Silencer (15 page)

27

Her first impression was of a mauve birthmark, suggestive of a truncated map of Italy, situated between Dansk's jawline and ear. And then his eyes: greens were often restful, but not the green of Dansk's eyes, which had the sharp, just-too-bright quality of a traffic signal located on a lonesome road in the deep heart of nowhere. His hair was thick and red and healthy, brushed back and straight, and a faint gingery down fuzzed his cheeks. He wore a neat single-breasted grey suit and grey shirt and a black and grey necktie. His body was trim: clearly he worked out. He looked way too young, she thought, but so did a whole lot of people these days – physicians, cops, lawyers. They were like kids dressing up. You go over forty, and suddenly the world's filled with children running the show.

She lit a cigarette. She was still a little tense.

‘I'm late,' he said. ‘Flight schedules don't mean a thing these days. I wonder why they even announce them.' He sat, frowning at the smoke drifting from her cigarette.

‘Yeah, I know. The health warning's on the pack,' she said.

Dansk said, ‘What people inflict on their bodies is their own business. They want to take risks, it's up to them.' He leaned back in his chair. He smiled very briefly, which in that split second softened the starkness of his eyes and dimpled his cheeks unexpectedly. She could imagine him as a boy, apple-cheeked and freckled. He had perfect teeth. He puts a lot of effort into dental maintenance, she thought.

She looked for an ashtray. A length of ash dropped in her lap and she brushed it off, leaving a grey smudge on her skirt. Clumsy. Dansk watched her without expression.

‘Do I call you Amanda or are we doing this on a formal basis?'

‘Amanda's fine,' she said. ‘So where do we begin?'

Dansk clasped his hands together. Well-manicured, except there was no nail on the pinky of his left hand, just puckered skin. ‘Your concerns about the Program,' he said.

‘That's a start,' she said.

He wandered over to the mini-bar, removed a can of Diet Dr Pepper and popped it. ‘Under one name or another – Silencer, WITSEC – the Program's been around for thirty years, give or take. And you can't run something this sensitive for that length of time without the occasional mistake, a lapse here or there.'

‘I don't call the fact that Galindez is dead a lapse,' she said, ‘and I certainly don't call the likelihood that Isabel Sanchez is dead a lapse either. Euphemisms give me heartburn.'

He leaned forward in his chair. ‘What I'm saying is, people are fallible, they get greedy. An official takes a bribe in return for somebody's address, then a witness you thought was well-protected turns up in the trunk of an abandoned car. I expect we'll find a bribe was involved in the situation with Galindez and Isabel Sanchez. We need some time to work on it.'

‘How much time?'

‘Impossible to estimate. These things have to be done very carefully. You don't want to alert the culpable party that he or she is under scrutiny.'

‘How many people have access to the kind of information we're talking about?'

‘I'm not allowed to divulge that.'

‘What exactly are you allowed?'

‘Try to understand, Amanda, the heart of this Program is secrecy.'

She said, ‘Look. The glaringly obvious place to start is with Victor Sanchez. I already went down to Florence and gave it a shot, not that I achieved anything.'

‘What impression did you get?'

‘He's involved up to his neck, I just can't figure out how he penetrated your security. Also he threatened me.'

‘Threatened you?'

‘He said I was next on his hit list.' She made a slashing motion with her index finger across her throat. ‘Which wasn't pleasant.'

‘You think he was serious?'

‘It's something I don't take lightly,' she said. ‘He scared me.'

Dansk was quiet for a moment. ‘We've arranged to interview him.'

My heart beats easier, she thought. ‘You're finally getting around to that, are you?'

Dansk seemed impervious to her sarcasm. He said, ‘My advice to you would be take a vacation and don't tell anyone where you're going. You'd be safer far away from here. Let me get on with my business, it's in good hands.'

‘Funnily enough, I told Isabel Sanchez the very same thing,' she said. ‘You're in good hands, sweetie. But I keep hearing the goddam dogs in my head.'

‘The dogs, right,' he said. ‘How close were you to them?'

‘Hard to say. A mile, two, maybe more.'

Dansk looked pensive. ‘You responded to a phone call from Mrs Sanchez, I understand.'

Amanda nodded. ‘I was too late to help her.'

‘What did she say exactly?'

‘Didn't you see the report?'

‘Sometimes the reports I get leave things to be desired.'

‘She was scared. Men were coming after her.'

‘Did she know these men?'

‘She didn't say.'

‘She mention how many men?'

‘Two she said.'

‘Descriptions, anything like that?'

‘No, no descriptions.'

Dansk shook his head. ‘It's a bad business.'

A bad business was an understated way of putting it, she thought. ‘I'm curious. She was in Farmington, New Mexico, then Tuba City. Finally she comes back here to Phoenix. Where did you relocate her?'

‘I can't answer that, sorry.'

‘What the hell
can
you answer? Galindez is dead, Isabel's missing and you come waltzing down from God knows what cubby-hole in Arlington or Washington or wherever, and you're condescending. Oh, we're taking over, Amanda, why don't you go on vacation.' She checked herself, the way her voice was rising. She didn't want to alienate Dansk, because he had the power to close doors on her.

‘Condescending?' he asked. ‘I flew all the way down here to set your mind at rest.'

‘And what if my mind isn't at rest? What if it's like a jumping bean?'

Dansk strolled across the room and sipped his drink. He switched the subject suddenly. ‘You talked about going to the newspapers, I believe. I don't think that would be smart.'

‘Is this some kind of warning?'

He sat down again and drew his chair close to her. Their knees were almost touching. ‘All I'm telling you is this: if you decide to have a word in the ear of some inquisitive journalist – cases collapse because witnesses are too scared to talk.'

‘But would you gag the journalist?'

‘You think we have that kind of power?'

‘I don't know exactly what powers you
do
have. I'm supposed to mosey off into the sunset while you people get on with your business.'

‘You agree to stay out of this business entirely, and in return I'll let you know the outcome.'

‘I stifle my curiosity while you get to work.'

‘One other condition is you don't talk with journalists.'

‘I see a problem,' she said. ‘You could come back to me in a couple of days, a week, a month, and you could tell me anything you please, and I'd have to buy it.'

‘That's not my style,' Dansk said.

Amanda stood up. She had pins and needles in her legs. ‘You're asking me to trust you.'

‘I'm asking you to be reasonable,' Dansk said. His voice was suddenly chill in a way she didn't like. ‘I don't have to tell you anything.'

She turned and looked out of the window and saw Dansk's can of soda glint in the rainy pane. She watched his image move a little closer to hers.

‘What if you don't get in touch with me? You're not going to give me a phone number where I can reach you any time I want, are you?'

‘I don't want you to walk out of this hotel feeling you've just talked with somebody who's going to vanish inside some – what was the phrase you used – cubby-hole in Washington?' Dansk took out a notebook from his pocket and scribbled something on a sheet. ‘I'm going to be in town a couple of days at least. Here's a number where you can reach me.'

‘You're not staying here?' she asked.

‘This was just for the purpose of meeting you.'

A secure room, she thought. Cloak and dagger. They did it in style. She wondered if people whose profession revolved around secrecy became addicted to it, if a life of secrecy was like being immersed for a long time in a sensory-deprivation tank. If that numb, lonely suspension did something to the way you viewed reality.

‘And when you leave town, where can I call you?'

‘I'm adding another number. This one's highly confidential. I'm not always behind my desk, but you can leave a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.'

‘I have your word on that?'

‘Of course.'

She wondered about the value of Anthony Dansk's word. Then she thought, I'm judging him too harshly. He has his own code of rules and regulations, he has to play by the book the way it's written. And she ought to feel some gratitude towards him for flying 2,000 miles just to talk to her – even if she'd had to apply pressure to get him here.

‘Are we agreed?' he asked.

She thought a moment and then said, ‘We're agreed.'

‘Maybe a drink on the deal would be nice.'

He sounded like a kid asking for a date, she thought. He was watching her with a certain expectation she found vaguely embarrassing, and for a moment he reminded her of the high-school loner who could never get a girl, the one who stood on his own at the edge of a crowded prom, clip-on bow-tie askew, eyes shyly scanning the dance floor.

She glanced at her watch. ‘Why not. Gin, if there's any, and tonic.'

He walked to the mini-bar. ‘There's no ice.'

‘That's OK,' she said.

Dansk brought her the gin and tonic.

She sipped the drink and looked at him over the rim of her glass. She noticed he had a habit of turning his face to one side every now and then to hide the birthmark from sight. He had to go through life that way, she thought, his face forever turned a little to one side. The birthmark obviously burdened him.

He said, ‘Why did you quit law?'

‘You've been researching my background, Anthony.'

‘I'd hardly call it research. When I knew I was coming to meet you, I figured I ought to know who I was talking to, that's all. Your resignation's no big secret.'

‘Why I quit law. Too many reasons. Mainly I was becoming polluted after years working with liars and flimflam artists and human eczema. I'd reached an unhealthy level of toxicity, and I wasn't prepared to go on paying the price.'

‘Human eczema,' he said.

‘Suppurations masquerading as people.'

‘Harsh words.'

‘You asked.' She listened to rain spray against the window. A wind was getting up and the trees shook outside, flickering the lamps.

She finished her drink. ‘I have to be going.'

She shook his hand, then he opened the door for her in such a way that she had to duck under his outstretched arm. She stepped into the corridor.

She said, ‘I was a little overheated before. I apologize for that.'

‘Already forgotten, Amanda. I'll be in touch.'

‘I look forward to it.'

‘Meantime, you'd be wise to get away for a while. The rest is under control.'

She went down the stairs, crossed the lobby and walked outside. She sat in her parked car and looked out at the night and realized she didn't like the dark. Rain drummed on the roof. She'd done her duty, she'd dropped the whole mess in somebody else's lap. At least it would make Rhees a happy man. She turned the key in the ignition just as Dansk came out of the hotel and walked in a sprightly way across the parking-lot. He passed within 20 yards of her car, but his range of vision was limited by his big black umbrella, and he didn't see her.

For some reason she had an urge to follow him, but she resisted it.

28

In his own hotel room, Dansk undid his necktie and hung it just so in the closet. There was a knock on his door. He went to answer it. The girl was about nineteen and waiflike. She had big brown eyes and a tiny oval face.

‘You're expecting me,' she said. ‘Chaka? From Romantic Liaisons?'

‘Yeah, come in, come in.'

She asked him what he wanted and he said, ‘Nothing exotic.'

‘You got it,' she said. She undressed in front of him, stepped out of her white miniskirt, slid down her tights and her black panties. She wore no bra: she didn't need one. She lay on the bed and he placed his hand on her taut belly. Navels intrigued him. A navel was like a tiny eye of flesh.

She smelled of talcum powder. Her armpits had been shaved. Her pubic hair had been razored also. Vaginal topiary. He'd once seen a hooker in El Paso with her pubes cut heart-shaped, like a furry valentine between her legs.

He took off his pants and folded them over a chair. Chaka was watching him and waiting, checking her internal meter. Tick, tick, time is money. He removed his shirt. She put her hand inside his yellow and white polka-dot shorts and stroked him for a while.

‘I don't feel anything stirring in here,' she remarked.

A breakdown of the machinery was the last thing he needed. He wanted release, his valve opened, pressure let out. The girl propped herself on an elbow and looked at him.

‘You wanna watch me jerk off, get you going?' she asked.

‘Sure.' His head wasn't sending signals down to the central furnace. Boiler-room failure. What's going on here, he wondered.

She spread her legs and rubbed a finger in the slit of herself. Her nails were red. Her little mouth was open. Dansk could see her fillings way back and the dark cavity of her throat. And then suddenly he was out in that goddam desert and he was wondering how close Amanda Scholes had been to McTell and Pasquale and their hounds. She'd said a mile, maybe two. Some margins were way too narrow.