“Yeah, Brett knows she’ll be firing blanks,” Wilger said, and tilted the bottle and took a swallow of the whiskey. “Look, friend, it’s rotten, in fact it stinks. But she’ll fight, she told me that. She’ll do anything she can to buy time.” Wilger drank again, his thin, pinched face beginning to redden a bit. “Let me give you some free insight into cops, Selby. We’re thieving bastards or knights on chargers holding back the jungle from civilization — take your pick. I could care less. But some cases have mile-high no-trespassing signs around them. Cops with white canes looking the other way. There are pushers in East Chester I can’t touch. They shove that shit into schools, onto army bases, a river of garbage all over the country. I pick up kids and army recruits, their heads are filthy with it. I can’t do a fucking thing...” Wilger’s voice was high and angry. “A lot of cops feel that way. It hurts, so they take a drink and forget it. But a case like Shana’s, that’s different.” He pounded the rim of the steering wheel. “It should be different. No pressure, no white canes. They shouldn’t try to stop us from dragging a sonofabitch like Thomson in by his heels... The reason for this speech, Selby, is that maybe you think you ought to thank me. Don’t. There’s not a guy in the Division, well, check that, there’s Eberle, but the rest would rather be sitting right here with me. So unless Petey Komoto strikes a blow for justice and cooperates, he’ll wish to fuck he’s stayed in Nippon drinking tea with his shoes off.”
Wilger smiled at Selby then, his face cold and humorless. “Know what else Vice told me? Petey pays off the right people, but his lady, Maria-Encarna, is dripping wet. Know what that means? No papers. She’s a wetback. A word to Immigration and they’d give her a pair of water wings and throw her back into the Rio Grande like a river carp.”
“Let’s hope we get it from Petey. She could be an innocent bystander.”
Wilger looked at him curiously. “You’d make a lousy cop. If she’s standing around a scumbag like Komoto, she’s not innocent.”
A yellow Cadillac Seville stopped in the block. A stocky man in a camel’s hair topcoat got out and walked past the dark houses and put a key into Komoto’s front door. When he went inside, lights flashed behind the windows.
“I’ll talk to him,” Wilger said, and got out of his car. “You sit tight.”
“No way,” Selby said. He opened his door and joined Wilger. “Komoto might have some friends keeping his lady company.”
Wilger judged the stubbornness in Selby’s face, then shrugged and said wearily, “Okay. But listen... I’m nothing special to look at, Selby. I’m a skinny redhead with glasses and dandruff. You know that. So, goddammit, when we’re inside, don’t look at me. Watch them. If the wetback opens a drawer or cupboard unless I tell her to, break her arm. That’s how cops get called brutal pricks, but it’s also how they stay alive sometimes. Shit, I’d rather do this by myself, Harry.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll try not to embarrass you. Let’s go.”
Simon Correll’s quarters at Summitt City included communications equipment and a master suite whose windows opened on the lakes and golf courses. The early morning light gave a glossy sheen to the beige carpeting and brushed suede furniture.
Correll had not been to bed; he still wore a gray silk lounge suit, a creamy white shirt and a maroon tie. His cologne was blended of cedarwood and cinnamon. At the window he stared out at the smooth, dull water, thinking of Jennifer: an informant at the hospital had told them of her death.
Swimming pools sparkled along the fairways. In the hazy sun they stretched like orderly blue beacons, resembling the markers that defined landing strips. A runway would be useful here, Correll thought. It was a detail they’d overlooked. He made a note of this on his desk pad. Near his hand was an enlarged photograph of the postcard his mother had treasured as a young girl in Portugal, a turreted chateau on the river, purple on that distant afternoon the picture had been taken, pointed and leaded windows gleamed in the River Loire’s reflected lights.
His mother had been dead a week now. He did not grieve for her, but he missed her presence at Mount Olivet. Everything ended; that was her ultimate gift to him, a pervasive resignation to that one simple fact.
His car was parked beyond the terrace, a classic blue Bentley, the only nonelectric car allowed in Summitt City. The side panels were painted midnight blue, but the fenders and trim were of a lighter shade of the same color, a combination Jennifer herself had chosen. He already thought of her in the past tense, how she had danced, the pleasure she had taken in rainy weather, and certain physical stimulants.
Correll’s thoughts turned on these poignant and harmless considerations to keep his suspicions at a distance. But he was only partially successful; he knew something had managed to slip through their defenses.
He wasn’t surprised when Sergeant Ledge came in a few minutes later and said, “Sir, we’ve got problems. I’ve been on the phone to Quade. Selby wasn’t on Flight 10 from Philly. Quade waited at the Memphis airport for the next flight, a local that stops over at Nashville and Richmond. He didn’t show on that one either.”
Correll said, “You’re sure of the contact in Philadelphia?”
“Yes, sir. Kiley was outside Miss Easton’s room at the hospital. He knew she’d asked for Selby. He heard the senator tell his aide, that slope who works for him, to make Selby’s reservations to Memphis. A lobby guard at St. Anne’s saw Selby leave in the senator’s limo. Quade is out now looking for the staff on the flight Selby was booked on. Some of them must be laying over in Memphis.”
Watching Correll appraisingly, Ledge added, “That’s all we’ve got, except that the press is interested in why the senator was at the hospital.” After a deliberate pause, he added, “there is one other thing. Kiley informed me an autopsy’s being performed on Miss Easton now. At the hospital morgue.”
Correll let out his breath. “When Quade checks in, patch the call straight through to me. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
After Ledge left, Correll opened his attaché case and glanced through a codex of classified numbers. He noticed automatically the loaded Beretta in a spring release holster, and beside it the Madonna in its globe of glass and glycerine and fairy snowflakes.
It saddened him to study the touch of pink on the Snow Virgin’s cheeks, applied so deftly (but with what pain?) by his mother’s arthritic old hands. Yet his melancholy was paradoxically lightened by the built-in despair that had been her most important gift to him. Human life was transitory, meaningless... it was Correll’s rebellion against that dreadful emptiness that, he felt, had given him the purpose and strength to protect human frailty in havens like Summitt City. To protect people from themselves. Particularly from themselves...
He punched out General Taggart’s number and was patched immediately through to the general’s priority phone at Camp Saliaris.
“General,” he said, “you can tell our people the second installation is ready to go on-line. We’re phasing out here.”
“Damn, I always thought of Summitt as our flagship. You’re sure it’s compromised?”
“Certain enough not to take any chances.”
“I’ve been in touch with the Cape. But what about a mix? Kraager’s people and Van Pelt’s?”
“I’ll leave that up to you.” Correll then mentioned the detail that had occurred to him earlier, the advisability of landing strips and hangars at projected experimental bastions. “Everything muted and coordinated with the general ambiance, of course.”