Box Nine

Chapter Twenty-Nine

It’s dusk before she feels free of the drug’s effects. She’d driven north, passing out of her native state and jumping on and off all the eerie New England highways that were cut through solid granite hills. The highways have smooth rock walls running on either side of them, rising up thirty feet high so that nothing can be seen but the road ahead. Over a period of time, they can cause a subtle claustrophobia. Lenore noted this as a secondary concern.

For lunch, she’d grabbed french fries from a drive-through burger chain visible from the road. By dinner, she felt safe enough to stop in at a small, lazy diner in a town she’d never heard of. She ordered soup and tea with milk, thinking this would soothe a nervous system so pushed beyond its liberal limits that a shutdown was not out of the question.

By seven, she’s back in Quinsigamond. She drives by the green duplex, but finds it in darkness. At ten, she’s still seated in the Barracuda, staring up at the back of the Hotel Penumbra, waiting until the top floor’s lights go on. She thinks about writing some kind of note and securing it to the steering wheel. An apology to Ike, begging him to forget the past week, maybe the past year, stating flat out her inability to explain both last night and this morning.

She thinks about leaving several notes: Instructions on what to do with any of her belongings that Ike doesn’t want. A word of encouragement to Shaw and Peirce. Advice to Zarelli to accept his shortcomings and learn to find pleasure in his family again. And something for Fred. What could she say to Fred?

The possibilities make her too uncomfortable to continue, so she scraps the note idea entirely and climbs out of the car. The Magnum is in the trunk, but she’s still got the.38 strapped near her ankle. She walks around the block to the front of the building and stops at the revolving door as a parade of Cortez’s women file out for the evening. They’re all dressed like it was Halloween and everyone chose the same costume.

Looking through the doors into the lobby, she sees Jimmy Wyatt trying to act stone-faced to the last of the women’s comments. When he sees Lenore, his hand instinctively jumps to the inside of his biker jacket, but when she doesn’t move, it stays there. They stare at each other for a while until she feels he’s assured she’s not an immediate threat, that this isn’t some bizarre assault, then she pushes her way inside.

She gives Wyatt a small smile, tries to make it look like she’s been unsuccessful at suppressing it. She holds her arms out and up slightly, like a bored version of halting for the police. But he’s not biting. Nothing about her being inside the hotel is going to be playful. His eyes are narrowed on her. She looks away from him to the rest of the lobby. It’s been restored beautifully. Everywhere there are Ionic columns shot through with veins of deep green marble. The lobby has a wonderful, slightly freezing feel to it. There’s a small rise of three stairs beyond Wyatt that opens out into an empty rest area where people once checked in at the front desk and then waited for the elevators. Huge Persian rugs of dark reds and greens cover the marble floor that’s been worn into shallow bowls in spots. Against the walls are couches and chairs, foreign-looking, experiments in furniture that went wrong. And hung above them are these out-of-place pastoral paintings hung in ornate thick gilt frames.

It’s not like a real place, Lenore thinks. Then she turns her eyes back to Wyatt and says casually, “I’m here to see the boss.”

His eyes narrow and she wonders if he’s got a pad of paper tucked away somewhere to communicate.

“Could you tell him I’m here?” she says.

He shakes his head no.

They stare at each other. She hadn’t counted on this.

“Okay,” she says, “I don’t want you to take this wrong, you know, I want to be clear here. You can’t tell him, meaning you’re physically incapable, which I’m aware of? Or you just won’t tell him, as in you don’t want to or you’ve got instructions not to or something like this?”

He waits until she’s finished and simply shakes his head no again.

“Mr. Cortez would want to see me,” she says, lowering her voice. “It would be in his best interest to see me.”

Now he just folds his arms across his chest.

“I don’t want to tell you your job, but I think the thing to do here would be simply to check in upstairs. I’ll wait right here. I won’t budge.”

It’s a standoff. He makes no movement at all. They just continue to look at each other.

“You’re limiting my options,” she says. “You understand that?”

He nods.

“So I’m only left with one avenue here.”

He raises his eyebrows slightly.

“I’m going to have to shoot you in the fucking head.”

He gives a big smile, but she sees his shoulders shift under his jacket and she knows it would be close as to who got to who first.

Then a voice from nowhere: “That’s enough, Jimmy. Show her the elevator.”

It’s Cortez. And he’s been watching and listening to the whole scene. She should have realized that. Cameras and microphones. Probably in every wall.

Wyatt pivots backward and extends a hand forward like the perfect bellman. She waves him off and says, “I can find my way up, thanks.”

She moves past him up the three small stairs to the main lobby and turns left to find a wall of three old-time elevators with the traditional arrow pointers mounted above each door to indicate which level the car is at. The door is already opened on the middle elevator and she steps into the gilded cage and looks to press for the top floor, but there are no buttons. Then it dawns on her that this is the express car, the private car for use by Cortez only. Straight to the top, no stops.

The car bucks slightly, then starts to rise and Cortez’s voice fills the air.

“What a delightful surprise.”

She feels uncomfortable not being able to project her words in a particular direction, but she doesn’t want to make Cortez aware of this.

“In the neighborhood. You know how it is.”

“Actually, no. I don’t get out too often.”

“Is that by choice?”

“Actually, that would be hard to say.”

“You’ve done wonders with this old building.”

“It was a crime. The way I found it. Left to decay.”

“Some things need constant attention. Continual upkeep, you know?”

There’s no response. The elevator comes to a stop with a jerk and the doors slide open. She steps out into a small foyer. The doors immediately close behind her, but she doesn’t hear the car move. She stands still for a minute and takes in the surroundings. It feels about ten or twenty degrees warmer than in the lobby, and yet it’s not uncomfortable. The ceiling hangs a good twelve or more feet high. It’s antique — scrolled tin plating covered with a glossy enamel. The walls are natural mahogany, divided every three or four feet into carved panels. The floor is a burnt-rust-colored tile covered by a large, oval, oriental rug. She stares down at the rug, it draws her attention. It’s filled with an intricate pattern, a confusing weave that works like an Escher print — it shows a pattern of books that, when viewed from a different perspective, become fat-bodied geese in flight.

“Come, please.” Cortez’s voice sounds from nowhere. “Join me in the library.”

The foyer opens into a large hall. Midway down, there are two sets of double doors facing each other. She faces one set, reaches out, and tries to turn the gold lever-handles. They’re locked. She turns around to face the second set and they open for her, revealing an enormous room.

“This way,” he says, and this time she can tell the sound of his voice is coming directly from his mouth, not a hidden speaker system. She enters the library. It’s an enormous room, probably consists of more square footage than the entire green duplex, her place and Ike’s combined. All four walls are made of built-in bookshelves, floor to ceiling. All of the shelves are empty and covered with dust.

The rest of the room is almost empty. The floor is covered by two gigantic braided rugs. There are no windows. There is one break in the shelving to allow for a small fireplace and mantel. The remains of a fire are smoldering on the andirons. There’s a single, low-to-the-ground, overstuffed rocking chair, covered in a faded, soft-grey material. The chair sits facing and to the left of the fireplace. It looks a bit out of place in the room, like it came from a garage sale or had been passed down through several generations.

The only other piece of furniture is something big and bulky that’s been covered by a plain white bed sheet. It’s pushed up against a wall to the left of the rocker. Hung on the wall above the mantel is a large, iron-looking crucifix, a grotesque-style Christ figure, bent and broken, iron droplets and running lines of blood covering the body. Below the crucifix, resting on the mantel itself, are small wooden boxes standing upright to reveal their contents — a mishmash of pebbles, shells, watch faces, string, eggs, shards of a broken mirror, a doorknob. Lenore has an urge to walk over to them and study them more closely.

“My own feeble attempts,” Cortez says. “An old hobby of mine.”

He’s standing at the top of a wrought-iron platform that rises from a tiny spiral staircase mounted in the very center of the room. Lenore approaches the miniature stairway and looks up. There’s an open skylight cut into the ceiling of the building. Cortez is peering into a telescope that juts out of the skylight. He’s being pathetically careless, Lenore thinks. Could he actually trust me?

“Come up, please,” he says. “I want to show you something.”

She looks around the room, then climbs the seven stairs and joins him on the circular platform. He brings his head up from the telescope and stares, then, slowly, smiles at her. “Which one of us can resist saying it?” he asks.

“Excuse me,” she says.

He tilts his head back slightly, puts a theatrical and self-mocking hand on his chest, and says, “We meet at last.”

“Had to happen sooner or later,” she says.

Up close, he’s a little more breathtaking than Lenore was prepared for. He’s tall, probably about six five or so, with large eyes that contain blue and grey and green and dominate the face. He has the most ingratiating grin she’s ever witnessed, with a small gap between his two front teeth that enhances rather than detracts from his attractiveness. He has a thick, woodsman beard that covers the whole second half of his face, black with random strands of grey starting to break through here and there. His hair is jet-black and a bit too long, she thinks, and he parts it to the left in a big sweeping arc. He speaks in a rich, almost echoing baritone, like a well-trained actor with a natural sense of timing. There’s a strong hint of a Spanish accent, but also something beyond that, something clearly more foreign, distant, impossible to place.

“Just like in the movies,” he says.

“What happens when it rains?” she asks, pointing upward with her thumb.

“There is a cover,” he says, not raising his head from the eyepiece. “What the architect called a bubble. I’ve always liked that. ‘A bubble’.”

She looks down at the telescope, and though she knows nothing about the equipment, she’d bet it was a state-of-the-art model, probably costing more than she makes in a year.

“So,” she says, “is this for real? Is this some kind of prop or are you really into astronomy?”

He can’t seem to get away from the self-mockery. “I’m a man of many interests and many talents.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. We’ve got to pump you up a little.”

“The problem is, the sky in Quinsigamond is so obscured by all the light. Cities are horrible places, don’t you think?”

“I’m a hometown girl, you know. I’ve got a soft spot. I’m a city girl.”

“Where I come from, a town called Banfield, you could go into the fields at night and the sky would be infested with the stars. ‘Infested with the stars’—plagado de las estrellas.”

“Sounds like a disease.”

He sighs. “I have an evil talent for making the beautiful sound horrid.”

She shrugs. “That could come in useful. Dissuade people from things that you don’t want them to go near.”

“There’s no need for that. I’ve always been a man willing to share.”

Lenore doesn’t know how to respond. She pauses and then says, “That’s a chapter in the myth that I’m unfamiliar with.”

He laughs, peers down into the eyepiece. “That I’m a generous man? You’ve been misinformed. You can’t always believe what you hear.”

“Or what you see. Or touch.”

“Or taste.”

He looks up from the telescope and they stare at each other in silence for a moment.

He clears his throat and says, “By the time I was ten, I knew the surface of the moon better than most children know the village they live in. At twelve I could name most of the constellations. I once asked my mother if heaven was near Orion.”

“What did she say?” Lenore asks, genuinely wanting to know.

“I honestly don’t remember. It was so long ago.”

“I would think that would be the type of thing you would remember.”

“Memory is a pathetic tool. It never works the way it should. It’s rarely useful. It brings more pain than pleasure.”

“Memory has never brought you comfort?” she asks.

He lets a slow but huge smile grow on his face, then says, “Not that I recall.”

She rolls her eyes and says, “Bring out the big hook.”

“Do you want to take a look?” he asks, motioning to the telescope.

She nods, leans down over the eyepiece, and squints. At first she can’t see a thing.

“It’s not very clear,” he says. “Too much cloud cover.”

She brings her head back up, unsuccessful. “What should I have seen?”

“Surface of the moon,” he says. “Sea of Vaporum. Wonderful name.”

He turns and starts down the stairway and she follows.

Back on the floor, they stand facing each other. He puts his hands on his hips and says, “You’ll have to excuse the way I’m dressed. I believe in comfort at home. And, of course, I wasn’t expecting company tonight.”

He’s got on a pair of grey sweatpants that bunch around the ankles, a black crew-neck cotton sweater, and a pair of ratty, five-and-dime-store slippers.

“You look fine,” she says, and feels a wince of embarrassment.

“Could I offer you a drink?” he says. “I’m allowed a single nightcap, myself, due to my condition.”

“Your condition?”

“Addison’s disease. I believe your President Kennedy suffered from this also, yes?”

“I really don’t know. I’m sorry to hear—”

“Please take a seat,” he says, cutting her off and extending a hand toward the rocking chair. He starts to move toward the fireplace. She follows, and remains standing behind him. He grabs a short poker from the brick patch of flooring that extends a few feet out from the hearth and begins to jab and stir the embers and charred remains of wood.

“Sit,” he says in a soft voice, and she hesitates and then eases herself into the chair. She sinks into its cushions. It’s tremendously comfortable and she can see why it would be hard to part with or even alter.

“Because I am usually the only one in this room,” he says, “there is only the one chair. But I will sit on the floor. Good for me, for a change.”

“You need some books for your shelves,” Lenore says.

Cortez smiles, then says, “I’ve often thought this is the main reason people buy books. To fill empty shelves. But these shelves were once quite full. Bursting with volumes, as a matter of fact.”

“Let me guess,” Lenore says. “You donated them to the literate poor.” She’s immediately unsure of the wisdom of her remark. She thinks it’s the chair that’s given her the comfort to be a joker.

But Cortez enjoys the comment. “Not quite,” he says. “I sold them. To a dealer here in the city. Ziesing Ave. A Mr. Beck. Fine store. You should go sometime.”

“My brother’s a big book-guy. Loves mysteries.”

“They say that indicates a love of logic. Until recently, I suppose. I read mysteries when I was young. Now they just confuse me. I’ll tell you an awful secret about myself.”

“I’m all ears.”

“I came very close to burning every book in this room.”

“And why was that?”

“They were driving me out of my mind.”

“Was someone making you read them?”

Cortez puts the poker down and eases onto the floor facing her, close to the relit fire. Half of his face is left in shadow by his position. He sits cross-legged, with his long arms draped over his knees.

“Now, that,” he says, “is a very good question. No one was holding a gun to my head, no. Of course not. But I felt compelled just the same. By my own nature. I’ve been a voracious reader since I can remember—”

“But then, we can’t trust memory.”

“Again, very true. But still there are feelings. Instinctual feelings. Whether or not our memories hold a great deal of what we’ll call ‘historical truth’ matters very little in terms of these feelings. I loved Jules Verne. Did you read Jules Verne?”

She shakes her head no.

“Oh,” he says, closing his eyes and frowning, his head swaying slightly. “Around the World in Eighty Days. From the Earth to the Moon. Filled me with pure joy. My father abandoned the family when I was a child. I like to think of Jules Verne as my father now.”

“That still doesn’t tell me why you wanted to burn your books.”

He unclasps his hands and looks up at her as if the answer were obvious. “The joy started to leave. I don’t know why. It just began departing. What I had felt since childhood, what I had felt for books, I started to no longer feel. And it became too painful to keep them around.”

“Why do you think this happened?”

He just shakes his head.

“It occurs to me,” she says, “that we know almost nothing about each other.”

“I think,” he says, “that we both suspect a great deal.”

“This might be a golden opportunity to clear up those suspicions,” she says.

“You’re sure you wish to do that?”

“I don’t know about you,” she says, “but at this point I honestly, absolutely, have nothing else to lose.”

He rubs his eyes and breathes heavily.

“Tell me something,” she says.

“You tell me what it is you suspect,” he snaps back, not angry, but suddenly very serious.

She wishes she were on the floor with him, at the same level, and that the lighting in the room were different so she could see his face more clearly.

“Okay,” she says. “I suspect that everything they think about you is wrong—”

“They,” he interrupts.

“The department. And the Feds. And the DEA. And Interpol.”

“What is it they think?”

“That you’re a very sharp renegade. That you’ve had a plan from the start. That you’re on your way to control of the whole East Coast, and then, maybe, beyond the East Coast. That the Italians and the Jamaicans and the Colombians and all the various Asian cartels are going to have to deal with you sooner or later. Basically, that you’re the top dog, so to speak.”

“And this you don’t believe?”

“No,” she says, a little nervous. “I don’t know why. I can’t even look at their paperwork. I can’t even hear about the documentation. Transcripts from a million informers. Something’s wrong about it.”

“You think,” he says, “I’m a puppet of some kind. You think there’s someone above me.”

“No offense intended.”

“But this is your suspicion.”

Lenore nods. Cortez bites his lower lip and gives a barely perceptible shrug.

“What I’d like to do,” he says, “is get all the suspicions out in the open before we confirm or destroy them. So here’s mine. Certainly, you’re a narcotics officer. There’s no question about this. For a time, the question was, were you filthy, or, perhaps, did you wish to be filthy? To the best of my knowledge, I wasn’t paying you. Mingo’s idea was that you were, in his words, a headcase. Le falta un tornillo. Your friend in the lobby, Jimmy, he thought you had the makings of a spectacular junkie, which, I must admit, I had to agree with. Tonight, I think something else, something beyond all these things. I suspect you are a woman without a sense of place. You don’t know where you belong. And you’re drawn to Bangkok Park because of its completely ambiguous nature. Because you think this might be the end of the road.”

Lenore wishes she’d taken him up on the drink offer. She gets out of the rocker and comes down to the floor, sitting in the same position as Cortez, almost mimicking him.

“Okay,” she says, “I’m a headcase. And I’ve got an appetite for speed that’s on the move. And I think I belong in the Park more than you do.” She pauses, turns more toward him, and says, “So, your turn.”

“As a younger man,” he says, so quietly she strains her eyes to watch his lips, “I was a seminarian, and then a medical student, and also a journeyman trumpet player. I grew bored with everything in time. And now I am a fine actor. Tremendous actor. There should be the Oscar, there, up on the mantel. But I’m bored to tears. I’m bored to the point of distraction.”

He uncrosses his legs, rises, and moves to the sheet-covered piece of furniture behind the rocker.

“Come here and see something,” he says, and Lenore stands and moves next to him.

He pulls the bed sheet free like a magician at a children’s party. Underneath is what looks like an antique traveling salesman’s product case, a big black wooden steamer trunk with fat leather straps for reinforcement. Cortez take a moment to open it and Lenore sees that it’s fitted with shelves for displaying the goods. The shelves here are crammed with old-fashioned books, leather-bound. Lenore leans forward a little to take in the wonderful smell. The titles written down the spines are all in Spanish.

“I thought you got rid of all your books,” Lenore says.

“I got rid of all those books,” Cortez says, gesturing toward the empty bookcases. “You have no idea what you’re seeing, my friend.”

“Old books.”

He shakes his head no. “There are one hundred books in this trunk. And not one of them has ever been seen by a northerner. Not a single one. Never been seen, let alone read. You want to talk about conspiracies? Here are novels, stories, poetry. From Argentina. And also from Peru, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia, Mexico, Ecuador. From all the countries below.”

He pulls out a volume and holds it in his hand.

“Paraguay.” He reshelves it and pulls out another.

“Guyana.”

He reshelves the second volume and begins to point at spines.

“Colombia, Nicaragua, Honduras.”

Then he folds his arms across his chest and says, “And, except for this trunk, Cortez’s own trunk, none of them have ever traveled north of Juárez. It’s our hidden library. The ghost library. The North knows nothing of it and never will.”

Lenore shrugs her shoulders. “So why are you telling me about it?”

“Because this is my future,” he says. “This is what I wish to do. I wish to go back home. Like you. For me, it’s possible. I want to just disappear. Into the Andes. Into a cave in the Andes. With my trunk. I want to vanish with my books.”

“Why don’t you?” Lenore asks.

“All things in time. The instinctual actor knows when to exit.”

“I’ll bet he also knows how to line his pockets one last time.”

“Which brings us to Lingo.”

“How much do you know?”

“Not as much as you think. It’s already out there. I’m sure you’re aware of that. I’ve been listening to the police radio all night. Such excitement. The city is humming. There was a sample batch. Every parasite in this hotel has dipped into that cookie jar, I’m sure. In another week, the blood will be rolling down the streets.”

“Do you know who’s selling? Do you know who smacked the Swarms, who you’re buying from?”

“No idea. I hope you believe me on this. I know it’s a new company. The sales rep is unusually elusive. Refers to himself as the Paraclete, which, I’m embarrassed to confess, appeals to my sense of the dramatic. But I can’t tell you where they come from or how big they are or how they got involved with the Swanns. You see, I’m more in the dark than you.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet. Let’s try something else. Confirm a hunch for me. Do you know who the Swanns cooked it up for in the first place? I mean, was it CIA or NSA or some other circle of fuckers in mirror sunglasses and wash-and-wear suits?”

“Who knows these things? These kinds of questions are like little Zen koans, don’t you think? The answer is really moot. Inconsequential. It’s the process of pondering the question that counts. I personally believe in a unified field theory in these matters. Everything interconnected and as important as everything else. You know who I think dreamed up Lingo? I think it was some blind, deaf, dumb, illiterate, incontinent, unwashed streetperson selling pencils from a soup can for a nickel, standing in front of the White House gates. Good an answer as any.”

“Maybe for you. But I’ve hit bottom. And now I’ve got to ask questions that I didn’t even acknowledge a week ago. Like who is it on the other side of the fence, on my side of the fence, that’s been helping you out for a while now? Someone up near the top of the department? Someone up in City Hall?”

“How do you know it’s not both?”

“How high does it go? Does it get up to Welby? Does it go beyond him?”

“My guess would be it goes fairly high. But, like you, my friend, I’m just a cog, correct? I’m an errand boy of sorts, yes? A caretaker. That’s your theory, right? You have to have the courage to stand behind your theories, Detective.”

They smile at one another. She says, “I don’t think you’d last a week in a cave in the Andes.”

He shakes his head and says, “That’s where you’d be wrong.”

She shrugs. “You know what you want, I guess—”

“And you also.”

“So why can’t we both have what we want? Why can’t there be a way that you get the money and the distance? You get to run. All shots fired far over the head.”

“You want a time and a place?”

“You knew that when I came in the door.”

“You want everyone left over after I run?”

“I want the producer. And the broker. I’d say I want the Aliens too, but I’m betting you’d balk.”

“The aliens?” Cortez repeats.

“The people above you,” Lenore says.

“I love that term. But you know how it is with aliens. Long arms and all.”

“You’ve got quite the imagination.”

“And a strong sense of history. You’re free to believe what you want. I know the extent of their power. It’s been my experience that what is fantastic up here is simply the boring routine when you get south of the border.”

“In that case, one last question.”

“Go ahead.”

“The Aliens. They wouldn’t by any chance be women?”

An enormous smile breaks on Cortez’s face. He cups a hand around Lenore’s neck and, without actually making any sound, mouths the words “Of course they are.”

“I’m glad I entertain you so much,” she says.

“I hope it’s been a mutual infatuation.”

“Infatuation. That’s how you want to define this.”

“You’d prefer something stronger,” he says, voice low, genuinely flirting with her.

“Absolutely. And since you’re the one breaking to run, that makes me the spurned victim.”

“You? A victim?”

“And I’m here for some concessions.” She pauses, then says, “So how about it?”

He starts to close up the ghost library. He sinks to his knees to latch the case and says, without looking at her, “I’m taking Max with me, you know. You won’t be seeing any more of him.”

Lenore is startled. “You know about Max and me?”

Cortez nods. “And I don’t believe I’m the only one. But a father will forgive a son almost anything.”

“Father? Figuratively, or—”

“Does it matter?” He pauses, looks at the palm of his hand. “I don’t want Wyatt hurt, either.”

“Okay.”

“Mingo, I’m not as concerned about. I’ve had the feeling lately that if I looked into some of Mingo’s off-time activities, I’d be very disappointed. He’s caused more of my problems than he’s worth.”

“Just keep your people near you.”

He comes back upright, moves in close to her until their bodies are almost touching.

“You’ll be free at two A.M.?”

“I think I can make it.”

“St. James Cemetery? Off Richer?”

“Where my parents are buried.”

“The old section. Near the railroad tracks. A freight car labeled ‘Pachinko.’”

“All right. Done. Have you been given the money for the purchase yet?”

“It should be arriving shortly.”

“Then I should be getting out of here. You keep your hands on the cash. Can you set something up between now and the meet? Transportation and all?”

“I’ve had some loose contingencies in place for some time.”

“Then this is it,” she says, taking an awkward step backward, feeling a little woozy. “Have a good life, Cortez. Reading. In the caves.”

He rolls his eyes for some reason. He looks sheepish, embarrassed. He seems to her, suddenly, almost shockingly, unsure and young, like he could hold up his hands at any second and tell her the whole thing was a joke, an elaborate put-on. Ike and Woo, the whole narc department, even poor cousin Lon might come running into the library, conspirators in the gag. Everyone might laugh, bottles of champagne could be popped open, music could be introduced to the dusty room, and a party, based solely on a fat prank played on Lenore, could start its march into the night.

Instead, Cortez holds his hand above his head, palm flat and parallel with the crown of his skull, and says, “Remember, shoot high.”

Lenore stares at him, waiting for something more. Then she gives a single, small nod and turns to move. Cortez puts his hands on her shoulders, pulls her in toward him, and begins to kiss her. At first, Lenore doesn’t respond, but as seconds pass and he shows no sign of separating their lips, she lets herself go comfortable, and then she’s returning the gesture, applying pressure of her own. Their mouths open, almost simultaneously, and tongues slide around one another and into new territory. It goes on for full minutes, their breathing becoming more and more audible, sucking noises multiplying.

She wants to press on his shoulders and force him down onto the floor. But he stops, draws his head back slowly, then brings his mouth forward, this time pressing his lips to her forehead. He kisses softly now. He tilts his head and kisses her cheek, holding her face in both his hands. Then he steps backward, gives a small bow of the head, like some odd Euro-Latin count, some last-century duke, and he walks out of the library in a modified march, hands down at his side and feet moving in syncopated time.

She stands for a moment, taken back. She realizes she, too, should leave, get back to the Barracuda, get back to the green duplex, get on the phone, and start setting strategy. Instead, she moves to the fireplace, squats down, and hunches in over her knees. She tries to lean close and get any last heat the embers might have to offer. But it’s no good. She’s got a chill and an ache that’s only going to grow. The thing is to keep it under control for the next three or four hours.

That’s the goal. Get through a specific period of time. Keep the mind on that simple goal. Continue to perform, to move through the motions. Fulfill the duties, the responsibilities. Do her job.

And, where Cortez is concerned, shoot high.