crowded with cars, the valets bustling back and forth-all of it creating a blur of peripheral motion, even as my eyes focused hard on Samantha, standing in front of me, her face cold and pink and shiny. I could never precisely explain the hints I got, whether they were from her words, her tone, her posture, or her proximity, but inexplicably I placed my hand on her forehead, brushed her hair softly, then let my fingers run down her cheek. She glided closer to me without ever seeming to move, and before I could even think about what was happening, she placed her warm lips fully against mine and kept them there for what could have been an eternity. She pulled back slightly, and I opened my eyes to see hers still closed, her face inches away. So I put my lips on hers again, a kiss that was hard and soft, passionate and affectionate, all at the same time.
Then she pushed me away gently in an almost helpless manner and said,
'There's a cab right here. It's better if I just leave.' She turned and walked slowly to the curb. As she settled into the taxi, she looked back and gave me an odd, even goofy wave and a smile. I stood on the sidewalk until all I could see were the taillights of her car driving down Pennsylvania Avenue, and I thought, my God, this finally feels like something called home.
As I pulled out my keys on my darkened front stoop, there was a noise from inside the house that I wasn't used to: the sound of someone talking. I froze and strained to hear, but all I could decipher was a low, barely audible mumble. I leaned over the railing to look in the window, but the shutters were drawn closed, as I had left them this morning. I could see a light was on, but that would make sense, given that Kristen had been supposed to drop Baker off earlier in the night.
I strained harder to hear, thinking it might be Kristen inside, but it sounded more like a male voice.
Another voice filled my mind. There are people who would kill rather than see you get to the bottom of this story. You are in danger.
Imminent danger.
A good warning. In the past ten days I had been struck by gunfire, shot at unsuccessfully, punched, and stalked. It was coming up toward eleven-thirty. The only sound was the gentle rustle of crinkled leaves in the chill wind of a late autumn night. There were no passersby, no moon, no lights on in any of the neighbors' houses. Inside mine, the sound droned on.
It could be a stereo, but it certainly didn't sound like it. Kristen may have left the television on for the dog, though she had never done that before. I admit, I had no idea what it was. I just knew it was something unusual, and right now, the unusual was not going to be good.
You are in danger. Imminent danger.
I thought about slipping back toward my car and calling the police from my cellular telephone. This being Washington, though, it might be a while before they arrived. And it struck me in a wave of panic that if Kristen had dropped Baker off as she said she would, then he was inside with God only knows who. And if the police arrived, it seems one of the first things they always do is shoot the dog. So standing there in frozen silence on the stoop of my own house, I realized I had to handle this myself.
The mind, as I've said, is a funny thing. Miraculously, I remembered that I had left a pair of old pruning shears beside the stoop, in my little patch of a garden in front of my house. I slowly, silently walked down the two stairs, hunched down in the dark, and found them protruding from a pile of ancient, soggy leaves. I at least had a weapon now-maybe not something the NRA would be proud of, but a weapon nonetheless.
With the shears in hand, I stepped cautiously back up on the stoop. I pushed the key into my lock, moving with what I pictured to be the precision of a German surgeon. I strained to hear the voice, making sure it didn't waver or get closer, and I could detect no movement or change. It was a goddamned monotone. What the hell it was, I had no idea. The key pushed all the way in. All I had to do was snap the lock open and burst into the door.
With the key in the lock and the breeze blowing on my neck, I briefly weighed my options one more time. I knew, inherently, that charging into my own house with a garden tool as my only shield was probably not the smartest thing I would ever do. Hopefully it wouldn't be the last.
My mind raced through what I might find inside: some shadowy mastermind of a presidential assassination attempt. Perhaps Assistant Director Drinker. Maybe, in the best case scenario, my anonymous source. Probably some nameless thug ready to carry out someone else's dirty work. But I knew, standing here, that I really had no choice. I wasn't going to leave a helpless dog inside to fend for himself. I had brought myself into this whole situation. The dog was just an innocent bystander.
So without more thought, and perhaps without enough thought, I snapped the lock, threw the door open, and burst inside, holding the shears ahead of me in a way that would allow me to stab anyone in the neck who posed any danger. For a fleeting moment of dangerous glory, I felt like Don Johnson.
'Freeze,' I yelled.
The warm air of the house hit me in the face. So did the unmistakable smell of Fritos. Sitting on my couch with his feet on the coffee table and my telephone up to his ear, Steve Havlicek calmly said, 'Hold on one second, honey.' To me: 'Boy, am I glad I'm not some overgrown bush.'
At the same time, Baker bolted up from a sound sleep, squinted toward the rear of the house, and ran into the kitchen, barking at the back door. Wrong way, pal. I made a mental note to get his ears flushed out.
I let the shears fall to my side, closed the door behind me, and said breathlessly, 'What the flying fuck are you doing in here?'
Havlicek said into the phone, 'Honey, I'm sorry. I've got to run.
Jack just got in. Seems a bit out of sorts. Yeah. Yeah. I'm at his place. Yeah, we just have to have a chat. Tell Mary I said I'll make it back for her playoff game. Good. Yeah. I love you too.'
He hung up the phone, pulled a few Fritos out of the bag beside him, took a sip from a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, and said, 'Howaya, slugger?'
'How am I? Jesus Christ, I'm almost dead from a fucking heart attack.
How the hell did you get in here?'
'Just a little trick I learned from my days growing up in Dorchester.
You don't have a deadbolt on your back door. You might as well just leave the thing open with a sign that says 'Come on in, but bring your own beer.''
By now, Baker had trotted back out into the living room with a confused look on his face. I knelt down and rubbed behind his ears, relieved that he was all right.
'You scared the hell out of me,' I said to Havlicek.
'Sorry about that. Hey, before you sit, grab yourself a beer. I've got some Pabst in the fridge. We've got to talk.' As I walked into the kitchen, he called after me, 'Grab me another too.'
I didn't think anyone drank Pabst anymore, though I noticed I was now the owner of a case of it. Of course, I didn't think anyone outside of grade school ate Fritos either, so I guess I had a lot to learn.
As I slumped down into a chair with a can of beer, Havlicek held out the bag of Fritos in front of my face.
'No, thanks,' I said.
'No, really, try some. I bought the pounder.'
'No, really, I don't want any.'
'You eat dinner?' he asked.
'Where do you think I'm coming from?'
'Good point,' he said. He seemed to consider this for a moment, opened his fresh beer, though I don't know if you can ever really call a Pabst fresh, and said, 'We've got to talk.'
My heart was still pumping, which might explain my frustration. I said, 'I thought that's why you were here.'
'Right. I'm dying to know what you learned.'
Given all the bullets flying around over the last week or so, I didn't particularly like his description. But I put that aside and walked him through every crucial detail of my trip. I told him of the Pigpen, of my discussions with Sammy Markowitz, of the cryptic remarks by Diego Rodriguez, of my deduction about the federal witness protection program, and the confirmation that Markowitz provided.
'So we've got an armored car robber by the name of Curtis Black in the federal witness protection program,' I said. 'We're told we need to find out his relationship with the president that was just shot.
Black's a fellow crook of a guy by the name of Paul Stemple. Stemple's pardoned by the president in the
