Persuader

fastener applicators. I told them I had tracked one down and found a three-dollar screwdriver. That had led to three-thousand-dollar hammers, thousand-dollar toilet seats, the whole nine yards. It's a good story. It's the sort of thing that suits any audience. Most people respond to the audacity and anti-government types get to seethe. But it isn't true. It happened, I guess, but not to me. It was a different department entirely.
    "Have you killed people?" Richard asked.
    Four in the last three days, I thought.
    "Don't ask questions like that," Elizabeth said.
    "The soup is good," Beck said. "Maybe not enough cheese."
    "Dad," Richard said.
    "What?"
    "You need to think about your arteries. They're going to get all clogged up."
    "They're my arteries."
    "And you're my dad." They glanced at each other. They both smiled shy smiles. Father and son, best buddies.
    Ambivalence. It was all set to be a long meal. Elizabeth changed the subject away from cholesterol. She started talking about the Portland Museum of Art instead. She said it had an I. M. Pei building and a collection of American and Impressionist masters. I couldn't tell if she was trying to educate me or to tempt Richard to get out of the house and do something. I tuned her out. I wanted to get to the Saab. But I couldn't, right then. So I tried to predict exactly what I would find there. Like a game. I heard Leon Garber in my head: Think about everything you've seen and everything you've heard. Work the clues. I hadn't heard much. But I had seen a lot of things. I guessed they were all clues, of a sort.
    The dining table, for instance. The whole house, and everything in it. The cars. The Saab was a piece of junk. The Cadillac and the Lincolns were nice automobiles, but they weren't Rolls-Royces and Bentleys. The furniture was all old and dull and solid. Not cheap, but then, it didn't represent current expenditure anyway. It was all paid for long ago. What had Eliot said in Boston? About the LA gangbanger? His profits must run to millions of dollars a week. He lives like an emperor. Beck was supposed to be a couple of rungs up the ladder. But Beck didn't live like an emperor. Why not? Because he was a cautious Yankee, unimpressed by consumer baubles? "Look," he said.
    I surfaced and saw him holding his cell phone out to me. I took it from him and looked at the screen. The signal strength was back up to four bars.
    "Microwaves," I said. "Maybe they ramp up slowly." Then I looked again. No envelopes, no reel-to-reel tapes. No voice-mail messages. But it was a tiny phone and I have big thumbs and I accidentally touched the up-down arrow key underneath the screen. The display instantly changed to a list of names. His virtual phone book, I guessed. The screen was so small it could show only three contacts at a time. At the top was house. Then came gate. Third on the list was Xavier. I stared at it so hard the room went silent around me and blood roared in my ears.
    "The soup was very good," Richard said.
    I handed the phone back to Beck. The cook reached across in front of me and took my bowl away.
    The first time I ever heard the name Xavier was the sixth time I ever saw Dominique Kohl. It was seventeen days after we danced in the Baltimore bar. The weather had broken. The temperature had plummeted and the skies were gray and miserable. She was in full dress uniform. For a moment I thought I must have scheduled a performance review and forgotten all about it. But then, I had a company clerk to remind me about stuff like that, and he hadn't mentioned anything.
    "You're going to hate this," Kohl said.
    "Why? You got promoted and you're shipping out?" She smiled at that. I realized it had come out as more of a personal compliment than I should have risked.
    "I found the bad guy," she said.
    "How?"
    "Exemplary application of relevant skills," she said.
    I looked at her. "Did we schedule a performance review?"
    "No, but I think we should."
    "Why?"
    "Because I found the bad guy. And I think performance reviews always go better just after a big break in a case."
    "You're still working with Frasconi, right?"
    "We're partners," she said, which wasn't strictly an answer to the question.
    "Is he helping?" She made a face. "Permission to speak freely?" I nodded.
    "He's a waste of good food," she said.
    I nodded again. That was my impression, too. Lieutenant Anthony Frasconi was solid, but he wasn't the crispest shirt in the closet.
    "He's a nice man," she said. "I mean, don't