by Barry Eisler
“I do. Do you know it?”
“Visited on a school field trip when I was a kid.”
“You grew up in the area?”
“For a while. Among other places.”
“But you know Washington.”
He remembered a family excursion to the city when Alex had still been in a stroller. The five of them had stayed in a single room in a cheap hotel off Dupont Circle. Alex wanted to start at the zoo. Katie wanted the ballet. Ben wanted the war memorials. Their dad wanted the Smithsonian. Their mom had tried to negotiate the resulting hairball. It had rained the entire weekend and even Katie couldn’t stop the fights. Ben had been back maybe a half dozen times since then, never staying for longer than he had to.
“I know it well enough to know I’d rather be somewhere else,” he said.
“And where is that?”
“Why, you thinking about visiting me?”
“Just making conversation.”
Her questions were innocuous enough, but they were making him uncomfortable. He didn’t want to tell her too much. Harmless details could sometimes be assembled into a meaningful mosaic.
“How about you?” he said. “Why the FBI? Why not CIA, or the military?”
“Because I believe in law and order. Plus I don’t like violence. Law enforcement’s about breaking the cycle of violence.”
He briefly wished someone had told that to the Manila cops who’d exhausted themselves beating the crap out of him. With every passing hour, the memory of those four days felt increasingly bizarre and improbable. But still, every time he thought of it, the cops cuffing him and later whaling on him, the heat and stink of the prison, the feeling of being swallowed up by some huge, insentient beast, cut off from anyone who knew him, anyone who cared—
“And you?” she said.
“What about me?”
“Why the military?”
“Military? I don’t know anything about the military.”
“My ass, you don’t,” she said, shaking her head.
He liked the thought of her ass, which he’d had a few opportunities to appreciate during their unlikely time together. He smiled to let her know.
She cocked an eyebrow and gave him the bored look again. “My God, you’re really just fourteen years old, aren’t you?”
“It feels like sixteen, actually, but I could be off by a little.”
“Actually, I think fourteen is generous.”
He smiled. “I thought you said before you didn’t have time to flirt with me.”
She snorted. “What makes you think I’m flirting with you?”
“Aren’t you?”
“I certainly am not.”
“Yeah, you are. Otherwise you wouldn’t have denied it so fast.”
“Oh, dear. Romeo here can’t go wrong. When a woman says she’s interested, she’s interested. When she says she’s not interested, she’s still interested. Did you know that grandiosity and megalomania are primary characteristics of narcissistic personality disorder?”
“Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.”
“So, are you married?”
She squinted at him. “Are you for real?”
“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
“Oh, thank goodness. For a moment there, I thought you had subpoena power or something.”
“Well?”
“Let’s just keep this professional, all right? I don’t think we need to start getting to know each other’s personal lives and all that.”
“Suit yourself. You’re the one who was flirting.”
“Please.”
“So you’re not married.”
“No, I’m not married.”
“Why not?”
“What are you, my grandmother?”
“Does she ask you that?”
“All the time. But she has an excuse. She’s senile.”
“Do you date?”
She laughed. “What is this, twenty questions? Why are you asking me this bullshit? Seriously.”
“I’m interested in you.”
“You’re not interested in anyone but yourself. You’ve got that written all over you.”
She seemed to mean it, and because it wasn’t the first time he’d heard such a thing, the comment bothered him enough to make him want to ask what she meant. But he knew if he did, he’d lose the initiative. Initiative toward what, he wasn’t really sure.
“I’m just wondering what it’s like to be a young, attractive, female FBI agent who’s smarter and got more moxie than most of the men around her.”
“Oh, is that me? Smarter and with more moxie?”
“Don’t forget the attractive part.”
“Yes, I heard that, too.”
“So, are they intimidated by you? Do they hit on you?”
“You know what you’re doing right now?”
“What?”
“It’s called projection. Do you know what that is?”
“I think I’ve heard of it.”
“You’ve heard of it, but you don’t recognize it. It’s when you attribute to others a behavior you sense but can’t face in yourself.”
“Is that what I’m doing?”
“Of course it is. You’re intimidated by me and it’s making you uncomfortable. You deal with the discomfort by being sexually passive-aggressive with me. Hitting on me, that is, which makes you feel dominant. But rather than recognize any of that and deal with it like an adult, you suggest that it’s other people who must do what you yourself are doing right this very minute.”
Ben puffed up his cheeks and blew out a breath. “That’s a pretty sophisticated analysis.”
She looked at him, and once again he was struck by an incongruous gentleness in her eyes. “It’s actually pretty simple,” she said. “You’re hurting inside, Ben or whatever your name really is. That’s where all the adolescent bluster comes from. You don’t want anyone to see what’s really going on in there, so you act like a jerk to push them away. I expect it works really well for you, too.”
After everything that had happened with Alex, that one stung. He thought of Hort, stripping him bare with his commentary in that filthy prison. A few rejoinders came to mind, but because he sensed that maybe she was right, they all made him feel pathetic.
“I guess it does,” he said.
But she didn’t catch that he wasn’t sparring anymore. “Now listen,” she said, “we’re busy now, we have a job to do. But you know what? When this is over?”
He raised his eyebrows.
“When this is over, I want you to make a little time for yourself and look up some of the disorders we’ve been talking about. Projection, for example. Maybe you can get some insight.”
He didn’t answer. He’d had about as much insight as he could handle.
15
Breaking the Cycle of Violence
Ben and Paula landed at Quepos, a small airport on the Pacific coast with an open-air pavilion handling both departures and arrivals. Hort had taken care of customs, and they hadn’t needed to transit through San Jose.
At the curb, a young, fit-looking brown-skinned guy in shorts, a polo shirt, and shades was leaning against a dark green van. Ben and Paula walked over.
“Where are you heading?” the guy asked.
“Up the coast,” Ben responded, using the bona fides Hort had provided. “Hoping to see some crocodiles.”
The guy nodded, handed Ben a set of keys, and walked off without another word. Paula watched him go. “We don’t have to sign for anything?”
“I guess not.”
“If I didn’t already know you’re a spook, that’s pretty much the proof. If you were FBI, we’d be waiting in a rent-a-car line now.”
Ben smiled and opened the driver-side door. Paula rolled her eyes and moved around to the passenger side. “I know, I know, the man’s got to drive,” she said. “What does this thing do, shoot Hellfir
e missiles? Turn into a boat?”
“No, but if it’s what I’m expecting, in back it’s got one-way glass on the windows, a couple of comfortable swivel seats, and even a portable toilet. Perfect for all your mobile surveillance needs.”
Paula entered the coordinates for Taibbi’s bar in Jacó on her iPhone. As soon as they were clear of the airport, Ben reached under his seat and pulled out the Glock 23 that was waiting for him there. Better this way than taking a chance on trying to bring one directly, in case Hort hadn’t managed to handle customs.
“Well, that’s handy,” Paula said. “I don’t suppose you’d like to share.”
“Check under your seat.”
Paula did. There was a Glock waiting for her, too.
“Now that’s the kind of interagency cooperation I’m talking about,” she said, smiling and checking the load.
“I don’t want you walking around unarmed. But don’t point it at me, okay? Once was enough.”
“Well, that would be ungrateful of me, wouldn’t it?” she said, and Ben noted that she hadn’t actually agreed. Not that it would have mattered anyway. They weren’t exactly on their way to a lifelong friendship, but he was pretty sure they were past the point where they’d be throwing down on each other.
They headed north up the coast, the sun setting to their left, the road shifting from one lane to two and then back again as it twisted past jungle and plantation and rickety roadside town. Occasionally they would crest a hill and catch a glimpse of the ocean, its surface scored with gold and pink as the sun slipped away beyond it, but mostly the route felt more tunnel than road, a passage sealed off in all directions but forward and back by the indifferent, impenetrable green of the rain forest all around.
When they passed a sign telling them they were ten kilometers from Jacó, Paula said, “Now listen. I know you like to be the driver, I know you like to be in charge. But let’s not go into Taibbi’s place bristling with attitude, okay? If we have to ratchet things up, we’ll ratchet things up. But let’s start sweet. Which means I’ll do the talking, okay?”
Ben chuckled. “Was that sweet when you told McGlade you were going to climb up his ass and chew your way out?”
“It’s what was called for at the moment. But I started nicely and evaluated him first.”
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great line. I’m going to use it myself first chance I get.”
“Do we understand each other? You’re too much of a hard-ass all the time, and I don’t want you getting in people’s faces and antagonizing them unnecessarily. We won’t get any cooperation that way. You have to know when to use sugar and when to use spice. You’re all spice.”
“All right, whatever. If you want to take the lead, it’s fine with me. All I care about is the results.”
“I don’t think that’s true, but okay.”
“What do you mean, it’s not true?”
“I mean, when someone uses a hammer for every job he’s presented with, he’s not just trying to do the job.”
He glanced over. “What’s he doing, then?”
She looked at him. “He’s enjoying the hammer.”
Ben didn’t answer. Like a few of her earlier observations, like what Hort had told him in the Manila city jail, the latest comment chafed, and he knew that must mean there was something to it. But not something he was inclined to consider at the moment.
By the time they pulled into Jacó, the last light had leached from the sky. They rolled along the main drag, two potholed lanes hemmed in on either side by low-slung buildings, some new, others ramshackle. There were open-air restaurants and dim nightclubs, souvenir shops and cheap hotels, construction sites and vacant lots and everywhere palm trees, swaying as though to silent music in the murky dark.
“There it is,” Paula said, pointing to an enormous illuminated sign for Bottle Bar, the name they’d gotten from McGlade.
“I know,” Ben said, watching three curvaceous Latina prostitutes going inside. “Just want to get a feel for the street before we go in.”
He continued down the strip. Small knots of tourists, some Tico, others foreign, wandered the sidewalks and zigzagged back and forth across the street, not aimlessly, exactly, but more with the air of people who would know what they were looking for only when they found it. The contours of the town changed somewhat as they drove, but overall, Jacó was a fractal, each part possessing and revealing the character of the whole. Which was, obviously, the bartering of pleasure—surf and sun by day, booze and sex at night. Burgos Street in Manila, Pattaya in Thailand, Orchard Tower in Singapore … they all looked different, and they all felt depressingly the same.
They drove back toward Bottle Bar and parked a little way down the street. Paula started to get out. “Wait,” Ben said. “Let’s just watch for a minute.”
“Why?”
“Because you never know what you might learn.”
A group of five pudgy white guys approached the entrance. A security guy in a black Bottle Bar T-shirt stood up and waved a wand over them, but perfunctorily, just their waists and shoulders. The guy reached out and patted a pocket here and there after wanding it, probably to confirm that what had set off the detector was just a cellphone.
“See that?” Ben said. “We can’t just go in there with shoulder-holstered Glocks.”
“All right, fine, we’ll leave the guns in the van.”
Ben shook his head. Even on his own time, he didn’t like to go unarmed. When he was operational, there was just no way. “Not yet,” he said. “Let’s just keep watching for a minute.”
They did. “Look,” he said. “They’re not wanding the girls.”
It was true. Another collection of prostitutes, black, Latina, and mulatto, went right past the security guy, who nodded and didn’t even stand up.
“He probably knows those girls,” Paula said. “They’re probably there every night.”
“Maybe.” He looked at her.
She frowned. “What?”
“We need to get you a costume change.”
She looked at him, not understanding. Then her eyes narrowed as his meaning became clear. “No. No, that’s ridiculous.”
“It makes perfect sense. Have you seen even one nonprofessional woman go in there in the last ten minutes? Civilian women don’t go to places like Bottle Bar—it’s not that kind of joint. The system is, the hookers get in free and the bar charges the men a cover for the privilege of paying for overpriced beer while they take their time deciding which girl they want to take home that night.”
“I see you know a lot about places like this.”
“I know enough to tell you you can’t just march in there in your FBI pantsuit. You look all wrong. You’ll draw attention and at a minimum they’ll wand you. It won’t work.”
“So you want me to dress up like a sex worker, is that it?”
“Well, you’ve got the body for it, from what I can tell.”
She looked at him. “You’re repulsive.”
He sighed, realizing something. “You’ve never worked undercover before, have you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re used to people taking you seriously because you’re the FBI. You’re used to relying on the badge to get what you want. But you’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy. You don’t have automatic authority out here. You need to learn to blend, to use stealth.”
“Stealth? All I’ve seen you use since the moment I met you is force.”
“The point is, if your sweet-talk routine falls flat, and if no one here gives a shit that you’re with the big bad Bureau, force might be all we have to fall back on. We’re going to be on unfamiliar ground, with a guy who I gather from McGlade and otherwise is no cupcake, in a place that deals with enough troublemakers to justify a metal detector at the door and probably more security inside. I don’t want to go into an environment like that without a gun if I don’t have to, and if all we have to do to slip one inside is dress you like
a streetwalker, it seems like a pretty small price to me.”
She glared at him for a long moment, then said, “Fine.”
They got out and walked to an open-air souvenir shop down the street. Along the way they were approached twice by scrawny locals offering weed and Ecstasy. Each time Ben shook his head and the dealers peeled off.
In the shop, amid !Pura Vida! T-shirts and Imperial Beer baseball caps and postcards of beach sunsets and surfers carving waves, they selected a black sarong and a red halter top. Ben looked at the halter Paula was holding, checked the sizes, and grabbed another one, one size down. He held it out. Paula looked at him as though he was offering her a turd.
“I won’t even be able to breathe,” she said.
“And no bra.”
“Are you trying to be funny?”
He wasn’t. Maybe, on another occasion, he would have been enjoying the whole thing, but he wasn’t in that mode now. He didn’t know what was inside that bar and whatever it was, he wanted to be carrying when he found it.
“I’m being one hundred percent professional when I tell you there’s going to be a direct correlation between the doorman’s eagerness to examine you with his eyes and his failure to examine you with the metal detector.”
She looked at him for a long moment, as though trying to detect some glint of humor or mockery in his eyes. When she saw none, she said, “All right, then,” and took the smaller halter into the changing room.
A few minutes later, she emerged, and despite himself, Ben’s mouth dropped open a little. He could tell before that she had a good body, but … damn.
“How’s this working for you?” she asked, smiling and stepping unusually close.
“It’s … you look good. For the role, I mean.”
She stepped closer. “You sure there’s nothing else I need to do, just to make sure I’m properly in character?”
He hadn’t noticed earlier that she’d been wearing perfume, but he could smell it now, and as much as the revealing clothes, maybe even more, it stirred his awareness of her as female. He’d contemplated her sexually from the moment they’d driven off from Kissimmee together, of course—she was an attractive woman, and some level of sexual contemplation of attractive women was a reflex for him. But it had been more of an intellectual thing initially, driven partly by curiosity, partly by antagonism. Seeing so much of her actual skin, her body revealed in the ridiculously tight halter and clinging sarong, smelling her perfume from how close she was standing … there was nothing intellectual about it.