Mother smiled at me and reached across the desk again to take both my hands. "Yosip," she said in Romany. "What a wonderful long way you have come since you ran away. A lawyer, and now a big man, a very big man, in Washington. I am a very proud gypsy."
What I might have said to her was interrupted by a racket outside my office. Voices were raised. I thought I heard what could only be Anita yelling. That's another thing that had never happened before.
Fred burst back into the office, with Anita right on his heels. His face was livid. Mother turned in her chair and looked coldly at him. A gypsy woman can give you the snootiest look in the world, right down her aquiline nose, when she feels like it. It stopped Fred Plaice in his tracks.
"Yes, Fred?" I said quietly.
"If you don't mind, Tinker," he said brusquely. "I'd like to be present for this interview."
"Tinker?"
"I'm sorry, Gyp," he said. "I'm ... I'm upset."
"I'll bet you are, you sneak," Anita said. "Chief," she told me. "He was fit to be tied when you chased us out. The first thing he wanted to know was whatever had made you decide to get Tony Carlucci in here to trick his gypsy snake. I was so mad that I flipped and told him it was my idea."
"Is that why you're back?" I asked him.
"Get this calf-eyed girl Friday of yours off my back," he said stonily. "Our security certainly doesn't permit your confidential assistant to be in love with you. We're supposed to be checking each other constantly."