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Charles knew every nook and cranny of his library, every stairwell and cabinet. He had designed it himself, oversaw the construction, ordered the catalogue of books that now inhabited its shelves. An entire section was filled with first editions, some of his favorite works, but an even larger section was dedicated to books he had always wanted to read.
Ensconced between the familiar and the new, it was one of his favorite things to sit in his large leather chair, book in hand, and enjoy his final Scotch of the evening. It was on his way to this fateful task, carrying a copy of A Universal History of Iniquity, that he noticed a book on his shelf that he didn’t recognize. Bound in deep purple leather, sitting amongst his first editions, it stopped him short. He could point a guest to the location of any book they might request, but here was one that was unknown to him.
He stood frozen before it. There were many titles of science and learning in his library, but it also filled his imagination. Perhaps a mischief maker had made their way into his sanctuary and placed the tome. He often had fantasies that the library, with its collective knowledge, would somehow gain sentience, and would try to communicate with him in such a fashion. Or perhaps a minor deity had cursed someone to inhabit a shelf in the shape of a book. His favorite idea, though, was that somehow, something ancient and alien had arrived in his humble library in the form of a grimoire.
Logic, though, dictated there were only so many possibilities for the book’s appearance. The most likely answer, he knew, the one favored by Occam and his blasted razor, was that Charles had put the book there and forgotten it. That his faculties were finally failing him.
Me and Sophie arrived at Simon’s earlier than our planned rendezvous with Rotella, but it wasn’t a surprise that he was already there. Not in the cafe, but down the street, parked in a service Renault. I pretended not to see him, instead escorting Sophie in with all of the gentle happiness that still stung with every opened door or touch or light kiss. It only stung the way happiness stings when it feels like a betrayal and I could hear Cheryl laughing at me in every instance. But it stung anyway. It didn’t stop me, though, from opening the door, or accepting the kiss, or blushing at a lingering hand.
Seeing Sophie and me come in together, Simon raised his hands, twirling his towel, a welcoming sovereign greeting favored guests. This time of day, the cafe was empty, the only customer an old drunk in the front, drinking brandy and smoking one of Simon’s cigarillos.
We sat at the table at the back, beneath the mirror, and waited for Rotellato join us. It wasn’t long before he did. Enough time to see if we were being followed. He hadn’t been expecting Sophie, though, and the sour twitching of his mustache underneath his shades made that clear. He took out his anger on the old drunk, rousting him from his near stupor under the pretense of his smoking inside. Before he threw him out, though, Simon came to the old man’s rescue, spraying a florid bouquet of cursing that would have made any sailor proud. I separated them long enough to give the old drunk a hundred Euro, apologizing to him profusely and politely escorting him to the door.
When I turned back, Rotella and Simon were still glaring at each other. At least Rotella had the decency to take off his aviator sunglasses. Both being French, Simon’s anger at having a customer driven from his cafe needed no explanation. Rotella, seeing my renewed attention and knowing in Simon’s eyes he was acting the buffoon, gestured to Sophie. “Who is this?”
“Why don’t you sit down and find out?”
Rotella eyed both me and Simon, the latter’s gaze reminding him of his own crassness. With a very French harumph Rotella moved to the table at the back. As if I were asking a favor from the pope, I requested Simon to bring coffee.
In the moments it took me to calm Simon, Sophie had already begun to charm Rotella. By the time I got to the table, our policeman was leaning forward to light a cigarette he had provided to her, and she was taking a preparatory exhalation that softened the air between them.
“You should have told me you were coming with someone else,” Rotella said at my approach. Then to Sophie, “Even if she is this charming.”
I sat down next to Sophie. “She insisted.”
Rotella continued to speak to Sophie. “And who are you?”
“Sophie, Inspecteur Rotella. Inspecteur, Sophie.” Even as Sophie graciously nodded her head, Rotella continued to stare at us, waiting for further explanation. “Did you check out the address I gave you?”
Rotella’s face drained of its suspicion as the heaviness of what he had found flowed in to replace it. “Oui.”
“The map that I spoke of?” Rotella nodded, the hunger for information that’s indelible to all cops coming into his eyes. I bowed my head to Sophie. “She made it.” Rotella returned his gaze to Sophie, an admiration there that hadn’t been before. “The women in those places trust her. Tell her things they wouldn’t say to you or me.” Seeing Rotella begin to relax into his chair with understanding, I added, “So will Nika.”
“And you do not think Mitnick will care?”
“He’s a lot more likely to let her speak with Nika than either of us.”
Rotella glanced back and forth between Sophie and me. “And if I say no?”
Sophie didn’t answer the question, but said, “Mitnick’s houses?” Rotella nodded, understanding she meant the whorehouses. “There are many places alike all over the city.”
I let that sink in before I asked, “Do you want the map?”
Rotella put his sunglasses back on and regarded us safely behind their darkness. “Oui.”
“Then we should go.”
Rotella eyes dodged back and forth behind his shades, invisible yet there, like so much of what was going on. He tapped his lighter against the table and moved to stand. “I will drive.”
I nodded, grateful to have police transportation to Mitnick’s. Mitnick wasn’t likely to start murdering people in the presence of a cop. I paid the bill and said goodbye to Simon.
While I did this, the inspector drove the Renault down from his watchpoint, so we only stepped out of the cafe and to the curb. Rotella opened the backdoor for Sophie and I climbed into the passenger seat. I began to give Rotella instructions to Mitnick’s but he interrupted me. “I know where I am going.”
The inspector demonstrated a quick and able command of the city’s layout, driving us out to the byway east of town while avoiding the worst of traffic. I cracked a window as Rotella lit up his first cigarette. Exhaling, he asked, “How do you two know each other?”
My mouth felt dry at the complexity of the question, but Sophie answered first. “Do you know of Don Verdicchio?”
Rotella glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “In the north of Italy? I knew of him. His reach was great. Before his death.”
Sophie nodded then, matter-of-factly, “We killed him.”
On the winding road up the mountain, it was good that Rotella only let the surprise of the statement wink at him. The skittering of the car took us onto the shoulder and not off of it. From the passenger seat I could see a foreboding spread from his eyes to the rest of him, an oil spill moving out to cover his cop cool. “So your relationship is professional.”
The statement caused Sophie and I to laugh. I wouldn’t have blamed Rotella for thinking he was trapped in the car with a couple of crazy people. I could practically see him trying to recollect what he could about Verdicchio’s death, but I had never said word one to the authorities. The only eye witnesses spoke of a man with a gun following a knife-wielding woman covered in blood and moving with a slow fury.
Slowly as if trapped with a caged animal, Rotella asked, “Is that what you intend for Mitnick?”
The cabin filled with the noise of air moving around it and its tread across the road. I answered before Sophie did. “We just want to get the women out from under Mitnick. Including this Nika.”
Sophie was smart enough to know when to change the subject. “Many of them are illegal. Brought here against their will or with false promises. They will need help.”
This softened Rotella, his eyes floating back to the road as we snaked up the mountain. “I will remember that.”
“Good,” Sophie concluded. “If there is no one to help them, they will only be sent back to where they came, and the cycle will begin again.”
“Much like what will become of Mitnick?”
“In the end?” Sophie watched out the window as Mitnick’s Greek temple of a home rose from the sea cliff’s horizon. “It is the same for all men.”
This fatalism appealed to Rotella’s nature as a Frenchman or a cop. Or maybe both. He pulled onto the long driveway that led to Mitnick’s.
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The attic was stuffy with summer heat. It reminded Charles of days spent at his grandfather’s, searching through the detritus of his past, things the old man had relegated into his dusty garret. There was a wooden walking stick that looked like it could double as a weapon with its sharpened point. A pair of black binoculars in their worn case, an old brass theodolite separated from its tripod. When Charles found a journal filled with indecipherable math and survey coordinates, he became convinced his grandfather had been a wizard.
Now, years later, searching through his own father’s home, Charles didn’t see any pictures of his grandfather. None alone or with his father or with any of his siblings. He realized then, that if his grandfather had been a wizard, his one trick had been to disappear.
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We left Lanzo with Sartre and a reminder to meet at the Distributeur International warehouse the next evening. The two had matters to discuss; funeral arrangements for Moreau and whether to involve the police.
I had Atwell drop me off at the telephone booth near the cathedral. I used it to check the messages on the mobile and was happy to see there weren’t any. That meant Rotella and me were still on to meet Mitnick tomorrow afternoon.
Back at the tenement, I climbed the stairs, kicking trash out of my path and pumping my legs to clear my mind. When that didn’t work, I sat down in the apartment to inspect the revolver.
I had it disassembled and laid out on the coffee table when Sophie arrived home. She breezed in with her quiet grace, standing at the coffee table before I really knew she was there. By way of greeting, she said, “You are on the map.”
Startled and confused, I followed her gaze to the table and realized her map of the brothels must be under the tablecloth. Not a particularly complex way to hide it, but simple and effective. I nodded and began to scoop up the pieces of the revolver into the dishtowel they were on. As if remembering some point of protocol, Sophie bent over from her great height and kissed the top of my head as I moved out of the way. Closer now, she noticed the black metal pieces I was working with and asked, “What is this?”
“It’s a pistol.” Sophie stared at me, her level gaze telling me she was expecting a more in-depth answer. “It’s broken. I’m trying to fix it.”
Sophie’s eyebrows went up and the corners of her mouth went down indicating some perverse interest. “Can you?”
I shook my head. “The firing pin is busted. Without a new one, I can’t.”
“Where would you get this?”
“No idea. If we were in the States I could pick one up anywhere.”
“But you are in a civilized country,” Sophie replied with the wriest of smiles.
I pulled the tablecloth up, revealing the map underneath with its scattering of dots. “Yeah. Civilized.”
Sophie didn’t need to look at the map with its pink and blue to understand the jab. “You have a point.”
As she moved to sit in front of the map I asked, “So how’s it going?” Pulling solely from her memory of the last 24 hours, she began to color in new circles. Watching the muscles in her back move as she dug the pen into the paper, I heard Cheryl whistling a low, idle tune, something she did when pretending to ignore the obvious. I resisted the urge to tell the imaginary incarnation of my deceased wife to shut up.
Fortunately, Sophie put actual sound into the air by answering, “It has been busy.”
Watching her dot the map, almost all in blue, one after another, I said, “I can tell.”
Whatever depravities Sophie had witnessed in her travels across the city had clearly not improved her mood. She continued to work in silence. Her usual graceful curves became sharp angles as her jangled nerves flowed into her scrawling.
I thought about asking her more questions about her investigations. Instead I remembered the inspector and my promise to him. “I spoke with the cop, Rotella.”
“Si?”
“He’s going to help me get a message to Nika. To get her out. I offered him a copy of the map in exchange.” This sparked enough interest in Sophie that she lifted her gaze to me. “He wants to bust open Mitnick and Sartre’s operations. I figure we let him. We just have to time him right.”
Sophie leaned away from the map and into my American-sized indentation on the couch. She idly placed the pen she was holding to her lips, eyes resting on me. “How is he going to see Nika?”
“Mitnick wants to meet him. See if he can be bought. Somewhere in there we’ll get her a note that Lanzo wrote to her. Tells her where and when to meet.”
Sophie tapped the pen twice against her lips. “How will this happen?”
“We’re meeting at Mitnick’s place. Nika should be there. Rotella’s going to say he needs to talk to her if Mitnick wants him to play ball, that he’s heard rumors she’s being held against her will.”
Sophie blinked as the implausibilities started to pile up. “Then how will she escape?”
As usual, Sophie had managed to isolate the weak spot in any plan. “Well, that’s up to her. She did it once before.”
Sophie arched an eyebrow. “Before she was let out to play. Now the man who allowed this is dead, newcomers from the old country swarm the city. They will not simply let her go.” Sophie’s own considerations caused her to lean forward, rapping the map in pangs of thought. “Mitnick’s home is far from town. How will she make her way to the city?”
Sophie was pointing out a series of uncertainties I had been glossing over since speaking with Rotella. Not particularly pleased at having my brilliance questioned, I replied, “She’ll have to figure it out.”
Sophie smiled in the same way as when she had first asked if she should visit Mitnick. “I will go with you.”
“What? Where?”
“With Rotella. To visit Mitnick and this Nika.”
“Mitnick isn’t expecting anyone else.”
Sophie leaned back into the couch again, this time languidly unfurling her long form, the curves of her body stretching the light sweater she was wearing. “Do you think he would mind a visitor from such as me?”
“Yes,” I said emphatically, “I do.”
“Then you will tell him I am an associate of Rotella’s. He wishes me to speak with the girl.”
“What if someone recognizes you from the party?”
Sophie raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Rotella is the first police to consort with lucciola? We will merely say that I am a…” She paused as she found the English words she was searching for, “A professional friend.”
“And you think that Mitnick and his people will just accept this?”
Sophie returned to her map with a simple, “Si.”
Sophie’s insistence on coming along had supplanted the rancor she had brought home with her. I sat down next to her on the couch, the resulting rocking taking her attention away from the map. “If you’re going to come along we’re going to have to nail down some details.”
Vagaries always allowed Sophie to play the mysterious card, to avoid commitment, to allow a sphere of control that she never had to explain to anyone, including me. So forcing her to sit and talk about details was perhaps one of her least favorite things. But we did talk – we talked about the map, the Inspecteur, and how she would get the note to Nika. How Lanzo might bring her to the hutch.
We walked through it as carefully as setting up dominos, with Sartre and Mitnick at one end. In the middle were the police raids on the cathouses. At the finish were Lanzo and Nika disappearing under the resulting cloud of war.
Realizing we might be up late, I went into the kitchen and made some coffee. Sophie hummed happily on thecouch until I heard Cheryl’s voice as if she were there with me. With a teasing lilt that she knew always irritated me, she asked, “So y’all gonna talk about fuckin’?”
From the corner of my mouth, hopefully low enough that Sophie couldn’t hear, I let out a slow, “Shut up.”
There was the echoing laughter that told me I was being a fool and it faded like it was falling down a well, a happy suicide that took my wife away again for the millionth time. I ran from that and strode into the other room, vibrating with an intensity that only Sophie could ignore.
I reached out and took her by the wrist, pulling her attention away from the map. Touching her without permission got me a reflexively sharp stare, one dangerous enough that I was glad her Opinel knife wasn’t within easy reach. Her expression mellowed, though, when she saw my eyes, uncertainty in a man that usually moved with purpose. Her free hand floating to gently land on my cheek.
Unsure of how to address the enormity of everything in front of us, particularly right there in that small apartment, I could only think to say, “I’m not sure how to do this.”
Sophie gave me a small grin, pulling me closer by the hand I held her by. With a twist and a pull she easily freed her wrist and placed its palm on my other cheek, tilting her forehead to mine. The hard edges of the small space between us softened as she said, “I miss her too.”
I wanted to lash out at that statement, to say that I had lost more, to point out that she had only known Cheryl a few weeks. As her hands guided my bulk into the bedrooom, though, I let that selfishness go, melting instead into the warm comfort I had retreated from it almost every other time I had felt it with Sophie.
We lay like that until a fart escaped me much louder than I expected. Sophie giggled. I couldn’t help but laugh as well, using it as a signal to get up and get moving. But Sophie pulled me down again and, eyes flicking towards the fading of the sun through the window, said, “We have the time.”
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Arlo knew he was going to join the CRISPR club the moment he saw Harriett. She was impossibly tall and magnificent, handing out flyers for a club recruitment drive. She used her imposing form and beauty to arrest fellow students into listening to her brief pitch on the future of transhumanism. She had clearly altered her own structure. No normal person was that tall, and he wondered how painful the transformation must have been. He stood in the shadow of the campus’s oldest oak trees, watching her so long that he missed two classes.
He knew he his life was a blessed one. Saved by missionaries from his war-torn ancestral home and raised in Spain, he was loved despite looking and sounding different than his other 13 siblings. The students atthe concertado schoolshad been less accepting, but it provided the best education and much needed lessons on the privileged limits of tolerance. He had learned science and how to fight at the same school, and that had led him to America.
His parents had tried to encourage him to study theology or sociology, something that might be used to help people as they had helped him. His brawls with fellow students, though, had given him the resolve to stubbornly pursue his love of science, even through the quiet disapproval of his family. The unspoken agreement that emerged from this was he would be allowed to pursue his chosen vocation as long as he never broke faith with the Holy Church. When he left for America, this was only hinted at in reminders to attend Mass and questions about the priest’s sermons.
Now he had encountered Harriett, something that stood in the face of all of that. The church had decreed all genetic manipulation to be a sin, even in utero to prevent diseases in generations that hadn’t been born yet. Not only did her height advertise that she had tinkered with her own DNA, but she was participating in an organization that treated it as a some kind of social club. Arlo, thinking of his homeland with its droughts, floods, wars, and starvation, couldn’t even imagine having the resources to treat the building blocks of life as toys. The metamorphosis cost alone was unimaginable to him.
Arlo shunted his backpack and crossed the quad to Harriett who was smiling at student passersby even as most ignored her. Others glared at the fliers she was handing out with open hostility. As she locked eyes with Arlo, seeing no ill will in him, her smile increased in radiance till all he could do was take the pamphlet she handed him and mumble a hello.
She began to ask him about why he was interested when a wandering student yelled out, “Hey Harriett, does your boyfriend know you were a dude last week?”
“Oh piss off you bigot,” was Harriett’s immediate reply, neither unafraid nor ashamed. Whatever anger her tone held drained away and she came back to Arlo with a devilish grin. “I wasn’t a boy last week.” She touched him lightly on the arm and winked. “It was months ago.”
Arlo couldn’t tell if she was joking. Either way, it was going to make for some very interesting conversations.
