That was no beautiful woman, it was Samantha Stevens, special agent with the FBI, smiling at me from across the room as she slid her chair in, crossed her long legs in front of her, and gently placed her purse on the floor.
If you think it's tough to get Steve Havlicek out of a dining room when a free dessert is still on the line, think again. It's not just tough, it's impossible, a feat I wouldn't even try with a John Deere tractor and a pair of field oxen.
So with the last bits of their chocolate mousse cake gone, the boys finally took leave. I made my way across the room to Stevens's table, flashed her my attempt at a Frank Sinatra smile, and said, "Didn't realize you were a member here."
She was drinking red wine on a tab I had carefully and quietly established for her with the waiter, and reading the Wall Street Journal-the Money and Investing section, to be exact. "I've always wanted to go to a bar where they pump testosterone in through the heating vents," she said, not exactly answering my question. "Let me ask you, has anyone ever gored themselves on the moose antlers?"
"Not that I know of," I said. "Actually, the women members here, and yes, we do have women members, they all seem to really like the moose.
I'm not sure if that says more about the aesthetics of the moose or the quality of our women membership."
She gave me an exaggerated frown, comfortable enough, it seemed, that she didn't have to laugh at every joke that ever so slightly missed the mark. With another clever introduction out of the way, I took a seat at the table and said, "This is an unexpected surprise."
"Most surprises are unexpected," she replied. Good one. I made a mental note to stop using that clich'e after all these years.
She swirled the wine around in her glass and said, "Sorry to intrude on your sanctuary, but I need to talk to you in confidence again. May I?"
"Of course you can," I said.
She stared down at the wine rolling around the edges of her glass as she nonchalantly twirled the stem in her hand. After a moment, she looked up at me and said, "I'm being excluded from every major decision on a case that is supposed to be partly mine. I don't think I'm even being shown working copies of any reports. Drinker's barely speaking to me, and he seems to have carte blanche to do whatever he wants on this case, in whatever way he wants to do it. I don't even think my boss is clued in. Drinker speaks only to Callinger. I think they're the only two guys who know what's going on."
I let that sit out there as I processed it. I was still leery of being played for the fool, and harbored suspicions that this was some sort of a setup, an attempt to get me to divulge that I was working with an anonymous source, and maybe even Ron Hancock. I reminded myself, You don't know this woman all that well.
"Do you and Drinker talk every day?"
She shrugged. "He might stop by my office and ask me to do something like call this militia outpost or some gun store or something that seems peripherally connected, at best. He's not really one to make extensive chitchat even in the easiest of times."
"And you're really not seeing reports? You think about going to Callinger?"
"I did," she said. "I said it was bothering me, the way this investigation was being handled. I said I felt cut out of the loop on it. You know what he said? He told me to just stick with it, that it would be over soon enough, and not to worry about how it's going, that there were already plenty enough people worrying for me."
The chairman was signing "Fly Me to the Moon" now on what must have been some double album collection. A few guys at a nearby table had sparked up some pretty expensive cigars, something mild, something Dominican, from the scent of them. There was silence between us as Carlos stopped by to pick up our empty glasses and replace them with full ones.
Stevens took a sip of her fresh wine and said, "I'm hopeful, perhaps naively so, that if you have any information, even unsubstantiated information, about FBI wrongdoing on this case, that you might pass it on to me to investigate."
That was a tough one. I could just tell her, No, you're wrong. But why? And more important, why brick off a potential source of valuable information? Reporting was often about negotiation, and I still hadn't figured out where I was in this particular situation. So I lied, in the name of good journalism.
"I don't have anything right now, except what I've written for tomorrow morning's paper, which is a story quoting from an internal document saying that the FBI was identifying the shooter as Tony Clawson at least as recently as yesterday afternoon."
She just stared at me with that one, then took a sip of wine, absently lifting the glass to her lips.
"Right now," I said, "everything I know, my readers know. I tend to be like that. I don't keep secrets very long."
"Well, there's no way that I'm going to just sit back and watch while this investigation spirals out of control," she said. "It's an embarrassment for the bureau."
She looked me in the eyes and added, "Let me ask you something. That story of yours today. Do you know who the federal informant is?"
An interesting question, meaning, apparently, that she didn't.
I replied, "Yes. I agreed not to publish the identity so the informant wouldn't be killed, as could well be the case if word got out."
She nodded, still looking at me. She asked, "Is it Daniel Nathaniel?"
The question betrayed her profound irrelevance in this investigation, or at least I thought it did.
I didn't answer. I only looked back at her, in silence. She added,
"If it is, don't say anything."
I didn't, and she eventually looked away.
She spread a hard gaze over my face and said, "Then I have something else."
Her tone had changed, as did the look in her eyes. I felt a lump form in my throat, as if something were about to happen, something of significance. My impulse was to blurt out the question, What? but I stopped myself, not wanting to appear too eager, too needy. I coolly met her gaze and said, "Go ahead."
"I got access to some computer files." She hesitated and said, "We're on background here, right?" I nodded. She went on. "The files detail all federally paid informants, meaning, if someone's on our payroll for giving us information, they're recorded in the ledgers. Obviously, this information is sensitive, so not everyone is listed by name. Some just have descriptions, like, I don't know, "Miami dockworker." You know?"
She paused to collect herself. "The point is, Drinker told me about telling you of how Daniel Nathaniel is a federal informant. Well, he gave me the information in one of his rare written reports. Anyways, this guy Nathaniel, he's not on the list, despite Drinker's assertion to you that he was. I can't find his name, and I can't find anyone who fits the description. There's not even a militia member on our ledgers from Idaho."
I drank that in for a moment, stunned at the baldness of Drinker's lie and the fact that his colleague Stevens would call him on it, at least with me. What did it mean? If Drinker was fabricating, it meant that he worked with Nathaniel to concoct the story about the Wyoming militia, in all likelihood to hide something else. What was it they were trying to hide? That was the real question.
Much as I wanted to pursue it right there and then with Stevens, some inner voice told me not to. I think that voice was simply one of distrust. "That's, well, more than interesting," I said, dropping it at that.
We sat in a long stretch of silence, until she said, far more conversationally, "You ever have a week where everything in the world is out to screw you over?" She half smiled.
"Actually," I said, "I've had years like that."
She nodded sympathetically. "So I'm in Nordstrom's last night. I'm over there buying my father a birthday present, and I'm in the men's shop. I catch sight of this guy who looks so familiar that my heart realizes who he is before my brain does. You know what I mean?
There's a woman with him, and she's holding a pair of pants up to his waist while he's pulling on a new suit jacket. They're smiling, and they're so happy. And it hits me like a club over the head, that's my
ex-husband, and he's with another woman."
"Wow," I said, more for my own shock than in empathy with hers. I couldn't picture her with a husband, never mind an ex-husband, mostly because I had always associated her with being single and available.
This opened up an entirely new way of looking at her. So with nothing constructive to add at this point, and feeling slightly voyeuristic, I asked, "What did you do?"
"I was going to just turn away, but he saw me. We met eyes, and he called to me, "Hey, Sam, how are you?" I had no real choice but to go over, much as I just wanted to crawl into a hole. I walk over there, and the woman, she's still holding the fucking pants up to his waist, just kind of standing there not knowing what's going on. We talked a bit, though I'm not sure about what. My mind was just swimming. He introduced me to her, but just by name. He didn't say, "Julia, I want you to meet my ex-wife, Samantha. Sam, I want you to meet my girlfriend, Julia." I don't think I said more than a dozen words, and I just got out of there. I didn't even buy my father's present. I punched the dashboard of my car so hard I almost broke my hand."
I felt myself recovering from my own surprise, at least enough to ask a couple more worthwhile questions. She was facing me with her elbows on the table, her chin resting in her hands. She looked strangely comfortable unloading to me.
"When's the last time you saw him?"
"About a year. I hadn't seen him since we walked out of divorce court last fall and shook hands goodbye."
"You obviously miss him," I said, thinking the statement trite just as the words left my lips.
"I don't know if that's necessarily true," she said. "I think I miss my old life, or what I thought my old life would become, which was happily married, looking forward to starting a family, sharing, growing old with someone. Staying in love. Or maybe just not being alone."
"What's his name?" I asked.
"Eric." I hate the name Eric, but thought it best not to mention that.
She said, "You know, I'm not pining for him or anything like that. I'm really not. To be honest about it, I don't even think about him all that much anymore."
I started to say something, though exactly what, I'm not sure. She kept talking right over me, which I think was a good thing.
"It's just weird, seeing this guy, the guy I married, the guy I figured I'd be with for the rest of my life, to have children with, to send them through college, to retire with, it's just so fucking weird to see him with another person, like I'm so replaceable, like he's moved on, found something better, and I'm stuck, struggling with myself, no different than I was before. Or if I am different, then I'm just worse. That's what's so bad about all this."
I had half a mind to reach out and put my hand over hers, to comfort her with my eyes, to let her know she wasn't as alone as she was feeling. I held back for a variety of reasons, one of them being the continuing suspicion that I was being fed a line, another being the general inappropriateness of a reporter and a federal agent having any sort of emotional, never mind physical, involvement.
Still, I'm not a mule, so I told her, "Look, I hope you don't mind me saying this, but my bet is you're not like you were before, that you've grown a lot since you two split. The only difference is that you haven't found anyone yet, and maybe he has. And maybe you haven't found anyone because you're a little more discriminating. You don't want to make those same mistakes."
I paused, then brushed against inappropriateness, unable to contain myself. "I mean, look at you," I said. "You're stunning looking.
You're a goddamned FBI agent, and a well-regarded one at that. You will have more opportunities to meet men, and good men, than you could ever imagine. The right one will come along, probably when you least expect it." Like, say, right now.
She stared straight ahead. Around us, the grille was gradually clearing out, the laughter giving way to the background music. She looked up at me and said, "I know you're right. Sometimes it's just lonely."
"I know lonely," I said. "I've driven off to the hospital with a pregnant wife about to have a baby girl, and I drove home that night all alone, both of them dead."
She locked her eyes on mine and said, "I'm so sorry. I know that. My issues, they're trivial in comparison."
I said, "No, we all have our own issues, our own problems, our own obstacles to overcome. You mind me asking what went wrong with you guys?"
She thought for a minute, contorting her face ever so slightly so the skin was drawn even tighter over her cheekbones. She said, "I don't want to go there now."
I felt a slight rebuke, until she quickly added, "Some other time I'll tell you."
"Check, Mr. Flynn?" That was Carlos, in another display of his impeccable timing. I said, "Yeah, that would be great." *
The last drops of distant daylight had long since drained from the early winter sky as Baker and I arrived at Rose Park in Georgetown for what used to be our regular game of fetch, a ritual that I had missed this last week because of the press of work and the looming danger.
Used to be, this was my hour of calm. Out in the park, in the chill air, with nothing more than a dog who bore a remarkable resemblance to a small golden bear and the distant flicker of television lights in people's windows, all the bullshit seemed to give way to my own clear thoughts. And it was during this time out here when I so often came to realize where I had been and where I still had to go. Perhaps foolishly, I decided on that night to give it another go.
Baker tends to show his emotions more than me, despite his English lineage. As soon as we stepped on the soft grass, he tossed the tennis ball excitedly from his mouth, gawked as it hit my shoes, stepped back four paces, and sat, the look on his face one of unbridled joy at the event that was to come. I wished for the millionth time that I could get as excited about something, anything, as Baker did about shagging down this ball.
For kicks, I sometimes pretended I was playing quarterback for the New England Patriots, directing the team toward victory with my head and my heart. I don't want to throw the term multitalented around too loosely, but let's face it, I'm a full-service guy. On my first throw, he scooped the ball up in his mouth and whipped his head around as if he were breaking the ball's neck, if it had one, which obviously it didn't, but that's not really the point. That instinctual feat accomplished, he tossed it back at my shoes and set out across the field again as I led him by ten feet or so with another perfect throw.
He caught it on the first bounce. Grogan to Vataha. We were quite a team.
Standing there searching for the kind of peace that comes with perspective, I decided to bring a little misery to my night and take a quick inventory of all that was going wrong. I had an enormous story that seemed to be slipping out of my control. I had an anonymous source who might be about to send me on a wild-goose chase or into the throes of danger. I had someone taking an occasional shot at me. I had a fetching FBI agent with wondrous hair and pouty lips showing an inordinate amount of interest in me, though I wasn't yet sure if this comes under what was going wrong or what might be right. Too early to tell which way it was cutting. And I should add, at that moment, I also had an ominous-looking man in a tan trench coat walking purposefully across the otherwise empty field, heading exactly in my direction. I suspected I might soon be adding his visit to my list.
In regards to the approaching man, Baker spotted him just seconds after I did, and, being the faithful protector of all things Jack, bounded angrily across the field, barked loudly, and then grabbed the man's leg, bringing him down in a heap of blood and pain.
Actually, I lie. Baker joyfully trotted up to the guy, dropped the ball at his feet, and stepped back in wondrous anticipation of the throw he assumed was to come. The man kept walking, ignoring him.
"Be careful," I called out. "He's vicious."
"I'll be all right," the man said, getting closer, his voice, familiar, just slightly louder than conversational.
"I was talking to my dog," I said with a shallow laugh.
And out of t
he dark and into my life once again stepped Kent Drinker, assistant director of the FBI. Coincidence? I wasn't sure.
I added, for no particular reason, "You really should have called ahead and made an appointment. I'm rather busy out here."
"I don't need a whole lot of time," Drinker said.
That was good news. It was Thursday night, the end of a long day, and the dual feelings of exhaustion and uncertainty mingled in my mind and created an uncharacteristic sense of uneasiness, the type of mood when you begin questioning everything you've ever done for reasons that you're unable to fully understand.
I said, flat, "What can I do for you this fine night?"
"I was hoping I might get some help and give some help," Drinker said.
That sounded interesting, though rehearsed. I picked up the ball and tossed it for Baker, then watched his form as he hurtled across the field in pursuit. I turned my gaze to Drinker and regarded him for a moment. He was tall and athletic, with looks that spoke to the word Everyman, or at least to that of an everyday federal agent. He had close-cropped hair that I would bet he cut every couple of weeks. His eyes were gray. My guess is that he lived a spare life of simple pleasures, when he pursued pleasure at all. I'm not sure why, but I pictured his wife as a southerner, probably from one of the Carolinas, old-fashioned bordering on obedient, a stay-at-home mother, as if there was any other choice.
"Everything I have, I think I've given you already," I said. "My impression is that I was a pretty good witness, despite what you might think."
There was a long pause between us, broken only by Baker once again presenting me with the ball, and me once again throwing it.
"Look, I've dealt with reporters before," Drinker said finally. "I suspect you know that already. And I was more than helpful in my day.
I also got more than burned. My whole fucking career got fried. And now I've been given a rare second chance in the bureau. I'm out here doing the best I can. I'm trying to solve a presidential assassination attempt after the Secret Service put six bullets into my prime suspect and rendered him useless to me. And I have you and your paper staring over my shoulder second-guessing me every step of the way, getting in the way of a good investigation."
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