Brian Mcgrory - Dead Line

“We’re going to have to ask you to leave,” an FBI agent, one of the guys in my face, said.

“Ask away,” I said, “but unfortunately, until I get some information, I don’t think I can really go.”

He didn’t take too kindly to that and said, “Get the fuck out of here.”

My tax dollars at work. I’m trying to remember what the good faculty at the Columbia School of Journalism advised in these situations. Of course, since I instead matriculated at the School of Hard Knocks, I had absolutely no idea.

So I said, “Sir, it’s a public street.” I said this dismissively, as if I was running out of patience, and I was. I was.

“It’s a crime scene.”

“The crime,” I replied, “occurred down the street, in the parking garage. The only crime going on here are all the bad haircuts.”

Actually, I didn’t really say that last part, not because it wasn’t true, but because if I did, I probably would have been the recipient of a deserved haymaker from this antsy agent hanging all over my space. What I did say, though, was, “The only crime going on here is the waste of public energy.”

“Move!” he screamed, drill-sergeant style, right into my ear, so that I could feel not only his bad breath, but his warm spittle, on my lobe.

I ignored that too, hard as it was becoming, and called out to the ringleader and the late-arriving supervisor, “Can I get your names, please.”

They looked at each other. The boisterous agent in front of me didn’t know what to do next. I knew, and he did too, that one push, and he’d be working the switchboard of the FBI’s field office in Omaha.

The two supervisors traded nervous glances. It’s part of the majesty of this great profession that we can make men bearing arms afraid. The senior FBI agent turned to the ranking cop and said, “We’re going to follow you to headquarters.”

The cop snorted and replied, “Well, you sure as hell ain’t getting in.”

And just like that, in seconds, actually, everyone jumped into their cars and drove off. Suddenly, I was standing in the street all by my lonesome. I walked back toward my car and said to Sweeney, “Please, call me Henry Kissinger.”

He got out, wide-eyed and said, “What in the hell did you say?”

“I told them my name and asked them theirs.”

He laughed. I added, “Come on, we have work to do.”

He followed me silently to the front door of the apartment building. We both saw four mailboxes, meaning one apartment on each floor. He pulled some tiny device out of his pocket — for all I know, it might have even been a key — and had me inside the front door in a matter of about three seconds. We walked up to the second floor, and he used the same tool to unlock the door to Hilary Kane’s condominium. This was illegal, this breakin, and nothing I found in this search could be used in print. But someone was playing dirty with me, I feared, so I needed to play dirty back.

“Get out of here before you get in trouble,” I said to Sweeney at the door. “I have my phone on vibrate. Call me if a cop or Fed is trying to get in.” He nodded, turned and silently walked down the flight of stairs.

And I opened the door in search of my own worst fears.

The first thing that struck me was the light, loads of it, pouring through the back windows, splashed across her rumpled queen-size bed, speckled across the dark hardwood floors that were casually draped with discarded clothes. The second thing to strike me was the airiness of it all. The apartment, from front to back, from side to side, was wide open, like an artist’s loft, no walls, except in a far, rear corner where I assumed the bathroom must have been.

This was unusual for Beacon Hill. Apartments here are usually closed and cramped and dark as the night in the middle of the afternoon, and the architecture usually ranges from the uncreative to the dowdy. This one was stylish even, chic, and I liked the owner immediately. Apartments and houses can do that. They have a reflected personality, an ability to acquaint and comfort. Having never actually met her, I already knew that Hilary Kane was my kind of woman. Actually, check that. She was much too good for me.

I called out, “Hello,” the single word, happy at its core, just drifting into the vacant air of the room. I thought to myself what a shame it was that she couldn’t answer. Of course, if she could, I’d be facing imminent arrest, so I guess I wasn’t in any great position to complain.

The entry was in the middle of the apartment. To my right, the back end, was where she slept, so noted because that’s where the aforementioned bed was, with a soft down comforter tossed haphazardly on top of it, as if she had overslept that morning and rushed into a day that would unknowingly be her last. I walked back into her bedroom area and looked at the fashionable clothes that lay about the floor — a pair of stretch jeans, a few flimsy tank tops, some rayon running pants — and shoes, everywhere, shoes, various types of clogs and boots and sneakers and high heels, some pointed and refined, others chunky and rugged. What is it about women and their shoes?

I wandered over to her small desk a few feet from her bed, painted white, and saw from the dust marks where the confiscated computer monitor had been. Various papers sat in careful piles, likely placed there by the uncharacteristically thoughtful police. About eight or ten framed photographs sat on a shelf on the desk — mostly women friends smiling into the camera, often arm in arm, at various celebratory events. Three photographs were carefully tipped over, turned down on their faces. I reached out a hand to grab one of them, to see the image, when a jolt went through my arm — Sweeney’s vivid warning: “Look but don’t touch, not unless you’re wearing these gloves.”

I yanked his latex gloves out of my back pocket and pulled them on, golf-glove style. I felt somewhere between ridiculous and ominous, but the alternative — winding up arrested and hauled into court to explain my actions and plead an innocence that wasn’t really mine — was enough to prod me on. I picked up one of the photographs and held it in my hand.

It was of a man, reasonably handsome, with blue eyes and a strong chin and a full head of black hair that tumbled down onto his neck. He wore a blue blazer and he stood on what appeared to be a dock hanging over somewhat churlish seas. This picture could have been torn out of a Ralph Lauren catalogue. He carried the classic look of an ex-boyfriend — a little too smug, far too pleased with himself, in total, not a keeper, not for someone with the style and taste of Hilary Kane.

My suspicions were confirmed when I picked up the second picture, this one of the same guy, his hair a little shorter, a too-cool formless sweater covering his torso with a white tee shirt showing underneath. He was wearing a pair of perfectly faded jeans, sitting on the front steps of what appeared to be an extraordinarily expensive house, a mansion even, that I immediately suspected was that of his parents.

But he’s not what caught my breath short. It was her, Hilary. She was sitting one step beneath him, and his arms were wrapped affectionately around her neck. I wanted to punch him in the head.

To say she looked beautiful would be like saying that eagles know how to fly. Yes, on one very simple level, it’s true, but it gets nowhere near the glorious heart of a wondrous reality. She was blonde, with soft hair that no doubt flowed like silk down beyond her shoulders. I wouldn’t know, because in the moment of the photograph, she had it pulled back in a casual ponytail that highlighted the perfect lines of her chiseled face. Her features were small and sharp, except for her eyes, which were big and grayish-blue. She was wearing an old baseball-style undershirt, navy blue arms, baggy, down to her elbows, and a white body. She had on jeans that were smudged with dirt on both her knees. She wore a controlled smile on her face, her lips pursed, as she looked upward as if trying to see her boyfriend who lurked above, though not really. She had on worn track sneakers. In sum, I think I was in love.