Angel Eyes (9 page)

He is dancing with the girl who asked about the skull. There is a fire in her eyes that Tori recognizes and envies, a fire she feels but must suppress in order to fit into the perfectly manicured life in Diana's Garden. The fire exhibits itself as simple, unadulterated, elemental, and it represents everything Tori is not.

With a sudden wrenching of the girl's wrist, Tori spins her away and begins dancing with the biker. He is huge, and she smells him, a rich, heady combination of leather and sweat. Primitive. The beast.

"Hey! Hey!" The girl has returned, her hair disheveled, her face twisted into an angry mask.

"Get lost!" Tori shouts as she dances. "I'm here now!"

"Bitch!" the girl shouts back, and reaches clumsily for her. The rage bursts its bonds, at last. Tori twists her upper torso, slams her balled fist into the girl's face. The girl's neck snaps back and her legs go out from under her.

Tori continues to dance with the biker. She has not once looked into his eyes. She does not want to. His eyes don't interest her.

"Hey!" he says. "Hey!"

Tori is dancing, and hardly notices that he has stopped.

The biker says to her, ''Who the fuck do you think you are?'' And, as casually as someone would swat a fly, he smashes the heel of his thick hand into Tori's nose, breaking it. ...

Tori sat very still in the huge leather chair. It had been a long time since she had thought of that night in the Valley. Because her nose had healed slightly crooked, her mother had taken her to her own plastic surgeon. But after seeing the array of new noses he could provide her, Tori had run out of his office and never gone back. In the end, her imperfect nose had become for her a badge of sorts, a reminder of what she had never gotten and what she needed.

Freedom to be ...

Be what? She did not know. But Adona was right: she needed a passion. Without it, she was suspended in limbo, surviving perhaps, but hardly living.

"Tori?" Laura Nunn poked her head into the library. She was wearing a pair of blue jeans with lines of rhinestones across the pockets and down the legs, and a plain white man-tailored shirt, both of which she had just bought at a posh store on Rodeo Drive in the mistaken impression this casual outfit would allow her to feel closer to her daughter. But this attempt at being a pal was a role as well, and the sight merely saddened Tori.

"Oh, there you are, darling! You seemed to have disappeared like a puff of smoke." Laura Nunn flashed her kilowatt smile. "There's someone here to see you."

"There is? I don't see how." Tori looked up from the book she was reading. She had one leg thrown over the arm of me oversized leather chair she was slouched in. She was barefoot, wearing only a pair of cutoffs and a Cal Tech T-shirt. ''No one knows where I am."

"Nevertheless, he's here."

"Who?"

"Russell."

"Russell who?"

"Why, you know, dear. Russell Slade." Laura Nunn held the smile as if she were waiting for the director to yell, Cut!

"Jesus Christ!" Tori slammed the book shut, jumped off the chair. "I hope to God you told him to go to hell or, at the very least, that I wasn't home."

"I did nothing of the sort," Laura Nunn said. "I told him I was delighted to see him-which, by the way, I am. I told him I'd go fetch you. Now-"

"Mother, Russell Slade fired me!"

"Well, I'm sure that was just a misunderstanding," Laura Nunn said. "More a matter of internal politics than anything else. I'm certain it had nothing to do with the kind of job you were doing. New regimes, and all that. People who come into a new job want their own people under them. It's only natural, darling. I've seen it happen often enough at the studios. One just has to thicken one's skin. The last thing you need is to take this kind of unpleasantness personally."

"Oh, Jesus, I haven't even spoken to Russell since he canned me a year and a half ago.''

"Not even when we were ... in Washington last year?"

"No." Tori's mother could not bring herself to speak of it, but the President had presented them with the Congressional Medal of Honor awarded posthumously to Greg, and she had carried it back here, put it away in a drawer in Greg's room. It was to her not a symbol of pride, but rather another reminder of the enormous tragedy of his death.

"I can't think why you haven't patched up your differences by now, darling. He's such an adorable man. Just perfect for-" Some sixth sense caused her to stop. She turned to look over her shoulder, said in a voice so bright it verged on being brittle, "Darling, look who's here!"

And Tori saw Russell Slade brush past her mother, neatly cutting off her own avenue of escape from the library.

"Hello, Tori," he said, just as if nothing had ever happened between them.

Tori, for the moment speechless, looked past him to where her mother still stood in the partly open doorway. Laura Nunn gave Tori a beseeching look, then quietly closed the door.

Russell looked around. "I haven't been here in a long time. It was good to see your mother again. My God, what a magnificent woman she is."

"You've got a set of brass ones," Tori said. "What the hell are you doing here?''

"Could I have a drink, do you think? It's a long drive from the airport."

Tori went to the wet bar along one wall, fixed him a Tom Collins without asking him what he wanted; she already knew. She handed him the drink, and he nodded. He was dressed elegantly but comfortably in a dark blue polo shirt, linen trousers, a beautifully cut lightweight silk jacket. Tori was acutely aware that she was barefoot and dressed like a waif. She seemed at a distinct disadvantage, like a naughty child being interviewed by her father.

"I've come to debrief you," Russell Slade said.

"Debrief me?"

He nodded. "Someone had to do it. I thought it might as well be me. Ariel Solares was one of my best field men. Since you were there when he died, you know it's standard operating procedure that you be debriefed."

"You're the director; you don't know the first thing about debriefing field personnel, they're too far down the food chain."

Russell ignored her sarcasm. "As I said, Solares was one of my best men. I thought it wise if I came myself.''

"Don't bullshit me, Russell. You came here because it was me who was with him.''

"I understand your anger, but-"

"You don't understand one thing about me!" Tori flared.

Russell, taking a sip of his drink, regarded her coolly over the rim of his glass. "In any event, " he said at last, "I've got to talk to you."

"I don't work for you anymore."

He sighed as he took a seat on the leather sofa beside the chair she had been reading in. He picked up her book. "The Nobility of Failure. " He looked at her. "I know this book. It's about Japanese heroes of myth and history, isn't it?" He did not take his eyes off her. "Sit down. Tori, please. I recognize you're angry that I've intruded on your solitude, but I came here because Solares's murder compelled me to come. I think even you can see that. Let's try at least to be civilized, get the interview over with, and call it a day."

"How simple you make it all seem.''

Tori turned away from him, went back to the bar. She selected an oversized glass, dropped in some ice, poured single-malt scotch, then added some water. She recognized that she didn't really want a drink, but she needed to buy herself some time to restore her equilibrium.

"The first thing I'd like to know," she heard him say from across the room, "is if you're all right. You must have been hurt in the explosion, yet the San Francisco police told us that you refused medical treatment."

"That's because I didn't require any," Tori said, taking a sip of scotch, then turning around to face him.

"Not even shock. I see." Russell regarded her for a moment, then nodded. "That would be like you," he said, as if to himself. "You were always adamant about doing everything yourself."

"I am more qualified-"

"Yes, yes, I know. Please let's not get into that all over again."

"What mask do you have on today, Russ?" Tori sat down beside him. "The mask of the invincible administrator, or the master chess player, sacrificing one pawn after another in the bloody field you've never walked through? Or maybe it's your favorite you have on today: the Bernard Godwin protege mask.''

Russell sipped at his ?om Collins. "That's the one you hated most, isn't it," he said, aware of Godwin saying to him. Your relationship with Tori Nunn is all unfinished business. "Because in a way we're victims of sibling rivalry. We both think of ourselves as Bernard's proteges. He never had children, Tori, he made us, instead."

Tori made a disgusted sound, sat back against the sofa, allowed the coolness of the leather to penetrate her T-shirt.

Russell got up, took a walk around the library. This was typical of him; he liked to get the lay of the land. He found the physical and the emotional space inextricably entwined, and he chose the ground for his interviews with meticulous care.

Tori saw him come at length to the French fruitwood table. He ran his hand across the chocolate-colored leather of its top, the brass and green glass banker's lamp, the chased-silver burl cigar humidor given to Tori's father by Samuel Goldwyn. In so doing, Russell passed near enough to touch the box Ariel Solares pressed into her hand just before he had died. Tori held her breath. She had no intention of telling Russell Slade about its existence, either now or in the future. Ariel had given it to her, and she was now its sole guardian.

He turned back to her. ''What the hell happened in San Francisco?"

"Why don't you tell me."

"I don't follow you."

"Ariel Solares was pursuing me."

Russell's face was impassive. "Was he? Well, he had better taste in women than I gave him credit for."

Tori laughed despite herself. "You've gotten better, Russell, I'll give you that." She got up, stood face-to-face with him. "You know Ariel was pursuing me," she said, taking a stab in the twilight. "You sent him after me."

"Now that's an absurd notion."

"I don't think it is," Tori said. "Why else would you come to debrief me personally unless you were running Ariel yourself?"

"It happens that Solares was working on a first-priority mission for us. Actually, I was about to dispatch someone else to debrief you, but in the end decided that mine was the duty, sort of my way of taking responsibility for Ariel's death.''

"That's a pathetic gesture, typical of a desk jockey who knows nothing of the dangers in the field."

"Don't be melodramatic," he said. "The truth is my people go because they want to go, not because I make them.'' He put down his glass on the table beside the box Ariel had given her. "But you already know that."

"What I know is that Ariel was working for you, that his picking me up in Buenos Aires wasn't happenstance. He was waiting for me."

"Well, that's an interesting surprise," Russell said smoothly. "But it's wrong. A bit too Machiavellian."

Tori laughed again. "That's an oxymoronic sentence I'd like to preserve in my diary." She finished off her scotch. "What was Ariel doing for you in Buenos Aires?"

Russell shrugged. "According to you, waiting to lure you into his web.''

"I mean in the tunnels, Russell. The Yakuza assassins. Ariel knew who they were and why they were there. That means you know, too."

"Sure I do, but the information's classified. You don't work for me anymore.''

''Thank God,'' Tori said. "But I have to wonder whether you were ever able to replace me. Skills like mine are invaluable."

"To a very select few.''

Tori smiled. "No, I don't have to wonder. I know you've never been able to replace me."

Russell sat back, stared up at the ceiling. "That may or may not be true. But I would have thought you would recognize your ro1? in helping us find Solares's murderers." He paused significantly. "If only for his sake."

Tori smiled. "That's right, Russell, give it the old college try. Give me one last shot of team spirit, see if it takes.''

"I think you've misunderstood. Do you really think I'm as completely cynical as that?"

Tori rose, went back to the bar, poured herself some mineral water. "How is Bernard?" she asked. "He's still retired from the Mall?"

"Oh, not retired, never retired." Russell watched her carefully. "Bernard's maintained an unofficial consultancy of sorts. It's an arrangement that is beneficial to all concerned."

"Remember me to him, would you?" Tori said.

"Of course." Russell extracted a mini tape recorder from an inside jacket pocket. He snapped it on. "Now, can we get on with me interview?"

"All right," Tori said. "I'll tell you everything I know."

When she had finished, Russell said, "You're certain that's everything."

Tori said it was. She had not told him about the box or about going to bed with Ariel.

Russell snapped off the tape recorder. "Well, that's over with," he said in the tone one uses when one is finally finished making funeral arrangements. "Do you think we can call a truce of sorts?"

"What makes you think we'll need one?" Tori said, rising.

But as she passed by him, he put his hand gently on her left hip and said, "How does it feel?"

Tori went into prana, breathing deeply and easily. But to regain her equilibrium had cost her time, and the silence was unspooling rapidly, each second increasing Russell Slade's small victory over her. "I rarely think of it anymore," she lied.

"That's good," he said. "It means the healing is complete." He took his hand away, but still she did not move. "Tell me, can you do everything you could do before the, ah, incident?"

And, abruptly, it all clicked into place in her mind, scattered pieces that had made little sense on their own. Only when they were connected did the whole picture emerge. She turned to look at him. "It wasn't just that you sent Ariel after me, was it? You ordered him to test me. That's why he took me down into those tunnels. He knew the Japanese were going to be there. And that's why he was so passive down there, to allow me the opportunity to figure a way out. I was a rat in a maze." She stared wide-eyed at him. "That's it, isn't it?"