'About what, sir?'
'You know the President, don't you?'
'Coffee machine's that way, sir. You can see where the doughnuts are.' The young man turned his back. His height must have come from his father, Plumber saw, and he had education.
'Wait a minute!' Plumber said.
Laurence turned back. 'Why? We have a business to run here. Excuse me.'
'Larry, be nice to man.'
'Mom, I told you what he did, remember?' When Laurence looked back at the reporters, his eyes told the tale. They wounded Plumber in a way he hadn't known in years.
'Excuse me. Please,' the commentator said. 'I just want to talk to you. There aren't any cameras with me.'
'Are you in medical school now, Laurence?' Holtzman asked.
'How did you know that? Who the hell are you?'
'Laurence!' his mother objected.
'Wait a minute, please.' Plumber held his hands up. 'I just want to talk. No cameras, no recorders. Everything is off the record.'
'Oh, sure. You give us your word on that?'
'Laurence!'
'Mom, let me handle this!' the student snapped, then instantly apologized. 'Sorry, Mom, but you don't know what this is about.'
'I'm just trying to figure out—'
'I saw what you did, Mr. Plumber. Didn't anybody tell you? When you spit on the President, you spit on my father, too! Now, why don't you buy what you need and take a hike.' The back turned again.
'I didn't know,' John protested. 'If I've done something wrong, then why don't you tell me about it? I promise, you have my word, I will not do anything to hurt you or your family. But if I've done something wrong, please tell me.'
'Why you hurt Mr. Ryan?' Carol Zimmer asked. 'He good man. He look after us. He—'
'Mom, please. These people don't care about that!' Laurence had to come back and handle this. His mom was just too naive.
'Laurence, my name is Bob Holtzman. I'm with the Washington Post. I've known about your family for several years now. I never ran the story because I didn't want to invade your privacy. I know what President Ryan is doing for you. I want John to hear it from you. It will not become public information. If I wanted that to happen, I would have done it myself.'
'Why should I trust you?' Laurence Zimmer demanded. 'You're reporters.' That remark broke through Plumber's demeanor hard and sharp enough to cause physical pain. Had his profession sunk so low as that?
'You're studying to be a doctor?' Plumber asked, starting at square one.
'Second year at Georgetown. I have a brother who's a senior at MIT, and a sister who just started at UVA.'
'It's expensive. Too expensive for what you make off this business. I know. I had to educate my kids.'
'We all work here. I work weekends.'
'You're studying to be a physician. That's an honorable profession,' Plumber said. 'And when you make mistakes, you try to learn from them. So do I, Laurence.'
'You sure talk the talk, Mr. Plumber, but lots of people do that.'
'The President helps, doesn't he?'
'If I tell you something off the record, does that mean you can't report it at all?'
'No, actually 'off the record' doesn't quite mean that. But if I tell you, right here and right now, that I will never use it in any way—and there are other people around to back you up—and then I break my word, you can wreck my career. People in my business are allowed to get away with a lot, maybe even too much,' Plumber conceded, 'but we can't lie.' And that was the point, wasn't it?
Laurence looked over to his mother. Her poor English did not denote a poor mind. She nodded to him.
'He was with my dad when he got killed,' the youth reported. 'He promised Pop that he would look after us. He does, and yeah, he pays for school and stuff, him and his friends at CIA.'
'They had some trouble here with some rowdies,' Holtzman added. 'A guy I know at Langley came over here and—'
'He shouldna done that!' Laurence objected. 'Mr. Clar—well, he didn't have to.'
'How come you didn't go to Johns Hopkins?' Holtzman asked.
'They accepted me,' Laurence told them, hostility still in his voice. 'This way I can commute easier, and help out here with the store. Dr. Ryan—Mrs. Ryan, I mean—she didn't know at first, but when she found out, well, 'nother sister starts at the university this fall. Pre-med, like me.'
'But why…?' Plumber's voice trailed off.
' 'Cuz maybe that's the kind of guy he is, and you fucked him over.'
'Laurence!'
Plumber didn't speak for fifteen seconds or so. He turned to the lady behind the counter. 'Mrs. Zimmer, thank you for your time. None of this will ever be repeated. I promise.' He turned. 'Good luck with your studies, Laurence. Thank you for telling me that. I will not be bothering you anymore.'
The two reporters walked back outside, straight to Holtzman's Lexus.
Why should I trust you? You're reporters. The artless words of a student, perhaps, but deeply wounding even so. Because those words had been earned, Plumber told himself.
'What else?' he asked.
'As far as I know they don't even know the circumstances of Buck Zimmer's death, just that he died on duty. Evidently, Carol was pregnant with their youngest when he died. Liz Elliot tried to get a story out that Ryan was fooling around and the baby was his. I got suckered.'
A long breath. 'Yeah. Me, too.'
'So, what are you going to do about it, John?'
He looked up. 'I want to confirm a few things.'
'The one at MIT is named Peter. Computer science. The one going to Charlottesville, I think her name is Al- jsha. I don't know the name of the one graduating high school, but I could look that up. I have dates for the purchase of this business. It's a sub-chapter-S corporation. It all tallies with the Colombian mission. Ryan does Christmas for them every year. Cathy, too. I don't know how they'll work that now. Pretty well, probably.' Holtzman chuckled. 'He's good at keeping secrets.'
'And the CIA guy who—'
'I know him. No names. He found out that some punks were annoying Carol. He had a little chat with them. The police have records. I've seen them,' Holtzman told him. 'He's an interesting guy. He's the one who got Gerasimov's wife and daughter out. Carol thinks he's a great big teddy bear. He's also the guy who rescued Koga. Serious player.'
'Give me a day. One day,' Plumber said.
'Fair enough.' The drive back to Ritchie Highway passed without another word.
'DR. RYAN?' BOTH heads turned. It was Captain Overton, sticking his head in the door.
'What is it?' Cathy asked, looking up from a journal article.
'Ma'am, there's something happening that the kids might like to see, with your permission. All of you, if you want.'
Two minutes later they were all in the back of a Hummer, heading into the woods, close to the perimeter fence. The vehicle stopped two hundred yards away. The captain and a corporal led them the rest of the way, to within fifty feet.
'Shh,' the corporal said to SANDBOX. He held binoculars to her eyes.
'Neat!' Jack Junior thought.
'Will she be scared of us?' Sally asked.
'No, nobody hunts them here, and they're used to the vehicles,' Overton told them. 'That's Elvira, she's the second-oldest doe here.'
