“As well as the two-legged dangers,” she said. “Correct?”
“I want to be right up front about what you might be getting into.”
“Then I’ll be up front with you,” she said. “You’re asking me to do something for you and for the church. I’m appreciative of that. But…” She paused. “You’re talking to a woman whose faith… is badly shaken right now. I’m still recovering from Kiev and asking a whole lot of questions about how God could let something like this happen to me.”
“I know that, Alex. But I also know what you’re like. You need to plunge right back into something.” A shadow passed over his face. “Do you know what Gandhi, a Hindu, said to some British army officers during the battle for Indian independence?”
“What?” she asked.
“He said, ‘Jesus was a good and moral man. The trouble with many of you Christians is that you’re nothing like him.’ That’s why I keep the missions going, feeding the hungry, supplying medical care, doing what I can to fight poverty and illiteracy. I asked myself what Jesus would have done if he’d made all this money in hotels and restaurants.”
She laughed.
“And that was the answer that came to me. So these missions will continue while I’m alive and afterward. I hope you can help.”
“I’ll do my reading tonight, Mr. Collins,” she said.
She reached to her neck, where the gold cross used to be. Nervous tic time again. The jewelry was missing, of course, except in her memory.
“If you’re willing to go forward after you read the file,” he said, “I’m going to put you in touch with a man I’ve recently hired to advise me on some Latin American issues. His name is Sam Deal. Ever heard the name?”
“I might have. It rings a bell.”
“Sam used to work for Washington. I’ve known him for many years. He’s no one’s fool. He can give you an objective picture of what you’re getting into.”
Alex nodded. Somewhere she had heard Deal’s name. Then she pegged it. Her friend Laura who worked at the White House had had issues with him.
“I’ve tentatively arranged for you to meet with Sam tomorrow morning at eleven if you wish to proceed. He’s in town for a few days. He has time to meet.”
Alex nodded again.
“Sam would also be your weapons guy when you get to Caracas. You won’t be able to fly with a gun, obviously, but I’ll make sure you have protection as soon as you get there. Sam won’t be in Caracas, but one of his people will arrange things. Don’t worry about clothing for going out in the jungle. What size do you take?”
“Ten, American.”
“I’ll arrange for some gear. Shoes?”
“Nine. Wardrobe and firearms. You think of everything.”
He laughed.
“If you don’t mind my saying so, Mr. Collins,” she said, “you can be a bit of a contradiction.”
“How’s that?”
“You want to send me on a mission of peace, but the first thing you do is supply armament.”
“It’s a cruel, mean world,” he said. “I want you to be safe.”
She smiled. “Sounds like you think I’m going.”
“I rather have my hopes up,” he said.
She grinned slightly and pushed back from the table. If nothing else, the offer was both flattering and exciting. But she wasn’t sure how much flattery or excitement she was in the mood for these days.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll look at everything. Then I’ll call you tomorrow.”
From Collins’s lips, she saw the trace of a grin.
“Thank you, Alex,” he said.
By the entrance to the terrace, there was a sudden commotion that grabbed her attention. Outside on the sidewalk, a noisy homeless man accosted an older couple passing by. Alex watched as the man aggressively pursued them. The older couple hurried their pace. Alex rose to her feet. If no one else would do anything about it, she would.
Collins placed a gentle hand on her wrist. “Don’t trouble yourself,” he said.
“But-?”
Collins then nodded to his bodyguard. The bodyguard, obviously seeking any small piece of action he could find, moved with the grace and speed of a much younger man. He interposed himself between the couple and their assailant.
The panhandler attempted to shove the bodyguard in return. Bad idea. Mr. Collins’s hired hand sent the vagrant hurtling in a different direction, and he disappeared.
FIFTY-SIX
Alex’s apartment on East Twenty-first Street in Manhattan was a very quiet unimposing place, considering its location, and perfectly suited to her needs.
It was nestled into the back of a walk-up building first constructed in 1900, third floor rear, just twenty yards east of Second Avenue. The block itself was quiet, although traffic rumbled southbound on the avenue all day and all night.
Inside the furnished one-bedroom apartment, all windows overlooked a rear courtyard. The two rooms were a witch’s brew of clashing wallpapers, lamp shades, aging furniture, and worn carpets. It reflected the lifestyle of Joseph Collins’s son, Daniel, whose interests were far from the worldly or the run-of-the mill.
The younger Collins, single and about forty, had grown up wealthy, had worked in his father’s businesses for many years, but had also gone to seminary at Southern Methodist. Alex had never met him but had spoken to him on the phone from time to time. At age thirty-five he had left his father’s industries to help administer his father’s Christian philanthropies. There were a collection of pictures on the walls and on tables of Daniel trotting the globe; in Africa, in central America, in South America, in New Mexico, and one-presumably to get a nasty dose of some colder climates-in Labrador.
The pictures showed the young man-these days forty was considered young-in various villages or cities. He looked content with his mission and his missions. Everyone should be so lucky.
Alex quickly took a measure of the other people in the building. The upstairs neighbor was an actor who was out of town, and the downstairs neighbor was the landlord, “Lady Dora” Rose, as she called herself.
“Lady Dora” was a quintessential New Yorker, an elf of a woman in her late sixties. She had been left a pair of brownstones including this one. But the story, as Alex heard it on arrival, got even better.
Lady Dora’s late husband, Marvin, had owned a newsstand that had specialized in thoroughbred and harness racing tout sheets and sporting publications. His store also featured a telephone that never stopped ringing. Marvin, who was fifteen years older than Dora when they wed, had gone out for a walk one night in June 1977 and never came back. Presumably he was still walking.
The “Rose” in Lady Dora’s name was a truncation of “Rosenberg,” which had been Marvin’s name, and the “Lady” was a figment of her own inflated sense of grandeur.
“I made it up so I could be an interesting person,” she told Alex when Alex asked about it. “Then for ninety-four dollars I had had it legally added to my name.”
Lady Dora showed Alex a New York State driver’s license to prove it. Not that she drove or owned a car. Over the years, Lady Rose had also acquired a hint of a British accent, though more often than not the Brooklyn one she had been born with also surfaced. Lady Dora also introduced Alex to Sajit, the handyman, who came in for ten hours a week off the books to sweep the floors, fix the plumbing, and replace lightbulbs.
Sajit was from Sri Lanka. He was a slim, tiny, fastidiously neat man who always wore a white dress shirt with shiny black pants. Today was no exception. Under Lady Rose’s critical eye, he set up a rickety card table with a pair of heavily dented metal folding chairs, the type often seen as props at wrestling matches.
“You will take good care of everything in Daniel’s place, won’t you?” Lady Rose asked. “Daniel’s a wonderful young man. He has a famous father, you know.”