Page 94 of The Instruments of Darkness

The Capital occupied the first floor of an old two-story brownstone that looked out of place amid modern warehouse stores and a couple of dilapidated strip malls, like the last surviving structure from an earlier settlement annihilated by aerial bombing. The windows had bars on the outside and wire mesh on the inside, while the main door was a slab of graffitied metal monitored by the kind of meathead who bought his T-shirts too small and his pants too large. This latest version was sitting on a high stool, immersed in his cell phone like a chump, so our shadows had fallen on him before he even registered our approach. From inside the Capital came the sound of raised voices competing with speed metal.

The doorman finally looked up. His eyes drifted over Angel and me before resting on Louis.

“I don’t think this is your kind of place, fellas,” he said, addressing himself to one of us in particular. People of color didn’t frequent the Capital, not unless they were lost, or angling for an insurance settlement.

Angel looked momentarily confused, but then his face cleared.

“Wait a minute,” he said, “this isn’t one of those straight bars, is it? You know, with heterosexuals touching and kissing and all? We’ve heard about those kinds of places. I’d like to visit one myself, seeing as how I’m on vacation. It’ll be something to tell the folks back home.”

“We’re from New York,” added Louis, as though this explained everything, which it possibly did.

“Then get the fuck back there,” said the doorman.

Here’s the thing about stools: they have a tendency toward instability, especially if you’ve unwisely developed the bad habit of shifting your weight back to raise the front legs briefly from the ground, as the doorman had. That was why, seconds after advising Louis to head south for the duration, he found himself lying on his back with the sole of Louis’s right shoe pressed hard against his neck. His eyes were now even duller than before because he’d banged his head hard.

“Like the man told you,” said Louis, “we’re on vacation.”

I picked up what was left of the stool and tossed it between two cars. God forbid we should have created a trip hazard.

“Why don’t you introduce us to everyone inside?” I said to the doorman. He nodded once, before immediately regretting it. He struggled to rise, but if he expected any help, he was out of luck. We let him get vertical at his own pace before giving him time to stop swaying. He managed to get the door open and half fell into the bar, the three of us close behind.

The music was painfully loud. A dozen people were scattered around the room—three at the bar, two in a booth halfway down on the right, and the rest by the pool table at the rear—but the attention of nearly all, the bartender included, was fixed on two young women playing eight ball. One of them was wearing only a bra and denim shorts. She missed her shot, and the men whooped as she began to remove the bra.

“I warned you,” said Angel. “It’s a straight joint.”

“Classy too,” said Louis.

Only one man wasn’t taking in the show, and that was Antoine Pinette. He was seated at the end of the bar farthest from the door, with a glass of orange juice in front of him. He barely reacted when I reached across and turned off the music, as though he’d long before tuned it out. Pinette was lean in the way of those who burned off calories at a higher rate than the average, consuming vast quantities of energy even in repose. He got his ash-blond hair cut at the same place in the Old Port frequented by a lot of the local cops, much to their disgust, so it was always short and neat. Unlike everyone else in the Capital, his skin was free of ink, and his white shirt was freshly laundered. Slowly, lazily, he turned toward us, revealing his strange symmetry. Pinette’s features were unsettling in their regularity, resembling an image that had been created by placing a mirror down the center of a face and transplanting the reflection. The absence of imperfection rendered him incongruous, turning what might have been a handsome man into a living mannequin. The effect was rendered more extreme by his eyes, which were a very vivid blue. They suggested a presence trapped behind a mask, like a ghost haunting itself.

Pinette looked after himself. He read books, worked out, ate a lot of protein, didn’t screw around, and forged bonds of discipline among his people based on shared credos. He did not own a cell phone, not even one of the old flips that couldn’t do more than make or receive calls, which, in addition to preserving his sanity and attention span, gave him a layer of deniability should the law come calling. Like Bobby Ocean, he had left conventional politics far behind. Republicans and Democratic elites were one and the same to Pinette, joint conspirators in a “globo-homo” pyramid scheme, a cancerous metastasis whose visible sores took the form of shopping malls, outlet stores, minimum-wage jobs without security, and despoiled nature. I might even have agreed with some of his conclusions, but not his solution: the consolidation of white power through the exploitation of the credulous; the victimization and terrorization of those who did not share his color or beliefs; and a conviction that the strong and powerful had no obligations to the weak and vulnerable, and the only earth destined to be inherited by the meek was the patch of ground in which they were finally interred. Men like Pinette had helped the aged and crippled climb down from the cattle cars at Auschwitz, and offered soft words of reassurance to them as they were led to the gas chambers.

A familiar brute in denim and leather, seated not far from Pinette, eased himself from his stool and waddled in our direction. His name was Noah Morin, and he came from a long line of welfare deadbeats who prided themselves on never having done an honest day’s labor, not unless a prison guard was standing over them with a baton. Cumulatively, his people worked fewer hours each year than the Easter Bunny. If Morin had finished high school, he had no recollection of it, and if he’d ever learned anything, he’d done his best to forget that as well. But compared to the rest of his clan, Noah was quite the go-getter: he picked up jobs here and there, the majority dishonest and the rest actively crooked. His bulk meant he was rarely required to inflict or suffer harm, since his physicality alone was enough to encourage compliance. I wasn’t surprised that he’d fallen in with Pinette and Bobby Ocean. Morin was a bully boy, cannon fodder. He was one of the reasons Bobby was so vehemently antiabortion, because it reduced the stock of foot soldiers for the battles to come. When that fighting was done, Morin’s betters would step over his corpse without a second glance.

“I was listening to the music,” said Morin, to all and none of us.

He showed no sign of recognizing me. Then again, he had the retentive memory of a hamster.

“What music?” Louis replied. “I didn’t hear any music.”

Morin’s head swiveled in Louis’s direction.

“I heard noise, is what I heard,” Louis continued. “We didn’t like it, so we brought it to an end.”

Morin’s brow furrowed so deeply that his face practically collapsed in on itself. He advanced a couple of steps to get in Louis’s face. Flecks of spittle struck Louis’s skin as he spoke again.

“Who the fuck are you to—?”

Louis had slowed up in recent years. In his prime, I wouldn’t have seen the blow before it landed. Now, as he struck Morin in the throat with the rigid, outstretched fingers of his right hand, I caught the blur. Morin dropped to his knees and began to choke. Louis regarded the spectacle with mild interest.

“Who the fuck am I?” he said. “I’m That Guy.”

Around us, the clientele were reacting to this assault on one of their own. I saw pool cues being taken from the rack, and I was sure that blades, and a gun or two, would also be available for selection. The woman in the denim shorts, her bra refastened, picked up the cue ball and hefted it, ready to throw.

Only then did Antoine Pinette intervene, the bodies nearest him parting like the Red Sea before Moses, although that analogy immediately ran aground on the rocks of Pinette’s frequently expressed anti-Semitism.

“I’ll take care of this,” he said. “I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.” He stared hard at me. “Right, Mr. Parker?”

“No,” I replied, “I think we’ve understood everything so far, what with all the single syllables. But we’d like to use some longer words with you, Antoine.”

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