“I’m Special Agent John Peoples with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“Good for you. What am I doing here?”

“You are here because you do not listen.”

He brought his eyes to mine to make sure I was doing what he just said I do not do. He was my age, maybe a little older. He had all of his hair and it was a little too long for the bureau. I guessed that it wasn’t a style choice. He was just too busy to get it properly cut.

His eyes were the thing. Every face has a magnetic feature, the thing that draws you in. A nose, a scar, a cleft chin. With Peoples everything was drawn to the eyes. They were deeply set and dark. They were worried. They carried a secret burden.

“You were told to stand down, Mr. Bosch,” he said. “You were told rather explicitly to leave things alone and yet here we are.”

“Can you answer a question?”

“I can try. If it’s not classified.”

“Is my watch classified? Where’s my watch? It was given to me when I retired and I want it back.”

“Mr. Bosch, forget about your watch for now. I am trying to get something through that thick skull of yours but you don’t want it to get through, do you?”

He reached down for his coffee and took a sip. He grimaced as he burned his mouth. He put the cup back down on the floor.

“More important things are at work here than your private investigation and your hundred-dollar retirement watch.”

I put a look of surprise on my face.

“You really think that’s all they spent on me after all those years?”

Peoples frowned and shook his head.

“You are not helping yourself here, Mr. Bosch. You are compromising an investigation that is vitally significant to this country and here all you want to do is show how clever you are.”

“This is the national security rap, right? It is, isn’t it? Well, Special Agent Peoples, you can hang on to it for next time. I don’t consider a murder investigation to be unimportant. There are no compromises when it comes to murder.”

Peoples stood up and stepped toward me until he was looking directly down at me. He leaned over the bed, putting his hand against the wall for support.

“Hieronymus Bosch,” he yelled, actually pronouncing it correctly. “You are trespassing! You are driving the wrong way down a one-way street! Do you understand!”

He then turned and went back to his chair. I almost laughed at the theatrics and for a moment thought that he did not realize that I had spent twenty-five years working in rooms like these.

“Am I getting through to you at all?” Peoples said, his voice calm once again. “You are not a cop. You carry no badge. You have no provenance, no case. You have no standing.”

“It used to be a free country. That used to be enough standing.”