The 56th Man (35 page)

Rodriguez threw an irritated glance at Ropp,
then came up toe-to-toe with Ghaith. “My friend, I think you need a
little R&R in the Green Zone.”

Only a few miles from the Baskin-Robbins, Ari
saw the entrance to a park and turned in. There was nobody else
there, which was not surprising. On one side was a sterile-looking
chain link fence that separated the park from Powhite Parkway, on
the other a threadbare patch of woods through which Ari could see
the back of a $1.99 laundry. Half of the clearing was taken up by
the lane and parking lot. There were no amenities, there was no
playground, and the two rotting benches looked unwholesomely
fragile. With nowhere to jog or commune with nature, it was an
ideal dumping ground for dispirited souls.

He did not get out of the xB. He sat and
allowed his tears to wash out quickly and efficiently. When that
was done, he sent a mental fireman to investigate the gutted
remnant of Ari Ciminon, extinguishing glowing embers with morbid
ease, until all that was left was a dark and murky cavern.

But the ache would not leave. Perhaps he
could have dismissed it, as he had done his rage and remorse. Yet
he was familiar with the pain. It was, in fact, his only companion.
And now that he had damned himself with his actions, it might be
the only friend he would ever have.

While driving away from the ice cream parlor,
he had seen customers old and young watching him in horror. At
least one of them held a cell phone to her ear. And the wary young
girl behind the counter would have already called the police. But
the police were the least of his concerns. It was the U.S. Marshal
who would come after him, pinpointing him with the LoJack and
storming his little Scion with vengeful precision. He would not try
to avoid arrest and repatriation--and certain death. But what would
happen to his wife and son? Would their new adoptive land evict
them? Would they be hustled off on the first plane to Baghdad? It
was horrifyingly possible that he had condemned them, too.

And the Riggins family? They would go
unavenged. There seemed no great urgency to solve the crime, in any
event. Their deaths were a statistical nullity compared to the
murder rate in his own country. Now Ari's sense of mission, adopted
out of boredom as much as through any desire for justice, would
result in the death of his own line. This had been the fate of all
too many of his countrymen who had stood up to Saddam. Entire
families wiped out. The Americans insisted such things did not
happen in their land of plenty. Or if they did, it was due to
unsavory foreigners on their soil, or through some bizarre
concatenation of unlikely events resulting from aberrant
behavior.

What jokers.

It was true that Ari felt safer here, that it
was highly unlikely that a car parked next to him would explode or
that someone would approach him in friendly greeting before yanking
the cord on a suicide vest. But he sensed an underlying fear in
this society. Like when he was a kid, and Omar aimed a rubber band
at his face. The dread of being shot was almost as bad as being
shot. Americans went in constant fear of that stretched and poised
rubber band.

Of course, if he had a choice of fears, he
would choose the place where that rubber band was least likely to
be released. America was probably a good place to raise a family. A
good place to survive in. After all, that was why he was here.

Then why did he take out after Sandra that
way? Even before he had attacked her, he had egged her on with
criticisms and false comparisons. Was it because she represented so
much that was smug and intellectually vacuous? She had crossed the
line when she spoke of his wife that way. But was it his fault that
she had gone too far?

Rana. With her he had balanced his fortunes,
discussed options, shared risks. Ari had enough ambition for a
dozen men, so there was no need for his wife to play Lady Macbeth.
But he missed the dance of her eyes whenever he made a veiled
reference to a course of action or a momentous decision. They could
not speak openly, of course. There was the risk that even his house
was bugged. A top-level general and his mistress had been tortured
and executed, and the general's entire family eliminated, when his
pillow-talk strayed to Saddam Hussein's bastard origins. Yet it was
astonishing how much Ari and Rana could convey without words, and
how little was misunderstood.

Had she been by his side now, she would not
have needed eyes which were now gone or a voice that was now
silenced. Her simple, profound presence would have nipped his anger
in the bud. Whenever he had felt wrathful toward one of his sons
(even the best of boys could find a way to draw one's ire), Rana's
gentle shadow nearly always subdued him.

His cell phone rang. Ari leaned sideways and
removed it from his pocket. He opened it. The number was
unfamiliar. The Marshal or the police? Either might call to ask him
to come in voluntarily, saving them the trouble and expense of
arraying the might of the state against him.

"Ciminon," he finally answered.

A strange, croaking whisper came out of the
tiny speaker.

"Hello?" said Ari.

"No...charges..."

"Ms. Sandra?"

"Yes."

"Where are you calling from?"

"The...hospital. Where the fuck...do you
think?"

"I'm glad to see you're still alive." And he
was. He hadn't been sure.

"I called them off." Her constricted voice
was filled with pain.

"The police?"

"Everyone. Told them...never mind."

A lovers'
quarrel
.

"Then pulled my weight. Showed them...my
credentials..."

Sandra pulling her weight. Ari found himself
smiling.

"Listen, Ms. Sandra...I'm sorry--"

"Shut the fuck up. I shouldn't have...I
didn't know..."

"I understand," said Ari.

"Do you? If you were arrested...you'd..."

So this wasn't a kiss-and-make-up call.
Sandra was concerned that he would tell a court-appointed lawyer
some dirt about Jerry and Moria Riggins. The lawyer would blackmail
the prosecution into a plea bargain. Ari had seen enough American
movies to understand the arrangement.

“
Mr. Ciminon…?”

“
Yes?”

“
I…don't see any good reason…why you
should be helping the U.S., after all that happened...”

“
This is the only way that I can save
what little I have left,” said Ari, and left it at that.

"All right. But why--"

“
I have nothing more to say on that
subject.”

“
And I shouldn't be asking, anyway,”
said Sandra quietly. After a pause, she asked, “Do you think...you
can find the killers? I mean, of the Riggins family?"

Ari was surprised by her openness. He nodded,
as though she could see him. Then he said, "I think so."

"Good," said Sandra, then disconnected.

In the Electronics department of the Forest
Hill Wal-Mart Ari tried to invoke the assistance of a clerk, who
stared at him as though he had just jumped out of a fish bowl.

"You want to buy a computer?" the clerk
said.

"Inexpensive but efficient," Ari
responded.

"Well, sir, we don't go into computers in a
big way. I mean, not in the stores. We've got some bundle packages
on our website. HP, Dell, good names like that. But…I guess you
need a computer to go online and buy them. We've only got a few
things here…"

"But?"

"Well, they're cheap enough."

Ari was aware that 'cheap' was a double-edged
sword. "Are you suggesting that I go somewhere else?"

"We've got a Toshiba laptop that's pretty
good. Uh…but…have you tried Circuit City or Comp USA or Best Buy?
They might have something better on their shelf, if you need
something right away. Well, not better. Just more powerful.”

“
That sounds better.”

“
It depends on how you want it
configured. You want XP? Are you going to be doing a lot of
downloads? How much RAM are you going to want? If this is for
business, you'll need a good processor for your bandwidth. I hear
Intel's 2 Quad core is good. It can chop right through the
threads."

Ari felt himself droop as the young man
droned on. So much for his splendid English. He felt as stupefied
here as he had at Lowe's when confronted by the arcana of home
improvement. The clerk's eyes had glazed over as he paraded his
expertise, and so did Ari's. The two of them looked like a
hypnotist and his subject, only both had gone under and there was
no one around to snap them out of their trance.

The clerk stopped talking. The men stood
stupidly for a moment, then shook themselves awake.

"To tell you the truth," said Ari, "I don't
need it for anything extensive. I just want to use it to send an
email and for a little research.

"
An
email," the clerk said, dumbfounded by the singular
indefinite article. "Why not just go to the library,
then?"

"Excuse me?"

"There's public libraries all over the
place."

"They would have a computer that I can
use?"

"Sure. Some of them hardly have books
anymore. Just terminals."

"Excellent. Thank you."

Ari had already noted three libraries, one
within jogging distance, the other two about fifteen minutes away
by car. The Westover Hills branch of the Richmond Public Library
looked so much like a residence that Ari had wondered if he
misunderstood the sign. He suspected it had limited resources, and
in any event it was too close to home. The main city library on
Franklin Street looked sufficient, even grand, but Ari found it
uncomfortably close to Carrington's base of operations. That left
Henrico County's Tuckahoe Library, just off Parham Road, which he
had seen during his drive out to Moria's Notions. Spacious and new,
it held out the promise of giving Ari everything he needed--for
free.

The librarian at the front desk directed him
downstairs, where he found two long rows of computer workstations,
plus numerous terminals tucked away in odd corners. They all seemed
to be occupied.

"I'm afraid you'll have to wait your turn,"
the harried woman at the reference desk told him. “It's first come,
first serve, with a two-hour limit. You have a library card?”

“
I'm afraid not.”

“
I can issue you a temporary
one.”

“
With my name and address?”

For the first time the reference librarian
gave him a good look. Noting his suit and neat appearance, she
seemed to conclude he was not a homeless good-for-nothing. “Do you
live in the Richmond area?”

“
I'm…visiting.”

“
Then I'll issue you a Visitor's Card
when a workstation is free. I'm afraid that's only good for one
hour.”

“
That's perfectly adequate. Thank you
so much.”

Ari put a name on the waiting list, then
wandered through the book stacks. He noted several new titles about
the war in Iraq, including State of Denial, Cobra II, Assassins'
Gate and Hubris. After flipping through some of the books, he
concluded the general theme was summarized by one particular title:
Fiasco. Ari shrugged mentally. All wars were fiascos. He'd lived
through three of them.

He passed a table around which sat three
teenage girls. They could barely suppress their giggles as they
flipped through the pages of the oversized volume in front of them.
Ari drew a book at random from the bookshelf and sat at a nearby
desk.

"Can you believe?" one girl was saying.

"That can't be Mr. Wilson. I mean, this guy's
like totally bald!"

"It's him, Shirley."

"Oh gawd, you mean he's wearing a wig now?
But he's a hunk!"

"Well he's a baldy hunk under that rug."

"How about Colonel Kramer? My sister told me
they had a total dripwad teaching English when she was a
junior..."

Ari glanced down at the book he had selected.
Ancient Mesopotamia. He stood and returned the book to the shelf.
He went back to the reference desk.

"I'm sorry, no terminal is available yet,"
said the harried librarian.

"I wanted to inquire about something else. Do
you have books here put out by the schools? I mean as mementoes,
with pictures of the students and teachers?"

"You mean yearbooks?"

"That sounds right."

"We carry some of the local schools."

"Freeman High School.”

"Oh yes," the librarian smiled. "We have them
going back thirty years. It's just down the road from here. I
graduated from there myself before going off to Mary Baldwin."

"And where would the yearbooks be?"

"Against the back wall behind the reference
section."

"Ah..." Ari turned left and right.

"I can show you." She asked her coworker to
take her place for a moment, then led Ari down an aisle behind her
desk. She wore a plain white sweater and a blue skirt. Her loafers
gave her a flatfooted stride that verged on the gawky. Her
dishwater blonde hair fell straight to her shoulders. She seemed
pleased to take this little recess among the shelves. Perhaps she
had once dreamed of spending her days among books, only to find
herself in a bleak landscape of pixels and geeks. "Here you are,"
she said on reaching the back of the room. "Was there any
particular year you were interested in?"

"Nineteen-ninety-two.”

"That's the year I graduated!" She went
straight to the yearbook in question and pulled it down from the
shelf. "I haven't looked at this in ages."

"Everyone who graduated that year is in
here?" Ari asked.

"Everyone, period. It's divided by classes.
See? The freshmen get these tiny portraits and the seniors have
these larger, formal ones, with the sophomores and juniors in
between. Who are you looking for?"