He popped the oil-soaked crust into his mouth and licked his thin lips. Not at all, he said I dont hate her. Dont think it for a minute.
Her boyfriend, Tally said, as a second figure, male, appeared on the rooftop below. The boy had dark hair and wore loose, casually expensive French sports clothes. As they watched, he crossed to the waterbed and crouched beside the girl, reaching out to touch her. Shes beautiful, Roberts, isnt she?
Well, the unit director said, Ive seen her befores. Its surgery. He shrugged, his eyes still on the boy.
If youve seen my befores, she said, someone will hang for it. But she does have something. Good bones... She sipped her wine. Is she the one? The new Tally Isham?
He shrugged again. Look at that little prick, he said. Do you know hes drawing a salary nearly the size of mine, now? And what exactly does he do to earn it? A bodyguard His mouth set, thin and sour.
He keeps her happy. Tally smiled. We got them as a package. Its a rider in her contract. You know that.
I loathe that little bastard. Hes right off the street and he knows it and he doesnt care. Hes trash Do you know what he carries around in his luggage? A cyberspace deck! We were held up for three hours yesterday, Turkish customs, when they found the damned thing... He shook his head.
The boy stood now, turned, and walked to the edge of the roof. The girl sat up, watching him, brushing her hair back from her eyes. He stood there a long time, staring after the wake of the Athens boats, neither Tally Isham nor the unit director nor Angie knowing that he was seeing a gray sweep of Barrytown condos cresting up into the dark towers of the Projects.
The girl stood, crossed the roof to join him, taking his hand.
What do we have tomorrow? Tally asked finally.
Paris. he said, taking up his Hermes clipboard from the stone balustrade and flipping automatically through a thin sheaf of yellow printouts. The Krushkhova woman.
Do I know her?
No, he said. Its an art spot. She runs one of their two most fashionable galleries. Not much of a backgrounder, though we do have an interesting hint of scandal, earlier in her career.
Tally Isham nodded, ignoring him, and watched her under-study put her arm around the boy with the dark hair.
36 THE SQUIRREL WOOD
WHEN THE boy was seven, Turner took Rudys old nylon-stocked Winchester and they hiked together along the old road, back up into the clearing.
The clearing was already a special place, because his mother had taken him there the year before and shown him a plane, a real plane, back in the trees. It was settling slowly into the loam there, but you could sit in the cockpit and pretend to fly it. It was secret, his mother said, and he could only tell his father about it and nobody else. If you put your hand on the planes plastic skin, the skin would eventually change color, leaving a handprint there, just the color of your palm. But his mother had gotten all funny then, and cried, and wanted to talk about his uncle Rudy, who he didnt remember. Uncle Rudy was one of the things he didnt understand, like some of his fathers jokes. Once hed asked his father why he had red hair, where hed gotten it, and his father had just laughed and said hed gotten it from the Dutchman. Then his mother threw a pillow at his father, and he never did find out who the Dutchman was.
In the clearing, his father taught him to shoot, setting up lengths of pine against the trunk of a tree When the boy tired of it, they lay on their backs, watching the squirrels. I promised Sally we wouldnt kill anything, he said, and then explained the basic principles of squirrel hunting. The boy listened, but part of him was daydreaming about the plane. It was hot, and you could hear bees buzzing somewhere close, and water over rocks. When his mother had cried, shed said that Rudy had been a good man, that hed saved her saved her once from being young and stupid, and once from a real bad man...
Is that true? he asked his father when his was father through explaining about the squirrels. Theyre just so dumb theyll come back over and over and get shot?
Yes, Turner said, it is. Then he smiled. Well, almost always...