Tran Le wanted to know what a "subject" was.
George drove up and Mudger got in the car. Vietnam, in more ways than one, was a war based on hybrid gibberish. But Mudger could understand the importance of this on the most basic of levels, the grunt level, where the fighting man stood and where technical idiom was often the only element of precision, the only true beauty, he could take with him into realms of ambiguity.
Caliber readings, bullet grains, the names of special accessories. Correspondents filled their dispatches with these, using names as facets of narrative, trying to convey the impact of violent action by reporting concatenations of letters and numbers. Mudger loved it, both ironically and in the plainest of ways. Spoken aloud by sweaty men in camouflage grease, these number-words and coinages had the inviolate grace of a strict meter of chant.
Weapons were named, surnamed, slang-named, christened, titled and dubbed. Protective devices. Bearings of perfect performance. Reciting these names was the soldier's poetry, his counterjargon to death.
"I guess I ought to hit it," George said, "or you'll miss your plane."
Mudger didn't really care. This operation was slop. Maybe it was true, what people seemed to suspect. Without PAC/ORD behind him, things were slipping badly. No doubt PAC/ORD itself was helping manage the process of deterioration. This whole thing should have been handled by now, without his presence becoming necessary. The other thing, Van and Cao and the adjustment, was an even greater mess, at least potentially, having the foreordained character of some classical epic, modernized to include a helicopter. But he was the one who'd let it go on. That was stupid. He wanted to be in his basement shop, right now, pounding a heated steel blank with a double-faced hammer.
Early man roaming the tundra. You have to name your weapon before you can use it to kill.
Lomax was motionless in the cashier's shack.
It occurred to him that one day soon areas such as this would be regarded as precious embodiments of a forgotten way of life. Commerce and barter. The old city. The marketplace. Downtown.
What are we doing to our forests, our lakes, our warehouse districts? That's how it would go. What are we doing to our warehouse districts, our freight yards, our parking lots?
He was tired, hungry and cold. The man who handed out tickets and collected money had left some Ritz crackers stacked on a piece of wax paper. Lomax edged them away with his elbow. Other people's food. Other people's refrigerators. He'd always been vaguely disgusted by things he'd happened to see in other people's refrigerators.
He heard a man shout. The sound had the tone of an insult. Briefly someone's head became visible over the top of a car parked about fifty yards away. The voice again, screaming insults. A second figure appeared, moving toward the car.
Lomax sucked in his breath and removed the automatic from his waistband holster. He put his left hand on the door handle, ready to push it open if necessary. It was possible his silhouette could be detected in the very dim light cast by a streetlamp not far away. He remained motionless for several minutes. Some more screaming. No one else around. The old city. The abandoned core.
The second figure moved off, toward the warehouse. Lomax opened the door of the shack. There was a gunshot. He moved quickly to the nearest car, crouching down behind it. Someone passed within twenty yards of him, moving quickly, a man, head down, as if he were walking into a stiff wind. Lomax looked over the trunk of the car. Someone was walking in the opposite direction, slowly. Also male. He disappeared behind the freight car.
Lomax stayed where he was for three full minutes, listening. Then he headed toward the car where the shooting had taken place. He held his gun against his thigh. That arm he kept stiff, not swinging naturally as the other arm was. He saw himself leaving the scene. A jump in time. He saw himself getting off a plane at National in Washington. He saw himself selling condominiums on the Gulf Coast.
Both doors were open. On the ground on the driver's side was a man, breathing deeply. Lomax crouched five feet away, his gun directed at the man's head.
"Who are you?"
The same worried breathing. The deadweight respiration of a deep sleeper.
"Who are you?" Lomax said.
"Fuck off. I'm hit."
"I know you're hit."
"The slug's in my throat. I feel something."
Lomax leaned to his right for a better look. The man had been shot on the left side of the face, below the cheekbone. With the doors open, the car's interior light had come on and Lomax could see powder burns rimming the hole in the man's cheek. There was blood all over his mouth.
"What's your name? Who are you?"
"Mind your own business. Let me breathe."
"I can get you an ambulance. Would you like that?"
"If I start choking, put your finger down my throat. I'd appreciate your doing that. I hate that feeling of choking. I fucking dread it."
"No promises," Lomax said, "unless you tell me who you are."
"I'm Sherman Kantrowitz."
"Who are you, Sherman? Who were those other people?"
"I'm the son of Sophie and Nat."
"Who were those people?"
The same uneven deep breathing. The search for a rhythm.
"Who do you work for, Sherman?"
"I want to swallow but I'm afraid."
Lomax saw himself playing eighteen holes a day. The sun is shining. There's a sweet breeze from the Gulf.
Tran Le.
The fields were tawny and sparse. Three-quarters of the wheel and more. Winter's pure alcohol in the air.
Tran Le standing by the window.
Her eyes were large and dark and had a special dimension inward, an element of contriteness, as of a child always on the verge of being punished. Without this softening depth, her face might have had too much contour. The lines of her cheekbones and jaw were strong and exact, and she had a full mouth, wide and silver-pink and sensual, and a little greedy in a certain light, a little coarse. Again a counterpoise. It mocked the childlike eyes.
She moved from window to window now. Small lamps swung on the patio. A cane chair stood beneath a tree. The end of a red canoe jutted from one of the stables. She crossed to the other side of the room. Leaves turned slowly in the pond. The scarlet runner hung over the edge of a small shed. It was quiet, minutes till sundown, a tinted light in the fields. She watched the ponies graze.
5
It took the cabdriver about sixty seconds to write out a receipt. Moll watched a pair of dog-walkers stop near the curb to give their pets a chance to sniff each other. Cute. She took the receipt and went up the stairs to the front door of the brownstone.
In the vestibule she rang the bell and waited for Grace Delaney to buzz her in. Nothing happened. She rang again. It was after eleven but this was Monday and Grace always stayed until midnight, or later, on Mondays.
Moll had a set of keys. Before opening the door, she peered through the glass panel, her view obscured by the crosshatched metal grating on the other side of the pane of glass.
She entered the building and started climbing to the third floor. She walked with her head twisted to the left and angled upward so that she might see ahead to the landing and the next bend in the staircase.
Both doors on the third floor were locked. She climbed the final flight. Two keys to the door of the outer office. On the second try she fitted each to its respective lock. Only one lock had been fastened.
All the lights were on. She entered hesitantly, calling Grace's name. She walked through the outer area into Grace's office. The usual clutter. Proofs, correspondence, photographs. A bottle of hand lotion on the coffee table. A paper cup nearly filled with vegetable soup.