Fidelity (13 page)

26

K
AY SAT
at her desk a few days later, the matrix booted up on her desk computer, drinking a cup of coffee. These were not noteworthy activities; indeed, they were activities that Kay spent probably a rough majority of her waking hours engaged in. There could be no possible reason why the other Agents in the bullpen, most of whom were busily puttering away at their own work, could have any idea what she was considering. All the same, Kay found herself growing unreasonably paranoid, as if Marshall and Wilson and the others could read into the folds of her mind and know what she was secretly planning.

“For Christ's sake,” Kay reminded herself. “
You
are a spy, essentially. You ought to be capable of a little bit of subtlety.”

Besides, she was probably driving herself crazy over nothing. In the early days after Kay had moved in with Luis and Justyna, she had created all sorts of scenarios to explain the death of her parents, fantasies that offered her some comfort. Perhaps it had all been a mix-up, with the Colombian authorities misidentifying the bodies; elaborate dreams at the end of which the door to her room would swing open and the two of them would be standing there, holding hands and waiting to embrace her.

But they hadn't lasted long. Even at ten years old Kay was, if
not a cynic, at least a realist. The deaths of her parents had taken what little naïveté had been left her. She did not believe in Santa Claus or happy endings. And she didn't believe in their reverse, in a devil or in the grand plans of evil men. Her parents had walked down the wrong street in the wrong part of the planet and crossed paths with some bitterly impoverished thug, some kid from the slums who had gotten his hands on a functioning pistol and recognized Paul and Anne as gringos and hoped to steal enough for food or drugs. And something had gone wrong, as things often did, and then there were two more corpses to be put into the ground. There was nothing more to it than that. The world was a grim and a dangerous place; the righteous remained unrewarded; greed and corruption and cruelty too frequently went unpunished. Life had no natural bent towards justice; it needed to be forced into that direction, forced by hard-eyed men and women with badges on their chests. A difficult job, one that no one did perfectly and that many did not even do well. But it was necessary all the same, to have someone standing by to push against the world's savagery. This had been the fundamental underpinning of Kay's thinking for twenty years, the reason she had joined the Bureau, the reason that she pushed herself so hard, day in and day out.

And yet . . . in a minimized window on her browser Kay had opened up Sentinel, the FBI's case management database. A quick search would reveal any information the Bureau had put together on her parents and their untimely deaths, and might clear up any last lingering mystery. Of course, performing that search was, strictly speaking, against Bureau policy. The vast agglomeration of data that the Bureau had painstakingly developed over the course of almost a century was not something that could be lightly perused by anyone. It existed to service active investigations, not so that Agents could use them for personal matters.
There was no legitimate reason that Kay could be using Bureau resources to investigate her parents' deaths. If anyone found out, Kay would get in trouble, and deservedly so.

An extremely unlikely possibility, Kay had to admit. She did not suppose that Jeffries was spending her afternoons looking over every keystroke logged onto each of her Agents' computers. But that wasn't really the point, not as far as Kay was concerned. She had not spent the better part of her life trying to join the FBI only to bend its protocol. A person either stood for something or they didn't, and Kay thought that she did, and that meant that you had to play by the rules that you'd chosen to uphold. Even a minor breach of regulations like the one Kay was considering made her feel guilty and out of sorts.

“Malloy . . . Malloy!”

“What?” Kay looked up abruptly.

“Going for sandwiches. You interested?” Marshall asked.

At the moment Kay found that she was not at all hungry. “No,” she said. “Thanks.”

For some reason the interruption seemed enough to push Kay into action. After Marshall had stepped out to get the order, she quickly tabbed over to Sentinel. She typed “Paul Malloy” in the text box, her heart beating with each keystroke.

The search lasted, or seemed to Kay to last, a very long time, long enough for Kay to replay in her mind all the reasons why this wasn't a good idea—indeed, was quite the opposite. When her father's name popped up with a “0” next to it, Kay wasn't sure whether to be happy or sad. A zero or “0” file was a control file in which information not acted upon for various reasons was stored. At least her breach of FBI protocol hadn't been pointless. The FBI had been in contact with her father for some reason. More than that she couldn't say without having her hands on the file itself, and it was only now that it occurred to Kay that
her father's file—being an inactive case from twenty years ago—would not be in the database. Electronic record keeping only went back to around 1995; everything before that was stored in a huge warehouse near Washington, D.C., referred to within the Bureau as “Pickett Street.” If she wanted to learn anything else, she'd have to find a way into it.

This was the problem with breaking rules with minor sins. This was why corruption needed to be guarded against so vehemently. No one started off planning to turn to evil, or at least Kay thought that very few did. One rubbed away a line, even a small one, at one's own peril. The relatively small breach of protocol that Kay had just committed would require a more substantial transgression if she ever wanted to find out what was in her father's file. “This must be how the RIPs feel,” Kay thought. One act of malfeasance begetting a second, and then a third, and then at some point you looked up and realized you had no idea who you were anymore, that what had once seemed a bedrock moral code was as hollow as a rotted tree.

Kay sighed, closed down Sentinel. She stared at the matrix for a long time without actually seeing it. Then she headed towards the bathroom, stopping in the hallway outside of the SCIF to take out her cell phone.

“Torres?”

“If it isn't Ms. Big Leagues herself. What are you doing calling down to the minors?”

“I'm thinking I might be in Baltimore this weekend,” Kay decided. “Can I buy you lunch?”

27

K
AY AND
Justyna were enjoying an elaborate dinner at a three-star French restaurant in Manhattan, the sort that Kay could not afford or could have afforded only if she had spent the next week fasting. She had made it a point of pride not to take money from her adoptive parents, not for years, not since she had finished college—but if ever there was anything that might tempt her fierce sense of independence, it was cassoulet and a red Bordeaux.

They had spent cocktails discussing Justyna's week. Like many women of her social milieu, she was involved in any number of charitable organizations, although unlike many of her peers Justyna actually cared about these charities beyond an excuse for social activity. When the appetizers arrived they had switched over to Kay's recent history, or what she could tell of it, which wasn't much. Life for Kay lately had been work, and obviously the specifics of Black Bear weren't the sort that could be made public knowledge.

“Yes, yes, you are a big important FBI Agent; we're all overwhelmingly impressed,” Justyna said, although it was obvious that her sarcasm was feigned. “Let's talk about something interesting: How are the boys?”

Kay smiled. “I'm afraid being a big important FBI Agent doesn't leave me lots of time to cruise singles bars.”

“Oh, Kay, you're far too young to have gotten so dull. Surely duty can't take up
all
of your time. There must be someone in this city of nine million who wouldn't mind meeting a beautiful young woman who is legally allowed to carry a concealed firearm.”

Kay laughed. “I'll put out a Craigslist post, see if I get any responses.”

“Seriously, Kay,” Justyna said, laying one gloved hand on her niece's. “Life can't only be about work, however important that work is. You have to find some sort of balance.”

Which sounded nice in theory, Kay had to admit, but which in practice meant less time with the matrix, less time looking over case files, less time doing her job. And meant the increasing likelihood of another death attributable to the unknown subject, or UNSUB, of the Black Bear investigation, more sensitive information filtering its way into the ears of the nation's enemies. For most people, extra hours at work, increasing dedication, meant a few more dollars to the company's bottom line, maybe a nice bonus at the end of the quarter. For Kay it was, quite literally, a matter of life and death. You couldn't turn that on and off like a switch.

“Well . . .” Kay began after an unsure moment, “there might be someone. Maybe.”

Justyna gave an overdramatic clap of her hands. “Is he tall?”

“Yes?”

“Is he handsome?”

“He is.”

“I like him,” Justyna said. “You should marry him.”

“It's nice to see where your priorities are.”

“Handsome and tall you can't change. Everything else . . .” Justyna shrugged her shoulders, which were left uncovered by the small black dress she wore, one that would have been inappropriate for any sixty-year-old woman who was not her aunt. “A woman can work on. When I met Luis he used to wear sweatpants and sleeveless white T-shirts. He used to drop cigar ashes on the carpet and spit onto the street. But after forty years I've almost managed to civilize him.”

“That doesn't sound much like my uncle,” Kay said.

“I might be exaggerating slightly,” Justyna admitted. “Don't try and change the subject. Tell me more about the potential father of my grandchildren.”

Kay laughed. What was Andrew? He was handsome and he was extremely smart, a rising star within his own organization, obvious from the way they had treated him that day in D.C. Obvious just from meeting him, really. He gave off a strong impression of competence; of certainty, even; of a person who was going somewhere. He had taste and he had style, there was something cultured and almost grand about him. No, Kay had to admit, he had gotten to her.

Perhaps that was why Kay changed the conversation swiftly, rather than admit to any hint of softness. “I meant to ask you about something that you said on our last date: about that FBI Agent who came around after my parents were killed.”

Justyna flinched, and immediately Kay regretted not putting the matter more tactfully. She had come, over the years, to be able to discuss the deaths of Paul and Anne Malloy with the detachment of someone whose job was intimately involved with death, and sometimes she forgot that other people did not have her professional discipline. “Can you remember what they asked about?”

Justyna sighed and poured herself another glass of wine. “It
was a rough time, Kay, I don't need to tell you that. Those first few months we were so busy trying to set up a home for you and your brother that we barely had time to grieve. There were always people coming in, offering condolences, not to mention the practical aspects of it. Flying the . . . bodies home, all the logistics of the funeral. Honestly, it's been twenty years since I thought of that FBI Agent. As to the specifics of our conversation . . .” Justyna shrugged. “Not much. Sorry.”

“Do you think it's possible that my father might have . . . contacted the FBI for some reason?”

Justyna narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

“I don't know why. I'm just wondering.”

“Your father wasn't doing anything illegal,” Justyna informed her. “He wasn't involved in money laundering, or racketeering, or smuggling endangered species. I'm sure I have no idea why he would have contacted the FBI, assuming that's what happened.”

“Maybe something to do with his new job?”

Justyna wiped her upper lip with her napkin, then set her hands at her side. “What is this about, Kay? What are you getting at?”

Except that Kay still wasn't sure, didn't have anything firm. For that matter didn't have anything shaky, only the vague smell of malfeasance, an uncomfortable itch that there was more to the matter than seemed clear to her at this point. But then, suspicion is not evidence, and there was no point in worrying Justyna unnecessarily.

“Don't worry about it, Auntie,” Kay said, smiling and trying to change the subject. “Shall we split the crème brûlée, or do you think one dessert alone is insufficient?”

“We can split it,” Justyna said, unsatisfied with Kay's answer, but knowing she wasn't going to get a better one.

28

T
ORRES PICKED
Kay up at Baltimore's Penn Station, drove her east out towards the city line, stopped in front of a strip mall just past Canton that housed a Dollar Store, a Vietnamese nail service, a takeout joint advertising pizza/subs/Chinese food, and a restaurant that Torres informed her confidently served “the best goddamned crabs that ever got steamed to death in service of my stomach.” Hard-shell crabs were a specialty of the Chesapeake Bay region, and the best of them were inevitably found in seemingly unhygienic holes-in-the-wall, the sorts of places a person would drive past swiftly and not think twice about. Torres, needless to say, had an encyclopedic knowledge of the best dives and takeout places in the greater Baltimore area, and in this as well as many other things Kay trusted him implicitly.

They sat at a booth in the back, started with a dozen extra large and some Natty Boh, both of which were brought out swiftly. Half the crabs and all of the beer were spent without touching on anything serious. Mostly sports news. Did the Ravens have a chance this year? Was it possible that the Jets suffered from some sort of curse, and if so, could it be removed? They argued for a time over the virtues of soccer, Kay being an early convert
to the sport by way of Aunt Justyna, who was a mild obsessive, Torres adamantly asserting he would rather be beaten about the face and neck with a claw hammer than forced to sit through any game allowed to end in a tie. It was an old argument, and progressed in the standard fashion.

“How's your wife?” Kay asked.

Torres shrugged. Torres didn't like to talk about Eileen, and when he did he liked to paint her as a shrew. Neither of which did anything to fool Kay, of course. She had seen him slip away from too many stakeouts to call her before she went to sleep; did not have any trouble recognizing the clear signs of affection that her ex-partner tried so hard to hide. “She's fine.”

“How's the office?”

Torres inserted his thumb into the carapace of a bright red crustacean, split it neatly in half, poured some butter on the meat and wolfed it down happily. “We muddle along without you, Kay, though the warmth has gone out of summer.”

“How poetic.”

“Thank you. I've been thinking it up for most of the afternoon.”

“And the job?”

Torres shrugged. “It's the job. We're hot on the trail of the next Williams, based out of the west side, but other than that, essentially identical. Not quite so nasty, maybe, but very nearly. The drug war continues, Kay, us on one side, them on the other. How about your end? How's counterintelligence?”

“Kind of the same,” Kay said, “except that the enemy is better trained and meaner.”

“You enjoying it?”

Kay thought this over for a moment. “I think ‘enjoy' might be a bit too strong. Some days involve staring at a computer screen
until your eyes start to freeze over.” Kay shrugged. “Hard not to miss the day-to-day excitement of gangs. But I'm good at it; that's something. It's necessary.”

“How's Frowny?”

“We don't really call her that, up in New York.”

“I'd hope not. She's not one who minds cracking the whip now and again, our Jeffries.”

“No indeed.”

“She cracked the whip on you at all, Ivy?”

Kay laughed. “We've come to an understanding, Frowny and I.”

Torres laughed also. “So what are we here for? Because that train ride from New York to Baltimore is a long one, and I don't imagine it'll go any easier with a bushel of crabs in your belly.”

“Look, Marc . . .” Kay began, then fell silent.

“Oh, shit,” Torres said, smiling, “this must be serious if we're using first names.”

“I need a favor.”

“I've got two kidneys, Ivy, and you're welcome to one of them, if that's really what you're interested in.”

“It isn't,” Kay said, but then fell silent again. Asking for help had never been her strong suit. Quite the opposite.

Torres came to her assistance. “I don't really need to remind you, do I, Ivy, that you literally saved my life last year?”

Kay blushed. “Don't make so much of it. You'd have done the same as I did if I'd been the one who caught that bullet.”

“It was my leg, Kay, and it was your pistol that saved the rest of me. So tell me what you need and I'll see if I can do it.”

But it took Kay a moment to get started. “Did I ever tell you about what happened to my parents?”

“No,” Torres said, setting his crabmeat down on the newsprint covering the table. “Not in detail.”

Kay did then, flatly and without any excess of emotion. The straight facts as she knew them. Paul and Anne ­Malloy met as residents at Johns Hopkins. Specialized in global health, trying to cure those pesky third-world diseases that seem old-­fashioned, even rather quaint, here in the Western world: tuberculosis and polio, things our grandparents or great-­grandparents used to die of. True believers, the two of them, gallivanting all across the planet, trying to do some small measure of good. Namibia, Cambodia, Colombia. During a seemingly routine visit to the last, they were both killed in a robbery gone wrong, some thug losing his cool or just reveling in sadism. A few words about the godparents who took her in: good people, people who kept her on the straight and narrow. The story recounted as if it had happened to someone else, as if Kay were just repeating something she had heard, rather than trauma that she had experienced.

“I'm sorry,” Torres said afterward.

Kay grunted. “You did some work down in Colombia as part of some joint task force, right?”

“Years back. Maybe you've heard this rumor, Ivy, but they actually have some cocaine in Colombia. Hard to believe, I know.”

“You make any friends while you were down there?”

“Like, how friendly?”

“Friendly enough to get their hands on the file relating to my parents' death.”

“Why?”

“Can we call it curiosity for the moment?”

“For the moment,” Torres agreed, less than happy. “You so sure you want to go picking at scabs?”

“They're my wounds, Torres,” Kay said. “I'll pick at them if I want to.”

Torres nodded. “Fair enough.”

The waiter came back, and they ordered more beer and more crabs, although they still had a fair quantity of both left. Torres started up again after he was gone. “Shit, Ivy. All that buildup, I was at least expecting you were going to ask me for something a little more substantial than a phone call to an old colleague.”

“That was part one,” Kay said cleanly.

Torres cleared his throat loudly. “Then I suppose lunch is on you?”

“I see how deep your well of loyalty runs. Yes, yes, lunch is on me.”

“And what do you need?”

“I ran a search for my father on the Sentinel database.”

Torres wedged one thick finger into his ear canal, wiggled it dramatically. “I gotta get my ears checked,” he said. “Because it almost sounded like you just told me that you used Bureau resources for a personal matter, which last time I checked is a big no-no.”

“It came up as a zero file.”

Torres's good humor slid right off his face. “Shit,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“What else did it say?”

“Unfortunately, I have no idea. He died just before we started switching our paper files over to digital.”

“So then the file is located in—”

“Pickett Street. Exactly.”

Torres scratched at his jowls.

“You got any friends down there?” Kay asked.

Torres thought it over awhile. “Not exactly,” he equivocated. “Friends of friends, maybe. I'll have to think about it. What you're asking, Kay, it could get a fellow in trouble. A fellow . . . or a lady.”

“I know it's a lot to ask,” Kay said. “If you don't feel comfortable doing it, I can understand completely. It's just that—” But before she could say anything else, Torres cut her off with one motion of his thick hand.

“You think I'd forget the turn you did me so quick? If this is what you need, this is what you'll get.” He poured half a Natty Boh through a smile. “But I'm ordering more crabs.”

Kay smiled. “That seems fair,” she said.