rack, while Frank found an issue of People.
“These guys must get their reading material from my dentist,” Jose said. Marge rewarded him with an acid look.
By four-thirty, Janowitz had finished tapping the Palm Pilot, but he held it anyway, apparently unsure what to do with it. Frank dozed, his chin dropped to his chest, the People open in his lap to a spread on Madonna. Jose sat with his eyes fixed glassily on a seemingly paralyzed wall clock.
Suddenly Frank awoke, snapping his head up, momentarily confused about where he was. His head cleared. “Why don’t we come back tomorrow?” he asked Janowitz.
“Rhinelander won’t be here.”
“What?”
“He’ll be back in his district,” Janowitz explained. “Congress usually breaks for the weekend Thursday evenings.”
“Come back Monday, then.”
Janowitz shook his head. “They usually don’t start up again until Tuesday morning.”
“Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,” Jose said in wonderment. “How’d I ever miss out on something like that?”
“You live in the District,” Janowitz said. “Foreigners, felons, and D.C. residents can’t be elected members of Congress.”
“I guess we wait,” Jose said unhappily.
Another half-hour passed. The hands on the clock had slowly, almost painfully, crawled toward five.
Marge’s phone chirped once. She answered, listened, and eyed Frank, Jose, and Janowitz.
“Yes,” she said, “they’re still here.”
The Rayburn Building’s architect had attempted to graft the ornate nineteenth-century decor of the Capitol onto Frederick Rhinelander’s mid-twentieth-century office. The expensive operation had failed. Heavy velvet drapes, patterned carpets, and faux plaster crown moldings clashed with modern windows, fluorescent lighting, and government-bland pseudo-Danish teak furniture.
Frederick Rhinelander sat at his desk, the only genuine antique in the room, a massive piece with a sweeping, flaring grain that looked crafted from a solid block of oak. On the desk, a richly embossed leather- trimmed blotter, a Cross pen-and-pencil set, and a brass banker’s lamp with a green glass shade.
Rhinelander, a man of medium build, wore his dark hair short and neatly combed. He had on a well-tailored dark blue pin-striped suit, a snowy white shirt with an English spread collar, and a silver-gray silk tie.
Frank’s first thought was that Rhinelander looked younger than in his photographs. But that wasn’t it. In some indefinable way, Rhinelander looked more juvenile. As though he didn’t quite fit into the adult costume he was wearing. And there was an alertness about him, as though he was constantly sniffing the air for danger.
Al Salvani sat in an armchair to the side of his desk.
“Congressman Rhinelander,” Frank said, “I’m Detective Kearney, and this’s my partner, Detective Phelps. Detective Janowitz is working with us on the Gentry case.”
Frank and Jose offered their credentials. Rhinelander took them, examined them, then handed them back. He pointed to three chairs that had been drawn up in front of his desk.
“Please, gentlemen.”
Rhinelander spoke with a studied, careful enunciation. His New England accent carried a foppish nasal overlay of Old England.
“Please don’t think me brusque,” he said, “but there’s going to be a vote on the floor any moment. If so, there’s no telling when I shall return. So… shall we cut to the chase?” He touched his fingertips together, making a tent of his hands. “Detective Janowitz has already had access to Kevin Gentry’s appointments calendar.”
“Yes,” Frank said.
“But now he wants to go fishing in the subcommittee’s financial records.” Rhinelander spoke as though Janowitz weren’t in the room. “This line of investigation is presumptive of a motive for Mr. Gentry’s death arising from the subcommittee’s activities.”
Jose got through Rhinelander’s bureaucratese before Frank did. “Nobody’s presuming anything, Congressman. We want to know what Mr. Gentry was doing and why he was doing it. If we know that, we might find out who killed him. We’d appreciate your help to establish what Kevin Gentry was doing before he was killed.”
Rhinelander smiled condescendingly. “Very well put, Detective Phelps. And that means precisely… what?”
“It means we want to find out who he was dealing with and what the dealing was about.”
Rhinelander’s smile disappeared. “And that means…?”
Irritated over Rhinelander’s none-too-subtle baiting, Frank cut in: “That means we need access to people and records so we can build a timeline for Gentry’s activities.”
“You don’t believe that it was a case of Kevin being unlucky?” Rhinelander persisted. “Someone with a gun looking for any available target?”
“That’s only one possibility,” Jose said.
Rhinelander, his face a flat, expressionless mask, stared steadily at Jose. “I am the first to appreciate the value of good police work,” he said, with a righteous air. “Some of my colleagues complain to me that they’ve seen too little of it here in Washington. But I support your efforts fully. I’m inclined to have the subcommittee assist you. I hope you appreciate that.”
Rhinelander looked expectantly at Frank, Jose, and Janowitz.
“Well?” he asked. “Do you?”
“I’m sorry,” Frank said. “Do I… what?”
“I didn’t hear you say that you appreciated it… that I’d have the subcommittee assist you.”
It took Frank a moment to realize what Rhinelander wanted. “Yes. Of course, Congressman, we appreciate it.”
Rhinelander almost purred. “Good,” he said. “That’s good.”
“If you have a moment?” Jose asked.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Gentry… could you describe your relationship with him? He was your staff director for, what, four years?”
“Not exactly.”
“Oh?”
“It was less than four years,” Rhinelander said emphatically. “Three months less. And a couple of days.”
“Okay. How was the relationship?”
Rhinelander cleared his throat. “If it had been anything but excellent, Detective Phelps, Kevin wouldn’t have stayed on as staff director. He was very industrious… and very loyal.”
“What was the social relationship?” Frank asked.
“Socially?” Rhinelander asked. “We weren’t social… friends.” He leaned forward. “We had a splendid working relationship. I’m certain Kevin had friends. But I never met them.”
“In an interview after his death,” Frank continued, “you said that you saw him a little less than an hour before he was shot.”
“Yes.”
“Did he seem worried? Distracted?”
“Worried-no. Preoccupied-yes. We were getting ready for the annual District budget hearings. He had a lot on his plate.”
“The preoccupation… do you think it was about getting the work done? Or something to do with what he’d found out?”
Rhinelander held up a hand in a “Stop” motion. “That is so speculative that it’s ridiculous. I’m not going to answer.”
“I know the difference between fact and speculation, sir,” Frank said, feeling his face warming. “What someone like you thinks can be of help. That’s what I’m asking.”
Rhinelander stiffened slightly, then put on a small, patient smile. “Very well, Detective Kearney, my best speculation is that Kevin was harried by the amount of work. That’s not unusual. If a staffer isn’t overworked, he
