The Intermediary

CHAPTER ONE

There are always people who fascinate over some obscure, off the point detail that has nothing to do with anything. Then, they repeat that detail over and over the same way, until they bludgeon the life out of you. Or, by the force of repetition, they just make you want to agree so everyone can move on, which is where I am. They are company managers, client agents, my superiors, torture experts, former partners- you can find them around just about anybody with a nose to pick. They will wear you down unless you know exactly what they are doing, especially when they carry a badge.

I tell the story again. I am watching out the window to the street and talking with the bartender at McFaddens. Michael Alou, the money-manager, I mean the smug fuck with his finger in the client’s cake, comes out of the revolving doors at Broad and Pine, past the huge granite pillars, and down a long walk of stairs to the street. He is looking at his watch, and I am grabbing my coat and dropping a tip. I walk through the double doors of the bar entrance where I am blind for a moment, but as I turn he’s there, ten feet closer, right where he is supposed to be. I see a black limousine drive in fast. I think run. My head caves in from behind. I feel the skin on my face ripped off by the sidewalk. Something glows, and then all I have is a blank screen.

That’s all there is, I’ve gone over it again one more time, so it’s time to give in again. I am locked down in a hospital, my equipment is in custody, and this detective must like the nurse who keeps coming in, because he is in no hurry, and is playing Say it Forty Times. He is obsessed with the limo. I give him something. A sticker on the window. A blue circle. Like I said, there was no blue circle in what I have, but people need to believe in themselves. So I said it, and it worked.

The second piece of information you need is the most important one. I can describe what I do to you, but the one thing I do not do is kill people. In fact, the entire business enterprise I am employed in often requires a subject to not even appear bruised. We may need him to go into a bank and execute several transactions. He may need to apologize on his knees. We want him suited and pressed and weak. So I begin with the ribs. Cracked, they make every breath you take hurt. They remind you I am right outside. You may be a reliable coward, I will break one rib only. You may have fucked with me before so now it’s three, all on one side.

I’m not a psycho, I don’t have names for my favorite weapons, or have them cast from my mother’s silverware collection. For a rib it’s a $6 rubber mallet, swung hard at a subject, breaking down and away from the ribcage to avoid puncturing an organ. If you break his arm because he has time to raise it you are a chump, and that goes in the file as an accident. There are no freelancers, no nut jobs, nobody who claims an accident more than usual. The goal is efficiency, the need is to combine different kinds of persuasion, the service is discreet. There are polygraphs, mental examinations, tests, training, and evaluation. There are also redundancies, case managers put on your case without your knowledge. For that you get access to secrets.

They learn who you are- the governments, billionaires, celebrities, geniuses- those figures who have issues with money. But they understand the value of the firm, and they know that certain rules exist for a reason, for example, to prevent all kinds of things from coming into the open. A memoir, a confession, a retaliation from some meaningless cog who was just on a job, nobody wants that. Everyone works within the boundaries, and one essential rule of this kind of work is you do not kill the messenger. You do not go after the intermediaries. You do not reach into the personal lives of those who work there and destroy their reason for living because you are in the middle of a dispute. You do not want chaos, you want silence.

My identity must be known, I recognize this. The play is always complicated. But the boundaries that we operate in remain simple: we do not kill, they do not kill. So to get a hold of me, you do not blow a hole in the head of my wife and son, no matter what. But that’s exactly what happened. It has something to do with Michael Alou, and that is why I was there.

I can not stay in a hospital protected by cops. I have not come in since I came home last Tuesday and found blood everywhere. Sprayed across the walls, dragged down corridors, pooled around their bodies. I did what any sane person would do. A rule has been broken. Inside or outside, I don’t know. The rules have changed. And right now there is no way I can move, so for at least one night, I need luck.

CHAPTER TWO

I get luck. There is light through the blinds, so it is time to move. It’s early enough so that the place is quiet. The cop outside the door to my hospital room assumes I am asleep, so he is not alert. I have spent the last hour trying to put on clothes. I left the gown on, tucked inside black slacks, but as usual it is the shoes, and I now know I will be making the dash without the laces tied. My belt was taken, the chance to hang myself in the room was removed, but like all smart-asses, they left the pants and shoes, so for stupidity, I thank them. I will not be wearing a dress today.

But the weapon takes some thinking. Hospitals are not like auto body repair garages with shit you can throw everywhere. The pull string for the blinds is available, perhaps good for a choke from behind, but my guess is that the cop is not going to be just standing in the middle of the hall with his back to me. As the choices come into view, I am starting to get the energy to move. The medicine chest has three glass shelves. One could be swung once before breaking, then maybe the shard in your hand can be driven into a neck or chest. But that’s noisy and bloody. The toilet paper holder is solid metal. One side can be easily removed from the wall, could be effective with a face punch.

The bed cannot be broken down in any way without a tool. The TV is bolted. The bureau has drawers, but drawers don’t incapacitate, and neither do people attacking with drawers. I see the water pitcher. Something for the visitors to use. Like my wife who won’t be coming, or my son who made a drawing and is thirsty, but he won’t be coming either. The water in the tub is scalding hot. Obviously somebody didn’t get the memo about how to update seventy year-old hospitals, or maybe they just never had the money. I fill the pitcher so the steam is coming off it. I remove the toilet paper holder and head for the door.

I walk out into the hall, and there is the cop. I am mumbling Need some water and walking away as I hear him get up. I spin, find his face, and throw the water at it. He is nowhere close to ducking, and then he is grabbing at his eyes, as my Toilet Holder Fist nails him in the ear. He is down for the count, I have just assaulted a cop, and I am now a fugitive. I drag him into the room, yank the line off the blinds. I stick his tie in his mouth, and tie him off around the legs and wrists. Then I go.

Like most hospitals, if you are walking, they have something better to do. I grab a walker in the hall and I know I look ridiculous, which is perfect. I see the elevator, and I know it is a risk. But I am walking, and so I get in, and hit Down. I haven’t seen anybody yet. The elevators open on to a lobby hall, big enough to accommodate the swell of multitudes, but it is dawn so the swell is home, and only the lonely are watching what sounds like an offer for crystal dolphin-shaped figurines.

The lobby has a nurse’s station which probably knows to watch for strays and keep the prisoners in, and they probably have security there, most likely rented. The thing about elevators is, when they put them up they usually do it near the bank of stairs, rather than say, ripping a hole in the middle of 12 floors of prewar hospital. So I look around for the door, and sure enough, that gets you down to a basement and a loading dock.

Like any loading dock it smells like shit, and this time it’s in a hospital, so it includes its fair share of real shit- baby shit in fact, which as most people know is the worse kind of shit. So nobody is flinching when the guy in hospital patient garb walks out with his head wrapped in gauze. They work with the laundry and the garbage and the loading and unloading of trucks. There is shit going on. Not their job. So off I walk, no car, no money, but I know where I am. I have a head start.

CHAPTER THREE

Ozzie’s is not technically a bar or a hotel, since it has no license. Ozzie is a guy with a weird apartment who accepts guests at all times, except when he’s not there, and then it’s Clementine, who is like his maid and wife without sex. They are not against sex. Either one is happy to arrange sex for a guest, but Ozzie is impotent and Clementine is hugely fat. They can both claim a certain level of discretion for visitors, and they can ask the questions a client wants to answer to make sure he gets what he needs. But as far as I know neither one has any sex.

The last time I had been there my wife had changed the locks. It had taken a month for me to discover it, which made her really, really pissed. So I spent the first two nights at Ozzie’s. The next five nights I spent sleeping in the backyard, occasionally talking to my son in the window above me, who thought it was cool. My wife left a hamburger and some tomatoes and peas on a paper plate on Day Five, but by the time I arrived for bedtime in the backyard, an animal had turned a peace offering into an unholy splatter of ketchup and mush on cardboard. I picked up the cardboard and assembled it as best I could and left it inside the door of the kitchen for her to see. When she cracked up I knew the freeze was over. A nice memory. But usually I took clients to Ozzie’s because they were fucking perverts, and it was part of the job, and Ozzie and Clementine were, like I said, discreet.

When I showed up at Ozzie’s it was Clementine who answered. I told her that I needed to lie down and stay in a room all day, and make some phone calls. I asked for the room in back, which is smaller, but there was a way into an alley that might come in handy. She came in with towels and I told her I needed food, a change of clothes, some money and an ID. She nodded, walked out, and picked up the phone, and when I picked up, I could hear her dialing. She said she was calling Ozzie. I told her I was sorry, and to let me know when she got a hold of him. It was just raw instinct, nothing more.

She wouldn’t know who to call to give me up. But you never really know who your friends are, do you? I wasn’t the only person from our firm who came here. She might call one of them. She came back in with a shirt, socks, a sweater, and a hat to cover the gauze headdress. I was not expecting assistance of that magnitude, and just then the phone rang. I looked at her and let it ring. I may have mentioned that she is outrageously fat, but so are sumo wrestlers, and they can move quickly. She did, and grabbed the phone.

Hold On. She looked at me. It’s Ozzie. I took the phone, and indeed, it was Ozzie.

Thanks for having me, I said.

Not a problem. What am I looking at?

I don’t know yet. I need to make some phone calls. I have plenty of money. I just can’t get at it, I said. Silence.

OK, give me a couple of hours, I’ll let you know when the camera is on its way.

Ozzie was not a good shit or anything like that. He smelled something that could get ugly. He wanted me out and I wasn’t going to go without access to money and that meant ID. He gets me the ID, I go become someone else’s problem. This is easier than Clementine. It’s his ass, too, and he gets it.

I have been out less than an hour, but suddenly I am exhausted. Whether it is the exertion, or the tension, or the ringing sound in my head, the room feels warm. I am a lot safer than last night. I lock the door and lie down on the bed.

CHAPTER FOUR

Mr. Mason?

Knocking.

There’s a man here. He needs to take your picture.

Give me a minute. I tell her.

As I said, Ozzie’s is a very strange place, and it is not a coincidence that every door has an eyehole. Unfortunately, Clementine has the Western Hemisphere covered, so I can’t see him.

Move aside a moment, Clementine. I say. She moves and there he is, with a legitimate camera as a prop on his shirt front, and an appropriate level of boredom for the task at hand. He snaps his gum. I step back and open the door. Clementine doesn’t enter. His name is Gazi she says, as if Gazi isn’t there, but he is, and he is looking around the room.

The question is not always friend or foe. Occasionally it is neither. An intermediary. A person who delivers a message, or takes your picture. No need to worry, or to plot against him, or to kill him. If he is who he is supposed to be, he walks out having done a simple job, having taken your picture. And nobody is the wiser.

Gazi speaks. You will need to take off the bandage. He’s right, of course. Try showing a passport with your pale English complexion and your head wrapped like a Sikh. I go to the bathroom, where I find the clasps and unwind the bandage. They have shaved a portion of my head, revealing a nasty mix of stitches and black and blue set against my even paler scalp, so that one side of my head looks like someone who should not be out looking for killers, but should be holed up with a nice coma. But there is good news. I look better than I thought. My nose is still Roman and unbroken, my teeth neat and straight, with none missing. The cheek burn will heal within a day, and aside from the head wound I can soon be myself again, capable of attracting either sex with a combination of rugged good looks and quick conversation, or just being full of shit.

Gazi doesn’t seem to notice, as he goes about moving the chair in front of a wall that used to have a bureau in front of it. When I come out, he looks at me briefly and continues getting ready. He motions to the chair and I sit. I am looking at the camera and he is checking his focus.

Smile he says, without a hint of irony. I do not smile. It looks like a mug shot. I smile.

What about the side of my head? I ask smiling. The camera starts clicking.

Photoshop.

By which I take it, he plans to graft a piece of my hair onto this portion, touch it up, and make me look pretty. I nod. Keep your head still. I smile, and he clicks off a few more.

Then he is packing. An intermediary, a photographer, leaving with pictures of a man who will be all over the papers tomorrow. Why does Gazi rhyme with Ozzie? God, Ozzie, I hope this guy doesn’t get stupid on us. What us, I hear Ozzie say.

CHAPTER FIVE

It is time to make a phone call. I have a phone number I use, which plugs me into a hub called OLEX, and allows me to choose from about two hundred phone numbers my call can come from. I consider somewhere absurd, like Hawaii, but there’s nothing funny about this call, so I choose a local number, since they know I didn’t escape a hospital and get on a plane.

The phone rings, and a girl with an Indian accent picks up.

What can we do for you today?

You can bring my fucking six-year-old back to life.

8462, duty check I say instead, after a deep breath.

Hold the line if you will, please.

I have never held the line and been this tense.

Eighty-four-sixty-two. Good to hear from you. It is Pomeroy, that bald fat little fuckhead. They nicknamed him The Pomeranian because of his face, not his name. You still want to kick him off the couch whenever he perches his dainty ass on one. I am silent.

Hello? Are you there? he says. I cough.

Sorry old boy, need to hear a bit more. Let’s start with a word or two.

Rigid Silicates, I say. That is a client name. You never give a client name. He wanted a password.

Now that’s quite enough. You know what I need to hear.

Daedelus.

Very good. Where are you? You need to come in.

Can’t do that.

There is a pause.

What do you need? he asks.

Answers.

That can be arranged. The Pomeranian, like somehow all he needs to do is call for a butler, some scones, a bit of sherry and some answers.

Are you taking responsibility for what happened? I ask.

I can only assume you are suffering or some shit.

Listen. I need to know where this is coming from. I can’t come in until it is clear. That should be obvious, even to you…Is there anything on this that can be shared? By shared, he knows I mean electronically.

No, it’s quite personal, as I’m sure you realize.

Now this is where we are presented with what may be called One of Life’s Great Ironies. At least in my life. What we need, to try to make progress here, is an intermediary. Someone