Lyle got out of the car, automatically checking his pockets for keys, change, wallet, cigarettes. He watched her edge away into light traffic. They'd changed to Ohio plates.
He spent the evening in the district. It was hazy and dense, even by the river. Two men ignored a third, their buddy, urinating, as they wrestled in slow motion near the tennis dome at the foot of Wall, one of them trying to reach a bottle the other had in his back pocket. Lyle turned a corner and walked slowly west. He knew the lack of activity was deceptive, time of day, day of week, an illusion of relief from the bash of predatory engineering. Inside some of the granite cubes, or a chromium tower here and there, people sorted money of various types, dizzying billions being propelled through machines, computer-scanned and coded, filed, cleared, wrapped and trucked, all in a high-speed din, that rip of sound intrinsic to deadline activities. He'd seen the encoding rooms, the microfilming of checks, money moving, shrinking as it moved, beginning to elude visualization, to pass from a paper existence to electronic sequences, its meaning increasingly complex, harder to name. It was condensation, the whole process, a paring away of money's accidental properties, of money's touch. Somehow he'd come back to South Street. All three men wrestled now, back-pedaling in a roistering circle that seemingly had the bottle at its center. Their grappling took place in even slower motion than it had before, a film of reaching and mistimed grips, and they murmured and cursed, hanging on. What remained, he thought, could hardly be identified as money (itself, in normal forms, a compression of one's worth). The process remained, Marina's waves and charges, a deathless presence. Lyle thought of his own money not as a medium of exchange but as something to be consigned to data storage, traceable only through magnetic flashes. Money was spiritual indemnity against some unspecifiable future loss. It existed in purest form in his mind, my money, a reinforcing source of meditation. He watched a woman move from phone to phone in a series of open booths outside an office building near the Cotton Exchange. This view of money, he felt, was not the healthiest. Secrecy, possessiveness, cancer-bearing rationality. The woman, depositing no coins, lifted the phone off the hook, screamed something into it, then threw it back into the booth. After she'd done this to the sixth and last phone, hurling it fiercely, she saw Lyle approach and smiled at him, her raw skin cracking. When he smiled back, blinking a bit, she said: "Suck out my asshole, mister." He stopped, watching her hobble down the street. Then he picked up one of the dangling phones and called Rosemary Moore, letting it ring and ring.
2
Pammy bare-breasted on the redwood deck watched Ethan row toward shore, varying light between them, fire opal and conifer bronze, a checkered shade from house to water's edge, curt blue noon beyond. She sat on a bench while Jack Laws cut her hair. The house was all glass and cedar shingles, built vertically, its reflecting surfaces dense with trees. Jack muttered instructions to himself, thinning out an area behind her left ear. She looked west toward silhouetted hills, the mainland.
"What are you up to back there?”
"You wanted drama, right? A change. Don't interrupt.”
"What'll we do for lunch?”
"That's all we do here. We plan meals at great length with all this business about fresh vegetables, fresh lobster, country-fresh eggs, this bullshit routine. We talk about it, right? Then we actually plan it, the specifics. Then we do it, we make it. Then we sit down and eat it, talking about it all the while.”
"I don't want you doing things to my hair in this mood.”
"Then we, what, clean up, throw away, wash and dry. And then it's time to discuss mealtime, foodtime, the next meal. Quick, drive out to roadside stands. Blueberries, squash, corn, hurry.”
"It's not a life-enhancing mood you're in. I sense little warmth there, Jack.”
"After dark," he said. "The quiet.”
"I don't like scissors in your hand.”
"Do you believe how dark?”
"It's called night, Jack. We call that night.”
"I didn't know it would be like this. I thought swimming at least. Do you believe this water?”
"Cold, I know.”
"I thought morning swims. I thought at last, freedom from crowded beaches. But this water. Who knew?”
"It's not totally out of the question.”
"It's the pits.”
"Try again," she said. "Maybe it was just that day.”
"You have nice breasts.”
"A bit hairy right now.”
"Nice breasts for a girl.”
"I still want to know what we'll do for lunch.”
"If he ever gets here to supervise.”
"He rows well, I think.”
"The supervisor," Jack said. "If the supervisor ever gets here.”
"Anytime Ethan wants to rent a house this nice in a setting this lovely, cetra cetra, I'm perfectly happy to have him supervise.”
"What's he got in that boat, four tons of pig iron, the way he's rowing?”
"I like watching him. People rowing. People rowing and people bicycling. They're nice to watch. Once we were in England and somewhere near Windsor Castle we saw these boys rowing, prep school, in racing boats, rowing as teams in these sculls, and along the shore there's the instructor going along on this little path right along the shore on his bicycle, this towpath, calling out instructions.”
"I'm doing this par excellence.”
"So rowing and bicycling together," she said. "Boy, what a treat for my jaded cranium.”
"This is drama extraordinaire.”
"All I want's a new head.”
"You got it, charley.”
She'd always lived in apartments. This was a house in the woods at the edge of a bay, a house that inhaled the weather, frequent changes in temperature. She heard noises all night long. Animals lived in the roof and cellar. There were bats in the unused chimney. In bed, curled under blankets and quilts, she couldn't tell the difference between the sounds of wind and rain, or bats and squirrels, or rain and bats. There were ship-creakings everywhere and charred wood hissing in the fireplace, sputtering up at times, never quite still. When fog worked in from the bay it seemed to suggest some basic change in the state of information. The dampness in foul weather was penetrating. Birds flew into the huge glass windows, seeing forest within, and were stunned or killed.
They watched Ethan step out of the dinghy and pull it onto the stony beach, up over the tide line. He came up the makeshift steps and along a bending path, disappearing in the trees once or twice, head down when he emerged, trudging. Pammy went inside to find a shirt.
3
Lyle watched television, sitting up close, his hand on the channel selector. Near midnight he got a call from J. Kinnear. He imagined Kinnear looking out the window as he spoke, down at the dark yard.
"Where will you be Tuesday, eleven-thirty, night?”
"Happening fast.”
"If I were an intelligence officer putting you through a prerecruitment phase, I'd be inclined to move very slowly. I'd be inclined, I think, to let you discover your limit of involvement at a much more reasonable pace.”
"How far I'd go.”
"Correct.”
"My clandestine potential.”
"Be at night court, Centre Street. I may want you to meet someone.”
"Any idea how I can reach Rosemary?”
"None," J. said.
Two days later, after the close, he saw the green VW turn into Wall from Broadway. Marina pulled over and he got in. She drove out to the gray frame house. Kinnear was sitting out back, legs crossed, writing on a legal pad. From the small porch Lyle looked back in for Marina, seeing her through a series of doorways as she passed the entrance to the basement, near the front of the house, apparently talking to someone. Kinnear approached Lyle, gripping his upper arm as they shook hands and flashing that quick wink, an expression that said "trust, solidarity, purpose.”
"Lyle in his work duds.”
"Best tie too.”
"Big-time trading duds.”
"She forgot the Cheerios.”
Memory stirring in J.'s eyes.
"Yes-yes, she did, matter of fact. The Cheerios. Ruined two breakfasts.”
J. went back to his chair, his right hand trailing a sense of their recent handshake, and Lyle sat on the porch steps.
"How are you?”
"There's a feeling we've been penetrated. Consequently a certain amount of disinformation is being handed out. It gets a little complex at times.”
"Disinformation is what?”
"A term used by intelligence agencies. Meaning's clear enough, no?”
"Plausible but erroneous information.”
"So," Kinnear said, "there's a slight taste of cat piss in the air. Ambiguity, confusion, disinformation. What next, right?”
"Do you head up this group or whatever?”
"I don't confirm, I don't deny. Yes and no, but don't quote me on that. I'm a little bit of a Jesuit, Lyle. Jebbies know how to play position. They don't leave you with a good shot.”
"You weren't told of the first attempt.”
"Yes, well, the brother-sister act comes to us with a fair measure of self-righteous zeal attached to it. But that's all right, perfectly all right. We don't have a prospectus and we don't put out an annual report. Any rate, I wasn't supposed to tell you about the penetration. But I want your trust, Lyle. I may be needing it, frankly. I've been living in pavement cracks for a number of years now and you get so you trust the near stranger or at least go out of your way to vie for his trust because that's one of the things that happens. You get some complicated feelings about your own people. When somebody's picked up, wow, you can't imagine how quick you are to forget all that clan solidarity you've been building for years. It's assumed he or she will furnish names and places. Things change and maybe it's advanced communications, I don't know, but today there's just one terrorist network and one police apparatus. Thing is, they sometimes overlap.”
Kinnear walked over to the steps and put his hands to Lyle's face, framing it. He recited a phone number, speaking with exaggerated distinctness. He asked Lyle to memorize the number and instructed him to use it only at his, J.'s, specific request. Then he went back to the chair, openly venting his apprehensions in a pasty smile. He was vulnerable in the special way of men who still inhabit the physical structure and display the mannerisms of their early twenties, a relatively blameless age. J. had no less trouble being slender these days, or light afoot, and there were signs, still, of an ingenuous eager warmth in his eyes. This honesty was cruel, however, a suggestion of some essential deficiency in the man, his failure to understand deception, perhaps, or anything besides deception.
"Somebody like Vilar," Lyle said, "would be an example, I take it, of one network.”
This was the evening he was supposed to show up at night court to meet Kinnear's friend or associate or contact. He thought it would be "professional" not to mention it unless J. did.
"Vilar-good example. A man, the Story goes, who's wanted in x number of countries. Linked, as they say, with separatist groups here, with exiles there, with nationalists, guerrillas, extremists, leftist death squads, whatever they are. I hope for his own sake the man isn't double-celled. A mite touchy and high-strung.”
"What about somebody like George? I speak as a George myself. How exactly did George get involved?”
"How George got involved was this. We were using Rosemary as a courier. She was flying then, New York to San Francisco and New York-Munich, I think. It's safer and obviously cheaper to use crew instead of regular travelers. Anyway she and George Sedbauer met somewhere and he gradually became part of things, more or less. I wouldn't say she recruited him. It wasn't that carefully diagrammed. He told her he was in debt. She brought him to us. We promised him money, which we never delivered on and which he made only halfhearted requests for. I guess he enjoyed all that photocopying.”
"But drew the line at bombs.”
"George is paged," Kinnear said. "He goes out to the desk and sees Vilar. Things are kind of quiet today so George picks up a guest badge, which Vilar slips over his breast pocket, and they walk past the security guards and onto the floor of the Exchange. There's a conversation. George gets suspicious. What is this guy telling me? They talk some more. It dawns on George. This guy wants to leave explosives, a battery and a timing device in some fairly central part of the Exchange. Vilar hasn't told him this in so many words. But George is on to it; he knows, finally. There's no question but that he'll abort the attempt. Next thing, he's walking away from Vilar, who goes after him. There's a struggle. Vilar takes out a gun and fires, hitting George once in the lungs. Or is it twice?”
"Good question.”
"Or," Kinnear said, "George had two visitors on the floor that day. There was a second gunman. It was a bullet or bullets from this second man's gun that killed George. Not only that but he made it to the street. If I recall, early reports mentioned a chase through the streets.”
"True.”
"And for quite a while the police had trouble identifying the killer.”
"Equally true.”
"The second gunman was Luis Ramirez. He not only made it to the street; he escaped clean. Who is Ramirez, exactly? Let's say he's a rather obscure figure who's spent time in the Middle East and Argentina, presumably assisting the local movements and maybe picking up some handy bits of know-how. An exchange program, let's say. Known heretofore as an expert in falsifying passports. He's also Vilar's brother-in-law. An investigation will reveal the usual police inefficiency. It will show, specifically, that the bullet that killed George came from a seven point six-five millimeter Mauser automatic, not some starter's pistol, which is what they found at the scene.”
Kinnear crossed out a line or two on the pad before him. Lyle wanted a cold drink. He'd had a craving for something cold to drink since leaving the Exchange. Kinnear crossed out something else, this time with a little flourish of his ballpoint pen.
"Or," he said, "George ambles onto the floor. In one of his pockets is a miniature explosive device that includes detonator and receiving set. He has acquired it with the help and encouragement of his lover, Marina Ramirez, and it's no larger, really, then a ten-blade dispenser. The plan is simple. Leave the device in a message slot in one of the booths. Stroll casually out the front door of Eleven Wall. Get into the waiting Volkswagen. Drive, with Marina, to a point about half a mile away. Activate the device with a radio signal sent from a transmitter in the car. Explosion, death, chaos. What actually happens is George is followed onto the floor by Rafael Vilar, a man George has met at various places maybe half a dozen times, a sort of fringe figure, last seen at Lake Placid, where he spent a whole weekend panting after Rosemary Moore. Turns out Vilar is a police operative. Or, better, an extremist who turned. Naturally he aborts the attempt. The rest you know, more or less. A struggle. A shot or two. George dead. Vilar hauled into custody, temporarily, in an effort to safeguard the integrity of his role, prior to his retirement north of the border. Admittedly the weakest scenario. George's motive, for one thing, is unknown. We have to assume Marina was the activating force. Passion for Marina, et cetera, made him willing to comply. He'd been passed on, you see, from Rosemary to Marina. Sort of a promotion, with all the attendant responsibilities and risks.”
"Does Luis Ramirez exist in this scenario?”
"Doesn't enter into it, no. But I wouldn't say he doesn't exist.”
"Is Marina married to him?”
"Could be; I don't know.”
"Is she related to Vilar?”
"Absolutely not.”
In this scenario.
"Or," Kinnear said, "Vilar in his revolutionary fervor decides it's time for the ultimate gesture. He will give his life for the cause. Perfectly in keeping. Vilar has always had tendencies. The rightist kills his own leader. The leftist kills himself. Taking as many people with him as can be accommodated in a given area. In this case a superb sadomasochistic coup. Half the Exchange goes with him. This, in its surface aspects, is scenario one, minus the timing device. George aborts, et cetera.”
"I think there has to be a reason besides revolutionary fervor why he'd commit suicide.”
"Check with Marina on that.”
"Did the bomb they found on Vilar really have a timing device?”
"No idea," Kinnear said.
"The papers must have said. I don't recall, though.”
"Don't ask me, Lyle. You were there.”
"I was there, correct.”
"In your well-pressed suit.”
Marina took him to a different train this time. She wore baggy clothes, smeared with paint and varnish. He watched her extract a crushed cigarette from the pack in her trouser pocket, leaning far to one side as she drove through heavy traffic. Vengeance, he thought. She would be the type who dedicated herself to exacting satisfaction for some wrong. She would work on personal levels, despite the sweeping references to movements and systems. It was possibly at the center of her life, the will to settle things, starkly. Coercive passions sometimes had a steadying element in their midst. To avenge, in a sense, was simply to equalize, to seek a requisite balance. There was forethought involved, precision of scale. Lyle watched her put a match to the bent cigarette. He'd never felt so intelligent before. His involvement was beginning to elicit an acute response. They had no visible organization or leadership. They had no apparent plan. They came from nowhere and might be gone tomorrow. Lyle believed it was these free-form currents that he found so stimulating, mentally. They gave no indication of membership in anything. They didn't even have a nationality, really.
She parked near the station.
"What did J. tell you?”
"There's been a penetration.”
"We believe.”
"Yes, a feeling, he said.”
"Do you know he colors his hair?”
"I love it.”
"It's the kind where the color changes gradually, a little a day. Then you touch up.”
"Comb your gray away.”
"He used to be a counselor," she said. "What do you know about that?”
"Nothing.”
"He used to be a counselor with a group up in the mountains somewhere, out west. Group sessions.”
"Encounter.”
"Encounter," she said. "It was clearly the thing. He conducted sessions. They all found God, et cetera.”
"That's where He lives, you know, in the mountains.”
"What can you add to this?”
"Nothing," he said.
"Nothing about a kidnapping? About when he was involved with a group in New Orleans?”
"No.”
"But he told you what we discussed.”
"Disinformation.”
"If you get a phone call and hear my voice, and if I stumble and mutter and tell you that I think I've dialed the wrong number, and if I then say the number I intended to get, write down and memorize the first, third, fourth, fifth and seventh digits. You'll be hearing again eventually.”
"First, third, fourth, fifth and seventh.”
"The rest is padding," she said.
Later he went to Centre Street. Night court consisted of policemen in and out of uniform, occupying the front rows, and about sixty others, families of the accused and of victims, spread elsewhere. There was no judge at present. Lyle watched a legal aid lawyer, a young woman in a J. Edgar Hoover sweat shirt. She talked to people seated through the courtroom and to others clustered in the aisles, Kafkian lawyers, scavenging. A judge walked in and people began to assume various stances. As cases were heard, there was a general sense of men and women straining to understand what was going on-what forces, exactly, had caused this cruelty and ruin. A cop turned in his seat, yawning. It was well past the time Kinnear had mentioned. Lyle watched the woman conferring with three black men in a far corner of the room. They were in their twenties, one of them sitting in a wheelchair. Lyle waited half an hour longer, the voices around him sounding as though they'd been generated by machine, some regulator of flawed destinies.
At home he drank two glasses of ice water. He started to call McKechnie, despite the hour, when he remembered Frank's wife was ill, his oldest child was behaving strangely, there were problems, problems. He closed all the windows and turned on the air conditioner and the TV set in the bedroom. All the lights were out. He smoked, watching a film about glass blowing, with perky music, and tried to imagine what Kinnear was doing or saying at the moment, or what he'd do tomorrow, whom he'd call, where he'd go and how he'd get there. Kinnear was hard to fit into an imagined context. Lyle could not reposition him or invent types of companions or even the real color of his hair. He occupied a self-enfolding space, a special level of exclusion. Beyond what Lyle had seen and heard, Kinnear evaded a pattern of existence.
Lyle switched to a movie about a man suspected of embezzlement. The man's wife, a minor character, wore low-cut blouses. She had brightly painted lips and kept taking cigarettes out of a silver case and then tapping them against the top of the case, totally bored by her husband's crime. Out-of-date sexiness appealed to Lyle. He stayed with the movie, bad as it was, waiting for glimpses of the wife, her low-cut blouse. When the movie was over he began switching channels every ten or fifteen seconds, drinking Scotch. At three in the morning he called Pammy on Deer Isle.
"Ethan, it's Lyle.”
"Good God, man.”
"Don't tell me I woke you. I didn't wake you.”
"I was reading.”
"This is New York on the phone.”
"By the fire," he said. "I was pretending to be reading by the fire.”
"The city's in a state of incipient panic. Invasion of strange creatures. Objects are hovering in the air even as I speak.”
"You don't know how unfunny that is.”
"I think I do, actually.”
"Jack claims he saw a UFO tonight. Naturally we were mildly skeptical. Well, this upset him. Jack's upset. Nobody believes his story.”
"Wouldn't finish his veggies.”
"Went to bed without his Calder penguin.”
"Is she up?”
"I'll get her," Ethan said.
Lyle turned to watch the TV screen.
"So that was you," she said. "You like waking people up. How are you?”
"Having fun?”
"This place is so great. Of course I have to say that-he's five feet away. But it is, it's just great. Gets a little cold at night, I'd say. Yes, a little nippy. Like I'm freezing to death. But we're coping well. How are you?”
"The city's in a state of incipient panic.”
"I don't want to hear about it.”
"So what it's like, trees?”
"We went to this terrific place today. Weaving, they did weaving, quilting, pottery. The whole schmeer, you know? I'm pretending to like it-he's five feet away. No, seriously, did you ever see how glass is blown?”
"No, tell me.”
"So, okay, it's a little boring. No, it's not, I'm teasing Ethan. Listen, I'll wake up Jack. If he's still here. You can talk to him. If he hasn't been spirited away in a little green capsule.”
"I heard.”
"We'll make an event out of it. I'll get Jack.”
They talked a while longer. She didn't get Jack. After he hung up he watched television. As time passed it became more difficult for him to turn off the set. He knew an immense depression would settle in between the time he turned off the set and the time he finally fell asleep. He would have to resume. That's why it was so hard to turn off the set. There would be a period of resuming. He wouldn't be able to go to sleep immediately. There would be a gap to fill. It caused a tremendous wrench, turning off the set. He was there, part of the imploding light. The room he occupied was unfamiliar for a moment. He had to learn it all over again. But it wasn't as bad as he'd expected. Only a routine depression settled in and he was asleep within the hour.
4
Rosemary was at her desk, sorting mail. These surroundings no longer made sense. He'd seen her in a half slip, in panties, naked. He'd stood in the toilet doorway and watched her dress, an itemizing of erotic truths, until she'd spotted him and turned, off-balance, to elbow the door. At her desk, passing time, he marveled at the ease with which they fitted into slots of decorum. People must be natural spies. The desk, the broadloom were absurd. Her letter opener, neatly slitting. His tone of voice.
He waited for her after work in front of her house. They went inside and drank for several hours. He held her hand, occasionally putting his lips to the ends of her fingers. He realized this was an endearment.
In the kitchen he took another look at the picture of her with Sedbauer and Vilar. He studied Vilar's face. It was shiny and lean, a high forehead, tapered jaw. He heard her in the bedroom, Rosemary's clothes coming off.
Curled into herself she waited, an animal void, white body, deep stillness, the thing he tried to hand-grip and eat. He wouldn't urge her toward some vast shuddering fuck or recollect the touch of her hands at the end of a passive afternoon, some months off, paper sailing as his soul wandered from the floor. She extended her limbs. He could see breasts now, her face and neck, her arms and small hands, half cupped, and the wrinkled sheet between her thighs. He'd never before seen how different a woman's body was from his own. This fact, somehow, had been hidden from him. Am I drunk, he wondered. Supine she seemed enormous, nearly outsizing the small bed. That was good, that was right, deep stillness, organic void. Her breathing caused a perceptible cadence, body's periodic rise and fall, a metronome of his calculated lust. Slightly misshapen feet. Small bumps, flesh points, at the rims of her nipples. He undressed slowly, knowing neither of them would reach an interval of fulfilling labor, or whistle a bit, breathing nasally, and cry a name, all perspective burnt from their faces. She touched her ribs where a fly had landed. This automatic motion revealed her, briefly. In a haze he understood at last. But what? Understood, at last, what? The fly settled on a window sill. He watched it, trying to retrace its connection to the huge body on the bed, the bone and muscle structure of a dream. There were pale veins on her legs, sun lines and natural indentations. Knees up, head way back over the curve of the pillow, she might have been half yielding to, half defending against, some clumsy lover. He crawled, literally crawled between her legs. Then he rested his forearms on her raised knees and watched the way her throat lightly pulsed.
"Tell me some more about George," he said. "What did he do besides make you laugh?”
He crossed the street to the candy store tucked in at 77 Water, red and yellow awning, a homey footnote to the mass of steel and anodized aluminum. There was gray everywhere, wetness suspended, a day the color of the district itself. He bought cigarettes and chewing gum and then stood outside the candy store, under the bulk of the skyscraper, and unwrapped a stick of gum, listening for foghorns, a sound he associated with foreign cities and sex with other men's wives. It didn't take him long to realize he was being stared at. Man near the entrance to the lobby. Checked sportcoat, solid tie. Lyle had the impression the man wanted him to walk that way. He was stocky and boyish, a frozen jaw, wisps of hair curled down over his forehead. Lyle decided to go in the other direction. About two blocks away the man came alongside. Lyle stopped, waiting for a light to change. The man looked at him again, clearly intent on conveying some tacit information, a connection or message he expected Lyle to perceive. They walked another half block. Two women up ahead raised umbrellas simultaneously.
"You're McKechnie's friend, aren't you?”
"Is life that simple?" the man said.
"I kept waiting for you people to contact me. I talked to Frank McKechnie about the situation. About what certain people knew. Frank talked to someone to pass the word along. I expected earlier contact. In the meantime I decided to find out what I could.”
"That was outstanding, Lyle.”
"What's your name?”
"Burks.”
"Burks, your tone of voice isn't encouraging.”
"We do what we can.”
"They have contacts on the West Coast. I know that. They use Ohio plates, at least at the moment. I know the number if you want it. A green Volkswagen, or do you have all this?”
"What can you tell us about A. J. Kinnear?”
"It's J. Kinnear at present.”
"We have A. J.”
"It's just J. now.”
"Just J.," Burks said.
"I don't know how many people are involved. If they have units or teams or whatever, I couldn't tell you how they're set up. Kinnear is a complex individual, I think. They're out in Queens. I know the street name and house number.”
"Is Kinnear tall, short, what?”
They walked up and down the streets near the river. Lyle described Kinnear, speaking slowly and then listening with care, trying to memorize his own remarks and what Burks said in reply. It was like a conversation with a doctor who was reporting the results of significant tests. Questions and answers floated through each other. One's life seemed to hinge on syntax, inflection, points of grammar. He thought Burks said something about a voiceprint but wasn't sure of the context, whether it applied to Kinnear or not. It was also a little like his early conversations with Rosemary Moore, photographs of his own mouth, the sense of her remarks eluding him not only as they were uttered but later as well, in his attempts to narrate to himself the particulars of each encounter. He saw a barge in the haze, perhaps midriver, sliding toward the harbor. Burks' shoes gleamed. He was young, probably younger than Lyle.
"They may take another crack at the Exchange.”
"We'd be interested.”
"What else?”
"What else-what do you mean?”
"Is there anything else you want to know?" Lyle said. "They have a basement full of retread weapons. I can describe them if you want. I have this annoying faculty.”
"What's that?”
"Compulsive information-gathering.”
"It must be a burden.”
"Tone of voice," Lyle said.
"Fuck you, cookie.”
"Are you McKechnie's friend or not?”
"You talked to Frank McKechnie. He said he'd talk to a friend of his. If you want to believe my presence here is a direct result of McKechnie's communication, feel free, Lyle. But there's a question I'd like to pose.”
"What's that?”
"Is life ever that simple?”
"Nice.”
"We do what we can.”
"No, nice, really, I like it.”
"Good, Lyle.”
"What can you tell me about Vilar?”
"I can tell you to eat shit off a wooden stick," Burks said.
Just another Fordham or Marquette lad. Studied languages and history. Played intramural sports. Revered the Jesuits for their sophistication and analytical skills. Voted for moderates of either party. Knows how to strangle a German shepherd with rosary beads.
Lyle walked crosstown to busier areas. It was getting dark. He moved to one side to avoid some people stepping off a bus. One of them made momentary contact, putting an arm out to ward off a collision, a man with a mustache and wiry hair, muttering something, his head large and squarish. Keep yer distance, mon. Lyle looked around for a public phone as he walked on. It started raining hard and the streets gradually emptied out. Don't be settin' yer hands on honest folk. He found a bar, ordered a drink and went back to the phone booth. One of McKechnie's daughters answered, saying she'd get her father.
"That friend of yours.”
"What about him?”
"Burks," Lyle said. "Is that his name?”
"No.”
"Call him up, Frank, and find out if he knows who Burks is.”
"I made my call.”
"You can do that.”
"I made my call. That was it.”
"Call him. I'll get right back to you.”
"Sure, get right back.”
"I'll call you in fifteen minutes.”
"Sure, call, Lyle, anytime.”
He went to the bar and sipped his drink. A man with crutches stood nearby, a near derelict, it seemed. It wasn't much of a place. Two elderly women sat at a far corner of the bar, sharing a cigarette. Lyle finished his drink. It was too soon to call McKechnie again. He ordered another Scotch and went back to phone J. Kinnear, realizing, with profound surprise, that he didn't know how to get in touch with Kinnear. The listing would be in another name, obviously, and Lyle had never thought to check the number on the telephone in the frame house in Queens. Dumb, very dumb. When he got back to the bar he saw someone walk past the front door, hurrying through the rain, a man holding a newspaper over his head.}ust a glimpse was all. Wee glimpse o' the laddie's mustache. A little later a woman came in and greeted the man on crutches, asking what had happened.
"I got runned over by a learner driver.”
"Did you sue his ass?”
"What sue?" he said. "I was like on the brink.”
"You could collect, Mikey. People do it. You could make a nice little something for yourself.”
"I was like seeing cherubs.”
Or an M.A. in economics, he thought. Big Ten fencing titles. Square head, wiry hair. Author of a study on trade regulations in Eastern Europe. Does push-ups with his knuckles.
Lyle walked down Nassau Street. The district was a locked sector. Through wavering layers of rain he saw it that way for the first time. It was sealed off from the rest of the city, as the city itself had been planned to conceal what lay around it, the rough country's assent to unceremonious decay. The district grew repeatedly inward, more secret, an occult theology of money, extending ever deeper into its own veined marble. Unit managers accrued and stockpiled. Engineers shampooed the vaults. At the inmost crypt might be heard the amplitude pulse of history, a system and rite to outshadow the evidence of men's senses. He stepped out of a doorway and hailed the first free cab he saw, feeling intelligent again.
At home he heard from Kinnear almost immediately. He stood holding the phone, concentrating intently, determined to understand what was being said, the implications, the shad-ings, whatever petalous subtleties might be contained in the modulations of J.'s voice.
"I'm not where I usually am.”
"Right.”
"I'll be sort of transient-I would say indefinitely.”
"Before that, there's something that happened. I talked to a Burks, if you know the name. He asked about you.”
"Not unsurprisingly.”
"Do you know who he is?”
"I may have talked to him on the phone. I talked to several of them. I wasn't given names. I had a number to call. We did our talking exclusively over die phone.”
"I told him everything I know.”
"That was clever, Lyle, actually.”
"I thought I should tell you.”
"I'm one of those people you've read about who's constantly being described as 'dropping out of sight,' or 'resurfacing.' As in: 'He resurfaced in Bogota four years later.' Right now it's the former condition that prevails.”
Lyle tried to imagine Kinnear in some specific locale, an airport (but there was no background of amplified voices) or remote house (where, what room) in a well-defined landscape. But he remained a voice, no more, a vibratory hum, coming from nowhere in particular.
"I asked him about Vilar," Lyle said. "He outright refused to tell me anything.”
"Makes sense.”
"They don't like me.”
"Well, I talked to them, you know. We had talks about this and that.”
"My name came up.”
"I was very selective. That was part of the appeal of the whole experiment, from my viewpoint. It was interesting, very much so. I told them only certain things. They're quite a group-quite, let's say, adaptable, I guess is the word.”
"They know my recent history.”
"They know your recent history.”
"And they didn't contact me earlier because they had someone inside.”
"Now that I've severed all connections, Lyle, they've become very interested in you. You're their remaining means of tying into the little terror seminar.”
"Can't they just go in and seize weapons and arrest people for that, if nothing else?”
"They'll find nothing there but weapons. I was the only person who spent any appreciable time in that house. Won't be anybody there, now or later.”
"I thought Marina.”
"Marina was out there maybe half a dozen times, never for longer than a couple of hours.”
"Why pick now to travel, J.?”
"I was getting bricked in, old man. The element you think of in the person of Marina was clearly aware that information was trickling. The element you think of in the person of Burks was getting a touch possessive. It was time to do a one-eighty out the door.”
Lyle suspected J. was getting ready to hang up.
"How long have you been giving information?”
"Matter of a few months.”
"Get paid?”
"That was to come, eventually. Extremely doubtful I'll ever see it.”
"Fair amount, I assume.”
"Pittance.”
"Why all the risk then?”
"People make experiments, Lyle. They're very adept at certain things, so aware of shadings, our secret police. I wanted to get inside that particular apparatus, just a step or two.”
"They got your name slightly wrong.”
"I didn't know they had it at all. That's interesting. See what I mean? Techniques. I wonder how they managed it. They must have spent a great deal of time on me. I used to wonder about that. Are they really interested in what they're getting? Do they know who I am ? Their secrets are worse than ours, by far, which goes a long way toward explaining why their techniques are so well developed.”
"What happens now?" "I continue to ask for your trust." "Don't go just yet, J." "God bless," he said.
Lyle put down the phone, then dialed McKechnie's number. The little girl said her daddy didn't want to talk to him.
5
They discussed the sunset awhile, sitting on the deck with junk food and drinks. It was better than the previous day's sunset but lacked the faint mauve tones, according to Ethan, of the day before yesterday. They went inside and ate dinner, slowly, an uncoordinated effort. Jack complained that they were talking about the food while eating it, that they talked about sunsets while looking at them, so on, so forth. It was beginning to get on his nerves, he said. He used his semihysterical voice, that exaggerated whine of urban discontent. They sat by the fire after dinner, looking at magazines. Jack found a six-month-old New York Times. He read aloud from a list of restaurants cited for health code violations, chanting the names and addresses.
"We need wood," Ethan said.
"Wood.”
"Bring in wood.”
"Wood," Jack said.
"In bring," Pammy said, "Put pile.”
"Wood, wood.”
"Fire come," she said. "Make big for heat the body.”
In the morning they drove over the causeway, their hair flattening in the wind, and then across the bridge to the mainland. The sky was everywhere. Pammy sat behind the men, smiling at the backs of their heads. Weathering had given the houses a second, deeper life, more private, a beauty that was skillfully spare, that had been won. Boulders in brown fields. The kids here, on bikes, barefoot. She scanned carefully for traces of water, eager to be surprised by it, to have it come up suddenly, an avenue of hard blue between stands of pine, sunlight bouncing on the surface. The kids on bikes were lean and blond, a little less than well-fed, a certain edge, she thought, to the way they returned her smile, looking hard at the car and the travelers, eyes narrow in the sun.
In Blue Hill they visited a married couple Ethan knew, three children, a dog. Leaving, she and Jack waited by the car while Ethan exchanged prolonged goodbyes with his friends. Jack was looking at her.
"I'm not really gay," he said.
"If you say so, Jack.”
"I'm not, it's true.”
"It's your mind and body.”
"I should know, right?”
Late that afternoon she stepped out of the shower and felt pain, momentary pressure, at the side of her head. She would be dead within weeks. They'd force her to go through a series of horrible tests but the results would be the same every time. She was depressed, standing in a towel, her body slowly drying, dying. Waste, what a waste. She felt awful about Lyle. It would be easier for her to accept if she weren't leaving someone behind. Thank God no kids. She dressed and went outside.
After dinner they took the remaining wine and some brandy out to the deck. It was the mildest night they'd had. Jack was restless and decided to take the garbage over to the dump instead of waiting for morning. He got a flashlight and went up the path to the car, dragging two large plastic bags.
"He's right," Ethan said. "We can't seem to do anything without discussing it at the same time.”
"Vacation," she said. "That's what people do.”
"I hadn't realized we were doing it to the extent we were.”
"Your German mouth is so serious.”
"Maybe that's the secret meaning of new places.”
"What is?”
"Quiet, I'm working it out.”
"I don't want to hear.”
"It concerns self-awareness," he said. "I'll give you the rest later.”
"God, stars.”
"The clearer everything is. That has something to do with it too.”
"Look at them, millions.”
"I am.”
"Talk about them," she said. "Quick, before Jack comes back.”
Much later there were long silences between periods of conversation. Jack brought out extra sweaters, then three blankets. When the wind rolled through the tops of trees, Pammy had trouble understanding the sound in its early Stages, that building insistence of surf.
Later still, in some perfect interpenetration of wine and night air, she drifted through a more congenial region, a non-space, really, in which immaculate calm prevailed. Between moments of near-sleep she felt her mind alive in the vivid chill. Clarity rang through every sparse remark. When Ethan laughed briefly, an idiot grunt, she felt she knew what tiny neural event had caused that sound. There was total order in the night.
Then she was sluggish and dumb. She wanted to be in bed but hadn't the will to get up and go inside. She kept edging into some unstable phase of sleep. Her elbow slipped off the inside of the chair arm, causing her to snap awake. Everything was different after that, a struggle.
"God, the stars," Jack said.
It occurred to Pam that Ethan rarely talked to Jack. He addressed Jack by talking about furniture, movies, the weather. That, plus third person. He said things to Pammy that were meant for Jack. Sometimes he read an item aloud from a newspaper or repeated a phrase spoken by a TV newsman, repeated it in a certain way-meant for Jack, some fragmentary parable. She didn't think this revealed as much about the two men involved as it did about people living together, their lesions of speech and demeanor. Pammy and Lyle had their own characteristics, of course. Pammy and Lyle, she thought. We sound like a pompom girl and a physics major. Or chimps, she thought. The names of chimps learning language with multicolored disks. She drank more wine, watching Ethan make a series of preliminary hand flourishes.
"New places, when they're really new, really fresh and new, make you more aware of yourself. This can be dangerous.”
"I want my sleeping bag," Jack said.
"All this stuff is flashing your way. It's like a mirror, ultimately. You end up with yourself minus all the familiar outward forms, the trappings and surroundings. If it's too new, it's frightening. You get too much feedback that's not predetermined.”
"Want sleep out," Jack said. "Air, wind.”
"Fear is intense self-awareness.”
"Like today, earlier," Pammy said, "when I thought I had something wrong, I thought me, me, my tissue, my inner body. But it's easier to die alone. Kids, forget about.”
"Ground," Jack said. "Sleep, earth, creature.”
Ethan ran the side of his index finger along his throat, thoughtfully, and up over the point of his chin, many times- an indication of ironic comments in the offing, or pseudo wisdom perhaps, or even autobiography, which, in his framework of slanting planes, was itself determinedly ironic. They both waited. It was the middle of the night. Water closed around the rocks near shore, audibly, finding lanes.
"You people here.”
Jack went inside, returning with a sleeping bag, which he tossed on the deck. Everything was happening slowly now. Jack went around lighting candles. Jack paced, imitating a tiger. Pammy was aware that he was seated again, finally. They drank awhile in silence.
"I'm slightly lantern-jawed," she said.
They seemed to laugh.
"No, really, people, I'm slightly lantern-jawed. It's all right. It's, so what, no problem, long as I accept it.”
"Pam-mee.”
"So, you know, so what? When you think of other people's, what they have to accept type thing. And it's slight, just hardly noticeable, I know that. So you accept. And you live. You simply everyday live.”
"She's not about to blow her cookies, I hope.”
"Your sleeping bag gets the brunt if I do.”
"Mercy me.”
"Blat," she said.
Pammy and Jack began a sequence of giddiness here. Everything was funny. She felt lightheaded, never more awake. Where was Ethan? She turned to see his profile, partly shrouded in the blanket, theatrical and grave. It would be dawn soon, maybe an hour or two, unfortunately at their backs somewhere. Jack's voice grew shrewd and dry. It was the only sound for a time. He paused between remarks, effectively. She laughed at everything he said. It was comical, this matter-of-fact Jack. She began to laugh at the end of pauses, anticipating. There was a spell of quiet. Softest color seeped into Pammy's awareness, something pared away from the night, a glow of the lowest resolution, as though night itself were being broken down into its optically active parts.
"You people here," Ethan said.
The others laughed.
"What you don't know is a whole era of things. You've been gone right by. It must be solid void to live without the references, although it's problematical that you even know it, this blank space. I mean a Pete Smith Specialty. Do you even imagine what this conjures up? No idea, have you? What it means when two people might meet, not knowing each other, and then to realize this association in their past, this small thing magnified, the utter dumbness of a Pete Smith Specialty, that narrator's voice, or tapes of Sin Killer Griffin recorded in some Texas jail. Hearing that's a footing of sorts, a solid footing. You missed that, see. Because, then, at that time, there wasn't this Zeitgeist of the Month business. It was all one thing, which you missed completely. Pull My Daisy, Jesus, which wasn't that long ago, with some of the people still around, but you don't know it, total nothing. Pull My Daisy at the Ninety-second Street Y. Or Lord Buckley, a whole thing you missed, Lord Buckley doing The Naz. No idea what I'm talking about, right? You missed the references. You missed the Village clubs. All the hanging around. The footing, the solid footing. You don't know, see, what you don't know is that your whole own attitudes come from some of these things, which were the basis, the solid rock. What else, who else can I mention? The Naz, I said that. Do you know how the Lone Ranger found Silver?”
Pammy became giddier. Jack arranged his sleeping bag across the length of a collapsible beach chair and got inside. Outlines of small islands became apparent. Ethan walked across the deck and opened the sliding door.
Later Jack struggled out of his sweater. A lobster boat appeared at the southern point of one of the islands. Pammy heard the first gull. There was an animal presence in the air, a binding of appetites.
It was slightly warmer now. She saw Jack's shirt on the deck. Things caught her eye continually, birds mostly, a small boat now and then, a seal close to shore, its slick head vanishing, reappearing. The binoculars were inside.
"All right, how many gay friends do I have?”
"What?" she said.
"Gay friends.”
"How many does it take?”
"But you must have noticed how almost nobody I'm really friendly with is gay. Some, maybe, that I've lost touch with but Ethan thinks that are hanging around our building lobby and rooftop. Almost nobody by now.”
"It only takes one, I thought.”
"It's my mind and body," he said.
"Ah, point of agreement.”
She forced herself to remove the blanket and get out of the chair, stiffly. She went inside, found the binoculars and came back out on the deck to look at the seal.
"I see myself doing a lot of traveling in the near future," Jack said. "Just place to place. An unsupervised existence. It's what I should have done a long time ago. I don't want to be pinned down anymore. Not in one place and not in one kind of life.”
"He came up here because he thought it's what you wanted.”
"He thought wrong.”
"I think he's even prepared to make it more or less permanent, although how, financially, he expects to do this, I don't know.”
"What are you looking at while I'm talking? I can't believe, Pam, I'm telling my life and you're with these binoculars, totally somewhere else.”
"It's the seal, except it's gone, I think.”
"The seal again, it's here?”
"The seal is back, except it's around that bend again, I think.”
"Except it's not a seal," he said. "It's a frogman, spying.”
She lay in bed, shivering a bit, curled away from the source of light. She tried to convince herself she was only seconds from sleep. Moments and episodes passed through her mind.
Later she woke up and heard Ethan in the kitchen, coughing noisily, bringing up phlegm and spitting it out. The bed was immersed in sunlight. She shed blankets, her body sprawling awake under a lone sheet, unbending to the comprehensive warmth.
For years she'd heard people saying, all sorts, really, here and there: "Do whatever you want as long as nobody gets hurt." They said: "As long as both parties agree, do it, whatever." They said: "Whatever feels right, as long as you both want to do it and nobody gets hurt, there's no reason not to." They said: "As long as there's mutual agreement and the right feeling, no matter who or what." "Whatever feels right," they said. They said: "Follow your instincts, be yourself, act out your fantasies.”
6
Lyle hadn't been down here in years, the Lower East Side, that ethnic pantechnicon, streets, people, a history of flawless suffering. The car was parked on a side street near the Manhattan Bridge. Marina leaned forward, arms over the steering wheel, her head resting there, eyes right, watching Lyle. It was nearly dark. Five bottles, thrown from a roof, hit the pavement at ten-second intervals. Marina's eyes revealed the faintest clue of amusement.
"A little gasoline, you have a political act.”
"As it is, what?”
"Public nuisance," she said.
"Who's the target, I wonder.”
"The bottle is the target. They're breaking the bottle.”
"That's Zen," he said.
"Whatever works, we try.”
"The bottle is the target, master.”
"So, Zen, why not?”
Marina was about seven years his senior, Lyle estimated, and was showing today, for the first time, an inclination to be at ease, not quite so rigorous in her convictions, or less disposed, at any rate, to locate every exchange inside an absolute structure.
"Where will J. go?”
"Not far enough," she said. "It's not easy, disappearing, when your previous cover places and routes are closed off to you. J. has no money. He can't have friends, many, anyway, who'd be willing to help him.”
"What happens, terrorist discipline?”
She continued to look right at him, saying nothing. This disappointed Lyle. He'd been trying to get her to talk about aspects of Kinnear's situation, past and present. The experiment, as J. had called it, obviously wasn't a case of penetration in the conventional sense. Still, Lyle believed there was an element of premeditation involved. J. had planted himself; he'd infiltrated, at a conscious level, long before he decided to contact Burks or whatever agency it was that Burks represented. His "selective" disclosure of information merely confirmed the material existence of the space he'd chosen to occupy, the complex geography, points of confluence and danger. Lyle found these speculations absorbing and hoped that Marina would provide factual data to round out his concept. Fitting human pieces into gaps on the board. Such activity was thrilling. It was possible Kinnear had been an agent, in spirit, for twenty years. He'd functioned simultaneously on two levels. Counterpoise. His life was based on forces tending to produce equilibrium. Everything had a delayed effect. He could not act without considering entire sets of implications. Ended now. Collapsed inward. Possibly he'd worked it that close to the edge intentionally.
"Is J. homosexual?”
She didn't know.
"Is he likely to turn completely, sign on the dotted line?”
Gesture of indifference.
"Will he be killed, if and when?”
"Forget all doubts.”
"Yes, he will be killed.”
"It's not an urgent matter," she said. "We have other things to occupy us.”
She moved back from the steering wheel and toward Lyle, awkwardly, her right leg somehow in the way, preventing the effect she sought, a forceful intimacy, the exchange of intense commitments. Finally she put both hands to his face. The contact was such that it produced a cross-channeling, a lane of immediate reciprocity. Her eyes were fixed, a little mad-the wrong effect again. It was interesting, always, being touched by a woman, the first time, whose mind you know runs on different lines from your own, who lives by another map, entirely.
"Are we close to something?”
"Getting there," she said.
"Do we have a Vilar?”
"We have someone willing.”
"Is it possible he can get instructions from your brother?”
"You mean to prepare.”
"Because I'd hate for anything to detonate before it was supposed to.”
"Vilar is in total closed confinement. He tried to kill himself several times. They have him under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Vilar will kill himself rather than remain in prison. It's a matter of time, nothing else. It's the act he has rehearsed all his life. Death before pig justice. This is the destiny of one's class.”
She returned to her part of the front seat and looked out the side window at the rubble across the street. Three more bottles struck the pavement, about half a block away, again at ten-second intervals.
"But you have someone.”
"Definitely.”
"He does bombs?”
"He does passports," she said.
It was dark. A group of men and boys stood down at the far corner, laughing. Three of them disengaged and headed up toward the car, teenagers, one holding a bottle between his legs, duck-walking.
"So then I wait.”
"Very soon, Lyle.”
"We do it the same way, is that it? I let your man come onto the floor as my guest. He leaves the thing. Middle of the night, it goes.”
"You two will talk.”
"Who is he?”
"Not yet," she said.
"Did you ever dream you'd find another George so easily?”
"It's a quality of Americans.”
"What is?”
"Just as Englishmen never cease being schoolboys, Americans are doomed to perform heroic deeds.”
"An ironic saying, he interjected," Lyle said.
"Which illness is worse I leave for you to decide.”
She was smiling. The three boys passed in front of the car, looking in, and crossed over to the empty lot. She seemed to be waiting for Lyle to get out of the car. A man wearing outsized pants and a T-shirt full of holes approached the car on the driver's side. Marina said something in Spanish. Then she looked at Lyle. The man had recently vomited. Not taking her eyes off Lyle, she said something else and the man walked off.
"The bottle is the target," Lyle said. "I keep telling myself, as a soothing reminder.”
"We'll talk soon.”
"I'm getting out, is that it?”
"Yes.”
"And walking.”
"One foot, then the other.”
"Maybe you can drop me at Canal Street, if you're going that way, or anywhere near Lower Broadway.”
"This is better, right here.”
"Or Chinatown," he said. "Maybe you haven't been there lately. Interesting part of the city.”
When he got home he emptied the contents of his pockets onto the dresser. Wallet, keys, ballpoint pen, memo pad. Transit tokens on the right side of the dresser. Pennies and other change on the left. He ate a sandwich and took a drink up to the roof. Four elderly people sat at one of the tables. Lyle went over to the parapet. Noise from the streets rose uncertainly tonight, muffled, an underwater density. Air conditioners, buses, taxicabs. Beyond that, something obscure: the nonconnotative tone that appeared to seep out of the streets themselves, that was present even when no traffic moved, the quietest sunups. It was some innate disturbance of low frequency in the grain of the physical city, a ghostly roar. He held his glass out over the edge of the low protective wall. The other people had been silent since he'd appeared on the roof. He dropped the glass from right hand to left. There was that soft fraction of a second when neither hand touched glass. He resolved to do it five more times, extending the distance between hands each time, before allowing himself to go back downstairs.
He was in bed when Kinnear called.
"This has to be brief, Lyle.”
"I'm awake, but barely.”
"What's your situation?”
"Marina is more or less set on locating you. I don't think she has a clue at the moment as to where you might be, at least that I'm aware of. She still wants to do the Exchange.”
"What's your situation, dollars and cents?”
"You need?”
"I'm looking ahead.”
"What do you need?”
"Don't know for sure. There are several variables. Just want to determine if you'd be willing to aid and abet.”
"I should, what, draw out something now and wait to hear?”
"Draw out fifteen hundred now, good idea, in case the whole thing materializes over the weekend, which could mean trouble getting funds.”
"What, U.S. dollars?”
"Good point.”
"There's an exchange place near my bank.”
"No, stick to U.S.”
"Will you be able to change over easily?”
"U.S. will be fine, Lyle.”
"Are you in how much of a hurry?”
"Like now, zip.”
The next day Lyle was paged on the trading floor and given a telegram, originating locally, with three words on it-nine one five-and the teletyped name disinfo.
The day after that he experienced what at first he thought might be some variation of déjà vu. He'd finished lunch and stood at the door of a corner restaurant, able to see, at a severe angle, the lean elderly man who frequently appeared outside Federal Hall holding a hand-lettered political placard over his head for the benefit of those gathered on the steps. He, Lyle, was cleaning his fingernails, surreptitiously, using a toothpick he'd taken from a bowl near the cash register inside the restaurant. The paradox of material flowing backward toward itself. In this case there was no illusion involved. He had stood on this spot, not long ago, at this hour of the day, doing precisely what he was doing now, his eyes on the old man, whose body was aligned identically with the edge of a shadow on the facade of the building he faced, his sign held at the same angle, it seemed, the event converted into a dead replica by means of structural impregnation, the mineral replacement of earlier matter. Lyle decided to scatter the ingredients by heading directly toward the man instead of back to the Exchange, as he was certain he'd done the previous time. First he read the back of the sign, the part facing the street, recalling the general tenor. Then he sat on the steps, with roughly a dozen other people, and reached for his cigarettes. Burks was across the street, near the entrance to the Morgan Bank. People were drifting back to work. Lyle smoked a moment, then got up and approached the sign-holder. The strips of wood that steadied the edges of the sign extended six inches below it, giving the man a natural grip. Burks looked unhappy, arms folded across his chest.
"How long have you been doing this?" Lyle said. "Holding this sign?”
The man turned to see who was addressing him.
"Eighteen years.”
Sweat ran down his temples, trailing pale outlines on his flushed skin. He wore a suit but no tie. The life inside his eyes had dissolved. He'd made his own space, a world where people were carvings on rock. His right hand jerked briefly. He needed a haircut.
"Where, right here?”
"I moved to here.”
"Where were you before?”
"The White House.”
"You were in Washington.”
"They moved me out of there.”
"Who moved you out?”
"Haldeman and Ehrlichman.”
"They wouldn't let you stand outside the gate.”
"The banks sent word.”
Lyle wasn't sure why he'd paused here, talking to this man. Dimly he perceived a strategy. Perhaps he wanted to annoy Burks, who obviously was waiting to talk to him. Putting Burks off to converse with a theoretical enemy of the state pleased him. Another man moved into his line of sight, middle-aged and heavy, a drooping suit, incongruous pair of glasses -modish and overdesigned. Lyle turned, noting Burks had disappeared.
"Why do you hold the sign over your head?”
"People today.”
"They want to be dazzled.”
"There you are.”
Lyle wasn't sure what to do next. Best wait for one of the others to move first. He took a step back in order to study the front of the man's sign, which he'd never actually read until now.
RECENT HISTORY OF THE WORKERS OF THE WORLD
circa 1850-1920 Workers hands cut off on Congo rubber plantations, not meeting work quotas. Photos in vault Bank of England. Rise of capitalism.
the industrial age Child labor, accidents, death. Cruelty = profits. Workers slums Glasgow, New York, London. Poverty, disease, separation of family. Strikes, boycotts, etc. = troops, police, injunctions. Bitter harvest of Ind. Revolution.
may 1886 Haymarket Riot, Chicago, protest police killings of workers, 10 dead, 50 injured, bomb blast, firing into crowd.
sept 1920 Wall St. blast, person or persons unknown, 40 dead, 300 injured, marks remain on wall of J. P. Morgan Bldg. Grim reminder.
feb 1934 Artillery fire, Vienna, shelling of workers homes, i,ooo dead inc. 9 Socialist leaders by hanging/ strangulation. Rise of Nazis. Eve of World War, etc.
There was more in smaller print fitted onto die bottom of the sign. The overweight man, wilted, handkerchief in hand, was standing five feet away. Lyle, stepping off the sidewalk, touched the old man, the sign-holder, as he walked behind him, putting a hand on the worn cloth that covered his shoulder, briefly, a gesture he didn't understand. Then he accompanied the other man down to Bowling Green, where they sat on a bench near a woman feeding pigeons.
"How about a name?”
"Burks.”
"What Burks? What's Burks supposed to mean?”
The man glanced at a car parked across the street. Burks sat in the front seat, belted in, looking straight ahead.
"It's generic all of a sudden.”
"Do it our way, Lyle.”
"I'll live longer.”
"I wouldn't go that far, pessimist like me.”
"He colors his hair. Kinnear. I forgot to mention it last time. He may have a contact at night court, for whatever it's worth.”
"Out of curiosity, Lyle, only, where's he at?”
"Don't you have my phone wired in to the computer that runs the world?”
"Not one bit, to my knowledge, besides which I can't see as it matters because A.J.'s not about to tell you anything too, too important.”
"If you don't know, I don't know.”
"Suit your own self.”
"I might speculate, of course. Make an educated guess. Why don't you tell me something about him first? What you know, whatever. You managed to come up with his name from a voiceprint, apparently, or playing tapes to various people, I would imagine. So what else do you have?”
Burks-2 was spread over half the bench, wiping his fancy glasses with the handkerchief he'd had in his hand the past fifteen minutes. His fatigue, his weight itself, running over, made Lyle relax. He looked like a man who sponsors a women's softball team. He picks his nose with his pinky finger and has sex in automobiles.
"A.J. taught voice and diction, junior college level. He worked part-time for a collection agency. He collected. As a sideline he was involved in prison reform, talking to groups, raising money, state of Nevada. He got radicaler and radicaler, as the saying goes, although what actually transpired in the man's heart of hearts, Lyle, is open to question. There was a little razzle-dazzle in New Orleans, late spring in sixty-three. Hard to get the details straight. Somebody was supposed to get snatched, some lawyer attached to a government committee. He had information somebody wanted. There were connections, funny undercurrents. Oswald, for instance. Cuba, for instance. Missing documents. But seems the thing never got off the ground. Somebody contacted the Justice Department a convenient forty-eight hours before the attempt was scheduled. Old Kinnear disappeared at that point, just about. He resurfaced in Bogota three years later, where he got to be asshole buddies with some people involved in cocaine traffic. Next thing he disappears and right after that there's arrests by the score. Then we find him on the West Coast with a group of former campus hard rocks and they're in the travel business, running people underground or out of the country. A.J. did a little everything. Not exactly a force in the movement. He's been a courier. He's been a paymaster. As we reconstruct it, he's tried to palm himself off as operational chief of this or that terrorist unit. Wouldn't you think that was dangerous?”
"He may be in Canada.”
"In truth, Lyle, I don't care, really, cross my heart. A.J.'s in Limbo, Arkansas, far's I'm concerned. It's out of curiosity, only, I asked. Passing the time.”
"He may be in Canada or on his way to Canada. I'm not sure. I could be way off. But I think Canada.”
Bread sailed out of the woman's hand and a dozen pigeons came down among the fragments. Burks-i rolled down his window, yawning. Lyle yawned too, leaning over to read the car's plates.
"We'd like some input on Marina Vilar.”
"She still wants to do the Exchange.”
"Where's she located at?”
"I don't know. No idea. I think she lives in her goddamn car.”
"Who's with her, how many?”
"Don't you know any of this from Vilar?”
"Myself, Lyle, I couldn't tell you if Vilar's a Mexican or a Swede but everything I hear leads me to believe he's ready for the basket-weaving class. A mental. Not adjusting well to present surroundings.”
"I only know of one possibility, one other person, and he's probably the one who'll actually assemble the explosive.”
"Have a name, does he?”
"Luis Ramirez, maybe. I say maybe. I can't be sure. J. more or less indicated he did passports, he falsified passports. He's spent time with groups in other countries, // he exists, if that's his name. All three of them may be related one way or another. It's a little confusing.”
"Who's J.?”
"Kinnear.”
"A.J.”
"Your information's a little out of date.”
"All three who, the Latins?”
"Right, except they're Swedes.”
"I don't see as this is funny.”
Burks gave him a number to call as soon as Marina got in touch with him. When someone picked up the phone, he was to give his own phone number and then relate whatever information he had. Everybody was giving him numbers or proposing to give him numbers. He liked it. He had a feel for numbers. He didn't have to write anything down. He'd developed ways to remember, methods that went back to early adolescence. He did it every day on the trading floor, applied these methods. They were secret mnemonic devices. No one else used precisely the same ones. He was certain of that. The formulas were too idiosyncratic, situated too firmly in his own personality, to be duplicated elsewhere.
"Is there a date that sticks in your mind?" Burks said.
"She didn't say when. Not the slightest anything. Don't know what kind of explosive either.”
"What's their background, anything?”
"They did something in Brussels once and they did the airport, in West Germany-West Berlin, I mean. What's it called?”
"Shit, I don't know.”
"Anyway they hit the wrong plane.”
"Must have been hell to pay.”
"They hit the DC-9.”
"What did they hit it with?”
"Rockets.”
"Must have been hell to pay back at the office.”
Lyle got to his feet. The original Burks responded by starting up the car.
"Aren't you required by law to tell me what organization you're with, exactly?”
"If I had the energy to lift up my foot, Lyle, you'd be required to get kicked in the balls. That's the only requirement in effect right now.”
7
On the floor Lyle attended to the strict rationalities of volume and price. Close attention was a benign characteristic, mild eyes everywhere, sanity inhabiting the faces he encountered. This was solid work, clear and sometimes cheerful, old-world in a way, men gathered in a square to take part in verbal exchange, openly, recording figures with pencil stubs, the clerks having to puzzle over handwriting. Paper accumulated underfoot. Secret currents, he thought, recollecting Marina's concept of electronic money. Waves, systems, invisibility, power. He thought: bip-bip-bip-bip. A floor broker cuffed him on the side of the head, jokingly, a mock boxing match. Lyle went to the smoking area and called his firm's offices from one of the public booths, asking for Rosemary Moore. When Zelt-ner answered, he hung up. Frank McKechnie was standing nearby. He smoked with his arms crossed, bouncing on his heels, rapidly. There was an aura about him of manly suffering, things gone so far wrong they could no longer be expressed in coherent verbal form, needing commentary impossible here, tears or shouts.
"Well, then, Frank.”
"The world's still turning.”
"I see you shaved.”
"The outside world.”
"It turns, still.”
"That much is obvious, even to me.”
"It's good that it turns," Lyle said, "or there wouldn't be this stillness in here. We need that motion, see, exterior flux, to keep us safe and still.”
"This is what takes getting used to.”
"Because they never told you. Mummy and daddy. Your old pap. You know, flicking his suspenders. Never told you.”
"Where do I want to be, Lyle?”
"Inside.”
"Correct," McKechnie said.
"About that call I wanted you to make. It doesn't matter. I shouldn't have asked. Everything's taken care of.”
"Don't tell me about it.”
"It's all okay. Nothing to tell. Finito.”
"Because I can't give it my undivided attention, Lyle, you know?”
"It's a religious matter, Frank. Uttering certain words, the names of certain people. It's a deeply personal thing.”
"Whatever you're talking about, I agree.”
"It touches a nerve in the darkest places.”
Already Kinnear seemed very distant in time and space. Lyle's two visits to the gray frame house were spots of fog now, half myth, the living room and yard, die basement arsenal. It was as though he'd overheard descriptions of these areas, never having been there, physically, himself, scratching his ribs, a little dry in the throat. He searched his memory for details of place, a sense of texture and dimension. There wasn't much more than soft-footed Kinnear, his perfect little features and grained hair. Friendly crinkles when he smiled. His voice, mature and professionaclass="underline" two credits, noncompul-sory. It was reducing itself, the whole series of events, his own participation, to this one element, J.'s voice, the carrier waves relaying it from some remote location.
He called again that night. When the phone rang Lyle knew at once it was J. and felt deeply relieved, as if he'd feared being abandoned to Marina and Burks, to the blunter categories of reality. Kinnear, speaking without inflection, wasting not a breath, reminded Lyle that he'd given him a phone number to use only at his, Kinnear's, specific instruction. This was to be taken as such instruction and he asked Lyle to make the call from a public phone booth, using whatever precautions seemed advisable. Before hanging up, he added that the three-digit number on the telegram Lyle had received was the area code, digits reversed.
Lyle changed clothes, not knowing quite why. He took a cab, then walked several blocks to Grand Central. He got four dollars' worth of silver and stepped into a booth.
"I think we're operational.”
"Which means?”
"A two- or three-day holiday, if you can manage.”
"Starting when?" Lyle said.
"Day after tomorrow.”
"No problem.”
"Figure thirty-five hundred dollars.”
"What form?”
"There's no limit to the amount of cash you can take across the border.”
"I talked to Burks again. Burks isn't all that interested anymore. It makes sense, J. They had an informer and they lost him. They have no reason to be sending dogs.”
"It's my ass," Kinnear said.
"Marina, I don't think Marina's capable of finding you. She's got all she can do to get somebody to put together a thing that'll make a noise when they light it.”
"Lyle, it's my ass.”
"True.”
"She's capable. Marina's capable. The secret police know my name. They know my background. They'd very much like to chat is my impression.”
"I seriously question.”
"Are we operational or not?”
"But it's your ass.”
"Exactly.”
"So how do we do it?”
"Figure thirty-five hundred buys me documents, travel, necessities of life for a while.”
"You're not staying.”
"Only as long as it takes to buy some paper. The requisite name and numbers. Ever travel by freighter?”
"Then what?”
"For a scuffler like me?”
"You'll be back, I guarantee it.”
"Could be, Lyle.”
"Burks talked about New Orleans.”
"See, told you, they know.”
"Not very much, J.”
"They spent time on me, those people. They know who and how to scratch, they really do. Goddamn, they mentioned New Orleans, did they? That was how many years ago. Lifetimes is more like it.”
"Burks said something interesting.”
"What did he say?”
"He said Oswald.”
"Did he now?”
"He said Cuba, stolen papers, I don't know." "They're good," Kinnear said. "They spend time." "Was Burks saying you knew Oswald before Dallas?" "Lyle, chrissake, everybody knew Oswald before Dallas." They both laughed. Lyle turned toward the row of facing booths. Only one was occupied, this by a black woman, middle-aged, in a polka-dot dress.
"Maybe we can talk about it some more." "Concerning the money, Lyle, I don't know if I'll be able to pay you back." "No problem.”
"Is it a problem? Because if it is, Lyle." "Forget.”
"I shaved it down to the absolute bone. That's the sheer minimum I'll need to get clear of here. Not a dime extra.”