She nervously rearranged her silverware. “A static, a noisy silence, or however you want to describe it. But it’s there.”
“Any other peculiar things?”
“Well, there was something several weeks ago. I was standing out in front of a People’s Drug Store off Connecticut, near Dupont Circle. A source was supposed to meet me there at eight P.M., then we were going to find some place quiet to have dinner and talk. And I saw this man. Clean cut, dressed in a windbreaker and jeans, nice looking. He walked by twice during the fifteen minutes I was standing on the corner, and I caught a glimpse of him again later when my appointment and I were going into the restaurant. I know it sounds crazy, but I had the feeling I was being followed.”
“Had you ever seen this man before?”
She shook her head.
“Have you seen him since?”
“No,” she said. “But there’s something else. My mail. I live in an apartment building. All the mailboxes are downstairs in the lobby. Sometimes I get things with postmarks that don’t make sense.”
“If the CIA were tampering with your mail, I ran assure you that you wouldn’t know about it.”
“I’m not saying my mail looks tampered with. But in several instances, someone – my mother, my literary agent – will swear they mailed something on a certain day, and when I finally get it, the date on the postmark is inconsistent with what it should be. Late. By days, a week. I don’t know.”
She paused. “I probably would just assume it had to do with the ineptitude of the postal service, but with everything else that’s been going on, it’s made me wonder.”
“Why would anyone be tapping your phone, tailing you, or tampering with your mail?”
I asked the critical question.
“If I knew that, maybe I could do something about it.”
She finally got around to eating. “This is wonderful.”
Despite the compliment, she didn’t appear the least bit hungry.
“Any possibility,” I suggested bluntly, “that your encounter with these FBI agents, the episode at Camp Peary, might have made you paranoid?”
“Obviously it’s made me paranoid. But look, Kay. It’s not like I’m writing another Veil or working on a Watergate. Washington is one shoot-out after another, the same old shit. The only big thing brewing is what’s going on here. These murders, or possible murders, of these couples. I start poking around and run into trouble. What do you think?”
“I’m not sure.”
1 uncomfortably recalled Benton Wesley’s demeanor, his warnings from the night before.
“I know the business about the missing shoes,” Abby said.
I did not respond or show my surprise. It was a detail that, so far, had been kept from reporters.
“It’s not exactly normal for eight people to end up dead in the woods without shoes and socks turning up either at the scenes or inside the abandoned cars.”
She looked expectantly at me.
“Abby,” I said quietly, refilling our wineglasses, “you know I can’t go into detail about these cases. Not even with you.”
“You’re not aware of anything that might clue me in as to what I’m up against?”
“To tell you the truth, I probably know less than you do.”
“That tells me something. The cases have been going on for two and a half years, and you may know less than I do.”
I remembered what Marino said about somebody “covering his ass.”
I thought of Pat Harvey and the congressional hearing. My fear was kicking in.
Abby said, “Pat Harvey is a bright star in Washington.”
“I’m aware of her importance.”
“There’s more to it than what you read in the papers, Kay. In Washington, what parties you get invited to mean as much as votes. Maybe more. When it comes to prominent people included on the elite guest lists, Pat Harvey is right up there with the First Lady. It’s been rumored that come the next presidential election, Pat Harvey may successfully conclude what Geraldine Ferraro started.”
“A vice-presidential hopeful?”
I asked dubiously.
“That’s the gossip. I’m skeptical, but if we have another Republican President, I personally think she’s at least got a shot at a Cabinet appointment or maybe even becoming the next Attorney General. Providing she holds together.”