Choppy Water

23

Tom Blake left the J. Edgar Hoover building and drove to his house in Georgetown. As he opened the garage door with the remote and pulled inside, he was grateful — as he was every time he came home — to his late father-in-law.

There was some discomfort about living in such a fine old house in such a beautiful neighborhood: he had had to explain to a committee of agency accountants how he could afford to live in a better house than the director. None of them, apparently, had received such a wedding gift. And they had gone over the deeds and closing documents carefully.

Tom also had had to get used to having a wife who earned three times more than he did — and that was before her father died and she took over his large insurance agency and got a big raise.

He switched off the car and sat in it for a couple of minutes, working up a head of steam. If this were a play, the stage direction for this scene would read: ENTER, ANNOYED.

He found her in the kitchen, as usual. One of her great marital attributes was that she cooked beautifully and loved doing it. He had a constant battle with his waistline. He nearly lost his worked-up annoyance when he saw that she was wearing a frilly apron and nothing else. This was one of her little invitations to have sex, and she didn’t care if it was on the kitchen island. That was fine with him, too, even if he had to watch out for the hanging copper pots.

“Good evening,” he said, more formally than usual. She froze for a moment, then turned slowly around, her bare breasts struggling for freedom from the apron. “And what, exactly, do you mean by that?” she asked.

“I have a big problem,” he said, “and you’re the cause of it.”

She frowned. Her interest in immediate sex went out of her eyes. “Go on, tell me.”

“A big part of my problem is that I can’t tell you,” he replied. “It’s a matter of national security.”

“Well, that’s a new one,” she said.

“There’s something I have to do, and you can’t know about it.”

“Why won’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t say I won’t tell you. I said you can’t know about it. Think about that for a minute.”

She thought about it, and her face relaxed. “Oh, I think I see. You’re going to tell me, and then I have to forget about it.”

“You won’t have anything to forget,” he said.

“All right, you’re going to tell me, but I can’t know.”

“You’re starting to grasp the situation.”

“But if that’s the case, why tell me about it at all?”

“Because I can’t lie to you.”

“Tommy,” she said. “Have you been fucking somebody else?”

“I have not, and I have no intention of doing so.”

She stared at him. “You’re waiting for me to insist that you tell me,” she said.

“Something like that.”

“All right, Tommy, tell me, and I’ll forget I ever heard it.”

“You can’t say that lightly,” he replied. “This is the equivalent of swearing under oath that you don’t know this.”

She looked around her suspiciously. “Have you had the house wired? Are we being recorded?”

“Good God, no! If I can’t tell you about this, why would I want a bunch of tech guys at the Bureau to know about it?”

“All right, I’m ready to forget I ever heard it. Go.”

“The worst part first.”

“I’m ready.”

“I have to have lunch, maybe even dinner, with Peg Parsons.”

“You tricked me!” she shouted.

“What?”

“You tricked me into giving you permissions to fuck Peg Parsons! Again!”

“This is why I didn’t want to tell you,” he said, shaking his head. “And, for the record, I haven’t fucked Peg Parsons for more than twenty years.”

“Some things are timeless,” she replied.

“Do you want to hear why I have to see her?”

“I’m dying to hear it.”

“I have to ask her to write a column using information I’m going to give her that could be construed as against the national interest.”

“Do I want to know what that information is?”

“No, certainly not.”

“Tell me!” She stamped her foot. This was something akin to a Spanish bull pawing the dirt in the ring.

“Many years ago Holly Barker was a police officer in a Florida town, and she was, briefly, considered a suspect in the murder of her chief, who had, some time before, drugged and raped her.”

Amanda’s jaw was working, but nothing was coming out. Holly Barker was her idol.

“Make me understand,” she said, finally.

“Someone who is bitterly opposed to her politically intends to give this information to that creep of the airwaves, Jake Wimmer, who will fashion it into a conspiracy theory that could haunt her for years.”

“Surely this was investigated at the time,” Amanda said.

“It was investigated at the time by the internal affairs department of her police force, by the Florida state police — and later by the FBI and the CIA. Ms. Barker is as clean as a hound’s tooth.”

“But that won’t matter, will it?”

Tom shook his head sadly. “No. Not to these people.”

“And how does the awful Peg Parsons come into this?”

“We want her to publish the story, after having investigated it thoroughly herself. We want her to review the four earlier investigations during that process, then write a column about it. Then Wimmer’s conspiracy theory will be blunted, maybe even spiked.”

“Tommy,” Amanda said, “I think that’s just wonderful!”

“Then I can see Peg, and you’ll forget about it?”

She shrugged, and one loop of her apron fell off a shoulder. “Eventually.”

“Not eventually, now.”

“All right, now.”

“And you have no memory of being told?”

“None. Who do I have to fuck to prove it to you?”

“That would be me,” Tom said, working on his buttons.

Amanda slithered out of the apron and met him on the kitchen island. He made the gong sound only once.