Judas Horse

The moment I pick it up, the quadrants on the TV monitor flip to four different views — driveway, bathroom, attic, inside the cabinet—and there is Special Agent Ana Grey, staring into the camera like a bonehead tourist. As I move the cassette, my image on the split screen moves accordingly.

Stone has hidden a tiny camera in the spine of Apocalypse Now. He kept the camera aimed from the shelf in the living room, but he must have switched it for the real videotape when I noticed there were two. He has the whole place under constant surveillance. I can see from the monitor there is even a covert camera inside the German wall clock, keeping watch on who’s going up the stairs. And who’s been searching the house.

The apocalypse is looking at me now, through the pinhole of a live camera, less than an eighth of an inch in diameter.

My nose, on the screen, is as big as the snout of a moose.

That night at 1:00 a.m., a flashlight shines in my face.

“Get up,” says Stone.

I am already up, speed-dialing a thousand explanations. I have avoided him all day.

“You broke into my shop.”

“What are you talking about?”

I swing out of bed, but he pushes me down, his hand squarely on my chest.

“You broke into my workroom and my personal cabinets.” “Why would I do that? It’s the dumbest thing in the world.” “It’s all on tape, Darcy.”

I say nothing.

Neither affirm nor deny.

“Yeah.” He nods, reading my face. “That’s right. You’re toast.” I notice Sara is not in her bed. He has me alone. He has set the stage for — what?

“All right!” I shout, and surprise him by lunging for the wall switch, defiantly flicking on the light, making him squint.

“I did break into your shop, and I’ll tell you why I—” “Is that so?”

He sits beside me and the mattress sinks. Again, that scent of male, and the threat of two hundred pounds of leaned-out muscle and bone. He’s wearing a loose rayon shirt and jeans, long, hairy toes blackened with sawdust gripping the shower thongs that pass for slippers. He must have just come from the basement, checking his daily surveillance tapes.

“Everything around this place is a huge big secret,” I rant on. “I’ve been here weeks, and you still don’t trust me? Now I find out you’re spying on us? Your own people, who live in your house?” “It’s for everyone’s protection.”

“What if those tapes wind up on the Internet? Or maybe this whole operation is some kind of a setup.” “Setup for what?”

“Maybe you’re working for the cops.”

“Why would I?”

“To destroy the movement from the inside. They pull that shit, you know.” Dick Stone rubs his forehead, shiny from the warmth of the night.

“No need to freak, little sister. I came up here just to say ‘Right on.’” What is that in his amber eyes — besides middle-aged fatigue, glazed by the lateness of the hour? Something I haven’t seen before: Amusement?

He lays a heavy arm across my shoulders.

“Darcy, I would have done the same damn thing. Looked through Daddy’s drawers when the folks weren’t home. You know, I did that once when I was a kid, and guess what I found? In my father’s nightstand? A heap of condoms and a huge fucking kitchen knife he kept right by the bed. That was a shocker.” “Which? The condoms or the knife?”

“The knife, man. What was he thinking?” Stone shakes his head.

“Protecting the family, just like you.”

“We lived in suburban Connecticut.”

“Gotta watch out for those serial stockbrokers.” Dick Stone snorts with laughter. “You’re not far wrong. He was a competitive old bastard.” “You’re not mad about the cabinets? I see a lock, I can’t help thinking there must be something righteous inside, worth protecting.” He nods. “I dig it. You’ve got skills, girl.”

“Used to be a pretty good thief. Got busted for stealing data, served my time, but a regular padlock — that’s just too tempting.” Dick Stone’s face is now so close, I can see the tiny bristles on his cheeks.

“One question. Where did you hide the tools? You can’t just pick a lock.” “Have you been going through my stuff?”

“Regularly.”

“That’s why I kept moving them.”

I reach under the bed, pull out a small bundle that was duct-taped to the frame, and toss it over.

This open display stops him. Could anyone actually be so guileless?

I’ve pasted on a casual smile but I think I’ve stopped breathing. For several long seconds I watch Dick Stone waver, like a high school coach who discovers his best starting pitcher smoking weed in the locker.

Screw it. He likes the kid.

“Darcy,” he says slowly, “you’re okay. You’re the same as me. All you want is to have some fun. You like to start little fires, don’t you?” I rest for a moment in enormous relief. He hasn’t made a move on me, hasn’t doubted my story. And there is truth in what he says — sitting butt-to-butt on the edge of the bed, seemingly at ease in the heart of the night like father and daughter, or supervisor and agent, we recognize something inside the other that is the same.

A paradox is unfolding. The longer I stay under, the larger Dick Stone becomes. Rather than working his way into ordinariness through everyday contact, he grows more vivid, and my own sense of self-cohesion fades. The boundaries between Darcy and Ana seem inconsequential, not worth defending, as we are swept toward the Big One by some inner momentum of Stone’s that the meticulous procedures of the Bureau are powerless to stop. Donnato’s voice on the Oreo phone and my former life in Los Angeles dwindle and disappear like radio signals moving out of range.

The first time I drove through the Marine base at Quantico as a new agent, there was that orgasmic surge of ecstasy: This is what I’ve always wanted! Now, out of this cozy intimacy with Stone, the same words echo, but with a newly ominous tone: This is what I wanted, going undercover, isn’t it? To forget the past and my mistakes and the larger-than-life figures who dominated, even as the realization creeps at the edge of my mind that I have replaced one despot with another.

There is no retribution here. Dick Stone believes what he has said — that he and I are somehow the same — and now that he is done saying it, he simply gets up and leaves.

And the Darcy part of me experiences a rush of feeling for the old bandit that Ana, still the FBI agent, could never admit: Affection.

Twenty-four

The panic in Donnato’s voice brings Ana Grey back instantly.

“You breached Stone’s security system?”

“I was looking for the sniper rifle.”

“What’d he do?”

“He laughed.”

“What the hell does that mean?”