Maybe that’s where they’re holding Nandi. To my surprise, hope was still alive. Marsha stared at me, nearly gape jawed. “You put that together from the taste?”
“We need to go to Paso.”
Marsha backed up two steps, blocking the kitchen doorway. “Ten, wait . . .”
“I know it’s a six-hour drive from here, but this one goes to my gut.”
“I need you to take a deep breath and think clearly,” Marsha said, like a hypnotist.
“Wait—one minute I’m as good as anyone you’ve worked with, and now . . . what? You think I’m way off base? Look at the pieces: Cape Town. A winemaker. Paso Robles.”
Marsha reached slowly behind her back. I hoped she was about to call in the Marines.
Instead, she pulled out her Beretta. And pointed it squarely at the center of my chest.
My mind, which had been racing, came to a dead stop. I couldn’t have said anything if I’d wanted to. Marsha had the gun; it was her turn to talk.
“Put down the wine bottle, Ten,” Marsha said. “Kick your pistol to me.”
Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit.
“Look into my eyes,” she said, “and tell me if I’m bluffing.” Marsha’s eyes had been replaced by the eyes of someone I had never met.
She had moved to the doorway to stay out of my reach, I realized. Only an amateur points a gun in close quarters.
If I tried throwing the bottle at her, Marsha would shoot me as I raised my arm. I set the bottle down on the counter so hard that it splashed. I might not be able to hurt her with a glare, but I did my best. My eyes were seeing blood.
“Now the Beretta,” she said. “I’m sorry, Ten.”
I wanted to bang my head against the wall. How could I have been so stupid?
My hands slowly brought my gun out of my pants. I squatted to lay it gently on the linoleum and stepped back. With my toe, I kicked it in her direction. The Beretta Marsha had lent me slid straight to her feet, as if it had a homing device. She picked it up without taking her eyes off me, shoving it into her jeans with her free hand.
“I’m just trying to find a little girl,” said an old man’s voice that was mine.
“Put your hands on the counter,” Marsha said, as if I hadn’t spoken. She reached into another pocket, and I heard the all-too-familiar jingling of handcuffs.
In Paki’s kitchen, I assumed the position. Through the kitchen window, the bright bougainvillea blossoms lied and said everything was fine.
“Shit, Marsha, come on!” I said. “This isn’t right. You know it isn’t.”
Marsha tossed the handcuffs toward me, but I refused to catch them. They clattered to the floor behind me.
“Pick them up,” Marsha said, slowly and carefully. “Hook one wrist, put your hands behind your back, hook the other.”
“I want my lawyer.”
“DO IT!” Marsha roared. Was her gun hand shaking slightly?
I didn’t want to test Marsha’s nerve, so I cuffed myself. I had done that more times than I could count, too—but usually in the bedroom.
“This is entrapment,” I said. “You texted me and said you could help me.”
Once I was cuffed, some of the armor faded from Marsha’s eyes. She let her gun hand relax, dropping slightly. “Ten . . . I told you, I’m not a cop. I’m not FBI. This sucks on your end, but it’s not much better on mine. I’m sorry, but I can’t let you go to Paso.”
Getting arrested would have been a nightmare, but the nightmare was getting deeper. Anger made me want to try something desperate: charge at her with my shoulder; a long, sliding side kick . . . but I talked myself down. Only confusion remained.
“Why?” I said, feeling foolish for expecting anything like the truth.
Marsha pursed her lips, blinking. She was conflicted, or wanted me to think she was.
“Nandi is an abduction case, and it breaks my heart,” she said. “But my investigation is national security. If I blow a lead, thousands could die.”
“If you don’t care about one, you can’t care about ‘thousands.’” I started to shift my weight to try hooking a chair with my foot and heaving it up into her face, but even the thought triggered her alarms, and her gun hand snapped rigid again, the muzzle staring at my heart.
“Ten,” she said. “I really, really don’t want to shoot you.”
But she would. She didn’t have to say it. She had killed people before.
“What the hell does it matter to you if I go look for Nandi?” I said.
“It matters,” she said. “Your leap helped me bring something very important into focus, an angle that hadn’t occurred to us, and we need time to process what it means. We can’t send anyone rushing in—not you, not the FBI. We need to take a closer look.”
“Even if a little girl dies while you’re ‘processing’?”
Marsha didn’t answer right away. Her eyes were forlorn.
“Yes,” she said. “Even if.”
TWENTY-FOUR
12:35 P.M.
I work in Hollywood. I’ve been betrayed by friends, lovers, and strangers. But with Marsha, I’d hit the trifecta.
At gunpoint, she walked me out of the kitchen to Paki’s living room. She kept me in the corner of her eye while she peeked out the curtain. The gardeners’ machinery had died.
“If I can’t call a lawyer, fuck you,” I said. “You’re not taking me anywhere.”
Marsha gave me a baleful look and glanced outside again. Was she waiting for the gardeners to come looking? They were the only people who could tell anyone where I’d been.
“We’ll sit tight here for a while,” Marsha said. “Until my friends get here. They’ll want to meet you and chat about the wine, and you’ll have some time to calm down so you don’t get hurt.” She made it sound like a social occasion.
“In the middle of an FBI stakeout?”
Marsha’s eyes flashed. “You don’t get it, Ten. Screw the FBI. This is my scene now. I don’t want them here, I don’t want them in Paso. Your world just changed.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
“And then?” I said, my voice dry. “After the chatting is over?”
“That’s up to you, sweetness. But I think you need a vacation for a couple of days.”
Marsha was planning to debrief me, transport me somewhere, and lock me up. The juvenile part of my mind wondered, How could she do that to ME?
And the painful answer was, With effortless ease.
“Not without a fight,” I said again. “Just know that.”
“That could get ugly, Ten.”
“That’s up to you . . . sweetness. And, baby, don’t you dare turn your back on me. I can’t wait to throw you through that window.”
“Thanks for the warning. I’ll just have to kneecap you first.”
Marsha closed the curtain, never once turning her back as she paced. I wondered how long I had until her backup came knocking on the door. Unless they were already in San Diego, it might take an hour or more. I might still have time to talk my way free.
I stripped the steel out of my voice. “She’s a two-year-old girl, scared to death—and she just wants to go home, Marsha,” I said.
“You and I both know that Nandi is already dead.” The sugar coating was gone.
“Until there’s a body, we don’t know that.”
“She was dead the minute the drop-off went south. And if she wasn’t dead then, she was sure as hell dead after Spider made you at the nightclub. Your face was on the news, Ten.”
“How easy is it to kill a two-year-old kid, Marsha? Could you?”
I almost didn’t want to know the answer to the question.
“It would be tough,” she conceded.
“Do they plan to kill her? Yeah, maybe. I’m just saying they might not have done it yet. She could be in some basement in Paso Robles with Paki, and we still have time to find her!”
“If Nandi’s with her birth father, she’ll probably be fine.”
&nbs
p; “Fine? Are you crazy?”
“I’m sorry, Ten, but I can’t blow a five-year investigation because you think there might be a kid over there—especially if that kid might be dead, or with her dad.”
“He helped abduct her! He’s not her dad!”
My leg mutinied, stepped toward Marsha. She snapped into a two-handed pistol stance. “Sit down,” she said. “Slowly. Or you’ll never dance at Chela’s wedding.”
I sat. “This whole time, you never gave a fuck about Nandi,” I said.
“Believe me or not, that’s not true,” she said quietly. Her face was flat, nearly expressionless. She was masking emotions. “I’m only with you today because I wanted to help.”
“But you never thought I’d get anywhere, did you? This was just a side adventure for you. Except for that Asian guy at the club, maybe, you’ve just been marking time. You know what, Marsha? When your friends get here, I’m gonna tell them to go fuck themselves. Then, the first chance I get, I’m gonna call the people I know at the L.A. Times and see if they want a story on covert intelligence ops being conducted on U.S. soil and involving Kingdom of Heaven.”
Maybe it wasn’t the right tactic, but the truth was all I had left.
Marsha’s frame sagged. “Then you might not get that chance, Ten.”
“Do you think anything you threaten me with could be worse than this?” I said, shaking the handcuffs behind my back. “Then you haven’t learned a damn thing about me.”
“You’re wrong,” Marsha said, blinking. Her eyes looked glassy. “I’ve learned plenty. And there is worse. You don’t want to know how much worse.”
“Bring it on, bitch.”
This time, Marsha took two strides toward me.
“What?” I said. “You want to fuck me one more time?”
Marsha stopped in her tracks, giving me a sick, almost hopeful, smile. “Wish I could.”
“Yeah, baby.” My voice was suddenly super sweet, as if my words were poetry. “Just bring that fine chocolate ass over here and let me do that thing—you know, that special thing you like. Let me tie you up and rub you down. I hate it when we fight.” I puckered and blew her a poisoned kiss. The scent of her made me feel sick to my stomach. Until that day, I’d never had the taste of hatred in my mouth. “Now I know what a real whore looks like.”
Marsha’s face flinched. Not much, just a quiver at the edge of one eye, but I saw it.
“It’s not personal, Ten. It’s my job.”
“And you do love your work, don’t you?”
“Ten, don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
“That’s up to you. How long before your friends get here?”
Marsha shrugged. “Thirty minutes after I call. Give or take.”
Her words roared in my ears. “After you call . . . ? You haven’t flipped on your tricorder so your people can hear us?”
Marsha’s face was empty. “No.”
I took another long breath. “Why not?”
“I don’t know.” For the first time, Marsha lowered the muzzle, away from my heart.
She was barely five yards from me, and I was fast. In a deadly race, I could have launched at her like a missile. I didn’t. The day was coming back to life. I saw a calm, snowy Japanese garden in my mind.
“Don’t,” I said, trying to help Marsha see my garden, too. “Don’t make the call. I was where you are the day Nandi was kidnapped—the boss wanted one thing, but the other thing was right. I should have done what was right. Maybe someone in Paso is trying to do what’s right, too—and Nandi is still alive.”
Marsha didn’t answer.
But that was the first moment I knew Nandi still had a chance.
The drive to Paso Robles was six hours from San Diego, back north on Interstate 5, but we decided not to try flying. Even if we arranged a last-minute flight to Paso Robles Municipal, we figured we would still have to rent a car once we got there. Marsha could have called for a helicopter, but claimed she’d “gone black.” We were on our own.
My ride in the car with Marsha was tense, mostly silent at first. We were both on our way somewhere we had no business going, with someone we had no business going with. Just being near Marsha pissed me off. We both knew we were better off with backup, but neither of us could call the people we were supposed to. I didn’t dare call my father, since the FBI might be bugging my line to set me up for obstruction of justice.
Not ideal circumstances for a rescue attempt.
Marsha drove this time, so I went to work on Google Earth again to try to find a photo of Happy Cellars. The closest satellite image I got, if it was the right place, was a nondescript but large wooden farmhouse on a hill, surrounded by vineyards and at least a half dozen outbuildings. By the time we got to Paso, the shadows would be long.
“How’s it look?” Marsha said.
The memory of Marsha holding me at gunpoint made my tongue swell with anger. I had to concentrate to keep a civil tone. “Looks like a big farmhouse, if it’s the right place,” I said. “More than three thousand square feet. Probably has a big cellar, up on the hill like that. Lots of other little buildings where they could be holding her. Sheds. A barn.”
“We have our work cut out for us,” Marsha said. “We’ll want to separate again.”
“Works for me.” The farther away I got from Marsha, the better. She was insane if she thought I would ever trust her again.
“I’m putting my ass on the line for you and Nandi, Ten,” she said.
“Your choice,” I said. “You could have stayed behind. I don’t need a babysitter.”
“If we find what I think we might, we’ll need more than a babysitter,” Marsha said.
“If you want to talk, talk. Cryptic don’t mean clever.”
“You’re already in deep enough to go to prison for a decade.”
“I’ll wash your back in the showers,” I said.
“Bring a loofah, and some aloe. Jail soap is shit on my skin.”
The 101 is the more scenic route to Paso, hugging the Pacific, but it would have added ninety minutes to the drive. We shot north along Interstate 5, which stretched for mile after mile with no homes or businesses in sight, mostly just craggy rocks, brown grass, and the occasional fast-food watering hole.
Until the vineyards. After we turned west on Highway 46, about sixty miles from Paso, the vineyards’ lush greenery filled our windows. My hardest trials have often been waiting for me in pretty places, so the sights didn’t soothe me. Even landscapes can lie.
Marsha’s sigh seemed to echo my thoughts.
I removed the Beretta’s magazine and replaced it again, checking the action. Memorizing its rhythms. If we stumbled on a nest of armed men, I had to be prepared to fire multiple rounds. I hoped that the loud CLICKs from my exercise were irritating the hell out of Marsha. If you pull a gun on me again, you better pull the trigger, too, I thought.
Marsha knew that if she didn’t shoot me next time, I would kill her. We had an understanding, Marsha and I.
“We leave the car parked somewhere with the keys ready,” I said. “Whichever one of us gets Nandi first, we take off. The other one’s on their own.”
“That’s not how I usually do business,” Marsha said.
“Your world has changed,” I said, repeating her words from Paki’s apartment.
“This doesn’t count as an apology?” Marsha said. “I changed my mind, Ten.”
“And a thrilling, heartrending moment that was. Where were you planning to take me?”
For a long time, Marsha stared at the road. I assumed she was ignoring my question until she finally said, “A federal holding cell. Off the books, so it wouldn’t have been on your record. We would have wanted to host you for a few days, that’s all. Keep you out of the way—scare you out of talking. No rough stuff—just intimidation, a taste of your future if you got in our way. But I would have made sure they brought you In-N-Out Burgers.”
I hadn’t realized my anger had room to grow.
“You think that’s funny?”
“You asked for the truth, Ten. I never said it was pretty,” Marsha said. “Do you think that course would have been easy for me? But look at what’s at stake! Did you think we haven’t had another nine-eleven because no one’s tried it? Because somehow the bad guys had a change of heart and didn’t want to hurt us anymore? No. It’s because there are a lot of people like me, willing to work in the shadows to keep you safe.”
“I believe our former vice president called it ‘going to the dark side.’ Congratulations, Vader. The Emperor must be pleased.”
“Grow up. This is bigger than you. Or me. Or a beautiful two-year-old girl.”
Part of me was amazed by her powers of rationalization; another part understood her position, whether I wanted to or not. In her place, I might have done the same thing.
“And don’t turn your nose up at my burgers,” Marsha said. “After a couple of days cut off from the outside world, you would have been loving some burgers.”
“A comedienne and a humanitarian,” I said. “You’re the whole package, Marsha. All’s forgiven now.”
Marsha turned to me as if to make a snappy comeback, but she gave me only a peek of sad eyes. I can’t stomach a woman’s sad eyes.
“Save it,” I said, and pretended to doze against my headrest.
The dusk sky lit up Paso Robles in orange and deep violet, wordless beauty.
Once we’d talked through our plan, Marsha and I didn’t speak for the rest of the drive.
6:30 P.M.
Happy Cellars appeared at the intersection the navigator had promised, a building designed like a giant wine cask, well marked by a large ranch-style wooden sign at the T created by the intersection of two dusty rural roads. The bigger farmhouse stood high on the hill, an eighth of a mile away. There were four cars parked in a small parking lot set off from the street by a row of old, cracking, wooden wine barrels. A banner hanging on the building advertised WINE AND MICROBEER BAR NOW OPEN UNTIL 9 P.M.!!!
I hadn’t expected Happy Cellars to be open for business on a weekday, or so late. Most wineries in Paso rely on weekend business for wine tasting, but Happy Cellars also apparently had its liquor license to sell wine by the glass. I was glad for the chance to snoop without sneaking around. Yet.
From Cape Town with Love Page 29