“Shut up for a minute, I’m talking,” Colles said. “DHS investigators deal with all kinds of problems, security problems, some of them serious. Like, why can’t we protect our nuclear power plants from intruders? We had a guy down in Florida walk into... never mind. Anyway, these guys, these investigators, basically do paperwork and interviews. Too often, paperwork and interviews don’t get the job done. When there’s a problem, the local bureaucrats cover up and lie. They’re very good at that. That might even be their primary skill set.”
“Okay.”
“Now,” Colles said. “Have you been here long enough to know what a department’s inspector general does?”
“More or less.”
“An inspector general basically inquires into a department’s failures,” Colles said. He steepled his fingers and began to sound like a particularly boring econ lecturer. “They may look into complaints from whistle-blowers or, if it gets in the news, they can look at obvious fuckups. Like why Puerto Rico never got its Hurricane Maria aid from FEMA, outside some rolls of paper towels. They can also examine situations where a necessary investigation simply doesn’t produce... the needed results. We know there’s a problem, but the DHS investigators come up dry. Or they hang the wrong people, the bureaucratically approved scapegoats.”
“That’s unhelpful,” Letty said. She restlessly twisted a gold ring. She was bored, she wanted to move.
“It is. Of course, it’s fairly routine in governmental matters. People get hurt all the time, I can’t help that,” Colles said. “My concern is, the big problems don’t get solved. I’ve personally spoken with several of these DHS investigators, about their investigations. Actually, I didn’t just speak to them, I interrogated them in classified subcommittee meetings. They are serious, concerned people for the most part.
“What they aren’t, too often, is real good investigators,” Colles continued. “Or, let me say, researchers. They go somewhere with a list of questions, and ask the questions, and record the answers, but they don’t poke around. They don’t sneak. They don’t break into offices. What would really help over there is a smart researcher, somebody who knew about money and finance and crowbars and lockpicks and so on. You do. You have a master’s degree in economics and a bunch of courses in finance, and graduated with distinction from one of the best universities in the country. Which is why I hired you.”
“And because my dad asked you for a favor,” Letty said. She was paying attention now: she could smell an offer on the way.
“He didn’t press me on it. He really didn’t. Lucas said, ‘I want to draw your attention to an opportunity.’ I looked into it, and here you are,” Colles said. “If you were only what your college transcript recorded, I’d probably let you go now. But you’re more than that, aren’t you?”
Letty shrugged. “Spit it out. The offer, whatever it is.”
Colles laughed this time. “I can get you a little tiny office, a closet, really, downstairs. It has a safe, but no window. I think the last guy was put in there because of body-odor issues. I can also get you a government ID from the Homeland Security IG’s office. You wouldn’t be working for the IG, though. You’d still be working for me, as a liaison with Homeland. You’d go places with an investigator, but we’dcall you a ‘researcher.’ You may sometimes need to do the kind of research you did in Tallahassee.”
“That could be dangerous,” Letty said. “I could get hurt. Tallahassee was simple. Even then, if I’d run into the wrong cop...”
“There could be some... dangers, I guess. The IG’s investigators, the special agents, can carry sidearms for personal protection. I made some inquiries, the blunt-force definition of ‘inquiries,’ and the IG’s office has agreed that they could issue you a carry permit. Of course, you’d have to demonstrate proficiency before you’d get the permit. I know about your background, from talking to your father, so I’m sure you’d be okay. I know you’ve thought about the Army, or the CIA, but I can promise you, you’d be as bored in either place as you are in this office. Those are the most ossified bureaucracies in the world. The job I’m talking about, I can almost guarantee won’t bore you.”
“I...” Did he say acarry permit?
“I’ll stick you out in the wind,” Colles added.
“I’ve already resigned,” Letty said.
“And I put the letter through the shredder,” Colles said. “You want to quit, you’ll have to send me another one. You shouldn’t do that. Try this new arrangement. I think it could work out for both of us.”
She nibbled on her lower lip, then said, “I’ll give it another month, Senator Colles. We can talk again, then.”
“Listen, call me Chris,” Colles said. “When we’re in private, anyway. You’re a pretty woman. Makes me feel almost human again, talking to you.”
“If I get my gun and you pat me on the ass, I’ll shoot you,” Letty said.
“Fair enough,” Colles said.
With the changein her assignment, neither Colles nor Welp had anything more for her to do that day, except give her the key to the basement closet she’d use as an office. She went down to check it out, and while itwasbigger than an ordinary closet, it wasn’t bigger than, say, a luxury California Closet. The concrete walls were painted a vague pearl-like color, in paint that had begun to flake. The room contained a metal government desk that might have been left over from World War II, a two-drawer locking file cabinet with keys in the top drawer, a broken-down three-wheel chair that squeaked when she pushed it, and a safe buried in a concrete wall. The safe stood open, with nothing in it but a sheet of paper that contained the combination for the old-fashioned mechanical dial. The room did smell faintly of body odor, so Colles may have been correct about the previous occupant.
A busy Sunday would clean it up, she decided. A bucket full of water, a mop, sponges, and some all-surface cleaner. She’d bring in a desk lamp and a cart for her computer, perhaps an imitation oriental carpet for the concrete floor, a powerful LED light for the overhead fixture. She could get a new chair from Office Depot. She would need a coat tree, or a way to sink coat hooks into the concrete wall.
It would do, for now.
When she finishedher survey of her new office, she rode the Metro under the Potomac to Arlington. The day had started out gloomy and cool, and by the time she got home, a light mist had moved in, just enough to freshen her face as she walked to her apartment complex.
She changed into a sports bra and briefs, pulled on a tissue-weight rain suit with a hood, and went for a four-mile run on FourMile Run Trail. Halfway along, she diverted into a wooded park, walked to a silent, isolated depression in the trees. She often visited the place on her daily runs, and sat down on a flagstone.
There was noise, of course; there was always noise around the capital—trucks, cars, trains, planes, endless chatter from people going about their politics. The woods muffled the sounds and blended them, homogenized them, and when she closed her eyes, the odors were natural, rural, earthy, and wet. In five minutes, her workday had slipped away, the personalities, the paperwork, the social tensions. In another five, she was a child again, with only one imperative: stay alive.
Another five, even that was gone. She sat for twenty minutes, unmoving, until a drip of water, falling off a leaf, tagged her nose and brought her back to the world. She sighed and stood up, brushed off the seat of her pants, and made her way back through the trees. She’d never decidedwhat she waswhen she came out of the trees and back to life. Not exactly relaxed, not exactly focused, not exactly clear-minded, or emptied, or any of the other yoga catchwords.
Where she had gone, there was nothing at all.
