Time stopped while Ed Prescott took a tour around his very large office. Its darkened windows were of inch-deep armoured glass, turning the morning sunlight into afternoon. The double doors, closed against intruders, were of reinforced steel. Miami was enduring a season of home invasions, Strelski remembered. Teams of masked men held up everybody in the house, then helped themselves to whatever caught their eye. Strelski wondered whether he would go to Apo's funeral this afternoon. The day is young. See what I decide. After that he wondered whether he would go back to his wife. When things got this lousy, that was what he always wondered. Sometimes being away from her was like being out on parole. It wasn't freedom, and sometimes you seriously wondered whether it was any better than the alternative. He thought of Pat Flynn and wished he had Pat's composure. Pat took to being an outcast like other people take to fame and money. When they told Pat not to bother with coming into the office till this thing was cleared up, Pat thanked them, shook all their hands, had a bath and drank a bottle of Bushmills. This morning, still drunk, he had called Strelski to warn him of a new form of AIDS that was afflicting Miami. It was called Hearing Aids, Pat said, and came from listening to too many assholes from Washington. When Strelski asked him whether he happened to have heard any news about the
"Burr was evidently not as forthcoming about his Mr. Pine as you were about your Dr. Apostoll, Joe," he was saying, with enough reproach in his voice to sting.
"Pine and Apostoll were different types of sources. They were not comparable in any way," Strelski retorted, pleased to hear himself loosening up. It must have been Flynn's about Hearing Aids.
"Like to explain that a little, Joe?"
"Apostoll was a decadent creep. Pine was ― Pine was an honourable guy who took risks for the right side. Burr was very strong on that. Pine was an operative, he was a colleague, he was family. Nobody ever called Apo family. Not even his daughter."
"Was this Pine the same man who practically dismembered your agent, Joe?"
"He was under tension. It was a big piece of theatre. Maybe pounds over-reacted, took his instructions a little too much to heart."
"Is that what Burr told you?"
"We tried to work it out that way."
"That was generous of you, Joe. An agent in your employ uses a beating to the tune of twenty thousand dollars' worth of medication plus three months' sick leave and a pending law-suit, and you tell me his assailant maybe overreacted a little. Some of these Oxford-educated Englishmen can be very persuasive in their arguments. Did Leonard Burr ever strike you as a disingenuous person?"
Everyone is in the past, thought Strelski. Including me. "I don’t know what that means," he lied.
"Lacking in candour? Insincere? Morally fraudulent in some way?
"No."
"Just no?"
"Burr's a good operator and a good man."
Prescott took another tour round the room. As a good man himself, he seemed to have difficulty wrestling with the facts of life.
"Joe, we have a couple of problems with the Brits right now. I'm speaking at the Enforcement level. What your Mr. Burr and his confederates promised us here was a squeaky-clean witness in the form of Mr. Pine, a sophisticated operation, some big heads on a platter. We went along with that. We had fine expectations of Mr. Burr, and of Mr. Pine. I have to tell you that at the Enforcement level the British have not lived up to their promises. In their dealings with us, they have shown a duplicity which some of us might not have expected of them. Others, with longer memories, on the other hand, might."
Strelski supposed he should join Prescott in some general damnation of the British, but he didn't feel inclined. He liked Burr. Burr was the kind of fellow you could rustle horses with. He'd learned to like Rooke, although he was a tight-ass. They were a pair of nice guys, and they had run a good operation.
