They face each other again, and Calaphas says, “You must really love that car.”
“It’s not the car.”
“I didn’t imagine it was.”
“It’s the rifle, the AR-15.”
“You made some use of it.”
“One incident. Four dead.”
“You’re an activist attorney,” Calaphas says approvingly. “Once the gun had a history, why didn’t you get rid of it?”
“I meant to, as soon as I had a replacement.” His mouth curls into a snarl. “Then along comes fucking Michael Mace.”
The attorney is a well-practiced liar, but Calaphas is a living polygraph. The details about the customized Bentley are true, and the three million dollars is true, but the claim that four were killed with the gun is a lie. The snarl isn’t an expression that comes naturally to a man who has spent his life looking earnest and magisterial in courtrooms. The use of the F-word, when such language isn’t his style, is a calculated emphasis meant to sell his anger and his story. He wants the Bentley more than the three million, and the reason he wants it has nothing to do with the vehicle or rifle.
Calaphas says, “Three million is more than the right number. But if the navigation-system transponder is turned off, how am I supposed to find your car?”
“The three million is mostly in hundreds, but some is in three-inch-thick bricks of twenties. One of those bricks is hollowed out to accommodate a transponder.”
“It reports to your iPhone.”
“Yes. But maybe it’s gone dead. Or maybe there’s a limit to its transmission radius, and Mace was out of range before we realized he took the Bentley. He somehow controlled the security system here, kept us locked in and blocked our phones for hours after he left.”
“Then what good is the transponder to me?”
“I imagine that’s a problem that you—with all the agency’s technology to draw on—can find a way to solve. It’s beyond me, though surely not beyond you. Though you must be . . . discreet. This is between you and me. No third party.”
Calaphas furrows his brow and gazes at the floor, as though puzzling through the twists of some Gordian knot. “How do you explain Mace not showing up on your security video?”
“Somehow he must have taken control of the system, froze the cameras and walked right past them.”
“What does your security company say?”
“They said it’s impossible, so they’re gone.”
Calaphas looks up from the floor. “Gone?”
“How could I trust them? I threw them out and told them to shut down service instanter. Katherine recommended another company.”
“Katherine Ormond-Wattley?”
“Yes. A company with ties to the ISA, a military contractor with better tech than the firm I used. They’ll install tomorrow.”
“You don’t have security now?”
“No video, no alarms, but no one can get through our electronic locks.”
“Michael Mace did.”
“I don’t think Mace is coming back,” Woodbine says. “I wish he would, so we could have a shot at him.”
Calaphas doesn’t need to get by the electronic locks. He’s already inside.
Looking past the attorney, he considers the opposing-mirrors trick of endless reflections. An infinite Durand Calaphas is a true expression of his destiny, but the truth of Woodbine’s prospects is not what the mirrors appear to predict.
“Listen, do we or don’t we?” the attorney asks.
“Do we what?”
“Have a deal.”
“Absolutely. And you won’t be sorry you trusted me. But there’s this thing about Rudy Santana. He felt I was disrespecting you by being late. He did something stupid to impress me.”
Woodbine’s expression is wonderfully textured—a mild, doleful chagrin—and could be mistaken for sincere by the most perceptive of jurors. “I need men who can interface between me and the animals on the street who keep the merchandise flowing. Santana and Harris aren’t perfect, but they’re the best I’ve found.”
“I understand. But I think you should know Santana mentioned three names to prove how high you are on the ladder.” As Calaphas repeats those names, the lawyer’s eyebrows arch. “For your own good, Mr. Woodbine, you might have a word with Santana about discretion.”
“I will,” Woodbine declares. “I’ll speak with him as soon as you’re on your way.”
“Meanwhile, that transponder links to your smartphone.”
“To one of them. One I reserve strictly for that purpose.”
“I’ll need it.”
“It’s on the counter in the kitchen,” the attorney says, moving away, past the leopard-patterned chaise, the multiplied reflections of which offer infinite accommodations where one can lie for the focused contemplation of God knows what.
The former gym and current meditation room is thronged with replicates of Calaphas and Woodbine moving toward the exit from myriad directions, folding into and out of the room’s corners with great flexibility, seen retreating from the door even as they are approaching it. If these kaleidoscopic images can be disorienting, Calaphas is not confused as he follows Woodbine, for his attention is concentrated on the action he must take. At the same time, the regimented chaos of attorney and assailant in all their iterations makes it difficult for the target to recognize peril is imminent. Calaphas draws the small aerosol can of chloroform from a pocket and says, “Oh, one thing I forgot,” and Woodbine turns, and Calaphas sprays his host in the face. All the Woodbines around the room—whatever their size, whether coming or going—collapse to the floor.
The esteemed partner of Kravitz, Benedetto, and Spackman—who are elsewhere engaged in criminal enterprises—is not dead, only unconscious on the meditation room floor. For the time being, that is how his assailant wants him.
When Calaphas enters the kitchen, Rudy Santana and Harris are drinking Scotch and watching a TV that has risen out of the island on a motorized lift. They’re entranced by the cleavage of an actress and are engaged in a spirited discussion about whether her splendid breasts are larger than those of another actress they admire and would like to jump. They are for a moment oblivious of Calaphas.
No one’s life is a smooth ride from the womb to the grave. The poor and the rich, the wise and the foolish, the smart and the dumb, the beautiful and the ugly all suffer on occasion as they journey through the world. Physical pain, mental anguish, worry and failure, loneliness and sorrow are visited on everyone, even if not in equal distribution. Calaphas has arrived at the conclusion that we endure the pain of living by taking refuge in dreams. We dream of striking it rich, of falling in love with—and being loved by—an ideal mate, of being acclaimed for what talent we might possess, of jumping the bones of an actress with epic cleavage. In Calaphas’s opinion, these dreams are drugs as surely as are marijuana and cocaine and heroin, and all but one of them can be the death of you if you don’t indulge it in moderation. The only such dream certain to bring you genuine pleasure and spare you the suffering that people can cause you is the dream of exercising absolute power over others, but only if you act on the dream.