Politika

TWENTY-SEVEN

The sky outside the window was a blur of falling snow. It blew in rippling cataracts, tinged eerily pink by the vapor light across the street.

Putting his cordless phone back on its base, Nick Roma cursed inwardly. He could hear the wind keening outside, hurling flakes against the pane like fistfuls of sand. Although the rain that had soaked the pavement earlier had delayed any accumulation, he knew the city would be buried under mountains of white by morning.

Well, Nick thought, he had enough to worry about without letting the weather get to him. Better to look ahead toward what was in store. A moment ago on the phone, Marissa had said that she missed him. Why hadn’t he been in touch?

It was good to keep them wondering. She would be generous with her affection tonight, would want to make sure he hadn’t tired of her. And if expenses, not sex, were on her mind as she arched against him, so what? The maintenance on the Shore Road co-op in which he kept her was nearly two thousand dollars a month. And then there was the small fortune she spent on clothes and trinkets. Money was what moved her to passion — although she gave as well as she got. As in any fair deal, each party came away satisfied.

Rising from behind his desk, he went to the coatrack, took his Armani sport coat off the hanger, and slipped it on. Then he stood in front of the mirror, smoothing and combing. Let the snow come down. Let the city choke on it. He would spend tomorrow luxuriating in soft, warm flesh.

Satisfied with his appearance, he returned to his desk. In a plastic bag beside it were two bottles of Pinot Noir. A French label — the American vintages didn’t even belong in the same class.

He glanced at the dial of his watch. Ten minutes to eleven. It was Sunday and the nightclub downstairs was closed. And as usual on Sunday nights, Nick had been at the office to meet with his captains, receive his skim, give them instructions, mediate their disputes, and so forth. Most had grumbled about having to come out in the storm, but they didn’t have any idea what it was like to stand in his shoes. He believed in keeping tight control of all his projects. Anybody who didn’t was asking for chaos.

That, of course, was the problem with his participation in what had been done New Year’s Eve. So much of it had been out of his hands from the beginning. And then there was the business of the satchel charge, the one that hadn’t gone off. He had suspected even before the press leaks that something like that had happened. The earliest stories on the news had mentioned only three explosions following the initial blast, and at the time he had optimistically hoped they were wrong. But he’d had his lingering doubts, and day by day the hard evidence had mounted, eventually becoming conclusive. Three explosions. Not four. This according to every eyewitness, every inch of video footage, every photograph taken at the scene. When the story surfaced that an undetonated bomb had been discovered and given over to the FBI for testing, he’d known it was all true. And had gotten to thinking. Could that possibly have been what Gilea and her people wanted? And if so, why? He’d been aware that they meant to throw a wrench into certain political developments between the United States and Russia… but his biggest mistake had been to distance himself from the intricacies of their plan, and therefore remain half-blind to its intended outcome. Had he been caught up in a scheme that was more devious than he’d guessed? And if so, might it be that he was to be sacrificed as part of it?

It seemed like a lot of wild imagination… but before the first of the year, the same might have been said about a bombing on the scale of what had occurred in Times Square. Suppose he’d been set up to take the heat? He had to wonder about that, in spite of how Gilea had acted toward him the night of the attack, and what they had done together afterward, done right here in his office… or maybe because of it. She had been all over him that night. It had been as though she were on fire. As though the flames that had killed those hundreds of people had brought about an unquenchable heat of a different sort inside her body. He didn’t know how else to describe it. Gilea, Gilea. Here and then disappeared. What was he to make of her? A woman like that was capable of anything. Anything in the world.

And say he was getting carried away with his suspicions? Admittedly, he’d been on edge for the past couple of weeks. Say he was getting carried away, and he hadn’t been used as a pawn in some treacherous game, and the failure of the bomb to detonate was strictly an accident. Would the fact that it had nothing to do with Gilea’s planning make the position he was in right now any better? It didn’t have to be that he’d been double-crossed. Things went wrong, and people went down as a consequence. What had been worrying him was the possibility that analysis of the explosives would lead to a connection between the distributor and his import company. He was no expert when it came to the science, but he knew that might be done with certain kinds of testing. The authorities would want badly to make an arrest. How might the evidence be stacking up against him? He wasn’t sure yet, couldn’t be sure. But he wasn’t going to just stand around and wait for a gigantic fist to come crashing through his wall.

The wind thumped against his window, pelted it with sharp crystals of snow. The sound was loud enough to give Nick a start. Frowning, he cast off his thoughts with a visible shake of his head and returned to his desk.

He had done all that he could — for now, at any rate. He had his own men out, trying to discover what the Feds had learned — and throwing up smoke screens wherever they could. And if that wasn’t enough… well, he had his insurance, his films of Gilea fondling the plastique. He was sure he’d be able to cut a deal if he had to.

He picked up the phone again, called downstairs, told his men to get his car warmed up. He wanted to forget his concerns for a while, wanted to sink himself deep into Marissa, wanted to relax.

Otherwise he might go crazy thinking about what might lie ahead.