She didn’t look back or even acknowledge the driver holding the door as she ducked into the backseat. Mercer waited until the Lincoln was rolling before dashing out into traffic. A cabbie leaned on his horn and a traffic cop shouted. Mercer ignored them, angling so he could see the vehicle’s license plate. The white background and black letters were distinctive, and suddenly a great many things came clear, while even more became confused.
The Town Car was registered to the United States government.
Arlington, Virginia
It seemed to Mercer that the block of brownstones on his street was the last stretch of what had once been a charming suburb. Arlington had grown in the decade since he’d bought the three-story row house. It was now mostly anonymous high-rise apartment towers and office parks, with a few box stores thrown in to complete the sprawl trifecta.
Mercer’s street was lined with identical buildings, red stone structures with dressed block entrances, narrow windows, and shade trees along the curb. Traffic was generally light outside rush hour, and it wasn’t unusual to see mothers allowing their kids to play outdoors. It was almost as if time had left the street alone for the past sixty years.
Usually Mercer felt a calming wave as he entered his house. He owned the entire building and had remodeled the space so an atrium lofted to the third floor and a circular staircase spiraled down to the first. On the second floor were a niche library, two spare bedrooms, and a room outfitted with a five-stool mahogany bar, matching wainscoting with brass accents, and clubby leather furniture. It was a space designed to evoke a nineteenth-century gentleman’s club, and other than the plasma TV and the 1950s-era lock-lever refrigerator behind the bar, the effect was perfect. The master suite took up the entire third floor. Bathed by a pair of skylights, Mercer’s bedroom was larger than most apartments in Arlington, and the marble bathroom was the only one he knew of that had a urinal tucked in beside the toilet.
He strode through the front door and made straight for his home office on the ground floor. He felt no sense of homecoming, nothing but the hot anger that had been with him since seeing Cali get into a government car. He wasn’t going to allow himself to speculate until he was sure, but now that he was within minutes of knowing, all kinds of scenarios played out in his mind. None of them were very good.
He snatched the phone from his desk and dialed information. He heard a female voice and was about to ask for the number of the CDC in Atlanta when he did the acoustical version of a double take. He listened to the voice more carefully.
“God, Harry, you are so big. I don’t think Chantelle and I can take you but we’re willing to try. You just have to promise to be gentle.”
“What the…?”
“We’re both still virgins, you know, Harry. You’ll be our first time.”
“Who the hell is this?” Mercer demanded. Before the woman could reply, Mercer heard the sound of snoring through the open line. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered and killed the connection.
He left his travel bag on the desk and mounted the circular stairs to the second floor. Just as he thought. Harry White was sprawled on one of the couches, the cordless phone lying on his chest, rising and falling in time with his snoring. The nearby coffee table was covered in so many water rings left by highball glasses it looked like it had been mauled by a squid. The cut crystal ashtray atop was overflowing. Harry wore faded chinos, an over-laundered white shirt made of some indestructible synthetic, dark socks, and sneakers. His ubiquitous blue windbreaker was thrown over the back of one of the bar stools, a dog leash uncoiling from a pocket.
On the opposite couch, in an equally sprawled position, was Harry’s dog. The obese basset hound lay on his back so that his belly sagged in avalanches of fat. While one ear dangled almost to the floor, the other was spread across the leather like a mangy napkin. The dog lifted one bloodshot eye, spotted Mercer, and tried to wag his tail. The effort seemed too great, so he went back to sleep, snoring just a shade softer than his master.
“Et tu, Drag?” Mercer said to the mutt. He snapped off the portable phone on Harry’s chest and tapped the old lecher on the shoulder. Harry gave a startled grunt and his eyes flew open.
“Phone sex, Harry? At your age you get a hard-on only during leap years and you waste it on phone sex.”
The old man ran his tongue around his mouth and was obviously repulsed by what he found. “Hi, Mercer.” Harry’s voice rang with the lilt of a train wreck. “I wasn’t wasting it. I just wanted to see what it was all about.”
“Since you were asleep, I can tell it worked wonders. How long were you on for?”
Harry looked at his watch, his wrinkled face pulling taut with concentration. “Holy shit, it’s four thirty. Hey, I gotta go. I told Tiny I’d be back by now.”
“How long, Harry?”
“I’m not sure. I think I fell asleep around three thirty.”
“Two bucks a minute?”
Harry looked away, not because he was embarrassed by what he’d been doing, but because he’d been caught. “I think they said something about four dollars but I can’t be sure.”
Some friendships develop over many years; some are mere conveniences because of job or neighborhood. Some defy explanation. Harry White was fast approaching his eighty-first birthday, more than twice Mercer’s age, and yet they had been friends from the moment they met at the dive down the street called Tiny’s. A few who knew them assumed Mercer saw a father figure in the octogenarian, especially since he’d lost his parents at a young age. Others thought Mercer helped old Harry as though he were a charity case. Neither explanation was even close. Mercer had analyzed their relationship a few times and the best he could figure was that the two of them were the same person, just separated by a few decades.
Harry White had fought for his nation during World War Two, never bothering to get veterans benefits afterward because he’d done it out of a moral obligation and wanted nothing back for his service. He gave everything and asked only for loyalty in return. He knew firsthand that no matter how blurred the line between right and wrong, there was still a threshold that couldn’t be crossed. He believed that actions and words were of equal importance and that a favor asked was a favor granted. He personified what it meant to be part of the Greatest Generation.
Without consciously knowing it, Mercer had held himself to the standard set in those days and lived by a similar code. So in fact Mercer and Harry were from the same generation, men who had known deprivation in their youth, who had survived combat, who still mourned friends, and who still believed in the rightness of their deeds.
Harry suddenly became indignant. “And anyway you weren’t supposed to be home until the end of the month.”
Mercer slid around the bar and poured himself a vodka gimlet using Jamaica Gold, lime juice, and Ketel One. He put together a Jack and ginger for Harry, adding just enough ginger ale to make the whiskey tingle. “Nice to know you care, you bastard. The Central African Republic is in the middle of a civil war, or haven’t you been following the papers?”
“I’ve stolen your paper every day since you left.” Harry found his customary place at the bar and took an appreciative gulp before lighting up a Chesterfield, his blue eyes vanishing into folds of skin to blink away the smoke. “But if it ain’t a headline or on the crossword page, I don’t pay attention.” A tiny trace of concern edged into his booze-and butt-ruined voice. “Everything okay? I mean nothing happened to you?”