Sleeping Dogs

by Ed Gorman

  I was done here. Such a wonderful, sinister lead—and such a pitifully believable explanation.

  “I’m going to make a pizza if you’d like to stay,” Beth said, and for some reason in that moment I liked her very much. There was something of my daughter in her.

  “Thanks, Beth. But I need to get back to the office.”

  “Everything cool with us, Dev?” Billy said anxiously.

  “Next time just tell me you want Beth to do the makeup, Billy. It’ll be a whole lot simpler.”

  Then I was gone.

  CHAPTER 17

  Gabe was alone in the headquarters office. I could smell the whiskey as soon as I walked in. Out front, the place was packed with well-wishers and volunteers ready for their nightly assignments. Gabe, in his graying ponytail and granny glasses, sat at his desk with his feet up reading The Rolling Stone Reader. At least he wasn’t doing any online gambling at the moment. The great Marxist who fell for the worst sucker game of all, gambling. Warren had had to loan him money several times. And as far as I knew, Gabe still owed him many thousands of dollars. He hated Warren for not taking more leftist stands. He hated him even more for having to beg him for money to replace what he’d lost online.

  “I was just reading about the ’68 Democratic Convention here in Chicago,” he said after I’d settled in. “You should’ve been there. The American gestapo’s finest hour. Mayor Daley and his goons. Daley called one of the senators on the stage a fucking kike. You couldn’t hear him, but you could see him say it. You could actually read his lips. Then he called out his pigs and his police dogs and it was a mess. I got six stitches in my head.”

  I’d noticed that left-wing people my father’s age recalled even the worst moments of the sixties with a certain fondness. It had been, for many of them, as close to utopia as they would come here on Planet Earth. Yes, they’d been beaten, overdosed on drugs, suffered everything from scabies to incurable syphilis, broken bonds with families that had still not healed, and even been sentenced to prison. They’d had heroes as dubious as Timothy Leary, Bobby Seale, Abbie Hoffman, that only they could see the worth of. But even the worst of it all was cloaked in a nostalgia for that time when they—or so they saw themselves—bravely went up against the establishment that had contrived a war in Vietnam, persecuted blacks, let millions of their countrymen starve, and attempted to brainwash us with the Orwellian words of Nixon and Kissinger. For them these days, now approaching senior citizenship after all, there would never be a drug high, an orgasm, a guitar riff, or a speech as spiritually moving as the one they’d heard back in ’66 or ’68 or even ’79. Those were the sacred days.

  “Six stitches? Sounds like a lot of fun, Gabe.”

  “That’s the trouble with you kids today. You came out of your momma’s crotch with only one thought in mind. You wanted to get rich. No ideals.”

  “I think you’re either overestimating your generation or underestimating mine.” I couldn’t look at him without wondering if he was still gambling on the sly. Addicted gamblers are like that.

  “I’m hoping you all change. Not you personally, Dev. I mean you’re like me, an idealist. You know it’ll never happen, but you keep on working at it anyway. The other people around us—politics is a gig for them. They think it’s exciting.”

  “It’s probably more exciting than working for an ad agency or a brokerage house.”

  “But that’s all it is—exciting. And most of the time it isn’t even that. It’s just slogging through to sell your candidate. Who’d sell out his country in a minute if he had to.”

  “I’m glad I dropped by for your nightly inspiration.”

  His laugh was bitter. “You know what I’m saying is true. Warren only takes the position he does because that’s his niche in politics. Remember, he was on the other side all through college. Was even an activist for them. He changed when he couldn’t get the nomination for a seat in the state legislature.”

  Early in his career Warren had had to answer to that charge many times. There was no way short of a religious conversion that you could play the instant turnaround from one side to the other. And not look dishonest. But a scandal in the statehouse had squeaked him into office and he’d done so well in his first term in Springfield that even the press eventually began to see his conversion as real. Saint Paul on the Road to Damascus was frequently cited by way of explanation these days.

  I wanted Gabe to shave the beard and cut the hair and quit wearing the crew necks and faded jeans. I wanted him to face the realities of the sixties and not live in the past. But mostly I wanted him to find peace for himself. There was such sadness in those faded blue eyes and in that cigarette-raspy voice these days. He was a wounded animal. For all his self-delusion, there was a saintliness about Gabe.

  “I’m sorry, Gabe.”

  He’d been staring off. Now his eyes fixed on me. “Sorry about what, Dev?”

  “Oh, you know. I’m always sanctimonious about something. Now it’s the sixties I’m sanctimonious about. Your generation did a lot of good and the country is better for it.”

  He took his feet down from the desk, sat up straight. “Ah, who gives a shit anyway?” he said, reaching into his drawer for his pint. “You want a hit?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Mind if I have one?”

  “Not at all.”

  “You’re a good man, Dev.”

  “But sanctimonious.”

  “Yeah,” he smiled. “But sanctimonious.”

  I worked for about forty-five minutes, worked with enough intensity that I didn’t quite realize that Gabe had slipped out and Teresa had slipped in, perching herself on the edge of Kate’s desk.

  When I paused to rub my eyes, she said, “In your own way, you’re a good-looking man, Dev.”

  “I guess that’s a compliment.”

  “It just means you’re not conventionally handsome. You know, like my husband.” She sighed. “I’m feeling very sorry for him tonight.”

  “Oh, right. That press association dinner.”

  “They’re really going to lay it on about the debate.”

  Gabe came in just as she said that. “The cops doing anything about that by the way, Dev?”

  “They claim to be.” I hadn’t mentioned the obvious to any of the staffers, that it was one of them. And now that I’d met Beth and believed her story, that fact was irrefutable. I had no idea what the police theory was at this point and it really didn’t matter.

  “How about a hug, Gabe?” Teresa said.

  He went over and took her in his arms, careful not to pull her off her perch. Teresa was a collector of lost animals and lost souls. She’d long ago taken pity on Gabe, even when some of the midlevel staffers quietly questioned his value to the campaign. One of them had even drawn a business card that read:

  GABE COLBY

  Resident Hippie

  After Gabe sat down, Teresa said, “Did you tell Dev the news?”

  “I was going to but he got busy.”

  “Always the last to know.” But there was something about the tone in her voice, a kind of remorse, that I didn’t like.

  “I got a book contract to edit a textbook about campaign politics over the last fifty years,” Gabe said. “There’s enough money for me to retire and do it full-time.”

  “Hey, that’s great.” But it wasn’t great, because I didn’t believe it. What the hell was going on here? I watched Teresa’s face. She didn’t seem happy.

  “Who’s the publisher, Gabe?”

  “Oh, a—a new house. Small press. Rivington House is the name.”

  I was no expert on publishing, but I wondered if a small press, a start-up yet, could afford to pay the kind of money that would let Gabe retire.

  “Yeah, I’m really excited about it,” he said. “Something I’ve always wanted to do.”

  “So this’ll be after the election I take it?” I said.

  “Sure, Dev. Hell, the press would have all kinds of questions if I quit now.�
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  Good old Gabe. Maybe he’d finally paid Warren off. Or maybe they were so sick of each other that Warren had agreed to forget the debt and just send him away.

  Teresa went over to him and gave him another hug. “Warren and I are really going to miss you.” So she didn’t know. One thing this staff did was keep things from her. As they many times, apparently, kept things from me. I’d only been half-joking about being the last to know.

  “And I know Dev’s going to miss you, too.”

  “I sure am, Gabe. I’m glad you finally get to work on that book you’ve always talked about.”

  “Think of all the people I can libel.” He laughed. “Especially the guy who wore a codpiece so he’d look bigger when he stood in front of female audiences.”

  Teresa grinned. “God, is that true?”

  “It sure is.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know if I should tell you, Teresa. Might cut myself out of a book sale here. You have a credit card?”

  She was delighted. “American Express Gold. Now tell me!”

  “Okay.” He nodded at me. “You know who it was, Dev?”

  “Uh-uh. I’m as curious as she is.”

  “Downstate guy named Tim Aldrich. Real hot dog. I only worked for him because for some reason nobody could ever figure out he was against the war in Nam real early. Otherwise he was a reactionary bastard who thought half the population should be executed on general principle.”

  “And he really wore a codpiece?” Teresa said.

  “He really did. But then so does Dev.”

  Teresa was in high spirits. “I doubt Dev needs one.”

  I made sure to give her a kiss on the cheek before I left.

  CHAPTER 18

  “You sound tired, Dad.”

  “Down to the wire, sweetheart. I’m always like this about now in the campaign.” I almost said, “You remember.” But of course she wouldn’t remember. She was the first among her friends to have parents who divorced. She’d been ten. Sometimes four, five drinks down I could still hear her weeping, begging us not to split up. I once broke three knuckles smashing my fist into a hotel wall when those images came back to me one lonely night on the road. “How’s school going?”

  “I’m taking theater as a minor, I’ve decided.”

  “Well, at least you don’t want to be a rock star.”

  She giggled. “Why? Is that the thing now?”

  “I was sitting around with some pols downtown the other night and four out of five of them said they had college-age kids who told them they planned to be rock stars. Theater sounds like a sensible decision compared to that. At least you could teach.”

  “You’re getting carried away, Dad. My major is still poly sci.”

  “Maybe you should make your major theater and poly sci your minor.”

  “You’re really down tonight. Are you all right?”

  “Tired, I guess.”

  “You need a woman.”

  “Believe it or not, I’m getting ready, I think. Finally.”

  “I have a beautiful English professor here. She’d love to meet you. I even showed her your picture. She thinks you look sad and that intrigues her.”

  “Wait’ll she sees me if we lose the election.”

  “Lake really caught up after that debate. Did anybody ever figure out what happened?”

  “The official chemical report is that somebody slipped something called flunitrazepam in his Diet Pepsi. It’s one of those date-rape drugs. And they figured out how to time it so it hit about fifteen minutes into the debate.”

  “I haven’t seen that on the news.”

  “We just got word late today.”

  Cupping the phone: “Hi, Lauren. I’m just talking to my dad.”

  Her roommate. When she took her hand away I said, “Listen, honey, I’m beat. I just wanted to call and see how you were doing.”

  “I love you, Dad.”

  “I sure love you, hon.” It was one of those moments when I wanted to just sit there and sob and I wasn’t even sure why.

  Ten minutes later I was in my boxers with a Robert Ryan picture on TBS. Of all the noir men, Ryan’s my favorite. Melancholy and crazy at the same time. Feelings not unknown to me on my worst nights.

  When the phone rang I almost decided not to answer it. But I had to answer it. Otherwise I’d lie there for hours wondering what the message had been. If it was important they’d make any words they left on the machine as cryptic as possible in case one or both of us had our phones tapped. I picked up.

  “I know how late this is.” Kate.

  “This couldn’t possibly be good news could it?”

  “No, Bunny.” She loved pet names. “But not bad news, either. I just found but that Gabe is leaving us and I wondered if you knew what it was all about.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Gabe. On the phone. I called the office. He was still there. He was drunk but coherent. Some small press gave him a book deal?”

  “Yeah, I know. Doesn’t make sense to me, either.”

  Pause. “You know what I’m thinking …”

  “Probably what I’m thinking.”

  “But I don’t want to say it.”

  “Neither do I. But I may as well hang it out there. Maybe Gabe did the deed the other night.”

  “He had reason.”

  “He did indeed.”

  “And it wouldn’t have been all that hard to do.”

  “No, it wouldn’t.”

  “But it’s not even good circumstantial evidence.”

  “I forgot you went to law school for a year.”

  “Two years.”

  “That’s even worse.”

  She laughed. “You and lawyers.”

  “Can’t live with ‘em and can’t live with ’em.”

  “Maybe we should just forget this call. I just can’t believe Gabe’d do something like that.”

  “You ever hear anything about him confronting Warren?”

  “Gabe? Confronting Warren? That’s impossible. Gabe doesn’t have it in him.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He sure doesn’t.” I let go a sigh. It sounded weary even to my own ears.

  “Sounds like you need some sleep, Dev.”

  “I sure need something. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

  CHAPTER 19

  I worked from my hotel room the next morning. I got Beth’s phone number from Billy and called her at home. He said she was working the noon-to-eight shift at the beauty salon.

  She didn’t sound unduly happy to hear from me. But then she had no reason to. She was struggling with her feelings about her father—whom she probably loved about twenty percent less than she hated—and I was forcing her to walk into a past fraught with proof of his sins.

  “You want something. I can tell.”

  “I need your help, yes. I’ll pay you to help me.”

  “I don’t want any money, Dev.”

  “Well, I appreciate that,” I said. “Did you ever do any work on the computer for your father?”

  “Sometimes. He couldn’t keep secretaries. He always put the moves on them and they quit.”

  “I need to find his computer and his password.”

  “You want his computer?”

  “I need to find out who he was working with the last couple of months. That may give us our killer.”

  “I guess I never thought of that.”

  “I know you have mixed feelings about him, but I’m sure you want to find his killer, don’t you?”

  “I guess I owe him that. He didn’t deserve to die.”

  I was noble for once. I didn’t tell her that there were a few hundred pols who might disagree with her on that. “No, he didn’t. And that’s why I need your help.”

  Long pause. “I have his laptop here in my apartment.”

  “Do you mind if I come over and get it?”

  “I need to leave for work in an hour. Can you be here by then?”

 
I was there in forty-five minutes.

  I went back to my hotel room and set off on a four-hour journey that took me through a list of Greaves’s clients, which held several surprises. Some of the members of Congress who complained loudest about how corrupt and dirty politics had become had spent a lot of money, it seemed, with the wily Mr. Greaves. And from both parties. One page revealed a coding system that he used to hide various charges to his clients. They knew the code but were happy that nobody else did, the code hiding such items as escort services, gumshoes, even, in one case, a violent shakedown man well-known to the D.C. police. Greaves farmed out many of his smaller jobs. One of his principal tasks was collecting cash from firms that wanted favors from certain elected officials. This protected the client and the official alike. If a fall had to be taken, Greaves would take it.

  Though no detail was given, there was an asterisked list of elected officials’ names accompanied by specific dates and the names of cities. I was pretty sure that this was his private list of people he was blackmailing. He’d probably gotten to them the way he’d gotten to Warren. A man’s opponent would hire him, in the course of his investigation Greaves would see an opportunity to do some blackmailing on his own, and he would keep everything from his client.

  I was scouting names that recurred. Few did. You couldn’t afford an association with Greaves. So you kept his employment brief. You wanted to put a nasty on your opponent’s head. Once you got the nasty, it was bye-bye, Greaves. He hadn’t been exaggerating when he said that he’d never been invited to a governor’s ball or to a party on the Hill. If he looked like a pal of yours, the press would have you for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You would be handing your opponent a formidable campaign issue—your association with Greaves.

  In the last hour I found one name that appeared three times. I cross-checked the name with the dates of Warren’s travels. I was able to match the name and date to the young woman who played the hotel maid with Warren.

  The full name was listed only once. It was coded SC for secretarial services. From then on she went by the initials DF. Dani Fame. Though I knew that I was probably being my old judgmental self, I suspected that anybody with a name like Dani Fame was not (a) a police commissioner, (b) a NASA spokeswoman, or (c) a nun. She was more than likely a stripper who might be doing a bit of hooking on the side. This last suggested by the fact that she’d gone in and bopped Warren with no apparent qualms.