Tale of the Magic Dragon

By Leo Wang

Betrayal. The Vietnam War was full of betrayals. After the war ended, there weren’t supposed to be live MIAs. The North Vietnamese denied holding any. But that didn’t mean someone else wasn’t. Former Green Beret Frank McTigue, struggling as a private investigator, agrees to protect pretty Lia, who was threatened with death because she witnessed a murder--the murder of Frank’s former commanding officer. As Frank scrambles to protect his client, he is drawn into unfinished business from his tour of duty. Betrayals from the past work their poison into Frank’s new life as he makes a shocking discovery about men left behind on a patrol that officially never happened. Outnumbered and outgunned, Frank teams up with former Special Forces comrade at arms Odell Franklin. They push forward into places where they shouldn’t go, and into a desperate fight where secrets are dear and lives are cheap--but find a glimmer of hope for redemption.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leo Wang
• Release date: Jun 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301615186

Leo Wang

Once upon a time, life was good. Other people took care of everything. Growing up was a mistake.

Book preview

TALE OF THE MAGIC DRAGON

by

Leo Wang

Smashwords Edition

© Copyright, Leonard W. Wang, 2013. All rights reserved. None of the contents of this book may be reproduced in any format, file, printed material, or other form whatsoever without the author’s written permission.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank for respecting the hard work of this author.

To my parents

and

To Lisa and Eddie

This is a work of fiction. The story is imaginary. Any resemblance by the characters to real persons is unintended and coincidental.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter1

Chapter2

Chapter3

Chapter4

Chapter5

Chapter6

Chapter7

Chapter8

Chapter9

Chapter10

Chapter11

Chapter12

Chapter13

Chapter14

Chapter15

Chapter16

Chapter17

Chapter18

Chapter19

Chapter20

Epilogue

CHAPTER 1

Lia walked briskly, her pumps clacking on the sidewalk. It was only 7:30 in the morning and the day was sunny. The lightest of breezes, just a touch of chiffon, brushed against her bare arms. Despite the occasional rumble of a delivery truck, lower Manhattan was so quiet she could hear her footsteps echo. She liked the city this time of day, before the urban jostle and roar reached full tempo. She had started her internship at the firm only a few weeks ago, and the hyper competitiveness of New York still grated.

She had only two blocks to go before reaching the firm’s offices at the World Trade Towers, and could shorten the walk by taking a side street that ran by a parking garage. Lia had been stunned to learn that it cost $20 a day to park there. When she backpacked through Europe last summer, she and her friends had a food budget of $20 a day each. Her father, an experienced lawyer with the federal government in Washington, made only $60,000 a year and had gotten small or no pay increases in the last six years. President Reagan wasn’t generous with government employees, and Dad told her to look for private sector opportunities if she could find a good one.

She liked her internship. The firm was a major Wall Street investment bank, and she had been assigned to the mergers and acquisitions department, which did cutting edge work in the takeover boom that was going gangbusters in 1987. She barely knew how to read a financial statement—it wasn’t covered in the courses she took in her foreign service studies major--but the people in the department were very patient about showing her the ropes. The hours were long, especially for the young analysts who did the grunt work. She was glad that, for now, she was just an intern and not expected to work all the time.

But Lia wanted to make the right impression, since she’d be looking for full time work in a couple of years after she got her MBA. She usually arrived at the office early, to have time to concentrate before the daily chaos began. Being diligent came naturally. Her mother liked to rib her about her conscientiousness as a three-year old who had a place for everything—her crayons, her stuffed animals, her dolls, her favorite blanket and her books.

Even though the weather was perfect for walking, Lia took the side street to save a half a block. Sunlight angled into the canyon created by the small buildings on both sides of the street, lighting up one side and leaving the other in the shade. A pigeon fluttered by, looking for discarded scraps of food. Ahead of her, a well-tailored man stepped out of the parking garage, also walking in the direction of the firm on the shaded side of the street. Although she couldn’t see his face, she was sure from his sturdy build and upright posture that he was Bailey Hibbard, the head of the mergers and acquisitions department. He had his suits made in London, and seemed never to wear the same tie twice. But Bailey came from a modest background—his father had been a steamfitter and his mother a homemaker—and he was down-to-earth and approachable. He had grown up in Indiana and still had a Midwesterner’s lack of pretension. Lia had heard that Bailey had graduated from West Point and spent some years in the Army. But he had a soft-spoken way of asking, rather than ordering, and never seemed impatient. Other than his bearing, Bailey didn’t seem like a soldier.

Lia wondered whether or not to run up to him and say hello. Being a lowly intern, she didn’t want to make him feel pestered. He always had a dozen deals to oversee, and worked late into the evening just about every day. Some of the deals involved Dow Jones Industrial Average companies and were so big they could transform entire industries. It amazed her that she was involved in transactions of this scale.

A large motorcycle, with an extended front wheel, drove down the street from behind Lia. It slowed as it approached Bailey. The driver, who sported a black leather jacket and wore a helmet, pointed a pistol at Bailey and quickly fired: boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Sound waves reverberated painfully in the narrow street.

Bailey jerked sideways and forward as each bullet hit. Then he fell against the wall of the parking garage. His arms and legs thrashed and twitched. A moment later, he abruptly stopped moving. The driver turned to look at Lia and pointed the gun at her. The visor on the helmet had been pulled up, apparently to allow the driver to see into the shaded portion of the street. His face was illuminated by the angled sunlight, vividly highlighting blue eyes and an angry purple scar on his upper left cheek.

Lia noticed that the top of the gun had slipped back so that the front part of the barrel was exposed. The gunman seemed to pull back on the trigger, but nothing happened. She heard a soft curse as he shoved the gun under his jacket and turned back to grab the handle bar. Her ears were ringing from the sound of the gunfire, and she didn’t hear any engine sounds as the motorcycle accelerated down the side street and turned out of sight. A dry, croaking sound came from Bailey’s body, a sound that would replay itself in her nightmares a thousand times. Then it stopped and silence fell, a silence louder than the most hysterical scream Lia could imagine.

Lia never could remember exactly how the police arrived. She was still standing on the sidewalk, 30 feet from Bailey, when flashing lights and sirens filled the street. Officers interviewed her, and then drove her back to the little efficiency she was renting. She called into work to say she wouldn’t be there that day. Before the next morning, she had fled New York.

* * *

Frank McTigue settled into the cracked leather seat of his 25-year old office chair. He felt a familiar afternoon drowsiness coming on. The chair tilted sideways and squealed in protest, as always. But what could you expect from a secondhand chair bought at the Goodwill store? Frank felt a satisfying fullness in his stomach, and his eyelids drooped. Lunch had been pork chops grilled to the texture of leather, instant mashed potatoes covered with canned gravy, and slushy olive-colored string beans that could have been World War II surplus, served on a thick, cracked, cafeteria-style plate with heavy institutional silverware that had lost its shine decades ago, all for $3.95 plus tax. Not that Frank expected anything more from the greasy spoon below his office. On F Street, NW, Washington, D.C. in 1987, that was about all you could get amidst the cheap electronics and shoe stores that advertised going out of business sales year round and offered prices so low you suspected their inventory wasn’t supplied by members of the Chamber of Commerce. Frank couldn’t afford the rent in a better neighborhood, so he did his best to look respectable in a neighborhood that had parted ways with respectability decades ago. He put a potted plant in a corner of his office and hung his college diploma and a couple of Frederic Remington prints on the walls. And he always wore a suit, white shirt and tie to work, even if his wardrobe was limited to items he had bought while still on the federal payroll.

As he slipped toward his siesta, he thought about the ad he had just placed in the newspaper: Private investigator, white male, late 30’s, 6’ 1, 185 lbs., former military and government experience, reasonable fees, flexible hours, willing to accept challenging assignments, ISO clients, any age, race, gender, sexual orientation or religion, without regard to height, weight, profession, tobacco or alcohol usage, marital status, personal interests, hobbies, appearance, sense of humor, musical tastes, or personality, as long as they pay my reasonable fees and expenses on time. Call for immediate service; phone is answered 24 hours a day."

Frank devoted his office hours to waiting for calls, and had an answering service take the ones that came in at night. But no one called. In Washington, where so much crap was pulled, you wouldn’t think a private investigator would have trouble finding work. This town was filled with fast-talkers, hustlers, lobbyists, politicos, money men, con men, influence peddlers, smooth operators, and plain old liars, cheats and crooks, all of whom deserved to be thoroughly checked out. Frank had the right background for the job: four years in the Army that included combat experience, a college degree on the G.I. Bill, and then ten years as a government internal auditor. But in this town, it didn’t matter much what you had done or could do. What mattered was who would return your calls. And Frank was just an ex-grunt and ex-midlevel civil servant, which meant no one would return his calls.

During the three years he’d been a private investigator, he’d gotten work from a few ladies who wanted him to photograph their cheating husbands. With the divorce rate where it was, you’d think he’d have more of this line of work. Apparently, though, his less than upscale address was off-putting to the kind of folks who had the money to hire private investigators. While they didn’t always expect a p.i. to have a waterfront office in Georgetown, they didn’t want a guy who had no secretary and worked in a 80 year old brownstone in a rundown section of downtown, which was covered with graffiti and flanked by alleys smelling like latrines, located over a cut rate electronics store that never ceased to go out of business and a greasy spoon that never served a healthful meal.

Having a solo private investigative business wasn’t all bad. He was the Chairman of the Board, the CEO, the Executive Committee, the Management Committee, and the Compensation Committee. He got along well with the boss, and did all the work that was expected of him within the deadlines set by management. The quality of his work was never in question, and office politics were kept to a minimum. The vacation policy was generous and there were no disputes over his work schedule or how compensation would be distributed. It just would have been better if he had more work to do and more compensation to distribute.

Each hour that the telephone was silent was longer than the preceding silent hour; and his days were getting very long. Frank had already run through his modest savings, and then burned up the pension contributions he had withdrawn when he left the government. Using his pension money for current expenses was like robbing from his retirement. But he figured he wouldn’t make it to retirement if there wasn’t a roof over his head and food on the table. And, you had to have an office, however modest, because no one would hire a p.i. who worked from home. That was a dead giveaway of a failure, and Frank had learned the hard way during his public service in the jungles of Southeast Asia not to be a giveaway because they usually wound up going home in a plastic bag.

He was close to maxing out his credit card, and paid the minimum monthly payments by taking cash advances, depositing them in his checking account and then writing a check for the minimum payment. This was a game he could play for a couple more months, and then the jig would be up. After that . . .

The telephone rang.

Frank practically jumped out of his chair.

Hello, hello. McTigue speaking.

Hello. Is this Frank McTigue? asked a female voice.

Yes, ma’am. I’m Frank McTigue.

You are a private investigator? The voice had the rounded softness of a black woman from the South.

Yes, ma’am. I can handle any private investigative assignment. Frank had learned that, when you’re in the private sector, never be modest about your abilities.

May I ask you a few questions?

Absolutely. Ask away.

What is your background?

I’ve been a private investigator for three years. Before that, I spent ten years in the government as an internal auditor.

Any other background?

I have a degree in accounting, so I can handle financial matters as well.

She was silent for a moment, although Frank could hear the soft brush of her breath across the telephone receiver.

Do you have any military experience? she asked.

I was in the Army for a few years.

What did you do in the Army?

Well . . . uh, you could say I was in the infantry.

Again, she was silent. Did you do anything special in the Army?

This is a strange line of questioning, thought Frank. I spent some time in the Special Forces.

You were a Green Beret?

I believe that was the popular name, yes.

I see. Did you serve overseas?

A familiar tension began building in Frank’s back, a twisting of his stomach muscles and a tightening in the neck.

For a while. About a year.

Where overseas were you?

Frank’s back was now rigidly locked up, and a steel band was tightening around his forehead.

Southeast Asia.

Would that be Vietnam?

Yes, ma’am. Yes, indeed, thought Frank.

Were you there during the Vietnam War?

Frank inadvertently swallowed hard before speaking. I served a tour of duty during the war.

In the Green Berets?

That would be correct, ma’am.

Thank you for the information.

Wait a minute, please. Are you interested in hiring me?

I . . . I’m calling for someone else.

Someone else?

Someone I work with.

Is that person going to hire me?

I don’t know. I’m just asking a few questions for him.

May I ask your name?

I prefer not to say. This is a sensitive matter.

I see. I hope I can be of service. I’ve handled many sensitive matters.

Thank you. Maybe someone will call you back.

You’re welcome.

She hung up, leaving Frank in a mist of perplexing emotions. Why she was so interested in his Army service? No client had ever asked about that before. No one was interested in the Vietnam War any longer. It was over, with the last helicopter flight from the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon twelve years in the past. People didn’t want to talk—or even think--about the war any more.

Certainly, Frank didn’t want to think about it. His nights weren’t restful. Dreams came to him, memories he would banish if he could. Many were the mornings that he woke up exhausted and soaked in sweat. He’d need 15, 20, maybe even 30 minutes in front of the TV, perhaps watching it or perhaps looking over it and out the window, before he could get himself collected enough to take a shower, shave and get dressed. On his better days, he’d make some instant coffee and shove a chocolate chip cookie into his mouth. They said that some breakfast was a lot better than no breakfast, and that people who ate breakfast lived, on average, seven years longer than people who didn’t eat breakfast. A chocolate chip cookie didn’t exactly abound with nutritional value, but he figured he was one or two years ahead of the game if he could get one down.

At least he was doing better than Captain Hibbard. The news that the captain had been shot dead on a New York sidewalk had brought back of a torrent of memories. Here was a guy who put everything on the line for his country, surviving three tours of duty in Southeast Asia and receiving the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, the Bronze Star with Combat V and Oak Leaf Cluster, and two Purple Hearts. Battalions of NVA hadn’t been able to kill him, but some shit had murdered him in a drive-by shooting. Frank and a lot of other men would have followed Captain Hibbard into Hell. In a world that didn’t make any sense, it was really fucked up that the captain would end up an urban statistic.

Frank had heard that Captain Hibbard had gotten his discharge right after his third tour, not long after Frank left the service. He had been a very promising officer, one of many promising officers who left the wreckage of the Army after the Vietnam War. Hibbard had reportedly gone to business school and wound up working on Wall Street. The newspaper said Hibbard was an investment banker, whatever the hell that was. Frank didn’t know much about Wall Street--not having any money to invest, he didn’t need to. He had the impression it was a place where everyone would knife anyone else in the back for two cents, because money was all that they cared about. Captain Hibbard hadn’t been that kind of guy at all. If there was anyone with integrity and humanity, especially in a maximally fucked up place like Vietnam, it was the captain. Strange that he’d work on Wall Street.

But then again, maybe not. A lot of the guys who’d taken the working vacation in Southeast Asia, courtesy of the U.S. government, had come back wanting to get as far as they could from the military. Wearing a suit and tie, and banking on investments or whatever the hell people did on Wall Street would be a shitload different from going on long range recon patrols and making the acquaintance of different ethnic peoples who would never take a cup of tea from a Vietnamese. And you wouldn’t think there’d be much chance of being shot dead on Wall Street, either.

Frank thought about the other guys he’d known who hadn’t come back from ‘Nam. Some poet somewhere had said dead soldiers stay forever young. Not so. After your first firefight, you were ten years older. After two or three firefights, if you were still alive, you were twenty years older. You might not have any wrinkles or gray hair, but your eyes had hardened and you’d take on the look of a man in mid-life, who had come to realize that all the time he had left was borrowed. A guy who had just gotten in country could die young, and some did. Everyone else just died.

The phone rang again.

Frank started. Two phone calls in one day was a monthly event at best.

McTigue, he said into the telephone receiver.

Mr. McTigue, there is a place you should be at 9:00 p.m. today, said the woman who had just called him. She gave him an address in Northeast Washington, one that didn’t sound entirely safe, and added, It’s a job for you. Someone wants to hire you.

May I have your name, please? asked Frank.

Thank you. Then she hung up.

* * *

Frank steered his chariot through the streets of Northeast Washington. Shade trees lined the sidewalks. In the darkness of the evening, they trapped the glow from streetlights, and cast sharply etched patterns onto the poorly maintained pavement. Frank didn’t like the alternating zones of light and darkness. Bad guys could easily conceal themselves in the shadows. When he had been in the Special Forces, they hadn’t liked to patrol on moonlit nights. Might as well paint a glowing target on your back.

Frank’s chariot was a 1977 Ford LTD, with 156,000 miles on its creaky frame after ten years. Its maroon paint was randomly scratched and uniformly faded. The vinyl upholstery was worn and torn. The car needed a tune-up, a radiator flush, a brake job, a new air conditioner and new tires. And as soon as he could put together $1,200 that he didn’t need for food, office rent, mortgage payments, credit card payments, and utilities, Frank would get his chariot gussied up. There didn’t seem to be much likelihood of that in the foreseeable future, and Frank was grateful that American car manufacturers designed their products to operate, however imperfectly, under real world conditions where owners economized on maintenance.

He drove with the windows opened. In this neighborhood, that wasn’t the brightest idea. Bad guys lurking at a stoplight could reach inside a stopped car and perpetrate misdemeanors and felonies. But open windows were his only means of ventilation and cooling. In the heat of a Washington summer, he had to take the chance that the criminal element wouldn’t target an ancient jalopy like his chariot, even if he was a white guy driving around at night in a black neighborhood.

The .38 caliber snub-nosed revolver in his trouser pocket gave him a modest sense of security. It was as reliable as a firearm could be, and much more trustworthy than the high-capacity 9mm semi-autos that were now flooding the streets. Those pistols might carry 15 rounds, but they’d also jam after firing one or two if you didn’t hold them exactly right and keep them clean and oiled. Frank’s little revolver was good for 5 shots, rain or shine, hot or cold, wet or dry, oiled or not, clean or filthy, tightly held or loosely held. In making his choice of guns, Frank had been guided by his experiences in the service of his nation, during which some very well-credentialed, high IQ types in the Defense Department had decreed that all infantrymen should carry a new automatic rifle called the M-16. It had supposedly been a good weapon when first offered to the Army for testing. But the Pentagon had asked for changes that made it, in the field, a total piece of crap that jammed and failed to feed as predictably as the sun rose in the East. Fine young American men had paid the ultimate price for procurement mistakes made in the nation’s capital.

With the benefit of experience, Frank had chosen to carry a gun that would go bang whenever he wanted it to, and not whenever he didn’t want it to. Five sure shots were a lot better than just one or two from a magazine that held a lot of rounds that couldn’t be fired.

He had never used his .38 on the job; and that was perfectly okay. He had done enough shooting already, and no longer had the desire to direct firepower toward other people. Sometimes, it had been prudent for him to draw the little snubby. Actions spoke louder than words to some of the people he encountered in a professional capacity. But Frank was now a man of peace. More than anything else, he wanted peace.

He slowed down as he approached his destination. It was a small, clapboard house that had been built before World War II. Once the kind of housing used by federal civil servants in middle pay grades, it had, as the pay grades of the residents declined, deteriorated in sad proportion. In the muted illumination of a flickering streetlight, Frank could see that the paint on the clapboards had seen twice as many years as his chariot. The front yard, bounded by a chain link fence, had become a storage area.

Frank drove past the house and up the street. Then he turned around, drove past the house going the other way and went back in the direction from which he had come. All the while, he scanned the houses in the neighborhood, the cars parked on the street or in driveways, and the yards and alleys, looking for signs of trouble, anything that didn’t look right, something that might seem out of place. Subconsciously, without realizing what he was doing, he checked the trees and rooftops for snipers, and the road and sidewalks for signs of mines and booby traps.

Everything seemed okay, so he pulled his chariot into an empty space by the curb. As a matter of habit and instinct, he looked in both his rear view and side view mirrors before turning off the engine. He had been ambushed too many times to think that he couldn’t be ambushed again, even though Southeast Asia was 11,000 miles away. If he had to make a quick getaway, it would help to have the engine running.

But all was clear. Frank switched off the rumbling engine and stepped out of his chariot. The faint thumping of R&B came from one of the nearby houses. But the neighborhood was quiet enough that the chirping of grasshoppers brought back memories of nighttime patrols. With the sureness of experience, Frank moved silently, even though he wore leather-soled shoes and was walking on pavement. He stepped toward his destination cautiously, his right hand near the pants pocket containing his .38. Not that he had much to lose. He barely had enough money for tomorrow’s lunch, and was dressed in clothing Goodwill would have rejected. His chariot was so beat up that even the hoods on the street wouldn’t bother to hotwire it. But some habits, once acquired, can’t be shaken, and Frank kept his eye on the shadows to see if any of them moved.

He didn’t hear or see a dog behind the chain link fence surrounding his destination, and pulled open the unlocked gate. The light over the front door was on, a good sign, and Frank’s right hand eased ever so slightly away from his pants pocket. When he got to the door, he pressed the button for the doorbell.

No bell sounded.

That was a bad sign. Frank touched his pants where the snubbie bulged, to reassure himself that he knew exactly where it was. But lights were on inside the house and Frank figured that home maintenance might be lagging. He knocked quietly. Soft footsteps approached the door. Frank instinctively stepped to one side, so that a blast from a shotgun inside might miss him.

Who is it? asked the female voice that had called him earlier in the day.

Frank McTigue.

The sound of a deadbolt lock being drawn back etched across the evening quiet. Then the door edged back slightly, and a young, round-faced black woman looked out.

Are you Frank McTigue? she asked.

Yes, ma’am.

You have any ID?

Frank reached for his wallet and pulled out his private investigator’s license. He brought it up so the woman could see it.

Okay, she said. Please come in.

The door opened fully, and Frank stepped into a tiny foyer next to a petite living room of the type they had called a parlor where he had grown up. An old sofa and two frayed armchairs stood in the living room, along with a diminutive coffee table and a 19" television on a faux wood metal stand. A vacuous sitcom of the prime time variety babbled on the screen. Cigarette smoke lingered in the air, as did the sweet aroma of barbecue sauce. Frank was encouraged by the absence of the smell of booze or illegal drugs.

Please sit down, said the woman, motioning toward the sofa.

May I ask you your name? asked Frank.

I’m sorry, but I can’t provide it.

How can you hire me if you won’t even tell me your name?

I’m not hiring you. Please wait a moment.

She left the room, stepping into a hallway behind the parlor. Frank wondered whether it would be a good idea to sit down. If anything nasty were to happen inside the house, he’d be better able to react if he were standing. Not wanting to appear rude, he stepped toward the sofa and pretended to look across the room at a brightly colored painting of African women carrying baskets of fruit on their heads. That way, his eyes could cover the entire room and all entrances. Without even intending it, he had slipped his right hand into his pants pocket, where it gently wrapped itself around the .38’s grip.

There was a rustling from one end of the living room, and another woman, in her early twenties, stepped in.

"Soignée" was the word that burst into Frank’s mind.

He had never been good with foreign languages, and had forgotten the Spanish he learned in high school 48 hours after the final exam. But soignée was a word he had learned from a hooker in Saigon, who had taught him a few other things as well. He was on R and R, and she was there at the first bar he stopped in. Frank thought she was like a delicate flower, and told her she was very pretty. She said that she preferred compliments in French, the language of love. When he told her he didn’t speak any French, she told him to call her soignée, which meant elegant. And he did, for the entire weekend they were together. He could still remember what she looked like, and what soignée meant.

Mr. McTigue? asked the girl in front of him.

Uh, yeah, Frank McTigue, said Frank, trying not to sound completely astounded. He took his right hand off the .38 and out of his pocket, and reached for her extended hand.

My name is Lia Pianowski.

Lia Pianowski was about 5’ 7" and couldn’t have been more than 120 pounds. She had an angular face with a square forehead and a narrow jaw that jutted slightly. Her blonde hair hung straight down, ending just below her shoulders, and between her large green eyes was a long, straight nose that could have been a mite smaller. She had a marvelously clear and creamy complexion, and appeared to be wearing little makeup. In spite of her youthfulness, the overall impression she made was one of sophistication and grace. Her face was too distinctive to be Cosmo beautiful. But a European photographer would have seen her potential as a model, especially with the child-like impishness that turned up the corners of her mouth in a nervous smile. She could be a girl or a woman at will, and seemed to alternate between the two every minute or so.

Frank noticed that her hands were unadorned by jewelry. He figured she was about twenty-two, probably a college grad, and in her first job out of school, maybe as a legislative aide on Capitol Hill or perhaps a researcher at one of the think tanks that lurked in the capitol city. She was dressed in a white blouse and dark blue skirt that extended to her knees, with no jacket, apparently because of the warmth of the summer. She probably meant to dress in a way that would avoid drawing attention to her clothing, but the fact that the blouse was made of silk and her necklace of large, perfectly round pearls told Frank that she was acquainted with the finer things in life.

It’s a pleasure meeting you. Please sit down, said Frank, motioning at one of the armchairs. It wobbled slightly when