Peter Heller - Celine

Celine considered. If the file had been stolen, which sounded like the case, then this investigation had just become much more interesting. And they had barely started. A frisson of excitement went through her.

Celine’s close friends had long ago determined that she was not constructed like other people. Where others might shrink or panic she seemed to get larger, to become more focused. Perhaps it was her years with Admiral Halsey, Baboo’s longtime companion, who was known and feared for going straight into the teeth of battle. It was a trait his critics dissected with relish. But what they often missed in their analyses of battles and tactics was a streak of imagination and creativity that came straight out of a zest for boyhood mischief. Celine must have told Hank the story half a dozen times: When Halsey was an upperclassman at Annapolis he was given command of a patrol frigate during a live-ammo battle exercise on the Chesapeake. There were two teams. There was also heavy fog. The live ammo were rubber torpedoes. Halsey used his enemy’s convoy as radar cover—they just assumed the blip was theirs as no enemy in his right mind would fall into the fleet like a duckling—and he maneuvered undetected so close to a Farragut-class destroyer—feet not yards—that when he loosed his rubber torpedo he put a hole in the hull of the brand-new ship. He was reprimanded and commended by the same commander—who had a distinct twinkle in his eye as he gave the cadet his dressing-down.

Hank, who loved to think about character, sometimes wondered if that spirit in the face of long odds, and the unorthodox approach, may have rubbed off on Celine when she was a child. He thought of the two of them walking up that dirt road together in mud season in Vermont, the distraught girl holding the old admiral’s hand, the cold wind through the bare woods blowing her hair so that it covered her tear-stained face, the aged sailor barely noticing, his wandering mind maybe coming at last to focus on his young charge, this current mission: To console and protect. To educate. To love. Which he did. He adored Celine—Baboo had said so. He may have seen in the skinny girl—in her courage and mettle and imagination—a little of himself. What he might have said to her that afternoon: something about when we are most scared is the time to summon our clearest concentration and move forward, not back.

One of Hank’s favorite stories of Celine was years after Admiral Bill died. She was in her forties. One of her cousins, the curator Rodney’s younger brother Billy, was dying of pancreatic cancer at St. Luke’s up in Harlem. She went to say goodbye. They had grown up together and shared many summers on Fishers Island and he was enduring probably his last day on earth and she stayed late and did not let herself fall apart in his room. And she lost track of time. It was two a.m. when she finally kissed his cheek and said, “I’ll be seeing you, Billy,” and went out into the November night. It was windy and cold, much like that day with Admiral Bill years ago. She was lost to memories of childhood as she made her way down a deserted Amsterdam Avenue. This was back when that part of the city was much more dangerous than it is today. She had a vague thought that she might catch a cab at 110th Street. Litter blew across the street. The heels of her pumps clicked on the pavement and her bracelets jingled. Suddenly two large men leapt out from a doorway and loomed in front of her. They were very rough. Without thought Celine said, “Oh! You must be freezing!” Addressing the larger of the two, she said, “You’ll catch your death of cold. Your shirt is all ripped. Let me see if I have a safety pin.” With that, she opened up her purse and began rifling through it.

The men stared. They were dumbfounded. “Here, found one!” she said and pulled it out and reached up and deftly folded back the edge of the rip, smoothing it carefully so that it made a neat edge the pin could catch, and she did the same on the other side of the tear, and with wonderful concentration pushed the pin through both sides and secured it. She patted it neatly down. “There,” she said. “You’ll be much warmer.” The men stared. When they could speak they told her that this, ah, neighborhood was really really dangerous and what was she doing out here all alone?

“Saying goodbye to someone at the hospital who has been very special to me.”

They insisted on walking her to the corner and waiting with her for a cab. Hank could see the two towering men in tatters, and little Celine in her long wool coat and beret and gold earrings. Of course no cab would stop, the men were too formidable. So she finally turned to them and said, “You two were on your way to doing something, why don’t you go do it. I’ll be fine. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help.” And as soon as they left she hailed a taxi.

She had not been in command of a frigate that night, and her motive was not a vanquishing of any kind, but the instinct to go straight ahead where others wouldn’t dream to go seems in sympathy with her surrogate father.

Now she covered the phone in her lap for a second and was on the verge of speaking to Pete when she picked it up again and said, “I’ll call you back in just a minute. I promise. Pete is right here and we need to talk it over,” and she hung up.

The chat may have lasted five minutes.

The deductions were obvious. If someone had stolen Gabriela’s twenty-three-year-old research file on her missing father then 1) the timing suggested that they didn’t want Celine and Pete to have it, and 2) they couldn’t know that the two were just now launching an investigation unless Gabriela had told someone, or her phone was tapped. They’d clear that up in just a minute.

On the next bench, in full sun, was a family of four tourists feeding popcorn to Canada geese. The little boy was hurling the kernels overhead like he was trying to hit the birds with shot, and in his other hand he held a chocolate ice-cream cone that was melting all over his wrist.

“It’s very hard to be a boy,” Celine commented dryly. “You’re never sure whether to love something or kill it.” Pete followed her gaze. “This is a very self-respecting town, Pete. The pigeons here are wild geese.”

“Hmm.”

“Remind me to tell you a story later about peppering birds with shot.”

“Hmm.”

“Which, if you will stop interrupting me, brings us to further ideas on the matter. It’s very hard to concentrate when you are so effusive.”

He held her hand and rubbed the back of it with his thumb.

“Let’s assume that the file didn’t get up and walk of its own accord out of Gabriela’s apartment. And that she didn’t just leave it at the coffee shop. I’d be very surprised if she took it there in the first place. She would handle something like that with extreme care.”

“It was stolen,” Pete said flatly. “And I don’t believe she told anyone about enlisting us. I didn’t get the sense that she has a wide circle of confidants.”

“Right. And we’ll just ask her in a minute.”

“Which means her phone was tapped—”

Pete was interrupted by an alarmed blatting and honking. The little boy, unable to arouse love or inflict death on the geese by hurling popcorn—they just happily ate the stuff—had dropped his cone and charged headlong at the little flock. He’d stubbed his toe on a root and hurtled like a surface-to-surface child at the birds who were at least as big as he. That was the first commotion. The alpha goose, if there is such a thing, was on top of the prone boy in a flash, beating his great wings and hissing and pecking at his neck. You could see that the goose had snapped. Psychologically. He’d had enough of obnoxious little boys and junk food, this goose was going postal. Enough was enough. That was the second commotion. The mom screamed, the dad leapt up and rushed; the goose, to his credit, gave no quarter and flew into the man’s face. The dad looked like he was beating himself about the head and shoulders. The goose landed on the grass, stumbled sideways, recovered, stretched his tremendous neck, took two strides, and in sync with his tribe, flapped his great wings, this time for flight, and with dignity and improbable slowness took wing. He and his flock rose over the trees muttering and circled north, out of sight.