“How about your wife?”
“We file jointly.”
“Ever come close to cheating on her?”
“Never,” said Elias.
“Why the hell not?”
“Well,” Elias said, “I have my faith. Also, I stay sober at office parties. What’s on your mind there, Tash? Something wrong with Shirl?”
“I’m just asking,” Tashmo said. “I have this buddy, see? He cheated on his wife a long time ago. He cheated with this one woman in particular, the wife of his best friend.”
“This anyone I know?”
“No — it’s just a guy from my Bible study class.”
“You’re doing Bible study, Tash? Good for you.”
“Yeah, thanks — anyway, now the husband’s dead and the lady’s saying that her son with the husband is actually my buddy’s son and has been all along. It could be pretty messy, if it all comes out.”
“Sounds like it’s already messy,” said Elias, looking up the street. “It’s nearly J-hour — where’s the goldang motorcade?”
The motorcade had left the inn thirteen minutes late and lost more time along the way. The roadblocks coming north were less than textbook, two intersections not locked down, two others locked down partially, and for at least a quarter mile there they were actually in traffic, surrounded by non-decoys, by true ordinary cars, part of the world’s commute, which Gretchen didn’t like one bit. She hailed Tashmo on the comm and gave him a good reaming for fucking up the roadblocks. This wasn’t fair. She knew it; Tashmo knew it too. While the intersections coming north were on the master traffic plan, this aspect of the jog had been farmed out to the locals. If anybody was to blame, it was the traffic captain or maybe Sean Elias, who, as deputy lead agent, was the ranking man on scene. It wasn’t a big deal, though it created more delay, and even if it was, it wasn’t Tashmo’s fault, but Gretchen let him have it anyway. She was thinking about Felker, still looking for a lesson (or at least a question), and she was mad at Tashmo. She wanted him to suffer for the role he’d played, betraying Felker in the good old Reagan days, fathering the son who wasn’t Felker’s. Few things made Gretchen madder than men who tried to slide through life. Thoughts of Jasper Felker had led her back to Tevon, and to Carlton Imbry, Tevon’s father in L.A., another slick-ass law-enforcement Casanova, a black Tashmo almost. She gave Tashmo a tongue-lashing for the two blown roadblocks. Tashmo, to his credit, took it like a man, not finking on Elias or the captain.
Gretchen signed off. It was seven fifty-five. She dug through the pockets of her overcoat, looking for her cell phone. Every morning on the road, Gretchen called her son in Maryland. It didn’t sound like much in the mothering department — a phone call, what was that? Pathetic — especially with Tev at such an awkward age and with all the trash out there, drugs and gangs and thievery and evil on CD, computer, television, movies, drops of poison in the well. She tried to protect him from the poison in the well. When she was home, she took him to the movies at the mall. She let him pick which one, PG, PG-17, she’d even do an R. She knew that movies got R ratings for sex, violence, or explicit language. Explicit language didn’t worry her; kids heard worse in schoolyards. The violence scared her, but the sex scenes were the worst — damn embarrassing to sit through with your kid right next to you. She let him pick the movie because he wouldn’t go to any movie she had picked, and wasn’t that the purpose of the cineplex, the batting cage, the sneaker store, Tevon-time, son-and-mother bonding, all of that? Tevon liked cop movies, so they saw a lot of them. Often she was so worn out from the road that she fell asleep before the first burst of small-arms fire and missed the scene, somewhere toward the middle of the movie, where the cop rivals became buddies, and she woke up to explosions at the climax, throwing herself on the person sitting next to her, screaming in the dark, Tashmo, Felker, gun gun gun! The ushers would hustle down the aisle and eject them and Tev would be so angry and embarrassed, riding home.
Gretechen knew her morning phone calls weren’t a substitute for mothering. She could only hope that Tevon understood that it was a major pain in her ass to line up five private minutes at exactly seven fifty-five each day. The jogs, generally scheduled for eight, were small invasions to bring off; she couldn’t really stop the show to call her house and tell her son to get out of bed. Seven fifty-five was an awkward time for Gretchen, but she was stuck with it. If she called before that time, Tev would be in REM sleep and a SWAT team couldn’t rouse him. There was no point in trying to do battle with her son’s biological clock. Tev’s clock was more like a biological Stonehenge, mute boulder, enduring and immovable, slow cycle of the seasons, spring planting and the harvest, Tev wakes and lies there for a time and slowly, very slowly does he reach to scratch his buttcrack. If she called much past that time, Tev would be awake and still in bed, but already behind schedule, not yet showered, much less dressed. The school bus left at half past eight and Tev would have to go through at least four outfits, careful self-inspections in the mirror, before he was ready for his cereal and the daily hunt for the missing backpack, which contained the undone homework and a certain crucial comic book he’d be needing if they sent him to detention. Her phone call set it all in motion — shower, dressing, breakfast, the dead run to the bus — and if she called at eight, say, or five minutes past, Tevon’s morning went to hell from there. She told him what a pain it was to call on his schedule, not to make him feel guilty, but to let him know that he was fully worth it.
The vans pushed through traffic. Gretchen got her mother first. Mildred Williams was her usual fount of small complaints involving joints and poor digestion. Gretchen asked her to get Tevon—it’s late, Mother, for chrissakes put him on.
Tev picked up in his bedroom. “Hello, Moms.”
Gretchen said, “It’s late — you should be in the shower.”
But Tevon was relaxing like a pasha in his undies. “So how’s the P machine?” he asked.
The what? Then Gretchen remembered the lie she had told him in the driveway Sunday afternoon, the secret weapon of Protection, the two-three-one-two-three-six-P, the ring of energy around her in the crowds, the reason why he didn’t have to be afraid for her.
“It’s fine,” she said. “It’s great. They’re getting it off the truck right now.”
Tevon said that he had been thinking about the P machine. He’d figured out that it was a lie.
“Like Santa Claus,” he laughed.
Gretchen said, “Oh yeah? Well, I’m looking at the P machine right now, pal. They’ve got the extension cord out and everything. Come on, Tev, it’s late. Get your butt into the shower.”
Tevon said that he had been talking to Carlton Imbry in L.A. — just talking, no big deal, they were having some good talks.
“You can’t stop me, Moms,” Tevon said. “I can talk to my father if I want.”
Gretchen felt tired and afraid, hearing this — Tevon plunging into the uncertainty of fathers and of love.
She said, “I can stop you, son. You don’t think I can? Wait’ll I get home — we’ll see who can’t stop what.”
Tev said nothing. It wasn’t a long call.
She said, “Take a shower, Mr. Man. Let’s try and make the bus today.”
The vans were out of traffic, coming up a hill. She looked out at the neighborhoods. Typical and scenic, she thought bitterly. She was starting to have fundamental doubts about herself. Not about her job, her methods as lead agent, the way she drove her people. The whole team had heard her ream out Tashmo and most of them understood traffic plans well enough to know that the bungled roadblocks were not Tashmo’s fault. Tashmo wasn’t beloved by the other agents. They saw him for the selfish civil service schemer that he was, but they also knew that when you gave him an assignment, it usually got handled (usually by Elias — Tashmo had Elias wrapped around his finger). If Tashmo handled it, he handled it on Tashmo-time, complaining the whole way, but in the end the thing got done. The agents knew that Gretchen wasn’t in the right, blasting Tashmo for the roadblocks, and they probably chalked it up to She’s a bitch.