staring at the Frenchman but clearly looking straight through him.
The Frenchman found it disconcerting and unpleasantly suspenseful. He had told Bishop everything he knew. He worried that Bishop would not believe him and would work him over just to make sure.
But after a moment, the intruder nodded again. He stood to go. 'All right,' he said. 'Anything else you can tell me?'
The Frenchman tried not to sigh too loudly, but he was very relieved. He had judged the man aright. There was coldness and cruelty in him, but a certain fairness too. He had his code, such as it was, the way these people did. Mercenaries, hit men, terrorists, even lunatics-they all had their codes, or at least they liked to think so. The gunrunner felt a warm flood of gratitude and affection toward Bishop. Getting through the day uninjured was no small thing to him, given his advanced age and cowardice.
'Well, I can tell you this,' the Frenchman offered in the flow of his emotion. 'I have had many dealings with people in this business, yes? I have provided materiel to many men who do what this man does. I have seen men of great competence and expertise, and he is no doubt one of them, as are you, I can see. But never-never-have I ever witnessed anyone so… what is the word? Sans caracteristique. Nondescript, that is it. You might turn your back on him a moment and turn back and be unable to say it was he.'
Bishop looked down at him, bored, indifferent. 'Yeah?' he said after a moment. 'So?'
The Frenchman leaned forward in his chair, leaned past the image of the leather-and-sodomy girls on his computer. He set his elbows on the burn-scarred desktop, lay his hands together at his chin as if in prayer. 'So when it is on between you,' he said. 'Be aware, yes? The man is like a ghost. He can be right in front of you-right in front of you, and you will never see him coming.'
Part Three
Cats and Mice
21.
I followed Emma.
I woke up that morning in the white tangle of Sissy's fast embrace, in the smell of her, the older-woman perfumed smell that I was drunk on, that had me spellbound. My face was tucked into the hollow of her throat, and my dick was hard as rock against her thigh as she lay sleeping. Almost at once, I started thinking about Emma, fantasizing about walking along some street with Emma, holding Emma's hand, standing on Emma's doorstep at the end of a date and kissing her, drawing her into my arms, moving my hand inside her blouse. And so it went, until I wanted Sissy desperately, Sissy because… well, because Sissy was there-right there in the flesh when I was hard and crazy with love for Emma.
She liked it that I woke her up, that I couldn't wait. It made her laugh that I was so aroused, that I was inside her before she was even fully conscious. I looked down at her, trim and pink and white beneath me, her eyes swimming with tears, her lips parted on her small whispering cries. I looked down at her and thought if I couldn't have Emma I would die.
When I was getting dressed to leave, she called to me, 'Where are you off to so early, sweetie? Aren't you gonna come in to the office with me?'
I was in the bedroom, standing in front of the full-length mirror on the inside of her closet door. She was calling to me from the bathroom, calling over the noise of running water. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my clothes in her closet, my jeans, my slacks and button-down shirts, hanging among those schoolgirl outfits of hers, the white blouses, the pleated skirts. It was all so comfortable, so domestic, as if our lives were already thoroughly intermingled, as if the deal were already done. I despaired at the sight of it. I would never get free of her, never.
'I gotta go to Berkeley, remember?' I called back to her. 'On the case for that guy, that professor guy, the one who says his daughter is avoiding him. I'm supposed to follow her.'
I heard her shut the water off. 'What?' she called.
'I have to follow the professor's daughter. '
For whom my love-I fretted obsessively as I drove over the Bay Bridge half an hour later-for whom my love had become utterly impossible. Never mind Sissy. Never mind that I hadn't the courage or will to leave her. Now there was Emma's peculiar, intellectual, alcoholic, not to mention intimidating father to deal with. If she found out he had hired me to follow her, it would all be over. And if she didn't find out, he would find out that I'd followed her for my own purposes and then he'd tell her, and it would all be over. And it was all over anyway, because she was probably seeing someone else already, that was probably what I was following her to find out.
I knew I shouldn't have let it come to this. I should've turned the job down at the very beginning. But I couldn't. Because it gave me a reason to see her again. And by the time I reached Berkeley, that's all I was thinking about. I drove up the hill on the north side of campus, past the book store and the coffee shops and the sandwich shops and the students walking down toward the campus under big white clouds and a bright sun. I drove on into the oak- and elm-tree shadows of the hills, past the oak- and elm-tree-shaded houses. And all I was thinking about was that I was going to see Emma again.
And then I did. I did see her, up in the leafy neighborhood of the foothills. Not half a minute after I pulled my car to the curb a little distance from her parents' house, she stepped out the front door.
It was a moment of truth. After all my fantasies about her, the actual sight of her might have been a disappointment. She might've been less attractive than I remembered, or I might've exaggerated the quiet shock of connection I felt when I was with her. All that sense of destiny, of completion-it might've vanished before the fact of her like smoke in the wind. I might have watched her through my car window, smirking at myself for a romantic imbecile, sagging inside with sadness and disenchantment.
But oh no. It was not like that at all. She stepped out of the modest peak-roofed clapboard, out of the shadow of the porch into the bright autumn day. I took one look at that long, slim figure, the mischievous, valentine-shaped face, the adorable red beret atop the short, shaggy black, black hair. And, brothers and sisters, the angels sang, the birdies went tweet-tweet-tweet, and somewhere in that nexus of heart and testicle that passes for a man's soul, there was a spiritually audible snap as if all the jigsaw pieces of the world had leapt together in an instant.
So that was one second. Then, the next second, I realized Emma was walking straight toward me, that in yet another second, she would see me watching her from behind the wheel. Grasping the situation at a glance, I panicked instantly. I grabbed the ignition key, twisted it. A scree that sounded like the attack cry of a swooping harpy flew up from under the hood-because the engine was already running.
'Shit,' I observed.
I didn't wait to see if the hellacious noise had drawn Emma's attention. I popped the car into gear and hit the gas. The car let out another screech-the tires this time. It tore away from the curb, roaring up the hill. I muttered a prayer of the please-please-please-please-please variety that she hadn't recognized me as I thundered past.
So began the latest and last phase of my career as a private detective.
I went around a curve, out of her sight. I parked the car. Got out. Went after her on foot.
When she came into view again, she was still heading downhill. She was wearing a long, flaring coat and that beret, the same one she'd worn the night I met her. She was carrying books under her arm, striding purposely beside the winding road toward the campus.
I stayed about a block or so behind her. She moved rapidly under the trees, her figure brightening and darkening as she went from sunlight to dappled shadow. We descended together past small lawns and small houses nestled in foliage.
At first it all went smoothly. We were soon surrounded by other students on their way to school and older locals heading for the shops. It was easy for me to blend in and remain inconspicuous, easy to keep her in sight. There was only one problem. After the first moment of passion and excitement was over, I began to feel like scum. Following her, spying on her. Taking money from her father to find out what she was doing on the sly. I felt slimier with every step, guiltier with every step until, by the time we came within sight of that final stretch of stores and
