My hand throbbed. I squeezed my wrist hard, gritted my teeth, and walked into the office. It was empty. Banning’s footsteps echoed on the concrete floor in the open warehouse. I followed.
A wall of tall steel-framed windows opened east over more warehouses and industrial buildings. Whiffs of air pushed through the open lower windows, but it was as hot under the corrugated steel roof as it had been in the stairwell.
Lissa and Callas were seated at a spare old oak desk, heads bent over some papers. Sun baked the floor under the windows. I hated everything about this.
Lissa excused herself and walked over to me in a way that made the sundress look completely inappropriate. There was deliberation and no nonsense in her step, and her eyes bore into mine.
“What are you doing here, with Banning?” she whispered. Banning, about ten yards away, conspicuously stared through the windows. “Do you know how crazy he is?”
“We met yesterday. He helped me.”
“He’s a Holocaust denier. He’s lectured to hate groups in California and Oregon. Jesus, it was bad enough that Rob consorted with him—now, why you?” Her jaw clenched and her cheeks turned pale.
“This isn’t the place,” I said, trying to be mild and reasonable. “Some unusual things have been happening. Banning—”
“How do you know he isn’t responsible?”
I felt like a particularly stupid mooncalf.
“What do you know about Callas? Mrs. Callas?” Lissa asked.
“Absolutely nothing.”
“Banning just leads you around like a goat?”
There was nothing I could say.
Lissa pulled back. “I called friends in law enforcement. Callas is respected, but she’s an equal-opportunity type. She’s trained some really nasty customers. We’re going to have a long talk,” she promised.
“Why are you helping?”
“Your mother and I had a heart-to-heart after the funeral. Remember?”
I remembered standing in the hall with a piss hard-on.
“She told me Rob was smart, but you are smarter. Well, maybe I’m smarter than either of you. I want to know who killed Rob, and why. I owe my husband that much.” She returned my unspoken skepticism with a “spare me” grimace. “I’ve explained that if you agree to her training, I’ll pay. I think she wants to learn more about you and Rob. She already has the goods on Banning.”
Callas waited while we arranged our chairs. She propped her feet up on the desktop and wrapped her hands behind her head. All she needed was a matchstick between her teeth.
“I’m on your payroll now, thanks to Mrs. Cousins. But we’re in the early stages, and if I so choose, I’ll cut loose. Fill me in.”
Lissa went first. She told what she knew about Rob’s troubles and murder. I listened, trying to match the facts in her story to the papers I had been reading that morning. Rob’s manuscripts had been filled with a sense of adventure and discovery, but paranoia might have been just around the corner.
I followed, with my tale of ships, submarines, harassment, arson, and dog attacks.
Callas took a deep breath and shook her head after I finished. “I like our assailants quantifiable, our threats palpable and enumerable,” she said. “I know a little about Mr. Banning. The lurid parts. I meet a lot of weirdoes in my business, and I treat them professionally. Even paranoids have enemies. But you were once a respected historian. What happened?”
“I was discredited,” Banning said. “Or I discredited myself. Let’s leave it at that for now.”
“I can’t,” Callas said, “not if I’m going to grasp what we’re up against.”
Banning straightened in his chair and gripped the arms. “In 1991, I stumbled upon documents relating to a certain research program, top-secret at one time, dusty and almost forgotten by then. Russian file-keeping is notorious.”
“Go on,” Callas said.
“A campaign was begun to discredit me shortly after this discovery. And long before I met with Rob Cousins.”
“What sort of campaign?”
“I was subjected to mind-altering substances. My behavior changed.”
“Yes.”
“I lost all my money and my woman, and I was hounded out of academe. I became possessed.” Banning looked as battered and drained of life as an old mannequin.
“By what?”
He shrugged. “Let’s just say that this is my afterlife, and it’s hell. To all intents and purposes, I am a dead man.”
Callas studied him like a zookeeper assessing a new animal. “Do you think you were targeted by the KGB? The SVR?” she asked.
“They had no reason, after the Cold War.”
“The Jews?”
Banning twitched in the chair. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Do you know what you believe, Mr. Banning?” Callas asked.
