Blood Of Angels (11 page)

Nina didn't believe that either. By now she was following the case avidly. She scoured the papers and magazines for more information, kept her eyes peeled for reports on the television. Whenever she heard someone talking about it, at school or on the street, she slowed, tried to hear what they were saying. She became a sponge, absorbing everything, until it became a part of her.

A month later came the next episode in what was rapidly becoming a soap opera. The woman had reversed her claim. She was completely innocent again, and had never been anywhere near any of these men. Her attorney had also tried to rape her, she said. And the judge. Everybody was trying to fuck her over both figuratively and literally. Every man, and every woman too.

Not me, Nina thought, as she watched. Not me.

'But then…' Nina tailed off, and said nothing for a moment.

I kept silent, as I had done throughout. When Nina spoke again her voice was thick. 'Then there was this five-second piece of film, showing her coming out of court and being helped into a car. It was raining, and her hair was plastered down all over her head. She'd lost pounds again, but from the wrong places. It was like she'd lost weight from her mind. She looked across the top of the patrol car before she ducked her head, glared straight across into the television camera. And you could see it in her eyes.'

'See what?'

'She did it. I knew right then that she had killed them after all. You looked in her eyes and knew she was guilty, that she had been there and fired the gun. But I knew she was not guilty, too. I knew she had done these things, but also not done them. And I wondered how that could be. And how there could come a time when there was no winking left in her head.'

I thought about that for a moment. 'What happened to her?'

'She went down for all five. Killed herself eight months later. Got hold of a spoon, broke off the end, and pushed the shaft into her throat after lights out. They said it probably took about three hours for her to die.'

Nina was quiet for a full five minutes. Then I realized the rhythm of her breathing had changed, and that she was asleep.

===OO=OOO=OO===

I watched her a while, then opened up my laptop and plugged it into the phone. I hadn't had a chance to check email during the day, to see if my mystery correspondent still had something to say.

The hotel's connection was slow. While I waited, I found myself thinking about my own father. These messages from the ether reminded me of the last communication I had from him, a single-sentence note left inside a chair in their house in Montana. When you die, the loose ends are what prove you have been alive. The cans of food no one else likes. The greetings card not sent, its Cellophane now dusty and yellowed, the price sticker faded and historically cheap. My parents had left plenty such loose ends. Through them I had discovered my brother Paul and I had been unofficially adopted as babies after a confrontation with my natural father, a man who had harmed my mother. My parents abandoned Paul on the streets of San Francisco a couple of years later, believing the two of us were better kept apart, and not knowing how else to achieve it. The organization my natural father had belonged to was still in operation thirty years later, and my dad — and bear in mind Don Hopkins was just a realtor — tracked them down to a luxury development in the mountains above Yellowstone. They killed him and my mother. The group was small and very well hidden, but it had money and it had power. I knew this group now as the Straw Men. The detective called John Zandt had told me he believed the Straw Men had been in America for three thousand years or more, growing rich on the profits of prehistoric copper mining in the Great Lakes area. He claimed that a loose confederation of men and women had settled there, arriving from different parts of the globe and many different eras, united in a hatred of the world's increasing civilization: and further claimed they had subsequently been responsible for everything from the disappearance of early settlers at Roanoke to old Indian legends of violent tribes of bearded men, as they tried to resist later settlement of a land they believed to be theirs. I wasn't sure how sane Zandt still was, however. He had doubts about my character too. I had failed to take two opportunities to kill the man who had murdered his daughter. My brother, Paul.

But I suppose one's own life always seems more complicated than other people's.

Finally the machine pinged. I had a message. I opened it. It said:

Ward �

It's Carl Unger. Bobby's dead? What the FUCK?

I've come across something strange and it's ringing a bell with a matter Bobby called me about a year back. He mentioned your name in connection with it. It's important.

Call me
now.
202 555 9733.

C

I read the message twice, sat back to think. I didn't remember the name, but that didn't prove anything. It had been a few years since I worked for the CIA and it's not like they send newsletters saying who got married and how the softball team's holding up. I'm also not great with names. To me they always seem tangential to the person, like a favourite jacket they just happen to wear a lot. The email implied I had known this guy. But it could be I'd known him at one remove: the text suggested he'd known Bobby better, and the third sentence was particularly convincing in this regard. Bobby Nygard had been a tough bastard. I too found it hard to believe he was dead, and I'd been there the night it happened.

I checked Bobby's email address book. He had no listing for anyone called Unger. Proved nothing — I wasn't in there either. Bobby was a surveillance professional, specializing in computers and the internet. Who knew what weird ways he had of obfuscating his life? I could find no emails from Unger prior to the recent attempts — either from this address, or from someone of the same name from a different one. A more official-sounding .gov domain, for example. That didn't prove much either. Bobby evidently archived and purged his mail on a regular basis. The earliest here was dated less than a month before the point where our lives had re-entangled: less than a week later, he'd been dead.

I knew Bobby had called some people in those last few days, trying to chase down leads he and I had uncovered. It was certainly possible that Unger was one of these contacts. Was I ready to take that risk? And for what? If you kept re-reading the email, and had an optimistic heart, you could maybe believe this Unger guy might have information that would be of use to me. You could believe otherwise, too. 'Optimist' is not something I have printed on my business card.

'Tell me, Bobby,' I said. 'Is this guy for real?' There was no reply. I'd tried asking him questions before, and he'd never once come back to me. Contrary fucker. He'd been full of advice while he was alive.

I opened the email again and transcribed the phone number into my cell phone. I wasn't going to call Unger. Not yet. First I would ask Nina what she thought. If our lives were connected, which I hoped they were, then she had a say.

===OO=OOO=OO===

I woke to the sound of thumping. Someone was banging on the room door, hard. For a bad, fuzzy moment, something made me think it was Paul, that he'd somehow tracked us down in Virginia. Then I realized he wouldn't knock, however vigorously.

I sat up, back tweaking from the chair. The room was dark but for a parking lot glow through the curtains. I looked across at the bed but Nina wasn't there. Clock said it was just after 11 p.m. Felt a lot later. Like the day after next.

I groggily got to my feet and saw that the door to the bathroom was shut. Slash of light underneath it. I went and stood outside.

'Nina?'

'I'll just be a minute. Who's at the door?'

'Room service with attitude.'

'You ordered this late?'

'No,' I said. 'Joke. Never mind.'

Bang bang bang on the door again. I lurched over, squinted through the security thing. Remembered too late all the movies I'd seen where somebody gets shot in the eye that way. Luckily I recognized the face on the other side, fish-eyed though it was.

'Monroe,' I said, trying to sharpen up. 'And he doesn't look like he's going to go away.'

'Christ. Let him in.'

I yanked the door open, caught the agent about to hammer once more.

'We heard,' I said.

He pushed straight past. 'What are you doing here?' he muttered, though he didn't look very surprised.

'I come free with the deluxe suites,' I said. 'Look under your bed, there's one of me in your room too.'

'Fuck with this investigation and I'll have you arrested.'

'Duly-noted.'

Nina came out of the bathroom. I'd assumed she was showering or something, but she was still dressed. She looked a lot more together than I felt. She always does.

'What's up?' she said. 'We get a hit in one of the bars?'

Monroe grabbed Nina's coat off the bed and handed it to her.

'It's a little bigger than that. Somebody else just turned up dead.'

It was only a little after eight and the party was
happening.
It was
going on.
It was tight and happy and just swinging into the end of the beginning, kind of the best part. There were oldsters due home but on past form the Luchses were mellow hosts. They'd stroll out back, stand around being hearty for fifteen minutes and then retreat to the master suite with the curtains drawn. So long as nothing caught fire, they were cool. Meanwhile the pool was full of hooting boys and laughing girls, and people were dancing to some guy who was mixing songs off his iPod and out through a speaker system over by the keg. That could be a real pain in the ass, some tune-junky levering his taste in people's ears, but this guy had a cool Nu Indie/Alt. Country vibe going on and Brad wished him nothing but the best.

Brad was in a lounger under the big old tree in the centre of the main lawn, and he was feeling fine all round. There had been a sticky moment when the chick from a few nights before had seen Brad and Karen together and looked like she might want to make something of it, but she'd evidently got hold of some powder in the meantime and was already way too cheerful to care. Karen was currently standing by the pool chatting to some friends Brad didn't know. She had talked to her mom and it had been determined that if she really wanted her nose done they would pay for it, not least so they could influence which surgeon she went to: most of Mrs Luchs' pals were bionic one way or another and she had sound intelligence on the subject — though curiously she'd never gone under the knife herself. When Karen first mentioned their offer Brad felt a brief flicker of regret, as if something had been taken from him. Within two seconds he realized it was responsibility and a significant expense, both of which he could live without. Though, Lee having kicked a big chunk of the drug windfall back to the crew, Brad's finances were actually significantly rosier than usual. He was more or less back to zero again now, naturally, but he was wearing new Zpatuula shorts, Penguin shirt and CK briefs, and there was an extra foot of CDs and console games on the shelf at home. He'd bought himself an iMac for… some purpose or other, it would probably come in handy and the store had been, like, right there. And when Karen turned to give him a little wave, the necklace he'd given her glinted in the early evening sun. He was looking forward to watching it sway later on. A little K, swinging back and forth.

He sat and drank his beer, listening to the music, content for the moment to be alone. He sometimes thought that was the truly cool thing about having a lot of friends.

It meant sometimes you felt okay about being alone.

===OO=OOO=OO===

Cut to an hour or two later and he was sitting around the other side of the pool with a bunch of people and Karen was on his lap. She'd had her hair cut for the party and it was mid-length and glossy. They were just talking in general and listening to some dude who was saying how his uncle was going to set him up with cash to start a dotcom telling uncool kids how to be cool and Brad was thinking that sounded like a pretty cool idea and that he should maybe think of something like that for himself. He tried for a few minutes, stroking Karen's neck, but nothing came. Maybe later. He'd scaled back on the beer now because he'd taken one of the new pills — didn't have a name but they were red and had an 'A' on them, so maybe they were called A. Very laid back but you stayed sharp, or at least when you looked at things they had sharp edges, unless you moved your head too fast in which case they kind of sparkled. It made the fairy lights strung from the trees look fabulous. Lot of people on A tonight. It was proving very popular. Good news for Lee, and good news for Brad. Good news all round.

After another couple of minutes the dotcom dude had talked just a little too long and Brad found his attention wandering. The music guy had either passed out or found a friend and there was something mid-tempo but okay playing. Brad semi-recognized it but couldn't be sure. The Luchses had come and gone already and the party was in that full-on mid-evening mode when it seemed like it would last forever. The best part, for sure, maybe even better than the beginning of the middle. Brad was thinking maybe he'd get up in a while and go find some food or something when he saw someone unexpected the other side of the pool.

It was Lee. Brad hadn't even known he was there. Lee didn't party much. He was actually kind of a serious guy. Case in point, he was on the phone right now. All around him were people laughing and exercising their right to chill the fuck out, and there was Lee looking heavy and frowning like he was dealing in stocks and shares. Buy low! Sell high! Funny guy, really.

As Brad watched, Lee ended the call. He seemed to look off into the distance for a moment. Then he turned his head slowly around, as if looking for someone. Brad wondered who it might be. Lee's head stopped moving, and the A made the halt look robotic. He saw Brad, and nodded.

Brad nodded back, smiled. Lee, his friend.

Lee shook his head to indicate the previous movement had not been a mere greeting, and crooked his finger to make his point.