Anna was back on his doorstep at 7:30 a.m. Henry had already showered, shaved, and brewed a pot of coffee. Even Scooter was back, having scratched at the screen door for entry an hour earlier. He was now curled on the cool linoleum of the kitchen floor, watching Henry and Anna enter from the hallway. On the stove, two eggs popped in a slick of bacon grease in a cast-iron skillet.
“Want some?” Henry asked, pointing with a spatula.
She shook her head, all business until she spotted the dog.
“Ah. So there he is.”
“You’ve met Scooter?”
“The neighbors mentioned him. They see your willingness to take him in as a vote in your favor.”
“Didn’t know there was a referendum.”
“The court of public opinion. Poston’s has always been pretty busy.”
“I’ve noticed.”
She poured herself a mug of coffee. Henry slid his eggs onto a plate where two strips of bacon were already waiting. Scooter’s ears went up but otherwise he didn’t budge.
“Sounds like you’ve done some more asking around.”
“I have. It was fruitful.”
His stomach did a tiny somersault. He wondered if she was about to fire him before he even said yes.
“You spent a year in Europe.”
“That’s no big secret, although I doubt you found it on Google.”
“Talked to a friend of yours.”
“A friend?”
“Is it that unusual?”
“Well, no.” Although he had to admit that no obvious names leaped to mind. His most recent job had imposed a certain degree of isolation, as had this one. “But it’s fair to say I’m not the world’s most social creature.”
“He said that, too. ‘Bit of a loner’ were the exact words.”
“Wouldn’t mind knowing your source.”
“I’m fine with loners as long as they’re competent, and he spoke well of your skills. I like the whole Europe thing, too. Anyone who can go over there without a plan or a job and manage to stay an entire year must be resourceful.”
“Fifteen months, actually. And it wasn’t that hard.”
But he had been resourceful then. Happy, too, for the most part. He’d been in law school at the time, only a semester shy of a degree. Pointless, he’d concluded, before dropping out to hop a budget flight to London. He knocked around the U.K. on a bicycle for a few weeks, striking up conversations in rural pubs and bunking with farm families for weeks at a time as the seasonal chores demanded. He crossed the Channel and gradually made his way across the continent before reaching Germany, where he lived hand to mouth for eleven months in Berlin. By the end he had acquired a loose network of friends—Germans and expats—but was so broke that he had to bum a loan for a return ticket to the States.
Henry loved it there. Not the cold, or the clouds, or the short summer, but everything else, all of which seemed especially tailored to his preferences. Berliners walked places. They had clean and wonderful parks, and weren’t always in their cars. Even old ladies bicycled to the grocery store. No one seemed to mind having an American in their midst, and once they accepted you they’d do almost anything to help. The locals read books and newspapers, bought their bread from bakers. Spending an hour in idle contemplation in a bar or café was a virtue, not laziness, and restaurants weren’t so goddamned noisy. Nobody had guns, religion was passé. His kind of living, at least until he ran out of money.
The moment he got back to the United States he recognized what he had somehow never noticed before about the country he grew up in: People ate too much, bought too much, and then climbed into huge cars and trucks to go out and buy more. Bigger was always better, or at least more admired. Everyone was too distracted to read anything beyond the texts on their phones or the crawler on cable news. Voters opted for whoever promised to crack down on the people or groups they most despised. Greed and guns were rampant. At a time and place like this, it felt dangerous to be loyal to anyone or anything. And so it was that Henry fell into the perfect job for nursing his lonely contempt, a staff opening on Capitol Hill.
“Your bud says it was you who got that senator in trouble a few years back,” Anna said. “The one with the floozy on the payroll.”
“Opposition research. The people I was working for wanted him off a certain subcommittee. He made it easy for me. I was lucky.”
“People who are good at what they do almost always say they’re lucky.”
“And vice versa. In Washington, anyway.”
“Anything more I should know about your time there?”
“Nothing that’s relevant.”
Or nothing he cared to mention, because plenty was relevant. The job on the Hill had taught Henry most of what he knew about discreetly investigating someone’s past, following a paper trail, and doing surveillance while hiding in plain sight. The fellow who hired him had done the tutoring, a rumpled old gnome named Rodney Bales. Staffers referred to Bales in hushed, deferential tones as Sir Rodney, at least partly due to the remnants of an upper-crust British accent in his rumbling baritone.
Henry’s official employer was a senator from the Midwest, although Henry didn’t actually meet the senator until his third week on the job. His real boss was Bales.
Trying to figure out Sir Rodney’s past was like working on one of those cryptic crosswords filled with puns and confusing wordplay. Some people said he’d been with MI6. Others swore it was CIA. Now and then Bales casually dropped a clue to past assignments and whereabouts, like the time he joked about a talking parrot that had made him laugh in a wartime bar in Beirut. Henry was with him on K Street when he bumped into an old foreign correspondent who blithely mentioned, through gales of laughter, “that drunken old Serb who nearly took your head off in Pristina.” Then there was the time Henry came upon Bales in his office, poring over a Czech magazine.
Oh, yes, his office. Rather than quartering himself with the rest of the senator’s staff in the Russell Building, Sir Rodney’s home base was in the Capitol itself, a windowless chamber at the back of the senator’s hideaway. That’s where Bales first interviewed Henry before hiring him on the spot.
“You know what I like best about your résumé?” Bales had said. “Your senior thesis on Metternich, focusing on his minions instead of the man himself.”
“How did you even find that?”
“And your year abroad. You made your own way, you improvised.”
“Barely.”
“See? I like that, too. Almost every other chap who comes through that door is overselling himself before he even sits down.”
“If you really want to know, I’ve never been all that impressed with people in this line of work. Senators, I mean. Or even congressional staff.”
That was when Henry first heard Sir Rodney’s laugh, wet and caustic, like something bubbling in a cauldron. Bales then told Henry that before doing a single day of work he would have to endure a month-long training course known around the office as the School of Night.
“How late are the hours?”
“No, no. It’s a euphemism. From Shakespeare. A reference to a bunch of schemers and deep thinkers who were up to no good. Or so they say. Have you heard of the Farm, the CIA’s little training camp?”
“Sure.”
“Well, this is the Cliff’s Notes version, minus all the physical stuff. We also throw in an hour or two on data mining, and so on. Not just to show you how to do it, but to give you an inkling of what you’ll be up against. No such thing as a secret in this town anymore. Not for anyone who knows what the fuck he’s doing.”
Henry might still be working there if the senator hadn’t been unseated in the 2012 election. Bales, unsurprisingly, remained employed by switching over to committee staff, where he managed to at least keep Henry aboard part-time until the summer of 2013, when the gig at DOJ came open. Henry got the nod solely on the strength of Sir Rodney’s recommendation.
And, now, here he was tucking into his eggs and bacon under the gaze of his prospective next employer.
“Sure I can’t make you some?” he asked.
Anna shook her head.
“I can’t help but notice that you haven’t yet said no to my offer.”
“I also haven’t said yes.”
“And what will it take for you to say yes?”
“A little more information on my employer.”
“Fair enough.” Her cell phone began ringing in her purse. “Shit.”
Anna frowned at the incoming number but answered.
“Yes?”
Then a pause, followed by a look of embarrassment. She grimaced and touched a hand to her forehead.
“I’m so sorry. I meant to do that on the way out of town and it completely slipped my mind. Her pills are on the kitchen counter. The food’s in the pantry. Oh, and her name is Princess, not that she ever answers to it.”
Another pause, Anna nodding with a hint of impatience.
“I’m not sure. Cheryl will be back on Saturday, though, so you can just hand her over then. I’ll text her your number and address…Okay, good…And thank you again.”
She sighed and put the phone back in her purse.
“Princess?”
“A cat. Not mine. I was babysitting for a friend who’s out of town, so I had to pass her along to someone else. One more change of venue and she’ll start feeling like one of my clients.”
“Clients?”
“Children. Runaways, foster kids, juvies. I did have my own cat once, but gave it away after three months.”
“Allergies?”
“No. I just didn’t like having it around. My mother’s daughter, I guess. We never even had a dog growing up.”
“What’s a farm without a dog?”
“That’s what my father always said. All he ever wanted was a retriever for hunting, but Mom always put her foot down. I think Willard and me were already more critters than she could handle.”
As if on cue, Scooter stood and sauntered toward the back door. Henry walked over to let him out.
“Think I offended him?” Then she turned somber. “Maybe with a dog this never would’ve happened. Another set of eyes on Willard. Or maybe a dog would have distracted him, or been his friend.”
Henry decided it was a good time to change the subject.
“Those children you work with, who’s minding the store while you’re gone?”
“My coworkers. They’ll manage. So will the children.” Then she looked at the floor, as if ashamed for saying it so dismissively. “What more do you need to know about me? I’m thirty, I live in a third-floor walk-up in Mount Vernon with no roommates and, as you heard, no pets. My job is important but not all-consuming. I like baseball, hate football, never vote Republican, avoid Facebook like the plague, and eat out at least five times a week, which is probably why I can’t afford a better apartment or a real PI. Any other questions?”
“None that can’t wait.”
“I’m beginning to see how you go about your work. Watching, listening, waiting for slipups. Maybe you even arranged for Nancy to make that call.”
“What if I really had?”
“I’d be impressed. But not in a good way.”
“Useful to know.”
“You sound like a man who’s made up his mind.”
“I have. But I won’t take your money for any longer than two weeks.”
“Fair enough. Will you be needing an advance?”
He shook his head.
“What changed your mind?”
So, then. Already having to lie. Henry took another bite of his eggs to avoid looking her in the eye, and then answered with his mouth full.
“Curiosity, I guess.”
“That job of yours in Baltimore, with the U.S. Attorney. How’d you end up on their radar?”
Still interviewing him. Maybe she was having second thoughts.
“A friend on the Hill. Told me they were looking for something a little unorthodox, and said it matched my skill set.”
“Skill set?”
“Mostly the ability to keep my eyes open and my mouth shut while looking for anomalies and paper trails. Plus the law school background. They liked that, too.”
“What did DOJ want you to do?”
“Do you really need to know?”
“Now that you’re my employee, do you really need to ask?”
“They detailed me as support staff on a special investigation, an antidrug task force, working with city cops. It was an infiltration, plain and simple. Justice was convinced one of their people was tipping the bad guys, and they wanted to find out who.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“Not if you’re careful. I’m a chickenshit at heart, so I was careful.”
“Did it work?”
“They got their man, and I got a bonus. Which is why I don’t need an advance.”
The last part was another lie, but the first part was true. In fact, he’d built such an airtight case, and did it so quietly and efficiently, that DOJ was able to handle the whole thing without going to court, which greatly pleased his bosses because it allowed them to keep everything out of the public eye. It worked for Henry, too, because his role never had to be revealed in depositions, charging documents, or in open court. And in the departmental shake-up that followed, so many people were fired or transferred that no one could have said for sure who the snitch was. The U.S. Attorney showed his gratitude by offering a full-time job. Henry, having seen the lay of the land, turned it down.
“That looks good,” Anna said. “I’ve changed my mind about that egg.”
She stepped around him to the stove to turn on the gas and cracked an egg into the skillet with a single pop against the rim.
“One other request, if you’re really going to do this,” she said.
“Okay.”
“Keep me as busy as you can, don’t let me feel sorry for myself, and don’t act like I’m made of glass.”
“Understood.”
“When do we start?”
“How ’bout now?”
“Good. I scheduled a nine-thirty visit with Willard. I told them I might be bringing my own investigator, and they said fine.”
“That gives us more than an hour to spare. Would you mind if…”
“If what?”
“Well, this won’t be pleasant, but I need to look at the scene. The house.”
She held the spatula in midair, the egg bubbling beneath it.
“Okay.” Barely audible. “Sure. That makes sense.”
She ate only half the egg and slid the rest into the garbage. He grabbed a notebook and they set out on foot down Willow.