Free The Confessor by Mark Allen Smith

sidewalk vendors – fake Rolexes, sunglasses, something to smoke – past a soul-drenched sax player and three silent, suited men offering their pamphlets. He was experiencing sporadic moments of something that bordered on giddiness. He was out in the world again, on the street,
going
somewhere.
    Geiger’s resurrection had been a kind of rebirth for Harry. That night, he’d returned to Chinatown, grabbed his laptop and a few disks, and left without closing the door. In the cab back to Brooklyn, he’d caught sight of himself in the rearview mirror with a grin so wide he looked like a lunatic stranger. When he got home, he’d taken a long shower and shaved off the unwanted beard. Then he’d gotten into his own bed, made a note to buy a new dracaena, and fell into lush, dreamless sleep.
    He turned left at Second Avenue and headed north. The street level of the three-story building housed a West African clothing store. It was Harry’s first time here – the work he’d done until now had been from his Chinatown hideout. The building’s side door was in a narrow alley – pocked, gray steel with three locks, two steps down. Harry pushed the button on the intercom panel. Above it was a small, recessed lens.
    ‘Coming,’ said a voice.
    There were motion-sensitive lights and two round, metal reflectors mounted on the opposite wall to afford a view of both ends of the alley from inside the building. He grinned at the irony, because obsessed as Matheson was about detection and invasion, in this town his setup was business as usual. From Harlem to Soho, you could have a dozen locks, mirrors and security cameras and no passer-by would give it a second’s thought – and that made it perfect for Veritas Arcana. In a world where every day less could be hidden and more was revealed, the paranoiac was the sanest man in the room. He heard the locks being turned, and the door creaked opened on cranky hinges.
    David Matheson looked like hell. It had been two months since Harry had seen him – when Matheson had come to him for some software installations. Raccoon eyes stared from a pale, unshaven face, his tall, muscular frame in rumpled Dockers and a tan hoodie whose sleeves were dappled with coffee stains. He pushed his long, dark hair back from his forehead and took a drag of his cigarette.
    ‘Hi,’ he said.
    Harry stepped into the dark entry. It smelled of smoke and popcorn and stale, imprisoned air. Matheson closed the door, turned the locks, and went down a short hall toward a spill of light. Harry followed.
    The world had taken a heavy hammer to Matheson. His reckless passion for truth and disclosure had put his son in grave danger, unknowingly delivered the boy to violence, and in the end, been the blade that severed all but minimal contact between them. His online release of the torture videos had elevated Veritas Arcana, in the eyes of some, from a second-tier whistle-blower to an entity worthy of eradication. Now he was the
enemy.
    Harry turned the corner. The small, windowless room was part of a converted basement, bald concrete melting into shadows – trapped, hovering smoke lending it a Stygian mood. Jammed against a wall were a cot, mini-fridge, two dinged-up file cabinets with a microwave and lamp on top, and five plastic bins filled with tossed clothes. On the opposite wall were a laundry sink whose porcelain had once been white and a network of sweaty pipes that snaked from floor to ceiling. Matheson turned to Harry.
    ‘Welcome to my living room-kitchen-bedroom-dining room.
Mi casa es su casa
.’ There was a wrinkle to his smile that Harry had always liked – a meld of loathing for his between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place existence and a dark appreciation of it.
    ‘Not real big on the feng shui thing are you, David?’
    Matheson took a pull on his butt and flicked it into the sink. ‘On the contrary. It took me months to work out the proper . . .
flow
.’
    Harry waved the smoke away as he stepped inside.