James Patterson - Truth or Die

Above those words was Wolf Blitzer, presumably elaborating on the other two words filling the screen next to him. BASS OUT.

Owen quickly grabbed the clicker, turning up the volume. No sooner could we actually hear the Blitzmeister, as Claire got such a kick out of calling him, did the scene cut to the East Room of the White House.

The name Bass didn’t register with me at first, but as soon as I saw him standing at the podium, I put it together. Lawrence Bass was supposed to be the next director of the CIA. Now here he was — flanked by the president on one side, his family on the other — announcing that he was withdrawing his name from consideration.

“Wasn’t his confirmation hearing coming up pretty soon?” I asked.

“That depends,” said Owen.

“On what?”

“If you think this morning qualifies as pretty soon.”

Owen had pegged it, all right. That was pretty strange. On the flip side, Bass’s rationale couldn’t have been more common. Not only was he turning down the CIA director’s post, he said he was leaving his current position as director of intelligence programs with the National Security Council. Why?

To spend more time with his family.

“Turn it up more,” I said.

Owen ramped the volume on the remote as we both sat down on the edge of the bed to watch.

“Some decisions are easy, others are hard,” Bass explained, his hands tightly gripping the podium. “And then there are the ones that are both.”

He turned to glance at his wife, who was corralling their young twin daughters, an arm draped over each of their shoulders. The girls, who looked to be around seven or eight, were smiling, almost preening for the host of photographers before them. As for the wife, she was wiping away a tear.

“As honored as I was to be chosen by President Morris to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, I couldn’t ignore the sacrifice it would require of my family,” Bass continued. “All my life, I’ve known only one way to approach a job — and that’s with everything I have. That’s what I would’ve brought to my job as CIA director, just as I did at the NSC. But in the end, there’s an even more important job for me, and I already have it. That’s to be the very best father and husband I can be. So as much as this was a hard decision for me, in some ways — three very beautiful ways, to be exact — it was an easy one.”

With that, he let go of the podium, stepped back, and hugged his wife and daughters — one, two, three. The sound of cameras clicking away was nearly deafening, even through the television.

“Very touching,” said Owen as the screen switched back to Wolf Blitzer. He was introducing some pundit for comment.

“Yes, it was,” I said.

Owen turned to me. Each of us knew what the other was thinking. “For a minute there, I almost believed him.”

“Yeah, me, too,” I said.

A hot shower and some sleep used to do wonders for me. I’d wake up with that can-do attitude straight out of a breakfast cereal commercial trumpeting all those essential vitamins and nutrients.

Now I was just wondering if I’d live to see another breakfast.

Not to say there weren’t any saving graces.

For instance, watching Owen hack one of those disgusting websites selling personal information about people was the best irony I’d seen in a long time. It looked simple, too. That is, until I asked Owen what he was actually doing.

“It’s called a Structured Query Language injection,” he explained. “SQL for short. I trick the website into incorrectly filtering for string literal escape characters.”

String literal escape characters? Structured Query Language injection?

Carry on, I told him.

The upshot was that we weren’t taking any chances in communicating with Detective Lamont. That resulted in the second-best irony I’d seen in a long time. We were evading the prospect of the highest of high-tech surveillance by going seriously old school.

“How did you know I had a fax machine at home?” asked Lamont the moment we stepped into the backseat of his car that night outside what used to be the Juliet SupperClub near Twenty-First Street and Tenth Avenue. Given how many people had been either stabbed or shot at coming out of the place, I figured he’d know it well.

“I’ll let Owen tell you,” I said, making the introduction. Nothing in my fax had mentioned I was bringing someone along, and certainly not someone so young.

“How old are you?” asked Lamont. He was squinting. Partly because there was barely any light in the car, but mostly due to disbelief.

“Nineteen,” answered Owen.

Lamont turned to me. “My car’s older than him.”

I glanced around the interior of his Buick LeSabre, my eyes moving from the crank handles for the windows to the ashtray below the radio. An ashtray.

“Your car’s older than everybody,” I said.

With that, the headlights of an oncoming car lit my banged-up face. We were still parked along the curb.

“Shit,” said Lamont. “How did that happen?”

I told him the story. It also gave me a chance to thank him for tipping me off about my phone line.

“Call it a hunch,” said Lamont. “The two guys who paid me a visit were CIA.”

Owen chimed in. “Special Activities Division, right?”

“How did you know?” asked Lamont.

“Let’s just say we share the same company health plan.”

Lamont shot me another look. He’s nineteen and he works for the CIA? “What other surprises do you have?” he asked.

Lamont had helped me up until this point based on little more than his gut. The time had come to prove his instincts right. I asked Owen to take out his phone and show Lamont some highlights from the hallway of the Lucinda Hotel.

“How’s that for a special activity?” I said as we watched the body of Claire’s killer being removed from the room.

Then came the main attraction. The big picture, if you will.

Owen showed Lamont the two recordings he’d played for me at the Oak Tavern. Even having seen them already, I got the same anxious, uneasy, pit-in-my-stomach feeling I’d had the first time. All of it was so painful to watch. And yet that was all I could do. I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.

As for Lamont, he remained completely silent. In fact, he barely even moved. I tried to imagine all the things he’d seen as a New York City detective. Much of that, I was sure, was far more unsettling from a blood and guts standpoint.

But this was different. This had implications. The likes of which he most definitely hadn’t seen before.

“We need a favor,” I said as soon as the second recording was finished.

I half expected Lamont to shoot back, “No, what you need is a federal grand jury.” This was the guy, after all, who had warned me about trying to do other people’s jobs.

But that seemed like a very long time ago. A lot had changed. Including Lamont.

“Let me guess,” he offered, nodding at Owen’s phone. “You have faces but no names.”

“Exactly,” I said.

Lamont looked at me and nodded again. Sometimes a man’s character reveals itself slowly. Over months, maybe even years. Other times, all it takes is a New York minute.

“Yeah, I can help you,” he said.

As he threw the car into drive and pulled away from the curb, he began to whistle. It was the first few bars of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

Buy me some peanuts and what?

Lamont reached for his cell, tapping a speed dial number as we stopped at a red light at the corner of Tenth Avenue. He waited a few seconds while the line rang. We all waited.