“Olsen lives, and you are protecting him? The others are outside your jurisdiction now.”
“You insult me,” said Fernandez quietly.
The remark was part of the game, and that is how Gavein took it.
“I state in front of witnesses”—Gavein indicated Dr. Nott and Ra Mahleiné with a nod—“that among the murderers was a man named Olsen. One of the soldiers spoke his name. And the brigade numbered eight men, not seven. Both Lorraine and my wife have testified to that.”
This concluded the interview with the attorney general.
How many more pointless exchanges will there be? Gavein wondered.
Every morning the ritual was the same: trucks leaving with lights flashing, then a Davabel breakfast: cottage cheese, an egg, ham, ketchup.
Ra Mahleiné, heavily medicated by Dr. Nott, felt no pain. After breakfast, she would sit in the armchair in front of the house and do a little knitting; Lorraine hunkered next to her. Gavein brought out another armchair and set it on the sidewalk. The days were almost balmy now. All was still and pleasant on the deserted street. Overhead, the exploding helicopter cast shadows. A ball of fire speckled with dozens of fragments, it paled slowly in the sky. Its crew was long dead.
Gavein opened the book.
101
I write the numbers of the nested worlds—3, 5, 8, 13—but can’t find a formula for them. A tough froze! Without the 8, they would all be odd numbers, increasing. But that’s not much of a pattern; it doesn’t have the precision of the others. If you put 7 or 11 in the place of the 8, you have a sequence of primes, but then there’s no 2. I don’t know.
Finally a little humility in that redhead, thought Gavein.
In the Bolyas’ old apartment several creeps moved in, the kind who shaved their heads. They usually wore green tunics with red epaulets. Two girls and three guys, dividing the rent among them equally. Daphne was suspicious. She counted the dozens of beer cans thrown in the garbage. The cans were neatly stuffed into plastic bags, but one time squirrels tore open a bag, and they spilled out. The people drank quietly, without uproars.
Gary and Daphne, on the other hand, threw a party with much stamping of feet and bottles of port. The occasion was the publication in a local paper of Daphne’s article on what movers did: two whole columns of text. A bottle was overturned, and port got into the upholstery of the divan. Worse, the tub drain clogged and water seeped through the ceiling of the creeps below. An apology had to be made.
The girl who opened the door was thin as a rail. An even line of straight hair fell over half her face; the other hemisphere of her skull was shaved to a brushlike stubble. Her green tunic ended at mid-thigh, and her legs were bare.
The explanation Gary launched into became increasingly awkward.
When he finished, the girl said, “I’m Margot.”
He realized he hadn’t introduced himself. He did.
“No problem with the water,” she said. “We’re going to be painting anyway. But you won’t be doing that again, right?”
They exchanged phone numbers: simpler to call than walk down.
The new neighbors were OK.
One afternoon he and Daphne returned from the market. (Although Gary drove a truck, he didn’t own a vehicle privately; for marketing he had to use mass transit.) Furniture was being delivered to the people below. The three guys in green tunics struggled with the heavy pieces; the girls carried the lighter things: stools, flowerpots.
Gary helped them unload a large wooden table with a broken corner. The ungainly piece had been fitted into the van with difficulty, and getting it out wasn’t easy either. More gashes were added in the process.
Daphne looked at the table, at the inside of the van, and at the men doing the lifting. “Nothing to worry about,” she told them. “You can hide that with a little shoe polish.”
Gary panted under the weight of the table.
“Nice table,” Daphne said to Margot. “It’ll be just right for the dining room.”
“I got it at Morley’s. It was on sale, because it’s damaged.”
The other woman, Jutta, dropped a flowerpot with a ficus, and soil fell out. Swearing, she gathered the broken pieces and the soil and threw them in the garbage can. She stuffed the ficus in too, breaking its stalks.
“Fucking plant,” she said, out of breath. Her faded jeans were tight on her powerful thighs. When she bent over, the pants seemed close to splitting open. Gary could practically hear the seams rip. But the pants held.
I’ve calculated the time of staying in a Land for the world of Linda and Jack (where n = 4). It’s 3 8/9 years, or 1,419 days. Another piece in the puzzle.
102
Daphne stepped out of the bath and put on a gray bathrobe. Its color went with her hair, which she wrapped in a striped towel.
Even the hot water hasn’t relaxed her, Gary thought, seeing her frown.
She fell into an armchair. Her few physical charms showed through the bathrobe. Her cleavage was covered with freckles. Gary handed her a beer.
She choked on the first swallow. But with the second, her gaze steadied.
“Sometimes, Gary, you’re as self-possessed as a corpse,” she said.
“Huh?” He blinked, with the pink irises of an albino.
“You didn’t say a word when you were carrying the Bolyas’ table.”
“Ah… right.” He was slow. “I thought so.”
“No doubt about it. I saw the manufacturer’s mark.” Her dark eyes fixed on Gary.
“What does this mean?”
“I thought about that in the tub. The green tunics are mafia. They kill the people who move and take their things, and the border guards of Tolz look the other way. There’s probably an accomplice among the guards.”
“It makes no sense. Why keep the evidence?”
“Greed.”
“If you’re right, this is awful. We should tell the police.”
103
The police didn’t take Daphne’s story very seriously.
For the next job, Gary was unable to park his rig in front of the building: there was a new red Amido there. Jutta and Margot were washing the car. Sudsy water ran along the gutter.
It was the Bolyas’ Amido, down to the broken headlight, broken turn signal, and chipped paint.
“How do you like our new purchase?” asked Jutta. “We got it at Morley’s.”
Gary examined the car.
“It was in an accident,” Daphne couldn’t help saying.
“Yeah. We’re cleaning it up,” said Margot, rubbing at a bloodstain with her rag. “Because of the blood, we got it for even cheaper. I was spooked, but the boys talked us into it.”
“It’s a mess, all right,” agreed Jutta. “Look at that upholstery.”
“Use a strong detergent,” advised Gary, taking his cue from Daphne.
“If we can’t get the stains out, we’ll replace it. It’ll still be worth the trouble,” said Stack, joining the conversation. He wore a green tunic.
Gary and Daphne went to the police again, and again the police dismissed the story. They were seen by the same officer as before. This time he wore a T-shirt with the words Municipal Police. On the back of the chair hung a uniform jacket that had his name sewn on: Lieutenant Benjamin Cukurca.
Cukurca was old and completely gray. When he was agitated, his eyes watered, and he stroked the sparse hair plastered across his pate.