O'Farrell's Law

echoed a doubting voice in his mind.) And he genuinely did not want to back down, submit to an emotion he could only regard as weakness, although weakness wasn’t really what it was.

There was also the money to consider, reluctant though he was to bring it into any equation because he found the self-criticism (blood money? bounty hunter?) too easily disturbing. For what he did he was paid $100,000 a year, $50,000 tax-free channeled through CIA-maintained offshore accounts. The system enabled him to live in this historically listed house in Alexandria and help John now that he’d quit the airline to go back to school for his master’s. It enabled him and Jill to fly up to Chicago whenever they felt like it to visit Ellen and the boy.

He wouldn’t quit, O’Farrell determined. He’d get a grip on himself and stop constantly having such damned silly doubts and see out his remaining four years. If he were called upon to take up an assignment, he’d carry it out as successfully and as undetectably as he’d carried out all the others in the past. Not that many, in fact. Just five. Each justified. Each guilty. Each properly sentenced, albeit by an unofficial tribunal. And each performed—albeit unofficially again—in the name of the country of which he was a patriot.

Jill’s car was smaller than his, a Toyota, and it did not take O’Farrell as long to clean as the Ford. He did it just as meticulously, seeking rust that he could not find, and regained the house before the tourist invasion.

O’Farrell was relieved by the decision he’d reached. And his headache had gone, like his inner tension.

O’Farrell and Jill drank coffee while they waited for eight o’clock Arizona time, knowing that John would be waiting for their call. In the event it was Beth who answered, because John was upstairs with Jeff. O’Farrell, immediately concerned, asked what was wrong with his grandson, and Beth said “nothing,” and then John came on the line to repeat the assurance. He thanked O’Farrell for the last check but said he was embarrassed to take it. O’Farrell told his son not to be so proud and to keep a record so that John could pay him back when he got his degree and after that the sort of job he wanted. It was not arranged that they call their daughter in Chicago until the afternoon and when they did, they got her answering machine, which they didn’t expect because Ellen knew the time they would be calling; it was the same every weekend. Always had been and particularly after the divorce. They left a message that they had called and hoped everything was all right and tried once more before going out that evening and got the machine again, so they left a second recording.

“That’s not like her,” said Jill as they drove into town. They used her car because, being smaller, it was easier to park.

“It’s happened before,” said O’Farrell. It had become so ingrained over the years in his professional life not to overrespond (certainly never to panic) that O’Farrell found it impossible to react differently in his private life. Or did he?

“Why didn’t she call us? She knows we like to speak every week.”

“There’s all day tomorrow,” O’Farrell pointed out, going against his own need for regularity. He wished Jill had adjusted better to the collapse of Ellen’s marriage; she found it difficult to believe their daughter preferred to make her own life with her son in faraway Chicago rather than come back to Alexandria or somewhere close, where they would be near, caring for her.

“I wonder if something has happened to Billy,” said Jill, in sudden alarm.

“If something had happened to Billy, she would have gotten a message through to us.”

“I don’t like it.”

“You’re getting upset for no reason.” Routine sometimes had its disadvantages, he thought.

There was some roadwork on Memorial Bridge but the delay wasn’t too bad and they still got into town in good time, because O’Farrell always allowed for traffic problems. He found a parking place at once on 13th Street and as they walked down toward Pennsylvania he said, “We’ve time for a drink, if you like.”

Jill looked at him curiously. “If you want one.”

“It’s practically an hour before the curtain,” O’Farrell pointed out. “The alternative is just to sit and wait.”

“Okay,” she said, without enthusiasm.

They went to the Round Robin room at the Willard and managed seats against the wall, beneath the likenesses of people like Woodrow Wilson and Walt Whitman and Mark Twain and even a droop-mustached Buffalo Bill Cody, all of whom had used it in the past. O’Farrell got the drinks—martini for himself, white wine for Jill—and stood looking at the drawings. Had his great-grandfather encountered William Cody? he wondered. The martini could have been better.

There had been a lot of noise from a group on the far side of the small room when they’d entered and it became increasingly louder, breaking out into a full-blown argument. There were five people, two couples and a man by himself; the arguers appeared to be one of the couples and the unattached man was attempting to intervene and placate both of them. O’Farrell heard “fuck” and “bastard” like everyone else in me room and the barman said, “Easy now: let’s take it easy, eh folks?” They ignored him. The would-be mediator put his hand on the arguing man’s arm and was shoved away, hard, so that he staggered back toward the bar and collided with another customer, spilling his drink. The barman called out, “That’s enough, okay!” and the woman said, “Oh, my God!” and began to cry. O’Farrell gauged the distance to the only exit against the nearness of the disturbance and decided that the shouting group was closer. Better to wait where they were than attempt to leave and risk getting involved. The man who’d staggered back apologized and gestured for the spilled drink to be replaced and went back to his group, jabbing with outstretched fingers at the chest of the man who’d pushed him. Waste of effort, thought O’Farrell: at least three inches from the point in the chest that would have brought the man down, and the carotid in the neck was better exposed anyway. The bridge of the nose, too. And the temple and the lower rib and the inner ankle. The killing pressure points that he’d been trained so well how to use—but only in extreme emergency, because the absolutely essential rule was always to avoid possible recognition by an intended victim—reeled off in his mind until O’Farrell consciously stopped the reflection. It was prohibited for him to become involved in any sort of dispute or altercation, to attract the slightest attention, official or otherwise.

“Why doesn’t someone do something!” Jill demanded, beside him. “Look at her, poor woman!”

“Someone will have sent for security,” O’Farrell said, and as he spoke two uniformed guards came into the room and began herding the group away, ignoring their protests.

Jill shuddered and said, “That was awful!”

“Embarrassing, that’s all,” O’Farrell said. “They were drunk.”

“I didn’t like it.” Jill shuddered again.

It wasn’t being a very successful day, O’Farrell thought. He said, “Do you want another drink?”

“No,” she said, at once. “Surely you don’t, either?”

“No,” said O’Farrell. There would easily have been time. “We might as well go, then.”

They emerged from the hotel through the main Pennsylvania Avenue exit and immediately saw the group continuing their argument. The crying woman was still weeping and her hair was disarrayed. The other woman was trying to pull her male companion away and he was making weak protests, clearly anxious to get out of the situation, but not wanting to be seen to do so. As O’Farrell and his wife looked, the man who appeared to be at the center of the dispute lashed out; the disheveled woman somehow didn’t see the movement and the open-handed blow caught her fully in the side of the face, sending her first against the hotel wall and then sprawling across the sidewalk. When she tried to get up, he hit her again, keeping her down. Neither of the other two men attempted to intrude. One allowed his companion to pull him away, and the other, the one who had made an effort in the bar, visibly shrugged off responsibility.

“Do something!” Jill insisted. “Somebody do something! He’s going to hit her again.”

The man did, and this time the woman stayed down. Distantly O’Farrell thought he heard the wail of a police siren. He took Jill’s arm, forcibly leading her back into the hotel toward the long corridor that bisected the building to F Street.

“We can’t walk away!” Jill said. “She could be hurt.”

“It’s okay,” O’Farrell said. “It’s all being taken care of.”

“What are you talking about!”

“Didn’t you hear the sirens?” She’d expected him to intervene, he knew. And was disappointed that he hadn’t.

“No!”

“I did. They’re coming.”

On the pavement outside, on F Street, Jill stopped, head to one side. “I still don’t hear anything.”