“I’m getting an overload,” Bouchard said. “What all this boils down to is… what?”
“Finding Pencil,” Atkins answered. He turned to Frank and Jose. “I know you guys are already working that. Could we help?”
Frank paused. He felt Jose’s shoe nudge his.
“Emerson wanted to set up a task force,” Frank said, searching for a graceful out, “but Jose and I wanted to keep it small. It’s just us and another detective.”
Atkins nodded emphatically. “I think you were right. I wasn’t envisioning a bureau pile-on. No publicity. Just one person.” At “person,” Atkins put his hand on Bouchard’s shoulder.
Frank and Jose exchanged glances. Both nodded.
“Deal,” said Jose.
Neither Frank nor Jose said anything until they were on the sidewalk.
“What about that?” Frank asked.
“Great coconut cake,” Jose replied.
“No… What Atkins was up to?”
“They want in,” Jose said. “Atkins was nice about it. But we’d said no, he would have gone to Emerson…”
“Who’d have folded like a cheap suitcase…”
“And probably gone ahead with that brain-fart of his about a task force. At least we got Robin and no publicity.”
“We got Robin,” Frank amended, “but I’m not betting on no publicity.” He paused, playing out possibilities in his head. “Yesterday afternoon, Rhinelander calls Atkins. Whines about having us on his ass…”
Jose picked up. “… Atkins sees an opportunity to get the Bureau in on the case…”
“… and score points with Rhinelander at the same time,” Frank finished.
Ahead, down Pennsylvania Avenue, windows shone on the Capitol’s West Front, and the dome glowed white against a dark velvet-blue sky.
Nothing in this town works along a straight line. Everything moves along a curve just in front of you. And you can never see around the curve.
Frank pointed toward the Capitol. “Tomorrow morning, why don’t we drop up and see how Janowitz’s doing?”
TWENTY-TWO
Gentry’s personnel file… nothing in it but his resume, pay records, and a couple of letters of commendation.”
Leon Janowitz pushed the folder across the table to Frank and Jose. Meeting in Janowitz’s cramped cubicle was impossible. It was Friday, the cavernous subcommittee hearing room wasn’t being used, and so the three men huddled at the witness table. Before them, a semicircle of raised seats from which subcommittee members could look down on those testifying and into the cameras. Centered on a low wall below the seats, the crest of the House of Representatives marked where Frederick Dumay Rhinelander would preside.
Looking up at the crest, Frank remembered a vacation in Rome when he and Kate had toured the Colosseum. He had stood in the arena and had looked up toward where, with a roll of the hand, emperors had once decreed who would live and who would die for the entertainment of the crowd.
“ROTC at UCLA,” he heard Jose reading off the resume. “Lieutenant, Southern Command…”
“I’ve asked for his service records,” Janowitz said. “They have to send off to St. Louis.”
“Law school, NYU,” Jose picked up. “Then State Department, Western Hemisphere Affairs…”
“I’ve had a few of those,” Janowitz murmured.
“Those… what?” Jose asked.
“Affairs in the western hemisphere,” Janowitz cracked.
Jose frowned and lowered his eyelids and gave Janowitz his “Down, boy” look, then continued. “Four years at State, then staff of Senator Patterson, New York, then here.”
“Interesting background,” Frank said. “Anything else?”
“Just this.”
Janowitz passed over a sheet of paper.
“Character references,” he explained. “Gentry gave them when Rhinelander interviewed him for the job.”
TWENTY-THREE
Trees! Yes, damn it! I said, trees!”
All six feet, six inches of Senator Daniel Dugan Patterson stood behind his desk, phone at his ear. He listened for a moment. What he heard evidently met with his approval-his almost feminine lips pulled into a smug smile.
He hung up and, with his hand still on the phone, gazed out the window at the panoramic view down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Treasury and the White House. The man’s lean body didn’t fit a round face made even rounder by large horn-rimmed glasses. The glasses, the unruly silver hair, the rumpled blue seersucker suit, and the yellow paisley bow tie gave him the air of a slightly distracted college professor, which he had been at Harvard between stints in the administrations of four presidents.
“Pennsylvania Avenue,” he whispered to himself. “America’s main street. And the silly bastards complain about the cost of a few dozen trees.”
He shook his large head as though to clear it of silly bastards, then turned and regarded Frank and Jose with the perplexed look of a man finding a stranger using his toothbrush.
“And who are you?”
“Ah… police,” Frank said. “District Homicide.”
Patterson’s bewilderment hung on for another moment.
He fished in his jacket pockets until he came up with a pack of three-by-five cards, then shuffled through them until he found one that seemed to satisfy him. Holding it high in front of his face, he studied it, his mouth slightly open. He nodded and tucked the cards away.
“Yes. About Kevin.” He pointed to Frank. “You are…”
“Frank Kearney.”
“And you?” Patterson swung the finger around to Jose.
“Jose Phelps.”
Patterson nodded. “Very good, gentlemen. Please sit.” He gestured to a leather sofa and took a nearby chair for himself.
“So,” he said, “you didn’t catch Kevin’s killer.”
“No, sir, we didn’t,” Frank said.
“But you’re going to do so now.” Patterson spoke it kindly, but with a flat irony.
“Takes being lucky and being good, Senator,” Jose said. “We’re good. But we still need luck.”
Patterson’s expression softened. Leaning forward in his chair, he rested his hands on his knees and thrust his head at Frank and Jose.
“How can I help?”
“Mr. Gentry-”
“Kevin.” Patterson whispered the correction.
Frank nodded and began again. “Kevin… came here from the State Department in 1991. He stayed seven years… tell us about him.”
With a sad smile, Patterson shook his head. “Neither you nor I have enough time for me to tell you all I
