The current address she had for Claudia Donovan was in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in Queens. Myka would have guessed something artier or more industrial, but maybe Claudia's place was in some rundown spot that so far had eluded a developer's touch. She was all the more surprised when she pulled next to the curb fronting a rare single family home, one moreover that had been recently resided and had a carefully tended border of plants lining the walk from the street up to a front porch. That Claudia's grandmother lived here, Myka wouldn't have difficulty believing, but that a 20-something ex- (or not so ex-) hacker with a criminal pedigree regularly mowed the lawn and weeded the flower beds, that was harder to square with what she knew of Claudia. She had decided she would have a better chance of talking to her if she didn't call ahead and try to arrange a time, but she hadn't expected to be in full view as walked up to the door. Frankly, she had been expecting a few boarded-over windows and burned-out light bulbs in the hallway.
It was getting dark but not so dark that Claudia couldn't make out Agent Fuckface. Myka sighed as she knocked on the door. No lights were shining from the windows, but this house, although single family, was built like its multi-family neighbors, long and narrow. The kitchen was probably at the back as well as the bedrooms. If no one came to the front door, she would head to the back. Claudia wouldn't be above claiming that she was being harassed, but there was the little matter of the monitor-buster . . . . Myka infused her knocking with some righteous indignation.
Todd opened the door. Cautiously. "I thought I saw you coming up the walk," he said unhappily. "She's been good, really she has. She's been concentrating on building her consulting business. She hasn't had time to get into trouble." He had opened the door just wide enough that one-half of his face showed, and he began to inch the door closed, the slim rectangle of half-jaw, single cheekbone, and eye diminishing like a crescent moon behind a cloud.
Myka stuck her foot between the door and the frame. She wore sturdy – but not completely unfashionable - boots for precisely that purpose. "I don't think you want to do that," she said conversationally.
"Who is it?" Claudia called.
Myka leaned into the doorway and practically shouted over Todd's t-shirt-clad shoulder, "Myka Bering."
There was silence, broken only by the creak of floorboards as Claudia reluctantly came into view. From the little Myka could see, Claudia and Todd were standing in a foyer, which probably served to separate the living room and dining room. Straight ahead would be the stairs to the second floor and the bedrooms. The rooms, including the bedrooms, would be cramped, the one full bathroom only functional, but when she was a kid she would have given up every book she owned for a house like this. Maybe not every book but damn close. She would have had her own bedroom, a shoebox in size but hers. She wedged her foot farther into the crack. Now a house like this didn't seem big enough for the family that Helena kept saying that they would someday have. Todd was probably thinking she was counting down to when she would draw her gun and just kick the door in when what she was really doing was deciding the house was too small for her and Helena's future children.
He didn't need to know that, however. "Don't make me invite myself in, Todd."
He actually gulped and stood back, and she had to suppress the impulse to pat his shoulder and tell him it would all be okay. She had been met at the door by other skinny, scruffily bearded boyfriends in t-shirts that should have been tossed in the hamper days ago and been glad she had back-up. The only danger here would come from Claudia. But there were no snarls, no "Agent Fuckface," only a tired "I should let Todd throw you out."
Myka didn't try to disguise the dismissal in her side glance at Todd. "Unfortunately I'd have to hurt him if he tried it."
"As long as you left his dick in one piece."
"Can't guarantee it." Todd shifted uncomfortably, as if he were trying to move tender parts out of range. She closed the door. Todd was managing to shift and shuffle his way to a position behind Claudia, who wasn't conceding any ground to Myka. She wore an outsize Giants jersey over jeans . . . and bunny slippers. Her scowl dared Myka to let her glance linger on the slippers.
"Mrs. F. said you'd probably be calling or stopping by, but that gives you only ten minutes before I throw you out."
Myka gave her a skeptical look, under which Claudia both blushed and managed to look defiant at the same time. Spinning on her heel, she led Myka into a dining room that should have had keyboard towers and monitor graveyards covering the table and floor. Instead the only thing covering the table was a crocheted runner. In the middle of it were two candlestick holders lacking candles and a partially wilted floral centerpiece. Claudia stiffly, ungraciously pointed her to a chair. "Take a seat." After disgustedly issuing a stream of air at the ceiling, appalled at the demands simple hospitality was making upon her, she asked, "Do you want something to drink?"
"As long as you're willing to take a sip from it first, I'd appreciate a glass of water," Myka said.
Claudia stretched her lips in a sarcastic slash of a smile while Todd slouched into the kitchen, which, in this funhouse version of what Myka had anticipated Claudia's home would be like, was a scaled-down version of a suburban kitchen make-over – white cabinets, quartz countertops, stainless steel appliances, and large gas range. On one of those quartz countertops was a glass bowl with a large ball of dough, a dishtowel laid over the top of it to keep the dough moist. Bread, this half-reformed hacker baked bread. Then Myka spotted the can of tomato sauce. No, Claudia made her own pizzas, which was hardly less startling.
Todd carefully filled a glass at the refrigerator's water dispenser, setting it on the counter. He opened one of the refrigerator's doors and fished a shelf until he found a bottle of beer. He no sooner lifted it out than he put it back in favor of a bottle of cranberry juice. After depositing the juice in front of Claudia and the water in front of Myka, he scuffled out of the dining room, stopping only when Claudia shouted after him, "You didn't happen to spit in her glass, did you?"
He wagged his head in exasperation then continued scuffling toward the stairs. As the stairs creaked under his weight, Myka said, "Spit in my glass? Are you a badass or are you five, Claudia? It's hard to take your act seriously when your decorating style is Iowa Grandma. The sooner you start listening to what I have to say, the sooner I'll leave."
Freezing her eyes midway through their roll of annoyance, Claudia stared at her bottle of juice and picked at the label. "I know the Winslows have stepped up their efforts to take Christina. I was visiting the elf the other day and Jemma told me about it. Then Mrs. F. starts talking to me about the boxes of papers she still has from when Mr. F. had his law office." Derisively she asked, "Do you really think some real estate scandals from the '70s and '80s are going to bring down a senator? He's on the freaking finance committee, he's represented New York for years, you can't touch him. You've got guys with far less clout than Mark Winslow, guys who've been groping pages or spending campaign funds on ski trips, plunking their asses down in their offices daring people to vote them out."
"Just help me find some leverage. I'll worry about how good it is."
Claudia didn't chance a look at Myka, but her mouth curled contemptuously. "That's right, I forgot. An FBI agent who didn't wake up to the con her girlfriend was running on her until she read about it in the newspaper, she's on the case." She lifted her arms in an exaggerated stretch. "Yeah, you inspire me with confidence, Agent Fu . . . ." Her voice trailed off and she let her arms drop, folding them around her chest. "Find someone else," she finished wearily. "I'm not going to take on the Winslows for you, not even for Helena's sake."
Myka rapidly reviewed her options, which weren't many. She could threaten Claudia with her knowledge about the monitor-buster, harass her with search warrants and interrogations. If Claudia refused to budge, she could threaten to drag Todd into the investigation and darkly mutter about conspiracy charges and jail time. Yet Claudia was more likely to call her bluff than to give in, and Myka disliked the idea of coercing her cooperation. For one thing, a half-assed job by Claudia wasn't better than the same job done by someone else, it was more dangerous. A resentful Claudia was likely to booby trap her results, planting mistaken and misleading information. Myka couldn't afford errors, not against the Winslows. She needed to find an inducement that would make Claudia want to help or at least feel compelled to offer her services. Her gaze drifting toward the kitchen, she remembered Todd almost taking a beer from the refrigerator for Claudia before stopping himself and putting it back in favor of the cranberry juice. It was almost as if he had had to remind himself that she couldn't . . . . Myka knew she would look like a fool if she was wrong, but Claudia already thought she was a fool, so she really didn't have much to lose.
"How far along are you?"
Claudia startled, jerking her bottle and sending a wave of juice over the side. "What?" But she was coloring.
"Now I understand this." Myka waved her hand, encompassing the dining room and kitchen. "You're nesting. You must be thinking of all the things you're going to give your baby that you never had. A mother. A father." She hardened her voice. "You may think you don't owe Helena anything. She was an adult, she knew the risk she was running trying to save your ass, but you owe Christina. You're making a four-year-old girl pay for your freedom. Explain that to your kid someday, why she deserved a mom and Christina didn't." Myka rose. "By the way, I'd lay off the pizza, not the best prenatal nutrition."
She got closer to the door than she had hoped she would before she heard a muttered "Fuck me" followed by an aggravated "Goddammit!" that had Todd thundering down the stairs in alarm. Claudia stomped into the foyer, her face displaying the pitched battle between letting Myka leave and stopping her. "What is it that you want me to do?"
Myka was buoyed by no sense of accomplishment when she climbed the front steps of Irene Frederic's brownstone. Getting people to cooperate wasn't easy, not the people she dealt with, but she had learned not to dwell on how she won their cooperation. Shaming, browbeating, dangling in front of them the promise of immunity or a reduced sentence (when she knew she would do her best to ensure they received the opposite), she would do what it took. If nothing else, were she to become a mother to Christina and however many more children Helena planned for them, she would have all the bad parenting skills she would ever need. Her father wielded his disapproval with all the finesse of an axe, but Jeannie Bering, when she wanted to, could react to the sight of a messy bedroom as if her daughter had fatally plunged a knife into her heart, a heart, moreover, that beat only for her family. So she had guilt-tripped Claudia into helping, at least Claudia had a conscience that she could use against her. She was rarely so lucky.
She was about to press the doorbell of Helena's apartment when the door magically appeared to open, and considering that it was Irene Frederic who stood behind it, Myka wasn't going to consider magic an impossibility. Seeing that enigmatic smile, which managed to be both welcoming and slightly predatory, Myka could only offer silent thanks that it was Claudia whom she had had to manipulate and not Mrs. Frederic. She wore an apron tied over dress slacks and a silk blouse, and Myka was convinced that Mrs. Frederic wore only dress slacks and silk blouses when she cooked. "I was just delivering some extra cookies to Helena. My grandchildren put in an order for a class party. All my daughters-in-law claim that baking is too time-intensive, but I find it a pleasure." Stepping back to allow Myka an unobstructed path to the stairwell, she added, "I believe there may even be some of your favorite cookies on the plate."
"I don't know that I have a favorite cookie, but," Myka said, conscious that politeness and graciousness would never go amiss with this woman, even if Mrs. Frederic did harbor thoughts of taking over the world, "your chocolate chip cookie is a contender." It also happened to be the only Irene Frederic cookie she had tried, but she didn't expect Mrs. Frederic to remember that.
"I don't see you as a chocolate chip cookie person." As Myka hesitated on the first of the steps, Mrs. Frederic clasped her hands loosely on top of the newel post. "Too sweet. Helena likes toffee and nuts added to her chocolate chip cookies, and those would be not only too sweet for you but too indulgent. Oatmeal raisin possibly, but they can be bland." She tilted her head speculatively, although Myka was fairly certain that Mrs. Frederic had already decided what her favorite cookie was just as she was fairly certain that this conversation wasn't really about cookies. "You like a good bite to the sweetness. A ginger cookie, I think, and heavy on the ginger."
"My boss tells me that I'm a glutton for punishment," Myka said lightly, "so maybe I am drawn to a cookie with a kick."
Mrs. Frederic drew back from the banister, and Myka took it as a signal that the conversation, the parable, whatever it was, was over. She had climbed only a couple of stairs when Mrs. Frederic said chidingly, "You can't gobble them at once like other cookies. You have to pace yourself, savor each one. Discipline, restraint, patience. That's how you master ginger cookies, Agent Bering."
Helena was stuffing the remaining half of a cookie into her mouth when she opened her apartment door. "'s'eating,'" she mumbled as Myka entered and kissed her on the forehead.
Taking off her suit coat and folding it carefully over the back of the well-worn armchair, Myka said, "You sound like Pete. I mean, literally you sound like Pete. What were you trying to say through all the chewing and swallowing?"
"Stress eating," Helena said, still sounding glottal. She cleared her throat. "I've been stress eating all night. Every sweet I could lay my hands on." She pointed to the plate of cookies on the table in the eating space. "I've already had three of what Irene's calling the Heavenly Helenas."
"Heavenly Helenas," Myka repeated with a disbelieving grin.
Helena glared at her. "So it's as close to heaven as a devil like me can get. Someone thinks I'm sweet."
Myka strolled over to the table to eye the plate. Chocolate chip, the Heavenly Helenas, the familiar cross-hatching of peanut butter cookies, a few that smelled spicy even from this distance. She picked up one of the ginger cookies and tentatively bit into it. There was a definite kick to the sweetness. Her mouth was tingling from the ginger. Discipline, restraint, patience. Smiling to herself she thought there was one other quality needed to eat Irene Frederic's ginger cookies – commitment. She thought her tongue might be going numb. "Your landlady thinks I like my sweets with a dash of trouble."
"I never doubted that Irene would see through your ridiculous pretense of disavowing sugar," Helena said archly, "but that she sees the gambler underneath the agent's suit . . . ." She tugged out Myka's shirt and fanned her hands against Myka's abdomen. "I thought I was the only one who saw that," she whispered.
"I'm a dolphin and a gambler?" Myka teased, shivering under the coolness of Helena's hands.
"They're not mutually exclusive," Helena said. "Trusting that a human won't turn you into his next meal, that's a gamble."
"Don't confuse the average dolphin with Flipper," Myka said wryly.
"There's nothing average about you, love." Helena leaned in to kiss her, stealing the uneaten half of the ginger cookie from Myka's hand at the same time.
"You didn't charm me out of that cookie, by the way," Myka said sternly as Helena popped the rest of it into her mouth, quirking an eyebrow in disagreement, "I let you have it." As had become her habit most evenings when she visited Helena, she went into the kitchen to investigate the contents of the refrigerator, eager to see what Mrs. Frederic might have dropped off besides cookies. In the freezer, the butternut squash soup and jambalaya looked new, but Myka reached instead for a container labeled "Chicken Rice Casserole." She picked it up and put it down more than once, trying to refuse the comfort of a comfort food. But if she were going to risk ginger cookies, she might as well risk the casserole. Besides, she was a gambling dolphin or a dolphin gambler, whatever Helena meant by that. All she knew was that she taking the biggest gamble of her life, trusting that loving Helena wouldn't turn out to be a disaster the second time around. She loosened the lid and set the dish in the microwave. As she felt Helena's arms circle around her, she keyed in several minutes for the reheat, letting DeWitt and the Winslows and Claudia drift out of her mind. Then Helena's hug tightened and her chin ground against Myka's shoulder.
"Do you think Justice would intervene, tell the good senator to back off because he's interfering in a federal investigation?" Helena suggested hopefully. More firmly she said, "I want to talk to your ex-husband tomorrow. Could you arrange it?"
"I'm not sure that's a wise idea, Helena." Myka wished she had phrased her objection more diplomatically, she expected Helena's chin to grind harder into her shoulder, but Helena turned her head, and Myka could feel the kiss through the weave of her shirt.
"Of course, it's a bad idea, but I'm desperate. I long for the day I can blot that man from my memory, but if he can help me, help us, Myka, I will swallow my pride." Her laugh was equally soft and more plaintive. "I know what I'm asking you to do."
"I'm not objecting to trying to work Sam," Myka said, awkwardly stretching to take a couple of plates down from a cupboard. As the microwave dinged, Helena reluctantly allowed her room to move and sat, more than a little disconsolately, at the table. "It's the fact that we'll be raising our profile." Myka spooned equal portions of the casserole onto the plates, but she gave them another quick eyeball measurement before carrying the plates over to the table. "Pete's been giving us cover over there."
"I never promised him or the Neanderthal that I could deliver Nate." Helena inspected her plate and Myka's. "You gave me too much."
"They're equal," Myka protested.
"No, they're not. You gave me more. You always do, Myka." Helena leaned across the corner of the table that separated them and kissed her cheek. "If the Neanderthal has a better idea for luring Nate from his lair, I'd welcome it."
"You're supposed to be the Burdette-whisperer. Let him keep thinking he can't trust you because you're conning us. Don't give him reason to think he can't trust you to do the job." Myka took a bite of the casserole. She would have to add another ten minutes on the treadmill tomorrow morning. Tender chicken, perfectly cooked rice, mushrooms, a subtle cheese sauce with hints of wine and tarragon holding it all together. Make that another 15 minutes on the treadmill. Her mother had made chicken and rice casserole when she was a child. Canned chicken and Minute rice glued together with off-brand canned soup and then baked, sometimes for hours if her mom forgot to come up from the bookstore to turn the oven off. The habit of letting others have more - it wasn't generosity, it was self-defense.
"I can't lose her, Myka."
"You won't, I promise."
Helena looked at her steadily. "Don't do anything rash. I can't lose you either."
After dinner, they curled up on the sofa together, Helena idly flicking through the TV channels on the remote. For a moment her attention seemed held by a Rogers and Astaire movie on TCM; usually Myka was game for a showing of Top Hat or Swing Time, losing herself in admiration of their athleticism and control, the intricacy of their footwork, but tonight she felt only an eeriness in watching how quickly they swept across a ballroom floor, their movements less fluid than skittery, and she had an image of spiders scuttling for the nearest dark corner. Maybe it was only the strain of having to negotiate her way through conversations with DeWitt, Claudia Donovan, and Mrs. Frederic, each unpredictable in a manner that Myka feared she wasn't clever enough to counter, but she was relieved when Helena clicked to the next channel.
She returned home late from a three-day business trip to New Orleans to assess the price of some antebellum-era paintings a family, recently down on its luck, had decided to sell. The artists weren't of any particular note or recognized school, but Helena had said there would be more buyers than Myka might anticipate. "It's not hard to find an unreconstructed supporter of the Confederacy if you know the code," Helena had said wearily the night before she left. "Given them a Greek Revival exterior, honeysuckle, and a blonde virgin in a hoop skirt, and it's sold."
Myka registered only the slight dip in the mattress as Helena slipped under the covers and the hand, cold but possessive, on her hip before sleep overtook her again. That weekend they barely budged from the loft, Helena restless, almost frenetic at times, as she occasionally was when she came back from a consultation on a painting, pulling Myka down onto the bed, the sofa, the kitchen table, a demanding, teasing, provoking, ultimately irresistible force. It was like experiencing a storm front in your living room, and Myka loved the surrender. Saturday night they curled up in blankets, at that midpoint when they didn't yet have to commit to watching the movie or having sex; they could do both. It was an old one, in black and white, and as Myka glanced at the screen from time to time, she thought she recognized Cagney's pugnacious features. The sound was awful, the volume uneven and the dialogue often indistinct, but she could make out the odd phrase.
All right, Rocky, supposin' I take the money . . . what earthly good is it for me to teach that honesty is the best policy when all around they see that dishonesty is a better policy . . . . Whatever I teach them, you show me up. You show them the easiest way.
Helena groaned, leaning over the edge of the sofa to search for the remote on the floor. "It was much more fun making love with Double Indemnity as a teaser. Shall I just cut to the end and tell you that Rocky dies nobly in the electric chair?" Finding the remote, she pushed herself back up to a sitting position and turned off the TV. Myka launched herself at Helena's breasts, taking the remote from Helena's hand and flinging it to the floor.
Satisfied with the hard peak she had made of one nipple, Myka lifted her head up long enough to say, "That shows you what a life of crime will get you in the end."
Helena opened her eyes, their usual mocking glint temporarily glazed over. "Mmm, but it is the easiest way, darling. That's why it's so seductive."
"Doesn't compute for me." Myka touched the tip of her tongue to the other nipple.
"Of course, it doesn't," Helena groaned, arching her back, inviting Myka to take more of her breast into her mouth. "Because you never take the easiest way."
Myka snapped her head up and rolled off the sofa. She hitched up her half-unzipped jeans. "That's right. I don't take the easiest way. I'm going to make you work for your pleasure."
Helena had at first glared at her in outrage before letting her lips curl into a wicked smile that promised Myka she would be worked twice as hard for her own pleasure. It was a fair trade.
She eventually watched all of Angels With Dirty Faces, long after Helena had fled but not nearly long enough for the sharpness of the memories of that first viewing to have faded. Indeed she had made Helena work for her pleasure that night, turning her into an alternately shouting and beseeching mess, and Helena, as she had silently promised, gave even better than she had gotten. Having thoroughly exhausted each other, they had slept virtually all-day Sunday. That was the interior movie that played while Myka watched the real one. She didn't watch it alone. Sam had stopped by that night unannounced, as he often did during those months following the Marston Gallery heist, and watched it with her, popping a bag of corn that she pretended to eat. The night didn't end in them embracing each other with abandon on every horizontal surface in her apartment, it never happened even once they became lovers again, but she hugged him after she walked him to the door, and she asked herself for the hundredth time if she had seen this side to him when they were dating, the patient, solicitous "I'll watch this with you, even though I'd like a baseball game a whole lot more" side, if she would have fallen for, fallen victim to, Helena.
"You were thinking about us," Helena said. She had been resting against Myka's chest but now she drew back, her eyes searching Myka's face. "The old us," she clarified. She looked away, the sweep of her hair curtaining her expression. "It's this peculiar mix of emotions that settles over you and" she snapped her fingers, "they're gone like that, but anger, sadness, frustration, disbelief, I see them all. The one that really guts me, though, is how you wistful you manage to look at the same time. Like you miss the old us, miss her." Helena's laugh was a wry admission. "I don't blame you. Sometimes I miss her, too. She thought herself much too clever by half, but she had verve."
"She was cocky," Myka said, pulling Helena back against her, "and, I'll admit, it was as sexy as hell, but it was when she was kind, when she let herself be vulnerable, that kept me intrigued. If all I had wanted was someone with swagger, I would've stayed with Sam or Rachel."
"All I have is vulnerability – and pathos. I'm completely verveless, love, and I'm all yours." Helena chuckled.
"I was thinking about us, but not the way you think. I was remembering an old black and white that was running in the background when we were . . . ah . . . indisposed."
"Double Indemnity?" Helena interrupted with a sigh of pleasure.
"Angels With Dirty Faces."
Helena nodded, unconsciously pursing her lips, as if she were deciding how much to admit she remembered. "I had been in New Orleans that week."
Myka knew then that there had been no consultation about antebellum paintings, and while Helena might have flown to New Orleans, she had probably driven to Houston to meet with one or both of the Marstons. Helena twisted her head to look up at her, and Myka saw the ashamed confirmation in her face. "I was in New Orleans long enough to make an appearance at my hotel, just in case you or another agent would later check and, obviously, my return flight was from there, but in between -" She suddenly stopped. "I can't make it what it wasn't, Myka. It wasn't good, it wasn't legitimate."
Did knowing now – for certain – make a difference? Would it make a difference if Helena told her that she and David Marston, or Hilary, had fucked each other silly when they weren't finalizing their plans? She had suspected, and there hadn't been a minute of the months they had lived together that she didn't exhaustively reinterpret, labeling every smile or kiss or loving look Helena had given her as a betrayal. If Sam had caught her grimacing and clenching her hands into fists when, in the movie, Rocky said, "I think to be afraid, you gotta have a heart. I don't think I got one. I had that cut out of me a long time ago," it was because she was hearing Helena confess what must have been true all along only she had been too trusting or too stupid to realize it. She had held up every memory they had made to that pitiless examination and watched it curl and smoke like paper held to a flame. Yet those memories had all survived, each one, and she could remember how she and Helena would nestle together like puppies after they had made love only to begin blindly crawling over each other before they were fully awake. Understanding that Helena's energy had been fueled as much by guilt as by desire didn't lessen those hours or make them cheaper, it made them part of a longer story, which had more than its share of sorrow and pain but not only sorrow and pain. A story ten, no, ten and a half years in the making and still unfolding, or so she hoped.
"I know," she said, recognizing that, in fact, she didn't know, not all of it, not all that was yet to come. Neither of them did.
Helena closed her eyes. When she opened them, the shame and remorse lingered, but she said with resolve, "That's my burden, not yours. This isn't about me and what I did. You've got something on your mind. What made you think about that particular movie now?"
"Because of what you said about your father and Ted Bonaventura being altar boys, and because the person I spoke to at the prison where Bonaventura and DeWitt served time said Bonaventura mentioned the 'boys of St. Mary.' Bonaventura had been badly beaten – by DeWitt and his followers, so my source thinks – and he said that the 'boys' would look after him. Bonaventura was transferred away from DeWitt, but I don't think your father would have carried that kind of clout, not with law enforcement," Myka said dryly. "So I've been wondering, who else grew up with Rocky and Jerry?"
"You think your source is reliable? If he's anything like the other one I met," Helena shuddered in distaste, "I wouldn't trust him any farther than I could get away from his smell. It was pervasive, suffocating, intolerable." She paused then asked incredulously, "DeWitt tried to beat Bowdoin out of him?"
"I don't think so. It was over something smaller, a fit of temper DeWitt wouldn't engage in now. Too dangerous when there are better ways of getting payback." As Helena leaned her head against Myka's chest again, Myka said chidingly, "You're not protecting some of your father's friends, are you? I'm not looking to throw old men in wheelchairs into prison."
"I'm protecting no one." Helena delicately snorted. "Jim taught me well, because he protected no one, and no one would have stuck his neck out for him, other than Ted, not without money guaranteed. Besides, it's not like Jim spent his time with me reminiscing about the good old days. The other kids, if there were any, who were part of the 'boys," I can't tell you who they are."
"Would Jemma know?"
Helena smoothed the concentration lines in Myka's forehead with a finger. "She didn't know that Jim already had a wife. Whatever he told her about his past was a lie, even in the smallest details. However, I'll ask her, just to be thorough."
"I know it's a long shot. Your father could have had enough friends to field a football team, but it probably doesn't matter. The ones who are still alive won't know where the Bowdoin art is – they wouldn't have lived this long if they had. It's just another piece of the puzzle, that's all."
"When you get it all put together, be prepared for a picture of cats in party hats instead of a treasure map. The Wellses are born to frustrate expectations."
Myka bent her head closer, her lips hovering over Helena's. "We've changed, and we haven't changed. I still don't take the easiest way."
It was very late when Myka crept down the stairs, but she wasn't surprised to see a lamp's glow in the living room, and Mrs. Frederic reading a book in an easy chair. Her only concession to the lateness of the hour was the slippers she wore; otherwise she looked ready to host a bridge party. She seemed intently focused on the book, but Myka didn't take advantage of an obliviousness to her presence that would be best described a deliberate blindness –and deafness. Mrs. Frederic missed nothing.
"Thank you for the cookies. You're right. I especially liked the ginger ones."
Mrs. Frederic didn't lift her head, but she smiled down at her book. "I've put aside some cookies for Christina. Which do you think will be her favorite?"
"The ones with sparkles and fairy princess frosting. There weren't any on our plate, but I bet you have a few tucked away in the kitchen."
Mrs. Frederic was genuinely amused. "You're very good, Agent Bering." She closed the book and shifted in her chair to look at her. "My youngest grandson has asked for Black Panther cookies. I'm still working on that one."
Myka came into the living room a few steps. "What's your favorite cookie?"
She expected the bland nonresponse of "I like them all," but Mrs. Frederic appeared to be giving the question some thought. "Shortbread. A very plain shortbread," she said finally.
"Only deceptively plain," Myka countered. "They're rich, dense, and no matter what flavors they come in, they're unmistakable. They pack a lot of punch for a 'plain' cookie."
"I don't think we're talking about cookies any longer," Mrs. Frederic said mildly, but her gaze had sharpened.
"I don't think we ever were." Myka glanced down at her wrinkled shirt, her wrinkled pants. It really was late, and she was in no shape to take on Irene Frederic, not after the day she had had, but she still couldn't figure her out. Hers was a life that had been devoted to achieving justice, social, political, economic, but Myka didn't think she had encountered a do-gooder less sentimental or prey to illusion. Mrs. Frederic hadn't needed a boarder, and if she had wanted to support a former felon's return to society, there were ex-cons more deserving by any objective measure than Helena Wells. "Why?" Myka said softly, "Why did you do this and why her?"
"I saw an opportunity to restore a woman's faith in herself and what she could accomplish," Mrs. Frederic said quietly, all amusement gone but no indication that she was offended by the question either. She appeared to be answering as directly and simply as she knew how, and Myka suspected it took more effort than Mrs. Frederic's unshakable composure would willingly reveal. "My involvement isn't entirely devoid of self-interest. She's uniquely placed to help me, and she's more formidable than she knows."
"You might want to let Helena know about the formidable part, she'd appreciate it."
"You ought to consider the possibility that we've not been talking about Helena," Mrs. Frederic said smoothly, and her smile returned, this time enigmatic, teasing, and with a touch of malice. It righted an Earth that had, momentarily, slid off its axis. Myka instinctively put a hand out to the railing to steady herself, and Mrs. Frederic's smile grew wider.
She had driven home mainly by sonar. She wasn't sure she had seen a single stoplight or sign. In the apartment building's elevator, she had sagged against the wall, legs spread and feet planted to keep herself from landing on the floor. Had she hit the floor she had no doubt that she would have curled into a fetal position. She didn't know what Mrs. Frederic had meant, she didn't want to know how she should understand "uniquely placed." Uniquely placed to steal the nuclear football and sell it to the highest bidder? Uniquely placed to send a signal to the alien invasion force that they could start landing their pods?
In the safety of her apartment, she took a beer from the refrigerator. It was too late to be drinking; in only a few hours, she would be in the gym trying to sweat out the headache having a beer, even just one, this late would give her, but she needed either to drug herself to sleep or to focus on a task. She eyed the bottle doubtfully. There was one thing she could do. He would still be up. That was one thing they had always shared – the late hours, the very late hours, that resulted from the haunting sense that the one fact capable of making or breaking the case was still out there, waiting to be discovered. Or remembered. To win, you had to be willing to put in the extra work and time to find the witness, schedule one more interview, review the forensics . . . again. Burdette was just one of his cases, the most important one, but only one among many. She remembered him hunched over the desk in the spare bedroom that they had turned into an office, turning from his laptop screen long enough to scratch notes on a legal pad. "So many criminals," he would say, wriggling his shoulders under her massage and leaning back in his chair to look up at her, "so little . . . Jesus, just so many criminals."
When she called him, she tried to concentrate on those memories, the ones of her giving him shoulder rubs as he prepped a case, of him watching old movies with her as she slowly, and incompletely as it turned out, put back together the shattered pieces of the life that Helena had left her. She didn't want to think about their last meeting, how angry he had been, how betrayed she had felt. There was tiredness but no groggy collecting of himself when he answered. "What mess has she caused this time?"
"She's still trying to deal with the one you caused when you gave the results of the DNA test to the Winslows."
"She was going to do it eventually, anyway. That was no 'accidental' pregnancy. She doesn't do things accidentally. She was going to put the squeeze on the Winslows at some point. We stepped in before she could."
"If you cut back on the self-righteousness, it might sound more believable," Myka said sarcastically.
"Christ, Myka, she's a con. She's always been a con, she'll die a con." He breathed heavily into the phone. "Even on the off chance that she's reformed, she just makes . . . poor choices. It's not our problem that she got knocked up by Ben Winslow. We weren't going to pass up the opportunity to profit by her mistake."
Myka expected him to follow up with a jab at her on the order of "And you make even worse choices when it comes to her," but Sam was silent, waiting for her to get to the point of her call. As the silence between them dragged on, Myka wondered if he was hoping she had called for another reason. It gentled her tone as she said, "Helena's made a lot of mistakes, but she's not to blame for us." I am, she thought, but didn't say it. "Whatever you may think of her, her daughter deserves better than what the Winslows will give her, because what they'll give her is so much less than what they could. You know this kind of family, Sam. You understand what I'm saying." The Martinos had been financially better off than the Berings, but they had had modest beginnings. Frank Martino had built a small, struggling business into a bigger, more successful one, the reverse of what Warren Bering had done, which was to take a small, struggling business and run it into the ground, but Frank had paid a price for his success. Sam had said once that the only school event his father had taken the time off to attend was his high school graduation. He had no love for the golden ones, either. "Helena wants to meet with you. Give her the courtesy of hearing her out."
There was another heavy, more exasperated breath on his end. "Okay. I can give her a few minutes at 10:00, and then I want to talk to you alone, Myka."
This time the silence had no expectant quality, and the line clicked as Sam hung up, there being nothing else, Myka realized, for them to say. Other than what he needed to tell her in secrecy, apparently. It wouldn't be good, whatever it was. She tried not to worry about it, just as she tried not to worry about how long Claudia's cooperation would last or whether they would find something sufficiently damaging against Mark Winslow. Most of all, she tried not to worry about what Helena would do if she thought she was going to lose her daughter.