“Nope, I'm just beginning to find it. I'll see you at Midnight, in your office in the Russell Building.”
“It's right next to the Capitol, you can't miss it.”
“Great, and Sandy says she'll have that fetching blue dress on.”
“What? Just bring those files, damn it!”
“Ciao, Senator.” I hung up and stared at the phone for a minute.
“Tim? The blue dress?” Sandy laughed. “You're getting as bad as me, you know.”
“It must be catching.”
“Like I told you, Hardin's cute, but if he stands around too long in the hot sun, he's gonna leave a grease stain big enough to cook McDonalds French fries.”
We ran back out to the cab. Goutam had been looking at maps and immediately drove away, heading for the tunnel and New Jersey. I reflected back to the phone call with Hardin and remembered what Billingham had told me. There were way too many people way too eager to get their hands on Louie Panozzo's files.
There was a roll-down shade between the front seat and the back. I winked at Goutam in the rear view mirror. “See you in Philly, Goutam,” I said as I pulled it down.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Washington, DC: the shining city on the hill…
I rolled up the shade as the cab pulled over to the 30th Street Station in Philadelphia at 8:50, giving Goutam a leisurely ten minutes to spare. It was another of those big, neoclassical edifices from the 1930s that Sandy and I were becoming so expert at negotiating.
“Thanks, Goutam” I said as I handed him four of the crisp new one-hundred dollar bills I had taken off “Tony Grigs”, the hit man in Boston. Goutam smiled, and I handed him another one. “That's a little extra so that your memory won't be too clear about the people you had in the back seat and what they were doing on the way down here from New York. You see, her husband can get very jealous.” I winked at him.
“Oh, yes, sir!” he grinned. “And I can see he has ample reason to be.”
“Where's an INS agent when you really need one,” Sandy muttered as she got out of the cab. “Like, he knew what we were doing back there.”
“Like, you care if he did?”
“But this time, we didn't even do anything!” she complained as she jiggled and twisted her skirt and top, trying to get everything back into place. “But how did my clothes get all turned around like this, Talbott?” she asked innocently enough.
As the cab drove away, she took my arm and we strolled into the terminal. The evening commuter crowd had largely dissipated by then, but there were express trains to both New York and DC every forty-five minutes to an hour, so the station was never empty. One of the trains to DC was leaving in ten minutes and would arrive at Union Station in Washington at 11:00. We bought two seats in the upper deck of the observation car. At night and in the rain, we assumed it would be empty and give us some privacy.
The ticker agent found that mildly amusing. “Just so you know, we turn the lights out about two minutes after the train clears the station,” he warned without looking up at us.
“And...? Sandy asked, puzzled.
“And you'll want to be in your seats by then, lady,” he looked up, straight-faced. “The late run back to DC is popular for all those tired, Washington staffers returning home from a hard day “bureaucrating” in the Philly field office. So if I were you, I'd find an empty seat, I wouldn't go gawking or stumbling around up there in the dark.”
We looked at each other, puzzled by his comments. By the time we got on board and climbed the stairs to the upper deck, there were already a dozen couples huddled together on both sides of the aisle, especially toward the back of the car. From the looks and the blankets, it was obvious they were waiting for the lights to go out too.
“Why did I bother to straighten my skirt?” Sandy whispered as we took two seats in the second row. She snuggled up against me and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “But what a great place to hide.”
“Think of all the money we wasted on a sleeping compartment?” I said. Her head shot up and I got those narrow, threatening eyes. “Uh, that isn't what I meant. No, no, it was a lovely sleeping compartment with you lying there next to me.”
“And under you… over you… and yeah, I guess next to you too.” She kissed me on the cheek. “But tonight you're safe, I just want to cuddle.”
The train started up and I looked down at her, concerned. “Are you okay?”
“What? Just because I'm not pulling your pants off like everybody else in here? You think I'm sick or something? Men. Maybe I'm all loved-out for the day. Did you ever think of that?”
“You? My bullshit meter just went off the chart. “What's wrong?”
She put her chin on my chest and looked up at me. “It's almost midnight, Talbott. In three hours, I'll be back in my shack with the pumpkin and the singing mice and you'll be long gone, remember?”
“Sandy, you're crazy.” I couldn't see her very well, but I ran a finger across her cheek and felt the tears. “I'm not leaving you.”
“You won't have a choice; they won't give you one. This has been a wonderful ride, Peter, but it's almost over and we both know it.”
“Trust me, that's not going to happen.”
She put her head back down and stopped arguing, but I knew she was a long, long way from being convinced.
The rain that buffeted New England the previous two days had blown on through DC and sucked the humidity out to sea with them. By the time our train rolled into Union Station at 11:10 we were greeted by a clear, cool early summer evening. DC was a 9-5 “company town,” and the streets were nearly deserted after dark. And Hardin was right. His building wasn't hard to find. Two large office buildings stood between the train station and the big, floodlit Capitol dome stood down the street, less than a half-mile away. The sign on the first one read “Dirksen and Hart.” The sign on the other read “Russell.”
Inside the small front lobby, two bored rent-a-cops sat on stools next to a large, airport-sized metal detector, reading newspapers and watching a game show on a tiny TV. One of the guards went through the motions of pawing through Sandy's shoulder bag. The other one never moved.
“Can you tell us where Senator Hardin's office is?” I asked as the guard opened her camera case and looked through the lens as if he had never seen one before.
“Hardin? Oh, he's up in the “high rent district,” one of the guards snickered. “Ya'll go up to the second floor and take the hall to the right. His office is all the way back on the Capitol side. You can't miss it.”
“High rent?” I asked.
“Yeah. He's got “the view,” the second one cackled.
“And the back door,” the first one added and they both had a good laugh. “Best not forget he's near the back door.”
“Is that so they can sneak stuff in or sneak stuff out?” Sandy asked.
“All depends on what she look like.” The second one laughed even harder.
“Over the years, lots of “stuff” went in and out
We walked away shaking our heads, our footsteps echoing down the high, plastered ceilings and broad marble floors of the long corridor. A broad staircase led us up to the dimly-lit second floor. The lights were out in most of the offices. The only light in the corridor came from the art deco ceiling fixtures that ran down the center of the hall. This late at night, with only a handful of bulbs lit, the old building appeared even spookier. The only office that appeared in use was Hardin's. Up ahead, we could see his door standing wide open so the dim light fell out and illuminated a small circle around the doorway, like an island in a black sea. There was a US flag in a polished brass stand on one side, a State of Illinois flag on the other, and a round State Seal with big, gold letters on the open door that said TIMOTHY A. HARDIN, ILLINOIS.
Sandy and I peered around the doorframe. Most of the lights were out in his outer office, but we could see it
