"You want lemon with that tea, Lou?"
"Haw. This's all you do?"
"Well, I teach too. At the military police school at Fort McClellan. In Alabama. Then I'm head of hostage and barricade training at Quantico in the Bureau's Special Operations and Research Unit."
Now Henry LeBow offered an exasperated expression to Potter. The intelligence officer had never heard his fellow agent give away so much personal information.
Slowly Handy said in a low voice, "Tell me something, Art. You ever done anything bad?"
"Bad?"
"Really bad."
"I suppose I have."
"Did you mean to do it?"
"Mean to do it?"
"Ain't you listening to me?" Testy now. Echoing too frequently can antagonize the hostage taker.
"Well, the things I've done aren't so much intentional, I suppose. One bad thing is that I didn't spend enough time with my wife. Then she died, pretty fast, like I told you, and I realized there was a lot I hadn't said to her."
"Fuck," Handy spat out with a derisive laugh. "That's not bad. You don't know what I'm talking about."
Potter felt deeply hurt by the criticism. He wanted to cry out, "I do! And I did feel that I'd done something bad, terribly bad."
Handy continued, "I'm talking about killing somebody, ruining somebody's life, leaving a widow or widower, leaving children to grow up alone. Something bad."
"I've never killed anyone, Lou. Not directly."
Tobe was looking at him. Angie scribbled a note: You're giving away a lot, Arthur.
He ignored them, wiped the sweat from his forehead, kept his eyes focused outside on the slaughterhouse. "But people have died because of me. Carelessness. Mistakes. Sometimes intent. You and I, Lou, we both work flip sides of the same business." Feeling the overwhelming urge to make himself understood. "But you know -"
"Don't skip over this shit, Art. Tell me if they bother you, some of the things you've done?"
"I… I don't know."
"What about them people dying you was talking about?"
Take his pulse, Potter told himself. What's he thinking?
I can't see a thing. Who the hell knows?
"Yo, Art, keep talkin'. Who were they? Hostages you couldn't save? Troopers you sent in when you shouldn't've?"
"Yes, that's who they were."
And takers too. Though he doesn't say this. Ostrella, he thinks spontaneously, sees her long, beautiful face, serpentine. Dark eyebrows, full lips. His Ostrella.
"And that bothers you, huh?"
"Bothers me? Sure it does."
"Fuck," Handy seemed to sneer. Potter again felt the sting. "See, Art, you're proving my point. You've never done anything bad and you and me, we both know it. Take those folks in the Cadillac this afternoon, that couple I killed. Their names were Ruth and Hank, by the way. Ruthie and Hank. You know why I killed them?"
"Why, Lou?"
"Same reason I'm putting that little girl – Shannon – in the window in a minute or two and shooting her in the back of the head."
Even cool Henry LeBow stirred. Frances Whiting's elegant hands moved to her face.
"Why's that?" Potter asked calmly.
"Because I didn't get what I was owed! Pure and simple. This afternoon, in that field, they fucked up my car, ran right into it. And when I went to take theirs they tried to get away."
Potter had read the report from the Kansas State Police. It looked as if Handy's car had run a stop sign and been hit by the Cadillac, which had the right of way. Potter did not mention this fact.
"That's fair, isn't it? I mean, what could be clearer? They had to die, and it woulda been more painful than it was if I'd had more time. They didn't give me what I shoulda had."
How cold and logical he sounds.
Potter reminded himself: No value judgment. But don't approve of him either. Negotiators are neutral. (And it broke his heart that he didn't in fact feel the disgust that he ought to have been feeling. That a small portion of him believed Handy's words made sense.)
"Man, Art, I don't get it. When I kill somebody for a reason they call me bad. When a cop does it for a reason they give him a paycheck and call him good. Why're some reasons okay and others ain't? You kill when people don't do what they're supposed to. You kill the weak because they'll drag you down. What's wrong with that?"
Henry LeBow typed his notes calmly. Tobe Geller perused his monitors and dials. Charlie Budd sat in the corner, eyes on the floor, Angie beside him, listening carefully. And Officer Frances Whiting stood in the corner, uneasily holding a cup of coffee she'd lost all taste for; police work in Hebron, Kansas, didn't involve the likes of Lou Handy.
A laugh over the speaker. He asked, "Admit it, Art… Haven't you ever wanted to do that? Kill someone for a bad reason?"
"No, I haven't."
"That a fact?" He was skeptical. "I wonder…"
Silence filled the van. A trickle of sweat flowed down Potter's face and he wiped his forehead.
Handy asked, "So, you look like that guy in the old FBI show, Efrem Zimbalist?"
"Not a bit. I'm pretty ordinary. I'm just a humble constable. I eat too many potatoes -"
"Fries," Handy remembered.
"Mashed are my favorite, actually. With pan gravy."
Tobe whispered something to Budd, who wrote down on a slip of paper: Deadline.
Potter glanced at the clock. Into the phone he said, "I fancy sports coats. Tweed are my favorite. Or camel's hair. But we have to wear suits in the Bureau."
"Suits, huh? They cover up a lot of fat, don't they? Hold on a second there, Art."
Potter dipped out of his reverie and trained his Leicas on the factory window. A pistol barrel appeared next to Shannon 's head, which was covered with her long, brown hair, now mussed.
"That son of a bitch," Budd whispered. "The poor thing's terrified."
Frances leaned forward. "Oh, no. Please…"
Potter's fingers tapped buttons. "Dean?"
"Yessir," Stillwell answered.
"Can one of your snipers acquire a target?"
A pause.
"Negative. All they can see is a pistol barrel and slide. He's behind her. There's no shot he can make except into the window frame."
Handy asked, "Hey, Art, you really never shot anyone?"
LeBow looked up, frowning. But Potter answered anyway, "Nope, never have."
His hands stuffed deep into his pockets, Budd began pacing. It was very irritating.
"Ever fired a gun?"
"Of course. On the range at Quantico. I enjoyed it."
"Didja? You know, if you enjoyed shooting you might enjoy shooting somebody. Killing somebody."
"Sick son of a bitch," Budd muttered.
Potter waved the captain quiet.
"You know something, Art?"
"What's that?"
"You're all right. I mean it."
Potter felt a pleasing burst – from the man's approval.
I am good, he thought. He knew that it was the empathy that makes the difference at this job. Not the strategy, not the words, not the calculation or intelligence. It's what I can't teach in the training courses. I was always good, he reflected. But when you died, Marian, I became great. I had nowhere for my heart to go and so I gave it to men like Louis Handy.
And to Ostrella…
A terrorist takeover in Washington, D.C. The Estonian woman, blond and brilliant, walking out of the Soviet embassy after twenty hours of negotiating with Potter. Twelve hostages released, four more inside. Finally she'd surrendered, come out with her hands not outstretched but on her head – a violation of the hostage surrender protocol. But Potter knew she was harmless. Knew her as well as he knew Marian. He'd stepped unprotected from the barricade and walked toward her, to greet her, to embrace her, to make sure that when she was arrested the cuffs weren't too tight, that her rights were read to her in her native language. And he'd had to endure the copious spatter of her blood from the sniper who shot her in the head when she pulled the hidden pistol from her collar and shoved it directly toward Potter's face. (And his reaction? To scream to her, "Get down!" And fling his arms around her to protect his new love, as bits of her skull snapped against his skin.)