Part 7 (1/2)

”You might have told me that he was coming today,” I said.

”I didn't know until he got here,” Mrs. Z said. ”He had a cancellation.”

Hansen turned from the window and smiled. ”Sorry. I got all the way down to the other job before they bothered to tell me I couldn't come in.”

”Very rude of them,” Mrs. Z said. ”So I thought I'd just keep an eye on things.”

Meaning, no doubt, that she'd been going through our stuff while Hansen worked. It was a good thing I'd put all the papers pertaining to the case into a locked drawer in my desk.

”Uh, I hope you're going to get that done before the rain hits,” I said.

Hansen stuck his head out of the gla.s.s-free window and considered the cloudy sky. ”Sure looks like it, don't it?” he said. ”Sure been a wet year.”

”It has, yeah,” I said. ”Everyone was worrying about drought, and it turns out that we've got water to burn.”

Hansen laughed and nodded. ”Yeah, we sure do. I'm glad of it, yeah, but it's sure caused a lot of trouble down the coast.”

”Like Pacifica, you mean?”

”Yeah, that's it, all right. All them fancy buildings, red-tagged now.” He paused to scratch his scalp with one dirty fingernail. ”Well, I'll be getting the windows done in a couple of hours here.”

Rather than sit around and freeze while Hansen finished, we left. Once we got outside, I paused on the sidewalk and considered my back brain. The nagging sensation had disappeared. ”We could go sit in the car,” Ari said. ”You could do your LDRS there.”

”Not necessary. I've missed my chance at whatever it was.”

”That's too bad.” Ari glanced at his watch. ”It's four-thirty. Let's go have an early dinner.”

We walked across the street to the Persian restaurant. Since they featured a salad bar, I'd gone in there a couple of times. Nice people ran it, the son and daughter of refugees from the fall of the Shah. That afternoon, in the slack time between lunch and dinner, a young skinny guy with a long blue ap.r.o.n covering his gray slacks and white s.h.i.+rt drifted over to take our order. I remembered him as a cousin of the owners.

His English, when he asked if we'd like something to drink, was not the best. Not a problem-Ari spoke to him in a language that sounded a little bit like Italian to my ignorant ears. The waiter grinned in relief and answered in the same. Needless to say, I let Ari order for both of us.

”Is that Farsi?” I said once the waiter had gone off to the kitchen.

”Yes,” Ari said. ”A dialect of it, anyway.”

”How many languages do you know?”

”It depends on how you define a language.” He looked away and frowned while he thought about it. ”Five European ones, then Hebrew, of course, and Farsi. I can get by on the street with Dari, but I can't claim I know it. Then there's Arabic. It has a lot of dialects. Most speakers of one can't understand the others, but everyone who's been to school can understand the standard version. I know the standard and the Palestinian dialect well, and then I can get by with the Egyptian version.”

I was impressed. I only know three languages, if you don't count Latin, which I don't, since there aren't a lot of people around who want to speak Latin back.

The waiter returned with rose-flavored sodas and a tray of appetizers, a more generous selection than I'd ever seen before. With the place so empty, he hovered at the table for a while, talking with Ari. Both of them laughed now and then-at jokes, I supposed. After he brought the main dishes, he lingered some more, and this time Ari began asking him questions in between bites, which the waiter answered at some length.

It dawned on me that the boy had no idea that he was talking with an Israeli, because as far as I could tell, Ari's accent was identical to his. I smiled and looked vacant in what I hoped was the proper public manner for the girlfriend of an Iranian guy. At the end of the meal, Ari paid in cash, not a credit card with his giveaway name on it. He left a good tip, too.

We walked outside just as the rain started. As we scurried across the street, dodging cars, I saw Hansen loading sc.r.a.p gla.s.s into the back of his truck. Brand-new gla.s.s gleamed in the bay window of my apartment.

”All done,” Hansen called out.

”Thanks!” I said and waved.

We managed to avoid Mrs. Z as we went upstairs. I'm sure that she needed to lie down and rest after writing the check for the windows. As soon as we got inside the apartment, Ari strode over to the new windows to examine the workmans.h.i.+p. I turned on the heat.

”What was all the conversation about?” I said. ”In the restaurant, that is.”

”I was asking him how Johnson got up to the roof,” Ari said. ”The night you were attacked, no one in the restaurant would tell the police anything. It made me wonder if they'd a.s.sisted him.”

I experienced a retroactive frisson. ”Uh, had they?”

”No, or at least, I doubt it. The waiter was too forthcoming. The Shah's Iran was a police state, and this new regime is no better. One gets used to acting ignorant around authorities. They saw Sanchez as a threat and told him nothing.”

I was planning on running various Agency procedures that evening in the hopes of picking up traces of the coven members and through them, of the hooded man. I changed into work clothes, a pair of jeans, and a green top with a watercolor print and a deep V-neck. When I booted up my computer for a routine run on TranceWeb, I found nothing new in my inbox.

”I still haven't gotten that file on Reb Ezekiel,” I said.

Ari muttered something in Hebrew, then took his cell phone out of his s.h.i.+rt pocket. ”I'll see what I can do to speed things up,” he said. ”The sodding thing should have come through by now. I wonder if someone's intercepted it.”

”Could be, but I'll bet the bureaucrats just haven't cleared it yet. It has to come to the Agency via the State Department and the two guys there who know we exist. I-”

His cell phone went off with a loud burst of sour Bach. We both yelped. He clicked it on and wandered into the kitchen to answer the call in private, but he reappeared almost immediately.

”It's Sanchez,” he said to me. ”Evers apparently committed suicide this afternoon.”

I murmured something unladylike. Ari alternated between listening to Sanchez and relaying the details.

”He drowned in the bay right by the Ferry Building . . . around four o'clock . . . jumped from one of the piers . . . witnesses . . . they said what?”

A long pause while I squirmed in curiosity. Four o'clock-just about the time when I should have been doing an LDRS on Evers. Thanks to Hansen, I'd missed the chance, not that I could have reached Evers to warn him. By the time we'd headed for the Persian restaurant, Evers must have been dead.

”That doesn't seem possible,” Ari continued. ”Yes, yes, I know you're not having a joke on me . . . a rogue wave? But he did jump . . . ah, then the wave came . . . heroin addiction, certainly but . . . yes, O'Grady's lot will be interested in this. Tomorrow? Very well . . . nine o'clock, then.”

He clicked off the phone and returned it to his s.h.i.+rt pocket.

”We're going down to Sanchez's office?” I said.

”No, we're meeting him at the Ferry Building. Early, of course, while the chain of custody's intact.”

”The what?”

”While the police are still in charge of the site, the tape up, officers there, and so on. Once they've left the scene, even for five minutes, any evidence anyone finds isn't valid in court. So since Sanchez wants to go over the site in daylight, they'll have to keep it sealed off all night.”

”Good. I want to see where the murder happened.”

”I take it you don't think this was suicide.”

I walked over to the windows and stared out at the raindark sky. Off to the west, the clouds glowed silver and gold from the setting sun. For one brief moment, I could see in the swirling glare the horses and the chariot of the sun, rolling toward the horizon with Apollo at the reins. The Collective Data Stream tugged at my conscious mind.