Water to Burn (24 page)
Authors: Katharine Kerr
I took breaks now and then to run LDRS and Search Modes for both Caleb and Reb Ezekiel. I picked up no traces of Zeke, but now and then on Wednesday I caught a glimpse of Caleb, driving a car on a winding road that ran along the tops of cliffs overlooking the ocean—Highway 1, of course. I could never get enough of a mental impression from him to tell what he was doing there or where he was heading.
Late in the afternoon on Wednesday, I called my other former stringer, Jerry Jamieson, who worked as a specialized kind of hustler, a man who dressed as a woman. The type particularly appealed to customers from South America, though not exclusively, or so he’d informed me. Wherever they came from, the customers were willing to spend a lot of money on a specific sexual fantasy, of being the passive partner in anal sex with a man in drag. I may have been a psych major in college, but analyzing that particular desire lay way beyond me.
At any rate, I described Reb Ekeziel and told Jerry about the letter, but omitted any mention of deviant world levels, mostly to save time. Jerry had a skeptical turn of mind, probably due to his chosen profession, and I didn’t want to get into some involved argument over their existence.
“So suppose I spot this old guy,” Jerry said. “Should I glom on to him?”
“Only if it’s easy. He has friends on the street, and you don’t want to get them involved. If he’s willing to have you buy him a cup of coffee or something, sure. If he runs, no. If he doesn’t run, tell him you know Nola O’Grady. Call me either way.”
“Will do, darling. I haven’t seen any Agency money in too long.”
“Well, we’re willing to put you on regular payroll.”
“That means obligations, doesn’t it? Regular reports, following your orders, all that tedious middle-class behavior.”
“Some, sure, but it’s not like you have to wear a suit and work in an office. Think about it, and let me know if you want to sit down and talk.”
“I will. I’m not getting any younger, after all.”
I clicked off and returned to packing up the kitchen while Ari took apart the bookcases. Late that afternoon, Ari left for a couple of hours to return the rental car and pick up his new vehicle, which, he informed me, had been specially customized.
“Promise me you’ll stay inside,” he said. “I don’t want you out on the street alone without me there to keep an eye on things.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ve got too much to do here anyway.”
“You look tired.” He considered me for a moment. “When I come back, we’ll go out to dinner. Make a reservation somewhere, and you can see how the new car handles.”
I made reservations at a small Russian restaurant on Balboa Avenue, not too far from the apartment, but far enough to drive the new car rather than walk. I also called Caleb about our so-called business lunch. I’ll admit to being relieved when once again I got the answering service for his cell phone. He was still on the road, I figured. I left a brief message, saying I’d play another round of phone tag later, and clicked off.
With that out of the way, I sat down at the kitchen table and tried another LDRS for Reb Ezekiel. No matter how hard I concentrated, nothing came to me but a profound sense of absence. Either Zeke had died in the night, or he’d gone through a gate to some other deviant world level. I returned to my computer and web-surfed all my news sites, looking for a story about a homeless man found dead.
I found no reports of such deaths, but I did see a string of stories about rogue waves. Like hammers in an invisible hand, they had smashed into the cliffs all down the coast, starting in Pacifica at high tide just before dawn and continuing down to just north of Santa Cruz. When the tide turned, they stopped. No one had been injured. No structures, only cubic yards of dirt and rock, had fallen to the sand below. I immediately thought of Caleb, driving south on Highway 1.
I shut down the computer to foil Chaos hackers and spent a few minutes gazing at the blank screen, hoping for images. None. As far as Reb Zeke went, I was stuck with the gate theory, which in turn led me to believe that more gates existed in San Francisco than the one in the Houlihan house and the one that had been in the park. The old problem nagged at me: why the Houlihan house, of all places?
Finally I soothed my frustration by getting dressed up. I decided to wear a dress, since I knew Ari would like it, and I put on makeup, too. If you’re going to regress to your teen years, you might as well do it right and flatter your boyfriend’s ego. I owned several dresses, an ugly black number for funerals, and then a flowered summer dress, which would have been too cold, and a soft blue silk-and-linen blend that fell straight from a shirred neckline. It had nice warm sleeves. I chose the blue and added the gold pin he’d given me.
When Ari returned with the new car, and I saw this supposedly wondrous vehicle, I was shocked. It sat glumly by the curb, a gray sedan, several years old, with dark gray upholstery. I spotted a stain from some kind of beverage on the back seat and a couple of worn tracks on the fabric that might have been made by a child’s car seat.
“A Saturn?” I said. “They gave you a Saturn?”
Ari was trying not to laugh, or to be precise, to make the odd noises that served him as a laugh in all circumstances but watching Roadrunner cartoons. “It’s been heavily modified,” he said eventually. “What did you expect? A Jaguar? An Aston Martin? Something that would attract attention everywhere we went?”
“Good point. No one’s going to look twice at this.”
“Get in.” He handed me the keys. “Try it out.”
As soon as I pulled away from the curb, I realized what Ari meant by modifications. Even when we were moving at a fast clip the car barely vibrated. It was as heavy as a 1960’s Cadillac, thanks to some sort of armor installed between the plastic Saturn shell and the upholstery, but with its upgraded power steering, it handled like a sports car.
Ari’s mystery mechanics had also added a pair of buttons on the steering column next to the horn. Punch one, and the red light you were approaching turned green. Punch two, and all the windows but the windshield darkened; you could see out, but no one could see in. Ari also had a device to carry with him that would stop the car in case of theft, though doing so would destroy the transmission.
“It doesn’t fire nuclear missiles, however,” Ari told me. “Or walk on water.”
“Bummer,” I said. “It’s too bad it won’t come when it’s called. You know, like Wonder Woman’s invisible jet.”
Ari made a strangled noise that seemed to signal disgust.
“Just a joke,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“Wonder Woman?”
“Er, I guess you didn’t read that kind of comic when you were a kid.”
Again the strangled noise. I decided to let the subject die.
“At any rate,” Ari went on, “are you going to let me drive on occasion?”
“On occasion, like when I’m not in the car with you. It’s bad enough having Chaos masters out to get me. You don’t need to help them along.”
“Oh, come now! My driving’s not that bad.”
“Hah!”
“Everyone drives that way at home.”
“Remind me never to drive in Israel, then.”
“If that’s even a possibility.” His voice turned wistful. “I’d enjoy showing you the country, even if you didn’t want to live there. We could go on holiday.”
I fumbled through my mind for a joke to turn the moment aside. Couldn’t find one. He’d mentioned marriage once, and I wanted to make sure it stayed at only once. For a moment he watched me, waiting. At last he looked away and said nothing more until we reached Katya’s restaurant. After I parked, he helped me out of the car.
“You look wonderful tonight,” he said. “I meant to say so earlier.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m betting you speak Russian, by the way.”
He merely smiled. Once we got inside, however, his perfect Russian got us great service. While we ate blini with golden caviar for a first course, I realized the pattern to his “unusual flair for languages,” as his resumé called it.
“The European languages you told me you know,” I said. “I bet they’re Russian, French, Greek, and Turkish.”
“Very good on the Turkish. Yes, I think of it as European, too.”
“That part of the world will always be Anatolia to me.”
“My old-fashioned girl. Very old-fashioned, by about what, a thousand years? There’s one more European language, though, that I speak. Let’s see if you can name it.”
I thought for a long time. “Can’t,” I finally said. “Unless maybe Albanian.”
“English.” He grinned at me. “It’s a foreign language to me.”
“God! I keep forgetting that.”
“Good. That means I’m speaking it properly.” He reached for the last pancake on the plate. “I don’t suppose you want that.”
“No. I’m saving room for my main course.”
“I’ll hold you to that. Why did you ask about the languages?”
“It just occurred to me that the ones you know all have a bearing on Middle East politics. No Swedish or Irish for you.”
“True. That’s a nice bit of logic.”
And a good thing about the Irish, too, but I kept that thought to myself.
CHAPTER 9
O
N THURSDAY, WHEN THE TIME CAME TO MOVE, my local relatives offered to help except for Father Keith, who had church duties. Kathleen and Jack, however, had to beg off. She called me early and explained that Jack had woken up “sick as a human,” as she always modified the cliché. She took the dignity of dogs seriously.
N THURSDAY, WHEN THE TIME CAME TO MOVE, my local relatives offered to help except for Father Keith, who had church duties. Kathleen and Jack, however, had to beg off. She called me early and explained that Jack had woken up “sick as a human,” as she always modified the cliché. She took the dignity of dogs seriously.
“He says he’s got a touch of food poisoning,” Kathleen said. “I say he’s hungover.”
“Did you guys go out last night?” I said.
“He did.” She put emphasis on the “he.” “But I’m real sorry, Nola. I wanted to help.”
“Oh, it’s okay. I don’t have a lot of stuff anyway. Was he out with you know who?”
“Yeah. Who else?”
She paused, and in the background I could hear Jack’s baritone growling at her. “My sister,” Kathleen’s voice sounded as if she was holding her phone away from her mouth. “I’m telling her that we’re copping out on her.”
Jack growled again, a little louder.
“He says he’s sorry, too,” Kathleen said into the phone. “I thought maybe the sea air would—”
This time Jack spoke loudly enough for me to hear. “Would you hang up that damned phone?”
“When I’m done talking,” Kathleen said.
I had never heard them sound on the verge of a fight before.
“I’ll let you go,” I said. “He probably needs some love and Alka-Seltzer.”
“I wanted to ask if you’d like a puppy.” Kathleen pointedly ignored both my offer and the remark. “Or maybe a bonded pair. Tuesday, y’know? I took in some darling terrier mixes that some jerk dumped by the side of the road. I had the vet check them out, and they’re in great shape.”
“No, I can’t. The lease was real specific about that. No pets.” Actually, I was lying. I’d learned over the years that outright lies were the only way to fend off Kathleen’s efforts to load me up with dogs and cats.
“I don’t see how you can live in a place like that.”
“Er, well, y’know. I’d better go, Kath. I’ve got to pack up the stuff in the fridge.”
I clicked off to find Ari watching me. “Caleb’s back,” I told him. “But I’ll wait till he calls me.”
“You don’t want to seem too eager, no,” Ari said. “By the way, I’ve put in a request for detailed information on Caleb to the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office. They should get back to me soon.”
“You really must work for Interpol.”
“Of course I do, as I keep telling you. Would I lie to you?”
“Of course you would, if you needed to.”
Ari looked so annoyed that I dropped it. I had reasons for wondering. According to my own Agency’s workup on Ari, he left Interpol for long periods of time to go off and do something for an Israeli undercover group that wasn’t part of Mossad, unless maybe it was. Its true status was as mysterious as the “something” Ari did for it. Our agent had run into the proverbial stone wall when he’d been trying to put together a report on Mr. Nathan. I doubted if Ari believed that sleeping with him gave me the right to ask outright for more information, so I didn’t. I was, however, beginning to get some ideas.
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