The Triggerman Dance

And later, sitting on his balcony after touching her scar, then looking away at the arid hillsides of Laguna Canyon, John Menden felt a true sense of honor at having touched her.

You shouldn't have done that, she says.

I'm sorry. I've wanted to touch you for a long time. Now you're here. I never imagined you here. It's throwing me a bit.

I've imagined me here. Too many times. Maybe that was a mistake, but I couldn't help myself. Everything starts there, in the imagination, don't you think?

No, it starts in the eyes, and then the imagination kidnaps it.

To where?

To the heart, I guess. Then the heart makes it real."—to forget, to start over." Weinstein's voice severed the reverie like a sword. "So you come here, to nowhere, looking for the next avenue out."

John looked at his dogs, asleep in the dirt beneath the trailer. Rebecca's face fades away. "You've boxed me neatly, Mr. Weinstein."

Sharon shifted uneasily in her plastic chair. "Mr. Menden," she asked, "have you thought over what we talked about last time?"

"Of course I have." In fact, he had thought about almost nothing else. He understood that he was being vetted and auditioned—for what he could only guess. With the words of Rebecca's letter still whispering in his mind, it was difficult to hear much else.

"What are your feelings?" Sharon asked.

"I want to know more," said John.

Joshua nodded and stood, setting his half-empty beer on the chair. "We can't bring the facts to you, so we'll bring you to the facts. Get the chopper ready again, Sharon."

John was ushered through a back entrance of the Orange County FBI office, Dumars on one side of him and Weinstein on the other. They went down a long hallway covered with a pale green industrial carpet, then turned right and passed down another corridor. No one passed them in either. The building was quiet. After hours, thought John—the Feds are home with their little Fedettes. Joshua unlocked a heavy wood-veneer door and let them in.

It was a small room, set up like a theater. Joshua flipped on the lights, bright overhead fluorescents that bathed the air in a chilly, efficient glow. A large television monitor sat on a stand near a wall, and ten feet in front of it were three seats.

"Sit," said Weinstein. "I'm about to show you some things that very few people have seen. Sharon has seen them and my supervisor here. Select people in Washington—two to be exact. All three others know what Sharon and I are doing, but I've managed to get almost a sole proprietorship of this operation. As sole as anyone gets in a bureaucracy like ours. I was lucky. The President cut loose federal funds as part of his crime package and Orange County got some of it. That's where the money comes from. Like any other organization, in the Bureau, everyone wants to know where the money is coming from. Right now, I've got a

clean supply. It isn't a lot, and it isn't inexhaustible, and it doesn't flow without scrutiny from Washington. But for now, it's mine. Who knows, Mr. Menden, maybe it will be ours. May I call you John?"

"Fine."

Weinstein smiled then, which John took to indicate a new bonhomie. Then, like a dead leaf, it fell away.

"I'm going to ask you to relax now, John, just sit back, look at the screen and listen to a story. I'll narrate. You'll have questions, I'm sure, but wait on them—if you can. Of course, if you're missing what you think is an urgent piece of information, just speak up." Again, Weinstein smiled. It looked like something rationed, by his soul perhaps, leaving him only so many to spend in a day. His teeth were small and even, but his lips parted around them only momentarily, and with reluctance. It gave John a small shudder. The larynx wrestled beneath his skin. And Weinstein's voice now, so, well. . . welcoming. It sounded to John like something calling out from the first rung of hell.

CHAPTER 6

A man's face appeared on the screen. The image was a still photograph, in color. He looked to be in his early fifties, with short silver-gray hair combed back, a heavily lined and sun-darkened face, a wide jaw that spoke of resolve, and gray, level eyes much the color of John's own. He was wearing a white knit shirt, unbuttoned. The overall impression he made on John Menden—the self-professed analyst of faces—was of bearing, competence, experience and intelligence.