A Maidens Grave

identified himself, spoke to the clerk for a few moments. Finally he shook his head grimly, asked, “And what room?” He jotted down Holiday Inn. Rm. 611 on a pad. To the clerk he said, “No. And don’t mention this call.” He hung up, tapped the pad. “May be our Judas. Let’s go have a talk with ’em, Charlie.”
    Melanie glanced at the pad of paper. Her face went still.
    Who? Who is it? Her eyes flared. She stood up abruptly, pulled a leather jacket from a hook.
    “Let them handle it,” Angie said.
    Melanie looked back to Potter, her eyes flaring. She typed, Who is it?
    “Please.” Potter took her by the shoulders. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
    Slowly she nodded, pulled off the jacket, slung it over her shoulder. She looked like an aviatrix from the thirties.
    Potter said, “Henry, Angie, and Tobe stay here. Handy knows about Melanie. He might come back.” He said to her, “I’ll be back soon.” Then he hurried to the door. “Come on, Charlie.”
    After they’d gone Melanie smiled at the agents who remained. She typed Tea? Coffee?
    “Not for me,” Tobe said.
    “No, thank you. Want to play solitaire?” LeBow booted up the game.
    She shook her head. I’m going to take a shower. Long day.
    “Gotcha.”
    Melanie disappeared and a few minutes later they heard the sound of running water from a bathroom.
    Angie began working on her incident report while Tobe called up Doom II on his laptop and started to play. Fifteen minutes later he’d been blown apart by aliens. He stood up and stretched. He looked over Henry LeBow’s shoulder, made a suggestion about the red queen, which was not received very generously at all, and then paced in the living room. He glanced at the sideboard, where he’d left the keys to the government pool car. They were gone. He wandered to the front of the house and glanced outside at the empty street. Why, he wondered, would Potter and Budd have taken two separate cars to the Holiday Inn?
    But his blood lust was insatiable and he stopped worrying about such a trivial matter as he returned to his computer and prepared to blast his way out of the fortress of Doom.

2:35 A.M.
    It had been Hawaiian Night at the Holiday Inn.
    Steel guitar still pumped through the PA and limp plastic leis hung around the night clerks’ necks.
    Agent Arthur Potter and Captain Charles Budd walked between two fake palms and took the elevator up to the sixth floor.
    For a change Budd was the law enforcer looking perfectly confident; it was Potter who was ill-at-ease. The last kick-in the agent had been involved in was the arrest of a perp who happened to be wearing a turquoise Edwardian suit and silver floral polyester shirt, which carbon-dated the bust to around 1977.
    He remembered that he wasn’t supposed to stand in front of the door. What else? He was reassured to glance at Budd, who had a shiny black leather cuffcase on his belt. Potter himself had never cuffed a real suspect—only volunteers at the live-fire hostage rescue drills on the Quantico back lot. “I’ll defer to you on this one, Charlie.”
    Budd raised surprised eyebrows. “Well, sure, Arthur.”
    “But I’ll back you up.”
    “Oh. Good.”
    Both men pulled their weapons from the hip holsters. Potter chambered a round again—twice in one night and three years from the last barricade in which a bullet had rested in his gun’s receiver and meant business.
    At room 611 they stopped, exchanged glances. The negotiator nodded.
    Budd knocked, a friendly tap. Shave and a haircut.
    “Yeah?” the gruff voice called. “Hello? Who’s there?”
    “It’s Charlie Budd. Can you open up for a minute? Just found something interesting.”
    “Charlie? What’s going on?”
    The chain fell, a deadbolt clicked, and when Roland Marks opened the door he found himself staring into the muzzles of two identical automatic pistols: one steady, one shaking, and both safeties off.
     
    “Cynthia’s a director of the S&L, yes. It’s a nominal position. I’m really the one who calls the shots. We kept it in her maiden name. She’s not guilty of anything.”
    The assistant attorney general could protest all he wanted but it would be up to the grand and petit juries to decide his wife’s fate.
    No raillery. Marks was now playing straight man. His eyes were red and damp and Potter, feeling nothing but contempt, had no trouble holding his gaze.
    The AG had been read his rights. It was all over and he knew it. So he decided