that’ shit.” He slammed the door, and walked away toward the entrance to the Metro.
Jose knew not to ask Weaver for Cookie’s real name. Weaver wouldn’t tell him, but Weaver could find him again.
Weaver sighed. “Young ones… they want to fly like eagles, but then they wear their pants down around their buttocks.”
Frank bought a copy of the Post from a vending machine at the corner of Sixteenth and H, and walked into Lafayette Square. The Secret Service had closed off Pennsylvania Avenue after the Oklahoma City bombing, and you could see straight through the square to the White House without having traffic block your view. That part he liked. The other part, though, he didn’t. Adding more locks to your doors didn’t mean you were any safer. Only that you were more isolated. Bearing right, he found his favorite bench and sat down. For a moment, he gazed across Jackson Place at Stephen Decatur’s home.
Swashbuckling naval hero of the War of 1812. Conqueror of the Barbary pirates. Dead at forty-one, killed in a duel. Back in Decatur’s day, you could walk up to the White House, knock on the door, and ask to speak to the president.
Frank opened the Post.
The chemical industry was fighting the EPA over a report on dioxin. China had finally released the crew of the American EP-3 intelligence plane. A survey had counted 12,850 homeless in the Washington metro area. And forty- three people had died in a South African soccer stadium stampede.
“Good morning, Lieutenant. Any good news?”
Frank looked up. “I thought you’d know.”
Jessica Talbot was small-barely five feet-a delicately rounded face punctuated by dark eyes and framed by a halo of dark hair swept into a bun on the top of her head.
The first time Frank saw her, he figured Seven Sisters, Washington A-list, Kennedy Center patron, National Cathedral altar guild-quintessential bleeding-heart, little-pinky liberal.
He’d figured wrong. The only girl in a Pittsburgh steel family of five boys, a scholarship to Penn State. Ten years as an Associated Press stringer in Laos, Botswana, Nicaragua, and a dozen other pestilential-fever swamps whose major exports were malaria, dysentery, and plague. Jessica Talbot-never, ever Jess-had started at the bottom when the top management of the Post was known as the HBC-Harvard Boys’ Club-and had demolished several glass ceilings before the term had been coined. Along the way she picked up a Pulitzer and turned out several generations of reporters who wrote simple declarative sentences in plain English.
“I don’t do good news,” Talbot said, sitting down next to Frank. “Just the bad stuff. The kind that sells papers.”
Frank folded the newspaper and put it beside him on the bench.
Talbot pulled a pack of unfiltered Camels from her purse, along with a battered Zippo lighter. She stuck a cigarette in the corner of her mouth. “Tell me”-she fired up the Zippo-“tell me what was behind the Calkins firing.”
“I thought you were on the foreign desk. Aren’t you supposed to worry about France and Bangladesh?”
“I live here, Lieutenant. Not Bangladesh, which, I might add, is safer than the District.”
“That’s because judges in Bangladesh don’t let killers out of jail.”
Talbot sailed a plume of smoke skyward. “Touche, Lieutenant. And speaking of judges who don’t let killers out, how’s your dad?”
“In love.”
Talbot nodded approvingly. “That’ll either kill him right away or add another twenty years.”
“I think add another twenty.”
Another drag on the Camel, and Talbot turned to business. “Okay, now… Calkins?”
“He was suspended, not fired.”
Talbot shrugged. “Whatever… hung out to dry.”
“Emerson covering his ass.”
“Washington’s favorite pastime. Calkins screw up?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You want to know about Frederick Rhinelander. He a suspect?”
“He’s a congressman.”
“As Twain said, a member of America’s only criminal class.”
“He was Kevin Gentry’s boss.”
Talbot reached into her purse and brought out an envelope. “Clips,” she explained, handing it to Frank.
He weighed the thick envelope in his palm, then put it in a pocket inside his jacket. “You said you knew him personally.”
“Him and his wife. She’s on the board of directors.”
“Of the Post?”
“It is a publicly traded company. And she-her family-owns a big chunk of our stock.” Talbot paused like a diver at the edge of a high board. She gave Frank a severe look. “This is background,” she warned. “This gets out, you’re dog meat.”
“Go.”
“Tom and Daisy Buchanan,” Talbot said cryptically.
“I’m sorry?”
“The couple in The Great Gatsby.”
“That’s Rhinelander and…”
“His wife, Gloria… Gloria Principi Rhinelander,” Talbot said. She took a drag deep into her lungs and Frank remembered how good a cigarette could taste. “Fitzgerald described Tom and Daisy as ‘careless people.’ He must have known Frederick and Gloria Rhinelander.”
“Sloppy careless?”
“No. Careless in the sense that they didn’t care about the consequences of their behavior. They never had to as kids. They’ve never had to as adults.”
“Entitled.”
Talbot blew a near-perfect smoke ring and watched as it dissipated. “Old-money people are interesting. Especially the men. A frightened bunch.”
“What’s scary if you got more money than God?”
“Losing it. A market crash. Somebody taking it from you. You see, they know deep inside that the money is what makes everything possible for them. It buys them through life. It buys things, influence. Even buys them friends. They know they wouldn’t be who they are without it. And because they inherited the money… because they didn’t earn it… they don’t have the foggiest idea how to make more if they lose what they have.”
“And so?”
“And so they see danger around every corner. Everyone they meet is out to rip them off. They have a terrible sense of vulnerability.”
“Where’d the money come from… originally?”
“His from four generations of Boston banking and shipping. Hers from a father who set up a chain of pizza parlors, then sold out and got lucky in the market.”
An old man in a yarmulke came down the path. He took a seat at a table opposite Frank and Talbot. From a pocket of his frayed overcoat he pulled out chess pieces and arranged them on the board set into the tabletop.
“So his old money was older than her old money,” Frank said.
“Problem is, his ran out.”
“Oh?”
“The Rhinelander fortune hit the rocks with a succession of bad mergers. A bunch of Greeks stripped the family down to its monogrammed boxer shorts. Young Frederick snagged Gloria just in time.”
“She brought the money to the party, he brought the ancestors.”
Talbot stubbed out her cigarette and stood up. “You do good with a few words, Lieutenant. Want a job?”
Frank shook his head. “Your work’s too dangerous.”
Talbot walked a few steps, then turned around. “You owe me,” she said. “First dibs on this Calkins and
