Stone Junction

  It wasn’t pleasant thinking it through. He lay on his mattress in the basement of the Treat Street house resifting evidence, considering motives, entertaining the improbable, trying to seize the obvious, taking each person carefully, starting with himself.

  He knew he hadn’t betrayed his mother, but it was possible that the girl who’d wandered into the house the night before the theft attempt and who’d so wonderfully sucked his cock might have been an agent investigating the phony paper they were producing. Maybe she’d found something in the house, a note or something his mother had left. The trouble with that was he didn’t think his mother knew where the bomb would be planted until the next morning.

  He eliminated Shamus mainly on instinct. What he had learned didn’t contradict his gut feeling that Shamus had been the one with the most to lose. Volta’s suggestion that perhaps Shamus had changed the bomb so that it would kill Annalee seemed utterly farfetched; Daniel might have entertained it if Shamus had gone ahead with the theft, but he hadn’t, nor had he tried to eliminate the others involved.

  Gideon was more problematic. A faulty bomb was possible, but Daniel had to doubt, in light of the information from High Life, that the blast had been intentional on Gideon’s part. High Life had claimed Gideon had never said much about nuclear devices one way or another except to insist they were possessed of such horrible karma it was best to not even think about them. Daniel wasn’t sure what that meant, since it could be taken as a mindlessly blithe dismissal or an aversion as deep as taboo.

  He provisionally eliminated Carl Fuller, the wheelman, and Olaf Ekblad, the alarm specialist. Shamus had said whoever was involved would deal only with him and know only the part assigned, and evidently that was the case.

  That left his mother. She, he thought ruefully, would have done just about anything to stay with Shamus, and whether the theft was successful or not, she was going to lose. Only by preventing it could she have stayed with Shamus. And though she certainly had her sacrificial side, it was insulting to think she would kill herself to save the relationship. She wasn’t crazy. And even if she would have endangered herself, she wouldn’t have put him in peril. But what finally convinced him it couldn’t have been his mother was the memory of her scream telling him to run: It had been terrified. Whatever had happened, she hadn’t expected it.

  Daniel, heeding Shamus’s message to be careful of Volta, decided Volta should be considered as well. There were just too many unknowns. First of all, Volta would have had to know what was happening – where and when – which meant somebody would have had to tell him. Only Shamus and, for a few hours, he and his mother had known where the bomb would be placed. Of course, Volta had been strongly against the plutonium theft, and knowing how Annalee and Shamus felt about each other, he might have put tails on them. But it’s the nature of tails to follow, not anticipate, though perhaps there had been a way to get to the bomb before it got to Shamus. The other thing was, none of it felt like Volta’s style. But he knew exactly what Shamus meant about Volta. Even when discussing the weather, Volta always seemed to say just a little bit less than he actually knew.

  After ten hours of hard solid thought on every possibility he could imagine, Daniel gave up. There were too many unknowns, too many improbable sequences, and all the evidence pointed to the obvious: a faulty bomb, probably a malfunction in the timer.

  Transcription: Telephone Conversation Between

  Volta and Daniel

  DANIEL: Hello, Volta? This is Daniel.

  VOLTA: And how are you, Daniel?

  DANIEL: Broke and nowhere.

  VOLTA: (chuckling) At least you’re making progress.

  DANIEL: You’d have to convince me.

  VOLTA: The last time we talked you were merely broke.

  DANIEL: (sullenly) I suppose.

  VOLTA: Have you made inquiries?

  DANIEL: Yes, but without any startling discoveries.

  VOLTA: Are you satisfied Gideon killed your mother?

  DANIEL: Not completely.

  VOLTA: I’m not satisfied at all. The more I’ve thought about it, the more it seems too improbable that your mother connected the bomb with Gideon just moments before it exploded. As I mentioned before, it seems far more likely she heard something inside the case – some sound, the timer connecting – that convinced her the bomb was about to explode.

  DANIEL: That’s my tentative conclusion, also.

  VOLTA: Have you explored it at all? The possibility of a faulty bomb?

  DANIEL: No.

  VOLTA: I have. I’ve talked to four demolition experts who all said it was virtually impossible there would be a warning sound, though it would depend on the type of bomb. One of the experts, ‘Blooey’ Martien said that if your mother was a particularly receptive soul she may have ‘sensed’ imminent death – he entered it as a possibility, but noted it was highly doubtful. However, when I attempted to obtain the police report on the bomb, it was missing. No record. Gone. So while you may indeed be nowhere, you’re not alone.

  DANIEL: What do you mean the police record is gone?

  VOLTA: I’m not sure I can be more explicit. The bomb report is not on file. With every bombing, there’s a lab analysis of the traces to determine the composition of the bomb, the type of explosive, so forth. Either the report was never filed – highly unusual – or it was removed. Or, mostly likely, it was misfiled in the bureaucratic paper shuffle. You’re welcome to look if you choose. I must say, though, we have an exceptional contact inside the department, and she’s gotten nowhere. Also, your inquiries will no doubt excite their curiosity about you, thus their scrutiny, and perhaps their wrath.

  DANIEL: How do I know that you’re not making this up?

  VOLTA: You don’t. But you’re free to verify the information. In fact, we’ll increase your pay to $120 a month to do it. It’s a rather strange arrangement, paying you to verify our honor, but

  AMO has traditionally delighted in strangeness.

  DANIEL: I’ll take your word for it. But thanks for the raise. I can afford lunch twice a week now.

  VOLTA: Really, Daniel. Like most human beings, sniveling does not become you.

  DANIEL: (quickly, trying to catch Volta off guard) Did you know my mother was seeing Shamus in Berkeley?

  VOLTA: No. But I clearly surmised the possibility, since I did request your mother to call me should he appear.

  DANIEL: What made you think he’d show up?

  VOLTA: His eyes when he talked about Annalee.

  DANIEL: Were you having Shamus watched? Or us?

  VOLTA: (patiently, but with some snap) No, Daniel. You must understand that while I didn’t want Shamus stealing nuclear materials, and would have tried to dissuade him, I would not have physically intervened, and certainly not by killing your mother. If you think differently, we’re wasting each other’s time and spirit.

  DANIEL: I’m sorry if I offended you. I’ve been asking questions for the past few months and I’m a little hungry for some answers.

  VOLTA: All I can give you is my word that I knew nothing of the plutonium theft until the day your mother died in the explosion.

  DANIEL: One of the reasons I ask is that Shamus says not to trust you. I wonder if you trust him?

  VOLTA: Less so lately than before. He’s not doing well. He’s evidently drinking heavily and taking drugs – one of the painkillers, Percodan or Dilaudid.

  DANIEL: That’s not like him. Does he still wear a black glove?

  VOLTA: Yes, but with the fingertips cut off. All this comes from Dolly, by the way.

  DANIEL: It’s depressing about Shamus.

  VOLTA: Alchemy is full of cautions about becoming fascinated with the powers of decay. It is also traditionally held that a man burned by silver is marked by the moon.

  DANIEL: (abruptly, but not demanding) I’m tired of thinking about all this. I don’t see anywhere left to go with it. What’s next, if anything?

  VOLTA: Take a three-week vacation. The man I want to conn
ect you with won’t be back till the twenty-eighth. Call around then and I’ll put you in touch. His name is William Clinton.

  DANIEL: What will I be studying?

  VOLTA: Concentration.

  DANIEL: I thought that’s what I studied with Wild Bill.

  VOLTA: Indeed. I trust you’re well prepared.

  William Rebis Clinton was the ace safecracker west of the Rockies. Willie the Click, as he was known to his cohorts, could drill or blast any lock devised. However, as he repeatedly and vehemently pointed out, the highest expression of the safecrackers’ art was opening combination locks by touch alone, by becoming the spinning wheel, the tumblers and pins, by disappearing through your fingertips into pure sensation. On his fortieth birthday, Willie had resolved never again to use anything but his hands to open a safe. He hadn’t, and he was pleased. Drills and explosives did what Willie believed all technologies did: They killed feeling. By assassinating time and space under the guise of saving them, they keep people out of touch when the better state of being, according to Willie and others, is in touch. In his more delirious screeds, Willie claimed that industrialization was a Christian plot to destroy the pagan reflex between sensation and emotion.

  Willie was a short, wiry man with intense brown eyes. His most notable trait was his tendency to speak in whirling bursts of proverbs, obscure quotations, metaphors, speculative observation, and oblique conceits. When Daniel had arrived at Willie’s apartment in the Mission District, Willie had taken Daniel’s offered hand and scrutinized it a few minutes before ordering Daniel to sit down and spread both his hands palm up on the worktable. Curious, Daniel complied, and then became suddenly anxious when Willie sat down opposite him and opened a case containing five silver needles, needles so slender they flirted with invisibility.

  ‘What are those for?’

  ‘The obscure by the more obscure, Daniel, the unknown by the unfathomable. To gauge sensitivity. Synaptic discrimination. Your particular neural awareness. It’s painless. Though I believe it was Carlyle who noted, “The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss.”’ Willie lifted a needle to the light. ‘Now shut your eyes and tell me when you feel something – the slightest pressure or other sensation.’

  Daniel shut his eyes and concentrated on his upturned hands on the table. He felt a tingling in his left index finger and told Willie.

  ‘Yes,’ Willie muttered, ‘continue.’

  Daniel felt a burning sensation on his right ring finger. Then his left thumb itched, then his left middle finger tingled. Willie said, ‘Bah. Poor summation. A plus B, but no C. Clogged thresholds. You can open your eyes.’ Willie was glaring at him. ‘Virtual tactile insentience. A turtle has more feeling in its shell. So be it. As they say in Yugoslavia, “Tell the truth and run fast.” I’m afraid we’ll have to start with the absolute fundamentals. You do understand that opening locks is an art, and that a necessity of art is to intensify the organs it employs?’

  ‘No,’ Daniel said hesitantly, not without a touch of perversity, ‘I’m not sure if I do understand that.’

  ‘Muddy mind, troubled water. All right. Consider what Sickert had to say: “The whole of art is one long roll of revelation.” And it is revealed only to those whose minds are what Horace called “vacant” – though he was actually speaking of a woman whose heart is free. Get rid of yourself, Daniel. To open locks you must open yourself. Disappear through your fingertips.’

  ‘Suppose I don’t come back?’

  ‘A door always opens.’

  Daniel started to say something but Willie cut him off. ‘No. No more abstractions for you. You are the kind who can swim in them, but you should be bathing in water squeezed from stone. If you’d please close your eyes, and place your hands palms upward on the table again.’

  Daniel immediately felt something light and papery settle on each palm.

  Willie commanded, ‘All right, open them.’

  In his right hand Daniel saw a hundred-dollar bill. In the left, a slip of paper with a series of numbers.

  Willie explained, ‘The phone number belongs to Oriana Coeur. The money is to pay her.’

  ‘For what?’ Daniel demanded.

  ‘For her profound sensual dimensions. You will see her every Thursday until you develop tactility. From seven o’clock in the evening till three o’clock in the morning on the other six nights of the week, you will meet with me here for study. We will start with alarm systems. Locks must await your work with Oriana. As an Estonian proverb has it, “You can’t expect the mute to sing.”’

  ‘What did you mean about Oriana’s “sensual dimensions”?’

  ‘Ah ha! You see? Attention begins when the imagination is seized. Oriana is a woman of the evening who has a remarkable sensitivity to touch. The fee for her company is usually five hundred dollars a night, but since she and I developed the exercise together, the charge is considerably less.’

  ‘So what will she and I be doing exactly?’

  ‘Oriana will give you the exact instructions, but essentially you will touch her where she directs you, using a variety of pressures and movements. You will practice until Oriana is satisfied. She, please note, not you. You keep your clothes on. Your purpose is not only to please her, but to literally have her life put in your hands. Literally. If her pleasure is the answer, your task, as Krause put it, is “to provide the riddle.”’

  That evening, Oriana, her reddish-gold hair spilling over the pillows, arms flung wide, gave much more explicit instructions on where and how she wished to be touched – everywhere and any way she could imagine. At the height of her pleasure, Daniel imagined she was touching him, and for a long spinning instant lost all distinctions between their skins. Afterward, his hands felt like globes of light. But when Oriana, still flushed, began kissing his fingertips, asking what his pleasure was, he said he’d like to wait.

  Oriana bit his middle finger gently. ‘So Willie told you to keep your pants on, huh? He’s such a purist.’

  Daniel said, ‘It’s not really that. In the past, I’ve only been able to be with a woman once.’

  ‘What do you mean be with? That you could only come once a night?’

  ‘Once, period.’

  Oriana was interested. ‘Then you can’t get it up again for her, ever?’

  Daniel nodded.

  ‘Not even a little tremor of a twinge?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘These ladies knew what they were doing?’

  ‘They were extremely desirable, and remarkably patient.’

  ‘So what do you think is going on?’

  ‘I don’t know. It could be from an injury. A tiny sliver of metal was once blown through the right front quadrant of my brain.’

  ‘Good Lord! What happened?’

  ‘It’s complicated, Oriana. My mother was killed in an accident and I almost was, too.’

  ‘Oh honey,’ Oriana said. She took Daniel’s hands in hers and pressed them to her face.

  Daniel felt a tear against his palm. ‘Don’t cry,’ he asked her. ‘Please?’

  Oriana flung his hands off her face and sat up on the bed, facing him. ‘Fuck you,’ she spit. ‘I’ll cry when I feel like crying.’

  Daniel fell in love. He told her, ‘I want to wait to have sex with you because I’d rather have a future than a past.’

  In reply, she embraced him in her bare arms. ‘Any time and all the time you want.’

  Every Thursday evening Daniel was a brilliant student, but the rest of the week he was dunced by distraction. His mind wandered over Oriana’s lush and astonishingly responsive body. Willie’s mind was as interesting as Oriana’s body, but not nearly as provocative.

  Nonetheless, over the next three months Daniel learned to disable fifty different alarm systems and pick almost any lock that could be opened with a key. As they entered the fourth month of instruction, Willie introduced him to combination locks. At the first week’s session, Willie made him sit for two hours blindfo
lded, ears plugged, wearing thick gloves before allowing him to attempt the simplest $3.95 combination lock. As Daniel twirled the dial, Willie coached him. ‘Feel inside the lock through your fingers. As if they were root tips seeking water. Feel for the slightest drag, the friction between molecules. Trust your fingertips. They are closer than your brain, far less busy, and immensely less complicated. You need to open this lock to see yourself, and as Edgar Davis Dodds said, “Freedom resides in being equal to your needs.” But first you must comprehend the difference between necessity and desire.’

  Daniel wondered if he merely desired Oriana or actually needed her.

  ‘Daniel,’ Willie scolded, ‘is that a pretty sunset you’re watching up there on Jupiter?’

  Daniel went back to work on the lock.

  That night Daniel got some homework – a cheap combination bicycle lock. It was locked. When he returned it the next evening open, he received two locks to take home. Willie promised they’d begin the field-work portion of their study when he could open twenty at home overnight.

  Willie scouted the first few jobs, and put Daniel through his paces, from disabling the alarm system to locating and opening the safe. Soon Daniel’s responsibility expanded to include scouting and planning. They made about one field-trip a week, or about as often as his visits to Oriana. Daniel had suggested to Willie early on that he thought working with Oriana twice a week would be doubly helpful. Willie said he was sure it would, but that he couldn’t afford it. Oriana, when Daniel asked if he might see her more often, had claimed that the pleasure center in her brain would fry shut if she saw him more than once a week.

  Daniel, with Willie’s guidance, opened twenty-three safes during his apprenticeship. To Daniel’s utter dismay they never stole anything. The rule against theft had been firmly established on his first job, a dentist’s wall-safe in Tiburon.

  ‘Put it back,’ Willie hissed.

  Daniel thought Willie was kidding and didn’t even pause as he stuffed the sheaf of bills and an ounce baggie of cocaine into his jacket pocket.

  ‘Daniel,’ Willie roared, ‘did you fail to hear me or fail to understand? Put it back. We’re practicing.’