THREE

Tuesday morning my head hurt. My pride hurt even worse, and my suddenly flattened wallet was really killing me. A handful of aspirin took care of the headache, but the damage to my ego and bank balance from the long night at Foxwoods was going to take a lot longer to mend. I felt like taking the day off, but there was one big reason I couldn’t.

The clock on Kevin Finnerty’s deadline for the Brenda Thompson investigation was ticking, and Lisa Sands couldn’t finish her investigation until I’d talked with the judge again. I was tempted to let Lisa do the interview by herself, but I knew better. That business about the judge’s dead aunt still didn’t sound right. At the very least it represented an unusual mistake for a federal judge to make, at worst it could be a scandal big enough to ruin the president.

What it meant for sure was that a brand-new agent couldn’t be allowed to handle it.

I got a late start from home and didn’t bother stopping at the office first. It was after eleven as I mounted the steps of the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courts Building at the corner of Third Street and Constitution Avenue. I passed the statue of General George Meade outside the courthouse, pushed through the doors and used the elevator to ascend to United States District Judge Brenda Thompson’s courtroom on the sixth floor. The judge didn’t know I was coming, of course. In an interview like this you never want to let the other side get prepared. I’d already determined she was on the bench this morning, and I wanted to watch her in action before going after whatever she was trying to hide.

I slipped through the courtroom door and took a seat in the back. It was a drug case—methamphetamines—and had been all over the papers and TV. The defendant was a notorious gangbanger, a coconspirator in a homegrown drug cartel that included most of the really bad guys in the District. Albert Scroggins’s street name was “Scum,” and from the looks of him it was an apt description. I glanced around. His street gang—the Blades—had packed the courtroom, not wearing their colors, but despite that every bit as ominous. With their long black braids and fierce beards, they looked more like Afghan terrorists than urban Americans.

I watched Judge Thompson closely for her reaction to their unmistakable tactics, by now familiar in gang cases. Things went along fine for about ten minutes of questions and answers, until finally the judge had seen enough.

The assistant United States attorney—a young black woman with a no-nonsense dark suit and matching glare—was interrogating a prosecution witness, another black woman with a short afro and heavy glasses. Midway through the examination, Judge Thompson slammed her gavel hard enough to make my ears ring.

“That’s it!” she shouted. “That’s the end of this nonsense!” She pointed at a slouching figure in the second row. “You!” she snapped. “Out of here right now!” Her dark eyes blazed. “You will not sit in my courtroom and intimidate a witness! Get out before I have you thrown out!”

Noise erupted. Judge Thompson raised her gavel, pounded the room back into silence. The defense attorney, a short white guy, leaped to his feet, used the thick-framed reading glasses in his hand to punctuate his words.

“How can you do that, your honor? My client has every right to be supported by his friends and family. You have no business—”

“Sit down, Counselor! Now! Sit down and keep your mouth shut or I’ll throw you out as well!”

Now the bangers were all on their feet, shouting and pointing fingers. The judge turned to her bailiff. He touched a button on his desk. The doors behind us opened and U.S. marshals flooded in, grabbing arms, shoving gangstas toward the door. Thirty seconds later the courtroom was pretty damned empty. I glanced around at the wide eyes of those allowed to stay, felt my own eyes widen as well. Whatever else she was, Brenda Thompson knew how to keep order in her courtroom. Seeing her like this—watching her fearless disregard for some truly dangerous people—I reminded myself to tread lightly.

The sound of Judge Thompson’s voice interrupted my thoughts as she announced the early recess and ordered the jury to come back at one-thirty. I slipped out of the courtroom and headed for the judge’s chambers around the corner.

The judge’s clerk, a red-haired young man who looked like he hadn’t smiled for a long time, glanced up from his desk as I approached. I flipped open my creds and asked to see his boss.

“Got an appointment?” he wanted to know.

“A couple of minutes,” I told him. “That’s all I need.”

“Her book’s full, I’m afraid. She’s not even taking phone calls today.”

“Busy or not, I’ve got to see her.”

“She left orders, Agent Monk. No one, she said, not until after court this afternoon.”

“Call her.”

He shook his head. “I told you I can’t do—”

His voice died as I lifted the phone from his desk and handed it to him.

“Call her,” I repeated. “I’ll make sure she knows it wasn’t your idea.”

His narrow shoulders sagged. He took the phone, pushed a button, mumbled into the receiver, and hung up. He stared at me as the chamber door opened and Judge Thompson came through, her hand stretched out to me.

“Special Agent Monk,” she said. Her handshake was firm, but it was a little moist at the same time. Could mean a couple of things, too soon to know for sure what.

“Please come in,” she told me.

I followed her and couldn’t help admiring her light gray suit, the perfect tailoring that concealed the spreading that comes with age.

“Have a seat,” she said when we got to her desk.

I did so, in the closest of the matching crimson leather chairs facing the desk, then waited for her to walk around to her own chair behind the desk. On the way she stopped near the floor-standing American flag to her right, turned toward me for a moment before sitting. Clever woman, I thought. Bill Clinton couldn’t have done it any better. Without saying a word, she’d reminded me exactly who she was and what she represented.

Behind her dark cherry desk with its inlaid leather top and intricate detailing, Judge Thompson stared at me for a moment, then smiled. Her teeth contrasted with her light chocolate complexion, her brown eyes and slightly darker hair, which was cut short and styled perfectly for her triangular face.

“What can I do for you?” she asked.

“Before we begin, I have to say I’m impressed. I was in the courtroom. I saw what you just did in there.”

She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. “Those guys? I was dealing with worse garbage than that before I was ten years old.”

I nodded. She was right about that. Her file had all the details. Born in the worst part of Washington’s black ghetto, a heroin-dealing father who died in prison before she was three. Gangbanging stepbrothers she hasn’t seen since she started school. Raised by her grandmother after her mother had OD’d once too often. A dreadful story, even by D.C. standards.

I looked up to see that she was waiting for me to get down to business.

“You spoke with Special Agent Lisa Sands yesterday morning,” I said.

Her eyes flickered but stayed directly on mine. “Of course. The mixup over my mistake on the personal security questionnaire—isn’t that what you people call it?”

“Yes, your honor. The PSQ. I’m afraid we have a problem with it.”

She leaned forward and her eyes did fall this time, but only for an instant before she brought them back up. “A problem? I don’t understand. I explained to Agent Sands what happened. Didn’t she tell you?”

“She said you stopped in Brookston to care for a dying aunt, that after the funeral you went on to law school at Yale.”

Her hand went to her throat, massaging gently before she dropped it back out of my sight.

“Funeral?” she said. “No, there was no funeral. Aunt Sarah didn’t die, that was the point. We were told she’d never make it, but she did.” The judge cleared her throat. “I was determined to stay for the funeral, but, bless her heart, she refused to die. I hated to leave her, but I just didn’t have any other choice. Law school was going to start with me or without me, so I finally drove up to New Haven. I got there …” She stared upward, as though she were reading her itinerary off the ceiling. “Must have been a day or two before school started.” She looked at me again. “I can’t think why I left this off your questionnaire.”

“And is she still living, your aunt? Can she verify your stay with her?”

Judge Thompson frowned, reached for a piece of paper on her desk, stared at it for a moment, then grabbed a pen and made a quick note on it.

“Sorry,” she said. “This writ should have gone out yesterday.” She laid the pen aside. “Did my aunt die, is that what you asked?” I nodded. “Yes, Agent Monk”—she cleared her throat—“yes, she did, a number of years ago.”

“What year would that have been? Just for the record, your honor.”

“I don’t remember. A long time ago, but I’d have to search my files to tell you exactly when.”

“Your conversation with Lisa Sands was over the telephone. Perhaps that’s why she misunderstood you … why we avoid the phone for important interviews.”

She nodded. “I told her I waited for a funeral, not went to one. I thought I was pretty clear about it, but it’s been a madhouse around here since my nomination. The truth is I could have said anything.” She cleared her throat again. “I hope I haven’t caused a problem for you, but isn’t this overkill? We’re only talking about a few days, thirty years ago. What difference can it possibly make now?”

I stared at her. Surely the judge knew better than to ask such a ridiculous question. I wanted to tell her that, but now wasn’t the time. Not while I still needed her help.

“You know the bureau,” I told her instead. “A few days, a few years, its all the same to my masters. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you why.”

“Of course not, not after Josephine Grady.” She smiled. “What you really want to know is whether I was in jail, or in Moscow training with the KGB.” She shook her head. “I’m afraid my life’s depressingly normal. I was just a college kid blown away by the thought of going to Yale Law School. I did my duty with my aunt, but as soon as I could leave I was on my way again. End of story.”

Which left me with nowhere to go with that line of questioning, so I changed directions.

“I have a second problem, your honor. We need to interview your last college roommate, Dalia Hernandez, but we can’t find her. You told us you lived off-campus with her for almost nine months, but our agents in Berkeley can’t find any way to verify that. Or any records to indicate where she might be now.”

“She’d be in student records at Cal, for starters, and pretty easy to track down after that I would imagine.”

“Can’t get into student records, not for Dalia anyway.”

Judge Thompson nodded. “Right. I forgot about the waiver. You’ve got twenty releases from me, but none from her.”

“That’s why I’m asking. Maybe you can put your memory to the test.”

“That won’t be easy, I’m afraid.”

The judge cleared her throat again, and when she continued, the timbre of her voice was just the slightest bit higher.

“We didn’t part on very good terms, Agent Monk. Both our names were on the apartment lease and I had to leave before the end of the month, the end of the lease. Dalia thought I was trying to skip out on rent, on cleaning up the place. You know the problem.”

“Have you had any contact with her since then?”

“None, I’m sorry to say. I sent her a note with enough money to make sure she didn’t get hurt on the lease, but she never replied. The months turned into years.” She shrugged. “What can I tell you?” She laid her hands on the desktop, palms down. “I have to ask you again. What could you hope to get from finding Dalia Hernandez now? She didn’t like me at the end, probably still doesn’t, but so what?”

“You’re a Supreme Court nominee. Surely the president warned you about the depth of our investigation.”

“Of course he did, Agent Monk, and I don’t mean to be so difficult. It’s just that my confirmation hearings are coming up soon and even to think about them makes me cranky. I saw the Bork fiasco, what Clarence Thomas went through. Mother Teresa herself would have a tough time, and I’m beginning to understand why.”

“If you had to find Dalia Hernandez, really had to find her, where would you start?”

“She was in pre-law with me at Cal. Her home was in Philadelphia.” The judge shook her head. “Not much to go on, but I guess I’d check out the law schools in Pennsylvania.”

I stared directly into her eyes. “I’m obligated to remind you of something, Judge. If there’s something in your personal history that I should know about, now’s the time to tell me. It would be a mistake to let me find it first.”

“I have never done anything I’m ashamed of.”

“With all respect, your honor, that’s not responsive to my question.”

Her smile died. “Then let me make it clear enough that you and your headquarters can’t possibly misunderstand. There is nothing in my history that disqualifies me from sitting on the Supreme Court.” She lifted her reading glasses from the desk. “And if that’s all, I need to get back to work.”

On the way back to my office I considered the two things I’d just learned. One, Judge Thompson never did answer my question—not the way it needed to be answered anyway—and two, she was the most incompetent liar I’d ever interviewed.

Talk about tells, Brenda Thompson had been awash in them.

Overexplaining at the start, repeating far too many times her assertion about her aunt’s miraculous survival, clearing her throat repeatedly, then using her hand to massage her throat, as though she could physically squeeze out words she didn’t really want to say. Hands in her lap out of sight, and when they weren’t, flat on her desk with the palms down. Then that ridiculous business of attending to a piece of unrelated paperwork in the midst of my questioning. And half a dozen other clear indications she was not telling the truth. My stride lengthened as I neared the front doors into WMFO. Suddenly I couldn’t wait to find out why.

Back at Squad 17, Lisa was frowning as I approached her desk in the surprisingly quiet bullpen. Most of the desks were unoccupied, and I wondered why until I remembered that most of my squad was scheduled for firearms training this morning.

“Thanks a heap,” Lisa said before I could speak.

I stopped at the corner of her desk.

“Kevin Finnerty stopped by,” she continued.

I frowned back at her. “The ADIC was down here?” I wondered if I’d heard her right. Assistant FBI directors didn’t come to middle management, not ever. “What did he want?”

“To know where the hell you were, for starters. Then he tore into me because you were gone.” She seemed to read the question on my lips. “No, I didn’t. I didn’t tell him anything … but I feel a little used, Puller. Like you hung me out to dry.”

“I had no choice,” I said, and it might have been true. At least one person had accused me of that very thing, that my overnight casino runs were no longer under my control.

A stab of pain behind my eyeballs reminded me of my ordeal in Connecticut the night before. I hadn’t had a drop to drink in the casino, but the trip had been a disaster, enough disappointment and pain to keep me from my usual nap on the plane coming home. Now it felt like a small cabinetmaker was working inside my skull, sandpapering my eyeballs from the other side. Suddenly I wanted to sit down. I looked around for a chair to drag over, then decided to prop myself against the edge of Lisa’s desk instead. She smelled good, I couldn’t help noticing, and somehow it made me feel better.

“How’s the Thompson report going?” I asked her. “How far along is it?”

“I’m assembling the stuff from the other offices—three hundred and some pages so far—and I should have a rough draft by the end of the week.” She stared over my shoulder for a moment before her troubled eyes swung back to me. “But there’s still the missing college roommate … the unaccounted-for three weeks … the not-quite-dead aunt.”

I told her what the judge had said, that the aunt had in fact not died while Thompson was in Brookston. “Could you have misunderstood, Lisa? Misread your interview notes?”

“Not a chance.”

She opened the file on her desk, then the 1-A section of the file, a manila envelope attached to the inside back cover, used to store documentary evidence too small to be maintained in the vast bulky-exhibit vault on the second floor, as well as original interview notes from the case agent. Lisa pulled out a sheet of lined yellow paper and handed it to me.

“Here they are,” she said, “my notes from our conversation. Look for yourself.”

I took the paper. Her handwriting was as meticulous as the rest of her work. I didn’t expect to find a mistake and I didn’t. Halfway down the sheet, the words couldn’t have been more clear. B.T. waited till after S.K. funeral, then left for New Haven. Then, a bit further down, Lisa’s record of her call to the county clerk in Brookston. Date of death S.K, April 17, 1991. I read the notes again just to make sure, handed the page back to her.

“I’d say we have a problem,” I told her, but just saying the words made my pulse quicken, and the feeling made me wonder about my motives.

As an FBI agent—a pro—I’m expected to examine such lies as Thompson’s with the objectivity of a technician in a white lab coat, not as a predator racing to the scent of fresh prey. I should be able to do that, but no one in our type of work does. Firemen’s hearts leap at the sound of an alarm bell, policemen rejoice in the sudden bark from the radio that sends them into harm’s way. Soldiers would rather jump out of helicopters into blizzards of bullets than go through another goddamned day of training, and FBI agents can’t wait to go after the kind of people who claim to be righteous.

“So what now?” Lisa asked as she tugged her straight skirt toward the edge of her knees. “I’ve been through the file half a dozen times. Where do we start looking for the roommate?”

“You finish dictating the report. Make sure it gets highest priority through the typing pool. I’ll take care of the roommate.”

I started for my office at the rear of the bullpen, but took only two steps before I turned back to her. She looked at me, her dark eyebrows forming a quizzical arch.

“Thanks,” I told her. “Thanks for covering for me with Finnerty.”

She nodded and said something that sounded like Spanish, but real Spanish, the kind you learn before you learn English. I headed for my office, but made a mental note to take another look at her personnel file.

At my desk, I turned to the daily paperwork I had to get done before I could even think about solving the intriguing mystery of Brenda Thompson, the routine paper shuffling nobody ever sees in the movies, the everyday tedium no screenwriter would be permitted to include in a script. FBI agents have some incredible adventures, no doubt about it, but for the most part the job consists of filling up reams of paper with reports no one ever reads, compiling massive files that sit around for years until they’re finally destroyed to make way for new and equally useless compilations. I’ve often thought the files could be used for a better purpose. Like making convicted felons wear them around their necks.

My phone rang, a welcome interruption until I heard the voice on the other end. A voice I’d come to despise.

“Mr. Monk, it’s Jack Quigley from Pinewood Manor.”

My mouth formed an obscenity but I managed to keep it from turning into a word he could hear. “Yes,” I said in its place.

“I’m calling about your father’s account again. I don’t like doing this any more than you like hearing it, but the unpaid balance is simply too large to overlook. Your father’s care isn’t free, you know, and his condition is getting worse. If you can’t do something about this immediately, you’re going to have to send him somewhere else.”

Somewhere else, my ass. There was no place else, except to live with me.

“You’re going to get paid,” I told him, “but you’ll just have to wait till escrow closes on my house.”

His voice brightened. “You found a buyer?”

“Looks that way,” I lied. “We just have to iron out a couple of contingencies.” Like actually finding a buyer, for one. I heard in his voice the sound of his hopes crashing.

“Yeah … contingencies … right. Forgive my skepticism, but you’ve been telling me the same thing for months.”

“I’m meeting with my realtor just as soon as I get off the phone.”

“I’ll give you two more weeks,” the nursing-home administrator said. “Fourteen days, then you can come and get him.”

He hung up before I could answer, which was a good thing, because I didn’t have anything more to say. Lies had stopped fooling Quigley six months ago. My father’s care was enormously expensive, his monthly keep a significant chunk of my monthly salary. I thought about Connecticut again and felt a surge of resentment toward the casino.

There’d been a time last night—from one-thirty in the morning till almost three—when I could have paid Jack Quigley’s overdue balance and a hefty chunk toward Pastor Monk’s next month’s tab. Another hour on that kind of a run and I could have bought the demented old bastard his own wing. It had been that close, but it just didn’t happen, not last night anyway. That it would happen someday, someday soon, I took as an article of faith. There was no denying that the last twelve months had been a nightmare, but it would turn for me. Always had, always would. Not that Jonathon Monk knew, or cared. Not that the son of a bitch even knew where he was, or who was paying for it.

Or wasn’t paying for it, I guess Jack Quigley would say.

But regardless of what the administrator had said, his call had shattered my already puny resolve about catching up on my stack of files. Just the sound of Quigley’s harping made me think about all the years I’d wasted listening to Pastor Monk’s mindless rules, made me want to ignore the drudgery of my paperwork. Have some fun for a change. So I pushed the files aside and went to work on finding Brenda Thompson’s missing roommate.

But first I left my office, took five minutes to use the bathroom, to splash cold water on my face and run a hand through my hair. The face in the mirror didn’t make me happy, the pouches under my eyes, the stubbly shadow of whiskers. I’d seen that face before, I had to admit. Usually in a casino, but attached to other people in the casino, to the losers, the “bad beat,” as gamblers say. Losing does that to you, beats you up bad, but the good news is that winning reverses the process, and that’s why I needed to find the roommate. Some very good FBI agents had tried already and come up losers. By whipping the system until it gave up Brenda Thompson’s roommate, I’d be a winner again. Walking around lucky, as they say. I took another look at my tired face. And I’d be beautiful again, as well.

Back at my office door I hung up my Disturb and Die sign, closed and locked the door, grabbed my briefcase and opened my secret stash compartment. Christ, I thought, as I stared at the eight lonely hundred dollar bills that remained after last night’s setback. My stomach began to hurt. Eleven thousand dollars gone. The worst night I’d ever had, despite the great start. I’d been at least that far up when it turned on me, far enough ahead to convince myself I couldn’t possibly lose, although I no longer thought about gambling in such terms as winning and losing. The eleven large were still mine, I was just letting the Foxwoods Casino hold the money until I got back there to reclaim it. The philosophy is rife with error, of course. Nobody needs to tell me that, but I make it a point not to analyze it too closely. You start to believe the money’s gone forever, you can go crazy.

Besides, it isn’t about money, not for me anyway. I play for the action, the thrill of fear, the in-your-face belligerence of battling odds I can’t possibly beat … except that somebody always does, and sometimes it’s me. And when it is, I win more than just money. When it’s me, I not only beat the odds but everything else my old man taught me to fear, along with a couple of things he made me dread.

At least that’s what Dr. Annie Fisher tells me.

I can’t tolerate boredom—my now and again lover insists—and that’s the whole problem with me. Even worse, I’ll do any goddamned thing to avoid it.

Picture life as a spinning pie plate, Annie had told me more than once. Picture yourself riding that spinning plate. There’s a pole sticking up out of the exact center of that plate, and holding onto the pole is the only secure perch on the entire plate, the only sure way to keep from being thrown out to the edge, then off the plate altogether. It isn’t much fun clutching the pole, but at least you know you’ll make it to the end of the ride. Not like the risk-addicted bastards who let go of the pole, who creep toward the edge of the plate, their bodies quivering against the centrifugal monster trying to hurl them into the abyss, their mouths already forming the first faint moans of ecstacy. According to Annie, I’m only happy when I’m out on the edge, even happier when my grip is slipping, and far and away happiest when I’m clinging one-handed to the very lip of the plate, legs extended above the void, eyes wild and throat bulging as I holler for more.

She says that my childhood harnessed to Pastor Jonathon Monk’s church of no-matter-what-you-do-you’re-fucking-doomed has ruined me for a normal life. That given the choice I’d rather die than be ordinary. I argued with her at first, but we both know she’s right.

I shook the negativity from my mind as I prepared to slide a little closer to the edge of Annie’s plate.

First I removed two of my remaining hundred-dollar bills—“dimes” in casino speak, the curious vocabulary I find irresistible—and put the rest back into the secret compartment of my briefcase. If I failed to find Thompson’s roommate before my five-thirty appointment with Dr. Chen, I’d go down to the street and give the two hundred to the first wide-eyed panhandler I could find. If I located the roommate, I’d win. Not money, of course, but in the only important sense of the word I’d win.

Ready to go, I reached for my in-box and pulled out a sheaf of paperwork, spread it on my desk, and invoked the gods of bureaucracy to speed me along my way. I pulled my briefcase closer, opened it, and retrieved my pinky ring, slid the ring on my finger, then used the same hand to grab the telephone. Before I dialed I took a moment to admit what I was about to do, that I needed to change the rules of the game for the next few minutes. Official bureau rules had not been good enough to find Brenda Thompson’s college roommate. Now it was time for Quantico rules.

Like most states, California law forbids its universities from releasing information about students without a signed waiver from the student herself. I had one from Brenda Thompson, but nothing from Dalia Hernandez. To review the woman’s file at Cal without her consent I had to break California state law, but I didn’t have to search hard for justification. I couldn’t possibly harm the roommate, and I’d be clearing up a problem that could delay Judge Thompson’s Senate confirmation.

So I punched numbers, and three thousand miles away the switchboard at the Berkeley campus of the University of California answered, then directed my call to the student-records office. I told the woman who answered the phone who I was.

“I’m calling from Washington, D.C.,” I said, “and I’m hoping you can help me.”