Springboard

23

After they alighted from the cab, Thorn said, “See that lot over there?”

Marissa nodded.

“Holds two hundred cars, and it’s full. That’s the parking for Tials. See all those people at those outdoor tables, under those ratty umbrellas? That’s the dinner crowd.”

It looked like a busy evening at a country fair’s food plaza. Maybe three hundred people in the warm summer night, at long rows of wooden picnic tables set end to end. The diners were laughing, talking, eating.

“Come on.”

She followed him around the corner. There were three lines of people queued up in front of what looked like a market stall, a pole barn with counters and a dozen men and women inside it, no walls, just a roof. Fragrant smoke rose from the place in a thick cloud.

Behind it was a stubby, rectangular building the size of a small two-bedroom house — that held a refrigerator, freezer, and a lot of storage space.

“Looks like the waiting line for a ride at Disneyworld,” she said.

He nodded. “The long line is for new customers, the medium-long line for regulars. The short line is for cops and firefighters only.”

“And this is enforced how?”

“If you are in the regulars or cops line and somebody doesn’t recognize you when you get to the counter? You don’t get served — you have to go to the back of the new-customer line.”

“And these dedicated people are lined up to eat what?”

“Chiliburgers.”

Marissa shook her head. “This is it? Lord, Tommy. I was guessing maybe you were taking me someplace where they served fugu or some weird Tasmanian snail or something. You flew us all the way to New York — to Queens, of all places — to have chiliburgers?”

“Best in the country, maybe best in the world,” he said. “So how come a crack CIA operative like you doesn’t know about Tials?”

“I don’t even know what kind of name that is,” she said.

“Acronym, actually,” he said, heading toward the cop/firefighter line.

“How do you rate the short line?”

“Well, I was a regular, but Bruce decided that becoming Commander of Net Force made me a cop. Best perk I’ve gotten from the job so far, present company excluded.”

“Uh huh. You were explaining the name of this place?”

“ ‘There is always a Larry somewhere.’ The first letter of each word — T-I-A-L-S.”

They reached the end of the line. The man in front of them turned and saw them. “Hey, Thorn,” he said.

“Hey, Mickey. Marissa, this is Mickey Reilly, Detective Third, NYPD. Mickey, Marissa Lowe. Marissa is an operative for one of those, ah, federal agencies usually known only by their initials.”

“Pleased to meetcha,” Reilly said.

“Likewise.”

She looked back at Thorn. “Explain the name, please.”

“What? Mickey?”

“I will hit you, Tommy.”

He smiled. So did Mickey. “Well, Bruce used to work in Hollywood. He was an up-and-rising screenwriter, wrote a couple movies for guys like Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, like that. But it got to him after a while, all the Hollywood crap, so he took his money and quit. He bought a secret family chili recipe from some Greek guy back in the old country, then set up shop here.”

“And?” she asked.

“The story Bruce tells, he would go into meetings with studio executives to pitch a script. And they’d go back and forth, but nobody ever wanted to make a decision right there and then. They always had to check it with somebody first. Only a handful of folks in La-La-Land can actually greenlight a movie. So they’d tell him, ‘Baby, I love it, it’s great, a fantastic idea, but before we can go ahead, I have to run it past Larry, you know.’ ”

“Ah.”>

Thorn nodded, grinned. “Bruce said there was always a ‘Larry’ somewhere — down the hall, up the stairs, on vacation in Mexico. It was one of the ways studio guys avoided having to ever say ‘No.’ They could look like they were on the side of the angels, because they never rejected anything, never had an unkind word for anybody. It was always Larry’s fault.”

She shook her head.

“All they serve is chiliburgers and soda. You get to the counter, you say how many of each you want, that’s it. Nine dollars for the burger, a buck for the soft drink. They don’t take checks, Visa, Mastercard, or American Express, cash only. They also don’t make change — you give ’em a ten, you break even. A twenty, you either want two burgers and drinks, or you tip them ten dollars.”

He paused, but she didn’t say anything, just waited for him to continue.

“On an average night,” he said, “there will be ten or fifteen thousand dollars in small bills in the cash drawer. And, in case you are wondering, no, nobody has ever robbed them. If anybody ever tried, most of the cops in this line would happily shoot them and step over the body to get their order.”

Mickey nodded at that, and threw in a wink.

“You want it your way,” Thorn went on, “you go to Burger King — you don’t alter anything here. What you get is half a pound of ground sirloin on an oversize burger bun, slathered in the special Greek chili, wrapped in a piece of aluminum foil, and a wad of napkins, which you’ll need, and whatever soft drink they got the best deal on this week. You don’t want to know how many calories and fat and cholesterol is in Bruce’s burger.”

“Right,” Marissa said.

“Forty years ago, there used to be a place in L.A. with a similar setup, it’s where Bruce got the idea, but they franchised it, and it wasn’t the same after that. Tials is one of a kind. Open twenty-four/seven. Come by here at two A.M. on a weekday, it’s this crowded. People bring their families here for Christmas dinner. Tials never closes. I think Bruce must live in the refrigerator — which occupies a good section of that building behind the stand.”

“Wow. It’s that good?”

“It’s better than that. Just wait. After Tials, you’ll never be able to eat a burger anywhere else without frowning at it.”

“Two surprises in one evening. What else have you got up your sleeve, Mr. Thorn?”

He smiled and winked at her, but didn’t say anything else.

Twenty minutes later, they were sitting at a stained picnic table, each with a chiliburger and a Coke. Thorn watched her take her first bite, and smiled at the look on her face as she chewed and swallowed it.

“Lord. This is great!” she managed.

“You’re a cheap date,” he said, waving his burger. “Well, except for the ride.”

“Shut up and eat,” she said.

They did, chili dripping. Thorn watched her as he ate, and at that moment, figured this might be as good as dinner ever got, in which case, he’d have no complaints.

Seurat admired the woman’s sleeping body, taking great pleasure in looking at every exposed millimeter without having to pretend he wasn’t staring, without the need for a social pretext that what he saw didn’t attract him and draw him in completely.

Ah…

She lay on her side, her rich, long hair dark against his ivory silk sheets, her tanned skin lightly dotted with freckles, each of which seemed utterly fascinating. Her head was turned toward her chest, her chin tucked in, and the rise and fall of her chest seemed to raise her breasts to almost touch her face, sheltering it with every breath.

Her hip rose from the bed, a graceful arc that beckoned him to put his hand on it, a call that he had answered many times already this night. One long leg was hooked over his duvet, and he admired its utter smoothness, its grace.

He realized he was looking at her with the intensity he usually reserved for paintings, and grinned. She was a beautiful artwork that was all the more amazing for being real, and all the more exciting for being in his bed. He grinned again when he realized how much the comparison would amuse her.

And an American. Who would have thought?

The last day had been full of surprises. To think that he’d very nearly missed this one!

He had been outrageously irritable since the most recent attack, which had crashed the local CyberNation node, lashing out at his staff, wanting answers, pushing them to work harder, when they all wanted the same thing he did, and very nearly as much as he wanted it. Le boss was being the ass, and everybody knew it, no one more so than the boss himself…

In his last communication with Gridley, the man had obliquely hinted at a brute-force approach that was being tried on the attack, designed to find the mechanism by which their network had been compromised. Seurat had not been surprised, since it was the approach he would have expected from the Americans anyway. Never use a scalpel when a chain saw will serve…

But his own team had not been able to suggest a better approach.

He liked to think of himself and of CyberNation as smarter, more able to figure out the linchpin, the keystone of a problem, and to use that knowledge rather than force to achieve victory. A dagger rather than a blunt instrument.

And when they had failed him, and he, himself, had not been able to solve the problem either, he had left work in a foul mood.

On the way home, as he looped around the Boulevard Périphérique, his calendar had chimed to remind him of a showing at his aunt’s house, just out of the city. His family had for years managed to use the influence of their name and of their various connections in the art world to arrange for private showings of his ancestor’s works whenever one was on tour and passed through Europe. The events reinforced the bond of blood, and had helped reconcile the disparate branches of his family line, legitimate and not. Plus, they were usually a good time, a respite from the work world, and indeed a reason to take one.

But he’d been angry and had slapped his PDA, silencing the reminder, and accelerating toward his home. Art could not help him now, he needed science.

It had taken a few more kilometers of driving for him to laugh at himself, and to acknowledge that art was what he needed. Even if it did not inspire a solution, it would provide a different focus for the rest of the evening. Besides, the painting coming was a study for La Grande Jatte, one that had been out of the country for decades. Surely it was not going to be back soon.

So he had kept driving past his exit, heading toward his aunt’s, another thirty kilometers outside the city. By the time he had arrived, it had grown dark. The gathering was in full swing, the old chateau lit brightly from within, the color of the electric light the only difference from what might have been seen several hundred years before.

His uncles and aunts had greeted him warmly, and he’d grabbed a glass of wine from one of the family vineyards, a delightful ’08 that had sweetened his disposition considerably.

He had enjoyed the interaction, and had gradually worked his way toward the back of the house, to the old parlor where Aunt Sophia displayed paintings for events such as this. The rococo stylings of the house had soothed him, taking away the pain of the difficult day through their familiarity and sense of continuity.

Things have been worse and gotten better before, they seemed to say.

And there, in the back of the room, several of his older cousins staring at it, was the painting.

It was large, and Seurat recognized it immediately as one of the last studies for La Grande Jatte, nearly full-size, with the majority of the pantheon from the final painting laid out on it, albeit somewhat differently.

He stepped closer, feeling the warmth of that distant day, enjoying the serenity of the figures in the painting as they did also, taking pleasure in the consummate skill of his ancestor, acknowledging the careful planning.

And this was not even the final painting.

He felt a touch at his sleeve and returned to the world, the noise from the party washing back over him like an ocean tide, not realizing he’d completely tuned it out until it returned.

Standing there was good old Aunt Sophia, wearing one of her opera gowns, dressed, as usual, to deny detractors the pleasure of disparaging comments.

“Ahhh, Charles, mon cheri, there you are! I wanted to introduce you to Mademoiselle Millard, who is here with the painting. She travels with it on the tour, and was good enough to grace us with her presence.”

He thought he’d heard his aunt emphasize the woman’s status as single, and made a note to tease her about it later, which he promptly forgot as he turned and saw Millard.

She was tall, and wore a low-cut dress that covered enough to satisfy propriety, but which revealed enough to encourage imagination. She smiled, a graceful movement of her lips. Surely anyone could do such a thing — but if that were so, how come he’d never seen them poised just—so?

Sophia had completed the introduction.

“Michelle Millard, this is my nephew, Charles — also a Seurat.”

He remembered feeling a sudden thrill rush through him as he heard her name.

Michelle. How beautiful.

“Mademoiselle, it is a pleasure to meet you,” he said, thinking how inadequate it was. But somehow she brightened, and when she spoke her words seemed to tell him something deeper, something more.

“The pleasure is mine,” she’d said, and then, “I understand you have some of your ancestor’s works that are not publicly shown?”

He wasn’t sure, but he thought he’d heard Sophia chuckle before she walked off.

Seurat was no schoolboy. He’d been with women — many women. But he had had such chemistry with only a handful.

They had talked until late in the evening, about surface things — paintings, favorite artists, and even the weather. But beneath their words an understanding simmered, cascades of meaning that spoke of a deeper interest, deeper meanings to the nods and smiles.

He had offered to drive her back to Paris, of course.

And when she had asked if they could perhaps stop by his house to see his paintings, he had said, “Of course.”

Truly she was beautiful — and more.

Seurat couldn’t remember the last time he’d spent so much time with anyone without talking about CyberNation. Had he even told her what he did?

“Do you like what you see, Monsieur?”

He started. Had she been awake the whole time?

“If I had any clothes on, your eyes would have burned through them the way you were looking at me!”

He chuckled. “If I had any clothes on, they would have been burned off just by looking at you. Does that answer your question, Mademoiselle?”

“Oui.”

She reached over and slid her hand down his body, stopping at just the right place.

“As does this.”

He put his hands on her as well, and her breathing increased to match his.

An American, he thought, as they started to move together, and then, She is wonderful beyond belief.

It could be that he was going to have to reevaluate his feelings about the United States. Surely a place from which she had come from couldn’t be quite as bad as he had thought…