ball-breaker if you've spent a few sleepless nights on stakeout and instead of being thanked you're dumped on.'
'What stake-out? What happened?'
'Mister Kendrick,' broke in Annie. 'That's a zoo out there! You've got to show yourself, say something.'
'No, I want to hear this. Go on, Mr—may I call you Patrick, or Pat?'
'“Paddy” fits better.' The police officer patted his stomach. 'That's what I'm called.'
I'm Evan. Drop the “Congressman”—I want to drop it completely. Please. Go on. How was Barrish involved with the police?'
'I didn't say that, now. He, himself, is cleaner than an Irish bagpipe, which actually isn't too lovely inside, but he's purer than a bleached sheet in the noonday sun.'
'Men in your line of work don't thank people for clobbering clean laundry—’
'Well, it wasn't the biggest thing that ever went down; truth be told, by itself it was minor, but something might have come out of it if we could have followed up… The boys were tracking a mozzarella known to launder cash through Miami and points southeast like the Cayman Islands. On the fourth night of the stake-out at the Mayflower Hotel, they thought they had him. You see, one of those Bally shoe types went to his room at one o'clock in the morning with a large briefcase. One o'clock in the morning—not exactly the start or the shank of the business day, right?'
'Not exactly.'
'Well, it turned out that the Bally shoes had legitimate investments with the mozzarella, and the Pentagon logs showed that he'd been in a procurements conference until almost eleven-thirty and, further, he had to catch a plane to Los Angeles at eight in the morning, so the one o'clock was explained.'
'What about the briefcase?'
'We couldn't touch it. Much offence was taken in high dudgeon and lots of national security was thrown around. You see, someone made a phone call.'
'But not to a lawyer,' said Evan. 'Instead, to one Colonel Robert Barrish of the Pentagon.'
'Bingo. Our noses were shoved in dirt for impugning the motives of a fine, loyal American who was helping to keep the great US of A strong. The boys were reamed good.'
'But you think otherwise. You think a lot more than legitimate investments happened in that room.'
'If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck and looks like a duck, it's usually a duck. But not the pair of Bally shoes; he wasn't a duck, he was a slap-tailed weasel whose name was stricken from our list of ducks.'
Thanks, Paddy… All right, Mrs. O'Reilly, what do I say out there?'
'Whatever I suggest our boy Phil Tobias will probably object to, you should know that. He's on his way here.'
'You called off his Monday morning tennis? That's courage beyond the call of duty.'
'He's sweet and he's smart, Evan, but I don't think his advice can help you now; you're on your own. Remember, those vultures out there are convinced you've been grandstanding all last week—running a parlay from the committee hearing to the Foxley show. If you had ciphered out no one would give a damn, but you didn't. You took on a heavyweight and made him look like a fast-talking thug and that makes you news. They want to know where you're going.'
'Then what do you suggest? You know where I'm going, Annie. What do I say?'
Ann Mulcahy O'Reilly looked into Kendrick's eyes. 'Whatever you want to, Congressman. Just mean it.'
'The plaint of the swan? My swan song, Annie?'
'Only you'll know that when you get out there.'
The undisciplined uproar in the outer office was compounded by the sudden eruption of strobe flashes and the shifting, blinding floodlights of the television crews swinging their lethal mini-cams in the crowd. Questions were shouted and outshouted. Several of the more prominent newspeople were arrogantly demanding their rights
