“Yes, she’s dead,” Johnson confirmed. “Now, why don’t you sit down and tell us all about it.”

Philip Melincamp vomited in a men’s room at U.S. Air at Reagan National Airport before boarding a shuttle to New York City. He felt faint for most of the flight, his plight noticed by a flight attendant, who asked, “Are you all right, sir? Is there something I can get you?”

“No, no, nothing. Thank you. It’s just a cold, maybe the flu.”

She kept a wary eye on him for the duration of the short flight to New York’s LaGuardia Airport. She kept a wary eye on everyone.

At LaGuardia Airport, he stepped in front of other passengers waiting in a taxi line, ignoring their shouts of protest, and gave the driver an address on Steinway Street, in the Astoria section of Queens, an area known as “Little Egypt.” After some wrong turns that took them past dozens of Middle Eastern grocery stores, restaurants, and clubs, the cab pulled up in front of a café whose sign boasted AUTHENTIC ARAB CUISINE AND HOOKAH. He paid the driver, overtipping him, and dragged his two small, wheeled suitcases behind him into the restaurant. A short, swarthy man looked up from where he’d been counting money. “Can I help you, sir?”

Melincamp looked to the back of the long, narrow room, where four men sat drawing in shisha, fruit-flavored tobacco, through the water pipes known as hookahs, the smoke shrouding their faces and creating swirling patterns as it gravitated to recessed lighting fixtures in the low ceiling. “I came to see someone back there,” Melincamp said, shoving his luggage into a corner of the entryway and walking to the rear. A young Arab man removed the pipe from his mouth and frowned up at Melincamp.

“Can we talk?” Melincamp said, aware of sweat running down his cheeks.

Without responding, the Arab placed the pipe in its holder and went to a door leading from the hookah room to an alley. Melincamp followed. They climbed a wooden set of exterior stairs to an apartment above the café, where another Arab male, considerably taller and heavier than the first, sat at a scarred, yellow kitchen table, an Arabic newspaper open in front of him. His swarthy face was deeply pitted from acne. He wore a traditional male Arab headdress-a keffiyeh-in a black-and-red pattern and secured by an egal, a thin rope circlet.

“Why do you come here?” the man at the table asked.

Melincamp turned to the man who’d led him upstairs. “Joseph said to come here if there was trouble.”

“Is there trouble?” the man at the table asked.

“Yes.”

Another large man stepped from behind curtains separating the small kitchen from another portion of the apartment.

“I can explain,” Melincamp said.

“I am listening,” said the man, who closed the newspaper and glared at Melincamp in a way that drained blood from the talent agent’s face and turned his legs to jelly.

Melincamp grabbed hold of the back of a chair to support himself. He saw a glass half filled with water on the table. “Please,” he said, “could I have some water?”

The man picked up the glass and threw its contents into Melincamp’s face. Melincamp collapsed into the chair.

“It is too late for trouble,” the man said. “The plan goes forward. Are you ready?”

“No, but there is a reason, a good reason,” Melincamp said, his voice weak. “You see-”

He was struck from behind, and tumbled to the floor, unconscious.

THIRTY-EIGHT

There was a deathly silence as the dramatic, final minutes of Act II of Tosca played out. Twenty-three-hundred men and women in the Kennedy Center’s Opera House watched intently, many barely breathing, as Tosca and the evil Scarpia performed Puccini’s dramatic dance of lust and betrayal. Tosca has asked Scarpia in song how much he wants in return for sparing the life of her lover, Cavaradossi, who is in custody and scheduled to be executed.

Scarpia laughs and dismisses the notion.

“I want a higher payment,” he sings in his rich baritone voice. “I want a much higher payment. Tonight is the night I have longed for. Since first I saw you, desire has consumed me, but tonight, though you hope to defy me, you can no longer deny me.”

He stands and approaches her, arms outstretched. “When you cried out, despairing, passion inflamed me, and your glances drove me almost beyond bearing the lust to which you’ve doomed me. How your hatred enhances my determination to possess you. I may curse or bless you, but you must be mine. You are mine, Tosca!”

Willie Portelain stage-whispered to Sylvia, “I hope she sticks it to the bastard.”

“Shhh,” Sylvia hissed in return.

Tosca and Scarpia continue their “negotiation.” Finally, Tosca agrees to his terms; she will indulge him in a night of passion in return for a mock execution of Cavaradossi, and a legal letter signed by Scarpia ensuring the lovers’ safe passage out of the country. Scarpia writes the note and places his official seal on the envelope. As he does, Tosca sees a knife on the table and hides it behind her back.

He goes to embrace her: “Tosca, at last you are mine.”

She rams the knife into his chest, eliciting a variety of muttered utterances from the audience.

“You assassin!” Scarpia shouts as he falls to his knees, his hands clutching the weapon in his chest.

“That is the way Tosca kisses,” she spits.

“I’m dying. Help me,” Scarpia implores her.

“Your own blood will choke you,” Tosca sings, hatred in her voice. “It is Tosca who has killed you. Now you pay for my torture. Can you still hear me, Scarpia? Answer me! Look at me! Look, Scarpia, it’s Tosca. Your own blood will choke you. Die in damnation, Scarpia. Die now!”

He draws his last breath as Tosca yanks the safe-passage letter from his hand and secures it in her bosom. She’s about to leave, but changes her mind. She takes two candlesticks from the table, lights them, and places one on either side of Scarpia’s head. She removes a crucifix from the wall and puts it on his chest. Satisfied, she leaves the room, the train of her gown trailing behind her, the sound of chilling chords and fatal drumbeats from the orchestra blasting a crescendo to end this act of murder.

The audience erupted into a loud, sustained, standing ovation as the curtain closed.

People eventually left their seats to enjoy a stretch during the intermission, or to indulge in a cigarette on the vast terrace outside the lobby doors, low-flying flights into Reagan National Airport joining the animated sounds of their excited voices. Annabel stood with friends from the Opera Board. “It’s a spectacular production,” one said, “one of the best Toscas I’ve seen, and I’ve seen plenty of them, all over the world. No one gives his leading ladies more dramatic entrances and exits than Puccini.”

“The performers are wonderful,” Annabel said. “It’s almost spiritual listening to them, as though we’re in a giant cathedral.”

“Scarpia sure does a good death scene,” a man said.

“I’ve seen other Scarpias take longer to die in different productions.”

“What an added thrill to have Maestro Domingo conducting the orchestra. To be able to step in like that on a moment’s notice when the scheduled conductor got sick is amazing.”

“He’s amazing,” someone said of Domingo. “Nothing short of amazing.”

Across the terrace, at a low wall beyond which the rippling waters of the Potomac shimmered, stood Willie Portelain and Sylvia Johnson.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Sylvia said.

“Yeah, I like it a lot. Never nodded off once.”

“I can’t imagine a better endorsement, Willie.”

They had turned off their cell phones upon entering the theater. Berry had given them permission to be out of touch during the performance, but told them to call in during intermission, and again when the opera was over. Sylvia activated her phone and punched in Berry’s direct-dial number. “Hi,” she said. “It’s between the second and third acts.”