Mary, Mary

Claudette Thurman came with Rakeem Powell and his new girlfriend, whose name I didn’t catch. “Give it a week,” Sampson told me on the side. “If she’s still around, then you can worry about it.”
    Aunt Tia and my cousin Carter were the first actual family to come, followed by a string of warm and familiar faces, several of them bearing some vague resemblance to my own.
    The last to arrive was Dr. Kayla Coles, and I greeted her at the door myself.
    “Annie Sullivan, I presume?”
    “Excuse me? Oh, I get it. The Miracle Worker.”
    “The Miracle Worker—the one who got my grandmother to put turkey in her chili. I’m guessing that was your work. Well done.”
    “At your service.” She curtsied playfully in her turquoise dress, which looked very comfortable even while it clung to her. Kayla didn’t usually show off much of herself, and I couldn’t help noticing. She definitely looked different than she did in her usual preppy-practical work clothes.
    Instead of a medical bag, she carried a large covered crock.
    “Now
this
might be your biggest trick yet,” I said. “Bringing someone else’s food into Nana’s kitchen? I want to see this.”
    “Not just the food; I brought the recipe, too.”
    She turned the crock around to show a white index card taped to the side.
    “Heart-healthy baked beans for a woman who knows all too well how to cook with bacon fat.”
    “Well, come on in,” I said with a sweeping gesture. “At your own risk.”
    The sounds of Branford Marsalis Quartet’s
Romare Bearden Revealed
ushered us through the house, where the party was gathering up steam and everyone looked glad to see Dr. Kayla, who happened to be a saint in the neighborhood. I couldn’t help feeling a little giddy. At the end of the week I’d be on another plane. But for now, this was as good as it gets.

Chapter 77
    I FOUND SAMPSON AND BILLIE just as he was opening a beer in the kitchen, and I took it out of his hands. There was something I wanted to get out of the way with the big man before the festivities really got rolling.
    “Follow me. I need to talk to you—before either of us has a drink,” I told him.
    “Ooh, mysterious,” Billie said, and laughed at the two of us, the way she usually does. Billie is an ER nurse, and she’s seen it all.
    “Come on upstairs,” I said to John.
    “I already had a drink,” John said. “This is number two.”
    “Come anyway. We’ll just be a minute, Billie.”
    From my office in the attic, I could still hear the music muted through the floor. I recognized Dr. Kayla’s laugh amid the indistinct thrum of party voices.
    Sampson leaned against the wall. “You wanted to see me, sir? In your office?”
    He had on a funny T-shirt from his basketball team in the older men’s league at St. Anthony’s. It said, “
Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt
.”
    “I didn’t want to mix work with the party,” I said.
    “But you can’t help yourself.” Sampson grinned. “Can you?”
    “I’m not home for too long. I have to go back to L.A., and I don’t want to wait on this anymore.”
    “Well, that’s a good hook,” he said. “What’s the pitch? Let’s hear it.”
    “Basically? Director Burns and I want you to think seriously about coming to work at the Bureau. We want you to make the move, John. Were you expecting it?” I asked.
    He laughed. “More or less, of course. You’ve been hinting around enough. Burns looking to blackify the Bureau, sugar?”
    “No. Not that I’d mind.”
    What Burns wanted at the Bureau was more agents who knew the value of fieldwork, and people he could trust, his team. If I could recruit only one person, I’d told him, John Sampson would be my first choice. That was good enough for Burns.
    “I’ve already got the go-ahead from the director’s office,” I said. “Ron Burns wants the same things I do. Or maybe it’s the other way around.”
    “You mean he wants me?” Sampson asked.
    “Well, we couldn’t get Jerome or Rakeem, or the crossing guard at the Sojourner Truth school. So yeah, he’ll settle for you.”
    Sampson laughed loudly, one of my favorite sounds. “I miss you, too,” he said. “And believe it or not, I have an answer. I want you to come back to the Washington PD. How’s that for turnaround? You’re right about one thing—we do have to get back together. One way or the other. I guess I vote for the other.”
    I couldn’t help laughing out loud, too; then John and I banged closed fists,