by Colin Harvey
LIV
Thursday
Shah received a call from Building Management. "Package for ya here."
"Who from?"
"No return address." The operative had to be genetically obese – no blue-collar could afford the calories to get that fat – with sweat-beaded forehead and a squeaky, exasperated voice: "Building policy is you come down, open it in the containment cage. Then only one person's hurt if all the sniffers and scanners missed anything." The call cut off before Shah could ask whether the guy had bio-scanned it, although Shah guessed the guy had, and ruled that threat out. Opening it in the cage was covering all bases.
It took Shah two minutes to walk down to the first floor, five times as long to track down the containment cage and its grumpy operative, who were out the back of the building facing a walled yard.
"Those walls would be nasty falling on you." Shah nodded in their direction.
"Ten feet thick," the fat man said. "Need a nuke to blow them down, and it'd be rerouted 'fore it ever got here." He opened the cage. "Here ya go." He ducked behind a low protective wall.
The package was an A5 padded packet. Shah put on latex gloves. "How come I get the treat?" He called. "Some crazy sends something and I get put in harm's way?"
"What'd ya expect? That I should?"
"Suppose the commissioner gets one? She come down herself?"
The operative laughed contemptuously. "She'd send a flunky like you to take the hit."
Shah muttered, "Yeah, fuck you too." He tore open the packet with trembling fingers, and felt inside.
It was another CD. Shah's eyebrows lifted. He shook the envelope but nothing else fell out. "It's safe to come out now."
Upstairs, Shah waited impatiently for the CD player to finish scanning the files. He was sorely tempted to press override, but if it did have an electronic virus, he'd be in deep shit.
Finally it came up all-clear. Checking the properties, Shah saw it was voice-only.
Shah hit play.
A voice said, "If you're in the public eye in any way, even if or you're just doing an everyday job, the hardest thing about it is that it makes vulnerable those you love."
"That's your voice," van Doorn said.
Shah frowned. "No, that's not me."
"That's you," van Doorn insisted, tapping his finger in a vain attempt to jog his memory. "I've heard it before. Get it over to CSU. It's unlikely the sender's dumb enough to leave any trace, but we ought to check."
Shah did so, putting a priority flag on the seal, which meant that he'd probably get it back in about two weeks rather than three, but it was the best he was going to get.
But van Doorn must have lit a firecracker under someone, for that afternoon CSU called Shah. That it was negative was unsurprising but still faintly disappointing, for all that Shah had expected no more. But the caller confirmed that the lab tests had confirmed the voice as Shah's. "I'd guess it was from when you were in your early twenties," the tech said, adding, "It's probably a compilation of two or more recordings stitched together."
Shah poked his head around van Doorn's door. "The voice is mine."
Van Doorn waved him in. "Found this."
Two clips arrived on Shah's eyepiece, and he felt again his concern about his mother, and the guilt at being a Muslim in post 9/11 New York. On the second one he talked about reprisals, but played it down. "It's the same for anyone in the public eye–"
Shah blew his cheeks out. Whoever sent it pieced it together from them."
"I got the records library looking at archaic media," van Doorn said. "I found a couple of old radio interviews you did, after a bit of a ruckus with some vigilantes that got picked up by the media."
"It's obvious who sent it: Kotian." Shah sighed. "It's a thinlyveiled threat."
"Against who?" van Doorn said. "It don't sound very threatening."
"It does if you factor in Leslyn and Doug," Shah said. "Or Aurora."
"The tranny hooker?" van Doorn said. He frowned, and drilled Shah with a look.
"Nothing to it, Cap," Shah said. "Just professional."
"Hey," Shah said, when Aurora finally opened her door to him. She had a new hairdo, swept forward much more than the old one. Shah wasn't sure that he liked it.
She smiled thinly and stepped back to allow him in.
Shah stared. "That a bruise?" He reached out to touch the cheekbone beneath the hair, but she shied away. "Hold still." Shah eased the hair away and hissed. "Kotian?"
Aurora's head inclined a centimeter. "He was half-mad with grief. I thought better me than his wife or children. He pays me…"
"Not enough," Shah said. "You could go into witness protection?"
"He can't help himself at the moment," Aurora said. "Until Sunny died, I thought that he was nothing like his father. Now I realize that Abhijit's learned how to act around civilized people, but it's only a veneer." Her laugh was brittle. "Anyway, it's irrelevant. I was just preparing to visit a client, so I have to get ready."
Shah watched her walk into her bedroom. Half-tempted to follow her, instead he sat on a couch, leaning forward with his hands clasped as if praying, elbows on his knees. He was still in the same position when Aurora emerged from her bedroom a few minutes later.
He tracked her as she moved across the room, fixing her earrings, patiently, unwavering, as if trying to see her properly for the first time.
She wore a short backless skirt, and slipped into high heels, still fiddling with the second earring, so her head was tilted.
"Can I kiss you?" he blurted.
For the first time since he'd arrived, she smiled. "I don't know if that's wise." Her smile slipped when he didn't return it. "I was joking."
He nodded, tried to smile.
"Come here," she said.
Shah crossed to where Aurora stood, left hand holding her ear, right elbow out in front of her. He looked up, and laughed. "It's weird, looking up to kiss someone."
Without speaking, Aurora stepped off her shoes. She smiled. "But I'm not kneeling."
They kissed until Aurora pushed him away. "I have to go."
"Kotian?"
Aurora shook her head. "Is that what this is about? Are you competing?" She frowned. "Are you just using me, to score against Kotian?"
Shah thought, she's as uncertain as me, even if it is for different reasons. He said, "If anyone's using you, it's Kotian. And he'll happily sacrifice you, if necessary."
"I don't know," Aurora said. "I don't know anything any more, Pete. Not even how much longer I have in this game." She sighed. "I shouldn't have kissed you."
"Tonight?"
"Or last night," Aurora said. "I don't usually get involved…"
"You want out?"
"I don't know. It's a young girl's game. I earn a lot of money, but I pay high taxes. Kotian takes a management fee, and I spend fortunes on clothes and beauty treatments."
Shah realized she'd misunderstood him, so switched to her topic. "Sex may be a lucrative profession but it's not a lifetime career."
"What is?" Aurora grinned. "Apart from being a cop."
"What would you do? If you could choose anything?"
"I've always wanted to help people."
"Couldn't you study part-time?"
Aurora shook her head. "He's so demanding. And he's gotten more possessive since you shot Sunny." She shivered.
"Cold?"
She shook her head. "Afraid. I'm attracted to you. But am I just substituting one older protector for another?" Before he could answer, she shooed him out, saying, "I have to go."
Shah knew they'd left the conversation unfinished. Sooner or later it needs finishing.
LV
Monday
"You bloody bastard creature!" Kotian lunged for the poodle. It bared its teeth, snarled and ducked under the bed.
"Abhijit!" Madeleine called from the doorway. "Why are you chasing Mitzi like that?" Out of respect to Sunny, she wore a black knee-length dress. It was unadorned and at lea
st ten years out of date, but despite that, and being more pear than hourglass-shaped nowadays, his wife was as self-confident as ever; she could stare anyone down – sometimes even Kotian.
But not now. Kotian held up his slipper. "That bloody thing has pissed in my shoe!"
Madeleine's hand went to fetch the dog's collar, but she gave no other sign of emotion. "That's awful. I'm sorry. But I will discipline her. Mitzi, come here!" The little dog ran to her and as Madeleine bent, leapt into her arms. "Mitzi is a naughty little dog. Bad girl." It was obviously meant to be a stern voice.
Kotian didn't realize he was baring his teeth until Madeleine said, "Heavens, Abhijit, you look positively feral." She motioned with her head to the lounge. "Come, have a drink."
He'd been in Washington a week, and all he done was sit on his ass in meetings, or drink at social occasions in which nonentities expressed wholly insincere condolences at the loss of a young man few of them knew, and fewer liked. But according to them the sun had all but shone out of Sunny's ass and the boy had been a cross between a saint and superhero. He wanted to spit at them "Where the bloody hell were you while he was alive?"
But that would be poor form and one didn't show poor form among the Georgetown cocktail set. So he nodded, and boiled inside. Until now.
It was all he could do not scream. He took a deep breath, and let it out. And again. Again. Deep breaths, his doctor had told him. "I'm going to go for a walk." He kicked off his remaining slipper so hard it flew through the air and thudded against the wall. He slid his feet into slip-on pumps. "I need some air."
"Was it the call?" Madeleine murmured; "The one just now?" Madeleine made no effort to move out of the doorway, so he would have to push past her. He didn't want to look her in the eyes, didn't want to see sympathy. His brain was boiling. "It was Harcourt," Kotian said. "He called to tell me that the police's precious Internal Affairs have decided that my son's murder was a legitimate shooting."
"Oh, Abhijit," Madeleine breathed. "My dear." She reached toward him, but didn't quite make contact. It summed up their marriage.
Kotian shook his head. "Their findings were that he was fleeing arrest and presented an unacceptable danger to the public. I might as well have not bothered complaining. Shah is off desk duty and back out on the streets, while I've buried my eldest boy."
Grief threatened to overwhelm him, and Kotian would not – could not – stand that. He would be strong. He was the Lion of Bangalore. Better to be angry at the whole rotten world than he should give way to tears. It wasn't Kotian's fault that the man he'd tried to deal with was as corrupt and rotten as everyone else. He'd thought that because Shah came from an Asian background he would understand. He'd forgotten that the man was a Muslim, and therefore as devious as any other Pan-Islamist. "It's not right!" Kotian bellowed. "Land of the free – hah! Justice in America is still a matter what race you are!"
"Abhijit," Madeleine said. "Come now. You're upset, but there's no call for such talk."
"Isn't there?" Kotian snarled. "God, you stand there all superior with your breeding and your manners and you lecture me about decorum even as my son rots in the ground?"
"Abhijit, stop it!" Even Madeleine backed away a little in the face in of his rage, not far, but into the hallway, allowing him access to the corridor. "It's nothing to do with race. Not all of those witnesses could have been biased. Perhaps justice has been done."
It was too much. She'd only married him for his money. Even their occasional coupling had been as bloodless as everything else about her, and now behind that stoic exterior she was laughing at his grief, like all the others were. She'd never liked Sunny.
He wasn't even aware of raising his hand. Madeleine's head jerked back, her eyepiece flew across the room, and blood from her nose spattered the wall and his light gray suit.
If it had been anyone but Madeleine, he would have taken her in his arms and consoled her, but she only flicked her hair back into place and stared at him, refusing to wipe the blood which trickled down across and around her mouth, down to her chin.
"Abhijit. In our twenty-four years of marriage I have accepted your boorishness, your infidelities, and your volatile temper because that is what our kind of people do. We endure." Taking a white handkerchief from her sleeve, she finally dabbed at the blood, and when she had staunched it, said in the same voice to tell the gardener where she wanted her flowers planting, "But if you ever do that again, I will very publicly divorce you. I hope that is clear."
"Oh yes," Kotian said. His eyes were wide and his voice shook with rage, but he had a measure of self-control back. "It's absolutely clear. It's probably pointless me apologizing–"
"Quite."
"–but I do, in any event. Not just for striking you which was inexcusable, but also for directing my anger at you at all. That was wrong." Kotian stalked past her and down the corridor, toward the lounge and beyond that, the door to the outside world.
"Abhijit!" Madeleine called, voice quavering ever so slightly for the first time he could ever remember. "Abhijit, you won't do anything foolish, will you? Please! Abhijit!"
Kotian rounded the corner in the corridor, and stopped to adjust his jacket before leaving the house. A cold front had settled over Washington, so he couldn't venture outside without it. His jaw clenched so tightly that it hurt. That CD was just a taster of what's to come, my friend Shah. He bared his teeth in a cold smile.
LVI
You disembark from the Hindustan Aeronautics HA-777 with your shirt sticking to your back. Your teeth are furry, when you sniff your pits they stink, and the miniatures of champagne courtesy of the pretty stewardess stuffed into your pockets distend your jacket. You stop briefly in Arrivals to shunt them into your carrier bag, so you don't clink at the body searches, and resume. Gulbar told you, "Don't stop too long in the arrivals hall: they have cameras everywhere, looking for anything different." Welcome to LAX 9 the signs say. While you rubber-neck them you check for the micro-cams.
The long lines of people of Middle-Eastern and South American origin snaking around the block from passport control are in stark contrast to those of Caucasian, Chinese and Japanese. The Pacific Nations pump too much money into the Californian economy to risk offending them, whereas the lunatic remnants of Shining Path Onward still fighting their obsolete guerilla war have recently bombed Yanqui installations in Peru and added themselves to the Axis of Terror lists.
You're somewhere in between. India has too much at stake in the country to risk offending its citizens, but there's no hiding the fact that you're brown-skinned, even if it is a very light brown. So the numbers of customs people processing your flight are greater than the one security man processing the six hundred arrivals from Lima, or Buenos Aires, or whatever dump it is.
As you near the next available kiosk, you feel your gut clench. Not now, you think. It should be at least twenty-four hours before you need to use the washroom.
A Latino woman, so very similar to the shuffling zombies in the Lima/Buenos Aires/Wherever queue holds out her hand. "What's the purpose of your visit… sir?"
You show her your visa and work permits. "I am joining my Uncle Vinod in his business in Baltimore," you burble. There is a Vinod in Baltimore, but he's no more your uncle than the President. You'll be a free man when this job is done, and what's more a free man in what is still – just – the richest country on earth. You wonder what she would say if you told her, "The purpose of my visit is to shit a kilo of heroin in a sealed bag into one of your American toilets tomorrow morning." You decide it's better not to find out.
Nonetheless you smile at the thought, and it seems to offend her, but of course your papers are in order. She stamps the papers with furious purpose. "Welcome to the United States of America, Mr Kotian. Good luck in your new career."
LVII
Tuesday
Things moved quickly: At eleven o'clock van Doorn called Shah and Bailey. "You're both back in the field."
"What about Stickel, sir?"
Bailey said. She seemed to have hardened since the shooting, as if the event had burned away her uncertainty. Shah wasn't sure that she hadn't lost something else with it. Her innocence. He felt sad for a moment.
But as soon as the lieutenant hung up, they both did a little jig around the desk.
"Thanks," Shah said. For saving me, from a bullet, or a disciplinary hearing, depending how things had panned out.
"De nada," Bailey said, suddenly shy again. Then she added, with a hint of defiance. "I couldn't afford to lose a partner so early in my career."
