“Oh, it’s an emergency, all right,” she said as they idled there, cars whizzing past them. “I’m about to call nine-one-one to come save your sorry ass.”
He grinned at her maddeningly. “You probably hear this all the time, but you’re really quite lovely when you’re angry.”
“Stop jamming me, doughboy!”
Mitch’s eyes widened. “Doughboy? Am I detecting a slight racial subtext here again?”
“What you’re detecting is your face on the verge of coming into full frontal contact with my fist!”
“Lieutenant, I’m just trying to do my job,” he explained patiently. “It’s not a nice job. I know that. Reporters are not nice people. I know that, too. But this story is something I need to do in order to get this horrible nightmare out of my system. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“Maybe I can,” Des allowed, studying him. “But I have to tell you-I liked you a whole lot better back when you were… what did you call yourself, mildew?”
“I think the word I used was fungus. And that makes us even.”
“Is that right? How so?”
“I prefer you as a starving artist. So let’s just call it a draw, okay?”
“You can call it whatever you damned please. To me, you’re nothing but a raw dog now-somebody’s who’s strictly out for himself. But I’m fine with it. These eyes are wide open.” She resumed driving, her eyes on the road, back straight, both hands gripping the wheel.
Neither of them spoke for a long while.
It was Mitch who finally broke the quiet. They were in Rhode Island by then. “Okay, maybe I overplayed my hand a little,” he conceded.
“No maybe.”
“Then again, maybe you’re just trying to make me feel guilty so I’ll show you the cards I’m playing.”
She let that one slide on by. Just drove. And waited.
“Allright, I’m playing the Fibonacci Series,” he finally revealed.
Des furrowed her brow at him. “Wait, wait… That was the name of the picture hanging on your wall, wasn’t it? The one with all of those lines.”
He nodded. “My wife’s design plan. It’s a variation of the Golden Section-one of the basic systems of proportion dating back to antiquity.”
“Mitch, why are you talking at me about geometry?”
“I’m not talking at you about geometry, Lieutenant,” he said quietly. “I’m talking at you about people.”
And with that Mitch Berger shut down on her, same as he had the first time she interviewed him in his carriage house. She would get no more out of him. Not now, anyway.
Damn, what was he talking about?
At Hope Valley Des got off I-95 and onto Route 138, a two-lane rural road that snaked its way through low, fertile farm country before it hit Narragansett Bay. A bridge took them over its narrow West Passage to Jamestown, where the tollbooths for the Newport Bridge were. It took them out over the bay’s broad East Passage and into Newport, the scruffy colonial seaport that New York robber barons had turned into their summer playground at the end of the nineteenth century. These days, yachters were drawn to its marinas. Tourists came to gawk at the gargantuan Bellevue Avenue mansions and to stroll the historic waterfront, where the streets were narrow and the traffic impossible.
Des turned right at the bottom of the exit ramp and followed the signs for downtown Newport, passing in between two vast cemeteries before she turned right onto America’s Cup Avenue. Her destination was the Doubletree Inn out on Goat Island, an old naval installation that was situated out in the harbor across from Market Square. The Goat Island connector road was just past Bridge Street. There was a small park at the mouth of the connector road. Benches overlooked the shipyard and the neighboring district of immaculately restored three- hundred-year-old houses that fronted on Washington Street.
Des glanced at her watch. It was just past twelve-thirty.
“I can find the Black Pearl from here on foot,” Mitch said. “I’ll be waiting for you there, spoon in hand.”
She pulled over at the park and rolled down her window. The breeze was cool and tangy with the scent of the bay. Soft gray clouds were beginning to form in the western sky beyond the Rose Island lighthouse.
“Look, I owe you one,” she said. “I’m sorry I called you doughboy.”
“Not to worry, I’m a pro. It won’t affect our negotiations.”
“That’s not why I’m sorry.”
He gazed at her curiously. “Just exactly how often do you get that angry?”
“Never. Well, almost never.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because the next time it happens I just might have to kiss you. I really don’t think I’ll be able to stop myself.” He opened his door now, smiling at her brightly. “Good luck, Lieutenant. I hope the superintendent is in a talkative mood today. In fact, I hope he can’t keep his mouth shut.” Then Mitch Berger slammed the car door shut and went gallumphing off down Washington Street in the direction of the wharves.
Des watched him go, feeling as if she’d just been plunged headlong into one of her recurring bad dreams, the one where she suddenly found herself boarding an airplane without any luggage or even any idea where the plane was going or why she was getting on board.
But this was no dream. This was really happening. She and Mitch Berger. The two of them. Even though it made no sense. None.
He was more than three blocks away, nothing more than a distant blob on the sidewalk, before Des was able to stop shaking.
The Doubletree Inn was hunkered at the northernmost tip of Goat Island, the better to see Newport Harbor from. Apart from the awesome view, it was a standard issue convention hotel-fairly new, fairly big and about as charming as a military supply depot.
Des left her slicktop in a loading zone and went inside. The lobby was small and low-ceilinged. There was a piano bar. There was a gift shop. There were potted palms. A long corridor led to the ballrooms. She followed the arrows.
Registration tables were set up in the ballroom foyer, where a couple hundred lab rats from all over New England were milling around with soft drinks in their hands and name tags on their chests. Many of these forensic scientists were shes. The crime lab had long been considered law enforcement’s kitchen-it was okay for women to excel there. Once a year, they got together to network and to attend workshops on subjects like Capillary Electrophoresis Analysis and Headspace Gas Chromatography. Display booths had been set up in one of the ballrooms by the makers of lab microscopes and cameras.
Her timing was good. The annual awards luncheon had just let out.
The man himself was standing in the ballroom doorway in a navy-blue suit and gleaming black wingtips, shaking hands with the commonfolk and being charming. John Crowther was sixty, starched and straight-laced, a family man, a church-going man, a Brylcreem man. He was very good at being charming. He was also good at being open-minded, approachable and caring. In reality, he was none of these things. He was a mean, vindictive son of a bitch, a consummate political in-fighter, a man who was always on his toes, ready to deliver a punishing blow. He was also known to be someone with his eye on the governor’s mansion.
When he spotted Des standing there on the edge of the crowd, he welcomed her warmly. Introduced her around. Then steered her smoothly away from the others and murmured, “I’ve been expecting you, Lieutenant.”
“You have?” she said, surprised. “Why is that?”
“You’re Buck Mitry’s daughter, that’s why,” he replied, the politician’s public smile never leaving his narrow, rather pinched face. “You’ve been knocked off of your horse. You don’t like it. Not one bit. Neither would the Deacon. Although I’d be willing to wager my entire pension plan that he doesn’t know you’re here. And, believe me, I have one helluva pension plan.”
“Sir, the reason I am is that we have to-”
“Not here!” he cautioned her, waving at the conventioneers as he led Des across the foyer and away from them.
