15th Affair (27 page)

We napped. Then we went to the park, my girls and me.

We sat by the lake and watched ducks and people. I made small talk with Martha and Julie. But my mind was working hard.

As usual, I still had questions.

THE PHONE RANG
at seven the next morning while I was brushing my teeth. It was Brady.

“Hah-wo,” I said.

“Are you all right?”

I spat and rinsed. “Good as new.”

“Fine. There’s a car downstairs for you. Go to Mission and Cortland. Two officers are at the scene. They’ll fill you in. Conklin’s on the way.”

Brady hung up. I sang to my reflection, “It’s gonna be another bright, bright, sunshiny day.”

I finished my morning ablutions and welcomed Mrs. Rose, who asked, “How are you?”

Everyone wanted to know how I was. I must look like I’d been dragged up and down Filbert Street behind a garbage truck.

“I’m fine,” I said. “How are you?”

“A little tense. My daughter’s due anytime. She’s packed to go to the hospital. Do you think you’ll be home after work?”

“I’ll be home by six. Or call me and I will relieve you as speedily as the law allows.”

“That’s good enough for me,” she said.

I kissed Julie, ruffled Martha’s ears, tossed her a tennis ball, and grabbed a bottle of tea from the fridge. Then I ran down the stairs.

There was a fire-engine-red Camaro in front of my apartment building with gold hubcaps and matching chains around the plate guards. The envelope taped to the window had my name on it, and there was a set of keys inside, along with a note written in Brady’s block-letter handwriting.

“Merry Christmas from the motor pool.”

It was not Christmas, and this car’s previous owner had clearly been convicted of possession of narcotics with intent to sell. I hated the car on sight. But until Nationwide paid out for my deceased Explorer, it would have to do.

My drive to the Mission would have been a laugh riot if I’d been in a laughing mood. I got suggestive gestures and horn toots and more than one offer to race, but on the positive side, the car went from zero to sixty in a heartbeat, handled beautifully around curves, and braked on a bottle cap. The motor pool had tooled this crass beast into a first-class cop car.

When I got to the intersection of Mission and Cortland, Conklin was waiting outside a cheap variety store near the corner. He was not alone. Three squad cars were at the curb and a load of interested citizens stood behind the yellow tape. Broken glass glittered on the sidewalk.

Conklin met me at the car and took me over to talk to the first officer, saying, “Officer Dow spoke with the lady a few minutes ago. Dow, tell the sergeant what you told me.”

The uniformed cop was young and keyed up and clearly wanted to make his report.

He said, “Girl in there says she’s had enough of her old man. She shot him and yelled out to me that she doesn’t trust men at all and won’t be taken alive.”

“Father? Or husband?” I asked.

“Husband.”

“SWAT is on the way?”

Dow said, “She says if she sees men in black, she’s just going to blow her brains out. But she’ll talk to
you
, Sergeant. She saw your picture on the news after the Chinatown bust.”

I was back on the job, working a case that didn’t involve spies or orphaned children or multiple homicides. It wasn’t exactly blue skies with a side of roses, but it wasn’t bad. There was even a chance that I could do some good.

My vest was in the back of my Explorer, which was still undergoing a forensic postmortem at the crime lab, but I was wearing my lucky socks.

I asked Officer Dow, “What’s her name?”

BY 2 P.M.
, I was home again with my shoes and cell phone off.

Mrs. Rose was at her daughter’s bedside. The victim of the variety store shooting was in stable condition, and the young female shooter had a lawyer and was under suicide watch.

Joe was with Alison Muller at some black site in DC or on foreign soil, and I didn’t know when he was coming back or if I would let him into my life again.

I could make a good case for moving on.

I thought of Alison Muller’s taunts about the closeness of her relationship with Joe, and although she was a five-star liar, he had an equal number of stars on his chest, maybe more, and they made a pretty good pair.

Mrs. Rose liked to say, “When feeling pathetic, make tea.”

I boiled water and took a look at the big pile of mail that had been accumulating for weeks on the kitchen counter. Joe had been paying the bills for a while, but I still knew how to balance a checkbook.

I blew on my tea, switched the radio to Radio Alice, 97.3, for their adult contemporary sound, and put the mail and my computer on the coffee table. I tossed the flyers and catalogs to the floor, separating out the utilities and condo maintenance and the bank statement.

I was going through the statement when I saw a charge for a safe-deposit box that I didn’t know we had. I’m not saying it was a secret. Only that I hadn’t noticed it before.

The time was now 2:35. Our bank was at Ninth Avenue and Clement, five blocks away. If the baby would cooperate, I could get there before closing time.

I went to the drawer in Joe’s office and removed the key I’d found days ago at the bottom of a stationery box. I put on my shoes, strapped Julie into the baby sling, and arrived at the bank five minutes before closing. I told the woman in charge of the vault that I wouldn’t take long. I just had to get into the box before the weekend. It was urgent.

Was
it urgent? I asked myself, even as she opened the doors. Was I setting myself up for one more hideous disappointment?

“Please, Mrs. Molinari,” said the vault keeper. “I have an appointment with the coach at my son’s school. I promised.”

Joe’s key had the number 26 engraved on the shaft. The vault lady put her key into one of the locks and I put my key into the corresponding lock. After the tumblers clicked into place, I slid the long metal box out of the cabinet and took it into the tiny viewing room next to the vault.

I fumbled with the hasp and finally got the box open. I stared in at the contents. There were several unsealed envelopes inside. One of them held our condo lease. I found our marriage license, Julie’s birth certificate, and Joe’s father’s death certificate. Under those envelopes was a long flat candy box with gold edging and a stylized drawing of a bow on top.

As I bridged the lid of the candy box with my fingers, preparing to open it, I reflected on the fact that I was snooping—again, but screw it. I was entitled to whatever truth I could find in this haystack of lies a.k.a. my marriage to Joe.

If there were mementos of Joe’s secret life with Alison Muller, I absolutely needed to know.

I removed the lid. Up came the smell of chocolate and cherries, but Alison Muller wasn’t inside the candy box.

Julie was there. And so was I.

On top, a sprig of Julie’s fine, dark baby hair tied with a slender pink ribbon. There was a photograph a stranger had taken of Joe and me on the ferry to Catalina, both of us grinning, the wake foaming behind us as we stood embracing at the rail. That was the first time we’d told each other, “I love you.”

Under that photo was a copy of the marriage vows we’d exchanged in a gazebo lapped by the ocean in Half Moon Bay, and there was a candid snapshot of Joe and me and Cat and the little girls, all of us laughing and walking barefoot down the beach in our wedding clothes. And there was a printout of an e-mail from me to Joe telling him that I missed him so much, asking, “When are you coming home?”

I was struck by the congruence of having similar thoughts now at this very different place and time in our lives.

My musings were interrupted by the vault lady tapping on the glass, pointing to her watch.

“I’m coming,” I said.

I put everything back in the box and returned it to its sleeve in the cabinet behind the locked doors, and Julie and I left the bank.

“What now?” I said to my precious little girl as we crossed Lake Street toward the Molinari family home.

“What’s going to happen now?”

ALISON MULLER KNEW
every inch of the cell where she’d been held for a month or more—she wasn’t sure how long. It was impossible to grasp even the difference between day and night in the artificial gray light of this underground box, which had been designed by a crazy person.

The walls leaned in and the ceiling sloped and even the stones in the wall were different shapes, laid without pattern or sense.

She was grateful for the crazy stones because each had a personality. Like the one shaped like a kidney next to her bed. And the one next to it, shaped like Ohio. Looking at the stones gave her a place to put her mind.

There were no fellow prisoners, no exercise yard. She had a narrow bunk, a flush toilet, and a recessed shower head over the toilet that dispensed only cold water.

Her one meal and a change of paper clothes were delivered by her interrogator.

He came to the chair outside her cell at regular intervals to question her. He was very formal. His clothes were neutral and boring, but pressed, and he always wore a tie. Alison didn’t know him and he wouldn’t tell her his name.

“What do people call you?” she would ask. “Just say any name.”

“My name is unimportant.”

She had called him Unimportant for a while, but it was clumsy. So she tried other names: Bert, Voldemort, Condor. But the name that stuck was Secret Agent Man, or Sam.

Sam was middle-aged, paunchy, and humorless but a fine interrogator. He never hurt her physically, but he knew how to get to her, how to worry her and make her desperate for news of her kids.

He also brought incentives with him: a box of food and a clean, blue, one-piece flushable garment.

These items remained under his chair while he tried to break her. Most of the time when he was ready to leave, he slid the parcels under the lowest bar of her cell. Sometimes he took the food and clothes away with him.

Today, as usual, he’d said, “Hello, Ms. Muller. Are you comfortable?”

“Fabulous accommodations, dahling,” she’d said. “If you could have fresh flowers delivered. And a change of linens.”

The interrogator smiled, if you could call the thin stretch of his thin lips a smile. He asked the same questions every day. “Who gave the order to blow up the plane?”

And every time, she said the same thing.

“Like I told you, Secret Agent Man. What I heard is that they were rogue Chinese operatives. I didn’t know them. I don’t know who they were working for. I heard they’re all dead. Now. If you don’t mind telling me, who do I have to blow to get out of this joint?”

“What information have you passed to the Chinese?”

“None. None at all.”

One time, after the questions were done, Secret Agent Man said, “I’ve seen Caroline.”

He pulled his phone out of his shirt pocket and showed her a photo of her daughter coming out of her middle school building. He said, “She has a bruise on her left arm. See there. I think she may be getting into fights. Or maybe Khalid did this to her.”

Then he’d asked her another of the everyday questions. “Who is your contact in China? Who were you going to meet when you got there?”

“I didn’t have a contact. I was going to be met at the airport. That’s the truth. That’s the
truth
. It all happened very fast. Remember, please. I am still CIA. I was only going to work over there for
us
. Molinari knows this. Please. I’ve told you everything. What do I have to do to get out of here?”

Today, after the usual bull, Secret Agent Man had said, “Your meal is a cheese and mushroom frittata. I had one. It’s very good.
Bon appétit.
I’ll see you soon, Ms. Muller.”

And then he’d left.

Alison had thought of killing herself. She had run headfirst at the wall, but she really couldn’t get any momentum going and had only given herself a headache. A hidden camera watched her. The one time she’d tried to hang herself on the bars, Sam had appeared and said, “No, Ms. Muller. Don’t do that unless you’d like us to take away your clothes. Keep you here in the nude.”

She wasn’t yet desperate enough to drown herself in the toilet. But she was close.

She was going to be here for life.

She was going to die in this underground stone box.

The sooner the better. There was no way out and nothing left to live for. She couldn’t even fantasize anymore. She just couldn’t fool herself into believing in happiness.

She went to the cot, which was chained to the wall, and lay down. She pulled out strands of hair, one at a time, and she started the countdown to the one thing she had to look forward to.

The next meeting with Sam.

He was all she had.

ALISON THOUGHT SHE’D
finally gone insane.

She heard men’s voices out of sight in the corridor beyond her cell. She knew both voices. One was Sam, her tormentor. She knew for sure she was crazy, because the other man—was Joe.

First the muffled voices, then the shadows falling across the stone floor. And then they were both at the bars.

Secret Agent Man said, “You have a visitor, Ms. Muller.”

He put the box with her dinner and her one-piece outfit under the chair and then said to Joe, “Take your time. When you’re ready, you know where to find me.”

Alison rushed to the bars and grabbed them.

“Joseph. Have you come to get me out?”

“I could only arrange a visit,” he said.

He brushed her hand with his, then sat in the chair outside the cell. She sat on the floor right against the bars so that she could be close to him.