Wild Card

FIVE

Nimec held off on phoning Vince Scull, up Link’s chief risk assessment man and lead crank, until nine o’clock in the morning. With the difference in time zones, this meant it would be five A.M. in San Jose, not exactly regular office hours, but Nimec had punched in Vince’s home number and figured he would be up getting ready for work by then. And if he wasn’t, Nimec figured he ought to be. And if that was a stretch to justify the early call, Nimec wasn’t about to let himself feel too bad. He’d waited to the extent that his patience had allowed, reasoned he’d suffered enough aggravation from Vince over the years to be due a huge credit bonus, and in any event had never known Vince to react any better to consideration versus inconsideration. The guy would invariably find some reason to grouse, so why let it be a factor either way?

“What the hell do you want?” Scull said groggily once Nimec had announced himself.

“We need to talk, Vince.”

“Gee-fucking-whiz what a treat,” Scull said. “Just when I think I’m rid of you for a couple weeks, you decide to haunt me long distance.”

“This is important, Vince.”

“It occur to you I might have company and we’re maybe in the middle of something?”

“No, Vince. Honest. Can’t say it did.”

“Yeah, well, up yours, too,” Vince said. “Speaking of which, want to hang on while I pay a visit to the throne, or is it okay I carry the phone in and chitchat as things move along?”

“We need to talk right now, Vince.”

There was a pause of what Nimec took to be consternation at the other end of the line.

“Have it your way,” Scull said. “You hear a grunt come out of me, it’s not because I got turned on by your voice.”

“Good of you to share that,” Nimec said, and without any further holdup went on to outline the observations he’d made at the harbor.

Ten minutes and various undefined rumblings from Scull later, he’d gotten around to the questions that had plagued him since then… the first of which concerned the lines he’d seen run between the main container ship and its three feeders.

“I think they were fuel transfer hoses,” he said. “And I’m wondering if you’ve ever heard of cargo ships that double as oil tankers.”

“Uh-huh,” Scull said. “I have.”

“You have?”

“Oh, sure. Multitasking’s the word these days. What it’s all about,” Scull said. “Take this pair of shoes I bought, for instance. Put ’em under a bright light and they can dance ballet, tap, and modern jazz on their own. I’m telling you, Petey, you oughtta see the razzle-dazzle show they give on my kitchen table.”

Nimec rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

“Come on,” he said, exasperated. “Be serious.”

“Okay, I was full of crap about the ballet part, and the taps lose rhythm after a minute or two,” Scull said. “What the fuck you want for fifty bucks at Payless?”

“Damn it, Vince—”

“I’m seriously trying to tell you I’ve never heard of anything like you mentioned,” Scull said. And was quiet a second. “Well, okay, strike that. Think it was in World War Two, the Allies used to dress up fuel tankers heading out to the Pacific as standard freighters. Made ’em lower value targets for the Zeroes. And far as I know they really carried freight on deck.”

“Dress them up.”

“Is what I said two sentences ago, yeah,” Scull said. “There’s a problem with your phone connection, Petey-boy, you could always hang up and call back after the birds start to chirp.”

Nimec was tugging his chin.

“The Second World War dates back a ways.”

“You’re implying what’s old ain’t relevant, I’d have to take that as an insult.”

Nimec ignored him. “Question, Vince. You figure it’s possible anybody would be doing that now?” he said. “I mean legitimately using dual-purpose carriers.”

“Anything’s possible,” Scull said. “Can’t be too complicated a trick to overhaul a ship. But you know you’re asking me a two-in-one of your own here, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So which you want me to check out for openers? Who might be doing it on the up-and-up, or who might have reasons that’re on the slippery side?”

“Both,” Nimec said. “It’s why I asked the way I did.”

Scull gave him a somewhat exaggerated harrumph.

“This happen to tie in with Megan’s mystery e-mails?”

“I’d say so if knew, Vince.”

“But you don’t.”

“No,” Nimec said. “I don’t.”

“How about theories?”

“Yours would be good as mine.”

Again, Scull didn’t say anything.

“I wanna be sure I’ve got one thing straight before I go ahead and do your bidding,” he said after a moment. “Those cargo ships… you positive they were feeders and not coasters?”

“What’s the difference?”

“Coasters wouldn’t need tugboats because they’ve got engines aboard to power ’em,” Scull said. “They’re usually sorta long and narrow so they can snake through tight spots. Canals, river openings, that kind of shit. I saw a lot of them that year I was in the Polynesian islands scouting out sites for our ground stations. How they get their name is bringing loads along coastal routes.”

Nimec remembered what he’d seen beyond the piers.

“The boats last night had tugs,” Nimec said. And paused. “Until they didn’t and still sailed out of the channel.”

“Instead of pulling back into the harbor.”

“Right.”

Scull sighed. “I gotta admit, Petey, that right there confuses me.”

“Same here,” Nimec said. “And the sooner you can find information that’ll unconfuse us, the better.”

The phone became quiet again.

“Still with me, Vince?”

“Yeah, I had some private business that needed doing, want a graphic description?”

“No, thanks.”

“Then why don’t you hang up and let me roust my top-notch staff from under their quilts,” Scull said.

“Think we can keep this in-house?”

“Don’t see why not. Cal Bowman, you know him?”

“The name rings a bell.”

“He’s got a good bunch under him who specialize in what we call maritime works issues. They do reports on coastal processes, traffic forecasts—”

“Great, Vince.”

“I’m guessing you’re on a ’crypted freq?”

“Yeah. My satphone.”

“Keep it handy,” Scull said. “I’ll call back in a few hours with whatever we can pull together.”

Nimec considered that and had to smile.

“Those birds chirping in SanJo yet?”

“Not anywhere near my block, how come?”

“Thought you’d feel it was a little early to be waking people up.”

Scull produced an ogreish chortle.

“I give what I get when it comes to distributing the misery,” Scull said. “Fuck ’em all, big and small.”

“That a Vince Scull original?”

“A collaboration between me, Robin Hood, and Karl Marx,” Scull said. “Like it?”

Nimec shrugged. “Sends a clear message.”

“On behalf of the three of us, I’m glad you got it loud and clear,” Scull said.

And on that delightful note he signed off.

Henri Beauchart had been at the surveillance station well before Eckers arrived at nine A.M., accompanied by three of his adjuncts from Team Graywolf.

It only fed Beauchart’s existing unhappiness. He and his own staff had already completed their electronic probe. A simple effort, yes, but hastily called for. And here Eckers would come walking in the door to take control of an operation that was itself something Beauchart detested at his core. Still, what was to be gained from dwelling on his resentments? That would only make him miserable. The time for second thoughts or complaints was long past. His position at Los Rayos had been one thing before Jean Luc Morpaign returned from Paris to handle his deceased father’s business affairs, and another thing afterward. The brutal truth was he’d allowed himself to be purchased, gone from preventing and solving crimes to committing them. And he should be accustomed to Tolland Eckers stepping on him these days.

Eckers was Jean Luc’s man. Indeed, his spiritual familiar.

Now he approached the U-shaped terminal where Beauchart sat beside a young, dark-haired woman wearing a conservative blouse and skirt, a red bindi dot of Hindu tradition in the center of her forehead.

“Henri,” he said. “You have what I wanted?”

Beauchart looked back over his shoulder at the American. His companions had remained a few paces behind him.

“It is all done,” he said with a nod toward the woman at his console. “Chandra is one of my best intranet monitoring operators. I’ve had her bring up this graphic so you can see for yourself how the information was obtained.”

Eckers waited.

“The summary log reports and strip charts have been hard-copied, but I’ll venture a guess you won’t care to review them,” Beauchart said, pointing to the screen in front of him. “What you see here will be good enough.”

Eckers leaned forward and scanned the screen. Its galaxy view of the resort’s network architecture showed a large circle representing the primary host surrounded by smaller circles that depicted its various nodes, with connecting lines to display the inbound and outbound communications routed between their portals. On the perimeters of the orbiting circles were hundreds of tiny colored points, each of which stood for an individual computer in the system.

“My first step was a global query, entering the names of Mr. Nimec and his wife,” Chandra explained. “This sought them out of the resort’s computer databases and those of any licensed and rented alliance businesses they might have visited on the island.” She paused. “Shops, nightclubs and restaurants, tour organizers… we require they use certain collaborative software applications to give us different sorts of information. Most of it’s statistical. They rarely raise complaints, since the stated reason for this is our desire to learn which attractions and hospitality providers are popular with our guests, and how to improve and better target services for them.”

“Tracking their activities being a fringe benefit,” Eckers said.

The woman nodded.

“Our partners understandably do object to having some of their programs, or specific program files, interface with our central database… There are degrees of overlap in the merchandise and services they provide, and that creates occasional competition between them,” she said. “An example of what they like to keep private might be their accounting and inventory figures. Scheduling information is another very pertinent example, as I’m about to show you. The business owners are often insistent about maintaining the confidentiality of this data, which is why we slip trojans into their computers over the intranet. They’re self-updating and undetectable to any firewall or spyware-detection program compatible with our system infrastructure. And we have built-in alarms should they try to install any other such programs.” Chandra placed a hand over her computer mouse. “To get back to my global search, it gave us several immediate hits. But the tracking data we needed would usually take from several hours to a day before being transferred between their computer subsets and our host by the trojans.”

“Why’s that?” Eckers asked.

“Too routine to red flag other than for a special action,” she said. “Then it suddenly becomes important. But an unregulated flow of traffic would overtax the system’s capacity, so we use automatically staggered cycles.”

“Like timed stoplights on a busy intersection.”

“Yes… unless circumstances dictate that we go into the computers, override the predetermined cycle, and extract the information packets as I did from here,” Chandra said, and then moved and clicked the mouse.

Eckers watched closely as she highlighted one of the orbital subnet circles on the galaxy view and then zoomed in on a specific point along its circumference. It grew large on the screen, a numerical internet protocol address appearing above it.

Beauchart saw the American’s eyes narrow with curiosity. Again, he had to stamp down on his distaste.

“The computer we’ve identified belongs to one of the resort’s licensed agents… a water sports shop that also schedules a range of excursions,” he said. “The Nimecs are booked for an outing this afternoon. One that I believe will present the singular opportunity you desire.”

Eckers caught his quick, meaningful glance.

“The shop’s name?” he said.

Chandra clicked her mouse and it appeared over the IP address.

Eckers read it off the screen, grunted as his interest was further stirred.

“Okay,” he said. “Give me a look at the details of what they’ve got scheduled.”

Chandra gave them to him.

They were, as Beauchart had predicted, good enough.

Jean Luc winced when his blackline cell phone rang on its docking station first thing in the morning — the caller ID display told him it might only complicate what was set to be a busy day. At the top of his schedule was a ten o’clock meeting in Port of Spain to settle down the apprehensive gentlemen at the Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries. Then it would be across Independence Square to the Finance Building, where he’d no doubt have to apply more verbal palliatives. And then an international call to Reed Baxter, during which he’d be obliged to pass on a filtered and edited version of the gaining worries in the Capitol and tolerate Reed’s whining on about his own. So much nervous energy generated on both sides, and he the transoceanic conductor that made it flow smoothly back and forth rather than build to some dysfunctional system overload. Jean Luc hated to think what might happen if he decided to let it go. The whole shebang, everything. And sometimes he felt he could, even would, inherited alliances and duties aside. He had an ample bequest and many interests. He could travel the globe for the rest of his life and never grow tired of its sights and cultures. The past bore on him only to the degree that he allowed it, and by no means would Jean Luc continue shouldering its burdens if he grew convinced they’d add up to his personal ruin.

Now he entered his study in a robe and slippers, thumbing the cellular’s talk button and shooting a glance at the antique Boullé clock on his mantel.

“Toll, it’s barely eight,” he said. “I’ve got my fingers crossed you’re calling with good news.”

“I wish I was, sir,” Eckers said. “There’s been a development that’s going to need our attention.”

“Involving our elusive islander?”

“Elusive if alive,” Eckers qualified. “The perimeter watch has been maintained around the village, but Team Graywolf gave me nothing to indicate a substantive change in that situation when they last reported in. They’re convinced he wouldn’t have made it out of the southern preserve, and are combing it day and night.”

“Then what’s this about?”

“The visitor from San Jose,” Eckers said, and then paused. “I think this has to be considered highly time-sensitive, sir.”

Jean Luc closed his eyes and released a breath.

“Let me hear it,” he said.

Eckers did, his summary delivered cool-headedly enough — he was a man whose calm outward demeanor rarely if ever gave a read of his true level of concern. Jean Luc appreciated that, considering what little it took to induce fits of panic in too many of his business and political associates. But Eckers’s haste to contact him was itself a measure of the seriousness of what the cameras had apparently picked up at the harbor last night.

“You don’t suppose he could’ve missed the transfer, do you?” Jean Luc said. He was reaching, of course, and could tell from the momentary silence in his earpiece that Eckers knew it.

“We’d have to rule that out,” Eckers said. “Our surveillance video’s close-up, and digital quality. And I reviewed it in various enhanced modes to eliminate any guesswork.” He paused again. “He observed the whole thing, sir. Those were high-magnification surveillance NVG’s he was using… advanced military grade optics. The ships would have been well within their range at the point of rendezvous, and he was looking directly out at them.”

“And I don’t suppose we can gain any comfort by telling ourselves he probably doesn’t know what he saw.”

“He’ll know he saw something,” Eckers said. “If he didn’t realize what it was, he’s going to want to find out.”

Jean Luc sat behind his desk and stared at the glass-door bookcase against the wall to his right. On its upper shelf were four thick, leather-bound volumes that comprised the family record, notably minus the diary pages of Ysobel Morpaign, wife of Lord Claude, which had remained locked away in a vault for over a hundred years after her suicide. The Morpaigns had always revealed more truths about themselves between the lines than in them, but on occasion Jean Luc would read through their handwritten memoirs and try to decipher the reality of who his ancestors had been compared to how they’d wished to show their faces to the world — in some indescribable way, it helped put his responsibilities in their rightful place. He was the family scion. The keeper of its legacy, obliged to oversee its commercial holdings and carry through its immediate and far-reaching goals. A now kind of person, as he’d put it to Eckers. But that was his own outward face. Privately, he dwelled on the past more than he would have cared to acknowledge, and time and again found himself wondering about old Lord Claude, plantation owner, bootlegger, and forerunner of an oil dynasty in Trinidad. Claude, whom Ysobel’s sad, secret writings claimed would have ordered his only son thrown into the pitch lake as a newborn infant, his body left to sink down into the tar with the bones of nature’s failures and discards, had not letting him live been a wiser expedient. Childless in his marriage, Lord Claude had desperately wanted a male heir. That it had been conceived out of his lust for a black slave woman was something he could abide, just so long as the light-skinned son could pass as his legitimate issue, and its birth mother could be made to disappear forever. And so long as fragile, vulnerable Ysobel, who had assumed her husband’s disgrace as her own by blaming it on her infertility, could be manipulated into spending the nine months of a supposed pregnancy in her Spanish homeland to enable the lie.

It was, Jean Luc knew, all dust and cobwebs. Ancient history that shouldn’t matter to him, let alone be a kind of closet obsession. And what did his preoccupation with it signify if not a shameful lack of pride in who he was, a hunger for acceptance from elitists and polite society bigots about whom he shouldn’t give a good God’s damn?

“The visitor,” he said now, turning from the bookcase. “He’s supposed to be staying at Los Rayos a few more days, that right?”

“It’s my understanding, yes.”

“Which means he can be expected to do more poking around.”

“I’m convinced he will.”

“And how do you feel we should handle this problem?”

“Honestly?”

“I rely on you to be honest with me, Toll.”

“We know what he’s up to. We know his background and capabilities. It makes him a threat that has to be eliminated.”

“He’s with his wife, isn’t he?”

“Right, sir.”

“You sound as if you’ve considered that.”

“I have. And it could be to our benefit.”

“How so?”

“I recommend we take care of them together,” Eckers said. “There are scenarios that will give authorities on the mainland a plausible explanation. And that should also take the legs out of any progressive investigation by his people at home.”

“You sincerely believe their suspicions won’t be raised?”

“Of course they will. But they can suspect whatever they want. We just have to be careful not to leave them any solid proof.”

Jean Luc thought a moment.

“The one hitch in all this might be Beauchart. He’s been difficult before—”

“Beauchart’s already aware of what I have in mind.”

“And he hasn’t objected?”

“No,” Eckers said. “And if he does, I’ll quiet him. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Jean Luc held the phone silently to his ear, seized at once by a kind of morbid humor. In a few minutes he would have to get dressed and ready for his meetings — discussions meant to reassure his partners that their illegal oil shipments were being successfully covered up despite a glorified bookkeeper’s aborted attempt at snitching them out. But not until he’d started his day with some brief words about double murder.

“And He shall come again with glory to judge the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end,” he mused aloud. “Is that line by any chance familiar to you?”

“No, sir, it isn’t.”

“It’s a quote from the Christian scriptures I memorized a long time ago,” Jean Luc said. And shrugged a little in the stillness of the room. “Go ahead, Toll. Do whatever’s necessary. Keep us among the quick. Because if I’m going to be judged at all, I’d rather it be that way than the other.”

It was a quarter to ten when Vince Scull called back. Nimec had hung around the villa’s pool all morning, watching Annie take some laps and admiring how graceful and relaxed she looked. He’d learned to swim in the military as part of his combat survival training and, even so many years later, found that being in the water made him revert to the tight discipline the training had instilled.

“Okay, Petey, what am I interrupting?” Scull said.

Nimec shrugged with the satphone to his ear.

“Me getting a kick out of Annie enjoying herself,” he said.

“Uh-huh.” Scull said. “Don’t suppose I should want to go there.”

Nimec frowned. At least Vince sounded wide awake now — maybe even excited, the way he did when his juices got flowing.

“Your noggins find out anything?” he said.

“Haven’t talked to a single one of them who’s heard of combo tanker-freighters. but they’re on it,” Scull said. “Meanwhile, Bow — I mentioned him, didn’t I? Cal Bowman?”

“Yeah, Vince. You did.”

“Bow helped me with some groundwork, basic shit just might interest you.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“You told me the feeder ships you saw were maybe three-hundred-footers, right?”

“Be my guess,” Nimec said.

“Give or take, it puts them in line with the size of industrial oil barges,” Scull said. “They’d be anywhere between two forty and two eighty feet long and carry loads of crude, refined, gasoline, home fuel, asphalt, or all the above and then some. The number of tanks in a barge’s hold depends on how many types of product they’ve got aboard. Might be one, two, four… there’d need to be different tank linings for different grades of petroleum.”

“And different ways of filling the tanks,” Nimec said. “I figure if the feeders were taking oil, it would have to be a lighter type. Put crude in the hoses I saw and it would gum them up like thick molasses.”

“Bow said about the same,” Scull answered, and then paused for a long while.

“Vince? You still with me?”

“Don’t get your bathing trunks in a knot, I need to look at my notes.” An audible shuffling of papers over the phone. “Okay, here we go… It’s twenty-four thousand.”

Nimec’s forehead creased.

“Must’ve missed something,” he said, sure he hadn’t. “What’s twenty-four thousand—”

“Barrels, Petey. It’s the typical load on one of those barges. Talking equivalents, that comes to one million gallons. You want another example, imagine a convoy of a hundred twenty tanker trucks, because that’s how much rolling stock it’d take to move it by ground.”

Nimec let that settle in for a minute. He was wearing a short-sleeved Polo shirt and the morning sun was already hot on his bare arms. He reached for the icy glass of Coke on a table beside his lounger, sipped, watched Annie from under the bill of his Seattle Mariners cap. Stroking to the deep end of the pool, she dove like a seal, then executed a kind of acrobatic loop-de-loop that left her long, toned legs briefly sticking straight up out of the water before they submerged with the rest of her. He’d promised they would go snorkeling together that afternoon. A boat would take them out over the coral reef beds for a couple of hours, and there would be exotic fish, and maybe dolphins and sea turtles. Then Annie was hoping they could hit another restaurant on the beach — it had a steel drum calypso band performing at dinner. After dark he’d leave her alone in the villa, head over to the harbor again, do a little undercover work like a character from a spy movie. That was the main thing on his mind right now and he felt lousy about it, but not lousy enough to bump it down on his list of priorities.

Pete Nimec, Man from UpLink, he thought. Some vacation you’re having… some great husband you are.

“Got anything else for me?” he said into the phone.

“You sound testy all of a sudden, Petey,” Scull said.

“I’m not,” Nimec said. “Anything else?”

“Maybe,” Scull said. “Remember what I told you about those disguised tankers in the Big One?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, here’s some history I found in our computers that’s a lot more recent — don’t know why it wasn’t right in my head, because it should’ve been,” Scull said. “A few years ago, around the time Uncle Saddam had his ass kicked out of Baghdad, two thousand troops from the Thirteenth MEU were assigned to a Brit naval operation to choke off oil smuggling on the Iraqi coast. There’s that city there, Umm Qasr, you might’ve heard of it. The country’s biggest port. What the smugglers did was tap crude from the Rumeila pipelines, run it down the al-Faw Peninsula in tanker trucks, then pass it off onto barges at Umm Qasr. Our troops pulled in dozens of non-Iraqi flagged ships moving about five hundred thousand gallons of oil out to sea every night — and, guess what, some of them were converted freighters.”

Nimec sat quietly for a moment. Oil. According to his company travel and intelligence briefs the area certainly had a rich supply — it’d accounted for most of Trinidad’s export economy for decades. In fact, they had those tar pits in the south where a British outfit built the first well rigs in the Americas, maybe in the world… a plantation owner had leased them drilling rights to a pitch lake on his land after his father, or grandfather, or somebody like that, had made a fortune marketing kerosene that had been distilled from it. Nimec believed the family still owned some processing plants, but would have to glance over the briefs again to be sure. In any case, it was oil that had indirectly brought UpLink here through its wiring deal with Sedco. There were the onshore fields and refineries, and some new deepwater patches. Lots and lots of oil. But oil smuggling… who would be doing it? Why? Where would it be going? And more to the immediate issue, what were the chances of his having stumbled onto something like that after just an hour or two of compulsive peeping through his five-thousand-dollar binoculars?

Probably much slighter than the odds that he was starting to let his imagination carry him away, Nimec admitted to himself. Still, he’d seen something peculiar at the harbor. No getting past it. He could hardly wait to head back tonight for another — and if he could swing it, closer — look around.

“Thanks for getting on this for me, Vince,” he said. “Keep in touch, okay? Something turns up, I want to know ASAP.”

“Got you,” Scull said. “And be sure to send my regards to the missus… that’s if you wind up seeing her before I do.”

Nimec blinked his eyes.

“What’s that supposed to mean?’ he said.

“Figure it out, honeymooner,” Scull said, and terminated their connection.

Nimec let the phone sink from his ear and exhaled, staring at Annie in the pool.

Figure out what Scull meant? It would have been too easy.

The rough part was that he already damned well knew.

The Modesto offices of Golden Triangle Computer Services occupied the entire top floor of a four-year-old medium-rise office building overlooking the downtown arch at 9th and I Streets. Behind the receptionist’s and security stations were large double doors with a sky blue satin-finish metal skin and the name of the concern plated across them in liquidy gray- and blue-toned prismatic lettering. This reproduced the decor of Golden Triangle’s original headquarters hundreds of miles to the south outside La Jolla, where Enrique Quiros had once run his narco empire surrounded by the sleek, stylish trappings of modern corporate respectability.

Lathrop took a stride or two out of the elevator toward the pretty young secretary sitting near the double doors, gave her a little smile, and waited. Their eyes met in brief, unacknowledged recognition as a dark-suited guard came around from his station, passed a metal detector wand over Lathrop, and then nodded at the secretary. She punched a button on her switchboard, spoke quietly into her headset’s mouthpiece, and the doors swung open, another guard appearing in the entrance to motion Lathrop past him into the carpeted hallway beyond.

The second man conducted Lathrop through several turns of the office-lined corridor, walking slightly ahead as if to guide him along, but that was just a formality. Lathrop knew his way around and it was no secret to the guards, the woman at the reception desk, or anyone else he passed approaching the main executive suite.

Juan Quiros was waiting for him inside, his elbows resting on his desk, his thick hands folded in front of him.

A stocky, bull-necked man with heavy features and an olive complexion, he seemed as constricted and ill at ease in a beige Italian designer suit as his predecessor Enrique had been sleek and loose, as out of place in an office setting as Enrique had been harmoniously compatible. Since his rise to ultimate power in the clan, Juan had acquired an overmanicured look from evident and increasingly frequent visits to the salon. His curly black hair had been treated with relaxers and imparted with a sprayed-on plastic gloss. His needle-sharp mustache might have been drawn with the fine point of a pencil. The eyebrows that had formed a solid bristly line above his nose before being reshaped by a series of waxings and tweezings were now neatly separated on his wide forehead, their high, thin arches giving him an appearance of perpetual surprise. But there was something in his eyes, something baleful and wolfish, the soft touch salon cosmeticians couldn’t lift away or mask.

“I thought about having you kicked the hell out of the building,” Juan said.

Lathrop glanced at the door to make sure it had been shut behind him by the departing guard.

“Always ready with a pleasant greeting,” he said to Juan.

“Pleasant doesn’t interest me,” Juan said. “I’m not sure you do, either.”

Lathrop looked at him.

“That wasn’t your attitude when I called,” Lathrop said. “You’ve changed your mind, tell me.”

Juan didn’t move or answer.

“Go on, tell me,” Lathrop said. “I’ll walk.”

Juan watched him closely, his fingers still linked together.

“What do you want?” he said.

“I hear that question a lot from people,” Lathrop said. “The smart ones have learned to ask what I’ve got, and I figured you were one of them.”

Juan’s smile showed nothing.

“Okay,” he said. “You have edge for me, talk.”

“Edge costs,” Lathrop said. “Figured you’d know that, too.”

Juan’s gaze was as empty as his smile. “I don’t spend money on thin air,” he said sullenly.

“How about on finding out who killed your cousin Armand?” Lathrop said. “And why.”

Juan regarded him without visible reaction for a moment.

“Tell you what,” he said. “The trade we’re in, we make enemies, and Armand was good at that. Maybe I got my own ideas about who would’ve killed him and am dealing with it.”

“Maybe,” Lathrop said. “Or maybe you don’t have a clue who sent that masked white man came blasting his way into that garage in Devoción. And maybe you’d better for your own health.”

Juan took a breath, his full lips parting over rows of white capped teeth. Then he slowly reclined and pulled apart his stubby hands. There were kinks of hair on their backs and on his knuckles that had escaped, or been ignored by the cosmeticians.

Lathrop waited.

“Give it to me,” Juan said at last.

“There’s more in the package and I don’t break it up,” Lathrop said. “You pay for all or nothing.”

Juan nodded, his eyes suddenly narrow and gleaming.

“We’ve done business before,” he said, “I know how it goes.”

“A minute ago you acted like you didn’t.”

Juan kept staring at him.

“Give it to me,” he said again. “Everything.”

Lathrop grinned, waited another moment. Then he stepped closer to the desk and took the seat in front of it.

“The man who killed Armand was hired by Esteban Vasquez to find out where you’re keeping his daughter and bring her back to him,” he said. “You make it worth my while, I’ll arrange to bring you that gringo’s head on a stake instead.”

Tom Ricci was in the bedroom of his rental condominium zipping the HK G36 into its case when he heard the doorbell. The sound took a moment to sink in, as if it was something new to him. He listened, thinking maybe there had been a mistake. Not many people came to call lately. And to his surprise the bell rang again.

Ricci finished packing away the carbine, propped it in a corner, left the room, and pulled the door shut behind him, listening for the solid click of the latch. Then he went into his entry hall and looked out the peephole.

He straightened up, doubly surprised now. But this time he reacted with a jolt.

He’d recognized Julia Gordian at once.

Ricci stared at the door as confusion took hold of him. His first thought was to turn back around without answering — he had no use for company, and what would she be doing here? They’d only met once or twice before that day in Big Sur and hadn’t seen each other after. It didn’t make sense and could only mean problems for him.

Ricci stared at the door, not reaching for its knob. She’d have seen his Jetta out front but that didn’t mean anything. Let her decide he was asleep, or out for a walk, or whatever. He didn’t want or need company, especially this morning. He just wanted her to leave.

He waited.

Another ring. A soft knock on her side of the door.

Ricci swore under his breath. His hand grasped the doorknob, turned it, and pulled the door half-open.

He looked at her for several seconds.

“Hi, Tom,” Julia said from the front step. She nodded toward her station wagon in the driveway. “I happened to be driving past your neighborhood this morning and figured I’d stop and say hello.”

Ricci was quiet. Julia had her black hair pulled into a loose ponytail that was kind of twisted up and clasped to the back of her head and seemed to be almost but not quite coming apart. There were three small gold rings in her left ear and two in her right and she was wearing black capri pants and flip-flop sandals and a lilac-colored sleeveless blouse with a lot of small yellow polka dots on it. In her hand, the one that hadn’t just dropped from the buzzer, was a waxed white paper bag.

Ricci kept the door partially closed between them.

“I never told you where I live,” he said.

Julia shrugged. “Are you sure?” she said.

“I’m sure,” he said.

“Guess I must have found out from somebody else, then,” she said with a smile. “Because I remembered the address while I was passing by. And since you’re you, and you’re here, and this looks like a home, the evidence shows I got it right.”

Ricci studied her, his eyes adjusting to the sunlight flooding over the small plot of lawn neatly maintained by the condo development’s service staff.

“Look,” he said, “I’m kind of busy.”

Julia stood there on the front step, shrugging again, her smile becoming a little sheepish.

“I don’t want to bother you,” she said softly, and held up her bag. “But I brought coffee and muffins… and, well, I haven’t had a chance… that is, much as it’s kind of late, I really want to thank you for saving my life.”

Ricci regarded her through the entryway awhile longer, hesitated. Then he grunted and pulled open the door.

“I’ll need to get going soon,” he said.

Julia nodded.

“Actually, that’s perfect,” she said. “I have a bunch of stuff ahead of me today, too.”

She entered, paused inside the door, and glanced around. The living room was medium sized with a pale gray carpet, a small sofa, a plump bustle-backed wing chair, and a television/satellite box setup on a plain black stand. It gave way to an open sort of hallway that led in turn to a combination kitchen and dining area. Everything seemed clean and orderly and comfortable enough in a sterile, impersonal way that reminded Julia of a motel room on check-in.

Ricci closed the door and led her toward the dining room. As she passed the wing chair, Julia noticed a big, packed sporting duffel — or hunting duffel, she guessed, since it had a woodland camouflage pattern — pushed against one of its arms.

“Planning to visit the great outdoors?” she asked, and nodded at the duffel. “I like to go camping myself a couple of times a year… y’know, just to clear my mind.”

Ricci’s glance went to the chair. He seemed a little thrown by her question, as if he hadn’t realized what was on it. Then he looked at her.

“Don’t need to clear my mind,” he said.

His chill tone, coupled with the stony expression on his features, caught Julia unprepared. She momentarily wondered if she’d done the smart thing coming to see him, then decided his reaction was proof enough that she had. Or at least that was how she was determined to take it.

She followed him to the table and set her bag down.

“I brought chocolate chip and macadamia nut muffins, my pick of the month,” she said, opening it. “Ever try them?”

Ricci’s head moved from side to side in the negative. “They’re from that bakery practically around the corner from here, Michael’s Morning Toaster,” she said. “Good luck to anybody who tries finding them in Pescadero, which is why I drove all this way to relieve my sicko addiction.”

Ricci turned to her.

“We going to need dishes?” he said.

She flapped a hand in the air.

“C’mon, we can rough it,” Julia said, and patted the tabletop. “We’ve got paper cups, napkins, paper plates… the bakery guy even tossed in plastic knives and forks. That’s, God forbid, in case you’re the type who’d actually use them to eat a muffin instead of your bare fingers and teeth.”

Ricci stood stock still, quietly watching her. She had reached into the bag and begun to empty it, laying out its contents on the table, carefully peeling the lids off the coffee cups, setting the muffins onto the paper plates.

“You don’t need to thank me,” he said.

Julia stopped what she was doing and looked up at him, her face abruptly serious.

“Would you prefer I didn’t? Or can’t I be the one to decide that?”

“I’m saying you don’t need to,” Ricci said. “I was doing what I got paid to do.”

Julia stood there holding a muffin halfway out of the bag in its waxed tissue wrapper.

“All right,” she said. “Want to hear my stroke of genius?”

Ricci’s piercing blue eyes went to hers. He held them there for a full thirty seconds, and then nodded.

“Let’s just enjoy a nice breakfast before we go about our busy days,” she said. “I won’t spout on to you about my feelings of gratitude, and you won’t talk about why you’ve dropped off the face of the earth when it comes to your friends. And we’ll consider it a fair bargain.”

A silence. Their gazes held together across the little dining area as the aroma of the hot fresh coffee rose in wafts of steam to permeate it.

Then, slowly, Ricci gave Julia another nod, and approached the table, and pulled out the chair opposite her.

“How’s Vivian?” he said after another long spell of silence. “She come around okay from those gunshot wounds?”

Julia reached for her muffin and raised it to her mouth. “Viv goes jogging with me every other morning,” she said. “Rain or shine, like it or not.”

Ricci’s face took on an expression she interpreted as pleased.

“Great dog,” he said.

Julia glanced at him, about to take a bite of the muffin.

“Yeah,” she said, and smiled. “She sure is.”

And with that they got started on their food.