“I’m not bullshitting you. All I knew was I was supposed to go to California. The information was waiting for me when I arrived yesterday. I caught a lucky break and an opportunity presented itself. I didn’t have a chance to tell you sooner and I’m telling you now.”
There was a long silence. He knew I’d known earlier. But what could he do?
“I’m waiting on the second name now,” I said. “As soon as I have it, I’ll tell you. In the meantime, take what’s on the bulletin board and see how it cross-references with what I’ve already given you. I’ll drag things out as long as I can on my end.”
“I hope you’re not going to fuck me on this.”
“Why would I? We both want the same thing. It’s just a question of timing. I’ll check in again tomorrow, okay?”
He waited a moment, then said, “Okay.”
Back at the hotel, I took a long, hot shower. Then I got a fire going and sat with a towel around my waist, watching the flames. I hadn’t eaten in more than eight hours, and I thought I should get something into my stomach. But I wasn’t hungry.
I wanted to feel something. Relief that I’d bought Dox time. Horror that I’d just killed a man, probably a husband and father, not a mile from his house, on the very road he was taking home to his family. Fear that I’d missed some variable, that even now the local police, or worse, Hilger and his men, were mapping my coordinates, triangulating on my position, moving in for the kill.
But there was nothing. It was as though some emotional spinal cord had been severed, leaving my mind useless and numb.
The numbness disturbed me. It was how I always used to feel, or rather, not feel, after taking a life. Clinical, analytical, detached. The trouble in Manila, when I’d frozen rather than traumatize a child by killing his father in front of him, had actually been a kind of breakthrough for me, although I’d only realized it in retrospect. It had been the first sign that the killer might be less than all of me, the first crack in the ice of what I was. But now, the iceman was back. And not just for the work, it seemed. For the aftermath. For everything.
All of which was bad enough. But what was worse was how…comfortable it felt. Like a favorite chair, or the food you grew up on, or an old, perfectly sprung pair of boots that felt just right when you slipped them on after a long absence.
I told myself there was no reason to be concerned. Being myself again felt natural enough, and it was certainly easy. I thought maybe I should just give in and go with it. What was the point of fighting, anyway? In the long run, you can’t win against yourself. I’d been up on points for a while, but the iceman was patient. He’d bided his time, and when he saw his moment, he’d found his way back.
No, not back. Maybe he’d just always been there. Like I supposed he always would be.
17
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, I left the Stanford Park and headed south on 101. In an Internet café in San Jose, I checked the Kanezaki bulletin board. It was empty. I found another café and checked on Hilger. Again, nothing. I left him a message that read, “Tell me when I can reach you by phone.” I didn’t say Jannick was done. I didn’t mention Dox. For the moment, I wanted to keep my options open.
It looked as though I had a little time on my hands. I decided to return to Los Angeles by the coastal route. Strange circumstances to fulfill my ambition to drive along the sea, but smoke ’em if you got ’em. And it would give me a chance to think.
The drive was beautiful. My appetite came back on the way, and I stopped in Carmel for lunch. I stumbled across an Italian place called Casanova in a cozy mission-style building, and ate on their patio, warmed by the radiant sun. The food was superb: bruschetta with local heirloom tomatoes; linguini with fresh mussels and shallots; chocolate nougatine pie. All accompanied by a ’96 Hudson Vineyard Marcassin Chardonnay that alone was worth the drive.
It was the kind of place Delilah liked, and the kind of place I liked to take her. I realized I should probably call her. But I didn’t know what I would say. The work she did, and the world she inhabited, necessitated compromises, of course, but in her way Delilah was as ethical a person as I’ve ever known. I didn’t want to have to tell her what I’d just done. And I didn’t want to hear the suspicion in her voice if I refused to answer her questions. I certainly didn’t want her judging me. I’d dealt with enough of that shit with Midori and wasn’t going to put up with it from Delilah, too. How could she understand, anyway? How could anyone, who hadn’t been there?
Yeah, but Delilah knows you, better than anyone. She would understand.
Bullshit. No one ever understands. They say they do, but they don’t.
I kept heading south, the windows down, the sunroof open, the wind in my hair. The road narrowed in Big Sur, the traffic thinning, the stores and houses and other signs of people slowly evaporating as I drove. Soon the land was mostly quiet meadows and conifered hills, scalloped cliffs that wended along the Pacific, in and out, back and forth, each curve in the road revealing some new, spectacular vista. I watched the ocean sparkling a thousand feet below and felt I was driving along the edge of the earth, through some intensely private and stoical place, beyond civilization’s purview, beyond any notion of redemption or regret, a place that existed only for itself, that neither welcomed nor opposed nor held in any regard at all the fragile creatures who intermittently passed through in awe of it.
San Simeon. Pismo Beach. Santa Barbara. The sun set over the water as I drove, yellow, then pink, then finally a long red band at the horizon, fading to indigo. I wondered if Delilah had ever driven this route, and imagined what it would be like to have her here with me, watching as daylight yielded to a giant vault of stars. I tried to push away the thought, but the feeling persisted.
I drove on in the dark. Absent the distraction of the sunlit scenery, my mind began to wander, not to good places. I thought of Jannick, and all I had taken from him. I reminded myself that I had no choice, that it was either him or Dox. I thought of Hilger, and regret and ambivalence were eclipsed by hatred and cold rage.
First Dox, I reminded myself. Then Hilger. Just be patient. That’s what’s going to make this work for you.
I stopped in Santa Monica and checked the bulletin boards. Nothing from Kanezaki. A short message from Hilger: Call me at 08:00 GMT.
Eight o’clock Greenwich Mean Time…that would be midnight in California. Damn, it was almost eight out here already. A few more hours, and I would have missed the time for the call. I thought about skipping it entirely, telling him I hadn’t gotten the message until too late, giving Kanezaki more time to work the data. But I decided not to. If Kanezaki hadn’t found anything by now, he wasn’t going to, at least not without more information. A call to Hilger might shake something loose. And besides, I wanted to check in on Dox, to see if he was okay.
I thought for a moment. Hilger’s message was left at five o’clock that evening California time. I had posted at nine o’clock that morning, which would have been midnight or later throughout most of Asia. I imagined Hilger going to sleep sometime before I posted the message, receiving it and responding in the evening my time…morning his. A reasonably safe bet, then, that he was still in Asia somewhere, on a boat as Dox had said. It wasn’t much, but the more pieces I had, the better I’d be able to recognize and exploit each one of them, until hopefully, finally, they’d all add up to a breakthrough.
I called Kanezaki from a pay phone. “Heads up,” I told him. “There’s going to be a call at oh-eight-hundred GMT. Less than four hours from now. If you have a way to track the signal, that’s your moment. I’ll keep him on for as long as I can.”