Nameless Night (9 page)

The first ring of the phone startled her, reminding her how seldom it rang lately.

She picked it up. “Kane,” she said into the mouthpiece.

“You free?” The voice pulled her feet from the coffee table and sat her up straight. Although they dealt with each other on a daily basis, both face-to-face and over the phone, District Attorney Bruce Gill rarely called her at home. Rarely . . . like in somebody must have died . . . like in she was fired or something.

“I’m here,” she answered.

“I need you over at the North Precinct ASAP.”

There it was. No request about it. Get your ass over there.

“What’s up?” she asked.

He told her everything he knew. Right away, she could tell he was peeved. The more annoyed he got, the higher the pitch of his voice. This time on a Sunday night in the spring, Bruce and Katrina Gill were invariably headed out and the Honorable Bruce Gill didn’t like business interfering with his social life. She held the phone away from her ear. He was squeaking about a meeting they’d had last week . . . like it was something she could forget. The day Gill made the front page by refusing to round up a bunch of Middle Eastern types just because the FBI wanted them rounded up. You had to give the guy credit; he recognized the knuckles of opportunity when they knocked. His one-liner about how he wasn’t arresting anybody “just because his middle name is bin” had gotten him above the fold from coast to coast, and made him the darling of every wild-eyed liberal in the country, not to mention conveniently providing a pedestal whence he’d orated that the residents of his city should not and would not have their rights abridged in any way by any federal agency whatsoever. She gazed out the window while Gill used the occasion to warm up his speech for next year’s gubernatorial campaign. Shards of sunset lit the tops of the clouds as they slid sideways across the sky; pulled long and thin by a following wind, they moved due north, resolute and arrowlike on their express flight to Canada. In the street below, yellow pulsing lights bounced frantically around the buildings. A crowd had gathered on the corner by the wine merchant. She pressed her face against the glass, but from nineteen stories up, she couldn’t make out what was going on. She hated the feeling of being left out. Hated it more than anything.

“I’m on it,” she said finally, cutting her boss off midplatitude.

“All right, then, take care of it,” he huffed, and hung up. That he offered no instructions spoke to his faith in her professional ability. That he offered no apologies . . . well . . . whatever that spoke to was something she didn’t want to think about. She pushed herself to her feet, stretched, groaned long and loud, and then padded off toward the bedroom.

NIGHT ROLLED SILENTLY over the horizon, hunching shoulders and pulling chins down into collars in the minutes before the overhead lights hissed to life, one by one flickering for a moment before drooling their X-ray light onto the pavement below. A cold wind rode shotgun to the darkness, swirling the street debris into a trash tornado, flapping stiff awnings like flags, and ruffling the torn posters tacked to the telephone poles, where a million staples, old and new, bristled in the low orange light like iron quills. Dinner was long over. Paul was on his third cup of cocoa, and the waiters were sweeping the floor. He checked his wrist as if he were wearing a watch, wondered where that habit came from, and then took another sip from the white mug curled in his elbow. An hour ago, his pursuers had entered the restaurant for the second time, annoying the staff, walking among the tables and checking faces. Both times he’d calmly looked up from his plate and met their gaze. Both times they’d continued their search elsewhere. Second time around he’d mused as to how an inability to recognize oneself seemed to pretty much preclude the possibility of other people recognizing you also.

Jalisco was the only place on Landon Street he’d ever seen. Ms. Willis used to bring them all up here on Saturday afternoons for lunch. The staff would set up a long table back along the kitchen wall where they could all eat together without bothering other diners, the more delicate among whom sometimes objected to the bohemian table manners of certain housemates. Without willing it so, he’d found himself ensconced at a familiar table near the back of the restaurant watching passersby on the sidewalk. Wasn’t so much he felt at home as it was he had no idea where else to go. He heaved a sigh, sat back in the chair, and looked around. The restaurant was nearly empty. He swiveled his head and checked the place out. Like everything else in his life, Paul remembered it in general terms but had never zoomed to the specifics. For instance, he’d never noticed the walls before, never noticed the once-bright murals, festive and tropical but covered with an inch of grime now . . . the señoritas, the serapes, the bullfights, and the bougainvillea . . . and the beach scenes and the palm trees wavering in an imaginary breeze.

He closed his eyes and the recurring scene was waiting . . . right there on the inside of his eyelids . . . the beach, the green water, the two figures, and something gleaming white cutting back and forth across an azure sky. He could smell it now . . . the salt air . . . the oceanic odor of renewal and decay. He lowered his inner eyes, looked along the golden beach, past the distant figure where his vision had always stopped before, and then . . . in the distance, nearly obscured by the haze, he could see a line . . . a needle wavering in the rising heat rays . . . but a line nonetheless. He strained for perspective. Something rode on top of the line like a head on a pin. He narrowed his inner eyes. A tower. The wavering apparition was a tower of some sort. Like the kind of thing you saw at an . . .

“We’re closing up.” The waiter stood by his side. His face said he was sad but the rest of him said he wasn’t. Paul dug in his pants pocket and came out with a twenty. The waiter snapped up the cash and the check and hurried over to the register. In less than a minute he was back, carrying the change on a small wooden tray. Behind them the lights in the kitchen went out. Out on the sidewalk, another one of the waiters was readying the steel security gate. Paul left the change on the table and got to his feet. His legs were stiff from sitting as he shuffled out onto the sidewalk. The steel security gate accordioned its way across the front of the space. He watched as the waiter locked it in place, pulled down the overhead windows, and locked the door.

The swirling wind sent icy fingers down his collar. He shuddered, hugged himself hard, and then rubbed his hands up and down his bare arms in a vain attempt to create a little warmth. Landon Street was nearly empty. Across the road, above the arcade, the lights of a tattoo parlor threw bright squares onto the sidewalk below, illuminating the half-dozen people waiting at the bus stop. slave to the needle, the sign in the window said. Something in the air spoke of rain.

Paul started left, then changed his mind and went the other way, up toward the far end of the street, where, behind a temporary chainlink fence, the construction crews were building yet another set of condos. He stuffed his hands in his pants pockets as he crossed Harrison Street and walked along the front of the Presbyterian church occupying the corner of the block. He could hear singing coming from inside. He kept walking.

12

He made her skin crawl. She wasn’t sure why, but something in his manner raised goose bumps all over her body. She rubbed her hands together, took a deep breath, and made a point of modulating her tone of voice. “Mr. . . .” she began.

“Van Dusen,” he filled in.

She suppressed her gag reflex. “Mr. Van Dusen . . . my boss, Mr. Bruce Gill, the district attorney of Queen Anne County . . . Mr. Gill has made his position on matters of this nature quite clear.”

She felt herself slipping into her courtroom oratory mode and tried again to relax, but her revulsion for the little man kept her throat tight and her spine stiff as steel. “This county . . .” she began again, “insists that any law enforcement actions taken within the confines of the county be . . .” She held up her index finger. “One . . . coordinated ahead of time with the local PD.” The little man opened his mouth to protest, but she silenced him with a second finger. “And two . . . must be accompanied by all the paperwork necessary for the actions required.”

“This is a matter of national security.” He practically whispered it. Every hair on her body stood on end.

She shuddered. “How would that be?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” he said with that smarmy reptilian smile that made her want to punch him in the mouth. She pulled out her notebook and flipped to the back. “Wesley Allen Howard,” she read. When she looked up, his face had taken on some color.

“I’d be very careful with that if I were you,” he hissed.

“And why is that, Mr. Van Dusen?”

He rolled his eyes to the ceiling in disgust. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

Kirsten Kane snapped her notebook shut and got to her feet. “According to Ms. Willis, all she did to become a threat to the American way of life was to run a people search on that name and the next thing she knew you and your little band of thugs appeared on her doorstep.” She held up a restraining hand. “I know . . . you’re not at liberty.”

He got to his feet, shaking his head as if disappointed at a child.

“We’ve wasted far too much time on this silliness,” he announced.

“If you would be so kind as to return the prisoners to our custody, we’ll make other arrangements.”

She couldn’t help herself. A short dry laugh escaped her throat. Apparently, the little man’s arrogance knew no bounds. “You really don’t get it, do you?” she snapped. Before he could answer, she went on, “Since this seems to be so difficult for you to process, let me make this county’s position clear. Ms. Willis and Mr. Suzuki are tax-paying citizens of this county, well-known people in our community, and as such are going absolutely nowhere with you unless and until you provide us with a federal warrant for their arrest, at which point, our office will review the charges and in the event we find the accusations warranted we will instruct the appropriate local law enforcement agency to make the arrest. Until such time . . .”

—she paused for effect—“I think you and your merry band should consider yourselves fortunate not to be cooling your collective heels in a cell . . .”

He was sneering at her again, making a little chortling sound in his throat. She had to take a step back to keep from belting him one. She continued, “In a cell, charged with kidnapping and assault and a raft of other charges I haven’t had the time to think of yet.” She pointed at the door. “Now collect your little robots out there and get out.”

He straightened his shoulders inside the Italian suit. “You haven’t heard the last of this,” he promised. He shook a finger at her. She wanted to break it off. “This will come back to haunt you,” he said.

“I’ll sleep with a night-light,” she assured him. He stopped at the door and turned back her way. “I had two men injured in the line of duty today.”

“One’s been treated and released.” She swept a hand through the air. “Surely you’re not holding Ms. Willis and Mr. Suzuki responsible for the neighbor’s dog.”

“I had a man shot today. He’s in critical—” “His condition’s been upgraded to stable,” she snapped.

“We have a suspect in the shooting.”

“That’s not the story we’re getting from the hospital,” she said.

“Your agent claims the gun went off while he was struggling with one of Ms. Willis’s residents. He told officers the gun fired on impact with the ground.” She was talking to his back now. Little SOB walked away while she was still talking. She gnashed her teeth in frustration. The door hissed closed. She took a deep breath and looked over at the black glass panel along the west wall of the interview room. She made a “come here” gesture. A moment later Sergeant Ramirez pulled open the door and stepped inside.

“Guy’s thick as a brick,” he said.

She held up a hand and turned her head aside, as if to say she was unable to express her feelings about the man. “Can we find a unit to give Ms. Willis and Mr. Suzuki a ride back to Arbor Street?”

Sergeant Ramirez said it wouldn’t be a problem.

“Have them check the street. Napoléon there isn’t going quietly on this thing. I’d be willing to bet he’s got a couple of his minions lurking around in the shrubbery somewhere.”

“And if he does?”

“Send them on their way. If they give the officers a hard time, if they come back after you’ve braced them off the first time, run them in.”

Ramirez smiled for the first time. “It would be my pleasure,” he said.

“Have the neighborhood unit check in on the facility first thing in the morning. I don’t want those people bothered again.”

“Those idiots have got one of the residents on the run,” he said.

“What about him? We can’t just leave him out there.”

She checked her watch. “According to Ms. Willis, the guy’s severely disabled. We ought to be able to find somebody like that. He’s probably scared to death.”

“Not to mention freezing his ass off,” Ramirez said. “I got a description. According to Ms. Willis, he’s wearing nothing but a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. It’s getting real raw out there.”

“Check the neighborhood.”

The sergeant nodded. “We’ll keep an eye out for him.”

PAUL WATCHED IT all go down. They’d ditched the trench coats in favor of blue windbreakers and had downsized the Town Car to a more innocuous Subaru Outback, but right away Paul recognized the one who got out and peed on the maple tree. The guy was too big to forget. He and his partner were sitting half a block south of Harmony House with the engine running when the city police cruiser came by for the first time. Paul watched the silhouettes slouch in the seats as the black-and-white slid by, watched as the cruiser continued up Arbor Street and turned right onto Slayter Avenue.

From his outdoor vantage point, Paul heard the cruiser’s engine roar to life, and then a moment later, heard the sound of squealing tires and then the roaring of the engine once again. As the sound faded, he turned his attention back to the parked car. They hadn’t heard a thing and hadn’t moved a muscle. He smiled. A minute and a half later the cop car slid around the south end of Arbor Street and screamed their way, engine aroar, light bar ablaze, before sliding to a halt just behind the parked Subaru, allowing the cop in the passenger seat to step out and approach the car with minimal exposure.