Part 20 (1/2)

”If she does, she won't tell me, not yet anyway. No one else is going to tell me anything, that's for sure.” Michael paused, then smiled like a man with three aces and a pair of kings. ”She's got all kinds of information you can use, about the levels and gates and stuff. She told me she wouldn't tell me until we said she could come through, but I believe her.”

I couldn't blame a girl in Lisa's position for bargaining. I would have done the same in her place. I still felt like smacking the clever little darling across the face.

Michael was watching me with large hopeful blue eyes. So, what do you do when your baby brother-the one you bottle fed, changed, pushed in a stroller, walked to his first day of school, taught to ride a bike, helped with his homework, and so on down the whole cruddy maternal list-comes to you because his first real girlfriend lives in desperate circ.u.mstances and you can help get her out?

”Oh, all right.” I took the bargain. ”Let me see what I can do. If the Agency ever sends a team to seal off that gate, I want you and Lisa on our side of it, so we'd better get moving.”

”Thanks, Nola!” Michael beamed at me, then threw his arms around me and hugged. ”You're the best sister ever in both of the worlds. I'm h.e.l.la stoked! Seriously!”

I returned the squeeze, but I felt like a complete sucker, not thanks to any psychic talent, but Just Because. As soon as everyone else began eating, I filed a report with Y. I requested his help with getting Sophia a U.S. pa.s.sport or at least, a green card that she could eventually use to apply for citizens.h.i.+p. I emphasized that the girl had crucial information to trade for the papers. Beyond that, as I told Michael, we could only wait and see what the Agency decided.

Late that night, after the last of the pizza was eaten and everyone had gone home, Ari and I sat on the old blue couch and contemplated the big stack of folded-down boxes. Outside, the rain began with its usual cozy patter.

”I did something really stupid this afternoon,” I said.

”Agreed to help Michael and his girlfriend, yes.” Ari said. ”I suppose this information the girl has will be worth it.”

”It better be! He must have told-” A sudden suspicion appeared in my mind. ”Or do you have the bedroom bugged?”

”No, of course I don't! The office downstairs is on the security system, but I've blocked off the sounds from our bedroom. Simple decency and all that. Can't have you scaring the neighbors.”

I was too tired to kick him. ”But about Michael-”

”Yes, he did tell me. He asked me if I could get the papers if you couldn't. Your brother's entirely too clever.”

”You mean, he doesn't believe you only work for Interpol?”

”Exactly. I told him that if he let one wrong word slip, they'd find his body on a lonely hillside.” Ari stretched his legs out in front of him, a somehow melancholy gesture. ”I doubt if he believed that, though.”

”Do you think you could get her the papers?”

”If she were Jewish, we could cover her under the Right of Return, but according to Michael, she's not. Why?”

”Just a vain moment of hope that I could pa.s.s the buck. Oh, well, if I end up in federal prison, will you visit me?”

”I'll do better than that.” He put an arm around my shoulders and drew me close. ”I'll smuggle you out of the country before they catch you. I know how to get a new ident.i.ty for you.”

”You're wonderful.”

”I'm glad to see you recognize that.”

He smiled, and I kissed him. We didn't do much talking the rest of the evening.

At ten o'clock the next morning, I was unpacking gla.s.sware in the kitchen when my uncle, Father Keith, the Franciscan priest, called me. His first words, not even a h.e.l.lo, were, ”Is Michael using drugs?”

”He told you about Lisa?”

”He told me a strange tale about a girl of that name.”

”It's all true, the deviant world levels, his sweetheart in one of them, the works.”

”Did her parents really dump her in an empty lot when she was two days old?”

”They did, yeah, because of her club foot. It happens a lot over there.”

Father Keith was silent for so long that I began to wonder if we'd lost the connection.

”Too bad it's true,” he said eventually. ”I'd know what to do if he were using drugs.”

”Why did he call you, anyway?”

”To see if I'd make her a fake baptismal certificate.”

It occurred to me that Michael was going to be a firstcla.s.s operative at the Agency once he officially joined up. ”Will you?” I said. ”After all, you've done it before.”

”My sins haunt me. How badly do you need it?”

”Let's just say it would be a great first step in a long process. You'd be helping save this poor girl from a life of sin. She's being forced to work as a prost.i.tute.”

”Yes, Michael made sure to cite the example of Mary Magdalene. Let me think about this.”

He hung up before I could say anything else. The abrupt end to the call put me off guard when the phone rang again. I clicked on, expecting it to be Father Keith. Instead, Caleb said h.e.l.lo. It took me a moment to gather my mind. Once I did, I felt profoundly uncomfortable, even though Caleb sounded pleasant and businesslike.

”Sorry about the phone tag,” he said. ”I had to go out of town for a couple of days. Some unexpected business dealings.”

”Well, we were moving, too,” I said. ”Not a problem.”

”Good, good. That's always a real ch.o.r.e, all right.”

I pinpointed the problem as the distinct feeling that someone else was listening in to the call. It was nothing so clear-cut as the sound of breathing, or even that slight hollowness of sound that occurs when an eavesdropper's on a second phone, but I felt it nonetheless.

”Now, about that lunch date,” I said, ”I'll be unpacking for the rest of today. Tomorrow? Sunday?”

”Tomorrow would be best for me. Where are you living now? Is there some place good nearby? We want a place that's quiet so we can talk.”

”For sure. None of those bright s.h.i.+ny places where everyone sounds like shrieking parrots. We're in the outer avenues, near Noriega.”

”Okay, then I know where we should meet.” Caleb paused for a strangely high-pitched laugh. ”How about the Cliff House? The dining room, not that burger place. It's about as old-fas.h.i.+oned quiet as you can get.”

”Sounds good. One o'clock?”

”Perfect. I'll see you then.”

We ended the call. I continued unpacking while I went back over the conversation in my mind in order to decipher my feeling of discomfort. In their elaborate security system, Ari and Itzak had included the ”interference generator” that protected cell phones conversations and other wireless communications, which made a tap in unlikely. The listener, therefore, had to be in Caleb's mind, or attached to his consciousness one way or another as a psychic wiretap, as it were. The obvious candidate: Brother Belial.

I suspected that I was going to meet him at lunch, too, whether he was present physically or not. When I considered Caleb's odd laugh, I remembered that the Cliff House stood just down the hill from the place where Doyle and Johnson died. Either Caleb's sense of humor was even stranger than Ari's, or the thought made him real nervous.

Although Father Keith never called me back, a couple of hours before sunset, he did drive over in a borrowed red SUV full of werewolves. Since the moon would be full that night, the Hounds of Heaven, as they called their pack, had gone to Father Keith's protection the day before. All five of them sat decorously in their seats inside the SUV, each wearing a doggie safety harness, Lawrence in the front seat, JoEllen, Matt, Ryan, and Samantha in the seats behind. Each also had a leather collar, decorated with a dog license tag and a small silver cross.

Keith himself was wearing his floor-length brown Franciscan robes. He's neither tall nor short, a compact, solid-looking man with curly gray hair, tonsured of course, and pale blue eyes. When I went outside to greet them, I noticed the window of the downstairs apartment next door, which looked our way from right across the driveway. Instead of the usual drawn curtains, I saw faces plastered against the gla.s.s, staring.