Special Agent and Mrs. Britton arrived fifteen minutes later. They were accompanied by four Secret Service agents. All of the men at the table stood when they came into the dining room.
“If you have any clout with the guards, Tom,” Sandra Britton said, “I’d really like to have a little something to eat before I’m strip-searched and put in my cell.”
“Sandra!” McGuire said uncomfortably.
She went on, unrepentant: “The only thing the prisoners have had to eat today is an Egg McMuffin as we began our journey and, for Christmas dinner, a hamburger in a Wendy’s outside Baltimore.”
She directed her attention to Castillo.
“You’re the warden, right, Colonel? When do I get my one telephone call? I just can’t wait to talk to the ACLU.”
“Just as soon as I introduce you to my grandmother,” Castillo said, laughing. “Abuela, this is Sandra Britton. Sandra, Dona Alicia Castillo.”
“I’m very happy to meet you,” Sandra said. “But what in the world is a nice grandmother doing sitting down with this company?”
“I told you you’d like her, Dona Alicia,” McGuire said.
“Or are you also under-arrest-by-another-name?” Sandra pursued.
“Sit down, my dear,” Dona Alicia said. “We’ll get you some dinner.”
“I understand why you’re a little upset, Sandra,” McGuire said.
“ ‘A
“My dear young woman,” Billy Kocian said. “I recognize in you not only a kindred soul, but someone else suffering velvet-cell incarceration at the hands of these thugs. May I offer you a glass of champagne? Or perhaps something stronger?”
“Both,” she said. “Who the hell are you?”
Kocian walked quickly to her and kissed her hand.
“Eric Kocian, madam. I am enchanted.”
“As well you should be, Billy,” Dona Alicia said.
“Pray take my seat, and I’ll get the champagne,” Kocian said.
“Hey, Jack!” Davidson said. “How goes it?”
Britton shook his head.
“Ginger-peachy,” he said. “How could it be otherwise?”
Kocian took a bottle of champagne from a cooler, poured some in a glass, and handed it to Sandra.
“Please excuse the stem. It originally came, I believe, filled with yogurt and decorated with a picture of Mickey Mouse.”
“Thank you,” Sandra said. A smile flickered across her lips.
“As a prisoner, of course, I am told nothing,” Kocian said. “So I am therefore quite curious about your obvious distress. What have these terrible people done to you?”
“You sound like a Viennese,” Sandra said.
“How perceptive of you, dear lady. I was born and spent many years in that city.”
“I’m a semanticist—I teach at the University of Pennsylvania. Or I
“Indeed.”
“He would have had a ball with this,” she said.
“You are implying bureaucracy run amok?”
“Am I ever.”
“Tell me all, my dear.”
Sandra sipped appreciatively at her champagne, pursed her lips, and then drained the glass.
“Was the offer of something stronger bona fide?”
Kocian nodded.
“In that case, Colonel, I will have one of your famous McNab martinis, thank you ever so much.”
“My pleasure,” Castillo said, and went to a sideboard loaded with spirits and drinking paraphernalia.
“So, what happened, Sandra?” David W. Yung asked.
“Cutting to the chase, Two-Gun,” Sandra said, “ten minutes after my better half here assured me that all was well as the Secret Service was on its way to our bullet-shattered cottage by the side of the road—before which sat our bullet-shattered new car—they did in fact arrive, sirens screaming, lights flashing. I expected Bruce Willis to leap out and wrap me in his masterly arms. By then, of course, the AALs who had turned tranquil Churchill Lane into the OK Corral were in Atlantic City. But what the hell, I thought, naive little ol’ me, I shouldn’t fault them for trying.”
“Then what happened?” Davidson asked.
“The first thing they did was tell the Philly cops to get lost,” Sandra said. “My living room was now a federal crime scene. And they hustled Jack and me into the back of one of their SUVs and drove off with sirens screaming. I thought they had word the AALs were coming back.”
“The what, my dear?” Dona Alicia asked.
“African-American Lunatics, make-believe Muslims who don’t like Jack very much.”
“Why not?” Dona Alicia asked.
“I kept an eye on them for the police department,” Britton said.
“What he did, Abuela,” Castillo said, “was live with them for long years. He wore sandals, a dark blue robe, had his hair braided with beads. They thought his name was Ali Abid ar-Raziq.”
“And for that they tried to kill him?”
“Actually, they came pretty close to killing both of us,” Britton said.
“Sandra,” Yung said reasonably, “an attack on Jack, a federal officer, made it a federal case.”
“Is that why they took Jack downtown and took his gun and badge away? The way that looked to me was that Jack was the villain for getting shot at.”
“They took your credentials and weapon, Jack?” McGuire asked.
“And it was my pistol, not the Secret Service’s.”
“Had you fired it at the bad guys?”
Britton shook his head.
McGuire looked at the four Secret Service agents who had brought the Brittons to the house.
“Who’s in charge?”
“I am, sir,” the shortest one, who held a briefcase, said.
“Where’s his credentials and weapon?”
“I have them, sir,” the agent said, holding up the briefcase. “Mr. Isaacson said I was to turn them over to you.”
“Give Special Agent Britton his credentials and his pistol.”
“Sir, I don’t—”
“That was an order, not a suggestion,” McGuire said. “And then you guys can wait in the kitchen.”
They did.
“Just to keep all the ducks in a row, Tom,” Britton said as he carefully examined the revolver, reloaded it, and put it in his lap, “Joel didn’t take them. The clown in Philadelphia did.”
“
“Right. Just before he told me I was being transferred to Kansas or someplace just as soon as the, quote, interview, close quote, was over.”
“And was that the clown you told what he could do with the Secret Service, Jack?” Delchamps asked.
“You’re not being helpful, Edgar,” McGuire said.
“No. I told that to the clown here in D.C.,” Britton said thoughtfully. “But I think he was a supervisory special agent in charge, too.”
Castillo, Delchamps, and Davidson laughed.
Britton picked up his Secret Service credentials, examined them, and held them up. “Does this mean, as they
