how it all started. Devine and Chakely were one of the teams assigned to Secretary Goldberg and his family. They worked under Jezzie.”
“And nobody ever suspected them?” he asked me.
“Not at first. The FBI checked them out. They checked everybody out. Chakely’s and Devine’s daily logs were off. That’s when they became suspicious. Some watchdog analyst at the Bureau figured out that the logs had been doctored. They had twenty people for every one we had. Besides that, the FBI removed the doctored logs so none of us could find them.”
“Devine and Chakely spotted Soneji checking out one of the kids. That’s how the whole circus began? The double take.” Sampson had the general rhythm of the thing now.
“They followed Soneji and his van out to the farm in Maryland. They realized they were stalking a potential kidnapper. Somebody got the idea to kidnap the kids after the actual kidnapping.”
“Ten-million-dollar idea.” Sampson glowered. “Was Ms. Jezzie Flanagan in on it from the beginning?”
“I don’t know. I think so. I’ll have to ask her about that sometime.”
“Uh huh.” Sampson nodded with the flow of our conversation. “Your head above, or below, the water line right now?”
“I don’t know that, either. You meet somebody who can lie to you the way she did, it changes your perspective on things. This is very tough to handle, man. You ever lie to me?”
Sampson showed some of his teeth. It was halfway between a smile and a growl. “Sounds like your head’s a little below water to me.”
“Sounds like it to me, too,” I admitted. “I’ve had better days. But I’ve had worse. Let’s have that beer.”
Sampson gave the gunner’s salute to the punks on the corner. They laughed and gave us the high sign. Cops and robbers in the ’hood. We crossed the street to Faces. A little oblivion was in order.
The bar was crowded, and would be that way until closing. People who knew Sampson and me said hello. A woman I’d gone out with was at the bar. A real pretty, real nice social worker who had worked with Maria.
I wondered why nothing had come of it. Because of some deep-down character flaw I have? No. Couldn’t be that.
“You see Asahe over there?” Sampson gestured.
“I’m a detective. I see everything, right. Don’t miss a trick,” I said to him.
“You soundin’ a little sorry for yourself. Little ironic, I’d say. Two beers. Nah, make it four,” he told the bartender.
“I’ll get over it,” I said to Sampson. “You just watch. I just had never put her on our suspect list. My mistake.”
“You’re tough, man. Got your nasty old grandma’s genes. We gonna fix you up,” he said to me. “Fix her ass, too. Ms. Jezzie’s.”
“Did you like her, John? Before any of this came up?”
“Oh yeah. Nothing not to like. She lies real good, Alex. She’s got talent. Best I’ve seen since that movie Body Heat,” said Sampson. “And no, I never lie to you, my brother. Not even when I should.”
The hard part came after Sampson and I left Faces that night. I’d had a few beers, but I was mostly coherent, and nearly dulled to the worst of the pain. And yet it was such a shock that Jezzie had been part of it all this time. I remembered how she’d led me away from Devine and Chakely as suspects. She’d pumped me for anything new the D.C. police had picked up. She’d been the ultimate insider. So confident and cool. Perfect in her part.
Nana was still up when I got back to the house. So far I hadn’t told her about Jezzie. Now was about as awful a time as any. The beers helped some. Our history together helped even more. I told Nana the truth straight out. She listened without interrupting, which was an indication of how she was taking the news.
After I had finished, the two of us sat there in the living room, just looking at each other. I was on the hassock, with my long legs spread out in her general direction. Screaming silence was everywhere around us.
Nana was bunched under an old oatmeal-colored blanket in her easy chair. She was still nodding gently, biting her upper lip, thinking over what I’d told her.
“I have to start someplace,” she finally said, “so let me start here. I will not say, ‘I told you so,’ because I had no idea it would be this bad. I was afraid for you, that’s all. But not about anything like