And yet it doesn’t seem small.
It felt okay to be sitting there, and after a time I shambled inside again and got another coffee. I returned to the table and went back to watching people walking up and down, tourists and locals on their way somewhere, the homeless passing through, stopping in the square for a few moments, then moving on.
I was halfway through the second cup when I heard a chair being pulled out from the other side of the table. I looked around to see that someone had joined me.
“You’re good,” she said.
I didn’t know what to say. She levered the top off her cup of tea to help it cool. Lit a cigarette and leaned back in her chair. Looked at me.
“Are you okay? Physically?”
“I’ll live,” I said.
“Well, that’s good.”
“Glad you think so.”
“You were locked in the top office for a reason. You were intended to stay there for your own safety.”
“Shame you didn’t explain that at the time. Gary Fisher might still be alive.”
She shrugged. Something had changed, more so than when I’d seen her on the pier in Santa Monica and even since last night—though I hadn’t had much chance to observe her closely then. Her hair was brushed differently, or maybe it was the same, but her suit was new in some way, its fabric or the cut, something that hinted at an older fashion. Perhaps it was something less tangible. Body language, the light in her eyes, or lack of it, whatever it is that makes someone altered from the person she was before, that says she stands at a different angle to you now. Whichever, I knew that this person was no more my wife than the girl who used to go to sleep in the bedroom of what was now Natalie’s house.
I started with that. “What did you take?” I asked. “From Natalie’s?”
“Nothing important. A keepsake.”
“Of what?”
“Being a child. I used to stash my little treasures under the floorboard there.”
“Why go back for it now?”
She hesitated, as if deciding how much she wanted to confide in me. Or what I could be trusted with.
“When I was about eight,” she said eventually, “going on nine, one weekend we went to a swap meet over in Venice. Me, my mom, Natalie. We wandered around, looking at the usual crap, you know, and then I saw this one stall and knew I had to go look at it. The woman had all this really old, dusty stuff.”
She reached into her purse, pulled something out. Put it on the table. A small, square glass pot, with a tall Bakelite lid. Whatever was inside had once been brightly colored, a hot pink of a kind now out of fashion, but it had dried and cracked and gone mainly murky and black. There was a faded label, in the kind of lettering you see on old cinemas. It said JAZZBERRY.
“Nail polish,” I said.
“Original 1920s. I didn’t know that then. Just knew I had to have it. My mom thought I’d gone nuts. I used to take it out and look at it once in a while. Didn’t understand why. Until I was eighteen.”
“What happened then?”
“Things changed.”
“You started to believe that you’d been here before.”
“So you think you know some things, huh?”
“I don’t really know what to think.”
“Your friend Gary built quite a castle in the air, by the sound of it. In which he’d have lived alone. Probably just as well things turned out as they did last night. No offense.”
“Was he right? About any of it?”
“I don’t know what he told you. But…people guess things. Sometimes they guess right. The mental institutions of the world are riddled with sane people who just never had the sense to shut up.”
“What’s the Psychomachy Trust?”
“What do you think? What’s your guess?”
“Something to do with the intruders.”
She raised an eyebrow. “The who?”
“That’s what Gary called people who got it into their head that they keep coming back.”
“A name he got from your book, I suppose. I’m sure that, if any such people exist, they’d prefer the term ‘revisitors.’”
“The place under the building in Belltown,” I said. “What was that for?”
She glanced at her watch. “A gathering. One that happens very rarely, and quite soon. It’s why I’ve been spending so much time here.”
“But now it’s burned down.”
“Oh, we wouldn’t have been using that place anyway. It was prepared long in advance. A hundred years ago, that’s how it was done. The world is far less formal now. You have to move with the times.”
“Wasn’t there a risk someone would find it?”
She laughed. “Find what? Some chairs, a table? Big deal. Hiding things is for amateurs.”
“What about the bodies?”
“That was different.”
“Who was Marcus Fox?”
“Someone who used to be important,” she said, as if the subject were distasteful. “He has always been…difficult. He developed worse problems during his most recent time away.”
“Away where?”
“The place where you go. In between. It’s not far. Marcus became very cruel. He hurt people. Little people.”
“I saw. Why keep the bodies?”
“They were as safe from discovery there as if buried in a forest or thrown into the bay. Until you and your friend started digging around.”
“And Fox?”
“He became a security risk. He was dealt with.”
“Killed, you mean. By the man who shot Gary.”
“So you say.”
“Why did Todd Crane say Marcus was in the building yesterday?”
“You do have good ears. And a busy little mind. That could be a problem. But, of course, we know where you live.”
I stared at her. “It’s where you live, too.”
“No. I never lived there, Mr. Whalen.” She stubbed out her cigarette, looked at me with blank indifference. “I assumed you understood. You’re not talking with Amy. You’re talking to Rose.”
Maybe I’d already guessed. I’d certainly realized during the night that Amy could have put a number for ROSE into my phone, at any time in the last few weeks or months, and I wouldn’t have noticed until she called me from that number. Called why? To warn me, maybe. Or to stop me from screwing with something I didn’t understand. Presumably the same reason I’d been approached by the two men in the alleyway with Georj. Men in the pay of the intruders, whoever the hell they were.
“So who is Rose, exactly?”
“Just a label for a state of mind.”
“I don’t believe that. I don’t think you do either. Why was Shepherd trying to kill that girl? Was Fox supposed to be inside her?”
“He was. But Mr. Fox appears to have left the building.”
“That happens?”
“Very rarely. She was strong. She was also far too young. There’s some concern over how Marcus got through in the first place. One of our helpers may have been involved.” She shrugged. “Sometimes revisitors jump ship. Once in a blue moon, they get kicked out. Someone will keep an eye on the girl. We’ll see.”
She saw how I was looking at her and shook her head. “Not going to happen here. I told you on the pier. This is who I am. How I’ve always been, underneath.”
I noticed a gray limousine parking fifty yards away up Yesler. A man got out, old, African-American, distinguished-looking. The car drove off, and the man walked down toward the square. He sat on a bench by himself. This struck me as odd in some way.