I smiled at my reflection in the glass wall.
“No. Your wonderful sense of humor is an elixir in and of itself.”
The tapping of the key hesitated, as if interrupted by silent amusement.
“Jasper.”
I frowned now at my reflection, the sound of my name in her mouth troublesome.
“Lady Chizu.”
“When may I expect my property to be returned?”
I made a mental calculation that took into account the best- and worst-case scenarios involved in crossing to Culver City, what obstacles might be thrown up against me by Officer Haas, how quickly he would capitulate when he realized the nature of the man he was dealing with, the possibility of further interference by Afronzo mercenaries, and additional travel to Century City.
“Some hours after dawn, I expect.”
The key she was striking tapped three more times, and a chime rang as the carriage traversed to the end of its rail.
“I will delay my breakfast, then, in anticipation of you joining me.”
The Century Plaza Towers were illuminated; I could see them, albeit dimly, through the smoke. I nodded, focusing my attention on what I took as the fortieth floor of the north tower, imagining Lady Chizu seated on her folded legs at her desk, assessing the function of one of the items in her collection, pondering what might have been communicated in the final note it had been used to write.
“I will bring a flower for the table.”
A firm ratcheting as she returned the platen to its top position, ready to be struck again.
“Bring my property. Though the flower will be appreciated as well.”
She hung up.
I pocketed the phone. Leaving behind the rest of my work phones. I didn’t expect that I’d be doing business in the manner I had pursued it in the past. Should I need to contact any former clients, I had their numbers safely tucked in my head.
Standing one last moment at the glass, I realized that I’d reached a point of self-indulgence. There was nothing to be gained by staying any longer, nothing but increased risk. So I left.
In the garage I placed my travel kit in the trunk of the Cadillac. I no longer had the Land Rover I’d used years ago for a similar exodus, but the Cadillac was quite possibly more durable. The travel kit itself consisted of a Metolius Durathane mountaineering haul bag filled with various pieces of survival equipment, some of it lethal, most of it mundane, and a black canvas T Anthony duffel filled with clean underwear, socks, a few of Mr. Lee’s irreplaceable shirts, a spare laptop, phone, universal current adapter kit, an unopened deck of playing cards, a shaving case, two blank five-by-eight sketchbooks, a pencil box, a sweater with a hole worn under the right arm that I’d never mended because I was inexplicably attached to the garment and refused to remove it from the kit for fear I might have to run of a sudden and leave it behind, wool slacks in gray and navy, a black alligator belt, a crumple-resistant poly-blend black sport jacket made from, of all things, recycled plastic bottles, the front door key to the house I grew up in, and, a recent addition, the soldering iron that had been used on me. For which I expected I might have some need myself.
I opened the garage door, drove the Cadillac onto the driveway, and put it in park with the engine running while I climbed out and dug at the roots in a small bed of lamb’s-tongue that bordered the walkway up to the entry. Before exiting the house I’d spent several minutes passing a degaussing wand over the computers and drives the men had piled in the living room. I didn’t have time to ensure all data would be unrecoverable, but between my primary and secondary measures I felt I could afford a high level of confidence.
A few inches deep in the soil, I uncovered a plastic box and the capped end of a PVC pipe that ran toward the house. I twisted the cap from the pipe and freed the bare ends of two wires taped just inside its mouth. Black friction tape sealed the plastic box. I unwrapped it, opened the box, and took out a DELTADET 4 industrial detonator. I pressed the test button to be certain the batteries were charged, received a green light, clipped the two wires into a slot at the top of the detonator, flicked the arming switch, and pushed the red button that gave me a fifteen-second delay to leave the scene.
Leave I did, climbing through the open door of the Cadillac and accelerating away without buckling my seat belt, letting momentum close the door for me. There wasn’t anything to be heard; the Thermate TH3 packs planted about the house would quickly incinerate my personal records, the accumulations of DNA I’d sloughed off in my bed and bathroom, and perhaps burn long enough to create difficulties in identifying the men I’d killed. But I doubted that last possibility. The charges were specifically sized and placed to erase as many of my traces as possible, but not to rage so thoroughly that the sprinkler system could not extinguish the blaze before the concrete, glass, and steel structure was burned through and the surrounding hills and homes put at risk. It was not sentiment. It was practicality. Enduring pursuit and notoriety being the inevitable rewards for starting wildfires in the Hollywood Hills. Should anyone investigate the smoke drifting from the sodden interior ruins of my home, they might be shocked to find the corpses, but that shock would be far outpaced by the relief that the fire was contained.
I drove down the narrow twisting streets, slowing to a crawl at one point while a party of drunken sleepless in fancy-dress ball gowns and tuxedos stumbled down the middle of the road for a quarter mile. They began to dance as they walked, puppeteers to the towering spider shadows that my high beams projected onto the walls of abandoned homes and the branches of dead trees.
Inching behind them, illuminating their capers, I felt my confusion again. A moment like this, a mystery play acted out just for my eyes, how could such a thing happen and my end not be at hand? Yet where was the beauty in my own life to offset the value of such a gift?
It was coming. The future.
It was already here.
23
PARK LISTENED TO ONE OF THE TEN WEALTHIEST MEN IN THE world. A man who, if the world lasted long enough, would undoubtedly become the single wealthiest. Past seventy, once-broad shoulders with a wide chest now drifting toward portly, and apparently comfortable with the fact; his iron-gray hair was thick as ever, and sharply parted at the side, even at this hour. A man who, wealth aside, wore a thin cotton bathrobe, that dangled threads from the cuffs, over a pair of equally worn red flannel pajamas.
“I should be asleep, Officer Haas.”
The man tugged at one of the hanging threads and pulled it loose.
“But then, shouldn’t we all.”
He wrapped the thread around the tip of his left index finger.
“Officer Haas. The name rang a bell when I first heard it. So I dug up the most recent edition of Who’s Who.”
He pointed the now-purple tip of his finger at an open book resting on the brass-riveted black leather arm of a Colonial chair under a tulip glass reading lamp.
“Safe bet it will be the last edition. In any case, I was right about the name. I’d heard it before. In fact, I met your father once.”
He walked to the chair, unwrapping his finger, dropping the thread in one of the pockets of his robe as he went, and picked up the book.
“That was when he was ambassador to the UAE. I was conducting business in Israel. We met as Americans abroad, at a diplomatic function in Saudi. He was a cordial man. I read his book.”
He put a hand on the back of the black chair.
“Sitting in this chair. Read it straight through. I recall being alarmed by his predictions for the region. In retrospect, they seem optimistic.”
He referred to the open page in the copy of Who’s Who.
“Opportunistic Militancy and the Inevitable Loss of the Middle East. Published in 1988. Well ahead of the curve, your father. Must have been an interesting man to grow up around.”