The Bricklayer

FIVE

STEVE VAIL SPLASHED SOME WATER ONTO THE MORTAR AND USED knife edge to sink the moisture deep into the mixture. The late-morning sun felt good on the back of his neck. It had rained the night before, leaving one of those damp Chicago mornings that felt cooler than the mid-seventy-degree temperature. Moving back into the shadow of the large circular chimney he had been hired to rebuild, he picked up a brick and flipped it over so its wire-cut face was in position and buttered one end with the softened mortar. He pushed it into place, tapping the top with the butt of the trowel handle, and then used a backhand sweep to scrape off the excess mortar, flicking it into the joint just formed. His eye checked the brick’s alignment as he reached for the next one.
The ladder he had used to get to the flat roof started tapping rhythmically against the top of the wall. Someone was coming up. Flicking the excess mortar off the trowel, he threw it, sticking it into the pine mortarboard. He peered over the edge of the roof and was surprised to see a woman coming up the ladder. She moved quickly, her hands and feet finding the rungs instinctively. She was wearing a pantsuit and small heels, which should have made the climb more difficult, but they didn’t seem to slow her at all. Under her jacket, on the outside of her hip, he could see the bulge of a gun. Parked behind his truck now was a four-door sedan, one of those full-size government cars that were conspicuously nondescript.
Kate Bannon came over the top of the ladder and was surprised to find Vail leaning against the chimney, apparently waiting for her, his stare mildly curious. She brushed her hands against each other, wiping away imaginary debris from the ladder as she composed herself. “Hi,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m—”
“Kate Bannon.” He took her hand.
“How’d you know?”
“Detroit.”
“I didn’t think you’d remember me,” she said. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t think you knew I existed.”
“I knew.” His mouth tightened into a grin that she couldn’t quite decipher.
“Even though I was some ‘management bimbo’ getting my ticket punched?”
He smiled more completely. “Even though.”
“I would assume that’s what most of the male street agents thought,” she said. “And looking back, I’m not sure they were wrong.”
“Brutal honesty, and so early in this little—what is it we’re having, some sort of sales pitch?”
“At least give me the courtesy of pretending you’re being fooled,” she said. “And it’s not about your performance at the bank last month if that’s what you’re worried about.”
She was hoping to see some surprise from Vail that she knew he was the one who had disrupted the robbery, but his face had shifted into those unreadable planes she remembered from Detroit. “I’m not. I know they wouldn’t send someone all the way from Washington just for that.”
“How’d you know I’m at headquarters?”
“Five years ago, you were some ‘management bimbo’ doing your field supervisory time. I haven’t been keeping track of the rate of promotion for women, but I would guess that’s long enough for you to be at least a unit chief.”
“Actually, I was just promoted to deputy assistant director.”
“Really,” he said. “You must be quite the agent because someone as brutally honest as you surely wouldn’t accept a promotion simply because you’re a woman.”
She stared back at him, slightly amused. “Listen, Steve, if you’re trying to convince me that you can be an SOB, I remember. You’ll also find I’m not that easy to get rid of.”
Vail laughed. “A deputy assistant director. And on a rooftop in Chicago. There must be a really big problem back at the puzzle palace?”
“There is something we’d like your help with.”
“Unless you’ve got some bricks that need to be laid, you’re in the wrong time zone, darlin’.”
She looked at the chimney and the tools scattered around it. “You have a master’s degree in Russian history from the University of Chicago. How did you wind up being a bricklayer?”
“Is there something wrong with being a bricklayer?” he asked, his tone half amused with the feigned indignation.
“It just seems like there would be easier ways to make a buck.”
“Fair enough. It goes something like this. First you have to get fired, and then if you wait long enough, you start getting hungry. The rest of it just kind of falls into place.”
“I would have thought that you’d have looked for something a little more…indoors.”
“My father taught me when I was a kid. It’s how I got through college. And if you’re going to snoop around my personnel file, please get it right. Soviet history. It’s an important distinction in case whatever brings you here depends on my ability to see into the future,” Vail said. “Thus…” He waved his hand to encompass the surroundings. “Actually, I kind of like the work. It’s real. There’s something permanent about it, at least in human years. Handfuls of clay being transformed into complicated structures. And then, of course, it was the only house that the wolf couldn’t blow down. Besides, there are too many bosses indoors.”
“So you’re never going to take a job that has a boss?”
“There’s always a boss. The trick is to never take a job you can’t walk away from. Especially when the bosses get to be insufferable, which I think is now a federal law.”
“Is that what you did with the FBI, walk away when you didn’t like the boss?”
“Seems like you’ve thought about it a lot more than I have.”
“I’ve come with an offer that you can walk away from whenever you want.”
He pulled the trowel out of the mortarboard and picked up a brick. “Then consider me walked away.”
“I wouldn’t be here unless we really needed your help.”
“One of the things my departure from the Bureau taught me was that the FBI will never really need any one person.”
“I’m impressed. You’ve maintained a grudge for five years. You rarely see that kind of endurance anymore.”
“Thanks, but the credit really should go to my father. World-class scorn was the sum total of my inheritance. Enough of it can get you through anything.” Vail started turning over the mortar on the board again.
“Do you want it in writing? The Federal Bureau of Investigation needs the particular skills of Steven Noah Vail.”
“You’ll find someone else.”
Kate stepped in front of him. “I know something about you that maybe you don’t even know.”
“Oh good, I was wondering when we’d get around to managerial insight. Will I need something to write with?”
“You have to do this.” Her tone was not pleading but accusatory.
He held up the brick between them. “I do this so I don’t have to do anything.”
Her eyes carefully searched his face. “My God, you don’t know, do you? You really don’t know why you do these things. Why you have no choice but to say yes to me.”
“In that case, no.”
“Stop being so Vail for a minute.”
“Why is ‘no’ such a difficult concept for women? You demand we understand it the first time, every time.”
“Do you know why you stopped that bank robbery?” Ignoring her, Vail spread a bed of mortar and pushed the brick into it. “Because no one else could,” she went on. “Everyone else in the world is running around searching for their own self-importance, and you’re cruising around ignoring yours.” She smiled. “And let’s admit it, if you’re really that into revenge, what could be better than having the Bureau come crawling to you to fix some problem that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t?”
Vail stared at her like he was seeing her for the first time. He turned and went back to work on the chimney. For the next half hour neither of them spoke. She sat down on the edge of the roof and watched him. There was an economy of movement to his work that she supposed was necessary for any task so repetitive, but still there was something about the way he did it that she found intriguing. The way his large, veined hands flipped over the bricks and found the right alignment instinctually. The way when he applied mortar, it was always the exact amount needed, never dropping any, never needing to add any. The flow never interrupted. How he was transforming perfectly rectangular bricks into a perfectly round chimney.
The more she watched him, the more she realized he was working faster than he normally would. If the work was as rewarding as he had said, there should have been an occasional appraising touch or at least a glance when he finished a course, but instead he immediately reached for the next brick. She couldn’t tell if he was just angry with her or if he wanted to get done so that he could be rid of her for good.
After the last brick was tapped into place and the joint scraped flush, Vail flicked the excess mortar off the trowel and then scraped both its sides on the edge of the board. She could finally see some reaction on his face. Even though the trowel was clean, he kept stropping it against the board absentmindedly. “What exactly is it that needs fixing?”
“I’m sorry, I am not allowed to tell you.”
“Who is?”
“The director.”
“The director?”
“That’s the one.”
“What is it that you think I can do that the other eleven thousand agents can’t?”
“Most important? Be discreet. Last month’s little bank robbery gave us a pretty good indication that you’re not interested in getting your name in the papers.”
“And less important?”
“You had a certain reputation in Detroit.”
“For?”
“Hunting men.”
“So you want me to find someone without anyone knowing that the FBI’s looking for him.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that, but those are the main concerns.”
“Other than getting to polish my neglected self-esteem, what’s in this for me?”
“It’s completely negotiable.”
“Are you saying that as a deputy assistant director or as a woman?” As her face reddened slightly, the scar on her cheekbone started to glow white. He smiled. “That’s enough of an answer for now. When?”
“I came in a Bureau plane. It’s waiting at Midway.”
Vail picked up a ten-gallon bucket and started shoveling the unused mortar into it. “Give me a half hour to clean up.”


VAIL’S PICKUP PULLED up in front of his apartment with Kate’s Bureau car close behind. He walked back to her as she opened the door. “I’ll make it as quick as I can.”
She got out. “Can I use your phone?”
“You don’t have a cell?”
“I’d rather use a hard line.”
“I wasn’t expecting company.”
Kate wondered how bad it was up there. She found herself intrigued at the prospect of peeking into Vail’s personal life. “I’ll keep my eyes closed.”
Vail opened the door and let Kate walk in ahead of him. The small apartment was not what she expected. It seemed newer, better constructed than the rest of the building. The walls were unpainted Sheetrock. The taped seams were visible but had been smoothed with the expert touch of a trowel. In stark contrast, the dark hardwood floors looked like they had been recently refinished and were buffed to a high sheen. The furniture was sparse, and the few tables and shelves scattered around held a couple dozen different sizes and types of sculpture, mostly the kind that were found at garage or estate sales or dusty way-out-of-the-way antique shops. Strangely, all the human figures were of the headless variety and had apparently been purchased for the detail of the torsos. She wondered if there was another reason. “I’m still working on the walls, but I guess that’s obvious.”
On a worktable at the front window, to take advantage of the natural light, was an almost complete sculpture of a male torso formed by hundreds of thumb-size smudges of clay. “You live here alone?”
“If you’re asking if it’s mine, the answer is yes. And yes to living alone.”
She walked over to the two-foot-high figure and examined it more closely. The upper portion appeared completed and was heavily muscled. She glanced around at the other works in the apartment to see if any matched the style. “None of the others are mine if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“Do you sell them or give them away?”
“Actually, I throw them out when I’m done, or break them down so the material can be reused.”
“Have you ever tried to sell them?”
“They’re not good enough yet.”
“Really, this seems like it has potential.”
He pulled off his T-shirt. “That’s probably why you’re not working at the Guggenheim, and I’m a bricklayer. Beer?”
“Sure.”
“Glass?”
“Please.”
Her voice had an odd quality about it that Vail was drawn to. It was lilting, but at the same time gracefully incomplete, making him want to hear it again. “Not trying to be one of the guys drinking out of the bottle—refreshing.” He handed her a glass and twisted the cap off. After opening his, he took a long swallow from the bottle.
She glanced at each of the sculptures again. “What’s with the no-heads?”
He took another swallow of beer. For the first time that day, she sensed a reluctance to answer a question, an evasion of the blunt answers that seemed to come naturally to him. “I find faces distracting. I’m always trying to figure out what the models were thinking about at the time, even what language they might be thinking in. Probably studying Russian and reading Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky all those years has scarred me for life. Besides, I’ve tried faces. They all wind up looking like they’re from Middle Earth.”
The explanation seemed superficially dismissive, one that he never quite believed himself. Remembering Detroit now, she wondered if there was a natural distance he preferred. Back then everyone assumed it was some sort of extension of his inexplicable modesty. Armed with this new insight, she looked around and could find no television or magazines or personal photos. Apparently not even pictures of faces were allowed. The real question, she supposed, was what had made him like that. “Even though you didn’t say yes right away, I’m surprised getting you to come back to Washington wasn’t more difficult.”
“As you can see, my sculpting business isn’t going that well. And the job I just finished was the only one I had scheduled.”
Again, she detected a slightly hollow ring to his reasons. “You know, if you’re interested in getting your job back permanently, that could be arranged.”
“I’m not looking for permanent right now, just different.”
She smiled and nodded, deciding to lighten the conversation. “I think I can pretty much guarantee that this is going to be different.”
“Give me fifteen minutes. The phone’s over there.”
Kate sipped at her beer absentmindedly as she listened to the shower. She stood over the unfinished sculpture, admiring its virility. The shoulder and upper arm muscles seemed too large to be realistic, but it gave off a kind of primitive indestructibility. Then, closing her hand, she let her fingertips massage her palm, recalling the callused strength of Vail’s handshake. She let the tip of her finger run lightly down the curve of the figure’s spine like a drop of warm water.