“You see now?”

  “See what? That we’re back to where I started when I said your plan is to kill another one of them just to prove Homer didn’t kill the first one?”

  “Pretty much,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. I can’t do that like the French do, can’t make it say a dozen things at the same time. But I only needed it to say one.

  “How come you always want Mack to come over after dark?”

  “Dell, are you just pretending to be dense?”

  “Do I have to?”

  “No, mon brave soldat,” she whispered, kissing the side of my mouth on her way to dropping into my lap. “When it comes to certain things, you are as thick as concrete.”

  “You, too,” I said. And slapped her bottom.

  “Stop that! He’ll be here any—”

  “So?”

  “So I don’t want to be all silly when he shows up.”

  “So just sit quietly. And tell me where I’m so thick.”

  “Ah, Dell. If you could have seen how some of my girls get whenever Mack comes over, you’d understand.”

  “He’s not all that—”

  “Oh, yes, he is!” my wife said, snuggling into me to take any jealousy-sting out of her words. “And I’m not letting any of my girls anywhere near him, not if I can help it.”

  “He may not be a fossil like me, but he’s way too old for them, is that it?”

  “Will you stop? It’s not that. Some of my girls, they’ve been coming over since middle school. I know some are certainly … adults now. By law, anyway. It’s not the age difference—how could it be, with me being so much younger than you?” she teased. “But Mack just gets uncomfortable when girls go all goo-goo eyes around him. Maybe if—”

  “I thought you used up your supply of unmarried girlfriends when you got Debbie and Dr. Joel together.”

  “Dell! I did not! I can’t help it if—”

  “Tu crois qu’en étalant le beurre tu vas cacher le pain?”

  “Hmmph!”

  Before I could translate whatever Dolly’s sound meant—she uses it for all kinds of things—Rascal let us know that Mack was pulling in behind the house.

  “We have to start from here: we know Homer didn’t kill that guy.”

  “That’s not where we start,” I told Mack. “The DA doesn’t have to prove Homer killed anyone. All he needs is for some judge to say he’s crazy. As far as the whole town’s concerned, that’s the same as saying he’s guilty. Another major victory for the DA. Another load on that ‘cooperation between agencies’ pile of crap he’s always pitching.”

  “Yeah, I get it. What you said before, right? The only way to get Homer released—really released, so he’s back to where he was when they picked him up—is to prove someone else did it.”

  “How many on your caseload?” Dolly asked. Trying to divert him from walking the same road she knew I was going to?

  “I don’t know, exactly. The Medicaid disability reimbursement is the official head count. But that just covers the permanent homeless, the shelter visitors, and the people who live in the residence or with their families.”

  “Just?” Dolly said, smiling at him like he was being too modest.

  “You mean the jail? That’s a variable. When they get a guy who’s so off-the-wall that they pick up on it right away, they’ll stick him in a camera cell, put him on suicide watch, and give me a call. I could get three the same night, or none for a month.”

  “And the freelance stuff?” she said, still smiling.

  “That’s only—”

  “Every day. Or night. Nobody’s paying you to hang out with some of these kids. How else would you have known the nearest place to find skinheads?”

  “I don’t spend that much time …”

  “Yes, you do,” Dolly said, her tone saying it wouldn’t be a good idea to argue with her.

  Mack just nodded. Probably knew more about women than I did at his age. Probably? Who am I kidding?

  “Maybe it’s time to think about triage,” I said, knowing Dolly would get what I was saying.

  She did. “You mean just—”

  I cut her off, turned to Mack: “If you get yourself in trouble trying to protect Homer, you risk everything you’re involved in. It’s taken you years to get so much traction in this place. I don’t mean with the homeless, or … the mentally ill, or anyone like them. I mean with the people who run the show. You wouldn’t just be cutting your connection to the people you work with, you’d probably be cutting all the programs, too. Not just cutting them down, cutting their throats.”

  Mack’s face set itself in hard, sharp lines. “I’m not just walking away. It’s not that there’s anything special about Homer. It’s just me. Walking away, I can’t do that.”

  My wife turned to me. Said, “Tu n’abandonnes jamais ni tes morts, ni tes blessés, ni tes armes,” her voice heavy with sadness.

  Never abandon your dead, your wounded, or your weapons. The code of La Légion. And she’d gotten it right—Mack was hell-bound to save Homer, and he lived under the same code I once did, except that he wasn’t following any orders but his own.

  She twisted on the seat of her chair to face Mack. “But you see what Dell’s saying?”

  “Sure.”

  “So isn’t there a line somewhere?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re—”

  “We take it as far as we can without putting everything else you’re doing in danger.”

  “How would I know where that line would be?”

  “You’ll know,” I assured him, now back on familiar ground—Mack probably knew more than me about a lot of things, but he’d be lost in the jungles I’d worked for so many years. “You’ll see it for yourself, as clear as neon at night.”

  “What I said to him, that goes double for you,” my wife told me, the second Mack closed the back door on his way out.

  “Pick a square and stand on it, honey.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You think I’d give a damn about some Nazi being killed? Or some crazy man who might have to go to the state hospital? No. So why am I in this at all? You know why, and you know I’ve already done some things—”

  “What things?”

  “Things that had some risk to them. But only while I was doing them. Now I’m done. In the clear.

  “But MaryLou knows something’s up. I’m not saying she’d talk—it’d take a lot more than threats to scare that girl—but if she thinks Franklin might get dragged into …”

  “I never meant—”

  “You meant to protect Mack, baby. And the work he does. You put your faith in me. What was I supposed to do, use my influence down at City Hall? Hell, I wouldn’t even know who to bribe.”

  “Stop it!”

  “Stop what? Stop trying to help Mack get Homer out, or stop reminding you that I only got into the whole thing because you wanted me to?”

  I wouldn’t have been surprised if Dolly had thrown a punch at me—she’d done it before. But I wasn’t ready for tears.

  “I shouldn’t have ever said a word, Dell. I’m sorry. I never meant for you to be in any …”

  “I know,” I said, speaking the truth to set up the forthcoming lie. “But now that I see how important Mack’s work is, I want to help him.” Then I covered the lie with a blanket of total truth: “I’ll be careful, little girl. Very, very careful. You know I’m good at that.”

  ||

  There’s more than one level of cryptographer. The reason this leave-no-trace safecracker had gone undetected was not only his masterful touch on the dial, but his knowledge. He knew—and had warned me—that, no matter how well shielded, any traffic could be intercepted, even his own.

  Now that everything is stored in some data bank, somewhere, getting in wasn’t a problem for him. That “cloud” created for data backup just made his work easier. But all traffic is monitored for “chatter.” So, even if someone was listening, his own communications were always designed to be read as if they weren’t coded.

  “Dependent on routing” could only mean one thing—if someone inside the Nazi organization was informing, he was also being kept informed. So the payoffs depended on who was getting them. But what kind of agency man would hand over info to any of the same people he was supposed to be keeping under surveillance?

  I had to be very careful, just as I’d promised Dolly. So all I sent back was:

  |>Employee discharged prior to retirement?<|

  The young man was a few inches taller than me, and at least a hundred pounds heavier, none of it fat. He was holding a huge tree’s bole in both hands, gently lowering it into the earth. I treated the operation with the respect it deserved, standing quietly a few feet away.

  Franklin patted earth into place. Then stepped back to make sure he’d handled it perfectly. That’s when he spotted me. “Mr. Dell! MaryLou said you’d be—”

  “I know,” I said, speaking extra softly so he’d lower his voice. Any sound coming from Franklin’s double-barreled chest would carry a long way, and any excitement amped it way more than usual. “Don’t get fussed, Franklin. I know she told you not to talk with me about anything important unless she was there, too.”

  “Yes, sir. But I told her she didn’t need to worry. I’m a big boy now”—not a trace of irony in his words—“and I know I can always trust you, Mr. Dell.”

  “That’s okay, Franklin. You can’t blame MaryLou. She knows you can look after yourself. It’s just how women are.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. Didn’t your mother—?” Immediately cursing myself for opening that can of dirt. Franklin’s mother had no love for her “retard” of a son, but sure found a use for him when his football skills earned his worm of a father a no-show job … the only one he was qualified for.

  “My mother?” The giant looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “She knows I can look after myself.”

  Easy enough to translate: What other choice did I have?

  “Sure. What I meant was, there’s no reason to worry MaryLou. I only stopped by to see how you were doing.”

  “He’s doing just damn fine,” a voice snarled behind me. “And he’d be doing even better if guys like you didn’t stop by for a chat while he’s working.”

  Spyros, the horticultural wizard who didn’t much care for humans but loved plants, especially trees.

  “What other guys?” I asked, not smiling, so he’d know it was a question, not some banter.

  “You, you’re enough, all by yourself,” he said, changing his tone from snarl to sour. And telling me nobody else had been around lately, too.

  “Mr. Dell’s my friend,” Franklin said. His voice still quiet, but now it was as muted as a heavy crowbar.

  I could see Spyros deciding how to play this: he didn’t like seeing me come around, but he knew Franklin would jump to my defense as quickly as he’d defend Franklin himself if anyone got stupid and called the giant by anything other than his name.

  “Yeah, well, Franklin’s working, so …?”

  “Couldn’t I take my lunch break a little early today, Mr. Spyros?”

  “Sure,” the old man said, grateful that the giant had shown him a way out of the closing vise—his ego on one side, and my presence on the other.

  “I don’t think MaryLou understands,” the giant said.

  His lunch box sat next to him on the downed limb of a dead tree, unopened.

  “What doesn’t she understand?”

  “That she doesn’t have to … protect me, I guess. I mean, that should be my job, shouldn’t it, Mr. Dell? To protect her?”

  “Franklin, listen close, now: MaryLou absolutely, positively knows you’d protect her. Anytime, anyplace, anyhow, okay?”

  “But, then, why would she have to be here just for me to talk to you? About anything important, I mean.”

  “Because she thought what I wanted to see you about was something that involved her, too.”

  “Is MaryLou—?”

  “MaryLou’s fine,” I said, trying to keep Franklin from going off the rails. If he thought MaryLou was having trouble with someone at her school, he’d be in his truck and rolling before I could finish another sentence.

  “Then why did you come over, Mr. Dell?”

  “Dolly wants to put some kind of tree—a Japanese something?—out back, but she’s not sure if it’d survive in heavy rain. So I told her I’d ask you.”

  “Me? Not Mr. Spyros?”

  “Sure. But if you aren’t … comfortable with that, I could—”

  “I think she means a Japanese maple,” the giant said, back on familiar ground. And secretly thrilled to be consulted. “The kind with red leaves. If that’s the one, it’ll do great, Mr. Dell. That’s a very strong tree.”

  “I knew you’d know,” I told him. “Thanks, Franklin.”

  As I walked away, I could feel the glow of his pleasure at knowing something of value to me more strongly than the sun on my back.

  Damn me and my stupid ideas.

  The thought stayed with me all the way back to our cottage.

  “Dolly, you think a Japanese maple tree would look nice out back?”

  “What? Dell, since when do you care about stuff like that? Besides, you know I’d ask Johnny and Martin”—she never said one partner’s name without the other’s—“if I wanted anything like that.”

  “I went over to see Franklin. But once I started talking with him, I realized that it wouldn’t be a good idea to get him involved. I had to come up with some reason for dropping by, so I told him you were interested in having that tree.”

  “In case he asks me? Or because now we have to get one?”

  “Both.”

  Dolly gave me a look I couldn’t translate. I could feel it on my back as I went toward my basement, too. But it didn’t feel like sunlight.

  When I checked, there was a message.

  I copied it as fast as I could, knowing I’d have to study it for a while.

  ||

  A government spook running an operation solo? Nothing special about that. No cop on any level ever gives up his “Confidential Informant” list. There’s no central data bank. Maybe it’s all about breaking some spectacular case, getting interviewed on TV; maybe they just don’t trust each other. But that “Trade-off = permit” had to be connected to the coding system I’d memorized years before.

  So: first number before first hyphen, fourth number after second hyphen, second number after fourth hyphen … The code always went on in that sequence for as long as the message ran, but the “R” meant “over.”

  “Over” was another double-edge: could mean “over to you,” or “no more info.” Only one way to find out, but, first, I’d have to puzzle this one through so I didn’t come off as … someone you have to explain things to in detail. The more detail needed, the longer the line has to be open. I didn’t know the shadow’s limit, but I knew I didn’t want to test it.

  I stared at the three-digit number I’d pulled out of the message to make sure I had it. Then I went back upstairs.

  Dolly was at that huge slab of butcher block she uses for everything from making sandwiches to studying medical charts. It was long enough to ensure that any of that mob of teenagers who always seem to be around in the afternoon during school weeks had a place to sit. A place of their own.

  “Does this mean anything to you?” I asked, as I put the piece of paper in front of her, my nose full of the fragrance of her fresh-washed hair—she hadn’t yet pulled it back and banded it for working outside, or put it up in a chignon the way she does when she wants to look professional.

  “Oh-oh-seven? Are you serious, Dell?”

  “Dolly …”

  “I know,” she sighed. “Come on, baby. Double-oh-seven, that’s from the James Bond movies.”

  “Uh …”

  “Ah, if you’d— Never mind,” she interrupted herself. “The spy movies, the fun ones, I mean. There’s a whole series. Bond, he works for some British spy agency. And that double-oh-seven—they even call him by that name—it means he’s licensed to kill.”

  “How old is this movie? I mean, when did the series start?”

  “I don’t know. A long time ago. I can get you the exact—”

  “No, that’s okay.”

  “What difference would that make?”

  “If that’s some kind of serial number, like on a car or a gun, it would have to be real old. The seventh Brit spy licensed to kill? That’d be—what?—at least a hundred years ago?”

  “It’s a movie series, honey, not a documentary.”

  “But this oh-oh-seven thing, most anyone would know what it meant?”

  “Everyone but you, I think.”

  I didn’t say anything. Not out loud. I was too busy doing the math in my head: a government-agency man, operating on his own, running a CI? Sure. But giving him a license to kill …?

  I went into my den, closed the door, set my oxblood leather chair to near-recline, closed my eyes, and tried again.

  When Dolly tapped on the door, I said, “Come in, girl. I was just about to go and get you.”

  Dolly was ahead of me.

  I could tell, because she had one of those small notepads with her, and a gel pen in her hand.

  “If you’ll just move that chair up straight …”

  She dropped into my lap while I was still sitting up, legs crossed at the knee, pen poised over pad like a secretary in a bad movie.

  “Has there ever been a … case, I don’t know what else to call it … of a government-agency man running a separate operation? I mean, running the whole operation on his own, and—” I dictated.

  “A covert agency?”

  “At least whatever part of an agency he was in, yeah. But it’s probably got to be the FBI or the CIA.”

  “There’s a lot more—”

  “Sure. But this would have to be info that was public record. After it was exposed, I mean.”