The Breaking Point: A Body Farm Novel by Jefferson Bass Page A

was our operation. Our call. Janus got a good agent killed two weeks ago—”
    “You don’t know that,” interrupted the other man. “Your agent was in way over his head, playing three guys off against each other. I don’t think Janus fingered him. I think your guy just fucked up.”
    “Janus got one of our agents killed,” insisted Prescott. “And when one of ours gets killed, we don’t just stand by and—how’d you put it? ‘Let things play out’? We come down like the wrath of God. Maybe that’s the reason we don’t lose as many agents as you guys do.”
    My mouth was still full, but I had stopped chewing and started sweating. I didn’t know who Prescott meant by you guys, or by he, and I had no earthly idea who “Goose Man” was. The one thing I understood with perfect clarity was that I’d stumbled into the pissing contest Prescott had mentioned earlier. And it sounded like a doozy.
    Still slouching in the booth, I vacillated: On the one hand, I wanted them to leave immediately; on the other, I wanted them to keep arguing— from the beginning, guys! —so I could figure out what they were talking about. Across the room, I noticed the waitress clearing a table; she glanced in my direction, and I felt a jolt of panic. If she came over now—offering a refill of juice, or asking why I wasn’t eating—she’d blow my cover. Not now, not now, I telegraphed her, carefully avoiding eye contact.
    “You sanctimonious sonofabitch,” the stranger was rasping. In my mind’s eye, he was fat and sweaty, his words struggling to burrow out from within a mountain of flesh. “You wanna know why we lose more agents than the Bureau? I’lltell you why. It’s because you guys are going after pussies—embezzlers and secret sellers and kiddie-porn perverts. Pussies. Meanwhile, we’re out there waging war . With the worst motherfuckers on the planet.”
    “Are you?” Prescott’s voice dripped with sarcasm. I couldn’t tell if he was questioning the badness of the enemy, or the totality of the war effort.
    “Damn right we are. And we’re doing it with a fraction of the money and manpower you necktie-and-cufflink office boys get.”
    “You’re breaking my heart,” Prescott sneered. “Poor, pitiful you. Now if you’re through whining, I’ve got work to do before we climb that mountain tomorrow and pick up the pieces of this operation.” He walked away, his heels pummeling the tile.
    “Prick,” muttered the other man. I heard him turn and trail Prescott out of the IHOP. As his footsteps neared the front door, I risked raising up to take a look. I got a fleeting glimpse of a man who was short and fat, his hair a graying, greasy shade of red. From behind, at least, he looked as repulsive as he sounded.
    I looked down at my plate. The now soggy waffle was surrounded by a moat of cold egg yolk, and the strips of bacon gleamed dully through a varnish of congealed grease. I pushed the plate away, my appetite killed by disgust. Or was it by fear? As I pulled out my wallet for the reckoning with IHOP, I couldn’t help wondering what other reckonings awaited, and what the hell I’d gotten myself into.
    I STEPPED OUT INTO THE NIGHT—STILL WARM, BUT not unpleasant. Eighty-five degrees in the sauna-dry foothills east of San Diego was a different animal from eighty-five degreesin the steam bath that was East Tennessee. It wasn’t that I didn’t sweat here, I’d noticed; it was that the sweat evaporated almost instantly, cooling the body a bit without drenching the clothes entirely.
    “How was your dinner?” The voice came from the darkness behind me.
    “ Crap, ” I exclaimed, jumping with surprise. Again I recognized the voice as Prescott’s, and I turned toward it. He was leaning against the IHOP’s wall, waiting for me. “You scared the bejesus out of me.”
    I expected him to say that he didn’t mean to; instead, he repeated, “How was dinner?”
    “Kinda meager,” I said. “I ordered a lot, but I