—
VI
Even with the clotted traffic, the cab drew up in front of the Concorde Opйra’s three sets of polished wooden doors with close to five hours to spare. While Vasquez settled with the driver, Buchanan stepped out of the cab, crossed the sidewalk, strode up three stairs, and passed through the center doors. The act distracted her enough that she forgot to ask for a receipt; by the time she remembered, the cab had accepted a trio of middle-aged women, their arms crowded with shopping bags, and pulled away. She considered chasing after it, before deciding that she could absorb the ten euros. She turned to the hotel to see the center doors open again, Buchanan standing in them next to a young man with a shaved head who was wearing navy pants and a cream tunic on whose upper left side a nametag flashed. The young man pointed across the street in front of the hotel and waved his hand back and forth, all the while talking to Buchanan, who nodded attentively. When the young man lowered his arm, Buchanan clapped him on the back, thanked him, and descended to Vasquez.
She said, “What was that about?”
“Shopping,” Buchanan said. “Come on.”
The next fifteen minutes consisted of them walking a route Vasquez wasn’t sure she could retrace, through clouds of slow-moving tourists stopping to admire some building or piece of public statuary; alongside briskly moving men and women whose ignoring those same sights marked them as locals as much as their chic haircuts, the rapid-fire French they delivered to their cell phones; past upscale boutiques and the gated entrances to equally upscale apartments. Buchanan’s route brought the two of them to a large corner building whose long windows displayed teddy bears, model planes, dollhouses. Vasquez said, “A toy store?”
“Not just a toy store,” Buchanan said. “This is the toy store. Supposed to have all kinds of stuff in it.”
“For your son.”
“Duh.”
Inside, a crowd of weary adults and overexcited children moved up and down the store’s aisles, past a mix of toys Vasquez recognized (Playmobil, groups of army vehicles, a typical assortment of stuffed animals) and others she’d never seen before (animal-headed figures she realized were Egyptian gods, replicas of round-faced cartoon characters she didn’t know, a box of a dozen figurines arranged around a cardboard mountain). Buchanan wandered up to her as she was considering this set, the box propped on her hip. “Cool,” he said, leaning forward. “What is it, like, the Greek gods?”
Vasquez resisted a sarcastic remark about the breadth of his knowledge; instead, she said, “Yeah. That’s Zeus and his crew at the top of the mountain. I’m not sure who those guys are climbing it . . .”
“Titans,” Buchanan said. “They were monsters who came before the gods, these kind of primal forces. Zeus defeated them, imprisoned them in the underworld. I used to know all their names: when I was a kid, I was really into myths and legends, heroes, all that shit.” He studied the toys positioned up the mountain’s sides. They were larger than the figures at its crown, overmuscled, one with an extra pair of arms, another with a snake’s head, a third with a single, glaring eye. Buchanan shook his head. “I can’t remember any of their names, now. Except for this guy,” he pointed at a figurine near the summit. “I’m pretty sure he’s Kronos.”
“Kronos?” The figure was approximately that of a man, although its arms, its legs, were slightly too long, its hands and feet oversized. Its head was surrounded by a corona of gray hair that descended into a jagged beard. The toy’s mouth had been sculpted with its mouth gaping, its eyes round, idiot. Vasquez smelled spoiled meat, felt the cardboard slipping from her grasp.
“Whoa.” Buchanan caught the box, replaced it on the shelf.
“Sorry,” Vasquez said. Mr. White had ignored her, strolling across the round chamber to the foot of the stairs, which he had climbed quickly.
“I don’t think that’s really Sam’s speed, anyway. Come on,” Buchanan said, moving down the aisle.
When they had stopped in front of a stack of remote-controlled cars, Vasquez said, “So who was Kronos?” Her voice was steady.
“What?” Buchanan said. “Oh—Kronos? He was Zeus’s father. Ate all his kids because he’d heard that one of them was going to replace him.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. Somehow, Zeus avoided becoming dinner and overthrew the old man.”
“Did he—did Zeus kill him?”
“I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure Kronos wound up with the rest of the Titans, underground.”
“Underground? I thought you said they were in the underworld.”
“Same diff,” Buchanan said. “That’s where those guys thought the underworld was, someplace deep underground. You got to it through caves.”
“Oh.”
In the end, Buchanan decided on a large wooden castle that came with a host of knights, some on horseback, some on foot; a trio of princesses; a unicorn; and a dragon. The entire set cost two hundred and sixty euros, which struck Vasquez as wildly overpriced, but which Buchanan paid without a murmur of protest—the extravagance of the present, she understood, being the point. Buchanan refused the cashier’s offer to gift-wrap the box, and they left the store with him carrying it under his arm.
Once on the sidewalk, Vasquez said, “Not to be a bitch, but what are you planning to do with that?”
Buchanan shrugged. “I’ll think of something. Maybe the front desk’ll hold it.”
Vasquez said nothing. Although the sky still glowed blue, the light had begun to drain out of the spaces among the buildings, replaced by a darkness that was almost granular. The air was warm, soupy. As they stopped at the corner, Vasquez said, “You know, we never asked Plowman about Lavalle or Maxwell.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Just—I wish we had. He had an answer for everything else; I wouldn’t have minded hearing him explain that.”
“There’s nothing to explain,” Buchanan said.
“We’re the last ones alive—”
“Plowman’s living. So’s Mr. White.”
“Whatever—you know what I mean. Christ, even Just-Call-Me-Bill is dead. What the fuck’s up with that?”
In front of them, traffic stopped. The walk signal lighted its green man. They joined the surge across the street. “It’s a war, Vasquez,” Buchanan said. “People die in them.”
“Is that what you really believe?”
“It is.”
“What about your freak-out before, at the tower?”
“That’s exactly what it was—me freaking out.”
“Okay,” Vasquez said after a moment, “okay. Maybe Bill’s death was an accident—maybe Maxwell, too. What about Lavalle? What about Ruiz? You telling me it’s normal two guys from the same detail try to off themselves?”
“I don’t know.” Buchanan shook his head. “You know the army isn’t big on mental-health care. And let’s face it; that was some pretty fucked-up shit went on in the Closet. Not much of a surprise if Lavalle and Ruiz couldn’t handle it, is it?”
Vasquez waited another block before asking, “How do you deal with it—the Closet?”
Buchanan took one more block after that to answer: “I don’t think about it.”
“You don’t?”