Joel Goldman - The Dead Man

"I hear you. They're just doing their job the only way they know how."

"Exactly my point," she said. "DC won't let this one go, you know that, Jack, especially when something like Wendy's envelope shows up. They're going to keep coming at you until they find that money."

We were stopped at a traffic light at Summit and Southwest Boulevard in the heart of the west side Hispanic neighborhood where Mexican restaurants and bakeries held sway.

I looked at her. "Why not let it go? Why not leave Wendy and me alone? It's not like they are going to return the money to the people who bought the drugs even if they do find it. They'll deposit it in the Treasury and the growth in the national debt will slow down for a nanosecond."

"You know why. It's the only way the Bureau can remove the stain. One of our people did this."

"Colby Hanson wasn't the only one."

"Yes, but he was the only one who was one of ours."

The light changed. We made our way south on Summit, snaking onto the Southwest Traffic Way.

"Not according to Dolan and Kent. They think I know what happened to the money. Hell, they probably want me for killing Walter Enoch."

Ammara dipped her chin and laid on the horn at a driver who shifted into our lane, though his car was two-lengths in front of ours.

"Assholes," she said, pounding on the steering wheel, refusing to look at me.

The other driver was alone, his offense imaginary and not warranting her outburst. The assholes she was cursing were Dolan and Kent, the message clear. I wasn't just in the middle. I was in their crosshairs.

As crazy as it was, it made more sense than my attempt to link Walter Enoch's murder to the deaths of Tom Delaney and Regina Blair. The police had investigated their deaths and found no evidence of homicide. The only thing the three of them had in common was their participation in the dream project, something they shared with two hundred and forty-seven other people.

My daughter had been in love with a rogue FBI agent who was involved in a drug ring. She disappeared when we took the operation down and later reached out to me in a way designed to keep her whereabouts secret. I found her, as she knew I would, though not in time. Every FBI agent I ever knew would believe that she told me what happened to the money before she died. If Wendy hadn't been my daughter, I would have joined the same church.

I wouldn't take the odds that Wendy had mailed me a confession and treasure map but neither would I bet against it. There were several possible explanations why her envelope was the one piece of stolen mail that was found opened. The seal was old and may have given way. Walter Enoch could have decided after all those years of hoarding the mail to start reading it and chose Wendy's as his first. I knew that neither of these was likely.

The most plausible explanation was also the simplest. Whoever opened that envelope knew where to find it and was willing to kill Walter Enoch to get it. Dolan and Kent had a long way to go to prove that I knew the envelope existed or that I knew that Enoch had stolen it. None of that mattered because they knew the one thing that mattered most of all. I was the only person they could think of who wanted to know what was inside it more than they did.

Ammara pulled up in front of the institute. Her shoulders were hunched over the wheel, her hands still strangling it. She knew the score as well as I did, her conclusions and mine no doubt the same. This morning's session had been well orchestrated, complete with her assignment as my return driver. She was the ultimate good cop, my friend and former colleague, the one who would soften me up with appeals to old times and reason. She was supposed to tell me to make it easy on myself and give Kent and Dolan what they wanted, even if it was my head. I liked that she couldn't bring herself to do it.

"It's okay," I told her. "I get it. You're just doing your job too. The difference between you and Kent and Dolan is that you don't like it. It's what gets those guys out of bed in the morning. Tell them that you gave it your best shot but that I'm the one who is an asshole. And tell them I don't know what happened to the money and I didn't kill Walter Enoch."

She nodded, staring through the windshield. "I'll tell them but it won't do any good."

"Sherry is waiting for you in the private dining room," Leonard said when I got back to my office.

I looked at my watch. It was one-fifteen. "Really?"

"Totally. It's on the other side of the elevator. Double door."

The dining room was actually several rooms fronted by a small lobby whose walls were paneled in teak and hung with important art. I knew the art was important because each piece was illuminated with a strategically placed light and accompanied by a brass plate announcing that it was on loan from the Milo Harper Collection of Contemporary Art. I studied one piece that was all wild color painted with wilder brush strokes and splattered with globs of black, deciding that I had a greater appreciation for the artistry of converting on third and long than for anything in Milo's collection.

A woman in a sleek-fitting green dress greeted me. Her porcelain makeup and high swept blond hair belonged on a runway.

"It's one of a kind," she said, pointing to the painting.

"Me too. I'm Jack Davis. Sherry Fritzshall is expecting me."

"Of course. Right this way."

I followed her down a corridor until we reached a door at the end of the hall. She knocked once, waited a beat, then held the door open, closing it behind me, sealing the windowless room like an air lock. More teak paneling, more important art, thick plush carpet, and padded walls made it a soundproof inner sanctum with a privileged intimacy that screamed I was lucky to be invited inside these walls.

Sherry was seated at a round table that was draped in ivory-colored linen, empty, food encrusted china and silver shoved to one side, reading from a stack of papers in front of her. She set the papers down, giving me a disappointed look as if I was her teenage son dragged home by the cops in the middle of the night.

"I'm sorry you missed lunch. It was salmon. The chef made a superb sauce."

I took a seat opposite her. "Something came up."

She chewed her lip, rearranged her papers. "Let me give you some advice. Don't underestimate me."

"I don't have an estimate of you."

"Oh, but you do. You think I don't know what I'm doing because I scheduled the meetings with the project directors without consulting you. And you think I resent that you took my place as director of security."

"Okay. I do have an estimate of you. Why am I wrong?"

"I have an MBA from Wharton and a JD from Harvard. I was Milo's chief operating officer before he sold his company. I know how to make things run efficiently."

"And I have a PhD from the FBI. We do security differently than they do at Harvard and Penn."

"Business and organizational management principles have universal application, including for security. There has to be a plan and a system to implement the plan and accountability for execution of the plan."

"All the business systems and management principles in the world won't do a bit of good if you don't have an advanced degree in crimes and criminals. Milo Harper knows that or he wouldn't have hired me."

"My brother is a romantic. He likes to dramatize everything from his perch thirty thousand feet above the rest of us. I operate on the ground where things happen, running this institute and protecting my brother."

"Protecting him from what?"

"From anyone and everything that might harm him."

"You can't do that. No one can."

"I'm his only family. No one will do a better job than I will."

"Which is reason enough for you to resent me."