“I don’t dislike you and I want you to protect Lindsey.”
“I’m glad you don’t dislike me.”
“I do permit myself certain emotions.”
“Name one, Joan.”
I saw the flicker of humor on her face. Our pace slowed just a little. Taucher tried to get back on task but some of the fight had gone out of her voice. In its place was something new. Resignation? Disappointment?
Then ten steps each in silence, more or less synchronous, taking us farther down the boardwalk. Don’t know why I counted them. The fretful bed of gray clouds had still not seemed to move, even as the breeze came faster.
“I will now share a confidence with you,” said Taucher. “I don’t like being seen outside.”
“Why not?”
“Because of my makeup. You’ve noticed that I wear heavy makeup.”
“Yes. Why?” I asked. I felt like a compass needle unable to settle.
“Well, the makeup on my face is to hide what’s under it,” she said. “But around my eyes, the makeup is to show them off. My eyes are my only good feature.”
“I’ve never suspected you of vanity.”
“Doesn’t it scream out?”
“Your eyes look good, Joan. But what are you hiding?”
“I’ll tell you. I used to get kicked and punched in my face a lot in MMA. Goes with the territory, like with your boxing. One day, in a match, I got kicked really hard. Didn’t see it coming. Knocked me down but I got right back up. Won that fight, too. The downside was this acute hematoma that developed on my cheek. Kind of like a blood blister but deeper. Left cheek, over the bone but spreading down almost to my mouth, and up into my left nostril. And the hematoma never went away. It faded some. And it got a little smaller. But it turned from liver red to this cadaver-gray, raised, pore-dotted splotch that would look like hell on any person’s face. But this is my face, so I use the makeup. Of course, you can’t make up only a part of your face without calling attention to your secret. You have to go all in. That’s me. I’ve gone to dermatologists and cosmetologists and clinics and classes and consultants, all to learn how to put on makeup like a pro. I traveled to Tokyo to study makeup with an actual Geisha. I’ve worked at it. Still, when I’m outside, especially on a cloudy damp day like today? Well, if I’m not perfectly and heavily defended with my makeup, I look like an aging woman who got kicked in the face too many times and too hard. Which is what I am. I wish I didn’t have to make myself up like a whore. I dislike my vanity. But not as much as my hematoma. Does any of that make any sense at all?”
She laughed, brief and dry. Then turned to face the bay. The rain hit hard and suddenly. Slapped heavy on the water, raising mist like steam. We stopped under a metal restaurant awning built to protect waiting customers from the sun, raindrops roaring down.
“How are you going to handle Bakersfield with the media?” I asked.
“Publicly, we’re not involved,” she said. “I’m leaving it all to BPD. Their show.”
“Are they going public with the mutilation?”
“No,” said Joan. “Not with the threat, either. Just that he was found stabbed to death in his home. We weighed the value of telling the whole truth against the terror it might cause. It felt really good to deny this bag of dirt his moment in the sun.”
“He doesn’t seem to want publicity at all,” I said.
“You watch,” she said. “He’ll change, now that he’s followed through with Kenny Bryce. Classic pattern of radicalization. Anger, disillusionment, curiosity, commitment, action, escalation. He’s got confidence now. He’ll seek credit. He’ll be vulnerable to recruiters. We’ll hear some kind of communication from him. I expect it. I dread it.”
She dug her phone from her coat. She held her device up close and it chimed and a cool glow played off her face. I looked for the hematoma but couldn’t make it out. Wondered if it prognosticated dire events, like my own scar did. Her pale raptor’s eyes seemed to draw the light from the screen as her thumbs flew and the glow from the phone changed colors. She stared at the screen for a long moment, then slid the phone back into her pocket.
“Sorry,” she said. “My handlers like a short leash these days. Your turn now. What did you learn about Hector Padilla?”
I told her about my conversation with youth imam Hadi Yousef, and the odd behavior of Padilla at Masjid Al-Rribat Al-Islami. His interest in Islam, and in finding a Muslim woman. His loitering outside the women’s prayer room. When I told her about the large sharpening stone that had fallen from Hector’s upturned backpack and landed on Hadi’s desk, Taucher’s breath caught. “Who carries around a fucking sharpening stone?”
“Hadi said it looked new.”
Taucher’s eyes narrowed, and, heavily made up or not, sparked with anger. “Is he still working at that hospital on Genesee?”
“He works a midnight shift,” I said. “And yes, he worked the night Kenny Bryce was killed.”
She betrayed some small hint of appreciation of my professional reach. “You have a source at First Samaritan?”
I shrugged. One of my old deputy friends was their head of security. For him, a call to the janitorial subcontractor was all it took.
“I need one more thing,” I said.
“You’re the neediest informant I’ve ever run.”
“I have to see the surveillance video from Kenny Bryce’s place.”
An SDPD police cruiser came by, tires swooshing through the quickly rising rainwater. The patrolman gave us a look.
“That’s physical evidence,” she said. “They’d have my head. God, I have to stop saying things like that. Anyway, the surveillance video is a tall order, Ford.”
“I understand.”
“Maybe you don’t,” she said. “The video is FBI property and I can’t let it leave the building. Not physically, not electronically. Either one gets me written up, demoted, or canned.”
“Send me a self-destruct file,” I said. “Then I can’t betray you.”
Exasperation. “They’ll see it the second I send it.”
“Have someone else send it.”
Spy versus spy, I thought. Until now, I’d never thought of Taucher as at risk from her own organization. I’d thought of her as a rock. Now I wondered about her short leash. But as I considered it, I saw that she would have her internal enemies, just like any other ambitious employee. Maybe more. Her fierce attitude. Her blunt humorlessness. Her legendary obsession with 9/11. The fact that she could never quite be a part of the old-boys network.
“And,” she continued, “if I bring you back to JTTF again to show you that video behind closed doors, heads will turn. ‘What’s with Taucher and that PI? What’s the paranoid old hag up to now?’”
I told her I knew what it was like to work in a large organization. What happens if it turns on you. “You might enjoy private work, Joan. Like mine.”
“Is that supposed to be funny?” But before I could answer, she said, “But you should see it — the Bryce video. I’ll think of something.”
“Six and a half seconds,” I reminded her.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said. “But get off my back, Ford. I don’t negotiate.”
I nodded and watched the rain pelting the bay, half amazed that Joan Taucher would put herself at risk to help her neediest informant. I’d been a genuine help to her so far — I’d brought Caliphornia and his threats to her instead of to her superiors — but how much more favor would that earn me?
And I was puzzled, but somehow pleased, that heavily made-up Taucher had chosen to be seen outside by me. I wasn’t sure why I was pleased. Maybe something as simple as not disliking her. Maybe something as simple as being on the same side. “It’s all about risk and trust,” I said.