at Tran, and this time she returned my stare; actually, she smiled.
"What's going on here?"
Tran informed me, "No veteran agent comes to an indoor homicide without disinfectant. Rookies make that mistake--once. Cause for suspicion, right? So when I stepped out, I asked Barry what he knew about you."
Enders said, "And guess what, smart-ass? There is no FBI liaison at the Arlington Police Department."
To Tran I said, "You're sharper than you look."
"Actually, you just weren't that clever." She added, "We called FBI headquarters and asked them to confirm the employment of Special Agent Sean Drummond. Would you like to guess what they said?"
I did not need to guess, and anyway, Enders weighed in again. "So let's start with your rights. You have the--"
"I have the right not to hear my rights."
"Ah, hell . . . a funny guy. Who are you? A reporter?"
I ignored that insult. "Write down this number."
"Why?"
"Do as you're told, Detective. Now."
He stared back. Clearly he and I were in a macho pissing contest; we would either stare at each other forever or somebody had to take a swing. Women are better at this; they smile, say something nice and conciliatory, and get revenge later.
But Tran withdrew a pencil and notebook from her pocket and said, "Give me the number."
She copied as I said, "Local, 555-4290. Call and ask what you should do with me."
Enders, taking a threatening step in my direction, insisted, "The next call anybody's making around here will be you--from lockup. Hands up for the cuffs."
"Don't be stupid, make the call."
Tran, who had already shown she was clever and alert, put a hand on Enders's arm and advised, "I don't see how it can hurt."
Reluctantly, he took a step back, then flipped open his cell and dialed as Bian read him the number.
I waited patiently as he listened to the phone ring, then somebody answered, and he identified himself, then explained his problem--moi--and, after a long moment, he said, "And how do I know you're who you claim . . . Uh-huh . . . okay . . . Yes ma'am . . . Uhhuh." He looked at me and listened for a long moment. "No, no need, ma'am . . . Yeah, that would be acceptable . . . Yes, in fact, he's standing right here."
He handed me the phone and rubbed his ear. To Tran he said, somewhere between impressed and annoyed, "This guy's CIA. That was the assistant to the Director." Then, to me, "She wants a word with you."
Shit. I took the phone from Enders and stared at it, while I toyed with the idea of just punching off.
The lady on the other end, Ms. Phyllis Carney, was my presumptive boss, an elderly lady with the looks and bearing of a fairy-tale grandmother and the avuncular temperament of the Big Bad Wolf. About eighty, and thus long past mandatory retirement, which showed she was either irreplaceable at her job, or she knows the apartment number where the chairman of the House Intelligence Oversight Subcommittee keeps his mistress. Probably both--Phyllis doesn't like loose ends.
Her official title is Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence, an amorphous designation, which seems to suit her fine. I had been working for her for six months and had yet to figure out exactly what she does, or who she is. You feel you know her, and on the surface you do. At the same time, something about her is chronically elusive, a maddening mystique, as our writer friends might say. But partly her job is to cover her boss's butt, a Sisyphean task in a democratic land such as ours, where the head spook is always distrusted by the President, despised by the press, pilloried by the left, demonized by the right, and at any given moment is the object of no less than thirty ongoing congressional investigations and inquiries.
It said something about Phyllis that her boss chose her for this punishing and thankless task. It said something more that she accepted it when her high school classmates were either six feet under or dodging skin cancer and hurricanes in America's elephant dying grounds.
She must've been a good choice, however, because her boss was already the second-longest-serving Director in a job where few occupants are around long enough to have overdue books at the library.
Enders reminded me, "Drummond . . . the phone. Your boss."
I actually like Phyllis. She's courtly and well-mannered in that nice, old-fashioned way, and also businesslike and intelligent. At times, too,