The Tesseract Read Online Free PDF Page A

hole. Well, no great shock. Unexpected menstruation had been clutching at straws, and shaving accident was plain stupid.
    So the telephone torturer had shot upward, maybe with the barrel under his chin or in his mouth. Then again: pistol, lowvelocity, lead bouncing around the bone, no guarantee the bullet’s going to come out the other side let alone keep its trajectory. So maybe the guy had missed the first time. Missed because he was nervous and an idiot, and he’d had to try again.
    Probably the latter, Sean decided with a satisfied nod. That the guy was an idiot was a given. Obviously he’d been here for a meet: nobody could have checked into Patay for pleasure. So what did he need? Signposts? Hotel Patay was the hit hotel. It was written all over its bleeding sheets and empty rooms. If he hadn’t seen it straight off, he was in the wrong line of…
    The desert shimmered and disappeared. Sean sat up, the photo tumbling off his chest, forgotten. On the floor, half covered by dust and broken plasterboard, the steel plate coldly reflected the light of the bedside lamps.
    “You,” he said, raising an accusing finger. “Are all about me.”
    The moon orbits the earth. High tides and low tides come and go, the cause being gravity but the reason being nothing. The moon might have been bigger, farther away, closer. It just happened not to be.
    There was no point in Sean’s asking himself why Don Pepe wanted him dead. Mundane as the moon, the question wasn’t worth a second thought and barely worth the first. And anyway, even if he’d been inclined to ask, he’d have found there wasn’t time. At the same moment he was pointing at the steel plate, a gray Mercedes was pulling up opposite the hotel. It was instantly recognizable in Patay’s quiet cocoon; there weren’t many engines in Manila that purred.
    No fool, Don Pepe. Called to say he was coming late, then arrived early, catching the mark unawares. The car’s doors opened and closed. Four slams, four men. Even the driver was on his way up. Told, Sean speculated blankly, that there was no need to keep the motor running, as this job could take a while.
    Now, magically, the room was cold. A sauna transformed into an icebox with a jingle of car keys and a low murmur of conversation, floating up from the street outside.
5.
    Watched by the telephone, the dial its insect eye, Sean unconsciously traced the dead torturer’s last movements. He hovered by the door for several seconds before remembering that Patay had only one staircase, one exit, and the men were already approaching the building. Next he wrenched pointlessly at the bars on the window, which would have dislocated his shoulder before shifting an inch. And finally he ended up in the bathroom, where he established that there would be no escape through the tiny air ducts.
    The telephone made for an indifferent witness. But Sean’s reflection in the bathroom mirror, making contact as he turned away from the vent, was less detached. Even under pressure, the sight was arresting.
    His face seemed to be in a state of flux. Unable to resolve itself, like a cheap hologram or a bucket of snakes, the lipscurled while the jaw relaxed, the stare softened while the frown hardened. Fear, Sean thought distantly. Rare that one got to see what it actually looked like. Other people’s, sure, but not your own. Intrigued, he leaned closer to the mirror, ignoring the footsteps that were working their way up the stairs.

The Conquistador
1.
    “Aaaah, we’re going to be late,” said Don Pepe, breaking the tense silence of the last five minutes.
    Jojo nodded and nervously pushed his thumbs into the padding around the steering wheel. “Yes, sir, we are. I’m sorry.”
    “The hotel, now this.”
    Jojo paused a moment before saying, “Yes, sir,” again. He was leaving time for Teroy to add his own apology. After all, he’d been the one who had suggested Hotel Patay in the firstplace. But Teroy, sitting in the front passenger