"Jumper:Griffin _s Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Steven)

Chapter Ten

Turning the Corner I killed them." Alejandra had been crying for about a half hour, lying on my bed. I'd tried patting her back, but I couldn't keep still. I'd tried pacing, then I'd jumped away, to the makiwara in the Empty Quarter, and hit them, hit them, hit them until my knuckles split, bleeding, and the pain was finally enough to cut through the other pain.

I was sitting by the cave pool, soaking my hand in the icy cold water, when I said it.

Alejandra, lying on her side, staring into the dark corner of the cave, lifted her head. "What?"

"I killed Sam and Consuelo."

I'd told her the circumstances already-the INS and the helicopter and the phone calls. The way I'd found them.

A look of understanding came over her face and that was more painful than anything.

"I killed them like I killed my parents. Like I killed that policeman in San Diego." My voice was ragged; my breathing cut through the cave like a coarse-tooth saw. "Okay, I didn't hold the knives, but I might as well have."

I looked at her and away. "And I've probably killed you."

"Callete!" she said. "Stop it."

I took another ragged breath and held it. She got up and came over. "Hay caramba! What did you do to your hand?" She took it out of the water. The bleeding had slowed. "Did you hit someone? Mateo?"

"Mateo? Oh, Christ!"

I jumped.

Mateo wasn't on the island. It was a fairly short swim to the mainland, or he could've flagged down one of the dive boats and gotten a ride. I'd kicked him pretty hard, though, and his head did bang against the sidewalk.

So maybe he drowned in the strait.

I resented it either way, because I really wanted to hit someone.

When I appeared back in the Hole, Alejandra said, "Never do that again!" Her voice was strident and I flinched.

"Do what?"

She gestured sharply around. "You said there's no exit. What do I do when they kill you?"

"I'm sorry," I said, but that phrase was like a can opener. "I'm sorry! Oh, God, I'm so sorry!"

She put me on the bed and held me while the sobs wracked me over and over again. Sometimes she cried, too; eventually we slept.

She stayed with me five days. With me-I never left her in the Hole if I wasn't there, even if it was just fetching food from Phuket or the West End. We'd take turns with the solar shower in the jungle near Bahfa Chacacual, the other waiting down the hill (though I peeked once. Oh. My. I was uncomfortable for hours).

I'd sleep on my side, away from her, aware of her every motion.

On the sixth day, we shopped-Harrods in Knightsbridge- clothes and luggage. Back in the Hole we took the store tags off everything and packed them away in the two bags. I put fifty thousand dollars in the bottom of her main case without telling her. In London I'd already changed a thousand dollars to francs at Barclays.

"Don't flash it," I said.

"No, I'm not too stupid."

The corners of my mouth turned down and she laughed. " jSolo estaba bromeando!" She pulled me to her and kissed my forehead, without bending. "Ai."

We jumped to Rennes and waited for them but apparently it wasn't the sort of place they were monitoring. I started to buy the ticket for her but she stopped me. "Sweet, but I must do for myself now, eh?"

The clerk delighted in helping her with the transaction and came out of his booth to direct her to the right platform for the Paris express. I bought a southbound ticket for Saint-Nazaire on the Bay of Biscay.

I had this picture of me standing on the platform, watching her train pull away, but I wasn't paying enough attention when I purchased my ticket-mine left first. She walked me to my platform, held me for a moment, hard, as if to take an impression with her flesh, an indented memory. Then she kissed me, on the mouth, a grown-up kiss that brought the blood rushing.

"Be careful-sois prudent!" And then she was walking away, her shoulder bag slung, her large suitcase trailing behind on its wheels.

I rode the train as far south as Redon and jumped away, from the space between the cars.

The papers said the helicopter was abandoned in Mexico, just over the border near Highway 2, the route to Tijuana.

There were no cars reported hijacked but there was also no sign of the fugitives.

Apparently the police theory was drugs. Drug smugglers killed the INS agents and Sam Coulton and Consuelo Mon-Jarraz y Romera. And they fled back into Mexico.

Sam's funeral was in El Centra, Consuelo's in La Crucecita. I didn't go to either. What could result but more death?

And not the right victims.

I tried to jump to Phuket, not my usual place out on Ko Bon island, but an alley near the market in Chalong, but I couldn't recall it well enough.

I jumped my dinghy to the island instead and sailed over, and, when I got there, I spent fifteen minutes sketching the spot.

My plywood wall of sketches began having another purpose. If I wanted to return regularly to a place, I'd record it. Maybe photographs would've worked but when you sketch a place, you really look at it.

And I tried to sketch Mum. Then Dad.

Couldn't.

It wasn't memory-their faces were as clear as the day they-well, they were clear. But I couldn't see through the tears and my hands shook. It's hard to draw when your hands want to make fists.

It was the same with Sam and Consuelo, though I managed a head and shoulders portrait of Alejandra.

I tried another drawing of Mateo, as I'd last seen him, half in the water, half out, on the beach at Isla la Montosa. That I managed with some degree of accuracy.

I knew it was accurate-I had his driver's license. I also had his bag, which had held a gun-an odd gun.

I'd fired it in the desert, at a limestone outcropping, and it put two spikes into the stone with a cable taut between them. When I touched the cable it shocked the shit out of me, numbing my entire arm.

There were five more cartridges in the bag, all identical. The gun folded open at the breech, like an old-fashioned shotgun. I fired one more and it, too, shot out cable and two spikes. I didn't touch it this time. I put the bag back in my Hole.

I tried to relax, to do nothing, but when I did, I found myself wandering down to the end of the cave and turning on the flood that lit my villains' gallery. There were only four sketches. I thought there should be more.

I knew they were in London -they'd tried for me twice there, so I figured that was the place for the experiment. I bought two cheap video cameras and placed them on tree limbs in the corner of Hyde Park near the Tube station. I started them recording, walked out in the middle of the green, and jumped home to the Hole.

I returned in five minutes and left again. At ten minutes I returned, and stayed.

There were two of them, you could tell, their car came to a screeching halt in the bus lane on Kensington Road. They spread out, one coming up the main path from Queen Elizabeth's Gate and the other one cut around west, past the Boy and Dophin Fountain. They hadn't spotted me yet-I was standing next to the Rose Garden-and so it wasn't that obvious when I jumped.

I waited until they'd passed my cameras, then jumped away, west up the park toward Knightsbridge Station. They should've felt it, I hoped.

I walked across the street and into the station. After five minutes, a westbound train came through and I stepped aboard but got off, next stop, back at Hyde Park.

I strolled back casually, my eyes open for the two guys in green overcoats, but I didn't see them. I picked up the cameras and then jumped away, from the same spot I'd used before, by the Rose Garden.

One of them was blond with a receding hairline and a bald spot in back. He had almost no eyebrows and he looked familiar, but only vaguely, and I thought that perhaps he was the one who had attacked me on the stairs at the Elephant and Castle Tube stop.

I froze them on the little television screen at various points and sketched them.

His companion shaved his head, but he had dark stubble and bushy dark eyebrows and ran to fat-kind of jowly. Either of them could've been the one who'd tried at Embankment Station, when they'd snagged the two women instead-didn't see them that time. They both were Sensitives. They'd snapped their heads around the minute I'd jumped. You could see it on the tape clearly.

Must be a thankless job when your quarry can just jump away in an instant.

Then I remembered the circumstances of my first encounter. Maybe it's not so hard, when your quarry is an inexperienced child. Maybe they didn't have to hunt adult jumpers. Maybe the spent their time killing nine-year-olds instead. Or younger.

Now that would make it easier.

I had no sympathy.

I was irritated with the London police and with myself a bit, too. I should've stayed longer-as it was, the tape showed that when I jumped, the two guys had dashed back to their car to speed up Kensington after me. Not only did they not get towed or clamped, they didn't even get a ticket.

Their sketches went up on the board as London Blond and London Baldy, along with Post-its for the city and notes about where I'd seen them.

It was weird, but after I'd done this, I was able to draw a brief sketch of 5 a.m., leaning forward, like he did on the edge of his living room couch.

Huh.

I wanted to see Alejandra, very much, but I'd insisted she just disappear, on her own, so I wouldn't know. So I couldn't betray her accidentally. Hopefully she'd discovered that she had enough money to buy a new identity-that was my hope.

I'd warned her about using her own passport-told her what happened to me in Portsmouth. She said she understood. She said not to worry. I pulled out the big gun. I told her, "Consuelo would be very angry with you if you were to come to harm."

I took a train south from Rennes, first to Bayonne, then on to Hendaye, across the Rio Bidasoa from Spanish Hondarribia. I skipped the border, using my binoculars to see across the river, then jumping to a walkway on the far bank.

Bienvenido a Espana.

The locals wouldn't mind my travel-they considered both sides Basque-but they probably would disagree with the "Welcome to Spain." I sat in the old quarter and sketched the wall and the castle. When the place had seeped into my bones, I walked to the train station and purchased a ticket for Madrid for the next day.

I jumped to the Hole from one of the narrow alleys.

I was exhausted but I couldn't sleep. I was thinking about Alejandra. After tossing and turning, I got up and took a fresh sketchbook over to the table, turned the lights on, and drew her.

I drew her nude, as I'd seen her under the shower in the jungle above Bahia Chacacual. I sketched for two hours. The memory was better than the sketch, but it was still the best drawing I'd ever done.

Then I was able to sleep.

The next day I talked a lot, on the train, finding interesting variations in the accent and once getting in trouble when using taco, which apparently means "swear word" in Spain. So much for lunch.

Because of a service problem on a train in front of us, it took six hours to get to Madrid. When I looked at the map, it surprised me that it took only that long, but going back to the scale, I realized Spain was smaller than the state of Texas.

I was still exhausted, though, from the travel and the talking and the pretending to smile-that was the most tiring. I jumped away as soon as I'd made a quick sketch of the platform itself, with the city skyline prominent.

To whom it may concern:

My name is Griffin O'Conner. I am the child of Robert and Hannah O'Conner, murdered on October 3rd,19____________________ , in San Diego, Ca.

The accompanying sketch is of one of the three men (and one woman) involved in their murder. He was also seen in La Crucecita, Oaxca, Mexico, on November 13th, 19____________________ , and near the Russell Square tube stop in London, England, March 3rd, 200-. On March 16th, 200-, he was involved with the murder of Sam Coulton and Consuelo Mon-Jarraz y Romera and six INS agents in south-central San Diego County, California. His name is "Kemp" and he has a pronounced English (Bristol area) accent.

Sincerely,

Griffin O'Conner

March 29th, 200-

CC:

San Diego police department

FBI, San Diego field office

San Diego County Sheriff's Dept.

New Scotland Yard I reduced the sketch to half a page-I'd drawn a full-face and profile view to go with it-and put a nice inky thumbprint beside my signature, so they'd be able to prove it was really me.

I made five copies, four to send, one to put up on the board, and posted the three in San Diego, at the downtown post office on Horton Plaza, and the other in a post box outside the Epping Tube station, the very last stop on the Central line.

I went back to Mont-Saint-Michel at sunrise, jumping to the causeway, then sat and waited. If they were watching Cousin Harold they might feel me arrive; I doubted they were. But if they had stationed someone here, well then, they'd probably be along directly.

I just wanted to know.

I wasn't tired-I'd been shifting my operating time more to Greenwich zero. When you wake up in a sealed cave, it doesn't matter what the local sunlight is doing. I did tend to use the Kinko's in San Diego a lot but that didn't really matter, most of them were open twenty-four hours a day.

When no one arrived desperately looking for a jumper, I walked the rest of the way across the causeway to the island.

The tourist buses hadn't started arriving yet and the ones staying locally were still snug in their beds.

I received an odd look or two from the few locals who were out, but they responded with nods or smiles to my unsmiling "bonjour." I wanted something hot to drink, coffee preferably, but the tourist cafes weren't open yet so I found a nook and jumped to San Diego, and bought a muffin and a very large latte from a Starbucks that was about to close, then went back.

The shadows of the low morning sun threw the stonework of the spire into sharp relief and I used that, sketching the tower and the spire above from the courtyard outside the abbey. I stood up to stretch when a voice said in badly accented French, "No! Retorner, si vous plait." Then, immediately, in American English, "Where did you get Starbucks?"

I turned. A redheaded teenaged girl in an enormous black coat sat cross-legged on the stones about ten feet back near the entrance of the courtyard, a large-format sketchbook propped in her lap. The coat was tucked under her rear and legs, and she wore fingerless gloves and black-rimmed glasses, comme Elvis Costello. She was older than me, but still a student, I suspected. She hadn't settled into her body yet-not the way Alejandra had.

"Why shouldn't I move?" I asked her, ignoring the question about the coffee.

"You were part of the scene. I mean, I wasn't going to include you but then you didn't move for the last twenty minutes so I decided I should include you and I really like the way I got your hair and the drape of your coat so you really need to sit back down." She said this very emphatically, with a rush at the end and a stab of her forefinger at the bench where I'd sat.

I raised my eyebrows and she added with a suddenly nervous smile, "Please."

"Very well, a votre service, mademoiselle." I sat back and took up the sketchpad again. "How's that?"

"Turn a little more to your left-that's it. Are you done sketching? I mean, you can go on sketching but I'm drawing you as you were looking up at the spire, the sketchpad in your lap, right?"

"I'll just look up, then-I'm done with the sketch." I could've worked on it more, but the shadows were vanishing as the sun rose higher, and part of drawing is learning when to leave off.

I was a little angry with myself. I'd been sketching for two hours, at least, and though I'd been vaguely aware of people coming and going, I hadn't been paying attention. What if it had been Kemp?

Well, it wasn't. I drank from the now cold latte but returned to the pose.

"You never said where you got the Starbucks," she said. "I thought they weren't in France."

I knew they'd been in London for a year or two but really didn't know about France." "Don't know. I got this one in San Diego." I started to look around to see how she'd take that but she stopped me.

"Be still-I'm working on your ears. You're from the States? You sound like a Brit. Long way to bring a paper cup. Why bother?"

"My parents moved around," I said, answering the first question. I decided right then to get a travel mug, to avoid this problem in the future.

"You have very distinctive ears," she said.

I blushed. "They stick out like the handles on a sugar bowl."

The girl laughed. "That's… sweet."

"Ha. Very funny."

"Couldn't tell it by you. Well-I'm done. I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

I raised my eyebrows again and she blushed.

"Sketches!"

We sat on the bench. My first impression of her coat was correct-it brushed the top of her shoes and the sleeves were rolled back once so as not to swallow her hands-a man's coat, large.

I handed her my sketchbook, open to the morning's work. She seemed surprised, then pushed hers toward me. I guess she'd meant it when she said "show," not "handle."

She was working with charcoal pencils and a kneaded eraser on nice coarse paper. More impressionistic than a study, but she was right-with just a few strokes she'd captured the way my hair was sticking up in back and the way my anorak folded as the hem rested on the bench. The tower with its spire and the courtyard walls rose nicely, too; the proportions were good and the shading of the morning light hitting the upper spire was very nice.

Looking at mine she said, "How many days have you been working on this?"

"Just this morning." I looked over at it. Mine was much more of a study, more detailed, more photorealistic, less heart. "I was here at sunrise."

She pointed at the stepped arches in the lower tower and the crenellations where the slate roof tiles met the granite. "It's illustration quality-I mean, I'd wouldn't be surprised at all to find it in an architecture magazine or The New Yorker."

My ears-those large sugar-bowl-handle ears-burned. "Yes, but it took me two and a half hours."

"This is the sort of thing that takes some people days. What's your name? I want to be able to say I met you back in the day."

"Ah, well, Griffin. That's my name."

"Griffin?" She held out her hand, palm up, as if coaxing a timid animal out of a cave.

" Griffin O'Conner." Hell, I said it. It's not as if she'd be asking Interpol about me, right?

She extended the hand farther, taking mine. "Nice-tameetcha! E. V Kelson, As in Elaine Vera Kelson, but if you want me to answer, call me E.V., okay?" She gave my hand a firm shake, then dropped it. "So, where are you staying? We're at the Auberge SaintPierre."

She hadn't given me back my sketchbook and was now holding it up at arm's length, comparing it with the spire itself.

"I was staying with a friend's cousin in Pontorson, but I'm leaving today." Both literal truths. Ultimately a lie.

"Oh? Me, too. We did Paris, now five days in London. What about you?"

"I'll be going back home. Uh, who is 'we'?" She looked at me blankly and I clarified, "The 'we' who're staying at the Auberge-Pierre."

"Ah, the French Club. Trenton Central High School, New Jersey. There's eight girls, two boys, our teacher, and four parent chaperones."

"Ah. And do they know where you are?"

She glanced sideways at me. "Why? You planning on kidnapping me?"

I tilted my head to one side as if I were considering it, then shook my head regretfully. "I've got a bag job at noon, and two snatch-and-grabs for two-thirty. I couldn't possibly fit you in. But there's always coffee. If that would be all right with your chaperones."

"Well, yes, sort of, they know where I am-that is, on the Mont, sketching. I'm supposed to meet them back by eleven for checkout." She looked at her watch. "In two hours. If I don't get lost." She stood up promptly. "Coffee. I know where they'll serve cafe au lait and croissants. Found it by accident-then we can walk a bit, I'm stiff from sitting."

She took one last look at my sketch, and we exchanged books.

E.V. hated New Jersey, having moved there the previous summer from upstate New York. Her father was a chemical engineer, her mother a middle school art teacher whose jobs were always iffy as art funding was always the first thing cut. E.V.'s older brother, Patrick, was a freshman at Princeton and she had a large dog of indeterminate breed named Booger. She wanted to go to the School of Visual Arts in New York City when she graduated in two years. Her current boyfriend had asked her not to go on this trip simply because he needed her to go to a party and he was now her ex-boyfriend. "Though, to tell the truth, he was on the way out before that. He thought my cartoons were cute and he wanted me to draw him in the nude."

I learned all this in the ten minutes before we got to the cafe. Over coffee she wheedled out the fact that I was traveling alone and that my parents were dead.

"Oh." Her mouth opened and closed as if she was trying to find something appropriate to say.

I held up one hand. "Miss them terribly. It's been six-Oh. It's been seven years. Rather not talk about it if you don't mind. Tell me what you saw in Paris. Better yet," I tapped her sketchbook, "show me."

That worked. As I had the same sketchbook I'd had in Paris myself, we were even able to compare sketches of the same subjects.

I touched a picture of the Seine running under the Pont Neuf and said, "I love the way you did the water here near the lie de la Cite. It's alive-mine is more like asphalt than water."

"So, how often do you draw water?"

"Not often-it looks too much like asphalt."

"Practice. That's all. Make the next ten drawings you do be of water and I'll bet you catch the trick of it. Pinky deal," she said, holding out her little finger.

"Pinky deal? What do you mean?"

"You shake pinkies to seal the deal."

"How can it be a deal? What are you going to do? For your part?"

She looked at me, surprised. "Oh. I guess that's fair. But I'm telling you what to do. You should make the matching condition."

I thought about it. "Okay-I draw ten pictures of water and you let me draw you in London. Sunday."

"You'll be in London?"

"I can be."

"Draw me how?" she said, her eyes narrowing, and I realized she was thinking about her ex-boyfriend.

"Fully clothed, in public, but you'll have to lose the coat. Outside, say, in a park."

"We're staying at the Best Western Swiss Cottage but I have no idea where that is."

"Probably near the Swiss Cottage Tube stop-it's a neighborhood up Camden way. That's close to Regent's Park. I'll check in with you Saturday afternoon."

"O-kay. I think we have theater tickets so don't leave it too late," she said. She took off one fingerless glove and extended her pinky, hooked it around mine, and shook it up and down firmly. She let go and said, "Now you go boom."

"What?"

"Make a fist."

I did and she crashed hers into mine and said, "Boom."

"You're insane."

She nodded emphatically. "Yes."

Phuket has amazing water, stunning shades of blue and green both still and active. I did my first sketches on Ko Bon island, moving around from the leeward side to the more active waves. I worked in Prismatic colored pencils. I rarely used color but I couldn't stand the thought of trying that transition from deeper water to shallow sand bottom with graphite alone.

Next, I tried the Thames, but it's boring in the city-row after row of apartments with water views. I went back to Oxford and dodged tourists until I found a nice spot near Magdalen Bridge where I sketched people punting through the round archways.

I thought of going back to Oaxaca but it was too painful so I spent some time at Children's Pool Beach in La Jolla drawing sea lions coming onto the sand or the waves pounding against the other side of the sheltering breakwater.

It was a gray day, overcast, and the ocean was like that, too. Graphite pencil felt right for this water. Monochrome.

Just before I left, I went to a public phone and called the San Diego FBI Field Office.

"I'd like to speak with whoever is handling the March sixteenth murder of the six INS agents."

The woman who answered the phone said, "And your name?"

" Griffin O'Conner. I sent some information last week. By mail."

"Ah. One moment, please."

I got hold music for about twenty seconds. I was going to hang up when a man came on the line. The background noise was different. "Hello? Griffin O'Conner?"

"Yes."

"Ah, good. I'm Special Agent Proctor. Give me a moment-they patched you through to my cell phone and I don't want to crash."

The background noise lessened. "There, I'm on the shoulder. Where are you?"

"Surely your office already told you the phone number and location."

Proctor was silent for a few seconds and then he chuckled. "Well, yes, they did. I got your letter. Very interesting reading."

"Has it produced any results?"

"Maybe. A lot of questions, for one thing. What makes you think this Kemp character was involved in the murders at Sam Coulton's ranch?"

I thought about what to tell and what not to. The truth, I decided, or most of it. The only people the truth would hurt were already dead.

Or people I wished were dead.

"Kemp talked to me from there. By phone. He told me to come there or he'd kill Sam and Consuelo. I was afraid, so I called the INS and the sheriff. And yes," I added stridently, "I lied to the INS about there being a bunch of illegals there, but I thought the more people, the less chance of anyone getting-" I took a deep breath. "I lied."

"And this Kemp was there when your parents were killed?"

"Definitely."

"What's the common thread here, Griffin? What does Kemp want?"

"Me. I'm the common thread. Kemp wants me-he wants me dead."

"Why? He could've killed you at your parents', right?"

"He tried. I got away. I've got the scars."

"Again, why? What's the motive?"

I shook my head. I still didn't know-it had to have something to do with the jumping. "I don't really know why." A partial truth.

Proctor continued, "And where do Sam and Consuelo come in? Were they friends of your family? 'Cause I'm not finding any record of that."

"No. They found me in the desert after I got away. I was a mess and they took care of me until I was better. Later, I went and stayed with Consuelo's niece in Mexico, in the state of Oaxaca. Her house was blown up two weeks ago." I paused. "You knew that, right?"

Proctor exhaled. "Yeah. That I know. It was too close to the murders, the niece's home and all that. No bodies found."

"They missed. It was close."

"Were you there? There weren't any calls from Mexico that day, to the ranch."

"Ah, phone records. Mine would be the call from the pay phone in El Centra." I told him a half-truth. "Alejandra was almost killed in the explosion."

"That's the niece?"

"Yes. Alejandra Losada."

"Where is she now?"

"In hiding." I hoped. I frowned. "You haven't once asked me to come talk to you! You sent people, didn't you?"

Proctor paused, then said, "It's for your protec-"

I hung up. Out on Coast Boulevard, two black-and-white SDPD cars had stopped behind all the parked cars and four officers were getting out.

I went down the stairs past the seal observation deck, moving briskly, dodging the tourists, and headed out onto the breakwater. It was windy and cold and there were only a few people braving the sea spray that regularly shot through the railing.

The police followed slowly. It was a dead end, after all.

I reached the end, put one hand on the rail, and launched myself over. It was rocks and surf perhaps twelve feet below and I heard someone shout from behind, and then I was trembling in the Hole.

The Best Western Swiss Cottage was, oddly enough, by the Swiss Cottage Station on the Jubilee line, only a mile northwest of the zoo.

I caught E.V. in the half hour before her group was to go to dinner and a restaging of Candide. I called her from the house phone in the lobby.

"So, it's a pinky deal promise, right? Are we on?"

" Griffin? Ha! I told them we had a date and they said you were just putting me on. Did you keep your end of the deal?"

"You decide. I left you a packet at the front desk before I rang you up."

She gasped. "Are you here? At the hotel?"

"For a minute. I'm off to have Pakistani food in the West End. Ten o'clock all right?"

"Yes, but I've got to bring a chaperone." She said it like it was a mortal illness, like I've got leukemia.

Well, that's sensible. You can't expect them to let you go off with random strangers. I mean, what do they tell your parents? 'Let her go off with a strange boy and she didn't come back. Terribly sorry.'"

She laughed. "I could come down-we're on the third, no, second floor, right? Ground, first, second?"

"Shouldn't you be getting ready for dinner?"

"Well, wait for me. They made us all dress up and somebody should see it. It's very rare for me. My mom bought this dress specifically for the trip."

I smiled. "All right, then. I'll wait down here."

The entire group, all fifteen of them, spilled down the stairs and the lifts. E.V. was wearing her gigantic black coat but unbuttoned and she spread it wide to show me a black velvet square-necked gown that more or less molded itself to her. I had to listen to a bunch of introductions while trying very hard not to stare at E.V.'s body. She was more, uh, mature than I'd realized, under that black coat. She still wore her glasses but her short red hair had been moussed into spikes.

I was polite to the adults and complimented the women, young and old, on their dresses. At the last minute, E.V.'s teacher, Madame Breskin, said, "We have a dinner reservation for fifteen but I wouldn't be surprised at all if they could squeeze you in, too."

"That's very kind," I said, "but I'm not really dressed for it. Perhaps another time." I offered my hand to E.V. "Take a look at the sketches. I expect a scathing critique tomorrow. Ten o'clock, in the lobby?"

She smiled and I could see her about to say something, but then her eyes darted sideways at the girls around her, and she just nodded firmly.

It was still business hours in San Diego and I decided to give Proctor another try, this time from a bank of pay phones inside Horton Plaza Mall.

"Please give me Agent Proctor's mobile phone number," I said, when the receptionist answered the phone. The woman said, "He's in the office this morning, may I connect you?"

"All right."

Proctor answered on the third ring.

"Last time I answered your questions. Now it's your turn."

" Griffin? Are you all right? They swore you must've drowned!"

I ignored that. "Did you find any trace of Kemp?"

"Maybe." Proctor paused. "What if you're working with him?"

"Give me an effing break. Who gave you him in the first place?"

"We don't disclose the details of our investigations."

"Goodbye, then."

"No, wait!"

"Give me a reason."

"We can protect you."

"That scares me more than you can imagine. Give me a real reason. Has my sketch helped?"

"I told you-"

I hung up and walked away from the bank of phones, went over to the food court and bought a gyro sandwich, then jumped away from the antechamber outside the restrooms.

I did laundry, in anticipation, washed extra hard, thick coat of deodorant, and brushed my teeth thoroughly. Twice. She called it a date!

I took some deep breaths and told myself to calm down. It's not as if you'll be alone.

And we started out with the entire group, walking to Regent's Park, but it turned out that the majority were going to the zoo and only Madame Breskin would be tagging along with us, "if you don't walk too fast. Two weeks of touring and my feet are swelling." She tapped a book under her opposite arm. "Sitting is my goal."

When we hit the park, the rest of the group went west on the Outer Circle, headed for the zoo. We meandered down through the middle and ended up on the edge of the lake, with early rowers and the ducks, a bench for Madame Breskin, and us on the green, closer to the water.

The critique was thorough but not scathing, with examples given on the spot, in pencil, using the boating lake and the reflections of the trees.

She liked my work, though. "Didn't expect you to work from memory so much. It's really cool that you've been all these places and you remember them so well."

What could I say? After an awkward pause I tapped the Oxford drawings. "I was drawing this in the flesh. No memory involved."

"Well, I really love these pencils you did of the Bahamas."

"Uh, no-that's Thailand, near Phuket. Guess they are a bit similar, but I've never been to the Bahamas. But in Dr. No and Thunderball I guess it's similar."

"Well, are you going to sketch me?"

"Yes." I moved around a bit, considering her against the available backgrounds. "Here." I settled down and took my sketchbook back. "With the gold dome of the mosque in the distance. Why don't you sit on your coat?"

The day had started out gray, with wet pavements, and I'd been afraid it would rain, but the sun and the Londoners now flooded the park. She shrugged the coat off her shoulders, revealing a tight green sweater with three-quarter sleeves and a plunging neckline. I felt my cheeks heat up.

And told myself not to stare. Well, not particularly.

"Comfortable?"

She folded her legs and leaned to the side, propped up by one elbow. "I'm set."

Madame Breskin checked on us once, saw that the work was still in progress, and went off to fetch hot chocolate from the concessionaires. The clouds were coming back again when E.V. said, "Now I'm getting cold. Since you're not drinking it, can I have some of your hot chocolate?"

I looked down, surprised. I hadn't touched it. I handed it to her. "I'm sorry, it's stone cold." I closed the sketchbook and started to stand, to help her rise, but my leg was asleep from the hip down and I fell over. As the blood started back in, I nearly screamed.

She appeared over me, alarmed. "You okay?"

"Leg's asleep," I said through clenched teeth. "Why don't you toddle off and suggest luncheon to votre professeur, bien?"

By the time she returned with Madame Breskin, I was on my feet, limping around in a circle.

The three of us went to a little Indian place in Marylebone, though I had to promise Madame Breskin that we'd return to the hotel via taxi. In a booth, she and E.V. made me show them the drawing. I winced inwardly and pushed it over, watching their heads bend together as they looked.

"Oh," said E.V. One hand reached to the neckline of her sweater and tugged it up higher. "You…flatterer."

"My," said Madame Breskin. "I thought you were taking your time but you accomplished a great deal more than I expected."

Almost convulsively, E.V. said, "Look what he's done, though. I never looked like that. This girl is… sensual." She covered her mouth and darted her eyes sideways at her teacher.

Madame Breskin tilted her head. "Yes, I suppose. We all are, at times. If anything he's been more objective than idealistic. Sometimes we don't see what others… voir d'un coup d'ceil."

"Madame?" said E.V, preoccupied, still staring at the drawing.

Madame Breskin was regarding me and I translated, "See at a glance."

E.V. looked confused but the waiter came just then and I was relieved and E.V. was clearly relieved and Madame Breskin was clearly amused.

Later, in the lobby of the hotel, E.V. asked quietly, "I'd like a copy, if you could Xerox it."

"You can have it, when I'm done. I've just started on the background. I'm not satisfied at all with the light on the mosque and the ducks, and the water-that goes without saying."

She panicked. "We're leaving in the morning! You won't have time."

"I meant, when you get back. To Trenton." I folded back the cover of the sketchbook and pointed at the blank cardboard. "Your address and phone number." I put a drawing pencil in her hand. "Please?"

"Oh. Mail." She wrote the lines neatly, elegantly. "Of course."

I shrugged.

She said, "And your address?"

"Post is… difficult where I live and I'm not on the phone. But I'll be in touch."

Madame Breskin was giving us some space. She sat in an elegant lion-footed chair by the lifts and pretended to look at her book.

I tucked the sketchbook under my arm and held out my hand. "Bon voyage, Mademoiselle Kelson."

She took my hand and said, "A handshake? Screw that." She pulled and I stepped closer. The sweater was as soft as I'd drawn it, but the lips were, if anything, softer.

"Oh!" she said. "You can smile."

I had to pick up the sketchbook, after, and the doorman steered me gently out onto the wet pavement past the door frame after I'd collided with it once.

It was raining, cold and nasty, but I didn't really care.