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Chapter Twenty-Five

Tucker tried to shake his fury off as he left the trumped-up meeting with Gilfoyle; failed. He tried to walk it off; failed. He felt it seething through him like the water flowed under and through the hotel, and every time it began to cool, a recalled phrase from the overheard conversation simmered up in him. How dare he invoke Sandy Gilfoyle.

In the basement, on the way to the Grotto, Tucker discovered Pony and a hello girl engaged in some busywork. Earlier, he had discovered that last SOG telegram set out on his desk with the rest of his most recent notes; Pony had clearly decided a high-profile arrest would help his own flailing status in the Bureau. Technically, Tucker couldn’t fault him; Pony was in the right. And although he heard June’s voice in his head, asking him if it ruined the work, he nonetheless strode down the hall to Pony, past the various kitchen workers playing cards and prepping the next day’s service. Wordlessly, Tucker took Pony by the collar, leveraged him from behind the hello girl—who turned out to be Ulcie Crites— Ulcie Crites! —and used Pony’s shirt to pull him back down the hall, heads turning to watch through every door.

Pony showed him his rows of teeth. “Howdy, Minnick.”

“This is a conversation about conduct befitting a Bureau agent,” Tucker told him.

Pony said, “The Bureau was consoling Ms. Crites on her last day of work.”

June had fired Ulcie after all?

Tucker released his grip on Pony’s collar with enough verve to knock the other agent’s blond head briskly against the wallpaper. “Strap it in, Harris, or I’ll send a write-up so blazing Hoover will reread it to his mistresses on cold nights.”

Pony waited until Tucker was a safe distance down the hall to say, “Okey dokey, gramps.”

Tucker turned.

His fist.

Pony’s chin.

The speed of it surprised both of them. But Pony was game; he shot one back easily, lazily. He’d made it through the academy, same as Tucker. And now it was fair, they’d both set the scene. For a few minutes, they shoved and punched and pulped each other a bit in the hallway, breaths coming in machine-gun bursts, shoes scraping on carpet and wood, fingernails and skulls making contact with walls and doorjambs, until Pony cut open Tucker’s cheek with his class ring and Tucker landed a memorable one on Pony’s ear and kicked him for good measure. Pony stayed down, moaning resentfully and holding his thigh like the Dying Gaul.

The incident hadn’t cooled Tucker a bit. He left Pony there and paced back down the hallway, not even sure where his feet were taking him, until he heard Hugh’s voice say, “Tuck, whoa, Tuck. Walk in here a second.”

Tucker stepped into the workroom adjacent the Grotto. The doleful sound of Virginia Bruce singing Cole Porter’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” came from somewhere within. Don’t you know, little fool , she sang, you never can win?

“Sleepwalking, Agent Minnick?”

A half dozen kitchen staff of every age, color, and gender were rehydrating dried apple slices and preparing pies; Hugh sat at a small table playing solitaire and smoking a cigarette. Before Tucker even knew he was staying, a stool was pulled out and a cup of coffee and a few apple slices put beside it. A moment later, a chunk of ice inside a washcloth was added. He held this to his busted cheek.

“Watercolor artist.”

“Shepherd.”

“Xylophone maker.”

It took Tucker a few minutes to realize they were talking about him; they were guessing what he’d done before he joined the Bureau.

“Rodeo cowboy.”

“Tuna fisherman.”

“Thanks for the coffee,” Tucker said. “What am I looking at?”

Golden Delicious apples, that was what he was looking at. Last year’s crop, which had been immediately sliced and dried on window screens, in truck beds, and on top of chicken coops, with sheets on top to keep the bugs out. Now they were being simmered, soaked, lightly sugared, converted from dry good to indulgence.

“You know the Golden Delicious is a West Virginian apple,” said one of the men, a wiry man with healed burns on the back of his hands.

“You know the acre the original tree grows on is the most expensive acre in the state,” Tucker countered.

Grins. They were pleased. He was one of them, but not one of them. It made the game of him far better. Two of them broke off the line to dance, one of the women still holding a strainer behind her partner’s back as they did the rumba. Hugh and Tucker were left in peace; the Grotto was a place that didn’t ask questions.

“You look like someone nicked your ration card,” Hugh told him. “Was that the sound of Agent Harris’s head hitting the floor I heard out there?”

Tucker already regretted it. Ulcie Crites! Punishment enough, surely.

Hugh asked, “What’s this really about? The woman?”

Tucker just put his head in his hands and stared at the dim shapes of the apple slices between his elbows. He thought, but could not say, She’s with him.

“If she’s worth you hurting over her, that won’t matter. She’ll come to you,” Hugh said. “And if she doesn’t, you don’t want her anyway. That reminds me. You should take a look at a letter that was in the mail today. Go on, get it out of my jacket over there. Yeah, I like the taste of bossing you around; I think I should be SAC next time.”

Tucker fetched out the envelope Hugh had tucked into his jacket. “This is from PennyBAAAAAACK.”

Hugh raised his eyebrows. “He knows we’re reading everything. He didn’t have to send it regular mail. He must’ve wanted us to see it.”

The letter was typed neat as any State Department communication.

Salutations Linda,

After some thought, I realized what you said when you left was right after all. We are no good for each other anymore. Richie will do the paperwork for us.

Best, Benny

Tucker felt in himself a grudging admiration for the floppy agent. Pennybacker had kept up his annoyingly unflappable mood and successfully navigated a complex negotiation spanning two oceans, while in the background, a negotiation that mattered to only him slowly fell apart. Hugh was right, Tucker thought. It felt like this letter had been sent through the Bureau’s post office gauntlet just for them to see. The G-men had not asked and so Pennybacker had not answered, but here was a truth about him, a truth he endured as they were clannishly forcing him to brunch with the Swiss.

“I’m not working for you, though, Calloway,” Tucker said as he folded the letter away. “I’m never working for anyone else ever again.”

The moment he said it, he could feel how miserably and wonderfully true it was. He knew he was a hair away from winning his way back into the Bureau, but it didn’t matter. No matter what he accomplished between now and when the train arrived for the diplomats, he was quitting.

“Agent Minnick, Hoover’s most loyal soldier?” said Hugh. “I can’t be hearing right.”

“I’m ruined for the work. This place—” Tucker started the sentence, but didn’t know how to finish it. “I’m sending that resignation letter back with Pony.”

Ten years. Ten years of his life. More, really, because hadn’t he been headed toward the Bureau all through school, too? Since the moment his feet took him out of West Virginia and he thought, I’m going to make this right , where this was everything . Hundreds of nights of bad sleep in bad places, of lousy food at lousy times, of weighing right in one palm and wrong in the other until it became impossible to look at a situation without feeling that judgment inside himself. A lifetime of being shaped by this job, and him with only a loose idea of what he would do on the other side of it.

But he knew the decision was made.

Hugh asked, “You gonna tuck it in your bra so he notices it?”

As Tucker laughed, helplessly, a staff member slid one of the fresh apple tarts they’d been making in front of him. Four birthday candles glowed in it. When Tucker looked up, he saw that his confession had an appreciative, feral audience in the Grotto staff. Faces he recognized, from interviewing them, from carrying tables with them. The closest of them was René Durand, who had shut a door in his face on the very first week there.

“Congratulations, G-man,” Durand said. “Welcome to the real world.”

It had taken several months, but the Avallon had finally found a way to give him luxury.