Free Access to Power by Robert Ellis Page B

rose, grabbing his hand and shaking it firmly.
    “Frank Miles,” he said with a smile that betrayed his sadness. “It’s been awhile. Wish it could be under happier circumstances. How can I help?”
    Frank met his eyes. “The kid had a friend, Doc. Alan Ingrams. I need to talk to him.”
    Neilmarker nodded, thinking it over as he sat down and invited Frank to join him. “Woody was a good man,” he said.

 
     
     
     
    Chapter 22
     
     
    Frank made a right on New Hampshire Avenue and stopped at a diner off Dupont Circle. He ordered the house special, shepherd’s pie. When the plate arrived at half past ten, it looked like slop and had no real taste other than salt. But anything would have done, given the circumstances. He had been up for over forty hours, the length of most people’s entire work week. Getting food in his stomach was a question of mass, a matter of physics rather than chemistry or art.
    When he finished, he paid the bill and walked up the block to a convenience store on the corner. He needed an emergency carton of cigarettes to get through all this, at least that’s what he kept telling himself. But when he put the carton down on the counter, the man at the register wearing a beard and turban asked to see his identification. Frank was forty and needed sleep. There were mirrors hanging from the ceiling so that the cashier could spot shoplifters. Judging from his own reflection, Frank looked like he had been tied to the back of a car and dragged through ten miles of stop-and-go traffic. But he laughed it off, showing the man his driver’s license, and walking out of the store with what they were calling drugs these days and enough matches to light every one of them.
    He made the drive home in ten minutes. When he opened the front door, his dog wagged his tail in greeting and wanted to play.
    “Good boy, Buddha. I’ve had a rough day, too. You want dinner or what?”
    “I already fed him.”
    He flinched, then saw Linda standing in the kitchen doorway. She was wearing a bathrobe and holding a carton of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.
    “What are you doing here?” he asked.
    “I couldn’t sleep. I was having nightmares thinking about Woody. You don’t mind, do you?”
    He didn’t mind and shook his head.
    Walking into the kitchen, he grabbed a glass and filled it with ice. The bottle of vodka was in the freezer. As he poured a drink, he glanced at Linda standing before him in her bathrobe and decided that he’d better make the drink bigger. She no longer looked tired. He could smell his own shampoo in her hair, the freshness of his soap on her skin mixed with the scent of her body lotion. She must have just showered.
    “You can’t sleep,” he said. “And I feel like I’m eighty years old. How did you get in?”
    She smiled. “I kept my keys.”
    “I did, too. What’s Hardly gonna say?”
    “Jason’s in Wilmington with a client, but don’t get any ideas. I’m sleeping in the guest room.” When she noticed the size of his drink, she added, “You better go easy with that. The president called. He’s picking you up in twenty minutes.”
    Frank nodded, following her into the study. It was just after eleven and he guessed that the president’s cabin fever had made a comeback.
    “He got me on my cell phone,” he said, yawning.
    As Linda curled up on the couch, Frank watched Buddha hop up beside her, snuggling his head into the fold of her legs. He sipped his drink and opened the cabinets to his media center, revealing three televisions switched to the network affiliates with the sound muted. This was the way he usually ended the night—scanning local news broadcasts for political ads. Once the news readers had informed everyone of the latest beating, rape, or murder, once they broke from the horror they were creating to the commercials that paid for it, only then did he bother to turn up the sound. Even his worried client had mentioned it. Local TV news just wasn’t news