here.”
“Like hell there isn’t.” She walked quickly from the corner, carried by her anger. She was wearing jeans and a thick, black sweater and she was brandishing her opened cell phone like a weapon. “I saw what happened.”
“What happened, ma’am, was this gentleman-who is armed, by the way-assaulted two federal agents who were questioning him in the course of a federal investigation.” Pell puffed up into full, self-important government official mode. “What you saw was two federal agents using appropriate force to defend themselves.” Jane ignored him. She took my arm and looked me over.
“Jesus Christ, John, look at you,” she said.
“Jane,” I said softly, “it’s alright. Go inside now. The cops will be here in a minute. I’m fine. Go inside.” She ignored me too.
“Jesus, look at your head,” Jane said.
“You know this gentleman, ma’am?” Pell asked, sounding sly and more hostile now. I heard sirens approaching.
“He’s my neighbor, Agent-what is your name? May I see that ID again?” It was Pell’s turn to ignore her.
“Well, your neighbor is lucky we’re not running him in for what he did. And by the way, what exactly is your relationship with your neighbor, Miss-what’s your name?” Jane shook her head and looked at him like he was a new, but particularly disgusting, kind of cockroach. An NYPD blue-and-white rolled up the street, lights flashing. It stopped by the two fed sedans. Two uniforms got out, and one of Pell’s boys flashed an ID and buttonholed them.
Pell grinned with his big, bad teeth. “I’ll take care of these guys, Killer, unless you or your sweetie have something to say.” Jane was about to speak, but I put my hand on hers and she stopped. “No? Okay, then, Killer, I’ll see you bright and early Monday.” Pell turned toward the police car but then turned back. “In case you are more than just a neighbor, honey, you might want to ask Killer here what happened to his wife. Word to the wise, babe.” And he walked away, laughing.
“Christ, that hurts!”
“Hold still, I’m almost done,” Jane said. We were in my apartment, sitting at the kitchen counter. Jane was washing the gash on my head with alcohol. “Just a little more. There you go. Now we’ll put some of this stuff on.” She tossed the damp gauze pad on the floor, on top of my bloodstained shirt, and took a tube of antiseptic ointment from my first aid kit. Her hands were strong and her movements quick and sure. “You should get that thing looked at,” she said, as she daubed the ointment on. “That thing” was my side, which was more painful, swollen, and angry looking than ever. She was probably right.
“I will. But I’ve got to make some calls first.”
“Go ahead and make them, and I’ll make us some tea. Then I’ll take you to the emergency room.” I looked at her for a moment. She had insisted on coming in with me, and I hadn’t put up much of a struggle. I was impressed by her composure and her competence, and by the ease with which she took charge. She hadn’t yet asked a single question.
I walked back to my bedroom area and called Mike Metz. No one was home, and his cell phone was off. I left a message for him to call me ASAP. I tried Neary, but again I had no luck. I left him a message too. Neither of them would be happy with my news. Getting read the riot act by a cop-even an obnoxious federal one like Pell, who mauls you in the process-is one thing. It comes with the territory sometimes. Getting hauled in front of a federal prosecutor is another thing altogether.
U.S. attorneys on high-profile cases are dangerous beasts-ruthless and relentless, with broad investigative powers, and vast and scary resources at their disposal. Dealing with one is perilous and unpleasant at best; at worst, it’s something like being smacked in the face with a two-by-four and dropped into a deep, dark pit. Shelly DiPaolo was rumored to be a particularly nasty example of the species. If she really wanted to know why we were interested in Nassouli, she had the where-withal to find out. This was one of the risks Mike and I had warned Pierro of, a risk I’d tried to avoid. Tried and failed, apparently.
I put on a clean shirt and sat on my bed and thought for a while about what Pell said. I’d known from the start that running afoul of the feds was a possibility. The surprise was that I’d been anywhere close to showing up on their radar. But Pell had known about my run-in with Trautmann, down to my bopping him in the nose. Had Trautmann dropped a dime on me? That didn’t seem like his style. Did the feds have him under surveillance? Possible, I suppose. But Pell had known I’d been talking to Neary, too. How? Had Neary’s source in the investigation been telling tales?
Fucking Pell. He was the same bastard he’d been three years ago, only more so. His feelings for me seemed as warm as ever, and he still knew which buttons to push. The bruises on the side of my face were throbbing, and I realized my jaw was clenched tight. I took a couple of slow breaths and worked it loose.
Jane Lu had found tea bags, mugs, milk, sugar, and chocolate chip cookies in my absence. She was at the kitchen counter, just pouring the water, when I came back in. It was fully dark outside, and she’d flicked on more lights. I took a seat at the counter.
“You make your calls?”
“Nobody home. I need to wait for calls back.” She nodded and passed me a mug. She added milk to her tea, dipped a cookie in the mug, and took a small bite. She’d taken off her black sweater. Underneath she wore a gray MIT T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. I watched the muscles in her arms move as she fiddled with her tea bag. “How are you doing?” I asked. She thought about it for a minute.
“I’m alright. A little shaky, but alright. I haven’t really seen anything like that before, much less been a part of it,” she said. I nodded. She didn’t seem shaky to me, not even a little.
“Calling 911 was the right thing to do. Wading in there to break things up with your cell phone wasn’t. You were lucky-those guys are feds and more or less play by the rules-some rules anyway-but it wasn’t smart. You yell, you scream, you shout ‘Fire,’ but you stay far away.” She nodded and drank some tea. “But thanks-a lot. You saved me from what was shaping up to be a very bad evening.” She looked at me and shook her head.
“Is this an everyday event with you-getting into fights, getting beat up?”
“Would you believe you caught me in a slow week?” She just looked at me. “Actually, I’m running my holiday special on beatings-goes on till Christmas.” She looked some more. I looked back. “No, it’s not an everyday thing. It happens sometimes, but not often,” I said. “And I’m usually not the one who gets beat up,” I added.
“That’s good to hear,” Jane said, smiling. “Are your relationships with the authorities all so friendly?”
“Some of them are good, and some are not so good. Pell is a special case,” I said. Jane swirled tea around in her mug and said nothing.
“He didn’t pique your curiosity?” I asked after a while.
She was quiet for a few moments and shook her head. “Lauren told me about what happened upstate. It… it must have been awful. I can’t imagine.” She shook her head a little more. I watched my tea darken in the mug.
“What else did Lauren have to say?” I asked.
Jane looked at me for a long minute. “She told me you went through a bad time afterward. Very bad.” She sipped her tea. “She worries about you.” She looked away, out the windows.
“Why does that man have it in for you?” Jane asked after a while.
“He thinks I ruined his shot at being the next FBI director.” Jane gave me a quizzical look. “He thought the case was going to be a career maker for him. It was very high profile, a lot of media interest. The trial would’ve gotten a lot of coverage. And Pell was the special agent in charge. He would’ve been the star of the show, at least in his mind. But when the guy was killed… that was it. There was no big arrest, no perp to parade in front of the cameras, no trial, no CNN. There was barely a press conference. He blames me for that.”
“Why? Because you… shot that man?” I nodded and finished my tea.
“What does Lauren worry about?” I asked. Jane thought about it before she answered.
“She worries that you’re still going through a bad time, only now you keep it to yourself,” she said. Her gaze shifted. “You’re bleeding again.” She tore open another gauze pad and came around the kitchen counter. She stood in front of me and pressed the pad on the cut, the palm of her hand resting on the side of my face. “You’re going to ruin all your shirts if you keep on like this,” she said softly. She was very close. Close enough, I was sure, to hear my heart hammering in my chest, and to feel its pounding through my skin. Her dark eyes were huge, and her scent seemed to fill my lungs. Her pulse was beating quickly at the side of her neck, and her face and neck were flushed.
