"He the candyman for her family too?"

Cynthia nodded. "I think so."

"You recruit her for the, ah, matinees?"

Cynthia said, "Yes," very softly.

"Do you know how many other women party like that with Gerry?"

"No."

"Do you know if there are others?"

"Yes. There are. Sometimes there have been other women there. I don't know them."

"Always the same young men?"

"No. Always Gerry, but the others change. Sometimes Gerry doesn't even partic.i.p.ate. How did you get that picture?"

"I stood in the bathroom and took it through the oneway mirror. That's what Gerry does when he's not partic.i.p.ating. Only he uses videotape."

Cynthia stopped dead still and looked at me.

All the houses on Cynthia's street were brick with colonial trim. Very elegant, very muted. Softened by care and charm and maybe a faint scent of the river that drifted up.

"Videotape?"

I nodded. "Yes. I represent someone who was videotaped."

"My G.o.d."

"Your friend's husband with the government?"

She nodded. Her mouth opened and closed. Wordless.

We turned back toward her house. The trees along the street were old trees, maples mostly, and even leafless in December they looked graceful and sheltering. Cynthia looked at her watch.

"My husband will be home in an hour and a half," she said.

We walked some more.

"Can we sit in your car for a little while?" Cynthia said.

"Sure."

We were silent till we got to the rental and sat.

"What are you going to do?" she said.

"I'm going to try and put Gerry out of business without blowing the whistle on the person I represent, or anyone else."

"Can you do that?"

"Maybe."

It was nearly dark. We were getting close to the winter solstice.

"Have you ever watched the way politicians' wives look at them with an adoring smile in all their public appearances?" Cynthia said.

"Yeah."

"I've been doing that in public for nineteen years," she said. "And my husband's not even a politician. He's a bureaucrat."

I nodded. I'm not sure in the dark that she could see me. It didn't matter. I didn't think she was really talking to me.

"Nineteen years breathless with adoration. At all the parties we could get invited to, and when we weren't invited he'd be in dark despair and I'd have to cheer him up adoringly. Even when he was at work I had to adore him from afar at bridge games and luncheons among department wives and charity teas. The perfect complement to him. The adornment of his career. The beautiful wife, the lovely children, the gracious home."

"Kids still home?" I said.

"No. Private school. See them on holidays. A fine school in Virginia. One of the a.s.sistant secretaries sends his daughter there."

Two young girls in school uniforms walked past. They looked Indian or perhaps Pakistani. Their skirts were the identical blue plaid. They wore blue knee socks and blue blazers over white blouses. One wore cowboy boots, the other wooden clogs with a leather slip-on top. Diversity.

"Some women drink," she said. "I do g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gs."

"With college kids," I said.

"I am as old as their mothers."

"Do a little dope with them too, I imagine."

She nodded. She was watching the two schoolgirls as they diminished down the narrowing perspective of the long residential street.

"I've already had hot flashes," she said, watching the schoolgirls. "Imagine that? Hot flashes. Pretty soon a mustache and middle-aged hump. You know what the kids call us?"

"Grannies," I said. "This morning you attended a granny party."

She nodded. The schoolgirls were quite small in the distance now. She shook her head.

"When I was a little girl there was a song my father used to sing to me," she said. "One line in it was 'Stay away from college boys, when you're on a spree/Take good care of yourself, you belong to me.' " She sang the line over again and her voice was a little shaky. The streetlights had gone on and in the gleam of the one nearest us I could see the brightness of tears on her face.

"Nothing is irredeemable," I said.

"I don't even know why I do it," she said. "Neither does Ellie. There's some thrill to it, but mostly it's humiliating. The boys are crude and stupid. Afterward I feel like... like something that's been pa.s.sed around."

"That's part of its charm," I said.

The schoolgirls turned a corner, far down the street, and disappeared. Cynthia looked at me. Her face was wet.

"Charm?"

"Sure. You're acting out a lot of stuff that I'm not qualified to a.n.a.lyze, but you've found a way to do it and build in your own punishment."

She stared at me for a long time. "You think I need a shrink?"

I shrugged. "What you're doing doesn't seem to please you. Maybe a shrink. Maybe a divorce? Maybe a boyfriend on the side? Maybe a job?"

"I think psychology is a lot of c.r.a.p," she said.

"Okay by me," I said. "All I'm saying is that if you're unhappy, there are other solutions besides balling a bunch of dim-witted college kids."

She nodded slowly. "I've got to go in," she said. "My husband will be home."

"I'll keep you out of it," I said. "I might ask you to write out a statement of what you told me that I could show to a private person. But I probably won't need it."

I took the picture of her from my shirt pocket and gave it to her. "It's the only one I took that shows your face," I said.

She took it. "Do you think there's videotape?"

"If there is, I'll take care of it," I said.

"Why do this for me?"

"I'm doing it for the person I represent," I said. "Costs me nothing to include you."

"And Ellie?"

"Sure."

She got out of the car and stood for a moment on the sidewalk. I got out on my side and leaned my forearms on the roof and looked at her.

"It's really odd," she said. "I don't even know your name and you know things about me that I've never told anyone."

"As they used to say in the movies, your secret is safe with me."

She took a step toward her house and hesitated; she looked back at me. "Is it going to be all right?"

"Sure," I said. "But stay away from college boys, when you're on a spree."

She nodded and took two more steps and stopped again.

"Thank you," she said.

"You're welcome."

She reached her front steps and turned at her front door and looked at me.

"Mrs. Knox." I said. "For what it's worth, I think you're quite beautiful."

She stayed motionless at her door for a moment, looking back at me. Then she opened it and went in.

Chapter 25.

I spent most of the next day calling on people that Gerry Broz had called on in the aftermath of the great blizzard. I'd made note of the addresses and now I went visiting- Georgetown in the morning, Capitol hill in the afternoon. Some people weren't home, many of the people that were home wouldn't talk with me, but I made progress. Enough.

My approach was open and honest. Like my face.

"This is off the record," I told an elegant young woman in a town house on Fourth Street. "I'm doing work for a government agency. I won't mention the name, but it's a three-letter agency."

She stood in her open door in a silk lounging outfit and nodded. Her hair was black with a good-looking sprinkle of premature silver.

"You don't have to even give your name, and you're free to deny anything you say. I'm looking for background only."

She nodded again. Her dark eyes were enlarged by an enormous pair of gla.s.ses with jade-green rims.

"There is a young man who sells cocaine to you, and to many of your neighbors, good people, not criminals. He is covertly connected," I said, "to a foreign power with interests ant.i.thetical to those of the United States."

"I don't know anything about it," she said.

I shook my head impatiently, but friendly. "No, no. We don't care about the cocaine. I'll snort a little myself on weekends. We've got bigger fish to fry."

"What do you want?" she said.

"The name he's using," I said. "We haven't been able to establish his cover name, and we don't want to risk tipping him to our interest. All I want from you is his name."

She frowned. I was wearing my suit and a clean shirt and trying like h.e.l.l to look like someone who had gone to Yale and worked now for a three-letter government agency. I smiled sincerely, encouragingly. You can trust your government.

"You needn't admit anything about any proscribed substance," I said. "Merely a name."

"I..." She shook her head.

"I guess all of us are cynical now," I said. "I guess that there's no point talking about duty, about patriotism. I guess it's too late for that kind of talk. But I must say that you have a chance here, at no cost to yourself, to do your country a service."

I looked directly at her, standing straight.

"Gerry Broz," she said. "That's the name he uses here."

"Thank you very much," I said. "We will not bother you again. You have my word." I put out my hand, she took it. We shook, and I went on down Fourth Street to where I'd parked the car.

I replayed that scene maybe twenty times that day. In two other instances I got the name. Everyone else told me to beat it. Whatever happened to duty, honor, country? But I had enough. None of it would stand up in court, but I wasn't going to court. I was building evidence for a different forum.

At the sixteenth house I picked up a tail. It wasn't amateurish, but it wasn't Bulldog Drummond either. Two guys in jackets and ties, driving a dark blue Chevy sedan with District plates on it. One of them wore sungla.s.ses. They stayed behind me for the rest of the afternoon. They followed me back to the Hay Adams. When I gave my car to the doorman they moved on down Sixteenth Street, and when I came out half an hour later showered and reshaved and d.a.m.ned near preppy in my Harris tweed jacket, they were gone.