Online, she googled Birkenau Terezin. Although she did not find a man with that name, she found two places with a history of evil.
Terezin proved to be a town in the Czech Republic, which seventy-five years earlier had been called Theresienstadt and had been part of German-occupied Bohemia. The Nazis had ejected the seven thousand residents of Terezin in order to use the town as a Jewish ghetto, where as many as fifty-eight thousand were forced to live at one time and where more than one hundred fifty thousand passed through during the war years. They lived there only temporarily, because Terezin was a transport center to which Jews were taken from all over Czechoslovakia and from which they would be conveyed to various death camps as the gas chambers and furnaces could accommodate them. One of the camps to which they were transported by the tens of thousands was Auschwitz-Birkenau.
She wondered what kind of man so hated books and bookish people that he would trade the name Faulkner for names that were synonymous with cruelty and death.
Halfway through the pint of ice cream, she realized that she had forgotten something when she’d been searching her dad’s address book. Bibi returned to it and, with a pang of remorse for suddenly being such a doubting daughter, typed in FAULKNER. The directory popped to KELSEY FAULKNER, complete with a local address and phone number.
With the desk light turned off, Bibi felt her way to the window and used the tilt rod to open the louvers on one half of the shutter. She stood staring out at the lamplit fog that still drifted onshore like the ghost of some poisonous sea that had existed billions of years earlier, before the current healthy sea had formed.
With no one to turn to, she would have to be her own detective. And she was as certain as she had ever been about anything that she had little time to wrap the case. The Wrong People were searching for her, and she sensed that their numbers might be daunting, that they were not just a cult of a dozen or two dozen deranged individuals, but were more like a battalion—or an army. Whether they sought her by ordinary or paranormal means didn’t matter; either way, when they found her, they would kill her—and for reasons she still didn’t quite understand.
If Bibi was right about Ashley Bell, that she was a prisoner of these people, held for God knew what purpose, then it would be necessary to find them in order to find her. For that detective work, she needed wheels, and she thought she knew where to get them. But she had to wait for a more reasonable hour, at least seven o’clock, before making the call.
Fog could paint mystery on the most mundane scene. Now when she thought of Pax in some hellhole unknown to her, the mist also painted the night with melancholy. Sorrow was a degree of sadness that she dared not indulge; it would sap her will and strength. As much as she yearned for Pax, she could not dwell on him.
She thought of another foggy night, when she had been six years old for just two weeks, the evening of the day when Captain had moved into the rooms above the garage. He was the only important newcomer in Bibi’s life until, four years later, Olaf came to live with her.
Previously the apartment had been rented by a twenty-something woman, Hadley Rogers, who was busy with a career in art, not as a painter or instructor, but as a dealer or broker or agent, whatever. She had not been a meaningful presence in young Bibi’s life, seen most often flitting down the stairs to her Corvette in the carport. Miss Rogers seemed puzzled by children, as if she wasn’t entirely sure of their origin or purpose. She seemed less substantial than a real person, more like an animated painting of a person.
Captain, on the other hand, was obviously real and important. Tall, rugged-looking, with thick white hair, he was attentive and polite to everyone, even children. Bibi had accompanied her mother when the captain had been shown the apartment, and by the end of the tour, she liked him and knew she would always and forever like him. In spite of his scarred hands and two missing fingers, though his face was weather-beaten and his eyes were as sad as those of a bloodhound, Captain was glamorous; she just knew he had a lot of good stories to tell.
That night, after the fog had laid siege to Corona del Mar, Bibi couldn’t fall asleep. After a while, she slipped out of bed and went to get a glass of milk. As she approached the kitchen, where her parents were at the table, talking over mugs of coffee and Kahlua, she heard her mother say something that warned her to step to the side of the doorway, be silent, and listen.
“I’m thinking it’s a mistake. This has a bad vibe.”
Murphy said, “Well, I’m not getting any vibe, good or bad. I’m vibeless, babe.”
“I’m serious, Murph.”
“Yeah, I figured that out an hour ago.”
“Who moves into a place with just two suitcases and a duffel bag?”
“They were big suitcases. Anyway, it’s a furnished apartment.”
“People still have boxes and boxes of personal belongings.”
“You’re making yourself crazy for no reason.”
“What about Bibi?”
“Listen to yourself, babe. He’s not a child molester.”
“I didn’t say that. Don’t put words in my mouth. But he’s not like Hadley, hardly home. He’s going to be up there all the time. He’ll be an influence. She was instantly fascinated with him.”
“Retirees do tend to be more homebodies than hot young girls climbing the art-world ladder.”
“You think Hadley is hot?” Nancy asked.
“Not by my standards, not even lukewarm. But I have a lot of empathy. I can see the world through other guys’ eyes.”
“You might need to, if I poke out your eyes.”
“Here you are threatening your own husband, and you think maybe some worn-out, worn-down geezer with eight fingers is a problem.”
Nancy laughed softly. “I just don’t want any bad influences in Bibi’s life.”
“Then we’ll have to move to Florida or somewhere, because right now your sister Edith is just across the border in Arizona.”
Young Bibi had gone back to bed without milk and worried herself to sleep, afraid that the exotic and interesting captain would soon be gone, replaced by another bland and boring Hadley.
She need not have lost sleep. Captain lived above the garage for more than four wonderful years, until that terrible day of blood and death.
Now, standing at the window in her father’s office, Bibi saw what might have been dawn light refracting through the fog, faintly pinking it. She looked at the radiant dial of her watch. Almost time to call Pogo.
At 7:05, using the phone on her father’s desk, Bibi called Pogo. She expected to wake him, but he sounded as sharp as a shark’s tooth when he answered on the second ring: “Tell me.”
“I thought you knew it all.”
“Hey, Beebs. You never call me.”
“Don’t mom me, bro.” She asked about the surf rats with whom he shared an apartment: “How are Mike and Nate?”
“Still in bed. Probably abusing themselves.”
“I’m surprised you sound so together at this hour.”
“I was gonna catch a few before work,” he said, meaning a few waves, “but I wake up and it’s like milk soup. You’ve got to have a guide dog to surf this. Anyway, you had me scared, Beebs.”
“You mean the cancer thing.”
“Sounded too tough even for you.”
“But here I am. Clean and ready to tear it up.”
“You’ve always torn it up.”
“This has nothing to do with cancer. That’s totally yesterday. But I need some help, Pogo.”
“Why else do I exist?”
“That old Honda of yours. Does it have GPS?”
“Hell, Beebs, it hardly even has brakes.”
“Could I borrow it?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t you want to know why?”
“Why would I need to know why?”
“I might want it for a few days.”
“I’ve got friends with cars. I’ve got a skateboard. I’m cool.”
“Listen, this i
sn’t the boss’s daughter working you.”
“Hey, no, you and me grew up together, Beebs. Anyway, I don’t think of Murph as my boss.”
“He’s aware of that. I’d appreciate it if you don’t say anything to him about this.”
“Not a word. When you want the car?”
“The sooner the better. I’m at the store.”
“I’ll be there in like twenty minutes.”
“You’re the real thing, Pogo.”
“Beebs?”
“Yeah?”
“You catch a bad wave or something?”
“A real thunder crusher,” she said.
“Maybe you need more help from me than just the car.”
“If I do, I’ll let you know, sweet boy.”
After she terminated the call, Bibi opened her purse and took from it the book with the panther and gazelle on the cover. There was no title or author’s name on the spine, either, and no text on the back. When she opened the book and thumbed through it, the pages were blank. Or they appeared to be blank until faint gray lines of cursive script rippled across the paper, flowing as fluidly as water, gone before she could read a word. She paged through it more slowly, and twice again words appeared, shimmering as if seen through a film of purling water, but rinsed away before they could be read.
She examined the binding. There was no space for electronics or batteries to be concealed within the spine. It was just a book. But not just.
With more than fourteen thousand combined horsepower, the three General Electric engines produced a confidence-building shriek, and the huge rotary wing thumped the air like a heavyweight boxer’s fists pounding the crap out of a punching bag. SEALs and Marines and associated Navy men left the ghost town and headed out-country in the last two hours of light, at an air speed of 150 knots.
As the deck vibrated under them, the seven dead terrorists were restless in their body bags. Restless as they had been in life. Good men and women sought calm, peace, time for reflection. Evil people were eternally restive, intractable, always eager for more thrills, which were the same few thrills endlessly repeated, because the evil were unimaginative, acting on feelings rather than reason. Forever agitated, they were unaware that the cause of their fury was the confining narrowness of the worldview they crafted for themselves, its emptiness. There would never be an end to them—and always a need for men and women willing to resist them at whatever cost.
Just before sunset, without incident en route, they touched down on the aircraft carrier, much to Paxton’s relief. There would be a debriefing, after which he expected to call Bibi in California, where it was morning. That expectation was deflated three minutes after they debarked from the helo. Washington wanted all team members to maintain silence with the outside world for at least another eight hours, for reasons that they did not feel obliged to share.
When headlights tunneled the fog in the parking lot and the primer-gray Honda glided to the curb like a ghost-driven spirit car, Bibi stepped out the front door of Pet the Cat.
Because the heater took a long time to warm up, Pogo left the engine running and came around the front of the car to Bibi. “You’ve got that surf-goddess look going more than ever.”
“Maybe cancer was good for me.”
She knew that she was pretty enough, but not fall-down gorgeous or anything. On the other hand, Pogo made most of the male models in the big fashion magazines look as if they were trying out for roles as orcs in a possible sequel to the Lord of the Rings movies. He seemed oblivious of his physical perfection, even when girls were throwing themselves at him in such numbers and with such insistence that the air became scintillant with the fragrance of estrogen. It sometimes seemed to Bibi that if Pogo’s appearance meant anything at all to him, it was largely an embarrassment. But they truly had grown up together, as he had said earlier, and going to bed with him was as unthinkable as going to bed with a brother, if she’d had one. Two years older than Pogo, Bibi had taught him how to take the drop (how to slide down the face of a wave immediately after catching it), how to pull a rollover to get through white water, how to perform a roundhouse cutback, and other moves, when he was a preadolescent surf mongrel, before he surpassed her skill level. His good looks might have mattered to her when she was a preteen and early teenager. Then it had been a power trip to have the full attention of the boy that all the other girls most wanted. But now and for some years, what she loved about Pogo was his spirit, his humility, his tender heart.
He kissed her on the cheek and looked her in the eyes and said, “Who’re you hiding out from?”
“That’s not the way it is.”
In a staring contest, neither one of them would ever be the first to look away.
Pogo decided not to make it a contest. He surveyed the lonely mist-soaked morning, as the distant foghorn sounded at the mouth of Newport Harbor. “Just so you know where to get help when you’re finally not too stubborn to ask for it.”
“I know where,” she assured him.
He opened the passenger door and took from the seat a bag of breakfast staples from McDonald’s and a paperback novel.
After Bibi put her laptop and purse on the seat, she closed the door and said, “You don’t hide the books anymore.”
“Doesn’t matter if my folks find out I can read. I already escaped college.”
“You’ve always known what you wanted. Doesn’t it sometimes scare you that years from now, it’ll turn out not to have been enough?”
“The past is past, Beebs. The future is just an illusion. All we have is now.”
Indicating the McDonald’s bag, she said, “I don’t want that to get cold. But I have a couple questions.”
He gestured toward the store. “There’s a microwave inside. This stuff heats okay.”
She could smell the faint exhaust fumes as the Honda tailpipe pumped faux fog into the real stuff. “Has Dad ever mentioned someone named Calida Butterfly?”
After a hesitation, Pogo said, “She comes here. Tall woman, blond, jingles with jewelry when she walks.”
“Comes here to the store? How often?”
“A couple times a month.”
“I look at her,” Bibi said, “I don’t think boardhead.”
“She’s totally an inlander, not even a wish-was surfer. She comes to see Murph.”
“What about?”
“Beats me. They go up to his office.” She met his eyes, he read her instantly, and he said, “That’s not how it is, Beebs. They aren’t humping up there.”
It hurt her to ask, but she asked, “How do you know?”
“I don’t know, but I know. They go back a long way, but the vibe isn’t sex.”
“When did this start?”
“Maybe a year and a half ago.”
Continuing to pour in from the sea, the morning fog defied the sun. But there must have been some clearing inland, because jets were taking off from John Wayne Airport, the dragon roar of their engines speaking down through the fog as if from some Jurassic otherwhere.
“What about a guy named Kelsey Faulkner?”
Pogo considered, shook his head. “Never heard of him.”
“Birkenau Terezin?”
“That’s a name? Sounds like some kind of rash.”
“Ashley Bell?”
“I knew another Ashley once. Ashley Scudder. She traded surfing for corporate finance.”
“Must be some who do both, corporate-finance surfers.”
“Not many.”
“I better go, you better microwave,” Bibi said.
When she kissed him on the cheek, he hugged her fiercely. With his head on her shoulder, his face averted, he said, “When Murph called from the hospital Tuesday to say about the cancer, I closed the store, turned out the lights. Sat behind the counter and cried for an hour. Didn’t think I was gonna stop. Don’t make me cry again, Beebs.”
“I won’t,” she promised, and when he looked at her, she lightly pinched the tip of his perfect nose. “Than
ks for the wheels.”
“Whatever thunder crusher you’re riding,” he said, “just walk the board the way you do so well.”
To maintain control of a board, a surfer walked back and forth on it, shifting her body weight.
Bibi went around the Honda, opened the driver’s door, and looked across the roof at Pogo. With an affection so profound that she could never have found the words to describe it in a novel, she smiled and said, “Dude.”
He returned her smile. “Dudette. Walk the board, dudette.”
Because Pogo enjoyed tinkering with cars more than attending college but less than surfing, the Honda drove better than it looked. The well-tuned engine offered good takeoff from a stop and plenty of power for hills. In spite of the joke he had made about the brakes, they were in good working order.
Calida Butterfly lived in Costa Mesa, in a neighborhood that had once been middle-class, had fallen into decline, but had begun to come back strong before the crash of 2008. In the current economic malaise, gentrification had stalled, leaving newer semi-custom two-story homes next door to fifty-year-old ranch-style residences, some well kept and some not. Seventy-year-old bungalows were in the mix, too, this one stucco and that one clapboard, most of them in need of new paint and repairs. Some properties were landscaped and neatly kept, but here and there were weedy yards and overgrown shrubs, and bare dirt scattered with gravel.
The biggest pluses of the neighborhood were its future if the country ever got back on a vigorous growth path and the massive old trees that spread sheltering limbs over the streets, an eclectic urban forest of podocarpus, oaks, carrotwood, stone pines, and more.
Bibi parked across the street from—and a hundred feet west of—Calida’s place, in the enrobing indigo shade of a California live oak. The fog had retreated somewhat from this area, although a scrim still stirred close to the ground, like a lingering poison gas that had been shelled into the neighborhood by an enemy army.
The masseuse-diviner’s house stood on a lot and a half, a well-maintained two-story bungalow with touches of Craftsman style. Bibi had been watching the place less than five minutes when the segmented garage door rose and a silver Range Rover rolled down the driveway, turned east into the street, and motored away, roiling the low fog in its wake. She had never before seen what Calida drove and didn’t know if this might be it. Distance and the vehicle’s tinted windows prevented her from identifying the occupants.