Page 81 of Exit Party

“I see,” I said. And then, “Thank you for indulging my curiosity. It’s just . . . I’ve never been involved in a case that concerned someone I knew.”

“I understand,” he said. “It’s jarring, the first time that happens to you.”

How were the passphrases generated? I’d always assumed they were AI, pulled from the depths of the infinite internet, more or less random, but it couldn’t be denied that they contained patterns and pieces of something, a narrative of some kind. On my way home that night I was thinking of the passphrases I’d cycled through in the year I’d left Fillmore, that liminal moment between one life and the next. Variations on something, a poem or a scene: At night on the ferry there is no sea and no sky, the horizon marked by scattered lights. Moonless, starless, cold wind, cold night. You avoided the airless interiors of the ship, preferring at all times to stand on the bow.

The problem was, setting aside the absolute injustice of what had happened to the foreign Kareem, I recognized that I had entered a trap. Service knew I was sympathetic to Nico. If Nico returned, she would go to the children, and she would be arrested. If I failed to act decisively in that instance, if I protected her in any way, I would be arrested too. I understood the logic of Service, and I knew I was on probation with as much certainty as if I’d read my own personnel file.

The only way I could protect myself now was by doing my job impeccably. Move deeper into the police, I thought, my mantra from Fillmore, from that night when I stood looking down at the lit-up streets of the town and considered which way to go. When I arrived home that night, I logged into the Service system, and opened two new surveillance files. Samir Li, age four. Marlowe Li, age three. Residence: Harbor City / Los Angeles / California / United State. Parents: Kareem Fayed (Harbor City / LA). Nico Li (whereabouts unknown). I didn’t actually enjoy opening surveillance files on two preschoolers, but there is such a thing as duty.

7

A month or so later, Nico was declared legally dead, and I was surprised to receive a phone call one morning from an attorney on the subject of her will. She had left me a painting, the lawyer told me. What could he tell me about it? Not much. The title was Swan Dive, the artist was Lucas Alkaitis, did I know his work? No, I knew very little about art, but the mention of that painting gave me a thrill: I remembered it from my interview with Nico’s husband. When I came home from work a few days later, it had been delivered to my front door. I unwrapped the little bundle, and gazed for a while at the oil-paint sea. Later, at my computer, I looked up the artist. Lucas Alkaitis died of a heroin overdose in New York City in 1960. I spent some time scrolling through other paintings of his, and later, in a meeting with David Grissom, I was distracted by the memory of those works.

He’d been talking about visiting an informant out in Camp Five, which was located in the Mojave Desert. The mention of that camp focused my attention. Was Kareem still there, the foreign Kareem from the other place?

“I haven’t been out there in a while,” I said.

“They need an equipment upgrade. I called for transport from the train station, and my car’s radar system was broken.”

“So the warden didn’t know you were coming?”

“She knew I was coming,” David said, “she just didn’t know when I’d arrived, so no one let me in. I was stuck outside for an hour because they thought my car hadn’t arrived yet.”

There was something here, the wisp of an idea just on the edge of my thoughts. Later it seemed to me that I didn’t formulate the plan, exactly, it was more that the plan was already there and I had to find my way to it.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, and I realized I’d been staring into space.

“Oh,” I said. “You’ll think it’s silly, probably.”

“What?”

“This room,” I said. He looked around. We were in a cramped conference room between our offices, with buzzing lights, cup stains on the fake-wood table, and mismatched chairs. “We have a substantial budget,” I said. “Why do all of our rooms look like this?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “but I kind of like it.”

“You’re into mismatched chairs?”

“Not specifically, but I guess it reminds me of my high school? There’s just something familiar about it. I’ve got to run to a meeting, but I’ll see you later on this afternoon.”

“Yes, see you then.” I had a meeting too, with a preschool teacher whom I’d cultivated as a confidential informant. A half-hour later I was at the bakery across the street from Marlowe’s preschool. I’d chosen it, I realized, for something like the reason David was alluding to. It was also a little shabby, a little mismatched, and there was comfort in that. I felt that I was beginning to understand. Spaces like the Service headquarters looked harmless. They looked like spaces where nothing particularly sinister was happening, just people doing our jobs, and this allowed us to rest in a delusion that we were ordinary people doing ordinary work.

“Is everything all right?” the preschool teacher asked finally, a little annoyed. She’d been telling me that Marlowe, at three, was still presenting normally: a little sensitive, very intelligent, somewhat withdrawn, no sign of Nico or anyone else observing her when they were out for walks.

“Absolutely fine. My apologies.” I observed her for a moment. She was looking away, twisting a paper napkin into something like a rose between her fingers. “There’s something else you’d like to tell me,” I suggested, “but you’re not sure of how to frame it.”

She looked at me, startled.

“Please be assured,” I said, “this doesn’t have to be perfect. I will always give you the benefit of the doubt.”

The woman nodded. She was very young, no older than twenty-three or twenty-four. I understood how much she hated being forced to report on a small child.

“She’s neglected,” the woman said. “Marlowe. I know that’s a serious accusation, but there’s no other word for it.”

“Tell me more.”

Marlowe’s hair was so tangled that finally the preschool teacher had taken it upon herself to comb it, she said, even though that was against policy. She’d brought it up several times with Marlowe’s father, but he seemed exhausted and distracted; also he routinely picked up Marlowe an hour late. The child’s clothes were often dirty. Her father refused to pack her lunch—“She doesn’t eat that much anyway,” he’d said, “and you yourself told me you always have snacks on hand”—so by informal agreement the teachers had taken to bringing in an extra half-sandwich, an extra apple. Marlowe was never bruised, it was nothing like that. Just not taken care of. The little girl stared at the other parents at pickup. Sometimes she wandered over to them, and asked if she could come too, and you didn’t actually have to be clairvoyant to see where that behaviour might lead.

I sighed. Nico had asked one thing of me, only one thing, before she’d disappeared. “Thank you for telling me,” I said. “I’ll see what I can do.”