Weiss was my hero. Bishop was my hero, too, in his own inimitable mad-dog way. But Weiss… there was something about Weiss that had completely captured my youthful imagination. His solitude, his sorrow, his worldly wisdom, his nearly mythic acceptance of life as it was. Just standing there in that empty office-in his spiritual presence, as it were-the wind-tunnel roar in my head grew fainter; my mind grew quieter, grew still.
I didn't turn the lights on-not yet-but the sun through the wall of large arched windows made the place bright enough to see clearly. It was a large room, as Weiss himself was large, a cavernous space with a vast desk on the far side of it, two huge blocky armchairs for the clients, and, of course, the famous swivel chair itself with its high, high back and its thick arms flanking an impossibly spacious seat. The wall to my right was made up almost entirely of those windows, the apex of their arches rising to just beneath the ceiling. They seemed to open the room up into the city and to bring the city right inside the room. They showed a sweeping, vertiginous view of the ornately carved stone buildings across the street and the jagged, gleaming rise and fall of modern towers beyond.
After a while, when I had settled down, I turned the light on. I moved forward, still holding McNair's folder. I went around the enormous desk to stand beside the great chair. I had to take a deep breath before I could bring myself to sit in it.
Then I sat, sat silently awhile, swiveling slightly back and forth. Without thinking, I propped my elbow on the chair arm and rested my cheek against my fist-exactly as I had often seen Weiss do. What would he have made of this, I wondered. My first client, Emma's father. What would a down-to-earth ex-cop like Weiss have made of such a wild improbability?
I considered the question and sat and swiveled and leaned my cheek against my fist. Soon I found that I was even thinking to myself in Weiss's voice. I was thinking, Hey, it's a mystery, that's all. We think we know what the world looks like, but that's just our own bullshit we're looking at. Past the bullshit, take my word, it's a fucking mystery.
Just then I was startled by the ringing of the interoffice phone. I hesitated, then picked it up: "Uh… Yeah?"
It was Amy. She was still smirking. I could hear it.
"Patrick McNair," she said.
He was a small man, solidly built, fat in the belly the way drinkers get fat. In fact, as I stepped up to shake his hand, I caught the scent of whiskey on him, though it wasn't yet noon. He was bald with a flyaway fringe of silver hair. He had a round, pug, pinched Irish face. His cheeks were laced with scowl lines that seemed to have been carved into them with a putty knife. He had squinting eyes sunk deep into the flesh-eyes that looked out at me from a remove, withdrawn but watchful, a drunk's eyes.
As I showed him to one of the client's chairs, I noticed that he was dressed in an expensive and formal suit, black with a bright red paisley waistcoat in the English fashion, a bright blue tie. There was a generous sprinkling of dandruff on his shoulders. He somehow managed to come across as austere and unkempt at the same time.
I expected to have to explain to him why Weiss wasn't there, why such a young man was handling his case. I even had a little speech worked out about how I was supported by the full power and experience of the Agency and so on. But none of that was necessary. McNair began speaking even as he sat, even before I'd made my way back around the desk to the swivel chair.
"I suppose I can assume this is all confidential. There are situations in which one hopes never to find oneself, and sitting in the office of a private investigator certainly fits that description." He spoke like that, in a stilted, old-fashioned way, as if he were a character in a novel. He had a slow, rolling bass voice that added to the effect.
"Of course," I said, grateful to sink into the chair again, hoping it would steady me.
"The idea that anyone might know I'd been here, talked to you, especially about private family business…" He made a great show of shuddering. He gave a single bitter laugh. "It's bad enough I know it."
I offered him what I hoped was an encouraging gesture. Then I put my cheek back on my fist-a conscious action this time, trying to conjure Weiss's gravity and wisdom in myself. It didn't work. My heart hammered. My mind raced.
Patrick McNair, meanwhile, seemed to gather himself for a great effort. Then he said, "I want to talk to you about my daughter."
It's not easy to fall over when you're already sitting down, but I nearly managed it. My elbow slipped off the chair arm, and I-leaning on my fist-nearly went over the side with it. "Your… your daughter?"
"Her name is Emma." He sat like a pharaoh in the blocky chair, his head erect, his back stiff, his arms lying flat on the chair's arms. He seemed very conscious of his dignity; disdainful, lofty, fearful that the grime of our grimy business might somehow rub off on him. The more he talked, and the more personal the talk became, the more he seemed to fear he would be soiled. "She's my only child."
At this point I couldn't respond. I couldn't believe what was happening. It even occurred to me this might be some kind of joke or prank. Maybe Emma was taking vengeance on me for not calling her when I said I would.
I had repositioned myself now to keep from tumbling to the floor. I sat straight, my hands folded in my lap. It was silent in the room an uncomfortably long time before I realized McNair was waiting for me to prod him to go on with his story. I managed to stammer: "What seems to be the problem with her? With Emma. Miss… Emma. With her."
"Well-I'm not sure," McNair said. "I'm not even sure there is a problem. In fact, that's the problem: I'm not sure. I seem to have found myself in a position where I can either lower myself to snooping on her, following her, listening in on her phone calls and so on, or I can resign myself to ignorance." Without relaxing his lofty pose, he let out three sudden barks of harsh laughter. "Fortunately, it occurred to me that snooping and following people wouldn't present the same sort of moral dilemma for you. For you, it would just be business as usual."
It took me a second to work out the insult, but the insult was the least of my concerns. With popping eyes, I blurted, "You want me to follow Emma?"
"I want…"
"I mean your daughter," I said. "You want me to follow, um, your daughter, is that right?"
"I want you to find out what, if anything, is troubling her, and I want you to find out without her knowing you're finding out. I'll leave the methods to what I'm assuming, perhaps foolishly, to be your expertise."
At the moment I could understand his having doubts. My mind just then was like a demolition derby, the thoughts like stock cars racing every which way, crashing into each other. No matter how hard I tried to think it through, the full breadth and consequence of the situation was beyond me. He wanted me to follow Emma? Spy on her? When I'd already wronged and insulted her so badly? It was impossible. It was madness. To have the perfect excuse to be near her, and yet not be able to tell her I was there? And I would never be able to tell her! And what about him, her father? If ever I got the chance to be with her, how could I ever let her introduce me to him? What would he say when he realized who I was and how he and I had met?
That wind-tunnel roar was rising in my head again. My heart was racing again. I was perilously close to babbling hysteria.
"Maybe we should start at the beginning," I said, to buy some time, to calm myself. "Maybe you could explain what brought you here in the first place, what made you think Em… your daughter… needs to be watched."
I would've thought this would be the point where a client would say something like "I hardly know how to begin," or at least hem and haw for a moment as he worked to get his story in order. Not McNair. He answered immedi- ately, declaiming in such complete and complex sentences that it seemed as if he had composed the whole thing beforehand and was merely reciting it now.