It was two in the morning, the heart of darkness, the time of deepest loneliness. I thought of Morrell, in Maz?r-i-Sharif and wondered if he, too, was awake and lonely or if his old friend Marcie Love was keeping him company. Or perhaps a new friend more in tune with his mind than I had been.
These were such strange times we were living through, the Age of Fear, with endless war around the world, never knowing who we could trust, with our bank accounts and our e-mails an open book to any garden-variety hacker. Even though I use the Web constantly, I’m an old-fashioned detective. I do better on foot and in person than through the ether.
Someone had gone after Petra the old-fashioned way, breaking into her apartment. Had they made off with her laptop, or had she taken it with her? I looked again at the rudimentary surveillance footage from my office camera that I’d e-mailed myself. It didn’t look to me as though any of the office breakers—Petra or her two companions—were carrying a backpack or anything big enough to be holding her laptop. So someone had gone after that, looking for . . . her e-mails, I supposed . . . or to see whether she’d been looking up African national heroes.
Spy software. Of course, Petra had used my office computer, my big Mac Pro, one night at the beginning of the summer. That was how she’d known my keypad code. I wasn’t a high-tech wizard, but I knew enough to see which websites she’d been looking at. They might tell me something. And it was better, anyway, than sitting in the dark, feeling the Age of Fear close in on me.
I started to get dressed again, but I paused while zipping my jeans. I had to assume from now on that whatever I did, wherever I went, I’d have some shadow from Homeland Security, or Mountain Hawk, or maybe both, and I’d just as soon not be caught alone on the streets in the middle of the night. Even if I could sneak out to my car, it was possible—perhaps probable—that they’d installed some kind of GPS tracker in it, some little gizmo I wouldn’t be able to find easily. They wouldn’t have to stay with me on the streets to keep tabs on me. They could use their hotshot triangulation software to watch me online.
A thump on the back stairs made my heart jump again. I took the Smith & Wesson and slipped into the kitchen, tiptoeing on the tile. I laid my head against the door and squinted out through the glass. And felt another bubble of hysteria rise in me. The sound was Jake Thibaut, hauling his double bass up the back stairs to the third floor.
I put the gun down and unlocked the kitchen door. When Thibaut reached the upper landing, he jumped almost as much as I had on hearing him.
“V. I. Warshawski! Don’t sneak up on me like that! I don’t have insurance that covers dropping bass down stairs when surprised by detectives.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m so edgy these days that, when I heard you, I thought it was my housewreckers on their way back. Where were you playing?”
“Ravinia. And then we went out for a drink or three. What are you doing up at this hour? Any word on your cousin?” He drew the bass up next to him.
“If anyone has heard about my cousin, they’re not telling me.” I measured myself against the bass’s case, an idea coming to me. “How drunk are you?”
“Bass players don’t get drunk. It’s one of our hallmarks. Long, tall instruments give their players hollow legs. Why, you want me to bow a perfect fourth for you?”
“I want you to smuggle me in your case out to someplace where I can catch a cab and not be seen.”
He was quiet for a minute, and then said, “How drunk are you?”
“Not drunk. Terrified.”
He rested the bass against his back door. “You don’t seem like the terrifiable type.”
“No, of course not. We PI’s thrive on death and danger. We don’t have the feelings ordinary people do. I’m a disgrace to the club, letting trifles like a missing cousin and a murdered nun rattle me.”
In the dim light coming from my kitchen window, I saw him give me a speculative look. “Anyone going to shoot at me or set me on fire if I wheel you out to Belmont Avenue?”
“Anything is possible. You ever been held up by a junkie who thinks he can sell your fiddle for a fix?”
Thibaut laughed softly. “One advantage of playing a really big instrument: people know they can’t race off down the street with it. Let me put Bessie to rest, and I’ll be with you. I hope you’re clean. I don’t want sweat and grease or anything on the inside of the case.”
I went back into my place and carefully wiped all the protective cream from my face and arms. I realized I was hungry; I hadn’t eaten since breakfast yesterday morning. Fatigue and anxiety had kept me from thinking about food, but I was suddenly ravenous. Thibaut came into my kitchen as I was hastily putting together a cheese sandwich.
“You can’t eat inside the case,” he said. “Probably you won’t be able to breathe in it, either. The old guy downstairs is going to sue me if you suffocate?”
“Nah. He’ll just let the dogs chew on your bass.”