Capitol Punishment

THREE Relations

Darren Griggs wondered how one man could hate so much. He had puzzled over the same question more than a year before, when the name of John Barrish sparked images of a pitiful man who was so fearful of those whose skin was of a darker hue than his that he would champion their removal from “white” America. Now, as the head of a family torn apart by the actions of that same man he had pitied, Darren Griggs knew that he could hate even more.

Yet his hate was more profound. It came from a place inside that used to be filled with a contrasting emotion. Now there was a blazing inferno there. His rage was burning, aching for vengeance, consuming its host as it searched for a target of opportunity. It had tempted him to strike out at his own family, but he resisted, burying it deeper. His wife, already destroyed by the vicious murder of her little girl, was little more than a shell of the woman she had been. His son, who had doted on his little sister like any big brother would, was now more of an adversary in their family structure than a member. He thrived on conflict, savoring it, even in the smallest amounts. Arguments with his defenseless mother. Defiance of his father. And, even though Moises was of age, this devastated his father, who had always been the closest of friends with his son. Now the rift could hardly be wider.

And what could Darren do? He himself was teetering on the brink, ready to succumb to destructive urges, which would destroy the last vestige of shaky stability in his family. And that knowledge had guided him to the logical answer to the question. There was something he could do. Something he had to do.

Darren left his car a block and a half from La Brea and began walking east, his right hand curled around the rolled-up flyer. He had memorized the address, which would be just across La Brea and south a half a block or so. He knew so from having driven by a dozen times or more in the past week, hoping each time the courage to stop and go through with it would come to him. This time it had.

As he walked he was the subject of much interest from the residents of the neighborhood. He was an outsider; that was of no doubt. Half of those whose eyes were cast upon him looked out from under the wide brims of coal-black hats, their faces framed by long, regal beards. Children with curls dangling in front of their ears stared the most at the black man walking down their street, not because he was black, but because he was not like the other black men their parents had chased out of the neighborhood. He was dressed nice, not fancy, like Mr. Katz at the shoe store. This black man was clean, and he wasn’t pushing a shopping cart piled with bags and cans and blankets. He wasn’t dirty, and he didn’t have lots of little plastic bags in his hand. He looked almost normal, except that he was black.

Darren glanced left and right as he moved down the block. He saw some of the stares, and felt others. And he knew why he was suddenly the focus of attention. He also didn’t care. There were more important things to worry about, more pressing matters at hand. He had hate to deal with; this was just fear.

The evening rush hour was almost over, and Darren had little trouble crossing La Brea. He trotted through a break in traffic and turned right, his feet moving him toward the building frontage he had memorized from numerous no-stop passes in his car. Just inside the lobby, through twin glass doors that let the bright lights spill out onto the darkening street, Darren saw the signboard. He rubbed a nervous thumb on the roll of paper in his hand and uncurled it. Race and Hate: A Program on Understanding. The words on the sign and the flyer in his hand were the same, and the fact that he had it at all was another product of his daughter’s murder. If his son hadn’t started getting into trouble with the law Darren would never have had to come down to an attorney’s office two weeks before, and if that office hadn’t been just a half-mile from where he now stood, and if there hadn’t been a flyer stuck on his car windshield when he came out…

Coincidence or design, Darren didn’t care. It had happened, maybe for a purpose, maybe not, but he was here, standing outside the Hanna Schonman Jewish Community Center in the heart of the Fairfax District of Los Angeles holding on to a piece of paper that told of understanding, and to a thread of hope that it could all be true.

Darren Griggs hated himself for hating others, and he wanted it to stop. For his sake, and for his family’s.

With that determination he pushed the glass doors inward and followed the signs to the indicated room. The door was closed. He knew he was late, a product of his trepidation, but the cliché fit in this circumstance. Never just wasn’t an option. Darren took the knob in hand and opened the door, hoping, praying desperately that his mind and heart would follow.

He stepped into the Ben Kaplan Memorial Conference Room and eased the door shut behind him. It was a large, rectangular room with three sections of seats split by two aisles, the classic theater setup. Maybe three hundred seats, he guessed, with less than a third of them filled, but all of those were packed in the front five rows of cushioned seats. At the front of the room was a stage, where the attention of the assembled group was focused. Until, of course, they turned and saw who the latecomer was. Or, more correctly, what he wasn’t.

Darren saw all heads swing his way. He had expected it, in fact, just as the stares on his short walk to this place hadn’t surprised him. After all, as his father had told him when he was just a little black boy in a very white L.A., “Son, you is ten shades darker than dark. People will notice that. ‘Specially white folk.” And Darren was far darker than anyone in the room — except for the lady at the front.

“Sir, come on in.” Dr. Anne Preston smiled, knowing that her pearly whites would be seen from across the hall. It was her most striking feature, at least according to her boyfriend, and she hoped that it would serve as a quiet invitation to the man who had just entered to join the group. “We’re just getting to the good stuff.”

A few chuckles came from the crowd, and Darren forced a smile back to the speaker. Actually, he found, it wasn’t that hard to muster. Somewhat less than half of the eyes in the room followed him all the way to the seat he chose, in the row directly behind the main body of people. He avoided meeting their looks, instead focusing on the lady at the podium. Dr. Preston, he remembered from the flyer. A psychiatrist. A woman of color, standing before a sea of white. She would be his beacon in this room. His point of reference to block out the fear he felt from the stares.

Anne waited for the new arrival to be seated before moving on, putting the obvious questions as to why this man would put himself in this place at this time with these people. She figured that those musings would be answered when all was said and done.

“I want to talk a little about perception now,” Anne began. “How our perceptions, which are influenced by that old nature-nurture combination, affect everything we see, do, and most importantly, everything we feel.”

She pressed the projection button recessed in the lectern. The lights dimmed just a bit onstage as the slide projector hummed and painted the large white screen above and behind her with two images. One was of a black man, a close-up shot of an expressionless face and head. It was reminiscent of the famed Willie Horton mug shot, less the long hair. To the right of this was another picture, this one of a white man, dressed in blue jeans and a casual shirt, sitting peacefully on a park bench, smiling into the camera. The contrast was obvious. It also had a purpose.

“Jerome Wilkes was a thrice-convicted felon when he met Robert Foster one night two years ago, robbed him, and killed him. He shot him in the back of the head after making him get to his knees. We can only assume that Mr. Foster was begging for his life, but he had no way of knowing that the man who broke into his Atlanta home that night was on parole for another murder. Robbery, rape, murder.” Anne paused for effect. The grimaced faces were her cue to continue. “Jerome Wilkes did it all, and, unfortunately for Mr. Foster, he didn’t like leaving loose ends.”

Darren shifted his gaze between the faces on the screen, but found himself drawn to the man of his color. Why did he have to do that? he wondered. His actions were what white people saw when they looked at any black man. Killer. Rapist. Thief. Not all black people were like that, but the hate came anyway. Inside, Darren’s head was shaking with wonder.

“When you hear this story, and you see Jerome Wilkes and Mr. Foster, what do you think of?” Anne asked the audience.

“I see what I see all around us,” a man answered from his front-row seat, arms crossed tightly across a pudgy chest. Several seats to his right, the rabbi of the synagogue sponsoring the presentation leaned forward to listen. “All around our neighborhood. Look, no disrespect meant, Miss Preston…”

Of course not, but I stopped being “Miss” a long time ago. And earlier when you agreed with me, I recall being referred to as “Doctor Preston.” It was Anne’s job to read into what was said, and what wasn’t, and she was damned good at it, much to her boyfriend’s displeasure at times. Here, though, it would let her make a breakthrough…maybe.

“…but all we see are blacks committing these crimes. You see this all the time. You hear of it every day. They walk down our block and sell their crack.”

“Not anymore,” another man interjected. His face was a mask of hate. “Not on my block.”

“Fine, we clean up our own neighborhoods,” the first man continued, “but what about the rest of the city? Or the country. Look,” he said with added passion, pointing to the screen. “That’s in Atlanta. The blacks there are no different than here. No different than anywhere.”

“They can’t fit in,” a woman offered. “They don’t try.”

The first man’s head nodded emphatically, looking at Anne.

“That’s right. And so what do they do? They rob and kill white people because we tried to fit in, we worked hard, and we have things they want! Miss Preston, you show us these pictures and tell us this story and expect it to change our mind? It only reinforces it.”

Anne wanted to smile. She always wanted to smile at this point, more than her natural tendency to do so, but didn’t. “What reinforces it?”

“This!” the man half-yelled, standing and tossing his hand toward the screen. “You tell us a story about another black murderer taking a white man’s life because he wanted his things! That is what we live with every day!”

Darren swallowed hard. He hadn’t expected to hear the hate. Maybe feel it, but not hear it. Was this a mistake? Was coming here hoping for something to drive the hate out of his soul too much to ask? His eyes again looked to the screen. Why? Why did you have to fulfill their prophecy?

“You mean Jerome Wilkes?” Anne asked.

“Yes!” the man yelled fully now, pointing a spear-like finger at the black face over Anne’s right shoulder.

Anne glanced over her right shoulder, then over her left, holding her look there as she brought a hand up and casually pointed at the smiling white face staring down upon the audience. “This is Jerome Wilkes.”

It couldn’t be called a gasp, but there was a collective sound from the audience, including Darren.

“What made you think I meant this gentleman was the murderer?” Anne asked, pointing now at the black face above and to her right.

There was no answer. The man who had been standing looked to some of those near him, glancing briefly at the lone black face in the audience, and slowly sat back down.

“This, ladies and gentlemen, is Robert Foster. The picture you see is from his identification card. You see, Mr. Foster was an Atlanta firefighter when he was murdered by this man.” The direction shifted back to the man who, until a minute before, had been the victim in the eyes of the people in the room. “Jerome Wilkes is now awaiting execution for that crime.”

Silence. The hum of the slide projector’s cooling fan might as well have been thunder. The only member of the audience unaware of it was Darren, whose face was now downcast, his mind assaulting itself with torturous accusations. Racist! To your own people! The whites don’t need to hate us — you’re doing it for them! Black means bad! It means guilty! You’re no better than the animals that killed Tanya! He had come seeking understanding, and was now filled with confusion. The hate he had developed for those other than his own, a hate he wanted to destroy, was now targeted inward. He sat there, hearing nothing more, dreaming of ways to end this pain. To end it for good.

“This was a trick,” a faceless voice from the audience said.

“You’re right,” Anne responded. “Your perceptions tricked you into believing what you expected, rather than the reality. You see, preconceptions — even if somewhat validated by past experience — circumvent one of our most important abilities: the ability to look critically at something. When I put those two pictures up there you immediately focused on the black face when I mentioned that a crime had been committed.” She heard no dispute from the audience; not even a Why is his head hung like that? “Many people have come to the point where they see black as the color of danger. Yet here we have an example of something quite different.”

This was a mistake. Darren wanted to just curl up in a ball and fade away. To just be gone. Gone like Tanya. His living family didn’t even matter at the moment, and he had come here in the hope of resurrecting the old Darren Griggs, the real Darren Griggs, in order to save them. Now that wasn’t even a possibility as he saw it. He was on a slippery slope sliding slowly toward a steep drop-off. Slowly but gaining speed.

“You all condemned the victim here,” Anne said with some accusation in her tone. “Your perceptions prevented you from ascertaining the truth. Your biases prevented understanding from developing.” She gestured to the smiling face of Jerome Wilkes. “You were prepared to offer sympathy to this man based upon the color of his skin.” And next to Robert Foster. “And to crucify this man because of his. Color is a color, people. A color. That’s all it is. If you condemn Robert Foster because of his, then you condemn me. You condemn all people with skin darker than yours to a life of explaining why they aren’t all bad. Think about it. Please. Thank you.”

Anne never expected applause at these presentations, but it did come, if slowly. First one person would politely clap — She did do this free, after all — before a few others — I did think it was the black man without knowing anything else — joined in. She stood appreciatively before them as Rabbi Samuel Levin came from his front row seat to stand beside her.

“Dr. Preston, thank you,” Levin said, hugging Anne. “I’m sure I speak for everyone here when I say we deeply appreciate your time, and your wise counsel.”

Some nods now, more applause. Anne guessed there were seventy-five minds in the audience that needed enlightening. Maybe she had reached five. Maybe ten. That would be a success.

But there appeared to be one mind that might need something more. Maybe something she could offer.

“There will be refreshments in the Weitzel Room, everyone,” Levin announced. He turned back to Anne as the audience began to filter toward the door. “Will you join us, Dr. Preston?”

The man hadn’t moved. He still sat there, looking downward. “I’d love to. But I may need a minute.”

Rabbi Levin saw what she was looking at. “Yes. Of course. I will see you down the hall.”

Anne walked off the stage to where Darren remained seated. “Hello.”

Darren’s head jerked up, his eyes glistening.

“I’m Anne Preston.” She stretched her hand out.

Darren looked at the hand. Somehow it seemed to be more than an appendage. Much more.

“Darren Griggs, Dr. Preston.” He took her hand, shook it, then let go when he really wanted to hold on for dear life.

Anne took the seat directly in front of Darren and swiveled her body to face him. “Thank you for coming.”

Darren held up the rolled flyer. “I thought…maybe…I thought I might…” The mist in his eyes became a single tear from each that streamed over his cheeks. “I don’t want to die…”

What? Anne might have expected a hundred reasons why this man would have come here this night, but that was not one of them. “Why do you think that’s a possibility?”

“Because everything I…everyone I love is dying, and…” The tears came fully now. “…and I can’t help them. I can’t help them. I can’t save my own family!”

Anne watched Darren bend forward, his head touching the seat as the sobs came in waves. She placed a hand on his shoulder, rubbing gently until the spasms ended and he sat back up.

“I’m…” Darren wiped his face on the sleeve of his jacket. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

“Do you want to tell me about it? About your family?”

Darren felt the pressure in his chest build like the forces of a mighty river checked by a dam. The floodgates were closed, but not as tightly as a minute before. Before the question was asked. Do you want to tell me about your family? “Yes. Yes I do.”

And he did, talking almost without interruption for fifteen minutes. About Tanya’s murder. About his wife’s spiral into a bottomless depression. About Moises’ destructive behavior. About it all.

And Anne listened, wanting to cry at times. Remembering the news stories, how terrible it had seemed then, and now a living victim of that massacre was here with her, begging for salvation.

Then, as quickly as he began laying out the state of his life, Darren stopped. He was dry. The dam had burst and had let out all that was behind it. His desire for death was no longer there, but the aching he felt for his family was.

“I’m sorry,” Anne said, offering the first words one could after hearing Darren speak of his life, and of his loss.

“Thank you for listening.”

“I’m not done listening,” Anne said. She had to do this.

“What do you mean?” Darren asked.

“You need to talk more. Your family needs to talk. And you need someone to help you with that.”

She was right, Darren knew. But it all seemed so alien now — normalcy. How could they get that back from talking? And there were other considerations. “Thank you, Dr. Preston, but I can’t… I work hard as it is, and with the lawyer’s fees and my wife’s medication, I can’t…”

“Don’t worry about that,” Anne said. “We need to help your family first, and think about the other things later. I’ll make you a deal, though. If you want to do this, I’ll forget the fee if you and your family come to my house for dinner when we have everybody on the right track again. I’d consider that payment enough. You see, I love to cook, but my girl is grown and my boyfriend is into that health-food junk.” She made a face that translated plainly to Darren. It also elicited a smile. “Deal?”

Darren wanted to cry again, but for very different reasons than before. “Deal. Thank you, Dr. Preston.”

Anne handed him one of her cards. “Call me tomorrow. We’ll set up a first appointment.”

“Okay.” Darren put the card away and smiled again. How long had it been since he smiled twice in one day? He couldn’t remember. “I’ll call you in the morning.”

Anne watched Darren walk away, passing Rabbi Levin, who was entering.

“My God, Anne, what did you do to that man in fifteen minutes?” Levin asked. “When I left he looked like the world had fallen on him. Now he’s smiling.”

“The world did fall on him,” Anne said. “Remember the St. Anthony shooting?”

“The church on Crenshaw? Of course. How could anyone forget that? Four children killed.” Levin’s head shook. His grandparents had been dragged from a synagogue in Warsaw more than fifty years before and sent to their death. Now there was death in a place of worship. The senselessness of it.

“His daughter was one of them,” Anne said, hating the reality of it. “Tanya Griggs.”

“Oh dear God. No.”

Anne nodded. “After it happened he began feeling a deep hate for white people, something he’d never experienced. It scared him. He wanted it to stop, because he was starting to hate himself for hating others because of their color. Plus his family is in ruins.” She really shouldn’t say anymore, Anne knew. “I’m hoping I can help him, and his family.”

Levin felt ill thinking of the destruction that had been wrought upon this family. Hate. It was the worst of things. Combine it with ignorance and you had a very dangerous force. That was why he had arranged for Anne to speak to members of his flock. They were good people, but they were becoming less and less sensitive to the danger of misplaced hate. The evil they saw in the world was disproportionately of a darker hue, and they were beginning to transfer their fear of real violence to fear of anyone who looked like the criminals plastered on the news. Compassion was fading from their belief systems. That frightened Levin, because it was the same thing that had happened in Nazi Germany so long ago. Induced fear became hate. Then it became institutionalized bias. Then worse. That road had been traveled. No more. Never again, especially by his people.

“Anne, you are a good person,” Levin said. “Maybe I can ask Ellis to find you a spot in the Cabinet. They could use people like you.”

Anne chuckled at the complimentary suggestion. Levin was a major fund-raiser for the Democrats, and had an ear in the White House in the form of Chief of Staff Ellis Gonzales. Levin’s son had been a college classmate of his, and the bond stretched from family to family.

“I’m flying out for a meeting with him on Friday,” Levin said wryly. “Anne Preston in the White House. Heh?”

“You have pull with both big guys, huh, Rabbi?” Anne asked, laughing.

“Occasionally.”

“Well, I’ll stick to doctoring, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course. How could we get along without you.” Levin thought seriously for a moment. “Especially people like Mr. Griggs. I hope you can help fix what has happened to that family.”

“Me, too, Rabbi,” Anne said, knowing there was a starting point in any project. This one would be the father.

The son, however, had a very different concept of healing. Healing now held the converse of its dictionary meaning for Moises Griggs. Vengeance, strangely, carried the same definition.

There had been another presentation that night by someone purveying knowledge to an assembled group, though this one was much smaller in number than that attended by the elder Griggs. Twelve, including Moises, had come to this place to receive the offering, to receive the motivation. In church it would be called the gospel. Here, as told by Darian Brown, leader of the New Africa Liberation Front, it was a clarion call to battle.

The home of the NALF was a converted liquor store that had been looted to the rafters in the uprising of ‘92, and which the former Korean owners had decided to sell off so as not to have to return to a neighborhood they saw as rejecting them. And that it had, Darian Brown professed, and rightly so. Expulsion was a hallmark of the NALF doctrine, as was compensation to the sons and daughters of slaves. Compensation in the form of land, namely that of the slave states at the time of the Civil War. It was simple in Darian Brown’s mind. You move out the white people, and move in the black. Instant nation building. New Africa in this case. A homeland for the blacks robbed of their ancestral roots across an ocean. Returning to a continent ravaged by white colonialism was not an option. A piece of this pie — America — was the minimum payment acceptable on a bill long overdue.

And that message held appeal for a number that, though small, was growing. Darian Brown knew it would grow to a large movement in time of its own accord, but that would allow time for the white man to chisel away at the hard edge of their determination. Softening them. Convincing many that peaceful measures would work. No. No longer. Darian Brown, a thirty-five-year-old product of the Los Angeles ghettos who had tested the bounds of the white man’s law, knew that time was their enemy. “Now” was their friend. This movement needed a spark to ignite it into a blaze that nothing could stop. And it needed members, committed individuals, to make that happen.

But there were different types to serve the movement. There were workers, and there were soldiers. Darian needed soldiers now more than anything. The workers could lead boycotts, and harass businesses. The soldiers would serve a more vital role. One with risk, but one that would reap great benefits for the movement.

In any group he spoke to Darian always tried to pick who fit into which class. This night had been no different, except for the fact that he saw a potential soldier in the group. Young. Clean. Not one of the foolish gangsta types who stupidly thought the NALF was an avenue to legitimize their self-destructive behavior. And this one had an intensity to his face, as if the muscles were sculpted to a mask of stone. Rigid. Determined. A possibility. One worth approaching.

“What brings you here, brother?” Darian asked the young man as he drew a cup of coffee from the bottom spout of the tall metal pot.

Moises was surprised by the question, and more surprised by who was asking it. “Uh. I saw the poster down on—”

“I didn’t ask what directed you here,” Darian said. “I asked what brings you here. The ‘why,’ not the ‘how.’ “

It was so obvious as an internalized reason, but how to say it. How to explain it. Just say it. “I think it’s time to fight.”

“Go join the N-A-A-C-P,” Darian suggested, his intonation of the letters dripping with mockery. “They fight for rights. Don’t they?”

“Not mine,” Moises answered. “Not the way I want to. Not the way that will work.”

Darian nodded acceptance of the point, his lips pouting. “Well, we may have some common ground there. What’s your name, brother?”

“Moises Griggs.”

Darian looked behind and called over the other two who sat with him in the NALF hierarchy. “Brother Moises, this is Brother Mustafa.”

“Power, Brother Moises,” Mustafa Ali said, gripping Moises’ hand in a shake reminiscent of the hold shared by arm wrestlers locked in battle. He wore a brimless hat inspired by the African kinte style, but with the NALF logo of two clenched black fists on its front.

Moises nodded, not knowing if he should respond with the same salutation given him.

“And this is Brother Roger,” Darian said.

“Power, Brother Moises,” Roger Sanders said, exchanging the same raised handshake. Of the three NALF men surrounding Moises, he was the tallest, fully six inches taller than Darian’s five-five frame. That modest height, and some talent, had gotten him a college scholarship to UCLA, and nothing else. He was “valuable” to the white educational establishment when his physical attributes were functioning well, but when a bum knee reduced his ability it was good-bye Roger. Enjoy working at Mickey D’s. Just like the slaves America had kidnapped from their homeland, Roger realized he was valued only as a thing that could perform. His ancestors had bailed cotton and tobacco. He had thrown a ball through a hoop. Until Darian Brown showed him that there was a path to respect. A real path.

Moises sipped from his coffee after the greetings. He could see others leaving the building in ones and twos. No one else had gotten the attention he was receiving, but neither had they been excluded. He looked to the faces of the three men, wondering why they had taken an interest in him. Wondering, but not concerned that they had. Darian Brown’s words that night had made more sense to him than anything he’d heard in his life. More sense than the forgiveness crap that had weakened his people to the point that the whites could attack them with impunity, just like they had done to Tanya. Tanya.

“You know, I liked what you said…Brother Darian.”

Darian smiled at the young man. “Good. Maybe you’d like to hear more in a few days.” After we check you out, of course. That was a matter of prudence. The pigs had done lower things trying to infiltrate other movements.

“Yeah. I’d like that.” I’d like that a lot.

“Then you drop on by next Wednesday, Brother Moises,” Darian directed him.

“Sure.” Moises read a finality in the words, as if it was time to go. As if they wanted him to go. But why… Of course. They were being careful. He had just come in off the street, after all, and even an invitation to come back didn’t necessarily mean they trusted him. They wanted to make sure he was for real. That was it. And if they were being that careful, then they had to be for real. They had to. They were the real thing. Real fighters.

“Wednesday, then,” Darian said, reaching out for the cup in Moises’ hand. The young man handed it over and left the building, the last of those who had come going with him.

Mustafa closed and locked the glass door behind Moises, then pulled down the shades on all the front windows.

“Moises Griggs, huh?” Roger wondered aloud. “I heard that name somewhere.”

“I think he’s legit,” Mustafa said. “He’s too young to be a cop.”

“Check him out anyway,” Darian ordered. “Now what about the meet?”

“Sunday,” Mustafa answered. “Two in the afternoon.”

“Where?”

“The zoo.”

Darian considered the site briefly. “Good. Your choice?”

“Theirs.”

“Well, at least they’re smart,” Darian observed. “It’d be easy to spot any cops. Okay. We do it.”

Roger looked to both his comrades. “I don’t like dealing with these guys.”

“Because they’re white, Brother Roger?” Mustafa asked.

“That, and that we don’t know shit about them.”

Darian had gone through this before. Roger, though bold in his thoughts, was timid in manner. Overly cautious once the worry had been put aside. “Listen, white don’t mean shit. We need money to get things off the ground. Do you think this place is rent-free? Do you think the shit we’ll need to really strike out comes cheap? It doesn’t, Brother Roger. If someone comes along and wants us to do a job for them then we have to consider it, especially when there’s as much in it for us as these guys are talking. Money from white people. Better from them than from us.”

“You saw the bread they flashed us,” Mustafa said. “And the guns they gave us. And there’s more where that came from.”

“That’s what they say,” Roger countered.

“That kind of money is worth a little risk,” Darian said.

“Why us?” Roger asked. “Why’d they pick us?”

Darian looked at his comrade for a very long moment, ignoring the questioning that was now beginning to bore him. “Are you going to be asking ‘why’ when whitey is putting the chains back on your legs? Brother, our time is now.”

“But we don’t even know what they want us to do,” Roger pointed out.

“I guess we find out Sunday,” Darian said. “If we want to do it for them, we do. If not, or if we’re not sure they’re not pigs, hey, we walk away. But I am not going to pass up a chance for the kind of money they’re talking about.”

“Yeah,” Roger said, nodding. “You’re right. Okay.”

“Good. Sunday then.” Darian switched the coffeepot off, remembering the staggering electric bill they had received the month before. Running a movement was expensive, he was learning. And things had hardly begun. “And don’t forget Griggs,” he reminded Mustafa. “He might be of use if everything works out.”

Frederick Stimson Allen was a known commodity, but it took almost sixteen hours to piece together a biographical sketch of the mystery man who had died with him. And a bare sketch it was.

“Nick King,” Frankie said, reading from the top page of her notes. She lifted her dinner, a mass of meat, onions, and condiments barely held between a Kaiser roll, to her mouth and bit in.

Art’s source of nourishment was somewhat less exciting: a banana and a rice cake.

“You want some?” Frankie offered, her mouth full.

“No, I know how much fat is in that. Besides, Anne is making me something later.”

Frankie checked the time. Eight o’clock. “It doesn’t get much later for dinner, partner.”

“I know,” Art said, noticing the time himself. “But Lou said to wait.”

Lou Hidalgo, quite unexpectedly, had walked off the elevator just when the majority of folks were heading home for the day and told Art and Frankie to hang around until he talked to them. Then off to Jerry Donovan’s office one floor up he went. That was an hour ago, and in that span of time both agents had speculated to themselves as to why Hidalgo, after the tragedy that had befallen him just a little over a day earlier, would show up at the office. No one would have blinked if the A-SAC had just disappeared for a few days to deal with the loss of his son, but there he was, that look of determination so familiar, masking any pain he was feeling.

“What do you think it is?” Frankie wondered aloud.

“We’ll know soon enough, I figure,” Art said.

Frankie smiled and raised an eyebrow at her partner. “Are you going to be making A-SAC decisions soon?”

Art gave his partner a disapproving look.

“What?”

“You know what.” And so did he. The “what” was a job offer. More than that, really. The job was assistant special agent in charge of the Chicago field office, and the offer had come personally from the special agent in charge of that same office, Bob Lomax.

“Well…”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?”

Frankie looked to her cluttered desktop and scratched above her nose. “As a friend I just want you to consider it objectively.”

“I am,” Art assured her. “Now, back to now. King — what do we know?”

Frankie put the half-eaten burger back in its Styrofoam container and flipped through her notes. “Nick King. Mystery man. No driver’s license with that name matches the face according to DMV.”

“Did they do a visual match to rule it out?”

“For Nick King, Nicholas King, Nicky King, ad infinitum,” Frankie answered. “As for out-of-state…” She shrugged. That would take more time, and be labor-intensive. Three days at the earliest for that information, she knew.

“Well, there wasn’t any car in the garage,” Art said.

“No license, no car. Maybe he flew,” Frankie jokingly suggested.

“Or he was dependent on someone,” Art proposed.

“Allen?”

“God, I’d hate to have to depend on him for anything.” Art knew Allen better than most, having been on his case literally and figuratively for over a year. The thirty-year-old thug was a scumbag if ever there was one. Not only did he terrorize those weaker and different in skin tone from him, he had also left a trail of children from his home state of Georgia to California. Those innocent victims of his complete irresponsibility were left to be raised by young girls that Allen had charmed into the sack for a few months, weeks, or just for one night. Yes, Freddy Allen was Mr. Dependable in Art’s book. “Okay, what else?”

“Twelve-twelve Riverside is a rental property owned by a bunch of old ladies in a real estate trust,” Frankie continued. She was acting as the source in the familiar routine. Hashing the evidence, laying out what was known to be discussed, theorized on, challenged, and, if necessary, discarded. Her partner was playing the wall, against which the information was to be thrown to see if it would stick.

“When did King rent it?”

“Over a year ago.” Frankie scanned for other information relating to the residence. “The property manager from the real estate trust said King always paid his rent on time, with a cashier’s check. That was drawn from a bank in Palmdale.”

“An account?”

Frankie shook her head. “King paid cash for the check. He was not an account holder.”

“There or anywhere else,” Art said, his brow furrowing as he thought. “No bank account that we can find. No identification. No social security number. Would you rent to someone like that?”

“Nope.”

“Then why did they?”

“The property manager said she wasn’t with the trust when King moved in,” Frankie answered.

“That’s one thing we need to find out,” Art said.

“Inconsistency number nine million to check on,” Frankie commented with mild humor attached. “Also, no employer that we know of.”

“But he had money,” Art observed.

“Someone supporting him?”

“The more appropriate word might be bankrolling,” Art said.

Frankie moved further through her notes. “Okay, Nick King the person.” For two hours Frankie had talked to the only neighbor of King’s, probing, peeling away whatever might conceal some bit of information. “A nice man. Kept to himself.”

“So he could be a serial killer,” Art said, frowning.

“The neighbor only talked to him a few times. She said he spoke with a heavy accent.”

Art perked up at that. He had been talking to the sheriffs commander on-scene while Frankie was interviewing the neighbor at a nearby motel, and he hadn’t caught that bit of information when scanning his partner’s notes earlier. “What kind of accent?”

“German, Polish, Russian,” Frankie recounted dubiously. “You name the country, she thought he sounded like he was from there.”

“Guttural European?”

“That narrows it down to a continent,” Frankie confirmed.

“King, huh?” Art wondered. “That doesn’t sound awful European.”

“He could have Americanized his real name,” Frankie said. “Maybe he immigrated and wanted to fit in. A lot of folks coming in have done that.”

“Could be,” Art half-agreed. “But everything so far points to this King fellow maintaining a fairly cryptic existence.”

“You think the name is an alias?” Frankie asked.

“It would fit.”

“But why?” Frankie saw Art waiting for her to propose the reasons. “What little we know points to King isolating himself. Financially, residence, identification. Protection?”

“How so?”

“Well, either King was trying to protect himself, probably from incrimination, or he was trying to protect someone else,” Frankie proposed.

Art followed her line of thinking and joined in. “Add Allen to it.”

“Freddy.” Frankie thought for a moment. “If he was going to do King in, then that would point to someone wanting to be insulated from what he was doing.”

“Use King, then get rid of him,” Art said.

“The twelve grand in cash, the remote house,” Frankie recounted. “Bankrolling does fit into this quite well now. So someone who Freddy Allen is associated with gets King to make some nerve gas—”

“Nerve agent,” Art corrected.

“Nerve agent — for whatever reason, Allen goes to get it with the intention of removing King from the picture after the pickup, but King gets wise and decides if he’s going to die, then someone else is, too.”

Art nodded slowly. It felt right. There was no other way to describe the gut instinct a veteran street agent got when the pieces slid together seamlessly. He had no absolute proof yet that the scenario his partner had just laid out was anything but a theory, but he’d lay money on it being damn close to reality.

“So,” Frankie said. “King and Allen. Who was King and how did he get involved in this, and who was Allen working with?”

“We have the center of the puzzle,” Art said. “Now we have to find the edges.”

Frankie flipped the pages of her notepad closed and tossed it on her desk. She looked to the clock, then to the empty coffeepot on the small credenza to her side. “I’m gonna need some caffeine if this drags on too much longer.”

Art, who had his own small coffeemaker on his side of their workspace, might have agreed with her had he not sworn off caffeine. Five hours of sleep after leaving the site of the incident as the sun came up, followed by nine hours of poring through what little they knew about the entire affair at this early stage, left neither agent wanting to make this evening another long one that would stretch into the wee hours of the morning. Art knew they needed sleep, at least one good night of it, in order to start putting the final pieces of what led to the incident at 1212 Riverside together to form a coherent picture. From that picture they might then be able to identify those who had almost succeeded in obtaining what the internationally inclined politicians called a weapon of mass destruction, though Art knew that had any of Freddy Allen’s kind gotten their hands on it it would be a weapon of mass murder. Whoever those folks were, they deserved the cuffs for their intentions, and the gas chamber for causing the deaths of Luis Hidalgo, Jr., and the others. Art could supply the cuffs. The other would be decided once those were on.

The sound of the elevator door sliding open and two sets of footsteps drew the agents’ attention. Art stood and turned to see who…

“Orwell?”

Frankie joined her partner as Captain Orwell, dressed down in blue jeans and a leather jacket, approached with Lou Hidalgo.

“Art. Frankie. Have a seat.” The A-SAC pulled two more chairs over for the captain and himself.

There was no mistaking the expression Hidalgo wore like a red flag. Art had noticed it as he neared. There should have been grief, and sadness, but there was something masking those emotions instead. Art suspected it to be determination. The A-SAC knew it was rage.

“What is it, Lou?” Art asked.

“As of four o’clock today, per the director, I am overseeing this investigation.”

“Wait,” Frankie said. “Lou, they can’t dump this on you right now.”

Hidalgo shook his head. “It’s not like that. Cam is out of the country, and Jerry…well, he has other things to deal with.”

Oh, shit. Art straightened in his seat unconsciously. The director had called the A-SAC personally, and Jerry Donovan was busy? “Lou?”

Hidalgo faced the man who could have had the A-SAC position had his life not taken a personally tragic detour. “Art, don’t read into that. I know you. Jerry is busy, that’s all. The director wants me to watch over this thing, and, that said, you two are now running the investigation per me.”

That statement perplexed Frankie. Weren’t they already the de facto lead on the case because of their involvement with Allen? That silent musing lasted only until she noticed the look on Orwell’s face. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

“This isn’t going to be just a cleanup investigation,” Hidalgo said. “Things are a lot worse than anyone wanted.”

Dammit! Art remembered the captain’s less-than-absolute assurances at the site. Probably, huh? “Some of it got out, didn’t it?”

The question was directed squarely at Orwell. “Not exactly.”

“Well, exactly what does ‘worse’ mean?” Art demanded.

“When I finished the analysis on the chemical residue in the containers there were some anomalies I wasn’t expecting,” the captain explained. “I want you to understand this, so let me be precise. VX can be manufactured into two stable reagents.”

“As a binary weapon,” Frankie recalled.

“You told us that at the site,” Art said impatiently.

“Give him a chance, Art,” Hidalgo said.

Orwell waited a second for the air to clear. “The two reagents are what we refer to as a base and an activator. For VX the base is ethyl 2-[diisopropylamino] ethylmethylphosphonite. We call it QL for brevity’s sake. The activator is a thicker substance called dimethyl-polysulfide. When those two are mixed they yield VX. I found residue that let me estimate King could have produced enough QL for three of those cylinders.”

“But there was only one,” Frankie said.

“Which made sense because there was only enough residue of the ingredients for the activator for that one batch in the cylinder. I was able to estimate that because there was a clear measurement of one of the activator’s components: methyl mercaptan.”

“Okay, I follow you so far,” Art said. “There was enough of the base for three cylinders of VX, but only enough activator for one.” The captain confirmed Art’s understanding with a nod. “Was the leftover base still there?”

“No. I was—”

“Wait,” Art cut off the captain. “It was not there? You mean someone out there has half of what is needed to make twice as much VX as we had on-site?”

“No,” Orwell said. “Let me finish.”

Frankie gave her partner a look that told him to ease up. He was a driven one, she knew, and sometimes needed a little mothering to keep him from letting that drive push him too quickly.

“While we were doing the residue analysis we found something unexpected,” Orwell went on. “Two chemicals: ethyl mercaptan and ethylene glycol dinitrate.”

“Wasn’t that other one methyl mercaptan?” Frankie asked.

“Right. These two chemicals, along with a combination of the others we identified, can be processed into an activator named triethylmonosulfide.”

“An activator?” Art said. “Like the dimethyl-whatever?”

“Similar.”

“What are you saying, that this other activator works with the base that isn’t accounted for?” Frankie asked.

“Yes. VX shares its base with another nerve agent that was derived from it. VZ is its name.”

The two agents shared a look before Art spoke. “You mean that there is a reason to believe that someone out there has all the ingredients to make a nerve agent like the one that got loose up on Riverside?”

“Not like, Jefferson,” Orwell corrected. “Worse.”

“Worse?” Frankie said with surprise. “You said VX was the most deadly thing we had.”

“It’s the most deadly nerve agent we’ve produced and stocked,” Orwell clarified. “VZ is more lethal, but it is not as useful to the military because its deliverable state reduces its persistence. Triethylmonosulfide as an activator is not a thickener, which means that, although VZ won’t stick to things as readily on the battlefield, it is more readily absorbed into the human body, both through inhalation and through the skin.”

“So we didn’t make this stuff because, even though it would kill you better, it wouldn’t hang around long enough?” Art asked incredulously.

“Basically, yes.”

Art let his body fall back in the chair. It was all clear now, why Lou was running the show. Jerry had put the cart before the horse and told the world that everything was A-OK before getting any final word. Idiot! “So someone has this stuff.”

“We have to assume that, Art,” Hidalgo said.

“Enough for two of those cylinders?” Frankie inquired.

“Or containers of similar size,” Orwell answered. “But that thing had to be specially made, so there’s no reason to think there wouldn’t be more.”

Art filtered all the information that had just filled his mental data banks, trying to place what was most important in the forefront. In the lead was a question. “If this VZ stuff is more deadly, why did King make VX at all?”

Frankie seized on a possibility almost immediately. “Maybe as insurance against exactly what we think Allen was going to do.”

That made a hell of a lot of sense, Art realized. “Freddy goes there to do away with King, after the VZ has already been delivered. King had to sense that something was up.”

“And Freddy probably played the tough guy,” Frankie surmised. “Remember the surveillance tape from that liquor store he robbed last year? He didn’t even pull the gun at first. You could hear him on the tape saying, ‘Give me the money so I can kill you.’ Then he did. Just shot the clerk in the face.”

“So he may have been equally as cocky with King,” Art continued the line of thought. “Telling King what he was going to do without even pulling the gun.”

“But King was prepared for that,” Frankie said. “There was a bathroom right off the hallway where we found King. He might have retreated that way when Allen confronted him.”

“And the cylinder of VX could have been right there,” Art agreed. “King just had to reach through the doorway.”

Orwell listened to the exchange with intense interest, wondering how the agents could process the possibilities so quickly, how the imprecise could be funneled into a combination of probabilities that one could almost see as reality.

“This investigation just became priority number one, Art,” Hidalgo said.

“Clearly,” Art said. “Captain, you said this stuff is more potent than VX. How much?”

“The effectiveness of chemical agents is measured as LD-50. That’s the amount of the substance, measured in milligrams, released per minute within a cubic meter that will kill half of those exposed without protection. VZ has twice the LD-50 of VX when inhaled, and four times when absorbed percutaneously.”

“What’s the dose?” Art asked.

“For VZ you’re talking point-two-five milligrams if inhaled, and four milligrams if absorbed through the skin. But VZ, unlike VX, mists extremely well into minuscule droplets, which means that anyone unprotected will almost certainly breathe in a lethal dose before they absorb it.”

Art tried to imagine so small an amount, but couldn’t grasp it effectively. “And how much is in one of those cylinders?”

“My estimate is about fourteen ounces,” Orwell answered.

“And how many people could that much VZ kill?”

“That would depend on a lot of factors,” Orwell said. “Environment. Dispersion.”

“A ballpark figure,” Art said. “Assume that there are lots of people and everything goes just right.”

The captain thought for a moment. “Figuring that half the agent would be wasted as it spread, a guess would be four to five thousand.”

The number, spoken clinically as just a combination of digits, floored the three agents.

“Five thousand people?” Frankie asked.

“In the nightmare scenario your partner gave me, yes,” Orwell affirmed.

“If someone of Allen’s kind has it and is planning to use it, you can bet they envision the nightmare scenario,” Art said.

“So how do we stop them?” Hidalgo wondered for the group.

“Well, pardon my French, but Jerry’s fuckup may have given us a little edge,” Art observed. “Everyone knows that there was a release of VX thanks to him, and they also think that that was it. The fact that we’re investigating just goes along with the incident.”

“So whoever has the VZ might be feeling more secure because they think we think there’s nothing more out there,” Hidalgo said. “And the fact that we’re still checking around to tie together loose ends might not spook them either.”

“Not if they were as careful as I bet they were,” Art said.

“If King was insulated well,” Frankie began, “just imagine how tight the folks behind this are wrapped up.”

Hidalgo considered the proposition that his lead agents were laying out. “So we press this without actually saying publicly what our real focus is?”

“I think that’s our edge,” Art said.

“But what about public safety?” Hidalgo asked. “If something happens…”

“There’s no way you can protect anyone from this,” Orwell said. “I may not be a cop, but what Jefferson is saying is logical. The only way to protect the public is to get this stuff away from whoever might use it.”

Secrecy was not uncommon in an investigation, but Hidalgo could just imagine the media and the civil libertarians crying “cover-up” if something happened before the Bureau could find and secure the nerve agent. But experience told him that a wide-open investigation might simply push the bad guys deeper into hiding, or, worse, into using their trump card before it could be taken from them.

“Do it, Art,” Hidalgo said. “You’re senior on this. Find it.” Find them.

“Will do,” Art promised, seeing the added desire in the A-SAC’s eyes…along with the fire.

“Captain,” Hidalgo said. “Thanks for digging this up. You may have saved some lives.”

“I hope so.”

Hidalgo excused himself and headed back up to Jerry Donovan’s office, leaving Orwell with the two agents.

“If you need anything…” Orwell offered.

“I’m sure we will,” Frankie said. She looked to Art. “Early morning tomorrow, partner?”

“Tomorrow, and the next day, and the next… We’ll figure a split between us tomorrow.” Art glanced at his watch. This very late dinner with Anne could end up being his last for a while. He wanted to get going, but there was one thing still nagging at him. “Captain, you said we never made VZ for our inventory, even though it was more deadly.”

“But not on the battlefield,” Orwell repeated from earlier. “Just because you can make something doesn’t mean you have to.”

“Did anyone else know how to make it?” Frankie asked, picking up on her partner’s line of questioning.

“Yes.”

“Did anyone actually produce it for their military?” Art pressed.

“Yes.”

“Who?” Art asked.

“The Russians,” Orwell answered. “Why?”

He didn’t get an immediate answer from the agents, who were locked in a suspicious, almost knowing stare.

“King, huh?” Art said, repeating his doubts from earlier.

“Da,” Frankie agreed.

The West Executive Avenue entrance gate to the White House grounds swung open an hour shy of midnight as a light snow dusted the nation’s capital. Three white Ford vans, windowless from the cab rearward, pulled in behind a government sedan, which led the small caravan around the executive mansion to a spot near the East Wing. There they stopped, met by a tall, serious-looking Secret Service agent who went to the lead car, brushing the snow off his shoulders as he walked.

“Who are the drivers?” Secret Service Agent Ted O’Neil, head of the presidential detail, asked.

Fellow agent Larry Price, stepping from the warmth of the Service Buick, pulled the collar of his overcoat up. “Tenth Mountain Division from Fort Drum. All louies.”

“Good.” O’Neil, the man charged with keeping the president alive for the four or eight years he was in office, walked to the back of the first van with Price at his side. The driver already had the twin doors open.

“Where are these going?” the lieutenant, wearing nothing even remotely Army, inquired.

O’Neil looked at the piles of duffels in the back of the vehicle, at least two dozen in number. “Everything’s going down in my office.”

“You’re not going to have any room left, Ted,” Price commented quite correctly.

“How often am I there?” O’Neil asked. The leader of the presidential detail, a man of great importance himself, existed on a schedule that left little time for anything other than being close to the Man. The office was really just a place O’Neil visited once a day, late in the evening, after the president had been put to bed, to complete his portion of the requisite daily reports. Then it was sleep in the small bunk stuffed among others in a small section of the East Wing reserved for the Secret Service, and then up an hour before the president’s scheduled wake-up time so he could walk the Man from his private quarters to the Oval Office. Once every two weeks O’Neil went home to his family in suburban Maryland to reacquaint himself with his wife and four children. This lasted but a weekend, and already three of those had been preempted by overseas trips, and the one coming in just twenty-four hours was now just a dream fading away. O’Neil felt the pressure, dreaded the long hours, missed his family, and loved the job he did more than anything he could imagine. “Who’s going to instruct us?”

Price looked down the line of vans. “The louie in the back.”

“His name’s Morrison,” the lieutenant with the two agents clued them in.

“Tell him to bring two of the…what are they called?” O’Neil wondered aloud, searching his fatigued mind for the word.

“MOPP suits,” the lieutenant said.

“Tell Morrison to bring two MOPP suits to the bunk room,” O’Neil told Price. “You escort him and keep them in the duffels. I don’t want some steward catching sight of them and letting it slip.”

“Gotcha, Ted.”

O’Neil backed away and let the officers and two of his detail begin the chore of lugging the seventy-plus duffels into the dark and quiet basement of the East Wing, the smaller and less important sibling of the power center on the opposite side of the executive mansion.

“JESTER is down for the night,” the report came through O’Neil’s earpiece. JESTER was the Service code name for the president. The first lady was TULIP. And there was a third code name the agents now had to associate with the first family.

“Is SCOOTER quiet?” O’Neil inquired, speaking into the microphone hidden under his left cuff.

“For a change,” the agent reported.

O’Neil smiled to himself. The president’s son was an “active” child, and one who had demonstrated that he had a pair of lungs to challenge the most bellicose inhabitant of the Hill. And the code name was quite appropriate. O’Neil had personally taken two tumbles trying to avoid the tyke as he scooted out from behind some piece of furniture in the Oval Office or in the first family’s private area of the main building. He was a handful. He was also damned cute.

“Early wake-up tomorrow?” the agent asked.

“Five,” O’Neil reminded the night detail leader. “He has a speech at NYU.”

“All right. See you in the morning.”

O’Neil pulled his wrist away and checked his watch. Morning. That would give him about four hours of sleep, which was about the norm. Not as much as he wanted, but enough. Enough for this job.

A stiff breeze blew in without warning, reminding him that he didn’t have an overcoat on. But the chill was somehow welcome, just as the end of each day was welcome and satisfying. Another day behind them. The mission of the Secret Service presidential detail fulfilled. The president and his family were tucked safely into bed. As the snow tickled O’Neil’s face he had a feeling that all was right with the world.

Then, as the combination of agents and Army officers came back for a second load of the gear O’Neil hoped was never needed, that feeling became more a hope than a measure of reality.

“A little wine?” Anne half-asked, half-prodded.

Art held his finger and thumb an inch apart, spreading them to an inch and a half as Anne’s smile grew. He watched her walk back to the kitchen and wondered how any woman could look so good in sweats, or in nothing at all for that matter. Ease up, Arthur. You’ve got all night.

“I can feel your eyes on my behind, Art,” Anne said, glancing back over her shoulder with a smile.

“Can you blame me?”

“Hmmm.” She filled two glasses with Chardonnay, hers more than his, and re-corked the bottle.

“You’re the one trying to get me drunk, sweetheart,” Art said.

Anne walked back in and sat next to her own private G-man. She handed his glass over and clinked hers lightly against it. “A girl has to get lucky somehow.”

Art grunted. He was worried about being too forward all the time, then she would let loose with a line that made him feel like a prude. You gotta love her, Arthur. He did.

Anne leaned over, her T-shirt-covered breasts pressing against his arm, and kissed Art on the neck, tasting upward until the lobe of his ear was between her teeth. She nibbled, knowing it was having an effect by the long, slow breaths he was taking. “You like?”

“I love,” Art said.

“You’re going to let work keep you away from this?” To the neck again as she set her glass blindly on the coffee table, the newly free hand coming to his chest and undoing the shirt buttons from top to bottom.

“You’re bad, woman.”

“I’m good, too.”

Art swallowed hard. “I know.”

Anne pulled back, a Cheshire grin on her soft face, and rubbed his chest through the open shirt. “You know I’m just kidding about work.”

“I know,” Art assured her. He lifted her hand from his chest and kissed it. “I am going to be busy, though.”

“Really busy?”

“A night here and there, sweetheart,” he promised hopefully. “Maybe.”

“It sounds important.”

“It is,” Art said, knowing Anne would ask no more if he didn’t volunteer it, and he couldn’t. “So, how was your day?”

“I did another seminar tonight,” Anne told him.

“For Rabbi Levin?”

“Yeah. The sixth one.” She picked her glass up and sipped slowly. “Tonight was a little interesting, though.”

“Oh?”

She wondered for a second if she should say anything, but Griggs wasn’t really a patient yet, and she actually wouldn’t be revealing any confidential information. “Do you remember the St. Anthony’s massacre?”

“Sure,” Art answered. “Remember Thom Danbrook? He was the agent killed last year.”

“With you and Frankie,” Anne said.

“Yeah. He was involved in the investigation of the guy behind it. Thom was the one who could have closed the door on John Barrish, but he never got to testify.” Or do anything. “Barrish walked a few days ago.”

“I know,” Anne said. “I had a walk-in tonight, a face that you might say would stand out in the crowd.”

“Who?”

“The father of one of those four little girls.”

“You’re not serious,” Art said. “You are.”

“His name is Darren Griggs, and he’s just devastated,” Anne explained. “His family is in shambles. He saw the flyer and came to the seminar. He said he was starting to hate people in the same way Barrish does. Art, this man was suffocating. It was hard to talk to him because I could almost feel his pain. It has to be eating him up.”

Barrish. He was free because the legal system protected him from scurrilous prosecution, but who protected those he wanted to harm? You do, Art thought. “Jesus, Anne, I don’t know how you can handle what you do.”

“I do it to help people like Griggs,” she said, the admission worn like a badge of honor.

“Are you going to see him?”

“I made the offer. All he has to do is call.”

Art saw that glint of altruism in her eye. “Pro bono?”

“Drink your wine, G-man,” Anne said, skirting the issue.

Art smiled. It was her prerogative, one she seemed to exercise often. Then again, she made enough money for four people and felt it was something she had to do. Give something back. Such a soft spot for a very strong woman.

Anne made a loose fist and tapped Art’s stomach. “You may just win that race.”

“Well, I’m now officially in the senior division,” Art said, shaking his head. “Fifty. Can you believe that?”

Her hand opened and slid down over his belt. “You’re still eighteen in certain respects.”

Art put his glass down, taking Anne’s and doing the same. “Come on,” he said, putting his hand out. “Let’s go upstairs.”

She looked into his eyes, the mischief at the core of her personality seizing control. “What’s wrong with right here?”

“The couch?”

Anne glanced to the soft shag carpet at their feet.

“You little devil,” Art said.

“I’m a good girl,” Anne protested as she slid off the couch to the floor, pulling Art with her.

“You’re a bad girl,” Art said, leaning closer as Anne pulled him. She eased onto her back between the couch and coffee table, which Art slid aside.

“I’m both.” Anne took his head in her hands as he came close. “Tell me which one you like better.”

“I will,” Art said, kissing her softly and pulling away for just a second. “In the morning.”

John Barrish looked upward through the windshield, gazing at the star-filled, limitless sky as Toby pulled the Aerostar into the driveway and to the storage yard’s access box.

“Stan and I figured this was as safe a place as any,” Toby said, taking the white plastic card from his jacket and inserting it into the slot. The arm restricting access to the facility jumped upward, allowing him to drive through.

“I missed the stars while I was locked up,” John commented. “Do you remember what Trent said about the stars?”

Toby pulled in a slow breath, steadying himself for a recital of some more wise musings of the renowned Dr. Felix Trent, long-dead purveyor of the racial purity theories his father held dear.

“He said the stars burn bright for one reason,” John began. “So that one can navigate by them. ‘Chart your course by the stars you see, and ignore the rest.’ ” He nodded, a wistful smile coming softly to his face. “He was a wise man, Toby.”

“Yeah. We’re here, Pop,” Toby said, stopping and hopping out of the Aerostar.

John got out and followed his son to the door, slightly larger than one typical for a residence. Toby flipped through several keys on his ring before finding the right one for the single padlock. He opened it and hung it on the unlatched hasp, then turned the light on inside the ten-by-eight storage room he’d rented a month earlier.

“Where is it?” John asked, looking over the motley combination of boxes and old furniture piled against one wall.

Toby closed the door behind them and went to the pile. “Stan and I moved this stuff in here to make it look legit.”

John watched his son paw through a box that was partially covered by a pair of old chairs. “Did Allen know about this place?”

“Nope. Just me and Stan.”

“Not that it matters now,” John observed. “I’m glad he’s out of the picture.”

“Here,” Toby said, pulling both hands from the box and holding the twin cylinders out for his father to see.

“They’re so small.”

Toby nodded. “He asked how big we wanted them. I told him as small as they could be and still do the job.”

Barrish gave an approving smile. “You did so good while I was away, Toby. Real good.”

“Just carrying on, Pop.”

The elder Barrish examined the cylinders visually, bending to get a close look.

“Here,” Toby said. “Take one.”

The stainless-steel cylinder was very cold to the touch. “Unbelievable.”

“I know,” Toby said with a smile. “They’ll fit almost anywhere.”

“When is Stanley checking out the test site?”

“Tomorrow,” Toby answered. “He’s got the plans of the unit already.”

“How?”

“He just called and asked,” Toby said, laughing. “He said he was some sort of engineer and needed space for some trouble at an overseas construction project.”

“And they just sent it to him?”

More laughter preceded Toby’s answer. “I mean, it’s not a secret, but the guy didn’t even blink, Stan said. He got the plans yesterday at the P.O. box.”

Barrish smiled and shook his head. “Stanley can do good when he puts his mind to something.”

“He’s a sneaky little guy, Pop.”

“I guess that can be useful.” John turned the cylinder around in his hand, looking closely at the small black cube that capped one end. “What does this do?”

“It’s the release control,” Toby answered, pointing to a recessed switch and a blacked-out digital readout with two tiny buttons beneath it. “The timer is right there, flip the switch, and at the right time it all happens.” Toby chuckled a bit. “We pick the time, and someone else does the dirty work.”

“Who did you choose?”

“Some revolutionary outfit called the New Africa Liberation Front. They advocate some hoo-ha about giving the old slave states to the New Africans.” Toby’s eyes rolled. “Real small in number, but the guys in it have records. Freddy’s AB contacts checked what kind of time they’ve done. All the skills we need, and the proper skin tone.”

“Excellent,” John commented. The foolish Africans were going to do their dirty work, and all that white America would see and hear on TV would be “Black Revolutionaries carried out a heinous attack today…” But that would only be the beginning. The beginning of an end. The beginning of a wake-up call, the first step in showing white America what the Africans’ true self was…with a little help, of course. But the ends justified the means. These ends justified any means. “Absolutely excellent.”

Toby saw the pleasure on his father’s face. He would do anything to make that man happy and proud. But there was still a question before them. “Pop, we’re getting low on cash.”

“We can get more.”

Toby drew in a breath, considering his father’s confident statement for a moment. “We had trouble getting money from him while you were locked up.”

“I’m out now, Toby,” John said with a steely tone. “Monte will have to deal with me again. Besides, it’s not his decision. I’ll straighten him out”

Toby was glad he no longer had to deal with their reluctant benefactor, a man drawn into their fold quite by manipulation, a little willingness, and chance. A chance his father had exploited perfectly.

John handed the cylinder back and gestured at the second one. “One for the money, and two for the show.”

“It’s gonna be a hell of a show, Pop.”

“That it will be,” John agreed, thinking briefly on the spectacle aspect of what they were about to undertake. The opening shot — the test before the show — would captivate the nation, and even the world. It would make those in power nervous. But all that would be dwarfed by what was still to come. The coup de main. To be witnessed live on television, in Moscow, in London, in Tokyo, and, most important, from Maine to Hawaii. The 300 million people who called themselves Americans would have front-row seats, and network play-by-play, as their government was dismantled in one fell swoop. How would they react? John Barrish was betting heavily on what he believed to be the answer. Betting with the confidence of a prophet. “Quite a show, son.”