Thirst No. 3 (12 page)

“Yes. With these glasses on.”

“What is that you’re giving her?” Mr. Garuda asks.

“Once again, please brace yourself. This file was taken off a notorious hit man known to the FBI as Marko. He has a reputation as a killer for the Mob. But in this case, for reasons unknown to us, he’s been assigned to kill you, Shanti.”

Mr. Garuda gasps in fear, but Shanti remains remarkably calm.

“What did I do to him that he would want to kill me?” she asks.

“You misunderstand. He’s been hired by a third party to kill you. He’s a professional. He murders people for a living. He has no personal interest in you.”

Shanti holds up the picture. “This must have been taken recently.”

“How recently, do you think?” I ask.

“The dress I’m wearing in this photo—I only bought it last month.”

“Are you saying this Marko is going to come to our house?” Mr. Garuda demands.

I raise a hand. “There’s no danger of that. Marko has already been taken out of action. He won’t be harming anyone else. But we still have a problem. We don’t know who hired him to kill you.” I pause. “Do you have any idea why someone would want you dead, Shanti?”

She slowly shakes her head. “No. I mean, there’s Juna. He’s the one who . . .” She has trouble finishing the sentence.

“He’s the man you were engaged to?” I say carefully.

She nods. “But that was two years ago, in India. Juna’s a poor shopkeeper who makes his money rolling bibis all day.”

“Cigarettes?”

“Yes. How did you know that?”

“I’ve traveled in India. So you feel Juna is an unlikely suspect?”

“Yes.”

I turn to her uncle. “Mr. Garuda, do you have any enemies?”

“None that I know of.” He stops to wipe at his eyes. “I’m sorry, this is very disturbing. Shanti has been through so much, and to think there is someone out there who wants to hurt her again . . .”

Shanti strokes the man’s arm. “Don’t worry, Baba. The FBI is here to protect us. Nothing bad is going to happen.”

The girl’s calm courage impresses me.

“What Shanti says is true,” I say. “I’m going to assign a team of agents to this house so that Shanti will be guarded 24/7. Should a second contract be taken out on her life, no harm will come to her. Any professional hit man who approaches this house will quickly see how well she’s guarded and immediately leave town.”

“Why do you think there will be a second contract?” Mr. Garuda asks.

“Because they arrested the man who was supposed to kill me,” Shanti explains to him before turning to me. “Is that true, Jessica? Whoever wants me dead will just hire someone else?”

“Yes. Assuming they’re anxious to have you killed. And that appears likely given the fact they hired Marko at the start. Until he was caught, he was considered one of the deadliest hit men in the country.”

“I must be more important than I realized,” Shanti says.

“To someone,” I say. “We come back to our original question. Is there anyone you can think of that would want you dead?”

“There’s no one.” She gestures to her face. “Because of my injury, I seldom go out. Never mind enemies, I hardly have any friends.”

“Do you work, Shanti?”

She hesitates. “No.”

“You don’t have a part-time job that you might do from home?”

She glances toward her uncle. “There’s a small job I have, but I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

“Why not?”

Mr. Garuda interrupts. “The company that employs her has a strict privacy policy. I’m sure you can understand.”

“On the contrary, I can’t think of a single American company that warns its employees not to talk about the firm they work for.” I pause. “We’re talking about IIC, aren’t we?”

Shanti and her uncle look surprised. “How do you know about them?” she asks.

“Let’s just say the FBI is very interested in them. In fact, we suspect IIC might be behind the contract on your life.”

“That’s impossible,” Mr. Garuda says. “They’re an investment firm. They have done nothing but help Shanti. I can’t believe they’d want to kill her. It makes no sense.”

“It makes no sense to me, either. But then, I don’t know what your niece does for IIC.” I pause. “How do they help you, Shanti?”

She hesitates. “They send me a check for one hundred dollars every month.”

“Why? Because you’re handicapped?”

“It has nothing to do with my face.” She stops and puts a hand to her wound. “At least, I don’t think it has anything to do with what Juna did to me.”

“Explain.”

She lowers her head. “It’s silly.”

“Tell me anyway.”

She raises her head, yet this time her eyes don’t go to me, but to one of the paintings of Krishna on the walls. She stares at it a long time before she answers.

“When Juna threw the acid in my face, the pain was unlike anything I had ever imagined. I felt as if someone was holding a blowtorch to my head. The burning wouldn’t stop, even when my friends washed away the acid. It just kept burning and burning. They took me to the doctor and he bandaged me and gave me pills for the pain, but still the burning stayed. I felt I would go mad. I couldn’t see then, nothing, and the doctor told me the blindness would be permanent. I didn’t know what to do. My mother and father—they felt sorry for me. Yet they also felt I had disgraced our family by refusing to marry Juna. My own father had the nerve to say that what Juna had done to me was my karma.”

“Damn him to the deepest hell,” Mr. Garuda whispers.

“Please, Baba, don’t curse. It doesn’t help.”

“He’s my brother, and I’ll curse him till the day I die.”

“He’s still my father. I have to respect him. I owe him that.”

“You owe him nothing. In this life or the next.”

It appears to be an old argument between them. Shanti shakes her head. “My whole life was pain and darkness. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t eat. I could barely drink. I thought I might die, and a part of me prayed for death. But then . . . this will be hard for you to understand.”

“Not at all. Then you started to pray to Krishna.”

She stared at me. “How did you know?”

“I pray to him as well.”

“How? I mean, why?”

“I’m not from around here, but that’s a long story. Please continue.”

“It’s hard to explain. In India we have what we call mantras. The mantra of a deity is supposed to be identical to the deity. Just saying Krishna’s name is supposed to bring his blessing. But we have a sacred book in India called the Bhagavatam that contains secret mantras that Krishna taught those close to him. One has always been very dear to me. I would repeat it for hours even before Juna attacked me.” She pauses. “This must all sound like eastern mysticism to you.”

“Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya.”

“That’s my mantra! How did you know?”

“I’ve studied the book you refer to.”

“But it has other mantras in it. How did you know I use that one?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know, maybe Krishna told me.”

Shanti continues to stare at me. “You are not like a normal FBI agent.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. Go on.”

“What happened next was a miracle. The vision in my left eye returned, and I was able to move around without help. And the pain began to go away. It didn’t stop completely, but
then, I didn’t pray for everything to heal.” She smiles. “You must think me stupid.”

“Not at all. You found that when you were suffering, it was easy to think of Krishna. You were afraid that if all your suffering was taken away, you would no longer think of him as often.”

Shanti is astounded. “How can you know these things?”

“Let’s just say I have suffered as well.”

“And you worship Krishna?”

“‘Worship’ is such a big word. I think of him, that’s enough for me.”

Shanti nods. “I’m happy the FBI sent you instead of another agent. Maybe Krishna had something to do with your coming. When I was healing, and the IIC man came to my door, I thought perhaps Krishna had sent him.”

“Why?”

“Because he told me I could earn a hundred dollars a month doing next to nothing. If you’ve been to India, you must know how much money that is there. Suddenly I had enough money to take care of myself, although my father tried to claim it for himself.”

“The bastard,” Mr. Garuda muttered.

“Baba!”

“He’s a thieving bastard!”

“I’m afraid I must agree with your uncle on this point,” I say to Shanti. “But you keep dancing around my question. What do you do for IIC?”

“I close my eyes and answer questions.”

“What kind of questions?”

“I don’t know. They don’t really make sense. Usually the man on the phone will spell out a list of letters and then ask for a yes or no. But I don’t answer by speaking aloud. I just push one for yes and two for no.”

“If you don’t know what the question is about, how can you answer at all?”

“I asked that when they hired me. They told me not to worry about what was being asked. They said I should just say what came to me in the moment.”

“How often do you answer their questions?”

“Once a week.”

“Always on the phone?”

“Yes. They gave me a special phone with headphones so I can listen to the questions without having to hold the phone to my ear. They said that way my arm wouldn’t get tired.” She pauses. “It’s real easy to do. Most of the time I feel like I’m doing nothing. The only hard part is when it goes on for a long time. Then I get restless. But that doesn’t happen too often.”

“Let me get this straight. Once a week they call and you put on your headphones and listen to a series of questions that make no sense. And you answer yes or no by pushing either one or two on your phone?”

“Yes.”

“Could these strings of letters be stock symbols?”

“I thought of that. I’ve never recognized any of the groups of letters. But that doesn’t mean anything. I don’t know much about the stock market.”

“Shanti, have you ever heard them talk about something called the Array?”

“No. What’s that?”

“We’re not sure yet, but it’s somehow connected to IIC.”

“They always send the check on time,” Mr. Garuda says. “They’re never late. To be frank, the money has been a blessing. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to take Shanti to physical therapy.”

“Whoever comes on the phone is always friendly,” Shanti says. “It’s hard to believe they would want to hurt me. I mean, I could see why they might want to fire me. I don’t know if I get many of their questions right. But why would they want to kill me?”

“I have no idea,” I say honestly.

We have reached a standstill. I don’t know what else to ask, because I have no idea what IIC’s up to, other than accumulating tons of money and targeting people for assassination. It appears unlikely Shanti has anything to do with their Array or their success in the market. Likewise, it seems ridiculous to think Shanti poses a threat to them.

Yet they want her dead.

Plus they see me as a threat, or at least as a “person of interest.” It’s possible—likely in fact—they sent the superhuman
assassin to take me out. However, if they have access to killers like that, why do they hire men like Marko to do some of their dirty work? It’s difficult to see a pattern in their behavior. They’re clearly rich, powerful, but they seem to be kind of crazy.

I stand and check my watch—eight forty-five a.m. I have already made up my mind. I’m going to California, to Malibu, to have a talk with the principals at IIC face to face. It’s a weakness of mine, this impatience, to suddenly barge in where angels fear to tread. But I can’t help myself.

“I told you I’m going to assign agents to guard this house,” I say. “If you go out, Shanti, they’ll follow you at a discreet distance. They’ll work in shifts, and I’ll make sure they introduce themselves to you when they first arrive so you know who they are. But after that you’re to ignore them. Don’t feel you have to feed them or to let them use your restroom. These people are professionals. It’s their job to take care of you. They’ll be armed, but don’t let that intimidate you. They’re all highly trained. Like I said before, if a hit man checks out this block, he’ll see how well guarded you are, and he won’t be able to get out of town fast enough. You will be in absolutely no danger.”

Shanti also stands. “Will you find out why someone wants to hurt me?”

An overwhelming need to protect her sweeps over me. I’m not sure why. I squeeze her shoulder as I speak next. “I’m going to do nothing else but work on this case. I promise you, I won’t rest until it’s solved.”

Shanti hugs me. “Thanks, Jessica, and go with Krishna’s love. I feel he’s the one who brought you into my life.”

I remember how Krishna spared my life five thousand years ago.

“You might be right,” I say.

It’s noon before my flight lands at LAX. I rent a car—a Mercedes SL—and drive toward the Pacific Coast Highway and head north into Malibu. The day is bright and warm. The sea breeze feels invigorating. Along the way, I dial Lisa Fetch, the woman who visited me at my house and first told me about IIC.

I actually called her a couple of days ago, just to make sure she was all right. We ended up talking for hours. She’s a fascinating woman—she might even be classified as a genius. She’s at her best talking about mathematics. Since the subject has never been one of my strong points, I’m intrigued by people who have an instinctive grasp of its subtleties.

For example, Einstein’s theory of relativity cannot be understood without an insight into the mathematics behind it, and Lisa is the first person I’ve ever met who was able to explain
the necessary math formulas to me in a few short minutes, and in such a way that I could understand them. Her vision of how numbers and time and space all fit together opened a fresh door in my mind, and here I thought there was nothing else for me to learn. Lisa is as much an artist with her equations as Matt is with his music.

Unfortunately, today, the instant she answers I know she’s in trouble.

“Alisa,” she says, sounding tense. “I was just going to call you.”

“What’s wrong?”

“It could be nothing. I’ve been unable to reach Jeff today. You remember him, he came to your house with me.”