"Very well," he said to Diane, but not without annoyance. It was as rude to tell someone that his house stank as it was to comment on the owner’s own malodorous hygiene. This would not usually bother Ari who, in the Army and on covert field operations, had been surrounded by men so pongy they could make a camel retch. It was the bold rudeness of the child that nonplussed him. Bad girls in Baghdad got whipped as a matter of course. Really bad girls got much worse. Diane’s behavior bordered on the perverse. Ari gave her the same look that had sent recalcitrant soldiers unquestioningly to their deaths.
She shrugged it off. "Oop-de-doo-doo. That’s cat poop."
"No it isn’t."
"I know cat poop."
Ari thought this was probably true. If he conceded this point, however, her argument would be clinched. Yes, her beloved Marmaduke was in the house. Ari called him Sphinx. He found it hard to admit that he had grown fond of the filthy beast, or at least dependent upon him. Whenever Sphinx was not there to curl up alongside Ari on his mattress, he found it hard to sleep. But denying that the smell came from cat droppings meant admitting he ate food that smelled like cat droppings.
Diane was leaning past his legs for a better look inside the living room.
"You don’t have much stuff." She cocked her head the other way. "You don’t have any stuff. Are you poor?"
"Io sono povero in canna."
"Huh?" she said, looking at him suspiciously.
"It means, ‘where are your parents and why aren’t you with them’?"
"They’re divorced. Mom’s at work and Dad’s wherever."
"Then where is your…nursemaid?"
"What’s that?"
"Maybe I chose the wrong word. ‘Nanny’?"
"You better learn English if you’re going to live around here. Everything’s English around here."
"I’ll bear that in mind," said Ari, thinking that you couldn’t get more English than ‘nanny’. When Diane tried to muzzle her way past his legs, he was reminded of a mastiff he had encountered at the Republican Palace. This particular dog had been trained to rip out throats and testicles, talents he could almost imagine belonging in this girl’s repertoire.
"It’s near here. I can tell. It’s—" She let out a shout and bolted into the living room.
"Bint saie’a!" Ari bellowed, racing behind her.
"Here!" she exclaimed, pointing.
"Stop this! You have to leave!" But he was brought up short when he saw the pile of cat feces against the baseboard, directly under the air register where Ari had discovered a murder weapon. Had Sphinx been making a comment on the lurid history of the house and the untimely demise of his former masters?
"See!" Diane demanded, as if Ari was the one with criminal bowels.
"Yes," he said. But don’t rub my nose in it….
"But that’s not all," the girl said with all the concentration of an artist in hot pursuit of inspiration. Before Ari could stop her, she had skipped into the short hall between the kitchen and stairs. "Oh!"
Ari raced into the hall to find her gawking at the kitty litter box.
"Eeew! Oop-de-doo-doo-doo! Don’t you ever scoop?"
"What do you mean?"
"Scoop the kitty poop!"
Ari looked over her head and noted the numerous dark clumps and soggy swaths of urine. He sniffed. Yes, what he had thought was dinner was, instead…this.
"No wonder Marmaduke did it on the floor. You need to clean out the box. Didn’t you know?"
The need to shovel feline excrement out of the box had never occurred to Ari, although now it seemed self-evident. Sphinx had spent many of his days and nights wandering the woods, or visiting Diane, or else the problem would have become apparent far sooner.
"You have a scoop," the girl continued, bending down and touching the vented shovel leaning against the box. "It’s never been used!"
The scoop had come with the litter box. Ari had thought it was a complimentary kitchen utensil, like the free prizes that used to come in Cracker Jack boxes. Before he could speak…before he could come up with something that would not make him sound like an absolute fool…a yellow phantom streaked down the stairs.
"Marmaduke!"
"Sphinx!"
They rushed into the living room but the cat was gone. Familiar with the cat’s primary interests, Ari outwitted the girl by pointing at the open door, then slipping through the dining room into the kitchen.
She wasn’t tricked for long. She found Ari standing next to the refrigerator, holding the cat in his arms.
"Marmaduke!" she said soulfully. When the cat began to squirm, Ari tightened his hold. "Stop, you’re hurting him!"
How often we claim moral righteousness to suit our ends, Ari thought sourly.
"He’s just hungry," he said.
"He wants to come to me!" Diane shot back. "Get your own cat!"
"But this is his home," Ari tried to reason as Sphinx pinked his forearm with a single extended claw. And then he mentally rolled his eyes in dismay. He had touched on a topic not suitable for children: the murder of children. Joshua and William Riggins had died upstairs, one by an accidental drug overdose, the other shot by his own mother, who had in turn been killed by her father. It had been worthy of Greek tragedy (which Ari thought also unsuitable for girls like Diane), heavily plotted with incest and eye-gouging and other unsavory topics, such as the sacrifice of Iphigenia—a very well-behaved girl.
"I know he used to live here," said Diane. "But he’s gotten over all that and moved on."
Forget psychic wounds. The deaths of the Riggins boys had, for Diane, been no more than a psychic scratch. Had her parents’ divorce toughened her?
"He moved back," he said. "Obviously."
"But he was with me all last week," Diane complained. "You tricked him into coming back here! I bet I can prove it. Where’s your family? They would tell the truth."
Now she was the one opening wounds. Ari had lost two boys during the invasion of 2003. The third was with his mother in Iceland, where she lay blind and mangled after being wounded by the same CBU that had killed his youngest son. They had been sent there when Ari came to the U.S. The reason for this was not quite specious, but not entirely legitimate, either. There were about 90,000 Iraq-born immigrants now in this country, most of them of Chaldean and Assyrian descent. They had settled, for the most part, in and around Chicago, which was the location of the oldest and largest community of American-born Iraqis. Though carefully vetted by the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, a few bad eggs would inevitably squirm through the net. More likely, a perfectly honest man would be coerced by threats to his family back in the homeland. Hunting down a former member of Saddam Hussein’s Special Security Organization who was now collaborating with the Americans would have a high priority on any insurgent’s list. Keeping Rana and Qasim half an ocean away was intended to protect them from becoming collateral victims in case Ghaith/Ari was located by the enemy. But the bonus for the Americans was that they had the perfect whip to keep Ari cooperative. One day, he might be allowed to join what remained of his family. If.
"My wife and son are staying with a sick relative."
"In Italy? Mr. Nottoway says you’re Italian."
"In Sicily, yes," said Ari, sticking to the cover story Karen Sylvester had concocted.
"Sicily?" Diane shivered as the cold air coming through the open front door reached the kitchen.
"Have you ever seen a map of Italy?" When she nodded, he continued: "You’ve seen how it’s shaped like a big boot, and the boot is kicking a football?" She thought a moment, then nodded again. He concluded: "I’m from the football that’s being kicked."
"Well…I’m sorry you’re all alone. But so am I, most of the time."
Her eyes darkened and Ari realized he was finally witnessing genuine emotion in the girl. Yela’an, he thought bitterly. What a country, where immigrants and little girls had only pets as families. But he remained resolute. "I’m sorry, Diane. I can imagine
your situation. But Sphinx belongs—"
Tired of being manhandled, the cat suddenly put its all into escaping. Ari fought Sphinx for a moment, but let go when Diane gave a cry of dismay and repeated, "You’re hurting him!"
Sphinx leapt onto the floor and dashed into the dining room.
"He’s getting out!"
But when they followed, they found Sphinx hesitating at the threshold. Sensing the frigid air, he was having second thoughts about the benefits of freedom. Not wanting to scare him outdoors, Ari and Diane kept their distance.
"See?" said Ari. "He wants to stay."
"He wants to stay warm. My house is warmer than this. And we’ve got furniture he can sleep on. I’ve got a scratching post, too."
This was new to Ari. A scratching post? A host of improbabilities flew through his mind, but he had no desire to once again put his ignorance on display before this girl.
"Not everything revolves around comfort," said Ari, a little pompously.
She spent a moment rolling this around in her mind. Physical comfort was the norm for her and she was struggling to think of a contrasting situation.
A car door slammed in the street. This spooked Sphinx, who made a dash for the stairs. With striking agility, Diane swooped down and trapped him against the floor. Ari moved in to assist—not her, but the cat. It was obvious to him that Sphinx was running for the safety of the bedroom.
"Stop!" the girl cried out loudly, trying to intimidate the adult with an emotional childburst.
"Let him go!" Ari commanded.
"You're killing me!"
Ari was aghast at this exaggeration, especially as he had not touched her. He remembered clearly Deputy Sylvester's admonition against approaching children in this country, where strangers (and especially strange men) were automatically assumed to be perverts. Karen had told him this just minutes before he grabbed her by the throat with such violence that she was sent to the hospital.
Ari did not back away. The girl who had complained that he was holding the cat too tightly was now pressing him against the floorboards with all her might. Ari doubted she was actually injuring Sphinx. It was more likely that he would scratch out her eyes in the tussle. Ari was reaching down to pull her hands away—she was in his house uninvited, after all—when there was a cough at the door.
Ari was in a half-crouch. He was caught dead to rights, without his gun, with an innocent girl who would perish with him. He jumped sideways from the crouch, ready to come up with arms raised. But he lost his balance and landed on his seat. Diane began to laugh at the spectacle, but fell silent when she saw the newcomers.
Officers Jackson and Mangioni were staring down at them.
Ari was not entirely relieved. He did not think the officers were in the pay of Al-Qaeda and planning to assassinate him. Nor were they (so far as he knew) involved with the Kayak Express, a small-time drug operation that Ari had put out of business—although this was problematic, since their superior had been very much involved. Former members of the former Express might be looking for revenge against the irksome foreigner who had shamed and robbed them. In Iraq, a similar scenario would have played out in a bloodbath.
Ari was well-versed in both the subtle and extreme expressions of killers, and he could say with reasonable certainty that neither of the policemen had murder in mind. They might, however, be concerned about what he was doing on the floor with a small girl.
"He’s trying to steal my cat!" Diane shrieked.
The officers were instantly put at ease by her melodramatic performance. Her overacting would not curry favor with this particular audience. Jackson and Mangioni shared several ‘tsks’.
"I’m not surprised," said Mangioni. "Mr. Ciminon here is a notorious cat burglar."
Ari clocked his eyes in warning, saying, "Diane is my neighbor."
Mangioni got the message. It would be poor public relations to allow a false rumor about a man to be broadcasted throughout that man’s neighborhood. And a little girl was just the type to start a ball like that rolling.
"Actually, Diane, I’m just funning you. As you can see, Mr. Ciminon is from a different land, and he doesn’t quite comprehend our ways."
That’s not much of an improvement, Ari thought.
But the girl nodded quickly. "That’s it! He doesn’t understand that a cat can belong to someone."
"I…" Ari raised his hand, palm out, an incredibly rude gesture in his country but one which Americans seemed to approve of.
Diane cut him off before he could present his version of the dispute.
"He can’t even speak English. He talks like Mr. Ed."
The policemen chuckled at the reference, although it eluded Ari. Sensing his bemusement, Mangioni said, "Mr. Ed is a talking horse, Mr. Ciminon.
Which left Ari even more in the dark. He felt he had no choice but to watch helplessly as Diane shifted pressure off Sphinx and tumbled him deftly into her arms. For some reason the cat declined to fight, despite Ari’s mental urging.
"Say ‘good-bye’, Marmaduke," the girl said brightly as she carried the cat out the door. Ari felt his heart go flat.
"Good-bye, Diane and Marmaduke," said Jackson.
"You dodged a bullet there, Mr. Ciminon," said Mangioni. "I wish I could get rid of my cat infestation as easily. But my kids…" He nodded at the departing girl as though she was one of his brood.
Ari grimaced as he stood. Had he pulled a back muscle? After all the fights he had been in, the irony of injuring himself while chasing a cat was not lost on him.
"Could you explain ‘funning’?" he said.
"Joshing, joking," Mangioni answered amiably. "I guess it’s not proper grammar." He glanced at his partner. "Is it?"
"Not my department," said Jackson, who was never quite free of surliness. Ari could not tell if this was the result of a philosophical world view, or simply dyspepsia. Jackson had a pouch in his hand. If he was here on some kind of business, Ari did not want it conducted inside his house. The smell embarrassed him and the gun on his refrigerator could get him arrested.
"You want to speak to me about something?" he inquired politely. "Maybe we should talk outside. I’ve had an accident in the kitchen."
"You seem to have a lot of those," Jackson smirked. They had once entered his house to find the rooms filled with smoke. Ari had been attempting to cook masgouf, unaware that the stove’s exhaust tube was blocked by Moria Riggins’ stash of cocaine.
As soon as he closed the door behind him, Ari realized the impracticality of his suggestion. It would be hard to hold a conversation if their teeth were chattering.
"You want to get a coat?" inquired Jackson.
"Or we can sit in the patrol car," Mangioni offered.
Ari nodded towards the street and they proceeded down the sidewalk. He glanced up Beach Court Lane to see if Sphinx had made his escape, but Diane was already out of sight.
Jackson held open the back door of the patrol car, handing Ari the pouch as he got in. "We’ll have to let you out," he said as he closed the door. "There’s no handle inside."
The officers slid into their front seats. The engine was running and the heater going full blast. Ari noted the new flowers next to the mailbox. Jackson and Mangioni had been placing these commemorative mementoes at the same spot for just over a year now, in memory of the Riggins family. The man who had instigated the practice was now dead. They must be doing this out of habit. But when Ari looked more closely, he realized the flowers were, for the first time, plastic. This made sense in the winter, but he could not shrug off the sense that the bogus flowers represented artificial sentiment. He was sure this was the last bouquet, that Jackson and Mangioni were finished with tributes. Yet they had been on the scene when the bodies were discovered. Not the first ones, as it turned out, but early enough to catch a hint of the truth.
The two men up front did not appear to know how to begin. Ari started to unzip the pouch.
"You don’t have to open that," said Mangioni nervousl
y. "Not if you don’t want to."
"I don’t understand. I had the impression you wanted me to study the contents."
"We do, but…" Mangioni had turned in his seat and was studying Ari. "Are you all right, Mr. Ciminon? I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you don’t look well."
Ari bushed this off with a brusque wave of the hand. "A little problem with adjusting to American food."
"What?" Mangioni grinned. "Are you saying Italian isn’t American?"
It was a major slip. For a moment, Ari had forgotten that these men believed he was from Sicily. Pizza was not as alien here as shakshouka. They wouldn’t know that the gustatory leap was far greater than they had been led to believe. However, the fact that the metropolitan police and U.S. Marshals Service were not in sync with each other gave Ari some measure of comfort. He was accustomed to a culture of secrecy and thuggish bureaucratic infighting.
"Let’s get on with it," Jackson said impatiently.
"I just want him to be prepared," Mangioni responded, frowning. "It’s pretty grisly, right? Not everybody can stomach this sort of thing." He turned back to Ari. "What’s in the pouch are pictures of Louis Carrington after he shot himself."
"Yes?" said Ari, his interest piqued. Detective Louis B. Carrington had been intimately involved with the Riggins family, and had in part been the death of them. Ari concocted an expression of mild dismay, with a touch of disgust thrown in—just to show the policemen that he was as sickened as they presumably were by Carrington’s suicide; nor was he so depraved as to relish gory images.
"There’s a summary from the police report, too," said Jackson.
"There’s not much detail." Mangioni gave him a cryptic look. "But you don’t seem to need much in the way of detail, do you?"
Although the bodies and every trace of evidence (not to mention every stick of furniture) had been removed long before Ari arrived at Beach Court Lane, he had been able (with Sphinx and a little unofficial help from Karen Sylvester) to piece together the solution to the crime. In fact, he had discovered far more than Karen intended.
The Godless One Page 4
