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possessed, it was the ability to kowtow to anybody who outranked him. He was an unapologetic sycophant. To call him a toady would have been an insult to amphibians everywhere.
    “Really good,” he said again as she extracted her hand from his grip and followed him into the reception area.
    “Nice to see you too,” she said with a twitch of her lips intended to convey a smile.
    “Shame about the news conference. Your flight got delayed, I guess?”
    “Something like that.” He would hear the true story soon enough.
    “Where’s Crandall? Isn’t he supposed to be chauffeuring you?”
    “I prefer to chauffeur myself. Got a desk for me?”
    “That we do. Hey, where’s your visitor’s badge?”
    “In my pocket.”
    “Better wear it. It’s the ADIC’s policy. All visiting agents must be provided with a security pass, which must be worn on one’s person at all times when in the office.”
    “How efficient.”
    Larkin key-carded a hallway door and led her inside. “Hey, with six hundred agents working here, we need all the efficiency we can get.”
    She might have been paranoid, but she took this as a reminder that the LA office was substantially larger than her Denver bailiwick.
    “Want some coffee?” he asked as he escorted her down carpeted hallways, past conference rooms and interrogation rooms. “Surprisingly, it’s now almost palatable.”
    Without waiting for a reply, he steered her into a small kitchen and poured coffee into a Styrofoam cup.
    “It’s good to have you aboard,” he said. “I think you’ll make a big difference.”
    “Why is that?”
    “Come again?”
    “Why will I make any difference to the investigation? What contribution can I make?”
    “Well, I’m sure the ADIC—”
    “The ADIC hijacked me as a publicity stunt.” She sipped the coffee. It actually wasn’t bad. “He feels I have some name-recognition value in this town.”
    “And you do.”
    “Name recognition won’t help us clear this case.”
    “Well…maybe not.” He gave her a sly, slightly disapproving glance. “Your plane wasn’t late, was it?”
    “No.”
    “You declined to participate in the news conference?”
    “I walked out of the mayor’s office.”
    Larkin made a tsk-tsk noise. “Tess, you just don’t know how to play the game. How to get ahead.”
    “I’ve done all right for myself, Peter.”
    “Anybody else with Mobius under their belt would’ve been out of Denver by now.”
    “Maybe I don’t want to be out of Denver.”
    “Why wouldn’t you?”
    “I like the scenery.”
    “Let me tell you something, Tess. This is just between you and me. It goes no further. You tell anyone we had this conversation, I’ll deny it.”
    “Very dramatic.”
    “You’re wasting your time in Colorado. You should be in Chicago or New York. Or here. You think Michaelson got this post on the basis of ability? He got it because he plays the game. You put your mind to it, you can outplay him without breaking a sweat.”
    “Why are you offering me this advice?”
    “I hate to see ability going to waste. You’ve got it all. The résumé, the brains—hell, you’re even a woman.”
    “Thanks for noticing.”
    “The Bureau would love to put you in a prominent post. But you need to show you’re reliable. You need to—”
    “Play the game. I got it.”
    “If you got it, you wouldn’t be here with me right now. You’d be having dinner with the ADIC after wowing the local media at that news conference.”
    “I don’t think the ADIC would have dinner with me, no matter how much wowing I did.”
    “He can be won over. Anybody can. You just have to approach them right. Give them what they want. Meet them halfway.”
    “Just out of curiosity,” she asked, “what does all this have to do with apprehending the Rain Man?”
    “Not a damn thing. We’ll get him. Then another nut will come along, and the clock is reset to zero and it’s a new ball game. In the meantime jerks like the Nose are getting