been authorized to offer Echeverria as much for the tapes as he’d snatched initially, five hundred thousand, and once I had his signature on a confidentiality agreement drafted by company lawyers, I was done. My client was betting that the tapes, which were apparently inflammatory enough to have every corporate executive wetting himself, would surface eventually. Why not track the thieving weasel down, make an offer, make it high, nail down an agreement, and be done with the little traitor? At six hundred a day plus expenses and a luxury suite, it sounded like a pretty good plan to me.
I ordered pan-roasted asparagus, rosemary and goat cheese mashed potatoes, and seared rare ahi, then turned on the television and sank into the couch while I waited for room service. A brief but energetic craving for a drink resurfaced and caught me off guard. I could almost hear the ice tinkling against a glass as a uniformed member of the waitstaff balanced a silver tray toward my room. At the height of my drinking, I had used hotels for privacy, to be alone with what I loved most back then. Tonight, I would settle for a Diet Pepsi.
I opened my laptop. My friend Madison from Quantico, my only cordial relationship left at the Bureau, wanted to check in. She had once been a deep-cover operative for the CIA, had her cover blown wide open. She’d ended up at the Farm, the CIA’s training center, trying to teach a bunch of kindergartners, as she had called the new recruits, the deceptive and dangerous trade of intelligence. Madison had been later lured to the Bureau, where I met her by chance. We’d become instant friends. Her email today was blunt. Desperate for someone who doesn’t leave a diamond on their desk chair. Her proper British way of saying she was working with a bunch of tight asses.
I had mail from my mother, who had only recently discovered the joys of the Internet, and now faithfully forwarded religious messages to me. I never read them. If I receive something with three hundred other names on it, I’m not reading it. I don’t care if it says Jesus is coming back. My father, thankfully, has not yet shown an interest in the Internet.
Where have you been, child? the subject line in my mother’s message asked, and I could almost hear her thick drawl. Emily Street had grown up on the Albemarle Sound of North Carolina, not far from Virginia, where words like “about” sound like “a boat.” Her voice was butter and swamp water all at once, soft and strong, and when I was a child, it calmed me. She read me to sleep at night and insisted I read to her in the afternoons, all kinds of books, magazines, newspapers. Words were her flying carpets. Wherever she wanted to go that day, we went. She taught me about that kind of escape and I grew up loving it and books.
I didn’t call her back. I have to build up to it with Mother, the princess of passive aggression, especially when she perceives neglect from her children. A real live southern belle, my mom makes true the expression that southerners can say anything to anyone no matter how insulting as long as it begins or ends with “bless your little heart” or “you poor darlin’.” Emily Street has turned it into a kind of art form. Honey drips from her lips as she extends her long claws and prepares to pounce. Melanie, you poor darlin’, are you still struggling with that awful weight problem? And with Harvey cheating on you and all, bless your little heart. Don’t you worry, honey. You’ll have lots of support. I’ve told everyone.
When my phone rang, I was watching blooper reels and using my asparagus instead of a fork to eat mashed potatoes. This is what I do in hotels now instead of crack open the little bottles in the minibar.
Neil sounded breathy and hyper.
“By George, I think I’ve got it,” he said in a bad Hollywood accent. “The link, old girl. I’ve got it. Elicia Richardson and David Brooks were both attorneys, as you know. Civil attorneys, both of them. Richardson was not in criminal law, which is what the file says. It was incorrect.”
“Okay, and …?”
“The second victim, Bob Shelby, lived on disability, barely scraped by, but he had a huge payment pending on a personal injury suit he’d won four months before his murder. Another month or