Curled up in bed with her own book, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Tess finally had a chance to tell Crow what had been bothering her all evening.

“He didn’t recognize Youssef’s face. But the name-the name seems to bother him. He changes the subject whenever it comes up.”

“So?”

“How do you know the name but not the face? Sure, certain beat cops are known on the street. But I’d be surprised if the average street kid could name the Baltimore state’s attorney, much less an assistant U.S. attorney. If you’ve heard of Gregory Youssef, it’s because he was murdered. But Lloyd hadn’t made that connection. He knew that a prosecutor had been murdered, he knew the name Gregory Youssef. But in his mind the two had nothing to do with each other.”

“Hmmmmmm.” Crow was lost in the world of Bernard Cornwell.

“Hey. Hey. I’m just as interesting as the Napoleonic era,” Tess said.

“Prove it.”

In her opinion she proceeded to make her case quite persuasively.

6

Barry Jenkins was the type of guy who always found a way to turn his weaknesses into strengths. Slow, stocky, and patient, he had learned early to make the choices that rewarded his build and temperament. In high school he crouched behind home plate as a catcher, blocked on the football team, then dated the girls who were impressed by such achievements. Work with what you’ve got, he told the guys he had mentored over the years, and you’ll always get ahead. And for most of his time in the FBI, that advice had proved golden.

The bar at the Days Inn on Security Boulevard also fell squarely into the category of working with what you were given. While the other federal agencies were downtown, the FBI was tucked away in this butt-ugly bit of suburbia near the Social Security complex in Woodlawn. This physical distance from the DEA, ATF, and IRS guys was supposed to emphasize the Bureau’s superiority. At least that had been the rationale once upon a time, and that attitude still prevailed. So let those other guys sip imported beer and cocktails in those desperate-to-be-chic downtown bars. And never mind that most of his coworkers went to an old-fashioned tavern in the heart of old Woodlawn. Barry preferred the bar at the Days Inn, a straight-up, honest place. Back in the day, it had been a family-owned motel with pretensions and a fancy restaurant, Meushaw’s. That is, Barry’s family, which really didn’t have anything to compare it to, had thought it ritzy. His folks had brought him here for supper after his first communion, and Barry had considered himself pretty worldly, ordering the chicken Kiev. In fact, it was at the moment that his fork pierced the breaded crust and butter oozed forth that he had vowed to have a life where he would see Kiev, or whatever it was called now, see the whole wide world. And he had. He could honestly say he had done what he dreamed of doing when he was a kid, and how many people could make that claim?

Sure, the younger agents considered Jenkins washed up, one of those doddering types just marking time until he hit mandatory retirement. But that assessment, like Meushaw’s demotion to the Days Inn bar, was all about appearances, wasn’t it? Jameson’s was Jameson’s no matter where you drank it, or in whose company. Barry was still Barry-shrewd beneath his good-boy exterior, analytical, easygoing with people. It just depended on how you looked at things, and Jenkins was an expert at considering situations from every angle. He could always see the whole where others saw parts, hold the whole playing field in his head. “Court vision,” they called it in basketball, but that was one game Jenkins had never played. No speed, no jump. Again, it was all about knowing what he could do and what he couldn’t, and the latter knowledge mattered just as much, if not more. If Barry were one of the fabled blind men locked up with the elephant, he would feel it from tail to trunk, bottom to top, and when he left the room and removed his blindfold, he would know it was a goddamn elephant.

Mike Collins arrived at 10:00 P.M. sharp, on-the-dot punctual as always, which accounted for his nickname-“Bully,” short for Bulova, or so the official story went. It had proved to be an unfortunate nickname for a while there, but Collins had ridden out that mess like the soldier he was. Big and handsome, he could have stepped off a recruiting poster-if the DEA had recruiting posters. But what made Collins remarkable, in Jenkins’s opinion, was that he actually had all the qualities that people projected onto this kind of masculine attractiveness. Nerves of steel, balls of brass, heart of gold. All those metals.

“I can’t believe you wanted to meet in this shithole,” Collins said after ordering a bottle of Heineken and bringing it to Barry’s table, one of several along the bank of windows that overlooked this unlovely stretch of Security Boulevard. But the table was isolated, and the reflection made it easy to see if anyone was in earshot.

“I like it out here,” Jenkins said, thinking, I don’t drive to you. You drive to me. “Why’d you want to meet anyway?”

“This kid prosecutor tried to chat me up on the smoking pad today, make conversation about Youssef.”

“So? That’s bound to happen from time to time. A person’s coworker gets killed, it’s natural to gossip about it.”

“He noticed something about the E-ZPass. Youssef used it on the way into town, when he was coming up 95 from his house. But on the way out, he went through a pay lane.”

“We’ve been over that. The pass works whatever lane you choose.”

“Sure, which makes sense when the killer is heading north afterward. But this prosecutor pointed out that traffic was backed up that night, said it wasn’t logical to sit there in a long line when a guy’s trying to get out, get some satisfaction, get home again.”

Jenkins took a drink, which burned a little. Reflux. Even his own body was turning on him. “He’s right, but what’s it to him?”

“My opinion? He’s sniffing around, looking for a way to insert himself.”

“So what did you say?” He tried to keep his tone super casual, although Jenkins always worried a little about Collins on the verbal front. Their extremely unofficial task was to gather information, not disseminate it. Jurisdictional proprieties may have placed the case under the Howard County police, but that didn’t mean the federal agencies weren’t going to keep tabs on it. Headquarters had technical oversight, but the locals wanted their own eyes and ears. Of course, it was a sign of how queasy the case made everyone that they let Jenkins be the liaison. If they really cared what had happened to Youssef, they would have wanted someone in better standing to play monitor.

“I said”-Collins paused, clearly proud of himself-“I said, ‘Do you spend a lot of time thinking about what goes on in the mind of a guy about to get his dick smoked by another guy?’”

“Good answer.” In his relief Jenkins bellowed a bit, sounding like the guy on the old quiz show with the families. The original emcee, the cocky Brit from Hogan’s Heroes, not the nondescript guy who had the hosting duties now. “That’ll keep him away from it.”

“For now,” Collins said. “But I think he might keep poking.”

“Who is this guy?”

“One of the newer hires, been relegated to second chair so far. Booted a come-up or two, but all the young ones do that.”

“Have I-”

“No, he’s too new. And too gung ho. What do you want to bet he’ll try to take anything to court when his time finally comes?”

“Sounds too stupid to be trouble,” Jenkins said, knowing that stupid people could be extraordinary trouble, the very worst kind of trouble. Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son. What movie was that? Animal House. Jenkins had been just a little too old to get that when it was released-out of college, already at the Bureau, already a father-but his older nieces and nephews repeated lines from that movie as if they were the Baltimore catechism. Fact was, Jenkins had felt a pang of sympathy for the would-be keepers of order-Marmalard, Neidermeyer, and most of all, Dean Wormer. Well, the world had learned its lesson, hadn’t it? You sacrifice order at a price. Learned it late, but learned it at last. Jenkins had been one of the voices screaming in the wilderness along with John O’Neill, another FBI agent, another guy they screwed over just because they didn’t like his personal style. O’Neill had tried to tell them about the impending threat from Osama, but no one wanted to hear. They busted his balls over a briefcase, forced him out. September 11 was O’Neill’s first month on the job as head of security for the World Trade Towers, and the one man who had been screaming about bin Laden since the bombing of the USS Cole ended up dead. You want to keep planes from crashing into buildings, you need a few more Dean Wormers in the mix.