Edge

ofguests to call, groceries and decorations to buy. I’d absently tucked the yellowing document into my pocket and discovered it this morning. The party had been years ago. It was the last thing I wanted to be reminded of at the moment.
    I looked at the handwriting on the faded rectangle and fed it into my burn box, which turned it into confetti.
    I placed the FedEx box into the safe behind my desk—nothing fancy, no eye scans, just a clicking combination lock—and rose. I tugged on a dark suit jacket over my white shirt, which was what I usually wore in the office, even when working weekends. I stepped out of my office, turning left toward my boss’s, and walked along the lengthy corridor’s gray carpet, striped with sunlight, falling pale through the mirrored, bullet-resistant windows. My mind was no longer on real estate values in Maryland or delivery service packages or unwanted reminders from the past, but focused exclusively on the reappearance of Henry Loving—the man who, six years earlier, had tortured and murdered my mentor and close friend, Abe Fallow, in a gulley beside a North Carolina cotton field, as I’d listened to his cries through his still-connected phone.
    Seven minutes of screams until the merciful gunshot, delivered not mercifully at all, but as a simple matter of professional efficiency.

Chapter 2
    I WAS SITTING in one of our director’s scuffed chairs next to a man who clearly knew me, since he’d nodded with some familiarity when I entered. I couldn’t, however, place him beyond his being a federal prosecutor. About my age—forty—and short, a bit doughy, with hair in need of a trim. A fox’s eyes.
    Aaron Ellis noticed my glance. “You remember Jason Westerfield, U.S. Attorney’s Office.”
    I didn’t fake it and try to respond. I just shook his hand.
    “Freddy was briefing me.”
    “Agent Fredericks?” Westerfield asked.
    “That’s right. He said we have a principal in Fairfax and a lifter who needs information in the next few days.”
    Westerfield’s voice was high and irritatingly playful. “You betcha. That’s what we hear. We don’t know much at this point, other than that the lifter got a clear go-ahead order. Somebody needs information from the subject by late Monday or all hell breaks loose. No idea what the fuck hell is, though. Pardonnez moi. ”
    While I was dressed like a prosecutor, ready for court, Westerfield was in weekend clothes.Not office weekend clothes but camping weekend clothes: chinos, a plaid shirt and a windbreaker. Unusual for the District, where Saturday and Sunday office hours were not rare. It told me he might be a cowboy. I noted too he was also sitting forward on the edge of his chair and clutching files with blunt fingers. Not nervously—he didn’t seem the sort who could be nervous—but with excitement. A hot metabolism burned within.
    Another voice, female, from behind us: “I’m sorry I’m late.”
    A woman about thirty joined us. A particular type of nod and I knew she was Westerfield’s assistant. A tight hairstyle that ended at her shoulders, blond. New or dry-cleaned blue jeans, a white sweater under a tan sports coat and a necklace of impressive creamy pearls. Her earrings were pearls too and accompanied on the lobes by equally arresting diamonds. Her dark-framed glasses were, despite her youth, trifocals, I could see by the way her head bobbed slowly as she took in the office and me. A shepherd has to know his principals’ buying habits—it’s very helpful in understanding them—and instinctively I noted Chanel, Coach and Cartier. A rich girl and probably near the top of her class at Yale or Harvard Law.
    Westerfield said, “This is Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Teasley.”
    She shook my hand and acknowledged Ellis.
    “I’m just explaining the Kessler situation to them.” Then to us: “Chris’ll be working with us on it.”
    “Let’s hear the details,” I said, aware that Teasley was scenting the air, floral and subdued. Sheopened her attaché case with loud hardware snaps and handed her boss a file. As he skimmed it I noted a sketch on Ellis’s wall. His corner office wasn’t large but it was decorated with a number of pictures, some posters from mall galleries, some personal photos and art executed by his children. I stared at a watercolor drawing of a building on a hillside, not badly rendered.
    I had nothing on my office walls except lists of phone numbers.
    “Here’s the sit.” Westerfield