“One bedroom.”
“Anyone there?”
Irina Budzhyshyn shook her head. “I am alone… Would you like some tea?”
“No thanks.” Milo took out his gun, passed through the beads, and turned left. Irina Budzhyshyn stood there, not moving, not looking at me.
A minute later he returned. “Okay. Tell us about Hermes Electric and Mr. P. L. Almoni.”
This time the name made her smile. “I need to make a phone call.”
“To who?”
“Someone who can answer your questions.”
“Where's the phone?”
“In the kitchen.”
“Anything else in there I should know about?”
“I have a gun,” she said calmly. “In the drawer next to the refrigerator, but I'm not going to shoot you.”
With a few quick strides, he retrieved it. Chrome-plated automatic.
“Loaded and ready.”
“I'm a woman living alone.”
“Any other arms?”
“No.”
“And no P. L. Almoni lurking in some attic?”
She laughed.
“What's funny?”
“There's no such person.”
“If you don't know him, how can you be sure?”
“Let me make the call and you'll understand.”
“Who're you going to call?”
“I can't tell you until after I make the call. You're not a county sheriff so I don't even have to cooperate with you.”
Statement of fact, no defiance.
“But you're cooperating anyway.”
“Yes. It's… practical. I'm going to call now. You may watch me.”
They went into the kitchen and he stayed right next to her, towering over her, as she punched numbers. She said something in a foreign language, listened, said something else, then handed the receiver to him.
As he pressed it to his ear, his jaws bunched.
“What? When?” He was growling now. “I don't… okay, all right. Where?”
He hung up.
Irina Budzhyshyn left the kitchen and sat on a couch, looking content.
Milo turned to me. He was flushed and his shirt looked tight. “That was Deputy Consul Carmeli. We're to meet him at his office in fifteen minutes. Sharp. Maybe this time we'll actually get past the goddamn hall.”
24
Wilshire was empty as we pulled up in front of the consulate building. By the time we were out of the car, someone was standing in front of the unlit lobby door.
He studied us, then came forward into the streetlight. Young man in a sportcoat and slacks. Big shoulders, big hands, one of them carrying a walkie-talkie. His hair was dark and very short, just like that of the guard behind the consulate reception window. It could have even been the same man.
“I'll take you up,” he said in a flat voice.
Striding ahead of us, he unlocked the door and walked across the echoing lobby. The three of us rode up to the seventeenth floor. He looked bored.
The door opened on Zev Carmeli standing in the corridor. He said,
Carmeli was wearing a dark suit and white shirt, no tie, and he reeked of tobacco. His hair had been watered and combed but several cowlicks sprouted.
“This way.” He did an abrupt about-face and led us to the white door of the same conference room. This time we walked through and out the back into the cubicles of the work area. Office machines, a water cooler, corkboard full of memos, the travel posters I'd seen through the reception window. The fluorescent panels in the ceiling were off and light came from a single corner pole lamp. Nothing to distinguish the place from any other site of repetitive-motion injury.
Carmeli kept going, hunched, arms swinging loosely, til he reached a door with his name on it. Twisting the knob, he stood aside and let us enter.
Like Irina Budzhyshyn's apartment, his office was characterless, with blue drapes over what I assumed were windows, a wall of half-empty board-and-bracket shelves, a wooden desk with steel legs, gray sofa and love seat.
A man sat on the love seat and when we came in he stood, keeping his left hand in the pocket of his blue jeans.
Late thirties to forty, five seven, around 140, he wore a black nylon windbreaker, pale blue shirt, black athletic shoes. His tightly kinked hair was black tipped with gray and trimmed to a short Afro. His face was lean, very smooth, cafE-au-lait skin stretched tightly over finely molded features. A strong nose was anchored by flared nostrils and his lips were wide, full and bowed. Very light brown eyes- golden, really- and shaded by long, curved lashes. Arched eyebrows gave them the look of permanent surprise but the rest of his face contradicted that: static, unreadable.
Probably Middle-Eastern, but he could have been Latin or American Indian or a light-skinned black man.
Familiar for some reason… had I seen him before?
He met my stare and volleyed it back. No hostility, just the opposite. Pleasant, almost friendly.
Then I realized his expression hadn't changed. Like a Rorschach card, his neutrality had led me to interpret.
Milo was looking at him, too, but his attention shifted to Carmeli as the consul passed behind the desk and sat down.
His big hands were clenched and I saw him open them. Forcing the appearance of relaxation. During the ride over from Holloway Drive, he'd been silent, driving much too fast.
He sat down on the sofa without being invited and I did the same.
The dark man with the golden eyes was still looking at us. Or past us.
Still pleasantly blank.
Suddenly I knew I
Driving away from Latvinia Shaver's murder scene. Driving some kind of compact car- a gray Toyota- just as the film crews arrived. Wearing a uniform like that of Montez, the custodian.
Another image clicked in.
A dark-skinned uniformed man had also been at the nature conservancy the day Milo took me to view Irit's murder scene.
Park-worker's uniform. Driving some sort of mowing machine, leaf bags stacked on the grass.
A pith helmet had hidden his face.
Following us? No, in both cases he'd gotten there before.
One step ahead because he had access to police information?
