"Sit down, Mrs. ... it is Mrs., isn't it? ... Mrs. Tinker, won't you
please?" I said in answer to his question. She took the chair Anita had
been using when Tony was pretending to be me, and I sat down in my
swivel across the desk from her.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Tinker," I said. "It's bad enough that you have
deliberately stayed in the District after all telepaths were most
stringently warned to register with us so that we could move them to
less sensitive areas. But I take it quite hard that you have tried to
embarrass me."
"That would take a little doing," she said. "You've got a heart like a
piece of flint. Let me see your palm!" she demanded, reaching
imperatively across my desk. Fred started to protest, but I passed my
hand across to her, leaning forward so that she could reach it.
Maude Tinker smoothed out my palm, rubbing her thumb over it as if to
clear away a veil of mystery, and bent close over it, her dark face
intense. She traced a line or two with her fingernail, and dropped my
hand to the walnut. "You have no mercy," she said. "You will use the
excuse that I tried to hinder the work of your department as a reason to
punish me severely--and your real reason is that you feel I might have
damaged you personally."
Fred was moving around the desk. He spoke softly in my ear while I kept
my eye on the gypsy. That was silly. He can't close his mind the way I
can. She could read his thoughts just as well as if he were screaming
them out loud.
[Illustration]
"That's a charge she may repeat, Gyp," he said. "Nobody could blame you,
if you disqualified yourself from this decision. I think we could get
the newscasts to see it as impeccable public behavior. We'll paint you
as the administrator so devoted to pure justice that even potential
resentment will be a barrier to your personal decision. How's that sound
to you, Gyp?"
"The day you have to start painting a picture for them, I've had it,
Fred," I said. I felt sure Anita had overheard his soft words in my ear,
but to be sure, I added, "I think it would be suicide to disqualify
myself from this case. That's just the first step to disqualifying
myself from the job. If there's any hint of telepathic heredity in my
case, ducking this decision would be a public admission that I'm
sensitive in that area. No. I'll handle it."
Anita nodded slowly to me. Well, she had called it. Maybe she _was_
right about Fred. "Tell you what," I said. "Several things about this
case interest me. If we are to believe her, this woman has had
absolutely no contact with any other telepath in Washington--she thought
she was the only one who had escaped our dragnet. Why don't all of you
shoo--I want to do a little survey in depth here--a little motivational
work. I think I can get more frankness out of her if there are no
witnesses. Beat it, kids."
Anita left with Fred. Maude Tinker and I were alone in my office. I
looked at her with a smile.
* * * * *
"Hello, Joe," she said.
"Hello, Mother," I said. "You look just wonderful."
Mother smiled at me and reached across the desk again to take both my
hands. "_Yosip_," she said in Romany. "What a wonderful long way you
have come since you ran away. A lawyer, and now a big man, a _very_ big
man, in Washington. I am a very proud gypsy."
What I might have said to her was interrupted by a racket outside my
office. Voices were raised. I thought I heard what could only be Anita
yelling. That's another thing that had never happened before.
Fred burst back into the office, with Anita right on his heels. His face
was livid. Mother turned in her chair and looked coldly at him. A gypsy
woman can give you the snootiest look in the world, right down her
aquiline nose, when she feels like it. It stopped Fred Plaice in his
tracks.
"Yes, Fred?" I said quietly.
"If you don't mind, Tinker," he said brusquely. "I'd like to be present
for this interview."
"Tinker?"
"I'm sorry, Gyp," he said. "I'm ... I'm upset."
"I'll bet you are, you sneak," Anita said. "Chief," she told me. "He was
fit to be tied when you chased us out. The first thing he wanted to know
was whatever had made you decide to get Tony Carlucci in here to trick
his gypsy snake. I was so mad that I flipped and told him it was _my_
idea."
"Is that why you're back?" I asked him.
"Get this calf-eyed girl Friday of yours off my back," he said stonily.
"Our security certainly doesn't permit your confidential assistant to be
in love with you. We're supposed to be checking each other constantly."
I hardly knew which of his two ideas to blast the hardest. I looked at
Anita first. She simply raised her head and looked me straight in the
eye. It could mean almost anything.