The Last Cardinal

The tour had been quite boring. Quin had only gone because Stevie was such a big fan. But Stevie was gone; the long line and dull drone of the guide could serve no purpose but a flash of nostalgia. It didn’t even manage that, despite the phrases that seemed to be lifted directly from Stevie’s ramblings. Maybe all fans talked that way. Quin still couldn’t see what it was in this author’s writing that was so interesting. A bunch of mid-20th century conspiracy theories with some superficial romance and cliché action. Quin felt the rest of the land around the cabin, which was at least alive and changing, full of grass and trees and birds and squirrels, to be much more compelling. This is what she told herself, anyway, despite not being an outdoorsy person at all. But that spirit of adventure, mystery, and intrigue that had so richly emanated from Stevie’s aura was, perhaps, what brought Quin to the one-room museum now dedicated to the Author, Stevie’s favorite.

The Author had died unexpectedly, nearly fifty years ago now. His last will and testament had declared that the land he owned, including the cabin where he had done most of his writing since his first novel had flung him into stardom and wealth, would become a nature preserve. This declaration had been made to the chagrin of the Author’s grown-up children. Stevie had felt this proved that the Author was deeper than some Fleming knockoff, and that the subtle language of his books contained irrefutable validation of this claim. But Stevie felt a lot of things. Stevie had also felt that her attraction to Quin was ‘just a phase,’ and that she needed to leave Quin to pursue a more ‘traditional’ relationship. Just like that. Stevie had said she’d wanted to stay friends, but Quin was unable to bear it, and she, Quin, suspected that Stevie had been counting on this so that they could make a clean cut of it. She wasn’t sure if this hurt more or less than the alternative.

Quin shook her head. She was not crying—she at least was now managing not to cry every time she thought of it—but her chest felt contracted and heavy, that feeling that quashes the desire and the ability to go about daily life. She took a long, deep breath, feeling the rush of cool air pour into her lungs. She had to admit to herself, it felt good. Perhaps not a cure-all, but definitely a help. Stevie would have said ‘I told you so’—no, don’t think about Stevie. She pulled her notebook and a pencil out of her purse (which was actually just a $10 Trader Joe’s tote bag with a bunch of stuff dumped into it) and sat on the grass. A red bird was chirping merrily, or maybe irritably, on a low branch of a tree about forty feet in front of her. She had come out this way without any real intention of doing sketches, but just to go off on her own. It was nice. Quin was not sure what kind of bird this was—she did not know if the preserve was really helping it and its kind avoid extinction, or if it was nothing more than a vindictive power play by a narcissistic no-talent author against his spoiled kids—but this was nice.

Her black notebook had faded to that ambiguous yet somehow distinct quality of brown and black that came with age, in use or disuse. It had been given to her by her uncle when she was seven; she had excitedly proclaimed that she would be writing in her new diary every single day. Twenty years later, there was still only one entry:

Dear Diary,

I pooped twice today.

-Q

Quin smiled. She supposed something must have happened to make her forget the notebook—a birthday present? a movie? sickness?—but she could not remember. Maybe she just hadn’t appreciated the idea of writing when she was in second grade. She was sure Stevie had been trying to write novels from the moment she could hold a pencil. Quin had never asked. She turned the page and began sketching her bird on the blank second page. Now that she thought about it, the bird looked vaguely like the cousin of the mascot of her brother’s favorite baseball team. What was it? Cardinal. Were those even native here? She didn’t think so. There were definitely some species of cardinal somewhere in the US, because they had significance to some Native tribes, representing love and loyalty, or something along those lines. But she didn’t think they were from here in Southern California. Huh.

Quin buried herself in her sketching, consciously deciding to focus solely on what she was doing. A much more difficult task than one might think. She sketched for longer than she had planned, ironing out details, correcting, erasing, correcting. At one point during her session, another visitor to the preserve walked by—right behind her, from the sound of it—which would normally have unnerved her, but she was immersed in her work. She forced herself not to even turn around and look. Nobody had stolen her purse; she felt its weight behind her. She reached back to touch it, just to be sure. It was there. Only then, with a sudden rush of paranoia, was her curiosity piqued. She turned around to get a glimpse of the person who had come near. Unless they were hiding behind a tree, they were gone. One older couple could be seen walking slowly along, but there were no other human beings in her line of sight. She went back to her work.

Quin’s maybe-a-cardinal was being quite kind in its willingness to stay in one spot while she sketched. Loyal indeed. As if in response to all her thoughts, the bird flew off as soon as she had finished her drawing. She looked down at it. She was not a very good artist. The drawing, which was intended to be a closeup of the bird with gentle shading to indicate the brilliant red of the feathers (Quin had no idea if this technique was legitimate; it just felt right), instead looked like a deformed, dirty snowman trying (and failing) to do a handstand. Maybe she was being too hard on herself. It could be a bird. A beautiful bird! Or a weird radioactive log. She sighed, dropping the notebook back into her purse, but holding onto the pencil, which was promptly transported to her mouth for chewing. It was long past time for lunch, and Quin was just beginning to notice that she was actually hungry. When was the last time she had truly been hungry? She made her way back to the main path, then matched the pace of the people in front of her as she approached the entrance. It was the same couple she had seen earlier. When she exited the large gate, she suddenly stopped. She turned around to look at the gate, which was unremarkable, then at the security guard standing to one side. She smiled, hoping she looked sincere. The security guard nodded, though his eyes and mouth were unchanged from their positions of duty. Quin rolled her eyes as she walked toward the bus stop.

The Author kept invading Quin’s thoughts as she walked. During the tour it was mentioned that, like Ian Fleming, he had been a real-life spy in his youth, and had to write slowly and carefully in order to avoid spilling real-life government secrets. Apparently, Quin thought, this filter also blocked out any content that was eloquent or meaningful. The guide had excitedly recounted a story that must have been legend among fans, as Stevie had regaled Quin with it on several occasions. According to legend, the Author had been out with a friend months before he died, saying he was working on a new book that deliberately gave government secrets away. He had known he was dying, and he had no interest in protecting his few living family members (what a great guy, Quin thought for possibly the six hundredth time), and apparently wanted to tell all. If this manuscript really existed, there was a chance it contained information that was still classified to this day, though, being so old, its relevance could not be guaranteed. The book was being titled The Last Cardinal. Quin found it odd that she saw what she thought might have been a cardinal in a place where cardinals are not supposed to live, outside the writing space of a former spy-turned-author who mysteriously died while writing a hybrid novel and top-secret leak titled The Last Cardinal.

Or maybe that was intentional.

Or maybe, because Quin wasn’t a bird expert, she had subconsciously misidentified the bird as a cardinal, thinking about things like love and loyalty, and having just been told the story about the unfinished book. Which was never found. Which could be buried on the very grounds Quin had just left! She stopped again. She turned back in the direction of the preserve and museum. There was a man standing thirty feet away from her, looking right at her. He stood just under six feet tall, with black, well-groomed hair, and wearing a black suit and sunglasses. The whole nine yards for a cliché spook. The two of them stood there for a moment, neither seeming to know how to proceed, but both knowing that, whatever plans Quin might have had, they now had to involve some sort of interaction with this man in black. If she were happy, if she were comfortable in her little reading alcove in the corner of her apartment, not having just done something new for the sake of doing it, if her heart had not been in such a strange state of limbo that was not getting better with time, she might have run. She might have stood there frozen, allowing for an eternity in which she and Mister Spook might have stared each other down, unmoving. They’d be a tourist attraction. But Quin wasn’t comfortable. She wasn’t happy. The thing she had deemed most important in her life was gone, just like that, and she was spending time doing things she never would have done otherwise. So she walked right up to him. She felt brave, and maybe stupid. Not quite having the nerve to say anything, she raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms by way of greeting.

“The notebook,” was all he said. The notebook? Maybe her drawing really was that great. She smirked inwardly.

“Why?” Quin asked. The man’s facial expression was unchanging, unreadable.

“The notebook,” he said again, then, after a moment, “check your bank account.” Now that was bizarre. Deciding to go with the flow, however, Quin pulled out her smartphone and checked her bank account. The balance popped up, showing there to be $20,000 more than that with which she had left it. She looked up, suddenly aware that her heart was bouncing around somewhere down the street.

“What is this?”

“The notebook,” he said once more. It could have been a recording, having sounded exactly the same all three times. Twenty-thousand. Quin took the faded notebook from her purse and handed it to the man, who promptly slipped it into an inside jacket pocket, turned like a clockwork figurine, and was gone. Weird.

*

Tony Diamond sat up straighter when Greg came in.

“You got it?” he barked.

“I got it,” said Greg, pulling a brown-black faded notebook from his jacket. Finally. This would turn things around. This would make Diamond unstoppable. All those secrets; all that dirt; especially on the so-called “Grassblades” Project. He took the book greedily, like an ornery schoolboy, and opened it. He stared for a long time, not bothering to turn the first page, which said:

Dear Diary,

I pooped twice today.

-Q