Lucas: “Guys…”
“Yeah, we know,” the woman said. “We tell St. Vincent a couple of little fibs.”
“Exactly,” Lucas said. “Oh, by the way, one of our contacts collected DNA samples from both Leonard—Leonid—and Bernie and they’ve been sent to a CIA lab to confirm that they’re related. We’re not sure Bernie is actually his son.”
After a moment of silence, the woman said, “I wish I had your contacts.”
• • •
After the meetingbroke up, Sherwood headed to his hotel room to call his bosses in Washington, to tell them that the deal with the counter-intel people had gone down as planned. Lucas walked back to his office in the federal building, where White had her nose in a computer. “I’m no longer on the case,” she said, when she spotted him coming in. “I’m going up north.”
“What for?”
“Guy got convicted of kidnapping his kid from his ex. He’s a winger who doesn’t recognize the court’s authority, so he didn’t turn himself in to do his time. The court, of course, does recognizehim.”
“Don’t get hurt,” Lucas said.
“Youdon’t get hurt. You almost got your ass shot again. What is it about you?”
“I dunno. Just lucky, I guess,” Lucas said.
White: “You look a little down.”
“I need some sleep, is what I need.”
White: “Uh-oh.”
“Not that bad yet. Sherwood sort of cheers me up.”
“Good for him,” White said. “Though he didn’t really strike me as the cheerful sort.”
“He’s not cheerful. He’s phlegmatic. That’s better than cheerful, when you don’t have much to be cheerful about.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” White said. “But…pills are better than into the pit. As long as they’re the right kind. Stay away from the Ambien.” Depression seemed endemic in the Marshals Service.
“I will,” Lucas said. “In the meantime, I’ll be back in my office.”
“What, chokin’ the chicken?”
“I’ll try not to get noisy,” Lucas said.
• • •
Lucas got hisdrawing pad out, which gave him a broad unmarked surface to work on. He began drawing circles and squares around the individual Sokolov events, with cartoon balloon commentaries on the events. Most of the cartoons’ balloons had only a word or two in them. He was still doing that, bereft of ideas, when Sherwood called.
“What are we doing?” Lucas asked.
“I dunno. I’m in a hotel downtown,” Sherwood said. “You want to come over?”
“What’s the hotel?”
“It’s a big glassy thing…Four Seasons?”
“Jesus. The taxpayers put you up at the Four Seasons?”
“It’s not a suite or anything. Just a room,” Sherwood said. “After Masha got shot, I had to find something quick and it was the first name that came to mind. Where are you?”
“About four blocks away. There’s a Whole Foods sort of kitty-corner across the street from the hotel. They’ve got a café. It’s noisy enough that we could talk.”
