The Short Drop by Matthew FitzSimmons Page B

months. A suspension for cursing out a teacher. He’d gone to live with his aunt full time, and Jenn’s report had copies of the increasingly despairing letters Miranda Davis wrote to her sister-in-law, detailing her nephew’s deteriorating behavior. How he rarely spoke anymore. Didn’t eat. Wouldn’t leave the house except to go to school. How he spent all day and night in his room on his computer.
    It was a matter of public record what he’d done on that computer.
    She knocked lightly at her boss’s door. George had always encouraged her to trust her instincts and to speak her mind. It was a trait that had never served her well at the Agency, and it had taken time for her to take him at his word. She didn’t come by trust easily, but George Abe had it. She would walk on broken glass for him.
    He’d thrown her a lifeline after her career at the Agency had imploded. Recruited her when she thought she didn’t want a job, tracked her down at home when she ignored his numerous calls and convinced her to come to work for him. To this day, she had no idea how he’d even known who she was. But he’d nursed her back into work shape and given her room to regain her confidence without feeling coddled. A good thing, because she would have quit on the spot. In retrospect, she knew she would never be able to repay that debt.
    “Come.”
    She opened the door. George was behind his desk, reviewing the financials from the first quarter. The Rolling Stones played in the background. A live version of “Dead Flowers.” She didn’t pay much attention to music and hardly ever knew who was playing, but she knew this song, because George had once spent an hour extolling the virtues of Townes Van Zandt’s acoustic cover during a trip to New York. The Stones were George’s favorite band, and she’d grown accustomed to Jagger’s lecherous caterwauling. An autographed poster of an enormous pair of lips, tongue protruding, hung framed on one wall. It was from one of the band’s US tours and was one of George’s prized possessions. A photograph of George beside Keith Richards hung nearby.
    The far wall was a bookshelf neatly divided in two, which, in a way, summed up her boss. George descended from one of the oldest Japanese families in the United States. His ancestors had fled Japan following the Meiji Restoration and arrived in San Francisco in 1871. They had carved out a rich and successful life for themselves, weathered internment, and rebuilt their fortunes in the 1950s. The Abes were proud both of their heritage and their adopted country. It was a family tradition to recognize the two halves in the names of their children.
    George Leyasu Abe.
    One half of the bookcase was devoted to books on Japanese history. George was particularly fascinated by the culture of the samurai, and dozens of books on the subject took up an entire shelf. His middle name, Leyasu, was taken from the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1600, which was dissolved by the Meiji Restoration of 1868. The other half of the shelf was given over to books on American colonial history. George Washington, his namesake, was especially well represented, as were Madison and Franklin. But, and Jenn knew this for a fact, there wasn’t a single book on Thomas Jefferson. George considered Jefferson disloyal and a traitor. It was a subject he could lecture upon for hours. She didn’t always understand her boss, or agree with his condemnation of Jefferson, but loyalty was one subject about which they were in complete agreement. That was why she couldn’t understand his decision to bring Gibson Vaughn into the next phase of this mission.
    George stopped what he was doing and pointed to a chair. Jenn sat, realizing immediately that she didn’t know how to broach the subject. George, as he so often did, read her mind.
    “So. Gibson Vaughn.”
    She smiled ruefully at her transparence. Poker had never been her game.
    “I just don’t get it,” she said. “Mike is the