Max nodded, absently pulling the discreet ponytail at his nape.
He had never made love to her with his long hair loose.
Temple realized that she wanted him to. That she needed time to fully experience the change in his appearance, to see him as the
CAT ON A HYACINTH HUNT * 271
lover in an erotic Japanese woodcut, flying hair and robes and elegant masculinity that didn't need Western overstatement, suspended in time.
He had changed. So had she. They needed to settle down and explore those differences.
Since their reunion only a week ago they had behaved like all forcibly separated lovers: coming together again at every opportunity to prove that nothing had changed when everything had. Their sexual chemistry had always been satisfying, but it had been tempered by the small realities of daily life that gave its fiery heights a more static, solid base.
Now they seemed characters in a spy-thriller, meeting clandestinely, conspiring, conjoining and slipping away into shadows again. These stolen moments had an exciting, frenetic sensation, but also felt fevered, desperate, disjointed. They needed timeout, leisure, a time to make love and a time not to make love. They needed everything the current situation was least likely to give them.
"Let's adjourn to someplace more comfortable," Max suggested. "You don't like the opium bed, and I doubt the futon is your cat's pajamas ..."
"Is there a living room in this place?"
Max smiled, and pinched her cheek. So they went there, to sit in matching Chinese black-lacquered chairs and talk.
"I like to think these date back to Orson Welles's day here." Max ran his hands over the ebony-smooth armrests. "A man his size would have welcomed the width as well as the elegant understatement. A misunderstood man. Not the overweening genius they made him be, but a titanic talent who spent himself too soon. He fell in love with fame at an early age, and never escaped it. Not even in death."
"What did you fall in love with at an early age, Max?"
"A woman named Kathleen. A land. A heritage. Danger and death. Caring so much that nothing mattered, which is the greatest self-deception of all."
Max looked at her across the formal room's gulf.
"So now you're a counterterrorist," she said. "Who are the head counterterrorists?"
"Shadows, even to me."
"Who do you 'counter?' "
He sipped the wine he had brought with him. Temple had abandoned wine. In vino Veritas.
And she had imbibed too much Veritas for the time being.
"At first I was anti-IRA," he said. "An odd position for an Irish-American. But they had killed Sean. I was off courting a Green colleen when they did it; they weren't Orangemen, but Greens-men, or else there, but for the grace--the gratuitous cruelty--of God, went I."
Guilt, Temple thought. The glue of the human jigsaw puzzle. Guilt made people more than angels, and far less. It made them human. Confession was not always good for the soul.
Concealment was sometimes a mercy, even from oneself.
"Tell me about the dead men in the casino ceilings."
"The Goliath management was worried about their security being breeched. Nothing they could put their finger on, just unease among the staff, as if they glimpsed something wrong out of the corner of their eyes but never could focus on it. I was asked to penetrate their system, if I could.
"I found the secret watching/listening post in the ceiling, cleverly placed just back and below one of their eye-in-the-sky camera installations. Empty, of course.
"It was cramped even for a midget, but it gave an overview of one of the blackjack tables. I reported it and volunteered to inhabit it one night to see what I could see. My profession involves getting myself into spots that are physically impossible for one of my size ... or length, at least. I had to belly-crawl down an air-conditioning vent to get there and when I did, the hidey-hole was occupied. Just my opening the panel to it dislodged what turned out to be the body that fell to the blackjack table. Of course there was no way to turn around without entering the now-exposed hidey-hole. I had to belly-crawl backwards to get out, and when I reached the mechanical annex, three armed men were waiting for me. Not hotel security forces."
"Max!"
"I fought, I hid, I ran. I knew that I was iced either way. Exposed as a spy if I admitted my hotel assignment, and liable to be in the sights of the setup crew for as long as it took to get rid of me. So I ran as far as I could go."
"Where did you go?"
"What's the place so obvious and predictable and taken for granted that no one ever thinks about it?"
When Temple shook her head, Max opened his empty hand as if presenting something magical. "Canada, haven for draft protestors and rogue magicians."
"What did you do there for so long? How did you survive?"
"I became a corporate magician."
"You? A house . . . wand-waver?"
"I kind of liked it actually. My job was to build morale and encourage creative solutions to problems. Production problems, personnel problems. I was a human resources wizard. I was expected to be the odd man out, and was paid for it."
"I bet you were good at it."
"I was. Surprised me. That there was something legitimate I could do in this world. Could bring home a salary like all the other wage slaves. People told me I helped them."
"An entertainer helps people too. Probably more than a publicist."
"What about an amateur sleuth?"
Temple gave one of those sighs that sounded too large for a person of her small size. Sighs, and size. Homonyms. A crucial clue in her first "case."
"It's just congenital meddling."
"Or congenital caring," Max suggested gently.
"Either way it's a female failing, isn't it? It's not macho like going out every day in a uniform with a gun and a billy club, or in civvies with a gun. It's listening to people. It's 'arranging' things.
It's putting the little details together. I let a killer go."
"Whoa!" Max sat up in his handsome chair. "You and Sherlock Holmes. Talk about an
'amateur.' How? And why?"
"The situation was so muddy. The misunderstandings so tragic. The ultimate victims were so very young. I played God. I decided not to judge. But the killer knows I know. I wonder if paranoia will set in, and I'll pay someday."
Max balanced his forearms on the Chinese chair's alien curves.
Not Chippendale, not Duncan Phyfe, not Queen Anne, quite. He seemed like a mystic aiming at elevation, as if he could float off the physical plane. He was just thinking.
She was struck by his grace, which was mental as well as physical. She awaited his verdict.
"Everything is a choice. Good or ill. A choice. Every day brings events, people, that narrow choice. Sends us down a chute like an animal to the slaughter. We twist and we turn. We buck like hell. And we always wonder if we should have broken for freedom sooner, or appeared tamer and less threatening, or been born an amoeba. My choices separated me from you when it was the last thing I wanted to do. I don't know if I'll ever overcome that.
"You let a murderer go. Your choice will make you look over your shoulder for the rest of your life. Not only for the one you think might mull it over and come after you, but for the one you don't realize you let go, and who will never let you go. I know."
Chapter 39
Opium Den Dreams
You know me: I will take the scent of a female over the scent of a flower every time.
Miss Temple Barr and her cohorts are clearly on the trail of the lonesome flora called hyacinth. It is obviously my job to make sure that the lady of the same name is not lonesome, especially if she is in the mood for making any startling revelations.