“She’s working something, cabron. I just can’t figure out what.”
Nando was flying up to Monterrey that afternoon for his niece’s quinceanera, and he picked up the check before he left and promised to let Carr buy dinner when he returned. “You keep your eye on her, bro. Maybe you can tell me what the mystery is all about.” It took him three days to work it out.
Carr spent a few more hours poolside that afternoon, watching her talk to the skinny men. The next day, he took a room at the hotel and followed her: to the beach with the tall skinny man, into town with the balding one, on the cliff-side hiking trail with the blond one who wore a strand of Buddhist prayer beads around his wrist. Poolside, in the cottony twilight, the men bought her drinks, fidgeted, laughed too long, and looked away from one another and scowled.
The day after that, Carr spent some dollars with the hotel staff to learn that her name was Carrie Lyle and that she was from L.A. The three men were from Milpitas, California, and they’d each given the same address on McCarthy Boulevard when they’d registered. Online, in the hotel’s business center, he found that the Milpitas address was the headquarters of Null Space Integrated, a manufacturer of specialized graphics chips, and that the men were NSI’s three most senior design engineers. Of Carrie Lyle he could find no trace at all.
A pro then, trolling for technical intel, or maybe for talent. It didn’t surprise Carr, but the knowledge left him feeling somehow disappointed, as if such mundane loot wasn’t deserving of her performance. Because it really was an exceptional performance-maybe the best he’d seen-subtle, unhurried, and finely calibrated to each member of her small audience. He saw it in her body language-the way she arranged herself at their sides-and he heard it in the snippets of conversation he’d managed to steal. She was tentative, almost shy, with the tall man; coltish, nearly awkward, with the bald one; and with the blond Buddhist she was ethereal and dreamy. Three women, beckoning.
It didn’t seem much work for her to reconcile her various selves when she entertained the three men at once. It was a matter of small adjustments as far as Carr could tell from his corner of the patio-something in her laugh, her posture, the way she touched her hair. A matter of little intimacies bestowed like candies: a fingertip on the back of a hand, a tanned thigh pressed for a moment against a pale one, a tanned foot sliding on a pale ankle, a hand on a nervous hip. The skinny men were like cats under a full moon, and at his shaded table Carr himself felt a lunar itch and an urge to howl.
So, mystery solved. Carr sighed heavily at the squandering of talent and hoisted himself from his seat. He headed toward his room and wondered what he and Declan might not get up to with someone like her on their crew. They’d been talking about recruiting someone with that kind of knack-a roper, a honeypot-but neither of them could come up with a likely prospect. Carr slid his key into his door and wondered if Carrie Lyle, or whatever the hell her real name was, might do. And then a gun was in his back and a hand was on his neck, pushing him inside.
The man didn’t wait until the door had closed. “The fuck you want, motherfucker?” His voice was American and nervous.
Carr turned slowly and took a slow, deep breath. The man was maybe thirty, and wore jeans and a polo shirt. He had short, black hair and a narrow frame, and something about his tapered head, and the way it swayed on his neck, reminded Carr of an otter. The man was sweating and breathing hard, and a vein throbbed at his temple faster than Carr’s pulse was racing.
“The fuck you want with her?” the otter said, and Carr sighed with relief that this was about Carrie Lyle and not some older piece of business. He studied the damp face. He didn’t think he’d seen the otter around the hotel, but he knew he wasn’t perfect when it came to those things.
“Want with who?”
“Don’t screw with me, asshole. You’re fucking bird-dogging her, and I want to know why.”
The gun was a little S amp;W, and Carr didn’t like the way it jumped around in the otter’s hand. “You mean the redhead? Take a look at her, brother-what do you think I’m interested in?”
The otter almost spit. “Right-that’s why you duke the desk guy a hundred bucks to see all those registration cards.”
Carr nodded slowly. She’d set up trip wires. She’d had someone watching her back. Carr was impressed, even if her guard dog was a lightweight. She’d known someone was trailing her and still she hadn’t broken stride. Carr took a half-step closer. The otter didn’t notice. “I wondered what she saw in those geeks,” he said. “A girl like that-I couldn’t figure it. I still can’t.”
The otter swallowed hard. “Bullshit. What are you-NSI security? Something private?”
Carr took another step forward and put a quaver in his voice and a frightened look on his face. “Seriously, I’m not anybody,” he said, and he raised his hands in the air. “I’m just here on vacation from-”
Carr jabbed his thumb into the otter’s throat, then into his eye, and then he took the otter’s gun. The man gagged and put his hands to his face. Carr pushed him backward into a chair. He tried to get up and Carr pushed him down harder and flipped him over. The otter had a wallet in his hip pocket and Carr took it, and slapped the back of his head when he tried to resist.
According to his driver’s license, his name was Kenneth Kern, from Van Nuys, California, and according to his business card, he was a partner and senior investigator with Victory Security Services, Inc. Carr tossed the wallet at Kern’s feet.
“I don’t work for NSI,” Carr said. “And I could give a shit what you guys are up to. I just want five minutes of her time-a quick chat, and nothing else.” He emptied the S amp;W while he spoke, and put the bullets in his pocket. Then he popped the cylinder out of the gun and tossed what was left into Kern’s lap. He held up the cylinder. “She comes to see me, I’ll give this back.”
She showed up around midnight, wearing a gray linen shift and an expression of impatience and disdain. She looked years older than she had poolside, and even ignoring the little automatic in her hand, she was about as seductive as the taxman.
Valerie’s voice was flat and without accent. “Your five minutes started fifteen seconds ago, so if you’ve got a pitch, make it now.”
Carr handed her the S amp;W cylinder. “I promised your boss I’d give this back.”
She snorted. “Kenny’s barely the boss of his shoelaces,” she said, and dropped the cylinder into her purse. She looked at her watch again.
Carr nodded and said his piece. Two days later, after she’d e-mailed the specs for NSI’s next mobile phone chip to her client in Shanghai and shorted a thousand shares of NSI stock, Valerie arrived for lunch in Chamela. Her expression was wary when Carr greeted her at the door of his casita, and warmed only slightly when Declan offered her a drink.
His phone is jittering on the bedside table, and Valerie is shaking his arm. Carr wipes a hand across his face and gropes for the light. Seven people have his number: the three men he was at dinner with hours earlier; the woman he’s in bed with now; Mr. Boyce, who rarely calls; Declan, who’s dead; and Eleanor Calvin. The caller ID shows a 413 area code, and Carr calculates the time in Stockbridge-five twenty in the morning. He takes the phone into the bathroom, turns on the light, and shuts the door on Valerie’s curious gaze. He runs water in the sink, and when he speaks his voice is thick and distant.
“Mrs. Calvin, what’s the matter?”
She’s seventy, about the shape and size of a hockey stick, but despite the early hour her voice is blue jay bright. “It’s not a good night for him, dear. He’s been walking the floor for hours, and now he’s calling for you.”
“Calling me for what, Mrs. Calvin?”
“You know how hard he can be to follow. He’s talking about your summer break, and a job-an internship, I think-at the State Department. I’m missing part of it, I’m sure, but I think he’s angry because you’re supposed to call someone about it, but you haven’t.”
The light in the bathroom is harsh and broken, the surfaces too shiny, and it all feels like sand in his eyes. In the mirror, his features are pale and smudged-a lost boy look, Valerie would say. Emphasis on the lost, Carr thinks, and for an instant Declan’s voice flashes in his head: Neither sober nor quite drunk enough.
“That was a dozen years ago, Mrs. Calvin.”
“It’s not a good night for him.”
“Would it help if I spoke to him?”
“It would help if you came for a visit.”
“Soon, Mrs. Calvin. Did you tell him I’ll be back there soon?”
“I did, dear, but honestly I’m not sure the ambassador knows who I am right now.”
