The Syndrome (56 page)

“Well ‘animals,’—I’ll give you animals.”

“Hey.”

“And ‘healthy,’” he continued, “I’ll give you healthy. But—”

“You’ll pay for that,” she said, a gleam in her eyes. She
rolled on top of him, pinned his elbows with her knees, crouched above him.

He atoned.

She felt guilty, she said afterwards, laughing, about extracting payment.

“We have a cure for guilt,” he told her.

“Let me guess …” She took the cure.

Afterwards, they lazed in each other’s presence, enjoying their newfound intimacy. McBride found a deck of cards in the desk where a
Gideon Bible
was supposed to be and, sitting on the bed, entertained her with them. He could cut the deck with one hand—which looked easy, until she tried it herself, and the cards exploded all over the room.

“You got a hat?”

“No,” she replied with a little laugh. “Why?”

“Because if you had a hat, I could show you how to toss cards into it from the other side of the room.”

“And why would I want to do that?”

“Because you could win a lot of bar bets with it—I mean, in case the law doesn’t work out.” Then he made her pick a card.

“‘Any card’?” she asked.

“What are you—psychic?”

“Unh-huh.”

“Well, pick one anyway.”

She did.

“Now, remember which card it is … got it? Okay, now put it back in the deck.”

She did.

Holding the deck between them in his right hand, he cut the cards—again, and again. Then he shuffled them, and handed the deck back to her. “Now take your card out,” he told her, “and press it against your forehead.”

First, with a skeptical look, and then with a deepening frown, she looked through the deck, searching for the card she’d picked. Finally, she said, “It isn’t there.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yeah,” she said, with a laugh. “How’d you do that?”

“Do
what?”

“Find the card!”

“What card?” he asked.

“The card I picked!”

“You mean … the queen of hearts?”

“Whoaa!” she exclaimed. “How’d you
do
that?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just a trick. And, anyway, I don’t have it.”

“Yes, you do,” she insisted. “Give it to me! It’s under your T-shirt, or something. It has to be!”

“But it’s not!”

“Is!”

“Isn’t!”

Getting to her feet, she patted him down—which wasn’t hard, since the only article of clothing he was wearing was a T-shirt. “Then, where
is
it?” she demanded.

He thought about it for a few seconds, his face settling into a solemn mask. Finally, he said, “It’s in the bathroom sink.”

She gave him a skeptical look. “No, really!”

“It’s in the bathroom sink,” he repeated.

“No, it’s
not!
It can’t be!”

He turned the palms of his hands toward the ceiling and gazed at her with the po-faced innocence of charlatans everywhere.
What can I do with this woman?
his eyes seemed to ask.
Why won’t she believe?

“Okay,” she said, getting up from the bed. “But stay where you are. Don’t move!”

“I won’t move.”

“Don’t get up!”

“I won’t get up.”

Keeping her eyes on him, she walked slowly backward toward the bathroom, opened the door, stepped inside and—screamed. A second later, she burst into the bedroom with the queen of hearts in her hand and her eyes as round as saucers. “How did you
do
that!?” she shouted.

McBride laughed. “You’d be amazed at what I can do.”

“But where did you learn how to do that?”

“When I was a kid. I read every book anyone ever wrote about Houdini. You want to know the truth? If I hadn’t discovered basketball and girls, I’d probably be a lounge act in Vegas. The Great McBride.” He smiled. Sighed. “I’d forgotten all about it until … just recently.”

Soon after, they ventured into the shower, where they laved each other with soap, an activity that each of them knew could only end in one way, which it did—with the two of them on the floor, exhausted by each other’s enthusiasm and inventiveness. Finally, Adrienne struggled to her feet, and went to the sink, where she drank long and deep from the tap, cupping the water in her hands. By the time McBride went to join her in bed, she was sound asleep, with the covers pulled up to her chin and a childlike smile on her lips.

Adrienne was the first to wake up, and when she did, she decided she might as well let McBride sleep. She liked the way he looked in bed, with his right arm thrown up over his head—as if he were swimming through his dreams. After she’d dressed and brushed her hair, she wrote a note.

No.

Not
love.
It was way too soon for that. She’d never loved anybody—not really, not that way. Maybe last night would be the first of many nights and then again, maybe it wouldn’t. So she tore up the first note and wrote a second, which she left on the counter in the bathroom, next to his toothbrush:

She asked at the front desk for directions to the library. The woman gaped at her as if the question were a joke. “
‘Lie-
berry’!?” she winced. “Sorry, hon’—I got no idea.”

Using a pay phone in the lobby, Adrienne got the number from 411, called and got directions. As it happened, the library was only three blocks away. Five minutes later, she was there. And an hour after that, she was done.

McBride was still in bed when she came back. Hearing her come in, he stretched luxuriantly and groaned with pleasure. “Mmmmm.
Mmmmmmm.
C’mere,” he said.

Adrienne was tempted. It would be nice to crawl back into bed—and dissolve in sensation. But she stayed where she was, clutching her yellow legal pad.

He propped himself up on an elbow, suddenly serious, concerned. “What’s-a-matter? Second thoughts?”

“No.”

“Whew! Because—I might be in
love.
I think—I think I
am
in love. You sure you won’t come here?” His voice slowed, became theatrically sleazy. “Show you a good time.”

“Lew.”

The somber note in her voice got through. “Okay,” he said, sitting up. “What’s going on? Where have you been?”

“The library.”

“Oh. So what did you find out?” He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and looked straight at her in a parody of alertness.

“Albino Luciani,” she told him.

“Luciani,” he repeated, then frowned, trying to remember. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “The list. So who
was
he?”

She turned her notepad toward him, so he could see what she’d written. He squinted.

“Oh, Jesus,” he muttered. “That’s who Crane was talking
about. That’s ‘Papa.’ There were stories about him being poisoned after Vatican II.”

“They’re going to kill us,” she announced.

He was silent for a long moment. Finally, he said, “I know.”

“What do you
mean
you know?” There was a little quaver in her voice, and she worked to control it.

“I mean, I know they’re going to try. They’ve already tried. But they won’t get away with it—I mean, they won’t succeed.”

“Why not?” she demanded, sitting down on the bed.

“Because we’re going after them.”

“What?!”

“We’re going after them! I’m gonna kill the son of a bitch,” McBride swore.

“Who?”

“Opdahl.”

“What are you—crazy?”

“It’s the last thing he’ll expect,” McBride told her.

“Of course it is—because it’s the stupidest thing you could do!”

“No, it’s not. The stupidest thing I could do is keep running from him. Because, eventually, you run out of room.”

“And how is killing him going to help?” she asked. “I mean, assuming you could—which you can’t!”

“I’ll plead self-defense. You can be my lawyer. We’ll have a big trial, and everything will come out.” He paused. “What do you think?”

She looked at him wordlessly for ten or twenty seconds. Finally, she said, “You’re insane.”

His head fell back on the pillow. “I know,” he admitted. “But, unless you have a better plan, I’m going after him—because I don’t know of any other way to stop Jericho.”

“‘Jericho’? You don’t even know what Jericho is.”

“Yes, I do—a little bit.”

“Like what?”

“It’s a bloodbath,” he told her.

She nodded in agreement. “Right. What else?”

“It’s time sensitive.”

She gave him a puzzled look. “Why do you say that?” But even as the words emerged, the answer came to her: because they’d sent Nikki to kill a dying man.

Seeing her look, he knew she understood. “They couldn’t wait,” he told her.

She nodded.

“And we know something else,” he said.

“We do?”

“Yeah. We know who the hit man is—the guy who gets it started.”

Adrienne frowned, uncomprehending.

“De Groot,” he explained. “My client. You met him. The one who …” His voice trailed off.

“What?”

“Son of a bitch,” McBride whispered. He was thinking of de Groot. The spiky blond hair, the athletic roll of his walk—a predator, always up on the balls of his feet. His ingratiating grin. The dancing light in his eyes. Even with the medication, the Dutchman had too much energy. He was constantly tapping his foot, or rapping his fingers against a leg, always humming a tune. Sometimes whistling. Always the
same
tune. They’d joked about it a few times, that it was a funny kind of tune for a hip-hop Dutchman to latch onto.
It’s like an audio virus
, de Groot had complained.
You think it’s funny, but I can’t get rid of it! And I don’t even know the whole tune—just the hook: about Joshua.”

“What!?” Adrienne repeated, unable to read his mind.

“He was always humming that song—the one about Joshua … and Jericho.”

“What song?”

He looked at her: “The one where the walls come tumbling down.”

Neither of them said anything for a long while. Finally, Adrienne got up and crossed the room to the window. Looked out. “Did he have a screen memory?”

McBride nodded. “Yeah. An abduction scenario.” He
paused, remembered. “And … you’re gonna love this … he thought he had a tapeworm in his heart. And that it gave him orders.”

“I remember,” Adrienne said.

She went to her legal pad, and began riffling through it. From somewhere down the hall, Adrienne could hear the motel’s cleaning women, rapping on doors: “Housekeeping! Housekeeping!” Finally, she found what she was looking for. “Look at this,” she said, and gave him the pad with her notes.

“Fuck.” The word fell softly from his lips—as if he’d whispered
lavender
or
shadow play.
Looking up from the pad, he said, “Jericho. It’s South Africa.” He let his head fall back on the pillow, and fixed his gaze on the acoustical tiles overhead. The tapeworm was an in-joke, of sorts, a sick reference to one of the Program’s earlier successes.
An homage.
McBride flashed back to his sessions with de Groot, and for the first time, he understood what the Dutchman had been muttering about. It had nothing to do with
mandalas
—the rigidly symmetrical patterns that haunted the visions of so many schizophrenics. It was Nelson Mandela he was talking about,
Mandela
he was after.

McBride pushed himself up in the bed, and swung his legs on to the floor. Reaching for his clothes, he began to get dressed. “He’s going to kill Mandela,” he told her. “He’s a racist, and he’s going to set South Africa on fire.”

They took turns at the wheel and drove straight through to Washington, smashing along the Interstate at eighty miles an hour, radio blaring. The sun went down in Georgia and, by the time it came up again, they were nearing the Virginia border.
Even going eighty, semis rolled past them in the fast lane, rocking slightly from side to side.

It was 11 a.m. when they crossed the Potomac, heading north on Rock Creek Parkway. De Groot’s apartment was on a sidestreet near Chevy Chase Circle. McBride remembered the name: the Monroe. He and de Groot had joked about it, with the Dutchman insisting that its namesake was Marilyn rather than James.

McBride hoped against hope that de Groot was still there. He thought if he could find the Dutchman, he might be able to defuse the screen memory. And if that didn’t work, he’d find a way to put him out of circulation—whatever it took to derail Jericho.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Adrienne promised.

“It’s on the house,” he told her. “I wish I had a gun.”

She blanched, then peered at him as if to decide whether or not he’d gone insane. “What for?” she asked.

He returned the look. “What do you think? De Groot’s a big guy.” Entering the tunnel near the National Zoo, he added, “I don’t want a repeat of what happened in my apartment.”

“Eddie had a gun,” she reminded him. “It didn’t do him any good.”

McBride kept his peace. Kept driving.

When they came out of the tunnel, she asked, “Do you even know how to shoot?”

“Yeah,” he told her. “I’m good at it.”

“Right,” she replied, her voice a casserole of skepticism and sarcasm.

“I am!”

She looked at him again. Was he serious? “How come?” she asked.

“My dad taught me.” He said it without thinking, but as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he flashed on himself and his father. A crystal-clear, brick-cold winter morning in Maine. Breath pluming from their mouths. Fingerless gloves. His father adjusting the gun on his shoulder, teaching him how to sight it in. The paper target stapled to a tree at the
foot of a low hill, maybe thirty yards away. “He won a medal in the biathlon—did I tell you that?”