“Mitch, who has his own interests to guard.”

“So what are you saying, Barbara?” I spoke carefully, deliberately. “You think I ought to do what these people want?”

“I think”—and then she took her time telling me what she thought. She did it by watching me intently, making sure I really was listening. “I think you ought to decide what’s right and then go ahead and do it. No matter what.”

No matter if I lost my job and never worked again. No matter if I was vilified throughout the country, the world, for betraying the Gregorys. “Yeah?” I said harshly. “Well, these people we’re talking about want me to track down everyone who could have been at the Gregorys’ that night.”

“Hasn’t anyone done that yet?”

If she was with Andrews, she would know they hadn’t. If she was with the Gregorys, she would know they had … sort of. Chuck Larson had said a detective had talked to Cory Gregory’s brother and cousins. A detective who had put nothing about the Gregorys in his file.

I lofted a cloud of cigar smoke straight above my head. “That’s one of the great unresolved questions,” I said.

“Nobody’s investigated Peter?”

“It doesn’t appear they have.”

She thought about it. “Tyler still sees him, you know.”

Tyler, the ex. The almost ex.

“He’s living in Sausalito. Tyler, I mean. Peter still sails out there on San Francisco Bay. He gets Ty to crew for him sometimes. If you want, I could get Tyler to put you in touch. He’s more than happy to do little things like that for me. As long as I don’t try to get him to come home, help me take care of the kids.”

It was time to stop this dance. I tossed my cigar next to hers on the pavers and sat up straight. “You realize you’re telling me I should be going after your old friends.”

“What I’m telling you is what I said before. Decide what’s right and then do it. And as for going after old friends, well, they’re friends because I know them. Because I grew up with them. Not because they’ve ever done anything for me.”

“And if they had? If they had done something great and wonderful for you?”

Barbara threw up her hand. “Look, George, I don’t know what more to tell you, but you’re obviously torn up by this. So what I’m suggesting is maybe you ought to stop worrying so much about other people and what their motivations are and just do something because it’s the right thing to do. That’s all.”

I did not agree or disagree. It was easier just to stare at the tree where I had seen the squirrel go. Try to figure out where he was hiding, when he would come out next.

4

.

MITCH WAS NOT EXACTLY SANGUINE ABOUT MY DAY OFF.

“You think I can’t fire you?” he screamed at me.

“I think it would be awfully awkward if you did.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you would have some explaining to do.” I was not being forceful or even cocky. Half of me did not care if I was fired; the other half just wanted to inflict a little damage on Mr. White. “It means it just may be that the card I’m holding is worth more than the one you have.”

Mitch was unnerved. His eyes did the bulging thing behind his glasses. “Are you threatening me?”

“Not at all.”

“Because I’m still the boss here.”

The boss whose butt had come out of his chair, who was now leaning across his desk, his weight on his bare forearms. Once again, he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt that severely impaired the authority he was trying to exert.

“You think you’re already at the bottom doing OUIs, Becket?” he bellowed in his little man’s voice. “Well, I can make it even worse for you. I can put you in juvie. I can have you going after deadbeat dads. I can give you nothing whatsoever to do if I feel like it.”

“Or the two of us can work together in what you might call our common interest.”

Mitch’s face had gone blotchy. Like his pipe-cleaner arms, it was not a pleasant sight.

“This Telford thing isn’t going away,” I told him. “In case you don’t know it, there’s a movement afoot to get someone to run against you. And the main platform of your opponent is going to be that you’ve been covering up for the Gregorys.”

Mitch came even farther across the desk. His next move would have to involve putting his knees on it. Then he would crouch like a porcelain cat. “Who?” he demanded. “Who is it?”

I did not give him an answer. I had something I wanted from him and that was my only bargaining chip.

“You?” His voice soared to the point of cracking.

“Not me, Mitch. I’m the Gregorys’ friend, remember?”

Mitch did not know what to say to that. Little gurgling noises came out of his mouth and spit rolled down his chin. After a while, he sat back. I have never felt so hated in my life. Not when Roland Andrews confronted me in my apartment in D.C. Not even when I was being shot at. I gestured to my own chin, pointing with my index finger. That made him even angrier, but at least he wiped the spit away. He did it with his bare forearm.

I told him that Bill Telford had raised enough questions about whether his daughter was at Senator Gregory’s house that night that people were out there now, combing the country for information.

He gurgled again, but held his saliva.

“One of the questions being asked is why you and Cello DiMasi didn’t follow up on the leads you had. I talked with Cello and he told me the police investigation was conducted by a certain Detective Landry, a guy who took early retirement and moved to Hawaii shortly after he didn’t find any connection to the Gregorys. You see where this is leading, Mitch?”

He didn’t tell me. He was too busy trying to reduce me to cinders with his eyes.

“We have no reason to want the Senator besmirched, do we, Mitch? He’s had enough problems over the course of his life. And he’s been good to us, to the people of this state, good to the entire nation. But you know as well as I do that there are folks out there who will seize any opportunity to tear him down. So I see us, you and me, as being in a position where we can do something about this whole mess. A unique position. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Mitch was not agreeing to anything. It is possible that the movements I saw his head make were simply the result of his body shaking.

“So what I propose is that you send me to visit former Detective Landry and see if we can’t come up with an explanation as to why certain things were or were not done. Why there are things that don’t seem to be in the police investigation file. That way, if he’s questioned by reporters or one of those pseudo-journalists on TV, or even, God forbid, the U.S. Justice Department, we can have a little more control over the situation.”

“You want me to send you to Hawaii.”

“I do.”

“So you can talk to Landry about the Heidi Telford investigation.”

“So I can straighten out the Heidi Telford investigation. Before the whole world gets the wrong impression.”

“Before some guy can use it against me in next year’s campaign.”

“Yes.”

“And you still haven’t told me who that guy is.”

I told him.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Mitch White. But he knew I wasn’t, and he seemed to be just as worried as he had been before.

5

.

SEAN MURPHY.

I didn’t know Sean all that well. He was younger than I was, had been in the office only two or three years, but he was already doing felonies. He had gone to law school at Northeastern and interned at the Suffolk County D.A.’s office in Boston. That was a big deal to our guys. Reid Cunningham, in particular, loved him. He called him Murph-Dog and treated him like a hound, to be loosed on the most deserving of criminals—the home invaders, child molesters, wife beaters.