Free Mendoza in Hollywood by Kage Baker Page B

Juan Bautista said. When Nancy and Kalugin stared at him, he hastened to add: “My condor. Baby condor. I rescued him. It helps him get to sleep sometimes when he’s nervous.”
    “Ah, of course,” Kalugin said with a nod of understanding. “Would you perhaps do us the honor of playing for us now?”
    Juan Bautista hung his head and fiddled with the tuning pegs. “Sure,” he muttered. I braced myself, expecting him to clutch painfully at the frets in a beginner’s “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,”but to my astonishment he went into a classic Segovia piece, and it flowed out on the night air smooth as coffee with cream. He kept on with beautiful classical stuff all evening, Rodrigo and de Falla and Five Jaguar, quiet and unobtrusive, the background to our talk.
    “I have to know,” I said, leaning forward, “how the two of you met. It’s so rare, you know, for any of us to find . . .what you’ve found.”
    “It was terribly romantic,” Kalugin said, smiling where he lay with his head in Nan’s lap. “I’d been in a shipwreck, and washed up on the coast of Morocco. She was all in silks and bangles, third wife to one of the sultan’s corsairs.”
    Einar leaned his chin on his fist and grunted. “Our anthropologist will be disappointed she didn’t get a chance to talk with you.”
    Nancy opened her reticule. “I’ll leave her one of my calling cards. It is, after all, the correct thing to do in these circumstances in polite society.”
    “Calling cards,” I said. She nodded serenely and handed me a tiny square of pasteboard, embossed, beautifully engraved. I read:

    “D’Araignée?” I asked.
    “An artistic decision,” she said. “French for
spider
, you see. I have always retained the clearest memories of the folktales of my mortal parents. Indeed, I can scarcely recall anything else from my mortal life.”
    I remembered the angry four-year-old girl that she’d been, telling me how the spider god of her tribe had deserted them, saving only her.
    “Anansi,” she said. “The friend and helper of men, as I understand from my researches into the work of M. Griaule and Mr. Parrinder.”
    I stared into the fire. The immortal operative who’d rescued the child must have named her for the word she repeated most often, thinking it sounded like Nancy. Had the little girl been calling on her god? Had she finally made her peace with him now, since she’d taken his name for her own? I’d never made peace with mine.
    But how wonderful, what style she had, to what good use she’d put her anger.
    “What’s Salon Algeria?” I asked.
    “One of the Company safe houses in Paris,” she said. “I reside there when Dr. Zeus has no pressing errand on which to send me. And it’s useful, too; a certain segment of the artistic denizens on the Left Bank know that I am always interested in seeing canvases, and perhaps paying cash for them. Regretfully, members of the criminal class are also aware of this, and I’m afraid I have purchased stolen paintings on more than one occasion.” She shrugged. “One has the consolation of knowing that everything one purchases in this way will survive for the ages rather than burn in the political upheavals with which France is so frequently visited these days.”
    I nodded. God, she even had a home.
    “What were you doing in a shipwreck?” Juan Bautista raised his head and looked at Kalugin. “I thought we always know when a ship’s going to sink.”
    “We do,” Kalugin told him ruefully. “But when history records that a ship’s going to disappear with all hands, young man, she becomes fair game for the Company. And when history records that she carries valuable cargo, the Company acts. Most people suppose a marine salvage technician is some sort of diver, and it’s true; but, you see, I don’t go down after the wreck. I go down
with
it.”
    This extraordinary statement was followed by a distant salvo of gunfire, followed by wild laughter from somewhere up