Decker was making coffee in the kitchen when Emily returned for a visit. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen her. She’d appeared to him, off and on, for two years now. Since the accident.
At first, her presence had filled him with dread. Like a spirit, she would suddenly materialize in the most innocuous places. At the dining room table. At the head of the stairs. In the corner of his bedroom at night.
But, over time, Decker had gotten used to her presence. Indeed, there were days when he missed her so strongly that he wished she would suddenly pop up again. But each time he willed it, she never appeared. It was like the ability to discern through peripheral vision. By looking obliquely, less intently, one could actually see more effectively. Like stars in the night sky, so it was with the specter of Emily. When he prayed for her, when he yearned at the end of a long day to lean his head on her breast, to share some fear about Becca, or to confess some innermost secret, she would never materialize.
The Krupp’s coffee maker hissed in the corner. Decker poured himself a mug and sat down at the island beside her.
“How’s Becca?” she asked him.
Her blond hair seemed longer than the last time he’d seen her, and Decker remembered they say hair and fingernails keep growing even after you’re dead… or was it that the skin around them simply retracted, making them appear to grow longer? “They’ve put her in a medically-induced coma,” he said. “You know. So she won’t feel the pain.”
“That’s good,” she replied, staring off into space.
Tall, voluptuous and fair, with eyes the color of robin eggs, Emily was a breathtakingly beautiful woman. Even now, she made his heart swell. “And what about you?” she continued. “Any more pies, John?”
Decker smiled his crooked smile. “No. I’m finished with that.”
“How are you coping, then? Don’t tell me: More bio-feedback with Foster?”
“Doctor Foster’s an idiot. The only thing that seems to work these days is the dōjō.”
“What about sex?” Emily asked. “You mean the dōjō and your call girls. How is Kathleen, anyway? Still tying you up and fucking other men while you watch. I never did understand your fantasies. You’d think being a cuckold would just piss you off.”
“You know why,” Decker said.
“That was a long time ago, John. It’s time you let all that go.”
“I…” He shook his head. “You left me, Em. What the hell am I supposed to do? Anyway, it’s better with strangers. Always has been.”
“But that isn’t love. That’s just… masturbation with humans. And you deserve love, John. We all do.”
The doorbell rang. Decker turned toward the front of the townhouse. For a moment, he could feel his chest tighten, as he waited for the structure to blow up in his face. Then, nothing happened. Oblivious, the earth spun on its axis. When he finally turned back, Emily was no longer sitting beside him.
Decker took another sip of his coffee. The steady consistency of its flavor was an anvil of certainty in an insecure world.
The doorbell rang once again and he put his mug back on the counter. With a sigh, Decker climbed to his feet, now suddenly aware of every muscle in his body. He took a deep breath, then another, and the pain began to dissipate as he made his way slowly to the front of the house.
It was McCullough. His friend glowered down at him, a brown felt fedora covering his head, the collar of his trench coat pulled up at the neck. It was raining outside. His owl-like brown eyes gleamed behind his rain-splattered, wire-rimmed glasses.
“It wouldn’t kill you to answer your phone every once in a while,” he began, taking off his trench coat and hat, and pushing past him. He hung them up on the coat rack just inside the front door.
“Did you call?”
McCullough stared down at him for a moment without saying a word. He just stared at him. “Only about six times,” he replied finally. “How you feeling, man?”
“I’m fine, Rex,” said Decker, moving back toward the kitchen. McCullough followed close on his heels. “Want some coffee? I just made a new pot.”
“Is the Pope a bear in the woods?”
Decker took out another mug from the cabinet and poured McCullough some coffee. They sat down at the island together.
“Hellard wants to know when you’re coming back to the Center,” said McCullough. “I told him that you were, you know… recovering. I guess when you checked yourself out of the hospital after only one night, he got the mistaken impression that everything was okay. You know Hellard. Always jumping to conclusions like that.”
“I told you. I’m fine.”
“Sure you are.” McCullough blew on his coffee. “That’s what I told him. Got any cream? Don’t know how you drink it this way.”
Decker slipped off his stool and made for the fridge, trying to move as smoothly as possible. The pain was intense but he simply ignored it. Nonchalantly, he pulled out a carton of milk. “What brings you to this neck of the woods, Rex?” Then he stopped, remembering what the man who had blown up his townhouse had told him: Your neck of the woods. Just before the explosion.
“Can’t a guy check up on a friend? What the fuck, man? You almost died in that blast.”
“No I didn’t. You see.” He gestured down at his body. “Not a scratch. Nothing. Unlike the rest of the squad,” he concluded.
“Jesus Christ, John. It wasn’t your fault.”
Unlike Becca, thought Decker. “So you keep telling me.”
McCullough sighed. He held up his mug. “Anyway, I have news.”
Decker poured some milk into his coffee.
“You were right,” said McCullough. “It wasn’t El Aqrab.”
Decker finished pouring the milk. He put the carton back in the fridge. “I told you,” he said. “Have you made an ID?”
“Yep. Turns out it was another old friend of yours. Ali Hammel.”
Decker didn’t say anything. He didn’t sit back at the table. He closed the refrigerator door and simply stood there, facing the window by the sink. The frame was covered by a clear plastic sheet. The explosion had blown out every window in the house. What were once ways to look out at the world were now ways to get in.
“The Algerian? Are you sure?” Decker said.
“One hundred percent. DNA match.”
Hammel had been one of El Aqrab’s minions, thought to have died following an attempt to plant a fake nuclear bomb in the Empire State building eight years earlier.
“He’d been surgically altered,” McCullough continued. “Just like you suspected. Apparently, the order came from someone within the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Who, we’re still trying to find out.”
“But why?” Decker turned back to his partner. “I mean, why would Hammel have himself surgically altered to look like El Aqrab?”
McCullough shrugged. “Perhaps as an homage to his former boss. Or, to… I don’t know. I have no fucking idea. And it gets even weirder. The house in Brooklyn. It wasn’t blown up.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I mean not intentionally. Explosives weren’t responsible for the blast. At least, not as far as we can tell. Some kind of gas leak, apparently, coupled with a freak surge in power. A transformer in the street overloaded and—”
“Overloaded? By accident?” Decker laughed. “Are you kidding me? That doesn’t make any sense, Rex. I mean, what are the odds?”
“We thought it might have been rigged as a way to cover their tracks, but we didn’t find any residue. Nothing. NSA was able to recover some hard disks from the wreckage, though, which, among other things, featured a lot of personal information about you.”
“Me? Why me? What kind of personal information?”