“Yeah. Come on up.”
There was Mr. Bridge, coming carefully up the steps, one step at a time, not wanting to slip, and despite myself I felt the tiniest prickle of disappointment. There must have been some part of me hoping for a surprise. What if Deputy United States Marshal Bridge had turned out to have about him the smoldering air of a secret agent? What if he’d been six foot six and thin as a rail, wearing Loyal Texan cowboy boots and a battered Stetson? What if he wore a yarmulke? What if he were black?
Alas. Bridge was Bridge. A bushy gray mustache and a sloping forehead below a receding hairline. Tan slacks and brown dress shoes, poorly chosen for rainy late-autumn Indiana. He stood before me, me and my Abraham, a supplicant before the prince and counselor. He was the puffy, dull-eyed middle manager of my most contemptuous imaginings. This, my tormentor.
I raised my hand as I came closer, and he raised his in return. Bridge’s tie was brown and plain.
I fidgeted with the envelope’s dog-eared corner while Bridge came up the steps.
Bridge was alone, per my instructions. I could see down Meridian Street the car from which he’d climbed. He’d emerged from the driver’s seat, and I couldn’t tell if there was someone in the back or not, but it didn’t matter. Here at the steps it was just me and him, Bridge approaching, no bag or case, his hands raised as instructed. I had thought through all these details, got the setup straight: a public place, but a public place wreathed in darkness, a dead downtown in the middle of the night. It was 1:00 in the morning, Sunday morning. Two days since Martha and I returned to the North. Almost two weeks since Kevin was stuffed into the barrel, rolled onto the truck. Eleven days since I checked into the Capital City Crossroads Hotel, just down the hall from Martha and her son.
I ducked my hand into my other pocket, and Bridge stopped abruptly and raised his hands higher. I smiled. A glimmer of feeling reached me, distant but clear: it felt good to be in charge, even of one man, one small moment, one instant.
I wasn’t reaching for my gun. It was the envelope I took out.
Mr. Bridge’s eyes flooded with relief. He was easy to read, easier than ever, now that not even a phone line separated us. He was just here, ten feet in front of me, his features as open and plain as a child’s drawing. He reached out, as though I was just going to hand it over, and I could see it all in his face, the pressure that had been applied on him from wherever it had come.
I dropped the envelope back in my pocket, and he darted out his tongue quickly, licked his lips.
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
He nodded, licked his lips again. “I must hand it to you, Victor. That was well done. I don’t know how you did it, but that was well done.”
“I’m a professional.”
“Yes.” He nodded: yes. “Well, I hope you will not be surprised to hear that I am prepared to live up to my end of the bargain as well. If you would just…”
He took one more step up the stairs, and now my other hand came up, the gun hand. He stopped.
“What is it?” I said. “What’s in there?”
He stopped. “Have you opened it?”
Bridge. Question with a question. I went back on him: “What do you fucking think?” His eyes above the gray mustache were growing fretful. He didn’t like my tone. “Of course I opened it.”
It was still open, as a matter of fact, and it was in my pocket with the open end up. I took it out and held it up in the dim rain-flecked moonlight. A small flask of sturdy plastic or polystyrene, full of clear liquid, secured with a screwed-on cap. Still floating in there, after all this time—after Luna smuggled it out, got it into William Smith’s coat, after Billy panicked and stuffed it in his fridge, after I had it and Morris had it and Cook had it and I had it again—still floating inside that thin flask was something else. Something microscopically small.
“Well?”
Mr. Bridge’s lips were pursed. They disappeared beneath his mustache. “I’m not a scientist.”
“Yeah. Me neither.”
I waited. Bridge could see what the deal was now. I wasn’t turning anything over without this conversation.
“What it is…my understanding is…that what it is is cells.”
“Human cells?”
“Yes and no.”
I aimed my gun at him. “Bridge.”