Quantico Rules

by Gene Riehl

  Lisa slid into my arms and we began to dance. I looked at her, at her hair and her eyes, at the look in those eyes as she put her head on my shoulder. Relax, Puller, I told myself. She works for you. This isn’t what you came here for. There isn’t a single good reason for holding her like this and smelling her hair. No possible good can come of it.

  And other lies.

  I went on like that through the first song, but the second one was even tougher.

  Lover man, oh, where can you he?

  The words wobbled around in my brain, then finished me off.

  I lifted my arm from Lisa’s back and used my hand to pull her face up to mine. I kissed her mouth and she kissed mine. Our arms tightened around each other, our steps no longer keeping time with the music. Suddenly we were leaving the living room, pausing just long enough for her to pick up the second wine bottle and the corkscrew, me the glasses. Moments later we were in her bedroom. She left the door open after we got there. What little light there was from the hallway was more than enough as she led me to the bed.

  “Sit,” she whispered.

  I sat on the edge of the bed.

  She put the wine bottle on the nightstand, grabbed the glasses from me and did the same thing with them, then stood in front of me and unsnapped the fastener on her right hip. Her long skirt slipped to the floor. I looked at her legs, all the way up to her white bikini panties, then down again. I could hear my breathing grow ragged over the music. She reached behind her back and unbuttoned her blouse, shrugged her shoulders until it fell away. Her bra was so white it made the tops of her breasts look tan, even in the middle of winter.

  “Now you,” she said, her voice husky as she pulled me to my feet.

  She undid my belt, unzipped me, and eased my pants down. I stepped out of them and reached for my polo shirt, pulled it off and flipped it into the corner. I reached for my shorts, but she whispered, “Not yet.”

  We lay together on the bed for an instant before I kissed her again, then slid down her neck and kissed the tops of her breasts. I brought my hand up and undid the fastener on her bra. It fell aside. Her breasts were perfectly round, small enough never to sag, big enough to fall in love with. I kissed each of them, all around the nipples, then the nipples themselves. She arched her back, her breathing suddenly faster. I slid down her belly, tugged at her panties with my teeth. She reached down and pulled them aside. I could smell her, and in the next moment I was tasting her. Then I was rising to my knees and pulling her panties down. She lifted her legs and I slid them past her feet.

  “You want to make love to me?” she whispered.

  I’m not sure I said anything intelligible as I tugged my shorts off and did just that.

  We moved together, faster and faster. She came first, a warmth spreading through her body that I couldn’t get enough of, then a single long gasp, a shudder, and a sudden tightening of her arms around my neck. I groaned in the warmth of her breasts, the smell of her body, the taste of her skin.

  Afterward we lay together, our legs entwined, our breathing gradually coming back to normal.

  “Yum,” she said.

  “Indeed,” I said.

  And that was about it for conversation.

  After a while, she looked down my body and smiled. “Goodness, Puller. Is that a dagger I see before me?”

  I looked down, and damned if it wasn’t.

  She slid down my body this time, used her mouth to turn the dagger into a broadsword—a bigger dagger, anyway—and we did it all again.

  This time we did talk afterward.

  She propped pillows against the headboard and we sat together. In an old movie we’d have been smoking cigarettes, but we did just fine with the bottle of wine we’d brought along. I poured cabernet into her glass, then in mine.

  “Do I still have to call you boss?” she asked me.

  “When have you ever?”

  “I was pretty bold. You could charge me with sexual harassment, I suppose.”

  “You could plead insanity.”

  She laughed, kissed my neck. “You think I didn’t intend to get you in here? That you just walked in and swept poor little me off my feet?”

  “Well, I better read you your rights, then.”

  “I demand an attorney.”

  “I’m an accountant.”

  “Close enough.”

  I rose on one elbow. “You have the right to think about me when I’m gone. You have the right to call me up and make me come over here and do this again. You have the right to come to my house and do the same thing. If you cannot afford to get to my house, I will provide transportation both ways.” I leaned closer. “Do you understand your rights?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you waive your rights?”

  She reached down and gripped my diminishing manhood. “I’ve got your waiver right here, counselor.” She gave it a little tug to show she meant business. “And I’m not afraid to use it.”

  “Not the briar patch,” I said. “Please don’t throw me in the briar patch.”

  We laughed hard enough to make us careful with the red wine on the pale yellow sheets.

  Then we tried again, but it was too late and we were too drunk. We gave it our best shot but fell asleep in the attempt.

  The next morning, Saturday morning, we were not quite as giddy.

  I joined her at the kitchen table for coffee. Her eyes were a little slower this morning, too. She’d been thinking, I discovered when she began to talk.

  “Dr. Annie,” she said. “Your veterinarian. Am I getting myself into a problem here?”

  “We lived together for a while. Up to about six months ago.”

  “I’d have to object to that answer as nonresponsive. What happened? That’s what I really want to know.”

  “I’m not sure, Lisa. We just used it up, I guess, whatever we had.”

  Lisa shook her head. “You, maybe. Maybe you used it up, but I saw her the other day when I showed up.” She reached out and touched my hand. “By the way, I’m glad I did show up. The two of you weren’t wearing much clothing. I didn’t like the looks of where that was going.”

  “What about you?” I asked. “You can’t possibly be unattached.”

  “Not unattached, just divorced.” She took a sip of coffee. “Carl’s a Texan. The very idea of moving to Washington sent him scurrying.”

  “Kids?”

  “I had a feeling we shouldn’t have any, not until we’d been married a few years. One of my better decisions, as it turned out.”

  “And what about this decision? What about last night?”

  She smiled. “Not something you’d find in the new agents guidelines, but I can live with it if you can.” She picked up her cup, drank from it. “Can you?”

  I thought about what Annie had told me about my spinning plate, about leaving the security of the post in the center. Right now I could feel my momentum sliding toward the outside of that plate, and it was all I could do to keep from throwing myself to the very edge. Annie was right, of course. For me, life had reduced itself to two stages: on the edge, or waiting to get back to the edge. I looked at Lisa. It was going to be fun out there on the edge with her.

  “I don’t think the office will be an issue, if that’s what you’re asking. You won’t be on my squad much longer, not after the work you did on Brenda Thompson. You’re on the fast track for the Hoover Building, lady. It won’t be long before I’m reporting to you. Before you’ll be the boss sleeping with her tootsie.”

  She grinned. “But I’ll never forget the backs I climbed over to get there, will I?” She touched my hand again, squeezed my fingers. “Trust me, I’ll never forget the little people.”

  “Little person by day, maybe, but by night …”

  She threw her napkin at me. “That’s it. Time for you to go. I know it’s Saturday and I don’t have Brenda Thompson anymore, but I’m still an FBI agent with a boatload of cases. All the Thompson case did is put me further behind. Weekend or not
, I’ve got to get to getting.”

  The old joke is true, the one about the guy fucking himself to death and the mortician needing an hour to get the smile off his face. I sat behind the wheel of my Caprice, leering at the drivers around me as I cruised on down to the office, feeling for the first time in a while like a whole man again.

  I was still grinning when I turned on the Chevy’s AM radio, punched the button for WDC—All Talk, All the Time—and listened to the usual morning roundup of murder and mayhem that passed for news. Still grinning when the announcer turned to news from the White House. Stopped grinning when I heard the name Brenda Thompson. Forgot all about grinning when I heard what he said about her.

  SEVENTEEN

  My cell phone rang before the announcer got all the way to the end of the story. Lisa’s voice was a perfect reflection of my own incredulity.

  “Did you hear that, Puller? Did you hear them say we cleared her?” Her voice rose even higher. “What the hell are they talking about?”

  “Got to be a mistake. Finnerty is always in his office on Saturday. I’ll go see him as soon as I get there, find out what happened.”

  “Not without me, you’re not. My name’s on that report. I’m the one who’ll take the hit when Thompson’s abortion comes out, and you know it will.”

  I didn’t even have to think about it to know how right she was, on both counts. Only ten months into her probationary first year, she could be fired for almost anything, much less a major screwup on a Supreme Court nominee. With her name on the Thompson case ticket, she’d be out on the street in minutes when the judge’s abortion went public. And it didn’t help much to know that I’d be the one standing out there right next to her.

  But that didn’t mean she was going in to see the ADIC with me.

  Kevin Finnerty did not like women, especially women FBI agents. His loyalty to Hoover’s decades-long refusal to admit women was legendary; his disappointment when the Department of Justice finally mandated their inclusion continued to this day. I’d been surprised when he allowed Lisa to take the Thompson case in the first place, I wasn’t about to make it even worse for her by confronting the ADIC in her presence. Finnerty wouldn’t allow it, would use it to sidetrack her career.

  “You can’t come,” I told her. “Don’t bother arguing. I’ll get back to you in an hour.”

  “Damn it, Puller …” She stopped, then sighed. “Okay, okay. I’m leaving the house in a few minutes. You can find me in the squad room.”

  The meeting with Finnerty was a short one.

  “I can’t imagine what you think you’re doing,” he told me when I asked the question. “I told you yesterday how this works, and I don’t intend to go through it again.”

  “It’s my job,” I said. “It’s up to me to—”

  “It’s not up to you to do anything, Monk. I made you a supervisor, but that doesn’t mean what you apparently think it does. Your job is to handle the agents, to make sure they’re doing their jobs, to keep them from screwing up and embarrassing the bureau. That’s all I want out of you. The rest of it is up to those of us who run the place.”

  I stared at him, the back of my neck burning, my breathing turning shallow and rapid. I had the ridiculous urge to leap across his desk and punch him in the nose, but I settled for more words instead.

  “All I’m saying is that this is wrong … that the questions about Thompson, about Brookston and the judge’s roommate’s murder can’t possibly be overlooked.” Suddenly I realized I should never have let it get this far without telling him the rest. “There’s something else, boss. A diary. Jabalah Abahd kept a diary. And there’s a phony FBI agent … a monster. Calls himself Robert—”

  He picked up a pile of papers, hurled it to the desktop.

  “Enough!” he roared. “Don’t say another word!” His rage was so sudden, so complete, I could only stare. “If you’d found something provable you might be right! But you didn’t!” He took a breath and I could see him fighting for control. “What you have is nothing but circumstantial guesswork. Even you can’t be stupid enough to think the White House cares about your speculations.”

  I was on very thin ice now, but I’d stopped caring.

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you! We can’t stop now! If nothing else, we’ve got to go back to the preacher. The man was lying. All I have to do is lean on him.” I lowered my voice. “And that will lead us to the killer … the phony agent … the real story here.”

  “God damn it, Monk!” He reached for the paperwork, shouting again. “It’s a very simple concept! I tell you when to start, I tell you when to stop! What part of that don’t you understand?”

  “That’s ridiculous!” I yelled. “We’re not children you can order around like—”

  His fist crashed down on the desktop, the sound like a rifle shot.

  “Shut up!” he roared. “If you want to keep your job, don’t say another word!” He rose to his feet. “Get out! Get out of my office and do what I pay you to do!”

  I jumped to my feet as well, felt myself starting toward him before I realized what I was doing. I turned instead, strode to the door, yanked it open, and left him alone.

  On the other side, Barbara Perkins was staring at me with wide eyes.

  I advanced on her, ready to open my mouth and yell at someone who wouldn’t be able to throw me out, but I didn’t.

  “That man is a lunatic!” I told her instead, but I didn’t wait for her to respond before I was out the door and on my way down to Lisa.

  “It’s over?” she said after I’d summarized the disaster upstairs. “We just stop?”

  I had to get my breathing under control before I could make myself repeat what Finnerty had told me about that.

  “If we want to work here,” I told her, “we stop. I don’t know about you, but I need this job.”

  “I do, too. We all do, for Christ’s sake! You’re telling me we just forget about it?” Her voice rose. “If we’d known this was going to happen we could have stayed in Brookston until we broke the preacher and came up with the paperwork. I never would have come back here without it.”

  She stared over my head for a moment, breathing even harder than I was now, then swung her eyes back down and glared at me.

  “Damn it, Puller, we can’t just quit! At least let me go back and talk to Reverend Johnson. Let me go down there and beat it out of him.”

  I couldn’t miss the rage flashing in her dark eyes. It was lucky I was a cardplayer. Now I had to say words that made my stomach burn just to think about saying them, but my face would reflect none of the disgust that went along with them. She’d put into her own words my feelings exactly. If there was ever a time to go to Quantico rules it was now, but Lisa couldn’t be allowed to know that. Her future was bright with promise. To get where she wanted to go, she had to learn to accept these kinds of decisions, this kind of failure. Like it or not, fair or not, the Thompson case was over. She had to let it go. We both had to let it go.

  But before I could even begin, she was on her feet and out the door. I waited for her to turn back to me, to tell me she understood, to tell me I wasn’t the bureaucratic prick I sounded like. She didn’t, of course—I’d been a fool to expect her to—and a moment later she was gone.

  I went where I always did when the rage refused to go away.

  Finnerty’s words burned in my head all the way to Pinewood Manor, and I knew why. I’d paid a lot of money to the best shrink in town to tell me. I could almost hear Dr. Suskind’s voice as I drove out to Chancellorsville. It’s not the Thompson case, he would be telling me, it’s not that at all. You knew what Finnerty was going to say before you went in there, don’t pretend you didn’t. You also knew he’d treat you like a child, and you’re behaving like one now. To act like you’re outraged at the way he treats you is a lot worse than childish … it’s just plain stupid.

  Well, fuck you! I wanted to tell my old shrink as I pulled into the parking lot of the nursing home. Fuck
you and the Freud you rode in on. I didn’t need his help to know what I had to do to keep myself from getting even more destructive.

  My father lay asleep when I got to his room. The overhead fixture was off as I slipped through the door, but there was plenty of light coming through the lone window for what I was there to do. I strode to the computer I’d installed on the desk against the far wall, the desk where Pastor Monk spent his days polishing the sermon no one would hear.

  The NFL divisional playoffs had started today, but it was too late to get down on the Saturday games, so I concentrated on tomorrow’s instead. One game in particular, the San Diego Chargers and the Seattle Seahawks. The Seahawks were six-point favorites in Las Vegas, but the Chargers had been my team since childhood, and there was no doubt in my mind they’d cover the spread.

  I hit the power switch and the low-end Compaq whirred to life. It hadn’t cost a lot, the entire setup, but it was only meant to do one thing, get me connected to the Internet, to Sportsman.com, the site I used almost exclusively for betting on sports. They would ask for money, of course, and my latest brand-new Visa card still had a few thousand dollars I hadn’t yet lost.

  I glanced at my father in the bed. Even asleep his face was accusatory. Well, fuck you, too, I muttered, and your own silly rules. I grabbed the Compaq mouse and clicked my way to the link for tomorrow’s Charger game, then threw a thousand dollars at the game.

  I logged off, shut down the computer, and left the room.

  Halfway back to my Caprice, I realized it hadn’t worked.

  I’d done everything I always did when it was important to prove I hadn’t turned into a nutless wonder. More than I always did. A thousand dollars was the biggest single bet I’d ever made on a football game, but the feelings of self-loathing were still there. For the first time it was going to take something more than the sports book to get rid of them.

  I thought about what it was going to take. About Quantico rules.

  About what I had to do to make the ache go away.