Two black limos rolled up and a group of serious-looking men and women in power suits bailed out. I resisted the urge to make a serious circus clown car reference. Half of them were talking on cell phones, and the other half were talking to each other, hands and arms flying. They went through the double glass doors, and I fell in step behind them. They skirted past a security desk, flashing badges, and they didn’t hesitate as they approached a bank of elevators. A uniformed security guard—a young female—waved us all through.
So much for D.C. security.
With the aid of cheerful campaign workers who were no doubt impressed with the newspaper I was carrying and my age, it took just a couple of minutes to find Annie Wynn’s office, which was an impressive office indeed. When I had first seen her at work for Senator Jackson Hale of Georgia, it had been a frigid January in New Hampshire with lots of snow and ice. Her office back then had been a battered surplus battleship-gray desk, jammed up against a host of others in a rented space that had once been a clothing store in downtown Manchester. The phones would always be ringing, voices would be raised, and trash barrels were overflowing with pizza boxes and Chinese takeout food containers.
Now she had a private office, with expensive-looking furniture, leather chairs, a couch, a credenza, and piles of newspapers and briefing books. I sat down on the couch, looked out the window which had a jaw-dropping view of the office building across the street. The whole floor was neat, with nary a pizza box to be found, and the phones had low ringing chimes that seemed to gently ask you to pick them up.
Yet there was still a sense of energy to the people out there in the other offices and cubicles, a grim determination to fight these last few weeks to elect their man president. I recalled my father, years and years ago when I was in high school, talking about the last presidential candidate who had seemed to enjoy it all, Humphrey, the former V.P. from Minnesota. A “happy warrior,” my father had said, the very last of the breed.
I took in the office. A television set that was muted, showing CNN, and a computer monitor. No photos, no mementoes, nothing personal in here that said it belonged to Annie Wynn, formerly of Massachusetts, who spent a lot of time in New Hampshire.
Her voice, coming down the hall: “. . . and tell Eddie to bump back the caucus meeting to two P.M. The Senator’s BBC interview is going to run over, I know it. And get me the latest numbers from Colorado, and damn it, I don’t care what they say, I want a better sampling this time!”
She breezed in, dumped a set of black briefing books on the table, and turned to me, cell phone in hand.
Her hand lowered. Her face showed shock, but still looked pretty good. Pretty damn good, in fact. She had on black high-heeled shoes, black hose, and a dark gray skirt cut just above her knees. The blouse fit her curves nicely and was ivory with lots of collar and lace, and her fine auburn hair was curled around at the base of her neck in some sort of braid. I was pleased to see she was wearing a gold necklace that I had bought for her last summer at a crafts fair up at Sunapee, New Hampshire.
“Annie,” I said.
She shook her head. “Lewis, what the hell are you doing here?”
I stood up. “Nice to see you, too.”
She bit her lower lip, closed her eyes for a quick moment. “Sorry, it’s been one of those months.” Now she smiled and I went to her, and we hugged and kissed, and the touch and smell of her made it suddenly seem all right.
Still smiling, she went around and sat behind her desk, and I sat across from her on a fine black leather chair. “You bad boy, how did you get in here?”
“I walked.”
“Past security?”
“Apparently so,” and she shook her head.
“Sorry,” she said. “Not a laughing matter.” She picked up a pen, scribbled a note, and then said, “Dear one, why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”
“It was sort of a last-minute trip,” I said. “Some business to take care of down here.”
“Really? You told me you’d never, ever come back to D.C. Even to visit. Must have been something pretty important to get you out of New Hampshire.”
“Important enough.”
“So when are you going to take care of your business?”
“Already done.”
“Let me guess. Your quest to make everything right for your Diane Woods?”
“That’s right.”
“Guess I do know you, huh?” she asked. “So, when did you get to town?”
“Yesterday morning.”
Another “oh,” followed by “I see. So I was last on your schedule, then?”
“No,” I said, “I was saving the best for last.”
Her face was impassive on that one. More than ever, I felt out of sorts, out of place. Annie looked at her calendar and said, “Lewis, I’m already late for a status report, and I’m booked solid for the rest of the day, not even time for dinner. But maybe cocktails at eleven tonight, if things aren’t too crazy.”
“No, I’ve got something to say, Annie, and it shouldn’t take long.”
She leaned back in her chair. “Funny, I have something to say too. You first.”
I looked into that sweet, adorable face that I had spent so many long and delightful hours with, from cross-country skiing along deserted trails near the Atlantic Ocean, to trips to Fenway Park and gourmet meals at hidden restaurants in the North Shore. Hikes in the White Mountains and late nights watching old movies on TCM, and long, luscious, and soul-fulfilling hours in bed.
I took a breath. “I’m sorry, Annie, it’s not going to work. The two of us. This is your town now. Some time ago it was mine. I belonged here. I thrived here. But those days are long gone. I’ve been here less than two days, and I feel like I’m going to jump out of my skin, or that some car is going to run me down on Pennsylvania Avenue.”
I paused. She stayed quiet. I went on. “But I can’t ask, I can’t hope, I can’t expect you to head back north when the campaign ends. You’ve already told me that the Senator has promised you a future here, on his senate staff if he loses, on his presidential staff if he wins.”
“So glad you remembered,” she said, voice dry.
“You belong here now, Annie. Not me. So it’s not going to work.”
She slowly moved her pen around in a circle on her desk. “So you think it’s over.”
“Considering the few encounters we’ve had these past several weeks, and the quality of our conversations, I can’t see it being anything else.”
My mouth had dried out, my heart was slowly and heavily thumping along, and I waited.
Annie looked out the window, looked back at me. “Once again, you’ve led the way, my friend. As much as it pains me to say so, you’re right. It is over. And I just haven’t had the time or the guts to take a look at it.”
She made another rotation of her pen, looked up. “Still friends?”
“Forever, Annie. Forever.”
Her phone started ringing, and a young man with a pained expression on his face rapped at the side of the door. “Annie, Mister Geers is really getting impatient.”
“I’ll be right there.”
I got up and the young man stepped out, and I leaned over the desk and gave her a kiss. She smiled when I pulled back, but she hadn’t really kissed me in return. “There are some things of yours, back at Tyler Beach,” I said. “I’ll box them up and send them here, if you don’t mind.”
A quick nod as she gathered up her papers and briefing books. She still ignored her ringing phone. “That’d be fine, Lewis, but as you can see, I’m already late.”
“No problem.”
I started out of the office, recalled something and turned. “Annie, what were you going to say?”
Her head was still bent down. “What? What do you mean?”
“When I got here, you said you had something to say to me. What was it?”
“Oh.” She raised up her head, briefing books and binders clasped to her chest. “Yes, sorry. I was goi
ng to ask if you’d do me a favor. But . . . it’s not that important anymore.”
“Go ahead, Annie, say it.”
“Well. . . .”
“Please, tell me what you were going to say.”
Again, she bit her lower lip. “The thing you’re doing for Diane. The man who hurt her. Your hunt for Curt Chesak. Please stop it, will you?”
It felt like my heart had slowed right down, my blood now the consistency of cold molasses.
“What did you just say?”
“You heard me. This obsession on finding Curt Chesak. Please stop it. You’re making waves, Lewis, waves that can get the wrong people pissed off enough to hurt you, me, and the Senator. So stop it. Please. For me.”
I looked behind me and up and down the adjacent wide hallway, suddenly wondering if hard-eyed men with dark suits and earpieces were coming my way.
But so far, the coast was clear.
“Annie?”
“Yes?”
“You know what I said right back then, about being friends forever?”
“I do.”
I walked out her door. “Forever just ended.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The bus drive back to Massachusetts took about the same amount of time as before—twelve hours—but as I brooded and thought and brooded some more, it seemed to take twice as long. I napped and drank water or fruit juice, my stomach too tightly wrapped to accept any food. We stopped twice for refueling and rest stops, and I had to force myself to get off the bus and walk around to stretch my legs. The trip to D.C. and Arlington had been fruitful, even though the fruit had been bitter indeed. Probably a cliché; so sue me.
Our last stop was outside Hartford, and after I returned to my seat, I noticed a young man and his pregnant wife come up the aisle. He was in BDUs and his black hair was cut high and tight. He was in his twenties and his wife looked to be in her teens, and she had a shy smile as she followed her soldier husband onto the bus. The driver was still inside the station, completing some paperwork.
There were two empty seats, one behind the other, right next to me. Their companion seats had been occupied by two young men, bearded, wearing cargo pants and black fleece jackets. Bottles of designer water and bags of snacks were next to them on the empty seats. At the previous stop, the two of them had come in together, laughing and joking. The soldier stopped and looked at them, murmured something, but he was ignored by both young men. Each of them had iPod earphones in, they were reading Maxim and Rolling Stone, and their heads were slowly bobbing up and down in time with their secret tunes.
Feeling generous, I gave the two seated men about fifteen seconds, and then I stood up. The soldier looked me over and I gave him my best older guy smile. “Just a sec, just you wait.”
I leaned down, tapped the near guy on the shoulder. He glanced up at me, frowned, went back to his music and magazine. I gave him a harder tap, and he looked up.
“The fuck you want?” he said, taking one of his earbuds out.
“Nice to meet you too,” I replied. I motioned to the soldier and his wife standing in the aisleway. “How about being a sport, move up one seat, let the corporal and his pregnant wife sit together.”
“How about minding your own fucking business?”
He moved to replace his earbud, but I was quicker. With my right hand, I grabbed his beard, tugged him forward. He yelped. With my left hand, I took the wire to his iPod and quickly wrapped it around his neck, started twisting it as I also twisted his beard. He gurgled and started waving his arms.
“Tell you what,” I said. “When I let you go, you can move one seat forward and sit next to your pal.”
I tightened the beard and the iPod wires a bit more. His face colored. “Or you and I can see if that emergency exit behind you really does work, as I toss your ass out on the pavement. Can I get an amen?”
He nodded once, twice, thrice.
I let him go, stood up.
“Fair enough.” I stepped back and the guy, his face red and his nose dripping, bustled out of the seat, grabbing his belongings as he did so. The soldier and his wife backed down a few feet, and when the way was clear, they sat down together. The soldier gave me a knowing glance, and his wife ignored me and just kept her adoring gaze on her husband.
I took my seat, let out a breath. Wondered what Annie Wynn was doing at this very moment, and decided not to think about that anymore.
At North Station in Boston, I sat for a few minutes on one of the long wooden benches, just catching my breath. People in a hurry moved around, to and fro, and I tried to organize my thoughts, which were dark and disorganized indeed.
Curt Chesak.
Hell, I wasn’t even sure that was his name.
But I knew who he was, and what he did.
He was a hired gun, hired to raise hell, to be an agent provocateur. Soon after my last view of him at the Falconer nuclear power plant, beating the proverbial crap out of Diane Woods, my chase of him had resulted in a gunfight outside Boston University, the disappearance of a BU professor, said professor’s house burning down, and a fair number of well-armed and sharp-eyed men keeping an eye on Aunt Teresa’s house in the North End and my own house at Tyler Beach. Not to mention the story of the BU gunfight being spun into a story for the Boston Globe about a student filmmaking project gone awry.
So who were they? Contractors working for a federal agency? Contractors working for a foreign government—take your pick of any unstable oil-exporting country out there—or a foreign intelligence agency? Or maybe for some transnational corporation?
Too much to think about.
I rubbed at my hands, thought longingly of a meal that hadn’t been wrapped in plastic and a wide comfortable bathroom that didn’t bump and sway in the traffic.
Still too much to think about.
So stop thinking.
I smiled slightly.
So stop thinking already.
I flashed back to my first weeks working at the DoD as a research analyst, when one of my now long-deceased instructors had forcefully told us young ’uns, as she had said, not to think above your pay grade. Meaning, as she pointed out, if your job was to research and prepare a report on the latest variant of the Soviet SS-18 intercontinental ballistic missile and its guidance system, then do the goddamn report. Don’t think about any impact on arms control treaties, about the future threat of war, or the current nuclear offensive capability of the United States or the USSR.
Just do your goddamn report.
So there you go.
I didn’t care who was paying Chesak or why they were doing it.
I just wanted to find him.
After getting my ticket for the Downeaster to take me back up north to Exonia, I gave Felix Tinios a call. He picked it up after four rings and said, “Yeah.”
A signal. Things were not well, which was why he answered the phone the way he did.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Been better.”
“You where you said you’d be?”
“Had to go someplace else. Didn’t work out.”
“How’s the other part of the equation?”
Slight laugh. “Looking for a knife.”
“Glad to hear that.”
“Got anything for me?”
“Nope.”
“Anything you need?” he asked.
“Not at the moment.”
“Gotta go.”
He hung up. I put the cell phone back in my coat pocket, feeling cool, feeling uncomfortable. Felix had been going to take his Aunt Teresa to her winter haven in Florida after the BU shootout, and obviously the long reach of whoever was in Boston had managed to reach the Sunshine State and was nipping at Felix’s heels.
Just another signal, as if I needed one, of what I was up against.
And I had lied to Felix just now. I sure as hell needed him here, and not thousands of miles away. I needed his muscle, his street smarts, and his resources as I went up against the well-armed shadows t
hat were protecting Curt Chesak.
Then my phone rang, and I felt sweet relief course through me.
Had to be Felix, calling me back, telling me all was well, squared away.
I dug out my phone, saw that the incoming number was blocked.
Good ol’ Felix.
I answered the phone. “So, things improving?”
Another voice answered instead. “Beats the hell out of me,” the man said. “I understand you’re looking for me.”
I literally could not believe who was on the other end of the phone.
“Lewis? It’s Curt Chesak. How’s it going?”
I had to press my phone hard against my ear because my hand suddenly started trembling. “Curt Chesak? For real?”
He laughed and I had no doubt it was him. He said, “In the flesh, my friend. In the flesh.”
“I’m not your friend.”
“Just being polite.”
“Then be a sport and, speaking of in the flesh, why don’t you stop by, have a chat? Maybe we could have a cup of coffee or something.”
Another laugh. “Lewis, sorry, that’s not going to happen.”
“So, why the call? To gloat?”
“Oh, no, no, I’m too professional to gloat. No, the reason I’m calling you is to politely ask you to stop sniffing around and asking questions.”
“Gee, you know, Curt, I sort of quit my job last week, so I have a lot of free time on my hands. And I find you so very fascinating.”
“Then you have good taste. But trust me when I say this, Lewis: keeping after me is going to end badly.”
“As badly as Detective Sergeant Woods? Or John Todd Thomas? And those other innocents shot at the power plant? Sounds like something you would do, doesn’t it. Shooting two protesters to raise a fuss.”
“Just doing my job,” he said. “Like you used to do, back at the Pentagon.”
“No comparison.”
“Oh, really? So tell me, Lewis, when you were in the bowels of the Pentagon, doing your research tasks for the higher-ups, isn’t it the truth that some of the work you did was used in targeting? Mmm? Helping those with the fingers on the triggers send a Tomahawk cruise missile to some tents in a desert, or helping certain troops go into Bolivia or Colombia to take out a village or two? How many innocents perished because of your job?”
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