“Don’t even breathe,” I said, making a show of cocking the Colt, an unnecessary piece of theater to actually firing a double-action revolver. But the decisive click of metal on metal carried its own important information.
“Dr. Mapstone, what are you doing out at this hour?”
It was Bobby Hamid.
His feline eyes glittered from the light of the street lamp. His casual posture on the motorcycle barely changed. He was wearing a supple leather jacket that on anyone else would have invited touching. A black knit top and black jeans completed the ensemble. I let the gun’s hammer down and slid it into my waistband.
“No sleep tonight, Dr. Mapstone?” he said. “Virgil called sleep the brother of death. That has always stayed with me.”
I didn’t know whether to be worried or angry or relieved. “What if I told you the police are on their way?”
“This is a public street,” he said. He took a drag from a small cigar, producing the glow I had seen from the house. “And I am talking with my friend, the history professor.”
“I always wanted to have a gangster as a friend.” I sighed.
“Oh, David, those are old wives’ tales from the cop shop-one of those wonderful Americanisms, ‘cop shop.’ Sheriff Peralta doesn’t understand me.”
“He understands your connection to half the meth operations in the Southwest,” I said. “Along with assorted murder and mayhem.”
“And you know,” he said amiably “that I have never been convicted, despite Sheriff Peralta’s best bigoted efforts. These may be bad times for men with Middle Eastern backgrounds living in America, but as you know, Dr. Mapstone, I am a naturalized citizen, an Episcopalian, and a venture capitalist. All quite legitimate. I never even bought Enron stock.”
I didn’t laugh. “What are you doing here, Bobby?”
He adjusted one of his rich locks of hair. “Looking after you. It’s no secret the Russians are after Miss Lindsey. You must be missing her. And who wouldn’t? So beautiful, with that watchful, poetic quality to her. I can see her, before she found you, of course, as the smart girl surrounded by good-looking but stupid men. Thus her armor of irony and sarcasm…”
He watched me and paused.
“I don’t quite understand why you are being so reckless,” he went on. “Yuri’s brigade-they call their cells brigades, so many are former Red Army officers-Yuri’s brigade is known for its ruthlessness.”
I let my eyes sweep the street. “For a venture capitalist, you know a hell of a lot about Yuri.”
“I am an inquiring man, Dr. Mapstone, as are you. We live in momentous times: the great contest of the Cold War, the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union, the former Warsaw Pact joining NATO…things we never would have believed possible. The revolution that ruined Persia, that killed my family. Look at your hometown, David, utterly changed from when you were a boy. The clash of civilizations, Islam versus modernity. A new age of lawlessness, so many soldiers from the losing side with nothing to do but become mercenaries on the marketplace.”
I declined to let myself be drawn in. I said, “What were you doing at the towers that night? When we shared the elevator?”
Bobby’s economical features gave way to a thin smile. “Visiting a friend,” he said. “I might ask what you were doing? You seemed very nervous. Maybe it’s this case of the poor homeless man you’re so obsessed with.”
“Goddamn it!” I said, loud enough to wake some neighbors. I ratcheted my voice down. “No games, Bobby. I don’t have time. If you want to help, you’ll tell me where Yuri is.”
Bobby’s voice was calm. “Like the sheriff, you ascribe much more of a connection to the underworld than I really merit.” He dropped the cigar to the street and crushed it with his boot.
“Wonder why?”
“How is Sheriff Peralta?” Bobby said. “It must have been a blow to lose his father. And his wife moving out.”
I tried again. “Why is Yuri trying to kill cops? Seems like a ticket to prison or the morgue, even for a Russian.”
“Maybe he doesn’t see it that way,” Bobby said. “I only know what I read, of course. Some say Yuri was a Red Army captain, decorated many times for bravery. That he served in Chechnya in the Russian Army, and he was so effective that the Chechen guerrillas tracked down his wife and daughter, raped and murdered them. But others say Yuri is not a Russian at all.”
“None of this is helping,” I said.
Bobby absently pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and polished the chrome on the bike, a Harley that nevertheless had a kind of sinewy sleekness to it that seemed to go with Bobby Hamid.
“David,” he said, fixing me with a new intensity in his eyes, “if I were in your position, I would get as far away from here as possible. I would let the government do whatever it will do to protect you and Miss Lindsey.” He daintily adjusted his leather jacket. “You see, Miss Lindsey cost Yuri and his brigade many billions of dollars. And Yuri has creditors of his own, creditors who won’t be willing to just send impolite letters and ruin his credit report. This is capitalism for keeps, Dr. Mapstone. This is the real global economy.” Bobby licked his lips. “I would say Yuri’s potential for vengeance is unlimited.”
I watched him talk, feeling something cold on the back of my neck. For a moment I felt my legs were paralyzed in place, rooted into the cool sidewalk. But then I thought about Lindsey, and a different feeling came over me. I’d never been given to tough-guy speeches, but it came out with a certain cold anger.
“Bobby,” I said,” “do you know if I thought you were Yuri, and you meant any harm to Lindsey, I would kill you right here?”
Bobby watched me for a long time, something new in his opaque eyes. At last, he said, “Yes, David, I believe you would.”
I was still standing on the street a long time after the noise from Bobby’s Harley had faded from the neighborhood.
Chapter Twenty-four
I was on the freeway by nine that morning, making good time going south while in the opposite direction the army of suburbanites from the East Valley and Ahwatukee-the cops and firefighters call it “All-White-Tukee”-crept toward the city. As much as I loved riding trains and trolleys in Portland and San Francisco, in spread-out Phoenix I sometimes needed to drive in order to clear my head. After Bobby had left the neighborhood hours before, I had gone out to the Olds, put down the top, slid in a CD from Frank Sinatra’s Columbia years, then I had driven slowly through darkened city streets.
Walt Whitman’s “huge and thoughtful night” was all around, but Frank sang “One More for My Baby.” “Let’s just leave,” my baby had said, as we lay nude, legs entangled, surrounded by barracks walls, and beyond them armed guards. “Let’s just leave and start over, in a wonderful place. The government will have to resettle us, give us new identities. Can you leave Phoenix, Dave?”
“Can you leave your garden, Lindsey?”
“It’s your home, Dave.”
“I came home by accident. I had to find you…”
“I found you.” She laughed. “You were too shy.” It was nice to hear her laugh again. She said, “We can do anything we want. We can make a new future.”
Our future would have to wait. I let the towers of Central Avenue sparkle down on me while I tried to figure out why the FBI was digging through my office, with Kate Vare in tow and with Peralta as tour guide. Too bad for them: most of my Pilgrim notes were in my old briefcase, sitting next to me on the car seat. Maybe Peralta was looking after my interests-but if that were true, why didn’t he call me? Peralta had gone from badgering me with ultimatums to ignoring me while…what? It was enough to make you listen to talk radio and believe the conspiracy kooks who called in.