Time Bomb

tenacity. I had high expectations of the quality of information you’d be able to shunt to me. And I was right, wasn’t I? So I’d say the lentils paid for themselves. As did the homing tracers I placed in your Seville and in Detective Sturgis’s Matador and Fiat. Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite get to the Ford he traded for the Matador, but by that time I had enough data to be able to trace his abduction.”

“What a guy,” said Milo.

No longer hoarse now. Clear and quiet and enraged.

I knew what he was thinking: Burden had let him endure the interrogation. Waiting. Listening.

I said, “Howard was your conduit too. You dropped in on him and waited in his office so you could install your lentils.”

And hear every hateful word his son had spewed.

“Absolutely,” he said. A little too nonchalantly. “Holly’s behavior had been puzzling- distant, preoccupied. Due to her communication problems, I couldn’t draw it out of her. I knew she’d snuck over to Howard’s, both of them thinking I didn’t know about their little attempt at rapport-building. I thought Howard might be able to shed some light on the change in his sister, now that the two of them were communicating.”

“But you couldn’t simply ask Howard about it, because he also has communication problems.”

“Exactly.”

I remembered the loathing that had filled Howard’s office. How was a father able to deal with that- to defend against it?

I looked over at him. Placid. Blocking it out. Narcissism in service to the soul.

He made a left turn onto the freeway. All six lanes were as empty as Indy the day after the race.

“Howard’s a bright boy,” he said, “but he’s got many, many problems. Blind spots. You saw how obese and nervous he is. How he sweats. He gets eczema too. Gastric discomfort and insomnia. Clear signs of unhappiness. Constitutional weakness made worse by a poor attitude toward life. If he’d allowed me, I could have helped him with all of it. Perhaps one day he will. In the meantime, I couldn’t let his weakness get in the way.”

“That’s why you were so eager for me to meet with him. Hoping he might open up to me and you’d get it all on taper.”

He smiled. “More than hope. Data-based prediction. The conversation between the two of you ended up being a very useful transmission.”

“Wannsee Two,” I said. “Howard described how Holly had babbled about that the day her sister-in-law came over. I set out to learn what it meant. You listened and taped and followed along.”

“No, no,” he said, annoyed. “I didn’t need you for that. I was one step ahead of you. I know enough history to understand exactly what Wannsee was. Vahn-say is the correct pronunciation, of course. Gregory knows about Wannsee too, even though he’s from your generation. Because a good deal of Gregory’s family was eliminated by the Nazis. So when I called and told him we were dealing with Wannsee Two, he was more than eager to get involved in this project. Weren’t you, Gregory?”

“Absolutely, Mr. B.”

“Good ventriloquism,” said Milo. “Where’d you find a dummy this big?”

Graff gave a deep loose laugh.

“Hardly,” said Burden. “Gregory’s got training in electronics and biophysics under his belt, a year of medical school at an Ivy League university, a law degree from that same university, and graduate studies in business.”

Pride. Paternal pride.

His real son.

I said, “Sounds like a real renaissance man.” One part of my brain thinking about Linda and running at Methedrine pace. Another making small talk, trying to get information from the odd, scary man in the driver’s seat.

“Bet he has military training, too,” I said. “Former intelligence officer, same as you. That’s how you found him, isn’t it? Not some modeling agency. When it was time to recruit a partner, you know precisely where to go.”

“I’m not a partner,” said Graff. “Just a figurehead.” More laughter.

Burden laughed too. The exchange to the 405 appeared. He took it going south, and moved into the center lane, maintaining a steady seventy miles per.

I said, “How about going a little faster.”

He didn’t answer, but the speedometer climbed to seventy-five.

Wanting a hundred but knowing that was all I was going to get, I said, “Here’s another hypothesis: Between the two of you, New Frontiers has access to military computers. Ahlward had a military background. You checked him out.”

“Military background,” said Graff. Bear-growl laughter.

Burden didn’t join in. “He was the first one I researched. Before I approached you. The press was painting him as some kind of hero. I wanted to learn about the one who actually pulled the trigger. The hero who’d killed my daughter. What I found out smelled bad. He’d lied about being a military man.”

His tone said that was the ultimate felony.

“All he had was seven months in the Marine Corps. April of ’sixty-seven to November of ’sixty-eight. A good part of it in the brig before he was dishonorably discharged for moral turpitude. A closed file that I managed to open. Two separate incidents. Sexual harassment of a sixteen-year-old girl- a black girl- and attempts to organize a white-supremacist gang among other new recruits. It was the latter that made me research him further. After his discharge he enjoyed brief stints in local jails for theft and burglary and disorderly conduct. I decided he was scum, looked into his family history. His father had been a Bundist war criminal. Ran one of their summer camps. Schweiben. Ahlward Senior was imprisoned for sedition in 1944, released in 1947, only to die a year later of cirrhosis. Alcoholic scum. Multigenerational scum. Which led to another question: why would a supposedly liberal- minded city councilman hire someone like that? So I researched the city councilman too. Found nothing there but a piece of lint masquerading as a man. Good family, all the privileges, not a trace of hardship in his background. Not a trace of character either. Addiction to the path of least resistance. Needless to say, he found his way into the latrine we know as politics.”

Angry words but a conversational tone.

“I monitored Latch’s headquarters. Easy as pie, right, Gregory? But that didn’t teach me much. Latch’s people displayed a modicum of discipline- tended to be circumspect over the phone. But you were doing a fine job as my conduit, putting it all together: Novato, the old woman, that pathetic washout Crevolin. For a brief period I thought the vandalization of Ms.- Excuse me-Dr. Overstreet’s car was related to it, But Detective Sturgis proved me wrong. Congratulations, Detective.”

“Fuck off and drive.”

“Nevertheless, the rest of it proved what I’d known all along: that my daughter had been a victim herself. A dupe. I put it all together before either of you did. And in answer to the question you asked of Howard, Doctor, my political beliefs are antithetical to fascism. I believe in unrestrained free enterprise, minimal government control. Live and let live. On condition the other side behaves itself.”

“Die and let die,” said Graff. “Never again.”

“Gregory and I had no trouble believing in Wannsee Two. Because of our military background, our access to classified data. We knew what had gone on in various army bases during the late seventies. Racist cells that the armed forces broke up swiftly. But at the cost of discharging the fascists into the weak, civilian world, where irregularities couldn’t be dealt with as efficiently. That insight and experience gave me the edge. I knew from the careful way Latch’s people handled themselves over the phone that there had to be some other place they did their dirty work- a secret headquarters where the swine spoke freely. But they never let on, not through all the monitoring. Then I thought of Latch’s wife. Began tracing properties deeded to her. Burrowing through the layers of corporations she’d wrapped around herself. Piercing that kind of cocoon is absurdly easy if you know how, and I quickly came up with several possibilities- despite the fact that she’s a very well-landed lady. I was in the process of narrowing down the list when you made my job easy. Calling Detective Sturgis last night and leaving him the message about your being followed. That license plate. I have trace capacities better than most police departments- millions of licenses in my data bank. I matched your number to one of my possibilities, a company listed as a printing facility. Gregory and I were there just alter sundown. Saw Detective Sturgis being delivered there. Listening. Show him, Gregory.”