Cloak and Dagger (The IMA Book 1) (2 page)

“
I don't know. It was…speculation.”

“
You seemed pretty sure a moment ago,” I growled.

“
He's from America. I think he's from the west coast. He doesn't quite have the right...mentality for a southerner, or someone on the east coast. And the weather — what he mentioned of it — fits the description of Oregon, northern California, or southern areas of Washington. Temperate. Damp. I notice these things. I like to know who I deal with.” Watanabe paused, thinking hard. “If he is who I believe he is, he goes by Hephaestus. It's a pseudonym.”

“
Where does he
live
?”

He blanched, wary again. “I-I don't know his address. We were never close, only acquaintances. Distant ones. But we moved in the same circles. I respected his work. We chatted, on occasion. Shop-talk mostly, or chit-chat, like the weather or — or our…” His face scrunched up. “I can give you his name. His real one. At least” — he frowned — “I think
it is. I was surprised he introduced himself…so forthrightly. I gave him a fake name. In hindsight, it seems likely that his was fake, as well.”

“
I'm losing patience.” I stepped toward him. “The
name
.”

“
Parker. Rubens Parker.”

As the doors whooshed closed behind me, I pressed the button on the radio once more. “Get Mr. Watanabe some water. If he remembers anything else, inform me at once.” I waited until the woman on the other side of the line assented before shutting off the device for good. When he discovered that no food accompanied the drink, he might have another bout of hypermnesia.

I'd managed to get through to a difficult subject, establishing my reputation as a great field operative and investigative agent. I was feeling pretty satisfied, cocky even, until a familiar voice stopped me dead in my tracks. “All work and no play makes Michael Boutilier a dull boy. Just where do you think you're going, hmm?”

Adrian Callaghan was one of the few men I had to look up at — 6'7” at his last physical. He was also a sadist, a sociopath, and our chief interrogator. And he reported to me: a fact I had to remind him of constantly.

Like now.

“
What do you want? I didn't think you had clearance for this sector.”

Callaghan smiled, revealing slightly crooked teeth. He came to this country too late to lose his both his accent, and his overbite. The violence he'd wreaked in his home country against the English had earned him a death sentence, making him an expatriate at eighteen. I knew far more than I liked about Adrian Callaghan and his personal life. Like Morelli and his don, we went way back — but our relationship was far from friendly. I'm pretty sure he knew who had revealed his shady origins, and he had never quite forgiven me for breaking his nose.

“
You called me.”

“
I no longer have need of your services. You're dismissed.”

I resumed walking. He followed. “The weasel decided to talk then?”

“
Yes.”

“
How disappointing. Oh, well. I prefer them stubborn, anyway.” At my silence, he continued, “It's a bit like a game. You played Battleship when you were a lad, right? Choosing random spots, never knowing when — or what — you're going to hit. Guessing their weakness is like getting that hit, Michael; in that instant, you own them. And they know it.”

The holding cells were separated from the main building by a steel-doored elevator with an access panel: a kind of fail-safe should a prisoner manage to do the impossible and escape from his or her cell. I punched in the code and could not hide my annoyance when Callaghan tagged along. “Don't you have something you need to do?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “No use trying to get rid of me. I'm your backup in this assignment. Your business is my business, Michael, my boy.”

What?
The doors parted with a hiss of air. I stormed out of the elevator.

“
Why the hurry?” he mocked, keeping pace with my brisk stride. “Did Richardson forget to tell you?”

Goddammit. This was beginning to seem an awful lot like punishment: the last couple of cases I'd had were complete rot. Traitors. Petty thieves. Cases nobody else wanted, which gathered dust in the filing room until Richardson could find an appropriate stooge to do the field work. But maybe it wasn't the personal attack I was taking it as. Maybe Richardson hoped that we would monitor each other more closely than two more amiable colleagues.

And maybe pigs would also grow wings and perform aerial fucking cartwheels.

“
Hennessy,” I snapped. “Get me everything you can on Rubens Parker.”

She looked at my face, then at Callaghan, nodded, and raced out of the room.

“
Parker, hmm?” Callaghan mused, watching her leave. “Anyone I know?”

“
Doubtful.” I did a double-take. “Wait. Didn't Richardson debrief
you
?”

“
Maybe.” He grinned, pleased that he'd caught me off-guard. “However, a second opinion never hurts.”

Bullshit. He just wanted to annoy me. “He's the hacker that caused the network to crash if Watanabe isn't lying.”

“
You mean you aren't
sure
? If I'd had my way, there would be no uncertainty.”

“
You would have destroyed him. Richardson wants to keep him. He may be a blubbering imbecile,” I added, “But he's useful behind the keyboard. I can see why a waste like him might be considered valuable enough to keep alive…for the moment.”

Callaghan shook his head — but didn't argue; we both knew I was right.

The mousy woman returned a few minutes later with a sheet of paper. “Here,” she said breathlessly. “Everything I could find about Rubens Parker. As you asked.”

“
Thanks.” A glossy eight-by-ten color photograph topped the stack. My target was the middle-aged man. His wife and daughter sat on either side of him like bookends. The wife appeared Filipino — or maybe Latino. So did the daughter. Hard to tell. I wasn't sure if this would be relevant or not, but I filed it away just the same.

Rubens Parker. I was sure he'd do anything I'd asked him to.

The wife, on the other hand, could be a problem. There was a fierceness in her expression, drawn in the lines around her cheeks and eyes. I'd have to find a way to get her out of the picture so she couldn't influence her husband.

Callaghan craned his neck to look over. “Oh look, fun for the entire family. And they've got a kid.” He smiled. “I love kids.”

I gave him a sharp look. “You stay out of this. You're
backup
.”

“
Yes. I'll be right in back of you. Watching your every move.” The smile hardened. “Oh, I know about your understanding with Ricky Morelli and the others. Don't you know, Michael, that everyone is just as afraid of you as they are of me? They're glad to help you now, but if you fall…” His voice dropped to a whisper, “Unlike you, all they say about me is true. Deep down, you're soft…weak…and so very inferior to me.”

“
I'm your superior officer, Callaghan,” I snapped. “This is insubordination.”

“
Would you kill her?” Callaghan asked, running his finger down the image of the girl. “She
is
pretty, isn't she? And so young. Could you kill her for no reason, other than getting in your way? Could you hurt her? Could you do it with your own two hands? You might. But you would hesitate. And that, Michael, is the underlying difference between us. Because I wouldn't.”

“
Get out.”

“
I wouldn't,” he repeated. His mouth smiled but his eyes remained dead. Callaghan lied about many things but this wasn't one of them. “Don't get into pissing contests you can't win, Michael Boutilier. Especially not with me.”

“
Get
out
and let me do the job that
I
was asked to do.”

He clapped me on the shoulder. “
Well
. Don't screw up, then.” For one brief instant, as his arm drew away, his hand closed around the back of my throat and squeezed — not hard enough to cause any pain, but there was power behind it. I whirled around, my hand on the butt of my gun, just in time to see his shirttails disappear around the corner.

Fuck.

Christina:

In pop science, there's this phenomenon called the butterfly effect. You know, that a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. Well, on the day that my life changed — forever — it all started with me not doing my Spanish homework.

It was stupid, careless — completely
unlike
me, in other words — not to have finished it the night before. I was responsible. On top of things. The kind of child parents were referring to when they told their own offspring, “You should be more like so-and-so.” I spoke Spanish
fluently
. It would have taken all of ten minutes.

But I hadn't done it.

I looked down at the text that had woken me up. It was from Renee. The message remained the same, taunting me:
What did you get for number six on the Spanish homework?

Had the instructor even mentioned homework? He had spent the entire class period on Friday blathering on about the subjunctive and its uses. I remembered that much because I had been staring out the window at the empty soccer field, bored to tears, wishing
futbol
was in season because at least that would have given me something to focus on.

Havent done it yet. Maybe l8er
.

The response was quick.
What? You? Not doing your homework?

Please. If I was a good student, I wouldn't have teachers breathing down my neck, waiting for me to make a mistake. I was just…predictable.

Maybe too predictable.

I stared at the window and sighed. The icy light glazed the windows like a thin layer of frost, casting my room in a pale blue glow that turned the walls the most delicate shade of lavender. My room always looked best in the early mornings because the walls were baby pink — a color whose true hideousness was best revealed, like that of most horrors, in broad daylight.

I tried to complain about this, but most of my friends were unsympathetic; they couldn't understand why I was making a big deal over something as unimportant as the color of my walls. Sometimes, if they were feeling petty enough, they called me spoiled. My friends didn't get that it wasn't about the
walls
, not entirely. It was about what they represented — and that was my mother's determination to have control over every conceivable facet of my life. I called it
my
room, but that was just a formality. It was really my
mother's
room.

Oh, there were traces of my presence if you knew where to look. The books were mine —
Don Quixote
(in English), the Oz books, a signed collection of Julia Alvarez (in Spanish),
The Phantom Tollbooth
, and Harry Potter — as were the baseball pennants, and the collection of plush owls on the window seat. If you were really determined, you might find my trading card collection (hidden underneath my bed in three thick binders), some programming manuals (stolen from my father), my grandfather's chess set (missing a rook), and a couple of old game consoles from when I was a kid. My tomboy proclivities were otherwise banished from the household, as if my mother believed she could eradicate them by sweeping them beneath the pink rug. It wasn't my room she was trying to change. It was
me
.

I dressed quickly, avoiding the mirror. I'd pigged out on a bag of open chips someone had left on the counter last night and I could still feel the fat clinging to my thighs. I didn't want to
see
the evidence, as well. I hid the bag in my room because I was pretty sure that my mother snooped in the rubbish bin to spy on what I ate.

“
Happy thoughts,” I muttered, grabbing my bag from my desk chair. It was a pretentious thing — the chair, I mean, not the bag; an early twentieth century dining chair that had been reupholstered and repainted. It was so uncomfortable, I kind of suspected that it wasn't meant
to be sat on. In that sense, the Victorians and my mother had a lot in common: they both believed that furniture, as well as women, were better suited for display purposes only.

This was how deeply my mother had insinuated herself into my life. Like a serpent, her venomous criticism lingered long after she had departed. The bible says to honor thy mother and father but how many times can you turn the other cheek before you start feeling like a patsy? Why isn't it important to honor thy children, as well?

I found Mom in the kitchen. Her long black hair was pulled into her loose, trademarked chignon, secured with a jeweled clip. She was wearing a Chinese dress, real brocade, that made her skin glow. Wispy strands of hair fell into her face as she looked up from the sink, fixing on me the coal-black eyes that had made her the darling of the Dominican Republic in the 1970s, and my father fall madly in love with her.