scale. Something about the hour, the late-day haze and traffic fumes, or the vehicles themselves, intervening, some trick of distance made space appear to be compacted, the boys (from Pammy's viewpoint) isolated cleanly from the sprawl around them, the mess of house trailers, tombstones and fast-food outlets. It was near sunset, an antique light falling over the course. She felt she could watch indefinitely,
9
Lyle set things out on his dresser. When the phone rang he didn't want to answer it. He'd already fixed in his mind certain time spans. There were boundaries to observe, demarcating shades of behavior. Some faint static could disturb the delicate schedule he'd established, a closed structure of leave-taking and destination.
Driver's license, traveler's checks, credit cards, note pads (2), keys, wrist watch, road map, street map, ballpoint pen, wallet, U.S. dollars (4,000), Canadian dollars (75), cigarettes, matches, chewing gum.
It turned out to be Kinnear, surprisingly. Deprived of all but phonetic value, J. was no less a regulating influence, a control of sorts, providing standards of technique that Lyle was never slow to note. It was a good connection and his voice was warm and persuasive and distinctly pitched, a tone of countless small detonations, as from a stereo speaker, right there at Lyle's ear, reasonable, so close.
'I've been thinking about certain aspects of your involvement, Lyle-i.e., the Exchange, our friend Marina, whatever plan or plans may be in effect. It occurred to me that you mightn't be able to shake loose so very easily. Let me say: don't let it reach the point where either way you turn there's pure void, there's sheer drop-off. You let it get too far, it will literally happen, this business about being George's successor, with the same depressing results. Remember, George thought he was associated with money manipulators, illegal banking combines. You have the advantage. You also have a clear way out. I don't have to say more than that. Marina's capable. She can get the thing to the point where either way you turn, Lyle.”
'I never intended it to get there.”
'You saw the basement. George didn't. Take advantage.”
'I knew how far.”
'These things really go off, Lyle, when they're put together properly. It accomplishes nothing. It's another media event. Innocent people dead and mutilated. Toward what end? Publicize the movement, that's all. Media again. They want coverage. Public interest. They want to dramatize.”
'I never thought of reaching the point where either way I turned.”
'The whole plan was and is stupid. A lot of ridiculous theatrics and it's just childishly, stupidly worked out. Imagine being so lacking in resources and strategies mat you have to base a major operation on this tentative alliance, this weak, weak, weak relationship with someone who works for the very entity that's the target and who stands to lose everything and gain nothing from the whole affair. If there'd been any way I could have prevented what happened to George, I'd have done so at any and all cost.”
'I'm aware.”
'We'll talk more when you get here,' Kinnear said. 'We'll talk about New Orleans. Things happened you wouldn't believe. I worked on Camp Street for a while. I'll give you one guess who came looking for office space at five four four Camp. His Fair Play for Cuba period. And who kept turning up at a bar called the Habana, It gets more interesting than that. Mazes, covert procedures. Strange, strange, strange relationships and links. We'll talk.”
Marina, when she picked him up outside the old Fillmore East, 3 p.m., barely looked his way. She drove east, saying nothing. They'd entered a new phase, it appeared. Lyle, in a T-shirt and old trousers, carrying only four or five dollars and no ID but wearing his watch, hung his right arm out the window, feeling drowsy. She parked behind a Mister Softee truck. They walked several blocks and through a vacant lot and then one more block, past milling children and men playing cards at a table on the sidewalk, to a five-story tenement building. A man with a German shepherd sat on the stoop. The dog barked as they approached and the man, shirtless, a huge lump on his shoulder, hooked four fingers onto the animal's collar as Marina and Lyle went past. Another dog, this one in a second-floor apartment, started barking as they mounted the steps. Shat ap. Packing cacksacker. On four, Marina took out a set of keys. They climbed the last flight.
The apartment was furnished sparely. Lyle stood by the window, looking out at a large ailanthus tree. When Marina started speaking he turned toward her and sat on the window sill. There were several cardboard boxes nearby, filled with hub caps and automobile batteries. A yard or so of bright orange material, nylon perhaps, stuck out of a knapsack. A man emerged from the bedroom and walked between Lyle and Marina on his way to the toilet. He was young and moved quickly, making a point of not looking at Lyle as he went by.
'In prison there's nothing that can't drive a person to self-destruction. This is the purpose of jails. Vegetables not cooked right. No TV for twenty-four hours. Things like that are enough. Everything is broken down. All your strength and will. You have to be dependent on the environment to give you an awareness of yourself. But the environment is set up to do just the reverse. The exact reverse.”
(It was roughly here that the young man crossed the room.)
'Lyle, we have to be honest. Now if never again. I want you to know about my brother. In his life there has always been an element of madness. I use that word instead of a more clinical one because I don't want to be evasive. I want to give it as forcefully as I can. To those who knew him, there was never any certainty that it wouldn't come at a given moment. Violence, rage, threats of suicide, actual attempts. You had to be prepared to kill him, or love him, or stay away. There was nothing else. Rafael was ready to die. This is the single most important thing about him. Everything around him, all of life, all of people, was an attack on his spirit, his weakness. I witnessed some of this, previews of his death. To be his comrade, or his sister, you had to be willing to accept the obligations that went with it. His behavior, everything he was and did, this was your duty to accept as your own life. He had to know you accepted it. I saw blood more than once.”
The toilet flushed. Then the door opened and the man crossed the room again, touching Marina's hand this time as he walked past her. Lyle estimated height and weight.
'It's important to know this about Vilar because in a way everything we're doing here, or about to do, comes from him, originates with his plans, his philosophy of destruction. I've talked of one aspect only. He was brilliant too. He had university degrees, he could discuss ideas in any company. And he could manufacture bombs. He was an angel with explosives.”
'And you?”
'I'm less interesting,' she said.
'I doubt it.”
'I wanted you to hear the truth. In the past I've been guilty of sanctifying my brother. I have no doubt that on the floor of Eleven Wall that day with George, there were elements of self-destruction. About myself, there's little to reveal. I'm determined to use this chance we have. To cause serious damage at the Exchange, at this one place of all places in the world, will be a fantastic moment.”
'Attack the idea of their money.”
'Do you believe in the value of that?”
'I do, actually. The system. The secret currents. Make it appear a little less inviolable. It's their greatest strength, as you said, or your brother, and to incapacitate it, even briefly, would be to set loose every kind of demon.”
'To announce terrible possibilities.”
'I believe that,' he said.
She called the other man by name, Luis. He stood in the doorway, an elaborate leather band on his wrist. He had the same look Lyle had seen on the faces of a thousand young Latins in New York, boys standing outside supermarkets waiting to deliver groceries, or edging through the rhythmic quake of subways, one car to the next-a secret energy, a second level of knowledge well-nourished by suspicion, and therefore negative and tending to resist, and dangerous. It was present in his eyes, the complex intelligence of street life. You learn to take
