Water to Burn

  “It’s done by computer these days, huh?”

  “Yes. It’s the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, which as you can doubtless guess we call the IAFIS. Your agency doesn’t have a monopoly on odd acronyms.” Ari paused, hands on hips, to survey the glass and his equipment. “You know, if you’re tired, you could go sit down. This is all rather routine work.” He glanced my way. “Unless I can persuade you to eat something more?”

  “I’ve had plenty, thanks.” I wiped my hands on the remains of the paper towel he’d torn up. “I do want to sit down, yeah, and pick up my e-mail. Did you get enough to eat at the party? Finish this stuff if you want.”

  “I just might. It’s quite good.”

  The only e-mail of any consequence came from NumbersGrrl, who’d attached a background document on deviant level/world theory. I figured I might understand half of it. I was logging off when Ari came in, wiping a mixture of fingerprint powder and guacamole onto his jeans.

  “I’m finished,” Ari said. “I need to send the photos off, is all.”

  “Okay. Where are you sending them, or shouldn’t I ask?”

  “An Interpol regional office. How fast the prints get into the system depends on how many other requests have come in.”

  “How long will it take to get an ID back? Weeks?”

  “No. It’s not like DNA. Shouldn’t take long, overnight at the most.”

  “Y’know, sometimes I’m really impressed by what computers can do.”

  Ari smiled at that. “It takes a human tech to make the final determination. The machine normally spits out five or six close matches. In this case, we know our suspect’s alleged name. We merely need to know if he has a record. Once the clerk picks the right print, the system will tell us that.”

  “I bet he does have a record. There’s something too boyish about Caleb to be true. Boyish and kind of contrived.”

  I was planning on putting off my lunch with Caleb until late in the week, after the information on the fingerprints came back, but Ari received the report on the prints just four hours after he’d sent them off. I was thinking of going to bed, and he was working on his laptop in the kitchen, when I heard him whistle in surprise. I trotted in to see.

  “What is it?” I glanced at the screen only to see Hebrew letters. “You sure have an automatic encryption system there, don’t you?”

  “If you want to learn some Hebrew, I’ll be glad to teach you,” Ari said. “It might come in handy one day.”

  I made a noncommittal noise, and he returned to looking at the screen. “I’ll translate this for you,” he said, “and print it out, but the essence is, yes, Caleb has a record. Caleb Sumner is his real name. He’s still using it, I should think, because he served his sentence—eighteen months in a Massachusetts prison for blackmail—so I suppose people would consider him rehabilitated and all that. The sentence was light, but I’m assuming that was because of his age. He was nineteen at the time.”

  “Whoa! Not a nice guy, young or old.”

  “A petty criminal type, certainly. He’d had a few juvenile infractions, too. I can get the details from one of the American databanks.”

  “I thought juvenile records were all sealed.”

  “They are.”

  “Then how can you get them?”

  Ari merely looked at me. I realized I’d asked a stupid question. “Never mind,” I said. “I don’t want to know.”

  Ari logged off and shut down the laptop. When he turned in his chair to look at me, I noticed his expression, solemn to the point of being stone cold.

  “Nola,” he said. “We’ve got to have a talk about your brother-in-law.”

  My heart thudded once. I sat down opposite him at the table.

  “Caleb has to be blackmailing him,” Ari said. “It’s the only thing that would explain Donovan’s actions.”

  “You’re right, yeah. Why else would Jack cringe around that little jerk?”

  “The question then is, on what grounds?”

  His SPP gave me an impression of tremendous selfcontrol without even a hint of what he might be controlling. As for the question, I could stay silent, give evasive answers, or outright lie. I decided on none of the above.

  “Is he blackmailing Jack directly,” I said, “or threatening Jack’s father to make the blackmail stick? Jack would do pretty much anything to protect him.”

  “Possibly both.” Ari hesitated, then gave a little “throw caution to the winds” shrug. “They were both involved in running guns to Northern Ireland, weren’t they?”

  My heart thudded again. His SPP returned to normal.

  “What makes you think that?” I said.

  “Oh, come now.” Ari crossed his arms over his chest and glared at me.

  “Okay, okay. Yes, they were, but Jack was a teenager at the time, doing what his dad told him to do. Remember that, will you?”

  “I’m not a judge and jury.”

  No, I thought, just a cop, but it’s my bad luck you’re an honest one. Aloud, I said, “How did you find out?”

  “I suspected Jack from the day we went out to Marin to interview your sister. Over Pat’s death, if you remember. She made some odd remarks about firearms in relation to her husband. So I checked the files and saw various reports on Donovan senior.” His smile was as thin as the edge of a knife blade. “His activities were one of those things that everyone knows, but no one can prove. No one ever caught the transfer boat with the guns aboard. When the Gardai finally managed to confiscate a shipment, there were no fingerprints on any of the contraband. Your FBI never saw the guns being shipped from the States. There was nothing that would stand up in any court.”

  Kevin Donovan had spread money liberally around to ensure that dearth of evidence. I knew that Ari would feel duty bound to report any charges of police corruption, so I kept my mouth shut about that. My stomach twisted so badly that I felt like vomiting, and it wasn’t the salsa verde to blame. Ari cocked his head to one side and considered me with narrowed eyes.

  “Nola, why do you look so frightened?”

  “Are you going to report this conversation? Like a jerk I just gave evidence against them.”

  “Time to file charges ran out a long time ago. The statute of limitations applies to Customs violations, you know, at least in America. I suppose the British government might still prosecute, but I can’t see your government extraditing the Donovans. I’m not even sure if what they did was a crime under American law.”

  “You’re right, aren’t you? Call me twice a jerk.”

  “Never that.” Ari smiled at me. “I know how much your family means to you.” The smile vanished. “But answer me one thing. Jack’s not running guns to Gaza, is he?”

  “Hell, no! Not to anywhere in the Middle East or to anywhere else, for that matter, not now. Why would he? They weren’t doing it for the money.”

  “Good point.”

  “It was the old ‘Erin go bragh’ that caught both of them,” I went on. “Once Jack’s dad made his huge heap of cash, he was bored. Now, I can’t see how building shopping centers is exciting, but Donovan père loved every minute of it. He took up kind of an odd hobby to replace it.”

  Ari’s turn for the sigh—of relief, in this case. “Good. I wasn’t looking forward to arresting your sister’s husband.”

  “Would you have arrested Jack? If he’d been running guns to Hamas, say.”

  “I would have had to.” He said it quietly, but I could hear the steel in his voice. “I would have been sorry, but I would have. What would you have done?”

  My first reaction was “I’d have dumped you so fast . . .” My second reaction was total paralysis, because somewhere in my weird brain I knew it never would have been that simple. Ari waited, watching me. I finally wrenched my mind back into gear.

  “I don’t know,” was all I could say. “I honestly do not know what I would have done.”

  “Let’s hope we’re never in a position to find out.”
/>
  I mistrusted my voice and nodded my agreement. My stomach continued to yearn for antacids.

  “Jack must know about the statute of limitations,” Ari went on. “I don’t understand what Caleb could be holding over him. According to the records I’ve seen, Donovan’s been an impeccable citizen ever since.”

  “As far as I know he has, too. Which brings us back to his father. He’s in his ‘pillar of the community’ phase. Big man in the Knights of Columbus. Local charities adore him. When he had his cancer treatments last year, his church held special masses for his recovery. How would they all feel about a gun runner in their midst? Not everyone in that parish is Irish.”

  “Then exposure could create a very bad situation.”

  “Donovan senior isn’t young anymore, and he’s been really sick. If he ended up in the middle of a scandal, the stress could kill him.”

  Ari nodded. I could pick up his filing the data away in his mind. “I need to have a talk with Jack.”

  I must have winced or made some other physical gesture, because Ari looked offended.

  “I’m planning on putting his mind at rest,” Ari said. “Not making things worse.”

  “Okay. I guess.”

  “I suppose you’re thinking that I won’t be tactful.”

  “Yep. That’s exactly right.”

  “For you, I’ll try.”

  “I’ll come with you when you do.”

  Ari looked briefly exasperated, then shrugged. “Oh, very well! Now, don’t mention Caleb’s background to Kathleen until we’ve had our chat with Donovan. If she asks, tell her I’m still confirming the details of the case.”

  “That sounds nice and official, yeah.”

  I got up and went into the bathroom. I grabbed the bottle of heartburn meds, shoved four of them into my mouth, and washed them down with a glass of water.

  “What’s wrong?” Ari was standing in the doorway and watching.

  “My stomach hurts,” I said, “from our little talk just now.”

  “I’m so sorry.” He sounded perfectly sincere. “I didn’t think it would upset you.”

  I considered throwing the bottle at his head but thought better of it. “What matters now,” I said, “is doing something about Caleb. Can we get him arrested for blackmail?”

  “If Donovan’s willing to file charges, certainly.”

  “That’s a pretty big if.”

  “I’m fairly sure that American law offers protection to blackmail victims.”

  “Yeah, but is it enough? If Jack’s dad were in blooming good health, maybe, but he’s not. What if something got out?”

  “That’s what Caleb’s counting on, isn’t it?”

  I nodded and felt a knot of rage replace the pain in my stomach. “Well,” I said, “if Caleb’s involved with Chaos forces, the Agency will take up jurisdiction if Jack won’t go to the police.”

  “It already has, hasn’t it?” Ari paused for a yawn. “Thanks to your promotion, here in San Francisco the Agency means you.”

  With another twist of my put-upon stomach, I realized that he was right.

  CHAPTER 7

  NOW THAT I’D MET THE LITTLE SLIMEBALL, I could keep track of Caleb with LDRS and Search Mode: Personnel scans. I used both on Monday morning, but with extreme caution to avoid letting him know he was being watched. He never noticed my prying psychic eyes, most likely because of the nausea and headache pain he was transmitting. At one point I got a clear image of him drinking a glass of water, clouded by some kind of hangover medicine. He turned to a toilet and began to throw it up again, at which point I shut down the SM:P as fast as I possibly could.

  “I get the impression,” I told Ari, “that he sucked up too much of Jack’s scotch last night.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Ari said. “He seemed the type.”

  “He’s got a big mouth, too. By the way, Caleb knows something about those rogue waves, all right. He nearly choked when I mentioned them.”

  “Did he say anything incriminating?”

  “No. He could barely talk at all. But you know, it doesn’t seem likely that he could have murdered Evers, to say nothing of that girl who drowned down at Ocean Beach.”

  “True. Blackmailers and the like rarely use violence. They tend to be cowards, is why. The murders—Brother Belial’s work?”

  “Possibly. I’m just not sure of where he fits into the case. Let’s face it; we don’t even really know if he’s connected to Caleb. I overheard that one contact between Caleb—I’m sure now it was him—and somebody or something that might have been Belial, but I can’t be certain.”

  Monday morning also brought business hours in DC, when Y would be in his office. When I passed the problem of Ari’s mother’s role in the Armageddon kibbutz on to Y, he told me he’d get someone right on it.

  “E-mail me a list of questions,” Y said. “I just happen to have a contact in MI5. It would probably be politic to tell him what we want. She’s one of their nationals, after all.”

  “I’ll send them today, for sure. The problem is, I don’t have an address or phone number for her. And I get the impression that Nathan doesn’t want to give them to me.”

  “The original workup we did on Nathan gave us her current last name, Flowertree.” His image—we were talking in trance state—frowned briefly. “It’s quite unusual, so between that and my contact, I think we can trace her. I’ll let you know as soon as we do.”

  After I left the trance state, I made up the list of questions, encrypted them, and e-mailed them to Y’s private account. I started my usual work routine for a Monday, surfing the Internet, looking for the odd bits of data that might indicate Chaos activity. I’d gotten a third of the way through my bookmarked sites when Mr. Singh the realtor called with good news. The owners of the building we wanted had run their credit check on the Internet.

  “So this morning they had their results,” he said. “You may sign the lease at my office if you still wish.”

  “We sure do,” I said. “I’ll bring a cashier’s check with me for the rent and deposit and all that.”

  “Excellent. I will give you the keys then.”

  In honor of the occasion, Ari put on the blue pinstriped suit. I wore my tan corduroy skirt with brown suede boots and a white blouse with a red rose print, and a burgundy raincoat, because the sky that morning hung low and dark over the city. Once we’d signed the lease and had the keys, we drove out to the building because I wanted to decide where to put the furniture, and Ari wanted to look the place over for a mysterious project he had in mind. Rather than negotiate the driveway, I parked on the street. As we got out of the car, I saw spray-painted graffiti on the pale blue wall holding up the front steps.

  The black paint of the artwork, if you can call it that, was so precisely applied that I knew it had been stenciled, not done freehand. A ring of stylized black arrows, each about ten inches long, emerged from a solid circle about two feet across, “Crud!” I said. “Don’t tell me that they found me already!”

  “Who?” Ari was staring at the tag. “It looks like a traffic sign of some sort. A roundabout with many exits?”

  “No, it’s a symbol of Chaos magic.”

  “They have their own sort of magic?”

  “Yes and no, if you mean the Chaos masters we’re looking for. They probably do, but I don’t know if they’re responsible for this or not. There are all kinds of schools of magic. If it’s the one I’m thinking of, it’s modern, it comes from the U.K., and it’s not a threat.”

  Ari stopped staring at the symbol and began staring at me.

  “What I’m wondering,” I went on, “is if the Chaos masters are using this symbol now, or if some jerk kids found it on the Internet and have started tagging with it.” I looked closer and found a surprise. Four arrows emerged from the top half, but only three on the bottom. The discrepancy made the symbol appear ready to roll over.

  “It must represent some kind of unbalanced force.” I told Ari. “Normally this
symbol has eight arrows.” I paused for a grin. “Of course, it might represent stupidity if the tagger just copied it wrong.”

  “Schools of magic? Um, if you could back up a bit—”

  “Sorry. And no, I’m not having a joke on you. A lot of people in the Bay Area take magical studies seriously, usually ritual magic or Wicca, though, not the true Chaos magic, which is a mix of all sorts of different systems. Uh, do you know who Aleister Crowley was?”

  “I’ve heard the name. A writer and a heroin addict, wasn’t he? He called himself a magician, I believe.”

  “The heroin was incidental, but he was definitely a magician. One of his disciples, a guy named Austin Spare, laid down the theory for Chaos magic. The basic theory is that there is no theory. The goal is raising your consciousness to higher levels, and whatever works is okay, even drugs.”

  Ari growled, more in disgust than anger.

  “Never mind,” I said. “What counts now is getting this stuff off the building.”

  I got out the cell phone and called Mr. Singh with the news, though I didn’t give the magical meaning. I described the graffito as “looking like a dead spider or something.”

  “Another one?” he said. “Very well, I will have the maintenance man come out and wash over it. This has been a problem for a very long time, not that we have seen spiders before. Mostly letters and obscene words. The owners recently have been clever. They have painted the lower reaches of the outside walls with the special paint to which graffiti will not adhere. It can be removed with soap and water.”

  “Wonderful! If you could do that soon—”

  “I will call and send him.”

  Singh signed off. Before we went inside, I tried to snap a picture of the tag with my phone so I could add it to my files on this case. The phone beeped and refused to save. I tried taking a picture of the garage door instead. The phone worked perfectly. I put the phone away, then sketched a Chaos ward in the air with my right hand. When I threw it at the symbol, the ward shattered in a spray of electric blue lines and triangles. The graffito sizzled like fat in a frying pan. Ari yelped.