You must be Fred, Salazar said.
And you are?
Detective Salazar, and this is Dr. Singh.
Well, all our permits are in order and I don’t recall calling the police.
And yet we are here to see you, Salazar said.
Has something happened?
Is there anywhere we can talk privately, Salazar asked.
Has something happened, Fred repeated.
We came a long way, Sunil chimed in.
Everyone who comes here does, Fred said, unimpressed.
We can talk here or back in Las Vegas, Salazar said.
Fred laughed. Does that ever work, Detective? I have to set up tonight’s show. You’re welcome to stay for it. Box office opens at nine. With that, Fred went back to giving instructions to someone over the walkie-talkie.
Sunil stepped forward. I’m sorry if we got off on the wrong foot, he said. We are here to talk to you about two of my patients. I believe they were performers in your carnival.
Fred shoved the walkie-talkie into her back pocket, where the bulge drew Salazar’s eyes. She cut him a dirty look and then brought impatient eyes to bear on Sunil.
He suddenly felt breathless. Fire and Water, he said, more in a croak than anything.
King Kong, Salazar added.
King Kongo, she said to Salazar, then turned to Suniclass="underline" You have the twins. Thank God. I was worried about them. I haven’t seen or heard from them in over two weeks. Yes, yes, by all means, let’s talk.
With that she turned and trudged off across a small patch of grass, headed toward a blue Victorian wood house, alone at the edge of a rise. It was so blue; the color was like a shout in the gathering darkness.
She led them up some steps, through the front door, crossing a living room in a soft yellow, and out onto a back porch that was all red. Four Adirondack chairs sat there looking out over a sheer drop of about fifty feet. Below them, spread out across the floor of what was clearly an abandoned quarry, lit up like a scene from a fairy tale, was a carnival. But instead of the usual carney organ music, a young man sat in a wheelchair in the middle of everything, lit by a giant spotlight, playing a guitar and singing into an old-school microphone.
Welcome to the Carnival of Lost Souls, Fred said.
Thirty-six
Eskia stared at the Kentridge on Sunil’s wall for a very long time. As he examined it from different angles, he smoked several cigarettes, taking pleasure in knowing that the smell would drive Sunil crazy. Eskia liked Kentridge, also Pieter Hugo. Their work was not invested in obscuring or blotting out the uncomfortable truths about apartheid.
He’d half expected to find Asia hiding out here, and wondered where she was. Normally he would be tracking her down; he hated to leave loose ends. But this was no normal case. He fully intended to kill Sunil on Monday and by Tuesday evening to be home in Johannesburg. Since he had no intentions of returning to the United States in the foreseeable future, she posed no real threat to him. He wouldn’t admit it, not even to himself really, but he was glad not to kill her. Asia had something that got under your skin very quickly, and not just because she was beautiful and could do things sexually he never knew were possible. There was a vulnerability to her that brought out the protective instinct in men. In a way he understood Sunil’s fascination with her; too bad it felt like such a fucking cliché.
He wandered into the kitchen to open the fridge and poked around. He popped the top on a beer and drank deeply, then set it down on the counter and checked the freezer and every other inch of the fridge for hiding places, shaking every can, every box, opening the yogurt and running his fingers inside, even pulling the shelving panel away from the door frame. Nothing.
The bedroom was next. Bed frame, mattress, behind every picture, chest of drawers, wardrobe, and light fixtures, ceiling: nothing.
Bathroom: medicine cabinet, toilet tank, sink plinth, bathtub. He banged against the tiled walls checking for hollow spaces, emptied out soap and shampoo containers, squirted toothpaste down the sink, checked the floor for hollow tiles, especially in the shower, then the ceiling, and the laundry basket: nothing.
Back in the kitchen, Eskia imagined all the places he would hide a hard drive. He needed Sunil’s research. Killing him was personal, but the South African government would want Sunil’s research on psychopaths. Where had that fucker hidden it? He wouldn’t have it on him; that was too risky. Eskia had already gone over every inch of Sunil’s office at the institute. It seemed Sunil kept only one copy of his work on a portable drive. It had to be in his home somewhere. There was no safe, that much Eskia already knew. By the time he left the kitchen for the living room, the microwave, the coffee machine, toaster, stovetop, oven, cupboards — everything — had been taken apart: still nothing.
There would be no time to put everything back together, to make it look like no one had been here, not even with a team of men. That only happened in the movies. The best thing to do was to leave the place looking like it had been burgled or vandalized. Difficult in a secure building like this, so he would have to hurry up so he could hit a couple more apartments, reduce the suspicion. He didn’t want to spook Sunil before tomorrow. Being one of several apartments vandalized in a building was an unfortunate accident. If only his was robbed, it would be clear that it was deliberate. Glancing at his watch, he saw it was about five p.m.; Fred should still have them tied up out there in Troubadour.
From his spot on the couch, he stared at the Kentridge. It was a limited-edition print, numbered and signed. Surely Sunil wouldn’t have hid it there. It would be a shame to destroy something as good as that. He lit another cigarette and took a deep drag. He decided to leave the Kentridge for last, and started in on the couch, pulling stuffing out of cushions and cutting into the frame fabric. Another myth was that an experienced person could guess where someone was likely to hide something. People were too different and irrational for that kind of prediction to work more than occasionally. Shit, Eskia muttered. It wasn’t in the couch. Where the fuck was it? It had to be somewhere easily accessible since he took it to work and back home every day, but where?
He took a break to finish his beer, sitting amid the debris. Absently he tapped on a book while he smoked. Fuck, Sunil, he said out loud, are you really going to make me rip apart the Kentridge? Then he looked down at the book he’d been tapping: the Bible. Eskia laughed out loud, flipping the cover open. There in a perfect cutout sat the disk, in the one book most people wouldn’t touch even if they happened to come upon it.
Really, Sunil, Eskia said to himself. You are depressingly romantic. He stood up and stubbed his cigarette out in the middle of the white coffee table. Now to pretend to rob a couple more apartments. He looked at his watch. It was six.
Thirty-seven
Sheila wondered if she should go over. It wasn’t that late, not even seven. She had called Sunil several times already to check up on him, to see how he was taking the fact that the twins had their zoo MRI today. Three times, to be exact, she had called, and each time it went straight to his voice mail. She didn’t know if that was too many times, perhaps even excessive enough to qualify as stalking. Sheila was a proud woman and yet with Sunil she found all that pride had eroded as she subtly (she hoped) tried to woo him. She wasn’t very good at dating, and she had no girlfriends to call for advice. Working for the institute left little time for any relationships outside of work.
The thing is, she had been thinking of resigning from the institute for some time now. There were job offers across the world from universities who wanted her on faculty and although it would be a significant drop in salary, she didn’t care. In fact, her trip to Cape Town was part holiday, part job interview at the University of Cape Town. From what she could tell from the photos of the place, it looked like the south of France. Not a bad place to spend the rest of your days, especially if you had the right person with you.