“Good.”
“Temporarily.”
“Understood.”
Méndez glanced at Pescatore, who flashed him a grin in response. Way to get with the program, amigo. Welcome back to Cop-World.
Isabel laid out the game plan.
“Facundo, you have to return to Brazil and make sure Tayane is safe and cooperative. She’s our only victim-slash-witness.”
“Very good,” Facundo said. “I will leave tonight.”
“What about Zoraida Padilla?” Méndez asked. “She is a valuable witness too. I am concerned about her.”
“I’ll assign New York agents to protective surveillance,” Isabel said. “They’ll be told she’s a source in a sensitive smuggling case. Anyone shadows her, my guys shadow them.”
“Thank you,” Méndez said. “I will tell her to rest easy.”
Isabel turned to Athos and Porthos. She wanted them to fly to Tijuana and start a search for Abrihet.
“At your orders, Licenciada,” Porthos said.
Good plan, Pescatore thought. But what about the third musketeer?
He raised his hand. “Isabel. Shouldn’t I go down there too?”
“You’re going to work another front. With Leo. In Italy.”
The Mexicans left. Pescatore walked with Facundo to the Argentine’s rental car. They conferred on the sidewalk. Facundo bowed his head pensively, hands stuffed in the pockets of his off-white linen suit, feet planted in pointy two-tone shoes. The outfit made him resemble the owner of a Caribbean nightclub in a 1950s film.
Facundo urged Pescatore to watch himself. Things were moving in a dangerous direction.
“This is uncharted terrain,” Facundo said. “Although I have great respect and affection for Isabel, she is playing a tricky game on multiple levels. We are in a vulnerable role, scouts out in front of the official inquiry. Her bosses don’t know about us, do they?”
“Uh, no. We’re off the books, as far as I can tell.” Pescatore hesitated. He hadn’t told Facundo much about the secret nature of his mission or Isabel’s troubles in her agency. In a hopeful tone, he added, “It’s worked so far.”
“How she handles it is her decision. She’s the client. Sooner or later, though, operating in a gray area could be a problem. Be careful, son. Are you going home now?”
“Not yet. Isabel wants to talk privately.”
“Ah.”
Facundo raised his eyebrows. He thumped Pescatore on the shoulder, told him again to be careful, and left.
Pescatore knew that Facundo had been on the verge of making another comment. At the dining-room table, the Argentine’s calm alert eyes had moved between Pescatore and Isabel. Perhaps he had noticed the feeling that had rekindled between them. Unspoken, a glimmer, but it was there. Facundo’s discretion was a vote of confidence that Pescatore could handle such entanglements on his own.
I hope he’s right, Pescatore thought.
Isabel had changed into jeans, a denim shirt, and some kind of fashionable-looking open-toed ankle boots. She suggested he stay for dinner. He said he didn’t want to impose.
“Why eat alone when we can eat together?” she said. “We’ll get some work done at the same time.”
“Good point. Can I help in the kitchen?”
“Not unless you’ve learned to cook.”
Isabel prepared ropa vieja, rice and beans, fried plantains. She kept their glasses filled with Rioja. He hoped it would calm him down and help him sleep. So much for his resolution to stay away from alcohol. Isabel was knocking back the wine right along with him.
Ladling seconds onto his plate, she asked, “More maduros?”
“Absolutely.”
“You always liked them.”
“I’d eat fried bananas for breakfast if you let me.”
“You’d weigh two hundred fifty pounds.”
Her grin faded. She said she was going to share information with him in confidence.
“Not because I don’t trust the others, but they aren’t U.S. citizens. Bottom line: this trip to Italy is really crucial.”
“It’s all riding on Leo’s source, I guess.”
“Right. If we don’t find Abrihet, if we can’t corroborate her account and make a connection to Tecate, the Blakes could be in the clear.”
“What about the corruption case? Didn’t Leo’s article get things moving?”
“Yes and no. I met with the FBI and Justice. The State Department got involved. There’s White House interest. Many equities.”
“What does that mean?”
“DC-speak for a lot of players throwing their weight around.”
“Huh. Did they finally decide you’ve got enough for indictments?”
She grimaced disdainfully. “They decided not to decide. Until after the elections. This administration doesn’t want to tangle with the Blakes. Or interfere with a big international merger.”
“That sucks.”
“I’d like to find Abrihet, or find out more about her, before I contravene direct orders and accuse Perry Blake of being an attempted rapist and murderer.”
After dinner, Pescatore and Isabel took a walk. It had been their evening ritual in San Diego. Pescatore preferred the Pacific to the Potomac, but he liked Alexandria’s historic district with its Colonial facades and cobblestones. Twilight softened the blanket of September heat. They strolled past a World War II–era torpedo factory converted into a riverfront center for art galleries. The wooden marina was half empty on a Wednesday night. In the park, a family of ducks waddled across the grass. Pescatore felt full and tipsy. He imagined Isabel taking walks here at dusk, sometimes with Hasselhoff, mostly alone. He pictured her living in that big town house all by herself.
A message pinged on her BlackBerry.
“Leo just reminded me,” she said. “Blake is on TV tonight. A counterattack to the article last week.”
“For our viewing pleasure.”
Back in her living room, Isabel took off her ankle boots and slid onto the couch. She curled up on her side, knees drawn up, in the feline TV-watching pose that Pescatore remembered. Resisting the impulse to join her on the couch, he sat in an armchair at an angle to the television.
A financial network was broadcasting a profile of Perry Blake. Tall and lithe, he strode across a stage to accept an award. He conferred with guys in hard hats. He escorted a supermodel out of a helicopter in the glow of rooftop spotlights. He tossed a football during a charity event.
“Throws a nice spiral, I’ll give him that,” Pescatore said.
The camera did a quick tour of Blake’s duplex by Central Park and his mansions on the East and West Coasts, in the Hamptons and Bel Air. He also kept an apartment upstairs from his headquarters office because he pulled so many all-nighters. The interviewer was a star of the financial network and had a folksy, brassy style. She power-walked with Blake down a glass-walled hallway, the canyons of Manhattan rising and falling behind them. She called him Perry. She asked how he kept up his bicoastal, round-the-clock pace.
“Is this a commercial?” Pescatore demanded. “Is she gonna mention the freaking federal case against him? What is this bullshit?”
No answer. He glanced at Isabel illuminated by the screen, the sleek sculpted lines of her face brought out by the pulled-back hair. Her eyes glowed in the shadows. Pescatore scrutinized Blake as he would a suspect he wanted to remember: rooster crest of hair, crisp pointy jaw, tight impatient mouth. His office commanded a view of the Hudson and East Rivers flowing together at the prow of the island, the Statue of Liberty a midget in the background. Blake reclined at his desk in a salmon-colored polo shirt that showed off his biceps. When the interviewer got around to asking about “recent media reports,” he smiled narrowly. His long arm executed a sweeping, dismissive gesture.
I bet that’s the same office where he tried to rape the cleaning lady, Pescatore thought.
“The federal government has a job to do,” Blake said. “Lookit, I understand that.”
&n
bsp; His Midwestern accent reminded Pescatore of home; heavy consonants, a nasal tone adding a y to vowels.
“Frankly,” Blake continued, “they are wasting energy and money on us. Not for the first time. You’d think they’d learned their lesson. Is it possible there were administrative errors, corners cut as we grew in Mexico? Sure. It’s a complex and dynamic market, as you know, Sophia. But this talk of bribery and corruption is outrageous. It’s bull. It’s insulting. Lookit, at the end of the day, this fuss will amount to nothing. Here’s your headline, Sophia: ‘Another Win for the Blake Group. And for the U.S. Economy.’”
Pescatore shook his head. Isabel pointed the remote at the television and killed the power. They sat in sudden darkness. It made him uneasy. Isabel remained silent. Pescatore peered at her. He considered turning on a light, but it wasn’t his house. In the faint glow from the windows, he saw Isabel’s thumb pushing at her teeth. He realized that she was seething, as angry as he had ever seen her.
“Hey,” he said. “You okay?”
He got up and sat on the couch at arm’s length. She pursed her lips and exhaled slowly. She turned, as if noticing him next to her for the first time.
“I’m okay,” she said.
“It’s hard to watch him talk that shit, am I right?”
She nodded. She reached to her left, away from him, and turned on a lamp.
Pescatore tried to sound optimistic. “Blake’s playing all cool, but he’s worried. I can see it in his eyes. He knows what he did. He’s gotta know the survivors are out there, and it scares him. When criminals get scared, they make mistakes.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I gotta tell you, Isabel, I’ve never seen you like this. Taking it so personal, I mean. Breaking rules, running ops on your own. Like you don’t care who you piss off, what the consequences are.”
“I’ve had it,” she snapped. “I spent months on the Blakes, getting nowhere. Then Tecate happened. Horrible, but simple. Somebody killed these people; we need to solve it. Then I got blocked again. And now it all turns out to be connected. It’s too much. I can’t stop thinking about Abrihet.”
Instinctively, Pescatore took her hand. “However you wanna play it, I’m with you a hundred percent.”
She squeezed his hand.
“I know.”
Her voice was a near whisper, her eyes wide and melancholy. He was unsettled by the nearness of her, the swells and slopes of her curves in repose. Her breathing was agitated. He couldn’t tell if it was due to anger, or sadness, or the same urge he was resisting. Or all of that at once.
It would have been so easy to lean across the space between them. Let himself go, reach for her, find her mouth with his. But he didn’t budge. The voice in his head wouldn’t shut up.
What the hell are you doing? What’s the matter with you? This is not the time or the place.
With great effort, he disengaged. He pushed himself up off the couch. Trying to act nonchalant, he retrieved his notebook from the dining-room table.
“Okay, great,” he said. “I better get home and pack. Thanks for dinner.”
She caught up with him at the door, moving with small-footed quickness.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? One minute we’re having a serious conversation, the next minute you bolt.”
She was shorter without her heels. She stepped close, like a flyweight boxer slipping inside his reach. His back bumped against a closet door.
“What’s wrong, Valentine?”
“It’s just…I’m trying to keep things professional.”
“Meaning?”
He looked away. “Tell you the truth, I’ve been having some unprofessional, inappropriate thoughts when I’m around you.”
“Inappropriate.”
“In a romantic sense.”
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry to mention it, but that’s the way it is.”
“What happened with Fatima?”
“Nothing. I decided something, though. Her not making a choice is a choice in itself.”
She nodded.
“Isabel,” he said. “I don’t want to mess things up between you and me. Too much life-and-death stuff going on right now.”
She put her hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes.
“The important thing,” she said, “is that we’re friends. Good friends. We have to watch out for each other.”
“You’re right about that.”
“Give me a hug before you go.”
They kept the hug brief and safe. He turned toward the door.
“Valentine.”
“Yeah?”
“When this is all over…we need to have a conversation.”
She said the words deadpan, a statement of fact. Yet he had the sensation that a gate had swung open—a gate he’d thought was closed forever.
Driving north on the wooded road through Rock Creek Park, he turned up the music. Springsteen was still in the CD player: “We Take Care of Our Own.”
You did right, he told himself. It wasn’t the easy thing. Which means it was the right thing. But now what?
In the final months of their relationship, he and Isabel had fought like cats and dogs. In spite of everything, though, he had always believed that they would get married. The breakup was the main reason he had gone to Buenos Aires. Then he had met Fatima. Things with her were more relaxed. The long-distance aspect helped. They didn’t fight, not even in Paris when she had told him about Karim.
He steered the Impala up the exit ramp to Massachusetts Avenue and went northwest. At Wisconsin Avenue, he headed north in sparse traffic on a moonless night.
He was only a few blocks from home when he noticed that the configuration of headlights in his rearview mirror hadn’t changed for some time. He peered at the mirror. The sedan behind him was a Ford Interceptor, a model used often as a taxicab or police car. A light-colored van trailed it. The vehicles had remained in position, keeping a moderate distance from him, while others had passed him or turned off the avenue.
He considered slowing down or stopping to see what they would do. By now, though, he was too close to home. A surveillance team would probably know where he was going and avoid blowing their cover. He looked in the mirror again. The driver’s hat obscured his face. When Pescatore turned off the avenue, the sedan did not. But the van followed Pescatore. Coincidence? A synchronized move? He decided to pass his apartment building rather than pull into the garage driveway. The van stayed with him. He took a hard right into the dimly lit residential streets behind the apartment towers. The van kept going and disappeared from view. He circled back to his driveway.
In the elevator, he berated himself for dropping his guard. He had been absorbed in his thoughts. He couldn’t pinpoint when he had become aware of the vehicles, but he had the uneasy sense that they had been behind him for a while. Maybe there had been a stakeout outside Isabel’s house. His first guess: Blake security goons, like the ones Méndez had seen in New York. Watching the watchers. Another scenario: What if they were federal agents? HSI or FBI? Maybe Isabel’s rivals in government had gotten wind of her little freelance global op and were gathering evidence to squash her good. Along with her associates. He resisted the impulse to call her.
What are you gonna say, exactly? The wine went to your head and you hallucinated spies on your tail?
His two-bedroom apartment was on the eighteenth floor. It offered a view of dense treetops and single-family houses stretching west toward Virginia. Nice, but no comparison to the rooftop place where he had lived in Buenos Aires. His Washington landlord, Facundo’s Israeli friend, was a former pilot for El Al. The paintings and decor were dominated by motifs of airplanes, travel and Israel. Pescatore had added art and souvenirs from Chicago, the Mexican border and South America.
Pescatore checked his phone and discovered an e-mail from Fatima. The brief note said she was very busy; French counterterror cops
were on high alert for attacks. He decided he had to talk to Fatima in person. Before anything else happened with Isabel, good or bad, verbal or physical. Maybe after he got done in Italy, he could take a day or two off and go to Paris. Otherwise, chances were that he’d end up losing Fatima and Isabel both.
He packed a suitcase in his bedroom. Then he went into the study that served as the DC operations center of Villa Crespo International Investigations and Security.
Pescatore’s father had grown up in Sicily, immigrated to Argentina, and eventually made his way to Chicago. When Pescatore was in kindergarten, his family visited his father’s hometown near Messina. Pescatore remembered old ladies in black. Sheep crossing the road. Eating an arancino on the ferry crossing from Calabria—just a fried rice ball, but he’d never tasted one so good before or since.
He was excited about going to Italy, but it was brand-new turf. He had been able to converse in Italian since childhood, and he’d taken a college course. Still, he was far from fluent. He would have to be on his game. He wanted to read up on organized crime, immigration, smuggling.
Opening his laptop, he glanced at his shoulder holster lying on the desk. He would have to leave the gun behind. Unlike in Mexico, he didn’t have contacts in Italy who could arrange to score him an unofficial gat.
This is gonna be the kind of situation, he thought, where it would come in handy.
Part III
Chapter 10
The aging turboprop plane banked steeply toward the Mediterranean, causing police helmets and riot shields to clank together.
The island came into view, all twelve square miles of it, an apparition, a clump of rock and earth interrupting the endless expanse of turquoise.
Méndez saw a port, villas on hillsides, the rectangular slab of the approaching runway that bisected a corner of the island. He saw a fortified institutional compound that had to be the detention center. He did not see corpses floating in the water, nor had he expected to. Migrants drowned by the thousands en route to the island, but usually out at sea, out of sight, out of mind.
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