Still slouching in the booth, I vacillated: On the one hand, I wanted them to leave immediately; on the other, I wanted them to keep arguing—from the beginning, guys! — so I could figure out what they were talking about. Across the room, I noticed the waitress clearing a table; she glanced in my direction, and I felt a jolt of panic. If she came over now — offering a refill of juice, or asking why I wasn’t eating — she’d blow my cover. Not now, not now, I telegraphed her, carefully avoiding eye contact.
“You sanctimonious sonofabitch,” the stranger was rasping. In my mind’s eye, he was fat and sweaty, his words struggling to burrow out from within a mountain of flesh. “You wanna know why we lose more agents than the Bureau? I’ll tell you why. It’s because you guys are going after pussies — embezzlers and secret sellers and kiddie-porn perverts. Pussies. Meanwhile, we’re out there waging war. With the worst motherfuckers on the planet.”
“Are you?” Prescott’s voice dripped with sarcasm. I couldn’t tell if he was questioning the badness of the enemy, or the totality of the war effort.
“Damn right we are. And we’re doing it with a fraction of the money and manpower you necktie-and-cufflink office boys get.”
“You’re breaking my heart,” Prescott sneered. “Poor, pitiful you. Now if you’re through whining, I’ve got work to do before we climb that mountain tomorrow and pick up the pieces of this operation.” He walked away, his heels pummeling the tile.
“Prick,” muttered the other man. I heard him turn and trail Prescott out of the IHOP. As his footsteps neared the front door, I risked raising up to take a look. I got a fleeting glimpse of a man who was short and fat, his hair a graying, greasy shade of red. From behind, at least, he looked as repulsive as he sounded.
I looked down at my plate. The now soggy waffle was surrounded by a moat of cold egg yolk, and the strips of bacon gleamed dully through a varnish of congealed grease. I pushed the plate away, my appetite killed by disgust. Or was it by fear? As I pulled out my wallet for the reckoning with IHOP, I couldn’t help wondering what other reckonings awaited, and what the hell I’d gotten myself into.
I stepped out into the night — still warm, but not unpleasant. Eighty-five degrees in the sauna-dry foothills east of San Diego was a different animal from eighty-five degrees in the steam bath that was East Tennessee. It wasn’t that I didn’t sweat here, I’d noticed; it was that the sweat evaporated almost instantly, cooling the body a bit without drenching the clothes entirely.
“How was your dinner?” The voice came from the darkness behind me.
“Crap,” I exclaimed, jumping with surprise. Again I recognized the voice as Prescott’s, and I turned toward it. He was leaning against the IHOP’s wall, waiting for me. “You scared the bejesus out of me.”
I expected him to say that he didn’t mean to; instead, he repeated, “How was dinner?”
“Kinda meager,” I said. “I ordered a lot, but I only ate one bite. It was a big bite — my mouth was too full to say anything when I heard you behind me — but I’m not sure it’s gonna tide me over till breakfast.” I looked at him more frankly now, embarrassed to have been caught, but relieved not to be keeping secrets. “You knew I was there the whole time?”
“Just about.”
“How? I didn’t think you guys could me see over the back of the booth.”
“Couldn’t,” he said. “I noticed your reflection in the window. Hickock never did.”
“Hickock’s the pissed-off guy?”
“You might say that. Wild Bill. He was in the middle of his tirade when I spotted you. If I’d cut him off — if he’d known we had an audience — he’d’ve gone ballistic. At me and you both.” He shook his head. “No point in that.”
I nodded. “Well, thanks. Sorry I was sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time. Didn’t mean to put you in an awkward spot.”
“You didn’t. From what I hear, you’re one of the good guys. Besides, Hickock and I should both know better. Talking business in public? I oughta rip myself a new one for that.”
I remembered old national-security posters I’d seen from the early 1940s. “Loose lips sink ships?”
“Sounds corny, but basically, yeah.” He nodded across the parking lot, to the black Suburban under a streetlight, its back window thick with dust. “Come on, I’ll give you a ride home.”
“Thanks, but I’d kinda like to walk.”
He frowned. “You carrying?”
“Carrying? You mean a gun?” He nodded, and I shook my head. “Heavens no. I’ve never owned one.”
“Let me give you a ride, then. This ain’t exactly the tourist district, Doc. You might get robbed; you might get mistaken for a robber. Either way, you wander around here after dark, you’re liable to get shot. Or stabbed. Or worse. Not good for either of us.”
“Since you put it that way,” I said, “thanks.”
In the privacy of the Suburban, I figured he’d tell me at least a bit about the raspy-voiced man, and about their argument, but he didn’t. Instead, during the brief drive, he asked about my research at the Body Farm, then quizzed me about a couple of prior cases I’d helped the Bureau with. It was obvious that he was redirecting the conversation away from the confrontation I had stumbled into. It was also, perhaps, a reminder that he had done his research, had read the Bureau’s file on me. It might even have been a subtle caution: If I wanted to keep working with the FBI, I should keep quiet about what I’d overheard tonight. As I thanked him for the lift and headed toward my room, I parsed the conversation — the things he’d said and the ones he hadn’t. Loose lips sink ships, I reminded myself. And maybe crash careers.
Chapter 10
The trouble with graduate assistants, I’d noticed — well, one of the troubles — was their tendency to go gallivanting off every summer: for gainful employment, for adventurous travel, or for romance. My current assistant, Marty, was helping direct a student dig in Tuscany for three months, and judging by the letter and photos he’d sent in early June, he was getting both well paid and well laid. Not that I was envious.
What I was, though, was inconvenienced. I had a question that needed researching, but no time or tools to research it myself — and no helpful minion at my beck and call. So instead, despite the late hour, I called Kathleen.
It was only 8:45 in San Diego, but it was nearly midnight in Knoxville, and that meant Kathleen had probably been asleep for at least an hour. To my surprise, she answered on the second ring. Her voice sounded thick, but not sleepy.
“Hey,” I said, “is something wrong? Are you crying?”
“Oh, I am,” she sniffled, “but it’s just a movie I’m watching.” In the background, I heard voices and music. “Hang on, honey, let me pause it.” She laid the phone down with a rustle, then the background noise quieted. “You know I don’t sleep worth a hoot when you’re gone,” she said, “so I stopped at Blockbuster on the way home.”
“I’m jealous. What’d you get?”
“One of those chick flicks you wouldn’t take me to.”
“Silence of the Lambs?”
“Ha. Not quite. Shakespeare in Love.”
“I take it back,” I said. “I’m not a bit jealous.”
“Actually, you’d really like the scene where he’s in bed with Gwyneth Paltrow.”
She knew me well. “Well then,” I said, “when I get home, we can rent it again and fast-forward to that part.”