We Know (27 page)

him for years."

Callie said, firmly, "I believe him."

Steve's high forehead was glistening. He drew a hand through his curly hair, settled back in his chair, and grimaced.

I looked down at the dirty plate in front of me. "Thanks, Mom."

Steve took a deep breath, held it, crossed his arms. Then he said to me, "I'm a police officer. I've never helped you. I've never been in contact with you. If I saw you, I would probably be obligated to arrest you. Do you understand?"

I nodded.

He tugged a detective's notepad from his back pocket, jotted something down, and showed it to me, the way people do in movies when they make some big financial offer. It was a phone number. "Memorize this," he said. "It's my cell. Do not call it unless you are about to be killed."

I studied the number and nodded.

He slipped the notepad back into his pocket. "Leave me a phone number. Preferably a mobile. I can't just go in and start asking questions without raising suspicions, but I'm working a P.M. tomorrow and can grab some desk time when it's quiet. I'll check to see if there's a BOLO out on you--that's a 'Be On The Lookout'--or if the pursuit is contained to the Secret Service. And I'll run Jane Everett through the databases, but you're asking a lot here, kid. Medical confidentiality is a mess, and I can't produce a warrant even if we knew which hospital she had the baby at, which we don't. I have to go the other route--old-fashioned slogging--see if I can find a Jane Everett in her late forties or fifties who has a seventeen-year-old daughter. If she looks like the broad in the Polaroid, even better. Though she's young enough there she'd have aged a good deal. If I get something--and that's an if--Y\\ call you. In the meantime you are to stay underground. And you were never here. Not without putting your mother and me--and Emily--at risk."

I said, "I was never here."

"How about that?" Steve said. "We agree on two things."

Induma sat, legs curled beneath her, on the enormous sofa. I could tell she was upset, because she'd pulled one of the oversize pillows into her lap. Jane Everett's paternity report rested beside her on the cushion, where she'd set it after a cursory glance. From the upstairs bathroom carried the sounds of the running shower and Homer singing, a gravelly outtake from The Pirates of Penzance. Alejandro was at his apartment for the night, a relief on many levels. Pomegranate candles were burning on the coffee table, adding a pleasant tinge to the air.

"We shouldn't have come here," I said. "They're gonna start digging into my relationships. We don't know when they'll come knocking."

"Tfthey get around to ex-girlfriends from three

years ago--and that's an if-- so what? They have no grounds for a search warrant, and if they are digging that hard, they'll know who's on my speed dial. At the risk of sounding smug, this isn't an address you kick the door in on. You ring the bell, inquire politely, and then go off and shore up one helluva case."

"These guys don't bother with warrants."

"I am willing to take that risk," Induma said. "Now let's focus on making that risk worthwhile."

Wisps of smoke curled from the red candles. "My only way out of this is to get more evidence in my pocket. To hand it off to someone as an insurance policy. And to disappear before they disappear me."

Induma looked down sharply. "Run away again?"

"Not before I warn Baby Everett. The more this thing heats up, the more they're gonna want to tie up loose ends. And she's the biggest one."

Induma didn't move her gaze back to me. "You slipped them," she said. "But there's no saying you can do that again."

"I'd better get well out ahead of them, then," I said. "Are your channels still open at the crime lab? Could you get a DNA analysis through there?"

She hugged the cushion harder, glanced down at the lab report. "In case you get close enough to pluck a hair out of the president's head? Probably. I configured the damn storage network. If I say

there's a glitch, the director gives me the run. But even if I can get into the DNA databases, I doubt Bilton's info is in there with the general population's."

"It's gotta be on record somewhere, in case his body has to be identified after an explosion or a fire or if someone shot down Air Force One or something."

Induma said, "Even if we do confirm Bilton's DNA profile with the paternity report, he could still argue that the report's been doctored. You'd need to track down the original at the lab center or wherever."

"How about the Polaroid?"

She gestured for it, and I pulled it from the rucksack. Biting her lip, she tilted it to the light. "It looks old, way pre-Photoshop. Pretty goddamned convincing. Let's assume it's real. And let's assume this woman is Jane Everett. It's still not hard evidence of anything."

"I'm not going into court. I just want leverage. And Bilton's response to the stuff I've found proves I've got it."

"Still, it would be nice to have something concrete about any part of this whole cover-up."

"I do."

Her brow furrowed. "What?"

"Homer was a dentist," I said.

"Yeah?" She blinked. Then blinked again. "Oh,

no. Oh, no."

Homer strolled down the stairs, wearing a pink puffy bathrobe. His shaggy hair, when wet, touched his shoulders. The sash was stretched to its limit, barely holding the flaps in place across his distended belly.

Induma said, "Fetching."

Homer said, "We do our best."

"I need you to do something for me," I said.

Induma said, "Buddha wept."

"This thing in my cheek is a bone fragment. I need it. And I can't go to a hospital. I know this isn't exactly your field, but I want you to cut it out of my face."

Homer stared at me, then shrugged. "Okay."

I went to the kitchen and returned with a variety of kitchen knives. Fortunately, Induma had quite a selection. She said, "I think there's an actual scalpel upstairs. Alejandro bought it for one of his sculptures."

"Great. You have a digital camera, right? We should film the thing coming out of my face so we have proof of where it came from."

Homer appraised the knives, then watched Induma lay down a sheet on the sofa.

I said, "Listen, you can do this. I know it feels like you can't. But you can."

He looked calm enough. I must have been reassuring him for my own benefit.

He said, "Do you have any anesthetic?" , "For you or for me?" I said.

He didn't smile.

I looked at Induma. "I don't think we have any."

She said, "One of Alejandro's club buddies left a gram or so of coke in the glove box of my Jag. I haven't flushed it yet."

I said, "You want to blow cocaine in my face?"

"No," Induma said, "you want me to blow cocaine in your face."

She got the folded square of magazine page holding the coke, soaked the scalpel in alcohol, and we settled down, Homer standing over me in the Some Like It Hot bathrobe, eyes closed, no doubt trying to recall the principles of facial surgery. I lay on the sheet like a corpse, gripping Induma's hand in mine, waiting for the blade. The scalpel neared. His hand was trembling. He wiped his brow and stepped back.

"Do you have any scotch?" he asked. "I need a highball to settle the shakes."

As Induma started for the bar, I gazed up at his pale features.

"Better make it a double," I said.

Chapter
33

Afternoon light roused me, streaming through the curved wall of glass at the back of the living room. Immediately pain pulsed to life in my cheek. On the coffee table, just below the level of my face, squares of gauze crimped around blackened knots

of blood. Blades of various sizes with darkened tips. A salad bowl filled with pink water. A quarter page of Vanity Fair, unfolded, white flakes across Nicole Kidman's dress. Towels and more towels. And there, triumphantly resting in a metal Nambe candy dish, Charlie Jackman's bone fragment.

Pounding pain across my crown. Dirt-dry mouth. Numbness down my left side, like a dead weight. Two feet above my face, dangling from its arcing stainless-steel stem, the shade of a giant lamp swung over me like a dental light. I was on the couch. Raising my aching head in the limited space, I peered around. Induma was burrowed between me and the cushioned back, her face pressed to my bare chest so that her cheek shifted forward to crowd her mouth. Homer was sprawled in the corner, his hairy belly rising through the bathrobe like a breaching marine mammal. The scene looked like the aftermath of an S&M rave.

I slid out from under Induma, and she grumbled but immediately appropriated my space. The imprint of her body had reddened my left side. Some of the feeling prickled back into my skin. At least the numbness hadn't been from some surgical mishap.

I fought my way to my feet, light-headed, the makeshift implements spinning like cartoon recall. The silver and crimson blur brought back last night's endless probing, a memory as sharp as vomit in the throat. It had been horrible, and cocaine hadn't lived up to its reputation. Despite Homer's best efforts, the procedure had gone on and on, a bottomless splinter dig, steel tips scratching bone. It wasn't until first light competed with the lamp that the piece of Charlie had popped free and Induma had wept with exhausted relief.

The digital camera was still peering from its tripod, though the red light no longer glowed. At the end of a single, grueling take worthy of Hitchcock, Induma had held up the bloody chip of bone with tweezers before the lens to document that the fragment was the one that had been lodged in my cheek. She'd encoded and uploaded the MPEG, along with scanned copies of the ultrasound and paternity test, to a secure off-site server.

Eager for an update on Baby Everett, I checked my cell phone, but there was no message from Steve. I moved unsteadily past the tripod into the bathroom. The first glance was horrifying, but after a few swipes with a towel soaked in warm water, most of the black crust lifted. The wound was fearsome in its depth, but it remained relatively small, a little bigger than a bullet head. After popping two extra-strength Tylenol and four Advil, I found a first-aid kit in the cupboard. A circular Band-Aid covered the wound, rendering my face, aside from its expression of squinting agony, normal.

The noise of the sink must have awakened Induma and Homer, because by the time I got back out, they were sitting up, blinking at each other like hungover acquaintances unsure if they'd slept together the previous night. Beyond the tinted windows, surfers pedaled by with boards under their arms. Carefree L.A. in full Sunday swing.

"What time is it?" Induma croaked.

"Almost five."

Homer shoved himself to his feet, stumbled to the bar, and refreshed his glass with Johnnie Walker Blue Label. He gulped it down, then rubbed his eyes and shook his head. The bathrobe was hanging open now, but no one seemed to notice.

"Gotta get dressed," he said, then staggered into the other room to find his rags.

Induma and I just looked at each other. She wore a pert little smile that seemed to say, Can you believe what we did last night? We both held the stare, pleased at our shared secret--a blood oath and an inside joke all in one. It was more precious unspoken, just us in the imperfect stillness, like me and Callie on Frank's back deck with the moths and the gold smudge of the porch light, Callie with her Crystal Light and sticks of charcoal, me watching her work, blissfully unaware that I'd never feel so contented again.

Homer finally returned, the appropriated pink bathrobe peeking out among the layers of dirty clothes. I doubted that Induma would want it back anyway. I threw on a shirt to walk him out and grabbed Charlie's rucksack--I didn't want it out of my sight.

Homer downed another glass of scotch before bending to kiss Induma's hand. We walked out, and he tilted his face to the sun.

I said, "I'd give you a ride, you know, but I should probably stay off the street. Take some money for the bus." I reached into the rucksack, tugged five hundreds from beneath one of the purple bands, and held them out.

He exhaled, relieved, his shoulders dropping. "I thought you were actually just gonna give me bus money." He took the bills, rubbing them together like gold coins.

I felt a flood of affection for him, for what we'd been through, and I said, "Listen, I feel like I ought to tell you I know. About your wife and kids, all that. And I'm sorry."

He did a double take, his jowls bouncing beneath that scraggly beard. "I was never married."

"It's okay. I found out by accident. About how you were a dentist and then you started drinking, left everything behind."

"A dentist? What are you talking about, Nick? I sold weatherproofmg."

Shaking his head, he folded the bills into his pocket and walked off, leaving me poleaxed on Induma's front walk.

Induma was still laughing. "You had a drunk former weatherproofmg salesman perform maxillofacial surgery on you."

"Faulty intel. It happens to the best of us. Besides, I was high on cocaine at the time. Impaired judgment."

"Especially this week. Homer's vocational history came from the same woman who sold you that 'Godfather's with Firebird' line?"