a gunman with no regard for human life. When Duane levels that slow-moving good-ole-boy stuff at you it’s like he’s taking his time pointing a.45 at your forehead. I would call him a sociopath but he doesn’t like people.
And nobody much likes him, probably because he has no facial hair. He looks like a stunted adolescent: a fifteen-year-old with cottony pale skin, a large soft body hunched over at the shoulders. He’s got a round face, straight black shiny hair — one forelock always hanging down — and his eyes are also black, impenetrable. He went to good schools, has a law degree from Georgetown, but there’s still something dangerous and unpredictable about him, a backwoods brutality at odds with all the book learning.
A male agent told me Duane once confessed to having been a virgin when he got married. He says he is no longer practicing but came up through the ranks when the “Mormon mafia” ran the Los Angeles field office. They got shaken loose when a class-action discrimination suit filed on behalf of some Hispanic agents broke up the power structure and now the place looks like a poster for Brotherhood Week. That was before my time. Some of the guys enjoy hanging out with him because of his Japanese sword collection, but for a woman, walking into his office is like entering a deep freeze. I imagine the carcasses of former female agents swaying on elaborately wrought scimitar- style hooks.
“Where were you yesterday?”
I have to think. In Violeta Alvarado’s apartment.
“North Hollywood.”
“What you got working over there?”
“Personal business.”
“On government time?”
I should just take the hit and let it pass, but I am miffed that my boss has been back two days and intentionally not said anything about the most amazing arrest of the year.
“If you look at my time card you’ll see I was on duty all last Tuesday night writing up my affidavit on the California First Bank bust. I’ll probably log a hundred hours on it.”
Duane just sits there bouncing a tennis ball on his desk and watching me with glittering eyes.
“I looked at your time card. I looked at your affidavit too, why in hell do you think I called you back from the Valley this afternoon?”
The fear grips me. “Why?”
“You fucked up, lady.”
“How?”
“You sit there and you think about it. I’m gonna take a leak and when I get back I know you’ll come up with the answer because you’re a bright little thing.”
He leaves me paralyzed in the chair, stung by a primitive humiliation, like he is going to take a leak on me.
By the time he returns my palms are damp and I am breathing harder. “I did everything right and by the books.” Then, blurting it out like a child: “It was a perfect bust.”
Duane settles himself behind the desk and starts bouncing the tennis ball again.
“It would have been perfect,” he answers levelly, “if you’d told anyone else what was going on.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You didn’t call in a 211 in progress.”
I laugh. The relief is so profound I feel like taking a leak myself.
“Is that it?”
“You didn’t know what was going down inside the bank.”
“I had no way to know.”
“Exactly right, which is why you should have called in. You placed yourself and the public in unreasonable jeopardy.”
I can’t help scoffing. “It turned out fine.”
“It just as well could have turned to shit.”
“Well, it didn’t. I live right.”
My arms are folded and my legs stuck out in front of me. Defiant now. Catch me if you can.
“I’m glad you’re taking this lightly, Ana.”
“I don’t take anything lightly that has to do with my job, but I think, with respect, Duane, you’re overstating the situation.”
“I don’t. You showed poor judgment. That’s my assessment.”
His use of the words “judgment” and “assessment” just about causes my heart to stop. “Judgment” is one of the categories of our semiannual performance appraisals. If he gives me poor marks in judgment, it will derail my progress in the Bureau for years.
I know what I have to do and it is as onerous and revolting as if he were actually instead of symbolically forcing me to suck his dick.
“Message received. Next time I’ll call it in.”
“No, Ana, I’m afraid ‘sorry’ doesn’t cut it.”
“I didn’t say I was sorry. I said, Next time I will call it in.”
Duane gives me a real serious look. Serious and sober, Big Daddy concerned for my best interests.
“I see you’ve applied for transfer to the C-1 squad.”
“Correct.”
“Ana, you know I believe in full disclosure …”
I can’t wait to tell Barbara that one.
“… so I want to let you know up front that I’m going to attach an addendum to your request.”
“What kind of an addendum?”
“I’m going to say that in my opinion as your immediate supervisor you have demonstrated poor judgment and are not ready for transfer. We need to keep you close to home a little bit longer.”
By now my entire body is stiff with icy cold. I can hardly bend my knees. I wonder if moving slowly like this, taking my time to stand up, makes me seem unaffected and casual.
“You can’t make that call.”
“I know. It’s up to Special Agent in Charge Galloway.”
“And his decision remains to be seen.”
Duane nods almost warmly. “It remains to be seen.”
I walk past the message center, collect two messages from Mrs. Gutierrez, and continue to my desk, although the lights in the bullpen seem awfully dim and in fact there is darkness on both sides of my vision so the world narrows to what I can see directly in front of me which turns out to be my telephone, which I try repeatedly to rip out from the floor connection with both hands and although it’s screwed in there tight I do manage to pop the cable from its staples all along the floorboard so that it has enough play to finally enable me to pick up the telephone and hurtle it against the wall.
Arms are around me and the smell of a man’s starched shirt and suddenly I am on the stairwell with my face up against the cinder block, hands pinned behind my back.
My nose is bending. I am hyperventilating.
My hands are released. I stand still. My shoulders ache from being twisted and wrenched.
“Are you sober now?”
I nod, still facing the wall. When there is no further action from behind I turn and slump down on the metal stairs. Donnato sits next to me.
“I hope I’m the only one who witnessed that little display.”
I brush my nose with my sleeve. It is scratched and bleeding. Doesn’t feel broken.
“Sorry. I had to get you out of there. Didn’t know if you were armed.”
“Armed,” I echo hoarsely, as if an assault rifle could have stopped that sweeping awful wave of darkness.
“I knew when he beeped you at the bank that Carter was get ting cute. He’s spent most of his career walking over bodies. Yours isn’t any different. Don’t take it so goddamn personally.”
I lean over and put my head in my hands. I want desperately to disappear. To be that small being in a dark place, inconsequential and alone.
