And West Is West (15 page)

There she sees that Harry has come out and is looking at her as she stands naked in the hazy, incense-darkened candlelight. Zoe almost regrets the filthy kitchen window. She is just a blur to any voyeur on the fire escape or across the street peeping through a blind. Somehow she wants an audience. It's as if by living in Marla's space she has channeled an actor's desire to perform.

Unfortunately, no one is on the iron-barred escape. They are alone, she and Harry. And the solitude Zoe feels serves as a reminder. She playfully constructs a small pyramid of raspberries on Harry's little islet. Harry won't starve on her account if this goes on for a few days.

What?
She's indulging in a little ritual of self-pity. A reboot is what Ethan suggested. And
this
is close. Getting completely wasted. Touching bottom so you can push back to the surface.

She refills her tumbler with Prosecco and then follows it with a cocktail of Soma and Vicodin, no doubt half strength at their age. She's allowed to self-prescribe, no? After all, she is a physician's granddaughter—and his daughter as well. But she'll think about that later.

Lifting a foot over the tub rim, Zoe dips a toe in scalding water and hops back on her grounded heel—causing Harry a tsunami when she bumps his terrarium. “Sorry,” Zoe says, but Harry's already ducked into his shell. She opens the cold tap for a minute before stepping in. Going down she seems not to displace much water, she sinks like bones due to her diet of late—lentils scavenged from Marla's pantry or a brown banana courtesy of Ms. Wah. Even tonight's Belgian waffle with Ethan brought no inspiration. She'd simply hacked at it.

She settles against the curved back of the tub, her mouth at the waterline. Now the water has become too cool. With her toes she turns the hot tap to a trickle and, through fluttering eyelids, watches the candlelight rippling over the bathwater's surface.

CHAPTER 28

New York City

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Last night

Zoe,

I know I'm breaking our radio silence. I've given you space this past year just as you wanted when you moved to DC. No calls, no emails, no texts. But maybe now, after last night, we can start again. Let me explain.

I will not say that I had no hopes for us after last November, after that last night together. For days afterward I waited to hear from you, for you to tell me our night meant something more than your reaching out for comfort. But now I know this is all it was. And I can accept that.

I guess what I'm stumbling to say is that I'd like us to be friends. I can do this now and I think you too are ready, maybe more than you know. By coming to the opening you took your first step home. And by home I mean a place where people care about you.

As for me, after our talk last night I decided to look into Sergei's job. Tomorrow I'm off to Long Island for a couple of days to check things out. Can we talk when I'm back? Hope we're past all the bad stuff.

E

CHAPTER 29

Sagaponack

The Town Car, which had picked Ethan up in front of the Popeye's below his walk-up on Lexington, now deposits him in a driveway off Hedges Lane in Sagaponack. Ethan can smell the ocean as he stands below a multileveled, Gehry-influenced structure that towers over him in glass, steel, and cedar. One story too high for local regulations, the village has levied the building a ten-thousand-dollar-a-week fine—a cheap bribe compared to Russia, Sergei had told Ethan when they'd arranged his visit. He is being courted and it is flattering.

Expected by the staff, Ethan is escorted to his room, which has a private bath and windows that overlook not the dunes but a field of high grass. He is here at Sergei Sokolov's Long Island home, or is it a base of operations? Ethan sits on the bed and shuts his eyes.

“Mr. Winter,” a voice calls from the open door. It's a young woman wearing a jacket bearing Sergei's SAS logo—the
A
for Aleksandrovich—which is monogrammed everywhere here. “Mr. Sokolov will see you now. He is on a very tight schedule.”

In an elevator his escort holds a finger to a touchscreen panel. “Biometrics,” she explains as the doors close. Ethan's stomach rises, but he cannot tell how far down they are going. The ride becomes motionlessly smooth. There's not even a bounce at the end before the doors are sliding away. And here is Sergei.

“Mr. Winter. At last,” he says.

Sokolov is wearing one of his SAS windbreakers, as if transmitting to everyone who works for him that he, too, is just part of the team. He grips Ethan's hand and Ethan almost expects a bear hug to follow. But it doesn't. “This way,” says the Russian. Though a head shorter than Ethan and almost as slim, Sergei fills the space with his dynamism. This is a type Ethan recognizes, a force of nature, a person who, tornado-like, sweeps others up into his enthusiasms.

Lengthening his stride Ethan chases Sergei down a corridor that, from its halogen lighting, glows warmly like the interior of a Hollywood-imagined spacecraft. Ahead Sergei steps through a portal resembling an airlock door found in a submarine. “This is the vault,” he says from the other side. “Secure against everything from ocean surges to Chinese hacker attacks.”

After ducking under the door header Ethan finds himself in a low, wide, depthless room that is lit just as delicately as the corridor. The next thing he is aware of is the hum, the familiar-to-him hum of a serious mainframe. Its subtle vibration takes Ethan back to UIB, to his old office which adjoined the server room. In that space he had felt much as he is beginning to feel here, like he is at the center of a beehive. But unlike Ethan's solitary chamber at UIB, Sergei's operations center is a bullpen that doesn't offer even the privacy of cubicles. The arrangement suggests that Sergei, as if in a nod to old communist Russia, expects everyone to work for the benefit of the whole, that employees should expect fewer of the superficial inducements of capitalistic prestige prominent on Wall Street—the fancy job title, the corner office, the toy-box swag of watches, electronics, golf clubs. There are in this common room perhaps a dozen workstations, which are mounted on several conference tables as opposed to separated desks. And bent over these dozen or so stations, clicking away at keyboards, are workers who seem as focused on their jobs as drones in a hive. None have even glanced up at Ethan and Sergei's entrance. But Ethan knows why. These young men, for they are all young men, are coders fixated in their solipsistic coding universes, which nonetheless can alter societies. “Cozy, isn't it,” Sergei says. “This is where you will be programming.”

Ethan just smiles. For although he has signed a confidentiality agreement, he has not yet signed an employment contract—even if Sergei's offer is not one he can imagine refusing. Coding is what holds him together, his deepest pleasure, his essence. But now, standing in this chilly space, something twists in Ethan's stomach. It is not a distaste over the communality—he will not have to rub elbows as there is plenty of room between the workstations. It is something deeper, rawer.

As Ethan's stomach gurgles he notices that Sergei is studying him and guesses that the Russian is waiting for a response, a positive statement that will counter the stony face Zoe had often criticized him for, and which he can sense overcoming him once again. He should try to smile and talk admirably about what Sergei has built here. But he decides to ask another question. “Mr. Sokolov—” he says.

“Please, it's Sergei.”

“Sergei. Why did you set up out here, so far from Wall Street and Weehawken?” Weehawken is where much high-speed trading occurs.

Sergei, beaming, leans forward so that his face and then his black irises and pupils are all that Ethan sees. “You are one of us now so I may tell you,” Sergei says. “We are just doing the speed tests today . . .”

“Tests?” Ethan says.

“There is a transatlantic cable nearby.” Sergei grins. “It's fiber. Very low latency. We are
tapped
into it.”

Ethan feels his jaw relax. With the tap the Russian's computers will be getting data from London milliseconds sooner than the mainframes operating on Wall Street a hundred miles west. The difference in practical terms is gold, for a millisecond in speed-trading is comparable to the time saved using a telegraph over flag signals in the nineteenth century.
This
is impressive.

But then Ethan's stomach cramps again. He manages to stand straight, inconspicuously pressing a thumb into his solar plexus. “Wow,” he says.

“Yeah,” says Sergei. “You know, I like people like you. Motivated. Ambitious. And, in your way,
passionate
. It was dumb of you, but I liked that you took on UIB. And maybe I was a little unsure about your programming talent after I heard how you lost your job. There was that decimal point contretemps you were accused of, no?”

“Yes,” Ethan says feeling disparaged. For though he has long since concluded that the error was not his, the world still thinks otherwise.

“But then,” Sergei says, the skin orbiting his eyes crinkling, “I did a little more investigation. You do know that Dwayne Hoke, your own boss, set you up, yes?”

Ethan presses his thumb deeper into his solar plexus but even this cannot control the deepening cramp. He bends over and grasps his knees. What Sergei has just told him should give him relief. But it does not.

A sympathetic hand touches the small of his back.

“I know. I know, son. It is unbelievable.” Sergei helps Ethan toward a chair, a mesh programmer's chair. He snaps his fingers and gestures at somebody, and this unseen person rushes off. “More important, do you know why you were betrayed?”

Ethan, looking down, can only shake his head.

“Think about it. Oh, but maybe you don't know where Mr. Hoke is working now. He is gone from UIB. Look for him in Stamford, at a nice hedge fund job. I am pretty sure that Mr. Hoke was the one who moved your algorithm's decimal point so that somebody at this fund could bet against your bank's trades. It is the case of one good turn deserving another,
no
? This Dwayne Hoke, I'd say, is making much from your
mistake
. Plus bonus.”

Sergei offers Ethan an open bottle of Perrier that has magically appeared. “Thanks,” Ethan murmurs, more for the liquid than for the information about Hoke. He sips from the bottle and its liquid bubbles down toward his stomach.

“And now you will have your retribution,” Sergei says. “For getting rich is the best revenge, don't you think?” The Russian leans against the edge of the table by the chair Ethan is using.

Ethan tries another sip of water. He has identified what is wrong with himself. In his ideal reality, he wouldn't be coding for revenge, to screw people over.

“Well,” Sergei says, squeezing his prospect's shoulder as if their deal is done. “I will leave you to it. You will find a familiar face here who can brief you on your tasks. Because, of course, you do intend to take this job, yes? Welcome aboard, my friend.” And then Sergei is gone.

Hoke's treachery doesn't surprise Ethan. He had speculated on it but could gather no proof. Yet Ethan doesn't feel greatly angry with Dwayne, not now that someone else knows the truth about the misplaced decimal point. It is a vindication that should be emotionally, psychologically, physically satisfying. Yet it is not. It has not, for example, provided Ethan with relief from the spasms wrenching his gut. When he looks up, the familiar face that the Russian had mentioned is there. It's John Guan.

CHAPTER 30

Florida

Dear Jessica,

I know it is not the usual month since I last wrote. But I have been stirred up by some terrible news. It is not news that needs trouble you but it is why I am sending one last letter. A letter I expect you will never see. For what all my returned letters have made clear is that you have not gone back to the post office to where I mailed them. And why would that be? After many sleepless nights I have figured it out. Including why you dont and cant write to me anymore. It is because you have enemies and they are looking for you. What I say here then is not to you but to them. So if you ever read this Jessica I hope you understand. I had to do something to help you.

To Whom It May Concern. To YOU Who Are Hunting My Daughter and Reading Her Letters in Secret,

I know you are out there and I know what you are doing. As much as you are watching me I am watching you. Dont forget we still have newspapers and TV in prison so I know what you want. You want to keep your robot planes flying. You want to keep pressing those buttons to make your problems disappear. You want your wars to go on until all your enemies are dead or in Guantanamo. You will let nothing get in your way. And that includes my daughter. But you can stop looking for her because here is what I have done.

I have written up everything about her drone missions that I remember from those letters she sent me and which you confiscated too late. I have written about how she thought she was blowing up Yarisi and not just his wives. About how she was ordered to pull the trigger even though she knew something was off.

By now my lawyer has given these facts to the Miami Herald. Plus I have added a few details of my own. Like how you might have got Yarisi by now if you had listened to Jessica. Like how you go after honorably discharged soldiers like her to make sure they keep quiet.

What this means is that your secrets are out and my daughter can do you no more harm than I have already done you. So leave her be. Damn you. Leave her be.

A True American,

Donald Alan Aldridge

CHAPTER 31

California

Miss Shelly wanted to be outdoors for her birthday, but the wind has shifted and it's blowing now from the drought-brown foothills. Though the fires are not close enough to endanger the six gathered on the hospice lawn, a haze cuts short their celebration. The last time these six were gathered was a sadder occasion—Newt's funeral.

There are Peter and Pete, two men with shaved heads who consistently wear leather—though now more from nostalgia than conviction. Their arms, like Jessica's, are mapped with Shelly's visions. Peter, whom Jessica differentiates from Pete by his closely trimmed mutton chops and frailty, is leaning on Miss Shelly's wheelchair. Meanwhile Kane, Newt's brother, kneels to adjust the chair's dragging brake.

“That'll do 'er,” Kane says proudly, his long tangled hair pushed behind his ears. Like Newt, Kane has heavily lidded eyes and a sleepy look that matches his easygoing manner.

“Okay then. Let's get out of the smoke,” says Wanda, Kane's wife, the more assertive of the pair. Wanda favors tiered peasant skirts, dyes her hair midnight black and adorns her wrists with amethyst healing bracelets. She takes Kane's arm as if to subdue his inclination to tinker with any ailing mechanism at hand.

But before they move off Miss Shelly tries to speak and Jessica leans in, nodding after she comprehends Shelly's whisper.

“Never thought I'd live to see another goddamn fire season,” Jessica repeats verbatim to the group.

There is silence until Kane blurts brightly, “Fires are early this year so you haven't made it yet.” Rethinking his words, Kane's face reddens.

By the time the six cross the picnic area to the residence—a distance the width of a football field—Miss Shelly is asleep, or at least she has closed her eyes. Peter, hanging on to the wheelchair while Kane pushes it, seems equally exhausted.

“That was a dumb thing you said back there,” Peter tells Kane weakly. “Don't you understand that she is
trying
to die.”

“Come on now, Peter,” says Pete.

Kane, reprimanded, stares down at his boots.

“Time to get you home, Mr. Grouch,” Pete tells his partner. Then he turns to Jessica. “You'll have dinner with us next Saturday? Maybe you'll bake us one of your special desserts.”

“I'd like that.” Jessica kisses Pete on the cheek and offers him the weed brownies that she had made for today's aborted celebration. “Enjoy,” she says.

Jessica and Wanda roll Shelly to her room and help her into her bed. They settle her and kiss her goodbye, but Shelly is too soundly resting to notice. After a few minutes of communion the two women tiptoe from the room. In the hall Jessica sees Reggie, a nurse's aide with a teardrop tattoo and a gentle touch. He works an all-night shift because of his parole curfew, which starts at sundown. He may as well, he has joked, spend the dark hours making money instead of trouble. Reggie practically lives at the hospice.

“Call me, please, right away . . .
if
. . .” Jessica says to him.

“If there's any change, I will, Miss Jessie. And I'll check on her extra tonight,” Reggie says and squeezes her shoulder.

Out in the parking lot, Jessica and Wanda discover Kane tinkering again. This time he's working under the hood of Jessica's ride.

“Just checking the carb,” he tells Wanda and wipes his hands on his jeans. “You heard it backfiring coming up the hill. You don't want Jessie to end up walking.”

But Wanda's squint is directed beyond Kane. Out in the street two men wearing dark suits and sunglasses are getting into a black SUV.

“Kane,” Wanda says, her voice inflected with concern. “Those guys were parked out there when we drove in. Now they're getting ready to leave when we do?”

Kane turns to study the men. “Feds if anybody. But I doubt they're after me for six plants.”

“You haven't been sharing again?”

“No, babe. I learned my lesson good the last time.”

While Wanda shades her eyes to stare at the intruders, Kane lowers the pickup's hood. Jessica sees his shoulders slump. Kane wipes his face with the side of his hand. His eyes glisten with held back tears.

“Hey, Kane?” she says softly, touching his arm.

He turns to Jessica. “Just memories,” he says. “Newt's goddamn cancer saved me from doing time in Chino.”

This is not a story that Jessica knows.

“A few years back,” Kane goes on, “you could semi-legally grow here. But then the county started cracking down on private use and I had a few too many plants. Newt wanted to help so my lawyer sent him to a doctor. We'd be able to give the judge a medical excuse that some of those extra plants were for my brother's bad back. And that's when they found Newt's tumor. Judge gave me . . . what did he call it, Wand? It's like the Golden Gate Bridge.”

“A suspended sentence,” Wanda says.

Jessica absorbs the story while watching the SUV. Moisture drips from its tailpipe. The occupants are shadows behind tinted windows.

“So what do they want?” Wanda asks.

Jessica can't avoid a suspicion, but she keeps it to herself. Instead she says, “Hey, you guys mind coming back to the house? Keep me company for a while?”

AT NEWT AND
Shelly's, Jessica and Wanda dig up the makings for a late lunch. When Jessica brings the platter of tuna sandwiches into the dining room Kane is studying the photographs on the side table. Wanda follows behind Jessica with plates and paper napkins.

“Wand, remember this. Shell's fortieth. That was a trip.”

“You mean
you
were tripping.” Wanda turns to Jessica and shakes her head. “A garbage truck nearly compacted him after he fell asleep in a Dumpster.”

“I was trashed and nearly got trashed. Good times,” says Kane.

“If you say,” says Wanda. “Come and eat.”

Kane hugs Wanda from behind and kisses her ear as she sets the table.

“Hey!” Wanda says.

Kane winks at Jessica and then sits and fills his plate with sandwich quarters.

“They're not going to run off,” says Wanda.

“I'm starving.”

“You always are.”

Kane's eyes smile at Jessica as she sits. “I used to see that as criticism. Now I know it's
pure
love.”

“Don't be sentimental,” Wanda says, and then, “Baby, go wash your hands.”

Jessica sees that the white bread quarters Kane has piled on his plate are fingerprinted with grease from Newt's truck.

“A little roughage for the digestion,” Kane counters but goes to the kitchen anyway. From the dining room Jessica hears the sink tap open and Kane humming. Skittles passes under the table and brushes her leg before settling on a flank. “Here, girl,” Jessica says and drops a bit of tuna that Skittles noses but refuses.

It's strange for her to entertain guests at Newt and Shelly's without Shelly. She feels like an interloper. She feels as though she is somehow hastening Shelly's death. And in her awareness of that approaching event, things grow vivid. The glint of her water glass. The wood grain of the table top. Her pink thumbnail gnawed to the root. She tries a bite from a sandwich quarter, but her stomach recoils and she napkins the mush. Tomorrow, and each day that follows, will bring her less of anything to do that pertains to her friend's life—or death. Last week Jessica had helped Shelly finalize her funeral arrangements. When Newt died the emptiness hadn't gripped her so badly because he was still alive in Shelly. But now, all at once, both of her friends seem gone.

“Baby,” Wanda calls, but not to Jessica. When the splash of running water stops, Kane's sobbing comes through.

THE THREE SAY
their goodnights outside the hurricane fence. Kane is speaking to Jessica over the roof of his old El Camino.

“Bring that truck in next week. I'll rebuild the carb before you fry a piston.”

“Thanks.”

As he unlocks his driver's door, Wanda crushes Jessica against the chunky layers of her necklace.

“What you've done for Newt and Shelly is stellar,” she says. “I want you to know that we're okay about your getting the house.” Wanda pauses to study the low cinderblock structure. “After all, it's not like Shelly's giving away the Taj Mahal here.”

That's true. Newt and Shelly's, for that's how Jessica will always think of it, is a single-story one bedroom with one bath and an enclosed back porch. The roof leaks. The neighbors are scary. And jets take off nearby. But that Wanda even mentions the gift tells Jessica that the situation, for her if not for Kane, is complicated.

“I haven't thought much about it yet,” Jessica says.

“Well, if you don't turn in Shelly's paperwork, the place will be going to Kane. I just wanted you to know that. So it's all up to you.”

There's implication in Wanda's words and Jessica is about to ease her concern, tell her that she won't be claiming Kane's inheritance. But then Wanda's gaze shifts. To something beyond Jessica's face.

“There's that damn car again,” Wanda says.

Jessica turns to see the black SUV from the nursing home. Or perhaps an identical vehicle is coincidentally sitting at the far end of the block. In this light its tinted windows don't reveal if anyone is inside. Jessica trots back toward the house.

“Hey, Kane,” she calls as she jogs. “Why don't you take Newt's truck right now and I'll pick it up tomorrow?” Jessica returns with the keys.

“Whoa, I didn't mean to scare you about those pistons,” he says. “You can still drive a few miles before—”

“It'll be the first thing he works on tomorrow,” Wanda says.

“Whoa, whoa,” Kane says. “I've got an engine to put together in the a.m.”

Wanda takes the keys from Jessica and tosses them to her husband. “But you'll get on Jessie's truck first. And make sure it's ready for a long trip.”

Kane, clueless, cocks his head like a curious dog—and Jessica is curious too as to how Wanda has read her mind. “Sure, babe,” Kane says and tromps over to Newt's pickup. Meanwhile, Jessica opens the gate so he can back it from the yard. When Kane's got the pickup in the street he pulls up beside the El Camino and Wanda.

“I'll meet you at home,” Wanda tells him.

Kane, trustful of his wife's mysterious ways, shrugs. “Later,” he says and idles up the street. He passes the SUV, but the parked vehicle stays put.

“Well, that answers that,” Wanda says. “They're not after Kane, though he must have two dozen plants in his grow house.”

“I thought he learned his lesson?” Jessica says.

“He likes me to think so, so I won't worry. Now I just have to worry about you. Shelly told me of your Air Force troubles.”

“How much do you know?” Jessica asks humbly, like an abashed impostor.

“Just what you let on to her and Newt.”

This wasn't much. Jessica had only told her friends that she'd been discharged because some classified information had gotten out and that, after her trek in the desert, she'd likely been reassessed as a security risk. “I just don't want to be locked away in some psych ward,” she says.

“Shelly said you'd gone underground.” Wanda looks at the SUV and then back at Jessica. “What do we do now that they've found you?”

“We?”
Jessica smiles at this token of friendship.

“Before he died Newt made us promise to look out for you. So how can we help? I mean other than by getting the truck ready.”

Guilt stabs Jessica. “Can you tell Shelly I had to go? Take care of things at the hospice?”

“Of course.” Then Wanda takes Jessica at arm's length and squeezes her biceps, making her wince. “Look, Shelly will understand if you leave. She'll just want to know that you're okay wherever you end up.”

“I'll keep in touch.”

“If you just disappear, it'll hurt her.”

“I wouldn't do that.”

“What I mean is,
you
have become the daughter she never had.”

SKITTLES' BARKING CALLS
Jessica from the uneaten tuna sandwiches that she's mummified in plastic wrap and put in the can outside the kitchen door. She's trying to keep the uneaten food from stinking up the trash after she's gone. Now, coming around from the side of the house, she sees Skittles doing a frantic back-and-forth behind the front yard's chain-link fence.

They have come already. But they have not yet noticed Jessica, behind the overgrown bridal broom at the corner of the house. Men like these, however, are persistent types. Ignoring them, Jessica knows, will not make them disappear for more than an hour or two.

“Skittles!” she calls, though she doesn't really want the dog to stop her guard dog act.

The men's heads shift. The four lenses of their sunglasses reflect Jessica in quadruplicate as she approaches. The men's expressions do not change. They appear neither happy nor angry, neither relieved nor annoyed to see Jessica. They fix on her as if she is merely an expected object that has come into their line of sight.

“Miss Aldridge,” the shorter of the men says. He is not asking if she is Miss Aldridge but stating that she is. Still, the man seems not to be an arrogantly confident type. Jessica can see that he only wishes to believe that this person standing before him is Jessica Aldridge, the same Jessica Aldridge that she was a year ago—before she trekked into the desert, recuperated in a VA hospital, and then vanished. Jessica, playing Jessie, crosses her arms to show her tattoos. The photos this man must have of her are no doubt from when she wore an Air Force uniform, displayed no ink and weighed thirty pounds more. “You
are
Jessica Aldridge? Formerly Technical Sergeant Aldridge of the United States Air Force?” the man asks.

“And you are?” Jessica asks. She is holding Skittles by the collar to keep the dog between herself and the fence, whose perimeter the men have not yet violated. The other man, the taller of the two, has bent his legs slightly as if he is preparing to vault into the yard.