top. Now Chip and the girls picked up their backpacks, left the bar, crossed the main floor of the station and walked to Track 17. The sign said Messina. Departure time: 20:10. They found seats in a first-class car and Chip drank his beer, looking out the window. He watched a porter push a cart piled high with luggage. A conductor in a blue uniform walked along the side of the train, announcing its imminent departure. Chip looked down the boarding platform toward the station. He was sure he'd see McCabe running into the picture, but it didn't happen and the train started to move.
Chapter Six
In the dream Ray could hear a phone ringing, sounding far away at first, then close and loud. He turned on his side, opened his eyes and saw the message light flashing. It seemed like it was synched up to the pounding in his head. He looked at his watch. It was 6:50 a.m. He was on duty in ten minutes and he wasn't going to make it, Jesus, wouldn't make it if he had an hour the way he felt. His cell phone vibrated on the nightstand next to the bed. He watched it slide around in a circular motion and then stop. He was still in his clothes from the night before, lying on the bedspread. His cell phone vibrated again, telling him he had another message. He knew who it was and what it was about.
He tried to piece things together. Remembered being at the bar with Sturza. They were going to have a couple, but only a couple because they were both on duty the next morning, early. He remembered talking to a dark-haired girl sitting next to him, already on his third Dewar's and water when Sturza got up and said he was hitting it, and Ray better do the same. They had to be ready to go in seven hours.
The girl was from Indianapolis and said she was in New York for a dental convention. She was attractive in an ethnic way, and reminded him of Sharon when she was younger, dark shoulder-length hair, bangs, brown eyes and a nice body, what he could see of it.
Ray said, 'Are you a dentist?'
The girl turned to her two friends who were sitting next to her at the bar.
'He wants to know if I'm a dentist,' she said.
All three of them laughed like it was some inside joke.
The girl said, 'I'm a sales consultant. I sell dental equipment, we all do.'
Ray said, 'Like what?'
'Like titanium implants, disposable fluoride trays and x-ray mounts.' She perked up now. Talking about her job seemed to excite her, energize her.
'What about dental floss?' he said, having fun with her.
'That, too.'
'Sounds exciting,' Ray said.
'You think that sounds exciting, huh? What do you do?'
'I'm a federal agent,' he said. The Dewar's loosening him up, relaxing him, making him feel good.
She gave him a skeptical look. 'Yeah, right?'
Ray sipped his drink.
'If it's true, you must have a badge or something, right?'
Ray took out his ID and showed it to her, the five-pointed star that stood for duty, loyalty, justice, honesty and courage.
She turned to the other sales consultants and said, 'Ohmy-god, he's in the Secret Service.'
A few drinks later he remembered going upstairs with her, making out in the elevator, going to his room, she was sharing a room with Terry, one of the girls at the bar. She told him she'd never made it with a Secret Service agent. Can I see your gun? She pulled out a joint and said, want to get high? You're not going to arrest me, are you?
They smoked the joint and had another drink and he remembered the girl taking off her clothes, hugging him, great body, big breasts and olive skin.
She said, 'I've been a bad girl, you better put the cuffs on me.'
She held her hands out in front of her. Ray took the handcuffs out of the suit coat pocket and clamped them on her wrists. She gave him a naughty look and Ray pictured Sharon in the room at that particular moment, and it distracted him, Sharon his wife who he hadn't seen in six weeks, and felt guilty. He remembered the girl getting angry, telling him he was a fucking Secret Service homo. He unlocked the handcuffs and she walked out of the room and slammed the door.
Ray got out of bed and went to the bathroom, still drunk, splashing cold water on his face. He looked in the mirror at bloodshot eyes. He heard a horn honk and looked out the window at midtown Manhattan twenty-five floors below. He heard a knock, and then someone pounding on the door.
'Ray, you in there?'
He crossed the room and opened it a crack, saw Sturza in a dark-blue suit, burgundy tie and white shirt, looking ready for action, and swung it open. Sturza came in, eyes moving, scanning the room, holding the bottle of Dewar's. That's right, he'd called room service, and there was a roach in the ashtray.
Sturza said, 'What're you doing, trying to get canned? You know what time it is?'
He knew, but didn't care.
'Are you flaking? Jesus Christ. I'll try to cover for you, but you know Tracey.'
'You know Tracey, what?' Special Agent John Tracey, his detail supervisor said, walking in the room. 'Forget protocol, Pope? I've been calling you for forty-five minutes. You don't get up, check in before detail? How long have you been with the Service?'
'Longer than you,' Ray said. He'd never gotten along with Tracey who was anal, a control freak, an asshole, a few of the nicer things Ray and his fellow agents said about him.
He looked at Ray, looked around the room. 'Pope, if you've been drinking alcohol again, you're through.'
Ray saw him staring at the bottle of Dewar's.
'Look at you,' Tracey said. 'You think I'm going to put you on detail in your condition? Christ, you can barely stand up. What don't you understand about not drinking when you're on call? This is a strict breach of discipline, a violation of the Service professional code of conduct. Pope, the reason you never made SAIC, you can't follow the rules.'
Ray said, 'If you're finished, I'm going back to bed.'
Sturza flashed a grin and shook his head.
'You're the one who's finished,' Tracey said. 'I'll tell you one thing, you won't be on another protective assignment for the rest of your career. That I can pretty much guarantee.' His pale white face was flushed red now like he was going to explode.
Ray was called back to Washington and dressed down by the Director of Protective Operations who told him he was in trouble, a walking time bomb.
The director said, 'What were you thinking? You know what on-call means. Secret Service regulations strictly forbid the consumption of alcohol at any time during a protective assignment. Violations or slight disregard for this rule are cause for removal from the Service.'
He was a big man with a folksy style, talking down to Ray in that bureaucratic voice, like Ray was an idiot.
'I have Agent Tracey's report right here. In it, he states: When you didn't check in, and didn't answer numerous phone calls, he went to your hotel room. He said he found you in an intoxicated, disheveled condition. In Agent Tracey's opinion, you were not in full possession of your mental and physical abilities. He observed a bottle of Scotch whisky in your room, and he said you smelled like you had been drinking. Further, when he questioned you about it you were belligerent and uncooperative. Agent Pope, you've demonstrated a pattern of behavior that is extremely troubling. This is your third breach of conduct. You're what the Service defines as a risk. Your bad judgment could've put the protectee and everyone in your detail in serious jeopardy. We can no longer trust you in a protective capacity. We no longer have confidence in you as a field agent, and as you know, trust and confidence
