“Shall I have someone escort her here?”

“No, I’ll go. Get some air.”

Rudd was sitting on the wooden bench by the guard’s desk, her hair pulled back. She stood as Addis passed through the security turnstiles.

“How are you?” she asked.

“I wasn’t hurt,” he said.

“Good. I didn’t want to disturb you, but—”

“Let’s go outside.” He knew people—the guards, the employees coming and going, the visitors waiting to be cleared into the White House—were watching, listening for a clue that could be fed into the city’s gossip machine. Rudd must have realized that by merely trying to see him she would be in the newspapers tomorrow.

“Okay,” she said. “There’s somebody I want you to meet.”

Your boyfriend? What else can happen now?

They walked two blocks before either said anything.

“Not hurt at all?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

Haven’t we already covered that?

The people they passed on the sidewalk gawked at him. A red-faced man wearing shorts and a U.S.A. T-shirt handed a young child to a woman with frosted hair and grabbed his videocamera. Addis maintained his thousand-mile stare. How much could the fellow get for the footage? Enough to cover this family vacation? I don’t mind, Addis told himself. Today, he was selling newspapers and drawing people to TV shows and radio programs. Helping the economy, he thought. So was Julia Lancette.

“Was she special?” Rudd asked.

“She would have been,” he replied.

“I wish I could say more than ‘I’m sorry,’ but …”

“Yes.” He acknowledged the sentiment without helping.

She guided Addis into a sandwich shop, and they walked to the back. A young black man, wearing a white shirt and a blue tie, was sitting at a table. She introduced him to Twayne Starrell. He looked uncomfortable. His eyes were … . Addis could not decide. Hard? Edgy? Mean? He was not a lawyer, not a student, not a congressional aide, not a reporter. A canvas knapsack was on his lap.

“A messenger from Clarence Dunne,” Rudd said.

Starrell placed the knapsack on the table.

“What’s in it?” Addis asked.

“I don’t know,” Rudd said. “But he”—she nodded toward Starrell—“insisted I—”

Addis raised an eyebrow; Starrell frowned at the show of suspicion.

“Requested, and politely so,” she corrected herself, “that I arrange for you two to meet.” She explained she had received a call from a woman who claimed she had papers that Dunne had wanted to get to Addis.

“Tamika,” Starrell said. “Tamika Timmons.”

Timmons, Rudd told Addis, had followed Addis’s social life in the newspapers and tabloids. She had seen an item about Addis’s recent trip to New Orleans with Rudd.

“She don’t forget nothing,” Starrell remarked. “Makes it hard.”

“I’ll bet,” Addis said. He and Rudd sat down.