I slid out from under Induma, and she grumbled but immediately appropriated my space. The imprint of her body had reddened my left side. Some of the feeling prickled back into my skin. At least the numbness hadn't been from some surgical mishap.
I fought my way to my feet, light-headed, the makeshift implements spinning like cartoon recall. The silver and crimson blur brought back last night's endless probing, a memory as sharp as vomit in the throat. It had been horrible, and cocaine hadn't lived up to its reputation. Despite Homer's best efforts, the procedure had gone on and on, a bottomless splinter dig, steel tips scratching bone. It wasn't until first light competed with the lamp that the piece of Charlie had popped free and Induma had wept with exhausted relief.
The digital camera was still peering from its tripod, though the red light no longer glowed. At the end of a single, grueling take worthy of Hitchcock, Induma had held up the bloody chip of bone with tweezers before the lens to document that the fragment was the one that had been lodged in my cheek. She'd encoded and uploaded the MPEG, along with scanned copies of the ultrasound and paternity test, to a secure off-site server.
Eager for an update on Baby Everett, I checked my cell phone, but there was no message from Steve. I moved unsteadily past the tripod into the bathroom. The first glance was horrifying, but after a few swipes with a towel soaked in warm water, most of the black crust lifted. The wound was fearsome in its depth, but it remained relatively small, a little bigger than a bullet head. After popping two extra-strength Tylenol and four Advil, I found a first-aid kit in the cupboard. A circular Band-Aid covered the wound, rendering my face, aside from its expression of squinting agony, normal.
The noise of the sink must have awakened Induma and Homer, because by the time I got back out, they were sitting up, blinking at each other like hungover acquaintances unsure if they'd slept together the previous night. Beyond the tinted windows, surfers pedaled by with boards under their arms. Carefree L.A. in full Sunday swing.
"What time is it?" Induma croaked.
"Almost five."
Homer shoved himself to his feet, stumbled to the bar, and refreshed his glass with Johnnie Walker Blue Label. He gulped it down, then rubbed his eyes and shook his head. The bathrobe was hanging open now, but no one seemed to notice.
"Gotta get dressed," he said, then staggered into the other room to find his rags.
Induma and I just looked at each other. She wore a pert little smile that seemed to say, Can you believe what we did last night? We both held the stare, pleased at our shared secret-a blood oath and an inside joke all in one. It was more precious unspoken, just us in the imperfect stillness, like me and Callie on Frank's back deck with the moths and the gold smudge of the porch light, Callie with her Crystal Light and sticks of charcoal, me watching her work, blissfully unaware that I'd never feel so contented again.
Homer finally returned, the appropriated pink bathrobe peeking out among the layers of dirty clothes. I doubted that Induma would want it back anyway. I threw on a shirt to walk him out and grabbed Charlie's rucksack-I didn't want it out of my sight.
Homer downed another glass of scotch before bending to kiss Induma's hand. We walked out, and he tilted his face to the sun.
I said, "I'd give you a ride, you know, but I should probably stay off the street. Take some money for the bus." I reached into the rucksack, tugged five hundreds from beneath one of the purple bands, and held them out.
He exhaled, relieved, his shoulders dropping. "I thought you were actually just gonna give me bus money." He took the bills, rubbing them together like gold coins.
I felt a flood of affection for him, for what we'd been through, and I said, "Listen, I feel like I ought to tell you I know. About your wife and kids, all that. And I'm sorry."
He did a double take, his jowls bouncing beneath that scraggly beard. "I was never married."
"It's okay. I found out by accident. About how you were a dentist and then you started drinking, left everything behind."
"A dentist? What are you talking about, Nick? I sold weatherproofmg."
Shaking his head, he folded the bills into his pocket and walked off, leaving me poleaxed on Induma's front walk.
Induma was still laughing. "You had a drunk former weatherproofmg salesman perform maxillofacial surgery on you."
"Faulty intel. It happens to the best of us. Besides, I was high on cocaine at the time. Impaired judgment."
"Especially this week. Homer's vocational history came from the same woman who sold you that 'Godfather's with Firebird' line?"
"You try getting wrapped up in a government conspiracy. It can wear a person down."
"I just hope she shows you the secret handshake next time."
"There's an obvious joke I'm not gonna make."
"Hey. Chivalry isn't dead."
We were at the counter, me on a stool, Induma leaning. Our old positions. We'd showered and squared away the living room. Then, when we realized we were starving, she'd whipped together some vadai-which, to her chagrin, I characterized as Indian falafel. Now we sat and drank green tea.
She followed my eyes to the chip of Charlie's bone, in a Ziploc on the counter next to the chutney. I said, "I wonder what bone it's from."
"Sacroiliac, I'm thinking. I'll run it in right now. That all you care about, or you wanna do a DNA, too?"
I couldn't help but grin. We sipped our tea some more, enjoying the sun-warmed room, prolonging the inevitable. "Might as well while they're at it."
"Okay. Two days to process. And no, there is no quicker way."
"Baby, I take the Jag." I thought it wasn't a bad Alejandro. "I bring it in for the service."
She snorted. "You sound like Ricky Ricardo. Where to?"
"I want to see if I can flush out who's on my tail."
"Just don't leave cocaine in the glove box. It's becoming a pet peeve." She pushed back from the counter. "I have to get ready. Handro's taking me out."
"Right. The anniversary." I cupped my hands around the warm mug, stared into the tea like it held something fascinating. "He's a lucky man."
"Yes," she said, "he is."
I watched her walk up the stairs.
Chapter 34
With its throngs of UCLA students, Westwood has even more coffee shops per block than the rest of Los Angeles. At a sidewalk cafe table, I found a dark-skinned guy tugging on a hookah and slurping a boba drink with tapioca balls.
I said, "Want to make a hundred bucks easy?"
He said, "Okay, but I'm the top and it's another fifty for a reach-around."
"Let me rephrase."
"Please."
"Here's my credit card. The hundred bucks is just to walk across the street to that Starbucks, charge a cup of coffee, and bring it back here."
"Where you get the card?"
"It's mine." I showed him the name and my driver's license. Then I peeled five twenties off my roll.
"What if they ask for ID?"
"They don't ID for three-fifty."
He took another toke. "You think I look like somebody name Horrigan, you smoke more than I do."
"I'm paying you a hundred bucks to try."
He shrugged and rose, snatching the bills from my hand. He took two steps away, then came back. "What kind of coffee?"
"A Mocha Valencia."
"What?"
"A Toffee Nut Latte."
"Huh?"
"A cup of coffee."
"Coulda just said so."
I waited for him to scurry through the slow traffic and get into line, and then I crossed the intersection, entered a little jewelry store with tinted windows and a good view. The cut in my cheek radiated pain when I shifted my jaw, but I didn't want to leave to get more Advil.
The kid came back across the street with the coffee, found the table empty. After looking around, he sat down again and resumed smoking and checking out girls. Another few minutes passed. Then he started drinking my coffee.
I'd been perusing the same
cabinet for too long. The clerk came over with an aggressive smile. "Maybe I can help you decide on something?"
"Sure, I'm looking for my girlfriend."
"Earrings?"
I looked down. Earrings. "Yes."
"Do you know what she likes?"
Two sedans screeched up to the curb by Starbucks, and Sever and three agents I didn't recognize hopped out and rushed inside. I'd figured Bilton's crew had put a flag on my credit card, and I'd wanted to note the faces of some of the other involved agents. As a branch of the Treasury Department up until the Homeland Security shuffle, the Service knew money and how to track it. It had been nailing counterfeiters since the end of the Civil War. And now those considerable resources were pointed at me. This was bigger than just Sever and a few agent cronies. Bilton's crew was using the system against me. They wanted that paternity test and ultrasound. Maybe they even thought I could lead them to Baby Everett.
The clerk cleared her throat. "Is she fair or dark?"
"Oh, sorry. Her skin color's caramel. A little darker, maybe. Beautiful black hair. Dark brown eyes."
"Rubies are nice."
"Yeah, but she has an emerald stud in her nose. I'm worried it'd look like Christmas."
The agents emerged from the Starbucks and looked around. Sever locked eyes with the kid across the street. The kid was holding the mouthpiece at the end of the hose a few inches from his open mouth.
The clerk leaned across the counter. A little tenser. "Pearls, maybe?"
"Sapphire's her birthstone. The gold settings?"
"Yes. Those are chips, not full sapphires."
Sever crossed the street. The kid gave him my credit card, gestured around. Sever listened for a while and then laughed, the gleam of his white teeth pronounced against his tan face. He spoke into his radio, and the agents reconvened.
"Should I wrap them up? Sir?"
The agents climbed back into their cars and drove off.
"Sir? "
I offered her a smile. "Do you take cash?"
Induma was sitting on the couch in the dark when I came through the back door an hour later. The clock on the Blu-ray player showed 9:30 P.M., but it felt later than that. As I neared, I saw that she wore a black tank top and a pair of men's Calvin Klein briefs. One night when we were dating, she'd put on my underwear on her way from bed to bathroom and found them so comfortable she'd made a habit of wearing them to sleep. I couldn't help but stare at her smooth, brown legs.
"Glad you're back safe," she said. But she looked upset.
"What's wrong?"
She blew out an exasperated breath. "For how low-maintenance Alejandro is, he drives me fucking crazy sometimes."
I dropped the keys on the counter, mostly to stall. I waited until I could at least feign casualness. "Does the good outweigh the bad?"
"In the relationship? Yes. I mean, for starters he's gorgeous."
"He's not that gorgeous."
"He's better-looking than you" She smiled at my mock indignation. "Don't pout-that's hardly news. And he's nice enough. Heart of a golden retriever."
"And the mind of a goldfish." I relented under her look. "Okay. At times he's pleasingly good-natured."
"So he's gorgeous-"
"You'd mentioned that."
"I'm working to a point here." She was smiling. "But no matter how good-looking they are, you stop noticing. After a while you get this
… disdain for their familiarity. Sweat stains on their shirts. Hair-gel blobs on the countertop. Open mouth when they sleep. I never had that with you. No part of you was dirty to me. Was it me? Was it just me?"
My hands were balled, and I was unaccountably cold. I could catch the faintest scent of her perfume-Jo Malone Orange Blossom. "No," I said. "It wasn't just you."
"But that wasn't enough for you." Glow from a garden light fell through the back window, catching her face in a pale yellow band. There were so many things I wanted to tell her, but before I could find the shape of them, she continued, "Despite the problems, Alejandro's always there when I need him. This relationship-it works for me."
"Does it?" I asked. "How?"
"With all my money, everyone wanting something, I guess I want to hold some part of myself safe. Where no one can touch it. With him there's never that risk." Her voice was soft, even vulnerable, but her stare was as level as ever. "I learned that from you."
I crossed to her. She bobbed a bit on the cushion when I sat next to her. I said, "That's the last example I'd want to set."
"Well, you set it. With me. Over and over."
I said, "I'm sorry."
"I made my own choices. I'm not looking for an apology."
"That doesn't mean I don't owe you one."
She bit her lip, waved me off. Her eyes glimmered a bit, or maybe it was just the way the glow caught her face.
I felt a black hole where my stomach was supposed to be. I would've done anything to rewrite the past, but here we were, with her upset and me wanting to say something-anything-that would help. "I'm sorry your date went badly."
"I wouldn't call it a date."
"Oh." My face grew hot. "Uh-oh."
"He took me to Hooters. I mean, Hooters. And you know what his big surprise was? Chicken wings. I'm a vegetarian, for Christ's sake. I don't care that it's not some elegant restaurant-I mean, pack a sandwich and take me to the beach. Something that shows you've been remotely paying attention to who I am."
I found my cuticle suddenly fascinating. "I… um-"
"I asked him what the hell he was thinking, but he wouldn't say anything." She looked over at me, noting my discomfort. "What. "
"I may be partially at fault here."
Her gaze hardened. "Talk."
I would have done anything to avoid copping to my smart-ass role in their failed date. There was no way to come clean without revealing my feelings for her. But I owed it to her, and to Alejandro.
I cleared my throat self-consciously. "He asked me for advice on what to do for your anniversary, and I… uh, I told him where to take you. Half joking. I'd like to say that it got lost in translation, but I was also half not-joking, I guess."
She glowered for a moment, then cracked up.
When she finished laughing, she wiped her eyes and said, "Why would you do that?"
My face burned. If I could have curled up and disappeared, I would have been long gone. I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, and stared at the blank screen of the TV.
She said, "Oh, Nick." Her voice was empathetic and disappointed all at once.
Then she rose and headed up for bed.
Chapter 35
I woke up on Induma's couch, Egyptian cotton sheets twisted around me. Hot. Last night I'd closed and locked the windows overlooking the backyard and the canal beyond.
The cell phone, propped right by my face, showed no messages. I was impatient for Steve to get back to me with information on Baby Everett. Bilton's crew had every reason to go full bore until they found her. If they hadn't found her already.
I showered in the downstairs bathroom, dressed, and swapped out the Band-Aid on my cheek. Sitting on the toilet with the rucksack at my feet, I removed five hundreds from my money clip and slid them imperfectly beneath the purple band of one of the cash bundles, replacing the bills I'd given to Homer. It had been bugging me since yesterday, and I was glad I could make up that money. Whoever's it was, I didn't want to owe them.
I stared at my cell phone for a while. No missed calls. If Bilton's henchmen were after Baby Everett, every passing minute gave them another chance to close in.
I dialed.
When I came out of the bathroom, Induma had old-fashioned bacon and eggs sizzling in one pan, soy sausages in the other. On the counter a bottle of OJ and an intimidating stack of pancakes.
"Are these some of those exotic Bangalore eggs?" I asked.
"Airlifted this morning."
"And the bacon?"
"Family recipe from the Mahatma himself."
"I thought he was a vegetarian."
"Eat your damn breakfast, honky."
"I think only black people are allowed to say 'honky.'"
"What are Indian people allowed to call you?"
"Non-engineer."
"Clever, for a fugitive." She slid my plate across the counter.
When we were done eating, I helped Induma clean up, then put on my rucksack. She eyed it, looking worried.
I said, "I can't wait any longer. I've got to find Baby Everett, get word to her, something."
"You don't think Steve'll be able to find her?"
"Maybe not in time." I took a breath. "That's why I called Caruthers."
"You called Caruthers?"
"His aide. Alan Lambrose-the bow4ied conduit. Caruthers just flew down from Sacramento, and he can see me in an hour. He offered to help when I met him. If anyone'11 know how to locate a person…"
"We still don't know for sure that Caruthers isn't implicated in some other way. Trying to outbid Bilton for the ultrasound, whatever."
"This'11 be his test, I guess. If he has his guys grab me, we'll know he's implicated."
"Nick. You're wanted. Caruthers ought to have his agents arrest you regardless."
"Alan checked. He said there's no arrest warrant out on me."
At this, her mouth opened a little.
I said, "Bilton's crew is busting ass to track me down, but they're keeping it off the books for obvious reasons."
She blew a wisp of hair out of her face, keeping her stare on me. "They want you on terrorism charges, Nick. Which means if they do get you, you have no rights. You're willing to bet your life on Caruthers?"
"To warn Everett? What else am I supposed to do?"
"What if Caruthers's crew leans on you to give them the evidence?"
"I'm counting on it. I don't mind Caruthers playing politics as long as I can get to the girl."
Induma laced her hands across the top of her head. Stared at me.
We Know Page 20