From Cape Town with Love (22 page)

“I don't wanna.” She wasn't crying, but she was close. “He's mean!”

“No, no, it's okay. See?” I smiled for Nandi, just as I'd been instructed. My face hurt from the lie, but my smile didn't show a sign of trouble.

Still, Nandi gave a wail that crushed my chest. “I want my mommeeee!”

The men were behind me, closing in, but I didn't break away from Nandi's eyes or abandon my smile. My smile was the only thing I could give her. “You'll see your mommy soon. Hear me? I'll come back and take you to your mommy. That's a promise.”

I was close enough to see the quick spark in her eye: not a smile, but she believed me.

The sound of sirens rose in the night sky like an hallucination, too far to help.

While one man pulled me back, another swept Nandi up high. I yanked myself free, ready to fight, but somebody suckered me with the butt of a gun to the back of my head. I staggered, the world swimming.

I yelled out, my last resort for Nandi's sake:
“HELP! CALL 911—
” A flock of birds nesting in a nearby tree took flight. My anguish flew for miles.

I waited for the knife. The gunshot.

Instead, bright light flared all around. Dazzling white pain. I felt myself falling, pulled down into the depths of myself. I was drowning under the weight of Nandi's heavy absence. Crushed by the burden of her trust.

My head was a throbbing mess, but most of it wasn't from the pistol whipping that had left a walnut-size knot on the back of my head.

At the football stadium, I'd awakened in time to see Roman's body loaded into the coroner's ambulance. Nandi, gone. The money, gone. Vast, empty nothingness from end to end, except for the red lights of Hell flaring from the police cars and ambulances.

Two hours later, in an interview room in LAPD's Robbery-Homicide division, I remembered the index card in my back pocket. I still had my cell phone, so I dialed. I couldn't rehearse what to say. I wanted to tell her in person, but I wasn't free for a visit.

The phone picked up after one ring, anxious, silent waiting instead of a greeting.

“Is this Wendy?” I said, consulting the card. “Roman's wife?”

The woman's breaths fractured. “Tennyson Hardwick?”

He had told her I might call. What would I say if she asked me if he'd suffered?

Roman's wife coaxed me past my grim silence. “Please. Just tell me.”

“I'm sorry to call with news like this . . .” I heard her suck in her breath, waiting for what she already knew. Each word was a labor greater
than the last. “Roman was . . . killed tonight during our assignment for Sofia Maitlin. It happened fast, Wendy. He was trying to—”

Only a deep gasp told me she had heard. A pause, followed by a whispered question. “Did you get Nandi?”

My mind flashed on Nandi's anxious, wondering face. I closed my eyes.

“No, ma'am.” My throat was seared raw. “They want more payment.”

“God,” she said. “Oh,
God.”

She repeated her prayer for the rest of our call, excusing herself when she lost her voice. I heard a child in the background, and remembered Roman's kids on the pirate ship. I was grateful when the line clicked dead.

Lieutenant Nelson was standing in the open doorway, at a polite distance. After I put away my telephone, he came in with a packet of extrastrength Tylenol and a cup of black coffee. I'd asked for the Tylenol, but I would have picked beer over caffeine. I was tired of being awake. Every time I blinked, I had to fight to open my eyes again.

Nelson's brow was severe, hiding his thoughts as he paced. He'd been roused from bed, and was dressed blandly in gray sweatpants and a USC sweatshirt. So far, he'd spared me the I-told-you-so tirade whirring behind his brow. Maybe he had a human streak.

“He asked me to call her,” I said.

Nelson shrugged. “I've got nothing to add to that conversation, Hardwick.”

“I'd like to go home.”

Nelson sat at the edge of the table. “Forget it. You're in mighty deep waters—too far out for me to pull you in. I got you a few minutes to breathe, but that won't last long.”

I nodded. I'd figured as much, on all counts.

“Can't get worse,” I said, although we both knew that wasn't true.

“Oh, it can, and it will.” Nelson chuckled sourly. “Now you're the FBI's problem. And the chief of police. And pretty much the whole damn world. You want to be famous? You just got your wish. Kiss your life good-bye.”

Nelson walked away and closed the door. Human, after all.

I thought I finally would be free to leave after my polygraph, but I was wrong.

“Explain to me again why you didn't call the police the day of the party?”

Special Agent Fanelli of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was whiny and incredulous, a posture that had worn thin hours ago. He was about fifty, small boned and craggy faced, with a shock of dark hair and an uneven hairline, wearing a stylish gray suit. His accent was straight out of Little Italy, like John Turturro. “To be honest, Ten, this is the part I still don't understand.”

Five in the morning, and no end in sight. The agents were wide awake. At about three, Fanelli had started calling me Ten, as if we were buddies.

“If I'm being charged with something, I need to call my lawyer. If not, I'm ready to go.”

“Are you serious?” The female agent, Garceaux, was a fair-skinned sister whose hair was lashed in a tight bun. Her blouse and skirt were so mismatched that I wondered if she'd gotten dressed in the dark. She was in her thirties, but her voice was kitten soft, like a child's, almost out of my hearing. “This little girl's life is at stake, and you're talking about a lawyer? You can't be bothered to help us conduct a thorough investigation? You and your buddy blew it, but you're just gonna kick back and see how it all plays out? Wow.”

Her words were lashes, whipping me. I'd handed Nandi over to men I knew to be killers. Until that night, I hadn't known what guilt felt like, so thick in my lungs that it was hard to breathe the room's stale air. Maybe the polygraph had confused guilt with lies.

Now I understood exactly what Roman meant about those betrayed, those left behind.

“But sure, go on, put in a call to a lawyer,” Garceaux said. “I'm sure Nandi's all comfy eating frosted flakes and watching Elmo while we wait for you to lawyer up.” For the first time, she sounded angry. I noticed her wedding band, and I was sure she had kids. Maybe a daughter.

I stared at the table. I couldn't raise my eyes to stare a mother in the face.

“Everything else, we got it,” Fanelli said, pressing on. “You take the money to the fifty. Your buddy goes Dirty Harry and starts shooting. He gets sliced and diced.”

“His name was Roman,” I said, my eyes snapping to his. Fanelli dehumanized Roman at every chance, trying to rattle me and force a discrepancy in my story.

Fanelli almost smiled, bemused that he'd gotten to me. “Pardon me—Roman. Then you try to grab Nandi, but they clock you and take her away. She's gone in a poof. I got all that. The part where I'm stuck, bear with me, is why you don't call the police. Like,
right away.
And your dad's an LAPD captain? It confuses me. As soon as the kid is missing, you say, ‘Listen, I know you're a movie star, but there's common sense and there's stupidity.' Was it a mass outbreak of stupidity? Is that why a man is dead and this little girl is God-knows-where?”

“Sounds right—put it in writing,” I said.
“WE FUCKED UP!”

I don't know where I got the energy to shout.

Garceaux sighed. At last, maybe she felt sorry for me.

Fanelli finally had the confession he wanted. He gave me a contemptuous gaze over his shoulder before flipping through his notes. “Lucky for you, stupid's not a crime.”

“Nothing else about the subjects?” Garceaux asked me, more gently. “Not even race?”

I went through my laundry list again: “Only one of them spoke. He had an upscale English accent, but it could have been phony. I can't tell you race, because they were covered from head to toe. The one who killed Roman used a knife, and his art looked like one I saw in Langa. That's where Maitlin found Nandi, in South Africa.”

“His ‘art'?” Fanelli said. “That's what you call it?”

I was tired, so maybe I shouldn't have said it—but the knife fighter was an artist. Once Roman was disarmed, he'd never had a chance. Almost no one would. “He's incredibly dangerous,” I said. “About five-seven. He's not big, but his knife was like the needle of a sewing machine, jabbing from different angles. Fast as hell.”

Garceaux was scribbling eager notes, but Fanelli wasn't impressed.
Anything I said was wasted on his ears. “You done with your briefing now . . . Detective?” he said.

Fuck you,
I told him with my eyes, but ignorance can't be cured in a single conversation. I'd been underestimated my whole life—except by Sofia Maitlin, who'd expected far too much.

“Here's the new reality of your life . . . ,” Fanelli went on. “My injunction says you can't go within five hundred feet of Sofia Maitlin. You are not to contact Sofia Maitlin. If you
dream
about Sofia Maitlin, you're going to jail. We'll tell your new roommates you aided and abetted in this kidnapping—so you'll get along great with the guys behind the wall.”

I'd expected to be iced out, but it stung. My head felt too tired to hold upright. I had promised Nandi I would come for her. I closed my eyes, and her tear-damp face shined at me.

“Was anything I just said confusing to you?” Fanelli said.

“I need to tell Sofia what happened,” I said.

“Trust me, she knows,” Garceaux said. “Take that off your list of worries, sunshine.”

“This is a federal investigation now,” Fanelli said. “You're
off
this case. Until we contact you again, forget you heard Nandi's name. Do not discuss this case with anyone. Talk to the news about this case, or the tabloids, and you're going away. Have I been clear?”

He waited for an answer, so I nodded.

“Louder—for the tape, please,” Garceaux said.

“Got it.” A growl of surrender preserved for posterity.

They glanced at each other, deciding I'd had enough.

Garceaux slapped my shoulder. “Better hope we can clean it up. Get some sleep.”

They left me alone in the interview room. Nandi's cries and Roman's screams rang in the small room's walls, inescapable.

Five minutes passed before I could rise to my feet.

Chela was the last person I expected to find waiting for me at Robbery-Homicide. She looked dressed up for Halloween, wearing oversize sunglasses, one of Dad's fedoras, and my trench coat.

“Ten!”
she said, and wrapped her arms around my neck. I needed her hug, but I was so tired that she nearly pulled me off balance.

“What are you doing here?”

“What do you think? You scared the shit out of us!” Chela said, still hanging on. When Chela's hair brushed my cheek, I smelled Nandi in her curls. My stomach lurched. “Ten, why didn't you tell us Sofia Maitlin's baby was—” She stopped in midsentence, noticing the bandage on the back of my head. “Omigod! Did they take you to a hospital?”

A crowd was gathering as we attracted the attention of newly arrived detectives huddled near the coffee machine. Extra manpower. They weren't usually at work so early, and I didn't like their eyes on us. I wasn't in the mood to answer any more questions, spoken or unspoken.

“I'm fine,” I told Chela, steering her toward the hall. “Who told you about—”

“Captain's cop friend called. We've been here three hours already.”

I scanned the mostly empty office. “Where's Dad?”

“He's sleeping in the car. Ten, there's a buttload of news vans outside the police station, and the reporters are all asking questions about you and Sofia Maitlin's baby. It's surreal!”

I understood Chela's strange costume: It was a disguise. The story was out. The reporters might beat us to my house. A mounted television screen across the room with local news was showing a photo of Nandi.
AMBER ALERT: MAITLIN KIDNAPPING!

What if we'd put out the word when the original trail was fresh?

My stomach rolled, twice. I was about to puke all over the floor of the RHD.

“Wait for me,” I told Chela.

I'd given up on making it to the men's room when I almost ran by the sign on a door beside me. The bathroom was empty. I lurched to the first stall, and everything spilled out of my stomach: the coffee, the lone protein bar I'd had for dinner at Maitlin's, and a quart of pure acid. My stomach kept heaving long after the food was gone.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. I'd ignored my phone during the FBI interview, but I grabbed it. I was surprised by how much I hoped it was April.