find something out, you’ll be locked up for life. Or caught in the crossfire.’
I said nothing. The room went quiet again.
The lead agent said, ‘Last chance. Stick to being a witness. Did the woman mention Sansom’s name or not?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘She didn’t.’
‘But his name is out there anyway.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is.’
‘And you don’t know who’s asking.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t.’
‘OK,’ the guy said. ‘Now forget all about us and move on. We have no desire to complicate your life.’
‘But?’
‘We will if we have to. Remember the trouble you could make for people, back in the 110th? It’s much worse now. A hundred times worse. So do the smart thing. If you want to play, stick to the senior circuit. Stay away from this. The game has changed.’
They let me go. I went down in the elevator and walked past the guy at the door and stood on a broad paved area and looked at the river flowing slowly by. Reflected lights moved with the current. I thought about Elspeth Sansom. She impressed me.
That was for damn sure.
The night was warm. The air was heavy and full of waterborne smells. I headed back towards Dupont Circle. A mile and a quarter, I figured. Twenty minutes on foot, maybe less.
TWENTY-FOUR
Restaurant meals in D.C. rarely run shorter than an hour or longer than two. That had been my experience. So I expected to find Sansom finishing up his entree or ordering his dessert. Maybe already drinking coffee and thinking about a cigar.
Back at the restaurant about half the courtyard tables had turned over their clientele. There were new boys in suits, and new girls in skirts. More pairs now than threesomes or quartets, and more romance than work. More bright chatter designed to impress, and less scanning of electronic devices. I walked past the hostess station and the woman there called after me and I said, ‘I’m with the Congressman.’ I pushed through the wooden door and scanned the inside room. It was a low rectangular space full of dim light and spicy smells and loud conversation and occasional laughter.
Sansom wasn’t in it.
No sign of him, no sign of his wife, no sign of the guy who had called himself Browning, no pack of eager staffers or campaign volunteers.
I backed out again and the woman at the hostess station looked at me quizzically and asked, ‘Who were you joining?’
I said, ‘John Sansom.’
‘He isn’t here.’
‘Evidently.’
A kid at a table next to my elbow said, ‘North Carolina Fourteenth? He left town. He’s got a fundraiser breakfast tomorrow in Greensboro. Banking and insurance, no tobacco. I heard him tell my guy all about it.’ His last sentence was directed at the girl opposite him, not at me. Maybe the whole speech was,
I stepped back to the sidewalk and stood still for a second and then set out for Greensboro, North Carolina.
I got there on a late bus that was scheduled to stop first in Richmond, Virginia, and then in Raleigh, and then in Durham, and then in Burlington. I didn’t notice the itinerary. I slept all the way. We arrived in Greensboro close to four o’clock in the morning. I walked past bail bond offices and shuttered pawn shops and ignored a couple of greasy spoon eateries until I found the kind of diner I wanted. I wasn’t choosing on the basis of food. All diner food tastes the same to me. I was looking for phone books and racks of free local newspapers and it took a long walk to find them. The place I picked was just opening for business. A guy in an undershirt was greasing a griddle. Coffee was dripping into a flask. I hauled the Yellow Pages to a booth and checked it for hotels. Greensboro had plenty. It was a decent-sized place. Maybe a quarter-million people.
I figured a fundraising breakfast would take place in a fairly upscale location. Donors are rich, and they don’t go to the Red Roof Inn for five hundred dollars a plate. Not if they work in banking and insurance. I guessed the Hyatt or the Sheraton. Greensboro had both. Fifty-fifty. I closed the Yellow Pages and started leafing through the free papers, looking for confirmation. Free papers carry all kinds of local coverage.
I found a story about the breakfast in the second paper I opened. But I was wrong about the hotels. Not the Hyatt, not the Sheraton. Instead Sansom was fixed up at a place called the O. Henry Hotel, which I guessed was named for the famous North Carolina writer. There was an address given. The event was planned to start at seven in the morning. I tore out the story and folded it small and put it in my pocket. The guy behind the counter finished his preparations and brought me a mug of coffee without asking. I took a sip. Nothing better than a fresh brew in the first minute of its life. Then I ordered the biggest combo on the menu and sat back and watched the guy cook it.
I took a cab to the O. Henry Hotel. I could have walked, and it took longer to find the cab than to make the drive, but I wanted to arrive in style. I got there at a quarter after six. The hotel was a modern facsimile of a stylish old place. It looked like an independent establishment, but probably wasn’t. Few hotels are. The lobby was rich and dim and full of clubby leather armchairs. I walked past them to the reception desk with as much panache and confidence as was possible for a guy in a creased nineteen-dollar shirt. There was a young woman on duty behind the counter. She looked tentative, as if she had just come in and wasn’t settled yet. She looked up at me and I said, ‘I’m here for the Sansom breakfast.’
The young woman didn’t reply. She struggled to find a reaction, like I was embarrassing her with too much information. I said, ‘They were supposed to leave my ticket here.’
‘Your ticket?’
‘My invitation.’
‘Who was?’
‘Elspeth,’ I said. ‘Mrs Sansom, I mean. Or their guy.’
‘Which guy?’
‘Their security person.’
‘Mr Springfield?’
I smiled to myself. Springfield was a manufacturer of auto- loader rifles, the same as Browning was. The guy liked word games, which was fun, but dumb. False names work better if they’re completely unconnected with reality.
I asked, ‘Have you seen them yet this morning?’ It was an attempt at finesse. I was guessing Greensboro wasn’t in Sansom’s own congressional district. A Senate campaign needed state-wide funding and exposure. I figured Sansom’s own patch was already sewn up tight, and that by now he would be trawling farther afield. Therefore he had probably stayed in the hotel overnight, to be ready for the early start. But I couldn’t be sure. To ask if he had come down from his room yet would make me look like an idiot if he lived five minutes away. To ask if he had arrived yet would make me look just as bad if he lived two hundred miles away. So I aimed for neutrality.
The woman said, ‘They’re still upstairs, as far as I know.’
