The Last Supper but After Dessert

Seven men in a kitchen built for a magazine spread, and the owners' camping lantern turns all of us the same gray. Petar scrapes the last of the crème brûlée out of a ramekin with a teaspoon, steel on porcelain, tink, tink, tink, and the rest of us watch him the way you watch a man defusing ordnance.

Rendes turns the salt and pepper shakers until their labels face the same way. Since we came in through the garage yesterday he has lined the knife block up with the edge of the counter, squared the dish towels on their rail, and laid the Beretta magazines in two rows with their base plates flush. He sits at the end of the table with his back to the refrigerator and his rifle across his knees. Petar's spoon is still in the ramekin when Rendes reaches over and slides the dish to the middle of the placemat.

Everything in its place. Everything flush.

"You are almost at the bottom," he says.

Petar looks at the spoon. He looks at the ramekin. He taps the rim and puts the spoon in his mouth.

The spoon comes out clean. Rendes nods at it. "Now you are at the bottom."

"Let the man eat," Keane says.

Rendes shrugs. "He is at the bottom. It is a fact."

Vermaak laughs from his spot at the window over the sink, where he watches the searchlights through a gap in the plywood. His laugh sounds like a cough torn out of him sideways. "Ja, well, we're all at the bottom of one dish or another, boet."

The searchlight sweeps past the gap. A white stripe crosses the ceiling and is gone.

Suleiman pours tea from a pot he found in the pantry. He boiled the water on a Coleman stove from the garage, which stands on the marble island between a bread knife and two of the Berettas. The police cut the power first and the gas after it. The kitchen smells like cardamom and gun oil. He fills a cup for each of us and carries one more to the empty chair. None of us has touched that chair since 16:40 yesterday, when Luu took a round through the stair window.

"You understand," Suleiman says, and lifts his cup with both hands, "in Amman there is a shop. A man there, very old. He blends the tea himself. Each customer, he remembers what they take. This is his life's occupation. Forty years." He drinks. "We had a man like this, you understand. A man who remembered everything."

"Had," Vermaak says. "Ja."

Keane pinches his left earlobe between thumb and forefinger and rolls it. "Would you say the tea is worth the circumstances, Suleiman?"

Suleiman smiles with his eyes closed. "My grandfather poured tea for a man who had come to kill him. First the tea, then the business. The circumstances can wait for the cup."

I catalogue the kitchen the way the brochure would. Sub-Zero refrigerator, Calacatta marble, Wolf range with six burners and a griddle. Only the marble still works. The griddle still has egg on it from the morning before we came. Somebody scrambled it for two children on a twelve-thousand-dollar range, and now the owners sleep two to a bed at a Holiday Inn and we die in their kitchen, and it works out to a fair trade, the kind of lateral move you'd find in the classifieds if the classifieds covered this market segment. They were having people to dinner last night. They left us the dessert.

Ahn drops the magazine out of his sidearm and presses his thumb on the top round until the spring gives. He slides the magazine home and hums four notes of a song I can't place.

"Six hours." Rendes turns the satellite phone until it lies parallel with the edge of the table. The last thing it told us, at midnight, was HOLD. "Six hours since last communication."

He straightens a fork that has drifted.

Everything in its place. The fork lines up with the knife.

"And when they come," Keane says, and rolls the earlobe, "would you say they'll use the front?"

Rendes looks at him. "You already know."

"I'd like to hear you say it."

"Then you will wait."

Vermaak pulls the loose corner of the plywood two fingers' width toward him. The glass is gone from that window, and the March cold comes in and brings every sound with it. Diesel generators run the searchlights. A helicopter holds its position to the north, and a bullhorn turns a man's voice into the adults from a Peanuts cartoon.

"They're saying we should think about our families." Vermaak lets the corner go and it claps shut against the frame. "Ja, nee, that's rich. My family. My family consists of a cat named Bliksem who shits on my neighbor's car, and the neighbor, Hennie, who writes me letters about it. Formal letters. With letterhead. He had letterhead printed. For cat shit complaints."

"Is good cat." Petar sets the scraped ramekin down.

Rendes takes the ramekin and stacks it on the others with the rims aligned, and lays the teaspoon across the top.

Everything in its place, even the empty things.

Petar smiles. The smile has a gold canine in it. "Is good dessert. Is good last dessert."

"Don't call it that," Keane says.

"Why? Is truth."

"You'd find that naming a thing can make it arrive faster. My grandmother said that."

"Your grandmother," Vermaak says, "also said the banshee came every payday."

"She did."

"And did it?"

"Paydays were bad days in our house. Draw your own conclusions."

Suleiman refills his cup. "There is a story. A merchant in Baghdad sends his servant to the market. The servant comes back white, shaking. He says, 'Master, I saw Death in the market, and Death raised a hand at me. Lend me a horse. I will ride to Samarra, and Death will never find me there.' The merchant lends the horse. In the afternoon the merchant goes to the market himself. He finds Death and he asks, 'Why did you raise your hand at my servant?' And Death says, 'He startled me. I did not expect to see him in Baghdad. I am meeting him tonight, in Samarra.'"

The helicopter slides over the roof, thup-thup-thup, and the teaspoon creeps sideways on the stack of ramekins. Rendes sets it straight.

"You understand." Suleiman lifts his cup toward the plywood. "Samarra."

Ahn hums.

I open the Sub-Zero and it breathes warm air on my hand. The shelves hold a wheel of brie, a jar of Calabrian chili crisp, a Cloudy Bay with two glasses left in it, one ramekin with its cling film still tight, and a rotisserie chicken in a plastic dome. The sticker on the dome says $4.99 and SELL BY MAR 14, which was two days ago. I peel the sticker off and fold it in half and press the crease with my thumbnail. I do this with every dated piece of paper that passes through my hands. Luggage tags and rental agreements. Boarding passes in Bogotá, customs slips in Ankara, intake forms in the building in Virginia. Fold the crease and file the paper and the transaction closes. I carry the chicken to the island and put it down by the Berettas. The folded sticker goes next to it.

"Chicken," I say.

Vermaak looks over. "You're joking."

"It's past its date. So are we."

Rendes stands. He takes a knife from the block and breaks the bird down on a cutting board. Thigh goes beside thigh and drumstick beside drumstick, then the breasts, then the wings, and he sets every piece even with the edge of the board. He wipes the knife and puts it back, and he turns the block until it is flush with the counter again. Each of us takes a piece. One drumstick stays on the board.

"Leave the extra for Luu," Suleiman says.

So we do. Suleiman puts the drumstick on a plate and sets the plate at the empty chair, and none of us says a word about Luu upstairs in the hall under one of the owners' Frette sheets. The drumstick lies on the plate like an offering at a temple door.

Keane eats standing. He keeps one hand on his rifle and tears meat off a breast with the other. "Would you say this changes the name of it? The last supper but after dessert, is that what we're calling this?"

"Is second supper," Petar says. "In my country we have name for this. Vtora vecherya. When the table is already cleared and someone brings more food. It means the night is refusing to end."

"The night's going to end," Vermaak says.

Nobody argues with him.

Vermaak puts his eye back to the gap. "Ja. Ja, it will."

I bite into a wing. The skin is gelatin and the meat apologizes for itself, and it is the same chicken they put out in the break room of the building in Virginia. Nine countries, three continents, and the chicken never changes.

Rendes collects the empty cups from the table and stands them in a row on the island with their handles turned the same way. Then he eats a thigh. He cleans the bone from one end to the other and leaves nothing on it for a dog. When he finishes, he lays it parallel to his knife, adjusts it, and adjusts it again.

Everything in its place, even the bone.

The radio on the island crackles, krrsh. It belonged to the man they sent alone to the back door in the middle of the night with a camera on a cable. He got as far as the children's rain boots in the mudroom before Ahn put two rounds into him above the collar of his vest while the helicopter covered the noise. Afterward Rendes stood the rain boots back up in a row, and the row shows through the open mudroom door. The dead man's radio lies between the Coleman and the Berettas, and every little while a voice on the other end says, "Lima Two, status," and waits.

"They will figure it out." Rendes straightens the radio against the edge of the island. "That he is not responding. They will adjust."

Suleiman drains his tea. "Then let us have this night."

"What's left of it," Vermaak says.

"What is left is everything."

Vermaak turns his head. The searchlight comes through the gap again, and in the white stripe his face has the finish of a suitcase checked through too many airports. Three scars run side by side from his right temple down to his chin. "You're a poet, Suleiman. You know that?"

"I am a man drinking tea. If that is poetry, the fault lies with the century."

I unwrap the brie. It has gone soft, and the rind splits where my thumb presses. I spread it on a Carr's water cracker from the cabinet over the range. A sleeve of them costs six dollars and eats like pressed cardboard. The brie is what money would taste like if money had taste.

On the wall by the mudroom door, the Vivint panel is dark. We killed it ourselves at 06:00 yesterday on our way in through the garage. The work order listed every house on Alder Court, and this one was last on the list. The owners were still in bed. At 06:12 the husband came downstairs in his bathrobe and saw Rendes in his kitchen with a rifle, and the husband said, "Oh." Like a man who had opened the wrong door at a hotel. He saw the rest of us, and his mouth stayed open after the word was out of it. "Upstairs," Rendes said, and the man went upstairs and came down with his wife and his two children, a boy and a girl, eight and eleven, and Rendes walked them to the garage and put them in the Lexus. He leaned in and pulled the boy's seat belt flat across his chest. Suleiman pressed the button on the wall, the door went up, and they drove away.

We let them drive away.

The four other houses on Alder Court, we did not.

Keane has a question for everything, and he has never had one for that. The van that dropped us at the mouth of the court was due back at 06:30. The Lexus got to the main road first.

Ahn hums the same notes. He catches me looking and stops.

"What song is that?"

He drops the magazine. Thumbs the top round. Slides it home, snick. "My daughter's song. She made it up. Four notes. She was three."

"Was," I say.

Ahn looks at the plywood where the window used to be. "She is nine now. She lives with her mother in Busan."

He hums it again.

Petar picks up the dead man's radio and turns it over. A strip of white tape on the back says LIMA 2 in marker. He holds the talk button down until the channel goes quiet, and lets go. A voice says, "Lima Two, status." Petar presses the button again.

"Hello. Is Petar. Your friend is dead, I am sorry. He entered the wrong house. Is wrong house for entering. Is good night, though. We have tea. We have chicken. You should come in and have some."

Suleiman closes his eyes.

"Is joke." Petar lets the button go and puts the radio back on the island. "Is good joke."

"Petar," Keane says. "You've just told them their man is dead."

"They know this."

"Would you say they'd have sat on that lawn half the night for a man they knew was dead?"

"They know."

"You'd find there's a difference between knowing and confirming."

"Is same."

"It isn't."

"Is same in Bulgaria."

Vermaak laughs his torn-out laugh. "Ja, well, in South Africa we have a saying. Moenie die pot roer nie. Don't stir the pot."

Rendes moves the salt shaker a hair to the left. "The pot is already stirred."

The radio crackles again. The voice that comes out of it is deeper and has rank in it. "We know what you did on Alder Court."

Ahn stops humming.

"We have the security footage from the Wakeman residence. All four houses. We have everything."

Suleiman sets his cup down in the exact center of its saucer and keeps his eyes on it. "You understand, the servant rode to Samarra. But the story never tells you what the merchant did. After Death confirmed the appointment. The merchant knew his servant would die. He went home. He had dinner."

"Is second supper," Petar says.

I spread brie on another cracker, and it splinters when I bite. Outside the helicopter drops lower and the pitch of its rotors changes, and between sweeps of the searchlight the gap in the plywood has gone gray, and Vermaak thumbs his selector off safe, tik, and grins, and Ahn hums his daughter's song, and Suleiman pours himself more tea.

Rendes straightens the fork beside Luu's plate and lines the knife up with it. Everything in its place, even the plate for the dead. The drumstick is where Suleiman left it, and its grease has turned white in the cold, and the voice on the radio says, "Alder Court. Four houses. Sixteen people," and Rendes carries Luu's cup from the empty chair to the island and sets it at the end of the row and evens the spaces between the cups, and he picks up the dead man's radio and presses the button and says, "Seventeen," and Keane pinches his ear and Petar says, "Is good," and the gap brightens to the same gray as the lantern, and I pick up my rifle, and through the open mudroom door the smallest of the rain boots falls over.