скачать книгу бесплатно
Samuel Roth hunched forward and lightly patted Milo’s knee, then leaned back against the wall. Without ceremony, he clenched his teeth. Something crunched in his mouth, like a nut, and Milo smelled the almond bitterness in Roth’s exhale. It was a smell he’d run into a few times in his life, from people either utterly devout or utterly frightened. The hard way out, or the easiest, depending on your philosophy.
The assassin’s veined eyes widened, close enough that Milo could see his own reflection in them. Roth seized up three times in quick succession, and Milo caught him before he fell off the cot. The yellow-tinted head rolled back, lips white with froth. Milo was holding a corpse.
He dropped the body on the cot, wiped his hands against his pants, and backed up to the door. It had been years since he’d faced this, but even back then, when he saw death more often, he’d never gotten used to it. The sudden heft. The fast cooling. The fluids that leaked from the body (there—Roth’s orange jumpsuit darkened at the groin). The quick cessation of consciousness, of everything that person—no matter how despicable or virtuous—had experienced. It didn’t matter that minutes ago he’d wanted to ridicule this man’s false piousness. That wasn’t the point. The point was that, within this concrete cell, a whole world had suddenly ceased to exist. In a snap, right in front of him. That was death.
Milo came out of his daze when the door against his back shook. He stepped away so Sheriff Wilcox could come in, saying, “Listen, I got some folks here who—”
He stopped.
“Christ,” the sheriff muttered. Fear stalled in his face. “What the hell’d you do to him?”
“He did it to himself. Cyanide.”
“But … but why?”
Milo shook his head and started for the door, wondering what Mary Baker Eddy said about suicide.
5 (#u091b7d02-b9dd-575e-8bcc-09ecba9ad902)
Special Agent Janet Simmons gazed at Milo across the scratched white table in the Blackdale interview room. Despite his size, her partner, Special Agent George Orbach, was clearly the inferior in their relationship. He kept getting up to leave the room, awkwardly returning with Styrofoam cups of water and coffee and lemonade.
Simmons had a fluid, engaging interview style, which Milo supposed was part of Homeland’s new training. She leaned forward a lot, hands open except when she pulled a strand of dark hair behind her ear. Early thirties, Milo guessed. Sharp, attractive features marred only by a right eye that wandered. The ways she positioned her beauty were supposed to close the psychological distance between interviewer and interviewee, making it less adversarial. She even pretended not to notice his stink.
After sending George Orbach out again to find milk for her coffee, she turned to him. “Come on, Milo. We’re on the same side here. Right?”
“Of course we are, Janet.”
“Then tell me why the Company’s working out of its jurisdiction on this one. Tell me why you’re keeping secrets from us.”
Mrs. Wilcox’s delicious lemonade was starting to give Milo a sugar high. “I’ve explained it,” he said. “We’ve been after Roth for years. We learned he’d crossed the border in Dallas, so I went to Dallas.”
“And you never thought to call us?” She arched her brow. “We do have a Dallas office, you know.”
Milo wondered how to put it. “I decided—”
“I? Tom Grainger no longer makes decisions in New York?”
“I advised,” he corrected, “that if Homeland Security were brought in, you’d send in the cavalry. The Tiger would spot it in a second, and go underground. The only way to track him was with a single person.”
“You.”
“I’ve followed his case a long time. I know his modus operandi.”
“And look how well that worked out.” Simmons winked—winked. “Another successful day for Central Intelligence!”
He refused to meet her challenge. “I think I’m being very helpful, Janet. I’ve told you that he had a cap of cyanide in his mouth. He didn’t like the idea of living in Gitmo, so he bit. You could blame Sheriff Wilcox for not giving him a cavity search, but I don’t think that would be fair.”
“He talked to you.” Her tone became gentle; her wandering eye came back in line. “You had a conversation. That deputy with the girl’s name—”
“Leslie.”
“Right. He said you had twenty minutes alone with him.”
“More like fifteen.”
“So?”
“Yes?”
Admirably, Simmons didn’t raise her voice. “So, what did you talk about?”
“A man like that, a superstar assassin—he needs more than fifteen minutes to start talking.”
“So you just sat there? Staring at each other?”
“I asked him questions.”
“Did you touch him?”
Milo cocked his head.
“Did you try to beat the information out of him, Milo?”
“Certainly not,” he said. “That’s against the law.”
She looked as if she were going to smile at that, but changed her mind. “You know what I think? I think you and the whole Company—you’re desperate. You’ve lost whatever shred of credibility you had left, and you’ll do anything to keep hold of your pensions. You’ll even kill for that.”
“It sounds like you’ve put some real thought into this.”
She let the smile appear this time; perhaps she thought he was joking. “Tell me what the Tiger had on you that was so damaging. Tom wasn’t running him, was he? For your dirty little jobs? I don’t know what you guys do in your tower, but I suspect it’s pretty nasty.”
Milo was surprised by her vehemence, but he was more surprised by her superiority. “I suppose Homeland doesn’t have any secrets?”
“Sure, but we’re not the ones on public trial. It’s not our time yet.”
George Orbach pushed his way into the room, clutching a handful of paper packets. “No milk. Just this powder.”
Janet Simmons seemed disgusted by the news. “Doesn’t matter,” she said, crossing her arms. “Mr. Weaver is leaving now. He’s in need of a good shower. I think we’ll have to talk to Mr. Grainger instead.”
Milo rapped the table with his knuckles and got up. “Please don’t hesitate to get in touch.”
“Fat lot of good that’ll do me.”
The morning storm had left as soon as it had arrived, leaving behind damp roads and moist, clean air. As he drove, Milo lit a Davidoff from the pack he’d broken down and bought when he filled up the tank. The smoke felt good, but then it didn’t, and he coughed hard, but kept smoking. Anything to cut the edge off the stink of death.
He hadn’t had his cell phone long enough to figure out how to change the ring tone, so when it woke up somewhere along Route 18 to Jackson, it played a stupid corporate melody. He checked to see if it was his wife, but it was Grainger. “Yeah?”
“Is what that bitch from Homeland says true? He’s dead?”
“Yeah.”
A pause. “Will I see you at the office today?”
“No.”
“I’ll catch you at the airport, then. We’ve got things to discuss.”
Milo hung up and turned on the radio, flipping through staticky country stations until, inevitably, he gave up and pulled out his iPod, which he’d listened to half this trip. He slipped in the earbuds, clicked the French playlist, and skipped to track five.
His head was filled with the quick, swirling melody of “Poupéede cire, poupée de son,” sung by France Gall, Luxembourg’s 1965 Eurovision winner, penned by Serge Gainsbourg. The very tune he’d taught Stephanie for her talent show, the performance he was missing.
He dialed Tina. Her voice mail picked up, and he listened to her story about not being in and the promise of a call if he left a message. He knew she was already at the show, next to an empty chair, watching their daughter sing Gainsbourg’s phenomenal hit. He didn’t leave a message. He’d just wanted to hear her voice.
6 (#u091b7d02-b9dd-575e-8bcc-09ecba9ad902)
Tina couldn’t figure out what kind of idiot parents would think to dress their seven-year-old girl in pink tights and a tank top, tie a pair of pink angel’s wings to her frail back, and then cover every inch with glistening sequins. You could hardly see the child from the spotlight’s reflection as she pranced left and right on the stage to some dance beat with electric guitars, singing a warbling version of “I Decide,” from (the principal had told everyone) “that hit Disney movie, The Princess Diaries2.” It might have been a good song, but from her seat near the center of the Berkeley Carroll School’s auditorium, Tina could only make out the thump of the bass drum and see a little glittering girl-shape shift around on that painfully bare stage.
But of course she clapped. They all did. Two stood and hooted—the idiot parents, Tina assumed. Beside her, in what should have been Milo’s seat, Patrick struck his palms together and whispered, “In-fucking-credible! I’m getting my friends at CAA to sign up this one, ASAP.”
Tina hadn’t wanted to call Patrick, but with Milo pulling another no-show, Stef deserved as full an audience as possible. “Be nice,” she said.
Milo had left another of his curt, unapologetic messages on their home phone, saying that there’d been a delay. As usual, he didn’t call the delay by any name, just “delay.”
Fine, she’d thought. Miss your daughter’s talent show, and I’ll bringher real father.
Then Milo himself had suggested calling Patrick. “For Stef. And videotape it, will you?”
That had taken some of the wind out of Tina’s anger—that, and the fact that, for the last three days, Patrick had been trying to get her and Stephanie to come back to him. Milo, off on his vague, sudden business trip, had no idea.
Her reaction to Patrick’s initial attempt had been to walk the phone to the kitchen so her daughter wouldn’t hear her say, “Are you on drugs, Patrick?”
“Of course not,” said her ex … boyfriend sounded silly, but they’d never actually married. “How could you even think that? You know how I feel about drugs.”
“I bet you’ve put away a few scotches.”
“Listen,” he said, trying to sound reasonable. “I look back now—I look back over all of it. I look back decades. What do I see? Two glowing years. The only two years I was really happy. With you. That’s what I want to tell you. It was never better than that.”
“I like Paula,” she told him as she absently rubbed a sponge around the spotted aluminum sink. “She’s a smart girl. Why she married you, I’ll never know…”
“Ha ha,” he said, and that’s when she knew he really was drunk. She heard him take a drag off of one of his stinking cigarillos. “I’m the joke of the century. But think about it. Think about me. Remember how in love we were.”
“Wait a minute. Where is Paula?”
Another long cigarillo-drag. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
That, then, had clarified everything. “She’s walked out on you. And after six years, you’re running back to me? You must be seriously drunk, Pat. Or seriously stupid.”
Onstage, a boy in a Superman outfit was delivering a monologue, a heavy lisp making the words hard to decipher. Patrick leaned close: “He’s gonna fly soon. I can see the string attached to his belt.”
“He’s not going to fly.”
“If he does, I’ll buy him his first martini.”
Patrick’s long face and graying three-day beard earned him extra clients at Berg & DeBurgh. They thought that he, unlike his over-the-hill law partners, looked vital. These days, though, with the bruised shade to his weary eyes, he looked more desperate than vital. Paula Chabon, that Lebanese-French bombshell who sold her own line of jewelry at little boutique shops positioned in many world capitals, had moved to Berlin. An ex-lover had wooed her back. More than anything, Patrick wanted to believe he could do the same thing, that he could woo Tina back. He really was pitiful.
Superboy ended his monologue by running around the stage in mock flight, but the cape hung sadly against his back, and Patrick was annoyed that his feet never left the ground. “Turn on the video,” Tina told him after the obligatory applause.
Patrick tugged a small Sony video camera out of his pocket. When he turned it on, the two-inch screen glowed.
Without thinking, Tina squeezed his knee. “Here comes Little Miss!”
But the Berkeley Carroll principal came on first, squinting at the card in her hand. “Please welcome our first grader Stephanie Weaver, as she performs …” The woman frowned, trying to make out the words. “Poop-ee de sirk, poop-ee de son.”
Titters rippled through the audience. Tina reddened. How could this bitch not have learned how to pronounce it first?
The principal snickered, too. “My French isn’t what it used to be. But, in English, this is, ‘Wax Doll, Sawdust Doll,’ written by Serge Gainsbourg.”
The crowd duly applauded, and as the principal left the stage Stephanie entered, walking flat but proud to the center. She was, without a doubt, the best dressed of the bunch. Milo had spent a whole weekend with Stephanie in the Village searching retro shops for the proper one-piece dress and tights. Then he’d scoured the Internet, discovering midsixties haircuts. Tina had found it all a bit much, and the idea of dressing their child in forty-year-old styles a little pompous—but now, seeing how the washed-out browns of the dress and the striped stockings glowed, just faintly, under the spotlights, and how her bobbed hair hung perfectly straight along the sides …
Beside her, watching their daughter, Patrick was speechless.
There was a click from the speakers, a CD spinning, and then an orchestral melody that grew into a wall of sound with a swift beat. Stephanie began to sing, those French words perfectly formed.
Je suis une poupée de cire,
Une poupée de son
When she couldn’t get her daughter in focus, Tina realized she was crying. Milo had been right all along. It was beautiful. She glanced at Patrick gaping at that little screen, muttering, “Wow.” Maybe this would finally convince him that Milo was A-OK, despite what he’d believed yesterday when he called her office, at Columbia’s Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library.
“I don’t like him.”
“What?” Tina had snapped back, already irritated. “What did you say?”
“Milo.” She could tell he was slipping into an afternoon buzz, maybe one of his famous five-martini lunches. “I’m talking about Milo Weaver. I never trusted him, not with you, and certainly not with my daughter.”
“You never even tried to like him.”
“But what do you know about him? He’s just some guy you met in Italy, right? Where’s he from?”
“You know all this. His parents died. He’s from—”
“North Carolina,” Patrick cut in. “Yeah, yeah. How come he’s got no southern accent?”
“He’s traveled more than you know.”
“Right. A traveler. And his orphanage—he told me it was the Saint Christopher Home for Boys. That place burned to the ground in 1989. Pretty conve nient, don’t you think?”
“I think it’s pretty conve nient you know this stuff, Pat. You’ve been snooping.”
