Edge

Chapter 71

IN MY OFFICE I opened my safe and extracted the board game that I’d received on Saturday.

As I undid the bubble wrap and opened the lid the aroma of old paper and cardboard arose. The scent of cedar too, which was pleasing to me. One of the things I like about board games is their history. This particular one had been bought new in 1949. It could have passed through several generations of one family or moved laterally to another, thanks to a yard sale, or perhaps found its way to a New England inn, where it would sit in a bed-and-breakfast parlor for amusement on Saturday afternoons when the rain derailed the leaf viewing.

The smell of moth deterrent suggested that it had spent its recent days in a closet. The board itself was scuffed and stained-one of the reasons it had been such a bargain-and I wondered how many people had moved the markers from start to finish, who they were, what they were doing now, if they were still with us.

For all their cleverness and high-definition graphics, computer games can’t match the allure of their elegant, three-dimensional forebears.

I slipped the game into a shopping bag. It was 4:00 p.m. and I was about to go home.

Across my office a small TV sat on my credenza, the sound down. I glanced up at the screen and saw on CNN a flash: breaking news. That was something that duBois might comment on: breaking news versus news flashes versus news alerts.

I read the crawl. Lionel Stevenson was announcing he was going to be leaving the Senate, effective immediately. He was under investigation, it seemed, but no details were forthcoming. Sandy Alberts, his chief of staff, had been arrested, as had the head of the political action committee that Alberts was affiliated with and a partner at Alberts’s old lobbying firm.

Whatever else you could say about Jason Westerfield, grass didn’t grow under the man’s feet.

A voice from the doorway startled me and I shut the TV off. “I have it,” my personal assistant, Barbara, said. “You ready?”

I took the document from her and read through it. It was a release order, freeing the Kesslers from our care. The letter is merely a formality; if a lifter who hadn’t, say, heard the primary was in custody and made a move on our principals again, of course, we’d be there in a minute, even after the release was signed. But we’re a federal agency like any other and that means paperwork. I handed the signed document to Barbara and told her I’d be back in three days, maybe four, but she could always reach me. Which she knew but I felt better saying.

“Take some time,” she said in a motherly way, which I found heartwarming. “You’re not looking so good.”

The effects of the pepper spray were gone, as far as I felt. I frowned. She explained, “You’re still limping.”

“It’s just a scrape.”

Then she said coyly, “You have to let that toe heal.”

I laughed, thinking I never in a million years could have come up with that one. Maree and Freddy were right, I don’t joke much. But I’d try to remember the heal and toe line, though I doubted I would.

I gathered the board game, my computer and gym bag of clothes and walked to duBois’s office. She was on the phone when I stepped into her doorway. Her playful tone told me she was probably speaking to the Cat Man. It was the night for a romantic dinner, it seemed. She was describing to him-with typical duBois detail and digression-a chicken dish she had in mind.

I waved good-bye. She held up a wait-a-minute finger.

But I didn’t want her to hang up. I whispered, “Have to go. And thanks. Good job.”

The smile was faint but her eyes beamed. I remembered that when Abe Fallow would praise me I had the opposite reaction. I’d look down and deflect the compliment. I decided that Claire duBois had it right. She joked occasionally and had her bizarre observations and she talked to herself. She was at ease measuring emotion both in and out. That was the way it should be. If I could go back in time and change things, I would have fixed that about myself.

But that’s the past for you. Not only does it come back at the most unexpected, and inconvenient, times but it’s set in stone.

I left her to her monologue about cooking and I went to the garage to collect my personal car, a dark red Volvo. My career may not be the safest in the world but I drive the same make of vehicle that my insurance attorney father entrusted his family’s life to. Not stylish-but who needs style? It also gets pretty good mileage.

I was just driving out onto King Street when I got a text message. I paused on the apron and looked down. Gazing out the window at the Masonic Temple, I stared at the screen, debating.