this deal.”
Quiros looked for a moment as if he was about to say something, then caught himself.
“I told you,” he said and shook his head. “I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
Ricci looked at him.
“Think about it another second. Maybe there were rumors in the wind and you dismissed them. Because they were so screwball. Or because they came from pretty far outside your range. Something’s reached your ears that can help me and you pass it along, I might force myself to swallow your other denials. Move on from here. But you need to take the offer while it lasts, because it won’t be repeated.”
Ricci watched Quiros take a slow breath.
“No,” he said. “I’ve got nothing for you.”
Ricci was very still.
“Guess I should’ve counted on you being dumber than you look.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re making a mistake. You think you’re a player, but you’re as much of a stooge as Palardy. And you’ll wind up like him. You, your business, your whole precious family. Down the hole. Buried in dirt.”
Quiros leaned forward, his hands on his desk, his shoulders very stiff.
“Get out of here,” he said. “Who do you think you are? I don’t need your insults. Your threats. Don’t need you coming to me with some insane story, bringing me problems.”
Ricci rose from his chair, got his card out of his wallet, and flipped it toward Quiros. It landed on the floor, close enough to the desk so it almost seemed like he hadn’t intended to miss.
“You want to reach me, I should be in town another couple of hours,” he said. “Whatever you decide, we’ll see each other again. I promise.”
He stood there looking at Quiros another second. Then he turned and walked past Jorge and the other guards, pushed through the door, and strode down the corridor to the elevator. He rode it down to the lobby and left the building without once looking back.
“Meg, finally, I thought we’d never connect today except through voice mail,” Bob Lang said over the line from Washington.
“Phone tag,” she said.
“It gets maddening.”
“Yes, it does,” she said.
“You calling from home?”
“The office.” She checked her watch, saw that it was almost six-thirty. “I was at the hospital most of the afternoon. Thought I’d come in and rake through some of what’s been sitting on my desk.”
“How’s Roger doing?”
“No better.” She steadied herself. “They’re saying the X-rays show his lungs are near whiteout. Without the ventilator… I don’t think he’d be able to breathe.”
“Hell,” he said. “How’s Ashley holding together?”
“She’s incredible, Bob. If you were there to see her, you’d be impressed. She seems absolutely aware of Gord’s condition but won’t surrender an inch to discouragement. She puts on a mask and gown, stands at his bedside, and talks to him whenever they allow. He doesn’t respond… it’s doubtful he knows she’s there with him… and she keeps pushing.”
“Does the medical team know anything more about what brought on the sickness?”
She hesitated. What had Ashley told her?
The wall came down.
“No,” she lied. “From what I understand, they’re still looking at a strain of hantavirus. Or something related.”
A pause.
“Meg, I know it’s got to be the last thing on your mind right now, but I rushed through your clearances on the NCIC 2000 database. Sword’s got full, unrestricted access, all levels of classification. I can send you the entry codes directly via secure E-mail.”
“Thanks, Bob, it means a lot.” She suddenly wondered what kind of person she was. “Pete Nimec’s still here, and he’ll be glad.”
“I kept thinking about what you said last weekend. About how inverted my reasoning has been. And it suddenly seemed ludicrous. Not trusting myself to make the right decision, when it involves someone I trust more than any other person in the world.”
“Bob, you don’t have to—”
“I love you, Meg. I probably should have waited to say that over champagne and candlelight. But under the circumstances… I don’t know how long it will be until we see each other. And I thought maybe it would make everything you’re going through a little easier.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, couldn’t find a meaningful word within reach.
“I–I’d better get those codes to Pete right away,” she stumbled.
And abruptly hung up the phone.
Lathrop waited until seven P.M. to transmit his E-mail. He’d calculated that would allow the final members of his cast to hastily make the show’s opening call but shave their rehearsal and preparation time to the barest minimum. That was how he liked things: improvisation within a structured framework, the full script in his sole possession, his assembled performers knowing only the bits and pieces relevant to their parts.
Gently lifting Missus Frakes from his lap and setting her onto the floor, he gave the E-mail he’d typed into his computer a quick review, nodded to himself with satisfaction, and sent it off into the wide, crackling electronic yonder with a click.
When Pete Nimec went to his computer for the NCIC access codes Meg had told him she’d forward, he was sideswiped by the header of an anonymous message in his mailbox. It had been sent to him just minutes before, and said:
SHAZAM! OPEN IMMEDIATELY FOR THE LIFE OF ROGER GORDIAN.
He opened it.
Immediately.
And read it with astonishment.
“Well, we’re here,” Glenn said.
“Here we are,” Ricci said.
“Nice and quiet.”
“Yeah.”
“You uncomfortable being the only white guy in the joint?”
“Not unless you’re uncomfortable being the only black guy who’s sitting with a white guy.”
Glenn took a gulp of his beer. Ricci drank some of his soda. The cheeseburgers and fries they’d ordered had just been carried over from behind the counter.
The bar was on a rundown street in East San Diego, Nat King Cole crooning “Unforgettable” on the jukebox, the owner a black man in his late sixties with silver hair and a bristling handlebar mustache. The small handful of patrons was almost entirely male, and around the same age as the bartender. Behind the booth where Ricci and Glenn were seated, a chunky woman perhaps a year or two shy of the clientele’s actuarial mean was swaying to the music alone, her eyes closed, a cocktail glass in her hand.
“So what’s next?” Glenn asked.
Ricci shrugged.
“We eat our food, drink our drinks, I head back to my hotel room,” he said. “How long you figure our
