Big John roared to his feet. “You can’t talk to me like that, Agent Sherlock.” “Why not, sir?”
Georgina Simms just smiled. “It’s a good question, an excellent point actually, but we’ll let it go. Anything else you wanted to know, Mr. Bullock?”
“No judge is going to accept that she was just another well-trained agent doing a job. She taints the case. She’s a self-interested participant, not an objective law officer.”
“We’re gone,” Savich said, rose, and nodded to Lacey. “See you in court, Mr. Bullock, if the cops can’t manage to bring down Marlin when he resists arrest, which you know he will.”
Lacey smiled over her shoulder at him. “Perhaps you shouldn’t be spending so much time on Marlin Jones now, Mr. Bullock. You know Agent Savich is right. Marlin will resist arrest. The chance of your getting to eviscerate the law with your tactics isn’t likely to happen. Seems to me you’re wasting your time, which is worth lots of money, right?”
She felt Savich’s palm beneath her elbow. He said close to her ear, “We’re out of here. You did well.”
“We’ll go out the back way,” Jimmy Maitland said in the elevator. “I’ve already scoped it out.”
“That was interesting, Agent Sherlock,” Georgina Simms said. “I don’t understand either how you got into the FBI in the first place.”
“Actually, Ms. Simms, I was surprised too. Don’t get me wrong, finding Marlin Jones was a big part of my motivation for joining, but then I realized that this was what I wanted to do with my life. You know, before Mr. Savich brought me to his new unit, I could have ended up chasing bank robbers in Los Angeles. And that was the bottom line. I would have caught as many bank robbers as I could.”
“I rather think a judge might buy that,” Georgjna Simms said. “But as I said, however did you manage to even get accepted with this in your background?'”
“I guess nobody made a big deal out of it.”
“I guess not.”
Before they all parted in the underground parking lot, Jimmy Maitland said to Savich, “Simms buys it because it sounds good and it is true, for the most part. However, what she doesn’t know is that you’ve got the hots for Sherlock.
What are you going to do about that? Are you two going to get married, or what?”
“Yes, but as they say, timing is everything ”
“But the point is, why did you ask for her for the Criminal Apprehension Unit in the first place?”
Savich didn’t hesitate. “Because she was so damned good in Hogan’s Alley. No, I didn’t have the hots for her then, sir. I just thought that she’d be one of the best I could get myhands on. I found out she’d turned down profiling because she said she couldn’t stomach it, but she had all this great training and knowledge in forensics. No, sir, at that time, there was no lust scrambling my brains.”
Jimmy Maitland grunted. “Timing,” he said. “You’re right. All of this will have to be controlled very tightly. You took care of the leak out of your unit?”
“All gone,” Savich said.
“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me about it?”
“I would appreciate your not asking, sir, since there’s no solid proof.”
31
THEY SPENT THE REST OF the day with the local Bureau and police, seeing exactly what was going on with the manhunt. “It looks like everything’s being done right,” Savich said to one of the cops on the newly formed task force. “And there’s zero hint or word that Marlin Jones could have met up with someone?”
“Not an echo of a word,” Officer Drummond said. “Shit, my feet hurt. I think I’ve walked from one end of the zone to the other a good dozen times. I’ve spoken to every informant who’s ever migrated to Boston or was born here.”
By eight o’clock that evening, Marlin Jones was still at large.
They decided to eat again at the Chinese restaurant on New-bury and walked there.
“I doubt he’ll show, Sherlock.”
“I know. At least we’re giving him every opportunity to make a move.”