“What are you talking about? A year ago that’s what you wanted to do.”
“I changed my mind.”
“You got a better offer, more money just for carrying things.”
“And I let you in on it too, didn’t I?”
In the next room, Detective Serra said, “They’re off the subject. Do you want me to go back in and remind them they have to come up with the name?”
“No, thanks, Louise,” Slosser said. “This could take a while. I want them to get so used to the interrogation room and the predicament they’re in that they forget we’re out here listening. You can go back to your other work.”
“Thanks.” She went out the door and closed it.
Ariana said, “Why don’t we make a story up? Why can’t we say ‘We met a man named Stanley in Wash, he drove us to Malibu, and argued with Mr. Rogoso.’”
“Then what?”
“Just what really happened. Make it all the same except the man’s name. Mr. Rogoso told Chuy and Alvin to kill him, but he snatched the gun out of my purse. It was self-defense.”
Slosser’s face was close to the screen, his jaw working. “The name, honey. Time to say the name.”
Ariana said, “I wish I could talk to him. I could explain why we have to do it.”
“What would you say? Hello, Mr. Kapak. This is your good friend Ariana. I’ve got something to tell you that’ll just kill you.”
Slosser stood up. He left the tape running and walked back toward the big open office where the detectives had their desks. Nobody had told him anything to his face yet, but the big turn had occurred. He knew.
30
AT JUST AFTER NOON, Manco Kapak lay in his bed in a troubled sleep. He dreamed he was in a field with golden stems and fat seeds of grain. He knew he was young again, and back in Hungary. He was with Marija. She was studying music in Budapest, but he was only posing as a student. He was the right age—twenty-two—and he had acquired the bohemian look that students had, the workman’s clothes, a pair of round sunglasses that he wore all the time, a modest beard.
He had told her and her friends that he was studying political science, because it seemed to be a subject that had no particular agreed-upon content, no specific books that everyone had to read. It was also one of the dangerous subjects that implied membership in one of the opposition groups. But since he was on no lists of students and never attended a lecture, he felt secure. He and Marija were both Romanians—he from Bucharest and she from a village not too far away where he had relatives—and he suspected that much of what he had to offer was a cure for homesickness, a chance to use her own language.
She sometimes asked him why he never spoke about his studies, and he answered that he learned more by listening than by talking. He said that at his age, all he would be doing was repeating the words of his professors anyway. He would speak and write his own opinions when he had learned enough to have a right to them. When the others in their set heard this, he gained a reputation for wisdom and humility.
But in his dream he didn’t feel the contentment of those summers. He knew a great many things that none of the others knew, because he wasn’t only Claudiu the student. He was also Manco Kapak at age sixty-four. Camping in the wheat fields was sure to disappear with the summer, and anyone would know that, but he knew that it would disappear forever. All of it—the smell of the plants that somehow clung to Marija’s hair, the finger-touch of the gentle breeze, the steady sound of the chatter of their student friends, uncaring as the chatter of birds—was going to be obliterated. He knew that it was going to turn into a nightmare place. He tried to tell all of them that it was time to go, but his voice turned thick and slow, and he couldn’t draw in enough breath to speak loud and strong. The others didn’t seem to hear him. He had to save Marija, so he picked her up in his arms.
He knew the time was running out as he went along, holding her. He could not see the dips and rises in the earth, because the stalks of the plants hid them. He tripped and staggered and lost his balance many times. He made one long step and began to fall. He knew the hole was deeper than he had feared, and he began to turn as he fell, and gasped.
He awoke, lying there on top of the covers, trying to catch his breath. He looked past his feet at the tall, narrow windows copied in style from a French palace, turned and felt the smooth texture of the matching pillows and duvet on the bed. For an instant he saw it all with the twenty-two-year-old eyes of Claudiu the student. The old man he had become was richer and more secure than the most corrupt Communist bureaucrats he had met in those days. The thought brought him back fully to the present. He wasn’t really old yet, because he could still move quickly. His muscles had strength, even if it was not the strength of the young. When he got bent over and could no longer walk without help, he would be old. The time was coming, and it no longer seemed so distant as to be only theoretical. He could already feel a taste of the pains that he would feel then, so he knew where they would be—his knees, his right hip, and his hands.
He lay there and his memory brought his trouble back to him. He was in jeopardy. He had killed Rogoso and his two bodyguards. He sat up, swung his legs off the bed, yawned, and put on his shoes. He glanced at his watch. It was just after 12:00. He had slept late, and he felt anxious about being unconscious that long. There were forces waiting to take him down and destroy him. They were always there, and always had been, waiting like microbes for him to become too weak to fight them off.
He stood and held his place for a moment to be sure he had waited through the wave of dizziness from standing up too fast. He passed by the mirrored dresser and ran a brush through his hair to push it back down, and opened the door that led from the master suite to the hall.
He crossed the living room and looked, as he always did, to the left and right. To the left was the path through the tropical garden to the guesthouse, and beyond it, the bamboo forest at the back of the property. To the right was the formal front entrance with the two big carved teak doors that nobody ever used. It was protected from the street by a tight planting of trees. When the sunlight passed through all the greenery, it became soft and secret and the undersides of the leaves glowed.
Kapak walked down the far hallway past the pantry, the maid’s quarters, into the kitchen. The women of the cleaning crew were all gone, and Spence was sitting at the kitchen table reading the Los Angeles Times. He always read it in a prescribed order—front section, California, Calendar, and finally Business and Sports—then refolded it and put each section back as though he’d never touched it.
Even after more than thirty years in the city, Kapak could hardly ever bring himself to read the paper. He supposed it was because most of the stories were about things that had no bearing on his life. He checked it only to be sure his ads had run, skimmed the headlines to be sure there were no stories about him or about live adult entertainment. He said to Spence, “Good morning. Only it’s afternoon, right? You look relaxed.”
“I am.”
“How is that thing going? You know—the thing with Joe Carver. You got any leads yet?”
“I got him.”
“You got him?”
“Last night. I’ll show you something.” He got up, left the newspaper spread on the kitchen table, went to the maid’s room, and came back with a plastic zip-lock bag. He set it on the newspaper. “I thought this might make you feel good.” He began to pull the bag open.
“Is that blood?”
“Yes.”