All the Old Knives Read Free

was going on. But he was also smart, and if I buried Frankler Daniels would dig it up again and dust it off and make a stink. More important, he would take the investigation out of my hands, and that was something I couldn’t allow.
    I said, “How do you think we’d look once Daniels started shouting around Langley? I’ve got to follow this as far as it goes—not talking to Celia would leave a gaping hole. He would shove us into it.”
    Another sigh. “Just try to wrap it up quickly, will you? Tomorrow’s giving us enough headaches without having to pick apart yesterday. Remember that when you’re harassing your girlfriend.”
    But I was already ahead of Vick, and wrapping up Frankler is what makes me slow down in the thickening traffic and peer at signs, trying without success not to think about Celia, and what kind of a meeting she’s anticipating. A few hours of reminiscence, something official, or … something more interesting?
    On the radio the DJ tells me he’s busy getting the Led out, and I’m surprised that in the last three decades, ever since I played that old transistor radio in my high school bedroom, DJs haven’t come up with a better way of proclaiming their love for Zeppelin. He goes on, predicting a “Beatles Block” in the next hour, and telling his listeners to call in for his “awesome two for Tuesday.”
    Really? Did commercial radio reach its creative peak in 1982? I switch it off.
    To my left is a high school, and on the right a sign points me into the trees and down Ocean Avenue, which rolls downhill toward the coast, splitting the town of Carmel-by-the-Sea in half. The speed limit drops to twenty-five, and I ease along between two tricked-out SUVs. Carmel long ago rid itself of traffic lights, so every few blocks a four-way stop hides among the trees and cottages. I feel like I’ve been slipped a mild tranquilizer. It’s the freshest air I’ve breathed in my life.
    Eventually, after brief views of small homes through the trees, the shopping district appears, cut down the center by a median strip full of cultivated trees and lined on either side with cottage-themed local stores. Chains are prohibited, and the town center looks like a cinematic version of a quaint English village. Not a real English village, mind, but the kind in which Miss Marple might find herself stumbling around, discovering corpses among the antiques. I drive through the center, all the way down to the sea, passing retirement-aged shoppers dressed like golfers as they walk their little dogs, then take the sandy parking loop to get a glimpse of the clean, white beach and rough waves in the quickly fading light. There are tourists driving behind me, so I only get a moment of serenity before heading back up into the center.
    I park near the corner of Lincoln and wait behind the wheel as evening descends. A smattering of locals and tourists, each one his own particular shade of white, wander the sidewalks. I’m in the middle of an idealized vision of a seaside village, rather than the real thing. An image of an image, which is a perfect place to live if you want to be something other than what you once were.
    But it’s nice, and I wonder if I should have reserved a room for the night instead of a seat on the red-eye back to San Francisco. I can see myself waking in this village and joining the golfers for their dawn constitutionals along the shore. The morning breeze, the sea—the kinds of things that can clean you out after a decade in the Vienna embassy. A salt wash for the soul.
    After tonight, though, it’ll take more than a pretty beach to scrub my soul clean, and I suspect that by the time I settle into my return flight all I’ll want to do is run from Carmel-by-the-Sea as fast as my little legs can carry me.
    After raising the roof with another button press and locking it into place, I take a phone out of my shoulder bag.