Ari, all too prone to similar misstatements, emitted a small chuckle. "I'll bear that in mind. But alas, I am equally misplaced...in Sicily."
"Italy?" the woman said doubtfully. "Then how does it remind you of home?"
In fact, the sauce had brought to mind Ari's childhood in Iraq, when his father had gone to some expense to hire a cook talented in many types of cuisine: French, Indian, Italian, as well as all the local dishes. He had followed Baba's example when he set up his own house in Baghdad. During an international function at the As-Salam Palace he had gone behind the scenes to talk to some of the chefs. He could lure none of them to al-Masbah. He was a very junior officer, without enough clout to protect them if Saddam Hussein or his wife or his sons (or their wives) took offense at their moonlighting. But one of them supplied him with the name of a woman who not only knew lablabs from haricots verts, but could turn out an exceptional table. How many times had Ari slipped past her to burn his finger in her Béchamel?
"Believe it or not, there is a French restaurant in Syracuse that served the best crullers in the world," Ari confabulated. "My parents took me there at least once a week. They must have served the only pieds paquets between Rome and Algiers."
A growing crowd of lies was filling up the concert hall of Ari's mind. Keen anticipation grew for the new composition. The name of the piece? He had no idea. But it would certainly be novel.
Madame Mumford saw no reason not to accept Ari's story at face value. The French pried less and assumed more, often with alarming proficiency. The Direction de la surveillance du territoire had come perilously close to snaring him when he participated in the assassination of an Iraqi émigré. He had not prepared the bomb (that was too much like cooking) but he had done the preliminary groundwork.
"I must have you," Ari said abruptly, a little too avidly.
"Pardon?" said Madame Mumford, giving the saucepan a particularly harsh bang on the burner.
"I mean, you must cook for me."
"And when would this event take place? I need time to prepare."
"Event? Would every day be too much to expect? I have the funds." Ari found himself making little motions of impatience, like a boy preparing to lunge for a sweet. How often had he crouched in the mountains, hours or even days on end, waiting for the right moment to squeeze off a round at some Kurdish rebel? But here his sense of timing abandoned him. Realizing how this must appear to a staid Continental, he rigorously imposed upon himself the stillness of polite expectancy.
"I have other obligations, Monsieur," she said courteously. "And quite honestly, you have had only a small taste. Do you really enjoy this?"
"You're preparing coq au vin?"
"A special request from Monsieur Mackenzie's employer."
"A man of taste," said Ari, who promptly cast off the pretense of measured reserve. "But here…isn't this garlic soup?"
"I was advised by Madame to prepare a variety of dishes." She hesitated. "This is the French equivalent of 'meat and potatoes'. It’s very rare that I take on true gourmet cooking."
Ignoring this confession, Ari pressed ahead. "Could you come to my house at least two days a week? I would make it worth your while."
"There are French restaurants in Richmond," the woman observed, but a skeptical moue betrayed her opinion of them.
"I have heard rumors of such," Ari admitted. "I have also heard..."
"But they're popular," was Madame Mumford's half-hearted defense of local Gallic cuisine, as though she was obligated to stand up for her adopted city.
"Are you also adept at baking bread—"
"No, Monsieur," she said, again brushing past him with the gruffness of necessity. "I wouldn't dare try to compete with a good Parisian patissier. I've resigned myself to a bakery in Carytown. It's decent enough."
"Compared to Wonder Bread," Ari smiled. Madame Mumford laughed.
"Please, Monsieur..."
"Of course," Ari sighed. He burned his finger getting another taste of the sauce, then reluctantly withdrew.
He had barely entered the living room before a hand was jutted in his direction.
"Mr. Ciminon?" The speaker had bright childlike eyes, a creamy childish complexion, a face unlined by age or mundane experience. He seemed young enough, almost, to join the children in the basement. In some respects, he resembled the ageless Matt Mackenzie.
"I am Ari Ciminon," Ari acknowledged, accepting the smooth, cool hand.
"I'm Bristol Turnbridge. I work with Matt."
"Ah," said Ari with warm courtesy. "This has something to do with computers?"
"A lot to do with computers," said Tracy as she glided past them. She must have felt a chill and had donned a chiffon scarf, which she used to tag each man in turn. "Be nice to him, Ari. This is Matt's boss." And then she floated away, like a purple cloud caught in the slipstream.
Bristol batted away this kittenish behavior with a practiced gesture, like a man familiar with false seductions. "Matt's a rad guy, knows his COBOL and JCL like nobody's business. We were subbed to help transfer a pipe and wellhead warehouse and he had to sort out 300,000 material codes. Can you imagine?"
Ari received this with a deferential nod intended to convey his incomprehension.
"I get the impression you don't know what I'm talking about," Bristol smiled.
"I am limited to passwords and primitive databases," Ari confessed.
"Too bad necessity can be so boring," Bristol shrugged, his mimosa quivering in his champagne glass. "Lucky for me, I love the boring stuff. I guess it's really boring next to your job. Tracy tells me you work for the Cirque du Soleil. They're based in Montreal, aren't they?"
Ari shrugged, not wanting to elaborate on a lie that was getting out of hand. Interpreting this as unwarranted modesty, Bristol continued: "You go up to Canada a lot?"
"Occasionally."
"You're not very well placed, are you? The Cirque has shows all over the world, right? Richmond isn't very... well, central."
"It has an international airport.''
"It's to laugh."
Ari found his laugh a little too calculated, as though a rough edge had been consciously filed smooth.
"Try to find a direct flight to anywhere but LaGuardia."
Both men sensed piercing eyes and turned to see Rebecca Wareness glaring at them from across the room. She looked haggard and depleted. She turned away.
"Rebecca seems to be a little bit challenged in the tact department," said Bristol with a pronounced blush.
"Yes," Ari said uneasily, giving the woman a sad glance.
"Huh?" said Bristol, surprised. "What did you do to piss her off?"
He couldn't very well tell Bristol that Rebecca suspected him of being a potential child molester. He was equally disinclined to admit the central character in his dispute with Diane's mother was a cat. "It's a stress between neighbors," he finally conceded.
''That's an interesting way of putting it. What is it, if you don't mind my asking? You don't live next door to her, do you? I thought it was that flagpole guy, the one always nagging Tracy about her parties."
So he knew about Howie Nottoway's attempt to plant the Colors in his front yard. The neighborhood association had not only scotched such overt patriotism, but compelled him to remove the haplessly vacant pole. It was the pole, in fact, that had offended association sensibilities. It did not surprise him that Tracy had told Bristol the story. But now he was beginning to wonder if she was the one who had filed the original complaint against Howie. Tit for tat
"I live one door down from her, on the river."
"Oh, where the Riggins family..."
"Yes." Ari was fairly certain he had solved the crime, but the only one who knew the truth was Sphinx. And, being a cat, he was not inclined to provide any details.
"That doesn't give you..." Bristol gave a flip to his light brown hair, as though adjusting his nerves. "You know, the willies?"
"'Willies'? That's a form of nervousness?"
"You could say that."
"I hear no footsteps other than my own, if you're speaking of ghosts."
"Ha!" Again, the manicured laugh. "Here I am, IT to the wazoo, pure logic, and I still get the shivers. 'The ghost in the machine', I guess. We engineer all these programs, then half the time can't figure out what the computers are doing. So...if you're one house away, what could be so awful between you and Rebecca?"
"Do you live in this neighborhood?" Ari inquired.
"Uh...no. But I live on the river."
There was a hint of denigration in his tone, as if this neighborhood was too lowly for the likes of a millionaire. Or multimillionaire. Or the like.
"Yes?"
"I fired her husband. Which is even worse than it sounds, because he's gone and disappeared. I hope she doesn't think I had anything to do with that."
Firing somebody was a shade better than shooting someone from half a mile away. Ari saw no reason why Bristol should give a retrospective flinch.
"Can you tell me why you did this?" Ari asked tentatively.
"Not really. Confidentiality and all." Bristol took a sip at his mimosa. Ari sensed the man thought he might be suspected of uncalled-for brutality. In so many other places in the world, being dismissed might be considered a mild form of punishment. A lucky miss. But in America being fired was catastrophic. "He deserved it, believe me. Ethan was a bit facile when it came to IT security. You know 'facile'?"
"I believe so."
Bristol must have found Ari's face (or general demeanor) unsettling, which forced him into a defensive stutter. "He was doing stuff…really doing stuff. He had to go."
"And since then, he has gone missing?"
"I only know what Tracy has told me," said Bristol, apparently feeling the weight of culpability shifting off his shoulders. "Rebecca told her Ethan ran off with another woman. She got hold of his business phone bill and dialed a number he'd called a couple of times. Some girl with an Oriental voice answered. Probably some Asian gold-digger. Ethan made good money, at least while he was working."
Ari tsked emphatically, as though asserting the untrustworthiness of foreigners. This relieved Bristol, who gave Ari an appreciative flick of his brow.
"You were unaware of all of this?" Ari asked. "There was no indication while he was employed by you of trouble at home?"
"I didn't have a clue, and I used to be friends with him, before the blowup at STS."
"STS?"
"Our business: Sayed Technical Solutions. He seemed pretty happy family-wise. But I didn't know he was phishing—" Bristol caught himself.
"Ah, Ethan was taking illicit holidays at the lake?"
"Not 'fishing'." Bristol waggled an imaginary fishing pole. "'Phishing'." He tried to come up with a physical analogy and ended up with a shrug. "But I've said too much already. Anyway, he found another job right away. I got a call from an insurance company asking for a reference for him. I gave a thumbs down, but it looks like that didn't matter. I guess if there's friction between you and Rebecca, you have to take all that into account. She must be on edge."
"Actually, it has to do with a cat..."
"A cat!" Bristol laughed. "Has that stupid yellow tabby of hers been dumping in your garden? I know just the man to take care of it." He scanned the room.
'Stupid'? Sphinx had many foibles (a lack of courage and indecorous indoor hygiene being prominent among them), but to Ari's thinking he was far from stupid. He tucked away the fact that Bristol knew about Sphinx, and had probably visited the Wareness home.
Bristol caught the attention of a man scarfing down spiced mini-sausages.
"That's Bruce Turner, my sysadmin. He can take care of your pest."
Bruce licked grease off his fingers as he sauntered over.
"Bruce, this is Matt's neighbor, Ari."
Ari had shaken many dirty hands in his time, and was not averse to clasping Bruce's gleaming palm.
"You're the circus guy.'' He made it sound as if Ari was the star clown.
"Ari has a feline infestation, Bruce. How would you handle something like that?"
"I breed pit bulls," Bruce boasted, as though endowed with an extra set of testicles.
"Breeding bulls must take away time from STS," Ari said in amiable innocence.
Bristol's laugh lost its refined tone and came out crudely unedited. Bruce was slightly aghast.
"Where are you from, again?"
"Sicily."
"Well, they sure as hell must know what I'm talking about in Sicily. Pit bulls are dogs. Dogs with a purpose."
"Ah," said Ari, looking abashed but not feeling it. Just another colloquial misstep. "You breed dogs in pits?"
Bruce clutched Bristol's arm and gave it a squeeze, as though drawing his attention to a platypus.
"Think about it, Bruce," Bristol admonished. He was a head taller than Turner, which seemed to mystically transfer a corporate dominance to the physical. He had referred to the shorter man as 'my sysadmin'—whatever that was. "They must be called pit bulls for a reason."
"Because they fight in the pits!" Bruce exclaimed.
"Which is illegal and a little bit disgusting, right?"
"Oh, right." Bruce let go of his coworker and shuffled into a robe of moral rectitude. "Hey, everything is locality. Go to Spain, they kick dogs in the street. Cross the border into France and you see dogs being served in restaurants, which I guess says something about the food—"
"Bruce…" Bristol cautioned.
"I breed pit bulls for the market. They're great for home defense."
Ari was not put off by dog-fighting. The sport (if it could be called a sport) was a favorite pastime in many Arab countries. Matches were fruitful targets for suicide bombers, who were sure to kill hundreds at a time in the densely packed crowds. Oddly enough, dog-fighting was forbidden by those soft-hearted souls, the Taliban.
"You're saying one should be cautious when knocking on someone's door," he said.
Bruce laughed appreciatively, catching no hint of criticism. "Yeah, make sure you know the folks inside. If they have a strong sense of property rights, as well they should, be sure to call, first. And make sure they don't own a Rottweiler."
"Bruce is a graduate of UVA—"
"Voted best drinking school in the country."
"—but he's a little rough around the edges," Bristol finished with a shrug.
"Table manners weren't in the curriculum," Bruce admitted. "Don't belong there, anyway."
"I hope you show some manners while eating your coq au vin. Which smells fantastic, by the way."
"Snob." Bruce made a face of disgust. "I'm only eating it because I'm rooting for a promotion. With the sysadmin at Stanley & Starr blown to pieces, there's a lot less talent available."
"Locally," Bristol said airily.
"Yeah..."
"Blown to bits?" Ari inquired.
"You didn't hear?" Bruce said with a ghoulish expression. "A bomb went off in one of our competitor's offices. Poor slob sysadmin had only been back from Iraq for a few months, and that happens."
"He was killed?"
"Pretty much."
"Was it a mail bomb?"
"I guess. The police aren't saying."
"And he had been in Iraq?"
"I only know what they said on the news. He was subbed out to the Army, working with their computers in the Green Zone. There a full year. His name was Abdul Something-or-other. One of those artificially naturalized immigrants."
"Stop stuffing yourself with those wieners," Bristol admonished his employee. "You'll ruin your appetite."
Ari became lightheaded. "If you don't wish to partake in fine cuisine, I would—"
"Hey, Bruce," Bristol cut him off, seeing where Ari was headed. "Tell Ari how you train your mutts. With the cats, I mean."
Ari took alarm. He stared at Bruce, who failed to notice his suddenly-piercing eyes.
"Yeah, we got a ton of stray cats in my neck of the woods. Whenever I see one, I sic one of my dogs on
it. Tears it to shreds. You should hear the howling!"
Bristol, his lips compressed, was watching Ari. "Maybe in Italy they don't—"
"I, too, have an avocation."
"What's that?" Bruce asked densely.
"I assassinate men who torment cats."
There was a tense pause. Ari sounded very convincing.
"Yeeaah...?" Bruce said slowly.
"It's actually quite remunerative," said Ari. "I send the extra money overseas to my family in Syracuse—"
"Ari..." came a saccharin intonation from behind. As he turned, his elbow was grasped by Tracy. She looked at Bristol. "He's a real joker, Mr. Turnbridge. It's part of his job. He has to deal with so many nationalities."
As though the approved method for dealing with foreigners was by joking—a polite term for lying through ones teeth. On the other hand, Ari thought, swapping jokes with representatives from Al-Qaeda could prove beneficial to all concerned. Nothing else had worked.
Hey, did you hear the one about the suicide bomber instructor? He told his students: Now watch closely, I'm only going to show you this once.
"Ari, we're trying to make an impression," Tracy hissed once they were out of earshot of Bristol and his bruiser of a sysadmin.
"I think I succeeded," Ari observed.
"Not that kind of impression!"
Ari feared the hostess was going to ask him to leave, thereby depriving him of his first opportunity in many years to savor haute cuisine. His mind stumbled through possible apologies, diversions, and brute lies that could cause her to relent.
"You can be a bit of a troublemaker, can't you, Ari? I heard how you came home one day looking like a semi ran over your face. Don't deny it, the bruising still shows. Oh, not too much, so don't look dismayed. Rebecca thinks you got into a fight. Is that true? Was it over a woman?"
As she spoke, her skin tone came perilously close to matching her scarf's lavender blush. She was suddenly like a school girl all agog at running unexpectedly into a sports hero. Keeping the coq au vin in mind, Ari clasped the warm hand on his elbow. Carrying on with this woman was not the furthest thing from his mind, but it was certainly the least practical. It would confirm Deputy Karen Sylvester's opinion of him as being a thorough-going womanizer, in spite of what she had witnessed at the airport. The all-too brief reunion with Rana should have settled any doubts the deputy might have had. But Americans, no matter how repressed or liberated, seemed strangely confounded when it came to sex. It was one among many uncertainties they insisted the rest of the world share with them.
Cold Snap Page 3
