Cold Snap (33 page)

Ari got what he was fishing for, but it was
inedible. The briefest flicker of comprehension slipped behind the
woman's eyes, followed just as quickly by calculating opportunism.
His guess was a dramatic misfire.

"Like I said, Mr. Ciminon, it's none of your
business." Her leer was actually more attractive than her smile,
perhaps because it reflected her true self. "But you still want to
fuck me, don't you?"

"On the contrary, Ms. Nike. I want to toss
you into the river."

The leer vanished.

"But I believe in this country, such an
action would also result in you being 'fucked'."

The woman slung the cap back onto her head
and strode to the center of the trail. She hesitated. And then, as
if to prove to Ari that she was not intimidated, she went through
an abbreviated warm-up routine. Smoothly planting her hands on the
path, she stretched out her legs. When she stood, she lifted her
arms, one after the other, hooking them gracefully in the air.

Ari's mental vision snapped into focus.

Son of a bitch.

Without looking back, the woman took
off—southwards. In short order she was passing the beginners, her
head down in a pose of defeat, as if confessing she could not
finish the course.

Ari resumed his run. He scarcely noticed the
intermediates as he passed them again. His mind was racing faster
than his legs. He was trying to make a connection. He had
thought:

Uday. She's here because she had found out
about Ben's involvement with Uday's kidnapping.

Now he wasn't so sure.

Elmore Lawson? But then why would she be
following Ben?

Has she made the connection to me? Was she
following Ben to reach me?

But that theory faltered, also.

The woman possessed an Anthony Quinn-like
indecipherability. Quinn had played Mexicans, Greeks,
Italians...and Arabs. Like Quinn, the woman was an Everyman,
squeezing through the interstices of racial identity. She could
even be French.

Ari left the bridge and soon found himself
stumbling across hills and boulders. He scarcely noticed.

A little more than half an hour later he
reached the Reedy Creek parking lot to find the advanced group
congregating around Grainger and congratulating themselves on a
fine run. Catching sight of Ari, the pastor gave him a thumbs up.
Ari found Ben and took him aside. The vet seemed enormously pleased
that Ari had finished the course.

"I knew you had it in you!"

"I have many things in me," Ari nodded
agreeably. "Now listen, my friend, I am so sorry I have drawn you
into my sordid business."

"What? Why are you thinking about that? It
was a hoot."

"You should not hoot. You must lie low and
watch your buttocks."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"I wonder if they got more out of you than
you did out of them," Elmore Lawson said when he had finished
laughing. Ari was sorry to see how much pain laughter caused him,
but he was reluctant to forgo his carefully crafted recital of his
dinner party. In spite of the awful things life and flung in his
own face, Ari had never given up on laughter. And then he wondered
if his wife, trapped in her mute, damaged body, had surrendered all
laughter, and fell silent for a moment.

The story was heavily edited, with no mention
of the three guests in law enforcement:

Mangioni: "Here's my card with all my contact
information: work phone, cell phone, email, fax, and I've even
written my home number on here. I know, I already gave you all
these numbers, but I think you must have lost them."

Karen (accompanied by Fred, who seemed to
think it was his job to keep her out of trouble): "You lousy fuck,"
etc., etc. "You goddamn moron," etc., etc. "Turn your back on me
and I'll give you a kidney punch that'll lay you out for a week,"
etc., etc. "Who the hell is this Turnbridge character and why did
he come here for all this abuse unless he's a masochist and above
all, what the hell are you doing sticking your prominent nose in a
missing person case?"

"We've had this discussion before," said Ari,
self-consciously touching his nose. Many people were commenting on
it, lately. Was it really so large? "It's a matter of tribe."

"Mrs. Wareness is your neighbor, not a member
of any tribe."

"I'm enclosing the definition."

"You're what? Whatever. If you're doing
anything, it's stretching the definition—and I mean way out of
reason. Remember that other little discussion we had, about me
tagging you...?"

Etc., etc.

Nor did he tell Lawson about Pastor Grainger,
who knew that Ari was an Iraqi, though little else. He had
approached a shivering Ari in the garage with an offer to post
pictures of Ethan Wareness on the church bulletin board.

"We're just up the street," he reasoned.
"There's a chance one of my people may have seen him."

Rebecca came with accusations.

"You told me you would get help from the
police, but you've done no such thing! You've obviously found
something out, but you're doing it on your own. What you're doing
might be dangerous, both for Ethan and for you. Have you considered
that?"

Lawson did not seem pleased when it became
apparent to him that Ari was glossing over much of what had
happened, and Ari knew he would not let it go so easily. They would
return to the subject. Soon. He skipped Ben's conversation with him
in the garage, which was totally irrelevant:

"And what do you want?" Ari had demanded, his
teeth chattering. Ben had been the last of those who wanted to hold
a conversation with him in private. Ari had been in the garage for
over an hour, and hypothermia was making inroads.

"Nothing. Just everyone else wanted to talk
with you. I didn't want to be left out."

"Go away, Satan."

Lawson would have found plenty to laugh about
and to mull over had Ari told him any of this. As it was, he had to
make do with Turnbridge, who was staggering by the time he entered
the garage. Ari had done plenty of his own staggering lately (of
the Jack Daniels variety) and did not look down on him. But in his
presentation to Lawson he could not resist hoking him up into a
drunken buffoon. Ari was not quite sure why he did this. Back home,
people with a strong comedic streak were looked at askance.
Sometimes they paid the ultimate price for their flippancy. It was
Ari's theory that the comedians of the Imperial Palace were jealous
of their prerogative and destroyed the competition. In America, Ari
had a new stage with an audience of millions. He could mock and
mimic to his heart's content. Yet there was an odd, indefinable
heaviness of heart here that puzzled Ari and made him wonder if his
shtick was appropriate. Still, no one would shoot him for laughing
out of turn—or, at least, not as readily as they would have done in
Iraq, where a 'killer joke' had real meaning.

Ari told Lawson about his encounter with
Bruce Turner on the baseball field, including the role Ben had
played, without identifying him by name.

"Bristol Turnbridge told me up front he was
sorry he had sent Bruce to warn me off Ethan. From what he heard,
Bruce had botched the job. He considered my invitation to dinner a
heaven-sent opportunity to apologize—and then he warned me off,
again."

Lawson's laughter was triggered not by the
content but by Ari's performance. An objective third party would
have found Ari's mimicking of the businessman anything but
accurate. The mugging, the swaggering, the wobbling eyes of a man
whose horizon is utterly shattered were a caricature of the man who
had begged Ari to stay away from Ethan Warness, Rebecca Wareness,
Diane Wareness, Sayed Technical Solutions, the Central Virginia
Group and anything else that had to do with the missing man.
Underneath the slurring was an undeniable delirium of fear. Ari did
not want to convey this fear to Lawson, which gave him one more
reason to mock Bristol.

"I hope you don't talk like that about me
behind my back," Lawson chuckled when Ari was done. He jerked his
artificial arm at an awkward angle, as though demonstrating a
back-stabbing stage act.

"I wouldn't dream of it," said Ari. "But your
secretary...most definitely.

Lawson nodded, but said, "Isn't that a
shame..."

"What?"

"People here don't mock cripples."

"Would a cripple enjoy being mocked?"

"Probably not. But a cripple might feel a
little more normal if someone made fun of him. Just one of the
guys, after all."

"I stand remonstrated," Ari said solemnly.
"The next opportunity I get, I will mock you mercilessly."

"Uh...thanks..." Lawson rummaged through his
desk drawer. "But you know, someone already beat you to it." He
took out a G.I. Joe doll and planted it on his blotter. The face
had been burned off halfway and an arm and a leg had been removed.
When Lawson let go, the doll fell on its side.

"Ah," said Ari. "Interesting."

"That's not the half of it."

"What does this mean?" Ari leaned forward and
tapped a tiny card attached by a ribbon around the doll's neck.
"'Before'?"

"That's the half. Here's the other half." He
brought out another doll, this one missing all its limbs. For good
measure, the head was a melted mess and the crotch of the uniform
torched. The card on this one read: After.

"We're dealing with some real subtle people
here," Lawson observed. "I always thought I was lucky, not getting
my dick blown off, too. Not that that helped my marriage."

"Where were they delivered?" Ari asked.

"Next to the dumpster, where I'd be sure to
see them when I got out of my Cruiser. Good thing Freddie didn't
find them on my doorstep at home." He sighed. "Poor kid would have
cried his heart out."

"I'm close to tears, myself," said Ari.
Lawson backhanded the 'After' doll at his head. It was a good, hard
throw, but Ari caught it easily. He turned it around in his
hand.

"Who do you think sent it?"

"Right away, I can think of eight
possibilities."

"Eight! I only came up with two. Name
them."

"Perhaps someone from Sayed, who for some
reason wants us to drop the search."

"Thought of that one."

"Sung-Soo Rhee and his Kkangpae Puppets?"

"Thought of that, too. Hate to think of one
amputee giving that to another, but it's possible. Next."

"Someone at work that you have angered."

"Hey!" Lawson shouted. Then, more musingly,
"Hey..."

"One of your neighbors who wants you to
remove yourself from the neighborhood."

"I don't help property values," Lawson
admitted.

"Your wife."

"You're one cruel son of a bitch," protested
Lawson, pushing himself back into his chair and sulking. "My wife's
already done her worst. We have a phrase in insurance: loss of
consortium. It means losing the benefits of a normal family life
due to the actions of a tortfeasor. In my case, it's just bad luck,
but it amounts to the same thing. My wife left me because she
couldn't stand the stench—you may have noticed I stink sometimes. I
guess she couldn't stand to look at me, either, but she was kind
enough not to mention it. Not my boy, though. He told me right up.
He wouldn't live with Frankenstein."

"Very well, then," said Ari. "Have you
considered that the dolls might be from me? As you say, I can be
very cruel."

"That's an interesting notion. Did you send
them?"

"No." Ari tossed the doll next to its
half-maimed twin on the desk. "Of course, you might have damaged
them yourself."

"For what purpose?"

"To scare me off. Make me think you are being
threatened, forcing me to drop the search."

"Another interesting notion. But I would have
found a different way. I have too much respect for G.I. Joe here. I
had one when I was a kid. Still have it, in a trunk somewhere.
Unless my wife ran off with that, too." Lawson struggled out of his
sulk and rested his lone elbow on the desk. "You said eight
possibilities."

"ISAF."

"ISAF?" The vet went still, frowning. "You
got me there, pardner."

"It stands for—"

"I know what it stands for. What would an
Italian know about it? Come to think of it, why would ISAF want
anything to do with an Italian?"

"Or you?"

"Hell...ISAF? They're not even in the
States." When Ari did not respond, Lawson continued: "So? You were
about to say 'it's a long story', right? I'm all ear. Not too busy.
Haven't had one of my operatives call me in all of ten minutes.
They love me, you know. I'm always holding their hands. Not one of
them would consider something like this..." He nodded at the dolls.
"It's as inconceivable as having the armed forces trying to spook
me for no good reason. Right? Right? And while you're being so
talkative, why don't you tell me who the fuck you really are?"

"I'm Ari Ciminon, a poor boy from Syracusa.
Perdonare la mia povertà."

"Yeah, and I know a few words in German. I
was stationed in Kaiserlautern for a while. You can pick up
anything, anywhere, anytime. I'm tempted to call Immigration just
to make sure you aren't really a cockeyed raghead taking flying
lessons. Have you learned how to land, yet, by the way?"

"Please do call," said Ari quietly. "You will
find everything in order."

"I already did." Lawson slammed the desk with
his artificial hand. Ari noted that the wood on that side was
heavily scarred, perhaps from a letter opener.

"And?"

"Like you said, everything in order." He
slammed the desk again. "I know a set-up job when I see one, and
there's one setting up right in front of me."

"I am not slouching."

"Who do you work for? And I mean really. How
is it you can come waltzing in here at 10 in the morning on a
weekday and blow crap into what's left of my face? How do you earn
a living?"