Secret of the Seventh Son

JULY 29, 2009

W ill’s hangover was so mild it almost didn’t qualify as one. It was more like a light case of the flu that could be cleared up in an hour by a couple of Tylenol.

The night before, he figured he’d drop off the deep end, bump along the bottom for a good long time and not surface until he was nearly drowned. But a couple of drinks into his planned bender he got angry, angry enough to rev down the self-pity and keep the flow of scotch at a steady state where his input matched his metabolism. He leveled off and engaged in largely rational thought for much of the night instead of the usual volatile nonsense that masqueraded as logic, quickly forgotten. During this functional interlude, he called Nancy and arranged to meet early.

He was already at one of the Starbucks near Grand Central, drinking a venti, when she arrived. She looked worse than him.

“Good commute?” he quipped.

He thought she wanted to cry and half considered giving her a hug, but that would have been a first-a public show of affection.

“I got a nonfat latte for you,” he said, sliding the cup. “It’s still hot.” That nugget set her off. Tears started flowing. “It’s only a cup of coffee,” he said.

“I know. Thanks.” She took a sip then asked the question: “What happened?”

She leaned in over the small table to hear his reply. The store was packed with customers, noisy with chatter and explosions of the milk steamer.

She looked young and vulnerable and he reflexively touched her hand. She misinterpreted the gesture.

“Do you think they found out about us?” she asked.

“No! This has nothing to do with that.”

“How do you know?”

“They haul your ass to H.R. and tell you. Believe me, I know.”

“Then, what?”

“It’s not us, it’s the case.” He drank some coffee, glancing at each face that came through the door.

“They don’t want us to arrest Shackleton,” she said, reading his mind.

“That’s what it looks like.”

“Why would they block the capture of a serial killer?”

“Great question.” He massaged his forehead and eyes wearily. “It’s because he’s special cargo.”

She looked quizzical.

He dropped his voice. “When is someone taken off the grid? Federal witness? Covert activity? Black ops? Whatever it is, the screen goes dark and he’s a nonperson. He said he worked for the feds. Area 51, whatever that is, or some such bull crap. This smells of one part of the government-us-bumping up against another part of the government, and we lost.”

“Are you saying that officials in some federal agency decided to let a killer walk?” She was incredulous.

“I’m not saying anything. But yeah, it’s possible. Depends how important he is. Or maybe, if there’s some justice, he’s dealt with quietly.”

“But we’d never know,” she said.

“We’d never know.”

She finished her latte and rummaged her purse for a compact to fix her makeup. “So that’s it? We’re done?”

He watched her remove the streaks. “You’re done. I’m not done.”

His squared-off jaw was set in a classic pose of truculence, but there was also a serenity, the troubling kind when someone perched on a ledge has decided to jump.

“You’re going back to the office,” he said. “They’ll have new work for you. I hear Mueller’s coming back. Maybe they’ll team you up again. You’ll go on and have a great career because you’re one heck of an agent.”

“Will-” she blurted.

“No, hear me out, please,” he said. “This is personal. I don’t know how or why Shackleton killed these people but I do know he did this to rub my face in this dung heap of a case. It’s got to be a part-maybe a big part-of his motivation. What’s going to happen to me is what’s supposed to happen. I’m not a company man anymore. Haven’t been one for years. The whole idea of minding my fucking p’s and q’s to coast through to retirement has been bullshit.” He was venting now, but the public space was keeping him from really broadcasting. “Screw the twenty and screw the pension. I’ll find a job somewhere. I don’t need a lot to get by.”

She put her compact down. It looked like she’d have to redo her makeup again.

“God, Nancy, don’t cry!” he whispered. “This isn’t about us. Us is great. This is the best male-female thing I’ve had in a long time, maybe ever, if you want the truth. Apart from being smart and sexy, you’re the most self-sufficient woman I’ve ever been with.”

“That’s a compliment?”

“From me? It’s huge. You’re not needy like one hundred percent of my exes. You’re comfortable with your own life, which makes me comfortable with mine. I’m not going to find that again.”

“Then why blow it up?”

“Wasn’t my intent, obviously. I’ve got to find Shackleton.”

“You’re off the case!”

“I’m putting myself back on. One way or another it’s going to get me booted. I know how they think. They won’t tolerate the insubordination. Look, when I’m a mall security guard in Pensacola, maybe you can get a transfer down there. I don’t know what they’ve got for art museums but we’ll figure out ways to get you some culture.”

She dabbed her eyes. “Do you have a plan at least?”

“It’s not a very sophisticated one. I already called in sick. Sue’ll be relieved she won’t have to deal with me today. I’m booked on a flight to Vegas later this morning. I’m going to find him and make him talk.”

“And I’m supposed to go back to work like nothing’s happened.”

“Yes and no.” He pulled two cell phones from his briefcase. “They’re going to be all over me as soon as they realize I’m off the reservation. It’s possible they’ll put a tap on you. Take one of these prepaids. We’ll use them to talk to each other. Unless they get our numbers, they’re untraceable. I’ll need eyes and ears, but if you think for a second you’re compromising yourself, we’re going to pull the plug. And give Laura a call. Tell her something that puts her at ease. Okay?”

She took one of the phones. It was already damp from the brief time in his clutch. “Okay.”

Mark was dreaming about lines of software code. They were forming faster than he could type, as fast as he could think. Each line was spare, perfect in a minimalist way, without an extraneous character. A floating slate was filling fast with something wonderful. It was a fabulous dream, and he was appalled that it was being zapped by ring tones.

It jarred him that his boss, Rebecca Rosenberg, was on his mobile. He was in bed with a beautiful woman in a magnificent suite in the Venetian Hotel and the Jersey voice of his troll-like supervisor was stomach-churning.

“How are you?” she asked.

“I’m fine. What’s up?” It wasn’t lost on him that she had never called like this before.

“I’m sorry to bother you on your vacation. Where are you?”

They could find out if they wanted from his mobile signal so he didn’t lie. “In Vegas.”

“Okay, so I know it’s a real imposition, but we’ve got a code problem that no one can fix. The lambda HITS went down and the watchers are freaking out.”

“Did you try rebooting it?” he asked blearily.

“A million times. It looks like the code got corrupted.”

“How?”

“No one can figure it out. You’re its daddy. You’d be doing me a big favor by coming in tomorrow.”

“I’m on vacation!”

“I know, I’m sorry to have to call you but if you do this for us, I’ll get you three extra vacation days, and if you finish the job in half a day, we’ll get you Lear-jetted back to McCarran at lunchtime. So what do you say? Deal?”

He shook his head in disbelief. “Yeah. I’ll do it.”

He tossed the phone onto the bed. Kerry was still sound asleep. Something was fishy. He had covered his tracks so flawlessly, he was certain the Desert Life business was undetectable. He just had to bide his time, wait a month or two before starting the voluntary resignation process. He’d tell them he’d met a girl, that they were going to get married and live on the East Coast. They’d gnash their teeth and lecture him about mutual commitments, the length of time it took to recruit and train him, the difficulty in finding a replacement. They’d appeal to his patriotism. He’d hang tough. This wasn’t slavery. They had to let him go. On his way out the door, they’d give him a good hard scrub and find nothing. They’d watch him for years, maybe forever, as they did with all past employees, but so be it. They could watch him all they wanted.

When Rosenberg hung up, the watchers took their earpieces out and nodded their approval. Malcolm Frazier, their chief, was there too, stiff-necked with an inanimate face and a wrestler’s body. He told her, “That was good.”

“If you think he’s a security risk, why don’t you pick him up today?” she asked.

“We don’t think he’s a security risk, we know he is,” Frazier said gruffly. “We’d prefer to do this in a controlled environment. We’ll confirm he’s in Nevada. We’ve got people over at his house. We’ll keep tabs on his mobile signal. If we think he’s going to be a no-show tomorrow, we’ll move.”

“I’m sure you know your jobs,” Rosenberg said. The air in her office was permeated with the scent of large athletic men.

“Yes, Dr. Rosenberg, we do.”

On his way to the airport it began to drizzle and the taxi’s wiper blades beat like a metronome keeping time for an adagio. Will slumped in the backseat, and when he nodded off, his chin came to rest on his shoulder. He awoke on the LaGuardia service road with a sore neck and told the driver he wanted US Airways.

His tan suit was speckled with raindrops. He caught the ticket agent’s name, Vicki, from her name tag and engaged her in small talk while he presented his ID and federal carry license. He absently watched her as she typed, a chunky, simple girl with long brown hair clipped into a pony tail, an unlikely nemesis.

The terminal was awash in gray light, a clinically sterile concourse with little pedestrian traffic since it was mid-morning. That made it easy for him to scan the hall and isolate persons of interest. His antennae were up and he was tense. Nobody but Nancy knew he was taking a walk on the wild side but he felt conspicuous anyway, like he had a sign around his neck. The passengers waiting for check-in up and down the hall looked legit, and there were two uniformed cops chatting near the ATM machine at the far end.

He had an hour to kill. He’d grab a bite and buy a paperback. When he was airborne he’d be able to relax for a few hours, unless Darla was working this leg, in which case he’d have to wrestle with the quandary of cheating on Nancy, though he was pretty sure he might succumb to the “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” slogan. He hadn’t thought about the big blonde for a while, but now he was having a hard time getting her out of his thoughts. For a full-bodied gal, she had the tiniest, most weightless lingerie-

Vicki was stalling, he realized. She was shuffling a few papers, staring at her terminal with frightened eyes.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. The screen’s frozen. It’ll clear.”

The cops by the ATM were looking his way, talking into their radios.

Will snatched up his IDs from the counter. “Vicki, let’s finish this up later. I’ve got to hit the restroom.”

“But…”

He sprinted. The cops were a good sixty yards away and the floors were slippery. He had a quick shot straight out the door to the curb, and he was out of the building in three seconds. He didn’t look back. His only chance was to move and think faster than the cops following him. A black Town Car was dropping off a passenger. The driver was about to pull away when Will opened the back door and plunged through it, tossing his travel bag onto the seat.

“Hey! I can’t pick up here!” The driver was in his sixties with a Russian accent.

“It’s okay!” Will said. “I’m a federal agent.” He flashed his badge. “Drive. Please.”

The driver grumbled in Russian but smoothly accelerated. Will pretended to search through his bag, a ruse to lower his head. He heard shouts in the distance. Had they made him? Did they get the tag number? His heart was pounding.

“I could get fired,” the driver said.

“I’m sorry. I’m on a case.”

“FBI?” the Russian asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“I got son in Afghanistan, where you want to go?”

Will quickly ran through scenarios. “Marine Air Terminal.”

“Only other side of airport?”

“You’re a great help. Yeah, only there.” He switched off his mobile phone and tossed it in his bag, swapping it for the bulkier prepaid.

The driver wouldn’t take any money. Will got out and looked around: moment of truth. Everything looked normal, no blue lights, no pursuers. He immediately joined the short taxi rank in front of the terminal and hopped into a yellow cab. When it drove off he used his prepaid phone to call Nancy and fill her in. The two of them urgently hatched a small plan.

He figured they’d be motivated and resourced, so he had to put on a good effort, multiple transfers, zigzags. He had the first taxi drop him off on Queens Boulevard, where he stopped at a Chase Bank and withdrew a few grand in cash from his account and hailed another cab. The next stop was 125th Street in Manhattan, where he boarded a Metro North commuter to White Plains.

It was early afternoon and he was hungry. The rain had stopped and the air was fresher and more breathable than earlier. The sky was brightening and his bag wasn’t heavy so he set off on foot in search of food. He found a small Italian restaurant on Mamaroneck Avenue and holed up at a table away from the window for a languorous three-course time-killer. He stopped himself from ordering a third beer and switched to soda for his main course of lasagna. When he was done he paid in cash, let his belt out a notch and walked into the sunshine.

The public library was nearby. It was a grand municipal building, some architect’s concept of neoclassical design. He checked his bag at the front desk, but because there was no metal detector, he kept his weapon in its shoulder holster and found a quiet spot at a long table at the far end of the air-conditioned central reading room.

He suddenly felt conspicuous. Of the two dozen people in the room, he was the only one wearing a suit and the only one with a clean table space. The large room was library quiet, with an occasional cough and the scuff of a chair leg on the floor. He removed his tie, stuffed it into a jacket pocket, and set off to find a book to kill the time.

He wasn’t much of a reader and he wasn’t sure he remembered the last time he wandered the stacks of a library-probably at college, probably chasing a girl rather than a book. Despite the drama of the day, he was postprandial and drowsy and his legs were heavy. He weaved through claustrophobic rows of tall metal bookcases and inhaled the stale cardboard smell. Thousands of book titles blurred into one another and his brain started getting fuzzy. He had an overwhelming desire to curl up in a dark corner and take a nap, and was on the brink of going fully numb when he snapped back to alertness.

He was being watched.

He sensed it first, then heard footsteps, to his left in a parallel row. He turned in time to see a heel disappearing at the end of the stacks. He touched his holster through his jacket then hurried to the end of his row and made two quick rights. The row was empty. He listened, thought he heard something farther along, and crept quietly in that direction, another two rows toward the center of the room. When he wheeled round the corner, he saw a man scuttling away from him. “Hey!” he called out.

The man stopped and turned. He was obese, with an unruly speckled black beard, and was dressed as if it were winter, in hiking boots, a moth-holed sweater, and a parka. His upper cheeks were pocked and irritated and his nose was bulbous and textured like an orange peel. He had wire-rim glasses with a thrift-shop pedigree. Even though he was in his fifties, he had the petulance of a child caught doing something wrong.

Will approached him cautiously. “Were you following me?”

“No.”

“I think you were.”

“I was following you,” he admitted.

Will relaxed. The man wasn’t a threat. He pegged him as a schizophrenic, nonviolent, controlled. “Why were you following me?”

“To help you find a book.” There was no modulation. Every word had the same tone and emphasis as the last, each one delivered with complete earnestness.

“Well, friend, I can use the help. I’m not big on libraries.”

The man smiled and showed a mouthful of bad teeth. “I love the library.”

“Okay, you can help me find a book. My name is Will.”

“I’m Donny.”

“Hello, Donny. You lead, I’ll follow.”

Donny joyfully hurried through the stacks like a rat who had mastered a maze. He led Will to a corner then down two flights of stairs to a basement floor where he burrowed deeply into the new level with a sense of purpose. They passed a library assistant, an older woman pushing a cart of books, who smiled slyly, pleased that Donny had found a willing playmate.

“You must have a really good book for me, Donny,” Will called out to him.

“I got a really good book for you.”

With plenty of time on his hands, Will found the escapade diverting. The man he was chasing had all the hallmarks of chronic schizophrenia with maybe a touch of retardation thrown in, and by the look of him, was on big-time meds. Deep in a library subbasement, he was in Donny’s house playing Donny’s game, but he didn’t mind.

Finally, Donny stopped midway down an aisle and reached over his head for a large book with a worn cover. He needed both sweaty hands to wriggle it free before offering it to Will.

The Holy Bible.

“The Bible?” Will said with a fair bit of surprise. “I’ve got to tell you, Donny, I’m not much of a Bible reader. You read the Bible?”

Donny looked down at his boots and shook his head. “I don’t read it.”

“But you think I should?”

“You should read it.”

“Any other books I ought to be reading?”

“Yes. One other book.”

He scooted off again, Will following, lugging the eight-pound Bible under his arm, pushed up against his holstered gun. His mother, a meek Baptist who endured his son of a bitch father for thirty-seven years, read the Bible incessantly, and just then he cloyingly remembered an image of her at the kitchen table, reading her Bible, holding onto it for dear life, her lower lip trembling, while his old man, drunk in the living room, cursed her out at the top of his lungs. And she plumbed the Bible for personal forgiveness when she too turned to the bottle for release. He wouldn’t be reading the Bible anytime soon.

“The next book going to be as profound as this one?” Will asked.

“Yes. It’s going to be a good book for you to read.”

He couldn’t wait.

They went down another flight of stairs to the lowest level, an area that didn’t look like it saw a lot of foot traffic. Donny suddenly stopped on a dime and dropped to his knees at a shelf filled with older leather-bound books. He triumphantly pulled one out. “This is a good one for you.”

Will was keen to see it. What, in this poor soul’s view of the world, would match the Bible? He braced himself for a revelatory moment.

NY State Municipal Code-1951.

He put the Bible down to examine the new book. As advertised, it was page after page of municipal codes with a heavy emphasis on permitted uses of land. It was probably a minimum of half a century since anyone had touched the volume. “Well, this sure is profound, Donny.”

“Yep. It’s a good book.”

“You picked both these books randomly, didn’t you?”

He nodded his head vigorously. “They were random, Will.”

At five-thirty he was sound asleep in the reading room with his head comfortably perched on the Bible and the Municipal Code. He felt a tug on his sleeve, looked up and saw Nancy standing over him. “Hi.”

She was checking out his reading material. “Don’t ask,” he pleaded.

Outside, they sat in her car talking. He figured if he was going to be taken down, it would have happened already. It looked like no one had connected the dots.

She told him that back in the office all hell was breaking loose. She wasn’t in the loop but the news was spreading fluidly within the agency. Will’s name had been added to the TSA’s no-fly list and his check-in attempt at LaGuardia had triggered multiagency pandemonium. Sue Sanchez was feverish-she’d spent all day behind closed doors with the brass, emerging only to bark a few orders and generally be a pain in the ass. They’d questioned Nancy a few times about her knowledge of Will’s actions and intent but seemed satisfied that she didn’t know anything. Sue was almost apologetic at having forced Nancy to work with him on the Doomsday case and assured her repeatedly that she wouldn’t be stained by the association.

Will sighed deeply. “Well, I’m grounded. I can’t fly, I can’t rent a car, I can’t use a credit card. If I try to get on a train or a bus I’ll get picked up at Penn Station or the Port Authority.” He stared out the passenger-side window, then put a hand on her thigh and patted it playfully. “I’ll have to steal a car, I guess.”

“You’re absolutely right. You’re going to steal a car.” She started the motor and left the parking lot.

They argued all the way to her house. He didn’t want to involve her parents, but Nancy insisted. “I want them to meet you.”

He wanted to know why.

“They’ve heard all about you. They’ve seen you on TV.” She paused before finishing, “They know about us.”

“Tell me you didn’t tell your parents you’re having an affair with your partner who’s almost twice your age.”

“We’re a close family. And you’re not twice my age.”

The Lipinski abode was a compact 1930s brick house with a steeply pitched slate roof on a stubby dead-end street across from Nancy’s old high school, its flower beds brimming with cascades of orange and red roses that made it look like the structure was being consumed by fire.

Joe Lipinski was in the backyard, a small man, shirtless with baggy shorts. There were sprouts of silky-white hair everywhere-sparse on his sunburned scalp, tufted on his chest. His round, impish cheeks were the fleshiest part of his body. He was kneeling on the grass, pruning a rosebush, but shot up with a youthful spring to his legs and yelled, “Hey! It’s the Pied Piper! Welcome to Casa Lipinski!”

“You have a beautiful garden, sir,” Will offered.

“Don’t sir me, Joe me. But thanks. You like roses?”

“Sure I do.”

Joe reached for a small bud, pruned it off and held it out. “For your button hole. Put it in his button hole, Nancy.”

She blushed but complied, threading it in place.

“There!” Joe exclaimed. “Now you two kids can go to the prom. C’mon. Let’s get out of the sun. Your mother’s got dinner almost ready.”

“I don’t want to put you out,” Will protested.

Joe dismissed him with a what-are-you-talking about look and winked at his daughter.

The house was warm because Joe didn’t believe in air-conditioning. It was a period piece, unchanged since moving day, 1974. The kitchen and bathrooms had been updated in the sixties but that was it. Small rooms with thick mushy carpets and worn lumpy furniture, a first-generation escape to the suburbs.

Mary Lipinski was in the kitchen, which was fragrant from simmering pots. She was a pretty woman who hadn’t let herself go, although, Will noted, she was on the thick-hipped side. He had an unpleasant habit of divining what his girlfriends might look like in twenty years, as if he’d ever had a relationship that lasted more than twenty months. Still, she had a tight, youthful face, lovely shoulder-length brown hair, a firm bosom, and nice calves. Not bad for her late fifties, early sixties.

Joe was a CPA and Mary was a bookkeeper. They had met at General Foods, where he was an accountant, about ten years her senior, and she was a secretary in the tax department. At first he commuted up from Queens; she was a local girl from White Plains. When they married, they bought this small house on Anthony Road just a mile away from the headquarters. Years later, after the company was acquired by Kraft, the White Plains operation was closed down and Joe took a buyout. He decided to open up his own tax business, and Mary took a job at a Ford dealer doing their books. Nancy was their only daughter, and they were thrilled she was back in her old room.

“So that’s us, the modern day Joseph and Mary,” Joe said, concluding a brief family history and passing Will a plate of string beans. A Verdi opera was softly playing on the Bose radio. Will was lulled into a contented state by the food, the music, and the plain conversation. This was the kind of wholesome shit he never provided for his daughter, he thought wistfully. A glass of wine or beer would have been nice but it appeared the Lipinskis weren’t serving. Joe was zeroing in on the punch line: “We’re just like the originals, but this one here, she was no immaculate conception!”

“Dad!” Nancy protested.

“Would you like another piece of chicken, Will?” Mary asked.

“Yes ma’am, I would, thank you.”

“Nancy tells me you spent the afternoon in our fine public library,” Joe said.

“I did. I came across a real character there.”

Mary grimaced. “Donny Golden,” she said.

“You know him?” Will asked.

“Everyone knows Donny,” Nancy answered.

“Tell Will how you know him, Mary,” Joe prodded.

“Believe it or not, Will, Donny and I went to high school together.”

“She was his girlfriend!” Joe shouted gleefully.

“We dated once! It’s such a sad story. He was the most handsome boy, from a nice Jewish family. He went off to college, normal and healthy, and got very sick during his freshman year. Some say it was drugs, some say it was just when he developed his mental problem. He spent years in institutions. He lives in some kind of supervised house downtown and spends all his time in the library. He’s harmless but it’s painful to see him. I won’t go there.”

“He doesn’t have such a bad life,” Joe said. “No pressures. He’s oblivious to all the bad things in the world.”

“I think it’s sad too,” Nancy said, picking at her food. “I saw his yearbook pictures. He was really cute.”

Mary sighed. “Who knew what fate had in store for him? Who ever knows?”

Suddenly, Joe turned serious. “So, Will, tell us what’s in store for you. I hear there’s some funny business going on. I’m concerned for you, certainly, but as a father, I’m very concerned for my daughter.”

“Will can’t talk about an ongoing investigation, Dad.”

“No, listen, I hear you, Joe. I’ve got some things I’ve got to do but I don’t want Nancy getting caught up in this. She’s got a brilliant career ahead of her.”

“I’d rather she was doing something less dangerous than the FBI,” her mother said, chiming what sounded like a constant refrain.

Nancy made a face and Joe dismissed his wife’s worry with a wave. “I understand you were close to making an arrest but both of you were yanked off the investigation. How does something like this happen in the United States of America? When my parents were in Poland, these things happened all the time. But here?”

“I want to find that out. Nancy and I put a lot of time into this case, and there are victims who don’t have a voice.”

“Well, you do what you have to do. You seem like a nice fellow. And Nancy is quite fond of you. That means you’re going to be in my prayers.”

The opera was over and the station was doing a news summary. None of them would have paid any attention if Will’s name weren’t mentioned:

“And in other news, the New York Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has filed an arrest warrant for one of their own. Special Agent Will Piper is wanted for questioning for irregularities and possible criminal wrongdoing related to the investigation of the Doomsday serial killer. Piper, a nearly twenty-year veteran of law enforcement, is best known for being the public face of the still-unsolved Doomsday case. His whereabouts are unknown and he is considered armed and potentially dangerous. If a member of the public has any information, please contact local police authorities or the FBI.”

Will grimly stood up and put his jacket back on. He fingered the rosebud in the lapel. “Joe and Mary, thank you for dinner and thank you for your hospitality. I’ve got to be going.”

There wasn’t much city-bound traffic this time of day. They had stopped first at a convenience store on Rosedale Avenue, where Nancy hopped out to buy provisions while Will fidgeted in her car. Two bags of groceries were on the backseat, but no, she had said emphatically, she would not buy him booze.

Now they were cruising on the Hutch and the Whitestone Bridge was coming up. He reminded her to call his daughter, then fell silent and watched the sun turn the Long Island Sound burnt orange.

Nancy’s grandparents’ house was on a quiet street of postage-stamp-sized homes in Forest Hills. Her grandfather was in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s. Her grandmother was visiting a niece in Florida for a respite. Granddad’s old Ford Taurus was in the one-car lock-up garage behind the house; in case they found a cure, Nancy joked darkly. They arrived at dusk and parked out front. The garage keys were under a brick, the car keys in the garage under a paint can. The rest was up to him.

He leaned over and kissed her and they held each other for a long while, like a couple at a drive-in.

“Maybe we should go inside,” Will exhaled.

She playfully rapped his forehead with her knuckles. “I’m not sneaking into my grandma’s house to have sex!”

“Bad idea?”

“Very bad. Besides, you’ll get sleepy.”

“That wouldn’t be good.”

“No it wouldn’t. Call me every step of the way, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Will you be safe?”

“I’ll be safe.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“There’s something I didn’t tell you about work today,” she said, kissing him one last time. “John Mueller was back in for a few hours. Sue’s putting us together to work on the Brooklyn bank robberies. I talked to him for a while, and do you know what?”

“What?”

“I think he’s an asshole.”

He laughed, gave her a thumbs-up, and opened his door. “Then my work here is done.”

Mark fretted. Why had he agreed to come in off his vacation?

He wasn’t quick enough on his feet or strong enough to stand up for himself-he was always a lapdog for parents, teachers, bosses-always too eager to please, too scared to disappoint. He didn’t want to leave the hotel and burst the delicious bubble he and Kerry were inhabiting.

She was in the bathroom, getting ready. They had a superior night planned: dinner at Rubochon’s at the MGM Mansion, a little blackjack, then drinks back in the Venetian at the Tao Beach Club. He’d have to leave early and go straight to the airport, and he probably wouldn’t feel too brilliant come dawn, but what was he going to do now? If he was a no-show he’d raise all sorts of alarms.

He was already dressed for the night and restless, so he logged onto the Net via the hotel’s high-speed service. He shook his head: another e-mail from Elder. The man was sucking him dry, but a deal was a deal. Maybe he’d priced himself too low at $5 million. Maybe he’d just have to hit him up for another five in a few months. What was the guy going to do? Say no?

As Mark was working through Elder’s new list, Malcolm Frazier’s group was on Alpha Alert: shifts on cots and cold food. Moody sorts to begin with, they were in a despicable state over the prospect of a night away from wives and girlfriends. Frazier had even forced Rebecca Rosenberg to stay overnight, a first. She was beside herself over the whole situation, completely in tatters.

Frazier pointed at his monitor with irritation. “Look. He’s on that encrypted portal again. Why the Christ can’t you break that? I mean how long is it going to take you to break that? We don’t even know who’s on the other end.”

Rosenberg shot daggers at him. She was following the identical traffic on her screen. “He’s one of the best computer security scientists in the country!”

“Well, you’re his boss, so break the goddamned code, will you? How’s it going to look if we have to farm this out to the NSA? You’re supposed to be the best, remember?”

She shrieked with frustration, making the men in the room jump. “Mark Shackleton is the best! I sign his time cards! Just shut up and let me work!”

Mark was almost done with his e-mail when the bathroom door opened a crack and he heard a muffled, “I’ll be ready soon!” in her lilting twang.

“I wish I didn’t have to go back to work tomorrow,” he said over the sound of the TV.

“Me too.”

He hit the mute button; she liked to talk from inside the bathroom. “Maybe we can rebook for next weekend.”

“That would be great.” The faucet ran for a second then stopped. “You know what would also be great?”

He logged off and slipped the computer back in its case. “What would also be great?”

“To go to L.A. next weekend, you and me. I mean, we both want to live there. Now that you’ve come into all this money, you can quit your stupid UFO job and be a movie writer full-time and I can quit my stupid escort job and my stupid vasectomy job and be an actress, maybe a real one. We can go house hunting next weekend. Whaddya say? I think it’d be fun.”

Will Piper’s face was plastered all over the plasma screen. Christ, Mark thought, second time in two days! He unmuted the set.

“Did you hear me? Wouldn’t it be fun?”

“Hang on a second, Kerry, I’ll be right with you!” He watched the news item in horror. It felt like a boa constrictor had wrapped itself around his chest and was squeezing the breath out of him. Yesterday he saw this guy boasting about new leads, and today he was a fugitive? And it was a coincidence he was being called in from vacation? Two hundred IQ points started rowing in the same direction. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck-”

“What’d you say, honey?”

“Be right with you!” His hands were shaking like he had malaria as he reached back into his case for his laptop.

He never wanted to do this; a lot of Area 51 people were tempted-that’s what the watchers were for, that’s what his algorithms were for-but he wasn’t like the others. He was an it-is-what-it-is kind of guy. Now he desperately needed to know. He entered his password and logged onto the pirated U.S. database stored on his hard drive. He had to work fast. If he stopped to think about what he was doing, he was going to balk.

He started entering names.

Kerry came out of the bathroom, dressed to the nines in a slinky red dress with her new watch gleaming on her wrist. “Mark! What’s the matter?” His computer was snapped shut on his lap but he was bawling like an infant, big chest-sucking sobs and torrents of tears. She knelt down and threw her arms around him. “Are you okay, honey?”

He shook his head.

“What happened?”

He had to think fast. “I got an e-mail. My aunt died.”

“Oh, sweetie, I’m so sorry!” He stood up, wobbly-no, more than wobbly, in a near faint. She rose with him and gave him a giant hug, which prevented him from falling back down. “Was it unexpected?”

He nodded and tried to wipe his face dry with his hand. She got him a tissue, rushed back to his side and daubed him dry like a mother tending a helpless child. “Look, I’ve got an idea,” he said robotically. “Let’s go to L.A. tonight. Right now. We’ll drive. My car’s overheating. We’ll take yours. We’ll buy a house tomorrow, okay? In the Hollywood Hills. A lot of writers and actors live there. Okay? Can you pack?”

She stared at him, worried and perplexed. “Are you sure you want to go right now, Mark? You’ve just had a shock. Maybe we should wait till the morning.”

He stamped his foot and shouted in a juvenile fit. “No! I don’t want to wait! I want to go now!”

She backed away a step. “Why the big rush, honey?” He was scaring her.

He almost started crying again but was able to stop himself. Sniffing hard through blocked nostrils, he packed up his laptop and turned his cell phone off. “’Cause life’s too short, Kerry. It’s too fucking short.”