The form didn’t hesitate. Two hands shot up straight like in an old Western. It was a small, older man.
“Just take my wallet. I’ll get it out for you!” A quavering voice.
“Keep those hands up,” I said. “Are you armed?”
“No!”
The house looked fine and the guy didn’t seem to have any backup. I moved in closer.
The man in the rocking chair could have been anywhere between sixty and eighty. He was completely bald and clean-shaven. His face looked like a walnut with eyebrows. The walnut was dressed in a loud golf shirt and khaki slacks. His shoes looked expensive. I put my finger on the trigger guard, cocked my arm to raise the gun away, and gave him a quick pat-down. His bones felt brittle. Now I placed him closer to eighty.
“I said you can have the wallet.” This time his voice was testy.
“I don’t want your wallet. Who the hell are you and why are you sitting in my rocking chair?”
Without taking my eyes off him, I gave a signal to Robin, who had been following me at a distance.
He said, “You’re Dr. David Mapstone? I have a business proposition for you.”
I let him lower his hands. I holstered the Python and sat in the other chair.
He went on, “You have a funny way of greeting people.”
“What’s your name and why are you here?” I was not in a hospitable mood.
“Can we go inside?”
“No.”
Robin pulled in the car and started bringing luggage into the house. I heard the alarm’s warning beep until she disarmed it.
“May I?” He held up a small hand. I nodded. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a business-card case. He handed me the white card. It said: Judson Lee, Attorney at Law.
I told him to come in the house.
“I haven’t really practiced law for twenty years. I have a few clients, friends mostly, that I do favors for.”
Now he was in the study, in the low armchair, while I sat at the desk. My mind was still back in Washington, where history was everywhere. I hadn’t been to the city in years and Robin had never been there. The three of us had walked from the White House to Capitol Hill, around the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, and the Capitol itself as I told stories. The Capitol dome wasn’t even complete when the Civil War broke out and wounded union soldiers were hospitalized inside. The building held a crypt for George Washington, even though he was buried at Mount Vernon. Sam Rayburn’s “Bourbon-and-branch water” sessions were held in his basement hideaway, where young LBJ ingratiated himself to the lonely House speaker.
