table. She had to think.
Ten minutes later she found herself knocking on Pete’s front door.
He opened the door and squinted from behind a black eye. “I figured either you came home early or else there was a raging bull elephant loose in your apartment.”
“We need to talk.”
“Your place or mine?”
She thought about the pieces of broken crockery laying on her kitchen floor and decided she’d prefer he didn’t know she’d been deranged. “Yours.”
He moved slowly going up the stairs.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“Like I’ve been run over by a tank.”
The ground floor of the row house had been converted into a traditional apartment with living room, dining room, kitchen, and bedroom. The second floor, Louisa realized, was essentially two rooms-the bedroom, and a large living room/dining room with the kitchen area to the rear. It had hardwood floors covered by Oriental carpets, big heavy furniture in muted tones, an odd assortment of tables, black-shaded brass lamps, and the largest flat-screen TV she’d ever seen. One wall was devoted to bookshelves, their contents spilling over into a workstation that held a computer and laser printer.
Pete turned to her. “Is this going to be serious talking?”
“Yeah.”
He led her to the kitchen table. “Did you get to drink the coffee you made?”
“How do you know I made coffee?”
“You heat coffee for one minute in the microwave. It comes through loud and clear.”
She nodded. “Actually, I forgot to drink it. I was thinking.”
He filled a mug and handed it to her.
She looked at it skeptically. It smelled like coffee, but she wasn’t sure. “How do you get it this consistency?” she asked. “It looks like motor oil.”
“The trick is to let it sit a few days.”
She took a sip and sucked in her breath. “Holy cow.”
“Too strong?”
“Don’t you worry about it eating through the bottom of the mug?”
He pushed a cookie jar in her direction. “So what’s your problem?”
“I’ve been fired.” She took a cookie and nibbled on it. “Nolan called me into his office, asked a few questions about my relationship with you, and next thing, I’m told my services are no longer needed.”
“Has to make you wonder.”
“I thought you might be able to shed some light on my sudden termination.”
“No advance warning?”
“None.” She watched him expectantly. If he said ‘bummer,’ she’d hit him.
Pete felt the anger knot in his stomach. They were going too far. He could understand trying to cover dirty laundry, but this went way beyond anything he’d anticipated. Not that violence and intimidation were unprecedented in American political history. It was that he’d never been the direct recipient, and now the harassment was spreading to people associated with him.
He leaned back in his chair and debated how much he should tell her. He didn’t know her very well. Instinct told him she was too goofy to be devious, but it wouldn’t hurt to be careful. He linked his hands behind his head while he thought for a moment.
“A couple weeks ago a newspaper article caught my attention. It was just one of those little filler things…boy bites dog stuff. It was about a pig that was running around loose in the halls of Congress. This probably sounds dumb, but I kept wondering about that pig. I kept wondering what happened to him.”
Louisa grimaced. “You must have a lot of time on your hands.”
He leaned forward. “You know anything about this pig?”
“Sure. The pig was supposed to be sent to Amsterdam as part of a goodwill animal husbandry exchange program. The program was sponsored by Stu Maislin. This particular pig had been bred in Maislin’s home state and genetically altered to have an incredibly low fat ratio. The pig was brought to Maislin’s office for publicity pictures. After the pictures were taken, the pig was scheduled to fly out of Dulles, but it got sick. My understanding is that everyone was scurrying around, trying to figure out what to do with a sick two-hundred-pound pig, and the pig mysteriously disappeared.”
“How could it have disappeared? It was in the Hart Building, for crying out loud.”
Louisa shrugged. “It was a Saturday. There weren’t many people around.”
“There were guards.”
“Maybe one of the guards took it home and barbecued it.”
“I thought of that,” he said. “I’ve talked to all of the guards working that day. No one would admit to seeing it. I posted a reward for news of the pig. I made it easy for the informant to remain anonymous.”
She paused and stared at him with her cookie midway to her mouth. “Why on earth would you go to all that trouble?”
“It didn’t add up to me. My curiosity was aroused.” That plus the fact that he was researching Maislin for his new screenplay and had heard some odd rumors about drug use and mob influence.
Louisa surveyed the man sitting across from her. He looked to be in his late thirties. He obviously had a lot of money and a certain amount of fame, but he had few pretentions. He didn’t drop names, didn’t wear flashy clothes, didn’t buy designer cookies. He made the world’s worst coffee, he wondered about pigs in Congress, and he looked great naked. She didn’t have a clue about his honesty, and she suspected his morals were shaky.
“You seem sort of obsessed by this filler.”
“I’ve written screenplays about the black market arms network, about Wall Street scandals, about open-air drug dealers,” Pete said. “I’ve interviewed murderers, madmen, child molesters. I’ve never before run into the kind of intimidation I’m getting on this pig thing. I started receiving threatening phone calls after I posted the first ad. I ran an ad in the paper, and someone tried to wreck my car. I’ve had my apartment broken into, and I’ve been attacked in bed. Now you’ve been fired.”
“Are you telling me I was fired because of a pig?”
“Can you come up with any better reasons?”
It sounded pretty farfetched. She was known for being gullible, but this strained the limits of credulity. And she definitely didn’t trust Pete. He looked like a man who would tell a woman
On the other hand, even a creative person like a writer would have a hard time coming up with something that bizarre on such short notice. And the bottom line was that it didn’t matter if she believed him or not-she didn’t have anything else. She recalled the shoving match between Maislin and Bishop outside the Hart Building and wondered if it was significant.
“Okay, I’ll go with it for a while,” she said. “What have you found out about the pig that I don’t already know?”
“Not much. I need someone on the inside. Someone like you. You want to join forces?”
“I’m not on the inside anymore. Security reclaimed my badge.”
“You still know people.”
It was true. She knew a lot of people, and she’d had something similar in mind when she’d stormed up the stairs. She intended to get to the bottom of this. Being summarily dismissed by Nolan would put a black mark on her resume that would be hard to erase. She didn’t intend to be gracious about it.
She also didn’t intend to let Pete get the upper hand in their partnership. She’d seen his type before. He was a bulldozer. If she wasn’t careful, he’d be ordering her around, sending her off to chase down pigs. And even worse, if she wasn’t
“I’ll have to think about it.”
“Honey, you’re unemployed. What have you got to lose?”
