Pop Goes the Weasel

company called Vanity. You remember, Earle? They had the purple people-eaters.”
    “That was some years ago,” the other man said, nodding. “They went belly up.”
    “I guess they were Metro police. Never showed me any I.D., though,” Shafer said, and shrugged. He was being careful to speak with an American accent, which he was good at imitating.
    “Detectives Cross and Sampson,” the more talkative of the two men volunteered their names. “Detective Cross showed me his badge. It was the real deal.”
    “Oh, I’m sure it was,” Shafer said, and saluted the two old men. “Good to see the police in the neighborhood, actually.”
    “You got that right.”
    “Have a nice night.”
    “Yeah, you, too.”
    Shafer circled back to his car and drove to the embassy. He went straight to his office, where he felt safe and protected. He calmed himself, then turned on his computer and did a thorough search on D.C. detectives named Cross and Sampson. He found more than he had hoped for, especially on Detective Cross.
    He thought about how the new developments might change the game. Then he sent out a message to the other Horsemen. He told them about Cross and Sampson, adding that the detectives had decided to “play the game.” So naturally, he had plans for them, too.

Chapter 37
    ZACHARY SCOTT TAYLOR is a thorough, analytical, and very hard-nosed reporter on the Washington Post . I respect the hell out of him. His relentless cynicism and skepticism are a little too much for me to take on a daily basis; otherwise, we might be even closer friends. But we have a good relationship, and I trust him more than I do most journalists.
    I met him that night at the Irish Times, on F Street, near Union Station. The restaurant-bar is in an anachronistic, standalone brick building surrounded by modern office structures. Zachary called it “a dumpy little toilet of a bar, a perfect place for us to meet.”
    In the time-honored tradition of Washington, I have occasionally been one of his “trusted sources,” and I was about to tell him something important. I hoped he would agree, and would convince his editors at the Post about the story.
    “How’re Master Damon and Ms. Jannie?” Zachary asked as he sat across from me in a darkened corner, under an old photo of a stern-looking man in a black top hat. Zachary is tall, gaunt, and thin, and resembles the man in the old photo a little bit. He always talks too fast, so that the words all run into one another: How’reMasterDamonandMs.Jannie? There was just a hint of Virginia softening his accent.
    The waitress eventually came over to our table. He ordered black coffee and I had the same.
    “Two coffees?” she asked, to make sure she’d heard us right.
    “Two of your very finest coffees,” Zachary said.
    “This isn’t Starbucks, y’know,” she said.
    I smiled at the waitress’s brio, then at what Zachary had said — his first words to me. I’d probably mentioned my kids’ names to him once, but he had an encyclopedic memory for all kinds of disparate information.
    “You should go get yourself a couple of kids, Zachary,” I told him, smiling broadly.
    He glanced up at an ancient whirring ceiling fan that looked as if it might suddenly spin out of the ceiling. It seemed a nice metaphor for modern life in America, an aging infrastructure threatening to spin out of control.
    “Don’t have a wife yet, Alex. Still looking for the right woman,” said Zachary.
    “Well, okay then, get yourself a wife first, then get a couple of kids. Might take the edge off your neuroses.”
    The waitress placed steaming cups of black coffee in front of us. “Will that be all ?” she said. She shook her head, then left us.
    “Maybe I don’t want the edge taken off my rather stunning neurotic behavior. Maybe I believe that’s what makes me such a damn fine reporter, and without it my work would be pedestrian shit, and then I’d be nothing in the eyes of Don Graham and company.”
    I sipped the day- or two-day-old coffee. “Except that if you had a couple of kids, you could never be nothing.”
    Zachary squinted one eye shut and smacked the left side of his lips. He was a very animated thinker.
    “Except if the kids didn’t love or even like me very much.”
    “And you don’t consider yourself lovable? But actually you are, Zachary. Trust me. You’re just fine. Your kids would adore the hell out of you, and you would adore them. You’d have a mutual adoration