Shift: A Novel

For the first time another look entered Naz’s eyes.

“Beau?” she whispered—she was using his alias, but what he heard was Melchior’s mocking “Beau” on the train between DC and New York, and the disjunction enflamed BC. He took Naz by her bare, cool, thin shoulders, pressed her against his body in an embrace that was equal parts lust and power and contempt. He smashed her lips with his own, forced his tongue into her mouth. For a moment there was nothing, and then she was kissing him back, pulling him to her as hard as he was pulling her to him, and that’s all there was for a minute or a lifetime, BC had no idea, until Naz’s hands loosened on his shoulders, her mouth softened, her tongue retreated. Her sudden lassitude seemed to infect him, and he let go of her in confusion. Her eyes were looking down, at his feet, a pair of half- inflated circus balloons in their gaudy silk socks, at his crotch, equally painted in bright silk boxers, and equally flaccid.

“I—I didn’t know.”

BC wanted to hit her then, to wipe the look of pity off her face, but he wanted to hit himself even more. Wanted to turn and run from the room with his clothes clutched to his chest like a spurned lover. But it wasn’t Naz who had rejected him. It was he who had rejected Naz. At any rate, his body had. His body, which never failed him in any other situation—be it boxing or gathering evidence at a crime scene or holding up a suit of clothes and making them look like a man—this body had rejected Naz’s flesh like a finicky cat turning up its nose at a saucer of cream. Before he could do anything, though, Naz turned around. Oh, she was a consummate professional. She could make the bones of her skull and shoulders seem as soft and alluring as her cheeks, her lips, her breasts. But even BC knew it was all just for show now.

“If you would help me with my zipper, Mr. Gamin.”

It could have been the zipper on a body bag for all the tenderness BC showed. The violet fabric parted, revealing the white silk desert of her slip. Naz turned, steadied herself with one hand on his implacable shoulder, and stepped out of the dress, which BC held by both collar and hem, as though it were a flag that couldn’t touch the ground.

She was clothed only in her slip and stockings now. BC held the dress in his arms for a moment more, then, without looking, he tossed it over the camera.

In a flash Naz was on him.

“I’m going to press the trouble button.” The coldness of her hiss shocked him, but it also brought him back to his senses. “They’re supposed to send up both men. Chul-moo, the majordomo, and Garrison, who works—”

“The surveillance booth,” BC finished for her. “And the third man?”

“I didn’t know there was a third man.”

BC scanned the room, then, still in his skivvies, headed toward the bed.

“What are you—”

A faint crack cut Naz off as BC wrested the ball off the top of one of the bedposts. He tossed it to Naz, then wrenched off a second for himself. It was about the size of a croquet ball and made of solid walnut, but using it would mean getting close to Chul-moo’s sinewy arms, not to mention Garrison’s gun. That left the mysterious third man, if he showed himself. And Song, of course.

“I don’t know if I can hit a woman,” BC said to Naz.

“Leave her to me,” Naz said. Her knuckles were so white around the ball that BC was surprised it didn’t shatter in her grasp.

Childress, TX

November 14, 1963

The arrayed faces in the filling station stared at Chandler with a combination of fear and revulsion. He stared back, unsure of what to do. He glanced at his car. It was farther away than he’d realized. Somehow he thought running would only make things worse.

“M-mister,” Emily said. “Did you do that?” She pointed to the empty air over the intersection.

Without thinking, Chandler changed his face. It was an instinct. He didn’t know where it came from. But in the fraction of a second that it took him to turn back to Emily, a stranger’s features floated up from the depths of his mind and covered his own. He couldn’t see it himself, of course. But he could see it in the eyes of everyone looking at him: the sharp chin, the tiny smirk, the eyes, amused and scared at the same time.

Melchior’s friend from the orphanage. Caspar.

Chandler pushed the image into the minds of everyone in front of him in the hope that it would erase his own face from their memories. He saw them wince, and thought he could probably do more damage if he wanted to, but he had no desire to hurt them. Leave! he told them, pushing the word into their minds as hard as he could. Go away!

Instead of leaving, Jared Steinke got out of his old Dodge pickup and opened the handmade toolbox straddling the bed. Chandler saw what Jared was going for even before he pulled it out: a double-barreled shotgun, fully loaded. Jared had been planning on getting a head start on pheasant season, which officially opened Thanksgiving Day.

“Jared,” his mother screamed from the passenger seat—he’d been taking her to the hospital in Wichita Falls to get her diabetes checked—“Jared, get back in this car right now!”

Joe Gonzalez, seeing the shotgun in Steinke’s hands, turned and trotted toward the filling station office. It might’ve looked like he was running for cover, but the pistol beneath the cash register burned brightly in his mind.

Jared Steinke raised the shotgun to his shoulder.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want—”

He was squeezing the trigger when the ravens swooped down on him and he jerked the rifle up just as it fired. The glass of the Phillips sign exploded in a shower of sparks.

Chandler hadn’t seen the new Hitchcock movie, but Emily had, and it was her mind that gave him the ravens. He made just a pair at first, but then he added a dozen, two dozen more. A cloud of birds spiraled down on Jared