Page 97 of Nobody's Fool

I have Henry in one arm. I put my other around Molly as we gaze out the open window. The Mediterranean is laid out in front of us like a shimmering blanket, a gentle breeze blowing through the windows. Molly closes her eyes and soaks it in. We smell the salt air. For my part, I am experiencing no déjà vu to my previous visit to Spain because the difference between crowding into a youth hostel with the Lax Bros clogging the shared toilet and this opulent luxury suite overlooking the sea with my wife and child is, to put it mildly, transformative.

“Maybe we should move here,” Molly says.

“To Spain?”

“To this hotel suite.”

“We’d get bored.”

Molly tilts her head. “Would we?”

I follow her gaze back out the window. “Yeah,” I say. “But not for a while.”

“When do you have to leave for your appointment?”

I check my watch. I was able to set up a meeting with Carlos Osorio, the young police inspector I reported to twenty-two years ago, under the guise (honest guise, if you will) of being a private investigator working for the Belmond family. Osorio is still with the same police department, having risen to the rank of comisario, which you don’t have to be a major linguist or top-notch crime fighter to deduce means “commissioner.”

“I have an hour,” I say.

She comes closer to me. “Do you know what I hear is good for jet lag?”

“Uh, your son is awake.”

“A walk in the sun, silly.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t look so crestfallen. It’ll be fun.”

And it was. An hour later, I leave my wife and son by a gorgeous infinity pool, lying on something called a Balinese bed. Forget the suite—I think Molly could live on that bed and never be bored.

When the taxi drops me off at the El Puerto Hotel, the déjà vu doesn’t just come back—it rises in a rush and slaps me across the face. Some things have changed, sure, but not a lot. I glance toward the more crowded beach, and I swear I can see a couple of kids who look just like Anna and me on a blanket right where we used to lie. The memories are charging at me so fast I almost duck. It’s a harsh blast, a strobing kaleidoscope of a slideshow, and I can’t tell whether the memories are good or bad. I am trying to maintain my composure, focus on the job, remember that perhaps Anna too was a victim. But when I think of what came after, how it derailed me, I can’t help feeling rage at her too.

Twenty-two years ago, when I reported the “murder” to Carlos Osorio, I was a cleanly shaven scrawny lad. Now I’m weathered and bearded and look completely different. Osorio does not, though even in his youth, he had looked like an old soul. The years have been kindto Comisario Osorio. Other than some graying at the temples, there is zero change.

We shake hands and move into his office. He offers me an espresso, promising me that it will help with the jet lag. I don’t know if that’s true, but I can say that whatever he serves me hits like jet fuel. It’s also spectacular. He gets to the point fast.

“So what is the Belmonds’ interest in Fuengirola?” he asks. “I would think Marbella would be more their speed.”

The No Shit Elites had discovered that before joining the academy Osorio had spent three years studying in Cambridge. That explained the perfect British accent.

“Do you recognize me?” I ask.

He studies my face. “Should I?”

“We met,” I say. “Over twenty years ago. My name is Sami Kierce.”

He sits back, folds his hands, rests them on his stomach. “I thought you were here on behalf of the Belmonds.”

“I am. Twenty-two years ago, I was another young tourist staying at a hostel. I came to you because I thought a girl I was kinda seeing had been murdered. You dismissed it as my being high or drunk, but you did go back with me to her apartment.”

“And there was no body,” he finished for me.

“You remember?”

“Not really, no. But I would remember if there had been one, wouldn’t I?”

“I guess that’s true.”