Omerta - Mario Puzo [30]
When he went home that night, he was satisfied. There was no danger in the situation, not from the Don’s family. There would be no bloody vendetta.
Cilke lived in New Jersey with a wife he truly loved and a ten-year-old daughter he adored. His house was wrapped up with a tight security-alarm system plus the two dogs. The government paid. His wife had refused training to use a gun, and he relied on remaining anonymous. His neighbors thought he was a lawyer (which he was), as did his daughter. Cilke always kept his gun and bullets locked up with his Bureau ID when he was at home.
He never took his car to the railroad station for his commute to the city. Petty thieves might steal the car radio. When he arrived back in New Jersey, he called his wife on his cell phone and she came to pick him up. It was a five-minute ride home.
Tonight Georgette gave him a cheerful kiss on the mouth, a warm touch of flesh. His daughter, Vanessa, so boundlessly alive, bowled into him for a hug. The two dogs frolicked around him but were restrained. They all fitted easily into the big Buick.
It was this part of his life that Cilke treasured. With his family he felt secure, at peace. His wife loved him, he knew that. She admired his character, that he did his work without malice or trickery, with a sense of justice to his fellowman no matter how depraved. He valued her intelligence and trusted her enough to talk to her about his work. But of course he could not tell her everything. And she was busy with her own work, writing about famous women in history, teaching ethics at a local college, fighting for her social causes.
Now Cilke watched his wife as she prepared dinner. Her beauty always enchanted him. He watched Vanessa setting the table, imitating her mother, even trying to walk with that graceful balletlike movement. Georgette did not believe in having household help of any kind, and she had raised her daughter to be self-reliant. At the age of six, Vanessa was already making her own bed, cleaning her room, and helping her mother cook. As always, Cilke wondered why his wife loved him, felt blessed that she did.
Later, after they put Vanessa to bed (Cilke checked the bell she could ring if she needed them), they went into their own bedroom. And as always, Cilke felt the thrill of almost religious fervor when his wife undressed. Then her huge gray eyes, so intelligent, became smoky with love. And afterward, falling into sleep, she held his hand to guide them through her dreams.
Cilke had met her when he was investigating radical college organizations suspected of minor terrorist acts. She was a political activist who taught history at a small New Jersey college. His investigation showed she was simply a liberal and had no connection with a radical extremist group. And so Cilke wrote in his report.
But when he interviewed her as part of the investigation, he had been struck by her absolute lack of prejudice or hostility toward him as an FBI agent. In fact, she seemed curious about his work, how he felt about it, and oddly enough he answered her frankly: simply that he was one of the guardians of a society that could not exist without some regulation. He added half-jokingly that he was the shield between people like her and those who would devour her for their own agenda.
The courtship was short. They married quickly, really so that their common sense would not interfere with their love, for they both recognized they were opposites in almost every way. He shared none of her beliefs; when it came to the world he lived in, she was an innocent. She definitely shared none of his reverence for the Bureau. But she listened to his complaints, how he resented the character assassination of the Bureau saint, J. Edgar Hoover. “They paint him as a closet homosexual and reactionary bigot. What he really was was a dedicated man who simply did not develop a liberal conscience.” He told her, “Writers deride the FBI as the Gestapo or KGB. But we have never resorted