He looked out across Wilshire Boulevard to the glimmering rise of downtown. All those twinkling lights, so many lives in progress behind windshields and windows, people doing the best they could with their private trials and tribulations, their everyday triumphs and tragedies.
He saw his own window as if from afar, one anonymous dot among millions.
He was a part of the living hive of the city and apart from it, too. Like everyone else, he found comfort where he could. Like many others, he tried to give some comfort as well.
He took a sip of the Tigre Blanc. It had been distilled five times, getting it down to its essence. Clean nose, a touch of fruit, maybe a hint of pepper on the finish.
He closed his eyes and enjoyed the drink.
It had been a long time coming.
67
A Damning Light
The funeral was an all-out affair. The flag-draped coffin making its solemn descent into the earth. State troopers firing a three-gun salute. Speeches about a life dedicated to public service. And then the bagpipes, which never failed to make Naomi mist up.
Robbie and Jason managed to show up for once, to say good-bye to their father.
The former president was due to go into the ground next week, but given the recent torrent of revelations, White House officials were still figuring out how to deal with the pomp and ceremony of the state funeral.
Two days ago the Newseum had been breached, a full display showing up in the Today’s Front Pages installation on the sixth floor. It contained logistics reports from a three-decades-old mission that cast a damning light across Jonathan Bennett and his entire scandal-riddled legacy. The display was effective if unartful, an impeccably neat tiling of pinned documents behind glass.
Naomi had a guess who’d curated the illicit display.
When she’d woken up this morning, the light streaming beneath her shade had caught something on the lip of the nightstand drawer where she stored her service weapon. A gummy dime-size disk, slightly oblong, that on further inspection proved to be an adhesive made of silicon composite. When she’d held it up to the light, she’d seen a print pressed into its surface.
And a second print on the other side.
Which meant that one was fake—but one had to be real. After all, he’d been wearing it.
Orphan X, she was sure, had no prints on record. If she brought the adhesive in to the Forensic Services Division after the funeral, she could add one key piece of evidence to the exceedingly thin file that had been provided to her what felt like a lifetime ago.
As Robbie and Jason tipped shovelfuls of dirt into the open grave, she lifted the fingerprint adhesive from her pocket and stared at it there, perched on her thumb.
Director Gonzalez approached, and she lowered her hand to her side. “Ready to get back at it tomorrow?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “I am.”
He hugged her before taking the shovel from Robbie and stepping around the waiting backhoe to the grave.
Naomi stood with her brothers watching another throw of dirt fall and then another, covering their father, the legend of the Service.
Robbie pursed his lips. “He was tough.”
Yeah , Naomi thought. And so am I.
As her brothers drifted away with the other mourners, she stayed a moment, just her and the open wound of the rectangle marring the green grass. Maybe there would be peace now. For her father, for herself, for Orphan X, even for President Bennett.
Stepping forward, she flicked the fingerprint adhesive into the grave, and then the backhoe did its work, layering over the coffin, her father, the past.
Acknowledgments
Orphan X would like to convey his gratitude to his Special Operations Group: —Keith Kahla, Andrew Martin, Sally Richardson, Don Weisberg, Jennifer Enderlin, Alice Pfeifer, Hector DeJean, Paul Hochman, Kelley Ragland, and Martin Quinn at Minotaur Books —Rowland White and his team at Michael Joseph/Penguin Group UK
—Lisa Erbach Vance and Aaron Priest of the Aaron Priest Agency —Caspian Dennis of the Abner Stein Agency
—Trevor Astbury, Rob Kenneally, Peter Micelli, and Michelle Weiner of Creative Artists Agency —Marc H. Glick of Glick & Weintraub and Stephen F. Breimer of Bloom Hergott Diemer et al.
—Geoff Baehr, Philip Eisner, Dr. Melissa Hurwitz, Jay Karnes, Dana Kaye, Dr. Bret Nelson, B__ S__ (___) —Simba and Cairo, the lion hunters
—And my favorite trio, Delinah, Rose, and Natalie