Slowly he bent down to the scope’s eyepiece. At first the images were fuzzy, but when he adjusted the focus, the distant window frame leapt into sharp view, the open weave of the curtains like a patchwork gauze. He was looking into an upstairs bedroom of Yarnell’s house. From this angle he could only see the forward half of the room. A man and a woman stood locked in an embrace next to a four-poster bed. It was a dangerous game they were playing. They had probably snuck off, leaving the others downstairs. The man’s back was toward the window. When they parted, McGarvey was looking into the face of his ex-wife. Because of the effects of the infrared scope, Kathleen looked flushed, which in any event, he supposed she was. The man half turned, as if by request, giving McGarvey a clear view of him. Yarnell.
Oh, Kathleen, he thought. She’d always played dangerous games, but this time she could not know how precarious her position really was. For her as well as for Elizabeth. With nothing to lose, nothing seemed important. All of a sudden he felt a rush of protectiveness toward his ex-wife, and he didn’t know why.
“What is it, Mr. McGarvey?” Lorraine asked.
Yarnell tenderly caressed Kathleen’s cheek with his fingertips, and then kissed her forehead, her nose and again her lips, as if she were the most important person in the world to him, as if this were the most important moment, as if no one else in the world existed. Even from here McGarvey could feel the man’s power. Kathleen would be helpless. Except, he suspected, she’d gone looking for it. But she didn’t know, she could not know Yarnell’s power.
Lorraine was beside him. “Is it your ex-wife?” she asked softly.
McGarvey looked up into her eyes. She seemed like a kind, sensitive girl, genuinely concerned for him. She was one of the good ones, he supposed, who cared. Unless she watched her step very carefully, she wouldn’t last long in this business. The kind ones never did. There was no room for such sentiment.
“She’s with Yarnell,” he said, and he stepped away from the scope.
Lorraine watched him for a moment or two. “She couldn’t know about him.”
“I don’t think so.”
Lorraine looked through the scope for just a second, then straightened up. “Looks like they’re putting on a show down there.” She turned to Sheets. “We’ll stick around at least until Mr. Trotter shows up. Did he say when?”
Sheets had already backed off for whatever reason. “He’s in town. Said he’d be here in a minute or two.”
McGarvey lit a cigarette. He stood beside the window looking out into the night, the city glowing in every direction, even up toward the Naval Observatory in the center of its own big park along with the vice president’s mansion. The only darkness seemed to be in his own mind. Unwanted light was everywhere else. Strange and unfair, he thought. Thankfully Elizabeth was away at school. At least she would be spared the immediate hurt. Once again he was reminded of the women in his life: his sister, his ex-wife, his Swiss police watchdog, and Evita Perez, waiting for him in New York. They were all of a kind; judgmental women who in the end were very weak. Or, he wondered, was it merely his own chauvinism which made him think so?
Trotter was all out of breath when he barged into the apartment, as if he had just run up the eight flights of stairs. He stood puffing in the center of the room while he mopped the sweat off his brow with a handkerchief. He was flushed, and his glasses were steamed up. McGarvey noticed that he hadn’t shaved since this morning and that he still wore the same clothes he had worn at their lakeside meeting with Leonard Day. He had to wonder what his old friend had been up to.
“I need time, John,” McGarvey said.
“You were there this morning!” Trotter cried, his sudden emotion all out of proportion with what he was saying. “You heard him!”
“Forty-eight hours is all I need.”
“To do what—?” Trotter started, but then realizing exactly what it was he was saying, and in front of whom, he cut it off.
“I’ll get you and Leonard your proof, and you won’t have to do a thing except keep watch on Yarnell from here. Just like you’ve been doing for the past three days. Just like you’ve done today.”
“We can’t, Kirk, don’t you understand? It’s over now.”
Someone had gotten to Trotter. It was written all over the man’s face. “What happened, John? Today? Who’d you see? Who else knows about this now?”
“We cannot go on.”
“My wife is down there!”
Trotter seemed genuinely pained. “I’m sorry, Kirk. My hands are truly tied. In this you must believe me. Just get out while you still can.”
“Disappear, you mean?”
“Yes.”
McGarvey shook his head. “Who was it who got to you, John? Who’d you see today?”
“I have my orders …”
“From the bureau, John? From Day? Who?”
Trotter was cornered. He seemed to be all arms and legs. Gangly. “The president,” he whispered. “The president told me to stop.”
27
Time had truly and honestly run out. Winter, spring, day, night; it no longer made any difference to McGarvey. He was a man who had finally come face to face with his own demons, who had come foursquare against his own inner voice, which whispered like some troll in the scuppers that he was not master of his own fate let alone the future of others. Kathleen would say—and had—that he was a man driven by unseen forces. Insanity or simple willfulness, who could say. In the morning he took the shuttle flight up to New York after spending an intense evening with a new Trotter; a Trotter he’d never imagined existed, a man beside himself with fright, cowed into submission by the awfulness of the situation. “Here we have the potential for the ultimate disaster,” he’d cried at one point, not knowing where to turn or in whom to seek comfort or solace. All the forces were aligned against them. What did it matter if they believed they had the blessing of being right right on their side? What did it matter the distance they had come? Or the lives that hung in the balance? Trotter had no answer. No guarantees, in the end—and who among us could expect such assurances, had any right to expect such assurances?—but Trotter would do what he could. Basulto would be held for another forty-eight hours and the team at the Washington safe house would unofficially continue their surveillance. (They’d volunteered for it, with no backup should the situation fall apart!) Lastly, Basulto would be released on McGarvey’s recognizance with travel funds and documents when the time came. “If he ran, I would say good riddance,” a defeated Trotter said. “Nor at this point do I wish to know what you have in mind, where you would be taking him, or for what purpose.”
“We may not be much, John, but we are honorable men.”
Trotter shook his head. “There is no such animal, didn’t you know?”
“Did the president talk to you directly, John? Did he telephone you, send you a memo? Did a messenger come? What?”
But Trotter never answered, and as he entered the city through the Midtown Tunnel, he put his old friend out of mind. Just for now, just until he had all the pieces lined up. By then what he was setting in motion would have a life of its own. He would be able to step back and watch and wait for the end of the world or for his salvation, for all their salvations, though he didn’t think there’d be any thanks handed round at the end.
He paid the cabbie on the corner around the block from Evita’s club and went the rest of the way on foot. SoHo was not a morning neighborhood in the sense of daylight. There were people out and about, workmen, students on their way to school, mothers with their children, but the majority of the residents, the well-to-do artists, the connected businessmen, the chic women with their entourages, were still indoors, sleeping.
The front door to St. Christopher’s was locked. There was no bell and it took nearly five minutes of pounding before the big black man who acted as Evita’s bodyguard opened the door to McGarvey’s summons. He wore a gray jogging suit and a sweatband around his massive forehead. He had a permanent scowl on his fac
e.
“She’s asleep,” he said before McGarvey could say anything. “You’ll have to come back tonight.” He started to close the door, but McGarvey blocked it.
“I have to talk to her. This morning. Now.”
“Motherfucker,” the big man said, the word drawn out. “You don’t hear so good.” He yanked the door all the way open and poked a massive paw into McGarvey’s chest, shoving him backward and nearly off the step. “Come back tonight.”
“I don’t want any trouble with you, Harry,” McGarvey said, spreading his hands in front of him. “So if you’ll just be a good boy and run upstairs and tell Ms. Perez that I’m here …”
The big man shoved McGarvey back another step. “I’m getting powerful tired of you, white boy. I want your lily white ass out of here now.”
McGarvey didn’t want this. It was stupid, and yet he had been feeling a confrontation building up inside of him ever since Trotter had shown up in Lausanne. Even before that.
“This is important, Harry,” he said, trying one last time to be reasonable. He put his overnight bag down on the stoop.
“Shit,” the big man swore, coming forward. He grabbed a handful of McGarvey’s jacket and swung him around, bouncing him hard off the door frame. McGarvey didn’t resist; he went with it. He sagged as if his legs were giving out. The bouncer was very strong, but he wasn’t very sophisticated. A street brawler, McGarvey figured.
Harry hauled him to his feet, leaving himself wide open. McGarvey drove a knee into the big man’s groin. All the air went out of him and he staggered backward. McGarvey hit him in the solar plexus, the force of the blow sending the big man sprawling back into the vestibule. McGarvey came after him, driving a right into the man’s face, then a left and two more solid right jabs, causing blood to gush from the big man’s nose and mouth where his lip was all cut up. He sank to the floor, his eyes fluttering, his breath coming in big blubbering gasps.
McGarvey hauled the bouncer the rest of the way into the vestibule, looked around on the street to make sure that no one had witnessed the confrontation, grabbed his bag, then closed and locked the door.
Except for the bouncer’s labored breathing, the building was quiet. The man was unarmed. He hadn’t been expecting trouble, or at least he hadn’t been expecting someone too tough for him.
McGarvey’s right shoulder ached from where he had been slammed into the doorway. He hauled the bouncer across the vestibule and into the darkened club room, where he dumped him behind the bar. He’d be out for a while yet, and McGarvey didn’t think he would be in much shape to continue the fight when he did finally come around.
Leaving his bag by the entry to the vestibule, he went upstairs to Evita’s apartment. The living room was a mess. There’d apparently been a party here last night and no one had bothered picking up afterward. The place smelled of stale booze and cigarettes, and the sweeter, burned-leaves odor of marijuana. Evita’s cocaine paraphernalia was out on the coffee table in front of the fireplace; the vial lay open and empty. He listened but heard nothing, not even noises from out on the street. St. Christopher’s was taking a holiday.
He went to the back of the apartment, past an efficiency kitchen, the sinks and counters filled with dirty dishes, and down a short corridor to the rear bedroom. The door was open. He stepped inside. The curtains were closed over the four tall windows, leaving the large room in semidarkness. A raised platform at the center was dominated by a large circular bed. Evita was sprawled out asleep on the bed, her arms and legs spread. She was naked. In sleep her body seemed dissipated, tinged a little in blue as if she had circulatory problems, sagging here and there, flattened out, her neck too thin, her knees and ankles too bony.
For a moment McGarvey nearly turned around and walked away. She’d suffered enough. But he couldn’t think of any other way of doing what had to be done; of calling Yarnell out, of exposing the mole in the CIA and of stopping Baranov once and for all. Looking down at her on the bed he had trouble seeing her as the little girl in Mexico City, as Yarnell’s and Baranov’s plaything, yet he knew it was true.
He went into the bathroom, switched on the light, and turned on the cold water in the shower. He laid out a towel and a robe, then went back into the bedroom. Evita was just beginning to stir. He picked her up. She was surprisingly light.
“What?” she mumbled, her eyes fluttering.
McGarvey carried her into the bathroom, opened the shower door with his toe and put her down on her feet at the edge of the spray. She reared back all of a sudden, but he shoved her under the cold stream and shut the door. She screamed at the top of her lungs and then thumped against the door.
“You sonofabitch! Cristo!”
“We’re leaving in twenty minutes,” McGarvey called. “I’ll put on the coffee.”
Evita was still crying and sputtering when he went back out to the apartment. Harry, the bouncer, stood in the doorway weaving on his feet. His nose and mouth were bloody. He had a gun.
“I didn’t kill her,” McGarvey said. “I just put her in the shower.”
“Get out of here,” the big man growled.
“I’m trying to help her.”
“She don’t need your kind of help, you sonofabitch.”
McGarvey didn’t move. “I’m going to make some coffee. Then we’ll be leaving.”
“Not with her.”
“Someone is trying to kill her, Harry. I’m trying to stop it.”
“All sorts of people trying to do that lady harm …”
“Herself included,” McGarvey said. “I’m here to put a stop to it. Give her some peace.”
“Shit.”
“I’m not leaving without her, Harry. One way or the other.”
The bouncer raised his pistol. It looked like a toy in his massive paw. But the edge of his anger was gone. This was beyond his ken. He didn’t know what to do or say.
“Ask her, Harry. As soon as she’s out of the shower, listen to her.”
“Who the hell are you? You a cop or something?”
McGarvey shook his head. “You don’t want to know. Believe me. I’ll bring her back in a couple of days and you’ll never be bothered again.”
“Fuck you!”
“Save your breath, Harry, you don’t have a chance in hell,” Evita said from the bedroom doorway. She had put on a robe and wrapped a towel around her hair.
“You all right?” Harry asked.
“None of us has a chance in hell,” she said. “Go get your face fixed. And put away that gun, for Christ’s sake.” She turned and went back into the bedroom.
Harry seemed deflated. He lowered his pistol and looked from the bedroom door to McGarvey. He shook his head. “What have you people done to that woman? You fucked her up royal, that’s what.” He shook his head again.
“What people?” McGarvey asked softly.
“Shit.”
“Who else has come up here?”
“There’s always someone here. Someone after her. Pushing her. Telling her stories. Making her do … things.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Names don’t matter. But I see things. I watch things. We all do.”
“Her husband?”
“I would have killed the bastard if he ever showed up here,” the big man said with sudden feeling.
“Baranov? Does that name ring a bell, Harry? Have you heard that one? Was he here?”
“I don’t know shit,” the bouncer said. “You want her? You can have her. I don’t need this shit anymore.”
“I’ll bring her back …”
“She’ll never leave Mexico. Not this time.” The bouncer stuffed the gun in his pocket and went to the door.
“When was she in Mexico last, Harry? It’s important.” McGarvey hadn’t expected this.
The big man looked at him. His shoulders had sagged. He was carrying an impossibly heavy burden. “A year ago,” he said softly. “Maybe a little longer.”
“Did she go alone?”
> “She was looking for him.”
“Who?”
“Baranov.”
“Did she find him?”
“Don’t ask me. But she’s been fucked up ever since.”
“Did he come here? Did he come to see her?”
“I don’t know, I’ve already told you. And I’ll tell you something else. If you’re taking her to see him, you’ll lose her. She’s right, you know.”
“About what?”
“She hasn’t got a chance in hell.”
McGarvey watched him leave. He heard him on the steps, his tread slow and even, as if he were a man either starting out on a very long journey or just returning from one.
“He’s a good man,” Evita said from the bedroom door.
McGarvey turned to her. She had gotten dressed, but she looked like hell, her eyes red, her face wan, drawn. “It’s time for the truth now,” he said. “All of it.”
“Are we going after Darby and Valentin? Is that why you’ve come?”
“Yes.”
She seemed to think about it for a long moment. “Then the truth is what you’ll get,” she said. “Only I don’t think you’re going to like it very much.”
It was late afternoon. Their flight was due to touch down in Mexico City a few minutes before eight. The plane was barely half-filled so they had three seats to themselves in the smoking section near the rear. A thin haze hung over them. They had drinks, but had passed on the dinner. The stews had left them alone for the past half hour. Evita was strung out. “I don’t know what will happen to me if I have to meet face-to-face with him again. You can’t imagine what he’s like.”
They were all bastards, McGarvey thought.
“He’s worse than Darby,” she said, looking out the window. “More ruthless. More sure of himself.” She turned back. “He gets what he wants. Always.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that you went to Mexico City to see him?”
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