rested and much refreshed. Being able to help him with the case he was working on, that had been something, too. For a few moments there, she hadn’t felt totally useless. She hadn’t lost all her chops. Maybe that was a good sign.
After Alex left for work, she felt creative. She decided to go and work on her scrimshaw for a while.
At the bench, she turned on the gooseneck lamp, gathered her tools, and was about to get started when she saw the purple capsule lying there where she’d put it and forgotten all about it.
She reached for the cap, looked at it, and decided what the hell, as long as she had it in hand…
She put the cap on the table in her work field and adjusted the lamp to shine on it. Focused the stereoscope on it…
Ah. Here was a major discovery. It was a purple gelatin capsule with some kind of pale powder inside it.
Maybe something inside was more interesting. If she opened it very carefully…
“Shit!” she said, as the powder, which was a kind of bubble gum pink, spilled all over the table. She dropped the halves of the cap and grabbed a little paint brush she used for dusting the ivory. She swept the pink powder into a little pile, then onto a sheet of paper. There it was.
As she picked up the larger of the now mostly empty capsule segments to reload the powder, she noticed an odd strip of coloration on one end, just inside the edge. Hmm. What was that?
She held the cap under the scope, couldn’t quite make it out. It looked almost like some kind of pattern. Well, we’ll see about that. She put the cap down, removed the auxiliary lens, and brought the scope’s magnification to 10X. Let’s have another look, shall we?
Jesus! What was that? She fiddled with the light, turned the cap this way, then that, and got the shadows just right so she could make it out.
Etched into the material of the cap were tiny words. “Hi, Feebs! Want to find me? Ask Frankie and Annette’s grandkids, they know where! Sincerely Yours, Thor.”
She reached for the phone on the end of the bench. She had to get Alex. He was going to want to hear about this.
The restaurant, Claudia’s Grill, was half a block off the highway and slightly up the hill, so it had a nice view of the water. Drayne pulled his Mercedes into the parking lot, gave the key to the attendant and got a parking stub, then went inside. It was three minutes to seven, and the place was pretty full. They served a good breakfast here, and it was a great location.
His father sat alone in a booth, staring out through a wall of glass at the Pacific, the waters already changing from gray to blue as the sun began to burn off the morning fog.
“Hello, Dad.”
“Robert.”
Drayne slid into the booth. “What’s up?”
“Let’s order first.”
The waitress came by. Drayne ordered poached eggs, chicken apple sausage, and whole-grain pancakes. His father asked for white toast, corn flakes, and decaf coffee.
When she was gone to put their order in, his father cleared his throat. He said, “I’m glad your mother isn’t alive to see what you’ve become.”
Drayne stared at him as if his father had just sprouted fangs and fur and might start baying like a werewolf. “What?”
“How stupid do you think I am, Robert? Did it never occur to you that thirty years with the Bureau might have taught me something?”
“What are you
“PolyChem Products,” his father said.
Drayne felt his belly spasm, as if he had just gone over the big drop on a roller coaster. “What about it?”
His father looked disgusted. “There is no ‘it.’ It’s a paper corporation, a phantom. The bank records, the history, none of it is any deeper than a postage stamp. You thought I might look at it, but not too closely, didn’t you?
Drayne couldn’t think of anything to say. He was cold, as if he had suddenly found himself shoved headfirst into a refrigerator. He’d never expected this.
The old man looked away from him, out at the ocean again. He said, “I have friends, boy, people who owe me favors. I know where you live, and I know you live well, but I also know that you don’t have any visible way of earning money. So that means you are into something illegal or immoral. Probably both. From the way you talked about admiring that criminal who assaulted the agents and staff at HQ recently, I surmise it probably has something to do with drugs.”
“Dad—”
His old man turned back to face him, held up his hand to silence him, and in that moment, he was Special Agent in Charge Rickover Drayne of old, steely-eyed and fierce, one of the most stalwart protectors of the republic. “Don’t say anything. I don’t want to hear about it, I don’t want to
Drayne lost it: “You expected me to turn into a fucking robot without feelings who would grow up to be just like you.” He was amazed at the sudden venom in his voice. “You wanted a carbon copy of yourself to send forth, a grown-up Boy Scout who was trustworthy, loyal, friendly, obedient, who would cog his way into the system and stay there smiling until he wore out, just like you. You never once asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up or cared what I thought about anything.”
The old man blinked at him. “I wanted the best for you—”
“Robert—”
“Jesus fucking Christ, listen to yourself! Everybody in the world calls me Bobby except for you! I asked you to do that a hundred times! You didn’t listen. You never listened.”
Nobody said anything for a long time. Finally, Drayne said, “So, what are you going to do? Give my name to your friends who owe you favors? Have them investigate me?”
The old man shook his head. “No.”
“No? Why? Because I’m your son and you love me? Or because you wouldn’t want your old FBI chums to know
The old man was spared whatever answer he might have made as the waitress returned with their breakfast. Drayne had never felt less like eating in his life, but both he and the old man smiled at her.
When she was gone, the old man said, “You can think whatever you want. You… You’re a brilliant man, son. Smarter than I ever was. I always knew that. You could have gone into legitimate business and made a fortune. You could have been somebody important.”
“What makes you think I can’t do that now?”
“Oh, you could. I don’t think you want to. You were always more interested in pulling my chain than anything else, weren’t you?”
Drayne stood, dropped a fifty on the table, and said, “I’m not hungry, but you enjoy your breakfast. It’s a long drive back to Arizona. Give my regards to the dog.”
Drayne turned and stalked off. Dramatic, but he’d made worse exits. Let the old bastard chew on that for a while.
Once he was in his car, he realized how shaken he was. Even after all the years of layering scar tissue and
