9

SUSANNAH PULLED UP in front of her mom’s house in Alexandria, Virginia, with lines of mascara running down her face. She’d been crying for the past day as she flew in from Paris, packed up her DC apartment, and made her way back home. Lisa Bee promised to clean out her desk, since for security reasons they couldn’t have her anywhere near the office. It hadn’t made it any better that she wound up smeared on the front page of the tabloids with headlines like “What an International Whore Looks Like” and “Selling It to the Highest Bidder.” She didn’t even understand what had been leaked and what the stories were about—they were so convoluted and seemed to portray her as an international call girl, not an undercover agent. Regardless, she’d had to wear dark sunglasses and a wig just to walk around her neighborhood. She hadn’t told her mom much about the situation. After all, it was better to keep it under wraps, and her mom never knew the half of it to begin with. She just told her that she’d been fired and would need a place to stay for a bit. Her mom was only too happy to have her come home.

Janice Carter was waiting on the porch when Susannah pulled up in the old yellow VW bug. She had always wanted Susannah to drive a sleeker, safer car, but Susannah had fallen in love with that old sweet car. At least it wasn’t one of those sports cars Susannah always mooned over. Janice was a beautiful woman, and her fifty-five years had aged her in just the right ways. She had light blonde hair, a beautiful smile, and eyes like a hawk. She always wore cardigans, no matter what season, and with her curvy body she looked like something out of Mad Men. Today the cardigan was yellow, worn over a rust-colored blouse, with stunning 1950s-style jewelry to match. Janice owned a small accessories store in town and had made a name for herself in unusual knickknacks and rare gifts.

She was also an exceptional baker and always had treats on hand at the store. Today, she had made peanut butter brownies, Susannah’s favorite, as well as strawberry lemonade, and she was eagerly waiting to give her little girl the comfort she deserved. Janice suspected there was more going on here than Susannah had told her. And she suspected a man was involved. This could be the only reason for such a dramatic exit.

Susannah walked up to the porch of the beautiful old clapboard house and into her mother’s arms, and she wept, no longer able to keep it together. Janice embraced her, and lovingly soothed back her hair. “Now, now,” she said, “surely it can’t be all bad.”

“Oh, Mom.” Susannah sniffled. “It’s far worse than that.”

“Want to tell me about it? I made your favorite.”

“Okay,” she said. “I do think I need to talk about it. But it’s a lot, I’m warning you. There’s a lot I haven’t told you.”

“Well,” said Janice with a smile, “it’s been a dull week. Perhaps you can liven it up a bit. You know I live vicariously through you. ” And with that, they walked into the kitchen.

‡‡‡

EXPERT COMPUTER HACKER AJ “Fingers” Jones sat in the place she called mission control. Her clients perceived that she lived in New York or LA or Chicago, as she met them there on a regular basis. The truth was that she had a different identity in each city. To many this would seem tricky or frustrating or downright exhausting. But not to AJ. To AJ, this was the only way to live. By creating several different lives she accomplished two goals: to keep the real AJ hidden and to make several different incomes at the same time.

Mission control was located in Denver, Colorado, in the back of an old mortuary. An ex-lover of hers had owned all the real estate in the southern part of the Highlands and had literally given the place to her in a moment of unbridled passion. The fact that she had gotten him drunk, drugged him, and blackmailed him might have had something to do with the decision. Regardless, she left that torrid weekend in Aspen ten years ago as a property owner of the perfect front: an abandoned mortuary in what subsequently became one of the hottest areas in town. She left with the keys, the stock certificate, $70,000 in cash she had won at a poker game, and a wicked case of rug burn.

She had set up a state-of-the-art surveillance system in the basement, the place where the bodies used to be kept, and the place where she now lived and worked. She loved the history of this old mortuary and kept the feel of it intact: mason jars for her glassware, toe tags for labeling her files, old medical paraphernalia as décor. For the first few years there, it appeared to be just an abandoned building, but she kept having to deal with squatters and kids who wanted to get high. To her chagrin, it got worse when marijuana was legalized. Finally she decided to lease the upper floors to a well-known Denver restaurateur who turned the place into one of the finest restaurants in town. Despite the noise, it was a better cover. The owner knew that the basement was off-limits, but just in case anyone tried to get in, she’d installed a bank vault door with more bells and whistles than the State Department. Her main entrance was a small door in the back of the building. She frequently threw on a bloody apron and carried a butcher knife when she exited. No one ever asked her any questions.

Right now she had several computers open and working and several surveillance screens up. She was patched in to the FTP system and site, and had been watching, with fury, all that had happened in Paris. She gulped down a third chocolate croissant—the only form in which she consumed chocolate—and followed it with a glass of extremely rare, extremely expensive Bordeaux, courtesy of one of her LA clients. She wasn’t sure what was making her more angry: the fact that Susannah was getting hurt repeatedly by this man or the fact that this man was such an excellent operative. Or the fact that she could hear, faintly, the sounds of children at play in the park across the street. The neighborhood, which used to be filled with abandoned warehouses, was now the stomping grounds of yuppies, the gay community, and the nouveau riche. And their children. AJ hated children of any age, and found the sounds of them playing, a joyful noise to many, to be like the screech of nails on a chalkboard. This, coupled with the difficulty of hacking into Chas’s computer, was really pissing her off. Try as she might, she was having a very hard time breaking through his firewalls. And regardless, she never liked a man who used proxies to hide his IP address. She found it cowardly.

She lit a cigarillo and leaned forward in her chair, pushing her curly blonde hair back over one ear. AJ was blessed with mocha-colored skin, blonde hair, and a slammin’ body that she was very proud of, since she refused to exercise and believed gyms to be “Satan’s Playground.” She was fond of saying that she liked to work off her meals in the bedroom, and that if everyone got laid as much as she did, gyms would be out of business. “There’s gotta be somethin’,” she murmured, furiously ticking away at the computer keys of two keyboards at once, “I just know it.” She was listening to a live recording of Peggy Lee singing “Is That All There Is?” and she laughed at the irony. “I know, Peggy, I know. There’s gotta be somethin’ more.” AJ had been a cabaret singer in her early years and couldn’t work unless there was a jazz standard on in the background. For that reason she had a state-of-the-art surround sound system installed. It cost a pretty penny, but it was worth it.

Chas had a very complicated maze of firewalls protecting his information. She’d explored the first hard drive and now was looking into the second. Was it possible to have a movable firewall? Every time she got beneath his security measures, more popped up. She had tried password after password to no avail. In addition, he changed them every day, or so it seemed, judging by the little headway she’d made. AJ was confounded in a way she neither liked nor respected. And it was making her boil with fury.

She was trying to access a document labeled “Tada Gan Iarracht,” the phrase that Chas had tattooed on his arm, meaning “Nothing Without Effort.” “You got that right,” AJ said, letting out a large puff of smoke. “This is a MASSIVE pain in my ass.” She tried the word “Oakley” with various numbers, then the names of every one of his known relatives. She even found the names of the pets he grew up with, also to no avail. Then she looked over all the information again. His background. His colleagues. His supposed crimes. And a look in his eyes that he only had when looking at Susannah. And then she let out a laugh. “Well, goddamn. He’s a fucking romantic.” After several tries she typed in the password “LegsPalmer” . . . and suddenly the document opened, and the keys to his whole life were laid out before her.

AJ took a deep puff of her cigarillo and finished the Bordeaux, drinking straight from the bottle. Smiling, she turned on her favorite recording: Thelonius Monk’s “Well, You Needn’t,” sometimes referred to as “It’s Over Now.” Then she turned to her keyboards and let out a long howl. “Oh, how I love it when the mighty fall!” she said with gusto and got back to work.

‡‡‡

CHAS WAS ABOUT TO board a flight at Charles de Gaulle back to New York. It had taken him the better part of a day to get over the drugs and the emotional pain he felt but was trying to ignore. The problem was that he didn’t know which part of Susannah was real, which part was fake, and which part was her agenda. His computer and files were still there, intact, so he didn’t think she’d gotten what she’d come for. But what had she come for? That was the confounding part. Did she just want to have the last laugh?

Then again, he had betrayed her first, and in a far more destructive way. When he woke up yesterday morning, still groggy, late for another meeting with Pierre, he felt it had served him right. He just didn’t realize it would sting so badly.

When the meeting with Pierre and his cronies had finished, Chas took Pierre aside to apologize for his lateness, and also to try to patch up the mistake he’d made in breaking Susannah’s cover. Maybe there was still a way to stop the intel from becoming public? Or at least to put it off for a bit, until she was back in the States? “After all,” Chas said, trying to sound cold, “she’s really small potatoes. No big deal. And she was a really great fuck.”

Pierre had grunted and smiled, only saying, “As you wish, Monsieur Palmer. As long as our job goes as planned in two weeks, I don’t care who you fuck. But remember: one false move, and you’re done—and so is she.”

Now Chas turned his thoughts to Susannah. He thought of the time they spent together, the woman she was, and how she made him laugh. Fuck it all, he thought. I’ve got to try to make things right with her. This may be my only chance. Maybe it was time to put this foolish quest for revenge on hold. Maybe it was time for him to settle down a bit, get married, have kids. . . .

He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the visions inside it. Of Susannah in a wedding dress, radiant and gorgeous, of her as the mother of his children. That was something he had never even remotely desired after the childhood he had lived through. He was being ridiculous, and it was probably just the drugs still in his system. His whole life was built on pursuing revenge, and he wasn’t about to throw it away. Yet as he boarded the airplane and accepted a drink from a pretty flight attendant in first class, someone who would have once caught his eye, he looked away. Now his thoughts were only of Susannah. He promised himself one thing: that he’d come clean to her and try to undo the damage he’d done.

But first he had to find her.

‡‡‡

PIERRE SAT IN THE sunken living room of his Paris apartment, G by his side, still in her fishnets. The Italian was in his New York office on speakerphone, and was in a foul mood. He was always in a foul temper when in New York, as he had to lay low there, pretending to be a humble businessman, and he hated it. Pierre hated it, too, because he always bore the brunt of the Italian’s icy moods. He was happy G was there to ease the burden.

“I don’t like it,” came the voice from the speaker, the rage barely contained beneath it. “Do you mean to tell me we are now unsure of young Palmer’s motives? Why did we not see this coming?”

“We’re not positive,” G said. “We just wonder if he is telling the truth, or if he is following a bit too closely in his father’s footsteps. It seems fishy.”

“You’re damn right it does,” the Italian said grittily. “Pierre, what the fuck have you been doing? Other than scratching your balls, hoping to get laid? Tell me, why do I keep you around?”

“Monsieur Bruni, sir,” Pierre breathed, “it’s all under control. We just want to keep you informed—”

“Vaffanculo!” the Italian shouted. “I KNOW WHEN I’VE BEEN COMPROMISED!”

“Calm down, cugino,” said G. “We’ll figure it out. We are going to send people to follow him when he gets to New York.”

“And the girl?”

“We think we might like to . . . question her a bit. She may mean quite a bit more than we realize.”

“This is the whore I’m seeing on the front of the Post?”

“Yes, cugino.”

“But if she’s just a whore, we don’t care, right?”

“Except if she means something to Monsieur Palmer,” Pierre said quickly.

The room was silent for a moment, except for the sound of the Italian’s heavy breathing. Then he spoke. “All right. You have two days. Then we kill them both. And Pierre?”

“Yes, monsieur?”

“This is your last chance.” With that, he hung up on them, and the sound resounded throughout the room.

Pierre held his face in his hands, and G let out a slow breath. “So now what?” he asked in despair.

“Allow me to take care of it,” she said, standing up. “Ms. Carter may be the key we have been looking for.”

“Thank you,” he said weakly.

“Pierre,” she said, lifting his face up. “Get it together.” Then she slapped him, hard. “That was for the inconvenience. I’ll let myself out.”

Pierre was left with his jaw hanging open, wondering hopelessly how he had gotten himself in this deep. “Fucking Italians,” he said with a moan, and went to pour himself a drink.

‡‡‡

SUSANNAH HAD JUST finished telling her mother the full story, eating ten peanut butter brownies in the process. She had concealed the details about FTP; it was the professional thing to do, since she’d signed a nondisclosure agreement. She did, however, tell her mother that she was not a secretary, but an undercover operative, that her cover had been blown and her reputation smeared, that she certainly was not a whore, or a call girl, and that, yes, a man had been involved. At this, Janice let out a low sigh.

“Well, of course a man is involved. There’s really no other reason for a girl to waste so much good mascara.”

“Oh, Mom, he played me for a fool,” Susannah moaned.

“Well, sweetheart, it sounds like you played him right back.”

There was silence for a moment, the sound of the wind through the trees, the fading sunlight creating long shadows on the front lawn. Then Susannah spoke. “I just—I felt something with him I’ve never felt with anyone else, and it . . .” Her voice broke off.

“What, sweetheart?”

“Well, it made me believe that true love was possible.”

Janice sighed again and looked her daughter in the eye. “Honey, anything is possible, truly. But love? Love is tricky. It’s so rare to find the right thing, and if you think, I mean, if you truly believe this may be right, well . . .”

“Well what, Mom?”

“Well, then you need to go get him, sweetheart. Get him or forget him. That’s what I always say.” She went on. “And if you can’t forget him, then you need to see if there’s anything else worth looking at.”

“But, Mom,” Susannah cautioned, “he blew my cover.”

“Well, you don’t know that for sure, not yet. Not in the way you think. I think it’s always important to look at both sides of things.”

“Both sides of what? What could be worse than blowing someone’s cover? Or at the very least calling someone a whore? I mean, it’s my livelihood. It’s my whole life. And to top it off, he called me a joke!”

“Well, you’re no joke, sweetheart, everyone knows that. You can’t actually harm someone unless they are what you say, and honey, you are as real as they get. I just think there’s more to the story than we know. And—” She was interrupted by Susannah’s cell phone playing a jazz riff. “What on earth is that?”

“Sorry, Mom, it’s AJ, probably calling to see how I am. Let me run upstairs and get this, okay?”

“Sure, send her my love,” Janice said as Susannah made her way up the stairs to her room. She watched her daughter with a wistful expression, wishing she could help her and knowing that all she could do was listen and bake. She smiled as she thought of Susannah’s father, knowing how proud he would be of his little girl, and went to make another batch of brownies.

‡‡‡

SUSANNAH WALKED UP the long carpeted staircase to her childhood room. It had remained unchanged from high school and still bore the markings of a different era. There was a four-poster twin bed with a patchwork quilt, and flowered wallpaper on the walls. The flowers were abstract, and Susannah had always imagined faces hiding in the paint splatters, faces she’d come to know as old friends. The room had an orange shag carpet she had spent her childhood upon and large windows decorated with flowing curtains that had made her feel like a princess. Shelves lined the walls, and upon them were old awards for horseback riding and soccer as well as childhood trinkets: an old Rubik’s cube, a sculpted horse, her many and varied failed attempts at jewelry making. There was a pencil drawing of Susannah as a teen framed next to the shelves, and below it the phrase “Someone Prove Me Wrong.” It was her catchphrase in high school, and AJ, who had an excellent hand, had drawn the print. Susannah’s stuffed animal collection, relegated to a corner of the room, still made her smile, and she grabbed a particularly large giraffe named Gus as she sat down on the twin bed to answer the phone. “Fingers?”

“Legs, honey, have I got some news for you,” she said, and began to tell Susannah what she had discovered. Susannah listened, rapt, as AJ told her all she had learned about Chas in the past few hours. She ended with, “Here’s the point, honey—he’s been hunting his father’s killer all these years. That’s what this is all about. I don’t know to what extent he can be exonerated of these crimes, because he was instrumental in certain ones, but most of them were faked. It’s almost as if he was trying to cover the fact that he wasn’t really involved. Amazing, right? He made it look like he was a part of something he wasn’t. Understand?”

“Not really,” Susannah said, “but I get the drift.”

“So you see,” AJ said triumphantly, “he’s been honest with you, for the most part, all along. It’s really like a cover within a cover within a cover. He’s living life like one of those Russian dolls, where each layer is another lie. But at the center? Him hunting his father’s killer. Who is one of these guys he’s been palling around with in France for sure.”

Susannah blew out a long breath. “So what do I do with any of this?”

“Well, I’m not sure. I just wonder about something. The main thing missing here is who did it, right? Who killed his father, who’s the head of the operation, who’s he really after? I mean, we know he said something about an Italian, but that hardly narrows it down. How do we find that out?”

“Search me. I can’t do much of anything with a blown cover.”

“Well, it ain’t been blown yet. Meaning, yes, your pretty face is on the front of the paper with the word ‘whore’ all over it, but who cares? It actually doesn’t break your cover, it kinda adds to it. Frankly, I’m jealous. And it ain’t over till the fat lady sings.”

“Meaning?” Susannah asked.

“Look, sweetheart, I’m only seeing a bunch of trashy local rags calling you a sex machine. We know these guys know who you really are, so you can’t be anywhere near ’em till we take ’em down. Past that, I think it’s time to figure out how you can still do what you love and be with who you love. And patch together whatever’s gone wrong. Right?”

“Now, the L-word seems a little premature, Fingers—”

“Hang on a sec.” Susannah could hear AJ typing furiously at a keyboard, and a few moments went by in silence. “What do you think his father meant when he said all that stuff about the weather? The bride and the weather? The bride and the wind? What the fuck did he say?”

Suddenly, Susannah sat up like a lightning bolt. “Oh SHIT! Holy shit, Fingers, you hit it right on! His father was making a reference to a print that’s hanging in Chas’s office, a Kokoschka painting called Bride of the Wind. He wanted Chas to figure it out. But why? Why on earth would he do that?”

“You tell me, sweetcheeks.”

“Wait a minute—what about this?” she asked, her voice rising in excitement. “Something must be hidden in the office!”

“Oh, yes, yes, yes!” AJ said. “When you get excited about a case it just warms the cockles of my cold, cold heart. How soon can you get to New York?”

“What?”

“Do you want to find some way of doing the work you love, honey, or not? Do you want to patch your reputation back together, or not? Do you want your man back, or not? Don’t you think there’s actually a possibility that this could be The One, and don’t you think you deserve the chance to find out? Get on a plane, train, or automobile, get to New York, get the fucking hidden treasure, and save the day. It’s what you want, right?”

“Right, but, I can’t just break into Chas’s town house. And what if he’s home?”

“Oh, sweetie pie, you really don’t know me at all, do you?” AJ cackled.

“Your meaning, Oh mysterious one?”

“Chas just got on a plane to New York. You have an entire evening until he gets home. I have the codes to all his security systems, and interior surveillance of his home, car, and cell. You just put me in your ear, and I’ll get you in.”

There was a pause. Then Susannah smiled. “Oh, Fingers, I do love you. And I never want to know how you know all that. Gimme half an hour, and I’ll be on headset.”

“I’ll be waiting with bated breath, Sugar Britches,” she said. Then she disconnected the call.

Susannah sat on her bed for a minute, trying to catch her breath. Looking skyward she said, “Dad? Do you think I should go back to New York and try to figure this out? I’m confused. If you have any thoughts, I need a sign. Scratch that. I need a really big sign.”

She waited for a moment. Then she muttered, “Well, of course. I’m being ridiculous. I have to learn to make my own decisions.”

And with that, she grabbed AJ’s drawing off the wall, took it out of the frame, and tucked it in her pocket. “ ‘Someone Prove Me Wrong’ indeed,” she said with a smile.

‡‡‡

SUSANNAH’S HEART WAS BEATING a mile a minute as she ran down the stairs and directly into her mother, who had been listening, it seemed, from below. “Sorry, Mom! Gotta run. I’ve got important business to take care of, and—”

“Yes, Susie, I heard. Anything I can do to help?”

“No, Mom. I’ve just got to hightail it back to New York—I’ve got to get on the next flight out,” she said breathlessly.

“Can I drive you to the airport?” Janice asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s no big deal, really, just—”

“Sweetheart,” Janice said with a wan smile, “did you really think your father was a salesman? And that he traveled for business last minute to sell life insurance? Really? I thought you were smarter than that.”

Susannah’s eyes widened. “Wait, Mom, you mean—”

“I mean that I’ve been dealing with this my whole life, it seems. Secrecy is in your blood, and justice pumps it through your veins. I know the quickest route to any airport, train station, rental hub, or private helicopter service you can name.” She smiled wider. “And my car is faster than yours. Come on, sweetheart. Grab a few brownies for the road. You’re gonna need ’em.”