related crimes.)
There was a portable TV in the corner, perched on top of a mini fridge, and Sadowski turned it on.
And wasn’t his old army buddy — Captain Derek Greer — going to get a good swift kick in the ass out of that? Sadowski hoped — though it wasn’t likely on the Fourth of July — that he’d get to see him up there, at the Arab’s place. It would be so much sweeter if Greer actually knew who had fucked him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Even though it was the Fourth of July, it was business as usual around the Cox household, Beth reflected. Carter had run off to the Page Museum to catch up on some urgent paperwork — or so he claimed — and Beth had managed to prevail upon Robin to come to the house for just a few hours to watch Joey, so she, too, could go to work. With the museum closed for the day, and the staff all off at backyard barbecues and pool parties, Beth thought she’d never find a better time to run in, enter the last few paragraphs of the scribe’s secret letter into the computer database, get the translation… and find out, at last, how the drama had come to an end.
Traffic was heavy — it was another hot, dry day, and everybody in L.A. seemed to be heading for the beach — but fortunately Summit View wasn’t far from the Getty. And of course there were no cars, other than those belonging to a few of the usual security personnel, in the garage. Beth had an assigned spot, but it wasn’t as close to the elevators as some of the others, so she took one of those. The parking garage was at the foot of the hill, and the tram, which took visitors all the way up to the museum complex, had no one else on board. As the sleek, air- conditioned car made its way up the curving track, Beth looked out over the 405 freeway — the cars inching along, bumper to bumper — and toward the neighboring hills of Bel-Air. Way up at the top, though well hidden from view, was the al-Kalli estate… and on that estate was the book Beth considered one of the most remarkable in the world. A book that might now remain unknown, and unseen, forever.
The very thought still pained her.
Stepping out into the wide, travertine plaza, she saw only one other person, a security guard whom she knew. She waved to him and he waved back. Her own staff card allowed her to enter the building where her office was located. The carpeted halls, never noisy, were now completely silent; no phones were ringing, no copying machines were humming. It was all that she could have wished for.
Until she approached her own office. Lights were on, and spilling into the hall. And she could hear the clatter of computer keys, at a dizzying rate of speed. A rate that she knew only one person in the world would be capable of — her assistant.
When she stopped and looked inside, Elvis, his back to her, was staring at his computer monitor while his fingers flew across the keyboard and his head bopped to the jangling tune accompanying the program on his screen.
“Elvis,” she said, “what are you doing here?”
From the way he whirled around, it was clear that he was more than startled; he looked guilty. Beth’s eyes strayed to the computer — was he downloading porn? — but what she saw there looked a lot more like some super-high-tech version of “Dungeons and Dragons.” A wizard with a white beard was traveling up a winding road, toward a castle with several gates, while numbers flashed in the lower left corner of the screen and words scrolled across the top.
“Did I know you were coming in today?” he asked.
“No,” she said with a laugh, “because I didn’t know it myself.”
There was a creaking sound from the computer — one of the castle gates was lowering its drawbridge — and Elvis said, “Shit — can you give me a second?” He whipped around in his chair, glanced at the screen, tapped in a barrage of keystrokes, which were greeted with the sound of a heavy bell tolling ominously, and then the screen went blue.
“If you’re just playing some video game, why would you need to come here?”
“Because, well, it’s more complicated than that.” His skinny white arms poked out of his short-sleeved shirt. “It’s a network kind of thing — players from all over the planet — and the setup here is a lot faster and a lot more powerful than the crap I’ve got at home.”
“But didn’t it occur to you that it’s a beautiful day? The Fourth of July? You could be outside.” She realized that she had just channeled her mother.
And Elvis must have realized it, too. “Thanks, Mom,” he said with a smile. “But if you don’t mind my saying so, look who’s talking.”
Beth had the manila folder with the printout of the scribe’s letter in her hand, and clearly she wasn’t out on the beach, either.
“Welcome to Geek Central,” Elvis said. “I brought Doritos and Dr Pepper,” he added, gesturing at the junk food on his desk. “You want some?”
“No, thanks.” Shaking her head, Beth went around her assistant’s desk and on into her own office. “I’m going to log on myself.”
A few seconds later, she heard from Elvis’s desk the faint blast of a trumpet and the creaking of the drawbridge lowering again. “Could you turn that down?” she called out, and Elvis replied, “No problem — I’ll put it on the phones.”
Beth had really hoped to be alone, and wondered how she had wound up with the one assistant in all of Los Angeles who would rather be in the office on a national holiday than out smacking a volleyball somewhere. But she lowered her blinds — the afternoon sun was blinding — and then spread her papers out on the desk. She called up the graphemical database on the computer, then split the screen (as Elvis had taught her to do) and started scanning and transferring the remaining passages of the Latin text. She still felt lazy and vaguely unprofessional for relying on a computer to translate the Latin writing for her, but between the difficulties presented by the cramped handwriting and of course the archaic language, she knew that this was the safer and more expeditious route. And she could — and did — routinely check the work over afterward and smooth out the many rough edges.
And there were only a couple dozen lines left in the scribe’s hidden missive.
While she waited, she thought about giving Carter a quick call. She didn’t like what she was feeling around the house lately — a feeling that there were things in the air between them, things unspoken, and she wondered if Carter felt it, too. She’d never kept anything major from Carter — the way she was keeping her decision to hold on to the scribe’s letter from him now — and she suspected that the tension might stem from that. Or maybe she was imagining the whole thing — Carter had always been one to burrow deep into whatever intellectual puzzle he was trying to solve, and maybe he was just being true to form. And given that she, too, was sitting in her office on a hot, sunny Fourth of July — as Elvis had just pointed out — who was she to throw stones?
Her thoughts went back to that very morning, when Carter had been in the kitchen, feeding Champ several strips of raw bacon.
“Since when did he graduate from kibble?” Beth had asked, as she carried Joey to his high chair.
“From now on, this dog gets whatever he wants,” Carter said, though he didn’t explain why Champ had suddenly earned such privileges. And when Beth had asked about his late-night trip to the museum, Carter simply said, “I think I was able to put something to rest.” But again, he didn’t elaborate.
Even if Beth had been in a mood to confess her own transgression, Carter’s taciturnity would have turned her off.
Still, she thought, it was ridiculous to deal with a communication problem by not communicating. She picked up the phone and called Carter’s cell. He picked up after several rings and said, “Everything okay?” His voice was faint and muffled.
“Where are you?” Beth said. “It sounds like you’re in a bunker.”
