I buckled myself into the seat across the aisle from Barack. There was one more row of seats behind us, all empty. The same talkative agent who’d been with Barack a few nights ago in my backyard was in the driver’s seat fiddling with the air-conditioning. Barack’s ever-present gaggle of aides and personal assistants were, once again, MIA. Couldn’t say I missed them.
“I thought the funeral was earlier this afternoon,” Barack said, eyeing the flowers.
“These are for Jill. I’m on my way home—”
“Those are lilies, Joe.”
“So?”
“So it’s a sympathy arrangement. The lily is a funeral flower. If you were going for romantic, you should have gone for roses.”
The Escalade eased into traffic. I stared at the flowers in my hand. They looked like regular white flowers. “They had some red roses, but they were three times the price.”
Barack made a little finger gun and pointed it at me. “That’s why they’re more romantic.”
I sighed. Barack was right. He was always right.
“Anyway, I was headed home, and—”
He patted me on my knee, the good one. “We’ll drop you off,” he said.
I leaned forward between the seats and pointed to the approaching on-ramp. “You’re better off avoiding the interstate this time of day, if you can. Stay on this road for another mile, until you hit the four-way stop. Turn left, and stay on Thirty East until you see the sign for the Christmas tree farm. Stinson’s. It’s closed during the summer, but if you ever need a Christmas tree, they grow ‘em big and tall. Unless you’re Jewish. Are you Jewish?”
“No, sir,” Steve said.
“You ever had matzah ball soup?”
“He already has your address, Joe,” Barack said, cutting in. “How do you think we got to your place earlier this week?”
I patted Steve on the shoulder, and he flinched slightly. Service agents were known to be a little jumpy. “Let me know if you need anything, pardner.”
I leaned back in the seat. Barack stared at me for a beat.
“You look like you’ve been playing football,” he said.
My shoes were shined, but the rest of my suit was filthy. “I tripped. It’s nothing, really.”
“Hmmmm,” Barack said. The president was always saying stuff like that to me: “Hrmph” and “Hrrrrrm.” Occasionally, a “Harrrumph.” Even after working together for eight years, I hadn’t decoded the meanings behind them. Barack was, at times, a fortress. At other times, a glass case of emotion, as Will Ferrell would say.
“How do you like the Little Beast?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“My new ride,” Barack said, patting his leather arm rest. His mood seemed much improved since Wednesday. He explained that the aftermarket-upgraded Escalade was as close to his armored presidential limos—the so-called Beasts—that Barack could buy on the open market. He’d had this one imported from Afghanistan. It had been his gift to himself, after completing the first draft of his presidential memoirs. When Michelle saw what he’d paid for it, she said, “You’d better have a couple more book ideas inside that thick skull of yours.”
“I’m guessing it’s not a coincidence that you’re in Delaware again,” I said.
Barack leaned forward between the front seats. “Could we get a little privacy back here, Steve?”
The agent turned the radio up. It was a newer rock ‘n’ roll tune. I missed the stuff you could dance to: Buddy Holly, the Four Seasons. Not that I’d ever been much of a dancer. I’d been known to trip over my own feet, even when I wasn’t on a dance floor.
“We saw you at the funeral,” Barack said.
“You’ve been following me.”
“We went to the cemetery to pay our respects.”
“You didn’t know Finn.”
“I knew how much he meant to you,” Barack said. “We were going to flag you down afterward and say hi, but Steve and I saw you get in that van. It was all white. Generic. Perfect for an afternoon kidnapping. After finding that map, we didn’t want to take any chances.”
“You followed me?”
“For your safety.”
“I’m not a child, you know. You could have called me.”
He sighed. “You’re right, Joe. But I still think you should at least look into getting private security, like I suggested. If not for you, then for your family.”
“Leave my family out of this,” I snapped.
“Whoa, easy fella. It’s me, your pal. Barry. I’m not some bad guy.”
I unclenched my fists. I hadn’t even been aware I’d been clenching them.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t even know who the bad guys are anymore.”
“I’m sure Finn Donnelly wasn’t a bad guy.”
“You don’t know that. I don’t know that. Nobody knows that.” I told Barack about my meeting with my detective friend, Dan Capriotti. “The department’s working this as a possible overdose. The life insurance company is investigating it as a suicide. I don’t know who to believe. There are some strange guys around—”
“Strange guys?”
“Ran into some druggie at the facility, where his wife is living. Probably nothing, but…” I shrugged. “Did you know they found heroin on Finn? Can you believe that?”
“I was going to let you know. We just found out today, when the lieutenant faxed the case files to us.”
“You can stop doing that, you know.”
“What?”
I rolled my eyes. “What you’re doing. I know you think you’re helping me, but I’ve got my own contact on the force. Dan will let me know if they find anything important. Finn may have been mixed up with some dangerous people. For all I know, he was on his way to see me. To ask for my help. Now, do I believe he was on drugs? There’s nothing to say he wasn’t. I think the truth is going to be more complex, but there’s nothing you or your sunglass-wearing goons can do but get in the way. You’re free to go back to Bali or Cape Town or wherever and work on your tan.”
He stared at me with thin lips but didn’t say anything. What did he expect? He seemingly wanted to pick up right where we’d left off, like no time had passed since we’d left Washington. To be fair, it was exactly what I’d wanted.
Except it wasn’t. I’d expected we’d go out for drinks together. Maybe play a few holes, like in the line we’d been feeding to the press. Instead, we’d been reunited by tragedy. The specter of death hovered over us, poisoning the air we breathed. It didn’t help that Barack was his usual impenetrable self.
What did he get out of spending his energy and resources on something like this? He hadn’t known Finn. He was working an angle. I’d never known him to be underhanded, but his every move was choreographed. There was something about all of this that he wasn’t sharing with me.
The suspicion had been gnawing at me since Barack’s first visit.
It was gnawing at me even harder now.
I’d already come to the realization that the police might not be putting maximum effort into their investigation. Dan still hadn’t returned my call from yesterday. The trouble was, I’d also realized I couldn’t uncover the truth about Finn’s death on my own. I wasn’t a detective. I didn’t know what questions to ask, or how to ask them.
But that didn’t mean I needed Barack’s help.
“There’s no reason for you to get your hands dirty,” I told Barack. “The last thing we need is the Secret Service or the FBI or the NSA or whoever you want to call in complicating things.”
“Joe,” he said. His voice was flatter than Kansas.
“I’m serious. If I know you, there’ll be drones buzzing Wilmington within a week. This isn’t a war zone. I don’t want you to turn it into one.”
“That’s not fair.”
“You and I are private citizens now. There’s no way this ends well if we start swinging our dicks around—”
“Joe.”
“Don’t ‘Joe’ me,” I said. “I’m serious.”
“You’re serious.”
“As a heart-attack sandwich.”
“Well,” Barack said, “that’s that, I guess.”
For the rest of the way to my place, Barack busied himself on his BlackBerry. I stared out the window. There was more to refusing Barack’s assistance than my hurt feelings. The story behind Finn’s death was a time bomb. If and when it went off, there was no telling how many people would be affected by the blast. Keeping Barack—and Jill, and the rest of my family—as far away from my clumsy attempts to defuse it was the right thing to do. It was the smart thing to do.
It was a lie so well told, I almost believed it myself.