Will Staeger - Public Enemy

“Fine,” Curlwood said.

He didn’t ask for explanation or clarification.

Cooper hunkered down in the chair, staring up at Curlwood for a long, silent while. Curlwood didn’t say anything to fill the void. He didn’t particularly hold Cooper’s gaze either.

“You’ve got some kind of faith, Hennie,” he said. “Misplaced though it is.”

Curlwood the crackerjack advisor digested and interpreted in two seconds flat.

“I suppose,” the deputy chief of staff said, “I could say something like, ‘I spared you, and therefore assumed you’d spare me,’ but in actuality I had you checked out. Quite early in the process. Top to bottom.”

“That so,” Cooper said.

“You’re known for your extortion schemes. You show up in my library-logic completes the equation.”

“You ought to exercise a little more caution with your profiling, there, Hennie,” Cooper said. “Normally, your assessment might prove correct, but Cap’n Roy Gillespie was a good man. And though I didn’t know them, the Mayans in the fucking rain forest crater probably weren’t bad folks either.”

“Perhaps he was. And perhaps they were. Are we through?”

Cooper breathed in a long, slow volume of air and let it out the way a slow leak might result in the deflation of an inner tube. He’d given this a lot of thought-short of establishing a scholarship fund for other, as-yet-alive Mayan Indian villagers, what the hell was left to be done? Sleeping Beauty’s fellow villagers were dead and gone. Lying in a hospital bed in Sáo Paulo for the few weeks of recovery his wounds had required, Cooper had ultimately decided that unless he decided to make his appearance at the snuffer-outer’s home armed with a machete-prepared to behead the final target on Sleeping Beauty’s vengeance list-there existed few options beyond the usual self-preservation extortion scheme, albeit loaded with a shot at protecting a few others in the process.

Seated before him now, however, Cooper found he had to physically tamp down the temptation to throw his Sáo Paulo thinking to the wind, reach up, and strangle Curlwood with his bare hands.

Hennie, it’s your lucky goddamn day: after two trips down the hatch, my murderous streak seems to have been replaced by a stronger than normal desire for self-preservation-as though for the first time in twenty years I’ve got something to live for, and somehow it turns out that an institutionalized, murderous powermonger like you gets the honor of being the first to be spared.

Cooper stood. He stepped up to the shorter Curlwood, leaned his face down until their noses nearly touched, and grabbed hold of Curlwood’s head, feeling the man’s fleshy ears and cheeks against his palms. Then he slapped the deputy chief of staff on his left cheek-twice, extremely hard.

“For now,” he said. “We’re through for now.”

He released Curlwood from his grip.

Curlwood didn’t do anything but stand in place as Cooper limped into the hall and said, “My gun,” speaking in the direction he’d seen the Secret Service man go.

When no reply came, Curlwood yelled, “Give it to him!”

The Secret Service man came into the hall and flipped Cooper his Browning, which Cooper noticed, upon snatching the weapon, felt considerably lighter than before.

He returned the bulletless gun to the waistband at the small of his back and headed for the hills.

Laramie hadn’t told anybody but her supervisor that she was back in town, so the knock at the door concerned her. There hadn’t been word of any new bombings-not that she had heard, at any rate. But once the filo was found to spread into fresh territory-it was happening in small pockets throughout most regions of the country-Laramie understood part of the quarantine process to involve door-to-door visits by the National Guard.

This city is now under lockdown, she expected her visitor to announce. You are not to leave your home; not even to stand in your yard. Violators are subject to immediate arrest.

The visitor she spied through the peekhole in the front door of her condo was not, however, a member of the National Guard. She watched as Cooper lifted a thermos and two full-figured cocktail glasses so she could see them through the peephole.

It occurred to Laramie she was wearing only her panties and Lakers nightshirt. She considered ducking into her bedroom to pull on a pair of jeans, then thought what the hell and opened the door.

Cooper slid in and Laramie noticed he was wearing an oddly conformist selection of clothes-a sweater with a beefy collar-and-button arrangement, khaki slacks that actually reached below the knee, and even shoes. Laramie couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Cooper out of uniform. Taking it in reverse order, it was always-always-flip-flops or sandals, almost always shorts, and usually a tropical-pattern short-sleeved silk shirt.

Cooper raised the thermos and cocktail glasses.

“Would have preferred to hold this little reunion on the beach near San Cristóbal,” he said, “but with air travel restrictions being what they are, I’m figuring genuine Cuban mojitos will serve as the next best thing.”

Laramie shut the door and stood facing him with hands on hips.

“You look different,” she said.

“You don’t,” he said.

Laramie hadn’t moved from her place near the door, and Cooper noted that Laramie, in keeping with the manners of other government employees, hadn’t suggested he make himself comfortable on one of the available surfaces that surrounded them.

Therefore he, too, stood his ground.

“Was that a compliment?” Laramie said.

“Probably,” Cooper said.

Laramie nodded this time.

“What are you doing here,” she said.

“Saying hello,” Cooper said, “and, while I’m at it, congratulating my commanding officer on her relative success in defusing the ‘bioterror’ crisis-”

“Probably there was some other business you were here to attend to,” Laramie said, “but as the human lie detector machine, I’m going to posit the theory that you’re also here in an effort to impress me.”

“What gives you that idea?”

“When was the last time you swung by my actual home?”

Cooper said, “That would be never.”

“When did you last wear clothes a normal person would wear?” Laramie said.

“Tough question,” he said.

“These almost appear as gestures of the sort that would lead one to conclude there’s no longer an ultimatum in effect,” Laramie said, “requiring that I return to the islands to hop from resort to beach to spa and back again-or incur the wrath of zero phone calls.”

Cooper said, “Well, strangely, you seem to prefer living where people bomb you with filoviruses just for living here. But eventually one comes to accept such eccentricities.”

They kept standing in their places.

“What’s in a mojito?” Laramie said.

“A lot of very good rum,” Cooper said, “a few crushed mint leaves, some sugar, and very little soda water. Over ice.”

“Sounds pretty good.”

“Celebrated yet traditional Cuban cocktail,” Cooper said. “Speaking of tradition, by the way, this would be my first booze since departing on that Central American cruise you sent me on.”

Laramie stood firm but almost cracked a smile.

“Funny,” she said.

“What’s funny about recovering from massive and lengthy liquor abuse?” he said.

“I’m a few days in on the caffeine-withdrawal headaches myself,” she said.

“Ah,” Cooper said.

After a moment, Laramie said, “We don’t get along very well.”

Cooper considered this.

“Probably about as well as an old married couple,” he said.