Banish stopped and stiffened. His chest went cold. His eyes fell and came to stare at a fixed point of nothingness as Blood continued. “ ‘Veteran FBI agent John T. Banish was fined $1200 in February 1991 for being drunk and disorderly aboard a Washington, D.C.-to-New York flight on Thanksgiving Day, 1990. Through a plea bargaining agreement, more serious charges of assault and making terroristic threats were dropped. “He went berserk,” reported an unidentified steward who was on that flight. “He hit me and gave me a black eye when I refused to serve him more alcohol. He was very drunk, waving his badge around.”
“ ‘Banish was also the agent in charge of the World Financial Center hostage-taking in which three people died.
“ ‘New York District Court records show dual restraining orders filed against Banish in December 1990 by his wife and daughter, who have renewed those orders every ninety days since then and remain estranged from him to this day. “He’s sick,” said a person close to the family. “John is very dangerous.” ’ ”
Blood stopped reading. He closed the paper.
Banish remained still. Regret tugged at the muscles of his face and he straightened as much as he could and slipped one stiff hand inside his pants pocket.
“Very well,” he said.
Blood set the tabloid down. This was his payback for the previous night, to watch Banish slowly twist.
It was as though Banish had heard his own obituary read to him. He saw that this was how he was to be remembered. This was the sum total of his life. Flames of regret burned in his gut, but not new flames. They were a raging, ceaseless thing that even the satisfying of his immense thirst never did quite douse.
“Very well,” he said again.
Blood said, “Something happened to you in the woods last night.”
Banish nodded. “Fine,” he said.
He was certain that there would be no discourse. There was nothing in that for him. Talking was his profession and he knew better than anyone else its limitations. It could take you only so far, and Banish had been there, and he had come back, and here he was now.
He looked at the floor. “We will begin to allow relatives and friends up one at a time to record messages to the family,” he said. “Those urging surrender and peaceful resolution will be broadcast to the cabin. Those which do not, won’t. There will be no conversations.”
He found his chair and managed to sit at his desk. He pretended to go about his work. Blood said, “Fair enough” — to no acknowledgment from Banish, not even an answering glance upward. Then he turned and left without having to be asked.
Alone, Banish allowed himself to stare off again at a fixed point somewhere beyond his consciousness. The telephone was right there on his desk next to him. He recalled the few times during the past two years, the low times, when he had dialed the number in Cincinnati just to hear a familiar female voice say, “Hello.” The last time, following a prolonged silence on both their ends, Molly had said fearfully, “John?” and then hung up. He could see her in a long nightshirt, standing back from the telephone in a darkened kitchen, looking at it, wondering if it would ring again. Short, layered hair, lighter than it used to be, as in the hundreds of different photographs he had commissioned. Her left hand near her mouth. Her mother’s garnet the only ring she still wore.
He felt for the thick band on his finger. He pictured Nicole in a white wedding dress and veil. But he could not see her smiling. Despite all the photographs, his only daughter’s face was suddenly unclear to him. He could not conjure her up. As hard as he tried, he could not get his image of her to lift its lace-covered arms and raise that veil.
Staging Area
Fagin turned away from the Salvation Army truck, hot tray of food in hand. He was one of the last to be served that evening. A bonfire crackled strong in the cleared area before the trailers and most of the marshals and agents were eating their slop there. At a single picnic table separate from the rest he saw a man eating alone. Fagin went there.
He set his tray down without Banish so much as looking up. On the tray was a piece of thick-crust bread covered with chipped beef in a thin, lumpy brown sauce, a serving spoon’s worth of beans still settling into its rounded section, a separate cup of sulfur like bouillon, and a small square of cornbread.
Fagin said, “Shit on a shingle. Jesus H. Christ.”
Banish sat up a fraction then, no longer able to ignore him. He was bent over his plate, eating efficiently like a kid in his last days of BT, as a light wave of laughter went up from the direction of the blaze.
“Didn’t think you’d OK a bonfire,” Fagin said with his mouth full, gesturing with his fork.
Banish swallowed, still watching his food. “No reason not to,” he said. “Good for morale. After six days, fatigue becomes a factor.”
“Yeah,” said Fagin. “Six fucking days. That World Financial Center thing, how long was that?”
“That was an overnight,” Banish said.
An agent came up then with papers for Banish, who looked them over and initialed each page. He returned to his plate and started in on the beans.
Fagin said, “So, you married?”
Banish stopped chewing. He stared at the table. “You don’t read the papers?” he said.
Fagin gave a small grin of concession. He cut into his food. “Separated or divorced?”
“Waiting for annulment.”
“A Catholic.” Fagin nodded. He had guessed that, long ago. “Funny because you don’t seem to me like the marrying type. And also funny because, I guess you could say, now my own marriage is hanging by a fucking thread.”
“Maybe it’s your language,” Banish said.
“No,” Fagin said, “that’s the part of me she likes.”
Fagin let a smile surface, and then even Banish broke down and bared some teeth. Fagin shook his head amusedly, then looked at his food again and soured on it once and for all, dropping his fork and knife onto the tin plate and pushing the thing away except for the cornbread. Fucking disgusting.
“We met at a Dodgers game,” he said. “She was working in their front office there, still does.” He looked up at the top of the mountain, orange with the last of the dusk. “In fact, tonight’s our seventh anniversary. Yeah.” He nodded. “I’m thinking about spending it up in a tree. Sitting up in the branches pointing a sniper rifle at some fucking guy I don’t even know, holed up in a dink-water shack on top of a fucking mountain in the middle of nowhere fucking Montana.”
He was shaking his head slowly in disgust, wiping an already clean hand on the front of his uniform shirt. He wanted to spit, but could not from the table. It was his upbringing. “Now she wants a divorce,” he said. “She’s younger than me, couple of years. She’s white. It catches me a lot of shit. But who knows, you know? I’m not around much. You know how it is, the job. Maybe she’s fucking a ballplayer.” He looked down then, thinking he had gone too far. He didn’t want to look weak. “Maybe,” he said matter-of-factly. He was concentrating on one finger of his right hand, his trigger finger, dry and pinkish on the underside, rubbing as though to get something off it. “I’m gonna need an outside line later on.”
Banish was looking across at him. “OK,” he said.