Tuesday morning

Davis pulled his Jeep close to the discreetly inset intercom next to the huge wrought-iron gate on Ridgewood Road, saw the guardhouse was empty, and pushed the button. He looked up, smiled into the camera, and tried to look as nonthreatening as a sheepdog.

A man’s deep voice came through the intercom, “Yeah, I see it’s you, Mr. Hotshot. Mrs. Black told me to let you in.” He finished off with a snort. Davis didn’t think they were going to be best buds, sharing a beer at the Feathers.

Davis pulled in front of the beautiful old house, which had probably been built around the beginning of the twentieth century. It had a full three stories with a deep wraparound porch, at least a half-dozen chimneys, and big windows everywhere. It was painted a soft light blue with chocolate trim, though he thought it could use a bit of a touch-up. He stepped out of his Jeep to see a young guy in a green feed cap riding on a mower in clean straight lines over the large front lawn. He breathed in a hint of early spring jasmine, his mom’s favorite, triggering a memory of being a teenager and wanting to go back to sleep. It wasn’t breath-seeing cold, but close enough. He zipped up his leather jacket.

The front door opened and there stood the big man again, Hooley, who’d come busting out of the house yesterday morning, eager and ready to jerk out his tonsils until Natalie had called him off.

Davis eyed Hooley now, his beefy arms crossed over his beefy chest, a black turtleneck stretched around his thick neck, looking like he could punch out Muhammad Ali in his heyday, and wondered if Hooley’s IQ was a match for his muscles. He walked past the bodyguard, knowing the middle of his back was being tracked. It didn’t occur to him that Hooley was thinking Davis looked like a pussy with a smart mouth, and not even contemplating the size of his brain until he said, “You shouldn’t be here, yahoo,” and he cracked his knuckles for emphasis. “We don’t need you hanging around bragging about how cool you are.”

Davis turned, gave Hooley an appalled look. “What? You’re saying you don’t think I’m cool, Beef?”

“My name’s Hooley, jerk-off. My granny looks cooler than you racing in her wheelchair.”

Not bad. “You should visit the Bonhomie Club sometime, meet Fuzz and Marvin. They’ll tell you what a cool guy I am.” He grinned.

After a moment, Hooley grinned back. It looked painful. “I’ve heard about the backroom poker games there. Follow me. Mrs. Black likes to have breakfast in the sunroom.”

Davis followed Hooley through a maze of hallways, all wide and high-ceilinged, with original art on the walls, ancient Persian carpets on the polished wood floors. They walked through the kitchen, a modern marvel beneath carved crown moldings from ten decades ago, into the sunroom, obviously added on, a small screened-in room with space heaters going full blast, looking out over a big backyard, beautifully kept, the big stone fence covered with ivy, thick trees behind it.

“Agent Sullivan. Welcome to my home.” Natalie Black rose, shook his hand, gave him a big smile, waved around the room. “I like it out here even when it’s cold outside. You can be toasty with the space heaters and you feel like you’re cocooned in nature’s bosom. My husband always—well, never mind that.”

“I should have recognized you yesterday, Mrs. Black,” he said.

“Actually, I’m glad you didn’t right away, Agent Sullivan. Apparently, we both know about each other now, since I checked you out as well.”

She was wearing jeans, sneakers, a loose burgundy Redskins sweatshirt, her red hair in a ponytail. If she was wearing makeup, he couldn’t see it. She did indeed look like the biker babe’s mom. Because he was a cop, he saw the strain in her eyes, eyes the same light green color as her kid’s.

He shook her hand, waited for her to sit, then sat down himself. He drank orange juice, then his coffee, rich and thick. He could feel it hitting his bloodstream, had to be the finest feeling there was.

“Hooley, all’s good here. Go to the kitchen and have some breakfast.”

He said toward Hooley’s retreating back, “If Hooley’s a bodyguard, then why wasn’t he picking up the dry cleaning yesterday morning? Or at least with you? I mean, the shopping center is a good five miles from here. Why were you alone?”

“My Beemer’s new. I wanted to drive her myself. Do you like the coffee? It’s a special blend.”

“Sure, I was thinking it may be even better than Starbucks.” He looked at her closely for a moment. She looked tired, nearly at the end of her tether. He said, “In cosmic terms, Mrs. Black, our acquaintance is what you’d call brief, so I strongly doubt you’d invite me for breakfast to discuss the upcoming midterm elections. I know you’ve got big problems, so that probably means you invited the cop. What’s going on that you’d need a cop in addition to a bodyguard? As to that, why do you have a bodyguard?”