“Before he ruins you.”
“Roland—think big picture here. Not just me. New president, new government. New cabinet. New director of Central Intelligence. So, no old ghosts in the machine. Every stone will be turned. Every whisper and rumor run to ground. Such as Clay Hickman’s claims—whatever they are.”
“He told me that you two have a story to tell together. The story of what happened to Aaban and Roshaan at White Fire. I don’t know how it ends.”
Again his gaze roamed my face for a way in. For a moment in that bright sunlight, I could see, standing on the rocks in the stiff wind, with his coat flapping and his hair blowing wild, the young Briggs Spencer who had played ball and married his high school sweetheart and wanted a family and loved America. But I could also see the older man, whose terrorized patriotism and greed had led him past the boundaries of what we think of as acceptable.
“You won’t help me, will you?” he asked.
“I’ll honor my contract, Dr. Spencer,” I lied again. I’d been doing a lot of that lately.
“I will not let my future be sacrificed by Clay Hickman’s imagined past. Nor the futures of men I believe in.”
“Maybe discuss that with Clay.”
“Call me when you have him ready for me,” he said. “The bonus offer is good for forty-eight hours. And, if you change your mind about working for me after all this, let me know.”
“I won’t.”
“Let’s walk.”
We continued on, skirting the tide pools, children and moms and dads, seagulls prowling.
“You know, Mr. Ford, some years ago, as I read about the shooting of Titus Miller in the papers, I thought that we were kindred souls. Because my behavior in a highly pressured situation had been questioned, and so had yours. We both stood up for what we thought was right. We were outnumbered but unashamed.”
I stepped past a wad of seaweed, watched the sand flies lifting off, saw a sandpiper scurrying down-beach behind a receding wave. “Well, Dr. Spencer, when I read about Spencer-Tritt, I thought you were an opportunist with a good nose for dollars. I still do.”
He glanced at me, smiling without humor. “Then, later, when I read that your wife had died accidentally in her plane out in this Pacific Ocean, I wondered what would happen to you. Untethered and free again.”
Rage, Wrath & Fury stirred. “Now you know.”
“They said it was a bad fuel pump, didn’t they?”
“An intake obstruction. It was an expensive pump. Only a few hours on it.”
“But of course, many fuel pumps are damaged when a light plane crashes. Especially from the estimated twenty-five hundred feet.” We stopped, and again Spencer pried into me with his detached, unbiased gaze. “I wondered how you would deal with it. If you might feel responsible. If you ever regretted not doing something to keep her on the ground that day. With you.”
“I never thought that,” I lied.
He raised his eyebrows. “Of course you did. I became intrigued by the whole thing. Curious about you two. It didn’t take me long to learn that she was an adrenaline addict and a drinker and a fan of cannabis. Considered a bit of a loose cannon around the public defender’s office.”
“She only flew sober. And she was always sober when she drove or climbed rocks or skydived or hunted lobster at night. Or argued in court. She was a great pilot. She respected the air and her plane.”
“Of course you’re angry at her for leaving you behind.”
“I think I always will be.”
“Do you curse and blame God?”
“Vigorously.”
“What yearning drove her to risk her life in dangerous activities?”
“Flying made her feel more alive. Just like it does you and me.”
He smiled his You’re going to like me smile, seemingly satisfied with my answer. We headed back toward the house. Two young boys ran past us, splashing and screaming at the cold water for trying to get them. Spencer laid a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“Roland, say good-bye to your anger at her. And say good-bye to your fury at your god. These impede you. Come with me and I’ll make you wealthy and you can remember Justine on your own terms instead of those the world assigns. You must learn to be free again. Freedom is the difference between victim and victor. Only when you do these things will she be yours. Now, that’s an interesting expression on your face. You look intrigued by what I’ve said. The last time I spoke her name, up in my Sikorsky, you became childishly furious. I think you might be evolving, Roland.”
He took his hand off my shoulder. “I expect a call,” he said. “Soon.”
38
Driving home I remembered Justine, on my own terms, and very clearly.
We met at a muted holiday party at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in downtown San Diego, in a banquet room overlooking the ocean. I was solo.
All nice: an ice sculpture of flying doves, a tower of poinsettias in the shape of a Christmas tree, holiday music from a chamber ensemble. A much-talked-about Alaskan storm finally hit, rain lashing the high windows and the lightning moving closer.
Not by accident I got in the buffet line behind a shapely woman in a red party dress. She stood all of about five-foot-six in her high heels. She looked at me, then went back to the food.
“Pretty dress,” I said.
“Thank you.” Sleek red hair, wide-set green eyes, and a half smile. “It’s the same one I wore last night.”
“I’d wear it two nights straight, too, if it looked as good on me.”
“What a ghastly visual.”
“It got your attention. I’m Roland Ford.”
“I know. Justine Timmerman. I landed in the public defender’s office about the time you ditched the sheriffs. If you ask me, your partner should have been fired and tried for that shooting.”
We sat side by side at dinner, surrounded by people I didn’t know. The party was thrown by my “personal-wealth advisor,” who had put on much more of a spread than my modest investments deserved. I’d worn my best suit.
Justine was there with her friend Elke Meyer, who sat on the other side of me and told stories of Justine and her fishing in Baja the previous September. Justine had flown them to La Paz and back. Third year running. The women also snowboarded, skydived, and collected lobster together, at night, with headlamps to find their prey in the shifting black Pacific. Justine was a pilot, Elke a boat captain with a Master near-coastal license who “punched the clock” as an ophthalmologist.
They laughed and talked easily, a bit of competition in the stories. I sat between them like a stump. They’d known each other almost all their lives and were the same age—twenty-nine—and proud to still be under thirty. They joked about pumping out some babies before too long, in plenty of time to get back to the careers and the fun.
They seemed interested that I’d lived up and down the coast, surfed and boxed and shot it out in the first Fallujah because I really did believe in service to country. They thought I’d done the right thing in regard to a trigger-happy sheriff’s partner, and seemed intrigued that I could actually make a living as a private investigator. I had never wanted more to impress.
The three of us danced together after dinner. Happy chaos. But dancing is the one social skill at which I score above average, and I like it, so afterward I took them separately on sambas and fox-trots and swings. Elke was very good and Justine more intuition than skill, and I was proud to be the center around which they moved. When I finally took a break I downed my whole glass of ice water.
“Anyone up for a dip in the bay?” Justine asked. I looked out at the windblown rain and the bony fingers of lightning now closer to land.
“I’m in,” I said. Testosterone pumping, compelled.
“Let’s go,” said Elke.
We checked our coats and valuables, then burst outside. The storm roared d
own extra hard, as if it had been waiting for people like us. Two blocks. The bay boiled before us. We ran across the small beach, shucked our shoes, and waded in. I remember the sharp cold, and the hard-to-forgive idea that I was willingly ruining good clothes to impress the redhead. Lightning cracked and thunder rumbled. We swam and splashed and yelled, then trudged across the sand to the boardwalk and back into the dignified lobby of the Hyatt. Got our personal things from the coat-check clerk. Justine’s and Elke’s party dresses were little more than drenched rags plastered to their bodies. People looked at us with amused disapproval.
At floor seven they stepped out of the elevator and blew me kisses while the door shut.
—
After that first unusual night, Justine and I became a two-person swarm. We were together almost constantly. I’d been a bachelor all of my thirty-four years, hot and cold, all in or all out, eager or bored, faithless or betrayed or both. I was never one for meeting the family. Neither was she.
Six months later we were married on a large motor yacht, Cassandra, offshore of San Diego. It was as fine a wedding as I can picture—good people filled with goodwill, all thankful for the present and bullish on the future. A genuine celebration. Justine was ridiculously beautiful. The families got along. My mother and father were proud and blended in happily with the conspicuous wealth around them. As a former sailor, Dad loved the 248-foot Cassandra, with her helipad and “Balinese spa” and swimming pool. Grandpa Dick and Grandma Liz behaved themselves until well past midnight. We carried on late.
During the many congratulations I received that day, I secretly congratulated myself for having the good sense to love her.
—
Looking back I see our year and a half of life together as a half-crazy blur. Work hard, play hard. Sleep when you’re dead. I regret not having considered that sleep might come to one of us much sooner than we’d thought. But we were young and in love and death cast no shadow that we couldn’t outfly.
One Saturday in March, the first week of spring, two weeks shy of our anniversary, Justine woke up before me and came back to bed with two cups of coffee. She set one on my nightstand and took the other to her side and we propped up pillows and watched two orioles courting in the oak tree outside our window. “I’ve decided, Roland. I want to lay an egg, too.”
We’d been talking about that—Justine laying eggs—for weeks. She’d never come right out with it until then. I told her the same thing I’d said before. “I think you should.”
“You really do?”
“You’ll hatch it, I’ll bring the worms, and we can give him the whole bitchen world.”
“Give her the whole bitchen world.”
“Give all of them the whole bitchen world.”
“Well, that was easy, Daddy Rolando!”
We made love with full abandon and no protection twice that morning before breakfast. It is an entirely different experience when a life is in the making. Nothing like it. After which, Justine, still in my arms and breathing hard, said we had to go celebrate with the cloud gods.
But I’d made an appointment for early that afternoon with an old friend, down on his luck and needing my help with an employee who might also be an embezzler.
“Oh, let’s just fly instead,” she said.
“He’s a friend.”
“Then he’ll understand if you reschedule.”
“I did that already. Last week, when we went to the concert.”
“Just call him.”
I did, but my friend really did need my help, and professional pride wouldn’t allow me to postpone meeting him twice in a week’s time.
With a smile and a wave Justine drove her convertible down the Rancho de los Robles drive. Sunshine glinting on her hair, music blasting.
In the time we were together she mentioned her mortality just once. “I’m not scared of dying,” she said. “I’m scared of being forgotten.”
Now, as I approached my home on that same long winding drive on which I had last seen her alive, Justine was not forgotten. She was everywhere.
39
Coming up the drive, I saw that things were wrong at the rancho. A black SUV stood outside the main house. Wesley Gunn, running toward me, arms waving. Dick and Liz, near the SUV, gesticulating at each other. Lindsey and Burt outside casita three, in animated discussion.
I punched the truck around the last curve and skidded to a stop as Wesley reached the window. “Weird guy with a gun came looking for you. We got him cuffed and locked in the empty casita!”
“Get in.”
By the time we got there, all of the other tenants were now clustered outside casita three. Dick and Liz stood at one of the windows with their hands cupped, looking in. Lindsey leaned back against the front door, doing something on her phone. Dressed brightly for his thrice-weekly eighteen holes of golf, Burt waited on the front porch of the casita, feet spread and thick arms crossed. “I was putting my clubs in the trunk when he came racing up and demanded to see you,” said Burt. “Opened the gate and drove past the no-trespassing signs. Gave me half a look at some federal ID and the gun in his holster. So . . .”
I butted through Dick and Liz and looked through the window at Joe Bodart, sitting on the living room couch. Dark suit, walrus mustache, shiny head. His wrists were bound with two plastic ties. Glaring at me, he raised them for me to see.
“Company man is my guess,” said Burt. “I confiscated his gun and phone.”
“Langley could have your ass for this, Burt,” snapped Lindsey.
“I take full responsibility. But, Roland, that man approached me in a threatening manner. Disarming and restraining him was the most secure and humane course of action. I could easily have taken my driver to his knee.”
I looked through the window again. Bodart now stood in the middle of the small living room, raised his wrists to me again. I stepped inside and closed the door.
“PI, you’ve put yourself in a bad position.”
“At least I don’t look ridiculous.”
“If Clay Hickman has classified material from White Fire, he’s guilty of a crime. If he makes it public, that’s treason, and the DoD will send him to prison. He’ll beg for his cushy digs in the nuthouse again, believe me. What did he show you?”
“Nothing,” I lied.
Bodart looked down at the plastic ties. “Can you cut these fucking things off?”
“When I’m ready.”
Bodart stepped in closer. He was a big man, and heavy. I didn’t think he was foolish enough to kick me or take me down, but I was very ready. He stared at me as if in judgment, then moved away and sat back down on the couch. He looked past me at the Irregulars, who were no doubt watching the action through the window.
“I hope you’re a reasonable man, Ford. If not, you’ll get a lot of people hurt for no reason. Okay. Do you know where he is?”
“I haven’t seen him since he crawled out the bathroom window on you guys.”
“With your help. Which makes you a co-conspirator. I won’t hesitate to have you prosecuted, Ford. And we won’t stop until we have Clay and whatever his so-called evidence is. Top priority. We’ve been given wide latitude.”
“Latitude.”
“You know exactly what I mean. Cut these damned ties off me, will you?”
I shook my head no, returned his flat look. I was tempted to call him Wrangler, but Joe Bodart registered even higher on my scale of menace than Briggs Spencer. Especially where Clay Hickman was concerned. I pictured him in his cowboy togs at White Fire. I feigned ignorance of him because I had to. “What’s your name and who do you work for?”
“Bodart. And I work for the president of the United States. I have a number you can call. CIA, Special Activities Division. I’m the real deal, Ford, and I hate amateurs.”
“What do you want from me, except for what I don’t kn
ow?”
Bodart studied me. “I want Clay Hickman alive and well. In possession of no state secrets, no evidence of crimes committed at White Fire, and no plans to get vengeance on Spencer. Or whatever ‘white fire to Deimos’ is. I want to see Clay back in the hospital, which is probably the best place for him. And I want world peace, too.”
“So Hard Truth can come out next week and Spencer can tell the world what a hero he was in Romania. How he saved American lives and foiled terrorist plots.”
Bodart glanced at the window, then stood again. He went to the glass, pressed his face up close to Grandpa Dick’s. “Who’s that golfer?”
“Just a tenant.”
Bodart turned back to me. “Ford? Our nation needs to know the truth from people who were there. The Senate report on torture only got a tenth of it. But not the tenth that matters.”
“So you decide what matters.”
He looked at me with a hint of exasperation. “I defend my country by protecting the people above me.”
I thought back to Briggs Spencer’s “new” government, realizing that some of the new people wouldn’t be new at all. They would be the same people who had approved of White Fire, and places like it, in the first place. Rewritten the rules. Changed the game. They badly needed soldiers who could cover their butts or take the blame. “Does that make Clay more valuable to you dead, or alive?”
Bodart stepped in closer again and gave me an odd look—doubt and sympathy, maybe. His big mustache made him look somehow sad, but wise. “This is national security. Everyone’s expendable.”
“Like John Vazquez?”
A pause while Bodart’s wheels turned. I was fishing, but I could see that I’d gotten to him. I immediately regretted it. “What I’m trying to reveal to you is that if you have any good will or affection for Clay Hickman, deliver him to me. Quickly. Not to Spencer. Not to Arcadia security. Not to his shrink. To me. If you don’t do that, I can’t even come close to guaranteeing his safety.”
“But you’d kill him to get what he has.”
The Room of White Fire Page 23
