Good Morning, Killer - April Smith [49]
“What is your problem, Andrew? You have been acting really strange.”
“Man, you fucked me up, bad.”
“I did?”
“Withholding information.”
“How can you say that? I was not withholding information—”
“It is humiliating for me not to know about something that important on my case with my supervisor standing right there.”
“I’m sorry, I’ve had other things on my mind—”
“You’re a Fed, you can drop a case with no accountability—”
“What do you mean, no accountability?”
“They can move you all over the map, to fucking Timbuktu, but I live here, I don’t need this shit.”
Suddenly his heavy fist arced the air, so forcefully that I flinched. His shout wafted seventeen floors down.
“Will you cool out?” I said. “What’s going on? You yell at me over the phone that I shouldn’t tell you how to do your job, now I embarrass you in front of your boss. I mean, what am I doing that’s so wrong?”
“You’re in my way.”
I lost my balance then, as if I’d suddenly looked down those seventeen stories and realized I was standing on a ledge.
“If I’m in your way … I’m sorry … I’ll get out of your way.”
“No. Look. I’m sorry.” He took my hands, drew me into a tense embrace. My eyes were open, staring at the cinder block. When he spoke again, his voice was spent. “Got to go,” he whispered hoarsely.
I stepped back. “If I’m making you so miserable—”
“It isn’t you.”
“Then—”
“Later? Okay? Barry’s waiting.”
“Okay. Listen.” Still. The contact. “That was a good idea about the suspect’s military background. And thanks for standing up for me with Kelsey.”
It took a moment for him to remember. “That? It was just such a waste of everybody’s time.”
He hadn’t been defending me; it was just politics as usual, move the boring shit along. I found myself fighting a dull panic.
“Like your cowboy shirt,” running a finger along the decorative white edging that swirled above the pockets. “Want to go for a ride? How about tonight?”
He pulled on the handle of the metal door. A helix of wind sucked it back.
“Sure, when I get off. Around seven.”
The hair on our heads flew up in the draft.
We happened to be standing together on line in the cafeteria. It was three that afternoon and I was just getting lunch.
Galloway said, “Are you and Kelsey Owen having a personality conflict?”
“Kelsey? No, of course not.”
“I think we should pay attention to what she’s saying. She gives things an interesting twist. She’s green, but I think she’s got some good ideas.”
“Me, too.”
“So why don’t you listen to her ideas?”
“I listen.”
“Didn’t look that way.”
I couldn’t focus on how things had looked as far back as that morning. I had tried to be open, or at least appear that way, but now it was past and we had moved on to the next phase, and I was numb and dumb after ten grinding days with no sleep.
“She said you never answer her e-mail.”
“You want me to hold her hand, I’ll be happy to hold her hand. Whatever you want me to do, Robert, I’ll be happy to make you happy.”
“It’s not about me being happy.”
We were at the cashier. He could have paid for me and I could have paid for him, but that’s not the way it is.
“I’m going to work in a summer camp,” he mused. “I don’t want to be the camp director, nothing like that—I’m going to be the guy with the rake, keeping the area clean, where the kids throw stuff out of the tents.”
“You don’t think the Bureau is summer camp?”
He smiled. We walked outside, and I felt sorry for him, the way the sun burned through to the roots of his curly thinning hair. Wasn’t he hot in those turtlenecks? We were each holding our cardboard tray. I had a packaged tuna sandwich and a large black coffee, which would have zero effect. We had been heading toward the main entrance, but now he stopped.
“I’m going to take a break,” indicating the outdoor tables.
My cue. “See you later.”
But he stayed put. “You think I’m pitiful.”
“I don’t think you’re pitiful, I think you’re a great leader.”
He smiled painfully. “We’re all a team. Part of the Bureau family, and that ain’t no jive.”
We were squinting at each other against the