“What I think it means is he’s hired the company to do surveillance on the gala Saturday night to see if Amalie really shows up. If she does, the guy or gal, whoever he hired, will be tailing them to see where they take Amalie, then he’ll swoop in and try to snatch her. That’s just my personal opinion.”

Dennis snorted to show what he thought of Maggie’s personal opinion. “No one in their right mind would do something so stupid right under the feds’ noses.”

“Whoever said or even alluded to the fact that Lincoln Moss was in his right mind and that he wasn’t stupid?” Espinosa snarled. “That guy thinks he’s a law unto himself. Right now, his feet are to the fire.” Dennis leaned back in the booth and thought about what Espinosa had said. He shrugged. Everyone, he thought, was entitled to his or her own opinion.

“Listen, guys, I heard something earlier. I got it on the down low, so who knows if there is any merit to it. I have a friend in the White House press corps and we . . . you know . . . trade info from time to time. He woke me up this morning to tell me there was some kind of hush-hush meeting in the President’s chief of staff’s office at the crack of dawn, and Lincoln Moss was not there. The scuttlebutt is that the President showed up looking like a movie-star President dressed in a Savile Row suit. Now, my buddy doesn’t know Savile Row from a Target suit that comes with three pairs of pants, but a colleague, Katie O’Brien, told him the prez was wearing a Savile Row suit, a Hermès tie, and John Lobb shoes.

“And he tore into everyone who was there and said today was the beginning of something new. Or words to that effect. And, this is the best part, the prez kicked Moss’s chair, the one he always sits in, clear across the room.”

“And your buddy knows this . . . how?” Maggie demanded.

“He butters up the kitchen stewards and slips some green under the table. You gotta do what you gotta do in cases like this. We all do it, so don’t look so shocked, Dennis,” Ted said.

“What good is it if you can’t print it?” Dennis grumbled.

“You see, kid, here’s the thing. When gossip like this hits the fan, it grows legs, then someone in the know has to come front and center and either deny it or explain it, then the reporter gets to expand on the gossip angle without getting the steward in trouble. You getting it now?”

“Yeah, yeah. So that means Moss is out as in out?” Dennis asked. “More to the point, does Moss know he’s out?”