Cold City

  The change of subject caught him by surprise. He laughed. “After hearing about you and Sheila McKim, yeah. A double.”

  She rolled out of bed and strolled away. As he fully appreciated the curves of her body, he couldn’t help envisioning Cristin and Sheila going at it. The images caused a little stir down below. She returned with the bottle, completely nonchalant about her nakedness.

  “Did you have that body in high school?”

  She sat on the edge of the bed and poured a shot. “Pretty much.”

  “You hid it well.”

  “Just ’cause you’re the school slut doesn’t mean you have to look the part.”

  Jack didn’t like to hear her talk about herself that way. “Don’t call yourself that.”

  She shrugged. “It’s just a word.”

  Holding the shooter glass, she reclined on the bed.

  “We’re sharing?”

  “Uh huh.”

  She poured some onto her belly, filling her navel.

  “That’s yours.”

  He looked at her. “Seriously?” He put on a disgusted face. “What if you’ve got lint?”

  She giggled. “Don’t make me laugh. You’ll spill it.” And sure enough, some of it tricked down over her left flank. “And after where your tongue has been tonight, you’re going to worry about a little belly-button lint?”

  “Point taken.”

  He leaned over her and slurped the tequila. She squirmed as he licked the residue from her navel.

  “That tickles. Now my turn.”

  As she rolled him onto his back and pushed the sheet down to his hips, Jack did a quick check of his navel. No lint. He’d showered just a few hours ago, but who knew where that stuff came from anyway?

  She poured the rest of the shot and licked. It did tickle. She lifted the sheet and took a peek at him.

  “Ooh, I think you’ll be ready again reeeeal soon.”

  He had no doubt of that.

  She rested her head on his abdomen and looked at him. “Your fuck drought is over. We’ll be fuck buddies – as long as you want. Just don’t get attached.”

  He thought about that. Her vivaciousness, her in-your-face approach to sex and life in general were so refreshing… he might get attached.

  “You never get attached?”

  She lifted her head. “Nah. I’m too young to get involved with anyone. Plenty of time for that. Guys are the problem. They get all territorial and possessive. A couple of bouts in the bedroom and they think they can’t live without you and you can’t live without them. Wroooong! They get all worked up when you tell them it’s over. A guy in my first year at FIT beat me up when I broke it off. Said it wasn’t over till he said it was over.”

  A surge of anger cooled Jack’s afterglow. “Did you report him?”

  “No. I didn’t want the attention.”

  “You just let it go? How did you get free of him?”

  “He had an accident. He was always late for class and used to run down this stairwell every morning. One day he tripped. Had a terrible fall. Broken bones, bad concussion. He was out cold for a day or so. He’s got a permanent limp now.”

  Jack had to smile. “What did he trip on?”

  “When he regained consciousness he said he remembered a bunch of marbles on the landing, but nobody ever found any.”

  Jack could only stare at her. Her matter-of-fact attitude was a little chilling. More than a little. He liked her even more.

  “A guy shouldn’t hit a woman, Jack,” she added. “Don’t you agree?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “That was when I started working on my little speech, so that everyone knows the ground rules going in.”

  She refilled the shooter glass, then lay back and dribbled some onto her belly.

  “More?” she said.

  “How can I say no?”

  Indeed. He slurped, then reclined. She filled his navel, then licked it empty. But she didn’t stop there. She pushed the sheet farther down, exposing him.

  “This might feel a bit cold.” She poured the rest of the shooter over him and the tequila did feel cold. “But not for long.”

  She licked him, then took him in her mouth, and made it warm… made everything warm.

  9

  “Wake up.”

  Someone was shaking him. Jack opened his eyes. Cristin was standing over him, wiggling his shoulder.

  “What?”

  “Wake up.”

  He pushed himself up to one elbow and rubbed his eyes. “I think I fell asleep.”

  “I know you did.” She’d put on an oversized Bon Jovi T-shirt and plaid comfy pants. “No sleeping allowed.”

  He flopped back. “It’s your fault.”

  Their second bout of lovemaking – despite her insistence, he couldn’t call it fucking – had lasted much longer than the first, and had left him literally and figuratively drained. He must have dozed off.

  “Up-up-up!”

  “I can’t move.”

  “I’m serious, Jack. No sleepovers.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s a rule.”

  He forced himself to a sitting position on the edge of the bed.

  “Why not?”

  “I like my mornings to myself.”

  “No strings, no attachments, and now no sleepovers. You do like rules.”

  “Only if they’re mine. And sleepovers lead to all sorts of domestical, attachy feelings, and that leads to strings. And as I said, I like my mornings to myself.”

  Jack spotted his boxers on the floor and pulled them on.

  “I’m going to try to stand,” he said, “but I’m not sure my knees work.”

  He was only half kidding.

  Cristin laughed and held out a helping hand. “I’m not that good.”

  He took her hand and let her pull him to his feet. His knees held. He found his shirt and slipped into it.

  “In my limited experience, you are beyond fantastic.”

  “Better than Karina?”

  He looked at her. Was that important? He’d tell her the truth.

  “No comparison. But it’s apples and oranges. We were both beginners.” He pulled on his slacks. “Back then I thought Karina and I had the greatest sex in the world, but I had nothing to compare it to.”

  “But now you do. You’ve got to admit she’s kind of passive in bed.”

  He smiled. “Compared to you, I imagine…” His voice trailed off as a realization grew. “You and Karina?”

  She looked guilty. “I thought you should know.”

  “When?”

  “That summer after freshman year.”

  “But you said she was involved with someone else back in Berkeley and came home only for a week.”

  Cristin shook her head. “No, she was home all summer but made me swear not to tell you.”

  Jack’s head swam as he tried to put the pieces together. He still had tequila plus Cristin-triggered endorphins roiling through his bloodstream, so it wasn’t easy.

  “So let me get this straight: There was no field trip to volunteer at the Indian reservations and study their cultures.”

  “I told you that.”

  “And there was no new guy in Berkeley.”

  “No. That was my lie – or semi-lie.”

  “You could have told me the truth.”

  Her eyes widened. “Jack, we hadn’t seen each other in years, and we’re sitting down for our first conversation since high school, and I’m going to tell you that Karina’s ‘other man’ was me and we spent part of that summer munching each other’s carpets?”

  “Swell way to put it.”

  The image both hurt and excited him.

  “Actually ‘carpets’ isn’t exactly accurate because we both decided to shave our–”

  He held up a hand. “Okay, okay, I can see why you might hesitate, but jeez, Cristin.”

  “Jack, you wouldn’t believe how messed up she was. You know she’d always been a vegetarian, right?
Well, she’d gone total vegan out there and was into all that gender politics and alternate lifestyle stuff and somehow got the idea that she ought to be a lesbian.”

  “ ‘Ought to be’?”

  “Yeah, like you decide, right? It seemed to have more to do with politics than sex. When we got high once in senior year I slipped about doing Sheila. She’d been all ‘Oh, yuck’ then, but now she wanted to know what it was like and, well, you know me – or at least you do now – I said there’s only one way to find out.”

  He shook his head. “My first love became a lesbian.”

  “Only for a little while. It wasn’t real for her and she couldn’t get into it.”

  “Were you into it?”

  She shrugged. “It was okay. She was kind of passive. At least we didn’t have to worry about condoms and pregnancy and all that. When she got back to Berkeley she went hetero again.”

  “But not with me.”

  “You weren’t radical enough for her, Jack. You aren’t at all political. Gender politics – that was pretty much all she’d talk about. But sometimes, after we’d finish up, we’d lie in bed and she’d talk about you.”

  “How to avoid running into me?”

  “Yeah. But not just that. She was trying hard to get over you, but hadn’t succeeded yet. She’d been soooo crazy about you back in SBR. Freshman year, the first day on the bus, she spotted you getting on and right away wanted to know who you were. At first we thought you were hooked up with that weirdo Weezy Connell.”

  “Don’t call her weird.”

  “Everyone did.”

  “Because they didn’t know her. She was good people.”

  But definitely weird. No getting around that. Jack wondered how she was doing.

  “Anyway, when Karina found out there was nothing going there, she set her sights on you.”

  Jack remembered how Karina and Cristin always managed to wind up at his lunch table.

  “Well, she got me.”

  Cristin grinned. “But I bet you thought you got her.”

  Jack had to nod. “Yeah, I did.”

  She laughed. “Guys. So clueless. Say, whatever happened to that Weezy chick?”

  “I don’t know. We grew apart. She was a year ahead of us, so she’s probably graduated by now.”

  He and Weezy had been so close. They’d had some bizarre adventures together, seen some strange things, and he’d gone way out on a limb for her once. But then some doctor put her on medication to ease her mood swings and she changed. Her life evened out, her moods became less volatile, and she became less… Weezy.

  Had the meds made her life better? He couldn’t say. But wherever she was, he hoped she was happy.

  He grabbed his blazer – and the revolver swathed within – before Cristin could hand it to him, and glanced at the clock on her nightstand.

  “It’s not even midnight yet.”

  “It’s been a long week and I need my beauty rest. So, when will I see you again?”

  “Anytime.” Had he said that too quickly? He added, “You could see me again in the morning if you weren’t kicking me out.”

  She smiled. “Don’t look at it as me kicking you out. Look at it as me doing you a favor. I’m not a morning person. I like my wake-up time to myself. Having someone else around makes me very irritable. You wouldn’t like me at all. Trust me, you’re better off waking up in your bed rather than mine.”

  Jack didn’t feel like braving the cold.

  “Okay,” he said slowly. “Dinner again?”

  “Sundays are best for me. You pick the place this time. Come up with something interesting.”

  “Will do.”

  Interesting? He ate at sub shops and delis. Who could he ask? He’d figure that out later.

  She led him to the door and when he went to kiss her good night she held him off and pointed to her cheek.

  “Friends kiss here. A peck and no more.”

  So he gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. She returned the favor.

  “Night, Jack.”

  “Night, Cristin.”

  And then he was walking down the hall, cradling the blazer and its contents in his arms and thinking what a strange, quirky, intriguing woman the former plain-jane Cristin Ott had grown into.

  And damn she was good in bed.

  10

  The man in the white suit frightened Kadir. He had opened the door to his apartment to the man from Qatar, but this man and two other Westerners had entered with him. The man in the white suit seemed to be in charge. The man from Qatar acted as an interpreter when Kadir’s limited English failed him. The two others positioned themselves by the door and said nothing.

  “Do you know Seif Jalil?” the man in white said.

  “Yes. Not well. I work with him.”

  “Do you know that he was found dead?”

  Kadir gasped. “No! When? How?”

  “Apparently he was tortured. You know nothing about it?”

  “No-no! Of course not!”

  “Do you know of any reason why he would be tortured and killed?”

  Kadir searched for an answer. He’d barely known Seif Jalil. They worked together labeling cigarette packs for Tachus’s uncle Riaz. But Jalil had been unusually talkative lately. And Kadir had a feeling he had better give this man something useful.

  “He was involved in the…” He looked to the man from Qatar for clearance to mention the unmentionable.

  The man nodded. “Go ahead, Kadir. He knows all about it.”

  “Seif was involved in the auction.”

  “Yes, we know. He was in charge of arranging the seating and the rooms for inspection of the merchandise. Tell us something we don’t know.”

  “He…he heard there was a reward for return of the money.”

  The man in white looked at the man from Qatar. “Reward? Who authorized a reward?”

  “Our brother in the hotel.”

  The man in white’s eyebrows lifted. “Since when do we reward people for returning what they lost?”

  The man from Qatar made no reply and the other turned back to Kadir. “Why would that lead to his death?”

  “He said he was asking around, looking for clues.”

  This seemed to amuse the man in white. “ ‘Clues’? How quaint. Apparently he asked the wrong person.” Kadir quailed as his eyes narrowed and his gaze bored into him. “And what about you? Were you hunting ‘clues’ as well?”

  “No! They might lead me to those two killers. I don’t want to find them.”

  “Ah, yes. The two killers. We’ll get back to them. You didn’t happen to mention Jalil’s interest to anyone, did you?”

  “No. Who would I–?”

  “We are always suspicious of anyone who survives a massacre. Everyone dead but one. How does that happen?” Kadir opened his mouth to explain, but the man waved him silent. “Never mind. Tell us about these two men – all about them.”

  Kadir did the best he could with what limited knowledge he had.

  When he finished, the man said, “And you are sure they were Americans?”

  “They sounded like Americans.”

  “Would you be able to recognize their voices?”

  Kadir very much doubted that, but sensed he must remain useful to this man, or risk being discarded… disposed of.

  “I think so.”

  “You might get that opportunity. Stay easily available. We may call on you at a moment’s notice. Do not make us search for you. Because, no matter where you go, we will find you. We are everywhere, and you will suffer for any inconvenience you cause us.”

  The man in white led the way out, followed by what appeared to be his two bodyguards. The man from Qatar turned at the door. “Do as he says, Kadir. This is very serious.”

  And then he too was gone, leaving Kadir alone again.

  What was happening? How had he got himself into this horrific mess? All he had wanted was a job. Then he had met Elsayyid Nosair and came to share his devotion to jihad. The ma
n from Qatar was supposed to help them support jihad with a windfall. He’d made it seem like he was using his own money, but obviously it came from somewhere else, from someone he answered to.

  Who was the man in white? Who did he represent? Never once during the entire interrogation had he said “I” or “me.” Always “we” or “us.”

  Who was the “we”? Who was the “us”?

  Kadir felt that his life was no longer his own, that he was being lifted and carried along by a great force he could not resist, a force greater even than jihad.

  MONDAY

  1

  Jack stepped out of the narrow storefront a thousand bucks poorer than when he’d gone in. He paused by the yellow A-frame sandwich board sign on the sidewalk.

  ERNIE’S I-D

  ALL KINDS

  PASSPORT

  TAXI

  DRIVERS LICENSE

  It should have had an extra line: LEGAL AND OTHERWISE.

  He glanced back through the smudged window at the display of dinky castings of the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty surrounded by dusty snow globes encasing the Manhattan skyline and the Brooklyn Bridge and other landmarks.

  The weaselly guy inside had been all sorts of accommodating. He took a number of pictures of Jack and pocketed a large deposit, guaranteeing “totally locked-down, foolproof, atomically secure ID.” For that price, it had damn well better be. The only hitch was that Ernie didn’t have a “John” or a “Jack” ID in the hopper. The only one he had that started with a “J” was “Jeff Cusic.” Jack went with that one.

  When Jack returned from his next trip to North Carolina, Ernie would have a New York State driver’s license, a Social Security card, and a Visa card with a modest credit history ready for him. The Jeff Cusic they purported to identify was not fictitious. He’d died at age two. But his name lived on.

  Jack tried to shake off the morbid feeling of assuming a dead kid’s identity, but it followed him through a nearby Gristedes, where he picked up an eight-pack of Entenmann’s crumb donuts, and from there as he hopped on his Harley and rode to the Isher Sports Shop.

  Abe was delighted with the offering and immediately dug in.

  “Nu,” he said, biting the crumbs off first and littering the counter with donut debris, “your tryst with the girl from home went well?”