The Radiant City (40 page)

He kneels beside Anthony. He looks into his eyes, trying to see some fading light, some flicker receding. Anything. But there is nothing bright and nothing even dark. His eyes hold no secrets. They just are not Anthony anymore.

Matthew stands up. He looks around, abruptly and acutely aware that Jack might attack again.

Where is Jack?

He is not where he had been. Joseph is on all fours on the sidewalk, staring like a wild animal at Anthony. Jack is not with him. Matthew scans the street. Nothing. And everyone is looking at Anthony and Joseph and Matthew. Jack has vanished into the crowd, into the metro, maybe. Into the shadows.

Matthew goes to Joseph and hauls him to his feet. “Joseph. Go home. Go home now. Run.” There will be police. A young Arab man cannot be here. “Run,” Matthew says, shaking him, pushing him, and then he too is gone.

Matthew is freezing cold all of a sudden and he begins to shake. A man comes near and puts his coat over Anthony, trying to keep him warm. As though that would help. A surge of guilt goes through Matthew. He should have taken off
his
coat.

“The
flics
will be here in a minute,” says the man.

Matthew’s stomach roils. “I’m going to be sick,” he says. With his hand over his mouth, he heads for the alley. No one stops him.

In the alley, it occurs to him that he might kill Jack. That he might find him and kill him. The thought pulls him up and slams him against the wall. There is horror in leaving Anthony, his friend, there on the sidewalk. Anthony, who came to look for him when he wandered in the emotional wastelands, who cooked daube and sang Leadbelly songs to him through the door. Anthony who believed in redemption.

Anthony, who would not want him to kill Jack, and would not want Jack to kill himself. For that is the other possibility. Matthew still hears the sound that rose behind him as he stood over Anthony’s body. The sound of someone being disembowelled. The sound of Jack’s howl. Death sang in that voice. Anthony’s. Maybe Jack’s. Maybe Matthew’s. That too, is possible. Matthew considers this. Yes, it is possible, also, it is acceptable. An acceptable solution.

He ducks through the Galerie Rond Point and back along Franklin D. Roosevelt to the taxi stand. When the driver asks him where he wants to go, he is not sure what to tell him. Jack will not go back to his own apartment; Matthew knows this. Suzi has vanished, apparently, and so he will not go there.

“Belleville,” he says.

The driver looks unhappy. Taxi drivers do not like to dawdle in areas like Belleville too late at night. Matthew gives him the address and turns away. Let him be unhappy. He tries to think, but his thoughts scatter like marbles on a tombstone. Glancing around, he catches the driver looking at him in the rear-view. Matthew is thumping the door with the side of his fist.
“Pardon,
” he mutters. He wonders if he has been talking to himself. It is possible.

In his head, he plays out what he will do when he finds Jack. He pictures his hands around Jack’s throat. He pictures his fist in his face. He pictures making his eyes roll back in his head the way Anthony’s had. He pictures arriving too late, finding Jack hanging from a street lamp, with a bullet in his brain, with a needle in his arm. He pictures Jack gone mad. He pictures Jack broken, crushed under grief, the sack of skulls now, finally, one skull too many. He does not know which scenario frightens him more. He does not know which one satisfies him more.

The traffic at this time of night is light and they make it to the Bok-Bok almost faster than Matthew wants to. He pays the driver and watches him take off hurriedly, making for the safer, better-lit areas of Paris. He half stumbles down the stairs. Charlie and John sit in a corner. Three men he does not know huddle in the back. A new girl sits at the bar, dressed in a cheap gold halter dress, the skirt so short her panties show above her crossed legs.

“What’s up?” says Dan.

“Jack. Have you seen him?”

“He was in this afternoon.”

“Not just now?”

“Nope.” Dan tilts his porkpie back on his head and looks at Matthew suspiciously. Then he pulls out the crowbar. “Am I going to need this?”

“I don’t know. Don’t suppose you have another one of those, do you?”

“You want a drink? Looks like you could use one.”

Thankful that Dan is not the kind of man to ask questions, for he would break down if he has to say the words, he takes a double scotch, no ice. He holds his forearm close to his body to lessen the shaking in his hand. He sits at the back of the room and waits, sipping, for fifteen minutes. Then he waits twenty more.

“If he shows up,” he says to Dan as he leaves, “Try and keep him here. I’ll call in half an hour.”

“Don’t suppose I could stop Jack if he wanted to leave,” Dan said. “And I’d be a fool to try. Anyone would be.”

“Do your best. It’s important. And Dan . . . watch yourself.”

“Matthew, wait.” Dan reaches under the bar and then holds something out to him. “Take this.”

It is a sap. Heavy as only a ball of lead in a leather casing can be.

Matthew cannot find a cab and has to walk blocks, until finally he hails one on rue de Gambetta. He jumps in, gives the address on Châteaudun and has the driver wait while he talks to the border guard at the squat. No luck. Jack’s not there. The guard says Matthew is free to come on in, but Matthew believes him and does not bother. He really does not think Jack would want to be in a crowd just now.

He calls Dan. No sign of Jack.

And then it comes to him. He has no doubt in his mind where Jack has gone.

The girls and almost-girls swarm the taxi even before it comes to a halt. A pair of breasts press against one window and through another, hands lift a skirt – proving the pantyless owner is at least technically a woman. A girl hops up on the hood and the driver curses, saying the paint will be scratched; however, when he turns to face Matthew to accept his payment he grins. Matthew fights the urge to grind the francs into his face and eradicate that smirk. He gives him no tip, which earns him an insult he ignores. He opens the door and pushes into the wall of lace-covered, rubber-corseted, leather-wrapped flesh.

They call out to him in French. “Come with me, I give the best head.” “No, don’t listen to her, she’s too old. I’ll make you come until you scream for mercy.” “You are so pretty. You want to see my pretty little pussy? The real thing
, cherie
.” Their hands on his arms, their hands everywhere. He clutches his back pocket, guarding his wallet, and with the other hand he reaches in his jacket pocket and finds the sap there, waiting like a sleeping demon, heavy and dense.

“Fuck off!” he yells and throws his arms up, shaking them off. His hand swings back, threatening. The hot ember of a cigarette on his neck burns and he slaps it away.

“
Con
!
”
Bastard
,
calls a deep voice. A sharp heel kicks him.

He breaks through, jogs to the fence and hops over into the Pré Catalan Garden. Unlike the last time he was here, this night is not clear; there are no stars overhead, no moon. The terrain is dark and deeply shadowed. He senses he is not alone. The great tree in the centre of the lawn creaks as the wind blows. He heads across the grass in a straight line toward Shakespeare’s Garden and the cave. His passing startles a crow roosting in a birch tree and its caw is a mocking rasp in the veiled night. Matthew’s nerves jump like downed electrical wires. There is the flap and flutter of wings above him. Dark shapes only, bats or birds. Sentinels, raising the alarm. Not that he thought it would be possible to come upon Jack without warning; even at the best of times this was true. He tells himself it doesn’t matter.

At the next fence he calls, “Jack? You in there? I’m coming in.” Bravery boosted by bravado.

He climbs the fence and drops to the other side. As before, he tears his palm, which gives him a new focus for his anger. Sucking on it, he slowly walks across the centre of the circle of grass. He catches a faint whiff of tobacco on the wind, but it is gone so quickly he can’t be sure. As he reaches the edge of the grass he hunkers down, resting on his heels.

He waits as his breath slowly returns to normal. The rage leaches out of him, spreading across the hard earth, the cold stones. He gazes into the cave mouth, not even a real cave, but a make-believe cave, although the stones are real enough. It looks impoverished, lonely, more like someplace a scared twelve year old would go than someone like the hulking man he looks for. Soul-piercing sorrow slinks in to claim ground beside anger.

It is hard to tell what, if anything, lies beyond the cave’s mouth, and from where he sits he can’t tell if the lock has been jimmied.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are.” He thinks of the endless nights Jack has spent standing in the green jungles, still as a held breath. The minutes tick by and nothing moves. From beyond the confines of the garden come the distant sounds of car tires and now and then the voice of the prostitutes. It is as though a transparent dome, a bell jar, has settled over the Jardin de Shakespeare. The place becomes a microcosm of other places, specific to the truth—the isolation and danger—of all other places and yet removed from their reality.

Of course, it is possible Jack is nowhere near this place.

“What’s the matter, Jack? Waiting to sneak up on me? Finish me off? Is that the plan? Well, give it a try. I’m not going anywhere.”

The darkness remains merely darkness.

More time passes, perhaps a quarter of an hour, perhaps half an hour—it is difficult to keep track the way his thoughts race. Anthony’s face swims before him in the dark. The sound of his laugh floats in on the wind. Guilt like a sack of squirming snakes writhe in his guts. He fingers the sap, heavy in his pocket, dries tears he hasn’t noticed crying with his coat sleeve. His fury grows with the tears.

He stands up. “Fuck you, Jack,” he shouts into the cave. “You fucking psycho.” He braces himself, one foot in front of the other, balanced for impact.

The cave entrance is opaque as a piece of coal.

“I’m not going in that cave of yours, so if you want me, you’re going to have to come out. And you’ll have to come out sometime. I can wait until daylight. People will be here then. Is that what you want?”

Another ten minutes, fifteen minutes.

“So what? Have you offed yourself? Done us a favour? Is that it?”
Ah, shit. Regret
. With the words the taut wire of rage begins to sag. He wants a drink the size of a gallon drum; something he can fall into and drown. He has to know if his friend has found a permanent solution to his terrible troubles.
My friend?
The thought knocks Matthew as surely as a hammer blow to the head. Fucked up. Kindred soul. For it was possible, isn’t it? That look on Jack’s face as he strangled Matthew? The blind look that sees only ghosts. Tries to kill the ghost. Matthew has worn that look.

Jack. Betrayer. Comforter. Corrupter. Killer. Friend. One way or another. It must be settled.

“Fuck it. I’m coming in there.”

He walks slowly, straining to see. The lock at the barred entrance to the cave, although replaced on the hook, is not locked. His mouth dries up and the nausea churns. He touches the lock.

“Matthew,” a voice says.

Matthew nearly tumbles backward. The voice is Jack’s but it doesn’t come from inside the cave, it comes from above the cave. He steps back and looks up. Jack sits cross-legged on the roof of the cave. His face is covered in what looks like mud and only his eyes and teeth shine. He looks like a nightmare version of the Cheshire cat.

Matthew tries to keep the fear from his voice. “How long have you been up there?”

“Watched you walk across the grass. Didn’t want you to see me. What do you want?”

“Anthony’s dead.” There, let it be said for the first time. Let it find its target like a bullet. There is the sound of something being stifled, swallowed, choked down. “Come down.” Matthew tries to see if Jack has anything in his hands.

“You scared of me?”

There is no point in lying. “Yes. But not so scared I don’t want to fucking kill you myself.”

Jack nods. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m better than I was. Some. When you first got here, well, I think it’s good you didn’t come all the way in.” He uncurls himself with an ease Matthew didn’t think possible in a middle-aged man who has apparently sat on the cold earth completely motionless for the past hour at least. He disappears behind a bush and then soundlessly reappears to Matthew’s right. Matthew’s hands form involuntary fists
.

“Where’s Anthony?”

“What do you mean?”

“What’s happened to his body?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you know?” Jack’s voice is flat.

“I guess I left—came after you before the police got there.”