"My arms are an inch shorter since I shot that. You want arms an inch shorter?"
"I've already got short legs, might as well have arms to match."
Sam laughed.
"Okay. But if I go shooting, you gotta promise to go fish ing."
"Fishing? You mean it?"
"Absolutely. And we'll invite the girl next door."
"Oh no. That would be too embarrassing."
"Hey, I can't turn her down now. I already told her that your mom and I would take her fishing when I take you. Man, was she excited."
"Are you kidding me? You never talked to her. You wouldn't do that."
"Well, I looked about seventy years old at the time-with a beard. I'm your new god-grandfather for this trip. That's like a godfather, only old."
"Can I call you Sam so I don't forget like before?"
"You bet. Sam the god-grandfather. Absolutely."
"Sheees."
"How's the homework?"
"Good. Real good."
After a little more chit chat, Sam hung up, smiling at the boy's zest for life.
Off the living area was a hall to the two bedrooms and a large kitchen. Sam cooked slowly and with great delibera tion. For him cooking was art and he liked to replicate things he'd seen in restaurants, but with his own twist. Cooking with a woman in this kitchen, for the first time, would be like making love on his bed.
Suzanne had been only the second woman he'd loved to the point of commitment, but they'd been together in France and the relationship had been cut short by her death. Rachel, his first and only wife, had long preceded Sam's purchase of this house. He sat down in his leather chair and called Anna on her cell. No answer. She was no doubt in the shower at his showplace condo. Sometimes she liked long showers.
Sam knew he was crazy and that most normal people came out of their inner shell in their late teens. He told his close friends that this terrible aloofness didn't worry him, al though lately he was beginning to feel a bit like a middle- aged woman whose biological clock was ticking. From day to day his feelings seemed to change on the subject of father hood, and if Sam had a source of conflict that wasn't associ ated with the mess of his father's suicide, then this was it.
Built-in cherry bookcases contained Sam's personal book collection, weighted toward true-life exploration and adven tures of all sorts, including the classics like Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle. Sam liked reading about presidents. He didn't want the job but had plenty of books on the sub ject. His favorite topic was Indian history and that was evident both in the books and the storage cabinets on the other wall. Along that wall, also in cherry, were numerous drawers of the sort that one would use to store large nautical charts or maps that one wished to keep unfolded and flat In Sam's case they contained maps and parchments of historic and modern Native American villages and ceremonial sites along the Pacific Coast from Alaska to Mexico and inland throughout the west ern states. It was one of the best private collections in existence.
Everywhere hung Native American memorabilia. One of Grandfather's ceremonial headdresses hung in the corner. There was the Cherokee blessing on the wall and likewise the Tilok blessing. He had all manner of ceremonial peace pipes and pictures of famous Native American leaders, from Chief Seattle to Geronimo.
Near the coffee table lay Grandfather's favorite moccasins. Sam's mother, Keyatchker, aka Spring, teared up every time she saw them. Sam's regular and favorite chair was a big leather affair with an ottoman sitting under a massive lamp whose base was made of carved oak. Grandfather had carved it on one of his pilgrimages to the caverns in the mountains. Sam cherished it because so much of his grandfather was in the wood that had been held in his hands and molded by his knife. It was an eagle with its wings spread. Sam's Indian name was Kalok, which meant "eagle."
Sam sat in his chair and Harry promptly jumped in his lap and settled in. On the coffee table was a baseball mitt that had belonged to his son, Bud. Some days Sam would pick it up and put his hand in it. Today he studied the old leather mitt and noticed that it needed oil. There was still an ache in him that felt like it would split him open when he thought about Bud. It had been four years. Today he would not put on the glove and feel the leather that his son had touched. It seemed unholy to mix love with the rage he felt at Gaudet. Attachments were hard because the world carried no guarantees of their permanence. Bud was gone, Grandfather was gone, and Suzanne was gone-and now Paul as well, one of his best friends.
Sam also kept memorabilia from the period before he had learned that he was a Tilok. There were pictures of him with his father in Alaska, a long-ago life that ended with Sam's discovery at age twenty-one that he was half Tilok with a living mother he had never met. All his life he'd been told that his mother was a mestizo, a whore, a drunk, and dead.
The phone rang, the display indicating it was Jill.
"You know he loves it so much when you call."
"What? Have you got that boy's phone bugged?"
"He calls me all excited."
"How are things with Anna?"
"I think you lead a charmed life. Right at the moment of truth with Anna, the CIA calls. First they say nothing all week. Now they demand we take the French as a client on the Gaudet case."
"As in, France?"
"Yep. And you'll never guess who the French have hired to represent their interests in this matter?"
"I suppose Figgy wants to meet immediately."
"You're a mind reader."
"Tell Anna I'll meet her at Forbes for dinner." He wondered if the subject of his house would come up at dinner. Actually, he wondered whether the world would be the same by dinner.
Grady Wade sat at her desk with a stack of Michael Bowden's books and a letter from his publisher. Her half-full c offee mug read: if it's not outrageous, it's boring. From what she'd read-and she'd now read all of Michael Bowden's books-he seemed anything but outrageous, but far from boring. A welcome surprise for a young woman who found little in life that invigorated her.
At the end of her career as a stripper, Grady had told Sam that the major problem in dancing naked for a living had been the truth in the coffee mug inscription. In the end that had been what frightened her most. Perhaps a life of kids and family and an old oak tree in the backyard would leave her listless and drive her to constant excess. The irony, of course, was that her cure, working for Sam's organization, was undoubtedly more outrageous than dancing naked. Actually, Grady did two things at this desk: work for Sam and study for college, and which activity received her attention depended on the demands of each.
Anna Wade, Grady's aunt, had a profound need for Grady to become "self-actualized"-a normal person would say "succeed"-and Sam did his best to play godfather to Grady, determined that she make herself into something that she would eventually approve of. The catch there was that Sam claimed unique insight into what it was that Grady should approve. Many days she felt like a social-conditioning pro ject, but even that felt better than working in a strip club and coming down from a coke addiction. And so Grady studied, worked, slept a bit, and had little time for boys. Perhaps she had overloaded on men in her former occupation. For a time she had dated a man named Clint, who had fallen over whelmingly in love with her and wanted to marry. The free spirit in Grady just couldn't do it. Not at age twenty-one. Now she saw Clint only on occasion; like most men, he wanted to see her more often.
To top off her complicated life, she lived with Jill, her im mediate boss.
Researching scientist/author Michael Bowden came as a blessed relief from her normal work and schoolwork. In just a couple of days Grady had made copious notes on Bowden and the Amazon jungle, and in doing so had made one promise to herself: when Sam went to the Amazon to find Michael Bowden, she would use her best moves to ensure she boarded the plane with him-Devan Gaudet notwithstanding.