The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [191]
The MP ignored him and crisply saluted Annie. “Please follow me, ma’am.”
At 7:59 a.m., in an NAS staff room, the young couple sat at a large oval rosewood conference table. They might have been waiting for any sort of business to start its meeting, except that Annie wore a white Navy uniform and Dan had a Miami Police Department badge hanging from his rumpled blazer and the business was U.S. Government business. There were twenty chairs on rollers around the table, sixteen of them still empty. Two uniformed naval officers, one senior to the other, their faces set, displayed excellent posture at the far end. After introductions, Lt. Commander Bok and Chief Warrant Officer Sims had nothing to say except “Mr. Fierson will be with us in a minute.” When Dan stood to stretch, loosening his tie, both officers turned their heads, not their shoulders, to glance at him briefly, then returned to the file folders they were studying.
In the deep silence of the room the sudden noise of doors opening was a shock. First slipped in a young, bone-thin woman in a stylish black pants suit, with a white shirt; she wore a headset, carried a clipboard. Two male civilians stepped around her and moved to the table. One was the chunky FBI agent who’d been wearing the porkpie hat when he’d arrested Rafael Rook in the parking lot near Rest Eternal in Miami. “Hi, Dan,” he said.
“Hi, Willie. How’s it feel? You one-up me. State one-ups you.”
“We all want the same thing.” The agent pulled out a chair.
“Think so?” Dan asked amiably. “Annie, this is Willie Grunberg. He’s been after your dad as long as I have.”
The third man to enter was older, taller, thinner, wore a much more expensive suit and had the rich slightly waved gray hair that accompanies institutional success. Indeed, his dark pinstriped suit, substantial and imposingly tailored, gave off an impression of such consequence that the suit appeared to be wearing the man inside it. He nodded affably. “Good morning, everyone. I’m McAllister Fierson. Apologies. Fog delay at Andrews. Why don’t we introduce ourselves?”
No one saw any reason why they shouldn’t.
Fierson took his seat at the head of the table. “Pardon me one second.” His assistant handed him a page she took from her clipboard, which he initialed. The door opened again. The man who walked into the room this time was such a shock to Annie that surprise brought her to her feet. “Trevor?”
In this room and wearing a regimental tie and sports jacket with his button-down shirt and chinos, Trevor looked so out of his habitual setting that she almost didn’t recognize him. “Where are Amy and Eliot?” she blurted out.
“Her cat, my dog,” Trevor explained to the others in the room. “They’re with a pet sitter. Good one.”
The thin young woman with the clipboard laughed as if to express her amazement that they were wasting their time on cats and dogs.
Annie turned to Dan. “This is Trevor Smithwall. He lives next door. Trevor, what are you doing here?”
Trevor held out his hand to everybody, who had to introduce themselves all over again. He told them he was “Agent Smithwall, Justice.”
“Sergeant Hart, Vice,” replied Dan.
Annie was wondering if she had herself unknowingly given Trevor the means to pursue her father. How stupid not to be more suspicious of his willingness to use his FBI resources to help. “Trevor?” she said again but he seemed to think that it would be inappropriate to meet her eyes.
“Let’s begin,” suggested McAllister Fierson. “And I want everyone to feel comfortable. Lieutenant Goode, your father has placed us in an awkward…” He looked at Trevor.
Trevor said, “Situation.”
“My dad is a con artist,” Annie replied. “I don’t see how his ‘situation’ could involve the Navy, the—”
The thin young woman suddenly cursed in a loud whisper into her headset. “No, you need to get here at 8:25!” Everyone turned. She noticed their looking at her and told the man in the expensive suit, “Sorry!”
Fierson lifted an admonishing finger in her direction then turned back to table. “So