The window lowered with a whine.
“Morning, Gideon.”
“Josephus.”
Weaver touched a button, and the cargo door slid open. Jose climbed into the van and settled in the backseat.
“This’s Cookie.” Weaver motioned to the passenger seat.
Cookie didn’t turn around. He had lowered his visor so that its mirror gave him a bank shot of Jose. All Jose saw in the mirror was a pair of wraparound Oakleys eyeballing him.
I paid that much for shades like that, I’d have Internal Affairs down on me in no damn time.
“Cookie? There a last name?”
“Cookie’s good enough.”
The voice was young and sullen, and Jose thought he sensed an undercurrent of fear.
“Cookie,” Weaver said gently, “tell your story.”
“I don’t answer no questions I don’t want to.”
“Your call, Cookie,” Jose said.
Cookie sat immobile and silent.
“Cookie.” This time Weaver had a warning note in his voice.
“Skeeter wanted Z-Bug dead because Z-Bug killed that whitey what brought down all the shit.” Cookie spewed it out and fell silent.
Z-Bug? Zelmer Austin?… Whitey? Gentry? Where’s this shit coming from?
As if he’d read Jose’s mind, Weaver said in a whisper, “Tell us where you got this, Cookie.”
“TV sayin’ Z-Bug didn’t kill that whitey, so why you give a shit?” Cookie asked.
“Just want to know where you heard it, Cookie.”
Cookie glanced out the side window, then started in a low, nearly inaudible voice. “Pencil tol’ me. Me ’n’ him was partyin’ one day and he got to braggin “bout how big his balls was.”
Jose nodded. “Pencil tell you why Z-bug did the whitey?”
“Said Z-Bug was feelin’ like poppin’ a cap on some whitebread mu’fucka.”
“Watch your mouth,” Gideon cut in. “God don’t like ugly.”
Cookie gave an almost imperceptible nod to show he’d heard. “He did the whitey.”
Jose detected excitement in Cookie’s voice.
Cookie hesitated, as though making certain his audience was still with him.
Once a snitch gets on about his story, he keeps on to the end.
“Yeah,” Jose urged, “go.”
“Z-Bug was partyin’ at his girlfriend’s house. They drank up all the Stoly. Z-Bug’s woman blasted him a couple times. Pencil said Z-Bug started yellin’… screamin’ how he wanted to kill him a white man.”
“Unh-hunh,” Jose whispered.
“Z-Bug went out. Did it.”
“Killed the white man?”
“Yeah!” Cookie said in a tight, excited voice. “Oh, yeah!”
“What night was this?”
“Long time ago.”
“When’d you hear this?”
Cookie thought. “Year, maybe more.”
“You tell this to any police?”
In the rearview, Jose got a long look from Cookie through the Oakleys.
“It could help,” Jose added.
Cookie said nothing, but bobbed his head trying to figure out how much the truth might cost, then, “Yeah. A plainclothes name Milton.”
Not wanting to seem eager, or let Cookie know it was important, Jose took a couple of breaths before asking, “Those real Oakleys, Cookie?”
Cookie almost turned around. “Course they real.”
“Thought so. Good-lookin’ shades.”
“That all you want?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Cookie shifted, ready to open the door.
“By the way,” Jose asked, “you tell this cop Milton you heard the story from Pencil? Or from Z-Bug’s woman?”
Cookie sat still, as though somebody had thrown a switch and turned him off. In a sudden motion, he opened his door and got out. He looked back into the van at Jose.
“I tol’ you how it was, an’ I tol’ you how I tol’ that cop,” he said, voice rising, “You start givin’ me that ‘this or that’ shit.” He slammed the door, and walked away toward the entrance to the Metro.
Jose knew not to ask Weaver for Cookie’s real name. Weaver wouldn’t tell him, but Weaver could find him again.
Weaver sighed. “Young ones… they want to fly like eagles, but then they wear their pants down around their buttocks.”
Frank bought a copy of the Post from a vending machine at the corner of Sixteenth and H, and walked into Lafayette Square. The Secret Service had closed off Pennsylvania Avenue after the Oklahoma City bombing, and you could see straight through the square to the White House without having traffic block your view. That part he liked. The other part, though, he didn’t. Adding more locks to your doors didn’t mean you were any safer. Only that you were more isolated. Bearing right, he found his favorite bench and sat down. For a moment, he gazed across Jackson Place at Stephen Decatur’s home.
Swashbuckling naval hero of the War of 1812. Conqueror of the Barbary pirates. Dead at forty-one, killed in a duel. Back in Decatur’s day, you could walk up to the White House, knock on the door, and ask to speak to the president.
Frank opened the Post.
The chemical industry was fighting the EPA over a report on dioxin. China had finally released the crew of the American EP-3 intelligence plane. A survey had counted 12,850 homeless in the Washington metro area. And forty-three people had died in a South African soccer stadium stampede.
“Good morning, Lieutenant. Any good news?”
Frank looked up. “I thought you’d know.”
Jessica Talbot was small-barely five feet-a delicately rounded face punctuated by dark eyes and framed by a halo of dark hair swept into a bun on the top of her head.
The first time Frank saw her, he figured Seven Sisters, Washington A-list, Kennedy Center patron, National Cathedral altar guild-quintessential bleeding-heart, little-pinky liberal.
He’d figured wrong. The only girl in a Pittsburgh steel family of five boys, a scholarship to Penn State. Ten years as an Associated Press stringer in Laos, Botswana, Nicaragua, and a dozen other pestilential-fever swamps whose major exports were malaria, dysentery, and plague. Jessica Talbot-never, ever Jess-had started at the bottom when the top management of the Post was known as the HBC-Harvard Boys’ Club-and had demolished several glass ceilings before the term had been coined. Along the way she picked up a Pulitzer and turned out several generations of reporters who wrote simple declarative sentences in plain English.
“I don’t do good news,” Talbot said, sitting down next to Frank. “Just the bad stuff. The kind that sells papers.”
Frank folded the newspaper and put it beside him on the bench.
Talbot pulled a pack of unfiltered Camels from her purse, along with a battered Zippo lighter. She stuck a cigarette in the corner of her mouth. “Tell me”-she fired up the Zippo-“tell me what was behind the Calkins firing.”
“I thought you were on the foreign desk. Aren’t you supposed to worry about France and Bangladesh?”
“I live here, Lieutenant. Not Bangladesh, which, I might add, is safer than the District.”
“That’s because judges in Bangladesh don’t let killers out of jail.”
Talbot sailed a plume of smoke skyward. “Touche, Lieutenant. And speaking of judges who don’t let killers out, how’s your dad?”
“In love.”
Talbot nodded approvingly. “That’ll either kill him right away or add another twenty years.”
“I think add another twenty.”
Another drag on the Camel, and Talbot turned to business. “Okay, now… Calkins?”
“He was suspended, not fired.”
Talbot shrugged. “Whatever… hung out to dry.”
“Emerson covering his ass.”
“Washington’s favorite pastime. Calkins screw up?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You want to know about Frederick Rhinelander. He a suspect?”
“He’s a congressman.”
“As Twain said, a member of America’s only criminal class.”
“He was Kevin Gentry’s boss.”
Talbot reached into her purse and brought out an envelope. “Clips,” she explained, handing it to Frank.
He weighed the thick envelope in his palm, then put it in a pocket inside his jacket. “You said you knew him personally.”
“Him and his wife. She’s on the board of directors.”
“Of the Post?”
“It is a publicly traded company. And she-her family-owns a big chunk of our stock.” Talbot paused like a diver at the edge of a high board. She gave Frank a severe look. “This is background,” she warned. “This gets out, you’re dog meat.”
“Go.”
“Tom and Daisy Buchanan,” Talbot said cryptically.
“I’m sorry?”
“The couple in The Great Gatsby.”
“That’s Rhinelander and…”
“His wife, Gloria… Gloria Principi Rhinelander,” Talbot said. She took a drag deep into her lungs and Frank remembered how good a cigarette could taste. “Fitzgerald described Tom and Daisy as ‘careless people.’ He must have known Frederick and Gloria Rhinelander.”
“Sloppy careless?”
“No. Careless in the sense that they didn’t care about the consequences of their behavior. They never had to as kids. They’ve never had to as adults.”
“Entitled.”
Talbot blew a near-perfect smoke ring and watched as it dissipated. “Old-money people are interesting. Especially the men. A frightened bunch.”
“What’s scary if you got more money than God?”
“Losing it. A market crash. Somebody taking it from you. You see, they know deep inside that the money is what makes everything possible for them. It buys them through life. It buys things, influence. Even buys them friends. They know they wouldn’t be who they are without it. And because they inherited the money… because they didn’t earn it… they don’t have the foggiest idea how to make more if they lose what they have.”
“And so?”
“And so they see danger around every corner. Everyone they meet is out to rip them off. They have a terrible sense of vulnerability.”
“Where’d the money come from… originally?”
“His from four generations of Boston banking and shipping. Hers from a father who set up a chain of pizza parlors, then sold out and got lucky in the market.”
An old man in a yarmulke came down the path. He took a seat at a table opposite Frank and Talbot. From a pocket of his frayed overcoat he pulled out chess pieces and arranged them on the board set into the tabletop.
“So his old money was older than her old money,” Frank said.
“Problem is, his ran out.”
“Oh?”
“The Rhinelander fortune hit the rocks with a succession of bad mergers. A bunch of Greeks stripped the family down to its monogrammed boxer shorts. Young Frederick snagged Gloria just in time.”
“She brought the money to the party, he brought the ancestors.”
Talbot stubbed out her cigarette and stood up. “You do good with a few words, Lieutenant. Want a job?”
Frank shook his head. “Your work’s too dangerous.”
Talbot walked a few steps, then turned around. “You owe me,” she said. “First dibs on this Calkins and Gentry thing.”
Frank watched her walk away. He knew there had once been a Mr. Talbot, and he wondered if the guy had ever won an argument. He patted his jacket pocket where he’d put the envelope of clippings, and got up.
The old man in the yarmulke and overcoat was working out chess moves by himself.
Frank walked over.
“You used to play here with a black kid,” Frank said.
The old man didn’t look up. “Karim,” he replied. “He’s dead.”
The old man moved white king’s bishop on f1 to b5. He stared at the empty seat opposite as though waiting for his invisible adversary to make his move. He was still waiting when Frank left the park.
TWENTY
Frank finished off the cheeseburger and the cole slaw. He considered the fries against two additional miles in the morning. He pushed the plate away and reran Jose’s meeting with Cookie.
“Cookie says he got it from Pencil. But Milt says Cookie told him he got it from Austin’s woman.”
Jose pulled Frank’s plate over and picked out a French fry.
“I think we got it as straight as Cookie could give it… that he got it from Pencil, and not Austin’s woman like he told Milt.”
“So Pencil was either ratting out Austin two years ago for actually killing Gentry, or he was trying to frame Austin to cover for somebody else killing Gentry.”
Jose dipped the fry in a puddle of ketchup.
“Whatever… Milt bought it.”
“And Milt made it more credible, claiming that Cookie got it directly from Austin’s woman rather than Pencil.”
“Worse than the used-car business,” Frank said.
They sat on the terrace of Potowmack Landing, a marina restaurant. The lunch-hour crowd filled the place. Lanyards and pocket clips carried ID badges from the Pentagon and Reagan National, a mile or two up the GW Parkway.
Jose dropped his chin to his chest and watched a 737 over the Potomac, wheels and flaps down for a landing at Reagan National.
“Rhinelander?” he asked Frank.
“We got an appointment with him at four. Janowitz’ll meet us there.”
“What’d the Dragon Lady have to say about him?”
“Nothing complimentary.”
Jose finished the French fry and studied the check.
“Even split?”
“But you ate my fries,” Frank protested.
Jose shot him his narrow-lidded Mike Tyson look.
“Even split,” Frank said.
Back in the office, Frank fired up the coffeemaker and Jose switched on the CD player. Frank spread out the clippings while Jose picked up Zelmer Austin’s case jacket. The coffee was ready just as Ahmad Jamal was wrapping up “Poinciana.” The two men settled into reading and making notes. Jamal moved on to “Ole Devil Moon.”
“You about through?” Jose asked an hour later.
Frank checked his notes. “Frederick Dumay Rhinelander the Third, born with a silver spoon in each hand.” He passed an Architectural Digest clipping to Jose. “The homes of Frederick Rhinelander.”
Frank watched Jose’s eyes widen.
A 23,000-square-foot lodge in Aspen, complete with its own mountain and helicopter hangar.
A palace in northern Virginia: 40,000 square feet fronting the Potomac, just upriver from a Saudi prince.
An apartment in Paris: gilt, mirrors, and Louis XVI furniture overlooking the Place Vendome.
Jose handed the article back. “Must be tough,” he said with a roll of the eyes, “camping out in Paris.”
“Yeah. Life’s unfair. A lousy three thousand square feet… cramped accommodations.”
“Guy makes… what?”
“Congressional salary? Hundred fifty, sixty. Somewhere in the neighborhood.”
“Chump change. Think he even notices it come in?”
“Don’t think he balances his own checkbook, Hoser.” Frank took a cautious first sip of his coffee. “Our boy Zelmer?” he asked Jose.
Jose picked up his notebook. “Found in the middle of Eaton Road, ten forty-five Thursday night, April 15, 1999. M.E. report: Death by multiple trauma, manner of death automobile impact.”
“What’d he have on his sheet?”
“Assault with deadly weapon. Assault, intent to maim. Vehicular manslaughter. Burglary. Breaking, entering. Grand theft auto.”
“Time?”
“He and Skeeter and Pencil came from the same neighborhood. The three of them hand in hand to Lorton in ’eighty-seven. Skeeter met up with one of Juan Brooks’s top boys doing time. All three get out in ’eighty-eight. Now they’re back, bu
siness gets big. Then our FBI man Atkins busts Brooks in ’ninety-two. Skeeter takes over. Goes low-profile. Stealth operator. Narcotics knows he’s up to his ass in the business, but nobody can lay a finger on them. Austin is a hanger-on. One of Skeeter’s gofers.”
“Until he kills Gentry.”
“According to the story as told by Cookie as supposedly told to Cookie by Pencil Crawfurd.” Frank tossed his pencil onto his desk in frustration. “We got zip. We got absolutely… positively… zip.”
“One thing we got.”
“What?”
Jose gestured to the clock. “An appointment to meet the MFWIC of the Subcommittee on D.C. Appropriations. You think he’ll introduce us to his real estate agent?”
There he is,” Frank said.
Janowitz stood in the hallway opposite the door to the Subcommittee on D.C. Appropriations.
“You’re on time.”
“You’re surprised?” Jose asked.
“On time for what?” Frank asked.
With an index finger, Janowitz pushed his glasses back so they touched the bridge of his nose. “Nothing definite,” he said. “Al… Mr. Salvani… said Rhinelander wasn’t happy about me digging in the files.”
“You didn’t talk to Rhinelander yourself?”
Janowitz shook his head.
“You getting stonewalled?”
“No. Al’s been helpful. Had one of his staffers show me around. Got me a parking pass and a building badge, a cubicle and a computer. But”-Janowitz held up two empty hands-“no files until Rhinelander approves.”
“Almost four.” Frank gestured toward the subcommittee doorway.
Janowitz pushed through the door. Frank and Jose followed him in. At a desk in the middle of the room, a largish formidable woman looked up at them. She wore a worried frown, and held a pencil frozen in midair over an appointments register.
Janowitz walked up to the desk. “Marge, Detectives Kearney and Phelps have an appointment with Congressman Rhinelander at four.”
She eyed Frank and Jose, then brought her pencil down and moved it over the register. The pencil stopped. She bent closer, as though to make certain of the entry, then looked up.
A Murder of Justice Page 13
