Roses Are Red

see if I get sent to the hospital, too.”
    Jannie retorted, “Lame. Besides, Dr. Petito said the boxing lessons, and your ‘phantom punch,’ had nothing to do with my tumor. Don’t kid yourself, Damo, you are no Muhammad Ali.”
    So we went down to the cellar and we concentrated on footwork — the basics. I even showed the kids how Ali had dazzled Sonny Liston in the first two fights in Miami and Lewiston, Maine, and then done the same to Floyd Patterson after Patterson had taunted him for months before the fight.
    “Is this a boxing lesson or about ancient history?” Damon finally asked, his voice a mild complaint.
    “Two for the price of one!” Jannie shouted with glee. “Can’t beat that. Boxing and history. Works for me.” She was back in all her glory.
    After the kids went up to bed, I called Christine and got her answering machine again. She wouldn’t pick up. I felt as if a knife had been slid between my ribs. I knew I had to move on with my life, but I kept hoping I could get Christine to change her mind. Not if she wouldn’t talk to me. Or even let me talk to little Alex. I was missing him badly.
    I wound up playing the piano again, and I was reminded that jelly is a food that usually winds up on white bread, children’s faces, and piano keys.
    I carefully wiped down the piano, then I played Bach and Mozart to soothe my soul. It didn’t work.

Chapter 76
    THE NEXT MORNING I arrived at Bolling Air Force Base in Anacostia at ten to eight. SAC Cavalierre and three other agents, including James Walsh, got there promptly at eight. The behaviorist from Quantico, Dr. Joanna Rodman, showed up a couple of minutes late. We took off in a Bell helicopter that was shiny black, both official and important looking. We were off hunting the Mastermind. I hoped he wasn’t doing the same thing with us.
    We arrived at the downtown MetroHartford headquarters at nine-thirty. As I entered the office building, I had the overwhelming feeling that the place had been consciously designed by the insurance company to inspire trust, even awe. The lobby had enormously high ceilings, glinty glass everywhere, polished black-ice floors, and overscaled modern art screaming from the walls. In contrast to the grand public space, the offices inside looked as if they had been designed by either the junior architect of the firm or its resident hack. Warrens of half-walled cubicles filled large, airless rooms on every floor. There was lots of “prairie-dogging” out of the cubes, plenty of fodder for “Dilbert” satire. The FBI had sent agents here before today, but now it was time for the big guns to go to work.
    I saw twenty-eight people that day and I quickly found out that few of the MetroHartford’s employees had any sense of humor.
What’s there to laugh about?
seemed to be the company motto. It also hit me that there were a very few risk-takers among the people I met. Several of them actually said, “You can never be too careful.”
    My very last interview turned out to be the most intriguing. It was with a woman named Hildie Rader. I was bored and distracted, but her opening line perked me right up.
    “I think I
met
one of the kidnappers. He was here in downtown Hartford. I was as close to him as I am to you right now,” she said.

Chapter 77
    I TRIED NOT to show too much surprise. “Why didn’t you tell anybody before?” I asked.
    “I called in to the hot line MetroHartford set up. I talked to a couple of ding-a-lings. This is the first anyone
got back to me.
”
    “You have my full attention, Hildie,” I told her.
    She was a large woman with a pretty, homey smile. She was forty-two years old and had worked as an executive secretary. She was no longer with MetroHartford, which might have been why no one had interviewed her earlier. She had been fired
twice
by the insurance company. The first time she was let go was during one of the company’s periodic and fairly regular belt-tightenings. Two years later Hildie was rehired, but she had been let go three months ago because of what she described as “bad chemistry” with her boss, the CFO of MetroHartford, Louis Fincher. Fincher’s wife had been one of the tour-bus hostages.
    “Tell me about the man you met in Hartford, the one you believe might have been involved with the hostage-taking,” I asked after I’d let her talk.
    “Is there any money in this for me?” she asked, eyeballing me suspiciously. “I’m presently unemployed, you