Touch of the White Tiger

by Julie Beard

  He didn’t have to say anything for me to know what he was thinking. Not because I’m psychic, but because I knew him so well.

  Karma, Baker, you have just created so much karma. Ah, well. We’ll work it out.

  Since I was a latent Catholic, I figured I’d be facing the licking flames of hell as well as karma, but I couldn’t worry about that now.

  It was so peaceful without Lola here. I knew it would be a long time before I forgave her for hiding my father’s identity. It would be a long time before I could even talk to her without bursting a blood vessel in my brain.

  So, when I’d called earlier, I’d told Mike to give a money chip to Jimmy with the following instructions: take a chopper cab immediately to the nearest drive-through doc-in-a-box, have the fake plaster cast removed, buy some clothes, come back and take Lola somewhere far, far away. Wisconsin would do. California was even better. At least for a few days. I didn’t want a second murder on my conscience, and that’s what would happen if I had to see my mother right now.

  When Mike scooped the wok’s contents onto a platter and set the steaming array of bright green and red vegetables and tofu on the table, we both sat and helped ourselves in silence. I’m happy to report that his cooking tastes infinitely better than his healing remedies.

  “So, Baker,” he said at last, eyeing me intensely, “what will happen now for you and Detective Marco?”

  “You mean what will happen between us?”

  Mike nodded.

  I pushed back my empty plate and sighed. “I wish I knew.”

  “You killed for him. Is it not so?”

  “Yes.” I nodded as the realization really struck home. “Yes, I did.”

  Mike had once dreamt that Marco turned into a white tiger and killed me. But today I was the one who ended up doing the killing.

  “Like I said before, Mike, your prophetic dreams don’t do me any good unless I can do something about them.”

  “But you did,” he replied. “You are still alive.”

  “Yes, I’m still alive.” Marco didn’t kill me. But I believed he had brutally killed Rayenko. And I could not possibly imagine a reasonable explanation for that. At least not one that would make me ever again feel truly safe with him.

  Chapter 24

  Truth or Dare

  By the time Marco arrived, all that remained of the day was copper dust in the twilight clouds that etched along neighboring rooftops. I’d been strolling through the garden, surprised at how cool the nights had become, thinking about what bulbs to plant for the spring.

  I wanted to rearrange one of the beds so that Lin could plant a garden of her own. I hoped she’d be back with me before the frosts came. My lawyer had already told me he was confident all charges against me would be dropped because of Townsend’s written confession. Now that my name would be cleared, there was no reason the adoption couldn’t proceed as planned.

  But I wasn’t sure how much red tape we’d have to cut through before Lin could even move back home. Would she still want to? Or had she already become Sydney’s daughter, or worse yet, Gigi’s?

  These were the thoughts roiling through my mind as I hugged my chilled arms, breathing in the scent of late-blooming flowers and turning leaves. That’s when Marco appeared at the top of the balcony.

  He took the steps at a serene pace, but as his silhouette came closer and I could make out his features in the waning light, I saw that he was anything but at peace with himself. Dressed in pressed jeans and a collarless blue-jean shirt, he clutched a bouquet of pink roses in one hand, but didn’t offer them to me. He stopped an arm’s length away and blinked hard as he struggled to find the right words, for what I wasn’t sure.

  “Mike let me in,” he said at last, sounding disappointed with himself.

  “I told him to.”

  He blinked as if someone had just stabbed him, then said, “Gorky showed you the photographs of Rayenko’s body, didn’t he?”

  I nodded. “What was left of it. Did you do it, Marco?”

  He nodded. And in some ineffable way, the air around us lightened. It didn’t brighten, but we could breathe again. The truth had a way of freeing you. I’d always known that. Now we could talk.

  “Let’s go sit by the fire.” I reached out and clasped one of his hands and led the way up the back stairs.

  Mike passed us on the stairway as he returned to his shed in the back of the garden. He was finished doing the dishes and, as I discovered, preparing my apartment for a romantic interlude. Acting more like a Jewish yenta than a Chinese monk, he’d put out a bottle of wine and two glasses on the coffee table in the living room. A fire crackled cozily in the hearth. The lights were low. Music played softly in the background. Only candles lit the room.

  Too bad I was feeling anything but romantic. Still, the wine was welcome. I poured two glasses and gave one to Marco as we settled back on two large cushions that Mike had tossed in front of the fire.

  I took a sip and savored the oak tang of the wine, then said, “Tell me about Rayenko.”

  Marco leaned on one elbow and swirled his wine in the other hand, taking a fortifying drink before starting his story.

  “When I was young,” he began, staring into the yellow and blue fire, “I fell in love with a girl named Nadia. She was very…special.” He glanced at me, apparently conscious of the fact that even mentioning a prior girlfriend was hard for me to hear. “We were only seventeen at the time. Do you understand?”

  Did I understand what impulsive, all-consuming young love is? I’d never experienced it, but I could understand it, so I nodded encouragingly, and he continued.

  “Anyway, we fell in love. But her parents didn’t want us to marry, so I was essentially banished from her presence. Angry at my mother’s side of the family and all their friends who were so incestuously tied to the R.M.O. in one way or another, I decided to go to Italy to explore my father’s roots. When I returned three years later, I discovered that Nadia had had a child.”

  “Yours,” I said.

  “Mine. Her parents still didn’t want us to marry, so we were determined to elope. But Rayenko, Gorky’s second in command, took an interest in Nadia and determined that he was going to have her and my child for himself.”

  “How could that happen? This is twenty-second-century America, not medieval Russia.”

  “The abuse of power knows no timetables, no geographic limitations. Rayenko was a very powerful man in the neo-Russian syndicate. Nadia tried to refuse his advances, but he could not stand the idea that he could be outdone by a low-level sgarrista like me. So he kidnapped my child and my lover and took them to a remote location where he intended to coerce her into changing her mind.”

  In the golden firelight, I could see Marco’s pulse punching a beat in his temple. His rugged face was set like stone.

  “But he was unable to change Nadia’s mind. She told him she loved me and always would, that she despised him and everything he stood for.”

  “How did he react to that?” I asked in a strained whisper.

  He let out a pent-up breath. “He raped her, repeatedly. Then he murdered her, brutally. All in front of our child.”

  I breathed in his pain and touched the arm he’d propped on the cushion, squeezing with all the empathy I felt but could not adequately voice.

  “When I found her body in Rayenko’s cabin, he was still there and told me exactly what he had done in great detail, including the way her vocal cords ripped with the force of pain that bellowed from her tortured body. I lost control…lost my mind, really. I killed him. I didn’t realize how savagely I had killed him until I later saw the photographs, and the memories of that crime of passion surfaced.”

  “I’m so sorry, Marco.”

  He noticed my hand on his arm and looked at me gratefully. “That helps. It really does. I’ve never shared this with any other lover.”

  His confidence warmed me, even as his story appalled.

  “That’s one of the reasons why I
went into psychology,” he said. “To understand my own dark, horrible crime, to understand why someone like Rayenko would destroy someone so innocent like Nadia.”

  “Did your studies bring any peace?”

  One cheek tugged in a mirthless half smile. “Some. It gave me understanding. And it allowed me to accept the fact that the psychosis that I’d suffered was temporary. It allowed me to enter the police force and work in psych-ops.”

  “How did you get hired? Weren’t there background checks?”

  “Nadia’s and Rayenko’s deaths were never reported. Gorky saw to that. He didn’t want an investigation involving what he called his people.”

  “What about your child?” I asked.

  “When I regained my sanity, I found that Gorky had managed to obtain custody.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to reclaim my paternity rights. Not through the courts, because none of this was done by the book. But in reality. That’s why I’ve never broken ties with Gorky. That’s why I’ve been posing as his informant. I give him enough information about what goes on in the police department to think I’m working for him, but I’m careful not to betray anything that will harm my fellow officers.”

  “Oh, my God, Marco, what a nightmare.”

  He turned his head my way with an intensity that was spellbinding. “But not anymore, Angel. No more. The nightmare is over. Gorky will be arrested and put behind bars once and for all. There’s no way the mayor will overlook his crimes now, not when Gorky was directly responsible for Townsend’s death, and indirectly responsible for the death of the mayor’s own son.”

  He was right. This would spell the end of Gorky’s reign. I was happy about that, but still sad that my friends had perished so unnecessarily in the process.

  “Marco, I still can’t figure out how you happened to be the first one to arrive at the murder scenes.”

  “Gorky’s surveillance team set up shop across from your apartment a few days before Townsend began his blood spree. So I knew where you were going almost as soon as you did.”

  “How? Don’t tell me my conversations were being broadcast all over the city.”

  “No. But Gorky apparently knew what kind of bug Townsend had planted in your Personal Listening Device. It wasn’t hard for the R.M.O. operatives to plug into the signal feeding back to Townsend’s men. My cousin knew the guys running Gorky’s equipment and tipped me off on the sly.”

  For a long moment, I just sat there and tried to remember all the embarrassing things I might have said.

  “Gorky would never have told me where you were going, Angel. He thinks I’m not good enough for his daughter. That’s probably why he brought in someone from New Orleans to protect you, because he could send the guy packing when the job was done without acquiring a son-in-law.”

  “Son-in-law. Thieves-in-law. What a mess.”

  Marco chuckled ruefully. “Yes, but at least we’re alive to complain about it.”

  “How long have you known that I was Gorky’s daughter?”

  “Gorky told me the day after you were arrested. When he found out I was involved in the investigation, he called me to his compound. While he wanted me to keep him posted on the case, he made it very clear that I was to keep my hands off you. I let him think that I would be an obedient, albeit resentful, sgarrista. Since he has always preferred fear over affection, he was happy with that.”

  Marco put his wineglass aside, then mine, and smoothed his hand over my cheek, combing his fingers through my hair. In one easy, sexy move that was all Marco, he sat up and pulled me into his warm embrace, crushing my lips with his own, then soothing and parting them with a deft lave of his tongue.

  We kissed soul-to-soul, hunger feeding on hunger. I wrapped my arms around him without any intention of ever letting go. Nothing existed but the heat that pulsed between us.

  How could this be? How could all the moral ambiguities that whorled around us like a never-ending hurricane leave our need for each other unscathed?

  I didn’t know. Moreover, I didn’t care.

  About an hour later, somewhere between my fourth and sixth orgasm, Marco propped himself up in bed with his palms on either side of my head. Trying to hold still, though still pulsing inside me, with beads of moisture dropping from his dark ringlets of hair onto my already slick breasts, he stared into my eyes as if he could see the future in them.

  With his arms quivering and voice quavering from the force and binding thrall of our sexual union, he struggled to ask one last, burning question of his own.

  “Why…why did you pull the trigger?” He thrust deep into me once, then held still, trying hard to wait for my answer. “Why? You’ve never killed before.”

  I didn’t have to think about my answer. Arching my back, I rolled our entwined bodies over until I was on top, straddling him. Placing my hands on either side of his head, I leaned down and gave him a deep, sweaty kiss. Then I looked deep into his eyes and said, “I pulled the trigger to save you. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

  “But at what price?” he said, his voice hitching, his eyes wreathed with sadness. “You’ll never be innocent again.”

  “If I have to give you up to keep my innocence, Marco, the price of innocence is way too high.”

  He really took in my answer, and his sadness was transformed into a strength and determination so awesome I can only describe it with a metaphor.

  In Chinese mythology the white tiger, the god of war, ruled the west. Like the dragon, who ruled the east, the tiger was one of the four great celestial beings.

  “If you find the azure dragon,” Mike had once told me, “you will find the white tiger nearby. And when the two entwine as one, the earth will be in balance.”

  Balance was good. But first, I hoped we would make the earth move.

  The next morning, after Marco went down to P.S. #1 to help clear up any confusion that might be lingering over my convoluted case, I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast by myself. My slate had never been wiped so utterly clean, and it felt good. Life was suddenly full of radiant and infinite possibilities. But first came the many chores ahead of me.

  My lawyer had set up a press conference for me at 9:00 a.m. I didn’t relish giving a command performance at a hotel podium bundled with a hundred different television and radio microphones, but there was no way I could avoid talking to the press about yesterday’s dramatic events. It had made international headlines. Hank and Soji had convinced me that setting up a press event would be relatively painless and far better than having reporters camped outside my door.

  Shortly after 8:00 a.m. I headed toward Southport to catch a train, enjoying the crisp breeze and mellow autumn sunshine. But I’d only walked half a block down the leaf-strewed sidewalk before I slowed, then stopped, captivated by the familiarity of an approaching aerocar heading westbound on Paulina.

  “Henry,” I murmured to myself when I recognized the gold sedan, feeling buoyant enough to add with almost childish glee, “It’s Henry’s car!”

  Henry was behind the wheel, and Sydney sat beside him in the front seat. I waved and the car pulled over to the curb. My foster parents stepped out of the car, grinning at me with relief and joy. They looked ten years younger than the last time I’d seen them.

  “Hey, you guys!” I shouted, running to embrace them. We hugged and laughed and hugged again. Then we sobered, all at once, for it seemed too much of man’s inhumanity to man had come to pass in recent days. How could we celebrate so much death and destruction? But I was free, and the Bassetts would get to keep their house when my bond was settled.

  I wasn’t ready to talk about what had happened at Gorky’s compound, but I knew they’d already learned quite a bit from the news.

  “What are you doing here?” I said, touching up my hair. “I’m heading downtown for a press conference. Can you come with me? I know Hank will be there.”

  “That can wait a few minutes, can’t it?” Sydney said, her
genteel eyes bright with anticipation.

  “What for?” I asked.

  She turned back toward the car, then motioned for someone to join us. I realized in an instant who it was. The door opened, seemingly by a ghost, because Lin wasn’t visible until she stepped up on the curb and pushed the door closed with both hands and all her might.

  She stood uncertainly, folding her hands in front of her stomach, as if she didn’t know what else to do with them. Her straight, dark bangs hung over worried, almond-shaped eyes. She was as thin as ever, cute and girlish, but thankfully she wasn’t wearing the plaid skirt and white blouse Gigi had purchased. In fact, she wore the same casual, almost boyish little pants set that she wore when I’d sent her away.

  The only remnant of the life of luxury she’d enjoyed, or perhaps endured, at Gigi’s bidding was a small patent-leather white purse. It hung by an oval strap around one arm. I was quite sure it was empty.

  I took in a skipping breath as the sweetest, most unconditional love I had ever known surged up in me for this perfect, lonely, beautiful little girl who was utterly and completely alone. But was she still mine?

  “What should I do?” I whispered, clutching Sydney’s wrist.

  “Hug her,” she said. “Just hug her.”

  I released my death grip on Sydney’s arm and started forward, my feet doing what Sydney had ordered, ignoring the fearful braying of my heart. After two steps, I saw Lin take one of her own, then stop. She still frowned at me.

  Why did you send me away? I imagined her thinking. And will you do it again?

  No, I replied with my footsteps, each one faster and wider. Soon I was running, and she ran, too. Straight into my arms. I scooped under her arms and lifted her high over my head like the prize she was.