White Ghost (11 page)

W
e're going to have to pass on the Sheridan case,” Gage told Alex Z and Sylvia when he stepped into her second-floor office. “I need you to write up what you've done so far. I'll forward everything on to Joe Casey. The FBI can take over.”

Seeing them standing close together, Gage had the feeling they had been waiting for him.

Alex Z peered up at him. “What's going on, boss?”

“I'll need to take a little time off, so it's time to phase out.”

“You're talking about chemotherapy, aren't you?” Sylvia asked. “I'm so sorry. What can I . . .”

“Just carry on with your work.”

“Have you told the rest of the staff? I've heard people talking, wondering why you haven't been checking in with them. I even got a call from Derrell in London asking if something is wrong.”

“I'll do it later today.” Gage looked at Alex Z. “Set up a conference call so people out of the country can listen in.”

“Can't we take a break, let things lie for a while, and finish after your treatment?” Sylvia asked.

“By the time I'm done and able to work again, the chips will have made it to wherever they're going and will have disap
peared into new computers. It'll be as if it never happened. The case is out of our hands, whether we sit on what we know or give it to Casey.”

“But there's no way Casey can do it.” Sylvia's tone was flat, no sign of the frustration he knew she felt. “And I figured out what you were going to do. You weren't going to hand this case off to the FBI. If it weren't for the diagnosis, you would've gone to China and worked backward to Ah Ming yourself.”

Gage smiled. “I knew hiring you was a brilliant move.”

Sylvia didn't smile back.

“You think the Chinese are going to cooperate with the FBI? Their economy is built on theft, and their police are infiltrated with gangsters. Everything we've done will just end up in a file box somewhere.”

“I'm not sending any of our people over there.” Gage spread his hands to encompass the three floors of investigators. “No one else in the office has the kind of connections I have in China, and without them it's too dangerous. And remember, that file box is called intelligence. Someday the FBI will get another chance at Ah Ming and our stuff will help.” He looked back and forth between them. “That's how it has to be, so let's wrap this up.”

Gage returned to his office to call Burch in order to arrange a final meeting with Lucy. He also needed to begin following his own orders by preparing an investigative memo for Casey to accompany the data and reports.

As he sat down at his computer and opened a new document, he felt a kind of finality, like he'd come to accept the reality of the possibility he'd presented to Burch: that it was time to hand the firm over to his staff and follow Faith around the world. And now, staring at the blank screen and reaching for the keyboard, he felt like he was about to write his professional last will and testament. He'd always told his staff that investigators were only as good as their last case, and this was his.

F
aith paused at Gage's office door carrying a binder of her lymphoma research. She observed him in profile as he focused on his screen. She watched him type a few words, then glance to his left, reaching for some papers near the windowsill. He looked up as though something outside had caught his attention and paused. After a few moments, he shook his head, then moved a sheet closer to his keyboard.

A quarter of a century,
Faith thought to herself.
A quarter of a century. Where did it go? If only I could stop time, get some of those years back.

She knew that they hadn't been wasted; they were just gone, lost in the infinity of the past.

What is it about time?
she asked herself.
It marches, grinds, skips, flees, stops. What does that mean, time stops? It doesn't stop. It just seems to when the mind can't deal with the present.

Time doesn't stop, the mind just freezes.

Time.

What is time?

I know. I know exactly. It's an acid that eats away at life.

G
AGE TURNED AND LOOKED AT
F
AITH
, but now she didn't see him.

“I was just there myself,” Gage said to her.

Faith blinked. “Where?”

He pointed to the side of his head. “In here.”

He got up from his chair, walked to her, and folded his arms around her.

“I'm sorry,” Gage said. “You don't deserve this.”

“No, Graham. I wouldn't trade a minute, not a second . . .”

They held each other in silence, in their private universe, then Gage took her hand, interwove their fingers, and they walked back into the world.

T
HE GLARE OF THE NOONDAY SUN
, ricocheting off glass and steel of nearby buildings gave the street a clarity, a distinctness of color and shape that was rare in the city. Even the surface of the windless bay seemed as flat and shiny as a sheet of gray-blue steel.

They walked a few blocks inland to Wushan Garden and entered through what used to be the driveway of the converted auto repair shop. The owner waved at them, and then hurried through the crowded restaurant toward them.

“Graham, why you not call?” Danny Tang said in his restaurant English. “I got no table.”

“We'll wait. I wasn't sure what our plans would be. I didn't want to leave you with empty seats.”

“Come to kitchen. I show you something.”

“I'd like to, but Faith and I have some things we need to talk through.”

“Go ahead.” Faith smiled and tilted her head toward the back of the restaurant. “We have time.”

Danny led Gage through the dining room toward the steaming, rattling, banging, sizzling sounds of his kitchen. They ducked though swinging doors, past the flaming woks, and into the walk-in refrigerator-freezer.

“Look at this one.” Danny pointed at a forty-pound halibut
hanging from a hook. “I caught early morning outside Golden Gate. How much you like? I drop off this afternoon.”

“That's a beauty, but I couldn't.”

“You better say. I bring anyway.”

“Okay, but only enough for Faith and me for dinner tonight.”

When Gage returned to the dining room, Faith was sitting in a booth sipping tea with the clinical trial literature lying unopened on the table.

“What poor, unsuspecting creature did Danny yank from its watery home this time?”

“Halibut.”

“I thought he was a salmon guy.”

Gage shrugged and smiled. “I guess it got away.” He picked up his menu. “You know what you want?”

“It's not in my hands. Danny's wife told me she wants to try a new dish on us. Something vegetarian she said even you would like.”

Gage shook his head. “Why does everyone suddenly want to turn me into a guinea pig?”

“It must be your soft fur,” Faith said, running her hand down the back of his head.

He glanced back toward the kitchen. “I hope it isn't something with eggplant.”

“I was looking out for you. She promised. No eggplant.”

Gage pointed at her binder. “So what does the Internet have to say about my chemical dip?”

“Everything confirms what Stern said. All the first-line treatments are pretty much the same, chemotherapy plus an antibody to target the fast-growing cells.”

“So it's kind of a crapshoot which one we go with.”

“That's not the recommended language. Apparently the proper medical phrase is equally efficacious.”

“I'm thinking that maybe I should do it at UC San Francisco,”
Gage said. “That way we won't have to drive down to Stanford for every infusion. Maybe they can send her the progress reports and I can still get my checkups with her.”

“Stern figured you might want to do that and also get a second opinion before you start, so she e-mailed me a list of doctors.” Faith took a sheet from the binder and passed it to him. “These are the lymphoma people.”

“Sounds like a horror movie.”

“Sorry, lymphoma specialists.”

“Stern is all right,” Gage said, looking down the list. “I like a doctor who's not afraid of being second-guessed. I'll make some calls this afternoon.”

Danny approached the table gripping a steaming plate of mushrooms and broccoli in one hand and a bowl of noodles in the other. He served them a little of each, then stood back.

“I am thinking of this for the menu. It's up to you. You two like it, it's on. You not like it, it's off.”

Faith picked up a sauce-covered piece of broccoli with her chopsticks, placed it in her mouth, closed her eyes.

“Absolute heaven,” she said. “You don't even need to listen to him. A second opinion isn't necessary.”

Danny looked down at Gage and grinned. “It's even better with eggplant.”

B
urch and Lucy arrived at Gage's office late in the afternoon. He asked her to wait in the lobby while he spoke to Burch in the conference room.

“I don't want to put you in a difficult position with your client,” Gage said, sitting down across from Burch, “but I prefer she doesn't know why I'm giving up the case.”

“Where do things stand now?”

“There's no question about it. Ah Ming was behind the robbery.”

“Not that. I mean with you.”

Gage hesitated.

“The bottom line.” Burch said the words with a tentativeness telegraphing that he hoped he was ready for the answer.

Gage watched Burch's hands grip the table edge.

“They can shrink it back a few times, but they can't stop it. At least I'll be able to see the end coming.”

“That's a cheery thought.”

“It's a lot better than being blindsided.”

“Actually, it isn't.” Burch's voice hardened. “And that's how you're different from me and everyone else I know. The rest of
us just want to die in our sleep. No one wants to look it in the face, except you.”

Burch paused and his face reddened as if he'd grasped that he'd misdirected his anger, then asked, “How much time?”

Gage shrugged. “A few years, guaranteed.”

“Is Faith doing okay?”

“It's hard because we never play let's pretend, but she's getting by.”

Gage glanced in the direction of the lobby. “I don't want to keep Lucy waiting too long.”

Burch didn't respond, as if unwilling to let go of the moment, then nodded.

“I'm pretty sure the chips are on their way to China,” Gage said. “The problem is that the direct link between Ah Ming and the crime got cut.”

“Cut?”

“Murdered.”

Burch's eyes widened, then narrowed. “Let's tell the Sheridans that this is now something for the FBI or ICE to take over,” Burch said. “You agreed to stay with it only as long as it took to find out whether Ah Ming is responsible for Peter's death. You've done that.”

“But I don't want Sheridan doing something foolish. Ah Ming won't even let him crawl away if he shows up there again.”

Burch paused, his active eyes seeming to watch an idea work itself out. Then he asked, “Don't they have the right to the information? They hired me and I hired you. That means they own it.”

“Send the retainer back.”

Burch thought for a moment, then nodded. “That'll do, but since Sheridan is my client, I'll cover your costs, too.”

“It's not your problem,” Gage said. “It's an investment in my peace of mind.” He rose to his feet. “I'll finesse it with Lucy.”

H
old my calls,” Gage said to the receptionist when he arrived at the office the following morning. “I need to finish something before I head out for a meeting.”

Gage poured himself coffee in the kitchen, then began to review the reports prepared by Alex Z and Sylvia. Ten minutes into it, an intercom beep jabbed though the envelope of his concentration.

“I'm sorry, Graham,” his receptionist said, almost whispering. “But there's a woman here. She says she has to speak to you and won't take no for an answer.”

“Who is she?”

“Peter Sheridan's mother.”

Gage sighed. He didn't look forward to lying to a grieving mother, particularly since he didn't know whether it was for her benefit or for his own. To tell himself that it was both felt too much like a self-serving accommodation.

As he slid aside the reports, he wondered why she'd chosen this moment to come out of hiding, but then decided he didn't care about the answer.

She wasn't his problem.

He glanced at his watch. He had to leave in twenty minutes if he was going to have time to pick up Faith at the Embarcadero BART station and make it to UC San Francisco for his appointment.

“Put her in the conference room. Get her some coffee or tea or whatever she wants. Tell her I don't have much time.”

Gage printed out the list of questions he and Faith had prepared for the oncologist, folded it, and stuffed it into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He then walked down the hallway strategizing about how to get rid of Linda Sheridan. He had nothing to say to her that he hadn't already said to her daughter, and he'd moved on, not to another case, but to another life, or what was left of it.

Linda Sheridan sat facing away from the door, a cup of tea sitting in front of her on the table. Her black hair concealed all but a glimpse of her gold earrings.

“I'm Graham Gage,” he said, as he took the last step toward her and reached out his hand.

Linda slid back her chair, then struggled to her feet and turned to face him. Soft eyes looked up at him. She didn't offer her hand. She just stood there, unmoving, like a memorial to some ancient time. A tremor shuddered through him as he was wrenched backward from mature, reflective thoughts of death, to a youthful terror, looking up from the oil-stained pavement of a narrow Chinatown alley at those same eyes staring down from an apartment window.

“Ling?”

“Yes.”

“How . . .”

Gage gestured for her to sit down and took a chair next to hers. He leaned forward and took her hands in his.

“Where have you been? Casey told me you left witness protection.”

“I couldn't take the isolation. They gave me a new name and dropped me in a small town in Iowa where every Chinese person worked in a restaurant or a dry cleaner. That wasn't what I wanted for myself, so I went back to Hong Kong.”

“You shouldn't be in San Francisco. What if someone recognizes you?”

“I needed to see you.” Her face was heavy with sadness. “About Peter.”

The name jerked Gage back into the present.

“Linda Sheridan . . .” Gage felt racked by the vertigo of two worlds crashing together.

“I met my husband in Hong Kong. I went to college there and got a job as an account manager at the bank he used. He insisted the children and I move back to the U.S. when he started to have doubts about how the mainlanders were managing the takeover.”

“Why didn't you come see me before? Why didn't you come with Lucy?”

She shrugged. “Partly because I wanted to escape from the reality of what Peter had become. Partly because Peter was a creature of my isolation. And partly because I crossed a bridge to get away from the world I met you in.” She looked down at their hands. “Maybe it was because I lived so many years in fear of exposure it became a way of life.”

“Why now?”

She looked back up. “Lucy told me you decided not to continue.”

“There's nothing more I can do.”

Gage hated himself for lying. Shame, and then anguish welled up in him. He felt like begging for her forgiveness. He was about to respond to her truth, the truth that saved his life and his career, with a lie.

He looked away. “I've taken it as far as I can.”

Linda waited until Gage looked at her again, then stared into his eyes, searching for something.

Gage let her find it.

“Thank you, Graham,” she said, wrapping her hands around his. “I understand.”

Linda rose again and walked from the room, her limp tearing into the fabric of time.

What could she possibly understand?
Gage asked himself in the hollowness she left behind.
That she risked everything for me and I bailed on her the only time I'll ever have a chance to repay her?

What's life for, if not to spend on something decent?

Isn't that the real question?

Isn't that what she did?