popular. In the past the Bureau would have taken no pleasure at all in
busting the sort of businessmen that Holly was employed to chase down,
but times had changed and the Chicago office had gotten quite a taste
for it. The businessmen now looked like scumbags, not solid citizens,
and the agents were sick and tired of looking at them as they rode the
commuter trains home. The agents would be getting off the train miles
before the bankers and the stockbrokers were anywhere near their
expensive suburbs. They would be thinking about second mortgages and
even second jobs, and they’d be thinking about the years of
private-detective work they were going to have to put in to boost up
the mean government pension. And the executives would be sitting there
with smug smiles. So when one or two of them started to take a fall,
the Bureau was happy enough about it. When the ones and twos turned
into tens and twenties, and then hundreds, it became a blood sport.
The only drawback was that it was hard work. Probably more difficult
to nail than anything else. That was where Holly Johnson’s arrival had
made things easier. She had the talent. She could look at a balance
sheet and just know if anything was wrong with it. It was like she
could smell it. She’d sit at her desk and look at the papers, cock her
head slightly to one side, and think. Sometimes she’d think for hours,
but when she stopped thinking, she’d know what the hell was going on.
Then she’d explain it all in the case conference. She’d make it all
sound easy and logical, like there was no way anybody could be in any
kind of doubt about it. She was a woman who made progress. She was a
woman who made her fellow agents feel better on those commuter trains
at night. That’s what was making her popular.
Fourth person into the third-floor meeting room was the agent assigned
to help Holly out with the fetching and carrying until she recovered
from her soccer injury. His name was Milosevic. A slight frame, a
slight West Coast accent. Less than forty, casually dressed in
expensive designer khaki, gold at his neck and on his wrist. He was
also a new arrival, recently transferred in to the Chicago office,
because that was where the Bureau found it needed its financial people.
He joined the line for coffee and looked around the room.
“She’s late?” he said.
The lawyer shrugged at him and Milosevic shrugged back. He liked Holly
Johnson. He had worked with her five weeks, since the accident on the
soccer field, and he had enjoyed every minute of it.
“She’s not usually late for anything,” he said.
Fifth person in was Brogan, Holly’s section head. Irish, from Boston
via California. The young side of middle age. Dark hair, red Irish
face. A tough guy, handsomely dressed in an expensive silk jacket,
ambitious. He’d come to Chicago the same time as Milosevic, and he was
pissed it wasn’t New York. He was looking for the advancement he was
sure he deserved. There was a theory that Holly’s arrival in his
section was enhancing his chances of getting it.
“She not here yet?” he said.
The other four shrugged at him.
“I’ll kick her ass,” Brogan said.
Holly had been a stock analyst on Wall Street before applying to join
the FBI. Nobody was clear why she’d made the change.
She had some kind of exalted connections, and some kind of an
illustrious father, and the easy guess was she wanted to impress him
somehow. Nobody knew for sure whether the old guy was impressed or
not, but the feeling was he damn well ought to be. Holly had been one
of ten thousand applicants in her year, and she’d passed right at the
top of the four hundred who made it. She’d creamed the recruitment
criteria. The Bureau had been looking for college graduates in law or
accountancy, or else graduates in flimsier disciplines who’d then
worked somewhere for three years at least. Holly had qualified in
every way. She had an accountancy degree from Yale, and a Master’s