140914383X

by Raymond Khoury

  As she approached, I intercepted her as gracefully and non-threateningly as I could managed.

  “Faye?”

  She paused and nodded, her face giving absolutely nothing away. I guess she’d had years to practice that skill.

  “I’m Sean Reilly, Colin’s son.” I watched and saw her eyes fill with recognition, then surprise, before settling on a forced confusion. “Can we please talk? Just for a few minutes?”

  She made a move to get past me. “I don’t know who that is.”

  I put my arm out while giving her a relaxed, warm smile. “I hope you lie better in court.”

  She fixed me with a firm, no-nonsense look. “I never lie in court. I leave that to the cops.” She scrutinized me more closely. “You’re a cop yourself, aren’t you?”

  She tried to step around me again, but I blocked her. “Faye—”

  “I’m expected in court.”

  I knew I had only one chance to get through to her.

  “I’m not a cop,” I told her. “I’m with the FBI. And from what I’ve read, you and I share something else with my dad. Your whole life is about fighting for justice in the face of huge odds. About the greater good rather than personal gain. He would have been proud of you. I hope he’d be proud of me, too.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “What do you want?”

  “Just to talk. Give me ten minutes. Please.”

  Her eyes flicked down to her watch then back to me. She sighed. “OK. Ten minutes. This way.”

  She gestured east along the street and we headed in that direction. She eyed me as we walked, sizing me up, but more than that—like she was looking for something in me. It made me wonder if, somewhere in her mind, she was twenty-four again and walking with my dad.

  “You’re from here, aren’t you?”

  “Look, I know you probably know more about me than I remember about myself. Just do me a favor and don’t tell me how, OK? ’Cause I’d really rather not know.”

  We covered the block in silence. I thought about the fine line between how a tragedy can either define your life—make everything about that one moment—or give your life crystal-clear definition, as it seemed to have had with Faye. The jury was still out on which applied to me, because although my life had definition for many years, over the past few months everything had become defined by what had happened to Alex and by my father’s suicide. I just hoped there was a way to get back to the other side.

  I followed her across Twelfth Street and into the Reading Terminal Market, which occupied the lower levels of a nineteenth-century train shed. She led me through the market stalls—most of them only just open for the day—till we arrived at Old City Coffee.

  I asked her what she wanted and ordered, then carried our coffees over to an empty table at the edge of the seating area where we took seats opposite each other. She sat in silence for a moment, then turned toward me.

  “You look like him,” she said as her gaze danced around my face. “Not just the eyes. The expression.”

  I nodded, half-smiling. “So I hear.” I paused for a breath, then I asked her, “Were you together?”

  Much as she tried to mask it, I could see her breath catch and her eyes flare. “You don’t mince words, do you?”

  “I’m sorry, but—I wouldn’t be here if this wasn’t important. And I’m not some troubled soul looking for some kind of closure related to his parents, believe me. This has to do with an investigation.”

  “Into what?”

  “His death.”

  This time, she didn’t try to hide her surprise. “What are you talking about? And why now, after all these years?”

  “Tell me about you and him first,” I said.

  A solemn sadness spread across her face. “We were together,” she said, averting my gaze. “Very much so.”

  Even though I suspected as much, the stark, unabashed confirmation still hollowed out my stomach. The idea of my dad, a dad I hardly got to know, someone I’d idealized despite the way he died, maybe even more so because of it, the idea of him, leading a double life, cheating on my mom—it was a tough image to accept, even after all this time.

  I asked, “How long were you together?”

  “Just over a year,” she answered without hesitation. “I’m sorry if this is disappointing to you, but I feel you want the truth.”

  “I do. And I appreciate your candor.”

  She nodded and looked away, into the distance. “I never recovered, you know. He was very special. A big part of me died with him. I never forgave myself either.”

  “For what?”

  She took a strengthening sip of coffee. “Your dad was drifting through life when I met him, Sean. He and your mother . . . they loved each other, but they weren’t in love. Do you understand what that means? I mean, really understand?”

  “Time affects all couples, married or not,” I countered. “It’s only human, right?”

  “Yes, but your dad . . . he was a man of passion.” She visibly blushed, then shook her head. “I don’t mean it that way,” she said. “Not that he wasn’t—what I mean is, he expected a lot out of life. Big gulps of it. And, over time, his life with your mom had gone stale. A lot of it was her fault, he felt.” She paused a bit, hesitated, then added, “You know she had a miscarriage?”

  And the hits keep on coming. I had no idea. “No.”

  “I’m sorry . . . she did. A girl. Six months in. She would have been around four years younger than you.” She took a breath, watching me, clearly judging whether to keep going. “It was bad. Colin said she was never the same after that. He said there was a sadness in her that was always there. And Colin couldn’t blame her for it. It was just bad luck. But it took its toll on them. On him, too, first because of the miscarriage, then because of how your mom couldn’t come out of it. I mean, he understood she’d feel devastated. He was too. But, year after year, she stayed that way. He could see it in her eyes. He ended up morose, dour. His spark was gone.”

  “And that changed when you came into his life?”

  She seemed increasingly uncomfortable.

  “Please, Faye,” I said. “It’s fine. I’m not judging you, not at all. I just need to know. It’s important.”

  She nodded, willing herself to keep going. “He came back to life. He told me that’s how he felt, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave your mother. Or you. He said it was out of the question. He cared for you both too much. He couldn’t do it.”

  “But you wanted him to?”

  I watched as she allowed the memories to rise to the surface—feelings she maybe hadn’t allowed herself for over three decades. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want him all to myself. But, above all, I wanted him to be happy. And part of his appeal was about how good a person he was. I know it sounds perverse, but his firm commitment to you both—it just made me want him more. And then, a few weeks before he died, he told me he’d decided to leave your mom. He was worried about her—worried about you, even more—but he felt he only had one life to live and he’d done everything he could to try and make things better and that maybe she’d be happier having a fresh start with someone else, without that baggage. He asked if I’d wait for him to find the right moment to do it. I know, a lot of guys say that, right? It’s like Meg Ryan’s friend in When Harry Met Sally, the pathetic mistress who’s totally delusional about her guy leaving his wife for her and they keep reminding her, ‘He’s never going to leave her for you.’ But your dad wasn’t like that. He wasn’t lying about that. And I was in no rush.” She dropped her eyes, and her voice broke a touch. “Afterwards, I felt so guilty about what happened. I thought that maybe if nothing had happened between us he wouldn’t have . . . I never imagined it would make him do what he did.”

  Only then did I see the true sense of loss in her eyes. Maybe still as raw as the moment she heard Colin was dead. A bottomless chasm that could never be filled.

  Still, something wasn’t sitting right. “That’s why you feel guil
ty? You think he killed himself because he couldn’t handle his double life or the thought of leaving my mom?”

  “Well, what else could I think? It was the only way I could make sense of it. I mean, he was a strong man. Clear-thinking. He seemed to be in control; he had two separate, parallel lives, and he seemed OK with how he was going to handle it. But I couldn’t see any other reason why he’d do it, and I could never talk about it, not to anyone. No one knew. Isn’t that why you’re asking me all this?”

  “You think that was the cause of his depression?”

  “What depression?”

  “He was seeing a shrink in the months before he died. He was diagnosed with clinical depression. He was being treated for it.”

  “Nonsense. Colin wasn’t depressed. Conflicted, yes. Torn, maybe. But depressed? No way. Not at all.” She said it with total conviction. “I would have known. He was at peace with it. I mean, he felt bad about what he was going to do and about me having to wait, but like I said, I was in no rush. I was very young. I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. Little did I know how deeply he’d already affected me.” She sat back, visibly relishing some lost memory. “He was happy when he was with me. We were happy.” Emphasis on the “we.”

  Right then, I think she wished she’d been more tactful.

  I looked away, gave her some space to recover her poise. “He certainly wasn’t seeing any therapist,” she added, her tone firm. “I would have known about it.”

  “My mother didn’t know. I’m pretty sure she didn’t know about you either. The man could keep secrets.”

  “Not from me, believe me. Not about something personal like that.”

  “Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to tell the shrink about you, and since he couldn’t find a reason for his being depressed, the shrink ascribed it to clinical depression. It’s in the coroner’s report. My mom met the shrink. I mean, he did kill himself—or that’s what everyone accepted at the time.”

  “But you think otherwise?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Her eyes flared wide. “You think he was murdered?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I’d been thinking about this all night. If he had a lover and felt conflicted about it, it could explain a depression and maybe, maybe, the suicide. But if he’d been planning to leave my mom—and me—for her, then it underlined my suspicions. Someone with plans to make a new life with his lover doesn’t go blow his brains out. And from what Faye was telling me, he didn’t seem overly troubled by it. Certainly nowhere near enough to even begin to justify a suicide.

  I asked, “What can you tell me about the days or weeks leading up to his death? Was there anything particular he was involved with?”

  “Something that he’d kill himself about? Or that others would want to kill him for?”

  “Maybe.”

  She finished her cup as she thought about it. “He was very focused on all the big issues facing the country, and it wasn’t a good time,” she said. “We were in a deep recession. Inflation, interest rates, oil prices—they were big problems. And that was the year of the presidential election, Reagan against Carter, a big showdown . . . they had opposing ideals, you were too young to really know about it. They were troubled times. Abroad, there was the hostage crisis in Iran.”

  “I remember watching it on the news on TV with him and my mom,” I said.

  “Yeah, it was a big deal at the time.” A wistful look brightened her face. “I thought of him when I saw Argo, you know. Poor Colin. It was like the whole country was under his watch, he took so much to heart.”

  “But nothing specific?”

  “It was all on his radar. It was his nature.”

  “There had to be something out of the ordinary? Something that struck home more than the rest?”

  “You’ve got to understand, his work involved a lot of confidential meetings, things he couldn’t and wouldn’t talk to me about. I mean, a few weeks before he died, an old college buddy of his got in touch and he wanted me to meet him. It was like a fresh part of his life that he could involve me in, a part of his past he didn’t need to exclude me from. We could actually go out and socialize with him, he didn’t need to hide me with him since the guy didn’t even live in the US. And it was great to meet him, to be out with Colin openly. We went out for drinks. But it wasn’t just a social call, they were working on something together, and I couldn’t be part of that. Which was frustrating, because his friend was fun and I wanted to hear more about his life and his travels, especially with that accent. Then a couple of weeks later, Colin was dead. I didn’t understand it then and I still don’t understand it now, though it set me on a path. That’s how life works.”

  Something about what she said pinged deep inside some crevasse in my brain. “What accent?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “His friend. What accent did he have?”

  “Oh,” she recalled. “Portuguese. He was from Portugal. And I love the accent, it’s like Brazilian, I’ve sung along to it for years without knowing what the words mean, salsa and bossa nova, Antonio Carlos Jobim and—”

  The crevasse was lighting up like lava was about to burst out of it. “Portuguese? What was his name? Do you remember?”

  Her nose crinkled under the effort of dredging her memory for a long-lost name, then I said, “Camacho? Octavio Camacho?”

  Her face recoiled with surprise. “Yes, exactly. How do you know that?”

  43

  Camacho. The Portuguese investigative reporter whose name Kurt and Gigi had dug up in that Corrigan-linked CIA dossier and who died in a rock climbing accident the same year my dad did. I needed to check on the date of his death, but I was sure it was within weeks, if not days, of my dad’s death.

  They knew each other. More than that—they were old college buddies.

  I was having trouble controlling my internal expletives. What the hell had they been discussing? And why did they both die? My gut was telling me they were both killed to silence them, but ever since that night at Nick’s his warnings about finding out my dad was actually part of something bad were still gnawing at me.

  Right now, though, I had to downplay it with Faye. I didn’t want to expose her to any danger and so I really didn’t need her getting all overzealous about finding out what really happened to my dad. One obsessed vigilante was enough.

  “I just remember my parents talking about him,” I said. “It’s the kind of unusual name that stays with you.” Moving her away from that, I asked, “You don’t know what they were working on?”

  “No. I just know it was grave. It consumed Colin for days, but he wouldn’t tell me what was going on. All I know is that he was struggling with a major decision. Why not ask Octavio? I’m sure you could track him down?”

  I was surprised that she didn’t seem to know that Camacho was dead. Either he’d died after my dad did—and given that it wasn’t even noteworthy news in Portugal, she would have been oblivious to it here in the US. On the other hand, if he died before my dad, surely my dad would have known and told her about it? She would have known even if he hadn’t told her—unless he didn’t want her to know.

  Nick’s words again, like stubborn fleas, scratching away at me.

  There was nothing more to learn here. I drained my mug and we both got up to leave; I told her it was great to meet her, despite the circumstances and the bulk of our chat.

  As we stepped outside, she asked, “Will you let me know what you find out?”

  I wasn’t sure, but I still said, “Absolutely.”

  As I walked away, I decided I would. I couldn’t help feeling like I was trying to learn the truth for her as much as for my mom and myself.

  I checked the clock on the dash as I got in the BMW and called Gigi and Kurt. I asked them to redouble their efforts on Camacho. Clearly, he was key to figuring out what happened to my dad.

  Kurt said he had some news for me: he’d managed to hack into the computer in the office of Rossetti’s b
oss and pull out his online search history for the days leading up to his death. There was a lot there, as you’d expect for a newspaper editor, one working for a top paper. I said we’d look at it together when I got back and I made myself comfortable as I set out on the two-and-a-half hour drive down to Bethesda, Maryland and the second ghost from a murky past that Kurt and Gigi had unearthed for me.

  It was time to have a chat with Dr. Ralph Orford and see what he had to say about my dad’s state of mind.

  Sandman arrived at Reagan National at twenty past nine in the morning. He’d slept for almost the entire two hours and twenty-five minutes, waking only as the jet touched down. There was a car waiting for him at Garage A, key in the usual place, a field kit locked in the trunk.

  He hadn’t bothered waiting for the EMT, Fire Rescue and Miami PD to descend on the crash site, hadn’t needed confirmation that Siddle was dead. The building that now housed the Lamborghini was so damaged by the collision that the senior Fire Rescue officer had immediately declared it unsafe and evacuated the apartments on the second and third floors. In terms of collateral damage, it was a less than fitting tribute to a man who had killed so many without blinking.

  By the time Sandman had driven back to Miami International it was after four in the morning. He used the two hours before check in to read the file on his next assignment.

  He knew the psychiatrist by reputation, if not personally. As he always did, Sandman would get inside the head of his target, but in this case it would be quite impossible to achieve this at a level anywhere approaching the capabilities of the target himself.