Cold Snap (5 page)

Bristol, his lips compressed, was watching
Ari. "Maybe in Italy they don't—"

"I, too, have an avocation."

"What's that?" Bruce asked densely.

"I assassinate men who torment cats."

There was a tense pause. Ari sounded very
convincing.

"Yeeaah...?" Bruce said slowly.

"It's actually quite remunerative," said Ari.
"I send the extra money overseas to my family in Syracuse—"

"Ari..." came a saccharin intonation from
behind. As he turned, his elbow was grasped by Tracy. She looked at
Bristol. "He's a real joker, Mr. Turnbridge. It's part of his job.
He has to deal with so many nationalities."

As though the approved method for dealing
with foreigners was by joking—a polite term for lying through ones
teeth. On the other hand, Ari thought, swapping jokes with
representatives from Al-Qaeda could prove beneficial to all
concerned. Nothing else had worked.

Hey, did you hear the one about the suicide
bomber instructor? He told his students: Now watch closely, I'm
only going to show you this once.

"Ari, we're trying to make an impression,"
Tracy hissed once they were out of earshot of Bristol and his
bruiser of a sysadmin.

"I think I succeeded," Ari observed.

"Not that kind of impression!"

Ari feared the hostess was going to ask him
to leave, thereby depriving him of his first opportunity in many
years to savor haute cuisine. His mind stumbled through possible
apologies, diversions, and brute lies that could cause her to
relent.

"You can be a bit of a troublemaker, can't
you, Ari? I heard how you came home one day looking like a semi ran
over your face. Don't deny it, the bruising still shows. Oh, not
too much, so don't look dismayed. Rebecca thinks you got into a
fight. Is that true? Was it over a woman?"

As she spoke, her skin tone came perilously
close to matching her scarf's lavender blush. She was suddenly like
a school girl all agog at running unexpectedly into a sports hero.
Keeping the coq au vin in mind, Ari clasped the warm hand on his
elbow. Carrying on with this woman was not the furthest thing from
his mind, but it was certainly the least practical. It would
confirm Deputy Karen Sylvester's opinion of him as being a
thorough-going womanizer, in spite of what she had witnessed at the
airport. The all-too brief reunion with Rana should have settled
any doubts the deputy might have had. But Americans, no matter how
repressed or liberated, seemed strangely confounded when it came to
sex. It was one among many uncertainties they insisted the rest of
the world share with them.

"I would never fight over a woman," Ari
asserted. He did not consider his wife, whom he did not deem a mere
woman, and for whom he would kill to protect. In fact, he already
had.

"Why do I find that hard to believe?" said
Tracy smoothly.

"I have no idea."

"Then what was there to fight about?"

"It was only a bad fall—"

"That was a beating. It couldn't have been
anything else." They turned and found Rebecca shooting her dark
eyes up the footlong slope that divided their heights. "I have four
brothers. They were always getting into fights. A fall and a fist
leave different marks."

The last time Ari had been this close to her
she had been threatening to call the police on him. He noted the
glint in her eyes and the drink in her hand and wondered if much
worse was in store.

"Rebecca..." Tracy drew her hand away from
Ari and placed it on Rebecca's forearm. "You knew Ari would be
here. I thought the two of you..."

Rebecca took a quick sip from her mimosa.
"Yes?"

"You told me yourself that the police said he
was all right."

Ari grimaced. The woman had not been
bluffing. She had called the cops.

"They came," she said with a downturn of her
lips. "One of them was Italian...well, he had an Italian name, like
that restaurant in Short Pump. The other guy seemed normal."

Officers Mangioni and Jackson, who saw him in
a great good light after the grand assault in Cumberland. They did
not know that the culmination of that assault was the capture and
humiliation of Uday Hussein. They thought Ari had led them to the
killers of their former superior, Detective Louis Carrington. When,
in reality, Ari himself had shot the man once it became clear he
was a threat to Rana.

For Rebecca to call the morose, deeply
pessimistic Jackson 'normal' said much about her view on life. It
suggested she had joined the great sky-darkening flock of the
world-weary. Ari knew better than to ask her how things were
going.

Tracy must have seen herself as a peachy
reconciler, because she refused to drop the topic.

"The cops told you Ari was righteous, didn't
they?" she said, paraphrasing herself. Ari logged another confusing
term into his vocabulary. 'Righteous.' Mohammed was 'righteous'.
Indignation was 'righteous'. Officer Jackson? Well...he seemed
permanently indignant.

Apparently, the word did not sit well with
Rebecca, either. She produced a scowl that prompted Tracy to remove
her hand. Rebecca must have missed the consolation (no matter how
artificial), because she seemed chagrined by the action.

"The policemen wouldn't give any details, but
yes...they used that word: 'righteous'." She cocked an eye up at
him. "Is that what happened to you? You got into a fight with some
crooks?"

"I am under a stern admonition not to mention
the topic," Ari said, without adding that the admonition was of his
own making. His heart both lifted and sank—it was an odd
sensation—when Tracy gave him a glance of renewed appreciation.
There was so much boasting in this country that reticence had
become refreshing. Ari had not intended to come across as the
strong, silent and possibly heroic type, but that was the
result.

If Rebecca was impressed she managed to
disguise it under a look of sour resignation. No one liked being
put in the wrong. He wondered if she had carried out her threat of
asking Howie Nottoway to remove him from the Neighborhood
Watch—and, if she had, if her inner decency was strong enough to
retract the request. Patrolling these sedate streets helped satisfy
his communal instincts. Having been raised in a land of strong
tribal ties, he had begun to think of his neighbors as fellow
tribesmen. No doubt most of them would have been horrified by the
notion. In fact, Ari himself had been a bit of a weak link back
home, allowing loyalty to slip away (when it was safe to do so)
whenever it threatened his conscience. But there was no denying the
solace, occasionally fitful but sometimes all-encompassing, of
tribal connections. There was a sinister aspect to this, of course.
Saddam Hussein had been a master of playing off tribes and factions
within tribes against each other. But any organization, primitive
or allegedly advanced, could be corrupted. Look at communism. Look
at capitalism. Look at any group of cannibals who would devour
their neighbors the instant push came to shove.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Ciminon, if I reacted too
harshly that day you came to see Diane," said Rebecca with more
than a trace of reluctance.

"Oh," said Tracy with a brisk laugh.
"Formality!"

"Yes," Ari nodded. "Please call me
'Ari'."

Rebecca gave him a strange bulbous look, then
burst out, "It's such an odd name!"

"I'm sorry?"

"It sounds like a cottage on a mountaintop."
And then, as though quoting from a brochure, added, "'Enjoy our
airy cabin with its fresh, airy view of the valley'."

Ari smiled, but Tracy was quick to sense a
trace of hysteria.

"Oh, Beck," she said, taking small step
forward. "I know times are rough for you, but it'll work itself
out."

Was this what they called a mixed metaphor?
And how could things be so rough for Rebecca Wareness? She had won
possession of the cat, next to which a lost husband was
inconsequential. To his current way of thinking, at least.

Rebecca cast a wary eye from Tracy to Ari,
cautioning her to avoid giving out details of her dismal life in
front of a relative stranger. Ari was not so gauche as to injure
someone's feelings unduly. However, he was gauche enough to see how
it might benefit him.

"I'm afraid I am cognizant of your
situation," he said graciously. Bean-spilling Tracy took alarm and
looked towards Bristol, who was sniggering at something Bruce was
telling him—the refined laugh apparently being reserved for
non-employees.

"What is it you think you know?" asked
Rebecca nervously, undoubtedly thinking of the foreign accent that
had answered when she called the number on Ethan's phone bill.

Seeing Tracy about to explode with
embarrassment, Ari decided self-censorship was in order. "That you
and your husband had a falling in."

"Out," Tracy corrected, both women chuckling.
When Ari did not continue, the women's relief was obvious.
Separations and divorces were common property, right up there with
deaths and just below cat-ownership—a notoriously indecipherable
domain. Running away with an Oriental temptress, however, was a bit
too much.

"Well," Rebecca sighed, "there's a little
more to it than that."

Ari nodded understandingly. No one wanted to
seem commonplace. He believed the height of wisdom was being
satisfied with that very thing: being commonplace. But it was a
type of satisfaction curiously difficult to attain. And a runaway
husband was particularly commonplace.

"If there is anything I can do to help..." he
said.

Tracy gave Ari a bulging stare. Was he coming
on to Rebecca? Ari shot her a comical sketch of a scowl, warning
her against such an interpretation of his motives.

Rebecca's reaction came as a surprise. Her
mimosa-softened face resolved into a speculative demeanor, without
skepticism or ire. Practicality and emotional pain were winning out
over suspicion.

"I get the impression you work with the
police fairly often."

This drew a flick of alarm from Tracy. She
knew the police had reassured Rebecca about Ari, that Ari had
spoken to Jackson and Mangioni about the Riggins family. But that
he worked with them? That was new. The Mackenzie's lifestyle of
small forays beyond the law included the occasional use of
recreational cocaine. Tracy would no doubt exclude Ari from her
society if she discovered he was responsible for the demolition of
the Kayak Express, her former source of pharmaceutical
entertainment. And anyone actually chummy with the cops would be
viewed with horror—a dread that would inflate dramatically if she
learned he had been a highly placed cop (of sorts) in Iraq before
the war.

"I can assure you, this is all appearance.
You are aware of what happened to the previous occupants of my
house? Of course you are. The police are still investigating. They
sometimes drop by to snoop up my doorstep. It's quite a nuisance,
but I am polite to them. Perhaps they are not accustomed to that,
and think of me as a friend."

This seemed to placate Tracy, but Rebecca was
disappointed.

"Oh," she said, her eyes drifting away.

"However, I think they would oblige me if I
put a question before them on your behalf," he continued hurriedly.
It was obvious where she had been headed. Ari did not want to lose
the opportunity to be neighborly. Would she be grateful enough to
allow Sphinx back into his house?

Both women spent a moment sorting out his
words. Tracy had been unsettled by the prospect of a neighbor
talking to the police, while Rebecca thought Ari made his
connection to authorities sound so thin as to be worthless. Ari was
playing off the fact that Diane's father had vanished, although he
was not supposed to know this. You did not call the police if your
husband ran off with someone else. You hired a detective. Or, if
you were strapped for cash, you did the next best thing: find a
willing dupe. The only other person in the area with ties to the
police was Howie Nottoway, due to his position in the Neighborhood
Watch. And asking Howie for help could be a bit like thrusting a
needle in your eyeball.

"Yes, well..." said Rebecca hesitantly

"Why not?" said Tracy, sans specifics. She
was as interested as to Ethan Wareness' whereabouts as Rebecca. Her
reasoning might be limited to a yen for juicy details, but it was
enough to cinch the connection.

"I don't want to make trouble for Ari," said
Rebecca, as though he was out of earshot.

Tracy found this indirect approach amusing,
and turned to Ari with the officious air of a translator. "She
doesn't want to cause you any trouble."

"Ah," said Ari, lifting his shoulders.
"Trouble..."

"What does that mean?" said Rebecca
warily.

"I think it means it's no trouble at all,"
Tracy interpreted, then turned back to him. "Am I right?"

"Oui, bien sur!" He found French possessed
the admirable quality of deflating tension.

"Ooh!" Tracy shivered. "The Gallic
touch!"

A single common expression did not a Latin
lover make, but Ari smiled at the notion.

"We can't talk here."

Now it was Ari's turn to be alarmed. Was
Rebecca going to suggest they leave and deprive him of Madame
Mumford's elixir of life?

"God forbid that you go up to the coat room!"
Tracy tittered.

"The coat room?" Ari inquired.

"The bedroom."

"Yes, God forbid," said Rebecca sourly.

"We can discuss this another time," Ari
suggested. "I think lunch is about ready."

"Oh, just grab a plate of finger food and go
out on the deck."

Ari drew back. Rebecca was equally dismayed.
"Kinda cold, Trace."

"You're both smokers," Tracy reasoned.
"You'll be going out, anyway." Then she emitted a small moan and
tapped Ari's forearm. "I forgot to tell you. Bristol is anal on
smoking.