“Sure.”
But I felt as if I’d wandered into someone else’s dream.
She stood, pulling the blanket round her like a robe. I saw her glance about the room, as if reminding herself where she was.
I watched her, and said nothing.
She flipped the light on. Smiled at me.
There was an odd kind of delay there—barely a moment, but I noticed. A coming-back to herself.
She asked me, “How’d it go?”
“Not great. Rich crazy family with a loose god. Not our job, I’m glad to say. I’ll call it in, and maybe they’ll send someone else to take a look. Don’t expect they’ll get far, though.” I remembered the thumb drive. “I got some CCTV to look at. They say it’s definitely our guy. Appleseed. Be nice to get that cleared up, anyway.”
“Your bosses will be pleased.”
“Bugger them. I’ll be pleased myself.” I took my jacket off, threw it on the upright chair. “‘Undermining public confidence.’ That’s what bothers them.”
“Hm. Maybe public confidence needs undermining, now and then. Keep everybody on their toes.”
“That’s a weird thing to say.”
“Is it?”
She came over. She put her arms around me. I ran my hands across her back, feeling the muscles move, and brushed my lips across her cheek. I caught her scent, faint citrus, and a hint of something darker, earthier beneath.
“Talk to me,” she said.
“These people. You would not believe. You thought Eddie was a piece of work, but his dad—”
“Not them. Talk about us. Tell me we’re good people? We are, aren’t we? You and me?”
I pulled my head back, trying to see her, but she kept her face pressed to my shoulder.
“Yes,” I said. “We’re good people.”
“And it’s going to be OK, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“Life. I don’t know. Everything . . .”
It’s the plague of modern cafés: out-of-towners, sprawled across your favorite table, busy with their laptops and their cell phones, and their business meetings, which could just as easily be held elsewhere.
But that was us, next morning: Angel, Silverman and me, grabbing the corner table, whispering like terrorists plotting a coup. I ran the thumb drive, fast forwarding—we’d got an hour or more of stuff here, all unedited—and at each flicker of movement I’d freeze-frame, check who was going where, watch them amble down the corridor, their faces bulging as they passed the lens, their heads ballooning and then dwindling back to normal as they moved into the distance. I saw Ghirelli. I saw maintenance crew in overalls. And then came Edward, picking at something stuck between his teeth. The hall itself was plain and functional, probably a lower level, away from public and family quarters. A trolley full of cleaning gear stood in the middle distance, seemingly abandoned. And then here was Edward once again, this time with a friend. I sat up straighter. I let them walk up nice and close, then froze it.
“That’s our guy.”
I blew the picture up. I couldn’t judge his age. Anywhere from twenty-five to forty, I thought then. Hair long, down to his collar. Shades. As if he’d planned to be a rock star sometime in his youth, and never quite got over it. That likely put him nearer forty, I decided. He wore a lightweight suit in white or pale gray, the sleeves rolled up. Very retro. A canvas bag over his shoulder dragged the jacket out of shape. The bag was open, and when I pulled him closer, frame by frame, till he was right beneath the camera, I could see inside. Cables, and the top of a flask.
The guy had Field Ops kit.
It was a weird sensation, looking at him, knowing what he’d done.
“Fuck.” I sat back, held the laptop in my hands.
Angel pressed against me, staring at the screen.
“He’s kind of ordinary-looking, don’t you think?”
“That’s what Stella said.” Silverman picked up his camera, filmed us both.
“Johnny Appleseed,” I said.
“Now what?”
“Now—” I’d hardly thought. It was a face, an ordinary face, just like she’d said. It could be anyone. The sense of revelation dwindled. I ran the scene through, backwards and forwards. I didn’t have a plan. “Send it to my lords and masters, hope they find out who he is. Before he kills somebody else.”
“Or lets them kill themselves.”
“Same thing.”
It made me pause, though. I knew the Registry. I knew the way they worked. They’d try to keep it all in-house, all hush-hush, as long as they could; and when that didn’t work, only then, they’d reach out for help. The Registry had long, long fingers, but it didn’t like to share. Not till it had to. They’d hire a tracer, maybe get the cops involved, even the Bureau, and then someone would start ploughing through the databases, and in a few weeks, or a month— It took them twenty minutes.
They hadn’t used the cops. They hadn’t used the FBI.
They’d used their own employment records. And somebody who’d said, “I know that face . . .”
We’d got him, and I hadn’t even finished off my drink.
McAvoy.