The Blue Place

five

It was one of those Atlanta mornings when you step outside and the heat and humidity seal around you like shrink-wrap. The air is as thick as potato soup and you have to breathe in sips. I drove to Buckhead with the windows closed and the air-conditioning on and even the Mozart seeped limp and dispirited from the speakers.

I picked Beatriz up at the Nikko. She had replaced her glasses with contact lenses, her hair was sleek and groomed, and the unhealthy puffiness of her face was gone, or at least masked by professionally applied makeup. She wore a beautifully cut business suit, designed to show off a surprisingly generous figure, and instead of a purse carried a large leather portfolio. The way she did not meet my eyes when I said good morning was just the same, though, as was the facial spasm that passed for a smile.

Traffic moved south on Piedmont in fits and starts. Drivers in some of the cars around me began picking up cellular phones and calling in to explain why they were going to be late. Horns blared. We crept forward. With the engine at idle speed, the air-conditioning lost some of its bite. The car began to warm up. Just ahead, flickering red and blue lights across two lanes funneled vehicles past a car with its roof ripped off and a white-sheeted figure on the melting asphalt. I knew how a haemoglobin-carrying red corpuscle must feel as it squeezes through the hardening arteries of a fifty-year-old executive running about the tennis court in one-hundred-degree weather trying to impress his secretary, knowing that at any moment everything could jam up and stop forever. But then I was past the accident and traffic sped up and we all survived to hurtle endlessly along our paths for another day.

The sweat beneath the gun harness could not evaporate. With its seven-round clip full, the Walther PPK weighed less than a pound and a half, but it felt like more, an unaccustomed and unbalancing weight. Guns can be a distraction, a dangerous focus of one’s authority, a crutch. Many come to depend upon them: take away the gun and you take away their identity. Once I saw a police officer deprived of his weapon stand uselessly, dazed and uncomprehending, when he could have been calling for backup, chasing the perpetrator or helping me staunch the blood pumping from his partner’s thigh.

I wear a gun when the occasion demands it. I was being paid well to ensure that during the next three days strange little Beatriz del Gato came to no harm. Philippe Cordova would expect me to wear a gun. I wore one.

As we neared the centre of town and Atlanta’s one-way system we travelled west for a while on Tenth. The sun poured into the car through the rear window, and in moments the interior was swollen and thick with heat. I glanced in the rearview mirror. Beatriz did not seem affected. South again on Juniper, and into the cool shadow of the Peachtree Medical Building. The interior temperature dropped fifteen degrees. Beatriz stared out of the window and did not move a muscle the whole time.

I parked on Courtland and prepared for the long, long morning of appointments.

It was after she came out of the first office, face stiff, that I understood Beatriz del Gato was wasting her time. No one was going to employ an advertising executive who did not seem to understand the meaning of small talk and whose expression was as impervious as pottery glaze. She was utterly self-involved, did not acknowledge my presence at all but simply followed me doggedly through the hydrocarbon heat of downtown Atlanta to the sterile chill of another office tower for the second appointment. I waited in the reception area while she went off to some inner sanctum to show her wares. I tried to imagine her talking to one of these potential employers, and failed.

As the morning progressed, her expression began to change. She got paler, and there was a disturbingly gelid cast around her eyes and cheeks, as though the pottery glaze were on the verge of melting.

As we arrived at the offices of Perrin & Norrander, her fourth appointment, I found myself holding my breath, willing her to hang on. It was the usual Atlanta advertising agency: hand-knotted silk carpet, blond wood inlay (a competent assembly of ash and maple), men wearing Hugo Boss, women good jewellery, both with far too many clothes for this kind of weather; an ultimately self-defeating attempt to prove that advertising in the capital of the South was every bit as aggressive and cutting-edge as Madison Avenue. There is one thing Margaret Thatcher said that I agree with: if you have to tell people you’re important, you’re not.

The secretary was one of those sorority sisters from Ole Miss who didn’t believe in pronouncing l’s when they appeared in the middle of a word. She was on the phone. “Would you please ho’d one moment?” Efficient punch of button with terrifyingly red nail followed by professional smile at us. “How can I he’p you?”

“Beatriz del Gato to see Anthony Perrin,” she said, like one of those old-fashioned porcelain marionettes.

The Taloned One ran her finger down a screen, then favoured us with another artificial smile. “If you would take a seat, Mr. Perrin will be with you shortly. How do you like your coffee?”

I answered for both of us. The waiting room was frigid and the three chairs built more for looks than comfort. They were arranged under a horrible painting that looked like a television test card. Beatriz sat, portfolio on her lap; I didn’t bother. Even if the chairs were worth it, the painting hung so low I wouldn’t be able to lean back.

A moment later, the secretary came in carrying two cups of coffee on a tray.

I took one. She turned to offer the second, just as Beatriz stood up to take it. With a flap and squawk they collided. The secretary leapt back to avoid the cascade of scalding coffee. Beatriz didn’t manage as well. She hopped into the chairs, knocked her open portfolio onto the now-sodden floor, then overbalanced and toppled into the painting, which slid down the wall and landed on the polished wooden floor with an emphatic crack. Glass fell out of the frame.

“Goodness,” the secretary said.

Beatriz stared at her. Her eyes were like black holes burnt in stiff paper and the hand wrapped around the back of one chair was white at the knuckles. The mask had finally slipped.

The secretary took a step towards the chair. “Let me he’p you with that.”

Beatriz trembled like a deer. I stepped smoothly between them. “Perhaps you could direct us to the bathroom so we can see what we can do about Ms. del Gato’s clothes.” I gestured at the dark splash down Beatriz’s skirt.

“Oh, goodness. Of course. Two doors down on the right.”

I took Beatriz unobtrusively by the elbow. “Let go of the chair,” I said into her ear. “It’s all right. Everything will be all right. Let go of the chair.”

“Yes, fine,” she said, inanely, brightly. I led her through the reception area, through the door, down the corridor, to the bathroom.

“Here we go.” I parked her between the sinks and paper towel dispenser. It would have been a waste of time trying to get her to sit. Her body felt like wood. “I don’t think you need to take the skirt off. Let’s try blotting it first, and soap if that doesn’t work.”

Her trembling turned into shaking. “I understand,” I said, as I dabbed and blotted. “You’re in a strange country. You have jet lag and probably didn’t get any sleep at all in your hotel. Everyone is talking in a foreign language. Even the light switches seem upside down. They expect you to know what to do and you don’t. But that’s why I’m here. I can show you how things work and tell you where to go, and when.” I talked on and on, wondering how long she had been this afraid, so afraid that she had closed herself up like a fan: nothing in, nothing out; running around inside her head frantically plugging chinks in her armour, closing openings through which she might have to reach out and the world might reach in.

“There. That should do it for now.” The shaking had become long, rolling shudders and I thought she might shake herself to pieces. I took one of her cold hands. “Let it out, Beatriz, you’re safe here.”

An indrawn, juddering breath.

“No one will see you. No one will know. Just let it go.”

And she did, in a torrent that was equal parts rage, fear, and despair. She wept bent over, gasping and whooping, then stood straight and howled, face to the ceiling. When the gate was wide open, she leaned both fists against the mirrors and coughed up great chunks of grief and disappointment and broken dreams. She wept on and on until her face was swollen, and shiny with mucus and tears. After a while she settled down to an exhausted drone. I handed her yet another paper towel, stuffed six or seven in my pocket, and picked her up like a child.

I tucked her face into my shoulder so she wouldn’t see the stares, and carried her to the elevator, down fourteen floors, through the lobby, into the street, and across to the parking lot. I lifted her into the front seat, got a blanket from the trunk, tucked her up and fastened her seat belt.

“Warm,” she said.

“Yes, I know, but you need to be warm and I’m going to put the air-conditioning on high.” She needed the comfort more than the warmth, but I didn’t tell her that. “Sleep if you like. I’ll drive you back to your hotel.”

“No.” It was a drowsy whisper. “I hate my hotel. Hate it.”

She wasn’t in a fit state to be seen in public and wouldn’t go back to her hotel. While I waited to pull into traffic I called Happy Herman’s and ordered enough food for a picnic.

The remains of the meal lay on the blanket in the middle of my back lawn and the woman who sat like the Copenhagen mermaid in the too-big shorts and cut-off tee, peering at the base of the pecan tree trying to catch a glimpse of the turtle I’d seen, looked nothing like the Beatriz of that morning. Her eyes were alive, if shy, and the two smiles she had essayed had been quick, but not crippled. I had carried her and the blanket out to the back, fed her, and talked to her about nothing in particular, simply pointing out different birds, squirrels, naming the trees, explaining what all the different condiments on the sandwiches were made of. She’d eaten mechanically at first, then with real attention, and then fallen asleep as I was telling her quietly in my rusty Spanish about the bluebells I used to look for in the Yorkshire woods. She slept for nearly an hour, and when she woke up I showed her the bathroom and found her my smallest tank top and shorts, and now she was all clean and freshly scrubbed and watching the leaves under the pecan tree.

“You’ll have to go back to the hotel barefoot.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sure they’ve seen worse. There, there’s the turtle.” I pointed at the blunt leathery head poking cautiously from under a pile of nature’s debris.

“I see it.”

I told her about shrews, about the constant war going on between the various squirrels, the chipmunks who could leap three feet straight into the air when cornered by the cat that lived next door. Sometimes I had to mime the animal with bushy tail or pointy ears because I didn’t know the Spanish for all that flew and scurried in the Southeast. I’m still not sure she got “chipmunk.” It’s hard mimicking a tiny rodent with big cheek pouches when you’re six feet tall.

“And you have no pets?”

“No. I can watch things in my garden and I don’t have to feed them or take them for checkups, or worry about looking after them when I go away.”

“And they don’t worry about you.”

A bird burst into song among the jasmine. A plane droned in the distance. After a while I said, “Do you want that job at Perrin & Norrander?”

She blinked, then turned away and mumbled something.

“What was that?”

“Yes.”

“Do you really mean it?”

“Yes!”

“Then we need to get you another appointment.”

“They won’t—”

“I’ll talk to them. Blame the secretary. After all, she spilled coffee all over you. How could you be expected to continue with a scalded leg?”

“But I don’t—”

“You do now.” I was implacable. “Your flight to Madrid leaves on Monday afternoon. If we get you a ten o’clock appointment, I can have you at the airport just after midday.”

“They won’t give me the job.”

“No, they might not. But at least you will have tried.”

“What about my clothes?”

“We’ll go shopping.”

I discovered that under her plain exterior beat a flamboyant heart. She wanted to buy dresses and blouses with puffed sleeves and high waists that would be more suitable for a teenager. Fortunately she also wanted them in blood red and flaming orange instead of the available pastels. I steered her towards more practical clothes, made the occasional suggestion. We ended up with flax-coloured linen suit, shorts and T-shirts and sandals, and one stunning sleeveless dress in brain-bursting colours. Whatever made her happy. Then it was her turn to make suggestions. Under her direction, we bought dozens of flats of just-budding impatiens, petunia, and marigold, as well as two long troughs, and sacks of potting compost. “You’ll need seeds and cuttings for later-blooming flowers. These won’t last much beyond June.” She gave them a professional look. “We’ll transplant them tomorrow.”

It was a quite different woman I took back to the Nikko at seven o’clock that evening: smiling, competent, almost pretty.

At midnight I was cruising Cheshire Bridge Road, checking the parking lots of the nude bars. I spotted the primer-coloured 1972 Corvette in the lot of a low-slung building with bricked-up windows, but drove another quarter of a mile until I reached the well-lit Cheshire Strip. I parked in front of the Science Fiction and Mystery Book Shop where odd but harmless customers were happily choosing fat paperbacks, and walked back.

It was good to feel muscle bunch and stretch in my thighs, good to thump my boots on the cement, feel its imperviousness and my strength. I checked the cars. The hood of the Corvette was cold. I looked around the back of the building. One door, unlocked. I went around to the front. The turbine in my chest began to hum. The night air felt greasy and electric on my tongue. The weather was about to change.

The front bar was shadowy. A pool table was pushed up against one wall, underneath a labouring air-conditioning unit that did not quite drown out the thump of music from the more private back room. The bartender polished glasses and concentrated hard on not seeing the three men in the far booth. I leaned against the bar near him, shook my head when he lifted his eyebrows.

Buddy Collins was the kind of man who looked as though his neck was too thin for his shirt collar, though it and the expensive jacket fit perfectly. An untrained witness would probably not be able to describe him as other than a slimeball. Buddy Collins had fooled even trained witnesses—of which he had been one, once.

Right now, Buddy Collins was swallowing a great deal. He was pressed up against the wall on the inside of the booth by a man who had his back towards me. That man had his hand resting on Collins’s forearm. It was a very big hand. Equally big legs were jammed under the booth table; he wouldn’t be able to move out fast. He was leaning forward, talking at Collins. The one on the other side of the booth was mean and whippy-looking. He was trying to clip the end off a cheap cigar, and listened with only half an ear to the big man. He had heard it all a thousand times before.

“I can’t,” Collins said. “Not all of it. Not tonight.” The big man said nothing. “If you could just give me—”

The big man hit him, just a slap, but it was loud, and a bead of blood formed in the corner of Collins’s mouth.

“Gentlemen,” I said, moving in. They all swung around, astonished. “Don’t damage Mr. Collins too severely. He has some information I need.”

“You some kind of weirdo?” the big man asked, and turned back to his conversation with Collins without waiting for an answer.

The whippy one, who seemed to have clipped the end of his cigar to his satisfaction, pulled out a book of matches. “Butt out, lady.” He put the cigar in his mouth and struck the match. His eyes crossed in concentration. I hit him, twice, on the left temple, right hand left hand, and without pause stepped backwards and put all my weight behind an elbow strike to the big man’s nose. It burst like a piñata and spilled brightly, and he screamed, so I let my arm follow its automatic one-two training and hit him again, this time a knife-hand chop to the forehead. He sighed and slumped over the table.

The cigar was still hanging from Whippy’s mouth. “Do I need to hit you again?”

He did not seem to hear. I looked at Collins and gestured at the big man, draped all unconscious across the bench and table. “Can you squeeze past or should I pull him out?”

“I’ll manage.” He climbed up onto the table.

I turned to the bartender. He backed up a step. “There’s nothing much wrong with them, but you might like to have an ambulance here soon, get them taken off your hands. They won’t be very happy when they wake up.”

“You—” He cleared his throat, then thought better of it and just nodded.

Collins jumped down from the table. “Time to get out of here.”

In the parking lot, he looked around. “Which is your car?”

“We’re taking yours. I’ll drive.”

“Look, Torvingen. That car’s my pride and joy—”

I held out my hand. He stared at me then yanked keys from his pocket, slammed them into my hand, and went round to the passenger side. The car smelt of dirty leather and coffee. He watched me sideways as we pulled onto Cheshire Bridge.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just wondering why you suddenly appeared, where you’re taking me, things like that.”

“We’re going to have a nice talk. You’re going to tell me a few things I want to know.”

“Jesus, Torvingen, you’ve screwed up everything. Those two guys won’t take kindly to you—”

I pulled into the Cheshire Strip lot and killed the engine. “You owe them money. You’ve defaulted. They seemed about to get very unhappy. I’ve just accelerated the process a little. I’m sure you’ll think of something.” Collins had been a Vice cop until his spending had led to such excessive graft that even the APD could no longer turn a blind eye. He had been turned out when I was a rookie. Now he earned his money selling information from one street interest to another, and sometimes to law enforcement.

“You’re not on the force anymore,” he said.

“No. So now I can afford to pay more.”

“I don’t like you.”

“You don’t have to like me. Just tell me about the burn in Inman Park five days ago. Who ordered the job? Was the victim, an art appraiser called Lusk, known? And where does the big money go these days?” The Big Money, the money raised from the wholesale dealers who sold to midlevel hustlers.

He reached up and turned on the dome light. “You don’t have the money for that last answer. And if you did, and I told you, I’d never live to enjoy it.”

His eyes were still shifting, but he wasn’t swallowing. A quick cost-benefit analysis of forcing him was not promising: he probably didn’t know. “Fine. Then tell me who would be capable of this burn. Bertolucci didn’t recognize it. How do I find them, and who have they worked for in the past?”

“How much?”

“How much do you think it’s worth?”

“Two thousand.”

“I’ll give you five hundred.” I pulled the money out of my pocket and counted off five hundreds but didn’t hand it over.

“Guy from Boston. You don’t know him.”

“Name.”

“I don’t know his name! He’s just some technician hired in, like you’d pay someone to check your brake fluid.” He was getting agitated.

“Then tell me who he worked for.”

“Arellano.” He practically spat it out.

Arellano. The Big Money man of two years ago, the representative of the Tijuana drug cartel here in the South. Only no one had been able to prove it. “He’s been dead for two years.”

“This technician worked for him two years ago.”

“I don’t know what you’re telling me here, Buddy. Did the technician work this time for Arellano’s replacement?”

“Maybe.”

“‘Maybe’ doesn’t cut it.”

“This time he worked for a guy who might work for the guy who took over from Arellano. Okay?”

“What do you mean by ‘might work for’?”

“The guy washes money. He washes a lot of money. He hired the technician.”

“Give me his name.”

“I don’t know his name.”

I was pretty sure I did. “Another hundred if you tell me why he paid the technician.”

He hesitated, craned his neck to try to look up the road. “Another two hundred.”

“One hundred.”

He touched the blood at the corner of his mouth with a fingertip and sighed. “The fire was to clean up some evidence.”

“And did the evidence get cleaned?”

“A guy died.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

His eyes shifted.

“The truth, Buddy. If you don’t know, just say so and you get to keep fifty.”

“I heard some of the evidence is still walking around. But the technician got paid, okay? And no one is pissed off, and no one is talking about trying again. So it doesn’t make sense, okay?”

It made perfect sense to me, or part of it did. Julia was no longer important: she had no evidence and, after lying to the insurance investigator, no one would even begin to believe her without it. With the painting gone, Honeycutt thought he was safe. The question is, what was a money launderer doing dabbling with fake art? It was a stupid extra risk. That made no sense. Nor did the drugs on the scene.

Buddy could not make up his mind which was more interesting: the road or the money I still held. “Those sharks’ll be awake now, Torvingen. Just give me the money. Look, here’s a freebie for you. That evidence that got burned? Two old friends of yours know where it came from.”

“Tell me.”

He held out his hand. “An extra hundred.”

“Free.”

He shook his head and got stubborn. It wasn’t worth pushing. My job was to work out who had tried to have Julia killed, and now I knew. I handed over the money. “Get out of the car.” I climbed out after him and tossed him the keys. He was screeching out of the parking lot before I was halfway to the book shop.

Taeko Jay has worked for the DEA for as long as I’ve lived in Atlanta. Longer. Her coarse black hair is streaked with grey and she wears it long, with no apology. She came over to America twenty years ago—fell in love with a member of the CIA in Tokyo, got married, and had her citizenship papers two days later. The rules are different for some people. Her husband died ten years ago and now she lives with a skinny game designer half her age. She smiles a lot. Her teeth are white and pointed. A Japanese vixen.

Saturday morning at seven we were eating sushi. “Arellano’s successor? Well, here’s the funny thing, we don’t even know if there is one. There haven’t been any of the usual killings you would expect during a power struggle and we haven’t found any evidence of an organizational nexus here in town. Though they are using the same money man.”

“Honeycutt.”

She paused, with what looked like raw squid halfway to her mouth. “How did you know that?”

“I hear he’s not being so smart.”

“Is that so?”

“Playing both ends against the middle. I think you can expect trouble at some point.”

She looked thoughtful. “Two years ago, maybe. Now? Whoever is in charge is very savvy. Very, very savvy. And very low profile.”

I ate some raw tuna rolled up around something cold and spicy. “You sound as though you approve.”

“Well, the stuff’s going to get in no matter what we do, and if fewer bodies pile up, the citizens don’t complain as much, which means the people in Washington don’t breathe down our necks. Though politically speaking coke is old news. Smack’s the thing now, and with its traditional tie-ins with organized crime, everyone in Washington is jumping up and down and getting very hot under the collar. Smack is only just reemerging and the lines of supply are still new and reasonably clear. The politicos see this as their big opportunity, a chance to crush the drug trade—or one of them, anyway—and bang behind bars all those crime bosses they’ve been after since Gotti went down. And the heroin trade doesn’t use street gangs.”

“Not that gangs seem to be much involved in Atlanta’s coke trade.”

“That’s another strange thing—Are you going to use that lemon?”

I passed it to her. “Another strange thing?”

“Yeah. You look at, say, San Diego, and all the enforcers there are gangbangers, little sixteen-year-olds who see hundreds of thousands in cash and coke pass through their hands every week.” She squeezed the last of the lemon over her salmon. “No, smack’s the flavour of the month, and I’m glad. A smack habit is something you have to work to acquire, and when a user goes wild on smack, they just nod out, they don’t go psychotic. Did you know that heroin is actually beneficial to the body in small amounts? Like alcohol.”

“Think how much tax money the government would make if they legalized it.”

“But they never will. Lot of campaign contributions these days—especially in California—being made by pot smugglers. They want it to stay illegal. They make a very nice living, thank you very much. It’s all—Sandy,” to a passing server, “can I get some more lemon? So, yeah, it’s all becoming more or less respectable, like bootlegging during Prohibition. Hell, it already is respectable in Mexico. The Tijuana cartel owns the federal police and everyone knows it, even the politicos, but so few people are getting killed, and those mainly gringos, that none of them care. Just like no one cares here when big American corporations ship thousands of tons of baby formula to the third world and kill all the children. Deadly white powder, but this time wrapped in pretty boxes and the official cooperation of the government. So we have the commander of the federal police openly being the liaison man for the Tijuana cartel, and people down there just shrug. Blood pressures in Washington are, if you’ll pardon the expression, shooting up.”

We both grinned. I applied myself to the ahi.

“Hey, Aud, interesting case last month.”

“Yeah?”

“We helped bust a Nigerian heroin smuggling ring run—get this—by women. Apparently it’s traditional in Nigerian culture for women to run all the business stuff, and they’ve somehow got hooked into the opium pipeline that runs from the East, through Africa, and up to Seattle. I went up to Seattle with the task force. Got them all in one swoop. God, I love my job.”

I drove through the morning traffic, trying to think. Tijuana. Low-profile successor to Arellano. Honeycutt and the torch from Boston. But where did Honeycutt get the coke, and why would he want it there in the first place?

Beatriz was wearing the new sandals and shorts and tee when I picked her up again at half past ten, and her hair was up in a loose twist. She looked young and bright and fresh. She climbed into the front passenger seat.

“It’s safer for you in the back.”

“But I have never really been in any danger, have I?”

“No.”

“And you are wearing your gun?”

I lifted my jacket to show her the Walther. She put her seat belt on and that was that.

We ate brunch on the deck. Beatriz made pencil sketches as she ate. “The front needs some colour. If you cut another trench in front of the porch, we can plant some impatiens out there. Some around the tree, too.” Then she ate a croissant with quick, precise bites and picked up her pencil again. “While you dig the new beds, I’ll start on the tubs.” She sipped at her coffee, stared out at the back. “I wonder if the bed at the end needs widening….”

It was my job to keep her safe, and I was getting free help for my garden.

Two hours later, the new bed was dug, the old one widened, and there were bright flowers dotted around the beech tree and in two three-foot troughs beneath the front windows. Beatriz had a smudge on her left cheek. Her skin was beginning to darken after hours in the sun. It made the whites of her eyes seem faintly blue. She looked healthy, energetic.

“What do you think?”

My house had looked efficient, well maintained and clean. Now it was inviting. “Lunch,” I said.

I turned on the air-conditioning and we ate at the kitchen table. Halfway through the smoked salmon, bean salad and beer, the phone rang. It was Charlie Sweeting. He was excited.

“Hope you don’t have plans for tonight. Honeycutt’s giving a party. Black tie. I can get you an invite.”

I thought fast. “Charlie, can you hold a moment?”

I pushed the SILENT button, turned to Beatriz, who was trying not to listen. “Do you want to go to a big party tonight?”

She plucked at her T-shirt. “We would have to shop again.”

“Charlie? Yes, I can make it if I can bring a guest. And Charlie, when you give our names, just say it’s the daughter of a Spanish Cabinet minister—”

“Which one?”

“Luis del Gato, Minister of Labour.”

“Pity it’s not trade.”

“Indeed. The daughter is Beatriz del Gato. I’m to be her nameless escort.”

“I’ll have to—”

“Just say ‘and bodyguard.’ And if you’re going to the party, don’t acknowledge me.” Beatriz had now given up all pretense of not listening.

“Don’t you worry about me. It’s at his house in Marietta, eight until he thinks he’s impressed everyone. Are you really a bodyguard?”

“More of an escort. Thank you for this, Charlie.”

I put the phone down and turned to Beatriz. “I want to meet a man, but I don’t want him to know I’m meeting him.”

“What kind of man?”

“That’s what I want to find out. The party will be a formal affair, and very public. There will be no danger to you, at least no more than in any other situation.”

She looked at me steadily. “You have helped me. I will do this for you.”

I picked up the phone again. “Will those flowers need watering before we transplant them tomorrow?”

She took the hint at once and went to water the flowers. I called Julia. “It’s me. Sweeting got me two invitations for a black tie party at Honeycutt’s tonight.”

“What time?”

“Eight.”

“That doesn’t give me much time to get ready.”

“It wouldn’t be prudent for you to go.”

“Don’t be silly. All our business was by phone. He’s never even seen—”

“I’ve already invited someone else.”

“I see.” Her tone was icy. “Well, I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time.” Click.

They don’t sell things in bad taste at Saks, so that’s where I took Beatriz. And after she had picked out a deep red silk sheath and even darker red backless pumps, I took her to the cosmetics counter where a woman like a lizard helped her select the things to go with her dress. Then it was on to Hairanoia.

While she was having her hair washed I beckoned Douglas over. “She’ll want something…excessive. If you keep it to the merely dramatic, I’ll be appreciative.” He nodded politely. I would hate to be a hairdresser, always being told what to do by amateurs who think that just because they’re paying they should be in charge.

She changed in the bathroom then chattered at me through the bedroom door while I got ready. This would be her first big party.

“What about all the parties in Madrid?”

“I lived all my life in a small town called Cuenco, about a hundred miles from the city. It was only after Papa was offered the Cabinet post that the family moved.”

When I stepped out of the bedroom in a tiny black Vera Wang dress, she stared at me.

“It’s not polite to be too surprised.”

“What? Oh, no, it wasn’t…. It’s just…” I let her flounder. “You’ll carry the gun in your purse?”

“I never carry a purse.”

“Then…”

I walked into the living room, put my left foot up on the couch and turned towards her. My dress rode up and exposed the black stretch neoprene thigh holster attached garter fashion, with black elastic to-the-waist strap and waistband attachment. Her blink rate went up. I slid out the little Sig Sauer P230, showed it to her, then put it away. “Time to go.”

By the time we were on I-75 her excitement was back. “Who will be there?”

“Everyone who is anyone. Politicians, media moguls, bankers, that kind of thing.” Money launderers, crooked politicians, murderers.

She didn’t say anything to that but began to root around in my CDs. She stopped and swore softly in Spanish.

“What?”

“My purse. I left it at your house.”

“Do we need to go back?”

“No,” she said, and smiled. “Besides, what do I need for a party?”

A gun. Car keys. Credit card and five-dollar bill for the valet parking. Bodyguard to carry it all. She went back to sorting through the music. We listened to Skunk Anansie, very loud, all the way to Marietta.

Honeycutt lived in a neighbourhood of oversized Georgians with gravel drives and half-grown hedges that went up five or six years ago when the land out here in the middle of nowhere was cheap and you had to drive three miles to pick up a pint of milk. Now the land is expensive and stuffed with houses that all look alike and belong to neighbours you’ll never meet—and you still have to drive three miles to get a pint of milk. There were people all over the lawn: women wearing little jewel-encrusted silk slippers, men in midnight tuxes with brilliant cummerbunds. Four men in white shirts and black trousers parked cars. I noted the cut of their trousers around the ankle, pocket, and waistband. No weapons.

To the smooth-eyed man with the list at the door I announced, “Ms. del Gato and escort,” and we were in. A server glided past bearing a tray of martinis and Beatriz grabbed one, eyes sparkling. The roar of conversation and shimmer of diamonds was overwhelming.

A woman I recognised from Eddie’s pictures as Cathie Tyers, Honeycutt’s latest girlfriend, was standing before a huge wall aquarium, playing host. She greeted us with the pursed vowels of a Canadian accent, usual generic smile and Pleased-you-could-come, and unwilling handshake, then turned her attention to the sudden stir behind us. Cess Silverman had arrived, along with Georgia’s Secretary of State. They were greeted then wafted discreetly by one of the staff towards the back of the house.

I glanced about at the walls, as if admiring the moulding, following the wiring, the phone lines. No sensors on the hall windows; probably specially designed glass, fitted by the security company. I edged Beatriz towards a sideboard groaning under hors d’oeuvres. “For tonight, I’m not Aud. I’m your escort, Torvingen. Treat me like hired help.”

“I will try to remember.”

“Try hard. You’re the one with the invitation. No one here has any reason to believe I would be here except as your escort.”

“No one except Charlie.”

“Except Charlie Sweeting. Who is the white-haired gentleman heading our way.”

He was holding out his hand but remembered himself just in time and pointed it at Beatriz. “Miss del Gato. Charlie Sweeting. A pleasure indeed.” He shot a bushy-browed look at my legs. He was too well bred to lick his lips, but I could see him revising his opinion of my intelligence. Why is it that some men equate the size of a woman’s brain with that of her dress?

I gave him an up-and-down and let him see my professional dismissal of him as threat. When he recoiled with injured vanity, I dropped him a wink. He recovered with aplomb and turned to Beatriz. “Ah, Miss del Gato—may I call you Beatriz?”

“Certainly.”

“Allow me to advise you on some of this food. A sophisticated European woman like yourself might not be familiar with our plain country fare.”

She glanced at me. I nodded fractionally.

“Very well, Mr. Sweeting. It looks quite delicious. What are those green vegetables?”

“Okra, I believe. Now, I once heard a story…”

I trailed after them as he exuded courtly charm and she giggled. She was in safe hands for a while. I excused myself.

I trawled the party. Music was playing in the reception room; no one was dancing, but the conversation was loud and fast, with a high laughter quotient. I beckoned to a passing server for a glass of whiskey, and sipped. Not cheap. I passed through room after room, smiling my Goodness me, look at all these people! smile, which always gets a response. In thirty minutes I talked to an insurance broker from Los Angeles; some drunk old photographer with a very handsome face who wanted to tell me all about her work and snarled at her husband when he came to find out who she was talking to; one of the bigger building contractors in the city; and the lieutenant governor’s wife—who turned out to be a civil engineer. I asked her the usual questions about her job, and she was happy to tell me all about the design of the elevated MARTA tracks and why the support arches were the shape they were.

“Heavens!” I said, looking at my watch. “Is that the time? My poor husband will be wondering where on earth I’ve gotten to. So nice to meet you!”

I was drifting through the back parlour when I caught sight of a man and woman I recognized, sitting on a sofa, looking like successful executives in love. Lois and Mitchum Kenworthy. Or at least that’s what they had been calling themselves last time we ran into each other, three years ago, when they were up on embezzlement and fraud charges. Two old friends. Now I knew who had provided the fake Friedrich. I edged into another room, where I could watch them without being seen.

No sign of Cess Silverman, the Secretary, or Honeycutt, for that matter. No doubt they were huddled in the treehouse with the rest of the secret club.

Parties are like life—you think that what you see is all there is, until you discover the next layer, a whole other culture that’s going on all around you but you never knew existed. About three months after Helen married Mick, she called me up and we went to the Vortex. Somewhere around the fourth drink, she stopped talking and stared at her wedding ring. “It’s just a piece of metal, but it’s weird. It’s like a funny handshake. All of a sudden I find myself part of this club that I never even knew existed. With this ring on my finger, I’m visible, I’m real to other members of the club. They treat me differently. Even my mother treats me differently. She calls up and starts telling me all this stuff, about her and Pop, about their marriage. As if I’ll suddenly be able to understand. I was thinking the other day, my god, if I’d never married, I would never have learned all this about my own mother and father. Mind you, sometimes it’s not stuff I want to know. Then again, you know, it makes me feel good. To belong. To be one of Them. I mean, I’m thirty-eight, and for the first time in my life I’m being treated like a grown-up by the grown-ups. Even my dental hygienist treats me like a real person now. It’s frightening. I mean, what other clubs are there out there that I don’t know about?” She wasn’t looking for an answer. “My god, last time I was in the airport, some kid offered me his seat.”

“And you liked it?”

“Well…”

“Mostly?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“And that makes you feel guilty, sorry for all those people like me who’ll never belong to your marvellous club.” She stared. “Don’t worry about it. I belong to the big bad butch club, where only dykes who have broken people’s noses are welcome. Then there’s the tough cop club. And the ex-pat club. Not to mention the filthy stinking rich unemployed. You should be writhing with jealousy, not guilt.”

She burst out laughing. “You’re so refreshing. Let’s get drunk.”

And what I hadn’t told her was that you could be accepted as part of any club if you pretended you were already a member. The hard part was working out the fact of a particular club’s existence.

But I knew all about Cess Silverman’s secret club, the cronies sipping whiskey and talking about who to make or break in state politics. I’d been born into the Norwegian version, but declined to take up membership as an adult. Ten years ago, Denneny would have been at this party, fighting to gain entry to the club. He had even tried to use me. “Inside information would be very useful,” he said. “With your background and smarts you’d be a natural.” What he’d meant was, You’ll do well, and you’ll be seen as my protégé, and then I’ll do well. And I’ll be informed. He always had been ambitious. He’d been very bitter for a while when he was refused that promotion to commander, but perhaps that was partly because his wife was drinking herself to death. Now he no longer seemed to feel anything at all.

I waited until the back hallway was clear so no one would see me go upstairs. I cruised the upper floor. Sensors on the windows, no motion detectors in the corners of rooms. This time the wiring ran along the baseboard. He needed a new cleaning service.

I found the breaker box in the closet of what looked like a guest bedroom. I put a chair in front of the door, so anyone coming in would knock it down and give me warning, and flipped open the box.

He had made it too easy: everything was neatly labelled. I slid the screwdriver from its snug leather band on my thigh and hummed as I worked. He had what he thought was a good system: sensors on all windows and doors, battery backup in case someone cut the mains. I simply disconnected the battery from the mains so it could not recharge, and switched the alarm hookup over to the circuit labelled HALL: a few hours’ extra life for the fish in that fancy aquarium in case there was a power hit. No booby-trap lines to the phone. Good.

I closed up, put the screwdriver away, and went back to wandering. The carpet in the hallway was the particular shade of deep red that men favour when there is no woman around to tell them any better. It was wonderfully thick. An elephant could probably jump up and down outside Honeycutt’s bedroom and he wouldn’t hear a thing. Just made to be burgled. There was a reasonable amount of art, but nothing like the quantity Eddie had shown me. I recognized a particularly ugly sculpture in one of the bathrooms, and the large Day-Glo painting on the wall. No icons, no precious statuettes, no display cases. Given the shoddy electronic security, I doubted he had anything that small and precious in the house at all. They were too easily hidden in a pocket or…smuggled. Of course. Part of the money would be washed that way. Use dirty money to buy art quietly. Ship art abroad where it’s sold for clean money that can come back quite legally.

I opened the door to what seemed like a den, but the air was empty of the scents of use: no paper, no hot plastic from faxes and computers, no smoke or alcohol, no late-night sweat. The desk had a pile of papers on it, but they were tidy and curling at the edges. This was a front.

At the end of the hallway was a second, smaller stairway leading to the third floor. I walked up two stairs and tilted my head back. From above my head came a creak and sigh, the sound of a bored man on a chair outside a room. A guard. Another time, then.

The music from below was louder, a lot louder, and now it had a pronounced beat. People were dancing. I started downstairs.

Charlie Sweeting met me in the hall. “There you are. I think your young charge might have had a bit too much to drink.”

“Where?”

He stepped back. “It wasn’t my—”

“Where?”

“Dancing.”

He had to almost run to keep up. People peeled from my path like sod before the plough.

One of those party songs from the early eighties was thumping from the speakers and the dance floor was half full. Beatriz was being whirled around by some young man. Her hair was loose, eyes brilliant, cheeks flushed. She was laughing. People were watching. But her feet were sure and her energy high.

“She’s not drunk. Just having the time of her life.” I smiled at Charlie, as much to make everyone in the room relax as to reassure him. He muttered something I didn’t hear over the music, and headed for the quieter back parlour. I watched him walk past the Kenworthys, who were talking to someone with his back to me, then turned again to the dance floor. I watched for a long time, unseen.

Whoever Dancing Boy was, he was energetic. He was still twirling Beatriz around, and she was still laughing, when Charlie come back in with Michael Honeycutt. They were heading straight for me.

I did that subtle straightening thing that makes people pay attention, and Beatriz saw me, and waved, and dragged over Dancing Boy.

“Ms. del Gato,” I said deferentially, “I believe Mr. Sweeting wants to introduce you to your host.” And then Charlie was there, booming genially over the music, and Beatriz was shaking hands with a clean-boned man of about forty whose tux hung beautifully and whose gray eyes looked as guileless as a child’s. He was wearing some kind of cologne I couldn’t identify, a pleasant scent—not too strong, the way many men wear it—and seemed the kind of man who would do well mediating disputes: very little of that overt male body language that delineates the hierarchy. It seemed he and Dancing Boy, whose name turned out to be Peter Herrera, already knew each other, and the latter’s painfully obvious drawn-in elbows and slightly lowered eyes made it plain who was the alpha male. Honeycutt’s smile was affable, and he said all the appropriate things, but he was on automatic pilot, mind elsewhere, and after a minute or two, he excused himself. He moved well through the crowd, quite at home. I imagined that if someone faced him with his crimes, he would frown and say he was sorry, anything to avoid bad feeling or confrontation, but underneath would wonder what all the fuss was about. A man like that will often do what he thinks will please others; the trick is in predicting what he thinks. From the back, I recognized him as the man who had been talking to the Kenworthys.

Beatriz led Dancing Boy back onto the floor. It was nearly eleven o’clock and I had everything I had come for, but Beatriz was as happy as a child at her first birthday party, so I let them dance.

She chattered about Dancing Boy all the way south on I-75. He was ten feet tall, very kind, and could speak Spanish with such a charming accent. I didn’t interrupt until we were on Ponce, three miles from the house.

“What does he do?”

“He is an intern”—she sounded a little unsure of the word—“at a firm of attorneys. Lawson and Walton.”

“What kind of things does he do?”

“He’s some sort of liaison,” she said vaguely. “With a bank, I think.”

“Massut Vere?”

“Yes. Is it, then, a very important bank in the city?”

“Important enough. How long has he worked there?”

“Not very long. He doesn’t like it very much.” A point for Mr. Herrera. “He says that after he finishes his law degree, he wants to work with poor people.”

How very nice. I turned right on Clifton. She yawned.

“Two more minutes. You can stay in the car while I get your purse. We’ll have you at your hotel in less than half an hour.”

“Aren’t you tired?”

“I wasn’t dancing half the night.”

She smiled again.

“Here we are.” I turned into my street. There was a car parked in the driveway. Julia’s. Julia was in it. As I pulled into the curb, she got out. “Stay in the car,” I told Beatriz.

“There you are!” Julia said, heading towards my screen door, assuming I would let her in. “I called but there was no reply. And I remembered what happened with your machine last time. I’ve been…Never mind. I’ve got things to tell you. Earlier today I—”

Whatever she was going to say was lost in a thud as she walked into one of the flower troughs Beatriz had filled this morning. Julia grabbed at me just as I caught her under the arms and for a moment we were frozen in an awkward tableau somewhere between Gone With the Wind and a game of Twister.

I hauled and she scrabbled up my body. She froze as one hand touched the bulge at my thigh and the other the harness around my waist.

Beatriz chose that moment to get out of the car. “Aud? Are you all right?”

Tousled, flushed, shoes in hand, she looked about sixteen and well used. Julia picked my hand off her shoulder like a dead bug. “Taken to packing in public for your sweet young thing?”

One in the morning. Two strange women in my driveway with even stranger ideas. I couldn’t help it, I laughed. Julia turned and walked with great dignity to her car.

“Julia. Wait. What is it you have to tell—”

But she started the car, shot me a contemptuous look, and drove off with a roar.