Inside the case was foundation makeup, skin-whitening cream, blush, prosthetic plastic, spirit gum, fake hair, and a host of other fillers and toners that you'd find on a typical movie set. Sam began placing the items on the hood of the Vette.
Next he removed a heavy lockbox. It contained documents that he rifled through carefully. He found a car registration form that said Frederick Raimes and pulled out the corresponding license plates.
'I really don't get this bit with the license plates,' Haley said.
'It's okay. All legal.'
It took him a minute or two to change the plates.
'I'm going to call for a tow truck,' he said.
'Why?' Haley asked.
Sam took out his cell phone and dialed 411.
'State of Washington. San Juan Towing, on San Juan Island, please.'
The operator rang him through.
'Hi,' Sam told the mechanic. 'My name is Fred Raimes. I'm a Triple A member. I was here visiting and I need to get my car back to Anacortes. What would you charge to take my car on the eight p.m. ferry tonight?'
'Is it broke down?'
'Yes. Blown head gasket.'
'You could have it fixed on the island.'
'Yeah, but I'm a mechanic and I want to get it home.'
A pause. 'Uh, it comes out to be about two hundred fifty bucks, including the cost of the ferry.'
'Great.' Sam read him the number off the AAA card in the name of Fred Raimes.
They confirmed a time and place, and Sam hung up.
'Frick's gonna be disappointed,' Haley said. 'You said you were Robert Chase.'
Sam put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. 'Now you're catching on.'
'It's none of my business, but is Raimes the name you used in your life away from the islands?'
'Sometimes. Now I go only by Sam Wintripp. I was born Samuel H. Browning.'
'The name we knew,' Haley said.
'You know about Helen's ancestry?'
'Helen and your father were originally descended from the Scottish Highlanders,'
Haley said. 'Originally they were named Broun. Then their ancestors emigrated to England and changed it to Browning, right?'
'Right.'
She stopped. He could tell she wanted to ask more, but there was a quiet reserve about her-a stubborn resolve. Sam nodded. He was pretty certain he knew what was really on her mind. The summer of 1994 still hung in the air between them. Instinctively, though, he felt now was not the time to break open the old scab and try to clean out the underneath.
'I took the name Wintripp when I discovered that Mother was alive and not what my father claimed-a dead mestizo woman with a bad history.'
'I'm sorry about that. Everyone in the family was told the same story about your mother. Maybe that's why I identified with you. God knows my mother had her own problems.' She was quiet again. 'You would show up now and then, to visit, like an apparition out of the mist, saying nothing about yourself or your life. You were in the
'export business'? Give me a break. Even now,' she said, 'today, I wonder who you were back then, I mean as a person. Around 1992 they said you went into the computer business and then as a person with a life, you mostly disappeared.' There was a hint of frustration in her voice and he knew she was getting nearer the source of her feelings.
Sam began shaving his beard away with a portable electric razor, using a mirror to watch his progress. There were things he had to work out in himself and they needed more time to talk if he were ever to bring up the past.
'People who knew me, and there weren't many of those, called me Sam back then. No last name.'
'When did you find out that your mother was a Tilok Indian?' Haley asked.
'When I was twenty-one.'
'I think I was eleven when you told us. Your father hid it from you then, as long as he lived?'
'Yes. He was a shrill, bigoted, stubborn, macho Englishman-or actually Scotsman, if you will — emphasis on the macho. He was dead for a year when you came to live with Ben and Helen in '81. When I found my mother's family in '83, the Tiloks, I was given a new name: Kalok. Kids called me Kai and I liked it better. Anyway, fast- forward to nearly a year ago. After some tough circumstances-all these injuries and some worse things- I chose a new path in life. I decided, though, that Kai was too unusual for most folks and I was used to Sam; so outside the Tiloks, I'm still Sam.'
'We've always known you as Sam. Who picked Sam?'
'Actually, my mother, before they told her I died. She liked Samuel Clemens. That's the story, or as much of it as I can tell you right now.' He looked away from his small mirror and into her eyes. 'I'm trusting you to tell no one.'
She nodded, perhaps slightly happier now.
'Were you a spy?'
Sam thought for a moment.
'I was chasing the worst form of sophisticated criminals and terrorists, and there were plenty of them to chase. For now, that's all I can tell you.'
She seemed, reluctantly, to accept this and went back to reading Ben's documents while Sam finished shaving. Sam liked to face things fair and square, but his relationship with Haley was not like most things.
'I'm always amazed at how fast you read,' he said, glancing at her while he began applying makeup.
'Uh-huh,' she said, oblivious now to everything but what was in front of her. The intense look of concentration heightened his curiosity.
When she was done, she put down the papers and looked up. She took a long look at his disguise-in-progress and gave him a thumbs-up. 'Ready to hear about the papers?'
'You bet.' Sam continued working while he listened.
'The papers from the whale are in Ben's miserable shorthand, which I can barely read. I think he's making four peptide hormones with different protein expressions, using genetically altered bacteria at least for three of them. But I can't tell more than that.
They're working notes-notes he wouldn't even type up.'
After a few minutes she spoke again. 'This is pretty interesting.'
'What?'
'Ben started with about two hundred eighty genes of the twenty-five thousand or so found in humans and other higher mammals.'
'Okay…'
'To get down to six genes or so,' Haley said, 'is a major step. He clearly was onto something, but I can't see what that something was. Nothing here tells me that he was on the verge of solving the problem of aging.'
'Could six genes really solve a problem like aging?' Sam asked. 'To get youth retention would be tough, like you said.'
'Exactly. Aging is a diffuse process. It's brain, it's body… it's widespread. How are you supposed to fix that with six genes? Add to this that when your body's cells divide to replenish themselves, they have a built-in clock… Well, you read Nature, you know about telomeres. You're stuck with old cells when you get old.'
'You still don't believe in this discovery, do you?' Sam asked.
'Do I really believe that Ben has something that will allow people to live decades longer or hundreds of years? I haven't changed my mind. That would be hard to swallow.'
Sam had finished with the skin whitener and had gone on to the foundation. 'You're a good teacher. Keep going, but hurry.' He now applied the foundation makeup in layers of slightly different colors to give the mottled appearance of real skin. Because of time constraints he had opted for only a small bit of prosthetic plastic, so he had to do some contouring with nothing more than heavy makeup.
'Oh, my God,' Haley said.
