Valley of Bones

Twenty-three

Paz arrived at Lorna’s in a car driven by his partner, Tito Morales, who had been told just enough about recent events to give him cover. The young cop seemed glum and irritated, and as Paz was getting out of the car he said, “What was that line about telling your partner everything?”

“That’s only for honest cops,” Paz said. “Take care of yourself, Morales. Stay away from crazy people.”

He rang the bell and Barlow answered it, holding his S amp;W Model 10 revolver by his side.

“Any problems?”

“No. The ladies are sleeping. Emmylou went down in a jiffy. Lorna stayed up reading that notebook.”

“You read it too?”

“I did. ‘And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory and honor, and power, unto the Lord our God.’ Revelation 19:1.”

“As good as that, huh? Well, I guess I better read it myself.”

“Go ahead. It’ll do you a world of good, I believe. And now, if there’s nothing else, I reckon I’ll be going. I’d like to be with Edna. I’ll take your rental, if I may. If they want me, y’all know where I’m at.” Barlow handed over his big pistol without being asked and walked out.

Paz went into the living room and found the notebook on the coffee table and read it through, and as soon as he finished he went into the bedroom, dropped his clothes in a pile on the floor, a thing he rarely did, and slid into bed beside Lorna. He lay flat on his back, exhausted but so jangled by what had happened and what he had just read that sleep remained a distant rumor. He thought of Emmylou’s confession?the maniac had actually signed it!?and of what any prosecutor would say if he presented it in evidence, and it made him laugh out loud, an unpleasant and high-pitched sound on the near edge of hysteria. The sound made Lorna stir and moan, and slide closer to him, and he slid his hand under the curve of her butt, and brought his face close to her shoulder, breathing deeply of the sleep-scent that rose from her skin, like vanilla he thought, or was that synesthesia, she was so creamy.

At which point Paz let the reptile brain take command. She responded in her sleep and then awoke quite in midfuck, and made pleased and pleasing sounds, somewhat louder than was her usual wont he thought, a gasp ‘n’ groaner rather than a screamer or talker, which was actually his favorite type of the three. He thought the increased volume might have had something to do with the woman sleeping (or not) in the guest room on the other side of the headboard. Some women liked to advertise they were getting it, he had found, or maybe it was the special circumstances here.

In any case, it blew most of the static out of his brain, and afterward she rolled around and he saw her face in the rosy glow from her digital clock and was pleased that it seemed once again drained of the pinching tension it had worn, suffused with pleasure, looking years younger. He said, ” ‘A woman touched by a man pretends, sometimes, to sleep, for the pleasure of letting him think that she awakens. After, her thighs sleep differently from before.’ “

“Did you just make that up?”

“No, it’s from one of Willa’s poems. ‘Sleep,’ it’s called.”

Lorna stiffened and then let out a long, deep sigh, like an unraveling of something tangled in a dank internal place. “I don’t mind. You can go back to her after I’m dead.”

“Oh, would you just shut the fuck up,” he said gently and kissed her face innumerable times until she drifted off again. Moments afterward he joined her in sleep.

She was still out when he rose in the morning. He took a quick shower and dressed in fresh clothes from his suitcase, then peeked into the guest room and was pleased to see the cropped dark head of the Former Suspect from Hell on the pillow. By the bed was the bag he’d used to bring her possessions from the houseboat.

Lorna was stirring when he went back to her room. He leaned over and kissed her, which turned into more than a simple farewell smack.

“Get those clothes off!” she ordered.

“I can’t. I have to see Oliphant first thing. He’s out on a long limb on this and I owe him an explanation.”

“Are you going to tell him the…what the hell’s that?”

“It’s a.38 revolver. I’m leaving it with you, and your cell phone’s right next to it. We might’ve got all the bad guys last night, but who the fuck knows? Don’t let anyone take her without, one, seeing a warrant, and two, calling me. Okay?”

“Yes, captain,” she said sourly, touching the brim of a notional hat. “If I go to sleep again, will all of this not have happened when I wake up?”

He laughed, kissed her again, and left to call a cab.

This morning Paz had his police coffee in a mug that said NATIONAL TAX FRAUD CONFERENCE,SALT LAKE CITY, 1999, which did nothing to improve the flavor of the brew. Oliphant looked tired, as if he had not been able to return to sleep after Paz’s call had roused him in the middle of the night.

Oliphant tapped the stack of papers on his desk, the report Paz had knocked together in the small hours. “It says here you were pursuing a lead in connection with the Wilson killing, which is not our case, and which I specifically ordered you to stay off of. You were alone, also against orders, and armed with a shotgun. Two men drove up in an SUV, pointed weapons at you, and you killed them both with the shotgun. Then, while you were examining the bodies, a third man jumped out of the SUV and disarmed you, threatening you with a submachine gun. Next, this person, while making a cell call, was stabbed in the back by a homeless man, who fled. You called for backup and later arrested two other men, who had been summoned by Mr. Submachine gun, who turned out to be behind both the Wilson killing and the al-Muwalid killing, a Siegfried W. Sonnenborg, aka Skeeter Sonnenborg, aka John Hardy, an arms merchant and international security consultant, also our long-sought criminal mastermind. Approximately how much of this is true?”

“Say half?”

“Let’s hear it.”

“You’re sure? You lose deniability.”

“Oh, fuck that! I’m so fucking tired of deniability I could puke.”

“Okay, boss. First of all, we have Emmylou. They snatched her from a place I stashed her upstate after breaking her out of the hospital. They had her locked in a storage locker. She’s now at a secure, undisclosed location.”

“Along with the vice president. I’m sure they’ll have lots to talk about.”

“Right. Second, I didn’t shoot those guys. Cletis Barlow did. He was backing me and they drove up and jumped him. Both of them had federal fugitive warrants out. They were skinhead gunrunners and meth dealers, and probably won’t be missed.”

“No. And what about Sonnenborg being stabbed by a street person? You make that up too?”

“No, that’s true. Sonnenborg had the drop on us, I mean me, Emmylou, Barlow, and Dr. Lorna Wise…”

“Wise too? What, you didn’t bring the Hurricane Marching Band?”

“No, they had a game. Anyway, this guy came out of nowhere and put a big fish knife through his liver and ran away. Rigoberto’s real, a Marielista fruitcake. We’ll pick him up and put him away for good. He needs to be inside.”

“I guess. Still, pretty strange coincidence, him showing up like that, just when you needed him. Forty years of law enforcement work have taught me to be suspicious of coincidences like that.”

“What can I say, Major? That’s how it went down. But the fact is that weird coincidences pop out like mushrooms after the rain when Emmylou Dideroff is in play. It seems to be part of her M.O.”

“Mm. I guess there’s not much doubt that this Sonnenborg guy is the mastermind?”

“Oh, yeah, he’s our guy on al-Muwalid and Wilson and on the assault and kidnap upstate, him and his gang, also confirmed by the pair of mutts we grabbed later. Same kind of lowlifes, and they’re anxious to talk. On the mastermind thing, well, Sonnenborg officially worked for a fed named Wayne Semple, aka Floyd Mitchell, aka David Packer.”

“Who we don’t have.”

“No, but do we want him? My sense is that all the nasty stuff came directly from Sonnenborg, who was apparently quite a piece of work. Packer wrote the checks, but he’s not a player down here anymore. When me and Morales went by there at four-thirty this morning, there was no houseboat at all. Packer must’ve called his cleaners. He’s probably back in the ‘burbs outside Washington and the boat is somewhere out at sea, heading for a watery grave.”

Oliphant said nothing. He pursed his lips and stared up at the ceiling. Paz had the strange feeling that he could see the man’s thoughts, like the news feed that runs along the bottom of the screen on CNN. Paz took a microrecorder cassette out of his pocket and laid it on Oliphant’s desk. “This is for you.”

“What is it?”

“A full confession from Packer, naming names. This whole thing is about Sudanese oil and the attempt by agents of the U.S. government to influence Sudanese oil policy and get information about a huge oil find. They committed God knows how many illegal acts both here and over there in furtherance of that goal, including ethnic cleansing, attempted genocide, and torture, plus the two murders here in Florida. My thought was that if you had that in a safe place, and let people up in D.C. know about it, you’d be off the hook as far as any pressure from that end was concerned. I mean it’d be a Mexican standoff. Or am I missing some subtlety?”

Oliphant stared at the little rectangle for a good while and then slipped it into his shirt pocket. “No, I’d guess you were right. They won’t indict me. They might kill me, but they definitely won’t go the other route. I’d thank you…no, I do thank you, but by Christ, I hate all of it like poison!”

“You’re welcome,” said Paz. “Only two other items. One is the dangerous nutcase fugitive Emmylou Dideroff me and Dr. Wise illegally sprang from state custody. I vote for letting her disappear just like Mr. Packer.”

“Second the motion. You have a plan, I presume.”

“Sort of. Last night I put in a call to Rome a little after three-thirtyA.M. our time. I spoke to a very nice woman at the Society of Nursing Sisters of the Blood of Christ. I told her who I was and I said that her prioress general might be interested to know the current situation of one of their ladies. They call her Emily Garigeau. Rome seemed pretty interested.”

“What are they going to do?”

“I haven’t got a clue. But they’re a resourceful outfit. I’m sure they’ll think of something.”

“Yes. What’s the other item?”

Paz took out his Glock and his shield wallet and placed them on Oliphant’s desk.

“I’m handing it in, Major. I suggest you put it out that you forced me to resign. It’ll cover you better if any of this stuff starts to work loose. Irresponsible cowboy resigns under pressure of squeaky clean new administration. I’ll take the pension in a lump sum.”

“Christ, Jimmy, you don’t have to do this.” Oliphant’s face showed real concern, but at a somewhat more veiled level, Paz observed, it showed relief as well.

“I do. I killed two guys already on the job, and I just realized last night I can’t do it again, and if I stay on the street, one day I’m going to choke and get someone killed.” He stood up and held out his hand. “Been a pleasure, Major,” he said. “Come by the restaurant sometime. I’ll buy you a dinner.”

Lorna abandons sleep with some reluctance and toddles naked into her bathroom. There is a wall-spanning mirror there, placed by the former owners, and she pauses to check herself out. Still a long way to go before she looks wasted, but it’s starting. There will be a brief phase, she thinks, when I will be fashionably thin, before collapsing into yellowing skeletal wreckage. On the other hand, I’m getting the best sex I ever had from the nicest man I ever went out with: what is this, a terrific dessert at the end of a crappy meal?What? She realizes she is addressing the Deity and recalls the last notebook, where Emmylou refers to the putative sense of humor of the putative Holy Spirit. What would it be like, she wonders, to believe in all that? She reaches briefly inside her mind and finds no handle for it; instead there’s something like a damper that muffles any exploration in that direction and sets up, like an interior PowerPoint slide show, a materialist explanation for everything that has recently befallen her.

Now she palps her glands, finding them swollen but unchanged. She is feverish and has, she now determines, an actual fever of 100.2 F. Still slightly nauseated, but not enough to chuck up. She feels like death, but not that soon. She showers, and as she swabs love’s ichors out of her, she wonders yet again how long it will last, how long before she becomes too sick or too unattractive to have it anymore, and thinks by then I’ll have pills enough to slip away. It hasn’t really kicked in yet, she thinks as she dresses, I should be more depressed and I’m not, I feel like I’m floating over it, like it’s happening to someone else. The famous Denial stage? Probably.

As she emerges, she notices the guest room door is open and she hears movement in her kitchen. The refrigerator door swishes closed. There is Emmylou, all dressed in her shorts and T-shirt, with a container of yogurt in her hand.

“Oh, you’re up!” she says and wiggles the yogurt. “I hope you don’t mind…I can’t remember the last time I ate.”

“No, don’t be silly. I could make you bacon and eggs if you want.”

“No, this’ll be fine.”

Lorna makes coffee, and they take it and the rest of their breakfast out to the back patio. It is cool now, and the neighboring air conditioners have entered their fall silence, and they can hear the mockingbirds singing in the overarching foliage. Lorna sips coffee, nibbles a corner of toast. She is never hungry anymore. But Emmylou sits cross-legged in a basket chair and consumes her yogurt and eats four slices of toast and jam with total concentration and enjoyment.

She looks about fourteen now, and Lorna can hardly believe that this person has experienced the life she has presented in her confessions, murdering, whoring, leading armies, wading in blood…. Where does she keep it all? Lorna can see one of the woman’s feet poking out and registers the scars, the thick keratinized tissue, like rubber cement spilled and dried out. Where is the shattering, the crushing of the spirit, the post-traumatic stress? She recalls her battery of tests, administered with such confidence not long ago, by a Lorna that hardly seems to exist anymore. The damned woman is an affront to the science of psychology. Lorna catches herself thinking along these lines and feels absurd.

Emmylou becomes aware of Lorna staring and grins sheepishly. “I’m sorry. I’m such a pig now. The Dinka would be mortified.”

“Don’t they eat?”

“Yes, sure, but modestly. It’s againstdheeng to show hunger or gluttony. Of course their cooking is pretty bland. It’s mostly sorghum porridge studded with dead flies. Insects ingested with food or eaten purposely are a big source of protein in Africa.”

Lorna feels her stomach heave.

“You get used to it, everything crawling with flies, and it’s interesting,” says Emmylou, picking up the yogurt container. “The Dinka have tons of milk but they don’t have yogurt or cheese. I made some of both while I was there, but it wasn’t a hit. They have butter, though. Also, they don’t care about the actual yield from their cows, only how many cows, like thinking twenty nickels is more valuable than ten quarters.”

Lorna listens without comment, recognizing nervous chatter when she hears it. A precis of Dinka husbandry and custom flows forth, including items that Lorna could have lived without knowing?such as Dinka men pressing their lips to the anus of a cow and blowing air into its gut, to fool it into thinking it was still pregnant?and then the phone rings. Lorna goes into the house and comes back a moment later with a surprised look on her face and the cordless in her hand.

“It’s for you,” she says.

Emmylou takes the instrument as if it were a live grenade. She listens more than she speaks, and that mainly monosyllables. When she closes the connection she says, “That was the Society. They want me back. Unless our friend is going to arrest me again.”

Lorna barely wonders how the Society knew what number to call. “I very much doubt that. What will you do, go back to Sudan?”

Emmylou looks up at the mango tree. “No, I don’t think so. As you probably picked up from my writing, there’s a debate going on about arming our missions, and I’m a prime example of the success of that side of the debate. That’s why they paid to have me rescued and that’s why they’re sending someone to take me away.”

“So you’ll be a military consultant to the nuns?”

She laughs. “Sisters. Yeah, right, a master of war, just like Skeeter. Sister-Colonel Garigeau. No, Nora was right and the prioress general is wrong. I’ll be happy to fold sheets or do anything they want, but all that’s over with for me.”

“But you won your war. You proved her point?I mean the prioress general.”

“God won the war. Saying it was me is like saying a bat and ball won the World Series. No, He formed me from the beginning, the memory thing, making me sneaky, sending the devil into me, my family, Orne and his war library and his weapons, meeting Nora and getting civilized, the bombing of Pibor, all those things made me into an instrument of His will and He used me and gave the Peng Dinka what he wanted them to have. He chose another people for His covenant, and that will go on. They don’t need me anymore, just like the Israelites didn’t need Moses once they got to the Promised Land.”

Lorna now experiences a flash of irritation. She has been keeping a good deal of her real feelings about Emmylou Dideroff bottled up, but now that the woman is no longer a patient, she feels them froth into new life. The infernal arrogance! The shameless manipulation! The lack of caution and respect for the lives of others! Every string of her liberal heart twanged ire and she says, “What about the oil, Emmylou?”

“There is no oil. Didn’t you read the notebook?”

“Yes I did and I saw what you were trying to do. You were totally frank throughout the whole thing, letting out all the awful things that were done to you and that you did, creating an impression of guileless honesty, all to conceal one big lie. They found oil, a lot of it, or Richardson wouldn’t have radioed out, and the Sudanese wouldn’t have launched a huge attack on you, and especially Richardson wouldn’t’ve tried to smuggle out a CD when you searched him. What was it, ablank CD pasted to his skin? You slipped up a little there, it was a detail we didn’t need to know. Sonnenborg must’ve spotted it too.”

“There was no oil. The CD had financial records on it. He was a consultant and he was interested in getting paid.”

“I bet.”

“Lorna, if there was an oil find, don’t you think I would’ve confessed it? He tortured me for days….”

“You’re a religious fanatic. Torture doesn’t work on religious fanatics. As a matter of fact, you’re the kind of paranoid fanatic who regards torture as a vindication. You would have let him shoot me.”

“No, I explained to Detective Paz. He would have only shot me, and in any case there was the angel?”

“Oh, please! And what if Sonnenborg had been able to pull us off the street to some secret basement? You would have watched the bunch of us being tortured to death and you still wouldn’t have said a word.”

The other woman looks away. “God allows people to be tortured to death all the time.”

“You’re not God!”This comes out in a yell, and Lorna is gratified to see Emmylou jump a little.

“No, of course I’m not God, but I believe he used me for a time. For a while we made one little tribe secure. We did something against the toxic, vicious misogyny of Africa, we turned them away from being stupid proud victims, and taught them that God had a special use for them, that He cared about them being righteous. There’ll be a seed, like the one He planted in Israel. When the rich world collapses?”

“Oh, thank you! I should have figured there’d be apocalyptic stuff in there too. Do you have a date figured yet?”

Emmylou looked startled for a moment. “Oh, gosh, no, I’m not talking aboutjudgment day. I’m talking about the fact that it’s unreasonable to assume that ten percent of humanity is going to control ninety-eight percent of the world’s wealth forever. I’m talking long time scales here. A thousand years ago Paris and London looked like raggedy-ass trailer parks and Baghdad was the intellectual capital of the world. There were more books and literate people in Timbuktu than there were in England. New York was an Indian village. For all we know the world will be ruled from Wibok a thousand years from now, or someplace we never heard of. It’s no crazier than telling some sheik in Basra in the year one thousand that his descendants would be kicked around by Englishmen. And look around you, Lorna, look at what’s happening to your country, the stupid apathy, the addiction, the violence, the mercenary army, the corrupt political system, the rich and the poor becoming practically different species again, the collapse of religion…”

“I thought this was the most religious country in the world.”

“I’m talking about actual religion, not these rich pharisees with their rules and their delicate purity, rotting inside painted tombs, hypocrites, and the pagans praying for washing machines; they are all utterly corrupt and God has cast them out. Can’t you see it? ‘And the kings of the earth who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her and lament for her when they shall see the smoke of her burning, standing far off for the fear of her torment, saying alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour is thy destruction come.’ ” Her voices rises, becomes a different voice as she recites this, not unlike what happened with the Oya lady at thebembe.

A little breeze rattles the croton leaves and Lorna shivers and tries to think of some logical argument against the fall of the West, and then she thinks What am I doing here, trying to make sense to a maniac? But the maniac has something else to say.

“And have you ever thought that He may be using you too? That this between us, our passing and touching, is part of a larger thing, vast and twisted? He’s brought you through all these dangers for some purpose, some great thing, even if you never learn what it is. You or your seed, a child who might be the one who saves the world. We never do know.”

Now Emmylou swings her head around slowly and faces Lorna and fixes Lorna with her eyes. In these she sees bottomless sorrow, unlimited compassion. Lorna feels all the anger running out of her, although she wishes to cling to it, it is like water through her fingers.

“I’m not going to have any children,” Lorna cries. “I’m going to die and there is no God.”

And collapses utterly. She shrieks loud enough to frighten the birds away and pounds on the table and throws a cup shattering against a tree trunk. I’m going to die and there is no God, this is her wail, interspersed with wordless blubbering, shameful, beyond all control, God was going to torture her to death even he doesn’t exist, unfair, unfair! Emmylou jumped from her chair and held her in a wiry grip, stroking her hair and cooing meaningless comforting noises.

“I’m sorry,” she says when she can speak sensibly again. “I have cancer. Would God cure me if I prayed?” Lorna was appalled listening to her mouth say this, and in a little squeaking voice too.

“I don’t think it works that way,” says Emmylou, “but it never hurts to pray. If you want, I’ll pray for you.”

“Oh, what’s the point!” Lorna snaps as her self-disgust rises to overcome the terror. “Every plane that goes down must be screaming with prayers, but the plane still crashes.”

“That’s true, but if any of them are praying sincerely, they’re praying for God’s mercy in their final moments. That’s really the only thing wecan pray for, you know, thy will be done, and let me align myself with it.”

“This is all about heaven, right? The so-called afterlife?”

“That you don’t believe in,” said Emmylou.

“Of course not!”

“Then what are you afraid of? Extinction? You have extinction every single night of your life. What can it possibly mean if the lights go out permanently? You’d never know it, by definition.”

Lorna blows her nose into a paper napkin. “Oh, thanks! Why am I not comforted by that? I suppose for you it’s going to be choirs of angels and eternal hymns.”

“You know, I have no idea. We’re advised not to speculate: eye has not seen nor ear heard nor has it entered into the heart of man what the Lord has prepared for those who love him. I’m assured of a welcome into eternity and the resurrection of my body, but we really haven’t the faintest idea what that’s going be like, having an exalted body like the risen Christ had. It’s outside time, you see, and my brain just can’t bend around that, the idea of existence without duration, just like I guess the caterpillar doesn’t understand the butterfly, though it’s the future him.”

Lorna is staring at her, preparing some cynical remark, when a butterfly flies in from the yard and lights on Emmylou’s shoulder. It is small and bright blue, with orange eyespots in its wings. Then another comes and another, dozens of them, on Emmylou, the table, the chairs, on Lorna herself. Time slows and seems to halt, the breeze dies, the leaves fall silent, and for some incalculable period they share existence without duration. Then, in a blue flash the creatures take off all at once and disperse into the sky.

“And gone,” says Emmylou, smiling with delight.

Lorna felt something wrong in her mouth, a peculiar dryness, and realizes that her jaw has been hanging open for the whole time. Emmylou goes on as if nothing unusual has taken place. “I’m remembering something Teresa of Lisieux said. She was real sick, she died when she was twenty-five or so, and she said something like, It really doesn’t matter to me if I’m alive or dead, because I feel like I’m in heaven now, so what could death change? That’s pretty much how I feel, I guess. Of course, most people are in hell.”

Lorna misunderstands. “You think I’m going to hell?” she cried.

“Of course not. You have a much better chance of getting into heaven than I do. You’ve probably never done a consciously evil thing in your life. You work with the sick and try to cure them, and accept less money than you could earn in other ways. And you do it from pure goodness, since you don’t fear hell or seek heaven. I’m commanded to goodness and charity by my Lord, but you generate it like a pure fountain from your soul. You’re a far better person than I’ll ever be, and the devil has no grasp on you at all.”

Now Lorna jumps to her feet. These last remarks, with the butterflies, Eskimos, schizophrenic angels, the Little Flower: all too much for her. “I have to go,” she blurts out, “I have to go to the hospital now.” Racing toward materialism, escaping from all this…hope,whatever, but she can’t help herself.

She doesn’t even wash her face, just grabs her keys and her wallet and the medical records from GWU Hospital and gets in her car, and while she drives she dials Dr. Mona Greenspan and gives her secretary such a good impression of a patient just falling over the edge of psychosis (not much of a stretch now) that the frightened woman tells her to come right in.

Lorna in her paper smock, hours have passed, she has been probed and rayed and she has been waiting a long, long time, and now the door opens and Dr. Mona Greenspan, a small woman with a cap of silvery hair and an intelligent open face, enters holding a thick sheaf of folders. She sits on her little stool. “Well, the good news first,” she says. “You don’t have lymphoma.”

“What do you mean? I have all the symptoms of stage-four lymphoma and I had a positive biopsy and CAT scan in Washington.”

“What can I say? GWU is a good outfit, but people make mistakes. There are abnormal lymph cells there, but they’re not malignant. You have an infection. That’s why your nodes are blown up and why you’ve got a fever and why you’re losing weight.”

“Aninfection? What kind of infection?”

“Brucellosis, strange to say.”

“What? I thought that was a cattle disease.”

“It is, but people get it too, and it’s no joke. Have you been around any livestock lately?”

“Some cows. But the symptoms started before then.”

“Then what about unpasteurized or imported milk products, cheeses, like that?”

Lorna thinks back to before the weirdness started. The gym. Betsy. “Oh, God. I had some Albanian goat cheese in a health food restaurant. It was zero fat. Oh, Jesus, what a moron!” She slapped her head.

“I’m not done. I assume you don’t know you’re pregnant.” There was the usual stunned, gaping pause here.

“I can’t be pregnant. I’m on the pill.”

“I know you’re on the pill, dear, I’m your doctor. But you seem to be the lucky one in a hundred for which it fails. In any case, there it is, about five weeks. Didn’t you realize you’d missed a period?”

“I thought it was the cancer,” Lorna wails. “Oh, God, and that’s why I was puking up all the time.”

“Right. And the itching is an allergic reaction to sand flies, very common down here in South Florida. In any case…when I was an intern we called it Von Veilinghausen’s syndrome?a group of unrelated symptoms interpreted as a novel or more complex disease. But back to the brucellosis. There’s a real danger of spontaneous abortion here, not so much in human females as in cattle, but real enough. So what did you want to do about the condition? I’m assuming it’s an accident, in which case?”

“No! I want to keep it,” says Lorna, without any conscious thought at all.

Dr. Greenspan gives her a swift, sharp look and then smiles. “In that case, mazel tov. We’ll start you on rifampin right away.”

No one answered the doorbell, and Paz felt a little tickle of fear. Lorna’s car was gone from the carport, but that could mean anything. He used his key and paused in the short hallway, placing the grocery bag on the floor and listening. Nothing, the sound of an empty house, and then something else, a murmuring drone. Oh, right, he knew whatthat was. He took the bag into the kitchen and unloaded it onto the counter. Taking his cell phone, he punched the key for Lorna’s, and got the service. He left a call-me message, and the thing was no sooner back in his pocket than it played its tune.

“Where are you?” he asked and learned where and then heard the news. “Well,” he said, “that’s great.” More listening. “I thought brucellosis was something you got from guys named Bruce, sort of a gay community thing. No, you’re right, it does go to show I don’t know everything.” Now an even longer pause. Paz felt queasy now and had to pull up a kitchen chair. “Is she sure?” he asked. “Well, well, lucky us. I guess I’ll have to marry you and give up my dreams of a career on the concert stage. No, I’m not kidding. No, listen to me. It’s not a question ofpressuring. Pressure doesn’t even begin to describe it. Ever since that asshole got tossed out the window, my whole life has been on a railroad track with somebody else driving. All I’ve been doing is looking out the window at the scenery going by. Don’t you feel that way?” She did and told him about Emmylou’s phone call before they said good-bye.

Paz cracked a beer and went into the living room, where he found Emmylou Dideroff on her knees before the little African crucifix standing in front of her on the coffee table. He cleared his throat. She let out a little cry and sprang to her feet, her face flushing.

“Oh,” she said, “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“You looked like you wouldn’t have heard a bomb.” He instantly regretted that figure of speech.

“No, I would have heard a bomb.” With that unearthly smile. “Lorna isn’t here. She went to the doctor.”

“Yeah, she called. So, how’s things with God?”

“Fine, as always. Is Lorna…okay?”

“Yeah, it wasn’t cancer. She has some rare disease, which they can apparently fix with antibiotics. She’s also pregnant. How about that?”

“Yes,” said the woman, as if confirming something she already knew. “God be thanked. What will you do?”

“Oh, the usual. Marriage, house in the ‘burbs, driving to soccer games.”

“Not that usual anymore. Well, congratulations and God bless you.”

“You should stick around for the wedding. My mom will be in her glory?every witch doctor in Miami will be there. You could be a bridesmaid. I bet you’d fit right in.”

“Thank you, but I think my ride will be here soon. I have to get ready. Do you know if Lorna has an iron and board?”

Paz directed her to the laundry alcove on one side of the Florida room and then walked through the glass doors to the back patio. He lay down in a padded lounge chair and sipped his beer. He felt very peculiar, and for a while he couldn’t figure out what it was, and then he realized that for the first time in his memory he had absolutely nothing todo, no people to see, no cases to keep track of, no naggings from Mom to avoid, no girlfriends to juggle. He was between lives, and he felt like a sage of the East. Something Willa used to quote popped into his mind, Thomas Merton:

Who can free himself from achievement

And from fame,

Descend and be lost

Amid the masses of men?

He will flow like the Tao, unseen.

Such is the perfect man: His boat is empty.

Paz spent what seemed like a week lying there, watching clouds sweep across the sky and observing the lives of the birds and the larger insects, until Emmylou Dideroff came out and stood in his field of vision. She wore a dark gray calf-length cotton dress, with a freshly starched and ironed white apron over it, black leather boots on her feet and a white headcloth over her hair, marked with a thin bloodred stripe. She smelled pleasantly of spray starch and shone with an austere beauty.

“My boat is empty,” said Paz.

“Yes,” she said. “Good for you.” She held up a grocery bag. “Well, I’m all packed. My earthly goods.”

“You kept the habit.”

“Yes. I couldn’t bear to throw it away, and here I am. Will Lorna be back soon? I’d like to say good-bye to her.”

“Half an hour, maybe,” said Paz. He rose from the lounger. “So, off you go to further adventures.”

“I certainly hope not,” she said with a smile.

“Uh-huh. Little Emmylou rides off into the sunset, her work done. Although no one is really sure what that work was, are they? It’s like all the big boys sit down at the poker table, the U.S. government, the city, the state, the oil companies, the Church, the Sudanese rebels, the Sudan government, and Mr. Sonnenborg?can’t forgethim?and somehow, by dawn’s early light, when the game is all over, who do you think is holding all the chips? Why, good gracious, it’s little Emmylou Dideroff! Let’s see if we can count ‘em up.”

Paz plucked at his fingers as he spoke: “First, we have the fortunate death of the oil explorers. They could’ve hit a mine, but they also could’ve been purposely blown up by someone who didn’t want them talking to anyone. Next we have the fortunate rescue of our heroine, who gets tortured just long enough to convince any normal person that she’s telling the truth. No Joan of Arc last act for Emmylou. Rescued by a mysterious military gang who seem to be financed by our heroine’s own Society, which just happens to get all its income from?hello??oil company stocks. Next, somehow, one of the two people who really believes there’s a lot of oil there, and also happens to be the very guy who tortured our heroine, arrives in Miami looking for her. Now how did he know to come?”

“Skeeter must’ve told him.”

“Skeeter was working for the feds, for Parker. Who was watching you. Why in hell would he have done that?”

“He was a strange man. He always wanted to be the one controlling the play. That was his only pleasure, to make fools out of the whole world. He had no interest at all in how the game came out. He thought every outcome was equally meaningless. That’s why he blew the whistle on Orne Foy.”

“Did he? I kind of figured you for that one.”

“You’re very cynical, Detective.”

“True, but you have to admit you got a history of getting even. As a matter of fact, all the people, every single one of them, who ever crossed or messed with Emmylou Dideroff are dead. Except old Packer, and I’ll lay odds that something’ll happen to him, if it hasn’t already. Add to that, the one other guy who knew you were blowing smoke on the oil business is dead too, of course, although I’ll give you that Skeeter getting knifed was a coincidence pure and simple and?”

“Just another damned Eskimo.”

“What?”

“You want to believe that there are giant wheels turning, deep games being played, and there are, but not by men. God has preserved me in wonderful ways and done his will through me, using what means were at hand, including the plots of evil people. You know, God really wants to talk to us. He tried Scripture, he tries the still small voice, but we’re all unbelievers now, so he mainly speaks to us through a conspiracy of accidents.”

“That’s a way of putting it. Come on, Emmylou, just between the two of us, what’s the true story on the oil?”

She stared at him for what seemed a long time and part of him was terrified that her face would start to change and he’d be having this conversation with the Prince of Darkness. He went on. “I had an idea you might like. If you tell me the real story I’ll get your confessions to SRPU in Washington. That should convince them there’s no oil in your part of Sudan. I mean they don’t really know you.”

Some moments passed until he saw her give a little nod of decision, as if getting a message from somewhere.

She said, “Now I put lives in your hands. Are you ready for that?”

“Yes. I’m used to it.”

“I know, and I’m telling you this not only because of what you propose, which would be an act of mercy in itself, but because you love the truth more than anything, and I don’t want you to dig into this ever again.” She took a deep breath and said, “Richardson found a huge diagenetic trap on the upper Sobat basin, sixty billion barrels or more. I destroyed all their data and I sent them out by a road I knew had been freshly mined by the enemy.”

“Because God told you to?”

“No, it was my own idea.”

“Playing God?”

“Yes. And don’t judge me. It’s not good for your soul, and I’m being judged in a much harder court.”

“But why? The oil would make them rich. Your people. Don’t you want them rolling in it?”

“No. They’re happy. They have their cows and their God and a peace they can defend. Oil would destroy their world. Money and arms would come pouring into Sudan from every oil-addicted country on earth, and there would be mercenaries and the GOS would exterminate them to the last baby and the world would go tut-tut and fill their gas tanks. Now they have a chance. When the world collapses they’ll have a little secure place maybe. Maybe Dol Biong’s heirs will be prince-bishops of a little state, and maybe something good will come of it. I don’t know. But I would and will do anything to give them the chance.Anything.”

Paz saw the mad saint start to come back into her face and then the doorbell rang.

“And I guess we’ll have to leave it at that,” said Paz, moving toward the door. He opened it and there stood a towering, thin young woman in an SBC habit. She had cheekbones like wings, huge slanted eyes, and skin as shiny and black as a pocket comb.

“You’re a Dinka,” Paz said, with his neck hair wriggling at the reality of her presence, andThe Confessions of Emmylou Dideroff burst into vivid life.

“Yes, I am,” said the woman, but then Emmylou was there and with a cry she threw herself at the Dinka girl and they embraced and chattered away in that ringing tongue. Introductions were made: this was apparently Mary Dyak, Mary number three, from the famous gun, now all grown up and a novice. Then more Dinka. Paz waited a decent interval and said, “Well, so long, Emmylou.”

She said, “Give my best to Lorna and please don’t think bad of me.”

“I don’t,” he said. “You played the cards you got dealt. But I’m a cop, or was, and people lying to me gets on my nerves.”

He held out his hand for a conventional shake, but she grabbed it in both of hers and fixed him with her blue eyes, gas flames now, and she said, “Remember, lives in your hands.”

“You going to have me whacked if I tell?” he asked lightly.

“No, but you may sleep uneasy.You know what I mean.”

He did and he felt sweat on his brow.

Then the two sisters trotted down the walk, and at that moment Paz saw the way their dark dresses swung with their walking and realized that one wore a dress of cotton, one of wool. He had to lean against the doorpost, so rubbery were his knees, as they got into a black car and drove off.

“Well, we won’t see her like again,” said Lorna later on, after their glorious reunion, having been to bed and become hungry and giggled around the kitchen with no clothes on, Paz making omelettes in a silly position so as not to spatter his groin with spitting butter, and afterward eating a hilarious naked lunch, or supper, outside on the patio to the scandal of the birds.

“I sure hope not,” agreed Paz. “She was a pisser all right. Saint or devil?you choose.”

“I don’t think you do choose. She once told me something to that effect. Not even saints ever get rid of the demons, maybe especially not saints. One other thing, though, and don’t laugh, but I knew at the bottom of my bones that I had stage-four lymphoma when I walked out of here, and she said she’d pray for me, and when I got to the doctor’s office I didn’t have it anymore. And I don’t believe in any of that stuff.”

“A miracle, you think?”

“Or a medical error?you choose. In a funny way I think I’m going to miss her.”

“You’ll get over it,” said Paz. “And whatever it was, it couldn’t’ve happened to a nicer person, is what I say, and I’m sure little Jennifer or Jason will agree.”

“Little Amy,” said Lorna. “My mother. Is that cool?”

“Absolutely. Amelia, to give it that Cuban tang. And if a boy, how about Jesus?”

“That will guarantee my dad will never speak to me again, although marrying someone without a graduate degree will start the disownment process.”

“You can tell him I’m a full professor at the University of Girl.”

“Which has closed its doors and is no longer accepting applications.”

“Boy, that’s harsh. You’ll have to take total responsibility for improving my mind. Can you do that?”

“I can but try,” said Lorna. “But back to Jennifer and Jason, what’s your position on sonograms? I mean do you want to know the sex beforehand?”

Paz looked at her with a kindly look, but one tinged with some sadness too. The poor woman really had no idea. He said, “Dear, in this family we don’t need sonograms. My mom will tell you what sex the child is if you ask her, and probably even if you don’t. In fact, she’ll probably call us right now and let us know.”

“Plate o’ shrimp,” said Lorna with a laugh. “The old voodoo man’s trying to scare me,” but she stopped laughing when the phone rang. They both stared at the cordless on the table. It rang and rang, but neither of them was in any hurry to pick it up.