State of the Onion

by Julie Hyzy

  CHAPTER 6

  NAVEEN’S NAME SIMMERED ON THE BACK burner of my brain, bubbling around and keeping me from devoting my complete attention to the tasks at hand. After we finished lunch preparations and the waitstaff served it, we started in on the thousand other items that required attention. I went to the computer screen, knowing I needed to put the finishing touches on the ladies-only luncheon Mrs. Campbell would host the following week.

  My alert program reminded me to contact our sommelier. He was prepared for tonight, but he and I needed to chat further about the upcoming luncheon.

  Next week we’d be serving prosciutto and melon, followed by Chicken Maryland. Mrs. Campbell had requested a menu similar to one Mrs. Johnson had served during her tenure as First Lady. I thought about that now as I stared at the screen.

  Security had changed a lot over the years. Before I was born, visitors lined up outside for White House tours, and they were granted free access most mornings each week. Today visitors were required to plan in advance. Submit official requests, provide social security numbers.

  I sighed.

  Naveen was an example of why the rules had changed. And I’d been the one to stop his unauthorized intrusion. Why didn’t I feel better about that?

  Henry meandered by to assure me that he’d look into Peter Everett Sargeant’s dictum. Little did he know that it wasn’t the supercilious little man who’d set me off-kilter—well, not entirely—but the dark intruder from yesterday’s skirmish. I wished I could confide in Henry, but he’d be the first to remind me that my top duty was to the president.

  Tonight, one of the Campbells’ adult children would be present at dinner, and we’d already planned the family favorite—ultra thin–crust pizza. Loaded with artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes, and Italian sausage delivered from Chicago, it was one of our specialties. Cyan was kneading dough even as I tapped at the keyboard.

  Pizza was easy. But planning the next several weeks was more of a challenge. It took the remainder of the day to work out logistics for seven “intimate” dinners of less than ten guests each, four larger affairs with guest lists topping twenty, and three luncheons of varying sizes. I studied diet dossiers, made notes on allergies, and juggled entrée, accompaniment, and dessert choices, until the arrangements lined up perfectly like a culinary version of a Rubik’s cube.

  Twilight kept me company after work as I trudged three blocks to the McPherson Square Metro station. I used the time to check my voice mail. Hearing Tom’s voice cheered me at first, but his message—he’d be tied up but would try to call later—chased away my hopes for a cozy evening. He and I hadn’t parted on the most upbeat of terms last night and I was eager to see him so that we could make things right.

  The stations and the trains themselves were lonely at night. We pulled into Farragut West and I stared out the window—this time of day I rarely had trouble getting a window seat. At the stop, my attention was captured by two Metro Transit Police officers talking with a Middle Eastern man on the platform. He resembled Naveen. Not enough for me to believe it was the same man, of course, but enough for yesterday’s incident to jump once again to the forefront of my thoughts.

  The transit cops seemed to be unruffled, in control, and even as I wondered what their conversation was about, we pulled out of the station, one stop closer to home.

  But…the scene jogged my memory. Tom had said that Naveen was the Metropolitan Police’s problem now. Which meant there must be a record of his incarceration.

  The world whispered by as I put together what I knew.

  A man had been apprehended, running across the White House lawn.

  This same man was apparently on a first-name basis with one of our Secret Service PPD agents.

  The videotape of the man’s transgression, however, hadn’t made it to the news. Not really. What had been offered for the viewing public’s pleasure was a snippet of the scene. Carefully faked. Though obvious to anyone who’d been there.

  I made an unladylike snort, which caused the old man sitting across the aisle to glance over. With a smile to convince him I wasn’t a commuter loony, I continued my musings.

  The Secret Service had been there.

  I’d been there.

  For some reason, the Secret Service didn’t want Naveen’s face broadcast across the country. Why not?

  The people who usually jumped the White House fence were either mentally unstable or on a mission. Naveen struck me as one of the latter. When an intruder was caught inside the perimeter on an unauthorized jaunt, the incident generally ensured him a few minutes of fame wherein he (and it was almost always a male) used his screen time wisely to shout his vital message to a national audience.

  But…

  Naveen hadn’t shouted.

  My cell phone buzzed from the recesses of my purse. A quick glance at the number and I knew Tom had managed a little free time. I was still amazed that I could get service belowground.

  “Hey,” he said when I answered.

  “Hey, yourself. Where are you?”

  “Driving,” he said. A second later I was able to make out the fast-moving car noises in the background. I also heard another voice.

  “You alone?”

  “Nope.”

  I guessed. “With Craig?”

  “You should have been a detective.”

  I laughed at that. Tom and I hadn’t exactly “come out” with our relationship to our colleagues, although a few of the kitchen folks weren’t fooled. I knew Tom’s end of the conversation would be as devoid of identifying characteristics as he could make it.

  “You’re still on duty?” I asked.

  “Yep.”

  “And so you just called to tell me how much you missed me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Because I’m the light of your life and you don’t know what you’d do without me.”

  I could almost see him roll his eyes at that. He didn’t answer as much as grunt.

  “And because you’re so crazy about me,” I continued in a chipper voice, trying to keep the tone light, but determined to press my point, knowing he’d be forced to respond agreeably because Craig was right there, “you’ll tell me more about that faked news broadcast later, right?”

  Dead silence.

  “I’ll call you back later,” he said. And the phone went dead.

  Damn. Sometimes when I pushed my luck it snapped back to bite me.

  I knew there were things Tom couldn’t tell me, and I was okay with that. Keeping things classified was part of his job, after all. Part of his sworn duty. But I also knew that Tom often chose to keep things from me when there was nothing classified about them. He didn’t appreciate the way I analyzed and picked at things until I understood them. I found the process fascinating. He found my doing so annoying.

  Tom was just trying to protect me from too much knowledge, and from knowing things I shouldn’t know. I understood that. But this time it felt different.

  I watched out the window as the train emerged into the evening light at Arlington cemetery. I thought about my dad, and how I hadn’t been out to his grave in a long while. The world was a dangerous place for heroes.

  And then, another thought began to grow and take hold.

  Maybe Naveen really did have an important message for President Campbell.

  Blood rushed from my feet to my face and back down again, heralding a moment of absolute clarity. The look in the man’s eyes when he’d stared up at me hadn’t been the unfocused, crazed look of a lost soul. He wanted to tell me something. He’d said that the president was in danger.

  But Tom hadn’t taken Naveen’s warning seriously. No one had, apparently. The man had been sent to the D.C. Jail.

  My arm reclined against the train’s window frame. Not particularly comfortable, but it gave me the chance to tap my fingers against the glass as I pondered all this.

  Naveen had been willing to talk with me. He’d been about to tell me of the danger when I’d whacked him in the
head.

  I grimaced.

  The train pulled into my station just as I pulled myself out of my musings.

  By the time I made it to my apartment, I knew exactly what I had to do.

  CHAPTER 7

  “I’M TRYING TO GET IN TOUCH WITH ONE OF your inmates,” I said, wondering if that was the politically correct way to phrase it. I held my cell phone in a grip so tight I thought the plastic casing might crack. “I’d like to talk with him.”

  The woman’s flat, capable tone—uncannily similar to that of the dispatcher who’d warned me to stay out of the way yesterday morning—made me wonder if there was some moonlighting going on here. “I’ll need his name,” she said.

  “He was caught running across the White House lawn. Yesterday.”

  “I need a name,” she repeated.

  “Naveen.”

  “First or last?”

  I guessed. “First.”

  “I need the inmate’s last name.” This time the tone wasn’t so flat. I caught a hint of her impatience.

  “It’s…” Shoot. I had no clue. “Well, you see,” I said, “I—he—” My heart raced, making clackety pounds against my ribcage. I knew I was overstepping my boundaries here, knew I had no right to make this phone call. When I first picked up the phone, I’d been nervous. Now I was near panic. I’d foolishly expected my description of “White House Intruder” to be enough to identify him. After all, how many fence-leaping Naveens could there be?

  “Ma’am?”

  “I’m his girlfriend,” I said in a rush.

  Where did that come from?

  “And you don’t know his last name?”

  Thinking fast, I decided to go for ditsy bimbo. “Well—” I began, trying to buy time as I came up with a logical explanation that would still provide the information I needed, “—we haven’t been together very long, and he has a hard name to pronounce. I’d never be able to spell it.”

  The woman’s irritated sigh whooshed over the phone line. It gave me hope. “Naveen,” she repeated, then spelled it.

  “That’s right,” I said, hoping it was.

  With the memory of Craig’s anger crawling along my insides, I paced. I crossed my fingers as I listened, hearing the woman tap computer keys. I sure hoped repercussions of this phone call didn’t blow up on me like yesterday’s call to the dispatcher had. That’s why I’d taken the precaution of the cell phone. The jail’s caller ID, if they had it, would just show up as numbers, and wouldn’t include my name. I was sure the D.C. Jail got hundreds of phone calls for inmates each day. No one would bother to find out who was looking for Naveen. At least I hoped they wouldn’t.

  Another sigh. More clicks.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman finally said. “We have no one in our system by that name.”

  “But, they told me…”

  “I’m sorry. Whoever gave you that information was incorrect. We have no one incarcerated for trespassing on the White House grounds.”

  “I—”

  “Is there anything else?”

  My fingers now uncrossed, I dropped my shoulders. Stopped the anxious pacing. “No. Thank you very much for your time.”

  The logical portion of my brain, which I occasionally suspected occupied less than its allotted half, ridiculed my efforts. What was I hoping to accomplish by talking with Naveen?

  I didn’t know, exactly. I just couldn’t shake the sense that I’d screwed up somehow and I needed to make things right. I certainly didn’t regret playing a part in Naveen’s apprehension, but I did regret cracking him in the head with the commemorative pan. He hadn’t threatened me in any way—in fact, it had been more like he’d been asking for help.

  Resting my butt against my kitchen countertop, I rubbed my eyes. I should just let this go. I knew that.

  But.

  Just a quick Internet search, I told myself. Real quick. If I didn’t come up with anything, I vowed to let it go.

  After inputting countless different combinations of “Naveen,” “White House,” “trespass,” “Secret Service,” “D.C. Jail,” and “Farzad Al-Ja’fari”—the intruder’s name from the newscast—I came up with nothing beyond the broadcast pabulum from the night before. I was just about to try a Google image search when the phone rang.

  “I was just thinking about you,” I said as I picked it up.

  Tom made a noise that was half rumble, half laugh. “Good. I was afraid you’d be sleeping.”

  “But it’s not that—” I glanced at the tiny clock at the bottom of my screen. “Holy geez, it’s almost two.”

  “Yeah, I’m finally off for the night.” He didn’t yawn, but I could hear the weariness in his voice. “Heading home.”

  “I should probably get some sleep, too,” I said. “I have to be up in a couple of hours.”

  “What’re you doing up so late, anyway?”

  I opened my mouth, with no idea how to answer. What could I say? Oh, I’ve been conducting my own investigation—because you won’t tell me anything.

  I hesitated. And, despite being wiped out from his extended shift, Tom unfortunately picked up on it.

  “Ollie?”

  “Just surfing the ’Net. You know how I get sometimes.”

  “What were you looking up?”

  A clock-tick went by.

  “Just…stuff.”

  He made a noise. Frustration, agitation; I couldn’t tell. He knew I was hiding something. That drove me nuts. The few times I’d tried to surprise him—either with a special date or a gift—he always had an inkling of what was coming. Some people might call it a sixth sense, but I knew that Tom was just that good of an agent. He’d been trained to pick up on clues others might miss. Trying to put one over on him was an exercise in futility.

  “What were you looking up?”

  I pushed out a laugh and said, “You caught me.” Using what Tom always told me was the most effective way to lie—the best spies in the world did it—I kept my answer as close to the truth as possible. “I was searching online for news about the guy who jumped the fence.” I left out the little tidbit about calling the D.C. Jail.

  “For crying out loud, Ollie.” A slight scratchy noise over the phone line told me Tom was rubbing his face in frustration. “That’s done. Over with. Case closed.”

  “Did you ever find out what the guy wanted to warn the president about?”

  “We found out everything we needed to know.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that the guy was a loony who jumped the fence just like a dozen loonies do every year. We sent him to the D.C. Jail where he belongs. End of story.”

  I started to protest that Naveen wasn’t in the D.C. Jail, but Tom would want to know how I knew that. I took a different tactic. “What’s his last name?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not finding a whole lot online under the name ‘Naveen.’”

  “Good,” he said. “Let’s keep it that way. Listen, the Secret Service already handled this. That’s what we’re here for. We’ve got lots of experience and we know what we’re doing. It was just bad luck that you happened to be there when the intruder got past security. But…” He slowed his next words down, emphasizing each syllable. “We have taken care of this. We have handled incidents like this in the past. We don’t need help from a White House chef. Understand?”

  I wrinkled my nose at the phone.

  Perhaps sensing that he had come down too hard on me, he added, “Come on, you wouldn’t want me to tell you how to fry a chocolate mousse, would you?”

  In spite of myself, I laughed. “You don’t fry a mousse, silly.”

  “See what I mean?”

  I knew I should just give it up. Heck, I’d done all the investigation I could. I’d attempted far more than I should have and I’d come up empty. Agreeing to let it go kept Tom happy and made me look good, so I had nothing to lose. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll drop it. On one condition.”

  “And what�
�s that?”

  “That if any of this gets resolved, you let me know.” I added, quickly, “Only if it’s declassified, I mean.”

  I heard Tom yawn and stretch. “You got yourself a deal, little Miss Detective. Now, why don’t you get some sleep and I’ll see you tomorrow—er—later today sometime.”

  With a smile, I nodded into the phone. “Can’t wait.”

  WHEN POUNDING NOISES ROUSED ME FROM sleep at four fifteen, I jerked into that startled state of alertness that everyone dreads. It took me several seconds to realize that someone was at my door, and my bleary mind couldn’t fathom the reason for the insistent thumping even as habit sent me scurrying to answer it.

  I had a moment of awareness before throwing open the deadbolt and I remembered to check the peephole first. Tom and Craig stood in the hallway. Craig’s hands were at his side in classic alert stance, his gaze moving back and forth, taking in the length of the short corridor.

  “Ollie, wake up. Open the door.”

  I blinked and looked out the peephole again. “Tom?”

  My voice croaked, but both of them snapped to attention at the sound.

  Tom wore an expression I’d never seen on him before. Well, at least not directed toward me. “Let us in.”

  Fairly confident they weren’t here to shoot me, I swung open the door just as Mrs. Wentworth across the hall swung open hers. Her arthritic hand clawed at the doorjamb as though to steady herself and as Tom and Craig pushed past me, she asked, “Want me to call the police, honey?”

  The two men spun to face my elderly neighbor. She didn’t flinch.

  “No, thanks,” I said, trying to force a smile. “These are friends of mine.”

  They both turned to stare at me, frowning with such obvious effort that for a moment I doubted my own words. My skin sizzled. Could something have happened to Henry?

  “Well, if I find out in the morning that you’re dead, I’m going to give the police their full descriptions.” She brushed at her wispy white hair as she backed into her apartment, raising her voice. “You hear that, you two goons?”