The Confessor (18 page)

Geiger’s hand slid inside his jacket. ‘I’m not here for an apology.’

‘I didn’t think you were.’ Fear was not a word in Carmine’s emotional dictionary. He’d erased it long ago. So now, instead of fearing death, he wondered
how
he was going to die. What did Geiger have? A gun? A knife? ‘It’s late. Do what you came to do.’

Geiger’s hand started back out into view – Carmine’s brain failed to stop every muscle in his body from tightening – and Geiger tossed an envelope in Carmine’s lap.

A slow, thick breath bled out of Carmine’s lips. His body uncoiled. ‘Jesus . . .’

‘Carmine . . . If I wanted to kill you, why would I have waited this long?’

Carmine watched the face for some expression, an arch of a brow or turn of a lip that might hint at the feeling behind the question, but there was none. He remembered the first time they met, when Geiger walked into La Bella. At one point, Carmine had said –
‘Has anyone ever told you that you are one very strange motherfucker?’
and Geiger had answered in the same calm, stoic way –
‘Yes. A number of people.’
If Geiger had changed in any way these twelve years, Carmine was at a loss to put a name to it.

‘Do you still smoke?’ Carmine said.

Geiger brought out his Luckies and Bic lighter, and Carmine took them.

‘That’s my boy.’ He shook one from the pack and lit up. There was an audible
whoosh
as he drew in the smoke, let it sit in his lungs, nodding with approval, and then sent a cloud of smoke swirling around the car. ‘What’s in the envelope?’

‘Seventy thousand. I’m leaving for Paris soon. I need some things waiting for me when I get there. There is a list with instructions. A few calls should be all that’s necessary from your end, but there isn’t a lot of time. I estimated your costs at ten to fifteen thousand – so you should more than meet your profit margin.’

‘That’s very generous. This have to do with IR?’

‘I’m not in that business anymore, Carmine. You know that.’

‘But your ass is going on the line. Why?’

‘There’s something I need to do.’

Without looking in it, Carmine put the envelope on the seat next to him. ‘Why are you so sure I’ll take care of things?’

‘I didn’t say I was.’ Geiger opened the door. ‘Rollie’s in the trunk. Goodbye, Carmine.’

He got out and the door closed softly. Through the tinted windows, Carmine watched him move off until he left the splash of the streetlamp and seemed to simply disappear.

Zanni put the items down on the desk one at a time. ‘Passport – Mr. John Grey. Plane ticket – Air France, JFK to Paris Charles De Gaulle, ten p.m., Customized iPad, customized cell – press-to-talk, direct to me . . .’

Geiger’s home was awash with pure light. The copper sunbeams coming down through the skylight made electric illumination unnecessary.

‘Just to you?’

Geiger was facing her from across the room, putting clothes in a small canvas suitcase.

‘Just to me.’ She put down a packet of crisp bills. ‘Two thousand euros.’

He was watching her, putting together a profile. Right-handed, but not un-confident with the left. Possible astigmatism – but not to a significant degree.

‘Why would I need two thousand euros?’

‘You may not.’

She picked up her Starbucks grande and had a sip as she strolled. She was, he decided, dedicated to workouts – for tone, not bulk. Most likely she wanted her body lean for the work, but there might also be an element of vanity in her choice – about her shape, her sexuality.

‘All right . . .’ she said. ‘We assume you’ve considered a number of scenarios – one of them being that after you pick up Dalton’s instructions at the hotel you give us the slip, we never hear from you, and you do this alone.’ She turned to him, and waited.

Geiger did his neck turn, to the right.
Click
. ‘And why would I do that?’

‘Because you don’t trust us – and we get that – but in this particular case, we’re not the bad guys. The truth is we can’t afford another public disaster, and Dalton has to be removed. Do we need you more than you need us? Probably – but if you’re doing this to save lives, then we could be of value to you. We just want you to think about that.’

‘I have thought about that.’

She kept listening for some tilt of irony or gamesmanship, waiting for the slightest curl at the corners of his lips. But it never came. Not even a blink.

‘Rosanna . . . Are you solo on this job?’

She couldn’t get a take on his tone – he didn’t really
have
a tone – but the question still pushed one of her buttons.

‘Does that make you nervous?’ she said.

‘I don’t get nervous,’ he said.

‘There is never more than one of us from the division on a job. That’s standard Deep Red protocol. On this one – there’s me, and the contractor in Paris. He’s worked for Deep Red a dozen times.’ She drained her coffee, and frowned. ‘You know what, Geiger? I’m supposed to be on vacation now. They gave me this because I did the Dalton debriefing . . . and I know more about both of you than the others . . . and, I’ve already dealt with you.’ She stopped at one of the armoires. ‘So if you have an issue with me – you should say so now.’

‘What kind of issue?’

‘This may come as a shock to you – but some men in these scenarios have a problem with the fact that I’m a woman.’

Geiger put two neatly folded black pullovers in the suitcase. He was certain she monitored her conversational tone at all times – and likely had a penchant for sarcasm that she’d had to learn to keep under control.

‘Rosanna . . . Your sex is of no interest to me.’

Zanni wanted to turn around to see the look on his face – but she wasn’t certain what her own expression looked like, so she ran her fingertips over the smooth, lustrous wood instead. One thing she was certain about: she didn’t know another man who could have pulled off that statement.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Just so we’re clear.’ She studied the fabulous designs in the wood. ‘You restore these?’

‘No. I make them.’

‘You
build
them?’

‘Yes. From old wood.’

She stepped back to get a better look at the entire menagerie. ‘This what you’ve been doing?’

‘Yes.’

She turned to him. ‘They’re beautiful.’

He looked up at her. He gave away less than a sphinx – and Zanni felt an itch, an urge. She wanted to walk over and punch him in the face. The impulse had no anger in it. She just wanted to see what his reaction would be. She needed to get a feel for a rough edge – anything other than the unrippled surface. He was, hopefully, going to be her belled cat – but she still didn’t really know whom she was dealing with. He zipped up the suitcase.

‘You travel light,’ she said.

‘Just a few days and then I’m back here – or dead.’

‘You know, Geiger, you have a way of . . .
distilling
things.’

Geiger’s head turned left. Another
click
.

‘Okay,’ said Zanni. ‘I have to ask. What’s the neck thing about?’

‘Cervical damage. When I was a boy I slept on the floor of a very small closet . . . for years. It was cramped.’

Behind her eyes she saw a photo-flash of the soul-crushing scene, catching her off-guard – and she squelched it. She looked at her watch.

‘I leave in two hours. The contractor’s already scoped the hotel lobby – entrances and exits. We’ll be close by.’

‘Goodbye, Rosanna.’

She chose not to explore the various interpretations of the salutation and headed for the door.

‘One request, Geiger,’ she said. ‘Don’t call me Rosanna. Call me Soames, or Zanni – but not Rosanna. My parents named me after the song – by Toto?’

‘I know the song.’

‘Well, I hate it.’

‘The song or the name?’

‘Both. I spent junior high and high school hearing ten thousand idiots sing it every time I walked down a hall. So don’t call me Rosanna.’ She opened the door. ‘See you in Paris, Geiger,’ and she walked out, closing the door behind her.

Geiger’s fingers started an unrushed, shuffling roll on the suitcase. His mind locked her profile into place. At their first meeting, on the street, he had decided it would be best that he not believe anything she might say. Now, his analysis had shifted a few degrees – and he was emending his perspective. What he had first deemed falseness had more than guile in it. There was a dose of ambivalence in the poison.

It was two hours into the flight. Business-class seats were wide and plush, but he still needed to stand and walk the aisle every fifteen minutes to prevent the ‘deadfoot’ from kicking in – the pins and needles that started in his left hip and spread down to his toes. There were two seats per row, and he had originally been at the window. After the fourth time he’d gotten up and silently squeezed past the portly, middle-aged man in the aisle seat next to him, upon his return the man had asked politely:

‘Are you going to do this the whole flight?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Would it be easier for you to sit on the aisle?’

‘It doesn’t matter to me where I sit.’

‘Then how about we switch?’ Without waiting for agreement, the man had moved over to the window seat, and waited for Geiger to sit down before he gave conversation a shot.

‘Just need to stretch, huh? Sure. Long flight.’ Then he’d answered Geiger’s silence with a nod. ‘Business or pleasure?’ He’d given Geiger a grin. ‘Or both?’ And he’d added a wink, like a new pal.

Geiger had turned full-face to him, and his blade of a stare had pinned the man to the back of his seat.

‘It’s best that you don’t talk to me,’ he had said.

The fellow traveler, tasked with responding to a statement that, wrapped in its indecipherable delivery, lent itself to a dozen interpretations, had chosen an uncertain smile and a soft chuckle – as one might do to a joke whose punch line failed to hit home.

‘I mean that,’ said Geiger. ‘I don’t want to have a conversation with you.’

The man had nodded a few times, quickly, like a bobble head doll, and then turned to the window and not said another word since.

Geiger had run through it all thoroughly, and now his mode of thought was fluid – a river without bends, its surface untroubled. Everything that pertained to precision and detail had been dealt with, and all other possibilities in the future existed in a shifting, minimally defined plane. He was in a free-fly zone. From here on, what happened in one moment would define the next. This was the ultimate asap – with a ticking clock louder than any he’d ever heard in an IR session.

The sound of a young, wet sob pulled at him. He opened his eyes to see a boy – five or six – tugging back against the grip of his mother as they came down the aisle, announcing his feelings in something just short of an all-out plea.

‘I don’t wanna.’ He jabbed a small finger at the lavatory door.

His mother stopped. ‘But you said you had to
go
– right?’

‘But what if I’m in there and the plane crashes?’

‘It’s not going to crash, sweetie. Everything’s going to be all right.’

Geiger felt a sudden, short-lived yank – but he was uncertain whether the turbulence came from without or within.

The kid shook his head, and that set off his tears. ‘Come in with me.’

The boy’s mother smiled, and opened the door. ‘Look – see? It’s awfully small, right? Where am I going to fit?’

The cabin’s hum and rumble started to soften, the volume sliding – as if Geiger’s brain was turning down a dial – and the human voices swelled.

‘Then I wanna stay with you.’

‘Sweetie, I
am
with you.’

The muscles at the back of Geiger’s neck grabbed at his spine, and he tilted back against the seat.

The mother knelt beside her son and took his face in her hands. ‘I’m right here. I promise.
Always
.’

Geiger’s eyelids fell shut. There was a slow roll of feelings inside him, creeping up, then slipping away – the gravity of memory pulling them back and forth like a tide under the spell of an ancient moon. He sensed an earthy redolence . . .
‘You are the apple of my eye . . .’
A pulse inside a pulse . . . A hand within a hand . . .

Geiger opened his eyes. The boy and his mother were gone.

The train ride from Charles de Gaulle Airport to Paris took half an hour. He chose the train and its crowded cars instead of the solitude of a taxi, to begin the process of watching and cataloging faces in case one should reappear later on – standing on a street corner, sipping something at a café table, staring out the driver’s window of a car. The odds were slim, but still measurable. For the same reason, when he arrived at Gare du Nord, he took the B line south.

There were empty seats, but he chose to stand in the middle of the car, with a view to both ends. He’d not been to Paris before, but geography would not be of primary importance. This could be Rome, London, Prague, Madrid. Cultural mores, languages, urban habits – they could have some potential impact, but were unlikely to play a significant part in strategic decisions. Riders’ gazes were tilted down at PDAs and newspapers, wires dangling from ears – the modern android, rapt and insulated, incurious about the flesh around them. Few looked up from their portals, and no eyes turned his way.

This would not be about the place, but specific agendas. It would be about forces playing off each other – navigation, instinct and execution, flexibility and reaction. He would be – in various perspectives – prey, pawn, helmsman, conductor . . . and the very nature of the construct and desires of those involved ensured that people would die.

Hotel Maroq was a plain, gray-stone, four-story building wedged between two apartment buildings, their facades adorned with stretches of classic Parisian wrought-iron terraces. Directly across from it was another small hotel, Hotel Estival, with sixteen windows that offered occupants an unobstructed view of the Maroq’s entrance. The one-way street had parking on one side, and every spot was taken.