Celine

TEN

The chat may have lasted five minutes.

The deductions were obvious. If someone had stolen Gabriela’s twenty-three-year-old research file on her missing father then 1) the timing suggested that they didn’t want Celine and Pete to have it, and 2) they couldn’t know that the two were just now launching an investigation unless Gabriela had told someone, or her phone was tapped. They’d clear that up in just a minute.

On the next bench, in full sun, was a family of four tourists feeding popcorn to Canada geese. The little boy was hurling the kernels overhead like he was trying to hit the birds with shot, and in his other hand he held a chocolate ice-cream cone that was melting all over his wrist.

“It’s very hard to be a boy,” Celine commented dryly. “You’re never sure whether to love something or kill it.” Pete followed her gaze. “This is a very self-respecting town, Pete. The pigeons here are wild geese.”

“Hmm.”

“Remind me to tell you a story later about peppering birds with shot.”

“Hmm.”

“Which, if you will stop interrupting me, brings us to further ideas on the matter. It’s very hard to concentrate when you are so effusive.”

He held her hand and rubbed the back of it with his thumb.

“Let’s assume that the file didn’t get up and walk of its own accord out of Gabriela’s apartment. And that she didn’t just leave it at the coffee shop. I’d be very surprised if she took it there in the first place. She would handle something like that with extreme care.”

“It was stolen,” Pete said flatly. “And I don’t believe she told anyone about enlisting us. I didn’t get the sense that she has a wide circle of confidants.”

“Right. And we’ll just ask her in a minute.”

“Which means her phone was tapped—”

Pete was interrupted by an alarmed blatting and honking. The little boy, unable to arouse love or inflict death on the geese by hurling popcorn—they just happily ate the stuff—had dropped his cone and charged headlong at the little flock. He’d stubbed his toe on a root and hurtled like a surface-to-surface child at the birds who were at least as big as he. That was the first commotion. The alpha goose, if there is such a thing, was on top of the prone boy in a flash, beating his great wings and hissing and pecking at his neck. You could see that the goose had snapped. Psychologically. He’d had enough of obnoxious little boys and junk food, this goose was going postal. Enough was enough. That was the second commotion. The mom screamed, the dad leapt up and rushed; the goose, to his credit, gave no quarter and flew into the man’s face. The dad looked like he was beating himself about the head and shoulders. The goose landed on the grass, stumbled sideways, recovered, stretched his tremendous neck, took two strides, and in sync with his tribe, flapped his great wings, this time for flight, and with dignity and improbable slowness took wing. He and his flock rose over the trees muttering and circled north, out of sight.

In the shocked silence that often follows mortal combat, Celine and Pete looked at each other.

“Goose two, Smiths zero,” Pete said quietly.

“I had no idea their wings creak like rusty hinges. Didn’t it sound just like that, Pete? The boys look all right,” she added, very dry, meaning the kid and his father who were taking their humiliation out on each other.

“A valuable lesson in Don’t Feed the Animals. Could prove a lifesaver in bear country.”

“We’re going to bear country, aren’t we, Pete?”

“Yes we are. I’m looking forward to it. I’m a little tired of being at the top of the food chain.”

“You sound like that Neruda poem I love so: It so happens I am tired of being a man… Somewhere in there he knocks out a nun with a lily. Sorry, you were saying?”

Pete squeezed her hand. “Her phone is tapped.”

“Mmm. Probably for a while, God knows why. And nothing happens, no trigger, until she hires us to find her father.”

“Right. He disappeared twenty-three years ago. I think there’s a good possibility that someone has been eavesdropping ever since.”

“Wow.”

“Wow,” Pete repeated dramatically.

“Waiting for him to call. Because they don’t believe he’s dead either.”

“Right. And there are scores to settle.”

“Accounts to balance at the least.”

“Hmm.”

They listened to the vanquished little boy’s older sister scold him for getting whipped by a bird and dropping a perfectly good chocolate cone on the grass, and they watched the Family Smith tromp off to their car and new adventures in engaging the world.

Celine said, “Instead we triggered the action. So then why…” Celine wore large glasses in dark tortoiseshell. They were a bit like Jackie O’s sunglasses but bigger, even more of a statement. She didn’t mean them to be, she shied from anything show-offy, but she had an innate and inarguable sense of style. She took off the glasses, eyed them critically as if they were smudged, which they weren’t, and put them back on, settling them on her not at all diminutive, aquiline nose. “Why wouldn’t they want us to have the file?”

“You mean if they wanted to find Paul Lamont?” The two were beginning to pronounce the “they” with vague distaste.

“Yes,” she said. “They could simply follow us to him. After all, we have a better find rate than the FBI.” Which was true.

“But do we have a better success rate than the CIA?”

They looked at each other. “Probably,” Celine said. “That’s just it. They can’t find him. Whoever they are. And they’ve seen the file. You can bet they’ve broken in before and copied it. She didn’t know but she does now because they wanted her to know. They wanted us to know. The fallen picture, etc.—that was a warning.” Celine took a pocket mirror from her purse and checked her lipstick. “No, they’ve wrung the leads dry. The file is no more to them than an artifact. And we come along with our impeccable track record. They don’t want us to find him or they’d let us have the file. The risk, whatever the risk is, is just too great.”

“What’s the risk?” Pete said.

“I’m not sure.” She snapped the mirror closed and smiled at her husband. “I thought the silverware tray being moved was an interesting detail, didn’t you? Spy craft is spy craft I suppose.”

They had worked together for so long, had conducted so many of these inquiring conversations, that they knew the pacing down to the last long notes. Like musicians who nod at each other before the final measures, they shared a long look that meant: That’s all for now. This too shall be revealed. And then Celine raised the cell phone and called Gabriela back.