The Midnight House

buried deep. So, the best bet is talking to you and the other families. You have my word, whatever Jerry did, I’m not after him. I’m not a cop or FBI. I’m working for the agency, and only the agency, to figure this out. And I’m a friend of your husband’s. I know it may not seem that way, since we’ve never met before, but believe me, Ranger training, the guys in your unit, by the end you either can’t stand the sight of them or they’re friends for life. And Jerry was a friend. If he’d called me two months ago, said, ‘I’m in trouble,’ I would have been on the next plane down, no questions asked. That’s just how it is.”

Not a bad speech, Wells thought. Even if the reality was more complicated. After fifteen years, he probably would have asked at least a couple questions before buying his ticket. But Noemie seemed to like it. She patted his arm, leaned in.

“I’m telling you, I don’t know much.”

“Anything.”

“They were rough. And I think near the end, something went wrong.”

The FBI interview report didn’t have anything like this from her. Wells waited. “What gave you that impression?” he said finally. “Something he said?”

“He changed. The last couple months, he didn’t want to talk. Stopped e-mailing. He was hiding something, like he was having an affair. But Jerry would never have done that. Anyway, it was Poland.”

“He never said anything about what had actually happened?”

“No.”

“What about the information the squad developed? Did he ever talk about that? ”

“No.”

“Mom-mom!” From the second floor. A boy’s voice.

“Jeffrey,” she said. “He has nightmares. Since Jerry’s gone. He knows what’s up. The others don’t, but he does.”

She hurried upstairs.

I don’t got to tell you, Mr. Wells, she’d said. If there’s one person who knows, it’s you. Was he a torturer? A killer, yes. But never a torturer. Though he’d come close, that night in the Hamptons with Pierre Kowalski, the arms dealer. Another bit of unfinished business. Close to a year before, Wells had found himself outside Kowalski’s mansion in Zurich, pacing, hand on the Makarov tucked into his pants. Then he’d walked away. He’d made a deal with Kowalski, and he’d keep his word. For now.

NOEMIE RETURNED, trailed by a small boy, a miniature Malcolm Gladwell, a shock of curly hair springing from his head. His T-shirt, printed with a caped Will Smith from the movie Hancock, reached to his knees.

“This is Jeffrey,” she said.

“Hi, Jeffrey. Did you like Hancock? ”

“Mommy wouldn’t let me see it! ”

“Touchy subject,” Noemie said.

Jeffrey tugged on his mother’s pants. “I’m sleepy, Mommy.”

“If you’re sleepy, why weren’t you sleeping?”

“Want to sleep in your bed.”

“You know that’s not allowed.” She put him on the couch, settled beside him. He curled into her lap, his face just visible.

“Please.”

“Go to sleep here, and when you wake up, it’ll be morning. Deal?”

Jeffrey nodded happily.

“We’re going to go from twenty to zero. Promise to be asleep by zero.”

“Promise.”

“Close your eyes. Twenty, nineteen. ” She rubbed his forehead as she counted, and by the time she was done, the boy’s mouth had dropped open and his breathing was as steady as the fan overhead.

“You’re a magician,” Wells said.

She glanced at her watch. “Anything else you need to know, Mr. Wells? I should get him to bed.”

“Tell me about what Jerry was like when he got back.”

“He was quiet, not talking much.”

“And you read into that what?”

“I told you. That something happened he didn’t want to talk about.” She leaned back against the couch. The boy in her lap stirred, and she ran a finger down his arm to calm him. “One time.” She broke off, and Wells waited. “One time, I got home early from work, and he was reading a book about the Nazis. When I saw him with it, it was like I’d caught him looking at I don’t know what. He tried to hide it from me double-quick. I asked him about it, and he told me to mind my business. Which was not usual for him, even at that time. But I let it go. And I never saw the book again.”

“The Nazis. Do you remember the name of the book?”

“I do not.”

Again the boy stirred in her lap, and again she soothed him. “All right, Mr. Wells. I think it’s time for this one to go to bed. Me, too.”

“Just a couple more questions.”

“A couple.”

“You said a while back, you two were having problems before he disappeared. What was that about?”

“I loved Jerry, and I know he loved me. But like I said, he was different when he came back. And after we moved here, he had a tough time finding work. I guess I figured, a major in the Special Forces, a man like that could always find a job, even in New Orleans. But the corporate stuff — there’s not a lot of companies down here for that work. He did some bodyguard work, but he wanted to be a director of security somewhere. Thought he’d earned that. He told me we should move. I wanted him to give it time. It’d hardly been six months. New Orleans can grow on you.”

“But you’re sure he wouldn’t have walked out.”

“I’m sure.”

“The night he disappeared?”

“He told me he was going down to the market, pick up a six-pack. He’d been drinking more, too, since he got back. That was around seven p.m. Ten or so, I tried to call him and he didn’t answer.”

“Were you worried? ”

“It’d happened a couple of times recently. So, no. I wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t worried. Figured he was on the corner, hanging out. Watching dice get rolled. When midnight came and he didn’t come home, I decided to see for myself. So, I put my shoes on and I slipped my little.22 in my purse—”

“You have a gun—”

“Mr. Wells, you think those bangers out there care about Mace?” She laughed, her voice losing an octave and filling the room. “Mace? This is New Orleans. Mace? Anyway, I went out there, and Harvey, who runs the market, he said he hadn’t seen Jerry in a few hours, said he had himself a quart of Budweiser and went off to the Pearl, a few blocks away.”

“The Pearl?”

“The real name is, I believe, Minnie’s Black Pearl. But everyone just calls it the Pearl. A high-class establishment. Get shot in there for wearing the wrong hat. I was in no mood to visit the Pearl, so I went home. I figured Jerry would get home eventually and we would have it out, say some things that needed saying. Like my daddy said, sometimes a big storm clears the air. Though my daddy was full of it.”

“But Jerry never came home.”

“He did not. And the next morning, soon as the Pearl opened at eleven, I went over there, showed them the picture, asked if they knew him, and that S-A-N bartender, he started in with, ‘We don’t snitch around here.’ I said, ‘I’m not the cops, I’m the man’s wife,’ and you know what he said. He said, ‘That might be worse.’ So I said, ‘Look, my husband didn’t get home last night, and if you don’t tell me what you know, I will stand outside your bar tonight shouting about Jesus and sinners until you’re the one calling the cops to get rid of me.’ And so I found out what they knew, which was hardly worth the trouble. Jerry drank until eleven, by himself. And then he left. Said he was