Father night, p.10
Father Night, page 10
“I’m fine,” Alli said, though she felt far from it.
Waxman nodded, apparently taking her at her word. “I’m afraid the rogue Web site went live in error. An internal investigation revealed one of our people is obsessed with you. He has been stripped from the program. My apologies for any distress it caused you, I can assure you it will not reoccur.”
“That’s not enough.” Alli ignored the tension that came into Waxman’s body. “I want to know who posted the site, who Photoshopped my face on those bound nudes.”
Waxman’s expression grew pained. “I’m afraid his identity is a matter of national security. I’m sure you understand.”
“But I don’t,” Alli said. “There are circumstances that make it imperative I find him.”
Waxman shot Caro a lightning glance. He cleared his throat. “If I may ask, what circumstances?” He made the common word sound filthy.
Alli hesitated a moment, glanced at Vera, who mouthed, Go ahead. “This man knows things—intimate things—about a difficult part of my life that make me exceptionally uneasy.”
“Really? Well, now, that is troubling.” Waxman frowned. “I can certainly see how that might affect you adversely.” He sighed. “Hmm, we can’t have that, can we? Give me some time. Let me see what can be done.” He patted her leg, then rose creakily. “Not to worry, I’m always cleaning up after other people’s messes. I imagine that’s why my superiors still put up with me.”
“Thank you,” Alli said, though she sensed that Waxman had no superiors.
“It’s nothing.” Waxman’s hand brushed away her words. “Just another day’s work.”
When he had left, Caro said, “Okay, it’s payback time.”
“What, exactly, do you want from Henry Holt?” Vera said.
“A notebook.”
Alli cocked her head. “What’s in it?”
Caro smiled. “Believe me, it’s better if you don’t know.”
“People say that in films all the time,” Alli said. “It’s always bad news.”
“How will we recognize this notebook?” Vera asked.
“It’s made of ray skin—shagreen, decorators call it. Black and shiny, with a raised pearl-colored oval in the center.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“If I did I wouldn’t need you.”
“We’ll take care of it, Caro. I promise.”
“That’s good enough for me.”
Vera turned to Alli. “What did you two talk about in the loo?”
Alli arched an eyebrow. “I could ask you the same. You and Waxman were gabbing pretty good when Caro and I came back.”
Vera sat back. “Waxman was telling me stories about the old days.”
“Which ones?” Caro said.
“The ones where after World War Two the OSS rounded up all the clever Nazis, hid them from the war-crimes tribunals, and hired them for counterintelligence work against the Soviet Union.”
Caro shrugged. “Old chestnuts that’ve been in the fire way past their sell-by date.”
“Maybe,” Vera said. “Didn’t make them any less hair-raising.”
“Which story was it, exactly?” Caro asked.
“He was telling me the history of Butterfly—you know, change through chrysalis and all that. Anyway, according to Waxman, Butterfly was the code name for a unit of Nazis working to create false papers—legends—for deep-cover OSS agents being sent into the Soviet Union.”
“And?”
“Butterfly also used its skills to ensure some very high-ranking colleagues escaped Germany and justice.”
Alli looked from one to the other of her companions. “I can’t help but wonder what he thought he was doing.”
“What d’you mean?” Vera said.
“I mean our Waxman doesn’t strike me as someone who makes idle chitchat.”
Caro nodded. “Alli’s right. What the hell was Waxman trying to tell us?”
Alli looked at her. “Let’s ask another question: If Butterfly still exists, what would it be up to?”
* * *
“THERE ARE so many reasons to be happy,” Leonard Bishop said, sweat pouring down his bare chest, “why not let this be one of them?”
Nona, seeming to stare up at him with lust-glazed eyes, watched the pattern the streetlights imprinted on the ceiling. Her smile was for him, but her mind was over the hills and far away. In her mind’s eye, a big blue swamp moon was rising over Pontchartrain, the lake’s indigo water silver-tipped, shivery with a humid wind. That summer, Nona had been sixteen, in the full flower of her first real love, a tall thin biker in stovepipe jeans, cowboy boots, and with ropy tattooed forearms.
His name was Rob—she never did find out his last name—and he claimed he had the cops on his tail. According to Rob, he had held up a liquor store on the interstate, “just for giggles,” as he so succinctly put it. Whether this lurid history was true or not, Nona ate it up. She was as much in love with the legend as with Rob himself. When they were together, she was always on the lookout for cop cars—especially the state police—in order to have a hand in saving him from arrest and jail. By way of thanks he laughed at her. There was a cruel streak running through him that caused Nona to shiver with anticipation. But he was never cruel to her, or abusive. In fact, he was gentle with her, his touch always loving, his voice low and mellow. But with others, this streak emerged full-blown and ferocious. He never settled a dispute with words when he could use his fists or, even better, whatever weapon came to hand. She never witnessed him lose a fight, and there were too many to count. People soon learned to give him a wide berth, even other bikers who, unlike Rob, traveled in packs. “I’m a rogue elephant,” he told her once. “I crush whatever the fuck’s in my path.”
In bars, nightclubs, and strip joints, all the low-down, noxious places he took her, he always managed to tangle, to throw his weight around, to lash out with carefully controlled aggression and a cold, cold hatred. The people he put down were bullies—guys bigger, sometimes older than he was. Often there was more than one. Nona stood back in a kind of awe, vibrating from head to toe, while the mayhem ensued. It was like a game for her, like watching her own private 3-D movie, House of Horrors, southern style. Always afterward the sex was galactic, making her body arch and her eyes roll up in her head.
One rainy, windswept night, the game abruptly morphed, and it all went off a cliff. Besides his Harley Low Rider, Rob owned a Chevy, souped up and tricked out. As they were speeding down the interstate, the wipers full on to sweep aside the torrential rain, Led Zep’s Houses of the Holy blasting out of his eight custom speakers, the blurry night was suddenly lit by flashing red lights.
“Cops,” Nona breathed, as if this one word would save him.
Rob, singing harmony to Plant’s melody, didn’t even bother to glance in the rearview mirror. He slowed, though, gradually pulling off to the shoulder. As he did so, he reached under his seat and took out the largest, meanest-looking handgun Nona had ever seen.
“Rob, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Just sit tight,” he said with his drop-dead grin, “and watch.”
By this time the car had rolled to a stop. He kept the car in neutral, rather than park, opened the door, and got out. Nona could hear the electrified voice boom over the bullhorn. “Get back in the car, son.”
Ignoring the voice, Rob began to walk back to where the police cruiser had pulled in behind him.
Nona leaned over to the open door. “Rob, come back here! What the hell are you doing?”
He kept walking.
“Son, get back in the car!” the voice shouted. “You will not be warned again!”
Nona could see the cop with the bullhorn. In the driving rain, he was standing next to the cruiser, his free hand on the butt of his service revolver. If there was any traffic on the interstate, it was blurred and indistinct, seeming as far away as the next county.
Rob raised his handgun and squeezed off two rounds. The cop flew backward, his arms outstretched. Nona screamed. More shots, this time fired out the cruiser’s rolled-down window. A bullet struck Rob, twisting him sideways. He fired again, was hit again. He fell to his knees and kept on firing until he collapsed onto his face.
Then there was nothing but the sound of rain slamming the car’s roof and the hiss of intermittent traffic. The tarmac was stippled like a lake in a storm. Nona sat shaking and crying. Then she crawled across the seat and looked out the open door. Rob wasn’t moving and neither was the cop. The bullhorn lay in the road. There was no movement, no sound from the cruiser. Red lights kept blinking emptily.
Hands shaking, Nona slid behind the wheel and, not quite knowing what she was doing, put the car in gear and drove to the local police station, where she staggered up the stairs, crossed the lobby floor, and promptly vomited all over the desk sergeant.
“Nona?”
Because she was black, the white assistant DA tried to have her indicted as an accessory, but there was no case, and his efforts came to nothing, if you discounted two weeks of further terror for Nona.
“Nona?” Bishop slapped her gently on the cheek.
With a feral growl, she leapt up, grabbed him by the throat, shoved him off the bed, and slammed him against the wall.
“Don’t ever, ever touch me like that again.”
Her face was so close to his he had difficulty focusing on her.
“Like what? It was just a tap. What the hell’s gotten into you?”
“Did you hear me?” she said. She had not blinked since she had taken hold of him.
“Calm down.”
Still not blinking.
“Yes, damnit, yes, I heard you.”
Her eyes refocused slowly.
“Let’s both just back off,” Bishop said slowly and distinctly, “shall we?”
She nodded and stepped back.
“Mistakes were made.”
She stared at him as if he were a Martian.
He could not help thinking of his humiliating dinner with the General. Looking into her face, he felt like he had stepped into a steaming pile of something unsettling, something that if he was not exceedingly careful he would slip on and break his neck. What had he done? he wondered. There was a demon inside her he had never before glimpsed. But wasn’t there a demon inside everyone?
He massaged his neck, then frowned. “Do I have welts?”
“Let me take care of that.”
With a slightly abashed smile, she came into his arms and massaged his neck with a gentle touch so erotic that soon enough they were once again glued to each other. With a dreadful start, she realized that Bishop reminded her of Rob; they shared a monomaniacal look in their eyes. That long-ago night had been a crossroads for her. That night she felt her true calling. That night she decided to be a cop, to stop the Robs of the world—or at least her corner of it—from wreaking their mayhem and destruction. She was still on that path, and now she realized that she could not take another.
* * *
THOUGH IT was late, Caro did not return to her apartment. Instead, after dropping Alli and Vera off, she drove herself to Arrows & Quiver, her favorite dive bar minutes off the interstate just this side of the Maryland border. The place was dark, smudgy, with the low metal ceiling of a submarine. She was assaulted by decades of alcohol fumes, and the desultory chatter of the same twenty or so barflies who never seemed to leave the place even after it closed at four A.M. This motley crew was hunched along the oak bar, swaying in a line as if its members were all suffering the same degree of inebriation. On the opposite side of the room, rows of broken-down booths afforded a modicum of privacy, if not comfort. An old juke was playing, Journey’s “Wheel in the Sky.” It was that kind of place, which was largely why Caro felt comfortable here, stuck in time like a fossil in amber, so that it seemed as if she’d never been away.
As she slid onto a stool, the bartender greeted her with the same salute he had used the first time she had walked in the place. When he pushed her drink across the bartop, she noticed a folded slip of paper, rather than the usual paper napkin, under the glass. She glanced up at the bartender, but he had already turned away, tending to the unending orders from the conga line of sloshed customers.
She lifted the glass and, while she took a lingering sip, unfolded the slip with her free hand, and read what was written on it. Immediately she crushed the note, pulled over a heavy glass ashtray that the bar now used to pile up olive pits, struck a match, and burned the crumpled ball. The flash of flame caught the bartender’s interest for maybe a nanosecond, but as it died away, he turned aside.
Caro took her time with another sip, then, glass in hand, she rose and walked across the width of the room. As she did so, she thought about getting the hell out of there as quickly as she could. Practicality stopped her. In this instance, running would do her no good, and she knew it.
She saw him sitting at the booth closest to the rear. His back was to the door and, therefore, to her. That was how certain of himself he was. He did turn his head, though, when she slid into the booth opposite him.
“Good of you to join me,” he said in his trademark deadpan voice.
For some moments, she said nothing, simply stared into his face. And what a beautiful face it was—as if sculpted by a Renaissance master, with its high, wide forehead, large, deeply intelligent eyes, Roman nose, and full lips.
“How did you find me?”
To his credit, he didn’t smirk. “I know you better than anyone.” He paused a beat for drama’s sake. “The only one who knows you at all, I daresay.” He paused. “Apart from the Syrian, that is.”
“The Syrian saw only what I wanted him to see.”
“Don’t they all?”
“But not you.”
His face was completely still, like a Cretan mask she had seen once in an Athens museum. “Not me.”
“So now you’re going by Myles Oldham?”
“Is this to be a conversation of non sequiturs?”
“Grigori.” She took another sip of her drink. “Now you’re Myles.” She cocked her head. “Are you—what?—ashamed of Grigori?”
“Myles is so British, isn’t it?” he said. “It goes ever so much better with my accent.”
“And helped you through Cambridge, no doubt. It falls trippingly on the tongue.”
“As Hamlet said.” His head dipped in a kind of mock bow. “Your sarcasm is duly noted.”
“Or could it be that you’re ashamed of your Russian heritage?”
“Half Russian,” he said, bristling. “The other half—”
“Yes, yes, your mother was English. Marion Oldham.”
“I loved her very much.”
“You never knew her, Grigori. Not really.”
“Don’t.” His voice bristled. Then he barked an unkind laugh.
“Stop!”
They glared at each other. It was clear the knives were out for real. Having pushed him to the brink, Caro turned the conversation to other matters. Time, she thought, to bow to the inevitable. “So. What is it you want?”
“What I’ve always wanted.” He reached for her hands.
* * *
PAVEL KURIN, a tall, slope-shouldered man with a long, theatrical mustache that turned up at the ends and eyes like a Mongol, stood amid the rich animal stink in the center of a chaos he controlled. Kurin was the ringmaster and also the manager of the Red Square Circus. Like a philharmonic maestro, he conducted the striking of tents, the feeding of the caged animals, the parade of elephants into their straw-matted boxcars, the disposition of the jugglers, tiny contortionists, brawny strongmen, lithe acrobats, bareback riders, makeupless clowns, aloof trapeze artists, little people, twins and triplets giggling in clusters.
Kurin had been born into circus life. His parents were little people, comfortably retired now in Saint Petersburg. He, however, was over six feet tall—one of those unexplainable quirks that made genetics such a fascinating field of study. He knew this troupe intimately—their loves, their hates, and, most important of all, their friendships and feuds. Despite the inevitable infighting between the acrobats and the trapeze artists, these people were a family. Which meant in times of stress all feuds were forgotten as they banded together, outsiders against a hostile world.
Any group of people who approached the circus when it was down—especially in the rail yard where it was now—were viewed with extreme suspicion. The rail yard was where the local toughs came for payback for supposed cons perpetrated by circus folk. So it was no surprise that at first Kurin refused to talk with Jack, claiming with good reason that he was too busy. Thick-muscled roustabouts appeared, converging. But then Kurin caught sight of the old man, and, thinking of his parents in Saint Petersburg, he signed for his roustabouts to return to their normal duties.
“We’ll talk inside,” he said, climbing up into his private car. It was painted red and gold, with the Red Square Circus imprint flowing over a cluster of expressionist onion domes. The car was cozy and warm, festooned with a dazzling array of circus memorabilia, as if it were a museum rather than living quarters. A least two dozen photos of Kurin’s parents in costume, with animals and with various dignitaries, including Khrushchev and Gorbachev, hung on the walls, between the paraphernalia.
Kurin guided Gourdjiev and Katya to a curvy, tasseled fin-de-siècle love seat, upholstered in worn claret velvet. He stood facing Jack and Annika.
“You have the look of fugitives,” he said in his forthright manner.
“And if we are?” Annika said warily.
Kurin spread his arms wide. “We’re all fugitives here, in one way or another. We’re misfits fleeing the everyday world with its everyday people. We are the opposite of normal; here, in this sanctuary, we can be proud of who and what we are.”
“We need safe passage,” Jack said.
“Out of Moscow.”
Jack nodded. “For a start.”
Kurin studied the four of them for a moment, then, abruptly, turned on his heel. “I sense we all could use a drink.”
He poured them a very fine vodka he pulled from a small freezer. He served it in jelly jars, but he made no excuse for the service. When they had all taken a sip, he said, “Across the border is where you want to go.”
