I bring this up because as I stepped off the American Airlines flight from O'Hare to National at 8:30 P.m. Saturday and headed outside for a cab, a familiar female voice said from behind me, "Come here often?"
I turned slowly, not wanting to make a general jackass out of myself in case, as I suspected, the woman was actually talking to someone else.
There, walking two paces in back of me, was Samantha Stevens, special agent with the FBI.
"Only when I travel," I said. She flashed me a plastic smile and I asked, "You pulling into town or heading out?"
"Neither. I came to give you a lift." I must have looked a bit startled because she said soothingly, "I'm going to buy you dinner, whether you want it or not."
In fact, I did, even if she may have been the last person I expected to see, making the last offer I expected to receive. It seemed like a good idea. My mind was about to explode, there was so much going on in it. I needed to give it a rest before I briefed Havlicek and Martin the following morning. On the flight back to D.c." I had made a series of calls to lawyer contacts and some police detectives I knew from my days on the Boston crime beat. I didn't learn nearly enough, but what I did learn was interesting. Black, in the words of one veteran investigator, was a Tom Sawyer type, a gang leader who could convince the others to whitewash the fence while he sat back and watched. He had a college education and was widely known on the streets for his brains and his gregariousness-his ability to get along with crooks and to talk his way out of trouble with cops. He was believed to be without a gun on the occasion of the heist, which would perhaps explain why the feds granted him immunity, certain that he couldn't have been the triggerman. His lack of practice might also explain why he was such an awful shot at the golf course that day, assuming that it was him. And yes, he had brown eyes, just like the dead shooter at Congressional Country Club.
What I hadn't learned was where Black had gone and who he had become, and it didn't seem like I was about to. No one even acknowledged that he had disappeared.
That left me with one remaining option: find Paul Stemple. He was the link in this whole equation that I didn't yet understand-not that I understood any of it all that well. The problem was, it wasn't even remotely clear where I was going to find him, or even how I was going to find him. All of this is a longer than necessary way of saying, a friendly face, a piece of fresh fish, and an ice-cold beer seemed like just the quick fix I needed.
"How in God's name did you know I was coming in tonight?" I asked.
"We have our ways," she said, smiling. I made a mental note to check on those ways in the very near future.
"Well, name the place," I said.
"Kinkead's," she said. "Do you have your car here? I cabbed over."
"I do."
We made incredibly vacuous chitchat on the way to the restaurant-the exact kind of conversation I like most. Once inside, she settled gracefully into the booth, sliding her lean body in and then crossing her long legs under the table. She wore her black hair tied back in a low ponytail, scrunched at the end by a small nondescript band. I had never seen her with that look before, and I'm probably not the first to say that she looked ravishing. Put those feelings away right now, I told myself.
We ordered some seafood ravioli and a plate of Ipswich fried clams to start, and I suggested-actually demanded-that she try the pepita-crusted salmon, the signature dish of owner Bob Kinkead. She did.
More chitchat until we both fell quiet as she spooned some clams and a ravioli off the appetizer plates and onto hers. She took a bite, exclaimed her approval in a sound I hoped to hear someday in a different venue, and gave me a searching look.
Out of nowhere, she said, "The only point I want to make before we get too far into dinner is that we need to have a working relationship. I don't know how else to say it other than being direct, so here goes: what I want now is to work with you. That's all I want right now."
Oh, my. There were about a million ways to read that little declaration, and being a guy, I probably wasn't in an effective position to properly interpret even one of them. My first take was that this was good news. She flatly stated that she wanted a working relationship, and she had a better understanding of the ground rules under which I work, meaning she needed to continue to bring something valuable to the exchange. This was good. My second take was that she seemed to be saying she wanted no personal relationship, given the way she specifically emphasized working relationship. That said, third, she indicated she only wanted a working relationship right now, which could be her way of saying we should get this investigation out of the way before we go off and have sex like two angry wolves in the snowy Montana wilderness. Or something like that.
"I'm all for working together." I was obviously playing this safe, never having been one to foreclose prematurely any options.
"Good," she said. "I hear you have some interesting stuff, and by my count, you owe me from the last time."
"Really? What is it you hear?"
She gave me a smile that I wasn't sure how to read.
"Word in our shop is that you and your colleague are on the verge of springing another major story. There's a lot of speculation over what it might be, though I don't think anyone pretends to know for certain."
She paused and eyed me, searching, I'm sure, for reaction. I didn't betray any, so she continued.
"Of course, the hope is that you guys do a story that might answer the question of who the Secret Service shot that day at the golf course."
I still didn't say anything. This was an odd turning of tables for me.
Usually, I'm the one prodding, evaluating, trying to elicit any reaction. After years of watching people squirm across from me, I think I came equipped with at least some idea how to carry myself right then. I tried not to bat an eye.
I said, "We're working hard, Havlicek and me. We're getting some leads, and we're following them. But we're not where we want to be yet. Right now, we don't have a story, just a lot of ideas."
I know I was starting to sound like all those jackass cops I had covered all those years, the ones who would say of a sensational quadruple murder case, "We're assembling the forensic, eyewitness, and circumstantial evidence and continuing to pursue further leads. We will solve this case on our timetable, not yours."
We locked eyes for a long moment, not in any intimate fashion-this was, after all, the renewal of a working relationship, as she herself had said-but in an attempt to size each other up. To that end, I contorted my mouth ever so slightly to project the aura of sincerity.
She said, "Well, you boys better put a move on it, or you're going to let a whole bureau of federal agents down." She smiled, and so did I.
I regarded her for another moment. Samantha Stevens looked outright elegant, in an unfailingly wholesome kind of way-an athlete who will forever retain her physical grace. She had barely a trace of makeup on the perfect lines of her cheeks. The bags under her eyes, as I've said, betrayed that she had nary a worry in the world about the ravaging affects of age. Every other characteristic screamed eternal youth.
She seemed unusually poised on this Saturday night, confident, comfortable, able to enjoy the food and the company and still try to accomplish what I was learning was her goaclass="underline" to leave with more information than she had when she arrived. Looking at her, I had the inclination to rest my hand on top of hers, even for a moment.