“Your carry-on was so heavy I assumed you had a laptop and manuscripts in there.”
“DVDs. I’m going to spend every day before the kids get there watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert and every Thin Man movie ever made. All black and white, except for An Affair to Remember. For that one I’ll be crying my eyes out in living color.” She raised her cup. “To love in its many hues.”
Socorro took a sip, and then asked, “How do you and Graham do it? All these years and you still hold hands. Who does that anymore? At least not at our age.”
Faith didn’t want to respond. She never wanted to give women advice about how to live, or present herself or Graham as examples, or recommend their lives to anyone.
How could she? She knew how many times she’d lain awake when he was working in Pakistan or Russia or Egypt or dozens of other countries, afraid for him, and him afraid for her when she was researching in deserts and jungles where medical care was days away and in China or India where sudden changes in political winds often swept the innocent away.
Faith took a sip of her coffee to avoid answering.
And all of this, though it was invisible to outsiders, had been earned by worry and sacrifice. They’d grown into their life together. It hadn’t been guaranteed by their marriage vows or received like an inheritance.
What made it bearable was that they had each other and respected each other’s need to do some good in the world where it was in their power to do it.
But how could she say all that to Socorro?
In looking at her now, Faith realized Tolstoy was wrong: Happy families aren’t all alike. And the way she and Graham found happiness wouldn’t be how Socorro would, if she ever did.
Faith glanced at her watch. “Maybe we should…”
S ocorro gave Faith a hug just before arriving at the first security checkpoint. As she watched Faith walk away, Socorro’s peripheral vision caught the profile of a familiar face at the rear of the line next to hers. She stared at the dark-haired man for a few moments, but couldn’t resolve whether it was someone she knew or maybe an actor she’d seen on television. She shrugged, then turned and presented her driver’s license and boarding pass to the security agent, and passed on through.
A n hour later, Viz filled the doorway of the China Garden Restaurant in San Francisco, where Gage was eating lunch with Faith after she’d left Socorro at the airport. He spotted them in a far booth and approached, hat in hand. Faith scooted around the semicircular bench so Viz could sit down.
“I figured I better tell you myself, boss.”
“What’s that?”
“I lost Boots.”
“What happened?”
“He found the GPS I planted on his van and stuck it under a FedEx delivery truck. By the time we figured it out, he’d slipped away.”
“What about the hotel?”
“I talked to Rosa, gave her a few bucks and asked her if she knew why he moved out. She told me she started to throw away a newspaper one morning and he told her he wanted to keep the real estate section. Later she overheard him talking about an investment he was making, and the next day she saw he’d circled some listings. He took it with him, was gone for a few hours, and then came back and checked out. She doesn’t think he’s coming back. She looked real disappointed. I think she’d gotten used to the extra money.”
Chapter 79
' Namaste.”
The Indian accent carrying the words into Gage’s cell phone was both heavy and familiar. Gage swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up. He looked at the alarm clock, the red letters glowing in the dark.
“You know what time it is?” Gage asked as he emerged from the gray haze of sleep.
Babu laughed. “Of course, five in the evening.”
“I mean here.”
“Twelve and a half hours earlier. As it should be.”
“Which means?”
“It’s time to get up.”
“Not in California.
Babu paused. “You mean Americans aren’t getting up at the same time as us? I am always assuming they did. You want me to call back?”
Gage glanced over at Faith. He couldn’t see her face, just the moonlit outline of her head propped up on one elbow.
“Hold on a minute,” Gage covered the mouthpiece. “I’ve got a new cultural insight for you. Babu seems to think everyone in the world gets up at the same time as Indians.”
Faith shook her head.
“I’m sure that’ll be the next cover story for the American Journal of Anthropology,” Faith said, then dropped her head back onto the pillow.
Gage slipped on his robe and uncovered the mouthpiece.
“Hold on. I’ll take this downstairs.”
G age stood at the kitchen counter in the darkness, looking toward the lights of San Francisco, his view framed by pines and oaks on the lower part of the property. It was still more than an hour before the sun rose, and the owl hooting in the branch overhanging the deck seemed to be asking why Gage was already awake.
“The Hyderabad police found Mr. Wilbert’s body in a mango grove behind one of the dhabas along the highway,” Babu said.
Gage felt his muscles tense.
“Did you see it?” Gage asked.
“No. He was cremated right afterward. We use our limited refrigerated storage for food, not dead people. But the local police took photos beforehand. That’s how I knew who he was.”
“What killed him?”
“Natural causes.”
“How do you know?”
“Because foreigners in India only die of natural causes, even if the body shows signs of… of… shall we say… abuse? Our Ministry of External Affairs insists on it.”
“How much abuse?”
“Maybe as long as a few hours. Some bruises had time to form and some wounds scabbed over, others didn’t. My guess is that he was strangled in the end.”
“Do the local police know who he is?”
“They suspect he’s German because it’s mostly them who come to India on the sex tours. More to Kolkata and Goa than to Hyderabad, but still…”
“How about encouraging them in that idea?”
“They’ll find encouragement in anything that allows them to put the matter to rest.”
J ust before sunrise, Gage brought a cup of coffee to Faith, still lying in bed and watching the local news. On the screen was a repeat from a previous evening’s news segment.
A self-satisfied President Duncan leaned forward in his chair toward the interviewer.
“Of course, we’ll swear them in immediately after the Senate vote.”
“What about a filibuster?” the reporter asked.
“The Democrats would look ridiculous if they tried. A third of the Senate and the entire House hit the campaign trail in a few months, and nobody wants to carry that kind of ugly baggage.”
“Or is it merely that they don’t want the same treatment if they take the White House a year from now?”
