We spent all day into early evening on the photo, and by nine that night had run into all dead ends. Facial software came up empty. No match at Customs, at CIA, or at Army Intelligence. Nobody I spoke to knew anything about a refugee camp or Syrian village called Tol-e-Khomri. The files on fifth-columnist Americans came up blank. I guessed that I’d hear from a furious or frantic Kyle Utley sometime tomorrow, when the blowback reached him. Too bad.
“Well,” said Eddie at ten, as we sat around an Italian meal delivered from Carmine’s, huge platters of chicken, sausage, and calamari, “Kyle said it’s probably a dead end. I guess it is.”
“What do we have tomorrow?” said Izabel Santo. I felt her foot touch my ankle under the table. My tiredness vanished. I felt a hard stirring in my groin. My body needed food, and sleep, and it needed Izabel Santo. Anyone who thinks that sex is not sustenance is crazy. My fingertips were tingling. I allowed myself to feel the anticipation because I knew there was no romance in it, no love, promise, or future, just animal need. It was like gravity. We were two planets in close orbit. We were about to crash and burn each other up.
Eddie said, “The hospital. And probably ten more tax forms to fill out. But maybe we’ll get lucky on the photo. I gotta tell you. This quiet. I hate it. Something more is coming very soon.”
“I’ll check out that art shop,” said Izabel. “In the morning.”
“I’m going to go back to the office,” said Eddie.
“I’ll walk you home,” I told Izabel, and over my shoulder, as we left, saw Eddie’s approving smile.
Aya’s call came after midnight, jerking me out of one of the deepest sleeps I’d had in months. Izabel was up instantly, the moonlight on her sculpted shoulders, the sheet crumpled by her narrow waist.
I saw the incoming number and shook my head with irritation and also admiration. The kid was perfect for our unit. She worked tirelessly and she stayed on problems long after others would have given up. She even had the evasiveness down, an instinctual feel for how to ignore instructions. It was hard to get mad at this, since half the time I did the same thing, I thought.
“I did exactly what you said,” she started out, a clear indication that she had not, or she’d not bring it up.
“Aya, do you know what time it is?”
“Of course! But I need to tell you something! See, you told me not to call anyone and technically, I didn’t.”
I sighed. Everyone I talked to seemed to be throwing the word around today. Technically.
“Meaning what?” I asked.
“Well, me, Aya Vekey, I can’t make phone calls because you ordered me not to. Aya would never make a call. But Megan Luchs can.”
“And who is Megan Luchs?” I asked. Izabel got out of bed and, mouth dry, I watched her sway toward the bathroom, and the light go on. The room smelled of musk and sweat, bedding and perfume.
“Megan Luchs is a customer looking to buy Brazilian art for her mom’s new house. Her mom loves folk art.”
“She’s you, in other words.”
“Technically, you told me that I can’t call.”
“Aya, just tell me what you did.”
“Well! Megan called the shop in Brooklyn but kept getting a machine, so instead of leaving a message, she looked up the chain headquarters. Remember I said there were stores in different cities? There’s a website!”
“So Megan looked up the chain.”
“And it turns out that it was founded by an old woman: she’s like maybe fifty, her name is Johanna Fargo, and she lives in Denver. And there was a number on the website for headquarters. It’s there, too.”
“Which Megan called.”
“And I was surprised because Ms. Fargo herself answered! She was very nice and asked me, uh, she asked Megan questions about high school and what she likes to do, hobbies, what college Megan plans…”
“Get to the point,” I said as the bathroom door opened and Izabel came back to bed. The moon gleamed on the muscles of her abdomen, the small breasts, the hollow in her throat, her small white teeth. She cocked her head. What’s up? Being with her here was not like sleeping with a wife, or a girlfriend. What we had was raw and exhausted, friendship and solace amid confusion, a few moments of forgetfulness grabbed when we were too tired to work anymore, in the middle of too short a night.
Aya said, “Ms. Fargo said she knew who ran the Brooklyn shop, because it is her son Tom!”
“Her son is Tom Fargo.”
“She’s proud of Tom. She said he was away for three years, helping people overseas in the Peace Corps. And recently, he came back.”
I started to feel a tingling in the back of my neck.
“She said that Tom backpacked around in South America after that, but finally came home and took up her invitation to run a shop. She said he used to help her in the first shop, when he was a boy. So he knows the business. She said that the Brooklyn shop is probably closed during the emergency, but Tom is in New York because she just talked to him the other day.”
“She spoke to him on the phone…”
“His cell phone.”
“Did you get the number?”
“I didn’t ask, Joe. Sorry.”
I sighed.
Aya said, coyly, undoubtedly grinning at me in triumph, “But Megan got the number. And the address where the bills go, a private mail service.”
“Damnit!”
“I didn’t call the number, but I did look up the name Tom Fargo in New York, and guess what? I found three who have driver’s licenses. One is eighteen and the others are in their sixties. So it’s not him. Then I looked up property owners and found four, but one was a woman, Tomasina, and one was ninety, and the other two were the ones with driver’s licenses. Same in voting rolls. Not him. No other Tom Fargo paying electric or water bills. The New York City income tax people were so nasty and wouldn’t talk to me when I called! The lady said I sounded like a kid and was it a phony phone call!”
“Imagine that.”
“It’s not funny. How come this person has no records in New York?”
“Did you or did Megan check the Peace Corps?”
“Yes,” she said triumphantly. “Only one Tom Fargo was in the Peace Corps in the last four years, anywhere, and he came from Mobile, Alabama, and is sixty-one years old, a retired nurse. I was going to wait to tell you tomorrow. But what if it’s important?”
“You did right. Aya, do you ever sleep?”
She giggled. “I’m sixteen,” she said. “Not ancient like you. I don’t need that much sleep.”
On the night table lay the photo that Kyle Utley had left with us. Of the bearded jihadist raising his fist at the sky.
Aya gave me Tom Fargo’s cell phone number. By now Izabel was back in bed. She lay her hand on my thigh and snuggled close the way animals in the wild will sleep together. I had my arm beneath her neck, a human pillow. Her warmth made me drowsy. I held the slip of paper with the number in moonlight. The AC was on, the window down against insects. It was hot outside. By now, days after the initial spraying, any mosquitoes recently hatched would be out in the park.
“He lied about the Peace Corps,” she said.
“He has no address we can find?”
“Nothing in New York. No phone bills. Or any bills. No address or voting registration or city ID. I’ll keep poking around.”
I punched in the number for Ray Havlicek, and, at 1 A.M., got a voice message. I tried his assistant and got the same thing. I left detailed messages for them both. I thought a moment and then found the business card for Detective Jamal al-Azawi, our driver, and called his scrawled home number. He picked up after the second ring.