Hummingbird Salamander(14)

“What?” I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic.

“To the family.”

“Why?”

“Because. She’s dead. Recently.”

That came crashing through.

But why did it hurt? Hadn’t the note told me that? Hadn’t Silvina herself told me, in her way? Yet, somehow, I’d thought the task would be finding Silvina. Literally finding her. Not tracking her ghost.

“And there’s this,” Allie said, handing me a black-and-white photograph of a man standing on the bow of a yacht. He had a kind of weird bowl-cut for his dull brown hair, clean-shaven, and had a hooded look about the eyes and a small nose. Wearing a short-sleeved button-down shirt with a flower design, cargo shorts. Prominent gold chain around his neck. Something in the thin mouth, the curl of lip, made me dislike him. If not for the clothes, he would’ve had a chameleon-like look. You might not notice him in a crowd.

“Who’s this?”

“Ben Langer.”

“Am I supposed to know who he is?”

“You always talk about ‘the credible threat.’ About ‘collateral circles.’ Well, this name kept coming up. Ben Langer. Works for an import-export company that Silvina tied to wildlife trafficking. Also has a hand in illicit biotech and drugs. Langer might be doing the dirty work for that organization.”

“Good point,” I said.

“Langer is an opportunist of the worst kind. A sociopath at best.”

That seemed like belaboring the good point. Half our clients were sociopaths.

“And?”

“What I mean is: Silvina’s friends are dangerous. Silvina’s enemies are dangerous. This whole thing is fraught.”

“Fair assessment,” I said.

I set the photo down on my desk. Wanted to turn it over, but resisted the impulse.

“That’s that, then, right?” Allie asked, arms still crossed.

Projecting irritation. But unsettled underneath, the irritation for putting her in a bad mental space. Crime was meant to be invisible in our systems.

Should I stop? It seemed antiseptic to me. We were just gathering data. Passively. Not interviewing past associates. Not being obvious. So I felt confident in my answer.

“Keep digging,” I said. “It’s low-risk. This is all information on the surface.”

“Keep digging,” she said, in a flat voice. “You want me to keep … digging.”

“Yes. Keep at it. There must be more than a photo and”—I flicked through the folder—“a paltry dozen pages of information.”

Allie said nothing.

A mention of a corporation run by her father caught my eye. “Check property. Shell companies, the rest.”

“No,” Allie said.

I put down the file.

“No?”

“This isn’t about work,” Allie said. “Larry told me.”

Larry doesn’t know shit. Larry isn’t your boss.

“Larry doesn’t—”

“What about the pipeline account?” she asked.

“Spend an hour on this. It won’t kill you.”

“Then tell me the client, because Silvina’s dead.”

I sighed. Okay, I would go through the charade.

“The Vilcapampa companies. As you noticed, many of them are local. Silvina’s death may create an opportunity.”

Was that crass to say? She must have thought so, from the stare she gave me.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t tried to bind Allie to me. That I hadn’t done the things that create loyalty. Because that felt like a trick. A trap. And now it turned out I didn’t know her at all. Didn’t know the first thing about her personal life. Had rarely taken her to lunch. The kind of interest I’d taken was important to me, but maybe not to her. Was that what I was paying for now? Interoffice politics? Larry talking to her probably felt like sympathy or empathy.

“An hour or two,” she conceded, but I wondered if she would. She walked out.

Funny—I’d wanted her to be independent. I had wanted her to question me. And now …

Only later did I wonder if she’d found something more, something she hadn’t put in the file. That had unnerved her.





[20]


Strength lived in my body so directly back then that I could mistake it for armor. It shone out of me like a drug and flowed back into me like power. It made me drunk in a way, made me take chances. Or gave me reasons for excuses.

Worse, I was too proud of having studied criminology and psychology, in investigating Silvina. As if that meant I could exist, even flourish, in a world of mysteries. I knew in college that bodybuilding probably wouldn’t pay the bills. Or I wasn’t sure. It was more like: how do I make the strength of my body at least more than a hobby?

I had a vague idea of joining the police force, maybe one day become a detective. I could snap any number of men over my knee. I might stand out, but I would also look like someone who shouldn’t be messed with. Be one of the boys. Pretend, at least. But what you face doesn’t always work like that. Whatever’s indirect. The thing your strength might not match up against, any more than a boxer understands how to fight a wrestler.

But underneath that: even if you didn’t solve a case, even if I didn’t make it to detective, I would be the one who had the most information and most control. If you couldn’t make sense of a death, no one could, not really. Except, perhaps, a priest, and I didn’t veer existential or religious. No one in our family did. My brother came closest, but even in him it was more a kind of spirituality, a sense of awe at seeing the stars in the night sky. “The rogue immensity of the cosmos.” Like he’d never understand the world, but that didn’t bother him.