Some tourists wandered past, a young couple with two children. They looked like they’d been out for a boat ride; rosy-cheeked, windblown, grinning. They ate fresh food and breathed clean air. The kids would grow up straight and strong, which might not have been the case a hundred and fifty years before.
Good chemicals, that was the secret.
“Mr. Kosigin?”
Kosigin turned, almost smiling. He didn’t know how the Englishman could sneak up like that every time. No matter how open the terrain, he was always nearly on Kosigin before Kosigin saw him. He wasn’t built to hide or be furtive: he stood six feet four inches, with a broad chest and thick upper arms, so that his lower arms didn’t quite touch his sides when he let them hang. His legs looked powerful, too, wrapped in tight faded denim, with Nike running shoes on the feet. His stomach was flat, ripples of muscle showing through the stretched black cotton T-shirt. He wore foldaway sunglasses, with a little pouch for them hooked on to his brown leather belt, the buckle of which was the ubiquitous Harley-Davidson badge. The man had wavy blond hair, cropped high on the forehead but falling at the back past the neck of the T-shirt. The tan on his face was pink rather than brown, and his eyebrows and eyelashes were as blond as the hair on his head. He seemed proud of the large indented scar which ran down his right cheek, as though a single blemish were needed to prove how perfect the rest of the package was.
To Kosigin, admittedly no authority, he looked like one of those TV wrestlers.
“Hello, Jay, let’s walk.”
That’s all the man had ever been to Kosigin: Jay. He didn’t even know if it was a first or second name, or maybe even an initial letter. They walked south towards the piers, past the wares of the T-shirt and souvenir sellers. Jay didn’t so much walk as bound, hands bunched in his denim pockets. He looked like he needed to be on a leash.
“Anything to report?”
Jay shrugged. “Things are taken care of, Mr. Kosigin.”
“Really?”
“Nothing for you to worry about.”
“McCluskey doesn’t share your confidence. Neither does Perez.”
“Well, they don’t know me. I’m never confident without good reason.”
“So Cantona isn’t a problem anymore?”
Jay shook his head. “And the brother’s flight is out of here tomorrow.”
“There’s been an alteration,” Kosigin said. “He’s not taking the body back with him. There’s to be a cremation tomorrow morning.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I’m sorry, I should have told you.”
“You should always tell me everything, Mr. Kosigin. How can I work best if I’m not told everything? Still, the flight out is tomorrow afternoon. He hasn’t changed that, has he?”
“No, but all the same… he’s been asking awkward questions. I’m sure he doesn’t believe the story Perez threw him.”
“It wasn’t my idea to involve Perez.”
“I know,” Kosigin said quietly. Jay always seemed able to make him feel bad; and at the same time he always wanted to impress the bigger man. He didn’t know why. It was crazy: he was richer than Jay would ever be, more successful in just about every department, and yet there was some kind of inferiority thing at play and he couldn’t shake it.
“This brother, he doesn’t exactly sound your typical grieving relative.”
“I don’t know too much about him, just the initial search Alliance did. Ex-army, now runs an adventure-vacation thing in Scotland.”
Jay stopped and took off his sunglasses. He looked like he was staring at the million-dollar view, only his eyes were unfocused and he had the hint of a smile on his lips. “Couldn’t be,” he said.
“Couldn’t be what?”
But Jay stayed silent a few moments longer, and Kosigin wasn’t about to interrupt again.
“The deceased’s name was Reeve,” Jay said at last. “I should have thought of it sooner.” He threw his head back and burst out laughing. His hands, however, were gripping the guardrail like they could twist the metal back and forth on itself. Finally, he stared at Kosigin with wide greeny-blue eyes, the pupils large and black. “I think I know the brother,” he said. “I think I knew him years ago.” He laughed again, and bent low over the rail, looking for an instant as though he might throw himself into the bay. His feet actually left the ground, but then came down again. Passersby were staring.
I’m in the presence of a madman, Kosigin thought. What’s more, for the moment, having summoned him from L.A., I’m his employer. “You know him?” he asked. But Jay was scanning the sky now, stretching his neck to and fro. Kosigin repeated the question.
Jay laughed again. “I think I know him.” And then he pursed his lips and began to whistle, or tried to, though he was still chuckling. It was a tune Kosigin thought he half-recognized-a children’s melody.
And then, on the seafront in San Diego, with tourists giving him a wide berth, Jay began to sing:
Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
He repeated the tune twice more, and then suddenly stopped. There was no life, no amusement in his face. It was like he’d donned a mask, as some wrestlers did. Kosigin swallowed and waited for more antics, waited for the giant to say something.
Jay swallowed and licked his lips, then uttered a single word.
The word was good.
Reeve had got a cab to pick him up from the junkyard. It had taken him to the funeral parlor, where he picked up his rental car. He resisted the temptation of a final look at Jim. Jim wasn’t there anymore. There was just some skin that he used to live inside.
Back in his hotel bedroom, he sat at the window thinking. He was thinking about the missing laptop, the laptop’s disks. He was thinking that anyone could have locked Jim’s body in the car. It added up to something-or nothing. The Mexican had been lying, but maybe he was covering up something else, something trivial like the rental car’s roadworthiness or his own business credentials. Well, Eddie Cantona was tailing the Mexican. All he could do now was wait for a phone call.
He took the cellophane bag out of his jacket pocket and scattered the contents on the round table by the window. Jim’s effects, the contents of his pockets. The police had established his identity, then handed everything over to the funeral parlor.
Reeve flicked through Jim’s passport, studying everything but his brother’s photograph. Then he turned to the wallet, a square brown leather affair with edges curling from age. Twenty dollars in fives, driver’s license, some small change. A handkerchief. A pair of nail clippers. A packet of chewing gum. Reeve peered into the packet. There were two sticks left. A piece of paper had been crumpled into the remaining space. He tore the packet to get it out. It was just the paper wrapper from a used stick of gum. But when he unfolded it, there was a word written in pen on the plain side.
The word was Agrippa.
The call came a couple of hours later.
“It’s me,” Cantona said, “and I hope you feel honored. I’m only allowed one phone call, pal, and you’re it.”
They were holding Eddie in the same police station Mike McCluskey worked out of, so instead of trying to see the felon, Reeve asked at the desk for the detective.
McCluskey arrived smiling like they were old friends.
Reeve didn’t return the smile. “Can you do me a favor?” he asked.
“Just ask.”
So Reeve asked.
A little while later they sat at McCluskey’s desk in the sprawling office he shared with a dozen other detectives. Things looked quiet; maybe there wasn’t much crime worth the name in San Diego. Three of the detectives were throwing crunched-up paper balls through a miniature basketball hoop into the wastebasket below. Bets were being taken on the winner. They glanced over at Reeve from time to time, and decided he was victim or witness rather than perpetrator or suspect.