Ghost Rendition Page 9

  “You have to leave,” I mumbled one last time.

  And then she was rocking up and down, and I was inside her. Her back was arched. My hands were on her breasts. Her eyes never left mine, right up until we climaxed together. And then she was on top of me again, smaller now, tucked against me.

  “I told you I wouldn’t crack,” I gasped.

  Now that I was in no hurry to find sleep, it found me.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I got up early, called Nachash’s emergency number, and checked the Health Matters job board. It was like a superstition at this point. Then I went to pick up Devon. Suzanne was waiting for me at the door. I held up my hands palms out for inspection. “I come Taco Bell–free, ready to take our son healthy and happy to his delightful, reasonably priced school.”

  “Is that a hickey on your neck?” She eyeballed me like a veteran interrogator.

  “Shaving accident. I’m trying out a new electric.”

  Devon came out, and I flipped him the keys to the Camry. “You can start her up.”

  He loved to sit in the driver’s seat and start the car. I moved close to Suzanne and whispered in her ear. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m glad you’re jealous,” I said and pecked her on the lips.

  “What did you say to Mom?” Devon asked as I drove him to school.

  “I told her you had a girlfriend who’s eighteen and smokes unfiltered cigarettes.”

  “There is so much wrong with you.”

  “You have no idea.”

  I parked around the corner from the school as usual. I couldn’t help glancing at the phone booth and thinking of Rob.

  “Do you need to go check your office?” Devon asked.

  I had to be careful around him. He was too observant. He would make a great contractor. The thought made me shudder.

  “Are you doing okay?” I said. I had wanted to plan some big father and son outing to have our heart-to-heart but circumstances made that difficult.

  “Mom told you that I’m a freak or something?”

  “Of course not. We’re a little worried that you may be having a tough time at school, that’s all.”

  “Because you stuck me with a bunch of spoiled rich achieve-a-trons? No, I’m having a great time.”

  “You can go back to public school if you want,” I said.

  “And go through the whole new kid thing again? I finally have some friends who aren’t total jerks. They’re nerds, but I am too, right?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Nerd isn’t a bad word anymore. Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey and Larry, Jeff Bezos, nerds rule the world. I’m getting good grades, I’m not doing drugs. Tell Mom to chill.”

  And then he was out of the car and gone. My work instincts told me he was hiding something. His tone had the rushed pace and hint of forced bravado that were both tells. Or was it just adolescence? This wasn’t the type of interrogation that I was good at.

  Rob’s supervisor was going to be a different matter. Caroline and Pratt both insisted on coming. I let them, because I wasn’t sure I trusted them out of my sight. I argued with Caroline during the ride about why she refused to wear a bulletproof vest. Her point basically boiled down to that I couldn’t understand because I didn’t have breasts. It was hard to refute.

  I picked the lock on the front door with a pick gun and a torsion wrench. It leaves a clear mark, but it’s quicker than the standard tools and I wasn’t worried about detection. I was inviting Westfield to come home and he would know that.

  The house was a big brooding Tudor. It had five bedrooms, a master suite, three smaller bedrooms that looked like they belonged to boys, and one larger one that looked like it belonged to a girl. The attic had been turned into an office. A quick search turned up household bills and personal financial statements. A laptop computer didn’t turn up much more. Pratt checked for encrypted files, but it was clean. We split up and went over the rest of the house, but Westfield didn’t seem to take his work home with him, as you would expect.

  He made it back from the City or wherever he was in good time. We had finished looking around when he rang the doorbell and let himself in. He announced his presence, making sure we didn’t get spooked and shoot him. And he came alone, which meant he was open to talking. He sat down on his living room couch and waited for us to gather. He wore gray slacks and a striped, button-down shirt. He had thinning blonde hair and pale blue eyes. He looked like a corporate executive, a corporate executive who could order an execution as easily as his morning coffee.

  “Thanks for coming, Mr. Westfield,” I said to him as I sat opposite him in a wingchair.

  Pratt sat in an armchair off to one side, and Caroline stood between us, keeping an eye on the door.

  “Call me Chan, please. Ordinarily we would never meet, but these are extraordinary circumstances. That’s why I’m here in person. I’m hoping we can establish trust,” Westfield said.

  “I’m hoping you would tell us what the fuck is going on,” I said with a flat stare. Quickly shifting tones can subtly shake an adversary. He was unfazed.

  “Information is a commodity. What do you have to trade?”

  “Let’s start with your life,” I said.

  “I could offer you the same,” he said. “But I’ll give you something else as a gesture of goodwill. Shrink was assigned this rendition, but decided to sell Pratt to the Russians instead. His lifestyle ran ahead of his income. We know you are innocent in this, but that opinion can change.”

  “Why would Shrink hand Pratt to me if he didn’t want him renditioned?”

  “He set you up, I’m afraid. I understand how hard that is to believe. Rob and I were old friends. It broke my heart to find out he was a traitor.”

  “You were so broken up that you executed him,” I said.

  “Do you believe we would unleash this kind of carnage on our own soil? With the backlash caused by the Snowden incident, our adversaries have felt emboldened. We don’t know which one of them got to Rob, but trust me when I tell you that we will find out.”

  “Why should we believe you?” Pratt blurted out. “All you care about is making sure that you get your new spy toy. Well, you can’t complete the program without me, and I won’t finish it, not for you.”

  We had agreed that I was the only one who would talk, but Pratt couldn’t help himself. The stare Westfield gave him did not belong to a corporate executive. It belonged to a reptile eyeing a bug.

  “I think you will. It’s remarkable what impending death does to your priorities,” Westfield said.

  “You see, you don’t care how many people get killed or how much you trample on peoples’ rights. As long as you can dig up your dirty little secrets, you don’t care,” Pratt said, his voice cracking.

  “Secrets aren’t dirty. People are dirty. People who place themselves above their country. But we know how to deal with people like you,” Westfield said.

  “You think you know who we are? You think you know anything about us? You don’t know anything. But we know who you are. We know who the dirty one is,” Pratt screamed, fully unhinged.

  I motioned for Caroline to take Pratt outside. She took him firmly by the arm, and he let her usher him out.

  “He is a disturbed young man. How much did Rob tell you about his circumstances?” Westfield said.

  “I got my brief.”

  “You two were close, I know he gave you something more.”

  He was fishing, but for what?

  “I imagine you have a deal in mind. Why don’t we get to it?” I said.

  “We could have surrounded the house, killed the two of you, and taken Pratt by force, but I prevailed upon my superiors to give you a chance.”

  “To do what? Hand Pratt over and let you take him apart?” I said.

  “Finish your rendition and we’ll give you the full retirement package.”

  “Six feet of dirt?”

  “Enough money that you never have to see me or anyone like me ever again
. That’s the carrot. Your anonymity has been your insurance policy. Now that we have an image of your face, it won’t take long to find out everything about you. That’s the stick,” he said.

  “You wanted me to come here. You planted that file for Pratt to find.”

  “You wouldn’t have responded to a formal invitation.”

  “Westfield isn’t your real name. And this isn’t your house,” I said.

  “Only a convenient meeting place. As you saw, Pratt is far too volatile to trust with a project as important as Tiresias.”

  “He gets renditioned and finishes the program for you or dies trying. You get the program or prove that he couldn’t finish it and you hand it to someone else,” I said.

  “I’m pleased that you understand. I want this to end well for all of us. For the Agency, for you, for your family.”

  “You’re the one who needs to understand. Pratt was right, you’re never getting the program, and if you come anywhere near my family, I will make it my life’s mission to make sure you die in ways even you can’t imagine.” Talking and moving without one interrupting the other is harder than it seems. Nachash made me recite Buddhist scripture while jumping out of my chair and attacking him. If I broke rhythm by one syllable I had to start over. It throws people off if you can do it right. I was out of my seat and across the room by the first sentence. My hand was on Westfield’s throat by the start of the second. My Browning was in my other hand and pressed to his right eye by the time I was done. No one likes anything pressed to his eye.

  “Rob was right. I am the best. And I will wade through a division of your agency stiffs to get to you if I have to.”

  I could sense his pulse rate rise, but he didn’t react visibly. He was good. I made a quick exit. Caroline and Danny were waiting in the car. Caroline pulled out fast and did a good job of weaving through the streets to make sure we weren’t followed. I scanned for drones.

  “Thank you for not handing me over to him,” Pratt said.

  “I shouldn’t have let him get to me. I should have played for time. Now I have to move my family. What am I going to tell them?” I said.

  “You don’t have to tell them anything,” Pratt said.

  “It was a setup. They recorded us when we walked in. With the latest facial recognition software they probably have my address already.”

  “They used very primitive security on their router. I scrambled their video signal and sent them images of the Three Stooges instead. Those guys always make me laugh,” Pratt said.

  “You staged that blowup? You wanted to storm out of the room?”

  “I figured they were recording us. I needed some time to find out how,” he said.

  “Our boy isn’t as naïve as he seems,” Caroline said.

  They shared a look that I didn’t like. Was I the only room she had visited last night?

  “Good job,” I told him.

  He gave me his big sloppy smile like I had given him a puppy treat. I wasn’t sure whether to buy it or not. Nachash used to say that everyone is hiding something. Maybe he was right.

  • • • • • • • • • •

  I put the car in the garage, swapped out my license plates, and joined Pratt and Caroline in the kitchen. Pratt had found my stash of Starbursts and was working his way through it. Caroline had made us each a cup of lavender tea.

  “What do you think?” Caroline asked. “I don’t believe Shrink was a traitor.”

  “I think you should have tortured him. That’s what he wants to do to me,” Pratt said.

  “I don’t know what to believe, but I don’t believe him. He should have had a boatload of agents waiting for us. He doesn’t want us in custody. And he was probing about Rob. He’s worried he told me something valuable.”

  “Did he?’ Caroline asked.

  “I don’t know. He was signaling something to me, but I’m not sure what,” I said.

  “Something about me?” Pratt asked.

  “Because everything’s about you?” Caroline said.

  Their banter came much too easily.

  “Is Westfield, or whatever his name is, the one Rob went to war with, or did he just come down on the side of whoever Rob’s enemy is?” I said.

  “That’s the question,” she agreed.

  “He’s the one who went after Rob,” Pratt said.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked him.

  “Just a feeling,” he said.

  “From all your years in the business? I’m going for a run. Try to find out anything you can about Westfield, starting with his real name.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Caroline said.

  “I need you to babysit. He has a habit of disappearing. Don’t open the door or answer the phone.” I didn’t like leaving her alone with Pratt, but I needed space to think.

  “You’re not going to sneak off and do something heroic and stupid are you?” she asked.

  “Not without you.”

  I ran hard hoping the endorphins would clear my head. I had thought Pratt was simple to read, but I was starting to change my mind. He’d fooled Westfield. He’d fooled me. And something else, he’d said, “We know who you are. We know who the dirty one is.” Who was he referring to? Were he and Caroline a “we” now? Maybe it was just a figure of speech, but it bore watching. I looked up and realized I had run to the Big House. The lights were on. I knocked, hoping that Rowan wasn’t there. Suzanne answered the door.

  “Don’t tell me you’re having another allergy attack?”

  “Actually I came to talk to Devon.”

  “What’s going on?” she asked, suspiciously.

  “You said that I needed to get more involved. Is he home?”

  “He’s upstairs locked in his room as usual. I don’t know if your showing up unannounced is the best way to do this.”

  Surprising him was exactly what I wanted. People don’t lie as well when they don’t have time to prepare. I couldn’t tell Suzanne that, of course. That was one of our problems, she could always sense that I was holding back. She was the opposite. It was one of the things I had always loved about her. If she was happy, you knew about it. If she was angry, you knew about it. And it was all better than walking on eggshells and wondering, the way my mother tiptoed around my father. He rationed his feelings as if he had only a small supply and he was trying not to run out. Except for disappointment. He was always generous with that. And the irony was that Suzanne ended up accusing me of being emotionally stuck and all that was left in the end was disappointment.

  And now it seemed that Devon was struggling and I had completely missed it. At least I was here. I was trying. That’s more than I could say for my own father. With him, it was always on his terms or not at all.

  “He’s my son. Do I need to make an appointment?” I said.

  “Go on up. See what kind of greeting you get.”

  “Don’t be jealous. We can spend some quality time too,” I said.

  She shook her head. I was hoping for a smile, but mock disapproval was okay. When we were fighting, I knew we were okay. At the end, it was like a circuit blew and she shut down. I was worried that after our kiss she was going to shut me out.

  I walked quietly up the stairs to Devon’s room. I knocked on the door and let myself in. I knew he wouldn’t like it, but I wanted to see the look on his face. It was surprise with a dash of guilt. He blanked his computer screen and got up to greet me.

  “You’re supposed to wait until I tell you to come in,” he said.

  “Why, were you doing something you weren’t supposed to?” I playfully looked around his desk for evidence of wrongdoing. I also attached a tiny webcam to the bottom of his computer monitor that would catch his keystrokes.

  “Are you turning into Mom? Or did she send you up to spy on me?”

  “She’s worried about you. I am too. You know you can tell me anything, right? I’m always on your side.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Okay. Do you
want to go to the Dog House? We can split their ‘five hot dog, guaranteed to make you sick’ special, as many toppings as you want. We’ll tell your mom we’re going for ice cream,” I said.

  “I have to get my homework done or she’ll be all over me.”

  “Okay. I’ll take a rain check. You know you can call or text me anytime.”

  “You don’t have to worry. I’m not a little boy anymore.”

  “That’s why I’m worried,” I said.

  “He kicked you out?” Suzanne asked, when I got downstairs.

  “He said he had homework to do.”

  “I don’t know what he’s doing on that computer, but I know it’s not homework,” she said.

  “Have you ever tried to sneak a peek?”

  “Are you kidding?” she said.

  “Yeah, I guess that wouldn’t be fair to him.”

  “I’ve tried every password I can come up with.”

  I couldn’t help laughing.

  “It’s not funny. I’m worried about him. I tried taking away his computer, he just used his phone. I took that away and he went to the computer lab after school or a friend’s house. I don’t want to lock him in his room and turn off the power, but I don’t know what else to do.”

  Suzanne had tears in her eyes when she finished her tirade. I took her in my arms. She put her head on my shoulder. Would it be completely inappropriate to kiss her?

  “I’m sorry. It’s exhausting sometimes,” she said.

  “I was a little quirky at that age too, and I turned out all right. Okay, that’s not cheering you up. We’ll figure it out. I promise. I know I haven’t been around enough, but I am not going to leave you alone with this.”

  This time she kissed me. It was a quick peck, but I could still taste it on my slow run home. I didn’t want to worry her, but she was right, Devon was up to something. It couldn’t be too bad. He never left his room and his grades were holding up, but he obviously felt guilty about it.

  I felt bad about bugging my own son, but Devon was smart enough to stonewall me unless I had the goods. The best interrogations are when you knew what you’re looking for, when the information asymmetry is on your side. It gave me an idea about Westfield. He knew more than we did. That had to change.