by Bob Graham
“Carol.”
“Near the end of July, if memory serves, you had ridden her hard and she was pining for you to saddle up again. Did I miss something?”
“Same problem we had to begin with, I think. She’s pissed off because I didn’t pay enough attention to her the next few days, didn’t tell her I was going to San Diego, didn’t break what was left of my dick to finish a project she gave me.”
“Hurtful, very hurtful,” Mark consoled. “But you won’t make any progress in your love life if you lay it—so to speak—on her.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You just ate her up in bed. So she thought you actually were crazy in love with her. Then you got what you wanted and ... Verdad, amigo?”
“You’re right. I’m a jerk. So what do I do now?”
“Well, let us give this some consideration, my boy. Is there anything you’ve noticed about Carol that could be a clue?”
“I don’t think so. Everything about her’s a mystery. Like why someone who has a rose tattooed on her boob was so old-fashioned about sex.”
“Okay, so she’s a girl of contradictions. That’s sexy in and of itself. Who, or what, does she most care about, excluding you, of course?”
“Nothing materialistic that I can see. She’s a pretty simple Tennessee country girl. There’s almost nothing in her style you would call fancy or even sophisticated.”
“Then what’s the one thing that most stands out in your mind about the way she dresses, carries herself, or the way her apartment’s decorated?”
“I like the way she dresses. It shows off her body well, but only in a classy way.”
“What about where she lives?”
“The one thing that stands out in her apartment is that nothing stands out ... except, except, a framed photograph of herself, an older couple, and a young girl.”
“Any idea who they are?”
“I’ve assumed the couple was her parents. I have no idea about the girl; could be a niece.”
“Whoever, it must be somebody Carol cares about. She wouldn’t have her picture with her parents padded with a child who wasn’t special. Tony, why don’t you do an end run? Instead of a gift for Carol, get something for the girl. It just might lead her to give you a second chance.”
“Hell, my tactics haven’t worked, so I might as well try yours.”
On the way to the Truman Building, Tony was pondering what that personal something should be. He thought he was good at a lot of things, but playing Romeo was not one of them.
As he was leaving the building at 5:30, he had a thought.
He walked up 17th Street to a jewelry shop he’d passed on his way to work but never stopped in. Browsing over the counter he saw a golden pendant like the one his younger sister used to wear. It was embossed with a single word: “Love.” The gold was real and the cost more than Tony would normally consider, but this situation called for extreme measures.
Back to the Truman garage before 6:30, he drove faster than usual through the early evening traffic to Carol’s apartment building. He considered calling her on his cell, but reviewed his strategy and decided to proceed unannounced.
At Carol’s’ front door he gently wrapped with his signature two shorts, pause, and a final short. No Carol. Tony rang the unit buzzer once, twice, a third time. No Carol.
Turning to leave, he almost fell into her, her arms filled with grocery bags.
“Well, and to what might I attribute your being here?” she asked.
“I missed your birthday party; the invitation must have gotten lost in the mail. So I came a couple of days late, just to show my respects.”
“You lied last week and you’re at it again.”
Tony felt his tension rising. “Come on, Carol, I told you I was an asshole. What more do you want me to do?”
Across the hall the door to Apartment 444 opened. A man in his sixties looked out, scanning Tony with a disapproving stare.
“All I want you to do is leave,” Carol enunciated each word distinctly. She placed the bags on the floor and turned to unlock the door.
With the door opened she stooped to pick up the groceries. Tony grabbed three of the bags. With a slight stumble on the entrance throw rug, he came in after her, bumping the door shut with his behind.
The occupant of 444 muttered and shook his head, turned from the hallway to his apartment.
Inside, Carol ignored Tony as she placed the groceries in the woodpaneled kitchen cabinet and the Maytag fridge. Then she turned to Tony, still standing by the door.
“Well, that was a nice performance for the neighbors. It’s probably the most action the old geezer has seen since he moved here.” Carol’s eyes glared. “Now get the hell out of my place.”
Tony took a step toward her. “For Christ’s sake, give me a second chance.”
“I did; that was our performance in the shower. And then, once you satisfied yourself, you started ignoring me again.”
“I wasn’t ignoring you, Carol.”
“Well, you can see how I might mistake it for ignoring me. Most girls consider not calling the next day after first sex to be ignoring, but—”
“I have a present I would like to give you; for someone I think you do care for deeply.”
Carol was silent. She looked at him warily. Tony went to the coffee table and reached for the photograph of Carol, the elderly couple, and the young girl. From his inside coat pocket he extracted a small square box wrapped in gold paper, secured by a red ribbon and bow.
Turning the photograph to Carol, he said, “I don’t know who this girl is, but she must mean a great deal to you. This is a gift for her. I hope you’ll accept it.”
Carol removed the wrapping and opened the lid of the box. Upon seeing the pendant, her eyes moistened and tears began to form.
Tony reached out and embraced her. With no reserve, she clung to him, dampening his blue shirt collar.
She slowly pulled away and moved toward the bathroom. Tony had an erotic urge as he watched her from behind. In ten minutes she returned, her eyes still reddened but otherwise collected, her face clean and dry. “My choice is to eat alone or with you. If you don’t mind ham and sweet potatoes, I’ll give you a little bit of another chance.”
As they sat on the sofa together, Carol reached out to hold Tony’s left hand. “That was very thoughtful. Whatever its inspiration, you could not have touched me more.”
“Since it was the only picture in the apartment, I assumed the girl must have a special place in your heart.”
Carol used the remainder of a bottle of pinot noir with dinner, and afterward opened one of Graham port she had bought with no special purpose in mind. The hallway confrontation, even the three weeks in the cold, began to fade. They embraced, fondled. Tony rose, pulled her up after him, and guided her to the bedroom.
More than an hour later, Tony was asleep, Carol savoring their reunion lovemaking. Tony awoke and turning toward her, spotted the rose, the only interruption to her lithe nude body.
“Tell me about it,” he whispered, circling the area with the tip of his finger.
He thought he sensed her wincing, but then she moved the rose to Tony’s lips. He nuzzled, kissed, and touched it with his tongue.
“This is part of my life I want you to know; that I didn’t want you, or anyone, to know before. It will explain why what you did tonight was so special.”
Carol leaned back on her pillow, her left hand stroking Tony’s sinuous hairless chest. “I grew up in Spring Hill, Tennessee. When I was young it was the typical quiet southern town, with traditional values and expectations. For a girl, that meant being good in the Biblical way, graduating from high school, marrying a star of the football team, and having lots of babies.”
“That doesn’t sound much different from Hialeah.”
“Well, Spring Hill changed when I was in junior high school. My daddy, who had worked on his father’s farm, got a job at the new Saturn plant. We had some money for
once and a new car, a Saturn of course. I began to run with a faster crowd—lots of them had come from out of town for work. I had my first love with a boy six years older than me. He was James Dean handsome and played lead guitar in a punk band. He owned me.”
Tony placed his head next to her left breast. “We did some wild things together,” she continued. “One night after a gig that had more pot than music, and while we were stoned out of our minds, we had the same rose tattoo—he on his chest, mine ... here. When I woke up the next morning, I saw it and prayed it would go away.” She rotated slightly so Tony was only an eyelash away from the rose. “The tattoo isn’t the only result of this wild period. By the time I was eighteen he made me pregnant. I didn’t know what to do. He told me that if I didn’t get an abortion, he would leave me forever. My father said killing babies was against God’s word. I had the baby. She’s the little girl in the picture—when Suzie was five.”
“What happened to her father?”
“He did what he said he would. He left. I had been accepted at Middle Tennessee; my dad had saved enough to pay to send me. I skipped the first semester to be with Suzie, then left her with my parents, who loved her to death, just like she was their child. I was really sad when I got there—Prozac sad. I was thinking of Suzie all the time, couldn’t concentrate on my studies, and the thought of going out with boys disgusted me.”
That explains a lot, Tony realized.
“Anyway, by the second year I met a young female accounting professor. I had always been good at math; she took me on as a project, and five years later I had an accounting degree and passed the CPA exams. I got a job with Price Waterhouse in Charlotte. When I was thirty-two I got the chance to come here to Treasury, which takes me up to the Marine Corps Marathon and meeting you.”
“How often do you get to be with Suzie?” Tony asked.
“As often as I can. She’s almost as old as I was when I went wild, and I don’t want her to relive my mistakes. But I know I can’t be a single mom with what I’m doing here.”
She slipped out of bed and headed toward the bathroom. Carol returned in cotton pajamas and slipped back in the sheets.
“OK, I’ve just given you my life story. I’m really not interested in yours, at least not tonight. What I do want to know is what you’ve found out about the DOJ investigation.”
“I tried to get some information from Ben Brewster, but he stonewalled. I expect to be following up on Billington’s leads in Riyadh and Kuala Lumpur as soon as I can get there, whenever in hell that will be.”
Carol pulled her legs up to her chin. “Do you see any connection to what I’m doing with BAE?”
“Not yet.”
Carol flipped off the nightstand lamp. “We’ve had enough for tonight. You can stay or go; your choice.”
SEPTEMBER 1
Belle Glade, Florida
Francois Malaux had taken the opportunity afforded by the Labor Day hiatus from his work preparing sugarcane fields for the next year’s crop to spend some time fishing with his son. With eight-year-old Alain, he stood on the bank of the main drainage canal linking eastern Lake Okeechobee to the Atlantic Ocean.
Summer was well settled over south Florida. Francois’s green T-shirt was soaked through, and even his toughened bare feet stung with the heat of the limestone embankment. All father and son had to show for the first two hours were a batch of hand-sized bream and a single smallmouth bass. They tried a new spot a hundred yards to the west.
Alain arched his cane pole with a sideways sling. The hook, followed by the sinker and bobber, plopped into the still, murky black water. When the bobber was floating on the surface, he felt a twinge. As his father had taught him, he jerked the pole upward to set the hook. It bent almost in half.
“Daddy, Daddy, I have a really big one!” the boy exclaimed. Pulling the pole in all directions, Alain was unable to raise the catch. The line was stretched tight.
“Hold down, Alain,” his father cautioned. “We’ve lost four lines already and we’ll be headed home if this one goes.”
He took the pole and manipulated it in a more cautious, controlled manner. Frustrated, he said, “It’s stuck, maybe under a rock. I’ll try to get it unstuck.”
Francois cleared his pockets, making a neat pile of his wallet, coins, and a full pack of cigarettes. Wading into the canal, he followed the path of the line. He reached down, then submerged, disappearing from his frightened son’s view. He came up again, shaking the water from his near–shoulder length hair. He shouted with a grin that exposed his pearl white front teeth, “It’s a truck you caught! It won’t taste too good, but it did give up your line.”
Disappointed by their bad luck, they sat by the edge of the road. After a few minutes, they saw a Florida Highway Patrol car in the distance from the west. Waving it down, Francois led the trooper to the site of the sunken vehicle. The young trooper asked for the cane pole.
Taking off his patent leather shoes and rolling up his taupe uniform pants, he swashed into the canal almost up to his knees. Poking and maneuvering with the pole, he pinged the object below the surface, feeling out its surface and shape.
Returning to shore, he said, “Yeah, it’s a truck, all right. I’ll call the station and ask them to send a dive team and a wrecker. This sure as hell isn’t the way you want to end a holiday weekend.”
Francois nodded and told his son to collect their gear.
It was almost dark when a highway patrol SUV arrived with three men.
“Sam, Randy, suit up. We’ve only got half an hour of light, so scout it out for any human remains,” instructed Walter, the crew chief.
Sam and Randy stood on the side of the vehicle screened from traffic as they stripped to their Speedos and pulled on black wet suits.
With Walter’s assistance they attached and tested the regulators and shoved their feet into cumbersome, tightly drawn fins. With Sam leading the way, they trundled down the incline and into the water, then disappeared, a trail of bubbles marking the path to the submerged vehicle.
Less than ten minutes later, they reemerged from the dark water.
“Well,” Walter called out, “what did you find?”
Randy answered, “There’s no body in there. Best I could see, it’s a Ford 150 and looks as if it’s been here for a while.” He held up a webbed sack. “I was able to get this out of the glove compartment.”
On the embankment, Walter opened the sack. Out fell a flashlight and, in a plastic bag, a wad of papers and a cardboard box partially filled with .45 caliber bullets.
SEPTEMBER 4–6
Washington, D.C. ☆ Minneapolis ☆ Airborne, JFK to Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
At last, the summer was giving way to the first signs of fall. The Redskins would open the season on Sunday. The sidewalk in front of Tony’s townhouse, which since Memorial Day had been crowded with Capitol tourists, was back to the regulars. As had been true since Genghis Khan, in Afghanistan the warriors were preparing to retreat from the field to the cave for the winter.
When he reached his desk at 8:40, Tony found a note from Ms. Wilkens.
Mr. Ramos, your application for personal leave has been approved by Ambassador Talbott. He has directed that you submit a detailed itinerary of your travels, including contact points throughout. The Ambassador wishes to see you at ten o’clock.
Florence Wilkens
The good news was marred by Ben Brewster. He leaned his bulbous body around the doorjamb like the jowls of a pig into a trough. The button above his belt buckle had come undone, exposing a wad of hairy fat.
“Get your fat ass out of my office,” Tony ordered. “I’m going to be away from you for two weeks and I’ve got work to do.”
“I promise you this won’t be a Cuban joke, as much as you like them. In fact, I’ve got some advice for you.”
“I can only imagine. Have a seat, but don’t get used to it.”
The standard GSA office chair secured Brewster’s core with a substantial pe
rimeter hanging over. “I understand you’re going to Saudi Arabia to try to get the answers to some questions for the late Senator Billington.”
Tony suddenly looked up. “How do you know about that?”
Brewster dismissed the question with a wave of his hand. “We’re in the intelligence business, remember? Anyway, I know that territory like you do Afghanistan. My advice: stay home.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Tony said, still shaken that Brewster knew about his trip. “Next piece of advice?”
Brewster leaned back. “At least listen to what I have to say. First, it’s dangerous as hell.”
“Do you think Afghanistan is Disney World?”
Brewster’s voice rose in register and urgency. “Going on a personal mission means going without diplomatic protection. If you get crossways with the Saudis, it’s likely your handsome head will be separated from your studly body. Think of all the female broken hearts when that happens.”
“I’d rather not, but que será será.”
“Second, you are not going to learn anything. The 9/11 Commission looked into all of Billington’s fantasies and rejected them. They hardly got a footnote in the final report.”
“Billington put that in the same bucket as all the other cover-ups orchestrated by the White House.”
“Third, if there is anything to be learned, you won’t do it as a lone ranger. Billington’s interpretation of the events leading up to and surrounding 9/11 made a lot of official people uncomfortable, and since most of the ambassadors in that part of the planet are political appointees, not only won’t you get any help, they’ll be trying to take you out with their own version of a roadside bomb.”
Tony recalled the same caution from Senator Stoner.
“Benny Boy, though you might find the premise difficult to swallow, I’m no fool and I know what I signed up for.”
“My last shot is out of concern for my old and dear friend, you.”
“This one I’m really anticipating.”
“And I hate being called ‘Benny.’”
