Steven Womack - By Blood Written

“There’s got to be something else,” he whispered. “There’s got to be more out there.”

He went back to his desk and dug out the background file on Michael Schiftmann. The Manhattan Field Office had done a thorough, professional job of bringing Schiftmann’s current situation up to speed. He’d sold his condo in Cleveland, made almost six figures on it, then moved to Manhattan, where he’d been house hunting. Hank had everything on Schiftmann’s recent moves, up to and including the Northwest flight number he’d taken from Cleveland to LaGuardia.

Then Hank saw a note appended to the report almost as an afterthought, that Schiftmann had been staying with his literary agent, a woman named Taylor Robinson.

Staying with her? Hank suddenly thought. What? This guy can’t afford a hotel?

It was one of two things, he realized. Either Taylor Robinson took really good care of her clients, or these two were an item.

“Wonder what it would take to find out?” he whispered.

Hank turned to his computer and double-clicked the Internet Explorer icon. He went to Google.com and typed in Taylor’s name. In a few hundredths of a second, he found more than forty-seven thousand hits for Taylor Robinson.

The first was her home page at the Delaney amp; Associates Web site. He scanned her biography and noted she was a summa cum laude graduate of Smith College, that she had been an editor for several years before joining the agency, and that in a few short years, she had become one of the most powerful agents in the business.

Hyperbole aside, he thought, this was an impressive woman. He stared at her picture for a few seconds. She was, he realized, quite lovely as well. The picture was black-and-white, so it was hard to tell colors, but she had dark hair swept down onto her shoulders, dark piercing eyes, and high cheekbones.

She looked, he thought, patrician.

He read a few more pages, learned a little more about her, and generated some assumptions that he would later test.

Because Hank Powell had decided to pay a visit to Taylor Robinson.

Thursday morning, Manhattan

Hank Powell stepped out of the cab on East Fifty-third Street, leaned in, handed the driver a twenty, and stepped back as he drove away. He pulled his overcoat around him as a stiff wind pounded down the street from the East River.

Even in late March, the cold concrete canyons of Manhattan could chill a man to his bones.

He looked across the street at the row of brownstones, then drew a small spiral-bound notebook out of his pocket and glanced at the address. He looked back up, scanned the buildings again, and spotted his destination.

In every investigator’s professional life, there comes a time when he has to take chances. Sometimes it’s a matter of trusting someone you shouldn’t; other times it’s learning to distrust someone you thought was stand-up. But when you get stuck, when you hit that wall that stands between you and whatever it is that’s keeping you from the truth, you have to think differently, move differently, shake things up, and see what happens.

Hank Powell was about to shake things up.

He crossed the street and walked halfway down the block toward Second Avenue. On the north side, a couple of buildings from the corner, sat a four-story brownstone with a bronze engraved plate mounted on the wall next to the front door, which read: DELANEY amp; ASSOCIATES.

Hank climbed the stairs to the front door, then reached out and pressed the white button just below the plaque. A loud buzz erupted from the speaker next to the button, and a moment later, a female voice fuzzed over by static spoke:

“Yes?”

“I’m here to see Ms. Robinson,” Hank said into the speaker. “Taylor Robinson.”

The buzzer went off again, and Hank heard a relay behind the door trip, unlocking it. He grabbed the door handle and pulled, then stepped into what had once been the entrance foyer of the brownstone a hundred years ago when it was a family residence. Now it was the lobby of one of the most powerful literary agencies in New York.

A harried receptionist with dyed purple hair, a pierced eyebrow, and a petite tattoo of a rose on her right arm just at her shoulder, sat behind a desk to his left, looking like she was in multitasking hell. Behind her, and it seemed on every square inch of available wall space, were framed book covers, photographs of authors, awards. To Hank’s right, on the wall next to a polished wooden staircase, was a section of the wall devoted entirely to Michael Schiftmann. An elaborately matted and framed eight-by-ten photograph of Schiftmann was surrounded by framed book covers of the five published installments in the Chaney series.

“May I help you?” the young woman asked between phone calls.

Hank stepped forward. “Yes, I’m here to see Taylor Robinson.”

The receptionist eyed him, if not quite suspiciously, at least with a question on her face. “Do you have an appointment?”

“No,” Hank said, reaching into the inside pocket of his suit coat for his credentials, “but I think-”

“I’m sorry,” the woman snapped. “But you have to have an appointment. Ms. Robinson is far too busy-”

It was Hank’s turn to interrupt as he flashed open his ID

case, revealing his FBI identity card and badge. “I won’t take up much of her time.”

The receptionist cleared her throat and looked at the badge and ID. Her eyes got larger for a second. “Wow,” she muttered. “I’ve never seen one of those before.”

Hank gave her his most charming smile. “Wanta see my pistol?”

“You’ve got a gun?” the girl asked, incredulous.

“And handcuffs,” Hank answered. “They make me.”

“Bitchin’,” she said.

“Ms. Robinson?” Hank asked after a moment.

“Oh, yeah,” the girl stammered, as if suddenly coming out of a trance. Hank wondered where her mind had gone, what fantasy had played itself out in that second and a half of silence.

She picked up the phone, punched a few numbers, and spoke low. Then she nodded, hung up the phone, and pointed toward the staircase. “Ms. Robinson’s office is upstairs, far corner. Her assistant will be waiting for you.”

Hank nodded, smiled. “Thanks.”

Hank climbed the curving, polished mahogany staircase that he imagined some Victorian, gilded-aged, robber bar-on’s wife making a grand entrance on a century ago. On the second floor of the house, the rooms had been turned into offices, the once large rooms subdivided by renovation walls, partitions, and a narrow hallway that ran down the middle of the floor. Another young, hip, but this time somewhat bookish woman met him at the head of the stairs.

“Mr. Powell?” she asked.

“Agent Powell,” he corrected, knowing from years of experience how much more weight Agent Powell carried than Mr. Powell, even though they were the same person.

“Yes, Agent Powell, this way.” The woman turned and led him down the hallway, speaking in a cool, detached, professional manner as she walked. “Ms. Robinson was on a conference call a few minutes ago, but I believe she’s off now.”

They got to the end of the hallway, which let out into a common area with a sofa and a couple of leather wing chairs. Surrounding the common area were the doors to four offices, each with a desk close by for the requisite assistant.

The young woman led Hank over to the far right office and stopped at a closed door.

“I’ll see if Ms. Robinson’s available,” she explained, knocking lightly on the door. Then she opened it and stepped inside, closing it firmly behind her. Hank was alone. He took off his overcoat and folded it over his arm and stood there a few moments, looking around at another collection of framed book covers, these obviously from the agency’s less-stellar writers.