Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation (88 page)

    
Borges
looked past her shoulder. “Ah, he has a visitor . . . ”

    
“That’s
all right,” said Hildegarde. “I’m just leaving.”

    
“Dr.
Schoeppe,” said Monica, “this is Lieutenant Luis Borges, of the LAPD.”

    
Hildegarde
stepped forward to shake his hand. “It’s a great pleasure, Lieutenant. Stephan
speaks very highly of you. He says you keep the city sane.”

    
Borges
chuckled.

    
“And
this is Hildegarde Schoeppe,” Monica continued. “She’s Stephan’s, er—”

    
“Hildegarde
is my dad’s shrink,” Brigit piped in. “But she’s a Jungian.”

    
“She is,
is she?” said Borges. “In that case, I will escort the doctor to her car. I
have never met a real . . . Jungian.”

    
“I’m not
sure I believe that,” said Hildegarde. “But I’ll accept your escort.” She
turned back to Monica and Brigit. “I’ll see you on Wednesday. Call me if—”

    
Monica
nodded.

    
“I’ll be
right back,” said Borges.

    
“Okay,”
Monica replied with a soft smile. “I’ll leave the door open.”

    
When
they had reached the end of the front walk, Borges spoke. “Would it be a
violation of doctor-patient privacy for me to ask how he is doing? He seems
very much a changed man.”

    
Hildegarde
turned to him and thought for a moment. “I’ll speak to you as his friend. I
think he’d be all right with that. He’s the same man. Older, I think . . . in
the sense that he left years behind over there. He’s shaken, that’s for sure.
It would be glib to sum it up as post-traumatic stress . . . although there is
certainly that. It’s not psychosis. He’s perfectly lucid. He can’t seem to get
out of this ‘place’ he’s in. He calls it ‘seeing outside-in.’ Parts of his
description of it make it sound like autism…but it’s not. And there’s grief—deep
grief. A real connection with this girl. The one who—”

    
“Who
blew herself up,” said Borges.

    
“Or was
blown up. Yes.”

    
“Well,
you know . . . he always suffers when he can’t bring them back.”

    
“Oh, I
know,” she said. “Believe me, I know. This is deeper.”

    
“I have
a theory,” said Borges. “I won’t ask you to endorse or refute it. You know, I’m
sure, that he had a couple of brushes with suicide when he was a boy . . . ”
She gave the slightest nod, but that was all he asked. “I think every time he
pulls one of these people out of the darkness, he pulls himself out. And when
he can’t . . . ”

    
She
nodded. “The city is lucky to have you, Lieutenant. Keep us sane, will you?”

    
“Do my
best,” he said, and opened the door for her. “But remember, this is L.A.”

    
Brigit was at Raszer’s bedside when Monica showed
Borges in. Raszer was prone on his old futon—the same he’d had since the divorce—and
Brigit sat cross-legged on the Persian rug, looking through a photo album. She
glanced up.

    
“Does
this mean I have to leave again?” she asked Monica.

    
“Just
for a few minutes, angel,” said Borges. “If that’s all right.”

    
“I
know,” Brigit said, rising. “Police business.”

    
“C’mon,
Brij,” said Monica. “I’m making ginseng smoothies.”

    
Borges
scanned the room for a place to sit. Raszer, lying on his left side under a
pale green bedsheet, motioned to a high-backed chair in the corner. With
evident pain, he sat up and reached for a cigarette. He wore drawstring pajama
bottoms and was wrapped in bandages from waist to chest. He groaned and lit the
cigarette.

    
“When do
those bandages come off?” Borges asked.

    
“Another
week,” said Raszer, exhaling smoke. “And every time they change them, I go back
there, Luis. I have to watch her . . . come apart.”

    
“It’s
just a damned good thing they pulled you behind that flak shield when they did,
amigo, or you wouldn’t be here to relive the horror.”

    
“She was
all alone on those steps. So fucking scared. The look on her face—”

    
Borges
sighed deeply and dropped his chin to his chest.

    
“So,
what do we know today, Luis?”

    
“Not
much that we didn’t know yesterday. Except this, and it’s unconfirmed; it will
probably never be confirmed. My guy with the FBI’s counterterrorism group says
they did have one of the other bomb packs in hand two hours earlier. Found it
in a gym locker in Foggy Bottom. A government building. An employee handball
court.”

    
“Foggy
Bottom,” Raszer repeated. “The State Department?”

    
“He
wouldn’t say. He did say that they took it apart, they knew it was cell phone
activated, and they had the number. Now, that doesn’t mean it was
her
number . . . ”

    
“Yeah,
but Christ, Luis . . . they could’ve dropped a radio shield over her and
blocked the call the minute she walked out of there. I’ve seen it. I know they
can do it.”

    
“Maybe
there just wasn’t time.”

    
“I don’t
want to tell you what I think.”

    
“Why
not?”

    
“Because
you’ll write me off as a nut job,” said Raszer.

    
“I did
that a long time ago,” said Borges, “and I’m still listening.”

    
“I need
to think before I rant,” said Raszer. “I just wish . . . I just wish . . . ” He
stubbed out the cigarette and lay back down with a groan. “God, I’m tired. I
hope this isn’t what getting old is like.”

    
“I know
where you’re coming from. Conspiracies, when they’re real, don’t work like
assembly lines. They’re about gambling on probability; a series of on/off
switches that may operate and let the thing happen. Or may not. Nobody ever
touches the switches—that’s how they keep their hands clean. I see it here all
the time. And if there were people moled into the U.S. government who wanted to
see the sky fall, this is the way they’d go about it. If it doesn’t happen this
time, they just snap their briefcases shut, slip off quietly to some
high-priced lobbying or consulting firm, and wait for another day. The good
news is, thanks to you, that day is not today.”

    
“Not to
me,” said Raszer. “I’m a foot soldier. But there is a guy—”

    
“Don’t tell
me,” said Borges. “I like being at least a little dumb. Not you. You’ll never
close your eyes. You’ll never walk away from a door you can jimmy open. So, my
friend, you’d better figure on a long ride on the edge.” He stood up. “Speaking
of eyes,” he said, pointing to his own right, “I know a guy downtown, on
Jeweler’s Row, who makes the most beautiful glass eyes you’ve ever seen. He
uses gemstones—sapphires, rubies, emeralds—for the iris. He did one for a
partner of mine. Want his number?”

    
“Maybe
later. I’m going to stay with the pirate patch for now.”

    
“Okay,
friend. Rest up. And rest a little easier. Detective Aquino called me this
morning. That JW Elder, Amos Leach? He’s been charged with six counts: two
sexual battery, two contributing, one statutory, and one obstruction. And all
that without any cojones.
Your boy
Emmett Parrish came out of his shell to give a statement.”

    
After the cop had left, Brigit crept back in with
her smoothie and two straws, and took her place beside the bed. For a long time,
their exchange was wordless. Raszer gazed at the stained-glass window he’d
commissioned some years before, a depiction of Sir Galahad’s vision of the Holy
Grail. The golden rays issuing from the Grail were runnels in the glass, and
had been cut at angles so as to trap and refract the late-afternoon sun.

    
Brigit
could, up to a point, hop aboard her father’s train of thoughts, but not when
he went to the outside-in place. There, she couldn’t follow.

    
“Tell me
again about Francesca and the Fedeli d’Amore,” she said.

    
“Francesca,”
he said softly, easing back. “I want you to meet her one day. She’s quite a
lady. And she has a dog that isn’t really a dog at all.”

    
“Shaykh
Adi,” Brigit said.

    
“That’s
right. The kindest, wisest eyes you’ve ever seen.”

    
“And you’ll
take me there . . . to the place that isn’t really a place at all?”

    
“Na-Koja-Abad.”

    
“Nowhere-Land.”

    
“Maybe
someday,” he said. “After they clean up the neighborhood.”

    
“Do you
go there sometimes, Daddy . . . even when you’re here?”

    
“I think
so, yeah. I’ll try to keep the visits short.”

    
“That’s
okay,” she said. “I’ll keep an eye on you here if you want to go. In your mind,
I mean. Or whatever--”

    
“Thanks,
muffin. It’s always good to know someone’s waiting.”

    
“I’ll be
waiting,” she said, and touched his arm. Her expression froze.

    
“What?”
he asked.

    
“I just
had one of those . . . that weird feeling.”

    
“Déjà
vu?”

    
“Yeah.
When I said, ‘I’ll be waiting.’ I’ve said that before.” She smiled—a little
epiphany. “You know how you said that sometimes you feel like you’re still in
that game? That you’re just playing and the real you is someplace else?”

    
He
nodded.

    
“Maybe
that just comes from knowing that there’s a story made up for all of us, way
before we’re born. And we just sort of walk through it—like a game—until we
figure it out and start playing for real. Then it’s not a game anymore, is it?”

    
He laid
his head on the pillow and aimed his good eye through a stained-glass rose to
the sun, now golden and sinking. Brigit took her book and curled up on the rug,
close enough to take his hand if he had a nightmare. She would stay the long
night, and be the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes in the morning.

Those without whom, nothing: My publisher, Charlie
Winton. My editor, Michele Slung. My agent, Kimberly Cameron. Copy Editor,
Annie Tucker. Production Mgr, Laura Mazer. My protectress, Dorris Halsey.