Waldo opened the door and shivered as a chill wrapped itself around his legs.
Must be a window open, he thought. I could have sworn I closed them all.
“The legendary Agent Waldo Gunn,” said Agent Orange, extending a hand. “Protector of lost sheep.”
“Legendary in certain circles,” said Waldo. He shook the offered hand and thought involuntarily, I don’t trust this man’s hand.
Waldo could not help glancing down. He noticed that Orange’s fingers were slim as a girl’s and the nails were as long.
Why the instinctive dislike? wondered Waldo, and then he remembered one of his mother’s various long-winded sayings: Never trust a man with long nails, unless he’s a guitar picker. A long-nailed man has never done a day’s work in his life, not honest work at any rate.
Orange relinquished Waldo’s hand and stared over his shoulder into the suite.
“Quite a gathering you have here, Waldo,” he said, his Scottish accent making the sentence five seconds longer than it would usually be.
That accent would drive me crazy, thought Waldo. It could take all day to finish a conversation.
“What can I do for you, Agent Orange?”
Orange’s smile was wide and thin. “Isn’t it obvious? I need you to release the suspects into my custody.”
Waldo bristled at the idea, which was so outlandish that he initially thought Orange was joking. “Your custody? That’s hardly procedure. These are suspects in an investigation. You are not an investigator.”
Orange seemed saddened by this attitude. “Perhaps not, but I do outrank you, Waldo.”
Suddenly Waldo did not appreciate this man calling him by his first name. “That’s Special Agent Gunn, if you please. And for your information, nobody outranks me in this suite. As officer in charge, I can trump the president himself if I deem it necessary. At any rate, the Assistant Director is on his way, and he has ordered that nobody interfere with the subjects until he arrives.”
“But they killed my entire hazmat team!” objected Orange. “No quarter was given, though it was asked. I was lucky to escape with my life.”
No quarter was given, thought Waldo. Quaint choice of words. “You do seem remarkably alive. And unscathed, too. Where are the bodies?”
Orange coughed into his fist. “That’s delicate and strictly need to know. It’s connected to our operation, which is about fifteen grades above your security clearance. I could tell you, but then . . .”
“You’d have to kill me,” said Waldo, completing the hackneyed phrase.
“And your family,” added Orange, straight-faced.
Waldo’s instinctive dislike of this Scot burned brighter. “There’s no call to be rude. We have a procedure in place here, and that’s the end of it. You may wait in the lounge if you wish, but there will be no contact with the suspects. After all, we only have your word for it that the detainees are guilty of anything.”
Orange’s smile never wavered. “That’s an excellent point. Unfortunately, I am not in a mood to be detained at the moment, and as you pointed out, you outrank me only inside the suite. And I am outside. So I shall partake of another excellent coffee from the establishment across the street and return later when the big-knob bluebottle has joined the party.” Orange stopped suddenly and his eyes brightened as though lit from within. “Can it be?” he cried, his accent suddenly less Scottish. “Why, I swear that it is.”
Waldo was reluctantly intrigued. “What is? It is what?”
Orange gazed past the suite’s custodian into the room itself. “Blow me if I haven’t been here before.”
“I think you’re mistaken,” said Waldo in the most patronizing tone he could muster. “I have a log of every single person who has set foot across this threshold in the past twenty years, and you are not on it.”
Orange was so delighted that he actually clapped his hands. “This was years ago, Waldo. Many years ago. If I remember it right, an exceedingly dodgy character answered the landlord’s rap in those days.”
“Fascinating story, really. But if you won’t come in, you must leave. Security and all that.”
Orange doffed his cap, revealing a head of hair that seemed gray or black depending on the incline of his head. “And all that, indeed, Waldo. A quick coffee bath for the ivories, and I shall return. Watch for me, won’t you?”
Neither man offered his hand upon parting, but Waldo Gunn flicked through different camera views on the security screen so that he could watch Orange all the way to Monmouth Street.
“I will watch for you, Agent Orange,” he said between