LITMIR.BIZ

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writers had the complete solution in their hands the way he did, but they’d all comprehended some part of the jigsaw, and their observations about the part they had, whether haiku, dirty talk or alchemical formulae, gave him a better grasp of the system behind the symbols.

      A term that had cropped up regularly in the most perceptive of the letters was the Shoal. He’d passed over it several times in his reading, and never thought much about it. There was a good deal of evolutionary talk in the letters, and he’d assumed the term to be a part of that. Now he understood his error. The Shoal was a cult, or a church of some kind, and its symbol was the object he held in the palm of his hand. What it and the Art had to do with each other was by no means clear, but his long-held suspicion that this was one mystery, one journey, was here confirmed, and he knew that with the medallion as a map he’d find his way from Shoal to Art eventually.

      In the meanwhile there was a more urgent concern. When he thought back to the tribe of co-workers, with Homer at its head, he shuddered to think that any of them might ever share the secret he’d uncovered. Not that they had any chance of making any real progress decoding it: they were too witless. But Homer was suspicious enough to at least sniff along the trail a little way, and the idea of anybody – but especially the boor-slob Homer – tainting this sacred ground was unbearable. There was only one way to prevent such a disaster. He had to act quickly to destroy any evidence that might put Homer on the right track. The medallion he’d keep, of course: he’d been entrusted with it by higher powers, whose faces he’d one day get to see. He’d also keep the twenty or thirty letters that had proffered the best information on the Shoal; the rest (three hundred or so) had to be burned. As to the collection in the Dead Letter Room, they had to go into the furnace too. All of them. It would take time, but it had to be done, and the sooner the better. He made a selection of the letters in his room, parcelled up those he didn’t need to keep, and headed off back to the Sorting Office.

      It was late afternoon now, and he travelled against the flow of human traffic, entering the Office by the back door to avoid Homer, though he knew the man’s routine well enough to suspect he’d clocked off at five-thirty to the second, and was already guzzling beer somewhere. The furnace was a sweaty rattling antique, tended by another sweaty rattling antique, called Miller, with whom Jaffe had never exchanged a single word, Miller being stone-deaf. It took some time for Jaffe to explain that he was going to be feeding the furnace for an hour or two, beginning with the parcel he’d brought from home, which he immediately tossed into the flames. Then he went up to the Dead Letter Room.

      Homer had not gone guzzling beer. He was waiting, sitting in Jaffe’s chair under a bare bulb, going through the piles around him.

      ‘So what’s the scam?’ he said as soon as Jaffe stepped through the door.

      It was useless trying to pretend innocence, Jaffe knew. His months of study had carved knowledge into his face. He couldn’t pass for a naif any longer. Nor – now it came to it – did he want to.

      ‘No scam,’ he said to Homer, making his contempt for the man’s puerile suspicions plain. ‘I’m not taking anything you’d want. Or could use.’

      ‘I’ll be the judge of that, asshole,’ Homer said, throwing the letters he was examining down amongst the rest of the litter. ‘I want to know what you’ve been up to down here. ’Sides jerking off.’

      Jaffe closed the door. He’d never realized it before, but the reverberations of the furnace carried through the walls into the room. Everything here trembled minutely. The sacks, the envelopes, the words on the pages tucked inside. And the chair on which Homer was sitting. And the knife, the short-bladed knife, lying on the floor beside the chair on which Homer was sitting. The whole place was moving, ever so slightly, like there was a rumble in the ground. Like the world was about to be flipped.

      Maybe it was. Why not? No use pretending the status was still quo. He was a man on his way to some throne or other. He didn’t know which and he didn’t know where, but he needed to silence any pretender quickly. Nobody was going to find him. Nobody was going to blame him, or judge him, or put him on Death Row. He was his own law now.

      ‘I should explain …’ he said to Homer, finding a tone that was almost flippant, ‘… what the scam really is.’

      ‘Yeah,’ Homer said, his lip curling. ‘Why don’t you do that?’

      ‘Well it’s real simple …’

      He started to walk towards Homer, and the chair, and the knife beside the chair. The speed of his approach made Homer nervous, but he kept his seat.

      ‘… I’ve found a secret,’ Jaffe went on.

      ‘Huh?’

      ‘You want to know what it is?’

      Now Homer stood up, his gaze trembling the way everything else was. Everything except Jaffe. All the tremors had gone out of his hands, his guts and his head. He was steady in an unsteady world.

      ‘I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing,’ Homer said. ‘But I don’t like it.’

      ‘I don’t blame you,’ Jaffe said. He didn’t have his eyes on the knife. He didn’t need to. He could sense it. ‘But it’s your job to know, isn’t it?’ Jaffe went on, ‘what’s been going on down here.’

      Homer took several steps away from the chair. The loutish gait he liked to affect had gone. He was stumbling, as though the floor was tilting.

      ‘I’ve been sitting at the centre of the world,’ Jaffe said. ‘This little room … this is where it’s all happening.’

      ‘Is that right?’

      ‘Damn right.’

      Homer made a nervous little grin. He threw a glance towards the door.

      ‘You want to go?’ Jaffe said.

      ‘Yeah.’ He looked at his watch, not seeing it. ‘Got to run. Only came down here –’

      ‘You’re afraid of me,’ Jaffe said. ‘And you should be. I’m not the man I was.’

      ‘Is that right?’

      ‘You said that already.’

      Again, Homer looked towards the door. It was five paces away; four if he ran. He’d covered half the distance when Jaffe picked up the knife. He had the door handle clasped when he heard the man approaching behind him.

      He glanced round, and the knife came straight at his eye. It wasn’t an accidental stab. It was synchronicity. His eye glinted, the knife glinted. Glints collided, and the next moment he was screaming as he fell back against the door, Randolph following him to claim the letter-opener from the man’s head.

      The roar of the furnace got louder. With his back to the sacks Jaffe could feel the envelopes nestling against each other, the words being shaken on the pages, ’til they became a glorious poetry. Blood, it said; like a sea; his thoughts like clots in that sea, dark, congealed, hotter than hot.

      He reached for the handle of the knife, and clenched it. Never before in his life had he shed blood; not even squashed a bug, at least intentionally. But now his fist on the hot wet handle seemed wonderful. A prophecy; a proof.

      Grinning, he pulled the knife out of Homer’s socket, and before his victim could slide down the door stuck it into Homer’s throat to the hilt. This time he didn’t let it lie. He pulled it out as soon as he’d stopped Homer’s screams, and he stabbed the middle of the man’s chest. There was bone there, and he had to drive hard, but he was suddenly very strong. Homer gagged, and blood came out of his mouth, and from the wound in his throat. Jaffe pulled the knife out. He didn’t stab again. Instead he wiped the blade on his handkerchief and turned from the body to think about his next move. If he tried to hump the sacks of mail to the furnace he risked being discovered, and sublime as he felt, high on the boor-slob’s demise, he was still aware that there was danger in being found out. It would be better to bring the furnace here. After all, fire was a moveable feast. All it

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