Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! Read Online Free Page B

there was something in her voice that said she wasn't finished. 'Yet here you are.'
    It wasn't a question, as such, so I didn't know what to say. There was no answer to give.
    'My colleague is right,' said Agent Crosskill. 'Guys like you don't get lawyers. Guys like you disappear and are never heard from again.'
    I held his gaze for a moment and then looked past them to the door. Had they been telling the truth? Was there no one out there who knew about me? Could I, just for a moment, be the action movie hero, the guy who takes out his two interrogators, and then walks calmly from the building, straightening his cuffs as he goes?
    'You're tagged,' she said. The unnamed female agent, with the tightly tied back hair, who could read my thoughts.
    I lowered my eyes. I did not look down at my ankle, but with those words I became aware of the touch of something strapped round the bottom of my leg.
    'Do what you like, but cross that door and you'll set off so many alarms the Marines in Okinawa will hear it.'
    I glanced at her, and then at the door and finally settled my gaze on the mirror. Was there really no one behind the glass? Why bother putting me in a room like this? I might as well be in a stinking basement with rats and spider-infested ancient brick walls.
    I couldn't think. I just wanted to speak to Brin and tell her everything was all right, and then I wanted to lie down.
    How could I tell her that everything was all right?
    'Tell us about the Jigsaw Man.'

5
    ––––––––
    T here was a morning at the Stand Alone. A morning like any other, I suppose someone somewhere might call it. When I arrived Fanque and Two Feet were there, sitting on a sofa. Henderson would have been studying for his accountancy exam, and Jones was otherwise occupied. I might have been feeling all right if I hadn't known what she was doing, or if I'd known she was in Paris with her family or in bed with the flu. However, I knew that she was likely still in bed with the guy she'd met in the bar the night before.
    Jones had been drunk, and had got as close as she ever did to making an actual move on Henderson. When he removed himself from the playing field and left early, I shamelessly decided to try to take advantage of the fact that she was on her sixth vodka and Coke of the night, whereupon she – somewhat ironically, as it turned out – treated me like her gay friend and proceeded to tell me how much she wanted Henderson.
    What she also wanted was to sleep with someone, but I guess I was too close. Or not her type. Or not even on her radar. I went to the men's room at some point and got back to find that I'd lost her to someone else. I didn't get the chance to speak to her again, and she left with the guy not long afterwards.
    I collected my coffee and pain au chocolat from the counter, turned and surveyed the café. Ten tables of various sizes. A couple of comfy sofas to the right of the door as you entered, but we usually didn't sit in those. I preferred to sit at a table. Tables are more conducive to conversation than large sofas.
    Four tables were occupied, plus Fanque and Two Feet at the sofa on the right. They seemed to be having an intimate conversation, which I took as an invitation to ignore them. On my way to sit at a small two-seater table by myself, I passed the Jigsaw Man. He was working on a picture of a map of the world, as viewed some time in the early 17 th century.
    So far he'd managed the complete border of the puzzle, with one piece missing at the top left, plus the beginnings of Europe, isolated in the middle of the jigsaw.
    'All right?' I said, stopping as I walked past.
    'You?' said the Jigsaw Man, who was usually so all right that it was taken for granted that he didn't have to answer the question when it was directed his way.
    'Good,' I said, although I really wasn't. I was love sick.
    I watched him for a second as he placed a piece that straddled the Spanish-French border. I always wanted to stand and watch him