The Intern Page 5

  In his peripheral vision, he noticed a face holding on him for a beat too long. He risked a glance across the heads of the pedestrians crossing the street with him and grabbed an instant of direct eye contact with a square-jawed woman in a sweatshirt.

  She turned away hastily, raising a cell phone to her face.

  A band of pale skin showed on her finger; she’d removed her wedding ring to avoid its snagging on a trigger guard. In an instant he read her build and bearing—a plainclothes officer scouting for suspicious behavior.

  Like, say, a man switching baseball hats in the middle of an intersection.

  Careless.

  And lazy.

  Evan berated himself with the Second Commandment: How you do anything is how you do everything.

  He could see the woman’s mouth moving against the phone. Up the block, two uniformed cops keyed to their radios.

  He kept walking.

  The woman followed him.

  The cops split up, taking opposite sides of the street, fording the current of passersby, heading in his direction.

  Three tails were manageable. No one needed to get hurt.

  People spilled out of bars and restaurants. A guy was handing out flyers for the Spy Museum. A frazzled father had gotten the wheel of his baby stroller stuck in a sewer grate. Chaos was helpful.

  Evan cut around the corner just as another pair of uniformed officers spilled out of an alley ahead, blocking his best route to freedom. An older cop with a ready-for-retirement bulge at his belt line and a muscle-bound kid who couldn’t have been a year out of the academy.

  Twenty yards apart the officers and Evan stared at each other. Evan nodded at them.

  And then stepped off the sidewalk and into a bustling café.

  The pair of officers would reverse and cover the rear as the other three flooded into the front.

  Evan had ten seconds, maybe twelve.

  Given his training, that was a lifetime.

  * * *

  Evan threaded through the packed tables, requisitioning a mammoth latte mug from the service counter. In the back of the café, a brief hall led to a gender-neutral bathroom and a rear door with an inset pane of frosted glass. To the side of the hall, a small table remained bare, having just been wiped down.

  Heading for the open seat, he plucked an ice-water jug from a busboy’s hands and sloshed it across the tile floor in front of the table. As he swung into the chair, he reached between the couple dining beside him and snatched their salt shaker.

  The wife aimed a do-something stare at her husband, who managed a feeble, “Dude, what the hell?”

  Evan didn’t answer. He was down to five seconds.

  He unscrewed the top of the shaker and poured its contents into his fist. Then he tilted back in his chair so his shoulders touched the rear wall, tasted the matcha green tea latte, and waited.

  On the surface of the latte, a swan was rendered in steamed milk, its tail smeared to peacock proportions by Evan’s sip. Over at the service counter, an artichoke and sun-dried-tomato panini sizzled on the press, releasing delightful aromas. Evan watched the front door.

  At the behest of a harried manager, a waitress approached, clutching a menu to her chest in withholding fashion. She looked down at the wet floor and then up at Evan, uncertain where to start. “Sir, I’m sorry. You can’t just sit here. We have to seat you.”

  He reached into his pocket, pulled out a wad of hundred-dollar bills.

  “We’re not a nightclub. We’re, like, a café. We don’t take bribes.”

  He kept his eyes on the front door. With his foot he pushed the table away from him another six inches, getting it into position. “It’s not a bribe,” he said.

  “No?” She regarded the proffered bills. “What’s it for, then?”

  “The damage,” he said.

  The plainclothes officer and two cops shoved through the front door of the café, spotting Evan immediately.

  Evan sensed the waitress’s head swivel from him to the officers and back to him. There was a slight, mouth-ajar delay as she processed his meaning. Then the hundreds lifted from his hand and she scurried back to the manager.

  The energy in the café shifted as the officers advanced through the tables. One of the men unsnapped the thumb strap on his holster, and a kid screamed, and then there was yelling and jostling as the place cleared out.

  The cops crept forward, hands hovering over their holsters in case Sergio Leone decided to bust in with a crew and start filming.

  Evan sipped the matcha tea once more. It wasn’t half bad. He wondered at the kind of life that called for a steamed-milk waterfowl decorating one’s hot beverage.

  The officers stopped ten feet from his table and spread out. But not enough.

  The café suddenly felt quite silent.

  “Why are you chasing me?” Evan asked.

  “Why are you running?” the plainclothes officer said.

  “Because you’re chasing me.”

  “We had an incident a few blocks away,” she said.

  “An incident.”

  “That’s right. And then I saw you switching your hat.”

  The two uniformed cops unholstered their Glocks. They didn’t aim at Evan, not yet, keeping the muzzles pointed at the floor. An ice cube crunched under one of their boots.

  Evan looked at the three cops facing him down. “So that’s why you’re all here? Because I changed hats?”

  “Why would you do a thing like that?” the woman said.

  “The Nationals need some heart-of-the-order bats,” he said. “I decided the Orioles are a stronger bet for the postseason.”

  “And you decided this in the middle of E and Eleventh?”

  He liked her.

  “I did,” he said. “And while I know that civil liberties have been under assault by the current administration, I would think you could overlook an epiphany regarding the national pastime.”

  The amusement went out of her eyes. “Why don’t we stop fucking around?” she said.

  Evan took another sip of the tea. Hot, not scalding. “I’d like that.”

  “I’m gonna tell you what’s gonna happen next,” she said.

  “No,” Evan said. “I’m gonna tell you what’s gonna happen next.”

  He was still tilted back in his chair, casual as could be, but beneath the table he pressed his foot to its base. The uniformed cops were holding their Glocks too stiffly, seams of white showing at their knuckles. The muzzles were now aimed halfway between the tips of their boots and Evan’s table.

  “You’re gonna let me walk out of here,” Evan said.

  One of the male cops laughed, and the female officer blinked twice. “Or?” she said.

  “I’m gonna throw salt in your eyes at the precise instant I kick this table over. While you’re busy blinking, the table’s gonna hit you”—Evan’s gaze flicked to the cop in the middle—“right in the solar plexus. That’ll knock your gun to the side. Maybe you’ll fire it into your partner’s leg. Maybe not. Either way he’s gonna be distracted, because I’m gonna throw this overpriced latte in his face. Around then, when you’re all scrambling to react, you’ll notice just how slippery those wet tiles are that you’re standing on.”

  He turned his focus to the cop on the right. “I’m gonna come over the top of the table, swinging my chair, clipping your wrists, which’ll knock away your Glock—if you’ve managed to hold on to it by that point. Then I’m in your midst. Which means—even if you could see, even if you still had your weapons—you wouldn’t be able to fire at me without hitting one another.”

  Back to the cop in the middle: “You’ll be doubled over on the floor at this point, because … well, we’ve already covered that. I’m gonna break your nose as cleanly as I can with a quick left jab to make sure you don’t get your vision back anytime soon. Let me apologize in advance for that. I know you’re just doing your job. Then, with my right foot, I’m gonna kick you into her”—his gaze slid to the plainclothe
s officer—“while she’s still clawing at the salt in her eyes.”

  “But you’re not gonna break my nose,” she said, “because you’re chivalrous.”

  Evan gave a one-shoulder shrug of assent. Then continued, “After you three are tangled up and useless, it’ll take me four and a half strides to reach the end of the rear hall, where your backup’s waiting. The mirrored side of the espresso maker there on the service counter’s giving me a nice clear reflection of the back door with the frosted pane. Your boy with the extra Y chromosome is throwing a shadow from the hinge side. He’s holding his service pistol too far from his body, so when I kick the door open, it’s gonna knock it back into his teeth. He’ll go down hard, because that’s what muscleheads do. The veteran cop on the other side I’ll take down gently with a chicken-wing arm control, but I won’t break anything, because: respect. Before they can recover, I’m gonna bolt up the alley and disappear into the rear entrance of one of the shops that I scouted earlier, but I won’t tell you which one, because I don’t want to be predictable, and let’s face it, at this point that would be gilding the lily.”

  He lowered the giant mug to the top of his stomach, and all three cops inadvertently tensed. Their hands were too tight on the grips, and too tight meant tremors and imprecision. Evan was unarmed, and his body language was so unaggressive it verged on soothing, a dissonance they clearly found blindingly bewildering.

  Evan scanned the three officers, frozen where they stood. “So, guys. What’s it gonna be?”

  In answer, all three muzzles raised to aim at him.

  “Okay, then.” Evan adjusted his grip around the mug, readied his loose fist around the salt, firmed his foot against the table base. “Are we ready?”

  5

  A Not-Unfamiliar Coldness

  The park bench by the artificial pond looked like a movie prop, set at an artful slant beneath a Rockwellian maple tree. In the pond a family of plump ducks paddled by, ignoring the embarrassment of bread crumbs on the shore.

  The man sitting on the bench was clean-shaven, save for a patch of hoary stubble at the point of his jaw. His once-rugged face had crumbled under gravity, giving him jowls. His eyes were a touch milky, his still-brawny forearms liver-spotted.

  Jogging at a pace just shy of a sprint, Naomi Templeton took note of the bench from a good distance out and decided to accelerate until she passed it. Racer-back tank top over a jog bra, black running tights, sports headphones blaring Alicia Keys—all designed to make her run faster, go harder, be better. This girl is on fire.

  She crossed the finish line of the bench and leaned over, hands on knees, taking a few minutes to recover. Then she circled the bench, sat on the end opposite the old man, and flipped out her earbuds.

  As she caught her breath, the old man looked over at her, gave a double take. “You remind me of my daughter.”

  She said, “Is that so?”

  “Yeah, she’s sturdy like you. And don’t go getting offended. I mean well built, not fat.”

  “Noted.”

  “Her brothers are fit, too. Athletes, both of them. Lacrosse. You shoulda seen their muscles when they came home from college. Put me to shame—me in my prime, I mean. I think she was always trying to keep up.”

  Naomi leaned forward. A breeze blew across her bare shoulders, turning her drying sweat pleasingly cool. “Girls’ll do that.”

  “Yeah, especially with her mother gone early.” His trembling fingers found the cross nestled in the gray chest hair visible below the notch of his throat. His shirt was buttoned wrong, misaligned. He shivered a little. “She’s a tough one, my daughter. Always tried to please me, I think.”

  Naomi stared at the water. “Girls’ll do that, too.”

  “She never learned that you can’t ever please anyone by trying to please them.”

  “That’s a tough lesson to learn, I guess.”

  For a moment they sat and watched the breeze ripple the pond’s surface. It was faux idyllic here, which made it easy to disregard the countless TVs blaring too loud from countless windows in the industrial block of a building set behind the strip of artificial turf, the wheelchair platform lift waiting at the base of the stairs, the direct-care specialists—all lovely, all patient, all ethnic—heading back from their breaks along the gently sloped walkways. All you had to do was squint a little, breathe the fresh air, and you could pretend you were in the real world, that everything was okay.

  The old man shivered again.

  Naomi said, “What do you say we get you inside, Dad?”

  * * *

  She stood at the nurses’ station in the assisted-living facility, looking over the latest medical report. The facility’s name, Sunrise Villa, always struck her as optimistic and perversely cruel. Assessing her father’s lab work, she felt a not-unfamiliar coldness wash through her gut.

  She sensed Amanaki’s eyes lift from behind the counter. The nurse, with her empathic gaze and lilting Tongan accent, seemed preternaturally aware of subtle emotional shifts, a human tuning fork. “Everything okay, honey?”

  “Yeah, thanks. It’s just … The labs … I have to call my brother.”

  Amanaki’s eyes took on a knowing gleam, and she busied herself again at the computer.

  Naomi stepped away from the desk and dialed. Jason picked up on the third ring. “What up, Nay-Nay?”

  “I’m at Dad’s place. They took him off Exelon—”

  “Off what?”

  “One of his meds. They took him off it for nausea and dizziness, but he’s dizzy without it, too. They tried the patch form, but that doesn’t work either.” She ran her fingers through her bluntly cut blond hair. “His complex-motor stuff’s getting worse, and I guess he threw his pills at a nurse this morning.”

  “Did they hit her?”

  “Jason.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. Look, that’s what the nurses are there for.”

  “To have pills thrown at them?”

  “You know what I mean. We pay good money for the care. It’s a nice place.”

  “I know. I’ve actually seen it.” She realized she was making a fist around her hair at the back of her head. “I’m just saying, you should probably get out here and see him. Soon, I mean. And Robbie. Hell, Robbie I can’t even get on the phone.”

  “But he sends a check. It’s been fair all the way through.”

  “This isn’t about fair. We’re not eight years old, Jason. I’m here every other day—”

  “That’s because you live in D.C. And look, it’s your choice, N.”

  “No shit it’s my choice. I’m talking about your choices. It would mean a lot to Dad if you got your ass on a plane once in a while. You know how he feels about you and Robbie. It’s different.”

  “It’s not different.”

  The lie was half-hearted; Jason barely bothered to disguise the nicety with a tone shift. She could hear voices in the background, someone shouting out a ticker update.

  “Look,” Jason said, “with Tammy and the kids, you know, four schedules, four directions. You don’t appreciate how hard it is when you have a family.”

  “Jason, I’ve met your family. I appreciate how hard it is.”

  He laughed. “You know what I mean. And come on, the old man wouldn’t recognize me anyway. He’s lucky to have you there.”

  She resisted the urge to fill the silence.

  Jason finally said, “I’ll send you more money next month so he can get … I don’t know, more time with the staff or whatever.”

  “I don’t need more money. I need—he needs—someone else here who loves him. He still likes listening to music and looking at his and Mom’s wedding album—”

  The workplace noise grew louder in the background. “I gotta hop, N. News just hit the tape, and I’ve gotta whack some bids. Talk later.”

  The call severed with a click.

  Naomi pocketed the phone, walked back to the nurses’ station, and looked down at her father’s file.

  Amanak
i clacked away at her keyboard. “I been here a lotta years, and I can tell you, women are better at this.”

  “At not being selfish dicks?”

  Amanaki’s smile felt, as always, like the clouds had parted to let through a blast of soul-warming beauty. “Yeah, I’d say we are. Men talk a lot. Women stay and take care of what needs to be taken care of.”

  Naomi’s phone vibrated in the zip pocket of her tights—Jason calling back? The flare of hopefulness she felt was accompanied quickly with a pang of self-recrimination. When it came to her brothers, she knew better than to allow naïve optimism to worm its way to the surface.

  As she dug in her pocket, she realized that it wasn’t her personal phone that was vibrating but her secure Boeing Black smartphone.

  She thumbed the ANSWER icon. “This is Templeton.”

  “Special Agent in Charge Templeton?”

  “The very one.”

  “We need you here immediately.”

  6

  X Marks the Spot

  Arms crossed, Naomi regarded the scene in Apartment 705 as agents from Forensic Services worked up the room all around her. She’d been recently promoted within Protective Intelligence and Assessment, and though she’d worked a file drawer’s worth of cases since, the other agents still seemed to be adjusting to her. More precisely, they were still adjusting to the last name that came attached to her.

  For three administrations her father had run the “big show”—the Presidential Protective Detail. In that time he had pioneered enough security and safeguard innovations that his name had literally become synonymous with perfection within the Service. Did you Templeton the rope line? We need Templeton coverage from the hotel advance team. The motorcade route has been Templetoned.