Asaad checked the “package.” It was not really necessary, but he was trained to be a professional and leave nothing to chance. He performed the checkout for the hundredth time and found all the elements in their proper and ready state. He proceeded into the deep room to join his clean-shaven team for afternoon prayers.
Joey Palumbo was reviewing the stuff in his overnight in-box between sips of herbal tea instead of the usual morning coffee that was killing his stomach lately. He hoped to delay the ulcer he was working hard to have just one day farther into the future. Having been added to the very tightly controlled distribution list on all “Homegrown” traffic, he was more than interested in the report he held in his hand. It seemed the Madison PD received an anonymous e-mail from someone who knew Martha Krummel’s computer was now in the hands of the authorities. That in and of itself was unsettling. The e-mail reffered to a Sabot Society but fell short of taking credit for the recent wave of events. The most interesting part of the message, which prickled his cop’s nerve endings, indicated that this would not be the last: “Furthermore, for purposes of verification, this and all future Sabot Society communications would carry the code word “ultimate.” Palumbo picked up the phone to dial Billy Hiccock, but thought better of it. He called the Washington headquarters of the FBI instead.
Tyler seemed to love her Tandoori Chicken and Hiccock was working his Lamb Biryani. One of their evolved passions was Indian food — that still cracked up Bill, considering that Janice almost kicked him out of her office the first time they met just because he had it for lunch — and now they were dining in the best Indian restaurant in D.C. He popped his finger into a properly puffed poori, the steam inside escaping from the hollow bread made the same way it had been for dozens of centuries.
Hiccock was a little depressed and Tyler obviously noticed. “Wanna talk about it?”
“No,” he muttered as he ripped off another piece of steaming bread. “It’s just that, well, I really don’t have a clue about what the hell I’m doing. What makes me think I’m right and Tate and the entire national security system is wrong?”
“I didn’t think it was about that.”
“What did you think it was about?”
“I thought you were just investigating the possibility that you could be right.”
“So you’re saying that they are not mutually exclusive conclusions?”
“Yes, I know what you, what we, are doing is applying scientific methodology to a case that has more than one connection with science.”
“So you’re saying it’s not necessarily me against them. I just happen to represent a different set of assumptions than theirs.”
“Exactly.”
She watched him as he pondered this way of thought for a second and then shook his head. “No, no, nothing scientific about it. I wanted to cream that bastard at the FBI. This is personal!” Hiccock noticed the hint of a smile on Tyler’s face. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Manipulate me like that?”
“Was I manipulating you?” Her eyes couldn’t have appeared more innocent.
He nodded then tried a little reverse psychology of his own. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”
“Yes?”
“I think that you have been doing a great job.”
“That’s very nice of you to say.”
“Well, I know what it’s like to work under someone who never acknowledges your contribution.” Hiccock let it hang.
“How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Compliment me and insult me in the same breath,” Janice, Bill’s former boss at school, said.
“Was I doing that?” Bill said, certain his eyes couldn’t have appeared more innocent.
“Okay, truce!”
They both focused on their plates. After a minute, Janice looked up. “Do you trust your FBI friend?”
“Joey? Sure. Why do you ask?”
“Well, today when I left the Electronic Crime Lab, I walked to the Psychological Profile Division. I attended a seminar last year with the assistant there, Helen Davis, and I went to look her up. When I entered the office, she immediately closed a file marked ‘Homegrown.’ She seemed to know I was working with you. She was pretty closemouthed.”
“Like she was ordered not to divulge squat to you?”
“Yeah, squat, that was the word I was looking for.”
Hiccock glanced away for a second, then rejoined Janice’s gaze. “You think this ‘Homegrown’ file is about what we are investigating?” He slammed his hand down on the table and spilled the tamarind sauce in a shallow plate. People near them turned toward the table. “Of course it is! Damn. We were supposed to share information.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going to kick Joey’s ass.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Frozen for all eternity with his right arm fully extended, forever warding off would-be tacklers, as the ball is clutched tightly in the left, torso twisted mid-sidestep, was the figure atop one of the many football trophies that lived on a glass shelf in William Hiccock’s apartment. Their only human contact now was when Mrs. Phelps dusted them every so often. Wild Bill barely paid them any notice any more. His Heisman Trophy was not the first won by a player from Stanford. That path had been cut by Jim Plunkett. Nevertheless, this trophy along with other prizes stood guard to his illustrious past, a history of his glory days in gold, brass, wood, and chrome.
The kid with the golden arm was asleep in his armchair, the TV flickering in front of him. His sleepless nights and stress over the lack of progress in the investigation were taking their toll. The remote fell from his hand, awaking him startled. In a groggy haze, with one eye open and the other closed, he checked his watch. As he rubbed the sleep from his face with one hand, he searched the floor for the remote with the other. Finding it, he pointed it at the set, about to shut it off when he was caught up in an old black-and-white film on TV. A clichéd old Viennese music professor, replete with little white goatee, was giving a young girl a piano lesson.
“You see, the spaces between the notes are as important as the notes themselves. Now once more, only let the notes ‘breathe’ this time. Feel the rhythm left by the spaces.” The actor recited his line with an accent, probably his own from Germany, but being pawned off as Austrian to the movie-going public of 1940 or so. The professor’s lesson for the day was not lost on Hiccock. As the young girl tickled the ivories on her way to Mozartville, Hiccock picked up the phone and punched in a number he knew well, thinking, the spaces between.
“Like this, professor?” the young actress, destined for anonymity in later years, asked as she precisely paced each note.
Ten minutes later he was in the shower when the cordless phone he left on the bathroom sink started to ring. His wet hand reached out from behind the glass shower door to pick it up.