North of Montana

Jayne Mason and he’s like a puppy dog rolling on his back with his paws in the air. Get her anything. Do anything.”

Donnato’s looking through the latest stats on bank robberies in Orange County. They’re up.

‘Want some advice about Boston?”

I’m always eager for his expertise. “Tell me.”

“They have the best meatball subs in the world.”

I shake my head restlessly. “Galloway is treating me differently now that I’m working Hollywood.”

“This has nothing to do with Hollywood,” Donnato observes.

“Come on — if Joe Schmo called the FBI and said some doctor gave him too many Percodans, you think I’d be flying off to Boston on a background check?”

“It’s politics,” he explains patiently, “Magda Stockman is a major contributor to the Republican party. She hangs out at the Annenbergs. She was one of the private citizens’ who paid for the renovation of the White House under Reagan, don’t you remember? Oh, that’s right, you were twelve.”

“Still, when a person like Jayne Mason—”

Donnato interrupts, “Jayne Mason is another dippy actress and, believe me, Galloway would never roll over for a pretty face.” He holds up a hand to stop my protest. “Magda Stockman is the power player.”

He shakes his head sadly and goes back to the printout. “You ought to be reading The New Republic instead of Engine Grease World.”

“I like engine grease. You should give it a try.”

He pretends not to hear.

I laugh and slip off the desk. “I feel sorry for you, Donnato. Who will you have to abuse while I’m gone?”

“Only myself.”

• • •

This is wild. I get to go home early to pack for an eight a.m. plane to fly to a city where I have never been, on my own case, with no supervision except the SAC himself. My head is humming with what I need to bring and what the moves will be once I get there.

At this hour the lobby of the Federal Building is filled with great blocks of brownish yellow afternoon light but the press of humans has not slowed since I arrived this morning. The same impatient crowd waits to move through metal detectors monitored by two excruciatingly thorough security guards, and outside the line to get a passport seems longer and, if possible, slower.

The lobby is a place of crossroads where the course of each of the thousands converging from all parts of the world cannot be logged, but they have this in common: desperation and a seething frustration with the bureaucracy of the United States government, a combustible anxiety that makes me always stay alert when crossing these marble floors.

Maybe it’s that alertness, or perhaps a sixth sense when it comes to John Roth, that warns me he is close a split second before he calls out, “Ana.”

Yes, I’d caught the figure leaning against a wall, and known it was John despite the dirty hair down to the shoulders, raggy beard, and ripped jeans. The posture, the hungry gaze, cause my alarm system to shriek.

“You look good,” he says with a smirk.

“You look like Serpico.”

“Undercover narcotics. I like to run with the vermin.”

His shirt, missing a button, is open at the navel. The belly is concave, jeans hanging low.

“The fox guarding the chickens?”

“You’re looking at Mr. Straight.”

I nod. He looks like hell.

“Are you staking me out?”

“Just waiting. Indulging in a little fantasy.”

He takes a step toward me. I take a step back.

“I’ve got something for you.”

“Try it and I’ll bust you so fast—”

“No,” he interrupts, “it’s that Alvarado homicide.”

I stop my backpedaling but maintain a good eight feet between us.

“I went back on the street and tracked down that kid, Rat, the one who witnessed the drive-by. Turns out he was able to ID the car.”

“What jogged his memory?”

“He’s a male prostitute, I threaten to bust his ass, so he comes around. Turns out it was a gang hit but Alvarado was not the intended victim. A dope deal was going down a few feet from the bus stop. One of the suspects was marked by the Bloods. They missed. Ms. Alvarado happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“You’re sure?”

“The kid is good.”

“What about the hands? Or did they blow them away just for kicks?”

“The autopsy report says amputation of the hands resulted from the victim attempting to protect herself from the bullets.”

He brings his arms up and crosses them over his face.

I can see it now, all too clearly. A car swings around the corner. Pop-pop-pop and street people with experience duck for cover. Violeta Alvarado, out there alone in the middle of the night, who knows why — but innocent, she was innocent—is struck over and over again. She tries to fend off the hits but they come with astonishing force and so unbelievably fast.…

“There’s no connection between Alvarado being killed and her working for the doctor. She just got caught in the crossfire. Happens every day.”

I say nothing.

“I did this because I thought that might mean something to you.”

The autopsy photos flip through my mind like a grisly pinup calendar.

“It won’t help on your case, but at least now you know your cousin was clean.”

I’m thinking of the way her little girl hid under the crib. And the boy, with his lost dark eyes.

“She was your cousin, right?”

I have not answered John for several moments. Now I cross the marble one square at a time, deliberately walking toward him until we are face-to-face.

“Yes, John. She was my cousin.”

In acknowledging this I find I have gained something. Relief. Confidence. I can stand here, this close, and hold the look of a man I have long dreaded in a frank, new way. I can see new things, like the fear in John Roth.

“Take it easy on yourself.” I touch his shoulder. “And thanks.”

“Hey,” he says, shaky, off guard, “I’m not a total fuckup.”

We look at each other one last moment, then I take off, out of the building and into the parking garage at a fast clip. My teeth are all gummed up from the two colas I had to get through the afternoon and I can’t stand wearing these tight panty hose one more minute. Inside the car I wrestle them off. Much better. I turn on the engine and back out, on my way to crucify Dr. Randall Eberhardt.

ELEVEN