“Yes.”
Carmine took another sip of his drink. “I ever tell you how it happened?”
“No.”
“Funny story.” He sank back into the cushions. “Summer 1970. I’m in the navy. We’re in Boston, waiting to go overseas. Ever been to Boston?”
“No.”
“You ought to go. Great town. So we get a night ashore, and I have the best lobster fra diavolo I’ve ever tasted. But you don’t eat seafood, right?”
“No, I don’t.”
Carmine pointed at the table. “Drink your coffee while it’s hot. Why do I always have to tell you that?”
The answer was that Geiger didn’t like La Bella’s coffee, and he never drank it unless prompted by Carmine, which was every time. He picked up the cup and drank.
“So I end up walking around Cambridge, and I hear someone talking on a microphone, so I walk through this arch in a brick wall and you know where I am?”
“No.”
“I’m in a courtyard in Harvard University. There’s a rally going on. Anti-war stuff. Vietnam. A sea of tie-dyed T-shirts and long hair. Before your time. A guy on the steps of a building with a microphone is talking about the war. I’m at the back of the crowd, and this kid just in front of me turns around-Jesus in jeans-and looks me over. I’m in my crackerjack whites, flat hat at my John Wayne angle, and he says, ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ And I said, ‘I’m listening. It’s a free country, isn’t it?’ And the kid spits on my shoes. He spits on my shoes. Do you know how much time I spent, every day, polishing those shoes?”
Geiger took another sip of coffee.
“So I throw a punch, but before I can land it he jumps up and kicks me in the chest and puts me on my ass. Karate, kung fu, whatever-it was just like in the movies. He’s all of a hundred and forty pounds soaking wet and he puts me on my ass. I get up and load up my left, swing it all the way back for a knockout-and smash it into a lamppost. Wham! I’m howling and the kid walks away. I never even got to hit him. But you know what? Now I had two dislocated fingers, just like you said, and a crushed knuckle, and my hand is in a cast when the rest of my guys go off to Nam. I never went over. That little Harvard prick kept me out of the war.”
Carmine drained his cup. Geiger had another swallow from his.
“So what’s new in IR?”
Geiger put his cup down. This was the time. His temples drummed.
“I need your help with something.”
“Business-related?”
“I need a gun.”
The blue eyes flashed. “For what?”
Geiger didn’t want to tell him the whole story. His focus was starting to fuzz again on the edges. “It’s just a precaution.”
“Have you ever fired a gun before?”
“No.”
Carmine noticed a tiny piece of lint on the front of his tailor-made shirt and flicked it off.
“Eddie!”
One of the bodyguards came inside and stood motionless, hands clasped at his belt buckle.
“Geiger needs a piece. Not too big. He’s never used one before. Let’s keep the recoil down.”
The guard nodded. As he turned and walked out the door, he left a trail of images in Geiger’s vision.
Geiger reached for his coffee and knocked the cup over. The spill started running off the table’s edge, onto the carpet, and he watched each drop fall in slow motion.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Carmine. He sighed and flexed his fingers again.
Groggy as Geiger was, he caught the pang of rue in his benefactor’s voice. He wondered what had been put in his coffee.
Carmine stood up and ran a hand through his silver mane. “I don’t get you, Geiger. I’m a very smart man, but I don’t get you.”
Carmine knelt down directly in front of him, reached out, and patted his cheek affectionately. “I have to ask you something while you can still answer me. Can you understand me?”
This was another new sensation for Geiger-a drug-induced slide out of consciousness. He felt a spread of prickly heat from the neck up, but he didn’t care. “Right,” Geiger said.
Carmine reached out again, but this time he gave Geiger a firm slap across the face.
“Why did you do it? What the hell could you possibly have been thinking?”
“Right,” Geiger said.
“You think I’m happy about this? I’m not, Geiger. You’re my boy.”
Geiger’s head started to loll. “Right,” he said again.
“I wish there was a choice here, but I do business with these people. Remember when you told me the feds bugged my house? That was my fucking invitation to them. You gave it to me. You’re the one who hooked me up with them! We talked. We made a deal. I help them out once in a while, give them a name, do them a favor-and they leave me alone. Jesus, Geiger. It wasn’t Colicos who sent Hall to you. It was me.”
“Right.”
“You know who you’ve been fucking with? These guys are contractors-and I don’t mean the kind who do renovation. They’re government contractors. Understand? They’re the guys who do the stuff nobody’s ever supposed to find out about, and they don’t play by the rules, because they don’t have to. They’re all ex-commandos and mercenaries, fucking cowboys! And most of them are crazy, because if you do this stuff long enough, that’s what it does to you-it makes you crazy. Bottom line, they do anything to get the job done, because they know they’re gonna get disappeared if they don’t. These guys don’t retire with a pension and health benefits. Capiche?”
Carmine tugged at his jacket sleeves, as if he’d suddenly decided they were too short.
“They called this morning and very politely said that if you should happen to come by… So now do us both a favor. Just tell them what they want to know. I know he’s just a kid-but be smart.”
“Right.”
Carmine grabbed Geiger’s face in his hands. “And I’m gonna tell you something else, Geiger-about life. All your ‘outside versus inside’ stuff? It’s bullshit! Life owns your ass-from day one, cradle to grave. You don’t get it, Geiger. You think you can choose whether you’re in or not, but you can’t. If you come out of this alive, you remember that.”
“Right…”
Just before Geiger blacked out he had a thought, and even in his deeply muddled state, the irony did not escape him. He had never felt so good in his whole life.
PART THREE
18
“Geiger. Wake up.”
The voice was behind him. He could feel the restraints at his wrists, ankles, and chest. He was lashed tightly to something. He opened his eyes and quickly went down a checklist of his senses. Sight, sound, touch-they all seemed to be in working order. No fog, no fuzz, no delay.
He was in his own place-the Ludlow Street session room-strapped into the barber’s chair, wearing only his white jockeys. The air-conditioning was off. It was hot. He was already sweating.
“I’m awake,” he said.
A man stepped in front of him. Very thin and well over six feet tall, he was dressed in loose beige khakis and a gray sweatshirt. He wore round glasses, and his lightbulb-shaped head had only a few tufts of sparse, graying
