When he talked to Kate as usual on the phone in the middle of the afternoon, neither of them mentioned the problem. But when Joe got home that evening his wife greeted him with a faintly knowing smile.
“We had a phone call,” she announced as she plumped the baby down on the changing table. “Message for you.”
“Oh?” Having read her tone and expression accurately, he sighed. At the same time he felt more than half relieved. “Let me guess who.”
“He says he’s fine, thank you for asking.” Still smiling gently, Kate might have been speaking of an eccentric uncle. “You’re to meet him out at O’Hare Field tonight at eight. That fancy restaurant, you know, the one up on top of the terminal. Ask for Mr. Talisman.”
“Talisman, huh?” Joe looked at his watch and grimaced slightly. He would have to jump right back in his car and drive. “What if I don’t want to?”
“He didn’t seem to consider that possibility. You know what he’s like.”
“God, yes.” And yet there was an enticing excitement in the evening’s prospect. Suddenly Joe wanted to go. He tried to hide it.
“Oh, Joe. It was really a very courteous invitation. Would I ask you if you would be so kind, and so on. Why don’t you want to meet him?”
Joe looked at Kate.
“Joe. He saved our lives. To us he’s never been anything but perfectly— ”
“I know. All right, I’ll go, all right.”
“We can be pleasant to him,” Kate reiterated firmly. “Ugh.” This last was in reaction to what the opened diaper had disclosed. “You can hardly say that he’s made a pest of himself. It’s been over a year since we’ve heard from him. This must be something important.”
“Yeah.” Now he really did want to go. All it would take now was a little courage.
Courage. He was a tough cop, and carrying a gun, and it still came down to that.
When Joe asked for Mr. Talisman’s table, he was conducted to a luxuriously padded booth right beside one of the large, curved windows that looked out over ramp and runways. Tonight clouds had brought darkness before true sunset. Earlier in the day it had rained, and it was misting still, and the outside view was a melange of inky darkness and the glistening reflections of a thousand lights in all colors, flashing, spinning, moving, stationary. The sound of jet engines was muted by thick glass, but still came through. Joe had always liked airports and it had crossed his mind tonight, as it usually did when he approached the place, that he wouldn’t mind having duty out here. Airport security was CPD; years ago the city limits
had been stretched to take in the square miles of O’Hare along with a narrow corridor of land reaching through the suburbs to connect the airport to the metropolitan center.
The sole occupant of the booth, as usual, a model of courtesy, rose to shake Joe’s hand firmly and gesture him to the opposite seat. The voice was just as Joe remembered it, deep and faintly tinged with a central European accent.
“I am told that the Chateaubriand here is quite good. Ah, but you would like a cocktail first, perhaps?” Talisman had a glass of mineral water, still full, in front of him. The waitress, no doubt already somehow charmed, was hovering patiently nearby. It was past Joe’s usual dinner time, and he suddenly discovered that he was hungry; these first moments weren’t going anywhere nearly as badly as he had somehow feared they would. He ordered a vodka martini, and then expensive food. The waitress disappeared.
“I love aircraft,” Talisman commented, turning his head to better observe them through the glass. Joe looked out too, then focused on the faint, vastly distorted reflections of the restaurant’s interior on the curved surface of the window. With a little effort he could pick out parts of his own image. That, for example, had to be his own hand, impossibly broadened in a way suggestive of superhuman strength, lying on the white tablecloth. Joe flexed his hand, and watched titanic fingers shift. Of Talisman’s image, of the white hands that had no particular look of strength, the elegant dark suit, the angular brooding face, there was not a trace in the reflection. But no one was going to notice that fact who did not look very carefully into the distorting glass. And if anyone should notice, who was going to believe it?
The dark eyes turned back toward Joe. “And how are Kate, and your dear child?”
“Fine.” No question had been asked about Judy. That was good. Or was it?
The martini arrived promptly. Joe lifted it in an informal, silent toast. His host, smiling pleasantly, raised his own glass for the first time, barely touching it to his thin lips. The man who called himself Talisman tonight appeared to be about forty years old, a couple of decades younger in looks than when Joe had seen him last. His dark hair, almost straight, almost black, bore at the temples just a trace of distinguished gray. On the third finger of the relaxed right hand was a worn gold ring that Joe remembered seeing there before.
A cup of soup arrived. Joe picked up his spoon and ate. The soup was thinner than he liked, but like the martini very good.
He realized that somehow, with very few words spoken, he had been put at his ease. Or almost. His host, still smiling pleasantly, watched him eat.
“You’ve been traveling?” Joe asked. He felt no pressure to break the silence, but he was genuinely curious. “I mean, meeting here at the airport…”
“Yes,” said Talisman vaguely. “Also, as I say, I enjoy watching the aircraft.” The dark eyes looked outside, as if yearning, then came back to Joe again. “To business. Tell me, Joe, how are
