Heathern Read online

  THREE

  In morning's more transcendent glow we awaited Macaffrey, thinking or speaking of anything else. "We examined Jensen's office files," said Gus, lifting a sheet of paper. "With police I searched his apartment in the Bronx, and his sister's in Chelsea. They found it in her place."

  "Did she know it was there?" Thatcher asked, reclining in his chair, gazing through the wall-wide window onto 40 Wall Tower's pyramid crown and the ocean beyond. Sparrows and gulls flew by, uncaring of Dryco actions. Susie took shelter beneath her paper's tent.

  "Our silence was so effective that she was unaware of her brother's death until we told her. Interrogations proceed without result."

  "Cat's got her tongue," said Bernard.

  "Let's see what you got," said Thatcher. Looking over his shoulder, I read what was written, seeing carefully inscribed black letters: MAHAICA Conrad Taylor MYSTIC Mitch Moseley 3 days 25 percent. Susie declined to examine the note. "What the hell's it mean?"

  "As it has no evident meaning it must be pertinent," said Gus. "Mahaica is the name of a small port southeast of Georgetown, Guyana. No other references to this name exist in the files. What remains appears to be shorthand rather than code. In either event, the names, the figures, the word mystic, the meaning of those is still unclear."

  "Guyana?" Thatcher repeated. "Jim Jones territory?" Bernard nodded. "Nobody wants him, he's dead. What else's Guyana got?"

  "The usual raw materials," said Bernard. "It's an inessential state, except perhaps to Guyanans. No information received suggests Japanese interests presently operating in Guyana."

  "No evident interests," said Thatcher. One night while I was with him he drank to excess and began rambling about hiring Godzilla to destabilize Japan. I had to have Avi put him to bed before I went home. "They've been taking all this time figuring out how to get into it right. Cut their losses before they even begin-"

  "Who wrote this note?" asked Susie, tossing aside her paper as she might a kitten she'd tired of petting. "Jensen?"

  Gus shook his head. "No ID thus far. The lettering is done with felttip pen such as any criminal might use."

  "What's the provenance of the paper?" Bernard asked.

  "Standard notepad with a difference," said Gus, holding it against the light that we might see the watermark's modification, the fang protruding from the empty face's smirk on our company's happy-face logo. Bernard designed both versions of the trademark, the open and the closed. "The paper came from this floor."

  "Jensen ever come up here?" Thatcher asked.

  "Never," said Gus. "The guard wouldn't have accessed him."

  "So either he came in with somebody, or somebody was already here doing his business for him. Who's allowed on this floor?"

  "Many," said Gus. "Politicians, Army representatives, publishers, your friends, company executives, government officials-"

  "Charwomen, maintenants, anyone in the upper three levels of Security," said Susie.

  "Messiahs," said Bernard.

  "We can clear most of those," said Thatcher, "There's still a rat in the cheese factory. Whoever's behind this is using our people. Who among us is most corruptible?"

  "Blessings are equal, all around," said Bernard. "The Army, perhaps. There're enough of them around here, you'd think it was a VFW hall-"

  "It's not the Army," said Thatcher.

  "If he had Latin American dealings he would have liaisoned with Army personnel at times," said Susie. "Any reports of renegade elements within the ranks? Conceivably he was contacted--

  "Reports from all fields are analyzed by sociopathologists for disturbing motifs recurring in the subtext," Bernard said. "That way those bent twigs may be swiftly pruned. They're examined for signs of the boys enjoying themselves too much, or for patterns of fatalism, signs of disagreement with stated policies, the usual things. The prizewinners this year were a group of pilots who were flying copters into central Jersey at night to land in fields and mutilate farm animals." He laughed. "Those guys. Amateur devil worshippers off on a toot."

  "What happened to them?"

  "Transferred to the Turkish theater," said Bernard. "Busy mutilating Turks now, I suppose."

  "If Jensen couldn't get in up here no one in the Army ranks could have helped him access, whether they were in or out," I said. "Army involvement would assume knowledge on the part of some in Command, wouldn't it? Who analyzes their reports?"

  Bernard shrugged. "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

  Thatcher spoke again, ignoring Bernard's sudden lapse into tongues. "The Army's not in this, I tell you," he said. "They see things different than we do, that's all. They may not be too grateful but they don't forget who kept 'em going when times was hard."

  "Why would Frankenstein mind being given a gun?" asked Bernard.

  "Let's be realistic," said Thatcher. "You and I know who we're looking for-"

  "While it's possible the Japanese are involved, I'm sure it would be only coincidentally. They've had so little involvement in the area in the past-"

  "Think there's a possibility, though?"

  "Anything's possible, Thatcher," Bernard said. "We still have to get this agreement signed, whether they're involved or not. After that our problems are over, wherever they arise."

  "Over?" Susie asked. "Done?"

  Thatcher nodded. "You say this guy's into a lot of things-"

  "So many that conceivably a renegade within his organization might possibly be in on this. As, possibly, ones of ours have been involved. But he probably isn't the one immediately behind it. The Japanese aren't crazy-"

  "They play golf on top of skyscrapers," Thatcher said, speaking slowly, as if to children. "Keep robot fish in their aquariums. Put fresh air in spray cans. Watch movies of little girls killing each other with swords-"

  "So they're crazy as Americans," said Bernard.

  "They got fifth columnists in half my businesses and I can't fire the bastards, they're too good. They're trying to get me in bad with the government."

  "Aren't you constantly telling me not to worry about the government?"

  "It's not as cut and dried as I'd like it to be," said Thatcher. "You all act like we're already the government, but you can't hurry love. That's why things still have to look halfway right. We'll always have to have elections, for example, there's no getting around it-"

  "Subtleties," said Susie, "or so you always say."

  "You're safe as milk, Thatcher," said Bernard. "The populace has stayed so sober since it broke that terrible addiction to truth."

  "Never know what might get leaked," said Thatcher. "To the media."

  "Even the media you don't own want nothing to do with unlocking your closet," said Bernard. "More pressing problems need attention. The scams of beggars. Serial killers in the ranks of environmentalists. Subliminal messages on cereal boxes within the pictures of missing children. Keep in mind, all we have to do ninety-nine times out of a hundred is put the cap over the lens. Then there is no situation."

  "Mister Dryden," Lilly called over the intercom. It was noon. "Lester Macaffrey to see you."

  "Send him in," said Thatcher. "Never enough time to do everything that needs doing. All right, Gus, stay on Jensen's trail. Give Macaffrey a rubdown, too, why don't you?"

  As the door slid open Gus walked over and patted Macaffrey's limbs, as if to flour him. "Three times for luck?" Macaffrey asked, his arms outstretched. "Or ritual?"

  "Precautions," said Thatcher. "Have a seat. Good of you to come see us on such short notice. Never heard such good things about a teacher before, Lester."

  "Mister Macaffrey will do for now," he said, sitting down. "You understand."

  Avi had been invited to the meeting; when I asked if he was coming he shook his head, and walked away. I always knew when he was scared, even if he didn't. "Nice offices you got here. I'm surprised it's not the penthouse."

  "Precautions," Thatcher reiterated. A question of blast direction, Avi told me; the roof blew up if anything heavier
than a pigeon landed upon it, destroying as well the floor immediately below, the observation deck. "Mister Macaffrey, then. What I've heard about you makes me think your talents might be going to seed. I'd like to offer you a bigger field to sow."

  Macaffrey's stare seemed not so withering as it had the day before; I wondered if his mesmerism's effect could be likened to that of a drug to which one became addicted without ever feeling the high. Susie slipped on sunglasses, looking as a gorgon lifting her own mirrors against those who came to harm her.

  "Maybe you've heard of Dryco," said Thatcher. "We keep a low profile, but we're into more things than you could shake a stick at. What we lack is consistency. Got lots of material and no grand design. No theory."

  "You need a moral outline," said Macaffrey. "How could a teacher teach that?"

  "For a teacher your educational record is refreshingly free of degree," said Bernard, reading his printout. "We have no evidence that you were even graduated from high school. How did you come into your present position?"

  "Fell into it," he said. "Neighborhood folks saw me as a natural, I suppose. I don't think the Board of Regents minds my taking my students off their hands."

  "Yesterday you said your father was a minister," said Susie. As she sat there, her eyes unreadable behind those shades, she seemed only to lack a cup filled with pencils. "Of what breed? Something respectable? Fundamentalist? Racialist? Any interest in politics? How much experience has your family had in this area?"

  "Were the standard old ladies fleeced?" asked Bernard. "Did he molest innocent minds? Could he convince his flock that hell was worse than what they had?"

  Macaffrey answered, his face totemic, showing nothing, holding all. "My father was an Episcopal priest. He found good in unlikely places. I think he was happy with his life. In the fall he blessed the foxhounds before the hunts began."

  Bernard winked. "Who blessed the fox?"

  "Is this a genealogical society?" Macaffrey asked. "I don't understand what my family has to do with this-"

  "Background checks. Precautions," said Thatcher. "Looking for the man behind the mask. It's easy to lose the human element in all this if you're not careful."

  "Heaven forbid," said Bernard. "Much of a churchgoer yourself, Lester? Not much point these days, is there?"

  "I'm no joiner."

  "In our service economy," said Bernard, "who do you serve? God?"

  "No less than anyone."

  Bernard loved a challenge-to a point-and responded at full tilt. "I wish my teachers had been so creative. Such invention you have. Way above the norm, I assure you. It's tricky, you know, to describe a creative act without tossing the Lord in somewhere, I suppose, but I find such vagueness unholy. I'm told these concepts of yours came to you. How? In dreams? A bottle? Do you file through some heavenly fax? Do you consider your truth to be true?"

  "I've said it long enough that I should." Bernard's net was ready but the butterfly wouldn't settle. More familiar with Thatcher's logic, Bernard reconsidered, and readied the killing jar.

  "Good man in procurement, we hear," he said. "What's involved in that? You look up in the sky until you see what's falling? Some geyser of bounty shoots up between your feet? Where do you come by your gifts?"

  "Everybody has connections," said Macaffrey. "No mystery in that."

  "Tricks are fine for television but we have no cameras here." Thatcher once told me that there were twelve in the room. "Some here in our audience gave boffo reviews for your act's finale. Can you raise the dead?"

  "To be what?" Bernard pursed his lips and looked down at his printout.

  "Maybe you're not taking this in the right way," said Thatcher, leaving it purposefully unclear as to whom he spoke. "Mister Macaffrey. If Gus was to throw you through that window, would you fall?"

  "Under the circumstances you'd risk it?"

  "I wouldn't be putting in an investment to lose, if you fell. You get used to taking risks in business like you get used to breathing, you know. It seems to me that there's mighty big stuff being hinted at here and I'd like to see something more impressive. I want to know if you're all you say you are."

  "I'm nothing," said Macaffrey. "I'm here at your request. If you're so sure of what you see, why should I give you glasses?"

  "Gus," said Thatcher, "go out in the hall, bring Jake in here a minute."

  "Why?"

  "I won't hurt him." Gus went to retrieve, and the dialogue continued.

  "Is there something you're planning?" asked Macaffrey.

  "You're probably aware that most everybody in your line claims some degree of medical skill," said Thatcher. "None of 'em ever come saying they're a psychic accountant, for example. Guess God never has to balance His own books."

  "I'm no doctor."

  "Bringin' somebody back to life's damn good doctoring, long as they were dead," said Thatcher. "Course if you can do that we have a new problem, deciding who to keep--

  Gus returned with his protege. Jake stood silently, awaiting his orders, clasping his hands over his groin.

  "You been working over a year for us now, right?" asked Thatcher.

  Jake nodded. I don't believe he'd ever been in the boardroom before.

  "You've done a good job for us. Good potential. You don't fuck around, Jake."

  "I sting the bees." With quick fingers Jake smoothed his clothes, an unconstructed white jacket and ironed jeans.

  "That's the way God planned it. I hear you never let on when it hurts."

  "Not overmuch, nada nohow."

  "What does hurt you?"

  "Tooth Nazis," he said.

  "No root canal this trip," said Thatcher. "You don't mind blood tests, do you? How often you get those?"

  "Bimonthed as required."

  "Think of this as a blood test," said Thatcher. "Jake, Gus is going to break one of your fingers and then we'll see if this boy can fix you up. You pick the finger."

  After a moment's hesitation Jake lifted his left arm, extending a pinky no larger than my own.

  "There's a purpose to this, Mister Dryden?" Gus asked.

  "Told you I wasn't going to hurt him," said Thatcher, smiling. "Get to it, Gus, don't have all day."

  Gus broke bones with the greatest finesse, I was told; even so, I closed my eyes and covered my ears. Looking again I saw Jake motionless, as a statue of smooth cold marble. His arm was pressed against his side; his finger jutted away from his hand at an unnatural angle.

  "What do you suggest?" Thatcher asked Macaffrey. Macaffrey's look held no threat of trance.

  "Take him to the hospital," he said. "He'll go into shock."

  "You don't think you can fix it?" asked Thatcher.

  "I always fail tests."

  "But you passed, son. If you'd tried faking it you'd've already hit the street. Jake, that hurt much?"

  Jake's lips barely moved. "No."

  "AOK then. Gus, take him to the clinic." Jake shook Gus's hand from his shoulder as they walked away. Bernard tapped his pencil against the tabletop. Susie's eyes were unreadable behind her sunglasses. I tried convincing myself that I wasn't fully there.

  "You're everything I've heard, Mister Dryden," said Macaffrey, standing. "I'll be on my way."

  "I understand gut reactions," said Thatcher. "Sit back down. I want you to see how valuable you could be to my organization. Sit down."

  "What good could I do?" Macaffrey asked.

  "You got to have more self-confidence than that. Haven't you once stopped to think what you could be painting if you had a bigger brush?"

  "What do you want from me?"

  "People always want more than what those who have can give," said Thatcher, seeing no paradox. "But it's gotten to the point where we can't let expectations get much lower-"

  "How could they?" asked Bernard.

  "Time's come to raise a few hopes. We need to give 'em inspiration. Help 'em get out of bed in the morning. Help us keep a lid on things when the situation warrants it. Main thing we can't forget
is that we couldn't do what we do without people."

  "You want me to pass out the Kool-Aid," said Macaffrey.

  "I hope you're not making unwarranted references," said Thatcher, a century's sorrow soaking his voice at command. "Unfair lies, that's what you've probably heard. Makes me sick to think that's what's still believed." He calmed as he took comfort in truth. "Not ten percent of our money comes from drugs anymore, and we're in the process of phasing that out. We've diversified into a number of fields."

  "In a number of places."

  "It's so easy to go global these days," said Thatcher. "Only limit is how far you can see. Think of it, son. Hundreds of millions of people everywhere and every one of them listening to you. You can give peace to troubled minds. Help groups settle their differences. Solve the problems of tomorrow today. Get that camera in front of you and a few satellites and it's all yours-"

  "Thatcher," Bernard said, interrupting, "don't overstate-"

  "Think of what things might be like today if TV'd been invented twenty years earlier."

  "Television has great power to confound and distract," said Macaffrey. "It saps the soul. I have no desire for unnatural congress."

  "Most people'd kill and eat their grandmothers to get on TV," said Thatcher. "Worse, even. We'll start you at six thou per year and see how it goes. No more having to preach to gimpy kids from Farmingdale, that's for sure." Bernard and Susie looked no less stricken than I must have appeared; I made two per year, and Bernard not that much more. "Appropriate raises with suitable results. Fair and equitable. We scratch your back, you scratch ours. Everybody comes out ahead."

  "You want me to make people render unto Caesar what Caesar already has," said Macaffrey. "Not much point in that, Mister Dryden. I'm sure you'll get along fine without me." Turning, Macaffrey went to the door, and left.

  "What's this?" Thatcher said, watching him leave.

  "I think he's saying no," said Bernard.