Frank Sinatra was singing "The Best Is Yet to Come" as I strode through the wide doors of the University Club grille and up to the bar, where Peter Martin and Steve Havlicek were talking animatedly about whether Carl Bernstein had received his proper due covering-or rather, uncovering-the Watergate affair. I had just been out in the hallway calling my dog sitter. My first thought coming into this conversation was that maybe I should bow out straight away and head home for the night.
But good manners prevailed, as they so often do, at least with me.
Lyle was there, working his typical magic. Actually, what Lyle was doing was reaching deep into the coldest ice chest in the District of Columbia, pulling out bottles of Miller Highlife, and pouring them into frosted pilsner glasses. Seems like magic, especially when he's doing it for you.
Frank seemed to be hitting all his notes especially well in this particular rendition. It was my wedding song, and to that end, I felt a certain kinship to it, but I wasn't sure how I felt about hearing it here tonight. I guess all right, but the song can't help but bring back memories, fond and sad at the same time.
Katherine and I got married by a justice of the peace in a secluded corner of the Boston Public Garden as dusk settled on the second Saturday of October. The leaves were brilliant shades of orange and red. The air was slightly cool, perfumed with the sense of passage.
About eighty friends and family members gathered to watch us, and after the brief ceremony, we all strolled up the Commonwealth Avenue mall two blocks to my friend Roger Schecter's condomonium, where we ate a catered feast on his moonlit roof deck, danced to a five-piece swing band, and toasted a future that shone as bright as all those autumn stars. Who knew then that just as stars flicker, futures do as well?
The wedding itself was part of a whole weekend of festivity. The night before, at our rehearsal dinner in the downstairs dining room of Locke-Ober, one of Boston's most venerable restaurants, I stood up with three glasses of cabernet already flowing through my system and made a toast. "I'm a cocky sort," I began, to some snickering from a couple of tables filled with my wiseass friends. "I expect to accomplish a lot in life. Maybe my newspaper reporting will make me famous. Maybe I'll win a prize. But this marriage," I said, "this relationship, is the greatest accomplishment I will ever have, and I plan to guard it and nurture it and always be more grateful for this than anything else in my life. I am in love," I said in a bit of uncharacteristic openness, "and this love is greater than I could ever have imagined."
Katherine, when I sat down, had tears in her eyes. So did my mother, but I think that's because the nice general manager, subtle as he was about it, had just delivered the bill. The room was silent, then filled with applause. Later, a group of friends headed to the bar at the Tennis and Racquet Club, where I was also a member in good standing. I remember Frank Sinatra singing "Get Me to the Church on Time" as I ran into Katherine in the hallway to the rest rooms. I suggested to her that we follow tradition, that on this night we sleep apart, two remade virgins awaiting their big day. She put her hand on the back of my neck and pulled my lips down toward hers, kissing me hard. She pulled her mouth away ever so slightly, still holding my face close. "Not a chance in the world," she said. Okay.
Back to our wedding reception. Roger being Roger, and, well, the roof deck being his, he got up midway through the evening and gave a toast of his own. He raised the issue of his vast portfolio, as he sometimes tends to do-a fortune that extends into the tens of millions of dollars, all money made in timely investments in some Route 128
software and Internet startup companies. "For all my material wealth, for all I'm financially worth, I have nowhere near the happiness that these two have," he said. "Look at them. Look at what they have.
They have a joy that no amount of money can ever buy. They are wealthier than I ever hope to be, and on this night, I'm not ashamed to proclaim my jealousy."
That was nice. I think I saw one of my sisters wipe a tear off her cheek. Later, I handed the pesky wedding photographer a twenty-dollar bill and told him to go buy himself a couple of Scotch whiskies around the corner at Joe's American Bar and Grille, and take that Polaroid with him. Katherine sidled up to me along the railing of the deck.
The Hancock Building and Prudential Center were on one side of us, the Charles River on the other. She put her hand on my cheek in the only moment of privacy we had had all night. "You're the only thing I've ever wanted in my entire life," she said. She stared up at me, her eyes glistening and growing wet. After a minute, she stood on her toes and kissed me warmly on my ear, whispering, "I will love you, Jack Flynn, every minute of every hour until the day I die." That's when I felt a flashbulb go off again, and I thought to myself, My God, I love this woman, and boy, can that photographer toss back twenty bucks worth of Johnnie Walker fast.
"But it was Bernstein who had all the personality. People wanted to help him. People told him things they wouldn't tell Woodward." That was Havlicek, still engrossed in one of the more inane conversations that I had ever had the misfortune of hearing.
"Boys, boys," I said. "Why don't we sit at a table and start over on something that might actually matter to somebody."
My mood had quickly declined. But we sat down, and they shut up, and that seemed to make things a little better. A minute later our waiter stopped by the table with a basket of onion rings, some smoked salmon, and a couple of hamburgers. In the three minutes it had taken me to make my call, these guys had ordered the left side of the menu and put it on my tab. I started to say something, then figured, why bother.
Havlicek's mouth was already filled. Martin was cutting up several onion rings with a fork and knife.
"Carlos, could you bring me over a swordfish sandwich?" I said.
Havlicek looked up from his plate, alarmed. "They have swordfish sandwiches? I didn't see any swordfish sandwiches on the menu."
"Not on the menu," I said, immaturely restaking my claim to a club that I felt sliding away. "They make them up for me, special."
There was a pause, then Martin asked, "What time are you heading north in the morning?"
I said, "I figured I'd grab the six A.m. flight, get me in around seven-thirty. I'll be on the ground reporting by nine. This voice seemed to think that we didn't have a whole lot of time to waste on this thing."
"How we supposed to know?" Havlicek added, accidentally spitting a caper next to my fork, which I found more than unappetizing.
"We don't. We trust," I said.
They seemed to be thinking about that for a while, as if trust, to newspaper people, anyway, was such a novel idea. They ate. My swordfish arrived. Martin eventually asked, expansively, "So who is this guy and why does he want to help us so bad?"
We didn't answer, so Martin asked, "He some conspiracy theorist with a few good hunches? He someone in the White House, one of Cole's old loyalists trying to kick up trouble? Is it some agent of Stanny Nichols, like these guys Graham and Wilkerson, trying to leak out their opposition research, and if so, why be so covert?"
Havlicek looked down at his plate, I assumed in thought, but I realized it was because he was sopping up the last drops of burger juice and mustard with the remnants of a roll. "Don't know," he said. "But maybe we're working this puzzle backward. Maybe we ought to be trying to figure out what he has, and see if what he has holds up, before we worry about who he is. His identity could be the least of our issues, provided his information is any good."
Havlicek meant this in a friendly way, three guys sitting around a table with a few beers and some red meat discussing a good story. But Martin took it as a slight challenge to his intellect, as editors tend to do. When you're not on the street working a story, when you're not writing for the paper or producing anything of great consequence, you tend to get territorial and defensive about the power and value of your ideas, mostly because that's all you have.
"Look, I know what matters," Martin said. "I'm just figuring maybe we can shortcut this thing. And more than that, I'm just curious over who's spending so much time and money trying to help us out."
"So am I," I said, interjecting in my role as diplomat. "I'm curious as to who this guy is and what he's got. Keep in mind, it's me he's following around. It's me who was shot at over at the Newseum."
Carlos came over dangling dessert menus, asking if we were interested, prompting Havlicek to just about jump out of his chair at him. Frank was singing "Hello Dolly" by now, and very well, I might add. Waiters were carrying plates of prime rib and shrimp. The room was filled with the gentle clink of china, the hum of conversation, staccato bursts of laughter. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught an unusual sight-unusual, at least, for this particular club: a beautiful woman coming through the doorway, alone, and taking a place at a corner table. I turned to look, and my heart almost came through my chest.
That was no beautiful woman, it was Samantha Stevens, special agent with the FBI, smiling at me from across the room as she slid her chair in, crossed her long legs in front of her, and gently placed her purse on the floor.
If you think it's tough to get Steve Havlicek out of a dining room when a free dessert is still on the line, think again. It's not just tough, it's impossible, a feat I wouldn't even try with a John Deere tractor and a pair of field oxen.
So with the last bits of their chocolate mousse cake gone, the boys finally took leave. I made my way across the room to Stevens's table, flashed her my attempt at a Frank Sinatra smile, and said, "Didn't realize you were a member here."
She was drinking red wine on a tab I had carefully and quietly established for her with the waiter, and reading the Wall Street Journal-the Money and Investing section, to be exact. "I've always wanted to go to a bar where they pump testosterone in through the heating vents," she said, not exactly answering my question. "Let me ask you, has anyone ever gored themselves on the moose antlers?"
"Not that I know of," I said. "Actually, the women members here, and yes, we do have women members, they all seem to really like the moose.
I'm not sure if that says more about the aesthetics of the moose or the quality of our women membership."
She gave me an exaggerated frown, comfortable enough, it seemed, that she didn't have to laugh at every joke that ever so slightly missed the mark. With another clever introduction out of the way, I took a seat at the table and said, "This is an unexpected surprise."
"Most surprises are unexpected," she replied. Good one. I made a mental note to stop using that clich'e after all these years.
She swirled the wine around in her glass and said, "Sorry to intrude on your sanctuary, but I need to talk to you in confidence again. May I?"
"Of course you can," I said.
She stared down at the wine rolling around the edges of her glass as she nonchalantly twirled the stem in her hand. After a moment, she looked up at me and said, "I'm being excluded from every major decision on a case that is supposed to be partly mine. I don't think I'm even being shown working copies of any reports. Drinker's barely speaking to me, and he seems to have carte blanche to do whatever he wants on this case, in whatever way he wants to do it. I don't even think my boss is clued in. Drinker speaks only to Callinger. I think they're the only two guys who know what's going on."
I let that sit out there as I processed it. I was still leery of being played for the fool, and harbored suspicions that this was some sort of a setup, an attempt to get me to divulge that I was working with an anonymous source, and maybe even Ron Hancock. I reminded myself, You don't know this woman all that well.
"Do you and Drinker talk every day?"
She shrugged. "He might stop by my office and ask me to do something like call this militia outpost or some gun store or something that seems peripherally connected, at best. He's not really one to make extensive chitchat even in the easiest of times."
"And you're really not seeing reports? You think about going to Callinger?"
"I did," she said. "I said it was bothering me, the way this investigation was being handled. I said I felt cut out of the loop on it. You know what he said? He told me to just stick with it, that it would be over soon enough, and not to worry about how it's going, that there were already plenty enough people worrying for me."
The chairman was signing "Fly Me to the Moon" now on what must have been some double album collection. A few guys at a nearby table had sparked up some pretty expensive cigars, something mild, something Dominican, from the scent of them. There was silence between us as Carlos stopped by to pick up our empty glasses and replace them with full ones.
Stevens took a sip of her fresh wine and said, "I'm hopeful, perhaps naively so, that if you have any information, even unsubstantiated information, about FBI wrongdoing on this case, that you might pass it on to me to investigate."
That was a tough one. I could just tell her, No, you're wrong. But why? And more important, why brick off a potential source of valuable information? Reporting was often about negotiation, and I still hadn't figured out where I was in this particular situation. So I lied, in the name of good journalism.
"I don't have anything right now, except what I've written for tomorrow morning's paper, which is a story quoting from an internal document saying that the FBI was identifying the shooter as Tony Clawson at least as recently as yesterday afternoon."
She just stared at me with that one, then took a sip of wine, absently lifting the glass to her lips.
"Right now," I said, "everything I know, my readers know. I tend to be like that. I don't keep secrets very long."
"Well, there's no way that I'm going to just sit back and watch while this investigation spirals out of control," she said. "It's an embarrassment for the bureau."
She looked me in the eyes and added, "Let me ask you something. That story of yours today. Do you know who the federal informant is?"
An interesting question, meaning, apparently, that she didn't.
I replied, "Yes. I agreed not to publish the identity so the informant wouldn't be killed, as could well be the case if word got out."
She nodded, still looking at me. She asked, "Is it Daniel Nathaniel?"
The question betrayed her profound irrelevance in this investigation, or at least I thought it did.
I didn't answer. I only looked back at her, in silence. She added,
"If it is, don't say anything."
I didn't, and she eventually looked away.
She spread a hard gaze over my face and said, "Then I have something else."
Her tone had changed, as did the look in her eyes. I felt a lump form in my throat, as if something were about to happen, something of significance. My impulse was to blurt out the question, What? but I stopped myself, not wanting to appear too eager, too needy. I coolly met her gaze and said, "Go ahead."
"I got access to some computer files." She hesitated and said, "We're on background here, right?" I nodded. She went on. "The files detail all federally paid informants, meaning, if someone's on our payroll for giving us information, they're recorded in the ledgers. Obviously, this information is sensitive, so not everyone is listed by name. Some just have descriptions, like, I don't know, "Miami dockworker." You know?"
She paused to collect herself. "The point is, Drinker told me about telling you of how Daniel Nathaniel is a federal informant. Well, he gave me the information in one of his rare written reports. Anyways, this guy Nathaniel, he's not on the list, despite Drinker's assertion to you that he was. I can't find his name, and I can't find anyone who fits the description. There's not even a militia member on our ledgers from Idaho."
I drank that in for a moment, stunned at the baldness of Drinker's lie and the fact that his colleague Stevens would call him on it, at least with me. What did it mean? If Drinker was fabricating, it meant that he worked with Nathaniel to concoct the story about the Wyoming militia, in all likelihood to hide something else. What was it they were trying to hide? That was the real question.
Much as I wanted to pursue it right there and then with Stevens, some inner voice told me not to. I think that voice was simply one of distrust. "That's, well, more than interesting," I said, dropping it at that.
We sat in a long stretch of silence, until she said, far more conversationally, "You ever have a week where everything in the world is out to screw you over?" She half smiled.
"Actually," I said, "I've had years like that."
She nodded sympathetically. "So I'm in Nordstrom's last night. I'm over there buying my father a birthday present, and I'm in the men's shop. I catch sight of this guy who looks so familiar that my heart realizes who he is before my brain does. You know what I mean?
There's a woman with him, and she's holding a pair of pants up to his waist while he's pulling on a new suit jacket. They're smiling, and they're so happy. And it hits me like a club over the head, that's my ex-husband, and he's with another woman."
"Wow," I said, more for my own shock than in empathy with hers. I couldn't picture her with a husband, never mind an ex-husband, mostly because I had always associated her with being single and available.
This opened up an entirely new way of looking at her. So with nothing constructive to add at this point, and feeling slightly voyeuristic, I asked, "What did you do?"
"I was going to just turn away, but he saw me. We met eyes, and he called to me, "Hey, Sam, how are you?" I had no real choice but to go over, much as I just wanted to crawl into a hole. I walk over there, and the woman, she's still holding the fucking pants up to his waist, just kind of standing there not knowing what's going on. We talked a bit, though I'm not sure about what. My mind was just swimming. He introduced me to her, but just by name. He didn't say, "Julia, I want you to meet my ex-wife, Samantha. Sam, I want you to meet my girlfriend, Julia." I don't think I said more than a dozen words, and I just got out of there. I didn't even buy my father's present. I punched the dashboard of my car so hard I almost broke my hand."
I felt myself recovering from my own surprise, at least enough to ask a couple more worthwhile questions. She was facing me with her elbows on the table, her chin resting in her hands. She looked strangely comfortable unloading to me.
"When's the last time you saw him?"
"About a year. I hadn't seen him since we walked out of divorce court last fall and shook hands goodbye."
"You obviously miss him," I said, thinking the statement trite just as the words left my lips.
"I don't know if that's necessarily true," she said. "I think I miss my old life, or what I thought my old life would become, which was happily married, looking forward to starting a family, sharing, growing old with someone. Staying in love. Or maybe just not being alone."
"What's his name?" I asked.
"Eric." I hate the name Eric, but thought it best not to mention that.
She said, "You know, I'm not pining for him or anything like that. I'm really not. To be honest about it, I don't even think about him all that much anymore."
I started to say something, though exactly what, I'm not sure. She kept talking right over me, which I think was a good thing.
"It's just weird, seeing this guy, the guy I married, the guy I figured I'd be with for the rest of my life, to have children with, to send them through college, to retire with, it's just so fucking weird to see him with another person, like I'm so replaceable, like he's moved on, found something better, and I'm stuck, struggling with myself, no different than I was before. Or if I am different, then I'm just worse. That's what's so bad about all this."
I had half a mind to reach out and put my hand over hers, to comfort her with my eyes, to let her know she wasn't as alone as she was feeling. I held back for a variety of reasons, one of them being the continuing suspicion that I was being fed a line, another being the general inappropriateness of a reporter and a federal agent having any sort of emotional, never mind physical, involvement.
Still, I'm not a mule, so I told her, "Look, I hope you don't mind me saying this, but my bet is you're not like you were before, that you've grown a lot since you two split. The only difference is that you haven't found anyone yet, and maybe he has. And maybe you haven't found anyone because you're a little more discriminating. You don't want to make those same mistakes."
I paused, then brushed against inappropriateness, unable to contain myself. "I mean, look at you," I said. "You're stunning looking.
You're a goddamned FBI agent, and a well-regarded one at that. You will have more opportunities to meet men, and good men, than you could ever imagine. The right one will come along, probably when you least expect it." Like, say, right now.
She stared straight ahead. Around us, the grille was gradually clearing out, the laughter giving way to the background music. She looked up at me and said, "I know you're right. Sometimes it's just lonely."
"I know lonely," I said. "I've driven off to the hospital with a pregnant wife about to have a baby girl, and I drove home that night all alone, both of them dead."
She locked her eyes on mine and said, "I'm so sorry. I know that. My issues, they're trivial in comparison."
I said, "No, we all have our own issues, our own problems, our own obstacles to overcome. You mind me asking what went wrong with you guys?"
She thought for a minute, contorting her face ever so slightly so the skin was drawn even tighter over her cheekbones. She said, "I don't want to go there now."
I felt a slight rebuke, until she quickly added, "Some other time I'll tell you."
"Check, Mr. Flynn?" That was Carlos, in another display of his impeccable timing. I said, "Yeah, that would be great." *
The last drops of distant daylight had long since drained from the early winter sky as Baker and I arrived at Rose Park in Georgetown for what used to be our regular game of fetch, a ritual that I had missed this last week because of the press of work and the looming danger.
Used to be, this was my hour of calm. Out in the park, in the chill air, with nothing more than a dog who bore a remarkable resemblance to a small golden bear and the distant flicker of television lights in people's windows, all the bullshit seemed to give way to my own clear thoughts. And it was during this time out here when I so often came to realize where I had been and where I still had to go. Perhaps foolishly, I decided on that night to give it another go.
Baker tends to show his emotions more than me, despite his English lineage. As soon as we stepped on the soft grass, he tossed the tennis ball excitedly from his mouth, gawked as it hit my shoes, stepped back four paces, and sat, the look on his face one of unbridled joy at the event that was to come. I wished for the millionth time that I could get as excited about something, anything, as Baker did about shagging down this ball.
For kicks, I sometimes pretended I was playing quarterback for the New England Patriots, directing the team toward victory with my head and my heart. I don't want to throw the term multitalented around too loosely, but let's face it, I'm a full-service guy. On my first throw, he scooped the ball up in his mouth and whipped his head around as if he were breaking the ball's neck, if it had one, which obviously it didn't, but that's not really the point. That instinctual feat accomplished, he tossed it back at my shoes and set out across the field again as I led him by ten feet or so with another perfect throw.
He caught it on the first bounce. Grogan to Vataha. We were quite a team.
Standing there searching for the kind of peace that comes with perspective, I decided to bring a little misery to my night and take a quick inventory of all that was going wrong. I had an enormous story that seemed to be slipping out of my control. I had an anonymous source who might be about to send me on a wild-goose chase or into the throes of danger. I had someone taking an occasional shot at me. I had a fetching FBI agent with wondrous hair and pouty lips showing an inordinate amount of interest in me, though I wasn't yet sure if this comes under what was going wrong or what might be right. Too early to tell which way it was cutting. And I should add, at that moment, I also had an ominous-looking man in a tan trench coat walking purposefully across the otherwise empty field, heading exactly in my direction. I suspected I might soon be adding his visit to my list.
In regards to the approaching man, Baker spotted him just seconds after I did, and, being the faithful protector of all things Jack, bounded angrily across the field, barked loudly, and then grabbed the man's leg, bringing him down in a heap of blood and pain.
Actually, I lie. Baker joyfully trotted up to the guy, dropped the ball at his feet, and stepped back in wondrous anticipation of the throw he assumed was to come. The man kept walking, ignoring him.
"Be careful," I called out. "He's vicious."
"I'll be all right," the man said, getting closer, his voice, familiar, just slightly louder than conversational.
"I was talking to my dog," I said with a shallow laugh.
And out of the dark and into my life once again stepped Kent Drinker, assistant director of the FBI. Coincidence? I wasn't sure.
I added, for no particular reason, "You really should have called ahead and made an appointment. I'm rather busy out here."
"I don't need a whole lot of time," Drinker said.
That was good news. It was Thursday night, the end of a long day, and the dual feelings of exhaustion and uncertainty mingled in my mind and created an uncharacteristic sense of uneasiness, the type of mood when you begin questioning everything you've ever done for reasons that you're unable to fully understand.
I said, flat, "What can I do for you this fine night?"
"I was hoping I might get some help and give some help," Drinker said.
That sounded interesting, though rehearsed. I picked up the ball and tossed it for Baker, then watched his form as he hurtled across the field in pursuit. I turned my gaze to Drinker and regarded him for a moment. He was tall and athletic, with looks that spoke to the word Everyman, or at least to that of an everyday federal agent. He had close-cropped hair that I would bet he cut every couple of weeks. His eyes were gray. My guess is that he lived a spare life of simple pleasures, when he pursued pleasure at all. I'm not sure why, but I pictured his wife as a southerner, probably from one of the Carolinas, old-fashioned bordering on obedient, a stay-at-home mother, as if there was any other choice.
"Everything I have, I think I've given you already," I said. "My impression is that I was a pretty good witness, despite what you might think."
There was a long pause between us, broken only by Baker once again presenting me with the ball, and me once again throwing it.
"Look, I've dealt with reporters before," Drinker said finally. "I suspect you know that already. And I was more than helpful in my day.
I also got more than burned. My whole fucking career got fried. And now I've been given a rare second chance in the bureau. I'm out here doing the best I can. I'm trying to solve a presidential assassination attempt after the Secret Service put six bullets into my prime suspect and rendered him useless to me. And I have you and your paper staring over my shoulder second-guessing me every step of the way, getting in the way of a good investigation."
He paused for just long enough that I thought he was done, then added,
"I need some room. I need some time. And I need some help."
This was curious. I considered his words, then said, "I give you some time and space and whatever help it is you're talking about, what do I get in return?"
"I can help you on this case, just like I helped that reporter out in L.a." only I'm hoping you're a little more loyal, or at least reliable to your sources."
I said, "I think Benedict Arnold was slightly more loyal than the last reporter you dealt with."
He almost smiled in spite of himself. I looked him over for a moment.
Despite my finely honed abilities in the area of character judgment, I couldn't get a full handle yet on Kent Drinker. I wasn't sure if he was driving events in this case, or if the events were driving him, whether he was mishandling the investigation or deftly trying to conceal some larger truth. Not knowing hurt. It left me unsure whether he was friend or foe. I wanted to believe the former. My natural tendencies always caused me to suspect the latter, especially from public officials.
The raw facts were these: he had misidentified the presidential assassin. He had showed an inordinate amount of interest in who had called my hospital room. He had apparently consorted with a militia leader to concoct a story about motive, and then lied to me about it.
About an hour ago, I had learned that he might have lied to me about that militia leader being a paid informant. He had a direct line to the president of the United States. He had iced out even his top subordinate, Stevens, and was seemingly a one-man show in trying to solve the case.
Or trying not to solve it. I didn't know, and thus, my dilemma. And this thought popped into the front of my mind from one of the deep recesses: had he really iced out Stevens, or was I being played for a moron? Wouldn't be the first time, though that's not really the point here.
He kicked softly at a small stone in the field and said, "You drew too hasty a conclusion on Tony Clawson."
"Yeah?" I replied, my tone ranging from disbelief toward the incredulous.
Drinker ignored that and said, "You were right about some parts, wrong about others."
I played this through the journalistic calculator that was my mind.
"Let's see," I began. "Essentially, you publicly named a suspect who didn't even have the same eye color as the guy the Secret Service shot dead at Congressional. Help me out here with what we might have gotten wrong."
He asked, "Can I talk to you off the record?"
This again. I said, "I'd rather talk on the record and keep things on the up and up."
Drinker stayed silent for a moment.
"Once more, I'd like to, but I can't," he said. "I'd be fired in an hour, especially with my history. I want to stress, I have some information that's important for you to know."
Well, I didn't know whether to believe him, believe Stevens, or believe my own instincts, which told me not to believe anyone. The worst he could be doing was lying, so I told him, "Okay, on background, attributable to a law enforcement official."
"No way. There are only about three people who know what I know. I'd be fingered immediately." He paused and added, "My advice would be to take what I have and try to confirm it on your own."
There was a lengthy silence between us as I mulled my options, which were limited in number and scope. The last thing I expected on this night was for Drinker, who I regarded with little more than suspicion, to offer an enduring alliance and perhaps give me my biggest break on the case. Obviously I was wary for every good reason, but it wouldn't serve me well just then to shut him off.
In the quiet, Baker settled down in front of us and chewed on a stick.
I looked up briefly and saw that the sky was now a solid sheet of black.
"All right, off the record," I said.
Without much hesitation, Drinker started talking as if I had just turned on a spout. "We have a fucked-up situation. I'll admit up front, this shooting has nothing to do with the militia. You have us cold on that. And the dead shooter is not the Tony Clawson we offered up in that Home Depot ID, the California drifter. Good work on that, by the way. Sometimes I wish my people were as thorough."
"So you were lying last time when you told me Nathaniel was a paid informant?"
"I was protecting the truth."
I wasn't quite sure how to respond. So I didn't.
He continued, "It's a different Tony Clawson. And it's his background that's so interesting and so potentially devastating, especially to my agency."
Okay, so this was getting better by the syllable. I stayed silent, hoping the dead air would prod him to continue.
He stayed silent too. FBI agents must learn reporter tricks up at Quantico or something. I finally said, "Devastating, how?"
He shook his head purposefully. "Can't go that far," he said. He paused, then added, "Find out who Tony Clawson is, or was, and you'll know exactly what I mean."
Everyone had a suggestion. I thought of the words of the anonymous caller early that morning. Learn about Curtis Black, and you will have dug to the core of this case.
Baker came swaggering over and dropped the tennis ball at Drinker's feet. Drinker looked at me, then picked up the ball, gave it an underhand toss, and said to the dog, "Go get it," as if he needed instruction.
In the momentary silence, the voice of my anonymous source filled my mind again. Nothing is as it seems. A good warning, it increasingly seemed. So the obvious question now, beyond the obvious questions about Clawson, was what in God's name Curtis Black had to do with Tony Clawson.
Drinker turned his attention from the dog to me. "I need to ask you one more time, and I'm hoping you'll decide to cooperate. Who was that on the telephone in your hospital room that day?"
I didn't utter a word. In the void, Drinker added, "Look, I'll admit, we have a full-court press on you in trying to find the identity of your caller. I tried the hard approach. Stevens is trying the soft approach. You've been more than resistant. Here's the truth: I think I know who called you that day. That person's been in touch with you since. That person can screw up this entire investigation and, in effect, screw up the entire story that I'm more than ready to help you with. You help me, I help you, and you'll in fact be helping yourself."
Well, note especially his reference to Stevens, because that's the last clear sentence I heard him say. After that, it was as if I had just been kneed in the gut. So perhaps my first instincts were right: Stevens and Drinker really were in this together, trying to play with my mind. Or perhaps not. My head was starting to hurt. So much for the mind-clearing benefits of my evening dog walk.
I said, "Truth is, I really don't know who was on the phone, and that's all I'm saying about it right now." I regarded this as my best strategy. If I gave up any more details, my value to Drinker would likely lessen, and I'd receive less help. Simple journalist survival skills.
Drinker looked me over carefully. "There's a lot at stake for both of us," he said. With that, he turned around silently and walked back across the field from whence he came, his tan raincoat fading and then melding into the dark of the night. He left behind a couple of questions: Who the hell is this Tony Clawson, and is Drinker as good a friend as he wants me to believe? I knew then that the answer to the former would probably reap the answer to the latter. Now it was just a matter of doing the work.
Boston, Massachusetts February 13, 1979
Curtis Black sat in the front of the van as if he were watching a movie, transfixed by the developments unfolding on the screen. And just like a movie, everything was proceeding as if it were all part of a tightly written script.
The driver stood casually beside the armored Wells Fargo truck as if he didn't have a worry in the world, oblivious to everything going on around him, including Black's attention. He even pulled a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and lit it, took a few puffs, let it fall to the pavement, and stubbed it out under his black shoe. His cohort came from the back of the van, pulled out a dolly, and walked into the Shawmut Bank, where he would collect the day's receipts. If all went according to plan, he should be visible in the door in about seven minutes.
"Be alert," Black said into the small microphone pinned to the wrist of his shirt. Inside the van, the three men crouched against the back door.
Black continued staring out the window. The hazy dusk had grown thick, made to seem even darker by the moonless sky. A mist gathered on the windshield. The streets appeared slick with water, reflecting the glare of car headlights and store signs. All in all, Black thought to himself, ideal conditions for a heist.
Black regarded the armored car driver for a moment. He was about forty-five, maybe fifty years old, ruddy from all that time standing outdoors in weather just like this, stout, boyish, as if his wife made his lunch for him every day and packed it in a brown paper bag. He had big forearms, probably from lifting bags of money back at the warehouse. Imagine that? Black thought to himself. Here's a guy making $10 an hour, and he spends his days lugging other people's money around to the point that it probably hurts his back. Life can be ironic, and irony can be cruel.
Black shot a quick glance at his watch. The guard had been inside the bank for four minutes now. According to the plan, he should be approaching the door in roughly three minutes. Black's three men continued to crouch against the van door.
"Sanchez, come on up," Black said into the microphone.
The driver of the getaway car opened his door and walked up to the side of the van, his ski mask on top of his head like a wool hat, with the part that covered his face not yet pulled down. He stood beside the van, waiting, looking at the ground, concealing his face from any passersby.
And just as planned, the guard appeared inside the door of the bank, pushing a dolly with a duffel bag. He turned around and opened the door with his backside.
"Showtime," Black announced into his wrist. "G."
In a blaze of action, the rear door of the van burst open. The three men jumped out into the moist winter air, their black masks shielding their faces. On the pavement, they fanned out, then sprinted toward the guard at the bank door from different angles. There was to be no mistake: this was a relentless commando raid. Shoot one attacker, and there were still two others to finish the job.
"Freeze," Stemple yelled. The guard jerked his face up and was instinctively reaching for the semiautomatic pistol in his side holster when Rocco hit him with a body slam at full running speed. The guard sprawled out on the pavement, dazed. When he rolled over to get up, Cox was already on top of him, stripping his gun away, then pushing a jackboot down on his throat.
"You even move your tongue and I'll fucking rip your fucking Adam's apple out," Cox seethed. The guard stared upward, helpless and wide-eyed.
Meantime, at the van, Sanchez yanked his mask down over his face and approached the driver of the armored car from behind. His sole job was to immobilize the driver, preferably by putting him in a headlock, and knocking him unconscious with a knee to the face. Black had chosen Sanchez for this role because of his immense physical stature. He was six feet, two inches tall, some 220 pounds of raw muscle, a veritable mountain of a man.
Black watched from the seat of the van as Sanchez headed toward the armored truck at a controlled but rapid clip. He saw the driver reach for his sidearm. Just as the driver pulled his weapon out, Sanchez made contact, grabbing his coat and preparing for the headlock.
It was misting out, and that presented an unexpected problem. The drops of moisture had balled up on the driver's water-repellent jacket.
Sanchez's hands slipped, causing a couple of seconds of uncertainty.
The driver, considerably shorter, squirmed loose. Sanchez lost his balance-not enough to fall, but plenty enough to leave a gaping canyon of opportunity for any decent shot. Barely stopping to aim, the driver fired his gun in the direction of the bandits in front of the bank door, a wild shot but a shot nonetheless. The report felt like an explosion to Curtis Black, the sound echoing off the facades of the ancient stores and carrying down rain-slickened Hanover Street like a rolling ball of thunder.
As Black sat with his panoramic view from the front seat of the van, the moment seemed to freeze before his eyes. Sanchez stood a few feet from the driver, trying to regain his balance. The driver stood with the gun in his hand, taking aim again at the bandits. By the bank door, Stemple and Rocco, grabbing the duffel bag filled with money to lug to the getaway car, had fallen to their knees at the sound of the shot. Cox took shelter by crouching down behind the incapacitated guard.
Any and all semblance of control had been lost. Every minute of meticulous planning had become nothing more than a distant, disconnected memory, irrelevant to the events at hand. Never in the life of Curtis Black had he felt the raw terror he did at this instant, watching his heist spiral out of control, his destiny in the hands of four men he neither knew nor trusted.
He watched as Sanchez regained his balance, then shifted his body weight in preparation to lunge at the gun-wielding driver. On the sidewalk, he saw Stemple and Rocco reaching inside their jackets, though now he couldn't tell who was who. They both wore those ominous ski masks. They were both dressed identically.
"Hold fire," Black yelled into his wrist microphone. "Hold your fucking fire."
Crack.
Another shot, another echo rolling down Hanover Street. Passersby screamed, though Black hardly heard them. They dove behind cars, scattered down the sidewalk like frightened animals. Black scanned the scene frantically, looking for the source of the shot, afraid to know the answer. There was no good answer.
That one second felt like an hour. Black watched in horror as the driver dropped his gun, then crumpled to the wet pavement. Blood began flowing from a grotesque cavity in his neck, the liquid trickling out into a puddle of crimson that formed beneath the man's face. Sanchez stood over him for a moment, looked up at Black in the van, then bolted back toward the getaway car.
Stemple and Rocco ran toward the car with the duffel bag, their bodies slung low to the ground by the weight of the money. Cox crouched down low to the guard, lifted his gun up over his head, and swung it down violently at the guard's face, crushing his nose. He then stood up and sprinted after Stemple and Rocco.
Black flung the driver's-side door open on the van, lowered his head to conceal his features, and raced the ten yards back to the getaway car, where he snapped the rear door open and settled into the backseat.
Rocco and Stemple flung the money into the trunk and got into the back beside him. Cox settled into the front. Sanchez drove. The group squealed away, a tiny band of silence amid so much chaos.
Success and failure. Maybe a million dollars in the trunk. One man dead, five lives in so much jeopardy.
In a parking lot at the end of the Boston Fish Pier, where the group switched getaway cars from the Lincoln to a stolen station wagon, Black paused for a moment in the darkening night.
"Who killed him?" he asked, in something just short of a shout. "Who killed him?"
No answer.
The new driver, who had met them at the pier, took in the scene with panicked eyes. It wasn't supposed to be like this, he knew. The mood was supposed to be one of restrained celebration. It was his job to sweep them quietly out of town.
"What happened?" the driver asked nervously.
No answer. Rather, the men silently but hurriedly folded themselves into the new vehicle, ignoring the question. Stemple paused at the door, turned around, and flung his gun far into the harbor. Black could only shake his head. What was the point now? he wondered.
Would it do any good to merely yell at a man who had just committed cold-blooded murder? Instead, he leaned against a light pole and vomited into a plastic trash bag. His life, he knew, would never be the same.