The Skill of Our Hands--A Novel Page 16

  There had to be something here. There had to be. You can’t communicate without leaving traces, and you can’t leave traces without there being at least a good chance of them winding up in the Garden.

  I plucked a single red rose, inhaled it, and there was a group that called itself the Secret Six. I didn’t know who they were or what they wanted to do, but it sounded ominous. I inhaled more deeply and got names: Higginson, Sanborn, Stearns. There were some indications that even Frederick Douglass might be involved, although I couldn’t tell for sure. All of them, in any case, were dedicated Abolitionists, and all of them had, at one time or another, expressed impatience with peaceful solutions.

  I dropped the rose and continued.

  I found a set of glazed ceramic bowls, nice enough that I wanted to bring them up to the Villa. I held them and studied the deep, subtle swirls of purple and inky-blue, and—

  “… 194 carbines, with plenty of ball and shot … 1000 superior Pikes as a cheap but effectual weapon to place in the hands of entirely unskilful & unpracticed men.…”

  A thousand pikes? A thousand?

  I found the order for the pikes, and followed it to Brown’s military adviser, “Col. F.” It turned out to be Oskar’s old acquaintance, Forbes, from Italy. I stopped to write a note to Oskar, asking for information and switches for Forbes, and tacked the note to a wheel of the rusty cannon that marks my Garden’s border with his.

  Then I opened my eyes. The fire was nearly out, and I was shivering, and tired. My heart thumped, as I suddenly feared my old body would give out before I had time to stop him.

  I didn’t know where, and I didn’t know when, but I knew what: Old Brown was planning to go into the South and, single-handedly, ignite a slave revolt.

  THIRTEEN

  Nothing Anyone Said Would Stop Either Faction

  * * *

  This is where it all started to go badly wrong. This is where you might have made a difference, if you’d been watching. The spiral Ren made in her Garden, trying to bring Phil back, was running the show, and none of us knew it. How could we all have overlooked what we know about rushing recruits? How could anyone have considered Frio?

  —Oskar

  * * *

  “Sam Kelly,” Irina repeated herself, just to get under Oskar’s skin a little, “teaches civics at Southside High.” She surveyed the table again, but she had them all. Jimmy, Ren, Frio, even Oskar were giving her their complete and, if not friendly, at least concentrated attention. Good. She was looking forward to sharing her hard-won knowledge. They’d all be pleased.

  “Last year,” Irina informed her audience, “with both skinheads and undocumented kids in his classroom, Sam Kelly introduced Viktor Frankl to his students during his block on the Second World War. He wanted to teach them about Frankl’s ‘last human freedom’ but one girl threw it back in his face. Maybe, like Frankl had said about the concentration camp guards, the one thing Arizona police and ICE—that’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Jimmy—couldn’t take away from her was her ability to choose how she responded to them, but what freedom did the little brother she was half-raising have? Was he even human if he was too little to choose anything but terror every night his papa came home late?”

  Oskar swore in a low undertone.

  “Yeah,” Irina agreed. “So a classmate takes this info and reports the girl’s papa, and both her parents get deported, and Sam feels responsible. He’s had enough. He suggests to this girl that the kid who turned her dad in is mighty proud of his connections, bragging about his daddy, the deputized citizen. Maybe this kid might impress the pretty girls by bringing something caliber-licious to school and proving he’s as dangerous as he says.”

  Jimmy nodded. “So she does and he does and Sam does a locker check.…”

  Irina dismissed Jimmy’s dated guess with a wave. “The school has metal detectors.”

  Oskar barked one of his derisive laughs that apportioned equal scorn for bone-headed kids and idiot security.

  “Did Jane know?” Ren asked, her voice very quiet.

  Irina ignored her. “Anyway, another one of Sam’s students does weekend yard work for one of the ICE agents,” she continued. “Now Sam has his address and can maybe create a little interference with the cell service at his house. He misses some calls. Develops unusually leaky tires. Some other kids devise a social security number sharing scheme for the kids who want to work and the skinheads who don’t. They call themselves Hourlies, cause that’s how they get paid, and they’re not the Minutemen. It’s all very subtle, small-time stuff, until Sam meets Frio here.”

  Frio was the still of panthers, watching either Oskar or Sam behind him on the patio, and irritating Irina because she couldn’t tell which.

  “Frio, the cop,” Oskar clarified.

  “Frio, the ex-SWAT sniper,” Irina corrected.

  Oskar’s aversion to the police was fighting hard with his curiosity. Irina did him a mercy and explained. “Sixteen-year-old kid flunks a test, comes home from school strung out, ends up with Daddy’s pistol in his bedroom screaming he’s going to off himself.”

  “Mom calls 911?” Jimmy guessed, anguish in his rich voice.

  “And the cops deploy the SWAT team because they can. Because they have to take every chance they get to justify the expense of having one.”

  “Frio, what happened?” Jimmy could meddle with just the tone of his voice.

  Frio looked at his hands on the table, long black lashes soft against the hard adobe brown of his cheeks. “They sent a shrink in,” he said. “Our orders were to just watch the kid. Then he put his fist through a window. The team leader called it, and we fired.” He looked straight at Oskar. “My lieutenant had been through the Jose Guerena mess and didn’t want to hear anything from me about how it went down. Nothing in his world was ever gonna be more fucked up than that.”

  “So you quit?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You didn’t just transfer out of SWAT?” Oskar’s smile was predatory and sly. He was starting to see the possibilities. “Still in touch with any of those boys?”

  “Some of them.”

  “And you joined up with Sam and the Hourlies?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s not just desertion, that’s defection.”

  “Or conversion,” Irina suggested.

  “What did the cops know?” Oskar asked.

  “They knew someone was fucking with them,” Frio said. “They didn’t much like it.”

  Irina smirked at the understatement. It had been driving Jack nuts.

  “They’ve been keeping it out of the local press, but someone made a Twitter feed and a Tumblr page, so word’s getting out, even with the media guys toeing the line.”

  Irina nodded, proud of Menzie’s work.

  “What are they doing about it?” Jimmy asked.

  “Pima County has thrown about everything at it,” Frio said. “But last intel I got, they don’t even have a working theory on who we are. First they went after BAN, then they thought it was the DREAMers, so they put those kids in Eloy, but nothing changed. They’ve put four different profilers on it trying to figure out who’s leading or planning things, but Sam’s kept them running blind.”

  “Why here?” said Oskar. “Isn’t Maricopa County much worse?”

  Frio just looked at him.

  “Oh,” said Oskar. “There too, huh? And no one suspects the connection. Sam’s better at this than I’d have thought.”

  Irina nodded. Sam had fooled her too. She had thought it was Phil.

  “He’s white,” said Frio. “Cops look right past him.”

  “And then here comes Phil.” Jimmy shook his jowls. “Discreetly nosing around, just learning the territory.”

  “He kept coming to the library,” Frio agreed.

  “None too subtle,” Oskar said.

  “He had no reason to be,” Irina reminded him. “He didn’t know it was guerrilla territory or he would have found a way to help out. A
nd nobody on either side was writing much down, everything’s been done in person or on throwaway cell phones, so there wasn’t much to learn by grazing. I looked.”

  Frio nodded. “It’s something I brought with me from the force,” he told them. “My lieutenant was rabid about it. Nothing gets written down. No e-mail, not even notebooks. Said his boss taught him you can’t trail a man who makes no footprints.”

  “Good man,” said Irina, thinking of her obedient assistant police chief. “Belief in privacy is a bourgeois luxury these days.”

  “But Phil left footprints.” Ren’s voice was tiny.

  “Yeah.”

  “And the police followed them?”

  Frio nodded.

  “Did the police kill Phil?” Ren’s eyes connected with Frio’s over the table. “Did someone decide he was the one doing what the Hourlies were doing and pick him off?”

  Frio looked away from Ren.

  “Frio, did a police sniper shoot Phil?”

  Frio looked back up. “My professional opinion?”

  Ren nodded, but just barely.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Irina saw all the air go out of Ren.

  “Alex, our intel guy in Russia, suggested as much,” Oskar said. “But we had no notion why.”

  It was on Irina’s lips to argue, to say that was impossible. Jack would have told her if Phil’s death had been a police job. Hell, he would have been proud to tell her, but it was a mercy for Ren to have someone to blame, so Irina kept quiet.

  Then she remembered Jack talking to her breasts. Had he lied to her? Irina stiffened her spine and sniffed. It would only make it easier on her to turn Jack over to Menzie, which she had to do anyway now to let the Hourlies know he was coming. Still, Irina was finding it hard not to feel bitter.

  “So, Ren,” she said. “What do you think of Frio?”

  Ren pinked up and watched her tea like a mirror. “He’s qualified.”

  “For what?” Frio was used to people sizing him up, but Ren’s quick glance made him squirmy.

  “I was engaged to Phil,” Ren said.

  “Yeah,” Frio said. “We know.”

  Ren waited, but Frio didn’t offer anything else and she plunged ahead. “Phil was working to change the ‘show us your papers’ law.”

  “And we’d like you to consider taking up his work,” Jimmy added.

  “It won’t work,” Frio told Jimmy. “Cops love that law, especially in Maricopa County.”

  “You could maybe convince them not to.” Ren managed a shaky smile. “Change some minds on the force?”

  “People don’t change their minds,” Frio said. “They will kill you for trying, and they’ll die before they let you.”

  “You changed yours.”

  “I—” He stopped.

  Oskar opened his mouth, but Jimmy did something under the table—stepped on his foot or put a hand on his leg—and for once, Oskar took the cue.

  Frio shifted in his chair for the first time. “Yeah,” he said.

  “Minds are the only thing worth changing,” Ren said.

  Oskar opened his mouth again, and again Jimmy stopped him. Irina thought it must have taken hand and foot.

  “But you’re right.” Ren leaned forward in her chair, closer to Frio. “You can’t convince a person with facts and proof. Belief is a choice. And people make choices emotionally, then explain them rationally afterward. But Phil really could change people’s minds,” Ren told Frio. “Not a hundred and eighty degrees, not all the time, but he could be very convincing. He would have made some big changes once he’d learned who needed nudging.”

  Frio met Ren’s eyes. “I’m sorry they shot him.”

  Irina would swear she heard the spark pop between them.

  “Will you help us get him back?” Ren looked at Frio like there was no one else at the table, and Irina was impressed. Ren was recruiting. With no switches and no group consultation.

  Frio frowned. “They won’t release the body?”

  Ren flinched but Frio didn’t.

  She blinked, and a tear slid out of each eye, but she didn’t move to hide it, only steadied herself a moment and dove. “Phil’s not entirely dead,” she said. “His body is, but the rest of him is stored in something like a back-up drive.”

  Frio waited.

  “And we can reinstall it,” she said. “In another body.” She met Frio’s eyes again.

  “And you want me to get you a body?”

  It took all Irina’s strength not to do her best Mae West with, “No, baby, we want yours.”

  “Hang on,” Oskar said. “Do you believe her?” he asked Frio. “Do you believe what Ren has said about Phil being not all dead?”

  Frio was slow to shift his attention to Oskar from Ren. “Does it matter?”

  “Do you believe there’s some ‘rest of him’ once a body is dead?” Oskar persisted.

  “I don’t believe in anything where belief is one of the requirements.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking.”

  “I don’t give a shit what you’re asking.”

  “You should.”

  “Don’t see why.”

  “You could die,” Ren said, and Oskar had enough sense to shut up and let her keep Frio’s attention. “I mean your body wouldn’t,” she clarified, “but the rest of you might.”

  “Not your memories,” Jimmy said. “Phil would know everything you do about the department and their tactics. He’d have your training and the memory of all your experiences.”

  “You want to put Phil in me?” Frio’s incredulity was the only thing keeping his rage at bay.

  “So he could pursue your work,” Ren said.

  “I’m pursuing my work.”

  “You’d do it better as him,” Jimmy said softly.

  “And you’d be married to Ren,” Irina noted.

  “That’s not a condition.” Oskar scowled at her.

  Frio never looked away from Ren. “It’s not a problem.”

  “Nor an incentive,” Ren said.

  “Don’t decide now.” Jimmy leaned back and smoothed the expensive silk of his shirt. “Take some time, Frio. Give it some thought. Maybe consider letting us show you some of what’s involved.”

  “No.” Frio stood up. “No way. If your man had the kind of power you say, and he wasn’t doing every fucking thing to stop what’s happening, I don’t want to be him.”

  Oskar beamed.

  “It’s more complicated than it sounds,” Jimmy said.

  “That’s what cowards say.”

  “He was changing minds,” Ren said.

  “Who cares? He wasn’t involved with the law or the rules of engagement or the way families get ripped up or how many people die in the desert.”

  “I’d like you to meet him.” Ren checked the clock on her phone and stood. “It’s almost time,” she told Jimmy. “We’re holding a sort of funeral for him,” she told Frio. “But he’ll be there, or an experience of his will be. Will you come with us?”

  “Where?”

  Ren actually laughed at that. “Just the living room, actually,” she said.

  “I’m going to take a shower first,” Irina announced, feeling like it was all going well enough for her to leave. “I want out of my bum costume.” She stood up just as Jane and Sam walked back into the kitchen arm in arm.

  * * *

  Kate followed Daniel back through the house, past Wrecker’s office, where he was still on the phone with his sister, getting another update on his mom. He blew her a kiss as they walked by, and she and Daniel both waved back. In the den, Daniel took the same chair he’d occupied all day, but Kate was feeling antsy, and perched on a sofa arm.

  “Sure you don’t want something to drink?” she asked.

  “Are you in love with both of them?” Daniel rubbed a hand over the top of his head where his hair used to be before the fire.

  “Yes,” Kate said.

  “I always thought when you fell in love with someone it
wiped out your love for anyone else.”

  “Did you stop loving your brother when you fell in love with Amelia?”

  Daniel left his hand on his head, revealing the paler skin on the inside of his arm. “No,” he said, stroking his palm over his scalp’s new growth. “But I mean romantic love. Being in love.”

  “Falling in love and being in love are entirely different things,” Kate said. “You probably can’t fall in love with two people at once, but you sure can be in love with a whole bunch of them, all at the same time. I don’t think I ever loved Allen more than when I was falling in love with Wrecker.”

  “Because he understood about you wanting the other guy?”

  “Even before that, when I was first falling in love, and hadn’t said anything to him yet. I loved him more. It was like I just had more love in me—more for the new crush, more for the old love.”

  Daniel nodded and sat forward, twining his strong, slender fingers loosely. “Did you try to stop yourself?”

  “From falling in love? Why? It felt wonderful!” It had felt—in fact—a lot like now. “Anyway,” she said, “I’ve never known that to work well, deciding with your brain to feel something with your heart. Much easier the other way around.”

  Daniel nodded slowly. “It’s easier to justify what you want than to want what’s just?”

  “Of course.”

  “But isn’t that the whole point?” His hands flew apart and he sank back in the chair. “Isn’t the essence of morality putting desires under the rule of the mind?”

  “To what purpose?” Kate asked. “Just to enslave them?”

  “Well, no.” Daniel frowned and Kate wished she could let him off the hook. “I don’t mean choosing your head over your heart for its own sake. But if my heart or”—his eyes squeezed closed—“or some other part of me wants something my head knows is wrong…” He trailed off.

  They weren’t talking about Kate’s marriage anymore. His eyes met hers, searching.

  “Just because you want something doesn’t mean it’s wrong,” she said.

  “But sometimes it is.” He pressed the back of his head into the chair back, tipping his chin up. “Sometimes I want things that are wrong for me to want.”