The Inner Circle

“I think it was someone in Public Affairs.”

“Was it Francine?”

“It might’ve been-it was definitely a woman,” I bluff.

She lowers her chin, studying me through the fingerprint-covered glass.

“Something wrong?” I ask.

“You tell me, Beecher-you have no appointment and no contact name. Now you know the population we’re trying to help here. So why don’t you go back to the Archives and set up your meeting properly?”

“Can’t you just call the-?”

“There is no call. No appointment, no call.”

“But if you-”

“We’re done. Good day,” she insists, tightening both her jaw and her glare.

I blink once at her, then once at David Bowie. But as I turn to leave…

The steel door that leads upstairs opens with a tunk.

“-sure it’s okay to go out here?” Clementine asks as she walks tentatively behind a man with salt-and-pepper buzzed hair and chocolate brown eyes that seem too close together. At first, the gray in his hair throws me off-but that bulbous nose and the arched thin eyebrows… God, he looks just like the video on YouTube.

Nico. And Clementine.

Heading right for me.

28

'Mr. Laurent, your next appointment’s here,” the girl called out from the front of Wall’s Barber Shop, a long narrow shop that held seven barber chairs, all in a single row, with Shoeshine Gary up near the front door and local favorite James Davenport cutting hair in chair one.

Laurent glanced at her from the very last chair in the back, but never lost focus on his current-most vital- client.

“I should get back. It’s late,” Dr. Palmiotti said from the barber chair.

“Don’t you go nowhere. Two more minutes,” Laurent said, pressing the electric razor to the back of Dr. Palmiotti’s neck. Cleaning out the tater patch-that’s what Laurent’s grandfather used to call cleaning the hair on the neck. The very last part of the job.

“So your brother…” Laurent added, well aware that Palmiotti didn’t have a brother. “If he needs help, maybe you should get it for him?”

“I don’t know,” Palmiotti replied, his chin pressed down against his chest. “He’s not that good with help.”

Laurent nodded. That was always President Wallace’s problem.

This close to the White House, nearly every business had at least a few hanging photographs of local politicians who’d helped them over time. Since 1967, Wall’s Barber Shop had none. Zero. Not even the one from Newsweek, of Laurent cutting President Wallace’s hair right before the Inauguration. According to the current owner, in the cutthroat world of politics, he didn’t want to look like he was taking one side over the other. But to Laurent, the blank walls were the cold reminder that in Washington, D.C., when it all went sour, the only person you could really count on was yourself.

“Just be sure to say hello for me,” Laurent said, finishing up on the doctor’s neck. “Tell him he’s in my prayers.”

“He knows that. You know he knows that,” Palmiotti said, trying hard to not look uncomfortable.

Laurent wasn’t surprised. Like most doctors, Palmiotti always had a tough time with faith. Fortunately, he had an easy time with friendship.

With a tug at his own neck, the doctor unsnapped the red, white, and blue barber’s apron and hopped out of the chair in such a rush, he didn’t even stop to check his haircut in the mirror. “You’re a magician, Laurent. See you soon!”

But as Palmiotti was paying the cashier, Laurent looked over and noticed the hardcover book with the bright red writing-A Problem from Hell-that was still sitting on the shelf below the mirror.

Palmiotti was at the cashier. There was still time to return it to him.

Instead, Laurent opened the drawer that held his spare scissors, slid the book inside, and didn’t say a word.

As usual.

29

'You’re anxious,” Nico says to Clementine as he leads her past me and heads for the door that’ll take them outside. Clementine nearly falls over when she sees me, but to her credit, she doesn’t stop. Just shoots me a look to say, What’re you doing here?

I turn back to the glass guard booth, pretending to sign in.

If I remember my history-and I always remember my history-when Nico took his shots at the President, he said it was because of some supposed ancient plan that the Founding Fathers and the Freemasons had hatched to take over the world.

Exactly.

He’s crazy enough. He doesn’t need to be more crazy by me confronting or riling him.

“There’s no need to be nervous,” Nico continues, reading Clementine’s discomfort.

He shoves open the front door and steps out into the cold. As the door slams behind them, it’s like a thunderclap in the silent room.

“Th-That was-You let him walk out the door!”

“… and he’ll walk right back in after his visitor leaves,” says the guard behind the glass. “Our goal is curing them, not punishing them. Nico earned his ground privileges just like anyone else.”

“But he’s-”

“He’s been incident-free for years now-moved out of maximum security and into medium. Besides, this isn’t a prison-it’s a hospital. A hospital that’s there to help him, not punish him. You gotta let a man walk outside,” she explains. “And even so, we got guards-and a fence that’s too high to hop. We see him. Every day, he does custodial work in the RMB Building, then feeds the cats there. By the way, Beecher, they still got that copy of the Magna Carta at the Archives? That stuff is cool.”

“Yeah… of course,” I say as I try to walk as casually as possible to the door.

The guard says something else, but I’m already outside, searching left and right, scanning the main road that runs across the property. In the distance, there’s a guard walking the perimeter of the black metal gates that surround the hospital’s snow-covered grounds. Ahead and down to the right, the concrete walkway looks like a squiggle from a black magic marker that slices through the snow. The plowed path is lined with trees and holds so many benches, it’s clearly for strolling patients.

Nico’s at least four steps in front of her, his left arm flat at his side, his right clutching a brown paper supermarket bag. He walks like Clementine used to: fearlessly forward as he follows the thin pedestrian path. Behind him, whatever confidence Clementine had-the woman who plowed just as fearlessly into the President’s SCIF-that Clementine is once again gone. From the stutter in her steps… the way she hesitates, not sure whether she really wants to keep up… I don’t care how far people come in life-or how much you prepare for this moment. You see your father, and you’re instantly a child again.

As they step out onto the pathway, I stick by the entryway of the building, making sure there’s at least half a football field between us. But as I take my first step out and my foot crunches against some thick chunks of snow salt, I swear on my life, Nico flinches.

He never turns. He doesn’t glance over his shoulder to investigate. But I remember the news footage-how he