Congressman St. James nodded to his entourage as White approached the booth. The congressman’s toadies found urgent business to attend to at the bar. King Kong sat at a table five feet away, his back to the congressman’s table.
A row of bright teeth and a phony smile asked, “Can I order you a Diet Pepsi with lime, Mr. White?”
White smiled. “No sense playing games. Just come right out and let me know you’ve been investigating me.”
“It simplifies matters,” the Congressman said, making no attempt to apologize.
“Did you find anything interesting?”
“I find everything interesting, Mr. White, or may I call you Lucius?”
“Lucius is fine. What should I call you?”
“Anything you like.”
Several alternatives came to mind, but none of them were appropriate to the circumstances. “Why don’t I stick with ‘Congressman?’”
“As you wish.”
White’s drink arrived. Congressman St. James thanked the waitress and indicated he was ready for a refill.
“You’ve been asking a lot of questions about me.” The Congressman’s voice was pleasant. It was probably the same voice he used to thank supporters for their contributions to his campaigns. It was also the only thing about him that suggested he was in a good mood.
“I like to know about my elected representatives.”
The Congressman showed no emotion as he studied White’s face. “I don’t represent your district.”
“You have me there.”
“Now why don’t you just tell me why you have been asking questions about me?” The Congressman’s bright teeth were no longer visible.
“I’m a curious guy.”
The Congressman’s eyes narrowed. “Curiosity killed the cat.”
“I’ve heard that.”
“I don’t like people asking too many questions about me.”
“That can be annoying. But you’re a public figure. You should be accustomed to it.”
“Not when the questions are being asked by a criminal defense attorney.”
“That is a little different. I’ll give you that.”
“You’re something of a smart-ass, aren’t you, Mr. White?”
What happened to ‘Lucius’? “My father taught me to go with my strengths. Besides, the hours are good and there’s no heavy lifting.”
St. James’s jaw grew taut, and the coloring of his face inched into the red tones. “Now listen to me, you son of a bitch.”
“If that’s your new campaign slogan, I suggest you reconsider.”
St. James glared. “Let me tell you something, Mr. White. In the larger scheme of things, you are wholly irrelevant. You could disappear, and no one would give a damn.”
“I sort of hope my girlfriend would care.”
Self-control was becoming increasingly difficult for the Congressman. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I want to put a stop to it. If there’s something you want to know, this is your opportunity to ask.”
White couldn’t help but admire his tactics. It was unlikely that the Congressman would answer any of his questions, but the mere act of asking would reveal much about what White knew. “As much as I appreciate the offer—”
St. James interrupted. “Did you think I wasn’t going to find out you were asking questions about my time as a narcotics investigator?”
“Actually, I was pretty sure you would.”
“Then what the fuck do you want?”
White gave St. James a sardonic smile. “Is that any way to talk to your constituents?”
“Listen up, pissant! You’re not one of my constituents. So why are you investigating me?”
“I want to know about your connection to Richard Barlow.”
“Never heard of him.”
“That’s funny. According to your campaign finance reports, he’s one of your biggest contributors.”
“I have a lot of big contributors. It takes a lot of money to run for Congress.”
“But Mr. Barlow lives in West Palm Beach. The last time I looked that isn’t in your district.”
“So what?”
“I just thought it was odd.”
“Fuck you, you—”
“I guess that means you don’t want to tell me what you know about drug cases being fixed.”
The congressman clenched his jaw and gripped the edge of the table with both hands. “I wouldn’t know anything about that, and I’ll sue you if you say anything different.”
White ignored the congressman’s threat. He knew he couldn’t be sued for anything he said about a public figure. But he still wanted to know how far he could push the congressman. He slid his chair away from the table, casually crossed his legs and clasped both hands behind his neck.
“Tell me about your business with Lyle Wilson.”
“Why you little—”
“I guess you don’t want to talk about Lyle,” White said with a mocking smile. “How about Graham Brochette’s nomination? Shall we talk about that?”
St. James stiffened and propelled himself away from the table, tipping over his chair and spilling the drinks. “I’m warning you. Stop investigating my affairs.”
King Kong stood, glared at White, and followed the congressman away from the table.
“Congressman,” White called. St. James stopped and turned. “Give my best to your brother.” The blood drained from his face as he started to say something. Apparently, he thought better of his impulse and turned and headed for the door, ignoring the greetings of his constituents.
#
White waited until the elderly couple who had shared the elevator entered their room and closed the door before inspecting the jam around the door to his room. As he expected, the thread he had placed between the door and the jam was missing.
Inside the room, there was little sign of an intruder. The casual observer probably wouldn’t notice anything out of place, but a casual observer wouldn’t have known how carefully White had arranged his briefcase and the files left open on the small desk.
All the documents were in the same order White had left them, even the ones he had purposely placed out of their natural order. White took a short ruler from his pocket and laid it on the table. Beside the ruler, White unfolded a sheet of paper containing the precise location of each document when he left the room. Whoever had been there was very good, but not good enough.
31.
The Federal Prison Camp at Saufley Field Naval Air Station, west of Pensacola, Florida, bears little semblance to a prison. It’s a collection of two and three-story red brick buildings set amid pine trees on manicured lawns maintained by the inmates. There are no fences and no armed guards patrolling the perimeter. With its clean concrete walkways and numerous brick gazebos dotting the lawn, it looked more like a small college campus than a prison. The inmates housed at Saufley are mostly first offenders convicted of non-violent crimes. A few were convicts with good records who had been transferred to Saufley from other prisons to serve out the final months of their sentences.
The visitor center is a one-story brick building that, on the inside, could pass for a school cafeteria: linoleum floor, plastic tables and chairs and vending machines dispensing sandwiches, sodas, and miscellaneous snacks. The guard examined White’s credentials and scanned the authorized visitor log.
“Your boy is in the yard. Follow me.”
Behind the visitor center was a two-acre enclosed area with umbrella-shielded concrete picnic tables and benches. Inmates in green prison fatigues huddled with girlfriends, spouses, and families. A few babies cried softly. Young children from different family groups played together like old friends.
“All things considered, it’s a half-way pleasant place,” White observed.
“Yeah,” the guard said. “Say what you want, the feds know how to run a prison.” The guard pointed to a table.
#
Michael Drews embraced White and led him to a table in the cor
ner of the yard.
Drews should never have been in a federal prison. As a first-time drug offender with only enough marijuana for his personal use, probation was the only rational sentence. Maybe a few months in a county jail on a misdemeanor charge was justified. But an over-zealous federal prosecutor was sure that Drews knew enough to help him make a case against a major dealer, so he was charged under federal law. Drews didn’t know what the prosecutor wanted from him, but that didn’t make any difference. So now he was here, and White was handling his appeal pro bono. Lawyers who provide their services at no cost are highly valued by convicts and tend to get a lot of cooperation in return.
White withdrew packs of cigarettes from each pocket and slipped them to Drews. “One of these days I’m going to get caught doing this.”
Drews lowered himself to the concrete bench with his back to the guards.
“So? What are they going to do?”
“I’d rather not find out.”
“But aren’t you here on official business.”
White rocked his hand from side to side. “That depends on how you define “official.”
“Ah. That kind of official business?”
“Sort of.”
Drews opened the pack of cigarettes and leaned forward as White held out a lighter. He took a drag and let the smoke out slowly. “Now. What can I do for you?”
“I understand you shared a dormitory with Robert St. James.”
“Saint Bobby? That’s a name I haven’t heard for a while. Yeah, he was here for a couple of years.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“Bobby was a nice guy. Everyone liked him.”
“Was he bitter?”
“About being convicted?”
“Yeah.”
Drews took another drag and looked skyward, apparently savoring the smoke as he inhaled. “I don’t know. He put in six or seven years at a medium security prison before he got transferred here. He might have been bitter when he first went to prison, but he didn’t seem too wound up about it when I met him.”
“Did he ever talk about his conviction?”
“Not much. It’s a subject we learn to avoid. Especially if your case is on appeal.”
“Did he say anything?”
“It’s not like this is his first choice of places to be. Given his druthers, he’d rather be somewhere else.”
“But he never talked about getting revenge or anything?”
Drews rubbed his chin. “Just once.”
“And?”
“It was just before he was released. A couple of us were talking about what we’re going to do when we get out. Someone asked him about the first thing he was going to do.”
“And?”
“It’s kind of a joke around here. Getting laid is pretty much the first thing most of us plan to do.”
White chuckled.
“But not Bobby. He just sat there… all quiet… like he was picturing what he was going to do. Finally, he got this weird kind of look and said, ‘I’m going to get someone’s ass fried.’”
“What do you think he meant?”
“That’s not the kind of phrase you explore.”
White nodded.
“It’s not a good idea to know too much, if you know what I mean.”
“I understand.”
“What’s your interest in Bobby?”
“I honestly don’t know if I have any interest in him. He’s the brother of someone whose name keeps floating around the edges of another case.”
“Congressman St. James,” Drews said.
The immediate change in White’s face showed his surprise. “I assume he talked about his brother.”
“All the time.”
“What did he say?”
“He was always bragging to the new guys about how he had a congressman in his pocket. They’d be all sorts of impressed… until he told them the congressman was his brother. He got a lot of laughs out of that.”
“Is that all he said?”
Drews glanced around the courtyard before continuing. “There was this one time when he talked about his brother. Bobby claimed he was responsible for getting him elected.”
Drews took another drag and exhaled. “He said he was owed big favors for not ratting out the people he did business with before he was convicted. He claimed he cashed them in for support in his brother’s election.”
“Did he name names?”
“That’s something else we don’t do around here.”
#
When he returned from the federal prison camp that afternoon, White walked into his office, leaned back in one of the conference chairs and propped his cowboy boots on the table. He looked up as Horse and Leslie came in.
“All right. Let’s get this show on the road,” Leslie said.
“Why?” White asked. “Do you have a hot date waiting?”
“I don’t know. I may have to warm him up.”
“I can see we aren’t going to make much progress today,” Horse said.
Leslie laughed. “Speak for yourself, Horse.”
White looked at Horse. “See why I didn’t want to put her in charge?”
“If you can’t stand the heat….”
“All right, already,” White moaned. “Let’s get going.”
“Whatever we’re doing, we’re getting someone’s attention. Congressman St. James is pissed.”
“That explains why we weren’t invited for Christmas dinner.”
“But not a lot else,” White said. “There has to be a connection between the Congressman and Barlow, and maybe Wilson.”
“But what is it? All we know for certain is that Barlow is funneling a lot of money into the Congressman’s campaign.”
“There has to be a reason.”
“If I knew what it was, it would officially be a wonderful Christmas. All I know is that they’re scared. Otherwise, St. James wouldn’t have confronted me the way he did, and they wouldn’t have taken the chance of breaking into my hotel room to find out what we know.”
“But we don’t know anything.”
White ran the fingers of both hands through his hair. “No. But they seem to think we do. We must be getting close to something. I just wish I knew what.”
“I have some more information on Barlow,” Horse said. “But I don’t know if it means anything.”
“Nothing else is getting us anywhere. What do you have?”
“I looked into the guys who were bailed out by Jackson in West Palm Beach and later killed.”
“And?”
“There’s no apparent connection between any of them.”
“Nothing?”
“Not that I could see.”
“Not even race… ethnicity… where they live?”
“No, no and no. Not even crime. Three of their cases were cocaine-related. One was heroin-related. Two were marijuana related. And that’s only in the last six months.
“Judges? Prosecutors?”
“Two different judges. Two different prosecutors. The only thing they had in common was that they had all made plea agreements and gotten bail reductions.”
“And the fact that they were killed before they could testify.”
“Yeah.”
“So Jackson was arranging bail to get people out of jail where they could be silenced.”
Before anyone could respond, the intercom sounded and Grace Matthews said, “Horse has a call from someone named Peter Gordon. He says he’s a detective in West Palm Beach.”
Horse picked up the receiver on White’s desk and said, “Hello, Peter. Do you have news for me?”
For three minutes he listened, muttering only an occasional “uh-huh,” as he scratched notes on White’s desk pad. Finally, he said, “Thanks, Peter. Let me know what else you come up with.”
“What was that all about?” White asked.
“They found Barlow’s body in his car at a rest area off of Interstate 95.”
“When?”
>
“They found him about six o’clock this morning. According to Gordon, he died sometime between midnight and two o’clock.”
“What was the cause of death?”
“Gunshot to the back of the head.”
“Someone is getting seriously concerned.”
“There’s more,” Horse said. “They already have the ballistics report. It’s the same gun that was used to kill Jackson — Graham Brochette’s gun.”
White stood and began pacing in front of the marker board that spanned the width of the War Room. “Someone breaks into my hotel room and finds my file on our investigation of St. James. Four, maybe six, hours later Barlow is shot to death.”
Before White could continue, the intercom buzzed again. “There’s a call for you, Mr. White. He’s very insistent. He says it’s imperative that he talk to you now.”
White, Horse and Leslie looked at each other.
“What line is it on?”
“Line two.”
White pressed the button for line two and switched on the speakerphone.
Without any greeting, the voice on the phone said, “You’re sticking your nose into matters that don’t concern you.”
The voice had a metallic echo readily recognizable as computer generated. Whoever was calling had sophisticated equipment and was going to great lengths to avoid identification.
“If you don’t back off, something very unpleasant will happen to your girlfriend.”
White’s grip on the receiver tightened. “What am I supposed to back off from?”
“What happens on the east coast is none of your business.”
“Who…” White started to ask when the line went dead.
White and Horse looked at Leslie. She was already biting her fist and breathing hard.
“Bastards,” White muttered under his breath.
“I’ll have Tiny here in twenty minutes,” Horse said as he reached for the receiver and punched *69.
“Tiny?” Leslie asked from behind her fist
“A mountain that walks.”
Leslie wrinkled her nose.
“You’ll be safe,” White assured her.
Slowly, Leslie regained control of herself. “Who would threaten me?”
The Nominee Page 25
