“Do you want to talk about that day? The day of the accident?” Dr. Schneider said.
He got up and left. It was the first time he’d walked out during an appointment.
***
He didn’t have the heart to show her the photos. He simply told Asha he had proof that Nirad and Kumar were involved sexually, and left it at that. He’d driven directly from Schneider’s office to the Clift Hotel. It was getting harder and harder to stay away from Asha Chaundhry. When he was away from her, he would dwell on her. Touching her. He wanted her to leave the States now, before Thomas was charged, because he knew it wouldn’t stick and that she would be next. Robert Thomas might only be a placeholder until Nirad could get what he really wanted. He wanted Asha in prison. That was obvious. Exactly why wasn’t clear.
“Did you know about Nirad and Kumar? Tell me the truth, Asha.”
“No. When Nirad came, he wanted the room across from Bharti. I wondered then, because we had a larger guestroom. But I didn’t — perhaps I should have said something to her. To Bharti. I’d caught him looking at her in India in a way that — in a way I understood wasn’t right.”
“Did Rishi know?”
“No.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I just know. He would have told me. He liked Bharti—he treated her like a daughter. He wouldn’t have put up with it if he’d known what was going on under his roof. I’m sure of that. Rishi was kind. It was his nature. He was nothing like his father.”
“Do you think Nirad would kill the girl if she was pregnant?”
“Yes.”
They looked at each other. He’d come to the Clift Hotel to tell her that she should go to India before the case against Thomas fell apart. He was sure that Thomas was telling the truth, and his lawyer—a very competent one—would get the charges dropped, soon. Thomas had told them that he was with his employee at his gallery the afternoon of the murders, and he could prove it.
“You’ve got to leave,” Michael said.
“What will happen to Robert?”
“Nothing. They won’t be able to keep him for long. He’s gotten a good lawyer. The photos are from a month before, he claims. He’ll prove he wasn’t there and they’ll have to let him go. You should leave for India. Now,” he said.
“Nirad won’t send my daughters to my parents’ house. I begged him. He blames me somehow for what happened to Rishi and Bharti. Neel called and said that you are in danger. Neel is frightened he’ll lose his government job because of what’s happened.”
O’Higgins stood looking at her. She was wearing the bindi on her forehead again. She was in Western clothes, jeans and a white blouse, and was barefoot. She’d lost weight and looked like a waif. He could smell the incense in the suite, burning somewhere in the hotel room.
“Do you have Bharti’s phone? Is that what Neel means? Why you’re in danger?”
“Yes. Nirad wants the emails he sent Kumar,” he said.
“Why would he do that? Take photos?” she said.
He shrugged. “It’s common even for billionaires to take photos like that. I’ve seen hundreds. Men just do it.”
“What are you going to do?” she said.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want me?” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. Do you want me?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.”
She took him by the hand and led him down the hallway. The smell of the incense got stronger as she walked toward the bedroom. It was thick, a kind of fug in the air. He heard a cell phone ring as they kissed. It was as if he’d been waiting for her since the moment he’d seen her on the ferry. It was all very wrong, and he could have cared less. He wanted her. He wanted to make love to her, to be shut off from the world with her alone.
“Are you going to love me — the way you loved your wife?”
He didn’t answer. He unbuttoned her shirt. Something was starkly beautiful about her brown skin, incredibly warm when he touched her breasts.
“It was Rishi’s shirt.”
“I don’t care,” he said. “They’re dead. They’re both dead, and there is nothing we can do about it.” As he unbuttoned her shirt, he realized that she wanted him too, and he was surprised.
He fell asleep afterwards and dreamt he was at Limantour Beach. It was a beautiful blue summer day. The air was warm. He was looking at his footsteps in the wet sand being slowly washed away by the surf, impressions that were deep, but softened by the foamy tide and polished away wave after wave. Birds followed along behind him. He turned and saw his wife, naked, she waved to him standing in ankle deep water motioning for him to come join her. She smiled. It was summertime because the air was warm and the sky stark blue and clear. He waved back and then woke up in Asha Chaundhry’s bed.
“Are you sorry?” she said. She’d been watching him sleep. Her black hair was beautiful and thick. He reached out and touched it. Put his fingers in it. Touched her face and her lips.
“No,” he said.
“Can you help me get my girls back?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
He got out of bed and looked for his clothes, gathering them up. He didn’t feel like talking. And he had no practical answers. He was up against a fucking billionaire, probably about to be unemployed, and he was half crazy. What were the odds?
He had a sudden desire for silence, a restful quiet that he’d not had since his wife died. Surcease, peacefulness, a great pause as if he’d been put on a raft and left drifting, but toward something. If he could just figure it out; piece his broken crazy life back together.
He walked out of the room and dressed in the big living room, looking out at the city at night and all that it harbored, all that it promised during his life: his childhood, his adolescence, his father and mother and sisters and brother, all of them there in the lights, the last night at home before going to war. The morning he met his wife in the Starbucks, and saw a look in her interested eyes. It all seemed so strange, and could only be explained by a great silence.
He looked out at the city, tying his tie. Life’s textbook was coded, and never would explain anything. Gibberish. Nothing but one page of strange markings after the next. He found his Glock sitting on the wet bar. He tucked it into the pancake holster, the one he’d carried since he had made detective.
He picked up his phone and checked it. He had text messages from his daughter and one from Marvin, saying they’d been pulled off the case. He turned and looked at Asha standing in the hallway.
CHAPTER 21
“Is Rebecca with you guys?” O’Higgins said on the phone.
“No. You have a week off. Towler wants you to take it. So we’ll be up again next week. It’s okay. They are still looking at Thomas,” Marvin said. “He got some fancy Montgomery Street lawyer and made bail. But we’re good.”
“I can’t find Rebecca. She texted me — she was starting at Marin Academy today, but she’s not answering my texts.” Marvin had never heard that kind of panic in O’Higgins’ voice.
“Call her again,” Marvin said.
“I’ve called her three times. She doesn’t answer. It just goes to voice mail.”
“Do you still have it — the phone?” Marvin said, afraid to mention Kumar’s name.
“Yeah,” O’Higgins said.
“God damn it, Mike!”
“You better come over here, Marvin.” O’Higgins hung up. A text had hit his phone.
GIVE IT TO US AND NOTHING WILL HAPPEN TO R.
He stared at the message, as if he wasn’t reading it correctly. He read it three times. He was out of body for a moment, frightened and watching himself look at his phone. He saw what he was wearing, and saw his hand shaking. He’d never felt like that before, never so afraid, even in com
bat. He’d been anxious in combat, but this was a bone-crushing fear, and he had to stand back from it in a bizarre, out-of-body way.
“Dad, what’s wrong?” Rebecca had come in the front door as he was looking down at his phone.
“Where were you!?” he said, startled.
“I was at school. Started today. You sent them money, remember? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He needed to be sure he wasn’t imagining her.
“Something’s wrong, don’t lie to me,” Rebecca said. “You’re pale.”
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Twelve thirty. I came home to eat lunch. The SF ballet called. They want me to audition for their school — are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” She closed the front door and crossed the room.
“How is it, the school? Marin Academy?” He tried to get his bearings.
“Cool. They don’t take any shit there. People are different. Classes are quiet. It’s a lot different from where I was in Sacramento. I like it. No stoners allowed, thank God.”
“You want me to make you some lunch?” he said, trying to sound normal. His voice sounded strange from the shock of seeing her. He turned off his phone. Would they come here to his house?
“Okay. I was going to have soup, Amy’s. Why aren’t you at work?”
“We closed a case. I’m off for a few days.”
“You look awful,” she said. “Are you sick or what?”
“Give me your phone,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“I can’t explain right now, but — please give it to me,” he said. They were probably using it to track her, he realized.
“No.”
“God damn it, Rebecca, give me your phone!”
“No,” she said. “Have you gone crazy?”
“No. I can’t explain, but — I need it.”
“No. I’m not giving you my phone. You’re acting weird. I’m going to call Aunt June and have her talk to you.”
He didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t tell her the truth without scaring her. But if he lied? He was trapped without an answer or a direction. They were going to go after her if he didn’t give them what they wanted. His choices were stark, and his daughter’s life was at stake.
“I’ll fix the soup,” he said, looking at her. She was too thin, and looked like her mother more and more every day. She would be a beautiful woman soon, all the awkwardness of adolescence gone and replaced by a ballerina. A woman. Protect her. He saw the future in front of her. It would be glorious, his sister in New York would help her — she would get beyond the accident, she would fall in love and have her own family someday.
“You aren’t going to tell me what’s wrong?” she said. “Why are you acting so weird?”
“I love you,” he said. “You know that. Right?”
“Yes. But don’t act weird on me, okay? Please. I — I don’t want to leave again. I want to be here, at home. I want things to be normal again. That’s what I want. So you have to cooperate. I don’t care if you have a girlfriend. I get it. That’s why you didn’t come home last night. You’re a man and they want … you know. I get that. But I want us to be a family again, you and I — I come home, and you tell me to eat and pick up my room and come home by midnight and I act like a shitty teenage girl — normal. Okay? Like if … like if Mom was going to come through that door. Like that. I want it to feel like that. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said.
“I’ll make lunch, then. You want some?” She put her arms around him like she used to when she was a little girl. The distance between them dissolved, as if they had been lost in a wilderness and stepped out of it to find each other again.
“Do you remember Limantour?” he said.
“Of course. It was mom’s favorite place in the whole world, I think.”
“We should go, you and I, for a walk. Like we used to,” he said.
“Yeah, I’d like that.” She let him go. She was weeping. He started to cry, too. They’d not touched since the day of the accident, he realized. When they’d been on their rescuer’s boat, cold and in shock, the horror of what happened closing them both down.
“You miss Mom?” she asked.
“Yeah, every second. It just doesn’t go away,” he said.
“Why is it so hard?” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It just is.”
“Is that what love is? Just pain? I don’t get it.”
“No,” he said. “No, it’s not. It’s Limantour, when we were there together, the three of us. Just hold onto that from now on. We had that and we always will. It’s forever,” he said.
“But we don’t have Mom,” Rebecca said. “That’s the hard part. Memories only hurt you.”
Marvin came in the front door while they were eating lunch. He and Marvin looked at each other. Marvin could tell, immediately, that he’d not told Rebecca anything.
“Can a black man get a cup of coffee with you Irish bastards?”
“Uncle Marvin, if something happens to Dad — I mean if something happens at work — you know — would you —? Could I go live with you guys? I need a back-up plan,” Rebecca said. “I don’t want to go back to Sacramento. And I can’t stand Bolinas. I love Uncle Andy, but I can’t live out there with all those hippies.”
“Yeah,” Marvin said, not blinking. “You’ll have to share a room, though. And everyone has a curfew. And my wife will want you to go to church. Now can I have that cup of coffee?”
“I can’t tell her,” O’Higgins said.
“Why not?” Marvin said.
“Because she’s fragile right now. I can’t drag her out of here. I just can’t. If I do that now I might never get her back. She hates Bolinas. She wants to be here at home. And I want her here with me.”
“What are you going to do, then?” Marvin said.
“Give them Kumar’s fucking phone, ASAP,” Michael said.
“Good. Thank God. Finally you’re making some damn sense.”
“I slept with Asha Chaundhry, Marvin. It just happened — last night.”
“Am I supposed to be surprised? Isn’t that what you wanted to happen?”
“I guess. I think I’m in love with her. Asha,” O’Higgins said.
“Okay. Why not.”
“I give them the damn phone and we catch another case, and it’s all okay,” Michael said, as if he were trying to convince himself. He texted the number back.
Limantour State Beach—4:00 PM. It’s yours.
Their answer came back almost immediately:
Bring Asha.
Michael slid his phone across the table at Marvin, who stopped it, keeping it from sliding off.
“I don’t get it,” Marvin said, reading their message.
“They’re going to kill her,” Michael said.
“What?”
“I think so. Both of us, maybe,” Michael said.
“Why?”
“Takes care of a lot of problems for Nirad, doesn’t it? Asha was a ‘loose woman.’ The detective and her were having an affair? They know it somehow. What happened yesterday? It’s perfect for them. I led them to their solution, really, what Nirad wanted. He’s smart. That’s why guys like him run the fucking world. I was stupid. I just wanted to be with her. Wanted her.”
“You can’t go then, Mike. Just tell them we’ll leave the phone somewhere. Fuck them,” Marvin said.
“I have to go. Its Rebecca’s life we’re talking about. I have to go. They win. Don’t they? About Rebecca — will you take care of her? Funny she asked. She must have felt something was really wrong when she came in.”
“Mike —”
“I’m asking you the same goddamn question she just did. Do I have your word?”
“Yes. You have my word. We’ll take care of
her.”
“There’s a life insurance policy. We had two. There’s enough money to see her through. College, and all that. And her new school,” Michael said. “Keep the house for her. She’ll need a house when she has her own family.”
“Mike, come on! We can figure this out,” Marvin said. He looked frightened, realizing what was at stake.
“It’s one o’clock. I’ve got to go.” He called Asha, said he had to see her, and hung up.
Marvin was giving him a strange look. He understood there was no law now. The rich people of the world were running the show, and there was nothing two cops could do to stop it. The world was in a free-for-all, greed at the center of it.
“Jennifer loved you. Did you know that? I’ve been meaning to tell you. I wanted you to know that,” Michael said. “I mean, if she knew that Rebecca was going to — you know. She would be very happy with that.”
“Mike. I get it. All of it, man. I really get it. God damn it—I do.”
The phone he’d been carrying in his pocket from Neel Roa rang. O’Higgins took it out and answered.
***
He told Asha the truth in the car, and said that she could get out if she wanted to. She didn’t have to go with him. They drove Van Ness Avenue toward the Golden Gate Bridge. It was the last day of March. The winter clung to the City like an old shrew, stubborn, loud, its wind blowing up from Monterey Bay, ice cold. He used to like to sail in March because of the winds and the difficulty of sailing in winter. Wintertime offered a sense of wild freedom that summer’s idyllic skies never gave.
“No, I’ll go of course,” she said. She was wearing riding boots and had tucked her pants into the tops, and a black turtleneck. She looked beautiful, young and without flaws, a kind of womanly perfection, he’d thought when she got into the car.
“Why are you doing this?” he said.
“He’s going to take the girls to my mothers. He promised. So I have to go with you. We made a deal.”
“Do they know about us?”
“Yes. Everything,” Asha said.
“Is that why — is that what made you. Last night. Is that why you made love to me?”
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