Fear itself: a novel

by Jonathan Lewis Nasaw

  Today he was wearing a pale green poplin windbreaker and perfectly creased khakis with a one-inch cuff; his iron gray toupee was unruffled by the fresh autumn breeze.

  “Five bucks a hole,” he called as Pender stepped up to the first tee.

  “Ten,” replied Pender, who then duck-hooked his first drive into the dogwoods to the left of the fairway.

  Although Sid was ten years older than Pender, he preferred walking the course—possibly because he understood that the more tired Pender’s legs became, the worse he hooked his drives. Once again, Pender barely shot his temperature. He paid up at the nineteenth hole; Sid left the money on the bar, and several rounds later, he insisted on leaving his own car at the club and driving Pender home in the ’Cuda.

  Not a particularly subtle ruse: afterward, it occurred to Pender that if he hadn’t suspected anything by the time he dragged his golf bag through the front door—at which point the thirty or forty people crowded into the vestibule or overflowing into the living room jumped out at him (those still young enough to jump) and shouted “Surprise!” at the top of their lungs—he probably had been too drunk to drive.

  He had to fight back the tears as they crowded around him. “You got me,” he kept saying. “You got me good.”

  4

  September and October were what they called locals’ weather on the Monterey Peninsula. Not only did the tourists clear out after Labor Day, but so did the fog—if the winter rains held off, you could generally count on two months of sunshine.

  Dorie had been too shaken by the news of Wayne’s death to get any work done Tuesday. Eventually, she knew, she’d end up painting it out, putting the fear and the grief, the whole mourning process, into one of her plein air scenes—just not during locals’ weather.

  But when she walked down to Carmel Beach around six o’clock that evening, Dorie found herself wishing she’d brought her gear. You don’t need rain for mourning, she thought: a Carmel Bay sunset will do very nicely. There’s sadness in so much beauty, especially when it’s over so quickly. Then she remembered that Wayne Summers was only twenty-seven when he died.

  Twenty-seven! And he was healthy, he had a job he loved and his career was flourishing; he was as close to taking charge of his ornithophobia as he’d ever been; and as if all that weren’t reason enough to live, he got laid a lot more often than Dorie did, usually by breathtakingly gorgeous men—what possible reason would he have had to kill himself? Drown himself, at that. Wayne couldn’t swim a lick. Dorie remembered how he used to joke that it was one of only three black stereotypes that could be applied to him. The other two, he added, were a good sense of rhythm and none-of-your-business.

  Dorie found herself laughing through her tears at the memory. But after the tears came anger, and a resolution: She would not give up. She would keep trying, she would redouble her efforts, she would make a pest of herself at every level of law enforcement, until she had convinced somebody to open an investigation, and keep it open. Somebody like this female FBI agent. Because even if Abruzzi didn’t believe what Dorie was saying yet, at least she sounded as if she wanted to believe. That was something, anyway.

  5

  Froot Loops, thought Linda—the Maryland countryside was in full autumn riot, yellow and crimson and orange, and it was almost too much, like driving through a box of Froot Loops, or an old Technicolor Disney cartoon.

  Miss Pool proved to be as efficient at giving directions as she was at managing the Bureau (everybody knew it was the FBI clerks who really ran the place): from Virginia, follow 495, the Beltway, northeast into Maryland; then take 190, the River Road, north past Potomac and turn west on Tinsman’s Lock Road. Pender’s driveway was the first (and last) one on the left, on the far side of the sign marking the entrance to the C&O Canal National Historical Park and telling you what you could and couldn’t do there.

  It was dark by the time Linda turned down the long dirt drive. The other partygoers had parked in the overflow lot down by the canal and hiked back up the hill, so as not to screw up the surprise; the driveway was clear save for an old black muscle car—Linda parked behind it.

  Some things never change, she realized, as she heard the laughter and music spilling out from the big wooden house. Thirty-five years old, seven years with the FBI, and the prospect of walking into a party where she hardly knew anybody still reduced Linda Abruzzi to the emotional age of five.

  It’s okay, she reminded herself, you’re not here to socialize. Find Pender, ask him what you came to ask him, wish him luck on his retirement, maybe grab a crab puff. Then arrivederci, Abrootz—you’re out of there.

  The front door was ajar; Pender, glass of Jim Beam in one hand and a shiny new beribboned Callaway driver in the other, was holding court on the far side of the rustic living room, over by the sliding glass doors that opened out onto the back porch. He saw her coming and proudly brandished the driver over his head. “Linda, what do you think of my gold watch?” Then: “Everybody, this hotshot here is Linda Abruzzi—she’s gonna be filling my thirteen double Ds back at Liaison Support.”

  “If I can find them in that mess of an office, that is,” said Linda, to polite laughter. The first retort that had come into her mind was something about not leaving quite that big a footprint, but she didn’t want people looking down at her feet—she was still a little self-conscious about the shoehorn-style ankle braces built into the heels of her ugly orthopedic shoes, even though her slacks were tailored long to cover them.

  And before she could ask Pender if they could talk privately, somebody tapped her on the shoulder; she turned to find herself face-to-face with another Bureau legend, Deputy Director Stephen P. McDougal. McDougal, according to scuttlebutt, had come within inches of being appointed director several years earlier, instead of Louis Freeh. Good-looking older man with tremendous presence and a head of thick white hair you wanted to walk barefoot through.

  “How are you settling in, Abruzzi?”

  “Excellent, sir. First rate.”

  “Office all right? Need any special accommodations?”

  “No, sir, I’m fine.”

  “Good attitude,” said McDougal. “Behind you all the way.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Linda was relieved when he turned away—she’d found herself feeling the way she’d felt back in high school, encountering the principal in the grocery store. When do I get to be the grown-up? she wondered. And now Pender had disappeared. She glanced around, saw him out on the back porch, engaged in earnest conversation with a dapper old guy wearing what looked like one of Sinatra’s old toupees. She caught Pender’s eye; he waved to her to join them.

  “Linda Abruzzi, this is Sid Dolitz. Best forensic shrink who ever wore a badge. Never treated a patient a day in his life, though.”

  “Didn’t care much for crazy people,” Dolitz explained. “Bit of a handicap for a psychiatrist, but a plus as far as the Bureau was concerned.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you, too.” Dolitz had a neat little hand, not much bigger than Linda’s, and much better manicured. “I understand you have MS.”

  “Yes?” As in what of it? In the few short months since her diagnosis, Linda had already met too many people who saw her disability before they saw her.

  “So did my late wife. Would you mind terribly if I offered a suggestion?”

  “I guess,” said Linda dubiously.

  “Get yourself a cane before you throw your back out.”

  “I’ll take it under consideration.”

  “I’m sorry, I’ve offended you.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Friends?”

  “Friends.”

  “In that case, can I offer you a glass of wine? I was just on my way into the kitchen to pop the top on a lovely looking Bordeaux—if you want good vino at Pender’s, you have to bring it yourself.”

  “I’m on the wagon. But thanks anyway.”

  Dolitz left. Linda leaned out over the wo
oden railing; below her, the dark hillside and the shiny black ribbon of the canal.

  “Listen, Ed, I’m sorry to crash your party, but I needed to ask you a few questions, and Miss Pool said you were leaving town early tomorrow and that it would be okay to drop by.”

  “Well, if Pool said it, it must be so. What can I do you for?”

  “It’s about Dorie Bell’s letter.” Linda told him about Wayne Summers’s disappearance and ostensible suicide.

  “Oh, man,” was Pender’s only response—but it was an eloquent oh, man.

  “The thing is,” Linda continued, “I’m just not buying the suicide. Everybody else is—everybody but Dorie Bell. SFPD says drop it, Bobby says drop it, and the ASAC in San Francisco won’t even talk to me—he hung up when he found out I was with Liaison Support.”

  “That ASAC—his name wouldn’t be Pastor by any chance?”

  “Thomas Pastor—why, do you know him?”

  “Ran into him a couple times during the Maxwell case. Empty suit—couldn’t track down an elephant with diarrhea, but he’ll look terrific at the press conference afterwards.”

  “So where do I go from here?” There weren’t any courses at the Academy on liaising an investigation nobody seemed to want to conduct in the first place—but if there had been, Pender would have been the instructor.

  “You have any more contacts in the field office?”

  “Bobby was the last of my old gang.”

  “How about SFPD?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then you’re screwed,” said Pender. “Unless…” And he leaned back casually against the precarious-looking railing, arms behind him, weight on his elbows—for some reason he seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.

  “What? Unless what?”

  “Unless you just happen to know two old farts named Pender and Dolitz, who just happen to be flying out to Pebble Beach tomorrow. We’ll be five minutes from Carmel—no reason I couldn’t drop by, have a little chat with Ms. Bell, at least find out whether she’s with the MDF.”

  Linda gave him a never-heard-of-it shrug.

  “When I first got to Washington, there was a huge flap about a plot to blow up the Washington Monument,” Pender explained. “Metro had a tip on a new group called the MDF. Antiterrorism shuts down the monument, plants snipers all around the mall, the whole nine yards. Then somebody actually goes out to interview the informant—turns out MDF stands for Martian Defense Force—the guy was intercepting messages from Mars through his fillings.”

  Linda forced a laugh. “I don’t think Dorie Bell’s with the MDF. In any case, I couldn’t ask you to—”

  “You didn’t—I volunteered.”

  “But you’re retired now.”

  “Not exactly,” said Pender. “I still have two weeks before I’m officially a civilian.”

  “I don’t want to get you in any trouble.”

  Pender shrugged. “What’s the worst they can do, fire me?”

  6

  As a boy, Simon Childs had often been beaten by his grandfather for laziness—among other things. But he wasn’t lazy, just subject to spells of paralyzing, unbearable, skin-crawling lethargy.

  When not in the grip of one of his spells, however, Simon possessed a capacity for almost inhuman exertion; there were reserves of strength in that slender frame and surprising leverage in those long arms and legs. He worked all day and into the evening, and by the time he’d finished, the basement was so clean you could have held a prayer meeting down there.

  Except for the God…blessèd…birds. Try as he might, he just couldn’t bring himself to harm any of them. He tried to, starting with a mercy killing of the canary with the injured wing—the one he’d tried to stuff into Wayne’s mouth—but holding it in his cupped hands, feeling the warmth, the softness, smoothing down the trembling yellow feathers with his long thumbs, he felt the same fullness in his chest and throat, the same bittersweet, painful yet pleasurable feeling that sometimes overcame him when he ran hot water into Missy’s bath, or tucked her into bed at night.

  Therefore, despite the fact that it was far more dangerous than simply doing away with the birds—or perhaps because it was more dangerous, and therefore less boring—he decided to set them free.

  The first step was to consolidate the birds, by species—the parakeets, the pigeons, and all the canaries but one—into three cages, which he then loaded, along with the alarmingly apathetic owl in its burlap sack, into the Mercedes parked in the garage abutting the soundproofed basement of the Julia Morgan– designed Childs mansion. There was barely room in the trunk for the canary and parakeet cages; he stowed the pigeons on the backseat of the convertible, covered the cage with a blanket, tossed the sack with the owl into the front seat, and put the top up.

  Simon went back upstairs a little before nine-thirty. Missy was still in the bath. He helped her out, rubbed her down with a fluffy towel to get that blue-tinged skin nice and rosy, powdered her thighs so they wouldn’t chafe, and got her into her footed flannel jammies in time for The Original Ten O’clock News.

  “Now, Simon has to go out for an hour or so, but if you’re good, and you don’t get into any mischief, I have a very special present for you.”

  There weren’t many words that could induce Missy to tear her eyes away from the screen when Dennis Richmond was on, but present was one of them. “What, what?”

  “You’ll never guess in a million years.”

  “Will too.”

  “Hmmmmm. Lemmee see now. What’s little…and yellow…and has feathers…” Over the years, Simon had learned how to string the hints out so that Missy had the thrill of interrupting him in midquestion, which always made her feel smart. “…and wings…and Sylvester the Cat’s always trying to—”

  “Tweety Bird! A Tweety Bird!”

  “If you’re very good and don’t get into any what?”

  “Mischief.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I promise.”

  Missy was as good as her word, and so was Simon. He drove all the way out to Walnut Creek, surreptitiously dropped off the feathered menagerie outside the Lindsay Wildlife Museum, which specialized in rescuing injured birds, and got back to Berkeley in time to give Missy her present—the healthiest and singingest canary in the whole batch—before tucking her in.

  “I love her,” said Missy. Simon had put the cage right next to her bed.

  “What are you going to call her?”

  “Tweety, silly.”

  “Tweety Silly?” teased Simon. “That’s a funny name.”

  “Brat,” said Missy.

  “Brat,” replied Simon. As he bent over the bed to kiss her on the forehead, the canary began to sing. Simon turned out the light, but left the hall light on and the door ajar.

  “Good night, sis.”

  “Good night,” Missy called. “Sweet dreams.”

  “Let’s hope so,” muttered Simon, as the canary fell silent. “God, let’s hope so.”

  Manie Sans Délire

  1

  The morning after Pender’s retirement party, the spookily efficient Miss Pool made a single phone call, and in nothing less than a Bureau-cratic miracle, twenty minutes later two burly men in white coveralls showed up to haul away Pender’s files.

  Linda then tackled the task of cleaning out Pender’s desk and discovered the bottle of Jim Beam he’d left behind for her. She thought about throwing it into the wastebasket, but reconsidered: according to rumor, Counterintelligence was going through FBI trash now on a regular basis, trying to find the mole who had tipped off a major operation—the tunnel under the Russian Embassy, again according to rumor.

  Two hours later, while Linda was on-line, scrolling through the phobia.com chat room archives, the same two men in coveralls, accompanied by Special Agent Steve Maheu, returned with dolly-load upon dolly-load of white cardboard file boxes. Maheu, a crewcut member of the FBI’s Mormon Mafia, wearing a gray suit especially tailored to hide the umbrella up his ass (accordin
g to Pender), informed Linda that she’d been loaned to Counterintelligence.

  “Actually, I’m working on something kind of promising at—”

  He cut her off in midsentence. “Actually, you’re working on whatever I say you’re working on, Abruzzi. Unless you are physically unable to perform the duties to which you are assigned, in which case I suggest you hand in your badge and let’s get this charade over with before you embarrass the Bureau any further.”

  Lucky for you they took my gun away, Linda felt like saying. But what she did say, quietly, after counting to ten in Italian (a trick her mother, from the Sicilian side of the family, the side with the temper, had learned from her mother when she was a little girl), was, “Good lord, you really believe that, don’t you? That I’m embarrassing the Bureau.”

  “These boxes,” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken, “contain computer printouts of every transaction in every known bank account keyed to the social security number of any agent, clerk, or charwoman with knowledge of a recent operation which may have been compromised from the inside.”

  “You mean the tun—”

  Maheu cut her off again. “Excuse me? I didn’t hear that,” he said pointedly.

  “I said, what fun.”

  “That’s better. I don’t know how you did things in San Antonio, Abruzzi, but here in Washington we don’t deal in gossip, especially in matters of security.”

  “Sorry.” Linda, a born wiseass, refrained with difficulty from pointing out that technically they weren’t in Washington, they were in Virginia.