"You see this, Alex?" she asked and handed me an article she'd clipped from the Washington Post. It was a listing compiled by The
Children's Rights Council on the best, and worst, places to raise a child. Washington DC was dead last.
"I did see it," I told her. I couldn't resist a little dig. "Now you see why I work late so many nights. I'm trying to clean up a big mess here in our capitol city."
Nana looked me in the eye. "You're losing, big guy," she said.
Irony of ironies, it was the night we always reserved for our weekly boxing lesson. Jannie insisted that I go downstairs with Damon and that she be allowed to watch. Damon had a line ready for the occasion. "You just want to see if I get sent to the hospital too."
Jannie retorted, "Lame. Besides, Dr. Petito said the boxing lessons, and your "phantom punch," had nothing to do with my rumor. Don't kid yourself, Damo, you are no Muhammad AIL”
So we went down to the cellar and we concentrated on footwork -the basics. I even showed the kids how Ali had dazzled Sonny Liston in the first two fights in Miami and Lewiston, Maine, and then done the same to Floyd Patterson after Patterson had taunted him for months before the fight.
"Is this a boxing lesson, or about ancient history?" Damon finally asked, his voice a mild complaint.
"Two for the price of one!" Jannie shouted with glee. "Can't beat that. Boxing and history. Works for me." She was back in all her glory.
After the kids went up to bed, I called Christine and got her answering machine again. She wouldn't pick up. I felt as if a knife had been slid between my ribs. I knew I had to move on with my life, but I kept hoping I could get Christine to change her mind. Not if she wouldn't talk to me. Or even let me talk to little Alex. I was missing him badly.
I wound up playing the piano again, and I was reminded that jelly is a food that usually winds up on white bread, children's faces, and piano keys.
I carefully wiped down the piano, then I played Bach and Mozart to soothe my soul. It didn't work.
Chapter Seventy-Four
The next morning I arrived at Boiling Air Force Base in Anacostia at ten to eight. SAC Cavalierre and three other agents, including James Walsh, got there promptly at eight. The behaviorist from Quantico, Dr. Joanna Rodman, showed up a couple of minutes late. We took off in a Bell helicopter that was shiny black, both official- and important-looking. We were off hunting the Mastermind. I hoped he wasn't doing the same thing with us.
We arrived at the downtown Metro Hartford headquarters at nine-thirty. As I entered the office building, I had the overwhelming feeling that the place had been consciously designed by the insurance company to inspire trust, even awe. The lobby had enormously high ceilings, glinty glass everywhere, polished black-ice floors, and over scaled modern art screaming from the walls. In contrast to the grand public space, the offices inside looked as if they had been designed by either the junior architect of the firm or its resident hack. Warrens of half-walled cubicles filled large, airless rooms on every floor. There was lots of 'prairie dogging' out of the cubes, plenty of fodder for Dilbert satire. The FBI had sent agents here before today, but now it was time for the big guns to go to work.
I saw twenty-eight people that day and I quickly found out that few of the Metro Hartford employees had any sense of humor. What's there to laugh about? seemed to be the company motto. It also hit me that there were very few risk takers among the people I met. Several of them actually said, "You can never be too careful."
My very last interview turned out to be the most intriguing. It was with a woman named Hildie Rader. I was bored and distracted, but her opening line perked me right up.
"I think I met one of the kidnappers. He was here in downtown Hartford. I was as close to him as I am to you right now," she said.
Chapter Seventy-Five
I tried not to show too much surprise. "Why didn't you tell anybody before?" I asked her.
"I called into the hotline Metro Hartford set up. I talked to a couple of ding-a-lings. This is the first anyone got back to me!
"You have my full attention, Hildie," I told her.
She was a large woman with a pretty, homely smile. She was forty-two years old and had worked as an executive secretary. She was no longer with Metro Hartford which might have been why no one had interviewed her earlier. She had been fired twice by the insurance company. The first time she was let go was during one of the company's periodic and fairly regular belt-tightenings. Two years later Hildie was rehired, but she was then let go three months ago because of what she described as 'bad chemistry' with her boss, the CFO of Metro Hartford Louis Fincher. Fincher's wife had been one of the tour-bus hostages.
"Tell me about the man you met in Hartford, the one you believe might have been involved with the hostage-taking," I asked after I'd let her talk.
"Is there any money in this for me?" she asked, eyeballing me suspiciously," I'm presently unemployed, you know."
"The company is offering a reward for information that leads to a conviction."
She shook her head and laughed. "Hah! That sounds like a long, drawn-out affair. Besides, I should trust the word of Metro?"
I couldn't deny what she'd said. I waited for her to collect her thoughts. I sensed that she was thinking about just how much she wanted to tell me.
"I met him in Tom Quinn's. That's a local watering hole on Asylum Street near the Ravilion and the Old State House. We talked, and I
IRC;
liked him okay. He was a little too charming, though, which set off my warning alarms. The charming ones are usually trouble. Married man? Fruitcake?
"Anyway, we talked for a while, and he seemed to enjoy himself, but nothing came of it, if you know what I mean. He left Quinn's first, actually. Then a couple of nights later, I met him again at Quinn's. Only now, everything's changed. See, the bartender is a very good friend of mine. She told me that this guy had asked her about me before the night I met him. He knew my name. He knew I had worked for Metro. Out of sheer curiosity, I talked to him the second time."
"You weren't afraid of the man?" I asked.
"Not while I was in Tom Quinn's. They all know me so I'd get help in a nanosecond if I needed it. I wanted to know what the hell this guy was up to. Then it got pretty clear to me. He wanted to talk about Metro Hartford more than about me. He was clever about it, but he definitely wanted to talk about the executives. Who was the most demanding? Who called the shots? Even got into their families. He asked specifically about Mr. Fincher. And Mr. Dooner. Then, just like the other time, he left before I did."