It was late afternoon and dusk already. Heavy November clouds had sealed off the sky like steel plates. Light shone from the windows on the top floor. Clyde entered the door in the corner of the building and ascended a long, narrow flight of stairs. Numerous empty buckets and garbage cans were stacked on the landing at the top; weather had been dry recently. Clyde rapped on the door and then pushed it open.
Marcus Berry had the whole office to himself. He’d spread out some papers on a big old folding table and draped his jacket over the back of a chair as he worked. When Clyde came in, he thrust his arms into the sleeves of the jacket and shrugged it on and stood up all in the same motion, then crossed the room to shake hands.
“It was nice to see you at Jack’s place the other night,” Clyde said.
“Hey, when Jack Carlson invites me to a defeat party for Clyde Banks, who am I to turn it down?” Berry said. “Have a seat, Clyde.”
“Can’t stay. Left my baby with the neighbors.”
“Well, I hope you’re here to drop off the job application,” Berry said brightly.
Clyde felt himself blushing. He handed over the completed form. “Excellent,” Berry said.
“Well, you might change your mind after you read this,” Clyde said. He was about to lose his nerve, so he took a sheaf of handwritten notes out of his back pocket and threw it into the middle of the table, like a desperate riverboat gambler laying down a pair of sixes.
“Typewriters all busted down there at the sheriff’s department?” Berry said.
“This ain’t an official report,” Clyde said. “It’s a tip from a concerned citizen.”
Berry pondered this as he walked slowly up and down the length of the room, stretching his muscles.
“Not to bring up a sore subject,” Berry said, “but have you raised this with your boss?”
“I think it’s more of a federal issue,” Clyde said.
“Some bad guys crossed a state line, huh?”
“I think these bad guys have crossed some national borders,” Clyde said.
“Ah. You think we should send a copy to the DEA?”
“It’s not a drug thing,” Clyde said.
“Not a drug thing,” Berry repeated.
Clyde was getting less and less sure of himself and felt his face getting very hot. The report looked foolish resting there on the table, handwritten on lined paper like a child’s homework assignment. “If I tell you straight out, you’ll laugh,” he said.
“I doubt it.”
“But if you read that,” Clyde said, nodding at his report, “I’ve got it all explained from start to finish, and maybe it won’t seem so foolish.”
“Well, I’ll be certain and have a good look at it, then,” Berry said. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Clyde?”
“You already did it,” Clyde said. “I’ll see you around, Marcus.”
“Watch your step,” Berry said, “those stairs are not for the faint of heart.”
Clyde considered these words as he walked down the steps, wondering whether he was faint of heart. Sometimes he sure felt that way.
Chapter Fourty-Four
“Just to expedite this,” Hennessey said as the cab pulled away from Langley, “let’s just stipulate thatI’m an amoral, manipulative son of a bitch and that what I did was unforgivable.”
The man did have an infuriating talent for taking the wind out of Betsy’s sails. She heaved a big sigh and looked away from him, staring out the window at the wooded parkland surrounding the G.W. Parkway.
“If you needed a Trojan horse into the Agency,” she finally said, “why didn’t you just ask? Why go to the trouble to set me up with a fake life and fake friends?”
“The first thing that ought to be said,” Hennessey said, “is that although those people have gotten to know you for professional reasons that are sort of nasty and sneaky, some of them have come to love, or at least like, you for personal reasons that are perfectly sincere, and you should not make the mistake of rejecting them.”
“I appreciate your saying that,” Betsy said. “But I know that I’ll never forgive you.”
Hennessey sipped his coffee and thought about that one for a while, tilting his head back and forth as he worked through some kind of internal debate. “No,” he finally said, gently and almost reluctantly. “No. That’s not acceptable.”
“What do you mean, it’s not acceptable? What you did sucks and I’ll never forgive you. Accept that!”
Hennessey held up one hand. “Oh, by all means. I’ll stipulate from the very beginning that I suck. A lot of my associates suck, too—or else I wouldn’t bother to hire them. We all suck for a living. But what’s not acceptable is for you to be high-handed and condemnatory.”
“What’s wrong with condemning it?”
Hennessey sat up straight and became coolly angry. “What the fuck do you think you’ve been doing the last five years, sitting at that workstation? You type in requests for information, and the information appears, as if by magic. Where the fuck do you think that information comes from? You think it’s all from the Encyclopedia Britannica?”