“Oh God, Sean, can’t you see what Bill’s doing? He fed you that name because he knew how much it would frighten the Agency. I want him to be innocent, but this is dangerous.”
“Look, what I hoped was, we could have a long, candid conversation about Arbatov. This could be important for you, too. You were meeting with him also.”
“Don’t you understand?… I can’t speak with you about… well, about this topic.”
“And why can’t you?”
“I take polygraphs. I’m subject to prosecution. If I mention that name, I could go to prison. I have two young children. You see that, don’t you?”
I suddenly did-with a clarity that brought a rush of blood to my face. Merely bringing this up, I put her in peril. But then, her husband had to know that, too. So why had that conniving asshole sent me to ask Mary about Arbatov?
While I tried to reason through this, Katrina swiftly asked, “Didn’t Bill take polygraphs also?”
“No. As an Army officer he was immune from that.”
I abruptly stood up and mumbled, “Listen, we’ve got to get going. We’ve got all kinds of things that have to get done.”
Said less adroitly, it was time for a clumsy exit to match the even more clumsy mistake I’d just made. Nobody argued with me. No surprise there, right? Mary politely followed us out and at the doorway, put a hand on my arm and said, “I’m sorry I disappointed you, Sean. I want to help. Please believe that. I have to think of the children, though.”
“It was my fault.”
“It was not. Outsiders have no idea what it’s like to be hooked up to those detectors. I know one girl who literally begins shaking about a week before her annual sessions.” She laughed. “Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall at her confessions?”
I appreciated that in her typically gracious way she was trying to take the sting out of my embarrassment. But the only thing that would help at that moment would be to get my hands around her husband’s throat.
Mary smiled at my co-counsel and said, “Katrina, it was a real pleasure meeting you. I really wish it was under better circumstances.”
“Likewise. Listen, sorry about your husband. How are the children handling it?”
“They still don’t know. I’m trying to keep it that way. We’ve canceled my father’s newspaper subscriptions, and the cable TV hookups have been disconnected.”
“They don’t know?”
“I told them he’s on a trip. Maybe it’s a mistake… they’ve been yanked away from their school and home and friends in Moscow. They’re only kids. How much do you inflict on them at once?”
Then I received a perfunctory peck on the cheek, and we were off.
Once we were settled in the car, Katrina studied my face for a moment. “You think it was deliberate, don’t you?”
“He had to know.”
“Maybe he was using you to sound her out. Maybe it was a loyalty test. Or maybe he’s just desperate.”
“Or maybe he’s just an asshole,” I opined, putting the car in drive and peeling out of the driveway. I didn’t think it was any of the three reasons she just suggested. I thought he was trying to make me look like an idiot in front of Mary. And I walked right into it. From a personal standpoint, it pissed me off. From a professional standpoint, I found it alarming. This case was difficult enough without my client arranging emotional ambushes to show he’s the better man.
Back at my office, one of Imelda’s assistants was in the process of signing for a huge shipment of boxes. Three uniformed guards stood beside a delivery van, and a fellow in a gray suit blocked my doorway. Either FedEx was becoming very security conscious or I was looking at Eddie’s first evidentiary dump.
I walked up and introduced myself to the guy in the gray suit, who flashed a badge I didn’t recognize, identified himself as Herbert Something-or-other, and then coldly demanded, “Where are these documents going to be secured?”
I regarded the stacks in the back of the van and wondered myself. My office contained only two wall safes, and there were enough boxes to fill at least six. I told him I’d order more safes before we left that night.
“That won’t be satisfactory,” he snarled. “I’m not permitted to leave until I’ve ensured all the proper precautions are in place.”
Given that this guy was sent by the same fellas who’d broken into my office that very morning, this was two feet short of hilarious. I pointed at a chair and said, “Make yourself comfortable.”
Katrina and I then walked in and started cracking open boxes. We yanked out folder after folder after folder. I knew this drill. When Eddie got the call from Johnson to start releasing evidence, he and his legions began stuffing boxes with as many papers as they could lay their hands on. The vast majority of this stuff was meaningless garbage intended to exhaust and frustrate us.
Did I mention yet that Eddie’s a complete prick? Aware it was only me and Katrina on my team, the more of our time he could waste, the better.
Unfortunately, I had no solution to that. Katrina and I therefore dutifully stayed till midnight, speed-reading through folders and struggling to sift the important from the trivial. It was a high-risk game. Eddie’s folks surely kept a log of everything, and the odds were we’d get to court and Eddie would unleash some critical piece of evidence, and we’d scream, “Hey, objection, we never got that”; and Eddie would smile and hold up that log and say, “Yeah, then how come this says it was sent over to you on November 20?”
Someday I’m going to piss on Eddie’s tombstone.
At midnight I told Katrina I’d walk her out to her car. The little guy in the gray suit was seated fastidiously beside the entrance; American tax dollars at work.
I turned to Katrina. “Ain’t this better than pushers and dealers and whores?”
She ignored my question. “What happened to you two?”
“What two?”
“You know exactly what two.”
Oh Christ. Could I just shoot her and put an end to this crap? Not with a witness by the door, obviously, so I said, “I never really knew. I swear. Please… let that suffice.”
“Never knew? The chick’s a babe, Sean. The perfect woman, the type who gives men messy dreams. And you have no idea?”
So much for that. “I don’t. We dated my last three years in college. Came graduation, we both got busy. I went into intensive training, and she went into intensive training. I went on deployments, and she went on deployments. We saw each other a weekend every two or three months or so. I came back from Panama, and she’d turned into Mrs. Morrison.”
“Did you intend to marry her?”
And how did I know it would lead to this? Guys are not really into this post-affair psychoanalytic crap. Take me-you date a girl, and it works or it doesn’t. One or the other mumbles the marriage word, and the other either says, “Okay, I’ve got nothing better to do” or “actually, I’d rather have a sulfuric acid enema.” Then you either shuffle to the altar or go looking for the next prospect, without any lengthy claustrophobic pauses in between.
I admitted, “Maybe.”
Fortunately, we’d gotten to her car, a beat-up, clapped-out Nissan Sentra that probably had 200,000 miles on it the day she bought it from a used-car dealer. I opened her door and she had to climb in. I watched her drive off.
What did she think about all that? Probably that I’d been an idiot who waited too long. Or maybe that I was one of those intractable bachelors who’re afraid of losing their monopoly on the big-screen TV, letting Mr. Dickie feast wherever he wants, keeping their greedy grips on their own paychecks. Truthfully, I have some of that strain in me.
But that wasn’t it. I had always wondered about Mary.
CHAPTER TEN
I was pulled out of the shower the next morning by a phone call from Katrina telling me to turn on my TV. It was only seven, and Eddie was standing on the front steps of that big office building on 14th Street, flanked by three gimlet-eyed prosecutors, as he read from notes on a lectern: