Violets Are Blue

duty tonight.”
    Kyle laughed. I amused him sometimes. “Nana already told me. Your date’s a
lawyer
, right? Listen to this one. The devil meets with this lawyer. Says he can make the lawyer a senior partner, but the lawyer has to give him his soul
and
the soul of everybody in his family. The lawyer stares at the devil and asks, ‘So what’s the catch?’” After he told his joke, Kyle went on to tell me more than I wanted to hear about the similarities connecting the awful murders in San Francisco to the one in D.C. I remembered the victim, Patricia Cameron. I could still see her face. I shook off the image.
    When he was finished, and Kyle tends to be thorough if a bit long-winded, I went back to join Elizabeth at our table.
    She smiled ruefully and shook her head. “I think I just figured out the catch,” she said.
    I did my best to laugh, but my insides were already tied up in knots. “Honestly, it’s not as bad as it looks.”
    It’s much worse, Elizabeth.

Chapter 6

    IN THE morning, I dropped the kids at school on my way to the airport. Jannie is eight; Damon just turned ten. They’re really good kids, but they’re kids. You give them a tiny advantage, they take a lot, and then they take a little more. Someone, I don’t remember who, said that “American children suffer too much mother and too little father.” With my kids, it’s been the exact opposite.
    “I could get used to this,” Jannie said, as we pulled up in front of the Sojourner Truth School. Helen Folasade Adu — Sade — was singing softly on the CD. Very nice.
    “Don’t get used to it. It’s a five-block walk from our house to school. When I was a little boy in North Carolina, I used to walk five miles through tobacco fields to school.”
    “Yeah, right,” Damon scoffed. “You forgot that you used to walk
barefoot
. Left that part out.”
    “I did. Thanks for reminding me. I used to walk barefoot through those nasty tobacco fields to school.”
    The kids laughed and so did I. They’re usually good to be around, and I’m always videotaping them. I do it in the hopes that I’ll have nice movies to watch when the two of them go bad in their teenage years. Also, I’m afraid I might get CRS someday — the
can’t remember shit
disease. It’s going around.
    “I have a big concert on Saturday,” Damon reminded me. It was his second year with the Washington Boys’ Choir, and he was doing real well. He was going to be the next Luther Vandross, or maybe Al Green, or maybe he was just going to be Damon Cross.
    “I’ll be home by Saturday, Damon. Trust me, I wouldn’t miss your concert.”
    “You missed quite a few already,” he said. It was a sharp little dig.
    “That was the old me. This is the new and improved Alex. I’ve also
attended
several of your concerts.”
    “You’re so funny, Daddy,” Jannie said, and laughed. Both kids are smart, and smart-ass as well.
    “I will be home for Damon’s concert,” I promised. “Help your grandma around the house. She’s almost a hundred years old, you know.”
    Jannie rolled her eyes. “Nana’s eighty years young, or so she says. She
loves
to cook, do the dishes, and clean up after us,” she said, imitating Nana’s wicked cackle. “She truly does.”
    “Saturday. I can’t wait,” I said to Damon. It was the whole truth and nothing but. The Boys’ Choir was one of Washington’s secret treasures. I was ecstatic that Damon was good enough to sing with the group, but most of all that he loved what he was doing.
    “Kisses,” I said. “Hugs too.”
    Damon and Jannie groaned, but they leaned in close, and I wondered how much longer they would be willing to give me hugs and pecks on the cheek. So I took an extra few while I could get them. When the good times come with your kids, you’ve got to make them last.
    “I love you,” I said before I let them go off to school. “What do you say?”
    “We love you too,” Damon and Jannie chorused.
    “That’s why we let you embarrass us to death in front of our school and all our friends,” Jannie said, and she stuck out her tongue.
    “This
is
your last ride to school,” I told her. Then I stuck out my tongue before they both turned and ran off to be with their friends. They were growing up way too fast for me.

Chapter 7

    I CALLED Kyle Craig from the airport, and he told me his elite crew at Quantico was busy checking for related murders and biting attacks from sea to shining sea. He reiterated that he