The 56th Man (17 page)

As before, instead of facing into the room,
Ari faced out. "If she had been awake, and sitting here...she could
have seen the river."

"Well yeah."

"Was she wearing slippers?"

Jackson was stumped. He glanced at
Mangioni.

"Yes."

"Were they wet?"

"You mean, did she go outside in them? It
wasn't raining that night."

"Ah, yes," Ari sighed.

Jackson looked at him closely. "Why would she
go outside in her night gown at that hour?"

If she went down to the river, she might have
gotten the slippers wet on the narrow beach. But Ari decided not to
press them on the idea.

"You're right, I'm trying too hard to play
detective," he told the officers. "By the way, were any tracking
dogs brought here?"

"The K-9 people?" From Jackson's tone Ari
summoned an image of men with beagle faces sniffing along the
floorboards. "Not that I know of. You know anything about that,
Mangy?"

It was Mangioni's turn to give Ari a close
look. "No..."

"There wasn't anything here for the
bloodhounds," Jackson continued. "What are you getting at?
Toxicology reports. Coon dogs. What are you thinking they'd find?
This wasn't a goddamn opium den."

"Too many American movies, again," Ari
shrugged helplessly. "Shall we go to the boys' rooms?"

A general deflation affected all three of the
men. Jackson recounted the body positions and fatal wounds in a
monotone while Ari absorbed the details with a listless sorrow that
was made more profound by the possibility Joshua had been awake
when he was killed. His room was closest to the master bedroom and
he would have certainly heard any noise coming from there. He asked
if either boy had been wearing slippers. Mangioni answered no, but
that Joshua's covers had been thrown back, as though he had been
getting ready to jump out of bed. Besides, in a house filled with
the usual rugs and wall-to-wall carpets, impatient young boys would
not be inclined to waste time with footwear.

Ari left all the bedroom lights on. They
descended the stairs in a somber mood. If it had been Jackson's
objective to make the house unpalatable to Ari, he had only
succeeded in making it unpalatable to himself. The address on Beach
Court was a morgue, and he now obviously wanted out of it as
quickly as possible. It was with a little difficulty that Ari
unobtrusively ducked into the kitchen to turn off the kitchen
light, then guided them back into the living room.

"Just one more small question," he said,
turning off the living room light and stepping toward the picture
window, as though to point out something in the yard. Then he
jumped. "My cat!"

He raced through the foyer and out the front
door, running all the way down to the gazebo. He glanced under the
roof and bench seats, then trotted back to the house. He could see
the two police officers watching him.

"I was sure I saw him," Ari apologized once
he was back inside. He was soaked. Jackson and Mangioni backed away
from him a bit as he shook off several layers of water.

"No cat would be out in this weather,"
Jackson said.

"This is the kind of weather he escaped
into."

"Could've been a possum or raccoon," Mangioni
reasoned. "There are plenty of them out here."

"I don't think I know what those are," said
Ari.

"Sure, you've seen them," said Jackson. "You
may not've recognized them, though. They're our number one and two
roadkills respectively."

"I'm afraid my knowledge of the local fauna
is inadequate."

"What was that small question you had for
us?" Jackson said, now openly impatient.

"Oh. I just wanted to re-confirm that your
department has no idea as to who was killed first."

"We got plenty of ideas," said Jackson. "Is
that all we can do for you?"

They backed down the driveway, pausing at the
bottom to set their wreath against the mailbox post. Ari waved at
the cruiser, then closed the garage doors.

Inside, he carried his fish to the kitchen
table and peeled back the foil. The carp was cold, but he had
worked up a stupendous appetite. He had killed three people that
morning, and had spent the evening studying the deaths of four
others. He picked at the carp with his fingers, spitting out bones
as he went.

That he had been lied to in large measure did
not bother him. So far as he was concerned, the police were not in
the truth business. That they were involved in some type of
cover-up was a given. Nor did this give Ari cause for dismay.
Police worldwide were corrupt--or were, as the Chinese grocery
store manager had politely put it, 'mixed up'. The Americans
applied a little more care to the natural ills of law enforcement,
but their abundant rules and regulations protected the offenders as
much as the offended.

What was being hidden? Why, for example,
would Jackson and Mangioni insist that they had not observed Jerry
Riggins' body through the picture window when they approached the
front door? Ari had seen the two men perfectly clearly as he
returned from the gazebo. Were they disguising the fact that they
had seen something else inside besides the body? Or did they want
to de-emphasize the fact that Riggins was looking outside--was
watching for something? Or both?

This last idea reminded Ari that his original
notion had gone all wobbly. Moria Riggins had inherited a fortune.
Her notions shop, and Jerry's painting, were the pastimes of a
pampered class--of which Ari knew something about.

His mind weakened. He could hear the rushing
feet of Joshua and William Riggins racing down the stairs to the
living room. Gift time, for children, was a universal cause for
elation. Ari was not terribly familiar with Christian customs, but
he had heard that, on this particular holiday, celebrants peppered
the floor with new toys for their young ones. The Riggins family
had been wiped out the night before Christmas Eve. Had Joshua and
William seen the wrapped treasures under the tree? Or had their
parents hidden them away somewhere, to emphasize the morning
surprise?

Ari went over to the sink and washed his
hands. He stared at the fish. Without realizing it, he had consumed
nearly half. But he had not served it over rice. His fishmonger
would have berated him severely.

What was left would have made an excellent
meal for a cat. Ari closed the foil and put the carp in the
refrigerator. He poured several fingers of whiskey into a coffee
cup, turned off the kitchen light, and shuffled out onto the front
porch.

"Sphinx!" he called out.

The rain had stopped. There were even a few
stars poking through the clouds. With any luck, tomorrow would be
clear and Ari would be able to arrange another meeting with
Detective Carrington.

He stepped onto the sidewalk and looked
through the living room window. He could almost see the splatter
pattern: Jerry Riggins slumped forward, cranium shattered, brain
matter loosened like a dropped platter of scrambled eggs. What
else? A Christmas tree, gifts, furniture...and an intruder?

He walked down the sidewalk a short distance,
turned, and came back slowly, trying to re-create the approach of
the two policemen. From lower down, a dozen or so yards from the
road, he caught an oblique view of the living room, including the
far corner of the ceiling. Drawing up directly in front of the
window, he stopped, sipped at his glass, and contemplated the empty
living room. Ample light filtered down the stairwell.

He went upstairs and closed all the bedroom
doors. Coming back down, it was dark enough for Ari to feel the
need to guide himself using the handrail.

From the sidewalk, the living room was now a
black tomb. It was possible that two police officers, though
alerted to trouble, would fail to see the grisly interior. But the
room was now completely empty, with no shapes or angles to catch a
stray beam of light. The Christmas tree, the easy chair, the gifts,
other furniture--a coffee table, a couch, a pair of lampstands.

Why were you sitting in the dark, Mr.
Riggins?

The better to see outside, Mr. Ciminon.

Was Officer Jackson right? Were you gazing at
the moon?

Ari swore.

Mr. Riggins, were your Christmas tree lights
on?

He had not thought to ask that of Jackson and
Mangioni. Christmas in an American home was not a domestic scene he
was overly familiar with.

You've been watching too many American
movies.

That was what Jackson had said when Ari asked
about toxicology reports and bloodhounds. But American movies were
about all Ari had to go on when it came to this particular set of
customs. He had never known that many Christians personally, and
they had kept their holidays to themselves. But he had seen one
fairly recent Hollywood production that showed the American
president lighting up a national Christmas tree. Was this scene
reenacted on a smaller scale in homes across the land?

Were there tree lights? And were they turned
on? The minutiae of his adopted culture was strung across his path
like a million tripwires.

Ari paused, brooding. He paced back down the
sidewalk.

"Sphinx, you yellow devil! Are you out
here?"

From the dark river some geese honked
querulously, like neighbors protesting against a noisy party next
door.

He turned, walked a few steps, and resumed
his oblique study of the living room.

"Ah..." he said, smiling. The room was dark.
What he saw was in his mind. The memory of something he had seen,
but not noted, before closing the bedroom doors.

A ton of hours fell on his shoulders. Ari
dragged himself upstairs. He did not so much as glance at the
computer. He sprawled on his mattress and closed his eyes.

He couldn't sleep at first. Something was
missing. He was surprised that he had automatically crooked his
knees to accommodate Sphinx. How quickly new habits were formed.
New...friendships.

ELEVEN

He looked around, peered into to darkness
beyond the truck lights, then lay the M-16 on the ground and went
over for the scimitar. The second prisoner, watching him return,
bellowed fear and dismay.

"Be silent," said Ghaith, and used the blade
to cut the zip tie binding the man's hands. "Take the Bongo."

The man rolled over, his eyes bulging.
"Allah--"

"--has nothing to do with this. Take the
Bongo."

"I don't know why they took me," the man
sobbed, massaging his wrists. "I'm innocent--"

"There's a slight chance you are," Ghaith
stopped him abruptly. Taking note of the man's accent, he added,
"Use the Bongo to move out of Sadr City, and fast."

"I was a translator for the Americans," the
man moaned, as though trying to ruin his incredible good luck with
a confession.

"There you have it. Move to
America. Now
go!
"

The man scrambled to his feet and ran with a
limp to the Kia mini-truck. The engine was still running. Dragging
himself into the cab, the man quickly shifted into gear and tore a
wide circle in the clearing, nearly ditching in the canal before
straightening out and disappearing up the farm road.

Ghaith in the meantime was gathering up the
weapons and ammunition from the dead Mujahideen and tossing them
into the pickup truck, watched silently by the last prisoner, who
had worked himself back onto his knees. His hands still bound, he
surveyed the corpses around him with awe and loathing. There was no
need for Ghaith to explain what he was doing, but the steel edge of
resolve that had made him a pure survivor had worn thin. He needed
to talk. And he had a captive audience.

"This will bring in good money. A lot of the
weapons caches have been destroyed. The uprising can always use
more guns and ammunition. Pretty soon, the Revolutionary Guard will
have a regular pipeline into the country. Then you’ll see. They
think this is hell? Just wait. And they don't care who they kill.
They're just priming the pump, so that the killing goes on. That
man who went off in the Bongo--he wasn't one of them. He wasn't one
of anybody. That's all that it takes. But I'll sell these back to
the killers. Guaranteed income, eh? They kill, I kill them, I take
the weapons for resale, and the circle remains unbroken."

He did not bother explaining who 'they' were.
He was a little rattled, after all, and was mixing identities. But
in the end it didn't matter. It applied equally to everyone.

Finally, with all the automatic weapons and
ammunition belts and pouches secured under a canvas in the back of
the Toyota, Ghaith took up the scimitar and strode over to the
prisoner. He began walking circles around the young man, flashing
the heavy sword back and forth as if it was a toy. He was filled
with scorn, with anger, with a manic energy. The young man winced.
He was all of sixteen.

"What were you doing, eh?"
Ghaith demanded harshly. "Why did they choose you? Were you with
the Americans? Have you joined one of those idiotic brigades? Did
they want you for ransom?" Ghaith stopped for a moment. "I'm
ranting. No, not ransom. Of course not. They wanted your head. More
than any of these others, they wanted
your
head. And look where it got me. Are you proud of
yourself?"

He resumed his circular pacing, whipping the
scimitar back and forth.

"Who should we blame for all
of this? The Americans? The British? The Iranians? The Syrians? Can
we point at someone else? Of course we can. We point at everyone!
But I've known all along...from way back. Long before the wars,
before the gassings, before the missiles. Don't worry, I'm not
going to blame Allah, who is so great that we're mere pebbles of
shit on His ass. It's
us
. All
of us. I'm not talking about Kurds or Arabs or Persians or
dictators or democrats. I mean all who are here. We're animals. We
can't help ourselves. You put us in a cage and lock the door, we
eat ourselves alive. This is just a small part of the cage. You
know, of course, that I'm talking about the world. It's a cage. One
giant hopping-mad cage."