“So good, so good, so good . . .”
I sit. One of the old guys throws his arm around me, nudging me to sing along. I join in for a very unenthusiastic “I’ve been inclined” and wait for someone else—preferably Andy Reeves—to approach me. No one does. I glance around the room. There is a poster featuring four of the happiest, healthiest seniors this side of a Viagra ad with the words “Tuesday Afternoon Bingo—$3 Drinks” emblazoned across their chests. At the bar, a few of the guys I figure are orderlies-bartenders pour a red beverage into laid-out plastic cups.
When “Sweet Caroline” finishes up, the old folks hoot and holler their approval. I’m almost looking forward to the next song, enjoying this quasi normalcy, but the feathered-hair piano man stands up and announces a “quick break.”
The old-timers register their disappointment with gusto.
“Five minutes,” the piano man says. “Your drinks are at the bar. Think up a few requests, okay?”
That placates them a bit. The piano man scoops the money out of what looks like an oversized brandy snifter, heads toward me, and says, “Officer Dumas?”
I nod.
“I’m Andy Reeves.”
First thing I notice: His speaking voice is a little breathy.
Or whispery.
He takes the seat next to me. I try to guess the age. Even with whatever weird cosmetic work has made his face shiny, he can’t be more than midfifties, but then again, the military base closed down only fifteen years ago. Why does he have to be older than that?
I glance around. “This place,” I say.
“What about it?”
“It seems a far distance from the Department of Agriculture.”
“I know, right?” He spreads his hands. “What can I say? I needed a change.”
“So you no longer work for the government?”
“I retired, what, seven years ago. Worked for the USDA for twenty-five years. Got a nice pension and now I’m pursuing my passion.”
“Piano.”
“Yes. I mean, not here. This is, well, you have to start somewhere, right?”
I study his face. The tan is from a bottle or bed, not the sun. I can see some very pale skin near the hairline. “Right,” I say.
“We had a piano at that old Westbridge office. I used to play there all the time. Helped us relax when the job got too stressful.” Reeves shifts in his seat and flashes teeth so big and dazzlingly white that they could double as piano keys. “So what can I do for you, Detective?”
I jump right in. “What kind of work were you guys doing at the military base?”
“Military base?”
“That’s what it used to be,” I say. “A control center for Nike missiles.”
“Oh, I know.” He shakes his head in awe. “What a history that place has, am I right?”
I say nothing.
“But all of that, well, it was years before we moved in. We were just an office complex, not a military base.”
“An office complex for the USDA,” I say.
“That’s right. Our mission was to provide leadership on food, agriculture, natural resources, rural development, nutrition, and related issues based on sound public policy, the best available science, and efficient management.”
It sounds rehearsed, probably because it is.
“Why there?” I ask.
“Pardon?”
“The USDA has an office on Independence Avenue in Washington, DC.”
“Headquarters, sure. We were a satellite.”
“But why there, in the woods like that?”
“Why not?” he says, lifting his palms to the ceiling. “It was a great space. Some of the work we did, well, I don’t want to boast or make it sound more glamorous than it was, but many of our studies were absolutely top secret.” He leans forward. “Did you ever see the movie Trading Places?”
“Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd, Jamie Lee Curtis,” I say.
He’s very pleased that I know it. “That’s the one. If you remember, the Duke brothers were trying to corner the orange juice market, right?”
“Right.”
“Do you remember how?” Reeves smiles as he sees on my face that I do. “The Dukes were bribing a government official to obtain an advance copy of the USDA’s monthly crop report. The USDA, Detective Dumas. That was us. Many of our studies were that important. We needed privacy and tight security.”
I nod. “So that’s why you had the fence and all the No Trespassing signs.”
“Exactly.” Reeves spreads his hands again. “Where better for us to conduct our testing than a former military base?”
“Anybody ever defy those signs?”
For the first time I think I see the smile flicker. “What do you mean?”
“Did you ever have trespassers?”
“Sometimes,” Reeves says as casually as he can muster. “Kids would sneak into the woods to drink or smoke pot.”
“And then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“Would the kids ignore the warning signs?”
“Something like that.”
“What would they do then?”
“Nothing. They’d just walk past the signs.”
“And what would you do about that?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“We might tell them that this was private property.”
“Might?” I ask. “Or did?”
“Sometimes we did, I guess.”
“How would you do that exactly?”
“Pardon?”
“Walk me through it. A kid goes past your sign. What would you do?”
“Why are you asking?”
I put a little snap in my voice. “Just answer the question, please.”
“We’d tell him to go back. We’d remind him that he was trespassing.”
“Who would remind him?” I ask.
“I don’t understand.”
“Would you be the one to remind him?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then who?”
“One of our security guards.”
“Were they guarding the woods?”
“What?”
“The signs started probably fifty yards away from your fence.”
Andy Reeves considers this. “No, the guards wouldn’t be that far out. They would be more interested in controlling the perimeter.”
“So you probably wouldn’t see a trespasser until he reached your fence, is that correct?”
“I don’t see the relevance—”
“How would you spot this trespassing kid?” I ask, changing gears. “Would you rely on the guard’s vision, or did you have cameras?”
“I think we may have had a few . . .”
“Think you had cameras? You don’t remember?”
I’m testing his patience. That’s not unintentional. Reeves starts tapping the top of the table with a fingernail. A long fingernail, I notice. Then he gives me a toothy grin and whispers again: “I’m really not going to take much more badgering, Detective.”
“Yeah, okay, sorry,” I say. I tilt my head. “So let me ask you this: Why would stealth Black Hawks be landing at a ‘USDA’”—I do finger quotes—“‘office complex’ at night?”
Drop the mic, as one of my goddaughters might say.
Andy Reeves hadn’t been expecting that one. His mouth drops open, though not for long. His eyes harden. The big wide smile has been replaced with something closemouthed and far more reptilian.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he whispers.
I try to stare him down, but he has no problem with too much eye contact. I don’t like that. We all think eye contact is great or a sign of honesty, but like most things, too much indicates an issue.
“It’s been fifteen years, Reeves.”
He doesn’t stop staring.
“I don’t care what you guys were doing.” I try to keep the pleading out of my voice. “I just need to know what happened to my brother.”
Exact same volume, exact same cadence, exact same words: “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“My brother’s name was Leo Dumas.”
He pretends to be thinking about it, trying to dredge up the name from his memory bank.
“He was hit by a train with a girl named Diana Styles.”
“Oh, Augie’s daughter.” Andy Reeves shakes his head the way people do when they speak of someone else’s tragedy. “Your brother was the young man killed with her?”
He knows this. I know this. He knows I know.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”