The Swede (24 page)

T
HE CLOCK SAID NOT EVEN
two in the afternoon. Grip was back in place, with his views of the East River. He was starting to get restless. Not nervous, not afraid, just restless. It was the night that mattered. In a few hours he would become his opposite, the type a bodyguard would never manage to spot when he looked over oceans of people. Not the man with the stare, not the obvious threat, but the fish in the water. The invisible, the deadly. The facades and the river outside the window looked mostly like dead scenery, nothing worth a gaze. Grip squeezed one of his own shoulders. Reassuring—he could strike as hard as anybody. But it wasn’t about that.

He lay in only his underwear on the narrow bed, felt himself above the arms and then down across the stomach. Slid his hand into his underwear; his sex was cool and unperturbed. He got up, got dressed. When he pulled on the heavy jacket, he was standing by the bed again. A second of hesitation, but then he had full control of himself. It wasn’t his life that mattered. It was Ben’s.

So he left.

He drove out and parked near the power plant by the Brooklyn Bridge. He still had a few hours to kill, so he walked to the subway station and rode into Manhattan. The tools, the paper bag with the spray, were all that he left in the car. This was a detour, his ritual. One way to become a fish in the water, his way of harnessing his
own restlessness. No fuck-ups, not like in Central Park—he depended on no one.

Given the situation, it was obvious he’d head to the Whitney Museum. A late weekday afternoon, not many people there. Not deserted—that wouldn’t have been good—but sparse. He had the rooms to himself a few minutes at a time.

Grip bought his ticket, glanced into the café at the inside table where he and Ben usually sat, and took the stairs, not the elevator.

He passed a couple on the way out of the room, and then he was alone.

There was no painting calmer than this one. Hopper’s
Seven A.M.
, so still. Another hung next to it,
South Carolina Morning
: a woman in a red dress and hat, waiting. Morning light, that’s what the two had in common. But Grip’s favorite painting didn’t contain a single figure.
Seven A.M.
showed distant trees on one side, and on the other a storefront that time had passed by. So still. Some kind of story could probably be told, but one refrained from asking questions. The light and shadows convinced the viewer to exist in the moment. Hopper had drawn sharp lines where the sun cast shadows on the white walls inside the window, while outside the ground gleamed like warm sand. The hands of an old wall clock suggested that the time was seven. Someone who should have been there was somewhere else. Yet nothing was missing. With the morning light streaming down on the ground and in through the window, time might as well have stopped—so the clock always stood at seven.

Just like that, a place where nothing ever changes.

R
omeo Lupone didn’t even flinch but turned slowly around. Grip had kept watch outside the bar and then hurried ahead when
Lupone came out. At a corner piled with garbage bags next to a basement stairway, Grip had stepped forward. The sudden sound of someone nearby made Lupone turn around. But before they made eye contact, he was hit, completely unprepared by the tear gas, his scream half smothered by the surprise and stinging pain. Grip threw himself forward with a swift knee straight to the thigh, making Lupone crumple down among the garbage bags. Then Grip straddled him, with one hand clutching his jacket and the tear gas spray ready in the other. Held still, while Lupone yelped and cramped. Blinded, he’d emptied his lungs, and once he was gasping for air like a drowning man, Grip emptied the spray bottle into the gap. He inhaled everything.

Mucus like from a dog foaming at the mouth, vomit in convulsed waves, but no screams to attract attention from the neighborhood. When the second spray can was empty, all that could be heard were little peeps. Grip was grimacing, coughing, his own eyes filling with tears. He wrenched Lupone up to kneeling and dragged him along like a package, bouncing him down the basement stairs beside them. At the bottom was a cramped concrete chamber they barely fit inside. Empty plastic containers and cans bounced up against the walls as they made impact, like two wrestlers. Lupone’s legs kicked feebly around him. Grip blew snot from his nose and wiped his eyes on his sleeves to see in the murky cellar hole.

Then he pulled out the awl.

J
UST AS HE’D SAID HE
would, Grip checked into the hotel in Newark. After he’d left the Atlanta airport, there were four days that didn’t exist. The clothes were new, the car was sold. He was walking without any luggage through the evening darkness.

“How long?” asked the desk clerk.

Grip shrugged. “One night, unless you charge by the hour.”

The receptionist laughed uncertainly. Grip let him put an advance on his credit card before he went up to the room, turned on a pay TV channel, and sat down to wait.

The final scene of the movie was approaching when the phone rang. It was from reception. There was a message for him to pick up.

An envelope.

A note with an address and a time. He could make it, of course he could. Everything always so orderly. Grip went out and got into the first taxi. He’d put in his appearance—round trip to Newark—and now headed back toward the Holland Tunnel and the Manhattan skyline.

T
he address was in Gramercy, the entrance behind a row of well-tended trees. Perhaps he’d passed through the neighborhood before, but in any case Grip had never noticed the discreet location.
The buildings mostly older. No sign that suggested anything to him, either on the street or inside the gate.

“Mr. Grip, welcome,” said a man in a black-and-white-striped tie behind an old-fashioned wooden desk. There were moisture cracks in the walls, and the air smelled of chlorine.

Ten minutes later Grip stood in a borrowed bathing suit, tried to regulate a shower with separate handles for hot and cold.

“Locker forty-seven, then head directly into the baths,” the man had said.

Tile, slightly yellowed, with black-and-white mosaics: a diffuse pattern of shields and emblems on the floors, ancient gods posing naked along the walls. In the locker room, all the furnishings were dark wood, with polished edges, solid. The few other men he saw inside moved remarkably slowly; someone carried a racket. He got the feeling that the place was about to empty. It was after all quite late. Grip showered off and continued inside.

“Well, here you are,” she said quietly.

Shauna Friedman sat with her arms outstretched along the edge of a quiet Jacuzzi. She was alone. The air bubbles made silver beads around her.

“Salt water,” she said, “and it shouldn’t bubble more than this, they say.”

They were above the pool and inside a row of columns in the hall’s covered arcade. The light was pleasantly dusky. The pool’s glimmers danced across the walls and reflected on the ceiling, while the Jacuzzi’s blue-gray water seemed almost bottomless.

“Are you a member of this . . . temple?” said Grip.

“No, but I know someone who is.”

“How convenient.” He looked around. “Through your politician husband, one may assume?”

“Maybe.”

Grip nodded.

“As you see, not many people take a dip at this time of evening,” she explained.

“Members with both money and packed schedules?”

“They come here in the morning or right after work. This late, they’re at the opera or eating dinner with their auditors.”

In the pool below, only two heads glided back and forth. Of their conversation, no more was heard than an echoing murmur.

“Come in, it’s just warm enough.”

“Salt water?”

“Like the sea.”

Grip put down his towel.

The Jacuzzi’s pleasant warmth had reached up to his knees when Shauna said, “There was an empty seat on the flight from Atlanta—you disappeared.”

“Yes,” said Grip, “a whim,” and sank completely.

“Whim?”

“I realized that I was in the American South. The Civil War, you know, Gettysburg, it wasn’t far. I’ve always wanted to see . . . the battlefield.”

She smiled a prosecutor’s smile. “Gettysburg?”

“Yes.”

“How did you get there?”

“I bought a car.”

“There you go. General Lee and Pickett’s Charge—why don’t you tell me a little about them?”

Grip swept his hand through the water, ignoring the question.

“You can never prove it,” she continued.

“I don’t feel that anything needs proving.” Grip looked at her
again. Soaking with Shauna Friedman, trust hanging in the balance.

“The Civil War . . .”

“We can let it go,” he interjected.

“I just wanted to say about the Civil War,” she continued, “that some would argue America is returning to it. The same kind of destructive atmosphere, the same kind of—”

“Unholy alliances?”

“Adderloy’s freezer—someone deserves thanks for the tip.”

“So you went after him.”

“Someone sent an envelope with the address.” She nodded approvingly. “In the end, we found his fucking hole—a big house, I swear to you, all in old-plantation style. It was a raid with God’s good grace.”

Grip sat silent. Light off the water and murmurs from the pool washed over them.

“You have no idea what we found, do you?” said Shauna then.

“No. What? Adderloy himself?”

“Adderloy.” She snorted. “Adderloy, yes, we got him. Doesn’t say a word, but we have him. We found a lot of stolen art, those sculptures by Jean Arp, among others. Sooner or later we would have nailed him for it, but how long would he have stayed in? A battery of lawyers, and he’d have escaped with a few years, if that. But then . . .” Shauna looked in wonder at Grip. “No, you really have no idea. The freezer. What does someone like Adderloy have in his freezer? Something that took him all the way back to Topeka. You remember, the bank, N. said they’d poured the blood all over the floor of the bank. Turnbull’s blood. They stole two bags in the hospital, but used only one at the bank. The second bag, there it lay, fat and red as frozen cranberry sauce, right in Adderloy’s
home freezer. Couldn’t be better—the hand completely buried in the cookie jar. Fuck knows why he saved it.
Complicity
, half a dozen prosecutions attached to that—bank robbery, murder, kidnapping, you name it. Anything less than life would surprise me. His lawyers argue that there had very recently been a burglary at his house, that anyone could have gone inside to plant the blood. . . . But unfortunately the burglary was never reported to the police. Do you know anything about a burglary?”

Grip shook his head almost imperceptibly.

“No, exactly.”

He sat with his eyes closed, thinking of Vladislav. So Vladislav had taken the second bag they’d left with the Lebanese. Grip sank farther, so that the hot water came up over his chin.

“Turnbull?” he said then. “Is he still awaiting death?”

“Not for long.” Shauna raised her hand so that the water flowed between her fingers. “The Kansas governor has been informed. A little paperwork, and Charles-Ray Turnbull will get pardoned within a few days. His wife has already divorced him, but still.”

“And Reza,” said Grip, closing his eyes again.

“Would this change his situation?”

“He’s innocent.”

“According to whose goddamn yardstick?”

“Mine.”

“He was in the bank,” said Shauna.

“He was just a pawn, you know that.”

“Reza Khan sits where he sits. The CIA’s prestige, the train of prosecutors, the police chief in Topeka, yes, the whole fucking state of Kansas, demands it—of course he must die. Especially once that bizarre connection is gone—terrorists and Baptists. Everyone down there was deceived, and Charles-Ray was such an easy
person to hate. Now he’s free, but the debt is there, the air must be cleared. And they only have Reza left.”

“Not even a new investigation?”

“No.”

Grip didn’t move, and Shauna grabbed his arm under the water so he looked up again.

“It’s just you and me here now, remember that,” she said. “Those who haven’t been deceived in this are few and far between.”

“And you let them take Reza, because you have Adderloy?”

“Someone poked out Romeo Lupone’s eyes last night,” she replied.

Grip sat silent for a second. “You’re changing the subject.”

“Am I? Adderloy—art—Lupone. Lupone lay screaming bloody murder at the Wyckoff Heights emergency room. The nurses complained that they couldn’t even stand to look in his direction. A well-built man was seen standing and washing himself off down the river about the same time. While you were . . . in Gettysburg.”

“Lupone, remind me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“The driver.”

“Yes, the driver who said there’d been a Swede involved in Central Park. Why don’t you ask me how he’s doing?”

“Who?”

“Lupone.”

“How is the poor fellow?”

“Thank you, he’s going to make it. But my agents wanted to show him pictures of N. again, and now his eyesight . . .

“Listen,” she said then, “we found more interesting things at Adderloy’s.” She paused, watching an air bubble rise up through the water. “Can you believe that in the middle of one room was one
of Christo’s orange arches? Arch, gate, whatever you call them. Among all the oils and sculptures, it looked like something from outer space. In the middle of the room, like a religious object. You know, all the gates were supposed to be destroyed, every single one. And none had been reported missing. But I checked the documentation, the locations of all the gates, and where the murder took place . . .”

“I think I understand where you’re heading.”

“A gate disappeared unnoticed. And in that very place—nobody thought it was anything more than an ordinary robbery. The poor woman must have surprised them.”

“The fact that people want to steal art, I can understand that,” said Grip. “They want to possess what’s beautiful, and for someone like Adderloy, there’s the added challenge of obtaining it. But then we have Topeka.”

“You mean that something about Topeka would change because we have Adderloy?”

“That’s reasonable.”

“Well, in Topeka they like thinking about terrorists, and they even got to catch one. Jihadists in Kansas. Turnbull now being free just confirms that image. The police chief in Topeka thinks he has managed to uncover a diabolical conspiracy against good Christians.”

“But Adderloy is American and white,” said Grip.

“Adderloy doesn’t say a word.”

“He had a bag of blood in his freezer, it connects him to Reza.”

“Yes, but nobody is particularly happy to hear that. Adderloy had friends in high places in Washington before. Now they’re deadly to him. Nobody is going to let themselves get caught up in Adderloy’s case, neither the Southern Baptists nor the shadowy
figures in Washington. And right now, Adderloy himself isn’t saying a word. My guess”—Shauna nodded a few times—“my guess is that someone shot a little message under the door of Adderloy’s cell. He understands that silence is his ticket to a life sentence—if he divulges even the slightest bit of information, he’ll get a last meal, a priest, and a needle in the arm. That’s the hand he’s been dealt, because we’ve got him. Reza has identified him—that was the only thing the man ever uttered of legal value. The evidence would be pretty thin if the bag with Turnbull’s blood hadn’t been saved.”

“Have you seen Reza lately?”

“Just a few days ago.”

“How’s he doing?”

Shauna smiled. “A conscience white as snow, and half his brain somewhere else. He’s trying to gain time, says he remembers more and more. He talks a lot about the big birds flying in a line. Pelicans. More and more details are coming out about the others who were with him. Agency psychologists say they need at least a few months to build a case that would hold up. But that time doesn’t exist.”

“Is it soon?”

“They give him the injection in three weeks.”

“America is wonderful.”

“Better than that,” she countered. “America is for real.”

“Is that the answer to all questions?”

“As much or as little as Gettysburg is the answer to mine.”

“Lupone . . .”

“Lupone,” interrupted Shauna, “is the one who ensures that Adderloy gets locked up for eternity. If I can’t manage to tie him to Topeka, I’ll compensate by nailing him for art theft and murder in Central Park, and various other mysterious dealings.”

“I would just say that—”

“Even without his eyes, Lupone has given me Adderloy?”

“Pretty much. As you already know, on the flight from Garcia, I read through the interview where Lupone implicated Adderloy.”

Shauna looked unashamedly at Grip. “Look, I have every reason to question who you are. The passport, N., and all trips we both know you have made to New York.”

“Unfortunate circumstances, accidental coincidences.”

“The bag of blood in Adderloy’s freezer.”

“Not a coincidence.” Grip sat silent for a moment and then added, “And you would never have gotten Adderloy if it weren’t for me.”

“And you want something in exchange. Your lost innocence, perhaps? For Lupone’s eyes?”

“I was looking at rusty bayonets in Gettysburg.”

“For a cardiac arrest, in a cell on Diego Garcia?”

“A word of advice. Don’t fire all your ammunition before the war is over.”

Shauna stopped with a smile. “Advice, for me?”

“Yes. You fire and fire away, and yet you need me.”

“What is this, a guessing game?”

“It was you who wanted me to come here, right?”

“So why are we here?”

“We’re sitting in this Jacuzzi because you want to make sure that I’m caught on all your hooks. N., Lupone, and whatever else. Imaginary bargaining within silent walls.”

“Watch it,” said Shauna, “investigations are ongoing.”

“And out of pure gratitude, I should maintain polite silence.”

Down in the swimming pool, no more voices were heard.

Grip moved his hand through the water. “I’m deadly curious about one thing. What is it you don’t want me to see?”

A door slammed. The light and the silence of the swimming pool gave a sense of the surrounding night.

“You Swedes can still afford to play dollhouse with the world.”

“Said by a harmless woman from the Justice Department. For most in the FBI, no more than two gorgeous tits and tail.”

“Most people can at least handle not saying it out loud.”

“In a bathing suit, you can seduce a Swede.”