“I don’t know for certain, but it’s easy to get a license to home school a child if the parents plead orthodoxy, particularly for a girl. The black hats, again. The Greenbaums lived on the edge of the desert, too, not all that far from Qumran, if you know where that is.”
“I do. The ruins there loomed large in the legends we got told in school.”
I swiveled the chair around to ask him another question, only to have it go right out of my mind. He was holding his coffee mug in both hands and watching me over the rim with a real longing. I had the sudden urge to take the mug away and rub my face on his sweaty shirt. I thought of Sister Peter Mary, the real one, not just the visitation, and remembered the question.
“These silver bullets,” I said. “Do you agree that he must be making them himself?”
“Yes. The Tel Aviv police tried to track Johnson’s movements. They were looking for a jeweler who might have done some custom casting, but they didn’t find one. The conclusion was that he’d brought them with him. Something that small—he could have hidden the slugs in a box with cufflinks or something of that sort. They would have scanned as jewelry.”
“How could he get a gun into the country?”
“He couldn’t have. Someone there had to have supplied him with one. He carried plenty of currency. With the proper connections he could have bought one from a Palestinian group that deals in smuggled small arms.”
“And since he turned up in Syria, it’s likely he had those connections.”
“Exactly. The San Francisco police are looking for a jeweler now, but I’m fairly sure that you’re right, and he must be doing his own casting.”
“He’s got to have some kind of base of operations, then. You can’t go smelting metal in a hotel room or the backseat of a car.”
“Of course not.”
I let the image from my first remote sensing rise into my memory, the black hat, the gray trench coat. The hat gave me a frisson as I thought of implications beyond Sam Spade. “Is it possible that this Johnson is one of the orthodox?”
“He couldn’t be, if he’s our killer. He shot Greenbaum on a Saturday.”
“Okay. I can’t imagine one of the people you describe professing faith in Jesus even as a cover story, anyway. It was just a thought.” And not a very good one, I told myself. “Do you think he’s working alone?”
Nathan gulped coffee while he considered the question. “I don’t,” he said at last. “He disappears too easily. Someone’s got to be sheltering him or at the least providing him with a safe house. He must have had such a connection in Israel and one in Syria and Iran, too.”
“Which leaves out the psychotic serial killer.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t disagree with that. Neither, really, can the local police. They can see the possible political implications as easily as you and I can. They’re afraid that the CIA will come barging in.”
“It’s a good bet.” I Frisbeed the manila folder back onto the coffee table. “To be honest, I’d be glad to turn the whole mess over to the CIA or FBI or any agency that wants it. I signed on to keep Chaos within necessary bounds, not to deal with spies and serial killers.”
“Which reminds me. If you’ve finished reading, I’ve a few questions for you. What do you mean, Chaos lights?”
“Basically what I told you on the bridge. The Agency calls them Manifested Indicators.”
“Indicators of what?”
“Chaos forces, of course. No one really knows what they’re composed of. The Agency has a research project going forward to find out. Some sort of radiation would be my guess.”
“That sounds logical. Is there any evidence for it?”
“No. Only the process of elimination. What else could they be?”
Nathan scowled at me.
“Sorry, but I can’t tell you what no one knows,” I continued. “We do know that they only appear when the forces of Chaos are threatening the balance point to a dangerous degree. They showed up in America and Russia for the first time in the 1950s, when the U.S. and the Soviets were building atom bombs like crazy.”
“The balance point?”
“Between Chaos and Order. We live in Chaotic times, and so most people would think of me as an agent of anti-Chaos or Order. But really, I serve the balance, not either side, which makes me an agent for Harmony.”
“Harmony is different from Order?”
“It’s the product of Order and Chaos in balance.”
I could tell that Nathan was actually thinking about what I was saying instead of searching for counterarguments, a trend I wanted to encourage.
“Well, look,” I continued, “Too much Chaos, and things fall apart, like the poet said.”
“‘The falcon cannot hear the falconer.’ That one?”
“Yeah.” I was impressed despite myself. “But too much Order, and things stagnate like a silted river between narrow banks.”
“I don’t know that poem.”
“That’s because I just made that up.”
“Not bad.” Nathan paused to consider something. “When I was put in contact with your agency, I was given a briefing about it, a very strange, very short briefing. I gather, though, that your Congress founded it back in the Fifties. Was that because of the flying saucer hysteria?”
“That was part of the reason, yeah.” I wondered how much he’d been told. I didn’t want to give anything away. “The Air Force set up the first project, down in Palo Alto. That’s just south of here.”
“And it grew from there?”
“You could say that.”
I smiled, he waited. Finally he looked into his mug, frowned, and set it down empty on the coffee table. “I’m really quite hungry. Do you think you might actually eat something if I pay for it?”
“That has to be the worst dinner invitation I’ve ever gotten, but yeah, I’m hungry, too. One thing, though. Those pictures of Johnson. Are they here or in the office?”
“Here, of course. I don’t leave things like that lying around.”
“Bring them along. I want to show them to the stringer.”
We ate at a local Chinese place decorated by someone who believed in a daily hosing down with Lysol—bare pale green walls, white tiled floor with an obvious drain in the middle, vinyl-covered chairs, Formica tables. They had at least covered the bare light bulbs with silk lanterns that dangled red tassels for a spot of color. The food, however, I’d always found to be first-rate. Whenever I took anyone there, I’d order a number of different dishes and then just sample them while the guests did the serious eating.
When we walked in, Nathan stood looking narrow-eyed around the room. When a waiter tried to show us to a table in the middle of the room, he shook his head no.
“Sorry,” Nathan said. “I’d like that table over there in the corner.” He gave me an apologetic smile. “I’m never comfortable unless I can keep my back toward the wall.”
With a shrug the waiter led us to the chosen perch. He took my order, then trotted off to fetch the usual pot of tea.
Nathan had never used chopsticks before, and he set himself to be charming when I tried to teach him over an order of tiger prawns. We laughed a lot, but when the waiter brought the lo mein, he also brought Nathan a fork. Nobody in the room wanted to see him covered in noodles and sauce, not while they were trying to eat. He’d kept his jacket on during the meal, too. It didn’t look washable.
By the time we left the restaurant, the sun was setting off to the west, an orange glare behind the encroaching fog. Streetlights glimmered, waiting for full darkness. Shop windows and neon signs lit up in splashes of red and purple, glittering on the sidewalks damp from the fog. I love night in the city, cool, mysterious, jeweled with lights—I always feel that some magical thing waits for me, maybe around the next corner, maybe in some strange little shop still open when its neighbors have all gone dark.
Nathan, however, shivered and buttoned up his jacket with a small growl.
“I suppose you keep that coat on to hide the gun,” I said.
“Yes, but it’s the damp weather, too. I’ve been cold ever since I got here.”
“I hope you brought a raincoat. It
is
winter.”
We were walking side by side down the sidewalk. Without looking my way he reached for my hand. I almost let him take it, but just in time I pulled it away. I tucked both hands into my jacket pockets for safe keeping.
“We’d better not take the car,” I said. “The parking downtown is really lousy.”
“As far as I can tell, the parking all over San Francisco is lousy.” Nathan paused to look up and down the street. “This doesn’t look like a good district to find a cab.”
“There’s this thing called streetcars. We can’t pull up at Jerry’s corner in a cab, anyway.”
“Jerry is the stringer?”
“Yeah, and a hustler.”
“A what?”
“A male prostitute.”
“Um.” Nathan seemed unfazed by the revelation. “Is he reliable?”
“Very. He’s always had a good eye for Chaos.”
By the time we got downtown, night had fallen, close and silver in the fog. As we climbed out of the underground Muni Metro station, Nathan took a good look around at the scrappy shops, the drunks sitting on the sidewalk, the general disorder of Market Street once you get past Sixth and leave the big touristy department stores behind. Our route ahead on the side street lay between high stone buildings, dimly lit by streetlights alone, a shadowed canyon into the night.
“I don’t like this situation,” he said. “Let’s get in and out as fast as we can.”
“All right. I’ll give Jerry a call.”
Since Jerry’s fairly successful at his chosen line of work, he has a cell phone. He was standing, he told me, on a “good” corner on Ellis Street, a couple of blocks behind but not too near the big hotels around Union Square. With the economy so bad, the doormen were getting too greedy about kickbacks, or so he said, for him to sit inside. As we walked up, I saw him hovering by the lighted windows of a bar in his work clothes: a tight short skirt, sleeveless red blouse, black stockings, and very high heels. Thanks to the cold he’d added a ratty black fur coat to this mess. He wore his bleached hair—all his own, though—in that odd poufy style favored by drag queens, very Fifties with tons of hair spray.
“He’s not here?” Nathan said to me.
At that point Jerry waved and came flouncing over.
“Nola, darling,” he said in his baritone voice. “Have you brought me a john or is this one yours?”
This time Nathan did look fazed, but only briefly. “Definitely hers,” he said. “Sorry.”
“I’m not having any luck tonight at all,” Jerry said. “Unless Nola’s brought me some charity.”
I took the four hundred-dollar bills of Agency money out of my jeans and held them out between my thumb and forefinger. Although Jerry didn’t appear to snatch them, they disappeared smoothly and suddenly into his taped-up cleavage.
“That’s your quarterly accounting,” I said, “and the pay for the latest job. Your requisition for expenses still hasn’t come in yet.”
“Why am I not surprised? This will come in handy, though.”
“Try not to shoot it all at once. You’re too valuable to lose.”
“You
are
sweet, but I don’t do needles, darling. My kind of customer doesn’t like tracks on the merchandise.”
“Then don’t snort it all at once.”
“I’ll restrain myself just for you. Did you see the lights today?”
“I did, yeah. I’m surprised you could see them from downtown.”
“I wasn’t downtown, is why. Every now and then I get this mad craving for sunshine, and I went to the park.” Jerry frowned down at the sidewalk. “You know I see things, and it’s not the drugs.”
“Yeah. You’ve always been accurate.”
“There was someone down by the windmill in the park.” He glanced at Nathan. “That’s Golden Gate Park, down at the west end, almost at the beach. A very well-dressed fellow, Armani slacks, D and G shirt, very pricey-looking camera. He was taking pictures of the windmill. Tourists do that all the time. But he gave me the creeps. I don’t know why. He just did, and I thought, that’s who the lights came for. I don’t know why. I just did.”
“Oh, really?” I touched Nathan’s arm. “Can I have those photos?”
Nathan brought the envelope out of the inner pocket of his jacket. Jerry’s eyes went very wide at a glimpse of the gun.
“Why are you packing?” he said. “Nola, is this guy a cop?”
“Yeah, but he’s not interested in local regulations. Don’t worry about it. Is this the guy you saw by the windmill?”
In the yellow glare of the streetlight, Jerry looked through the photos. “No,” he said eventually. “The guy I saw was much younger. Brown hair, darker than this guy’s.” He flapped the envelope, and Nathan took it back.
“Well, remember the face in the photo anyway,” I said. “He’s dangerous.”
“I noticed he was a Dodger fan. It figures.”
“If he comes by pretending to be a john, don’t go with him. Okay?”
“I’ll mention that I’ve just come from the AIDS clinic,” Jerry said, grinning. “That turns the smart ones off. Very well, darling, if you say so. He doesn’t look like a big spender anyway.”
I took one of Jerry’s hands in both of mine. “Think about that guy you saw,” I said.
Jerry obligingly thought. I soaked up a vibe, not a clear image, nothing so useful, but a vibe, and an impression of a small room with wood paneling—better than nothing, but not very good. I let Jerry’s hand go.
“That’ll give me a start,” I said. “Thanks.”
As we walked down Ellis Street toward Market, we saw an empty cab coming our way, probably after dropping a fare off at one of the big hotels. Just as Nathan hailed it, I had the odd thought that Aunt Eileen was watching us. We’d gotten into the backseat, and Nathan had told the driver our destination, when my cell phone rang. I took it out of my shoulder bag and flipped it open.
“Nola, is that you?” A dark male voice, with the deep growl of a heavy drinker.
“Uncle Jim! What’s wrong? You sound like something is.”