“What are those?”
“Brick is a pro. But even pros make mistakes. If he thinks I’m back in New York, that’s all the information anyone can get out of him. He’s an agency man. My name may trip some wires inside his shop. He has to be loyal to them. And loyal to Byron, too. I don’t want to put him in a cross. This way, it gets tight, he can tell them what he knows, and it still won’t be a problem for me.”
“So where will you go, then?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“But this room—”
“Sure. I have to leave the hotel. But that’s all. I’m going to stick around.”
“And do what?”
“Lurk.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Here’s the deal, little girl. I can look for … this person I need over the phone. And I can work that from anywhere. But I can’t be sure of finding him at all.”
“Oh.”
She went back to packing, fussing over the task long after she should have been finished. I’d been ready to go for an hour, but I didn’t say anything.
“If you cannot find this person you seek …?” she finally asked.
“Then I’m going to go back and visit those Russians.”
“Oh,” she said again, still not closing her little suitcase.
I went back to waiting.
Minutes passed before she said, “You don’t have to … lurk close by, do you?”
“Not necessarily. But travel is a risk. Exposure. I need to go to ground. And I need to be close to the Russians.”
“But you don’t know anybody in Portland?”
“No. But I can always—”
“I have a better plan,” she said, zipping up her suitcase with authority. “Now I must make a call myself.”
The Metalflake maroon ’63 Impala SS coupe glided to the curb where Gem and I were waiting, in front of the Melody Ballroom on Southeast Alder. The same Mexican I’d seen on the dock when I first met Gem got out, wearing a black wool baseball jacket with white leather sleeves. The trunk popped open. I wasn’t surprised to see the battery nestled back there, or the monster stereo system. The trunk was huge, but with all the electronics, there was barely room for our bags.
Inside the car, another Mexican occupied the passenger seat. Gem and I climbed in the back. Gem threw one bare leg over my thigh, said, “This is Burke,” to the two men. Then, nodding her head toward the driver: “Burke, this is Flacco. And this is Gordo.” Both of them were solidly built, but neither remotely qualified as skinny or fat. They didn’t offer to shake hands.
Gem pulled my arm around her like she’d done in the poolroom, nibbled at my thumb until it was in her mouth, then went to work like a little girl with a lollipop.
Neither of the Mexicans spoke. When the driver kicked over the engine, you couldn’t mistake the sound.
“A 409?” I asked him.
“Sí! You like it?”
“I love it,” I told him, truthfully, running my eyes over the white Naugahyde tuck-and-roll interior. “This is a thing of beauty.”
“My heart is in this ride, hombre. My heart, and all my damn money.” He laughed.
“Looks like you spent it well. Taking a piece from each, that’s the only way to go.”
“What do you mean, a piece from each?”
“You could have cherried it out, pure resto, all numbers matching, that kind of trip. And you do have some of that—looks stock from the outside, except for the paint. But this interior, that’s custom. And that sound system … that’s extreme. You didn’t go lowrider, but it’s dropped. And it’s sure not back-halved, either; but I checked the big meats and the three-inch cans out back.”
“It’s all new underneath,” the passenger put in. “Konis, air bags, and Borla out the back.” He was wearing the same kind of jacket as the driver.
“You keep the dual quads?” I asked.
“That’s right. And the rock-crusher’s original, too.”
He meant the M-22 four-speed tranny he was gently stirring with a Hurst pistolgrip. The 409 made torquy sounds even at idle. Once we got on the highway, it settled down into a throaty purr—geared for cruising, not quarter-horsing.
About an hour and a half later, Gem took my thumb out of her mouth long enough to remind the guys in the front seats that she knew a very fine diner just down the road a piece.
We pulled into an area of dense darkness near the dock; a light rain falling, just a touch past mist. Gem and I climbed out of the back, and Flacco popped the trunk from inside again. We hauled our bags out. Gem pointed to her right and started walking, leaving all the luggage to me. The Chevy moved off—the 409’s growl sounding even meaner from the outside.
When I saw Gem step on the gangplank I must have hesitated, because she turned around, asked, “What is it?”
“You live on a … boat?”
“Yes. It is very nice. Come on.”
“I …”
“Burke, what’s wrong?”
“The boat … It’s not going to … I mean, you’re not going to, like, sail it, right? It’s going to stay tied up?”
“For now, yes,” is all the assurance I could get out of her.
I followed her onto the deck. I could feel it shift slightly, but I couldn’t tell if it was our weight or the damn water under it making that happen. Neither prospect cheered me much.
Gem ducked slightly and stepped into the cabin. I followed her, expecting … I didn’t know what. It looked like a little efficiency apartment with a Murphy bed. At least, I figured there must be a Murphy bed, because I couldn’t see anyplace to sleep.
“The bedroom and the head—the bath—are downstairs,” Gem said, as if reading my thoughts.
“Below this?”
“Yes,” she said, suppressing a giggle. “Below this. We will actually be under the water there. Does that frighten you?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh,” she said, caught up short by my answer. “I was only teasing. I didn’t mean to make light of …”
“It’s okay. Water scares me, no big deal.”
“Why?”
“Why does it scare me?”
“No. Why is it no big deal?”
“Because it’s just a fear. They only count if you let them get in the way.”
“Ah. So you will stay here, with me?”
“Does the boat rock at night?” I asked her, hedging.
“Of course. But there are no real waves in this cove. It is a very gentle motion.…”
“I guess we’ll see,” I told her.
It wasn’t so bad down there. At least that’s what I kept telling myself. Gem’s bed was a single, but she fitted herself over me like a sweet-smelling sheet.
I woke up the next morning ready to go fishing. But I had to wait until past New York’s nightfall to reach out to Mama.
“Gardens,” she answered the pay phone in the back of the restaurant. One in the morning in New York, right in the middle of Mama’s workday.
“It’s me,” I said.
“Very quiet here.”
“Dead quiet?”
“Yes. Many people … hear news.”
“Cop come back?”
“Not him. Others.”
“What’d they want?”
“Not come inside. Just watch.”
“Ah. They still there?”
“No. But maybe come back. Looking for—”
“Well, they won’t see it.”
“You not coming—?”
“Not for a while, Mama. Can you grab Michelle for me?”
“Sure. Where call—?”
“No call. Tell her to ask the Mole to send me some phones, okay?” And I gave her an address Gem told me was safe—a tackle shop a few miles down the road from where she was docked—and a name to use.
“Sure,” she said, like it was a take-out order of roast-pork fried rice. “You need Max?”
“Not where I am now, Mama. We’ll see, all right?”
“Okay, Mama. See you soon.”
“Sure,” she said. And hung up.
I fitted the cellular I’d been using in Portland into two halves of a Styrofoam block, wrapped it tight with duct tape. “Why are you sending that phone away?” Gem asked me.
“Byron had this number.”
“Yes?”
“So it’s going back to New York. Like I’m supposed to be doing. A pal of mine’ll make some calls on it over the next few days. Then he’s going to trash it. Anyone checking, they’ll know the calls were made from there,” I told her.
“So if Brick …?”
“Yeah.”
“It is hard for you to trust, isn’t it?”
“No. Not like you think, girl. If I don’t have to make the decision, I don’t, understand?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Sometimes, you don’t have a choice. You’re in a situation, you have to either trust someone or not. That’s it. Black and white—yes or no, live or die. But most of the time, you don’t have to go there. I don’t have to go there with Brick. I don’t distrust him, okay? But why should I go out of my way to trust him, either? Better to play it safe.”
“And me?”
“I didn’t tell you I was going back to New York, miss.”
Gem’s expression didn’t change. But when she took the finished package from my hands and brought it over to the counter, there was an extra twitch to her hips.
I spent the next couple of days making charts. In my head. I knew where some of the wires ran. And I knew they intersected … somewhere. What I needed was the junction box.
The man I was searching for lived in the whisper-stream, but he was no myth. I’d known Lune since we were kids. And I knew what he’d be doing, guaranteed. I just didn’t know where. I kept drawing possibilities on my charts, waiting. One morning, Gem was gone by the time I got up. And she stayed gone until it was dark again.
“For you,” she said a couple of days later, handing me a box wrapped in brown paper. I knew what was inside. And that there wouldn’t be fingerprints on any of it.
Three cell phones. Different brands, one not a lot bigger than a pack of cigarettes.
The last time I’d seen Lune face to face, he was operating out of a waterfront warehouse in Cleveland, in a section called the Flats. Over the years, that neighborhood had gone from hardcore to downright trendoid. Lune had pulled up stakes and moved on a while ago. But maybe he left a few roots in the ground.
The first few numbers I tried were disconnected. Even some area codes had changed. All I wanted was to leave a message. Lune had told me how to do that: say that my name was Winston, that my father was sick, then give whatever phone number I had for him to reach me—after I converted it by adding one to the first digit, nine to the last, and so on, working toward the middle of the ten-digit number, which was to be left unchanged.
When I’d gone through all the numbers I had, it was time to start seeding the clouds, hoping for rain. I reached out to organizations, groups, clubs, crews, gangs, associations … especially the ones with only one member. UFO documenters, alien abductees, Elvis-spotters, Illuminati true believers, anyone monitoring Scientologists, investigating the Monarch Program investigators, tracking werewolves, alerting the world to Remote Telemetric Surveillance, searching for D. B. Cooper, hiding from black helicopters, waiting for the Ascension …
Anytime anyone asked me who I wanted to leave the message for, I knew I was in the wrong place.
Four … maybe it was five … long days went by. I kept working the phones into the night, too—time zones don’t mean much to the people I was contacting. Some of the conversations felt like an icepick to the eardrum.
“Drink this,” Gem said, startling me out of wherever my mind had been, handing me a small white china cup.
“What is it?”
“It is tea. A special blend. Very good for headaches.”
“I didn’t say I had a headache.”
“If you saw someone limping, would they have to tell you their foot was bothering them?”
“What’s your problem?”
“My problem? My problem is your problem. But you don’t see it as I do, yes?”
“Huh?”
“I can help you.”
“You are helping me. And you helped me plenty already.”
“So we are done?”
“Gem, this isn’t the time to—”
“Please don’t be a stupid man.”
“I thought that was a redundancy.”
She refused to giggle, but I did get a tiny smile at the corner of her mouth. “Maybe it is.”
“Little girl, just explain to me whatever you want me to know, okay? I’ve been doing nothing but talking to very strange people for days. Maybe some of it rubbed off.”
“You are looking for someone, yes?”
“Looking for him to get in contact with me, that’s right.”
“But you do not know where he is?”
“Right.”
“So you are leaving messages in random places, hoping one of the people you leave a message with actually knows this person. Or how to reach him, anyway.”
“That’s the plan.”
“Why is it that you do not ask me to help, then?”
“Honey …” I hesitated, trying to come up with a capsule description of a man who didn’t fit any description. “It would take me a long time to explain the guy I’m trying to get in touch with. He’s one of the smartest people I ever met in my life. But he’s not … like other people. I don’t think he’d recognize me—this isn’t the face I had when we last saw each other—but he’d know my voice. And we have a communication code, for just between us. For all I know, one out of all the maniacs I’ve been speaking with is connected. If that’s so, whatever I say is probably recorded. Maybe even voice-printed. It wouldn’t make sense for a woman to be leaving messages for me, understand?”
“Of course,” she said, biting at her lower lip impatiently. “But there are other ways to … leave a message, are there not?”
“Sure. I was going to try the personals columns of a few of the ‘alternative’ papers. One of the Capgras people might—”
“Capgras?”
“Capgras Syndrome. When a person believes someone has stolen his identity and become his ‘double.’ They’re always serving ‘Public Notices’ in the personals, warning the world about the impostor. They usually provide a lot of ‘authentication’ info about themselves. Like their Social Security number, or some place they’re going to appear in the future.”
“My goodness!”
“There’s also the ‘lost passport’ game. Where the relay-man puts a notice in the papers saying he lost his passport, offering a reward, you know. But the trick is, he gives the number of the passport he supposedly lost. And the country it was issued from. That’s more than enough to send a pretty lengthy message in cryptography.”
“But why would you expect such people—?”
“I’m just playing the odds, Gem. Most of them, sure, they’re lost inside their own heads, or running their own games. But, for a few of them, Lune is the oracle. I just don’t know which ones, so I’m just spraying and praying, see?”
“Loon?”
“L-U-N-E,” I spelled it for her.
“Ah! French, yes? It means ‘moon.’ ”
“I’m sure that’s the root: ‘luna.’ But, in my man’s case, it’s short for ‘lunatic.’ ”
“But if he’s so intelligent—”
“Oh, he’s a genius, all right. Past a genius. But he’s … I don’t know the word for it. If there’s a word for it. I’ll tell you one thing, though. When it comes to making sense out of a whole bunch of what looks like random human-behavior data, Lune is the man.”
“I could still help,” she said, hands on her hips.
“I’m not saying you couldn’t. It’s just that—”
“I c
ould help now. Listen to me, please. Couldn’t you try the Internet? Contact the websites of the same sort of people you’ve been reaching out to over the phone?”
“I wouldn’t know how to—”
“Then be grateful you have a woman, you stupid man.”
Hours later. Gem at her laptop: hair gathered into a thick ponytail, her back as straight as a West Point plebe’s, fingertips playing the keyboard like a pianist. If she knew I was watching her, she gave no sign.
“Those sites you’re sending e-mail to, won’t they be able to trace back to you?”
She glanced up just long enough to give me a look so full of sweet indulgence it made me feel … geriatric.
It was dark when she came up on deck. I’d been there for a while, sitting in a castoff easy chair, thinking. She perched on the arm of the chair, apparently not bothered enough by the weather to put on anything over her T-shirt and shorts.
“Did you think I was bratty before?”
“When?”
“When you asked me that question about being traced through an e-mail.”
“No. Ask a stupid question and—”
“You didn’t think I was saying you were stupid!”
“Not stupid. Ignorant. And you were right.”
“It was very bad manners on my part.”
“You were busy. Absorbed in what you were doing. And you were doing it for me, to boot.”
She swiveled her hips and draped her legs across my lap.
“You are a very forgiving man,” she said softly.
“And you’re a very sarcastic little bitch.”
“I meant it!”
“Yeah? Okay. Sorry. I just … overreact to that whole ‘forgiveness’ crap.”
“I don’t understand.”
I reached up, grabbed a fistful of her thick, glossy hair, pulled her face down so it was close to my mouth. “Is it important?” I asked her.
“To me, yes. It is very important.”
I leaned back. Gem dropped into my lap. I took my hand from her hair and put it around her shoulders. She made a little noise. Then she settled in against me, waiting.
“When I was a kid, people … did things to me,” I told her. “Ugly, vicious, evil things. But I didn’t die from any of them. When I was older, I spent some time in a war. I didn’t die from that, either. You know what they call me?”
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