live to become a mother.
She fed the boys snacks from a picnic basket she’d prepared. After that, Djamila had to chase down the oldest boy, Timmy, to retrieve her cell phone and car keys from him. He’d done this before whenever she left her purse in a place he could reach. She didn’t mind; all children were curious. She loaded the boys into the van, where they immediately fell asleep. Then she took out her rug and performed her midafternoon prayer next to the van. She had brought a small bottle of water and a pan with her to perform her ablution.
While the boys slept, she drove all around Brennan, Pennsylvania. As had often been the case in this area, the town existed because the railroad gods had long ago decided to put a station stop here. These trains carried some passengers but mostly coal and coke to the steel mills and the eastern ports. Now Brennan was rebuilding itself into a posh suburb of Pittsburgh. The town had quaint shops and restaurants, regentrified homes and a sparkling new country club.
Djamila stopped often to take pictures with a small digital camera no bigger than her index finger. As she did so, she spoke into a small recorder, describing things that should have held little importance to a foreign-born nanny shepherding three slumbering boys around; however, all of it interested her. Then she covered the outlying areas, paying particular attention to road configurations.
Finally, she pulled up in front of a beautiful fieldstone estate that was set well back from the road and behind a low wall of locally quarried stone. Such a pretty home, she thought, but far too big. In America everything was too big: from the meals to the houses to the cars to the people. The only things that weren’t big were the clothes. Djamila had seen more butts, breasts and bellies in the last few months than she had seen in all the preceding years of her life. It disgusted her.
Give Djamila the jilbab and a khimar to cover her body, give her even three other wives to compete with, over such “freedom.”
She frowned as she glanced at the sleeping children. Yes, her employers disgusted her with their money and loveless marriage. Even the children in the backseat in one sense disgusted her because they would grow up one day and believe they ruled the world simply because they were Americans. She put the van in gear and drove off.
Djamila would report in tonight on her computer, at the movie site. According to her memorized schedule, the chat room for this night dealt with a film called To Kill a Mockingbird. It was a strange name for a movie, but Americans, she knew, were strange. Yes, strange, violent and, most frightening of all, completely unpredictable.
CHAPTER
16
OLIVER STONE HAD RETURNED to his cottage and attempted sleep, but the night’s extraordinary events rendered that act impossible. He built a small fire to battle the chill in the air and sat and read until dawn, though his thoughts continually wandered to the death of Patrick Johnson. Or rather, murder. Then he made some coffee and had a bit of breakfast. After that, he spent the next several hours attending to his duties in the cemetery. As he weeded, cut the grass, cleared debris and cleaned off aged tombstones, he focused on how close he and his friends had come to losing their lives last night. It was a feeling he’d had many times earlier in his life, and he’d learned to deal with it. Now it would not go away so easily.
After he’d finished his work, he went inside the cottage and showered. Looking at his appearance in the mirror, Stone made a decision; only he didn’t have the necessary tools to implement that decision. Caleb and Reuben would be at work by now. And he just didn’t trust Milton to do the job properly.
There was really only one alternative. He headed to Chinatown.
“Adelphia?” Stone called out. It was forty-five minutes later, and he was standing outside her apartment, which was situated over a dry cleaners. “Adelphia?” he said again. He wondered if she’d already gone out. Then he heard approaching footsteps and Adelphia opened the door, dressed in a pair of black pants and a long sweater, her hair pulled back in a bun. She looked at him crossly.
“How you know where I live?” she demanded.
“You told me.”
“Oh.” She scowled at him. “How did meeting go?” she said irritably.
“Actually, there were a few surprises.”
“What is it you want, Oliver?”
Stone cleared his throat and launched into his lie. “I’ve thought about your advice about my appearance. So I was wondering if you could give me a haircut. I suppose I could do it myself, but I’m afraid the result would be worse than how I look right now.”
“It is not so bad you look.” This comment seemed to slip out before the lady realized it. She coughed self-consciously and then gazed at him in mild surprise. “So, you take my advice?”
He nodded. “I’m going to get some new clothes too. Well, new in the sense that they’ll be new to me. And shoes.”
She looked at him suspiciously. “And the beard? That thing that makes you look to be, how you say, that Rumpelstein person.”
“Yes, the beard will go too. But I can shave that off myself.”
She waved dismissively. “No, I do. I have dreamed many times of disappearing that beard.” She motioned him into her apartment. “Come, come, we do it now. Before your mind it is changed.”
Stone followed her in and looked around. The inside of Adelphia’s apartment was very clean and organized, which surprised him. The woman’s personality seemed far too impulsive and fractured to manufacture such order.
She led him into the bathroom and pointed to the toilet. “Sit.”
He did so while she busied herself with getting necessary instruments. From where he was sitting Stone could see a shelf in the hallway that held books on many subjects, a few in languages Stone did not recognize, though he had spent many years traveling the world.
“Do you know all those languages, Adelphia?” he asked, pointing at the books.
She stopped assembling her tools and looked at him suspiciously. “And why would books like that I keep if I could not read them? Does my apartment look so big that I keep things I no use?”
“I see your point.”
She draped a sheet over him and knotted it behind his neck.
“How much cutting is it you want?”
“Over the ears and off the neck will do nicely.”
“You are sure of this?”
“Absolutely sure.”
She started clipping. Finished, she combed his hair into place, gelling down a few stubborn cowlicks. Next she attacked his thick beard with her shears, whittling it down quickly. Then picked up another object.
“It is this I use on my legs,” she said, holding up a lady’s razor. “But it will do too for your face.”
When he saw what he looked like in a small mirror Adelphia handed him after she’d finished, Stone almost didn’t recognize his reflection. He rubbed at facial skin he had not seen in years. With the bundle of long, scraggly hair and beard gone he noted that he had a long forehead with stacks of wrinkles and a smooth, slender neck.
“It is a nice face you have,” Adelphia said sincerely. “And your neck is like baby’s skin. Me, I have got no nice neck. It is old woman’s. Like the turkey. ”
“I think you have very pleasing features, Adelphia,” he said. Stone was still looking at his face in the mirror, so he didn’t see her blush and quickly look down.
“You have visitor last night.”
Stone glanced up at her. “A visitor. Who?”
“A man in suit. His name it is Fort, or is something like that. I not remember exactly. He say to tell you of his coming by.”
“Fort?”
“I see him talking to those men, the ones across the street. You know him, Oliver. The Secret men.”
“The Secret Service. Do you mean Ford? Agent Alex Ford?”
Adelphia pointed at him. “That is it. A big man he is. Taller than you.”
“Did he say what he wanted?”
“Only that he say hello.”
“What time was this?”