“ Yeah… so, maybe a rain check?”
“ Jessica.” Kim stopped her colleague as she was about to go. Jessica turned and looked demurely back at her. “Yes?”
“ We're not in any sort of… competition here, are we?”
“ Why, no, of course not. We're on the same side, right?”
“ I had hoped so, but I haven't felt so.”
“ If I've seemed…distant… well, it's for the benefit of the charade actually, to keep your association with the Bureau our little secret, remember.”
She's lying… covering up her true feelings, Kim instantly realized.
Jessica continued, running a nervous hand through her hair. “What would it look like to the others if you and I were… chummy? Well, I've still got to freshen up, meet Ed by eight.”
Kim nodded and breathed deeply. “Yes, you're right, of course. But listen, any time you want, I'd be happy to handle those items you took from Matisak's cell, as a favor to you, Jess.”
“ Maybe tomorrow. Good night, Kim.”
“ Night, Jess.” Now she's so reluctant, Kim thought, when before, on the plane, she was so anxious.
It appeared that Wardlaw had beaten them both out the door, for he was nowhere to be found either, and Kim felt terribly hollow and unconditionally alone.
15
Egyptian Proverb:
The worst things:
To be in bed and sleep not.
To want for one who comes not.
To try to please and please not.
Alex Sincebaugh felt the summer breeze cascading through his hair as his car sailed over great Lake Ponchartrain's shallow, brackish basin, the hum of the car in sync with Hank Williams's most melodic ballad, “I'm So Lonesome, I Could Cry,” the D.J. asking for callers to ring him up with the bluest blues they'd ever felt, something to top the line about the whippoorwill that “sounds too blue to fly.” Alex switched off the radio for the golden silence of the waters here, waters which served the city in countless ways. In winter, they warmed the frigid air coming in from the north before it chanced to the city's perimeter; in summer, the lake served as an ideal playground for boaters, fishermen and picnickers, although most of her waters were now too polluted to allow swimming, particularly along the southern rim by New Orleans. The northern area, however, remained a prime source for hefty trout, crab and shrimp any time of year. Named for Louis XIV's naval minister, the huge lake connected via narrow straits to the Gulf of Mexico, and little wonder it was a favorite dumping ground for mafia hits.
To clear his mind, Alex liked to drive, so he'd taken off early from his apartment and meandered about the city streets, gathering his thoughts, honest to himself about not wishing to be alone in his place. He'd become fearful of sleep, and to banish it and the creeping boredom, he'd even driven the twenty-four miles from the Jefferson Parish shoreline to Man-deville. The roadbed, perched just a few yards above the waters of Lake Ponchartrain, was blatantly advertised as the world's longest bridge, and at midpoint Sincebaugh could see neither shore from the famous causeway. However, the near-blinding, brilliant sunset was plain Southern beauty, like a fire in the sky, the light dancing arcade-fashion along the giant catfish scales created by low-lying, slow-moving vapor clouds which mirrored the bay waters. It was nearing eight P.M., and he was too exhausted and frustrated to sit around at his place.
Lake Ponchartrain, forming New Orleans's northern boundary, was in fact more of a bay than a lake; still, nobody- especially the tourists-had to know that, he told himself as he fished out his two dollars for the toll, reentering the city at the now-famous Lakefront-Bayou St. John district and City Park, where jazz and food spiced up life.
From there, Alex drove to a nearby coffee shop where he'd found the lights dim enough to go easy on his eyes but bright enough to read the Evening Star Gazette and the Times-Picayune. He didn't feel like going back to his place, at least not directly, and he knew that sleep would evade him, and he feared the recurrent dream he had been having since the death of the first Hearts victim, young Victor Surette. He also knew that he looked like hell, that he was not working on all four burners, and that soon his C.O. would call him in for a complete dressing down, now more than ever since he'd made a public spectacle of himself, infuriating Landry in the process at the Toulouse Street Wharf before the press moments after Dr. Desinor had left the scene.
They'd argued openly and loudly about the psychic, and Lew Meade's high-handed FBI forensics guru, Coran, as well.
Alex felt alone and confused and at odds with everyone. At the same time that he was glad to learn of Frank Wardlaw's dismissal, he found something about the self-assured Coran which equally rubbed him the wrong way. It wasn't anything he could put his finger on, just her officious manner, the way she conducted herself, maybe the way she took control and that emotionless exterior. Where had she put her feelings? Were they something she took out from that black bag of hers only when the occasion called for it?
Maybe he was just being foolish, childish and petty even; maybe none of it mattered; maybe Coran and maybe even the psychic detective could do a better job than he and deYampert. Fuck it all.
It wasn't that he hated women by any means, but maybe he did harbor a little fear of women who came on so bloody strong as Coran-and perhaps Kim Desinor as well. The two women had much in common, he surmised, and each was as talented or as crafty as the other-cunning folk, they'd have been called in the days of the witch trials. And each was alluringly attractive, each as beautiful in her way as the other.
Damn. He cursed the thought of feeling in the slightest attracted to Kim Desinor, though he knew he was. He'd felt something between them, some intangible and fairylike spark of intense desire that rose so quickly it was extinguished in its own rush to escape the moment he'd taken her in his arms there on the wharf. She too had to have felt it, despite her words and her coolness.
Yes, he was physically drawn to her, but at the same time, for some goddamned unaccountable, unexplainable reason, this Dr. Desinor's very presence on the case had him recalling in glaring and vivid detail the Vietcong doctors in that hellhole of a concentration camp where torture and human experimentation were routine, daily occurrences. Why such horrors should return now so vividly, he did not know, but he felt that she was the catalyst, the one who let loose the horrors. He didn't know why she had this effect on him, and no doubt it was totally unintentional on her part, but she did, and it was unpleasant, and yet there was something so erotically appealing, seductive and charming about her that he wanted to pursue her, no matter the consequences. He wanted to learn more about her, and this strange paradox of feelings had had hold of him from the moment he saw her step off that Lear jet today.
Alex had managed to endure the gross indignities and suffering placed on him in Vietnam largely through the process of mind over matter. After a while, he was no longer present, freed from the pain and humiliation by mere will and a kind of mind control his captors had no notion of or cure for. It infuriated them, challenged them, took them to new heights of cruelty, but he was no fun for them any longer since he felt not a thing.
He looked down at his scarred hands where the nails had grown back, covering the now-tough tissue beneath. He seldom thought of those times nowadays, because the moment one such image came even remotely close to his consciousness, it was extinguished by a fail-safe mechanism which he didn't fully understand but did truly bless.
The tortures were beyond cruel and sadistic; his scars attested to that. His ex-girlfriend, Allie, was one of the few women he'd allowed close since Vietnam, and even then she'd only seen him in the dark. He was careful to be up and dressed before dawn whenever she stayed over, except for that last time when she'd gotten him drunk and talking and sleeping in the next day. She must have seen the scars, understanding for the first time his total
