Black Heart, page 28
Now, the morning after, he arose slowly from the sheeted sofa, groaning a little. Tracy was already in the kitchen. He came
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into he living room, saw Thwaite with his fingers laced, hands clamped between his knees. He was staring at the carpet, at nothing.
Tracy set a steaming mug in front of him. It sat on the glass coffee table, untouched. Lauren was already out of the apartment. She had early classes all this week and, as Tracy looked around, he realized just how empty the place felt without her. It gave him a slight shiver: the knowledge that he was coming to depend on another person's comfort and presence so strongly. , 'C'mon,' he said softly to Thwaite. 'Drink up.'
!( 'Uh.' The other did not move. 'Not thirsty.' V 'Got breakfast cooking.' f 'So that's the stink I'm smelling. Not hungry, either.'
Tracy looked down at him. 'Just hung over.'
Thwaite couldn't manage a reply. Tracy sipped at his coffee, feeling the heat centring him. Finally Thwaite looked up. His eyes were red-rimmed. 'And what about you?' he managed to croak. 'You drank as much as I did. Maybe more. You should be crawling on your belly like the rest of us. What makes you different?'
Tracy smiled. 'I've got a constitution of iron.' He bent down, offered Thwaite the mug from the table. 'C'mon. I need you wide awake and alert. We've got to pay a call on Ivory White. The photos, remember?'
Thwaite nodded and winced. 'Ow, that was a mistake.' He rubbed his palms across his face, trying to peel away the grimy layer of lassitude the liquor had left him with. 'Yeah, I remember. Only suddenly it don't seem all that important. Not after last night. I ' He hid his face in his hands. 'Oh, God, it's some kind of a nightmare. Tell me it's a nightmare.'
There was silence in the room. Tracy went away into the kitchen, silently ate his breakfast without tasting any of it. For that moment, there was nothing he could do ... nothing anyone could do save perhaps Melody. But Thwaite had to find his own way in this.
When he was finished, he returned to the living room. Thwaite was sitting up rather more normally. The mug of coffee was between his hands.
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'Should I heat that up?'
'No. It's okay as it is.' He lifted his head and Tracy saw a ghost of a smile there. 'You know cops. Get used to drinking anything. If it hasn't got mould growing on the sides of the cup, I can't recognize it.'
'Listen,' Tracy said, 'why don't I go pick up the stuff from White? You stay here and get cleaned up. There're a couple fried eggs in the pan, if you can get them down.'
'That might not be such a bad idea.' Thwaite fumbled in his shirt pocket. 'Got his phone number here, somewhere. Call him and get his address. He'll likely be home; he's got the graveyard
shift again.'
Patrolman Ivy 'Everybody calls me Ivory' White lived just across the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge in Sunnyside. He and his slender wife and a squalling infant lived in a one-bedroom garden apartment just south of Forty-seventh Avenue.
'Jesus,' he said as he let Tracy in, 'I didn't know what to think when I got to Thwaite's house. I put in a call to 911 and the Fire Department, then I split.' He shrugged apologetically. 'I mean I didn't have any idea...' He peered into Tracy's face. 'Thwaite all right, isn't he?' 'He'll be okay.' 'And his family?'
'They weren't so lucky.' Tracy watched White's wife as she held the bawling infant. She was staring at him wide-eyed. He'd seen that kind of fear before. Now it made him uncomfortable; this man was an accessory to what they were doing. He didn't care for that much.
'Oh, Christ.' White crossed himself.
'Honey, what is it?' The woman's voice was thin and piping
with her anxiety.
'Uh, nuthin', babe.' He turned towards her. 'Why don't you take Michael back to the vaporizer? He's coughing his brains out.' He turned back to Tracy. 'The kid's got the croup. Neither of us's had a good night's sleep in a week.' Abruptly he was at a loss for words. He went and got a manila envelope, handed
it over.
'Goddamned terrible shame about Thwaite's family. He's
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okay, for a white man.' He smiled and Tracy saw his splay teeth.
'Mr Richter -'
'Tracy.'
White nodded. 'Tracy. I got three to think of, now that Michael's here and I gotta get my advancement any way I can. If that means helping Thwaite out, I said to myself, I gotta do it. Jenny, she doesn't understand it. She thinks if you're good at what you do, you get advanced no matter what. » 'Maybe that's the way it should be... that's the way it is, with I white policemen.' He paused for a moment. 'I just hope... well, I hope this tragedy, ain't gonna change Thwaite's plans none.'
Tracy smiled. 'We both appreciate what you've done, Ivory. I don't know your deal with Thwaite but I know he'll honour it.' He shook the other's hand. 'Don't worry, okay?'
'Do my best.'
The detective seemed much improved on Tracy's return. He had showered, and shaved and he seemed pink-cheeked. The bright spark had returned to his eyes.
'Listen,' he said the moment Tracy walked through the door, 'I gotta apologize for weeping all over your carpet before.'
'Forget it, Douglas. We're all human.'
Thwaite shot him a peculiar look. ' 'Cept you, maybe. I been thinking about what you did last night. I don't know why. Maybe to take my mind off of ... what I gotta do today. Doris's family ...' He looked away, towards the dusty light of morning filtering through the Levolors. 'They never liked me much, anyway. It's gonna be very hard, man. Very fucking hard.'
He shrugged, turned back. 'Anyway, I've got this mental picture of you ... what you did last night to 'Tonio. How the hell did you do it?'
'I don't think it can be explained,' Tracy said. 'It's got to be learned.'
'That guy at the dojo teach you that?'
Tracy smiled softly. 'No. Higure's my sensei now. The man who trained me is dead.' A faraway look came into his eyes. 'He died three years ago on a beautiful farm in Virginia surrounded
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by rolling, wooded hills, thoroughbred horses and a brace of golden retrievers. All the things he loved.'
'We should all be so lucky,' Thwaite said bitterly. He began to open the envelope. 'You know, while you were talking about it 1 got the strangest feeling you wanted to go back there.'
"Where?' A sudden cold knot had formed in the pit of Tracy's
stomach.
'You know. T.hat farm in Virginia.'
'No,' Tracy said firmly, 'I don't ever want to go back.' But he wondered whether he was lying to Thwaite and to himself. There was an undeniable magnetism about that place: the rolling meadows and pastures, the buzzing woodland, shivering its leaves with the change of the winds, and far off, against the horizon, the hazy blue guardians, the Shenandoahs, marching southward to become the Blue Ridge and, finally, in Tennessee, the vast Smokies. The Mines.
There was never a time when he didn't sweat there, even in bed at night, thinking of the next day's lessons Jinsoku would take him through. Yet there was an odd kind of longing for those days, a particular ache in the heart you feel for your first
love. He shook himself.
Thwaite had slid the photos out. 'Let's take a look at these.' They spread them out on the coffee table, side by side, like
playing cards, four black-and-white 8 x ID'S. Four faces of
death.
The first two showed John Holmgren as Tracy and Moira had left him: on the sofa, one leg draped to the floor, his clothes rumpled and heavily creased. The first was an overall shot, establishing the corpse along with the immediate surroundings. The second took in only the top half of the body, which meant details were more apparent.
Tracy studied the countenance of his dead friend. The expression already seemed unreal, as if he were looking at an artist's rendering of real life. There was nothing for them there. They
moved on.
The third shot was a close-up of the lower half of the body and seemed to reveal nothing more than the first two had
offered.
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'These look pretty standard to me,' Thwaite said. 'This Us one just shows him on his stomach.' He belched lightly. 'I think I roped White in for nothing.'
Tracy had picked up the fourth photo. It focused on the upper two-thirds of the corpse. He peered at it intensely while Thwaite got up, began to look around the room. 'You got a magnifying glass or something?' 'In the drawer of the sideboard,' Tracy said, not taking his eyes from the photo.
Thwaite came back and Tracy handed the thing over. Thwaite hunched over, closed one eye as he ran the glass across the top part of the print. He shook his head. 'Don't see no thin'. If this guy was iced I don't know how the hell it was done.' He put the glass down on the table, handed the shot back to Tracy. 'I had a long shot. Thought maybe Holmgren had bought it with a narrow cord you know, like a piano wire. But there's nothing like that around his neck.'
'You think the ME wouldn't've ' Tracy turned his head. I'Wait a minute. You could see the flesh of his neck?'
1 Thwaite nodded. 'Yeah, sure. Why?'
| His heart racing, Tracy reached for the glass, looked carefully through it. He scrutinized the photo, a centimetre at a time. I Thwaite moved closer on the sofa. 'You find something?' I 'Maybe.' Tracy did not look up.
I There was silence until Thwaite's irritated voice broke it. Well, you gonna let me in on it or what?'
1 Tracy finally looked up, handed over what he had been holding.
'What'm I looking for?'
Tracy sat back on the sofa and closed his eyes. 'The flesh at the back of John's neck. Just between the two vertical tendons. At the centre of the base.'
Thwaite did as he as he was told. He saw the edge of the Governor's shirt collar and just above it and somewhat darker since Holmgren had been wearing a white shirt, the bare flesh. He missed it the first time and had to refocus. 'It looks like a black spot. Could be anything: a bruise or a speck of dust on the negative even.'
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*
'Or,' Tracy said slowly, 'it could be a puncture wound.' The detective's head came up. 'Now how in hell could you tell that from a print like this?'
'I said I wasn't certain.' Tracy took a deep breath. 'I'm not.
But I've got a feeling.'
Thwaite was about to open his mouth to urge the other on, decided against it. He knew when to shut up.
Because he needed to do something, Thwaite got up and
turned on the air conditioner. Peering through the blinds, he
saw the street filled with people in shirtsleeves, some with their
jackets draped lankly over their shoulders. It was already a bitch
of a summer's day. He turned back at the sound of Tracy's voice.
'The first time I saw it done was in Ban Me Thuot. A North
Vietnamese. All it took was two fingers, a short needle between
them. Kim had brought him in for articulated interrogation '
'What the hell is that?'
'Articulated interrogation,' he repeated. His eyes were glassy, turned inward. 'It's like all such words: a euphemism. What it really is is five stages of implemented torture.'
Thwaite gave out a nervous guffaw. 'Just like in the movies, right? The Dragon Lady's about to take the burning bamboo shoots to the hero's fingertips.'
There was no smile on Tracy's face. 'In real life, Douglas, there are no heroes. This's guaranteed to break anyone down. You don't survive it. Not the way we learned it.'
'Jesus.' Thwaite shook out a Camel, lit it. Somehow the pull of the rich smoke into his lungs reassured him. 'Precisely. It all depends on the principal.' His eyes focused and he looked at Thwaite. 'The articulation stages remain the same regardless; it's the principal - the subject who determines the area.' He was speaking more quickly now. 'For instance, some people can't stand the pain of having their teeth drilled, for others it's the pain of a knife
gouge.
'It's called pain anxiety and it has nothing to do with the physical sensation. Everyone has at least one variety that he or she fears. It's universal. So there's always a way in; a starting point. And once you've found it, the rest is merely a form of
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mechanics that doubles and re-doubles the pain anxiety at irregular intervals until it becomes unbearable."
Thwaite swallowed hard. 'But what's this got to do with the way in which Holmgren was murdered?"
'Like I said, Kim had this North Vietnamese in for articulated interrogation. The principal went through the first stage.' Tracy's voice had slowed to a crawl. The images were running back at him, bouncing painfully against the insides of his eyelids like the sharp regulated flicks of an unfded fingernail. His nostrils flared abruptly; he could smell the stench of sweat and fear and urine dribbling down the principal's leg. A boy of barely seventeen.
Tracy did not want to remember. 'Kim turned away for a moment, perhaps to get another implement, I don't know. There was a blur of movement as if the principal were slapping a beetle from the side of his neck. The next moment he had arched forward and was dead.
'We brought a military medic in and he pronounced the man dead of a massive heart attack. But then he hated us. What we did in there sickened him. He was delighted to tell us that.'
Tracy got up; sitting was too difficult for him now. The past was like an explosive barrage detonating inside him, quivering his muscles. 'But of course we knew he must be wrong. We found the needle, we saw the puncture wound. I came up with a forensic genius over there. He was a second-generation Japanese; American but had spent plenty of time in Japan.
'He told us the man had received an infusion of an enormously powerful stimulant that jolts the cardio-vascular system with such force that it brings on almost immediate MI.'
'Even if you're a healthy sonovabitch?'
Tracy nodded. 'It seems to make no difference because the substance is so powerful. The forensic specialist said he found it only because he was looking for it. Unlike manufactured poisons, this stuff builds up no residue in the surrounding muscle or fat tissues. It's apparently flushed out through the endocrine system.
'And because it's a nutmeg derivative he said he'd bet ten out often MEs in the States wouldn't pick it up.'
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'But there's no way to be sure. I mean -'
'Look, Douglas,' Tracy said, 'even if we still had John's body to work on, I don't think the substance could be found now.'
'But there'd've been a chance.'
Tracy looked at him. 'A chance. Yes.'
There was an electric moment between them when they seemed to be walking at the edge of a precipice. Something dangerous prowled the room, an almost definable rippling of the atmosphere.
Then Thwaite said, 'Ah, what the hell. Does no good to think about "what if V. We gotta go on what we have. Period.' And it was gone. But inside, he still felt the shadow of its invisible presence. He cleared his throat, stubbed out what was left of the Camel. 'Still, I don't see how you can make this connection to Holmgren's death. Just from a black spot on a photo?'
Tracy began to move around, the restlesness growing. 'It's not only that I've been thinking about the way in which Moira was murdered. I've seen this done before. Occasionally, the Viet Cong would do it out of a sadistic desire to "crush" the enemy. The Khmer Rouge did it, also, in their formative days. They had a more practical reason, though. Bullets were at a premium; they were for waging their holy war. Prisoners were often executed by beatings just like that, inflicted by rifle butts or wooden clubs.'
'It's disgusting.'
'Invention is the mother of necessity.' Tracy shrugged. 'But let's take that view for a moment. We have John murdered by an arcane poison, virtually unknown in this country; we have Moira murdered just days after, beaten to death; we have a highly sophisticated electronic listening device I pulled from the Governor's brownstone.' Their eyes locked. 'They may all be links in the thinking of one man a man who's been, as I have, in Southeast Asia, during the war. Who knows it as well as I do.'
'What about your friend Kim? He's a Vietnamese; he was there; he's a master torturer.'
'It couldn't be Kim,' Tracy said immediately. 'First of all, he got me into this.' He could not, of course, tell Thwaite too much about the foundation; that it had no jurisdiction within the
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United States. 'For another, beating's not his style. He likes cleaner work than that. Also he knows next to nothing about electronics. This bug was hand-built by a master. I've got a feeling I'm right about this; John was poisoned, I'm certain of it.'
'You don't mind if I don't take your word for it ... at least not yet. Let's hear what your father has to say first."
'Fair enough.' Tracy relaxed a bit.
Thwaite got up. 'I gotta get downtown. There's a lot to do today. I appreciate last night's hospitality but three's a crowd. I'll check into a hotel tonight - my insurance company will pick up the tab. I'll let you know which one.' He put on his crumpled jacket. 'Meanwhile you have my number at the precinct.'
He eyed Tracy carefully, hesitated a moment. 'You know,' he said slowly, 'you're a very scary guy. After seeing you in action, I'm just as happy we never tangled. The violence you can whip up... well, it goes beyond anything I've ever seen and I thought I'd seen it all.'
'I've been trained for it.' Tracy held his voice expressionless. 'I use it when I have to. It's survival.'
Thwaite shook his head, his eyes canny. 'Hu uh. My point is you do it so well.' He rolled his tie up into a ball, put it in his jacket pocket. 'It occurs to me that wouldn't be the case unless some part of you enjoyed it.'
Tracy stared at Thwaite, his eyes shadowed. The light from outside was behind him and Thwaite thought it made him appear larger than he actually was. He wondered if that could be an illusion of Tracy's own making.
As for Tracy, he was thinking of the conversation he had had with Higure. Kokoro, the sensei had said. The heart of things. To peer into this and to survive is life's only heroic act.
