Water To Burn Part 18

"Yeah, I guessed." My voice sounded reasonably steady to me. "But do you have some kind of gripe to air?"

"I don't know." He walked over to the couch and flopped down on it. "Nola, I'd rather cut off a hand than hurt you."

I hesitated. Prudence dictated that I sit on the computer chair with the coffee table between us. Prudence has never been my strong point. I sat down next to him on the couch and felt Qi begin to swirl around us, a turbulence in the air. He leaned back, slumped down with his legs stretched out in front of him, and rested his head on the top of the cushioned back of the couch.

"There was someone, though, wasn't there?" I tried to choose careful words. "That you did hit. Only once, probably, and a long time ago."

He stared up at the ceiling while he talked. "Oh, yes. We were both in the army at the time." He hesitated again, just briefly. "I slapped her across the face. She struck up and broke my jaw with one punch."

I gained a sudden respect for Israeli womanhood.

"She outranked me, too." Ari turned his head and gave me a twisted little rueful smile. "I remember sitting on the floor of the hotel room in a great deal of pain and watching her call a doctor on the telephone. I can still see her standing there afterward, rubbing her sore knuckles and saying, 'Oh, by the way, our affair's over.' I'd already a.s.sumed that, actually."

The stormy Qi began to smooth itself into a flow.

"What did your superior officers have to say about all this? It couldn't have been the first incident."

"It wasn't, just the first involving a woman. They gave me a choice. Learn to control the temper, or be discharged. I learned. If I hadn't been such a good marksman, they probably would have court-martialed me for striking an officer, but they didn't want to lose my rifle. They wanted me to reenlist when the time came, you see, and move from military police to the special forces. As a sniper."

I saw a Possibility Image in my mind: Ari in battle gear, lying stretched out on a flat roof in pitiless sunshine, the rifle cradled in his arms, his beautiful eyes narrowed as he watched a target below.

"Why didn't you?" I said. "Become the sniper, I mean."

He returned to staring at the ceiling. The gray fog light, dappled from the lace curtain over the window, threw shadows across his face. I waited, then waited some more.

He said, "I wanted to keep my soul."

For a couple of minutes we sat without speaking. Outside the N Judah streetcar rumbled past. A car alarm sounded, then stopped. Ari continued looking at the ceiling as if he were memorizing every stain and crack on it. I wondered how I could possibly want to stay involved with a man like him. Even though I'd just seen him take charge of himself and his rage, there could come a time when he'd choose not to control it. With a past like his, what could anyone expect from him but rage that now and then slipped its leash?

"Are you going to end this?" he said. "Our affair, I mean."

I hesitated and cursed common sense.

"I can't blame you," he went on. "We can still work together. I'll promise you that."

"I'm not going to end anything."

He turned his head and looked at me, just looked for maybe a minute. "You need my rifle, too," he said.

"It's more than that." I leaned over and kissed him, a quick brush of my mouth on his. "The rifle's just a bonus."

He sat up, and for a miserable moment I honestly thought he was going to cry. Instead, he put his hands on either side of my face and kissed me. The wave of Qi broke over us like warm water.

We spent a long time in bed that afternoon. He fell asleep, eventually, while I lay awake and wondered if I'd been stupid or smart. We had to work together indefinitely because both our agencies had decreed we would. Trying to do so without s.e.x would be impossible, I decided, because without that outlet his rage would take him over sooner rather than later. It was a nice psychological explanation and utter c.r.a.p, of course, because the truth was simple: I didn't want to give him up.

I was expecting that neither of us would refer to the incident again, but he rose above my expectations. For dinner, we ate the remains of the deli food from the night before, while a soccer game played on the TV with the sound off. About halfway through, Ari turned to me.

"Do you want to know what set me off this morning?" he said.

"You know what it was?"

He nodded.

"Yeah, I do want," I said. "Because I don't want to trigger it again."

"It was the way you took over the entire maneuver. I raised objections; you ignored them. It was obvious you were in charge." He smiled, rueful again. "And then you had to go and be right."

"Oh." My first thought: so, now you know what it feels like! Aloud, I said, "Yeah, I can see why that would get to you."

"But I'm not making an excuse for my later behavior. I take full responsibility for that."

I was willing to bet that those lines were right out of the manual for whatever program he'd been in. That he remembered them gave him high marks by my reckoning. "You could have told me right then," I said.

"Yes, I should have. I'm too used to working alone. I tried to tell you that when we first met."

"Well, I'm used to working alone, too."

"But you're the head of an operation now, aren't you?"

Exactly what I'd taken on hit me hard. I was no longer a single operative consulting now and then with a pair of part-time stringers. Small as my team was, it had become just that, a team, and I needed to learn how to lead it. I had a brief moment of panic where I considered handing authority over to Ari. I squelched the idea and the panic both.

"Yeah, I am the head of this op," I said. "I've got a lot to learn, but I'll learn it. Y'know, I've never been part of an army unit or even a sports team. This is all new."

"But you've been part of that peculiar mob you call your family." His smile took any sting out of the words. "You can draw on that."

He was right. I could. I kissed him for it, too, despite the garlic and onions on his breath.

Although I checked the messages for both my cell phone and my landline several times that evening, Caleb never returned my call. When I tried an SM:P for him, I ran into a psychic wall. I could a.s.sume that he'd put the hangover behind him and regained his strength. I did get a vague impression from an LDRS of a dimly lit room without any visible furniture in it, but I received no indication of where the room was.

Kathleen, however, called me midevening. When I asked her if she knew where Caleb was, she told me no. Jack was watching TV in his study, with no plans to see Caleb until later in the week.

"I think maybe Jack saw through Caleb a little bit," Kathleen told me. "Caleb got so drunk at the party Sunday that Jack insisted he stay over. And really, I hate him, but I didn't want him to get killed on the freeway or something. So he threw up all over the bed in the green guest room, and ended up sleeping in the blue guest room, where at least he didn't barf again."

"He's a really heavy drinker, huh?" I said.

"He is, yeah. He wasn't as bad when Jack first met him. But this last week, he's been awful. I think that's why Woofie Five bit him at that other party. He smelled weird from all the scotch."

"Drowning his sorrows over something, maybe?"

The moment I'd said the words I knew how significant they were. What if Caleb had drowned that girl at Ocean Beach? He'd committed a crime before, but murder fell into an entirely different category. He could easily be falling to pieces with terror at the thought of going back to prison. At nineteen, a cute guy like Caleb would have found himself real popular with the hardened older cons, though not in any pleasant way. It was also possible, I supposed, that if he'd killed her by mistake, he might even be feeling remorse.

"By the way," Kathleen said, "Did Ari get those-"

"He's still working on the case. He needs to confirm some details, he tells me."

"Okay. I really appreciate him doing this."

The irony of it pinched my conscience, but I kept my mouth shut about the Donovan connection.

It took us Tuesday evening and all day Wednesday to pack up the old apartment. One good thing about moving: you find stuff you've forgotten you had. I threw out a bunch of chipped coffee mugs, an out-of-style torn skirt I'd never gotten to the tailor's, and my collection of "farewell, it's over" letters from old boyfriends, which I should have dumped years before. In the back of a closet, I turned up a digital camcorder I'd been given when I first worked for the Agency as a stringer during grad school. I was investigating ghost sightings and recording interviews. The camcorder had been state of the art, back then. I kept it because it would still be useful, I figured, for family holiday gatherings.

I took breaks now and then to run LDRS and Search Modes for both Caleb and Reb Ezekiel. I picked up no traces of Zeke, but now and then on Wednesday I caught a glimpse of Caleb, driving a car on a winding road that ran along the tops of cliffs overlooking the ocean-Highway 1, of course. I could never get enough of a mental impression from him to tell what he was doing there or where he was heading.

Late in the afternoon on Wednesday, I called my other former stringer, Jerry Jamieson, who worked as a specialized kind of hustler, a man who dressed as a woman. The type particularly appealed to customers from South America, though not exclusively, or so he'd informed me. Wherever they came from, the customers were willing to spend a lot of money on a specific s.e.xual fantasy, of being the pa.s.sive partner in a.n.a.l s.e.x with a man in drag. I may have been a psych major in college, but a.n.a.lyzing that particular desire lay way beyond me.

At any rate, I described Reb Ekeziel and told Jerry about the letter, but omitted any mention of deviant world levels, mostly to save time. Jerry had a skeptical turn of mind, probably due to his chosen profession, and I didn't want to get into some involved argument over their existence.

"So suppose I spot this old guy," Jerry said. "Should I glom on to him?"

"Only if it's easy. He has friends on the street, and you don't want to get them involved. If he's willing to have you buy him a cup of coffee or something, sure. If he runs, no. If he doesn't run, tell him you know Nola O'Grady. Call me either way."

"Will do, darling. I haven't seen any Agency money in too long."

"Well, we're willing to put you on regular payroll."

"That means obligations, doesn't it? Regular reports, following your orders, all that tedious middle-cla.s.s behavior."

"Some, sure, but it's not like you have to wear a suit and work in an office. Think about it, and let me know if you want to sit down and talk."

"I will. I'm not getting any younger, after all."

I clicked off and returned to packing up the kitchen while Ari took apart the bookcases. Late that afternoon, Ari left for a couple of hours to return the rental car and pick up his new vehicle, which, he informed me, had been specially customized.

"Promise me you'll stay inside," he said. "I don't want you out on the street alone without me there to keep an eye on things."

"Don't worry," I said. "I've got too much to do here anyway."

"You look tired." He considered me for a moment. "When I come back, we'll go out to dinner. Make a reservation somewhere, and you can see how the new car handles."

I made reservations at a small Russian restaurant on Balboa Avenue, not too far from the apartment, but far enough to drive the new car rather than walk. I also called Caleb about our so-called business lunch. I'll admit to being relieved when once again I got the answering service for his cell phone. He was still on the road, I figured. I left a brief message, saying I'd play another round of phone tag later, and clicked off.

With that out of the way, I sat down at the kitchen table and tried another LDRS for Reb Ezekiel. No matter how hard I concentrated, nothing came to me but a profound sense of absence. Either Zeke had died in the night, or he'd gone through a gate to some other deviant world level. I returned to my computer and web-surfed all my news sites, looking for a story about a homeless man found dead.

I found no reports of such deaths, but I did see a string of stories about rogue waves. Like hammers in an invisible hand, they had smashed into the cliffs all down the coast, starting in Pacifica at high tide just before dawn and continuing down to just north of Santa Cruz. When the tide turned, they stopped. No one had been injured. No structures, only cubic yards of dirt and rock, had fallen to the sand below. I immediately thought of Caleb, driving south on Highway 1.

I shut down the computer to foil Chaos hackers and spent a few minutes gazing at the blank screen, hoping for images. None. As far as Reb Zeke went, I was stuck with the gate theory, which in turn led me to believe that more gates existed in San Francisco than the one in the Houlihan house and the one that had been in the park. The old problem nagged at me: why the Houlihan house, of all places?

Finally I soothed my frustration by getting dressed up. I decided to wear a dress, since I knew Ari would like it, and I put on makeup, too. If you're going to regress to your teen years, you might as well do it right and flatter your boyfriend's ego. I owned several dresses, an ugly black number for funerals, and then a flowered summer dress, which would have been too cold, and a soft blue silk-and-linen blend that fell straight from a shirred neckline. It had nice warm sleeves. I chose the blue and added the gold pin he'd given me.

When Ari returned with the new car, and I saw this supposedly wondrous vehicle, I was shocked. It sat glumly by the curb, a gray sedan, several years old, with dark gray upholstery. I spotted a stain from some kind of beverage on the back seat and a couple of worn tracks on the fabric that might have been made by a child's car seat.

"A Saturn?" I said. "They gave you a Saturn?"

Ari was trying not to laugh, or to be precise, to make the odd noises that served him as a laugh in all circ.u.mstances but watching Roadrunner cartoons. "It's been heavily modified," he said eventually. "What did you expect? A Jaguar? An Aston Martin? Something that would attract attention everywhere we went?"

"Good point. No one's going to look twice at this."

"Get in." He handed me the keys. "Try it out."

As soon as I pulled away from the curb, I realized what Ari meant by modifications. Even when we were moving at a fast clip the car barely vibrated. It was as heavy as a 1960's Cadillac, thanks to some sort of armor installed between the plastic Saturn sh.e.l.l and the upholstery, but with its upgraded power steering, it handled like a sports car.

Ari's mystery mechanics had also added a pair of b.u.t.tons on the steering column next to the horn. Punch one, and the red light you were approaching turned green. Punch two, and all the windows but the windshield darkened; you could see out, but no one could see in. Ari also had a device to carry with him that would stop the car in case of theft, though doing so would destroy the transmission.

"It doesn't fire nuclear missiles, however," Ari told me. "Or walk on water."

"b.u.mmer," I said. "It's too bad it won't come when it's called. You know, like Wonder Woman's invisible jet."

Ari made a strangled noise that seemed to signal disgust.

"Just a joke," I said. "What's wrong?"

"Wonder Woman?"

"Er, I guess you didn't read that kind of comic when you were a kid."

Again the strangled noise. I decided to let the subject die.

"At any rate," Ari went on, "are you going to let me drive on occasion?"

"On occasion, like when I'm not in the car with you. It's bad enough having Chaos masters out to get me. You don't need to help them along."

"Oh, come now! My driving's not that bad."

"Hah!"

"Everyone drives that way at home."

"Remind me never to drive in Israel, then."

"If that's even a possibility." His voice turned wistful. "I'd enjoy showing you the country, even if you didn't want to live there. We could go on holiday."

I fumbled through my mind for a joke to turn the moment aside. Couldn't find one. He'd mentioned marriage once, and I wanted to make sure it stayed at only once. For a moment he watched me, waiting. At last he looked away and said nothing more until we reached Katya's restaurant. After I parked, he helped me out of the car.

"You look wonderful tonight," he said. "I meant to say so earlier."

"Thanks," I said. "I'm betting you speak Russian, by the way."

He merely smiled. Once we got inside, however, his perfect Russian got us great service. While we ate blini with golden caviar for a first course, I realized the pattern to his "unusual flair for languages," as his resume called it.

"The European languages you told me you know," I said. "I bet they're Russian, French, Greek, and Turkish."

"Very good on the Turkish. Yes, I think of it as European, too."

"That part of the world will always be Anatolia to me."

"My old-fashioned girl. Very old-fashioned, by about what, a thousand years? There's one more European language, though, that I speak. Let's see if you can name it."

I thought for a long time. "Can't," I finally said. "Unless maybe Albanian."