“Well, after seeing the place firsthand, I believe NIC is capable of pretty much anything.”
“So I take it your looking into that man’s death isn’t going all that well?”
Alex hesitated and then decided it wouldn’t hurt to come clean. He told her about his uncomfortable “chat” with the director of the Secret Service and about being busted back to protection detail.
“I’m so sorry, Alex.” She reached over and touched his hand.
“Hey, I set myself up for it. Gray plays in the big leagues, and having your own partner rat you out doesn’t help. I guess I was outclassed.” He took a drink of his cocktail. “Your martinis are much better,” he said, smiling.
She clinked her glass against his. “I knew I liked you.”
His expression grew serious. “I should’ve stuck to my original plan: with three years to go to finish off my twenty, put it on cruise control and don’t rock the boat.”
“You don’t strike me as a ‘cruising’ sort of person,” Kate replied.
He shrugged. “Look, let’s cut the shoptalk. Tell me more about yourself. That’s what first dates are for.”
She sat back and picked at a piece of bread in front of her. “Well, I’m an only child. My parents live in Colorado. They’ll tell you we’re descended from the Massachusetts Adamses, but I’m not sure I buy that. My dream was to be a world class gymnast. And I worked my guts out for it. Then I grew six inches in one year, and there went that dream. Right after high school I decided I wanted to be a croupier in Vegas. Don’t ask why, I just did. I enrolled in a course, passed with flying colors and took off for Sin City. But it didn’t last too long. I had a teeny problem with drunken high rollers thinking they could grab my butt whenever they wanted. After a few of them lost teeth, the casino suggested I head back East. When I started college, I decided to bartend to pay for it, and then I continued pouring drinks when I went to law school. At least with that occupation you have solid wood between you and the resident animals. And as you deduced earlier, I also play the piano. I earned money teaching it to help pay for school. I don’t need to keep bartending, but honestly I like to. It’s an outlet for me and you meet a lot of fascinating people at the LEAP bar.”
“Gymnast, croupier, bartender, piano-playing defender of truth and justice. That’s pretty damn impressive.”
“Sometimes I think it’s far more dysfunctional than it is impressive. So how about you?”
“Nothing too exciting. I grew up in Ohio. Youngest of four and the only son. My dad was an auto parts salesman by day, but by night he was the second coming of Johnny Cash.”
“Really?”
“Well, he wanted to be anyway. I think he had the largest collection of Cash memorabilia outside of Nashville. Always dressed in black, played a wicked acoustical guitar, pretty good pipes. I learned guitar so I could play with him. We even went out on the road together, playing some of the best hole-in-the-walls in the Ohio Valley. We weren’t great but we weren’t bad either. It was a blast. Then his four-pack-a-day habit caught up to him. The lung cancer took him in six months. My mom lives in a retirement village in Florida. My sisters are scattered around the country.”
“So what made you want to play the human shield?”
Alex took another drink and his look became somber. “I saw the Zapruder film clip of Kennedy’s assassination when I was twelve years old. I remembered thinking that something like that should never happen again. I’ll never forget the image of Agent Clint Hill jumping on the limo, pushing Mrs. Kennedy back into her seat. A lot of people at the time thought she was part of the conspiracy to kill the president, or else condemned her because they thought she was just trying to get away from all the blood on her, even if it was her husband’s. What she was actually doing was trying to retrieve the piece of her husband’s head that had gotten blown off.”
He finished his drink before continuing. “I met Clint Hill at a Secret Service function. He was an old guy by then. Everybody wanted to shake his hand. I told him how honored I was to meet him. He was the only guy to react when it happened. He helped Mrs. Kennedy, and he put his body between her and whoever was shooting at them. I told him if the time came, I hoped I did as well as he’d done. You know what he said to me?”
He looked up to see her gaze directly on him; Kate Adams seemed to be holding her breath. “What did he say?” she prompted.
“He said, ‘Son, you don’t want to be like me. Because I lost my president.’”
There was a long silence and finally Alex broke it. “I can’t believe that I’m sitting here dishing out this depressing crap. I’m not really like that.”
“With the day you had I’m surprised you didn’t bag tonight.”
“Kate, the thought of going out with you tonight was the only thing that got me through today.”
Alex looked a little surprised at the frankness of his words and quickly looked down, studying the exterior of his remaining martini olive.
Kate reached out and touched his hand. “I’m going to further embarrass you,” she said, “by telling you that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
The conversation turned to more innocuous subjects, and time sped by. As they were leaving, Alex muttered an expletive under his breath.
Coming in the door were Senator and Mrs. Roger Simpson and their daughter, Jackie.
Alex tried to duck by but Jackie spotted him.
“Hello, Alex,” she said.
“Agent Simpson,” Alex replied curtly.
“These are my parents.”
Roger Simpson and his wife looked like twins: very tall and fair-haired. They towered over their petite, dark-haired daughter.
“Senator. Mrs. Simpson,” Alex said, nodding at them both. Roger Simpson glared back at him so menacingly that Alex was convinced Jackie must have told him the whole story in her own biased way.
“This is Kate Adams.”
“Pleasure to meet you both,” Kate said.
“Well, take care, Agent Simpson. I doubt I’ll be seeing you around.”
He walked out with Adams trailing him.
As soon as they were outside, Alex blurted out, “Can you believe, of all the restaurants in this damn town—”
He broke off when Jackie Simpson popped out of Nathan’s.
“Alex, can we talk for just a minute?” She glanced anxiously at Kate. “Privately?”
“I’m pretty damn certain we have nothing to say to each other,” he shot back.
“It’ll just take a minute. Please?”
Alex looked at Kate, who shrugged and moved down the street a bit, studying the clothing in a shop window.
Simpson drew closer. “Look, I know you’re upset as hell at me. And you think I ratted you out.”
“Well, you’re batting a thousand so far.”
“It didn’t happen like that. As soon as Carter Gray left us, he must’ve called my dad. Even before he called the president. My father called and gave it to me up one side and down the other. He said I couldn’t let some maverick wreck my career before it even got started.”
“How did the director find out about my ‘old friend’?”
Simpson looked miserable. “I know, that was stupid. My father can be overwhelming. He ground it out of me.” She sighed. “My dad’s one of the most accomplished people you’ll ever meet. And my mother was a Miss Alabama, which makes her a saint down there. So being a simple detective didn’t cut it with them. They wanted me to go into business or politics. I put my foot down and said I was a cop. But they kept pushing for me to go on to a bigger pond. Just to get them off my back, I joined the Service. Dad pulled strings so I got assigned to WFO. His dream is for me to be the first female director of the Service. All I ever wanted to be was a good cop. But for them that wasn’t enough.”