saying, a friendly face, a piece of fresh fish, and an ice-cold beer seemed like just the quick fix I needed.
'How in God's name did you know I was coming in tonight?' I asked.
'We have our ways,' she said, smiling. I made a mental note to check on those ways in the very near future.
'Well, name the place,' I said.
'Kinkead's,' she said. 'Do you have your car here? I cabbed over.'
'I do.'
We made incredibly vacuous chitchat on the way to the restaurant-the exact kind of conversation I like most. Once inside, she settled gracefully into the booth, sliding her lean body in and then crossing her long legs under the table. She wore her black hair tied back in a low ponytail, scrunched at the end by a small nondescript band. I had never seen her with that look before, and I'm probably not the first to say that she looked ravishing. Put those feelings away right now, I told myself.
We ordered some seafood ravioli and a plate of Ipswich fried clams to start, and I suggested-actually demanded-that she try the pepita-crusted salmon, the signature dish of owner Bob Kinkead. She did.
More chitchat until we both fell quiet as she spooned some clams and a ravioli off the appetizer plates and onto hers. She took a bite, exclaimed her approval in a sound I hoped to hear someday in a different venue, and gave me a searching look.
Out of nowhere, she said, 'The only point I want to make before we get too far into dinner is that we need to have a working relationship. I don't know how else to say it other than being direct, so here goes: what I want now is to work with you. That's all I want right now.'
Oh, my. There were about a million ways to read that little declaration, and being a guy, I probably wasn't in an effective position to properly interpret even one of them. My first take was that this was good news. She flatly stated that she wanted a working relationship, and she had a better understanding of the ground rules under which I work, meaning she needed to continue to bring something valuable to the exchange. This was good. My second take was that she seemed to be saying she wanted no personal relationship, given the way she specifically emphasized working relationship. That said, third, she indicated she only wanted a working relationship right now, which could be her way of saying we should get this investigation out of the way before we go off and have sex like two angry wolves in the snowy Montana wilderness. Or something like that.
'I'm all for working together.' I was obviously playing this safe, never having been one to foreclose prematurely any options.
'Good,' she said. 'I hear you have some interesting stuff, and by my count, you owe me from the last time.'
'Really? What is it you hear?'
She gave me a smile that I wasn't sure how to read.
'Word in our shop is that you and your colleague are on the verge of springing another major story. There's a lot of speculation over what it might be, though I don't think anyone pretends to know for certain.'
She paused and eyed me, searching, I'm sure, for reaction. I didn't betray any, so she continued.
'Of course, the hope is that you guys do a story that might answer the question of who the Secret Service shot that day at the golf course.'
I still didn't say anything. This was an odd turning of tables for me.
Usually, I'm the one prodding, evaluating, trying to elicit any reaction. After years of watching people squirm across from me, I think I came equipped with at least some idea how to carry myself right then. I tried not to bat an eye.
I said, 'We're working hard, Havlicek and me. We're getting some leads, and we're following them. But we're not where we want to be yet. Right now, we don't have a story, just a lot of ideas.'
I know I was starting to sound like all those jackass cops I had covered all those years, the ones who would say of a sensational quadruple murder case, 'We're assembling the forensic, eyewitness, and circumstantial evidence and continuing to pursue further leads. We will solve this case on our timetable, not yours.'
We locked eyes for a long moment, not in any intimate fashion-this was, after all, the renewal of a working relationship, as she herself had said-but in an attempt to size each other up. To that end, I contorted my mouth ever so slightly to project the aura of sincerity.
She said, 'Well, you boys better put a move on it, or you're going to let a whole bureau of federal agents down.' She smiled, and so did I.
I regarded her for another moment. Samantha Stevens looked outright elegant, in an unfailingly wholesome kind of way-an athlete who will forever retain her physical grace. She had barely a trace of makeup on the perfect lines of her cheeks. The bags under her eyes, as I've said, betrayed that she had nary a worry in the world about the ravaging affects of age. Every other characteristic screamed eternal youth.
She seemed unusually poised on this Saturday night, confident, comfortable, able to enjoy the food and the company and still try to accomplish what I was learning was her goal: to leave with more information than she had when she arrived. Looking at her, I had the inclination to rest my hand on top of hers, even for a moment.
Instead, I pulled a piece of crusty homemade bread from the basket, took a bite, and said, in a manner intended to goad, 'Why don't you tell me what you have?'
She smiled at that, too. 'By my calculation, it's your turn.'
'I think you've miscalculated.' As I talked, she took a piece of bread from the basket herself and playfully bit into it. 'Sam, we're actively pursuing a story. I've told you that. We have what we hope are some good leads, but I don't know yet if they're going to pan out.
My sense is, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you're not in as active a stage as I am, so it might be better if you helped me rather than vice versa, or at least went first in this exchange.'
Truth is, I have no idea about the fundamental logic of this argument.
The salient fact to take away is that it marked the first time since I'd known Samantha Stevens that I addressed her as Sam, and that, to me anyway, meant that a significant bridge had been crossed, even if I was yet to learn where exactly that bridge had taken me. Score one for Jack, even if no one was actually keeping score.
She seemed to think all this over, perhaps even the Sam part. I don't know. As she stared at points unknown, our waiter arrived with our entrees and set them down before each of us. Sam looked her salmon over carefully.
'I guarantee you'll like it,' I said. 'If you don't, I'll take you home and microwave up some Swedish meatballs.'
Opening her eyes wide in horror at the idea, she said, with mock panic,
'I'm sure I'll like it.'
After her first bite, she did that exclamation thing again, saying,
'Oh, my God. This is unbelievable.'
'You like?' I asked.
'I love.'
Bob Kinkead stopped by the table in full chef's regalia, telling me he'd been watching me on television, and I didn't look as bad as he would have thought. After he left, I gave Stevens a nod, as in, Let's continue.
She said, 'Here's what I'm learning about Drinker. He answers only to the director, while I still answer to about two other layers of management. Drinker doesn't speak to my bosses. I can't speak to the director. Drinker barely speaks to me.' She hesitated for a second, then said, 'And here's the interesting part. I know he and the president talk on the phone all the time-almost every day. I saw Drinker's call logs.'
'Would that be so unusual, an investigating agent talking regularly to the victim of the crime?'
'Well, this is no normal crime, and no normal victim. I'll concede, we've only had two presidential assassination attempts since JFK was killed-Squeaky Fromme shooting Ford in seventy-five, and Hinckley shooting Reagan in eighty-one. So there's not exactly a lot of precedent or an FBI manual on how to handle this. But come on, you don't think it's bizarre, an agent and the president talking regularly about the investigation?'
I said, 'You know, I was in the Oval Office last week when Hutchins got a call on a line that said 'FBI.' He was pretty abrupt with the caller, said he'd talk to him later. In retrospect, it could have been Drinker. But why wouldn't they speak regularly?'
