The Butcher's Boy Read Online Free PDF Page A

she said. For once she meant it. He was tall and thin with a kind of delicacy about his hands and a rather unruly shock of light brown hair that probably made him look younger than he was. He guided her away from the desk to a line of seats facing the loading gate like a man conducting a lady off a dance floor. This wasn't going to be so terrible after all.

    When they were seated she noticed that he had somehow managed to pick a spot that looked as though it was in the middle of things, but wasn't close enough to anyone so they couldn't talk.

    He said, "Before I forget, are you carrying a weapon?"

    "Yes," she said. "They admitted there wasn't any reason, but regulations say field investigators have to. Are you?"

    "Yes," he said. "Same regulation. We'll have to board early so we don't attract too much attention when they wave us through the metal detectors."

    "I'm glad you came," said Elizabeth, venturing onto the most dangerous ground first so she wouldn't have it in front of her later. "What made the FBI decide to get involved?"

    "Your Mr. Brayer. He asked for cooperation and the Bureau is being very cooperative these days. Ten years of bad press, all the political stuff, massive housecleaning after Hoover died—you can imagine. Brayer offered a fairly straightforward murder case with a chance of something bigger, and all he needed was two days of legwork."

    "So the Bureau jumped at it? I hope it's not a waste of your time," said Elizabeth .

    "No," said Hart. "The Bureau is re-establishing its usefulness, doing favors. So either way it's no loss to the organization. As for me," he said, and Elizabeth could see he was going to step out on the tightrope, "I've been on assignments that didn't pan out before, and none of them involved flying to Southern California with a pretty lady."

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    Nicely managed, she thought, if a little clumsy. So he too liked to cover the hard part first. She rewarded him with the best smile she could risk. No sense in setting him up for some kind of embarrassment, but at least let him know we're friends.

    The voice in the air said, "United Flight 452 arriving at Gate 23," and Hart looked at his ticket. "That's us," he said.

    They sat in silence and watched the rest of the passengers filing in and getting settled. Then the door slammed with a pneumatic thump and the engines wound themselves up to a high whine and the plane began to taxi out away from the buildings into the night. At the end of the apron it spun around and faced into the wind, the engines screamed, and they shot down the runway into the sky.

    Elizabeth said, "You had your job long?"

    "Four years, about," said Hart. "You?"

    "Only a little over a year. It's interesting, though. What made you decide to work over there?"

    "Came back from the service, went to an undistinguished law school where I earned an undistinguished record," he smiled. "Seemed like a good idea at the time. Either that or spend the next twenty years researching precedents and hoping to become a junior partner somewhere. This sounded like more fun."

    "Sounds familiar," said Elizabeth .

    "You too?"

    "With variations. For me it was Business Administration, and the twenty years would have been spent doing market analyses," said Elizabeth, and turned to look out the window. They were above the clouds now, and she wondered how long she could keep looking out there before he remembered that all she could see was the tip of the wing.

    Movies were always a good way to spend those early hours of the evening in a strange town. A large crowd, a dark place, and a built-in etiquette that kept people from looking too closely at each other or starting a conversation. By the time the lights came up in the theater and he joined the file of people pouring out onto the sidewalk, he was hungry.

    Years ago Eddie Mastrewski had told him always to forget he was using a cover. You should be whatever you pretended to be, all the time except when you were actually working.