REUBEN FINE'S HOUSEKEEPER appeared with plates of food to set before Tiffany Douglass Douglas and her mother, Angela Douglass, PhD. Tiffany could not help digging in; she was starving. "You’ve got an appetite on you," said "Uncle Reuben’s" latest ex-wife. "I ate like a starving elephant when I was carrying Vanilla. When I was nursing, too."
Tiffany's mouth was fully occupied with eating at the moment, but her mother was not so intent on her food. Professor Douglass responded to the showgirl, "I had quite an appetite myself when I was carrying Tiffany. But how did you ever get the weight off?"
"I never put on much," said the showgirl. "I mean, not like other girls I know. I never put on any weight. I guess I got good genes, for that."
"Really? Tiffany's something of the same way. She couldn't have got it from me. Forgive me, but can I ask you a personal question?"
"Sure."
"Do you wear colored contacts? Or have you had some kind of cosmetic process?"
"Oh, these?" said Candy the showgirl, pointing to her liquid purple eyes. "Nope, these are the original issue. 20-10, in fact. I didn't always understand what the teachers were writing on the board when I was in school, but I could always read it. Another gift from my Daddy, whoever he was."
Tiffany postponed her next mouthful long enough to ask Uncle Reuben's showgirl ex "Sperm donor like me?"
"No, just someone my mom liked a little too much."
"I'd never seen eyes like yours until a few days ago," said Tiffany's mother.
"Really?" asked the showgirl. "I never met anyone else with eyes like mine, really, except"
Three little girls came down the stairs. The fastest one had Candy's extraordinary eyes. But she also had the coppery red hair Uncle Reuben had once had, as well as the spectacular Fine nose, already evident. "Hi! I'm Vanilla, like ice cream! This is my cousin Lily," she said, indicating one of two slightly taller children"clearly another fine from her nose"An' this is my cousin Mimi!" Mimi was a little jawdropper, a miniature of an Imperial concubine, but with cornsilk hair and huge amber eyes. The blond was so distracting that Tiffany Douglass Douglas paid little attention to the first cousin with the big Fine nose. Anyway, the black-haired one had hair falling over her eyes. Candy the showgirl noticed and said, "Lily, you need to learn how to use a brush!" She began working on the black-haired one. Vanilla climbed up in Uncle Reuben's lap.
They were eating in the front room plates on the coffee table between the couches. The side trip to see Michael Ennis Grandville had taken up most of the day. There had been two other people on the couch, but they had vanished. One of Tiffany hand made as the younger brother of Anastasia, David Godolfin. The other was an old man Tiffany did not make at all. He looked Chinese but what little she had heard before he'd gone had a Northeast accent. Did they know?
"My due date is April 1," said Anastasia. "When's yours?"
"Middle of February," Tiffany said when she'd cleared her mouth once again. "Maybe Valentine's Day."
"Hey, you must be like me," said Candy. "I was still doing shows until I was almost five months along.
"Another gift from your father?" asked Tiffany's mother.
"Must be. Mom said she was like a whale with me. I've seen pictures."
Masticating another delicious mouthful—Uncle Reuben's Russian housekeeper was a wonderful cook—Tiffany contrasted the cousins and Uncle Reuben's little girl. Lily the black-haired one was a little on the plump side. Mimi was delicately proportioned, like a doll. Vanilla was already showing the extra length of leg that would make her into another tall beauty like her mother. The cousins spoke with each other in a mix of English, Japanese, and Chinese, maybe more than one dialect. It was difficult to tell; the spoke quickly and not very loudly. No one had a problem hearing Vanilla, though. She asked, "Do you know if you'll have a boy or a girl?"
"Girl," Tiffany managed to say.
"Whatcha gonna call her?"
Swallowing, Tiffany answered, "Maybe Talitha."
"That's a Hebrew name," said Lily from under the curtain of hair Candy was still brushing out. Candy added, "From the Bible. All right, almost done." Candy brushed the child's hair back, and now for the first time Tiffany got a clear look at Lily's eyes. They were bluer than blue, a color that never did show well enough on film or on video. Although Tiffany knew only one other person who had bluey-blue eyes like that, she was familiar enough with that color. And at that moment, Lily voiced her thoughts. "You have eyes like mine," said Lily, putting a surprisingly professorial authority into the statement.
"Ah—yes, I guess I do," Tiffany said, sputtering slightly.
"Like your father's," said Tiffany's mother, looking back and forth between the child and her daughter. Who did she mean? Before Tiffany could decide to ask about that, her mother asked, "How old are you?"
"I'm seven," said the little girl with Tiffany's eyes and Uncle Reuben's nose.
"She's almost two whole times as old as me," said Vanilla "But I'm almost as big. Maybe I'll get bigger than Mommy some day."
"Not if you stay up all night," said Candy with authority in her voice. "Come on. It's past time for even old ladies of seven to be in bed." Vanilla protested, but Uncle Reuben upheld the decision, and Candy herded the children back up the stairs. The housekeeper appeared with seconds for Tiffany, then vanished again, leaving Tiffany and her mother alone with Uncle Reuben and his newest wife—who just happened to be the daughter of two people Michael Ennis Grandville was under indictment for murdering. "How did you like the Catskills?" Uncle Reuben murmured after Candy disappeared.
"Dissappointing," was all her mother said on the subject.
After a bathroom-call in the middle of the night Tiffany Douglass Douglas checked on her mother and found her standing by her bed looking through her window, in the dark. "It’s snowing," her mother said.
"It was in the forecast, said Tiffany, switching on the light and entering the room. "You can’t sleep again?"
Her mother closed the drapes and returned to her bed. Tiffany sat at the foot. "As long as you’re awake and we have some privacy, I’d like to talk about a few things."
"A few things like like what?"
"Lily, for one thing. Those eyes, it’s spooky seeing my eyes on another person after so long. But she’s got Uncle Reuben’s nose, for sure. Is she really his?"
"No, she really isn’t his. She got that nose from her mother."
"And she got her eyes from her father, which I believe I told you just a few hours ago."
"Who is her father?"
"Her father was Dr. Mamoru Chiba."
"Ms. Chiba’s husband?"
"Yes. And I can tell you that at least two more of his children have eyes like yours. But I doubt he was your natural father, since he would have been about ten when I started carrying you."
"How did you get to meet Ms. Chiba?"
"I had a problem between two of my students. One of them turned out to be the daughter of one of Ms. Chiba’s close friends."
"Did you meet her daughter? The one that—"
"Yes, I did, so I know what she believes happened."
"I imagine Mr. Grandville told a different story."
"I imagine he might, but I didn’t hear it."
"Not officially," said Tiffany.
"I mean I didn’t hear it. Tiffany, I am not going to help convict that boy. That’s your Michael’s job."
"I don’t know that."
"Yes you do. Your Michael is the only ADA in the state who has a chance to convict with any jury Gervaise will let sit for the trial, if there is one. You think I left you behind just to be mean? Gervaise would have pumped you dry to get what he could on your husband."
"What about Mr. Poteet and Mr. Sobel?"
"Gervaise has the mother, and the mother has final say." Tiffany’s mother turned on her side. "I think I might be able to get some sleep if you let me. Why don’t we save the rest for tomorrow?"
TIFFANY DOUGLASS DOUGLAS woke from one of her stranger dreams to find the landscape outside buried in deep snow, enough to make the cars parked along Stuyvesent Lane anonymous lumps. Snow was still falling. It was still dark, not quite six. She thought about calling her husband and decided against it; he was probably struggling to get to court.
Downstairs she found Vanilla and her cousins doing kata in the front room. The cousins were serious and had obviously received a lot of training. Vanilla was trying to follow. They were quieter than little girls should be, perhaps because of the old man with them, sitting, watching. He glanced at Tiffany, scowled, and then ignored her. Retreating to the kitchen she found Candy the showgirl, who said, "I’m dyin’ for some coffee. How about you?"
"I could use a cup or three. You seem cheery, even better than yesterday."
"Oh, Jesus loves me!"
"I’m sure he does. But is that why you’re in such a wonderful mood?"
Candy knew the kitchen well enough to get the coffee machine loaded and started without interrupting her talk. "Oh, it’s really silly. I just had a nice dream."
"Really? What was it like?"
"My dragon came, and took me flying."
"Your dragon?"
"Yeah. I’ve been dreaming about my dragon since I was little. Sometimes he chases away bad people. Sometimes he even talks. But mostly, he takes my flying."
"A dragon. What does it look like?"
"Kind of like a really big otter, only he has wings and horns. His wings are real pretty, like rainbows. Sometimes his eyes are like mine, but they change color." She snorted. "I know. He’s supposed to be my father, right?"
"I suppose he might symbolize your father, or what you’d like your father to be like. Strong, gentle, handsome. Not a bad combination." Tiffany smiled. "I haven’t really studied dream interpretation. It’s sort of out of fashion in psychotherapy these days."
"Really? Well, I’ll take your word for it."
"How did you meet Uncle Reuben, anyway?" asked Tiffany. "After one of your shows?"
"No. My family runs a wedding chapel. One of his friends wanted to get married in a hurry, and I was clerking that morning. I was only doing one show a night. I do real chorus-line work, you know? I’m usually the last girl on the right ‘cause I’m so tall. I wanted to ballet when I was little. But you can’t be too big in ballet. Guys can’t lift you." She sighed. "Vanilla loves dancing too, but she’s gonna be big like me. Chorus lines are just about all gone. The Trocadero was the last place in Vegas doing a big line show every night. But not now. The new management was really swift, you know? They packed us all out after the last show, no warning.""S
Tiffany asked about the old man. "That’s Mr. Han, Lily’s grandfather. Poor thing lost his wife a couple months back."
"He doesn’t have much use for me, does he?"
"Oh, that’s because of your mom."
"How come?"
Candy came close and lowered her voice: "Because of Mimi."
"Mimi? Why?"
"She was the one with Sarah, Ms. Chiba’s daughter. She got shot too, and I guess it looked pretty bad at first. It really scared Mrs. Han. I think Mr. Han thinks it might have killed her. So he doesn’t like your mother now, because she spoke up for Mr. Grandville. Listen, I really shouldn’t have told you this, we are not supposed to talk about it around Mimi. But I didn’t want you to think poor old Mr. Han is a bigot."
Some time later Tiffany heard her mother stirring, and she went to her room. The first thing she did was ask her mother whether she knew Mimi was the other girl with Sarah Uer at the delicatessen. "Yes, I knew," said her mother.
"From who? Uncle Reuben told you?"
"I know from Sarah Uer," said her mother.
"So . . . You know her story? You knew before you met with Grandville?"
"Yes, I did," said her mother, opening her window wider. "Smell that air. Lots of water in that snow. Have you heard from Michael?"
"Yes, it's snowing in the city, too. Court was cancelled, but he said he had to go in for a meeting anyway."
"Oh? Did he say what it was about?"
"No. Michael never talks about things like that on the phone."
MICHAEL DOUGLAS HAD FOUGHT HIS WAY to the Manhattan District Attorney's office for two hours and cooled his heels for two more when Carnie Schimmel showed up. "Mr. Douglas," she said brightly, extending her hand from a soggy jacket sleeve. "I see you had an easier commute than I did."
"I've got a place in Queens. Where are you coming from?"
"Further. I was supposed to be off today, actually. How are you doing with the Jaxborough case?"
"I don't think—"
Abruptly the side door to the conference room opened and Schimmel entered. He'd been waiting all along? Two others came in with him, one of them a quite attractive blond nurse, but Michael Douglas' eyes did not stray long from the now-shriveled form of the Manhattan District Attorney. Adam Shipwright's skin hung in pale folds from his chin, his cheeks were hollowed and the bags under his eyes had enlarged and darkened. He spoke in a voice little more than a dry whisper: "Colonel Verhofen is here to make sure you know no more than you have to."
"That's one way of putting it," said the man in the plain suit, flashing an ID that showed him wearing a green beret. Then he produced from his attaché case two forms. "Sign these and we can begin."
Schimmel started to protest, but Shipwright rasped, "Sign it!" and she did, and Michael Douglas signed his form too. The colonel in mufti, if that was who and what he really was, statched back the forms and produced a datapod. As he interfaced it to his station at the conference table, Schimmel joked, "Is it booby trapped, Colonel?"
"Yes, it is. 3 grams of some very nasty stuff, enough to take off a finger or two, maybe. The program I just started will completely erase this system's memory and any other system connected with it once it finishes. Now this is the video from Gretchky's Delicatessen. Once you see it . . . Well, here it is."
The big plasma display on the wall was divided into six windows now, one of them a blank. "One of the cameras went down three days before the incident," said the Colonel. "A service guy was coming out that afternoon to replace it. My guess is you are going to wish he'd come the day before. That camera covered the back hallway leading to the restrooms, the stockroom, the stairs to the apartment above the store, and the back door."
The colonel had obviously seen the video many times. "Here's where Mr. Grandville enters the picture," he said, and even though Grandville had on a ballcap, he looked up long enough for his face to show clearly. First mistake, thought Douglas, who had watched many crimes on surveillance videos.
"They let him in early?" asked Schimmel.
"Yes, they did," said the colonel.
"So he was a regular?" asked Schimmel.
"The Godolfin kids both remember him as a regular," said Shipwright. His nurse gave him a scolding look.
"Notice the sports bag he brought in," said the colonel. "Looks kind of heavy, doesn't it?" Grandville took the last booth and sat down to a paper, coffee, two bagels and a paper cup of schmear. After two minutes, he took the bag and disappeared through a door. "That goes to the back hall and the restrooms. He changed clothes in the restroom. Nothing important happens that shows up until six minutes later, when someone opens the back door and these two guys with their own heavy-looking bags come inside. Whatever did they have in them?"
The inside man, reinforced by the two new gunman, rapidly took over the delicatessen, herding the Godolfins and the other early customer into a stockroom that was covered by a working camera. They tied and gagged them quickly with duct tape. "Do we know who they are?" asked Douglas.
"We do," said the colonel. "Two cousins of Mr. Grandville's."
"Two more paragons of virtue, no doubt," said Schimmel. "How come we haven't heard from them?"
"From them, you'll find out soon. About them, that's something we don't know," said Shipwright. "Just wait for the end of this, will you?"
The two gunman with Uzis made do with ballcaps, but the inside man, the one that had to be Grandville, had added a mask. <That will give jurors an excuse to believe Grandville might not be the third man,> thought Douglas. He kept that thought to himself for the moment, but Schimmel audibilized it and added, "The cousins know enough to keep their heads down."
"They didn't have robbery records, but the detectives thought they looked pretty good for some liquor store robberies," said Shipwright. "I'll have Inspector Cohen here in a little while to fill you in."
"A long little while I think, Chief," cracked Schimmel.
"Might surprise you," said the MDA.
The colonel stopped the video two girls approached the entrance, one backing in and pointing at something across the street and high up. "The big one is Sarah Uer. The smaller one is named Mimete Han."
"The other living victim?" asked Schimmel. Her tone had changed. Douglas had heard she was especially good with children in court, and he thought he might understand why now.
"Yes," said the Colonel. "You want to see this in slo-mo the first time, or real time? It happens fast."
"Real time," said both Assistand DAs, Schimmel perhaps a little faster.
The video restarted, and it did happen fast. The inside man surged forward as Sarah Uer backed through the door. It was open, something that maybe the gunman didn't expect. He shot Sarah Uer just as she suddenly turned. Then the little one struck the pistolman with something, sending the weapon flying, and struck him again, knocking him the other way. Now the action was visible on three cameras and it was hard to follow on all of them. Douglas saw that the Uzi men were tring to fire, and then they were cut down by some kind of blast. The room filled with smoke. The only camera that caught anything from that point was the one over the front entrance, which showed the smaller girl dragging Sarah Uer outside, and then showed a vague form through smoke before it blanked out. "That's it, the last of the video feed. Interesting story about that. Manhattan Security Services turns out to be owned by a Chinese company that's really part of their foreign intelligence service. Good for us because they have real security. If it had been a legit company, someone would have leaked it to the press by now.
"Are you sure that's all? After all, Chinese spies . . ." A small bit of jocularity had slipped back into Schimmel's voice.
"Very sure. If there was anything else that would help you guys convict Grandville, they would have given it to us. China wants to be good friends with Mrs. Chiba and her good friends."
"What was that thing the kid used? I didn't see it before." asked Douglas
"Some kind of secret, right? Is she really a child?" asked Schimmel.
"She's a child," said the Colonel. "But not a normal one. That thing isn't a stand-alone weapon. It just helps her with her own powers."
"Powers?" asked Schimmel before Douglas.
"That's part of the really big secret."
"Which is more than we need to know, no doubt," said Douglas, this time beating Schimmel to the draw. This was so crazy he felt light-headed, even drunk.
The colonel said, "What the hell, you might as well know, you're smart enough to figure it out from what you know now. This is the real reason the Kinmoku refugees came to Earth. They wanted help from Mrs. Chiba and her frieds."
"Help from them?" asked Michael Douglas.
Schimmel was faster this time. "You mean Mrs. Chiba can do stuff like that?"
"A lot more than that, in fact," said the colonel. "Now, you want to see that last part again in slo-mo?"
Storms continued to dump more snow onto the Northeast states through Thanksgiving Day. Auntie Davilla did not fly in. Michael Douglas, however, somehow managed to reach Hyde Park just before noon of Turkey Day. Tiffany wondered how he had done that, for he arrived not only in time for the big meal but also looking quite fresh, if a little disoriented. Michael wasn’t interested in talking about it. "I’m here, that’s what matters," Tiffany’s husband said, and that was all he said on the subject. He soon seemed to lose himself in a football game in Arizona along with the other males of the household, even touchy David Godolfin.
But later Tiffany caught Michael talking with Uncle Reuben and David about the case, in a way. Michael was discussing his partner for the upcoming trial, Carnie Schimmel. Tiffany decided to butt in with: "She’s divorced, isn’t she?"
"In the process," said Michael. "I don’t think it’s going to slow her down for the case."
"The reporters will try to dig up dirt there," said David Godolfin.
"Some of them," said Uncle Reuben. "The story I heard is her husband is the one who was caught fooling around."
"Which means she wasn’t?" retorted David.
"I don’t know about that," said Michael. "All I know is she has a good record and she really wants to nail Mr. Grandville."
"She looks pretty good," goaded Tiffany," On TV, at least. What do you think?" She had intended that question for her husband, but Uncle Reuben answered. "I’ve met her. She’s not bad."
"You slept with her?" Uncle Reuben’s wife had come in the room just behind Tiffany, and they asked the same question almost in harmony. They both laughed.
"No," said Uncle Reuben. "Exception to the rule."
Tiffany’s mother then proceeded to dissolve the humorous interlude with: "Michael, do you really want to nail Mr. Grandville?"
"Yes, I do," said Michael.
"And you still want him to walk?" said David Godolfin. "Still?"
Something different was in the air now, something Tiffany couldn’t identify. Michael, Uncle Reuben, the Godolfin boy and Tiffany’s mother all shared something Tiffany did not.
"Would it be so terrible?" said Tiffany’s mother after a pause. "Whatever you think of him as a person, Michael Grandville is a symbol now. Whether he’s convicted or not, the trial is going to bring a lot of trouble. I wish my son-in-law didn’t have to be on this case. Michael, do you really think you have a hope of convicting him?"
"Yes," said Michael Douglas.
"Reuben?" asked Tiffany’s mother. "What do you think? Honestly?"
"Well, if I had to bet the farm, I’d have to put it on the defense," said Reuben Fine. "All it takes is one holdout. That’s one reason it’s nice to be defending."
Anastasia asked, "Couldn’t you ask for a change of venue? Would that help?"
"It might help," said Michael, "But it’s not going to happen. I can win with a Manhattan jury," said Michael. "Don’t forget Patrice Montaigne."
"We never do," said Anastasia.
"Well, halftime is over," said Uncle Reuben. "No more of Mr. Grandville at least until the postgame."
During the night Tiffany woke from another unsettling dream and found herself alone. First priority was toilet, of course, as for any woman in her fifth month of pregnancy. Not finding her husband at or near the facility, Tiffany Douglas decided she wanted to find him more than she wanted to crawl back into bed. Moving quietly, she went downstairs on the trail of faint sounds of conversation. She found they were coming from Uncle Reuben’s office-study. Tiffany was no more a snoop than the average wife, but she did not rap immediately on the study’s door when she came up to it. Instead, she listened for clues before she decided whether or not to enter or return to bed. She had identified by the sound of the voices who was inside, she thought, but only before the door did she really begin to hear what was being said. She promised herself she would not listen for too long, as she began to concentrate enough to make out the conversation.
" . . . about that," her mother was saying. "What they are going to think of on top of everything else is how Mimi blew away Grandville’s cousins and set fire to the whole block like that." Fingers snapped. "Gervaise is going to pluck on that string as often and as hard as he can."
"You know that from Mimi?" Tiffany’s husband asked.
"From Sarah and her mother. I understand there was video?"
"There was."
"And I shows?"
"It does," said her husband. "Why did they tell you all that?"
"They didn’t exactly tell me all of it. They linked to my mind, both of them. One of their, um, bunch is a student of mine. One of my other students came on to her and things got nasty. She decked him, and then he came up with a gun. She took away his gun and his hand with it."
"Took his hand off?" asked her husband.
"With a sword. I thought she was a mouse, but she wasn’t," said Tiffany’s mother.
"What happened? I haven’t heard anything—"
"You won’t. They put his hand back on, and then Sarah changed his memory."
"Changed his memory?" Tiffany’s husband laughed in an unfunny way. "That’s just too much. If they could change memories, why do you remember anything about this?"
"Because it didn’t work on me, Michael. I’m a little like they are, I have an immunity to it."
"You’re like them? Then what about Tiff? Jesus, she has eyes just like you told me, just like Lily Han and the one that brought me here."
"Betty," said Anastasia. Tiffany hadn’t heard her voice until then. So Uncle Reuben and his new wife were sharing this with her husband. This . . . craziness. But they all sounded absolutely sincere. Was Michael tolerating this, or did he actually believe it?
Michael spoke again after a few silent seconds. "Do you mean that our child could be like the Han girl?"
Tiffany didn’t hear an answer, and that made her decision. She knocked, and said, "I’m coming inside. Without waiting for an answer Tiffany opened the door, and shut it behind her as soon as she stepped through. "I heard you say some strange things just now."
Michael began to say, "You shouldn’t have—"
"I did. What exactly is going on?"
Her mother was holding a large rose with a single multicolored blossom. She handed to Tiffany. The blossom opened, and when her mother guided it next to the belly holding her child, it began to glow.