All Cry Chaos (22 page)

    The men faced each other.

    "I failed you, Henri."

    They had been friends once.

    At the door, Monforte said, "Forty years, and the worst mistake of my career . . . I can't even bring myself to ask forgiveness. Chloe."

    Poincaré said nothing.

    "Very well. About this woman at the burn clinic, I've put every—"

    "We are
not
discussing my granddaughter's death."

    "The woman appears nowhere in our databases. If she had so much as stolen a candy bar, we'd have found something. Why anyone would attack a child in that condition . . ."

    Poincaré opened the door.

    "Bonne chance, Henri. Let's hope the JPL will give you answers. Otherwise, the search could turn difficult."

    "I wouldn't worry," said Poincaré. "I'm feeling motivated."

    He took a last meal in Lyon before returning to America—at the Café du Soleil, near his former apartment. He could not walk in that district without thinking of Claire. In the early years, she would take him out on Saturday mornings simply to run the cobbles beneath their feet and feel the press of crowds in narrow spaces.
Close
your
eyes, she'd tell him—waiting for Poincaré to actually close his eyes so that she could lead him by the hand. With Claire his senses blossomed. He would smell the baguettes and croissants at the boulangerie and hear the cries of the fruit monger and the fish man. Y
ou
feel human here
, she said.
Connected. W
ith her, he had been.

    "Henri!"

    The café's owner clasped him warmly. Like everyone else, Samuel Ackart knew of Poincaré's troubles. The two were old enough friends that what needed saying Ackart said with his eyes and a squeeze of the hand.

    "Do you suppose," said Ackart, "I could get rid of that?" He was pointing over Poincaré's shoulder across the alley. Poincaré turned and saw a large number thirty-nine pasted onto the side of a building. "Countdown to the end of the world. It's all anyone talks about, and frankly I've had a belly full. Christ should come or not and let's be done with it. I've got a business to run."

    Poincaré turned back to the table. "I'd figure the Second Coming would be good for business, Samuel. If the world ends, who'll need money? May as well spend it on your food and wine."

    Ackart spit into a cup. "As a matter of fact, receipts are down."

    "Then you only have thirty-nine days left to suffer."

    "Just put me out of my pain now. I tear them down, the countdown numbers, and they sprout right back up like some evil weed. I don't want to be reminded!"

    Poincaré missed the change in Ackart's tone. Talking had become a chore for him; but because Ackart was a friend, he tried—conversing as if painting by numbers, out of habit: "Your menu's the problem," he said, "not Christ. I've been telling you for at least a decade to use a better grade of cognac in your coq au vin—and to get more fresh vegetables onto your plates."

    Ackart struck a match and let it burn to his fingertips. He struck another and lit a cigarette. "Did I mention these Soldiers of God or whatever they call themselves have got hold of Alain?"

    Poincaré set his glass down.

    "Two months ago he quit his job. Last month he shows up wearing robes. We can't talk to him now that there's a published date for the Second Coming. It's insane. I have no idea if he might turn into one of these lunatics blowing themselves up for Christ. He's devoted his life to saving others. Now this? If he had wanted to be a priest, fine. But this End Time craziness . . . it's vulgar. Cheap."

    The news hit Poincaré hard. Growing up, Alain and Etienne had spent as much time in each other's home as in their own. Their families had shared meals and vacations, the boys constant companions. When Poincaré saw Alain last, two years earlier in Paris, he was a successful public defense attorney in a silk suit who still, across a luncheon table, addressed Poincaré as
uncle
. "So he went to Los Angeles," continued Ackart, "because Los Angeles, he said, is the city most in need of saving. The new Sodom and Gomorrah. Cecile and I are terrified we'll read about him in the morning papers—that he'll set off a bomb on Rodeo Drive, shouting
Jesus Lives
before pushing a button. I've gone out there twice trying to talk sense into him. All he did was point me to the daily headlines. 'What more proof do you need of the End Times?' he said. 'The world's flying apart. Read all about it!' "

    To this point, the Soldiers of Rapture had been little more than a very dangerous comic book to Poincaré. On the one hand, there was the youngster with his v
erily
s in the subway in Cambridge, playing prophet with robes from central casting—a lad barely alert to his own theology. On the other, there were bombers and assassins on the loose intent on sowing fear to hasten the Second Coming. Before Samuel Ackart's news, Poincaré had dismissed the one as a joke and treated the other for what it was: terrorism plain and simple. But Alain? He was no Scripture-squawking parrot, no killer of innocents. He was a thoughtful, gentle man whose choice of profession, law, suited him for the same soul-sustaining reasons that architecture suited Etienne.

    "How did this happen?" said Poincaré.

    Ackart's face was a study in the shifting grays of depression. His eyes were puffy, their luster gone. Poincaré stared out the window with him, both men lost in an unspoken conversation with the number thirty-nine.

    "You know he was a sensitive child," Ackart said after a time. "Arguments upset him. If Cecile and I raised our voices over dinner, he'd run crying. When he was seven, we had to stop delivery of the newspaper because the articles turned him morose. I asked why all the sadness, and he pointed to a photo of a child in Somalia with rickets. . . . At some point the rest of us let it go. Alain couldn't. He hasn't."

    The smoke from Ackart's cigarette settled about their heads like bad weather. Poincaré shifted in his seat but could not get comfortable. "Civil wars, murders, riots," said Ackart. "The suffering of others broke him down. He chose law to repair the world—and it was beautiful to see. But after six or seven years, he turned sullen again. Two months ago, he decided we were in the Tribulation and he would leave the whole mess for Christ to set right. 'All the suffering's got to be a sign,' he said. 'Because if it isn't, life is not worth living.' That's where it ended," said Ackart. "With those words, which scare the hell out of me. Then he left for Los Angeles. Cecile and I are desperate. We've lost a son. This End Time madness is ruining our business. Worse, I couldn't say that Alain won't become a bomber for Christ. I'm at my wit's end."

    Ackart looked out through the cigarette haze, his eyes moist. Poincaré's own grief was immense, but Ackart's grief had moved him. "I'm leaving for the States in the morning," he said. "One of my stops is Los Angeles. I could grab Alain and ship him home for deprogramming."

    "Deprogramming . . . so that he can wake up to the same headlines? The world
is
going to shit, Henri. How does one take it in and live a life?" Ackart shook his head. "Look. You've got your own troubles, and I have no right . . . But I can't go on like this." He scribbled an address. "Find him. If you think he's dangerous, get him off the streets before something bad happens."

"
M
r. Punky-ray. You come right up!"

    Poincaré recalled Peter Roy's mother-in-law with affection, though in all honesty he had forgotten about the old woman until he tried negotiating, once again, the grimy call box on Massachusetts Avenue. She buzzed him into the building and greeted him at the office door with a smile and the same heavy-jowled crankiness he found so endearing on his first visit. This time, she extended her arm in the dim hallway light, palm downward—waiting. Poincaré bowed slightly and kissed the back of her hand. "Enchanté," she said. "Rachel's husband is expecting you."

    "Rachel's husband?"

    "Peter, my son-in-law."

    Roy appeared behind her. "Browbeating our clients again, Gladys?"

    She patted his shoulder on her way into the office. "You're the father of my grandchildren and you pay my salary—so I won't say anything unkind. But Mr. Punky-ray could teach you a thing or two about manners. You could start with a kiss each morning. Here, for instance." She put a finger to her cheek.

    Roy cleared his throat. "Welcome to America, Henri."

    Poincaré had also forgotten the appeal of Peter Roy, who reminded him of country lawyers he read about as a young man. Here were the suspenders, the bow tie, and the wire rims behind which dark eyes suggested principles that would not bend. Yet this country lawyer had hung his shingle above a tattoo parlor in an East Coast city.

    "Gladys heard you were visiting and baked muffins," he said.

    "Stop that! It's a surprise!" She rounded a corner with a tin of poppy-seed muffins, reminding Poincaré of Felice Laval introducing herself the morning Claire and he took possession of the farm. Overwhelmed by its ramshackle condition and suffering a brutal case of buyer's remorse, Poincaré was just working his hand through a hole in the foundation that he had somehow failed to notice before the sale when Felice arrived, croissants in a basket, a thermos of coffee, three paper cups and the reassuring news that field mice were a problem only ten months a year.

    "With you being so far from home," said Roy's mother-in-law, "I thought you might appreciate some American hospitality. Does your wife bake muffins?"

    "At the moment no, Madame."

    She hobbled from view in search of coffee. Walking to the conference room, Poincaré said: "I suppose you understand how fortunate you are."

    "To have Gladys? Half my clients bring her chocolates or flowers. The other half wonder how I haven't lost my mind. . . . What can I do for you, Henri? I seem always to be in a rush these days. When I was a partner at a downtown firm charging $500 an hour, I kept my meter running in ten-minute increments to make my billable quota each month. Now that I've set a rate my new clients can afford— $40 an hour, not even half of what a competent massage therapist makes—I run the meter at two-minute intervals just to keep the lights on. My time wasn't my own downtown, and it's not here. My wife says I've traded one prison uniform for another."

    "And I'm not a paying customer," Poincaré offered. "Or am I?"

    Roy smiled. "Sit, Henri. I imagine you want updates. I haven't heard from Madeleine Rainer again. And Fenster's estate is settled— all the legal matters are tucked away, save one. The battle over the hard drive has heated up. Eric Hurley, the Commonwealth's lead investigator on the case, contacted me two weeks ago asking if Fenster had left any indication in his will about the disposition of his laptop computer. My strong presumption, though no one has asked for my opinion, is that because James left everything to the Math League Trust he established to benefit the Cambridge school system, the burden will be on others to prove why his computer and whatever's on it shouldn't go to the Trust as well. In fact, no one knows what's on the hard drive—but the interest, shall we say, is high." "I'll call Hurley," said Poincaré. "We've met."

    "You should. The State has finally released Fenster's apartment back to the landlord, who sued so he could rent the unit again. The investigation has tied the place up for—what has it been, now—four months? The man deserves his rent."

    "Of course. What about Fenster's belongings?"

    "Donated, I believe. The landlord put the caretaker in charge of that."

    Poincaré slid three photographs of the same person across the table. Honey-nut skin. Jet black hair. Round face. One photo came off the Harvard Math Department's home page months ago. The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles mailed Poincaré the second. The last was a passport photo, provided by the Counsel General of Ecuador. Roy studied the images.

    "She's fond of scarves," he said. "Beyond that, never met her."

    "Dana Chambi," said Poincaré.

    "Fenster's graduate student? She and I spoke by phone several times after the bombing, mostly about the Math League and how that could become an important part of Fenster's legacy. We never met in person, but from what I can tell she's bright and agreeable. What do you want with Dana Chambi?"

    "She's a person of interest in my investigation."

    Roy folded his hands. "I shouldn't think so—not the woman I met by phone. She was nothing but helpful, conscientious. You saying she's a murderer?"

    "I'm saying she's a person of interest."

    Roy nodded. "Well, then. I can tell you how to find her, but not where—if that makes any sense. She's the 'Resident Expert' at the Math League Web site. When students log on, they find study sets, puzzles, mazes, and so forth. There's also a message thread that she monitors, providing free tutorial services. She said it would be a way of staying connected to Fenster's mission. She built the entire Web site and is running everything for the summer on a trial basis, until other tutors take over. Fenster's fund pays for advertising here in Cambridge—small money. Ms. Chambi takes care of the rest, gratis. It's an impressive site by any standard, an entire math curriculum to supplement what goes on in the classroom. She consulted teachers system-wide on its development, and apparently there's support for introducing it into the curriculum. I believe summer enrichment classes are already using it. So you can find her on the Web. Where she happens to be seated physically, of course, is anyone's guess."

    "Who hosts the site? Where does she rent server space?"

    Roy opened a second file. "The Math League Trust pays all expenses. The domain registry, the site hosting . . ." He flipped through several pages. "Yes, here it is." He pointed to copies of invoices establishing the Trust as the purchaser of services. "Gladys wrote the initial checks to launch the site. It's a yearly fee, not much. I'm custodian of the Trust, temporarily at least. Following Ms. Chambi's instructions, we bought the domain name and paid for server space. The company we dealt with is located in Philadelphia, but the actual servers could be located anywhere. Chambi could be on a world tour at the moment and still maintain the site without disruption to end users. So there's nothing in any of this that establishes a location for her. You could subpoena the company in Pennsylvania, but they would only point you back here, since we're the only ones who really exist for them."