By the time Kane and Danny got back to the office Eustace had vanished leaving behind only a cryptic note: “Out on the case.” Greg ground his teeth in silence, resenting the fact that Useless could get away with flitting around the city on his own while he, like an errant child, was not allowed out of the office without a chaperone. It had not always been that way but a succession of what Immerson called “problems” and Kane called “encounters with assholes” had led to Immerson’s strict enforcement of the otherwise largely ignored travel-with-a-partner rule.
“So, Useless can wander around the countryside free as a bird and I can’t get a sandwich without a babysitter? Is that what you’re telling me?” Kane had snapped the first time Immerson had threatened to write him up.
Immerson angrily sucked in the edges of his cheeks while he struggled to pick out which of Kane’s transgressions to deal with first.
“I told you not to call him that!”
“Useless is as Useless does,” Kane snapped.
“There! Right there is why I can’t trust you out in the world alone.” Kane glared but said nothing. “Every other agent in this Division knows enough to at least pretend to be on his best behavior when I call them in here. But not you. You just can’t help yourself. Until I can trust you to make it through the day without unnecessarily pissing off half the people you talk to, you only go out with a partner.”
“So if we’re out someplace and Eustace needs to take a pee do I have to go into the can with him?”
“Do you have a death wish? Do you want to lose this job the way you lost your last one?” Immerson asked in an almost compassionate voice.
“I’m a good investigator. I close cases.”
“Closing cases in not enough! Jesus, Kane, you’ve got to learn how to get along with people, even people who aren’t as smart as you are – especially people who aren’t as smart as you are.” Greg parted his lips but Immerson waved him into silence. “No, you’ve pissed me off enough already. Quit while you’re behind. Get out of here before I write you up.”
Teeth clenched, Kane stormed back to his desk. No, he decided, remembering that confrontation, it would not be a good idea to complain now about Useless’ Lone Ranger habits, besides it was almost quitting time.
“Do you want me to work on sharpening the parking lot footage or should I go back to the video from the sidewalk cameras?” Danny asked, waking Kane from his reverie.
“Let it go until tomorrow. There’s no point in putting in any overtime on it.”
“I was thinking that maybe we might be able to pull up a scar or a tattoo or something on the guy who dropped off Brownstein’s car.”
“There’s less than a one in a thousand chance that we’ll get anything useful from the parking lot video,” Kane said idly slapping his ballpoint against his palm. He looked up to find Rosewood staring expectantly at him. “The color of his hands was much lighter than the glimpse the camera caught of his face. That tells me he was wearing latex gloves so we’re not going to see any tats. Between him walking hunched over, the hoodie and the sunglasses he could be the Elephant Man and we wouldn’t know it.”
“We still might catch something once he was out on the street,” Danny suggested.
“He’s a pro so the odds of that are. . . .” Kane shrugged. “It’ll wait until tomorrow.”
“Agent Kane, do you think it’s him, the deputy who was with your nephew?” Danny asked in an uneasy tone. “Is that why you think he’s a professional?”
“He’s a professional because of the way he’s put this whole thing together. Is he Mearle Farber? I sure hope so. Anyway–” Kane paused and pulled out his ringing phone. The screen said ‘Martin Fouchet.’ “I’ve got to take this. I’ll see you in the morning.” Kane tapped the “accept” icon. “Hi Martin.”
“Greg, have you found out anything about Mr. Brownstein? Any leads?”
Kane considered a half dozen ways of politely ducking the question but found he couldn’t ignore the combination of hope and fear in his friend’s voice.
“Let’s get dinner and I’ll bring you up to speed. Pick a place.”
“I’m attending a conference at the Jefferson on, well, the details don’t matter. They have a five star restaurant–”
“Five stars? That means half the menu will be chopped liver, raw fish and snails. No thanks.”
“They have a cocktail lounge that serves burgers and club sandwiches and the like. We could probably get them to bring you a steak. It’s on me.”
“That sounds better. See you at seven.” Kane slipped the phone back into his pocket and turned to see Danny typing something on his computer. “Danny, go home.”
“I just thought I’d get a start on the FR-2.”
“Go home, call a girl, have some fun.”
“I already told Diane that I had to work late. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to have dinner with an old friend and give him some very bad news.”
* * *
Perhaps in anticipation of a difficult meeting or maybe just because he was tired and frustrated and in need of a drink Greg left his car in the employee lot and took a cab to the Metro station. The Jefferson Hotel was barely more than a long block down Massachusetts from Dupont Circle and he found Martin Fouchet waiting for him in the black and white tiled reception room. Kane thought the professor looked pinched and lean as if he had been twisted and half wrung dry but Greg pretended not to notice.
“Hi, Marty,” Kane said grasping Fouchet’s hand and pasting on the best smile he could manage.
“Greg, thanks for meeting me. I – well, let’s get a drink and something to eat.” The professor led the way to a bar that looked like a 1950s men’s club, all leather chairs and dark wood and walls hung with mahogany-framed maps. A waitress brought menus and ran through the bar’s cocktail specials in an almost sing-song voice. When she came to one concocted of hot apple cider and spiced rum Kane waved his finger as if signaling an auctioneer.
“Just decaf for me,” Fouchet said, “otherwise I won’t sleep.”
From the tightness of his lips and the lines around his eyes Kane figured his friend had other reasons than Brownstein’s absence for not being able to sleep but he said nothing.
“Can I bring you gentlemen any food from the bar menu?” the girl asked.
Kane took pity on Fouchet and passed up the $38 strip steak in favor of the $21 burger and fries. The professor ordered a bowl of chicken noodle soup and a green salad.
“Have you found Mr. Brownstein?” Martin asked as soon as the waitress had stepped away.
“No,” Kane said but trapped by the pleading look in Fouchet’s eyes added, “He’s disappeared.”
Fouchet paused and seemed unable to assemble Kane’s words into an understandable sentence. “Do you have any leads?” he asked finally.
Do you have any hope? Kane thought he meant.
“Here you go.” The waitress, “Holly” her name tag said, reappeared before Kane could answer. “One Cider Me Timbers and one decaf coffee. I’ll bring your meals in a few minutes.”
Kane took a long swallow and felt the hot cider and rum warm a path all the way to his stomach and spread out from there. After looking into Martin’s bleak face he took a second gulp.
“Marty, he’s gone.”
“You mean he’s run away, left the country or something?”
“I mean he’s vanished.”
“Washington isn’t the middle of nowhere. There has to be something you can do – surveillance cameras, cell phone records, something. How long can he hide without someone noticing him? What if I offer a reward?”
“I’m sorry, Marty. I didn’t make myself clear. He didn’t disappear. He was disappeared. Someone took him and put him someplace where no one is ever likely to find him again.”
“And you have no clues, nothing?” Fouchet asked.
Kane tried to stall by taking another sip and was surprised to find his glass almost empty. He waved at Holly for another round.
“It was professionally done,” Greg finally answered, looking back at his friend. “Someone who knew what they were doing wanted Brownstein to disappear and that’s what’s happened. I have no idea how we’re going to find the perpetrator leastwise locate Brownstein’s body.”
“Body? You think he’s dead?”
Kane took a breath then accepted a new drink from Holly.
“Marty,” Kane said once she had left, “professionals don’t run an operation like this for the heck of it. Somebody wanted Brownstein gone without a trace and that’s what’s happened.”
“But why?”
Kane glanced away to collect his thoughts and found his eyes settling on a stylish blonde sitting alone on the far side of the room. Noticing his attention she gave him the briefest of smiles then looked away.
“Does he owe people money, loan sharks or something like that?” Fouchet asked, his voice almost a whine. “I could pay them if it’s money they want. I just need one signature from him.”
Just as Kane dragged his eyes away from the blonde and back to his friend Holly appeared with platters and bowls.
“Marty,” Kane said a moment later, “I’m not supposed to discuss open cases with anyone outside my department but, confidentially, I’ll give you my opinion if you want it.”
“Of course I want it!” Fouchet snapped.
“Congress gave HHS a mandate to identify potentially dangerous substances and keep them out of the country. As you well know they do that by adopting regulations that ban chemicals they think may be dangerous. Getting one of their prohibitions reversed in court could take years. According to Brownstein’s deputy his department was only a couple of weeks away from approving a new set of regulations covering a whole new list of prohibited substances.”
Kane realized that he was babbling like a school teacher and forced himself to stop. He caught the blonde glancing at him out of the corners of her eyes.
“Anyway,” Kane said, forcing his gaze back to his friend, “With Brownstein AWOL there’s no one to sign off on the final draft of the new regulations. It could be weeks, probably months, before his post is officially declared vacant, a list of replacement candidates is drawn up, they’re vetted, the powers that be agree on his successor, and the new Director gets up to speed and signs the revised regs, assuming that he doesn’t want to overrule the staff and make some changes to the list.”
Kane took a bite of his burger and washed it down with the last of his cocktail. Martin stared at him expectantly. Do I have to draw you a picture? Kane thought, angry for no reason that he could justify.
“My guess is that somebody wants to import something on that new list, Marty, a lot of something on that list. Making Brownstein disappear buys them at least an extra couple of months to get their material into the country.”
“You’re saying that he’s gone and that’s the end of it?” Fouchet demanded, angry, as if Kane had told him that he was giving up on Brownstein’s disappearance because he was too lazy to do his job.
“I’m saying that there’s no physical evidence, no forensic evidence, no video, no cell phone records, no credit card records, no eye witnesses, no body, no nothing, zero. Nothing short of a really good session with The Amazing Kreskin and a ouija board is going to get us any closer to finding Brownstein’s body,” Kane snapped then wanted to bite his tongue. “I’m sorry, Marty. Sometimes I get–”
“It’s all right, Greg. I understand. I’m grateful that you took this on at all. I was just hoping . . . .” Fouchet slouched back in his chair and closed his eyes. “Well, I can’t have my people sitting around twiddling their thumbs while we wait for this to be all sorted out. Maybe we’ll be able to find another way.” There’s always Mexico, Fouchet thought but he kept his musings to himself.
Marty lowered his eyes and they sat there in silence for perhaps a minute before the professor looked up and blinked several times, as if confused about where he was and how he had gotten there. A moment later he checked his watch.
“I’ve got a meeting with, well, it doesn’t matter. And I probably should call my team, let them know that we’re not getting the ACX as planned. Maybe someone will have an idea about another way to go.” Fouchet dropped a pile of bills on the table. “Tell her to keep the change,” he said then squeezed Kane’s shoulder. “Thanks, Greg. I know you did the best you could.”
Kane’s eyes followed his friend all the way to the door and then drifted over to the blonde woman who, perhaps sensing his attention, lifted her head and looked back at him. He had two choices, leave or go over and introduce himself. If the collapse of his marriage had been more recent, if he hadn’t been drinking, if he hadn’t felt that old tingling in his pants, he might have given her a polite nod and called a cab. Instead he stood and walked across the room.
“Hello,” he said, mustering a polite smile. “My friend just left and since we’re now both alone I wondered if I might join you.”
The woman’s jaw was a bit too square for her to qualify as a classic beauty, more like the fresh-scrubbed but subtly hot girl-next-door. If Kane were describing her in a police report he would have said that she was five-feet six, a hundred-twenty-five pounds, thirty-five years old, blonde and blue, but that’s not how Kane’s brain was working right then. Instead he noticed the creamy hollows of her shoulder blades and the beginning of her cleavage and he imagined how the chill night air might raise her nipples against the thin silk of her dress.
“I don’t know,” she said with a sly smile. “Do you live in town or are you just visiting?”
Which answer does she want? Kane wondered but found no hint in her eyes.
“I live in D.C.”
“And what is it that you do here, Mr. . . ?”
“Kane. Greg Kane. I’m an investigator with Homeland Security.”
“Really? Are you carrying a gun?” she asked with a lilt in her voice.
Two guns, Kane almost said. Instead he pulled his coat aside to reveal the Beretta 92 with which the Office armed its agents.
“I feel safer already. I’m Allison Varner.” She waved at the chair across from her. “Please have a seat.”
Kane found himself cataloging little things about her – that the blue diamonds inside the gold-hooped earrings looked real as did the gems in the gold bracelet encircling her left wrist, both of which meant she, or her husband, or perhaps her ex-husband, had money. He also noticed some things that were absent. There were no rings on her left hand, but married people sometimes took them off. She wore no pins or badges that might signify an occupation or political affiliation, though that was more a male affectation. Half the guys in the Office wore little American flag pins on their lapels. Kane refused to do it. If being a sworn agent of the Department of Homeland Security wasn’t a good enough testament to his patriotism then some stupid lapel pin wasn’t going to make any difference.
Kane’s eyes were drawn to the soft folds in her pale blue and gold silk dress and he imagined what her body might look like if the cloth were suddenly to become transparent.
“Am I under investigation?” Allison asked.
“What?”
“The way you’re staring at me I wondered if you think I might have committed a crime.”
“Sorry. It’s a habit from my job. They train us to be observant.”
“And what have you observed about me, Agent Kane?” A vision of her breasts and the soft curves that flowed down to her hips filled his head.
“That you’re a beautiful, educated, self-assured woman,” Kane said in a clumsy attempt at gallantry.
Allison laughed. “You can tell I’m educated just by looking at me?”
“Your pattern of speech, your body language.” Her stare forced him to go on. “You’re at ease with the sudden attention of a member of law enforcement. Poor people fear the police. Middle-class people are usually deferential, eager to please. You’re amused. That puts you in the upper-middle class or higher. An upper-middle class woman who speaks well and has money, or access to money, is almost certainly well educated.”
“Do go on,” Allison ordered, intrigued or vaguely irritated, Kane couldn’t tell which.
Good sense would have told him to shut up at that point but Allison’s smiling attention and the second rum punch dissolved his restraint.
“You were married but you’re not married anymore.” Allison’s face clouded over but Kane pressed on. “Someone as attractive as you who’s never been married either has no interest in attracting a man or very much wants to attract a man. You’re neither which tells me that you were in a relationship that ended between one and two years ago.” Kane’s self-satisfied smile fled when he caught the pain in Allison’s eyes.
“Brain cancer,” she said, looking down at the now ring-less fourth finger of her left hand. “A little less than two years ago. When you’ve been with someone through all that being alone is . . . complicated.”
“I’m . . .” Sorry? An idiot? “I’m divorced,” Kane said. “Almost a year ago. She lives in Baltimore. I was a homicide detective,” he babbled, feeling as if he had lost the ability to connect his mouth to his brain. “I took the job with Homeland Security to make a new start.”
Allison looked up from her naked left hand but she could find no deceit or guile in Kane’s face. Perhaps he’s safe, she thought. Cops are supposed to be hopeless womanizers. It had been weeks since. . . . She waved at the barman and held up two fingers.
“We’re a pair aren’t we?” she said with a half-sad smile.
“What do you do?” Kane asked, anxious to veer the conversation in another direction.
“I work on the Hill,” she said with a flicker in her eyes that told Kane that she hoped he wouldn’t ask for any details. Just then their drinks arrived and they clinked glasses, both happy for the interruption. Kane noticed the barman make a note on his iPad. She’s probably billing the drinks to her room, he thought. Kane wanted to ask what she was doing at this hotel, alone, when she lived here in D.C. Was she meeting a man? Had he stood her up? Was she on a secret mission for the unnamed congressman or senator or agency that signed her paycheck?
Allison put down her glass and forced a smile and through some sixth sense Kane knew that any of those questions would ruin things as surely as tipping a cup of spiders into a Waldorf salad, and the snake uncoiling in his pants was screaming at him not to do anything like that.
“Do you have a room here?” he asked instead.
“Yes,” she said after half a second’s pause.
“I’ve never stayed at this hotel. I’m kind of curious about what the rooms are like. Could I take a look at yours?”
Allison held his gaze for a long heartbeat. “Sure,” she said then took as big a swallow from her glass as decorum would allow. Kane followed her, saying nothing, afraid that a single word might frighten her off, as if she were a rare bird suddenly landed on a branch just within his reach.
She slipped the key-card into the lock and he followed her inside. The instant he clicked the door closed behind them she turned to face him and no words were needed. After a quick, crushing embrace he stepped back and pulled her skirt up over her hips. When he yanked her panties down she bent her knees inward and then lifted one foot so that he could set them free. When he stood she twisted around offering him the zipper at the back of her dress. Then it was her turn to undress him and a few seconds later they tumbled onto the bed. After that it was all heat and sweat and noises without thought. When it was over she nestled against his shoulder, not sleeping, not fully awake. He caressed her nipples while she idly ran her fingers across his chest. He didn’t speak, afraid that any words would break the spell.
His encounters since his divorce had ranged from unsatisfying to uncomfortable but tonight he felt like a man standing at the edge of a desert and scenting the distant rush of water on the wind. Once was not enough. Twenty minutes later ability caught up with desire and he slid his hands down her body and teased her thighs wide apart. This time he took her more slowly but more powerfully and it was after midnight before the fire in Kane’s blood burned down leaving pleasantly warm embers behind. Spent, he collapsed against the headboard and encircled her shoulder, drawing her close.
“I’ve got a meeting in the morning,” she said a minute later, apropos of nothing.
Kane turned toward her but in the darkness her face was a mask. He could barely make out the shadowed dips and planes of her features in the glow from the digital clock. He paused for a second and, finally understanding her meaning, he felt the warmth in his blood begin to go cold.
“I guess you need to get some sleep,” he replied in a flat tone that made it clear that he knew her morning meeting was a lie.
“It’s going to be a long day,” Allison said as she pulled free from his arm and wiggled toward the edge of the bed.
“Yeah, me too.” Kane rolled off the other side and went hunting for his pants. “Can I call you sometime?” he asked as he buttoned his shirt.
“Of course,” Allison answered in a voice that didn’t promise that she would answer. “Do you have a pen?”
Kane flipped the switch on the bathroom wall and in the spill of light through the half-open door he scratched out her number on the hotel pad. The question: What the hell just happened? screamed through his head.
“So, I’ll call you,” Greg said after he slipped on his coat.
“Or I’ll call you.”
“That would be good.” Kane handed her his card embossed with the Homeland Security seal and his office phone number printed on the bottom. She dropped it on the night table next to the clock and he wondered if tomorrow morning it would end up in her purse or in pieces in the wastebasket.
Kane was halfway out the door when he stopped and turned back toward the bed. Allison was lying flat on her back, the sheet pulled up to her chin, her eyes gazing blindly at the shadowed ceiling.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“What?” She said, not trying to pretend that she didn’t understand.
“You’re treating me like a distant relative who’s overstayed his welcome. What did I do?”
“My husband was the love of my life,” Allison said. Kane had no idea what that meant so he just stood there and waited. “I’m not ready for a serious relationship.”
“Neither am I.”
“I’m not so sure that’s true and I can’t go through something like that again.”
“I’m not asking you to go through anything.”
Two seconds passed and she slowly twisted to face him.
“This could never be more than fun and games,” she said as if cautioning a child against approaching a strange dog.
“I spend most of my life chasing criminals. I wouldn’t have the time for anything serious even if I wanted it.”
“If we saw each other again it wouldn’t be exclusive.”
“There would be other women in my life too. Jesus we just had sex. I didn’t ask you to marry me.”
“Just so long as you understand that there will be other men. Are you sure you’re good with that?”
“Better than good.”
“And no questions. No ‘Where were you?’ ‘What’s his name?’ Nothing. The first time you start wanting something more than . . . this, that’s it.”
“Fine.”
“Because there is no more. They’ll never be any more.”
“Just fun and games, got it,” Kane snapped.
“All right, you call me and we’ll see how it goes.”
“Just so I’m clear, that means we’re going to fuck again, right?”
“Yes, we’re going to fuck again, and that’s all we’re ever going to do.”
“Sounds perfect to me,” Kane snapped then double-checked that he had his ID and his gun and then resisted the urge to slam the door behind him.