Mistress

I don’t want to use another AC adapter; if one is discovered, the other will be found. Diversify, I say. But this one will be more complicated than plugging something into a wall, so I need my night-vision goggles-like the serial killer in The Silence of the Lambs, except I’ve never murdered anyone, much less skinned them.

Murder can be made to look like suicide, and suicide can be made to look like murder.

Tired of worrying about house fires and home intruders? Want to spy on your party guests while you protect them from unwanted smoke inhalation? Introducing Benjamin’s functional all-in-one smoke detector and covert color camera. This easy-to-use gadget mounts to any ceiling and comes in three attractive colors to match any decor. Best of all, its 3.6-millimeter pinhole camera and audio microphone let you see and hear everything in the room. But that’s not all: if you act now, we’ll throw in a twelve-volt power adapter absolutely free!

Trust me, I’m not as normal as I seem.

Okay, all done. The kitchen looks the same as it did when I entered. I drop Diana’s old smoke detector and my night-vision goggles into my gym bag and stop for a minute to make sure I haven’t left anything behind.

I check my watch: it’s 9:57 p.m. My instructions were to be done by ten. So I made it with three minutes to spare.

I reach for the doorknob and then it hits me-I’ve made a terrible mistake.

Paul Newman didn’t star in Thief. It was James Caan.

How could I mix up Paul Newman and James Caan? Must be the nerves.

I lock up and move quickly down the hallway to the fire escape, accessible with a key. I pop the door open and slip into the night air just as I hear the ding of the elevator down the hallway.

Chapter 2

I take the stairs down the fire escape, all six stories, at a slow pace, gripping the railing fiercely. I don’t like heights. Presidents Washington and Jefferson wanted DC to be a “low city.” I’m with them all the way.

In the 1890s, the Cairo Hotel was built on Q Street to a height of 164 feet, towering over its neighbors. In reaction to the uproar that followed, Congress passed a law called the Height of Buildings Act a few years later. But they amended the law in 1910, making it even more restrictive. Now the heights of buildings in the capital are limited to the width of the streets they face plus twenty feet. Most streets in DC are no wider than 110 feet, so most buildings are no higher than 130 feet, which usually means thirteen stories or fewer.

Still too high for me. I can’t stand near ledges. I’m not so afraid of losing my balance or slipping. I’m afraid I’ll jump.

When I reach the bottom, I walk through the parking lot and take the stairs up to the brick path that follows the C &`O Canal. Diana lives on a tiny, two-block stretch of 33rd Street between the Potomac River to the south and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal to the north. Hers is the last building before the dead end at the canal, so it’s a secluded walk for me as I come around to the front of her building again.

It’s sticky-hot outside in August. The capital was built on swampland, and our humidity is unbearable this time of year. I don’t blame Congress for staying away.

Two younger guys are standing outside the loft building across the street, smoking cigarettes and checking out my bike.

“Sweet ride,” one of them says. He’s small and mangy, like Joaquin Phoenix in To Die For-Nicole Kidman’s breakout role, in my opinion, in which she showed for the first time she could carry a movie.

“You like it?” I ask. I do, too. It’s a 2009 Triumph America. Dual overhead cams, 865-cc, twin four-stroke engine, twin reverse cone pipes, phantom black with chrome detail. Yes, like the one Colin Farrell drove in Daredevil. I’m not saying I bought it for that reason. Not saying I didn’t. But yeah, it’s a pretty sweet ride.

“You get this thing out on the open road much?” the guy asks me.

Colin Farrell was terrific in Phone Booth. I liked that cop movie he did with Edward Norton and that futuristic movie he did with Tom Cruise, Minority Report. He’s underrated as an actor. He should do a movie with Nicole Kidman.

“Yeah, I try to stretch her legs when I can,” I tell the guy. I’m not supposed to be advertising my presence here, and yet here I am chatting up a couple of guys about my bike.