first time while in the car. I felt myself making a comeback. The confidence she had so expertly stomped into the bedspread in the hotel room was getting a second life. Now I was playing her.
“I thought you people always worked in twos,” I said.
We were stopping at another red light. I could see the freeway entrance up ahead. I had to make my move.
“Usually,” she said. “But today was busy, a lot of people out, and actually, when I left Quantico, I thought I was just going up to the foundation to talk to Oline and Dr. Ford and to pull the records. I wasn’t counting on a custody arrest.”
Her show was falling apart quickly. I was seeing it now. No cuffs. No partner. Me in the front seat. And I knew that Greg Glenn didn’t know where I was staying in D.C. I hadn’t told him and I hadn’t made the reservation through the Rocky’s travel office because there hadn’t been time.
My computer satchel was on the seat between us. On top of it she had stacked the copies of the protocol files, the Poe book and my notebook. I reached over and pulled it all onto my lap.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m getting out of here.” I tossed the protocols onto her lap. “You can keep those. I’ve got all the information I need.”
I pulled the door handle and opened the door.
“Don’t you fucking move!”
I looked at her and smiled.
“Are you aware that your use of coarse language is a lame attempt to reestablish your superiority? Look, it was a nice play but you ran out of the right answers. I’ll just catch a cab back to the hotel. I’ve got a story to write.”
I got out of the car with the things and stepped onto the sidewalk. I looked around and saw a convenience store with a phone out front and started walking that way. Next I saw her car cut into the parking lot and park in my path. She jerked it to a stop and jumped out.
“You’re making a mistake,” she said, coming quickly toward me.
“What mistake? You made the mistake. What was that charade all about?”
She just looked at me. She was speechless.
“Okay, I’ll tell you what it was,” I said. “It was a scam.”
“Scam? Why would I scam you?”
“Information. You wanted to know what I had. Let me guess, once you had what you wanted, you were going to come in and say, ‘Oh gee, sorry, your source just copped. Never mind, you’re free to go and sorry about the little misunderstanding.’ Well, you better go back down to Quantico and practice your act.”
I walked around her and headed to the pay phone. I picked the receiver off the hook and the phone was dead. I didn’t let on, though. She was watching me. I dialed information.
“I need a cab company,” I said to a nonexistent operator.
I dropped a quarter in the slot and dialed a number. I then read the address off the phone and asked for a cab.
When I hung up and turned around, Agent Walling was standing there very close. She reached past me and picked up the phone. After holding it to her ear for a second she smiled slightly and hung it back up. She pointed to the side of the box to where the receiver cable was attached. It was severed, the wires tied together in a knot.
“Your act could use some polish, too.”
“Fine. Just leave me alone.”
I turned away and started looking through the store windows to see if there was another phone inside. There wasn’t.
“Look, what did you want me to do?” she asked my back. “I need to know what you know.”
I whipped around on her.
“Then why didn’t you just ask? Why’d you have to . . . try to humiliate me?”
“You are a reporter, Jack. Are you going to tell me you were just going to open your files and share with me?”
“Maybe.”
“Yeah, right. That’ll be the day, when one of you people do that. Look at Warren. He’s not even a reporter anymore and he was acting like one. It’s in the blood.”
“Hey, you know, speaking of blood, there’s more at stake here than a story, okay? You don’t know what I would have done if you had approached me like a human being.”
“Okay,” she said softly. “Maybe I don’t. I’ll grant you that.”
We did a little pacing in opposite directions until she spoke.
“So what do we do? Here we