his calls out. The election was decided by sixty-seven votes and the other side won. When the prosecutor started listing all the crimes the guy had committed the op couldn’t help himself. He broke out in this grin that the jury could plainly see. He was proud of himself. The jury found him guilty on six counts and he was sentenced to eight- to-ten in a federal slammer.
I called my hotel on my cell. ‘Is it possible to get a DVD player in my room?’ I had an older Mac that couldn’t play DVDs.
‘Of course, sir.’
‘I should be there within a half hour. I’d appreciate it if it was waiting for me.’
‘No problem, sir.’
I spent ten minutes on the phone to the home office in Chicago.
‘So you’re not coming back tomorrow?’ Howard, who runs the day-to-day far better than I ever could, said with a fair amount of exasperation in his voice. I prefer to be on the road.
‘I know you owe Tom Ward a lot, Dev. But we really need to sit down with Finney and tell him to get his act together. He’s desperate and it really shows. We need to help him.’ Finney was a one-term congressman on our side who’d had, to be honest, a completely undistinguished first term. The word was he liked Washington nightlife a lot more than he should have and the newspaper back home had started printing the gossip right from the start. Now he was floundering, damaging himself with pontifical speeches about the rights of all mankind and the greatness of America that lay just ahead, neither of which he gave a flying fuck about and neither did anybody else. The amazing thing was that he was only trailing a few points behind his opponent, another John Wayne-type who was always seen on the tube fondling his rifle with a suspiciously sexual pleasure. Finney could still pull it out but he didn’t have much time. He’d dumped his previous consultant three months ago and signed on with us. Unlike Jeff Ward, he hadn’t accumulated enough gossip to do him terminal damage.
‘How about a Skype meeting?’ I said.
‘That’d be all right.’
‘Go ahead and set something up and I’ll be there.’
‘That murder of yours is all over the fucking place.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘But I like that granny.’
‘I’ve got an in with her. How about I line you up, Howard?’
He laughed. ‘Actually, she is kinda cute.’
I was just about ready to leave the Starbucks’ parking lot when my cell toned again.
‘Hi, Dev. It’s Kathy. I’m glad I caught you. There’s a detective by the name of Fogarty who wants you to stop by the police station as soon as you can. She said it’s important.’
‘But she didn’t say why, of course.’
‘Cops never say why. They have a badge. They don’t have to.’
‘Remind me to get one of those badges for myself.’
‘Get me one, too, while you’re at it.’
I’d never seen so much glass on a police station. The architect had made it so friendly and accessible I almost thought I’d gone to the wrong place. Kathy had given me simple directions but maybe I’d misread them. But no, there above the wide glass double doors were the words POLICE STATION. And on the sloping landscaped lawn were hedges clipped with such fuss a king would have been pleased.
The interior was bright and open and the front desk was more corporate than law enforcement. An attractive thirty-something blonde in a short-sleeved blue uniform shirt was typing on her computer. When she heard me she immobilized me with a white smile straight from a toothpaste commercial.
I know men are supposed to have sexual fantasies every few minutes or so but I divide mine between sex and romance. I’d had a number of affairs since my divorce but none had led to anything lasting. My fault, I’m sure. So when I see somebody as fetching as this policewoman, sex and romance commingle in my mind and romance often wins out. Yes, I’d like to go to bed with her but first I’d like to get to know her. I gave up one-night stands after about two years of them following the divorce.
‘May I help you?’
And then she did it. She raised her left hand and upon a certain finger was enshrined a certain kind of ring, one generally associated with the institution called marriage.
‘I’d like to see Detective Fogarty.’
‘Your name, please.’
After I told her, she said, ‘Why don’t you take a seat over there. She’s got somebody with her right now. But she shouldn’t be long.’
This was the same speech you heard in dental offices.
I sat down on a tufted dark blue couch that was so comfortable I had to resist the impulse to close my eyes and take a nap. Detective Fogarty would no doubt be impressed if she had to wake me up.
She appeared in a few minutes, a slender black woman barely tall enough to pass the height requirement. In her white blouse and black skirt and somber black-framed glasses she resembled a grad student more than a detective. Of course there were clues as to her real profession: the badge and gun clipped to her belt. She didn’t look much older than thirty.
‘My office is right down the hall. If you’ll follow me, please.’
She stood aside to let me walk in first. She pointed to a chair in front of her small metal desk. She was apparently a woman of few words. She closed the door then walked around to her own chair and sat down.
Numerous degrees, plaques, and a few photos of officials looking important covered the east wall. The right was given to framed photos of her family. All ages. A history there. If your eye was careful enough you noticed that the backdrop for many of the shots — including the two of her as a teenager — was the inner city.
She caught me looking. ‘Vanity.’
‘Not at all. The vanity is all those photos with you and those city officials. The family pictures are great.’
‘You know I never thought of it that way. But you’re right. That’s a very good point.’
‘I’m not as dumb as I look.’
She laughed. ‘That remains to be seen.’
‘Good one.’
She picked up a yellow Ticonderoga pencil and began to tap it against her left hand. ‘I dragged you down here because you appear to be the last person James Waters talked to before he was murdered.’
‘The last person you know of, you mean.’
‘The last person we know of so far.’ Then: ‘I’m told you and he were going to meet for dinner.’
‘He didn’t show up.’
‘Did he contact you to say he wouldn’t be there?’
‘No. The next time I heard his name mentioned was when I heard about his death.’
‘That’s when you met Lieutenant Neame, I suppose.’
‘Right.’
‘I’m taking over the case. The lieutenant is busy with two open cases that the mayor is very concerned about.’
‘I see.’
She dropped the pencil in her pencil holder and then folded her hands on the desk. ‘I realize that you didn’t have much of a chance to talk to him. I’ve already figured out your itinerary for the day.’
‘I probably spent seven or eight minutes talking to him in total.’
‘But he still wanted to go out and have dinner.’
‘Nothing notable about that, Detective Fogarty. Political people love to talk. War stories about old campaigns, kibitzing about how the new one is going. From what I’ve been able to gather he was a pretty lonely guy. Probably needed the company.’
She nodded and then gave me one of those assessing looks that are meant to intimidate. ‘What if he knew something he wasn’t supposed to?’
‘If he did I don’t know what it was.’
‘But he wanted to go out to dinner. You’d met him in a meeting for a very little time and yet you invited him to dinner.’
