She holds his gaze for what feels like a long time.
But there’s only one way forward here, and it applies to both of them.
“So,” she says eventually, “you want to hear what I’ve got?”
“Yeah. Okay.” He draws a hand across his thinning hair. “Shoot.”
Ellen pulls a chair over, sits down, and starts telling him about how she spent the weekend-about her quick visits to the two crime scenes, the first in Central Park, the second on the sidewalk outside Bra on Columbus Avenue. She describes how she met and spoke with various people at these locations, and then got follow-up texts or phone messages. She lists the different subjects she spent most of yesterday researching online, anything from algorithmic trading to real estate litigation to forensic ballistics. “And from all of which,” she says, summing up, “I did manage to extract at least one interesting and possibly relevant observation. It’s something I haven’t seen a single reference to yet, not anywhere, though I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before there’ll be one.” She pauses. “Or maybe not. You never know. But it is weird.”
“What is? What’s weird?”
“Okay, look, everyone’s saying that this is the work of terrorists, right? And maybe it is, but an assumption is also being made, and it’s based on nothing as far as I can see-”
“What assumption?”
“That these terrorists are highly organized, and professional, and that therefore the two shootings were carried out by the same people. Now maybe there’s an official narrative being put out for some reason, that’s always possible, I don’t know…”
“But?”
“Well… from talking to different people, and putting it all together, my understanding of it is that Jeff Gale took a clean shot to the forehead, and no one saw the perps, whereas Bob Holland had half his face and head blown off on a busy sidewalk with literally dozens of people watching.”
Max nods slowly. “Different MO.”
“Completely. The weapons were different, that’s clear from the ballistics, even to me… and the psychology of it was different. I mean, look at the whole approach.” She hunches forward a little more and lowers her voice. “So that can only mean one of two things-different perps, with no connection, or the same perps, but they’re a bunch of clowns and are making this up as they go along. Either way, what we’re being fed at the moment is clearly a line of bullshit, and this story isn’t even two days old.”
By the time Frank Bishop gets to work on Monday morning the feeling he’s had since he woke up-a low-lying sense of dread-has intensified considerably. It’s not a full-blown panic attack, not yet, but he suspects he’s getting there. And he tries to pin it down, to locate the starting point, the catalyst-because there usually is one, a specific moment when you see or hear or even just remember something, and it’s like a change in wind direction or a sudden shift in temperature. Was it a dream he had? He can’t remember. When you wake up feeling this shitty it usually is a dream, an insidious wormhole into some forgotten corner of your unconscious.
Though now that he thinks about it he actually went to bed feeling shitty, so…
What did he do yesterday? Nothing. It was a Sunday. He slept half the day and flicked through the pages of the New York Times and watched TV.
Oh… that was it. He remembers now.
He watched part of a documentary on some cable channel about the architect Frank Gehry, and it reminded him of how his own career as an architect has turned to dust. What bothers him is not the alternative life he has ended up leading, here in Mahopac, and at Winterbrook Mall, so much as the stuff he never got around to doing in his original life, professionally speaking, at any rate-the civic buildings, the bank offices, the bridges… the grand unrealized projects. That’s what bugs the crap out of him whenever he thinks about it. Which, to be fair, isn’t that often. But when he does, like last night, and now this morning, the feeling tends to linger, and thicken.
He waits until Lance has arrived before calling the regional manager. The place is quiet, and they’ll be lucky if three or four people wander in all morning. Though given the state he’s in today, Frank doesn’t want to take any chances. He talks to this guy at the same time every Monday, to go over numbers and staffing issues, and while it’s a perfectly routine call, it’s never that easy. Only in his late twenties, the regional manager is a bit of a jerk and clearly perceives himself to be on some “upward trajectory” within the Paloma management constellation. Frank gets all of this and plays along. He’s not an idiot. It’s part of what he has to do if he wants to keep getting a paycheck every month. But he doesn’t have to like it.
“Frank, my man,” the regional manager says when the call is put through, “talk to me.”
“Saturday,” Frank says at once, emphatically, and as if that’s all that needs to be said-one word, nothing else, not even the guy’s name.
Which is Mike.
“Saturday? What do you mean, Saturday? I don’t understand, Frank.”
“I mean, Saturday, Mike. Fifty units of the LudeX.” Then, instead of a judicious edit, he lets the tape roll. “Jesus, what was that meant to be, some kind of a fucking joke?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Hesitating, Frank looks out over the stockroom from his little office in the corner. No contingency plan here, it would seem. Though whatever this is, it didn’t just happen. Something is spurring him on. It feels like anger, but if so, what’s he angry about? Not the LudeX situation, that’s for sure. He couldn’t give a shit about the LudeX situation. Is it his increasing dread, then, his anxiety, but redirected somehow, transmuted into this belligerent little snit he seems to be having? Maybe, but he’s confused and doesn’t feel entirely in control.
“It was insane,” he says. “We were turning customers away all day.”
“We allocated-”
“Oh come on, allocated. That’s ridiculous.” He leans back in his chair. “I don’t know, do you people sit around all day thinking this shit up? Allocated.”
There is a short silence. Then, “Frank, have you been drinking?”
Frank laughs at this. “No, Mike, I haven’t. It’s a little early in the day, don’t you think? But is that all you can come up with? I’ve been drinking?”
“What the-”
“Because I question your fucking judgment?”
“Jesus, Frank.”
There is another silence. Frank presses the back of his head against the wall. He’s being reckless here, and he isn’t sure why-why now, why like this. But what does strike him is that in terms of tone, whatever about content, there’s no reason why any conversation between himself and Mike shouldn’t unfold in precisely the way this one has. It’s what should be normal. His being deferential to Mike, on the other hand… that’s what’s absurd. At the same time, if he doesn’t climb back through the looking-glass, and pretty quickly, he’s going to be in serious trouble.
“Listen to me, Mike,” he says. “What I-”
But he freezes. He can’t do it. Not at the moment.
“Frank?”
“Let me call you back later, okay?”
He puts the phone down.
After a couple of seconds, he gets up out of the chair and starts walking across the stockroom, expecting the phone behind him to ring at any second. He hopes it doesn’t, and actually suspects-on the basis that Mike must have been as relieved to end the conversation as he was-that it won’t.