It went far too quickly, even while they made arrangements to meet again on the weekend. When she left, the electricity that had been keeping him running went too, and he realized that he’d had only three hours’ sleep that night. He poured another cup of coffee and took it into the bathroom, looking at himself in the tall mirror. There were circles under his eyes, and he probably smelled disgusting. His teeth could stand brushing, too, and she’d still kissed him good-bye….
“This,” he said to his image, “has all been absolutely incredible. And you want to see her again, very badly. Very, very badly.”
Which meant that Roy probably had it right: He’d been hit hard and bad. When you’d just gone to bed with a woman and she seemed more interesting, there was definitely a lot more involved than the libido. When you couldn’t think of anything else but her…
He grinned whitely at his reflection and gave a double thumbs-up. A shower shocked him back toward normal wakefulness, although it did sting slightly on the scratches on his shoulder blades. That prompted a memory of her fingers there, and her heels stroking down from the small of his back….
“And it’s not often that guys my size get a murmured ‘you’re so sweet,’” he told himself aloud. “Pure discrimination, but we don’t. Only this time I did.”
He was still whistling when he came out of the elevator at headquarters. Roy Tully was there, with a Styrofoam cup of coffee in each hand—not likely to be anything as good as the fresh-brewed in the carafe at the Amber House, though.
Tom extended a finger that looked as if it could punch through sheet metal. “Don’t ask, Roy. Not a word. Or I turn your head around until you’re looking at the part of your anatomy you keep your brains and morals in. Capisce?”
“Capisce, amigo,” Tully said, with a lewd grin and a wink that left Tom torn between carrying out his threat and laughing. “The bossman wants to see us.”
Their supervisor occupied one of the corner offices. Henry Yasujiru was in his late fifties, blocky and impassive, with gray streaks on the sides of his raven-black hair; a neat man, formal and precise. Tom disliked him, without being entirely sure why. The office was as spare and unadorned as its occupant, with only three pictures: one of Yasujiru’s father in Italy, wearing the badge of the 442nd—a Japanese-American outfit that had collected more medals per man than any other Allied unit; one of Yosemite; and one of his mother as a young woman in front of a big Carpenter Gothic house somewhere in the Bay Area.
He began abruptly. “The affair in Los Angeles was less than satisfactory.”
Tully nodded. “Yessir, no doubt about that. Except for the condor Tom managed to get out.”
Tom nodded gravely himself, carefully not smiling. Roy wasn’t brown-nosing, but the carefully calculated razor edge of sarcasm in his voice would sail past Yasujiru like a beam of invisible energy.
“The condor is irregular,” Yasujiru said. “Most irregular. I do not see that we have achieved anything by becoming involved, Warden Christiansen. The source of the material remains elusive.”
The supervisor was holding a transcript of the San Diego Zoo’s report, as well as the one he’d turned in himself after he got back to Sacramento; Tom could see that the odd digital fantasy photograph from the warehouse was there as well.
The older man went on: “Our jurisdiction only extends to material from endangered species secured within California.”
Tom and Roy exchanged the briefest of glances out of the corner of their eyes. They both knew the bureaucratic impulse to avoid getting involved in anything unusual; here it was clashing with the equally powerful urge to get involved in anything remotely related to the organization’s mandate.
The mighty demon Cover Your Ass makes war with the evil spirit known as Build Your Empire, Tom thought.
“The condor is definitely of the Californian type,” Tom said. “And the sea-otter pelts probably came from this state.”
Yasujiru nodded reluctantly. “But what use is our participation if we cannot offer any information of our own?”
“We’ll have to find the poachers, after the middlemen are closed down,” Tom said. “And if we aren’t engaged with the operations, they may be able to scatter and avoid us—any delay in getting full information would be fatal.”
Another long silence. “Very well, then.”
“Thanks, Chief!” Tom said enthusiastically.
“I’d like to see this again, if I could, Mr. Yasujiru,” Roy added, snaffling the copy of the Aztec Grateful Dead off his senior’s desk.
“I hope there will be more… substantial results from the San Francisco operation,” Yasujiru said dubiously.
“You can count on us, Chief,” Tully said before the older man could object, shepherding Tom out like a corgi with a mastiff. “The whole thing will be resolved.”
“Phew!” he went on, as they made their exit. “Resolved and tied up with a pretty red-tape bow. Something has put fear in the heart of Fearless Leader.”
“I think he’s getting weirded out,” Tom said, as they checked their Berrettas and made sure their SOU identification was at hand. For this trip they were dressed to look nondescript, jeans and T-shirts and loose shirts over that to hide the holsters. Tully’s shirt was lime green with little dancing orange sea otters dressed in top hats and bow ties and brandishing walking sticks, Tom’s a plaid check worn soft with use.
“He likes everything aboveboard and respectable,” Roy said, and handed Tom the photograph. “This is turning out to be a seriously unrespectable investigation. Come have a look at this bit of historical reconstruction when you’re through with Fart, Barf and Itch.”
Tom looked it over while he phoned Sarah Perkins and finalized the meet with the FBI agent. There was a puzzled frown on his face when he put down the receiver.
“You know, this smells, Kemosabe. I looked it over yesterday and it’s just as fucking odd today,” Roy said.
“I know it is; and who are you calling asshole, Tonto?” Which was what Kemosabe meant.
“I’ll stop when you stop calling me idiot,” Tully replied—which was what tonto actually meant. “But seriously, asshole, this thing is strange. Weirder than you described it in the report.”
“Obviously, idiot.”
“No, in nonobvious ways,” Tully said. “Here, take a look.” He pulled out a magnifying glass. “Look at Mr. Cardiodectomy Is Part of My Cultural Identity there.”
Tom did; he hadn’t looked all that closely before, and Roy had an eye for detail work, as well as a mind that worked slantwise at things where Tom often just bulled ahead.
“Hmmm. Looks pretty ordinary, Mexican guy, middle-aged, except that he had a really bad case of acne once.”
“Not acne. You don’t get acne on your arms or gut like that. Look closer.”
Hmmm, Tom thought.
There was a scattering of pits across the arms and stomach below the T-shirt, and on the man’s muscular, scarred hands as well as on his face, or what you could see of it behind the mask. Which meant…
“Smallpox,” he said quietly.
“Yeah. Which has been extinct for what? Thirty years, most places? I saw a couple of old guys with scars like that in Somalia during my spell of humanitarian intervention and Skinny-slaughtering. Wait a minute…”
Tully looked at his watch to check that they had the time, then did a quick search—all their computers had the latest Britannica installed. The “Images” section of the article showed several photographs of smallpox scarring; the resemblance was unmistakable.