The Chronoliths

“Hey, buddy,” he said. “You got that package I asked you to pick up?”

I muttered something about the package; he gri

Of course Sue Chopra had known about Hitch. All my efforts on his behalf — to avoid implicating him during the polygraph interview, for instance — had been obvious and futile. Hitch was one of Sue’s so-called primary observers, and he must have figured in her co

I had assumed Hitch would also be unfindable, but he had probably hung around Chumphon a little longer than he might have had he understood just how closely witnesses were being scrutinized — long enough for the FBI to target his internet signature or even plant a locator on him. In any case, they had found him.

They had found him, and Sue had offered him the alternative of prompt arrest or a job. Hitch had made the wise choice.

“It’s not exactly an office job,” he said. “Good pay, travel, no strings. Supposedly a clean criminal record at the end of it, though the end is nowhere in sight. First thing they did was send me around the Pacific Rim hunting rumors about Kuin, not that anything substantial came of it. But I been busy, Scotty. Scouting touchdown sites in, you know, Ankara, Istanbul, doing little unofficial things here and there, talking to Kuinists — lately, talking to the homegrown kind. Copperheads and hajists.”

“You’re a spy?”

He gave me a sour look. “Right, I’m a spy. I drink martinis and play a lot of baccarat.”

“But you know about the haj thing.”

“I know more about the ‘haj thing’ than most people. I’ve been inside it. And I will do whatever I can to help you find Kait.”

I sat back in the booth, wondering if this was what I wanted. If this was wise.

“You know,” Hitch said, “when I think of Kaitlin, I still think of her at Chumphon. The way she’d run down the tide line in that pink one-piece Janice liked to dress her in, leaving these footprints in the sand like little bitty bird footprints, heel-and-toe. We should have taken better care of her, Scotty.”

He said “we” to be friendly. He was talking about me.

Hitch did not reminisce much, nor did he waste time. He had already gotten the details of the situation from Ramone Dudley, and I added what little I had personally learned while we stared at the coffee shop menus.

He said, “Mexico is a good bet. But we have to know more than we do before we come to any conclusions.”

He suggested another talk with Whit Delahunt. I agreed, on the condition that we not alarm Janice unduly. “And we should talk to Ashlee Mills, too. If she’s home, we could pick her up on the way to see Whit.”

“Not good,” Hitch said, “to get too many people involved here.”

“Ashlee’s as involved as I am. She’s been more helpful than the police, actually.”

“You vouch for her, Scotty?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He looked at me critically. “You haven’t been eating or sleeping much, it looks like.”

“It shows?”

“Maybe you ought to try the steak and eggs.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Steak and eggs, Scotty. For Kait’s sake, let’s say.”

I didn’t want the food, but it looked good when the waitress delivered it. I had surprisingly little trouble emptying the plate.

“Feel better?” Hitch asked.

“What I feel is the hardening of my arteries.”

“Bullshit. You need the protein. We have some work ahead of us, and not just today.”

I heard myself say, “Can we really get her back?”

“We’ll get her back. Count on it.”

Ashlee did a double take when she saw Hitch Paley for the first time, then shot me a look: You have friends like this?

Which was fair enough. Hitch still looked like a small-time criminal — he could have passed for a drug dealer à la Cheever Cox, or maybe the kind of bulky individual who collects on bad debts. I sketched out some of our past and repeated some of what Hitch had told me. Ashlee nodded but clearly continued to suspect that Hitch was something more than Sue Chopra’s ears on the underworld.

She took me aside and said, “Can he help us find Kait and Adam? That’s all I really need to know.”

“I think he can.”

“Then let’s go see this Whitman Delahunt.”

I drove. The afternoon air was gently breezy, the sky raked with high cloud. Hitch was silent in the car. Ashlee hummed a tune I recognized as an old Lux Ebone song, something sad. Something from the time when songs still mattered, when everyone knew the same songs. This year’s popular songs all sounded like marching music to me: drums and cymbals and trumpet notes drowning in their own echoes. But I suppose every decade gets the music it deserves.

Hitch had spotted the nicotine stains on Ashlee’s fingers. “You can go ahead and smoke,” he said, “I don’t give a fuck.”

The house where Whit and Janice lived had not aged especially gracefully, nor had the neighborhood it inhabited, but both were still well above the national average. People here could afford to have their trash hauled away, even during the collectors’ strike. The lawns were green. Here and there, rust-speckled landscape robots crawled among the hedges like sluggish armadillos. If you squinted a little, it looked like the last ten years hadn’t happened.

Whitman answered the door and recoiled when he saw me. He didn’t like the looks of Hitch or Ashlee, either. His expression turned blank and he said, “Janice is upstairs, Scott. Do you want me to call her?”

“We just want to ask you a couple of questions,” I said. “Janice doesn’t need to be involved.”

He clearly didn’t want to invite us in, but he may also have been reluctant to discuss his Copperhead politics in front of any passing neighbors. We stepped into the cool shade of the house. I introduced Hitch and Ashlee without being specific about why I had brought them. When we were away from the door, Hitch took the initiative. He said, “Scotty told me about the club you belong to, Mr. Delahunt. What we need now is a list of the other adult members.”

“I already gave that to the police.”

“Yeah, but we need it too.”

“You have no right to make such a demand.”

“No,” Hitch said, “and you’re not obliged to give it to us, but it will help us find Kaitlin.”

“I doubt that.” Whit turned to me. “I could have talked to the police about you, Scott. I wish I had.”

“It’s okay,” I said, “I talked to them myself.”

“You’ll be talking to them again if you persist in—”

“In what,” Hitch interrupted, “trying to save your daughter from this mess she got herself into?”

Whit looked like he wanted to stamp his foot. “I don’t even know you! What do you have to do with Kaitlin?”

Hitch smiled faintly. “She used to have a scar under her left knee where she fell on a broken bottle outside the Haat Thai. Does she still have that scar, Mr. Delahunt?”

Whit opened his mouth to answer, but he was interrupted:

“Yes.”

Janice’s voice. It came from the stairway. She had been listening. She came the rest of the way down, regal in her grief. “It’s still there. But it’s mostly faded. Hi, Hitch.”

This time Hitch’s smile was genuine. “Janice,” he said.

“You’re helping Scott look for Kaitlin?”

He said he was.

“That’s good, then. Whit, would you give these people the information they want?”

“That’s absurd. They can’t come here and make this kind of demand.”

“It sounded more like a request. But they might help Kait, and that’s what matters, isn’t it?”

Whit choked back a protest. There was a ferocity hidden in Janice’s voice, an old and potent anger. Maybe Hitch and Ashlee didn’t hear it, but I did. And so did Whit.