Chapter Eight
San Francisco
Gita Tiwari invited Gabriel to a Scotch tasting with buffet, on Thursday. Tasting wasn’t drinking and he was eager for a date.
They met at a floridly nautical Fisherman’s Wharf hotel, brass and wood railings, staff in puffed-sleeve shirts. Gita was a small woman with big hazel eyes and a cleft chin, her skin shiny brown like a beer bottle. She wore a short blue cocktail dress and gold heels. Her skin caramel and pepper, her cologne dark and bitter like almond liqueur. Cranberry and lime from her cocktail. Like a box of pricey chocolates. He inhaled deeply when he kissed her cheek. Maybe smells could be arranged, like clothing or furniture. Maybe some people had a knack for it.
It was a hard compliment to make. “You look fantastic,” he said instead.
The buffet dinner was served outside the hotel ballroom, with a bar of soft drinks and beer but no tables. Oily spring rolls, dry shrimp, chicken in beige sauce. The crowd set desperately on new trays of vegetarian maki, their chopsticks like seagulls.
Gita complained about work. “New data service,” she said. “Ohmigod. You can’t get a signal in half the buildings. I screwed up three orders last week. I have to use my own phone.”
“Maybe you can deduct your data bill as a business expense.”
“That’s smart. Sorry to talk work.” She laughed nervously. “Trish said you do security?”
“White-collar background investigations. I ensure the people in corner offices don’t have dark secrets. Mostly I just check bank statements. Some travel. And, handgun training.”
Her eyes grew big as tangerines; a flare in her scent, salt with her pepper. He kept it light, explaining the video targets, the full-weight fake guns. She didn’t offer the usual San Franciscan pacifist piety.
Staff opened the ballroom doors and called guests to table. Inside, large round tables were set with small plastic cups of Scotch at each chair. Gita slipped her arm around Gabriel’s and led him to the table nearest the projector screen. “Do you mind? When I’m not vain, I wear glasses.”
A man with port-wine hair and a light Scottish brogue cajoled people to sit. Gabriel studied the small pours. Maybe three shots total across eight glasses, and Gabriel didn’t have to finish. The smells alone gave him a buzz, burned sugars and nuts like a trail mix. A group took the other seats at the table, introduced themselves around. Gabriel grinned too much.
The Scot picked up a microphone. “My name’s Gerry, and I have the best job in the world.” He clicked his remote. An image of a green river valley, stone and wood buildings, the tallest with a peaked roof like a pagoda. “This is the Spey, the only water in all our whisky.”
Over a slideshow of landscapes and bulleted lists, Gerry explained single-malt and blended whiskies, had them smell and taste pairs of pours. The people at Gabriel’s table clowned, those with large noses glorying in presumed skill. Gabriel loved the complex fragrances, how quickly they faded, like catching snowflakes.
Whisky had its own words for smells. What Gerry called malty reminded Gabriel of Denise’s pumpernickel, a smoky sweetness like roasted marshmallow. The other looked the same but smelled like rotting fruit, leaving an oily taste in his mouth. “That has to be the fourteen-year,” he told Gita, pleased with himself.
Gita stared vacantly at the table, her shoulders slumped. “Migraine,” she told him. She took out a tin of blue pills, swallowed two dry, clutched his arm for rescue. “I need to go now.”
Upstairs, Gabriel asked the bellman for a taxi. While he massaged her hands she dug her forehead hard into his shoulder. He could feel her clench and relax her teeth. Heat and pressure, the most intimate he had been in years.
The bellman waved them over. “You OK?” Gabriel asked.
“Shouldn’t drink without food.” Gita kissed his cheek. “You go back. I’ll be fine,” she said. “Let’s try again, OK?”
In the ballroom the tasting was over. People sat with small wedges of cake and coffee. At his table sat a man and two women. “Your friend all right?” one woman asked.
He nodded. He felt cheated. He took Gita’s fourteen-year and drank it down.
Flesh and meat tastes in the alcohol burn. He looked at the women, neither one as fine as Gita, and for an exultant moment knew the breadth of his urges. He would gladly spill blood to fuck them. It would make the fucking better. A wolfish moment, beauty become tool, like a jeweled candlestick used as a club. Gone, like the whisky. He regretted it and wanted it back.
One woman frowned at his staring. Gabriel looked away and took deep breaths.
* * *
On Tuesday, Thorn’s office reeked of peppermint. In the candy bowl, blue wrappers with white Korean characters. Thorn was casual, a blue blazer over a golf shirt, and in good spirits.
“We have a project,” he told Gabriel. “One of Mr. Koenig’s visions. But we’ll be working with another firm, a defense contractor. The target is being recruited to work for them. We make the offer. If he accepts they take over.”
“Does the defense contractor know about our abilities?”
“Ha. They’d dissect us if they did. Read the file.”
The file had police reports on a man named Efraín, his last name one of many things redacted with thick black marker. What Gabriel could read was damning enough: assault, mutilation, extortion, murder. No defense contractor would hire this man.
An anonymous report in odd bureaucratic language detailed Efraín’s tactical thinking. Gangs employed desperate people as drug couriers and decoys, fatally risky for the couriers but each one insignificant to the gang. Efraín had a knack for it, with more decoys killed by rivals than couriers. Dates in the tactical analysis matched arrests without evidence.
Gabriel went back to Thorn. “Soldiers aren’t dope couriers. What is this?”
“When mass-production can be brought to bear,” Thorn said, “drone planes and self-driving cars will be commonplace.”
It took Gabriel a minute. “Because this guy treats people like expendable drones, he’s going to program expendable drones? Can I talk to Mr. Koenig now please?”
“Mr. Koenig is probably busy,” Thorn said. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“It’s raining.”
“We won’t melt.”
They said nothing through Security’s corridors, in the elevator down. Gabriel brought his umbrella but the rain had turned into cold. They walked north along busy sidewalks, close together in the diaphanous crowd. They stopped in a grim concrete plaza with a drained fountain.
“To begin, I’m sorry,” Thorn said. “I was not prepared for you. Luther Koenig is active and alert, but he’s seventy-six. I never expected to train a successor.”
“Thank you for saying,” Gabriel said. “But it’s not the issue. You said we would give people a second chance, not put thugs into military strategy.”
“This one is special,” Thorn said. “The important thing is to change people’s futures, not judge their pasts. Do you think Nate’s family feels justice was served in his case?”
Gabriel snorted. “I suppose not. Tell me how it works.”
“Tomorrow—”
“No. The woo-woo part. Koenig’s visions.”
Thorn shook his head. “Koenig dreams he sits in a wooden chair in a long hallway. ‘Like a schoolboy waiting to be disciplined,’ he told me once. Someone—he never sees a face—drops a note in his lap. A name, a place, date and time.”
“GPS coordinates?” Gabriel asked.
“No. But we get floor and room numbers. Koenig wakes and writes it down. It is always accurate. The named person is always there, then. We usually get a couple weeks’ notice, enough time to figure out who they are, though in some cases, such as yours, we’re not sure what it’s about. This one tomorrow came months in advance. But we know where he will be at 6:45 am tomorrow. It is certain.”
“He’ll probably be in bed.”
“It’s happened. Also, wherever it is, we can always get to. I once walked into the home of a counterfeiter. Big house, bolts and alarms. All doors were open for me.”
“Why don’t they call the police? Or shoot you?”
“They are—prepared, I guess you could say. In a way it’s stranger than Koenig’s visions. They have dreams too, just before we visit them. People sometimes mention them. They vary. Whatever that person needs to hear.”
Even after weeks waiting for it, Gabriel had a hard time with it. “You said ‘we.’ Have you done this with others?”
“I was trained by Koenig’s first assistant.” He smiled regretfully. “Since he retired, I’ve been alone, save for Del. Koenig’s had the dreams since he came to San Francisco in the late sixties. I’m well into my second decade. It is not easy work. Tomorrow we visit a drug dealer. A killer. We offer him a new life that will never thrill him like his current life. It will be dangerous and probably futile. But sometimes it’s not. We only get one shot. Are you in or out?”
“I’m in,” Gabriel said.
“All right,” Thorn said. “Pick you up at six tomorrow. Go back. I have things to do.”
Gabriel walked west. The fog made the street and the high-rise buildings look insubstantial, a stage set or a mirage. He slipped on the slick sidewalk and fell hard on his hip.
On the sidewalk was a round white sticker. LOVED BY GOD, in block lavender letters. Around the edge was a church name, an address in the Castro.
He bent down and peeled it off. LOVED BY GOD was good for an omen.
* * *
On Security’s virtual range, the virtual shots popped like bubble wrap. Gabriel’s arms burned from the authentic weight of the fake gun.
A camouflaged man with a machine gun appeared to his left. Gabriel’s first shot hit the top of the heart. His second went wild, hitting the left shoulder. “Sorry.”
“At least the first shot killed him,” Del said. The target became translucent, his shot pulsing green in the cartoon aorta. “Spread your feet. Helps your recovery before the second shot.”
“Give me a minute.” Gabriel put the gun on the shelf. “You know why I’m here?”
Del grinned. “The woo-woo? Basically. Yeah.”
“Nothing I’ve been doing involves the woo-woo.”
“It will. Meantime, we gotta do something with you.”
“How did you start working here?”
“Short version—I got banged up. As rehab I learned to type. Old school, manual typewriter. These hand problems people get now?” Del said. “Mushy computers. Nobody ever got carpal tunnel from a typewriter. When they discharged me I needed a job and I’m a little old to bodyguard. I started working for Ella Connors in Finance. We were a good team. She was tiny, and a paper pusher. When people saw me as her admin—”
“It changed the dynamic?”
“You and your phrases. Plus, it wasn’t hard for me to get clearances. That’s how I learned about programs like this one.”
“There are others? I don’t even know what this job is.”
“Some jobs are like that. Gabriel, you may like being a numbers guy but you’re tapped into something. You just gotta tame it.” Del made a grim face. “Sometimes Bill plays things too close to the chest, you ask me.”
“You think he won’t tell me things I need to know?”
“You make up your own mind. Break’s over.”
* * *
At six the next morning, a white limousine stopped in front of Gabriel’s house. The door opened. Smell of coffee and fake hazelnut, hot and sweet in the wet asphalt air. Inside, Thorn sat in a plain black suit. Across from him sat a young woman with gold-brown skin, in a navy suit, her brown hair in tight braids. Deep hollows in her cheeks.
“Yo, pimp daddy,” Gabriel said. “We’re going in this?”
“Just get in,” Thorn said.
Gabriel sat next to him. The woman closed the door. The window tinting made the interior dark. The limousine drove off.
“There’s another coffee if you like,” Thorn said. “We’re going to the Mission. It won’t take long. Traffic’s still light.”
Gabriel offered the woman his hand. “I’m Gabriel Archer.”
The woman studied his hand as if to look for weapons. She had an unappealing woodsy odor, moss and moist mushrooms.
“This is Keisha,” Thorn said. “She’s here to protect the car.” Thorn passed Gabriel a black cloth drawstring bag. “Empty your pockets.”
“The car should be fine,” Gabriel said to Thorn. “What about us?”
“We’ll be fine, or we won’t.” Thorn held up a large blue foil envelope, sealed on each end. “There may be a time I hand him this. It’s a test. If he takes it, time him. Count seconds. One-steamboat, two-steamboat, you know. We make the offer. We don’t enforce outcomes. We’re not dragging him out.”
“If he says yes?”
“Keisha takes him. We catch a cab home.”
“If he says no?”
“Keisha takes us home.”
“Assuming he doesn’t shoot us.”
Keisha gave Gabriel another hard look.
“Assuming that,” Thorn said.
After that no one spoke. Gabriel sipped coffee, until he worried he would have to pee.
In the silent dim gray, the facing benches seemed less car than train. He remembered long rides in Russia, bundled up in the cold cheap seats. The memory grew immediate, the start of a dream he shook off. The limousine had stopped.
Gabriel followed Thorn out to face a bluer brighter sky above a boarded-up building that stank of urine and rat. The rest of the street looked like anyplace: market, laundry, nail salon, carry-out Chinese, bank. As they walked Gabriel orientated himself. Van Ness behind them. The bar where he’d met Gita was only a few blocks away. Gita would find all this exciting.
Thorn led him to the nail salon. “It’s downstairs. All I know is we’ll get in.”
At the bottom of the stairs was a gray metal door, with a webcam stuck to the doorframe with duct tape. Thorn tried the doorknob. It was unlocked.
Inside, boxes and bright light and dust. Gabriel sneezed four times.
Ahead stood two men, one photographing the other. The model stood shirtless, muscular, his head and face shaven, in the hard white light of photographer’s lamps clipped to ceiling joists, a silver screen behind him. Black tattoos on his chest, his arms, his forehead, crude work by San Francisco standards. In one hand he held the skull of a longhorn bull, in the other a 9mm pistol, pointed at Gabriel.
“You should try allergy pills, vato,” the photographer said in a nasal voice. He wore a tank top shirt and jeans. He turned his back to them, showing a smaller gun tucked in the waistband. “Make yourselves at home. Wit’ you in a minute.”
Gabriel and Thorn sat on the floor. The shirtless man kept his gun on them. Behind him, a screen rotated webcam images: the door, the alley, two views of the limousine.
“You know,” the photographer said, “with the gun, muy cool.” He took a few rapid pictures, stepped back and squatted low to take more. He reviewed the camera’s display screen, frowned. “Maybe.” He turned to Thorn. “Like your ride, güero. Good for parties.”
“Thank you,” Thorn said. “Are you Efraín?”
Efraín whistled. “Está bien, Buenaventura. Baja el arma.”
The model frowned at Efraín.
“OK. Baja la calavera.”
The model put the skull on the floor. “Maldita policía,” he said.
“My friend thinks you’re cops,” Efraín said, putting down his camera.
“Somos consultores,” Gabriel said. “No tenemos armas.”
“Consul—” Efraín laughed, a short ugly bark. “These guys are bagmen, B.V. I don’t see no bag though.” He moved fast, putting his gun inches from Gabriel’s face. “You shouldn’t know about this place. Who told you?”
Gabriel smelled powder from the barrel, smelled oil and lead and steel. He was jealous. All his guns were toys.
“This is our bag,” Thorn said, holding up the envelope. “We’re offering you a job.”
Efraín stepped back. Gabriel looked away from the gun in quick glances. Unkempt black hair, sallow skin with red pimples on his face and upper arms. Wide narrow eyes. Tattoos poked past the edges of his shirt.
“Bagmen speaking college Spanish.” Efraín spat on the floor. He tucked the gun away. “Always nice to find work. Buenaventura.” Efraín passed the envelope to Buenaventura.
Buenaventura tore it open with his teeth. “Papeles,” he said. To Gabriel they stank of vinegar.
“It’s a test,” Thorn said. “The center is the goal, held by your enemy. The black lines are buildings, same on every page. Blue squares are enemy soldiers. The colored dots are ways of setting up your people. Each page is different. Some use five men, some seven. Which is best?”
Efraín sat on a stool and studied it, wary at first but increasingly absorbed. At eighty-five seconds by Gabriel’s count Efraín put down his camera. At one hundred forty seconds, he nodded his head, eyes vacant. At one hundred ninety he beamed. “Anaranjado. Orange. Seven men.”
Thorn nodded. “Orange is the best. Gabriel, how long?”
“Three minutes twelve seconds.”
Efraín rubbed the paper between his fingers, wrinkled his nose. He too noticed the smell. He let the papers fall to the floor. “That was fun. You got any more?”
“That’s urban combat strategy,” Thorn said. “Average time about twelve minutes. Less than half get it right. We have jobs that use your talents. Worth a lot of money and also not criminal. You’ll have a new life.”
Efraín put his fingertips to his eyes. “My sister Marisela came in a dream. All grown up, muy hermosa. Marisela got sick when she was nine and died. But this woman was Marisela. She read from a Bible. ‘Llegaron, pues, los dos ángeles á Sodoma á la caída de la tarde.’ So you angels, huh?” He held the gun at arm’s length, pointed at Thorn. “You fuck with my mind? How the fuck you make me dream my sister?” Efraín was dripping sweat now. Gabriel smelled anger, fear, some smoked stimulant.
“Is that a digital camera?” Gabriel asked.
Efraín looked as if he would spit on Gabriel. “What?”
“The camera. It’s nice. My brother took pictures. I have this one, big pink rhododendron with a bee in it. He used film though. He didn’t like digital.”
“He didn’t develop on the move,” Efraín said. “Digital’s the best ever.” He patted the camera. “Flowers, it’s hard not to make them look boring. Why’d he stop? You said ‘used.’”
“He died,” Gabriel said. “Drunk driver hit him.”
“Lo siento. So how you make me dream?”
“We don’t know about that,” Thorn said. “You want a job?”
“I’m listening.”
“New identity. The works. Citizenship, relocation somewhere upper-middle-class. Intensive training: engineering, avionics, programming. Tattoos removed.”
“You got dental? My teeth hurt a lot. Ha. You cabrones think I buy this bullshit?”
“I don’t care,” Thorn said. “We make the offer. At eight, our ride leaves. It never comes back. Either you are in it, or you’re not.”
“If I don’t let you leave?”
“The limo drives away,” Thorn said, “calling the cops as they go. They’ll give the cops everything they have. No deportation this time. Just a needle.”
“Maybe I tell the cops about your little test.” He picked up the papers. They dissolved into threads and vinegar smell. “What the fuck?”
“Spy paper,” Thorn said. “Light triggers an acid. Tell the cops it was a military intelligence exam. Say we drove a white limo and sent you dreams too.”
“Fuck you. You think I just go? Get in the car and disappear? Like witness protection?”
“Efraín,” Buenaventura said. “You do this. This is America. Only happens once. All we do, we just survive. You do this. Go away with them.”
Efraín looked ashamed. He shook his head. Not anger but fear. It was over.
Thorn and Gabriel stood. “We’ll leave now,” Thorn said.
“I’ll go,” Buenaventura said. “Take me. I’m a good soldier.”
“I’m sorry,” Thorn said. “My client can’t use you.”
“I can’t go?”
“You can’t go with us. Goodbye.”
In the sunlight Gabriel sneezed. When they approached, Keisha stepped out, gun in hand.
“He didn’t take the job?” she asked tartly.
Thorn shrugged. The limousine drove off. Keisha passed back their bags.
Thorn nodded to Gabriel. “Thanks for distracting him.”
“Glad I could help,” Gabriel said. “That test wasn’t real, was it?”
“I made it last night on my computer,” Thorn said.
“It’s all nonsense,” Keisha said.
Gabriel sneezed.
* * *
That afternoon Gabriel rode to unwind. He ended up in SoMa, near his old office. He rode around the familiar streets, dodging cars and running lights like a messenger. On the long uphill return, he gasped for breath through gritted teeth. On Filbert he crested the hill and fell sideways, barely catching himself. He walked the bike the rest of the way.
Denise wasn’t home. On the staircase landing sat a tall shelf of plants, watered recently. Gabriel smelled wet dirt and moist twigs. Smell of autumn. Smells had associations but often he didn’t know how they had been formed. Dirt autumn evening water leaves. Maybe it was instinct.
In the bathroom mirror he saw the gun, in his face while most people ate breakfast. It was said near-death made one appreciate life, but Gabriel had nothing to appreciate, just the butt of whatever joke remade his nose. He wanted to own himself.
He called Thorn. “I want a vacation. I want to taste whisky in Scotland.”
“You don’t drink.”
“I think it will help my nose.”
“Sure. Fine. Not next week. I’ll be away. After that. Set it up with Del.”
“I’d want to go for a week. I don’t quite have the leave.”
“We can square that. Are you OK? Do you want to talk?”
“I’m good,” Gabriel said. “See you tomorrow.”
Affordable flights were hard to find, with multiple stops and long layovers. Even the shortest would mean more than a day in transit each way. He played with departure dates, tried other airports. Oakland to Los Angeles, non-stop to Glasgow, late morning. Fourteen hours. Coach was sold out. Eight thousand for business class.
His sister had miles. Michelle Archer, eleven years Gabriel’s senior, traveled thirty weeks a year as an auditor for an engineering firm. The two had never been close and, since their brother’s death, they hardly spoke. Gabriel called her.
“You want my miles?” she asked.
“You said they expired faster than you could use them.”
“When did I say that?”
“Thanksgiving. Two years ago.”
“I don’t remember. Why are you going to Scotland?”
“I want to taste Scotch. They have distillery tours.”
“Scotch? Since when are you drinking? Have you talked to Mom about this?”
“Michelle, I never ask you for anything. Now I ask you for miles you can’t even use and you want me to talk to Mom?” His tantrum embarrassed him. “Sorry. I’ll hang up now.”
“Wait,” she said. “Gabriel, I’m sorry. Absolutely. Have my miles. Just e-mail me the flight info. It’s good to talk to you. You sure everything else is OK?”
“I changed jobs again,” he said. “Still with Empyrean. Rocky at first, but it’s all right.”