Instead, I pulled a piece of crusty homemade bread from the basket, took a bite, and said, in a manner intended to goad, "Why don't you tell me what you have?"
She smiled at that, too. "By my calculation, it's your turn."
"I think you've miscalculated." As I talked, she took a piece of bread from the basket herself and playfully bit into it. "Sam, we're actively pursuing a story. I've told you that. We have what we hope are some good leads, but I don't know yet if they're going to pan out.
My sense is, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you're not in as active a stage as I am, so it might be better if you helped me rather than vice versa, or at least went first in this exchange."
Truth is, I have no idea about the fundamental logic of this argument.
The salient fact to take away is that it marked the first time since I'd known Samantha Stevens that I addressed her as Sam, and that, to me anyway, meant that a significant bridge had been crossed, even if I was yet to learn where exactly that bridge had taken me. Score one for Jack, even if no one was actually keeping score.
She seemed to think all this over, perhaps even the Sam part. I don't know. As she stared at points unknown, our waiter arrived with our entrees and set them down before each of us. Sam looked her salmon over carefully.
"I guarantee you'll like it," I said. "If you don't, I'll take you home and microwave up some Swedish meatballs."
Opening her eyes wide in horror at the idea, she said, with mock panic,
"I'm sure I'll like it."
After her first bite, she did that exclamation thing again, saying,
"Oh, my God. This is unbelievable."
"You like?" I asked.
"I love."
Bob Kinkead stopped by the table in full chef's regalia, telling me he'd been watching me on television, and I didn't look as bad as he would have thought. After he left, I gave Stevens a nod, as in, Let's continue.
She said, "Here's what I'm learning about Drinker. He answers only to the director, while I still answer to about two other layers of management. Drinker doesn't speak to my bosses. I can't speak to the director. Drinker barely speaks to me." She hesitated for a second, then said, "And here's the interesting part. I know he and the president talk on the phone all the time-almost every day. I saw Drinker's call logs."
"Would that be so unusual, an investigating agent talking regularly to the victim of the crime?"
"Well, this is no normal crime, and no normal victim. I'll concede, we've only had two presidential assassination attempts since JFK was killed-Squeaky Fromme shooting Ford in seventy-five, and Hinckley shooting Reagan in eighty-one. So there's not exactly a lot of precedent or an FBI manual on how to handle this. But come on, you don't think it's bizarre, an agent and the president talking regularly about the investigation?"
I said, "You know, I was in the Oval Office last week when Hutchins got a call on a line that said "FBI." He was pretty abrupt with the caller, said he'd talk to him later. In retrospect, it could have been Drinker. But why wouldn't they speak regularly?"
"Well, they might. But put this in perspective. The president's a busy guy. He's trying to win an election. He doesn't need constant contact with the investigator on the case. If he did want regular updates, he'd be more likely to get them from the FBI director. We're pretty big on the chain of command over there. And it's not like this has been a textbook investigation, I seem to remember reading a few stories on the front page of the Boston Record that indicated we were fucking this thing up nine ways from hell."
There's that profanity thing again that turns me on. We both fell quiet, thinking about what Stevens just said. By now, the entrees were done and our waiter had delivered two orders of chocolate dacquoise with cappuccino sauce, and two glasses of port, which he pronounced to be a twelve-year-old Cockburn. Very nice.
I said to Stevens, "Okay, I concede the point. It is unusual those two would be talking as much as you say they are."
She took a bite of the dacquoise and declared she was on her way to heaven. She looked rail thin, yet packed down food like there would be bread lines come morning. She'd make a wonderfully expressive bedmate, I thought, if her partner could live up to the standard set by Bob Kinkead.
She said, "Not to force the issue, but let's put work aside for a while and see if we can chat like two regular human beings."
Truth be known, I still wasn't 100 percent confident that this wasn't some scheme, that Drinker and my new friend Sam weren't conspiring to set me up, playing off each other to learn the existence and the identity of my anonymous informant. I was either getting a remarkable window into the inner workings of a major FBI investigation, or rather an FBI civil war, or I was being played for a farm animal again.
"That sounds good, but just one more thing," I said. "Does Drinker ever bring up this point about the phone call in the hospital room anymore?"
"No, though I have to admit, I'm still curious."
Interesting answer. I decided to take a modest risk. "The name Black mean anything to you in this investigation?"
She looked at me blankly. Either it meant nothing, or she was one terrific actress. She shook her head thoughtfully and said, "Not a thing. Should it?"
My question was designed to accomplish two goals: first, see if, in fact, I did get any response, and second, to gauge in the future whether she had gone and passed this information to Drinker.
I said, "Probably not. Just scratching at dirt."
"No, really. What do you have?"
"Really, nothing solid," I said.
We both sat in silence for a while, sipping our port, collecting our thoughts. She began making small talk, about her first Thanksgiving since her divorce, her driving desire for a Caribbean vacation, her raves about my four-legged blond friend Baker. It became all very casual, breezy, floating on the surface, like a water lily, making no waves, just how I usually like it. Still, here I was, looking for meaning within, and this conversation exposed none of it. We tossed down another glass of port before I paid the bill with my trusty Record'-issued Visa card. I briefly thought of Martin checking the bill, asking me if the clams were fried in liquid gold. We made our way down the stairs.
For the rest of time, I'll always remember precisely where I was when the events of the next few minutes began to unfold all around me.
Actually, it's not as glamorous as it sounds. I was standing right in front of the coat check. I had just found my stub and handed it to the woman when Samantha, who was behind me, suddenly wrapped her arms around my waist and pressed her mouth against my ear.
My first thought was that the second glass of port had kicked in, inspiring an understandable fit of passion, such that she couldn't keep her hands and lips off me. Then I heard her whisper something, and my second thought was to tell her, "Huh? I can't hear you." Good social graces kept that thought in check as I replayed her words in my mind:
"Eric-you're my boyfriend."
An agile mind is an amazing thing. Take, for example, mine. I couldn't figure out why she was suddenly calling me Eric, and when exactly I had become her boyfriend-not that I was complaining just yet. I was confused. Then, amid my mental calisthenics, it struck me, within seconds, that her ex-husband, Eric, was probably in the restaurant, and she wanted to do a little role-playing. Well, so much for her fit of passion, but I'd take whatever I could get.
"Eric," she called out. "How are you?" She kept one arm wrapped tightly around me, such that when the nice coat check woman delivered our coats, I had to maneuver my arms around Samantha to accept them.