Timing was crucial. Before walking into The Vat on the trail of Michael Agnew, Livvy forced herself to wait a half hour. She figured that should have allowed him enough time to settle in, start on his anesthetic of choice, and meet with whomever he might have planned to meet, if anyone. He’d gone in alone. The Vat wasn’t known as an Enforcement bar and wasn’t in the vicinity of City Central, and sitting in her car, observing the foot traffic, Livvy recognized no one among those who followed Agnew in, but all that meant nothing. They might have arrived first.
Since her experience had always been that she was unlikely to pass unnoticed walking into a bar alone unless she was wearing a burka, and probably not then either, she didn’t try.
The Vat was dark and a little dingy, with the run-down ambience that seemed to suit serious drinkers and the overweight men in leather vests playing pool in the cubbies along one side. When she walked in she heard a couple of comments she’d rather have missed and everyone looked her over thoroughly. Except Agnew, who didn’t even look up.
Looking miserable, Agnew was sitting alone, in a corner booth, and paying no attention to anyone around him. Livvy’s research had shown that he still lived at home, with his parents. He apparently hadn’t wanted to go home.
“Agnew. Mind if I join you?” Livvy asked while sliding into the booth.
Agnew glanced up at her and reddened, then went back to staring at his drink.
“Do you have any Irish whiskey?” Livvy asked when the waitress appeared.
“I can check,” she said.
“No, never mind,” Livvy said. “Whatever beer you have on tap, some pretzels, and a refill for my friend.”
From the glasses on the table, that meant three for Agnew. She took it slow, finishing one beer and ordering another for them both before even trying to initiate a conversation. It wasn’t hard to let her mind wander back to when she had been so young that disillusionment this serious could feel like the end of everything that mattered. She was dealing with a very bright young man, and part of her goal was to remind him that he still had a future and work that made a difference.
“Your first assignment, right?”
Agnew glanced up at her again.
“Why LLE? No, never mind, you don’t have to tell me. If it’s a good reason it never sounds right when you say it out loud,” she said companionably.
She took a sip and examined the beer in her glass. There was nothing floating in it at least. After two nights ago and considering what she expected she might have to do later tonight, she really didn’t want to drink any more of it. Agnew kept his head down except when he was taking another swallow.
“My training officer, when I was in Tactical in San Francisco, could talk your ear off about the philosophy of this and the purpose of that,” Livvy said untruthfully. “Does Williams lay it on thick?”
“Not really,” Agnew said. He had started looking out over the crowded bar, perhaps with a faint hope of rescue, and he flicked an oblique look her way.
“Personally, I doubt that it’s ever all that complicated. You can over-think these things. If it feels right, it usually is. To serve and protect, right?”
Another sip.
“Where it does get complicated, though, is when you have people of your own. Trying to take care of everyone else’s family and take care of a family of your own. I suppose it can get to be a bit of a paradox at times, to do both unstintingly. But it’s the job, and there’s a long tradition of people that have been able to handle both.”
She took another sip, then realized that had to be it. She’d had some extra time, but the warmth was spreading, and it was getting late, and she had a long night ahead of her. She wanted it to be his decision to talk to her, but if he didn’t open up in another 5 minutes, then she had to lay it out for him, and ask him some direct questions.
“I don’t know anything,” Agnew said. “How do you handle that?”
“You tell me anything that might be at all useful, and let me decide. If it’s innocent, nothing comes of it. If it isn’t, then McGregor and I will deal with it, if I can find him.”
After a moment, he lifted his head and started talking. “He’s taken a few calls outside the car, as though he doesn’t want me to hear.
“Last week one day we drove to this huge, gated mansion in Potomac Falls and he went in alone. When he came back out, he was raving about this guy that lived there. How rich he was. How paranoid. How he had this fully stocked bunker under the house, waiting for the end of the world.
“Williams has been… in some kind of fission mode. Yesterday, he took personal time for the whole afternoon.”
“Yesterday afternoon… all right,” Livvy said. “Did you get the address on the mansion?”
“Yeah,” Agnew said. “How dumb does he think I am? Does he just not care?”
Livvy thought for a few moments. “Maybe, just maybe… Look, I know this is hard to understand. It’s possible that he doesn’t care, that he may want to get challenged, to get caught. He’s no fool, either, and he may have intended to slip you useful information.
“Sometimes out of anger or desperation or just plain dissatisfaction people get wrapped up in things they regret. They lose their way, and don’t know how to get back. A mid-life crisis, it used to be called. Now we have all kinds of additional issues and labels for them, but I suspect they’re still the same sort of thing.”
She pulled herself out of the booth and stood there, looking down at him.
“Personally, no matter what a person does or doesn’t do, I believe in redemption. I doubt that it’s ever too late to change things and be again that person you want to see in the mirror in the morning.”
“592 McCarthy Court. I never heard a name,” Agnew said.
“If it makes you feel any better, I knew it, I just needed confirmation,” Livvy said. “You saved me from a lot of worry about a costly mistake. Thanks.”
She started to take a step towards the door, and Agnew touched her wrist. “It’s a fortress,” he said.
Livvy smiled at him, and gave him another reassuring half-truth, “Young man, I’ve dealt with fortresses before.”
After Bedford left, Chris got up and moved slowly around the room, checking for anything that might prove useful. As long as he stood up straight, he found moving tolerable, but it still took him over two hours to find and destroy eight tiny acueyes. He could only hope they were the only visuals that covered the room.
The door and the lock were, as far as he could tell, impregnable, and the walls were solid concrete and probably very thick. He thought that, knowing Bedford, there might be a hidden back exit somewhere, with a tunnel to some other safe room, but he couldn’t find it. He did find some knives in the kitchen. He also found some ready-to-eat meals in a pantry, and helped himself to some delicious seafood pasta and two glasses of excellent Chablis.
Livvy sent her sixth request for a response to his ear comu. Since he had no access to a transmitter, all he could do was appreciate the subtle message it sent: she had nothing new to worry about other than the fact that he was not responding, and she knew enough not to send any important information. It was good to hear her voice.
He had little to do except think, and few of his thoughts were comforting. If he were alone on the case, it would be over for him, at least for now. But he had a partner, and he had to think about what that meant. He wasn’t a training officer, but that didn’t absolve him from giving Livvy the essentials of LLE work. He had thoroughly discussed the case with Livvy, and tried to give her a few basics along the way, but there was a lot he had neglected.
Did Livvy know by now that if the Chief followed his own strict policy, she was left to working the case alone? Chris understood and respected the policy, and had preferred working cases alone, for that matter, but Livvy was an LLE rookie. He had faith that Livvy would continue to work energetically, but that meant that his inattention yesterday, which had landed him here, was likely to get her killed.
It was no excuse that they had been thrown almost immediately into this complicated case with the concomitant distraction of becoming targets for assassination.
Did she know she could trust Meg and the Chief, and not trust Williams, who was almost certainly Bedford’s LLE ally?
She was a quick study; she’d understand by now how important it was to avoid media attention. That was probably Bedford’s biggest advantage, knowing from Williams that LLE shunned publicity so completely that the sad truth was that if he succeeded with his plan, unless someone very persistent found some incontrovertible evidence and refused to bury it, he wouldn’t be challenged, at least legally. Jesse would take Bedford’s place and die; John would get Jesse’s allotment. Jesse’s parents would be dead and everyone else in his life could be replaced. No one, other than a few people in LLE and Paula Bedford, would suspect. The scandal would be buried with Jesse.
On the other hand, odds were good that he could count on Williams to minimize to Bedford the threat Livvy represented. Williams might also let Bedford understand that Chris could be held indefinitely without significant LLE retaliation, and emphasize to Bedford how important it was to figure out how Chris had found Bedford’s connection to Josephson. That might keep Bedford from killing him outright.
He kicked the guilt around a while longer and then set it aside as unproductive. Later, if there was a later, he could re-explore it and what it meant to him.
By 10 pm he was tired of mentally running through the same pointless scenarios. A small, private war. For now, it was all on Livvy.
He had another glass of Chablis while he set a chair loaded with some cooking equipment leaning against the sliding door. Sometimes, primitive traps were the most reliable. Even if he had missed an acueye or two and they knew he was sleeping, no one could come in without creating a racket. Then he went back to the bed, carefully lowered himself until he was flat on his back, and stared at the ceiling. He might as well sleep, if he could.