Page 18 of His Wall

I traced it back through two intermediaries. I hit a name. It was not Conrad's.

I had spent months expecting it to be Conrad's. Every time I'd pulled at a thread, I had been bracing for the bottom of the thread to be his name, and tonight it was not. For half a second, I sat there with my hand flat on the page and felt something close to relief.

The name on the page was Hon. Charles R. Whitlock.

I sat very still.

Whitlock.

Federal judge. Southern District of New York. Currently serving. Confirmed in 2007. Nominated by the second Bush administration. A name I had never seen in any Vanguard record in my life.

Except I had heard it before.

Once.

In a dim corner of a steakhouse on Fifty-Second Street, a much older man leaned across a table with a martini in his hand. He told me, in a tone that dismissed my concerns, that the regulatory side was handled. Whitlock, he said, was someone who remembered his debts.

A judge does not sign regulatory approvals for free.

Someone paid him.

FOUR

LEAH

The phone rang twice before Harlow picked up.

"It's too early, Calder."

"I know."

"What?"

I sat at the kitchen counter in my running clothes with a mug of cold coffee between my hands. Through the open window, the city was coming awake — a delivery truck on the corner, a dog barking three buildings over, the iron gate at the bodega across the street rolling up.

"The sweet approach didn't work. He clocked it inside ten minutes. I want to go back to surveillance. There's a window — "

"No."

"Harlow — "

"You're not going back to surveillance. You're going forward. Stop building characters for him, Calder. You're not in a play. Just be someone he'd want to have a drink with. You know how to be a person. Try it."

My throat went tight. "I'm not sure I do."

"Then figure it out. Do this right." She hung up.

I sat with the phone in my hand. I had been Claire Kent for four months and Agent Calder for six years before that.

I drank the cold coffee, went to shower, then dressed for work. The cream blouse I had worn on Monday was at the dry cleaners. I pulled out a soft white one that was less sharp at the collar, and I put my hair up — but lower, looser, the knot resting at the nape of my neck instead of pulled flat to the skull.

I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. Here we go again.

I picked up my bag and went to work.

The day moved.

I took two calls before 9:00 a.m. I rerouted a vendor invoice that had come in on the wrong line. I confirmed Julian's lunch and pushed his 2:00 p.m. meeting by fifteen minutes because the client's flight was late. I drank the coffee Sarah brought me from the pot at reception, and she grinned and tapped my desk on her way past.