'All right.'
'And I haven't seen her since. And I certainly haven't seen my father-no one has.'
'Miss Graves…'
'So I don't really know who you are. And I can't really help you, can I? Even if I wanted to help you lead this 'bad guy' of yours right to my sister's door, I couldn't, because I have no idea where she is.'
It was awfully good, awfully cool. And though Weiss knew she was lying, he had no way to prove it. As usual, he had nothing to go on but being Weiss.
'Miss Graves,' he said slowly. 'I know your father would've called to warn you after I found him.'
'You found him,' Olivia Graves said. 'You found my father who's been a fugitive for seventeen years. The police couldn't. The FBI couldn't. But you did. You want me to believe that.'
'You know it's true. Because he called you. And even if he didn't call you, your sister would've let you know.'
Olivia Graves kept the performance going. She shook her head quickly as if she couldn't quite believe what she was hearing from him. She gave a bemused laugh. 'Well, you have it all figured out, don't you?'
'Yes,' he said.
'My father, who's been missing for seventeen years, has called me. My sister, who's been missing for fifteen years, somehow gets in touch. And all because of you. Is there something that makes you believe all this, or does it just come into your head?'
Weiss did laugh now. He couldn't help it. 'It pretty much just comes into my head,' he admitted.
'I can see that. Sort of like this fantasy you have of rescuing my sister from a killer. That just comes into your head too, doesn't it?'
Weiss didn't answer. There was color in Olivia's cheeks now, a sparking anger in her eyes. He knew if he just let her go on, she would show herself. He just let her go on.
'How well do you know my sister?' she asked.
'I've never met her.'
'Really. You've never met her?'
'I've seen some pictures of her, that's all. A photograph and a ten-second video loop from the Internet.'
'I see.' Her hands clasped on her knee, Olivia Graves leaned forward even farther, jutting her chin at him eagerly. Weiss couldn't help but get the idea in his head that she was moving in to finish him off. 'You saw some pictures of her. And she's very beautiful, isn't she, Mr. Weiss?'
'Yes, she is.'
'She always was. And men-' She gestured at him with one hand. 'Men of a certain mind-set have always fallen in love with her at first sight, even when she was a girl. To be fair, I think she fostered it to some extent. She had a habit of becoming whoever men wanted her to be. I suppose that makes her the perfect whore, doesn't it? Especially for someone like yourself, who seems to expect the world to correlate itself with your fantasy life.' Weiss saw a faint smile play at the corner of Olivia's lips, a faintly triumphant smile as she leaned in for him. 'Let me ask you something, Mr. Weiss. Do you often form such intense attachments to prostitutes?'
'Let me ask you something, sweetheart,' he said. 'How do you know she's a prostitute, if you haven't heard from her in fifteen years?'
The question caught her off guard, pulled her up straight as if he had yanked on a rope attached to the back of her neck. Weiss, being Weiss, had figured it would be like that. Being Weiss, he had figured this girl out pretty well. She was the 'sane one' in the Graves family. She was the lone member of a shattered clan who lived a normal life, walked a straight path. She wouldn't turn her father in. She wouldn't lead him to her sister. But she had no sympathy for either of them, no time for the messes they made, and no patience for whatever unsavory characters they got themselves involved with. They could play games with contract killers and private detectives all they wanted. She wasn't going to have them dragging her into their foolishness. The whole idea of it got her righteous anger working. And the anger was why she had said too much.
She tried to backtrack now. 'I just assumed she hadn't changed,' she said coldly.
'No. You know. Because you and her-you've never lost touch with each other. You wouldn't lose touch.'
Still, she kept the act going. 'I see. More of your fantasy life.'
'C'mon, lady. You were two little girls who went through hell together. Your big sister was beautiful and kind, and she took care of you the only way she knew how. You had the brains, and you always knew you were taking care of her too. And you still take care of each other. You wouldn't lose touch.'
Olivia began to speak, then didn't-then began to speak again, then didn't again. Then, bitterly, she said, 'Well… Well, this has been very interesting. You-you have a very interesting personality disorder, Mr. Weiss. Are you aware of that?'
He gave another laugh. 'Only one?'
'You think you understand everything, but you don't understand anything.'
'Yeah, it's that or the other way around, I'm never sure.'
Her eyes were glistening. It hurt Weiss to see it. The tip of her tongue came out to dampen her lips. 'I think you should leave now,' she said softly.
Weiss nodded. 'Sure. I'll leave. But first let me say what I came to say.'
Twenty-seven-year-old Olivia Graves sat very straight in her sling chair trying not to cry. 'All right,' she said. 'Go on.'
'You have a way of getting in touch with your sister. Nothing direct. Neither of you would risk that. But something simple. A middleman, probably, who passes messages between you. Whatever the system is, I want you to use it to send a message for me.' He couldn't tolerate this stupid chair anymore. It made him feel like a beached whale. With a tremendous groan, he worked his way out of it. He stood hugely above her, where she sat straight fighting her tears. 'Tell her it's up to her,' he said. 'She can run or she can stay. I won't do this forever. I'm close now, but if she goes on running, she can keep one step ahead of me. If that's what she decides to do, I'll stop, I'll walk away, and then it'll just be him, the bad guy, because he'll never stop and she'll have to go on running and that'll be her life till he finds her or she dies. If she stays put, if she lets me reach her, he'll reach her, too, and him and me, we'll decide it between us. Then it'll be over, either way. Tell her. Let her know. It's up to her.'
Olivia Graves was holding on to herself so severely now that her head trembled. She tried to smile her triumphant smile again, but it just came off as spiteful. 'You see? You think you understand everything,' she said again. 'But you don't. You don't understand any of it. Any of it.'
Weiss didn't answer. He shook his head. He sighed heavily. He put his hands in his pants pockets and lumbered to the door.
Olivia's next words broke from her in a ragged voice. 'Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this?'
Weiss opened the door and stepped through. 'You're the psychologist,' he muttered. 'You figure it out.'
34.
Now I have to say just a word or two here about what was happening to me, only because it eventually came to play a role in the central story-a minor role, I admit, but a role all the same.
Weiss, at this time, had just exited Olivia Graves's office and was driving out to Sky Harbor Airport, where he hoped to meet with the Shadowman. In San Francisco, meanwhile, where it was an hour earlier, Sissy and I had just returned to her apartment. We had left work on the early side. With Weiss gone and the business suffering, there wasn't much to do. The Agency had become a depressing place to hang around.
When we got in, Sissy went to the bathroom to take a shower. I changed into jeans and a T-shirt and plunked down on her four-poster bed to read. And I tried to read. I went through the motions. Stretched out on her fluffy bedspread, my head propped up on her fluffy pillows with a fluffy cat kneading my belly with her claws and another fluffy cat sleeping on my crotch. I held the book in front of me, and my eyes went back and forth over the words. But my mind was too full to pay attention to them, and my heart was too heavy. My heart weighed a ton.
I was thinking about Emma, about what she'd said to me. I could hardly think about anything else anymore. I kept asking myself: how was I supposed to become the sort of man she could look up to and admire? It was not a
