Eddie Bourque: Speak Ill Of The Living Part 3

This is foolish. He can't reach me through the gla.s.s. He can never get out of this prison.

Eddie willed himself calm. He paused for a deep breath, then said in a breezy voice: "I don't know much about you. I know you were an athlete before you came here, a good one."

Henry's face instantly relaxed. There was no trace of rage in him. He asked, "Do you know how the universe was made?"

Another sudden change of direction? "Sorry, I wasn't around for Genesis."

"Genesis? So you say G.o.d made the world?"

Eddie shrugged.

Henry leaned back, looked around the room. He seemed indifferent.

The sonofab.i.t.c.h is mirroring my emotions!

Was that a game for Henry? To read what another person was feeling, amplify the emotion and turn it back on them? Was that what thirty years in prison did to a person? Eddie wanted to talk about the note Henry had sent him, about who kidnapped Roger Lime. Henry was acting crazed, but Eddie didn't believe it. There was something in Henry's face that revealed a calculating intelligence behind the non-sequiturs and eccentricity. Henry Bourque would come to the point when he was ready.

Eddie played along. "Where do you say the universe came from?"

"There are scientists who have developed marvelous theories of the origins of the natural world that do not have to include a G.o.d," said Henry.

"The Big Bang theory?"

"A child's guess in simpler times, in comparison to the thinking of today-there's too much luck involved. Did you realize that the ratio of matter and energy in the universe is perfect? Had that ratio settled more than a quadrillionth of a percentage point either way, the universe would be too compressed, or too spread out, for life to begin?"

"I guess we're lucky."

"Maybe not. There are other theories."

"What's your favorite?"

"Imagine a mother universe polluted with points of infinite ma.s.s and no dimensions," Henry said. "The unthinkable gravity of these points bend the s.p.a.ce around them, until they snap off into another dimension, and create a new daughter universe with unique physical laws. Imagine that happening trillions of times, until, as chance would eventually determine, one of those daughters develops the right ratio of matter and energy for life. It's called the multi-universe theory. I didn't think it up, though I wish I had. Isn't it lovely? A theory of creation that doesn't rely on luck or on the Almighty?"

Eddie's eyes traced the scar on Henry's face. The edges were jagged, as if the wound had been carved with a dull knife. "That's a weird concept of the universe," Eddie said. "It's weirder than G.o.d."

Henry smiled. "Occam's razor."

"The simplest answer is usually the best."

Henry's finger rubbed the ridge of scar beside his eye. "Wasn't long ago that skeptics used Occam's razor to disprove the existence of G.o.d."

"As you said, the universe was simpler back then." Where is he going with this?

Henry s.h.i.+fted his weight in the chair, rolling his ma.s.sive shoulders. He said, "When you play chess, do you prefer the white pieces or the black?"

Here we go again.

"The black."

Henry snapped his fingers. "Yes, I knew that." He looked Eddie hard in the eye and asked sharply, "And which do I prefer?"

Eddie thought about how Henry had controlled their encounter, from the mysterious letter to his disjointed questions. He answered, "The white."

Henry laughed and banged a palm on his knee in delight. "That's right! Can you tell me why?"

"Because white always moves first. You like to have the first move of the game."

Henry's eyes closed for a second, as a smile spread over him. With playful sarcasm, he said, "I feel like you're the brother I never had."

Eddie imagined himself looking through Henry's eyes, seeing another human life end by his own hand. What weapon had been in that hand? A gun? A knife? A club? Eddie didn't know. He imagined a blurry gray object of death at the end of Henry's arm. He saw an armored car driver on the ground begging for life. Saw the begging stop and the blood begin. Saw meat and bones on the ground, and then the widow in black. The thoughts enraged him.

Eddie blurted, "You're so smart, how could you have been so f.u.c.king stupid?"

Henry raised an eyebrow. "Easy, easy," he cautioned. "If you went back in time to save me, you'd destroy yourself."

"What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

Henry sighed. The telephone crackled. He switched it to the other ear. "Your kidnapped bank president is pictured sitting on a five-sided table made entirely of poplar, a.s.sembled in traditional method with white glue and pegs-not a nail in it anywhere."

"How do you know that?"

Henry winked. "Because I made it."

"You? But you're-it's been thirty years."

"I built it to last, little brother."

Eddie felt his reporter's skepticism bubbling up. He turned on his bulls.h.i.+t meter. "Can you prove it?"

Henry gave a pained look. "I got angry during construction-the wood wouldn't behave," he said. "The left front leg would show the results of that anger. Look closely, see for yourself."

"Fine, let's say you made the table. You didn't kidnap Roger Lime. Who did?"

An intercom burped to life and a voice of tin screeched, "Aaaangem-up!"

"What's that?"

"We're out of time," Henry said. "We gotta hang up."

Eddie jumped from the chair and slapped a hand on the gla.s.s. "Who's doing this?" he cried. "You said you knew who's doing this to Roger Lime!"

A guard appeared at Henry's shoulder, tapped him twice.

"I gave away the table I made," Henry said, "to my partner's old lady."

He hung up.

Eddie's foot mashed the accelerator to the floor. The Mighty Chevette whined and shuddered, like it might to fly apart on the trip back to Lowell. Eddie steadied the wheel with one hand and one knee, and dialed the a.s.sociated Press news desk on his cell phone.

He asked for Springer, waited for the transfer.

"Need a favor," Eddie yelled to Springer over the wind roaring through the windows.

"Sure, Ed. Where the h.e.l.l are you?"

"My car."

"Sounds like you're under your car."

"Just bear with me. Can you get the photo of Roger Lime that the cops released the other day?"

"Yeah. It's been scanned into our archive. Gimme a sec to call it up on the computer."

Eddie yanked from his pocket the newspaper clip Henry had sent him. The newsprint photo reproduction was muddy. He couldn't see anything on the table legs.

"I got it," Springer said.

"Zero in on the lower left quarter of the photo," Eddie said. "The table legs. Can you enlarge it?"

"Lower left...yep...okay. Now what?"

"The table legs, man. Look closely. Notice anything, uh, unusual?"

"Seems pretty ordinary...well, there's a half-dozen marks on one of them-curved lines, crescent shaped."

Eddie felt rising tension, like his stomach was being pumped full of helium. He knew the answer, but he had to ask: "What would you say made those marks?"

"I dunno, Ed," Springer said. "Looks like somebody got p.i.s.sed and whacked the thing with a hatchet."

Chapter 3.

Eddie burst into the cla.s.sroom, ducked under the mysterious gurgling pipe, glanced at the clock, slapped his briefcase on the gray steel teacher's desk and grabbed an eraser.

"Sorry I'm late," he announced as he obliterated the chemical formulas left on the blackboard from an earlier cla.s.s. Eddie had been obsessing over his visit with Henry, and had struggled to plan his lesson before cla.s.s. He despised being late and was embarra.s.sed to face his students. He felt like he had cheated them out of ten minutes of learning, though Eddie suspected that his ten remaining cla.s.s members would rather chat with each other than listen to Eddie Bourque.

In large, squeaky chalk letters, Eddie printed the evening's lesson: "ON AND OFF THE RECORD."

He dropped the chalk in his s.h.i.+rt pocket and turned around. Five blank faces looked back at him.

"Oh," Eddie said, suddenly realizing he was missing half his flock. "Where's the rest of the cla.s.s?"

The mysterious pipe made its disgusting sucking sound, like a plunger in a bucket of worms.

"Eeeew!" said the cla.s.s, as they always did.

Eddie frowned at the pipe and waited for the noise to end. It usually stopped after half a minute.

Another great moment in education.

When he had applied to teach this community college course, Eddie had come to the school with lofty images of the academic world. But "Introduction to Journalism" had been a.s.signed a windowless, raspberry-red bas.e.m.e.nt cla.s.sroom, sectioned off from the boiler room by a cinderblock wall. The mysterious disgusting pipe, about five inches thick and made of unpainted steel, ran down the middle of the room at about six feet off the floor-just low enough for Eddie to scuff the top of his head on it. The pipe had nearly scalped him a dozen times, until Eddie had become programmed to automatically duck when pa.s.sing from one side of the room to the other.

Nearly halfway through the semester, Eddie was wondering if agreeing to teach the course had been a mistake. He had applied for the job because he needed the money. At his interview, he had to overcome a lack of cla.s.sroom experience, and to convince the college administration that money had nothing to do with it; he was just desperate to share his knowledge of journalism and practice the world's n.o.blest profession-teaching. In convincing the administration, Eddie had convinced himself.

Lately, though, he was dripping with doubt. He had expected his students to be raw in the beginning, but they didn't seem to be getting any better. Actually, it was almost as if they were losing knowledge. And whose fault was that? An even worse sign: the cla.s.s didn't seem to care that they weren't learning anything from Eddie Bourque.

They're killing their grandmothers to avoid my lectures.

"I heard that the two Irish la.s.ses who sat in the back dropped this cla.s.s," said Gerard from the front row. He was around fifty, round-shouldered and potbellied, with dark eyes that looked frightened while he was listening but demonic when he was speaking; it was something about the way his eyebrows rose and fell. With a phony British accent he used from time to time, Gerard suggested, "Maybe you were too tough on 'em, Mr. Bourque, and their fair stock couldn't handle it."

That got a laugh from the cla.s.s.

"Are you calling them sweet girls stocky?" demanded Margaret, a chain smoker with a cheese-grater voice who had already lost two grandmothers that semester. "Because we girls don't like being called stocky."

Gerard shot her a frightened glance, then turned away and mumbled devilishly, "How about livestock."

Margaret squealed, "What'd he say?"

Eddie spread his hands and smoothed the tension out of the air. "Okay, now..."

The pipe made its other noise, the slurping, like somebody vacuuming live squid in a flooded bas.e.m.e.nt.

"Eeeew!"

Eddie pinched the bridge of his nose a moment, and then slowly opened his briefcase. Two more students had dropped the cla.s.s? That made eight-eight students who had signed up for Introduction to Journalism had decided to quit before the semester was over. Eddie couldn't wait until after mid-term exams-no more refunds for anybody who dropped the cla.s.s...a.s.suming anybody was left by then.

Don't let them smell fear.

He fished the chalk from his pocket. The instant the slurping stopped, Gerard asked, "When are the mid-term papers due?"

"Good point," Eddie said. He reminded the cla.s.s, "Your mid-term a.s.signment is due by email next week. Those of you who still have living grandmothers might want to turn it in early, just in case something happens." He lifted an eyebrow and glanced around the room. Half the cla.s.s refused to look him in the eye. "It's a straightforward a.s.signment. Just attend any meeting of any public board or commission in your home towns and write up a news story based on what takes place."

He pointed to the blackboard and plowed into his lesson: "Which leads me to the point I'd like to discuss tonight. Public officials often try to go off the record. Can anybody tell me what it means to be on the record?"

"Like my band, man," said Ryan Daniels, a twenty-something kid in all black. His right nostril was pierced with a nut and bolt from a hardware store, his head shaved to the scalp except for patterns above each ear that resembled a fist extending a middle finger. "We're cutting two tunes this weekend for an e-p recording next December." He gave the devil horn sign with his fingers. "It's a heavy metal Christmas, baby."

"That ain't what he means," scoffed Margaret. "Your garage band ain't breaking any sales records. I doubt you'll sell ten of those things."

Eddie ducked under the pipe. "That's not what I mean," he said.

"See?" said Margaret.