"I had too many doubts," I said. "I admit, I rushed something I shouldn't have rushed."
Havlicek said, in that soothing way of his, "Fuck 'em all. By tomorrow, this is yesterday's news. We're onto even better things right now, and you know it."
I allowed my thoughts to broaden. I asked, half-rhetorically, "What is really going on here? What's this all about?" I didn't wait for an answer before I went on, allowing myself, this time, to become melodramatic. "We have some anonymous source who has told us repeatedly that things aren't as they seem, not to believe what others want us to believe. And now we have a point of fact where he is right, and a pretty fucking big one. The shooter isn't who the feds say the shooter is, at least it doesn't seem that way. So that means the motive may not be what the feds say the motive is. And now we have pretty good reason to believe that the feds have some bizarre, and possibly suspicious, relationship with the militia movement they are accusing of trying to kill the president. So where does that take us?"
"I'll have the cheesecake, some extra strawberries off to the side, and another beer." That was Havlicek, speaking to Carlos, who had appeared at our table amid my monologue. I was about to get aggravated with him for his lack of attention when he cut me off.
"Look back at the Kennedy assassination," he said. "It's almost forty years after the fact, and people are still arguing over who pulled the trigger and for what reason. Now we have another presidential assassination attempt, and it is not unlikely that the same argument could take place all over again. Two big differences here, though.
First, Hutchins wasn't killed, which will make this thing fade into history faster. Second, there was a reporter involved, namely you, who might help answer a lot of these questions before they slip off into some arcane debate among conspiracy theorists. For all we know, there is some mysterious force who tries to knock off our presidents every three decades. Maybe that's what this is all about."
Nothing much to add, and I was getting tired, so I said, in an unidentifiable accent, "Pret-ty strange. I've been out of touch all day. Anything happen in the campaign I should know about?"
"No. Nichols in California, Hutchins in the Midwest. The polls show Hutchins inching ahead, but probably not by as much as Nichols was expecting. The Washington Post had another story this morning on that suspicious real estate deal of Nichols's, though I'm not sure if the public cares. And Nichols has begun pushing for a final debate, probably because he sees the same poll numbers we do."
"You still think Hutchins could have cooked this shooting up?"
Havlicek only nodded. He said, "Don't be out of touch tomorrow, not even for a moment. We don't want to blow a call from the anonymous one. I'm going to write up this autopsy stuff and put it in the paper.
I'm nervous I didn't do it today, but wanted to run it by you first, make sure you didn't have something to add or subtract. This note makes me more confident than ever that we're right, that we're onto something big. I actually called my wife before I came over. I told her I wouldn't be home until after the election. My sense is, this thing gets a lot bigger before it goes away, and we're with it all the way through, me and you."
Samantha Stevens's recorded voice was more inviting than it had been before, and far more inviting, I should point out, than it had been in person. This time, there was a tinge of concern in her tone, as if something were wrong. And the very fact that she asked me to call her whenever I got the message, regardless of the hour, was telling enough.
I sat on my couch and wondered what she had.
It was only 10:00 P.m." and the house felt emptier than I had expected in Baker's absence. First things first. I called Kristen, the dog sitter.
"Hey there," I said, trying to sound charming to make up for the hour and the fact I was about to steal my dog away. "Sorry I'm calling so late, but I kind of assumed you wanted to get rid of that no-good blond guy with the oversize ears you've been sleeping withforthe past few days. Any chance of me picking him up?"
She was typically warm. "If you insist. I was about to head up to the store for a soda. Why don't we meet at the corner of n and Thirtieth in five minutes?"
Next, I dialed up Stevens. Ends up, she had left me her pager number, which was interesting. Even worried FBI agents don't give their home telephone numbers out to key witnesses whom they have an enormous crush on.
Okay, so I made up the part about the crush. But it wasn't one minute before the telephone rang.
"Jack, Agent Stevens," she said.
Agent Stevens. Isn't that precious beyond words? Perhaps I'd like to be identified herein as Reporter Flynn, or Journalist Flynn for all you National Public Radio types.
In the time in which she inspired my disdain, she quickly caught her mistake. "Samantha Stevens," she said, this time in a surprisingly fetching tone. I was quickly over it.
"What can I do for you?" I asked.
She said, in a voice that lacked the familiarity that I was hoping for,
"I'd really like to talk about a few things on this case. Would you be available to get together tomorrow?"
I said, "I've got a ton going on at work, obviously. Not every day presidents get shot in the middle of a campaign. Not every day reporters get shot either, thank God."
Nothing. Not even so much as a chuckle.
"What about tomorrow evening?" she asked.
This threw me off. She urgently needed something. If I were a betting man, I would bet it wasn't me. "That works," I said, sounding somewhat short of decisive for no particular reason. "How about a drink at the bar at Lespinasse, seven-thirty."
"Good," she said. "I'll see you there." She hesitated on the other end, then added, "Jack, can we keep this meeting confidential?"
"My favorite kind of meeting," I said.
I could see Kristen already standing on the designated corner from half a block away. Baker lay on the ground beside her, obviously exhausted by another full day of being a dog. He saw or sensed me from half a block away and pulled his face up off the curb, staring intently in my direction. I called his name softly, and he scrambled to his feet, then ran low and fast toward me, his tail wagging hard all along the way. When he got to me, he urgently ran his coarse tongue over my face in a show of thanks.
"Ahh, a boy and his dog," Kristen said as she came upon our little reunion. "How touching."
I said, "You saved me again. I can't tell you how much I appreciate this."
I handed her a check, which she reluctantly accepted without unfolding.
"I have a hunch I may have to fly out of here again soon on very short notice. Are you around?"
"I'm always around," she said, hesitated, then added, "Is everything all right in the house? You getting used to it again? It seems so, well, bare in there."
"I'm getting used to it," I said. "I suppose I should get used to it, seeing it is my life."
There was silence for a moment, the two of us just standing on a lamplit street corner. After a while, she said, "I miss Katherine."
That thought hung there in the crisp autumn air, adorned only by the gentle rustle of dead leaves and the faraway sound of a car door slamming shut. Kristen had only gotten to know Katherine for a short time. It was all so different then. Katherine and I were squeezing in our last spurts of relaxation before the onslaught of parenthood, flying to Rome for a weekend, to a wedding of a friend in St. John, up to Boston for a party in our honor with family and friends. There seemed to be a constant buzz in our lives, the air of expectation always present, the expectation being that life would always get better, that the very best days still lay ahead.
Kristen may not have known my wife very well, but she knew her well enough, and certainly she saw all this. When she said she missed her, I knew she was sincere.