phone company will be there within the hour to install our office line separate from my home line. Laurie wants to take personal calls on her cell phone, so as not to interfere with our activities. Edna is by now already on another project, though I have no idea what she could be working on. It's possible that some body-snatching work-pod took over Edna's body while she slept last night. Not wanting to disrupt whatever the Edna-pod is doing, and even though I'm still picking pieces of pancake out of my teeth, I go to lunch.
This lunch is with FBI Special Agent Robert Hastings. Pete Stanton, who set it up, told me that Hastings's friends call him Robbie, but that since I'm a defense attorney, I should call him Special Agent Hastings. Pete knows him from a few cases where their paths intersected, and he describes him as a stand-up guy.
The stand-up guy is already sitting at a table when I get there. At least I think he's sitting. Right now he's about half a foot taller than I am when I'm standing. I had asked Pete how I'd recognize him, and he described Hastings as dressing conservatively and balding slightly. Apparently, Pete considered these more distinctive features than the fact that Hastings is in the neighborhood of six foot nine, three hundred pounds.
Hastings is looking at his watch when I arrive. The lunch was called for noon, and a quick check of my own watch shows it to be one minute after.
I reach the table and introduce myself, and then say, "I'm not late, am I?" I say this with the full knowledge that I'm not.
"Yeah, you are," he says.
"Didn't we say twelve o'clock?" I ask.
A slight nod of his massive head. "Yeah."
I decide not to pursue the time issue any further, and I quietly let him take the lead in the conversation. It turns out that conversation-leading is not a specialty of his.
After about five silent and excruciatingly uncomfortable minutes, he says, "Pete tells me you're a pain in the ass."
I smile. "I've been called worse."
"Yeah," he says. "I'm sure."
Hastings goes on to tell me that Pete also said that even though I'm a little runt, there's not a lunch check ever made that's too heavy for me to pick up. He picked this really expensive restaurant to test out that theory.
He's in the middle of ordering enough food to feed the Green Bay Packers when it hits me. "Hey, you're not Dead End Hastings, are you?"
It turns out that he is, in fact, Dead End Hastings, who spent two years playing for the Denver Broncos and who was so named because when running backs came into his area, they were entering a dead end with no way out. An untimely knee injury cut a very promising career short.
The transformation is immediate. He goes from quiet and surly to affable and gregarious. Fortunately, his mouth is large enough that simultaneous talking and eating presents no difficulty for him at all. He regales me with stories of his playing days and is impressed with my knowledge of rather arcane pieces of football trivia. I always knew that all those Sunday afternoons in front of the television set would turn out to be worthwhile.
We're having dessert when I bring up the reason I wanted to have this lunch in the first place. "I need to know everything there is to know about Alex Dorsey. I'm representing the person accused in his murder."
His nod confirms my expectation that Pete had alerted him to at least this general subject matter. "And why exactly did you come to me?" he asks.
"Because I know the Bureau conducted an investigation that somehow involved Dorsey and that it got him at least temporarily off the hook when Internal Affairs was coming after him. That's all part of the public record."
I'm stretching the truth some: FBI involvement with Dorsey was never publicly confirmed. Hastings doesn't seem to care one way or the other. "It's not my case," he says, "so all I can do is tell you whose case it is."
"That's a start," I say.
"Darrin Hobbs. He's number two man in the eastern region, heading for number one."
"Thanks," I say. "Any chance you can set up a meeting for me with him?"
He shrugs. "I can tell him you want to talk to him. I wouldn't count on it, though. He's a busy guy."
"I understand," I say. "By the way, you said 'is.'"
"What's that?"
"You said it is his