“It has nothing to do with you.”
“Well, I don’t understand how you find out all these important things and helped them and instead of making you a hero, Ray fires you.”
“Don’t quit as a favor to me.”
She hung up.
“I like her,” Izabel said. “Fiery.”
Tom Fargo was out there somewhere, moving around. He was out there and by now had probably heard my announcement, and might have gone to ground. But the news was now spread to every police department and federal agency in the country. I did not regret what I’d done.
“Come to Brazil with me,” Izabel said, folding the last pair of jeans into her bag. “Help us track the people who set up that lab in the jungle.”
“I don’t speak Portuguese, remember? You’re the one who said it. What kind of moron goes to another country and can’t speak the language?”
She straddled my knees. She smelled great. Her arms went around my neck. Grinning, she said, “Hurt your feelings?”
I laughed.
“Come for a week or two, to a place where you’ll be…” she said, brushing my cheek with an index finger, “appreciated.”
“After.”
“Because you might be needed here? Because you might think of something? You won’t give up?”
“It’s my nature.”
Outside, it was hot, even for summer, and Riverside Park was still and green in the streetlights; Grant’s Tomb a looming edifice, and the tiny grave beyond it, the little fenced-off resting place of the Amiable Child, lay whitish in moonlight. At the window I looked out. A man and boy walked out there, with a dog. I imagined that they were the Amiable Child and dead general, eternally guarding the ground where they had been laid to rest. Still alert.
Izabel and I kissed and started making love. She’d just put on her travel clothes but slipped them off easily. But there was no lust to it, and no love either… it was just something to do. Our hearts were not in it, so we stopped.
“Rain check,” she said, dressing again.
Eddie and I would drop her at the airport and then Stuart and Allison had invited us for a late dinner at their apartment. I planned to go over my notes after that. Izabel was right. Even fired, I might think of something.
When the doorbell rang I figured that it was Eddie, come to fetch us. But the voice on the intercom belonged to Vicki Ponte from NBC News, always the pest.
“I got a phone call for you, Colonel. Can I come up?”
“How did you know I was even here?”
“Major Nakamura. The call I got? It was from a man who phoned the tip line but got the runaround. He figured I’d know where you were. He reached me by calling my boss. Get it? He had access at NBC. You’ll want to speak to him.”
Annoyed but intrigued, I hit the buzzer. Vicki was probably still working the FBI/NYPD split angle, weaseling her way in here to try to get a sour grapes quote. But at the moment, I was not particularly busy.
And when Vicki walked in she surprised me. She came alone, no camera. She did not mention the FBI. Her eyes went from Izabel to me. She said, holding up her smartphone, “I can reach him now. He told the tip line detective that he would only talk to you. The detective says no, tell me. But he’d seen the press conference. He’d seen the FBI take over. He was afraid to talk to anyone else.”
“Why? Why afraid of the FBI?”
“He’ll tell you himself, I guess.”
“This man had your private number?”
“I told you. He called our anchorman. See? He had Lester’s private number. And Lester called me.”
“Meaning he’s important.”
“Meaning let’s make a deal before I call him back.”
“No,” I said, sounding like Aya.
“Hear me out. If something comes of this, give me the story. That’s fair. If you meet him, I come along.”
“In other words, you don’t know what he has to say?”
She looked annoyed. But then confident. “He said I can come if it’s okay with you.”
I said nothing. Vicki Ponte insinuated herself further into the apartment. She sat down, like it was her apartment. She said, “Well, which do you like better? Not making deals? Or not finding out?”
“In Brazil we would make you tell,” Izabel Santo remarked.
“Good thing I’m not there. Believe me,” Vicki said, “on the way here I had my guys check him out. He’s no lightweight.”
“Okay. I agree. What’s the name of this important man?”
“He’s retired State Department. High up State Department. His name is Hobart Haines,” she said.
TWENTY-SEVEN
JetBlue Flight 1024 to Albuquerque was delayed due to bad weather over Ohio. Otherwise I never would have made it on time. Eddie dropped me at Kennedy, that deteriorating madhouse of an airport, after letting Izabel out at the international terminal.
“If you change your mind about coming, let me know,” she said, and kissed me on the mouth. Eddie, grinning, said nothing but raised his brows as he started up the car.
The jet was full so I’d had to buy a Mint class seat. As Manhattan’s spires fell away I turned on my laptop and tried to reach Aya. No luck. I checked news reports. No progress in finding Tom Fargo, if they were right.
Time stretches out on planes. It was impossible to believe we were moving at 540 miles an hour. Or that Hobart Haines had insisted he’d only speak to me in person. He seemed old and paranoid. How do I know it is really you if we talk on the phone? But he’d managed to reach me through high-level contacts, so I was humoring him now.
I think I know where Tom is going, Haines had said.
I watched the seat-back route map, which showed a plane zigzagging west, forgoing a straight route. I shut it off. I gazed out the window at a landscape that formerly hosted malarias. The Ohio Valley — once forest, now suburbs or farms — had produced millions of mosquitoes to sicken wagon train riders. TVA dam builders in Kentucky had contracted malaria in droves. The disease had been prevalent as far west as New Mexico. In the 1880s the East Coast from Massachusetts to Florida was rampant with it. In 1942 Washington created the Office of Malaria Control in war areas, which evolved into the CDC. By 1952 the East Coast was clean.
I hope my trip isn’t a wild-goose chase, I thought as a flight attendant brought Mint class dinner: poached lobster, the luxury at odds with the emergency. I had a fold-down massage seat protected by a privacy-enhancing plastic shield, like a face guard on a level-four mask.
“Do you mind if I ask you a question, Colonel?”
My neighbor, a big dome-headed man in his forties, sipped his second Grey Goose martini. People who need permission to ask a question invariably have an unpleasant one in mind.
My neighbor had eyed me disapprovingly from the moment he’d seated himself. He’d clearly recognized me but followed the New York tradition: Don’t talk to your seatmate until time lapses in a flight. Initial silence marks you as acceptable. New York rules. What a place.
He was robust looking, in an open-collared shirt and yellow V-necked cashmere sweater. He smelled of good cologne, so he took malaria medicine or believed he’d never catch the disease. He’d been reading stock market reports over his dinner of herb-crusted monkfish and white wine.
“Ask away,” I said.
“If you don’t mind, why is the government wasting money sending you people first class?”
There was an unpleasant edge to the words you people. He probably regularly ranted against “big government,” although I suspected he loved it enough when it came to corporate bailouts. I didn’t have time for an argument. I just told the truth. Which was better than the way I’d treated Vicki Ponte, sending her home for a travel bag, then bolting to the airport, leaving her behind.