Bombshell (22 page)

“This is beautiful!”

“This is too weird, right?” Janelle began to laugh, her lipstick catching the morning sunlight through the elongated windowpanes. “Come here!” Cash laughed also, and they embraced among the salvage below a Guerrilla Girls museum poster, choking back tears of remorse at the lost time between them. “It's so good to see you.” Letting her go, Janelle reached into a pile of clothes, plaid shirts, a leather jacket, and disintegrating denims. “You should take this. It still works.” She retrieved an old cassette Walkman and a set of headphones with tangled cable. “It's an antique, now.”

“It's wonderful. Thank you.”

“Let's get that coffee. I'm only sorry that you won't get to meet my fiancé,” Janelle said.

“Where is he?”

“He's out of town. He's a journalist, so he's often away, for now. We want him to work a Washington desk from this summer.”

“You don't live together though, right? There's no guy stuff here.”

“He's kind of conservative, old-fashioned that way.”

“You don't mind?”

“Well, we love each other, and I try to think of it as chivalric and romantic, but I'll admit, we do sometimes have a
language problem
.” Janelle winked over her shoulder as she entered the kitchen. “I don't read his work, but he tells me about it. Hey, whatever happened to Zelda? Nona said that you guys didn't make it, right?” The coffee finished percolating.

“Zelda . . . ” For a moment, Cash could not speak. “Zel died.”

“
Holy fuck . . . No
.” Janelle stifled a sob of sorrow.

“It was an accident, a cocaine overdose.”

“No. Fucking. Way.”

Then she saw that Janelle was crying.

“It was at a party,” Cash explained, choking on the words.

“Were you there? Did you see it? I mean, were you with her?”

“No. She worked at Macy's. It was an employees-only party. They were celebrating either the end or the beginning of the season. I don't remember which. So, I wasn't there. I could have saved her, J.”

“Oh, my God.” Janelle raced across the room to hold her.

In Janelle's embrace, Cash remembered identifying Zelda's body. She lay on a steel gurney, her dead eyes staring up at the strip lights. There was a tiny bead of blood in her nose. The mortuary attendants stood back as Cash pulled the green sheet lower. Zelda was wearing her Macy's uniform. There was a piece of glitter on her collar. Cash craned forward over Zelda's hard body and kissed her, lingering on her cold mouth and the tacky surface of her lipstick. A sob gathered in the core of Cash's flesh. Finally, as she collapsed onto Zelda, clawing at the rubber mattress sheet, it rose from her like an animal howl. The grief hatched from her throat with a terrible pain. Finally, she felt the soft hands of the attendants on her biceps as they carefully moved her away from the corpse of her lover. Through the mercury of her tears, Cash watched them draw the sheet back up, covering Zelda in slow motion. It was the last time that she ever saw her. It was April, five years ago. The Macy's Flower Show had just ended.

Janelle wiped Cash's warm tears from her cheek, asking, “Does Nona know what happened?”

“I couldn't . . . ” Cash's lips shivered as she tried to speak.

DRESNER HAD SPENT AN UNCOMFORTABLE NIGHT IN A DREARY MOTEL.
Now, he was en route to Washington, D.C., wiping the fallout of dry dust
from his eyes. Some of the flags were still at half-mast. His phone rang, vibrating in the cup holder beside him as he drove a rented Lexus out of Georgia into South Carolina. He answered it and the signal relayed through the speakers of the stereo system. The call was from Royce.

“Just so you know, sir: The elder Winters boy, Frederick, has gone to New York City to console the father. They still understand that the boy is missing.”

“That's very fucking interesting, Royce. Thank you.”

“I was just . . . ”

“Reporting what is front-page news for every newspaper in the state. Believe me, I have a stack of them right beside me on the passenger seat. I watched it on TV in a motel this morning. Don't be a creep, Royce.” He hung up.

The satisfaction he gained from reasserting himself returned Robert Dresner's wide, gleaming grin as he drove. The fact that it would take him eight hours to reach D.C. only buttressed his pleasure. He could rest in his own apartment for one night before travelling to New York to interview Evelyn and Frederick Winters. He had resolved to sustain the illusion that Kip Winters was merely missing. That way, he could deny his killer the vindication of a media circus. He caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror. Yes, he looked tired, but through that fatigue, the fixed white sheen of his confidence had returned to him. He was tempted to turn on the radio, but resolved that this period of silence was what he required most urgently. Kip Winters had been assassinated on the same day that John Wilkes Booth had assassinated President Lincoln at Ford's Theatre: April 14. Hunting the killer down had taken until April 26, when, Dresner recalled, he was shot in the throat, cornered at a farmhouse northeast of
Bowling Green, Virginia. That was her date, April 26, the day of her birth and the Chernobyl disaster. He would take her before then. It was while driving through Raleigh, North Carolina, that he received a summons from his director.

“Robert. I'd like to speak with you in the morning. In person.”

Jesus Fucking Christ. It was as though a razor sharp icicle was being forced into his scalp and down into his balls, where it spun in a frenzy of panic. There was no precedent for this in his career in rendition. “Shall I come to Langley?”

“No. I'll come to your apartment at nine
AM
.”

“I'll try to get some sleep,” he said, uncertain of how many more of these violent oscillations and disappointments he could endure.

April 16, 2011. At 9
AM
, Robert Dresner answered the door to his apartment and saw his director for the first time in his twenty-five-year career with the Central Intelligence Agency. His gaze was met by that of a tall, gaunt man in his seventies with thinning copper hair, streaked with white. He was dressed in a gray flannel suit and a white shirt, with a herringbone necktie. There was a small American flag at his lapel. He inclined his head by way of greeting. Dresner put out his hand, and The Voice gave it cursory attention as he drifted into the apartment. The effect was spectral and cold, as though he possessed only a limited facility to engage with the warm-blooded. As they moved to the seating area, the illusion paled away, and now more clearly observing something like rheumatism or arthritis dogging The Voice's movements, he became solidified, tangible, and intimidating in a melancholy paternal fashion. Dresner poured coffee
from a French press, pushing the cream and the sugar bowl toward The Voice, finally embodied on the black leather couch of his apartment. His face was freckled and worn, the blades of his cheeks converging on a thin patrician nose and ruminating red lips. Dresner sat opposite him in the matching recliner chair. Reaching slowly for his cup and adding four sugar cubes and letting the cream overflow, the old man relaxed into Dresner's environment, regarding the Vettriano print on the wall and the plasma screen before rolling his green eyes with disgust. Dresner followed the old man's eyes without comprehension. Finally, The Voice spoke.

“Royce tells me that you haven't informed the Winters family that Kip is dead.”

Dresner discovered that in immediate proximity, aligned with the physical presence of its owner, the voice that had electrified him with anxiety was disarmingly tender. It struck him with such force that it eclipsed his anger at Royce's grassing and manipulated him into a suppliant sobriety. His fears passed. All that remained was his loyalty, and his desire to clean the slate of the past two weeks of uncharacteristic failures.

“That is correct.”

“Can you explain that to me?” The Voice tried to cross his gray flannel legs, but some pain in his hips prevented him. Witnessing this, Dresner felt something like a dog attending its wounded master. He sipped at his coffee before answering in a calm, conciliatory tone, conscious now of the need to deliver Royce as some tactless sniper.

“I'm going to inform them tomorrow, in person.” He let that intimate gesture swell. “I'm going to Manhattan myself. My rationale is as follows. Firstly, and most importantly, she did not intend to kill Kip Winters, and
I believe that she was attempting to dispose of the body, in her amateurish way, hoping that he would be burned beyond recognition, or never be discovered, at least not yet. She will go to New York and attempt some form of extortion. She will attempt to sustain the illusion that Kip Winters is still alive to facilitate this.”

“But Evelyn and Frederick Winters will know of the homicide. A Russian PSS? Lord, I haven't heard of those in a long time. I used one in Red Square in 1986. She brings back curious memories, this girl.”

“You were in the Soviet Union when she was born?”

“We were pulled out after Chernobyl; those red winds. But let's fix upon the present, and the future.”

“Yes. Of course, the Winters family will be grief-stricken, sequestered in mourning. So, I will have them agree to let me act either
in their person
in the case of Frederick—we're about the same age, and she almost certainly does not know his voice, so that when she calls I can answer the telephone as the elder son, or at minimum I can act as an intermediary for them. They won't need to be involved. We can let them to their grief. While we indulge our girl and her bluff, we can also frustrate her and bring her out. Then: bag and tag.”

“You are convinced that time remains for rendition?”

“There are still ten days until April 26. Her date. It is profoundly significant for her, and it is my contention that she will want to string the Winters family, or the Winters Corporation, along until that date.”

“And you believe that you can get to her while she does so.”

“Yes. Inevitably, as she forces more interaction with Evelyn and Frederick Winters, she will render herself more vulnerable.”

The old man smiled. A trickle of coffee ran from the crease of his mouth. “It's not beyond the precincts of possibility, Robert. But . . . ” He pulled himself forward using the armrest of Dresner's couch. “Listen lad, you're not a man I associate with carelessness, lack of control.” He spread his hands in a gesture of bafflement, showing metallic blue veins and age spots. His voice remained surprisingly mellifluous and sympathetic.

“No mistakes in twenty-five years.” Dresner smiled.

“Your service has been immaculate. Until now.”

“I understand.”

They were silent for a moment. Dresner watched The Voice gather himself.

“How is your confidence, Robert?” His green eyes glinted enthusiasm.

“Sky-high. Truly sky-high.” Dresner sat forward in his seat, eager.

“Royce seems to think—”

“Royce can go fuck himself. I don't get him. I've never encouraged any sense that he should get bigger shoes. I know he's ambitious, but—”

“Perhaps, he heard it from us, Robert.” The old man cast his gaze about the room. In a sense, it belonged to him, to the CIA. “Cross Spikes will go on, you know.”

“I still have ten days.”

“You're getting married.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We can get through these next ten days, can't we?”

“Assuredly.”

“Then all right.” The old man smiled and let both palms fall upon his thighs. “You've come a long way since Oklahoma.”

Dresner grinned. “I'd prefer not to think about it.”

“Yes, how did Thomas Wolfe put it?
You Can't Go Home Again . . .
‘to the escapes of Time and Memory.' Will you assist me in getting up?” Dresner rose and ushered The Voice gently to the door of his apartment, holding it open for him. The man's torso was thin as a paper lantern. Even through the herringbone suit, he thought that he could feel his heart running. “I hope that you have a magical last night in D.C., Robert.”