After that, he had trouble getting back to sleep, though he may have dozed some around dawn. He finally awakened for good about eight-thirty in the morning, dissociated and hung over. His head ached; he needed a shave. This was life after the Bureau. Another pointless day stretched before him. He had no will to go on, but he decided out of habit to shower and have a cup of coffee. Then he put on a summer-weight suit and a white shirt, just as if he were going to the office.
I will go to the office, he decided. He had a desk to clear out, farewells to be said, and there was some paperwork to be attended to. It was the one place that made him happy and though the happiness it gave him now was phony, he realized, he could not deny it. All right, I’ll go, he thought. Have to anyway, sooner or later. Might as well be now.
Nick drove downtown and parked in the usual lot and went upstairs by the usual elevator. God, it was so familiar. He couldn’t believe he’d never do this again. He walked in, through the foyer and the door marked GOV’T EMPLOYEES ONLY and down the corridor. In all the offices people were already busy. Clerks filed or worked at computer terminals, secretaries typed, special agents bustled about importantly. Nick knew the rhythms of the place, knew exactly what the men’s room smelled like, and which of the three people who tended the coffee machine made the best coffee, and when the supervisory agent would be in and how long he took for lunch and what happened when he came in and what happened when he did not, and who was testifying in court that week and who was not. He knew the fastest way out; he knew where the rifles and the M-16’s were stored for SWAT usage; he knew who was designated SWAT team leader on the Reactive Team that week (it was a rotating duty); he knew who was new to the office and who was due to be shuffled soon, and who was producing and who wasn’t and – subtly different – who was thought to be producing but actually wasn’t.
And he loved every damn bit of it.
He entered the big room where the agents sat at their desks. In a police station it would have been called a Squad Room, but here it was simply known as the bull pen. It was surprisingly empty today, because of course Howdy Duty had drawn primarily on New Orleans agents to staff the big stalk in Arkansas. Nick went to his desk, took his key out and opened it.
On a normal day, this was when he’d take off his pistol and put it in the upper-right drawer. Today he had no pistol.
Instead, he opened the big central drawer. So little to show. A few files from cases he’d vetted for others, a few pencils, a few notepads. That was it. It was so empty.
Ahead of him, tacked on the burlap of the cubicle wall, was a picture of Myra, taken five years ago. It was an extreme close-up and she was smiling in the sunlight. You couldn’t see her disability. She looked like a bright, pretty young woman who had her whole life ahead of her.
On the desk itself was the
“Nick?”
He looked up. It was a guy named Fred Sandford, another special agent. Nick didn’t know him well; he hadn’t made the trip to Arkansas.
“Hi ya, Fred.”
“Hey, just wanted to say, was real sorry to hear how it went down out there for you. I’m sure there was nothing you could do.”
“I just did my best,” he said, “and it didn’t quite pan out.”
“Wanted to tell you, my brother is a police chief in Red River, Idaho. You always were a good detective, Nick. I could give him a call. Maybe he’s looking for someone.”
“Ah, thanks. I’m not sure at this point I’m going to stick with law enforcement. Too much hassle for too little satisfaction and too little money.”
“Sure. Got you. If you change your mind – ”
“I appreciate it, Fred, really I do. I’m thinking about going back to school, getting my master’s, and maybe taking up teaching. Something nice and quiet.”
“Sure, whatever you say.”
With that, he was alone again. He took the picture off the wall, retrieved his abortive LANZMAN file, hoping that one last scan might reveal a pattern where nothing else had. But it was another big zero. The reason why that poor guy was whacked in that motel room near the airport so horribly all that time ago would remain completely unknown, RamDyne or no RamDyne. Somebody else got away with it. Too bad. You were trying to reach me, and somebody put a big finger on you with about a million bucks worth of electronic gear, and it’s just going to fall through the cracks, like seventy-one percent of the crimes in this country, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.
Hap’s secretary, an officious woman named Doris Drabney, came by next. There was no sympathy in her eyes or face, but then there was no sanctimony either. There was simply nothing. “You’ve got some paperwork to sign,” she said.
In spite of himself, Nick was slightly frightened by her.
“You mean about the, um – ”
“The suspension, yes. Please stop by my desk on the way out.” And she turned and left.
Nick watched her march off. There was something rigid and jointless in the way she moved. She was one of those people who’d just let the Bureau sink into her life until it filled her whole personality. Until it became her personality. She was a lifer in the worst possible way, so gone in the life no other was even possible.
Well, he thought, that won’t happen to me. God knows what will, but that won’t.
And suddenly he was out of things to do.
He looked down at his meager cardboard box of belongings. Then he looked around for a friend, a colleague, someone to embrace or to give him a look or to signify that he was still loved, or, hell, that he was still
Yeah, sure, I get it, he thought.
He went to find Doris Drabney, sitting stiffly at her desk.
“Yes, yes, you’ve got, let’s see, you’ve got to sign
Numbly he signed the forms. One had to do with his Government Credit Union account, one had to do with his GEICO insurance policy, which would cease to be in effect thirty days from today, and one required a formal acknowledgment that he was being placed on indefinite leave without pay pending a meeting of the review board in re his case blah blah blah.
“Is that it?”
“That’s it. You’ll be notified of the hearing.”
I’m history, he thought.
“And your last paycheck is being held until you return the pistol.”
“
“Nick, that Smith & Wesson Model 1076 you lost during the incident of the speech. That was government property. Remember, you filed a lost-line-of-duty item report. And it was turned down? I sent the response to you in Arkansas. You’re being billed for the pistol. It’s four hundred fifty-five dollars.”
He just looked at her.
It’s probably an ingot mulched in with Bob Swagger’s bones, he thought. Or somewhere in a soggy swamp, or in some ocean somewhere, wherever Bob had been before he died.
He turned to leave.
“Oh, and you’re supposed to see Sally Ellion in Records, too.”
Ach! Sally! She was a slight, pretty, very Southern girl with what people all called “personality”; she’d had a hundred boyfriends in her time, and was always dumping one for another and then the new one. He’d always liked her somehow, even if she scared him a little bit. What on earth could she want now?
“What for?”
“I haven’t the slightest.”
