“I need to get this.”
The world was a confused clamor. Bridge ringing in my hand, those 1819 flags flapping in my brain, Jackdaw trembling inside a box, the rifle bucking against my shoulder, and Martha, Would you ever—would I ever what?
“It’s…” She gave a little toss of her head. “It’s nothing. Seriously. Take your call.”
I answered as I turned away, and the doors whooshed open, and Bridge said “Victor,” short and sharp, his voice charged with some energy I did not immediately recognize.
“Oh, yes, hello,” I said, still in Dirkson voice, walking fast, not liking to talk to him out in the bright no-man’s-land of the hotel lobby. It was like I had conjured a demon to rise up out of the patterned carpet, right where everyone could see it. “Hey, could you hang on just a sec?”
I kept the phone pressed against my chest until I was back in the room, out on the balcony, with a cigarette clenched in my teeth.
Would you ever…what? Would I ever—
“Victor.”
“You caught me in the middle of something.”
“And is that a problem for some reason?” A current running through his voice like rogue electricity. “I will call when I call, Victor. Do you understand? I will call when I want to.”
I took the phone away from my ear and studied it. Maybe it had connected me by accident to the wrong man. Some other Victor, somewhere else.
“How’s your progress?”
I skipped the jokes. I gave the man a whirlwind tour of the day’s adventures. I gave him Officer Cook and Maris on the steps, I gave him the pin I had put on Maris; I gave him the name of the doctor; I gave him the printout from Whole Wide World Logistics with the route of escape. I told him about Slim’s, but not about shooting Slim.
The whole time I was providing this debrief, I was measuring the short, cool silences that breathed between my sentences. Something was off—something was way off. Some new weather, a heaviness in the atmosphere, was brooding over our call like a storm system, darkening the color of the sky.
Like a good employee, I wrapped up my report with next steps. Tomorrow morning I would feel out the doctor, try again to pick up Maris’s trail, seek out Cook the cop if I had to, prevail upon him to make another run at the recalcitrant priest.
Another half step of menacing silence from Mr. Bridge. Then he said something that blew a hole in my understanding of the world, like a cannonball smashing through the high wood sides of a ship. “You holding out on me, boy?”
“Am I—what?”
But it wasn’t even the question. That word—that word again—that word. I sucked in poison from the cigarette and felt my cheeks tremble. Felt my neck get hot.
“If you are dragging your feet, I will know it.”
“I’m not.”
“What I’m hearing from you, Victor, is a list of half-completed tasks. Bullshit leads. This is day three on this.”
“Three days is nothing,” I said. “Remember Milwaukee? Fuck, man, remember Carlisle?”
“If you can’t get this over with—”
“If I—what?”
“If you can’t find the man—”
I was staring at the phone again, holding it at arm’s length and shaking my head. We were upside down. We were in a shadow land. Bridge’s aggression was way, way out of character. He was my handler, and he was handling me poorly. I noticed his uncharacteristic inarticulateness, the strange doubling back, how he had arrived at “If you can’t find the man” only after “If you can’t get this over with,” which has a whole different character.
“If you’re slow playing this, Victor, I will know that. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
“You understand what that means.”
I stood in silence, simmering in the implication of the question. The violence gleaming cold behind it.