Then Whitney Talbot arrived.

“I was at Video Americain, so I grabbed a movie from the recommended shelf-Funny Bones, have you seen it? I thought we could order in from the Ambassador. Oh, and I picked up red wine and beer at Alonso’s, because Indian food is so hit-and-miss in terms of beverages, and I don’t trust your taste in wine.” She turned to the agents and rolled her eyes. “She still likes merlot.”

It was always interesting watching someone meet Whitney for the first time, trying to take in what would have been a sedate, preppy prettiness if she were ever quiet for more than twenty seconds. She made an especially striking impression tonight, dressed in ratty sweats that appeared to date from their college days. Tess must have caught her as she headed home from doing erg pieces at the boathouse.

It was also interesting to see how quickly Whitney could size up a situation. Her own breathless monologue finished, she regarded the three suited men in Tess’s dining room, dropped the alcohol and videos on the table, then disappeared into the kitchen and began noisily gathering plates and glasses as if nothing unusual had happened. After pointedly setting two places at the table, she headed into Tess’s office, where she could be heard noisily punching the buttons on the phone and demanding Indian food. All for show, Tess assumed. The Ambassador didn’t deliver.

“Where is your boyfriend, Miss Monaghan?” Jenkins asked.

“I don’t know exactly.”

“Is that the truth?”

“He told me he was scouting bands for the club where he works.”

“He told you-interesting choice of words. It almost sounds as if you don’t quite believe him.”

“They’ve had a lot of off-and-on moments, those two,” Whitney said, coming back into the living room with Tess’s digital camera. “Tess, did you forget your ritual?”

“Ritual?”

“Taking everyone’s photograph when they cross your threshold. You know, like John Waters does.” The local film director did in fact take Polaroids of everyone who entered his home, an obsession he had detailed for several magazines. Whitney quickly shot three photographs of the visitors, not giving them time to protest, then handed the camera to Tess. “Me, too. Remember, you shoot me every time.”

Tess followed her instructions, not sure what Whitney was up to, but confident there was, as always, a plan.

“There’s only going to be enough food for two,” Whitney said, her voice den-mother brisk, her hands on her barely existent hips. She looked as if she were about to start a rousing game of I’m a Little Teapot. “So unless you want to watch us eat-”

“I didn’t get your name.”

“Whitney Talbot.”

“As in the county?”

“As in the congressman,” she said. “The one they named the bridge after, on the upper shore? A Republican, but a moderate one in the Maryland tradition. Well, the old tradition. Life is so partisan now. We love Uncle Deucie dearly.”

“Uncle Deucie?”

“Trevor Sims Talbot Jr. The second. Therefore, Deuce. Therefore, Deucie.”

The three men exchanged a look, and the older one jerked his chin upward, indicating they should leave. It wasn’t Whitney’s name-dropping that had done the trick, Tess was sure of that much. Whitney’s uncle was the kind of gentlemanly pol who had gone out of style in these more strident times, and it was doubtful he had any clout in Washington. No, it was the sheer fact of Whitney’s presence, which was what Tess had counted on when she summoned her. They didn’t want a witness to this interview, however unofficial, especially someone like Whitney, whose remarkable confidence made her difficult to scare or cow. She was simply too much of a variable to control for.

“Enjoy your dinner,” Jenkins said. “We’ll get back to you.”

Whitney and Tess did not speak again until they heard the car’s engine turn over, the crunch of gravel, the disappearing whine of the motor. They sat at the table in silence, poured themselves red wine and sipped-contemplatively in Whitney’s case, numbly in Tess’s. Minutes later another car pulled up, and Tess tensed, but it turned out to be the Ambassador. Whitney had somehow cajoled them into making this one-time-only delivery. Lamb saag, savory meat samosas-it should have been great comfort food, but Tess was beyond being comforted.

“Project Zeus?” Whitney asked when they were alone again, using the code they had agreed on when Tess realized that Whitney also could be pressured to provide Lloyd’s name if anyone guessed her part in this whole affair. Other friends might have used an astronomical reference, but this Roman-to-Greek transposition of Lloyd’s surname was a natural for two former English majors.

“Yeah. Feds.”

“Shit.”

“What was that thing with the photos?”

“I couldn’t be sure who they were. If they weren’t official, they would have balked, right? Besides, it freaks people out when you pull a camera on them. When you call me like that, I know it’s because you’re trying to fuck with someone. I was just doing my part.”

Tess raised her glass to her friend. “You did beautifully.”

“So what do they want? I mean, I know what they want, but why are the feds stepping in? They were content to let Howard County have this investigation when it was a gay pickup gone wrong.”

“I guess there’s glory in it now, avenging a fallen colleague whose death may have something to do with the drug cases he prosecuted. I don’t want to think about it, much less talk about it. Let’s hope this movie you brought over is good for a few laughs.”

Funny Bones was good for quite a few laughs, although not quite in the straightforward way the title had seemed to promise. Things went unexplained-Oliver Reed and those strange eggs-and there was a moment in which everything literally hung in the balance. It was, in fact, one of the few films that Tess had ever seen in which she could not predict the tenor of the ending, could not figure out if she was watching a comedy or a tragedy.

It made for an admirable quality in a movie, she decided, but an unnerving situation in one’s own life.

FRIDAY

20

Gabe didn’t have a photographic memory, although he had a good one. Gabe’s talent was that he knew paper, as if it were a language unto itself, an unmapped country. Gabe was good at paper even when it wasn’t paper, when it was just a facsimile of a document captured in a computer screen. If files and forms were women, Gabe would have been the Casanova of his time. In fact, if Gabe had been content to play to his greatest strength, he would be a forensic accountant, being summoned to testify as an expert witness in corporate scandals.

But Gabe had disliked the idea of life on the sidelines, waiting for things to happen. That wasn’t how he saw himself. So he had chosen the prosecutorial track, hoping that his knack for paper, for details, would pay off.

Finally it had.

“Barry told me that you expect to get a subpoena soon,” said the point guy at the bank, a former fed, just as Jenkins had predicted. “Until then we can’t give you copies. And, technically, you shouldn’t even take notes, so I’ll pat you down for pad and paper.”

He waved his hands in front of Gabe, maintaining three feet of space between them. “Nope, I don’t feel any thing. Anyway, enjoy yourself.”

The files were so straightforward that Gabe didn’t really need to take notes. Tess Monaghan maintained only two accounts at the bank, one personal, one corporate, both small. There were bumps of incoming cash here and there, but in amounts that jibed with the nature of her business.

But not for a while, he noticed. She was living pretty close to the margins these past few months. Interesting, but not necessarily of use. In fact, kind of the opposite. He wanted to find some big, mysterious sum, something that he could say looked like it had come from a drug dealer or an individual otherwise involved in a criminal enterprise. But this was just, well, pathetic. He wondered how she could afford that house up in Roland Park. According to the property-tax records he had checked this morning, she had bought it at a bargain price, $175,000. Even accounting for Baltimore ’s overheated real-estate market and the fact that it was probably a falling-down wreck when she acquired it, that was a suspiciously good deal. City rolls had it assessed at $275,000 for tax purposes, and that was low, based on his quick eyeballing of the place. She had probably made some of the improvements on the sly. Great, he could get the city to fine her for not pulling the proper permits. Yeah, that would scare her. Given her father’s juice as a former liquor-board inspector, she probably had the city types eating out of her hand.