“Keep burning your blowtorch under your nose; it’ll kill any viruses.” She laughed and came over to the door. “How many people have you given your office keys to lately, Warshawski?”
“Just one-a young economics Ph.D. who’s doing a little work for me.” “Some men were here yesterday and again this morning who didn’t seem to have any trouble with your front door. What’s going on?”
So much for trying to operate without the fear that leads detectives to unacceptable levels of nerviness. “They think I’m hiding an Arab terrorist.” “If you are, keep him buried until these guys lay off they’re a thoroughly mean-spirited bunch. If I didn’t have to finish `Children at Play’ this week, I’d take a hike, too-they make me nervous. These are what-federal agents? You know, my mother’s family was from Cameron, Mississippi. My grandparents had to run away in the middle of the night when the local sheriff led a group in burning down their house because it was in a spot where some local white muckety-muck wanted to build. I am not crazy about citizens having to stand helplessly by while the law takes over their homes.”
“Me, neither, but I don’t know what to do about it at this point. They keep waving that damned Patriot bill in my face.”
“Bastards!” She took me to a glassed-in cubicle at the back of her studio. She sat at a drawing board and began sketching rapidly with charcoal. In a minute, she had drawn four faces, two each on two separate sheets of newsprint. They were the same two men, dressed in service overalls in the first picture, in suits in the second. One of them was the man who’d insisted on searching my apartment last night.
“The one guy is a federal marshal, so I suppose his sidekick is, too.” I took the sketches from her.
“Try not to do anything to get these boys in blue so mad they burn down our space here: I’ve got two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of equipment that I don’t want to try to replace. Insurance company never paid my granddaddy one thin dime for his house, you know.” She stomped back to her blowtorch.
I moved slowly across the hall and undid the locks to my office. Why did I bother, when the FBI or whoever could come in with sophisticated lock busters and help themselves to my space?
At least they hadn’t trashed my office, not like the horrible time I’d had a year or so back when I’d gotten on the wrong side of a malevolent city cop. I booted up and checked my messages. I wrote Morrell a long e-letter, telling him everything I’d been doing since Friday morning, even about getting a quarter when I was reaching out a hand for him. I wanted to be able to discuss Benjamin with someone, or rehash how we’d run away from Larchmont, leaving Catherine Bayard bleeding in the fields behind us, and I poured it all into the letter. But when I read it through, I deleted that part. If they were tapping my phone line, they could pick up my e-mail as readily as my conversations.
Oh, darling, I wish I knew where you were. Surely you wouldn’t have gone off with some set of extremists and not left word with someone from your team. Surely you’re not with Susan Horseley or some other fascinating jet-setting journalist?
In the end, I deleted the whole letter and turned to my own phone logs.
CHAPTER 39
Dirty Laundry
Edwards Bayard came late to our meeting. I figured that was to show me he was really in charge, despite agreeing to meet on my home ground. While I waited, I made my call to Mr. Contreras to let him know I hadn’t been arrested, at least not so far today.
I still had a stack of unanswered messages from yesterday. Most that I returned just got me voice mail, since it was Sunday afternoon, but I reached Geraldine Graham. She was feeling cranky for being neglected, said she couldn’t hear me when I mumbled into the phone, then lectured me for shouting at her. What she really wanted was for me to come out to New Solway. When I told her I’d try to make it tomorrow afternoon, if my schedule permitted, she got rather huffy and ordered me to remember who was paying me.
“Not you or Darraugh, ma’am. If you want to put me on your payroll, I bill my time at two hundred dollars an hour.” On those occasions that I found clients who could afford it.
She paused. “I’ll expect you at five tomorrow, then.” “If I can make it. If I can’t-I’ll let you know.”
I felt honor-bound to call Darraugh, just to let him know I was visiting his mother, despite his orders to the contrary. He was home and slightly less arctic than the last time we’d spoken-although, naturally, he didn’t apologize for threatening to fire me.
“So Mother actually saw someone in the attic. Maybe she’s a heroine in the war on terrorism. She probably enjoyed herself at the social hour after church this morning.”