There's that profanity thing again that turns me on. We both fell quiet, thinking about what Stevens just said. By now, the entrees were done and our waiter had delivered two orders of chocolate dacquoise with cappuccino sauce, and two glasses of port, which he pronounced to be a twelve-year-old Cockburn. Very nice.
I said to Stevens, "Okay, I concede the point. It is unusual those two would be talking as much as you say they are."
She took a bite of the dacquoise and declared she was on her way to heaven. She looked rail thin, yet packed down food like there would be bread lines come morning. She'd make a wonderfully expressive bedmate, I thought, if her partner could live up to the standard set by Bob Kinkead.
She said, "Not to force the issue, but let's put work aside for a while and see if we can chat like two regular human beings."
Truth be known, I still wasn't 100 percent confident that this wasn't some scheme, that Drinker and my new friend Sam weren't conspiring to set me up, playing off each other to learn the existence and the identity of my anonymous informant. I was either getting a remarkable window into the inner workings of a major FBI investigation, or rather an FBI civil war, or I was being played for a farm animal again.
"That sounds good, but just one more thing," I said. "Does Drinker ever bring up this point about the phone call in the hospital room anymore?"
"No, though I have to admit, I'm still curious."
Interesting answer. I decided to take a modest risk. "The name Black mean anything to you in this investigation?"
She looked at me blankly. Either it meant nothing, or she was one terrific actress. She shook her head thoughtfully and said, "Not a thing. Should it?"
My question was designed to accomplish two goals: first, see if, in fact, I did get any response, and second, to gauge in the future whether she had gone and passed this information to Drinker.
I said, "Probably not. Just scratching at dirt."
"No, really. What do you have?"
"Really, nothing solid," I said.
We both sat in silence for a while, sipping our port, collecting our thoughts. She began making small talk, about her first Thanksgiving since her divorce, her driving desire for a Caribbean vacation, her raves about my four-legged blond friend Baker. It became all very casual, breezy, floating on the surface, like a water lily, making no waves, just how I usually like it. Still, here I was, looking for meaning within, and this conversation exposed none of it. We tossed down another glass of port before I paid the bill with my trusty Record'-issued Visa card. I briefly thought of Martin checking the bill, asking me if the clams were fried in liquid gold. We made our way down the stairs.
For the rest of time, I'll always remember precisely where I was when the events of the next few minutes began to unfold all around me.
Actually, it's not as glamorous as it sounds. I was standing right in front of the coat check. I had just found my stub and handed it to the woman when Samantha, who was behind me, suddenly wrapped her arms around my waist and pressed her mouth against my ear.
My first thought was that the second glass of port had kicked in, inspiring an understandable fit of passion, such that she couldn't keep her hands and lips off me. Then I heard her whisper something, and my second thought was to tell her, "Huh? I can't hear you." Good social graces kept that thought in check as I replayed her words in my mind:
"Eric-you're my boyfriend."
An agile mind is an amazing thing. Take, for example, mine. I couldn't figure out why she was suddenly calling me Eric, and when exactly I had become her boyfriend-not that I was complaining just yet. I was confused. Then, amid my mental calisthenics, it struck me, within seconds, that her ex-husband, Eric, was probably in the restaurant, and she wanted to do a little role-playing. Well, so much for her fit of passion, but I'd take whatever I could get.
"Eric," she called out. "How are you?" She kept one arm wrapped tightly around me, such that when the nice coat check woman delivered our coats, I had to maneuver my arms around Samantha to accept them.
My back was still to all the action, but I heard a somewhat nasally voice say, "Hey there, Sam. God, this is so great to see you."
I turned around to see a pretty-looking man with blow-dried hair and a dapper red pocket square in a navy blue suit come walking over, his white teeth blazing all over the room. He was tan in November, which explains more than I can describe. He looked to be the type of guy who always got along better with women than men.
"Eric, this is Jack. Jack Flynn." As she said this, she rubbed the back of her hand affectionately against the side of my arm. I thought she was overdoing the lovey-dovey act a bit but didn't think it was my place to say anything. I held out my hand cheerily to shake Eric's, and he gave me an oddly limp-wristed shake. I held in check my desire to call him a pussy.
"Very nice to meet you," I said.
"Same," he said, somewhat dismissively, his eyes drifting back to those of his former wife. I'm not precisely sure why, but I had the urge to punch him in the mouth. Worry not: good manners prevailed once again.
Meanwhile, Samantha was now running her hand up and down my back as we all stood there. Eric turned away for a moment and said, "Hey, Julia, Julia sweetie. Look who's here. Come on over and say hello to Sam."
Up walked an extraordinarily attractive blonde in a skirt so short I wasn't sure if I had accidentally been transported into some sort of adult entertainment lounge.
Eric again: "Sam, do you remember Julia? Julia, this is Sam. You guys met at Nordstrom's that day."
As I stood there, Mr. Manners didn't bother introducing me, and I wasn't sure if it was by intention or stupidity. Finally I stuck my hand out and said, "Julia, I'm Jack Flynn. Nice to meet you." Then I took my hand and softly ran it down Samantha's cheek, the very feel of her skin making my head go light.
Samantha took my hand in hers and kissed it softly. Here I was, thinking I was doing good. I was certainly feeling good. Samantha pulled my hand down to her side, squeezing it with what I first thought was sincere affection. Then I felt her sharp nails dig into my skin, and I almost yelped and jumped in pain. Luckily, I have the discipline of a Marine, and I maintained my smile.
"Coming or going?" I said to Eric.
He just kind of looked at me as if he had forgotten I was there. Maybe the complexity of the question caught him off guard. Julia said, "Just coming. We're going to get a bite to eat at the bar." She seemed nice enough, if not a little daffy, which is maybe what I mean by nice enough.
Samantha absently leaned into me, her body feeling warm and wonderful against mine, even if I was now gin-clear on what a charade this was.
She said to Eric, "We don't want to hold you up. We just had a great dinner upstairs and are hurrying out. I'll see you around." She laughed and said, "Seems like we're doing more and more of that."
Proper, mature farewells were made, though I'm not sure if Eric ever addressed one to me. Julia did, though, andwitha smile, creating a kind of bond as the two appendages in this little scene. Outside, on the sidewalk, I said to Samantha, "You almost scratched the skin off my hand."
She laughed in a distracted way and said, "You seemed to be taking advantage in my moment of need." She wasn't quite as flustered as I thought she might have been. Actually, she seemed to be relieved that things had gone this well, especially after that Nordstrom's debacle she had described.
I said, "Sorry about that." I left the intention of my apology vague, whether it was for her running into her former husband, or for my somewhat coarse attempt at physical engagement.
"Apology declined." She said this as she stood facing me, unusually close. The night was cold, the street crowded with cars, the valets bustling back and forth-all of it creating a blur of peripheral motion, even as my eyes focused hard on Samantha, standing in front of me, her face cold and pink and shiny. I could never precisely explain the hints I got, whether they were from her words, her tone, her posture, or her proximity, but inexplicably I placed my hand o
n her forehead, brushed her hair softly, then let my fingers run down her cheek. She glided closer to me without ever seeming to move, and before I could even think about what was happening, she placed her warm lips fully against mine and kept them there for what could have been an eternity. She pulled back slightly, and I opened my eyes to see hers still closed, her face inches away. So I put my lips on hers again, a kiss that was hard and soft, passionate and affectionate, all at the same time.
Then she pushed me away gently in an almost helpless manner and said,
"There's a cab right here. It's better if I just leave." She turned and walked slowly to the curb. As she settled into the taxi, she looked back and gave me an odd, even goofy wave and a smile. I stood on the sidewalk until all I could see were the taillights of her car driving down Pennsylvania Avenue, and I thought, my God, this finally feels like something called home.
As I pulled out my keys on my darkened front stoop, there was a noise from inside the house that I wasn't used to: the sound of someone talking. I froze and strained to hear, but all I could decipher was a low, barely audible mumble. I leaned over the railing to look in the window, but the shutters were drawn closed, as I had left them this morning. I could see a light was on, but that would make sense, given that Kristen had been supposed to drop Baker off earlier in the night.
I strained harder to hear, thinking it might be Kristen inside, but it sounded more like a male voice.
Another voice filled my mind. There are people who would kill rather than see you get to the bottom of this story. You are in danger.
Imminent danger.
A good warning. In the past ten days I had been struck by gunfire, shot at unsuccessfully, punched, and stalked. It was coming up toward eleven-thirty. The only sound was the gentle rustle of crinkled leaves in the chill wind of a late autumn night. There were no passersby, no moon, no lights on in any of the neighbors' houses. Inside mine, the sound droned on.
It could be a stereo, but it certainly didn't sound like it. Kristen may have left the television on for the dog, though she had never done that before. I admit, I had no idea what it was. I just knew it was something unusual, and right now, the unusual was not going to be good.
You are in danger. Imminent danger.
I thought about slipping back toward my car and calling the police from my cellular telephone. This being Washington, though, it might be a while before they arrived. And it struck me in a wave of panic that if Kristen had dropped Baker off as she said she would, then he was inside with God only knows who. And if the police arrived, it seems one of the first things they always do is shoot the dog. So standing there in frozen silence on the stoop of my own house, I realized I had to handle this myself.
The mind, as I've said, is a funny thing. Miraculously, I remembered that I had left a pair of old pruning shears beside the stoop, in my little patch of a garden in front of my house. I slowly, silently walked down the two stairs, hunched down in the dark, and found them protruding from a pile of ancient, soggy leaves. I at least had a weapon now-maybe not something the NRA would be proud of, but a weapon nonetheless.
With the shears in hand, I stepped cautiously back up on the stoop. I pushed the key into my lock, moving with what I pictured to be the precision of a German surgeon. I strained to hear the voice, making sure it didn't waver or get closer, and I could detect no movement or change. It was a goddamned monotone. What the hell it was, I had no idea. The key pushed all the way in. All I had to do was snap the lock open and burst into the door.
With the key in the lock and the breeze blowing on my neck, I briefly weighed my options one more time. I knew, inherently, that charging into my own house with a garden tool as my only shield was probably not the smartest thing I would ever do. Hopefully it wouldn't be the last.
My mind raced through what I might find inside: some shadowy mastermind of a presidential assassination attempt. Perhaps Assistant Director Drinker. Maybe, in the best case scenario, my anonymous source. Probably some nameless thug ready to carry out someone else's dirty work. But I knew, standing here, that I really had no choice. I wasn't going to leave a helpless dog inside to fend for himself. I had brought myself into this whole situation. The dog was just an innocent bystander.
So without more thought, and perhaps without enough thought, I snapped the lock, threw the door open, and burst inside, holding the shears ahead of me in a way that would allow me to stab anyone in the neck who posed any danger. For a fleeting moment of dangerous glory, I felt like Don Johnson.
"Freeze," I yelled.
The warm air of the house hit me in the face. So did the unmistakable smell of Fritos. Sitting on my couch with his feet on the coffee table and my telephone up to his ear, Steve Havlicek calmly said, "Hold on one second, honey." To me: "Boy, am I glad I'm not some overgrown bush."
At the same time, Baker bolted up from a sound sleep, squinted toward the rear of the house, and ran into the kitchen, barking at the back door. Wrong way, pal. I made a mental note to get his ears flushed out.
I let the shears fall to my side, closed the door behind me, and said breathlessly, "What the flying fuck are you doing in here?"
Havlicek said into the phone, "Honey, I'm sorry. I've got to run.
Jack just got in. Seems a bit out of sorts. Yeah. Yeah. I'm at his place. Yeah, we just have to have a chat. Tell Mary I said I'll make it back for her playoff game. Good. Yeah. I love you too."
He hung up the phone, pulled a few Fritos out of the bag beside him, took a sip from a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, and said, "Howaya, slugger?"
"How am I? Jesus Christ, I'm almost dead from a fucking heart attack.
How the hell did you get in here?"
"Just a little trick I learned from my days growing up in Dorchester.
You don't have a deadbolt on your back door. You might as well just leave the thing open with a sign that says "Come on in, but bring your own beer.""
By now, Baker had trotted back out into the living room with a confused look on his face. I knelt down and rubbed behind his ears, relieved that he was all right.
"You scared the hell out of me," I said to Havlicek.
"Sorry about that. Hey, before you sit, grab yourself a beer. I've got some Pabst in the fridge. We've got to talk." As I walked into the kitchen, he called after me, "Grab me another too."
I didn't think anyone drank Pabst anymore, though I noticed I was now the owner of a case of it. Of course, I didn't think anyone outside of grade school ate Fritos either, so I guess I had a lot to learn.
As I slumped down into a chair with a can of beer, Havlicek held out the bag of Fritos in front of my face.
"No, thanks," I said.
"No, really, try some. I bought the pounder."
"No, really, I don't want any."
"You eat dinner?" he asked.
"Where do you think I'm coming from?"
"Good point," he said. He seemed to consider this for a moment, opened his fresh beer, though I don't know if you can ever really call a Pabst fresh, and said, "We've got to talk."
My heart was still pumping, which might explain my frustration. I said, "I thought that's why you were here."
"Right. I'm dying to know what you learned."
Given all the bullets flying around over the last week or so, I didn't particularly like his description. But I put that aside and walked him through every crucial detail of my trip. I told him of the Pigpen, of my discussions with Sammy Markowitz, of the cryptic remarks by Diego Rodriguez, of my deduction about the federal witness protection program, and the confirmation that Markowitz provided.
"So we've got an armored car robber by the name of Curtis Black in the federal witness protection program," I said. "We're told we need to find out his relationship with the president that was just shot.
Black's a fellow crook of a guy by the name of Paul Stemple. Stemple's pardoned by the president in the middle of a campaign season."
That summary was followed by a moment of
thoughtful silence. Well, almost silence, and probably not all that thoughtful. Havlicek kept crunching on Fritos and swigging his beer. Baker was on the floor between us, snoring. I mulled over our immediate future.
"I know a thing or two about the witness protection program, having covered some issues within it a couple of years ago," Havlicek said.
"It's a hell of a well-run government operation. It began about twenty-seven years ago when the feds were trying to bust La Cosa Nostra, and they couldn't break the code of silence. It ends up, it wasn't that these mob underlings were so loyal. It's just that they were scared for their lives. Since then, the marshals have protected about 7,500 witnesses, most of whom, like Curtis Black, are themselves criminals. It's not a squeaky-clean process. It's not even a pretty one. But everyone familiar with it tells me it works."
Havlicek was on a roll and kept going. "The way it goes is, if you have something worthwhile, you cut a deal with the FBI to enter the program. Before a trial, you're given intense protection, typically in some safe house or a hotel suite. You're brought to the grand jury or to court with an army of agents around you. Once you do your thing, or once the other side pleads guilty because they know you're waiting in the wings to testify, that's it, you're given your freedom and a different identity, and you go off and become someone entirely new."
Havlicek looked at me. "Literally, Jack Flynn would cease to exist.
Your house would be sold along with just about everything in it. Your dog would be given a new home. You'd pack up a few personal things, some clothes and the like, and the marshals would cart you off in some armored van to a national complex over in suburban Virginia. You get to pick the region of the country where you want to move. They'll help you buy a new house or pay for a new apartment. They might help you with some job retraining and the like so you can get work. They'll get you started on getting new identification, like a Social Security card and a driver's license. You come up with your own personal history, some story of who you are and where you're from. And that's it, suddenly you're out on your own, a whole new person. I'm told that only about three people in the entire marshal's service ever get to learn your new identity-that's how closely held the secret is."
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