A Murder of Justice

by Robert Andrews

  “Paper,” he whispered.

  Kate breathed something in acknowledgment and her face relaxed as she drifted off again.

  Frank shut his eyes. Somewhere down the street a dog barked; he wondered if it was Murph. He felt Monty get up and make his way toward the foot of the bed. He opened his eyes in time to see the big cat stretch, then jump to the floor, landing with a cushioned thump. Frank gave up the thought of going back to sleep and instead lazily gazed at the ceiling, listening to Monty at work at his water dish.

  After a second or two, he sat up and swung his feet to the floor. He snagged a pair of running shorts out of the bureau, and went downstairs, Monty following.

  The Post lay where it had skidded across the sidewalk and caromed off the front door. He picked up the paper, and stood, still half asleep, sorting out the sky.

  Soft blue. Rain-washed blue. There was another word. A better word. What was it? Cerulean? Yes… cerulean. Cerulean blue. A good spring day in the making. With a cerulean-blue sky.

  He shifted his gaze from the sky to the paper in his hand.

  Papers come in plastic bags now. Even when it’s not raining. Condoms for newspapers? Come to think of it, not a bad idea.

  In the kitchen, first things first. Monty to be fed. Then the coffee. Frank ground it extrafine and, while the maker gurgled and wheezed, stood absorbed in thinking about absolutely nothing but the coffee filling the carafe.

  He’d finally sat at the table with a full mug and taken the Post out of its plastic sheath when Kate, wearing one of his shirts, entered and came over to the table and tousled his hair.

  He slipped his hand under the hem of the shirt.

  Kate swatted his hand. “Let’s not get started.”

  That made him want even more to play around under the shirt.

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” Kate said, twisting away and walking to the cabinet for a mug, “I don’t like burnt coffee.”

  With a sigh, he let his early-morning fantasy fade and opened the paper. Like a magnet, the headline drew his eye. His chest tightened.

  “Holy… shit!”

  Carafe in one hand, mug in the other, Kate turned.

  Frank held the paper up, pointing to the headline.

  “Subcommittee Chairman to Investigate District Drug Crimes.”

  He read the subhead aloud: “ ‘Rhinelander says recent deaths connect to Gentry murder.’ ”

  Before he read any further, the phone on the wall, his pager, and his cell phone interrupted with a medley of electronic beeps, chirps, and whistles.

  Mayor Seth Tompkins wore a pale-yellow shirt with antique gold cuff links, charcoal-gray trousers held up with burgundy-and-dark-blue suspenders, and his trademark bow tie, today a carefully knotted silk accent that matched the blue in the suspenders.

  “Not only do we learn that Congressman Frederick Rhinelander is going to open hearings on crime and punishment in the District,” Tompkins said in a deceptively quiet voice, “we find that the good editors of The Washington Post”-here his irritation cracked through the veneer of calm-“recommend that the congressman expand the hearings to investigate the overall performance of my administration.”

  Frank’s first impression was of a spare, neat man, a man who shaved each morning, lathering with a brush, using his grandfather’s straight razor, and splashing his face with bay rum after.

  The morning’s Post lay at Tompkins’s place at the head of the long conference table. On his right, Chief Noah Day; on his left, Randolph Emerson. Frank and Jose sat on Emerson’s side. Across from them was Tompkins’s press guy, John Norden, a stocky red-haired man with rimless glasses. Beside Norden, a young woman, presumably one of Tompkins’s aides, prepared to take notes on a yellow legal pad.

  Tompkins lightly ironed out the Post, running the palms of both hands across it. The hands came back together, fingers interlocked over the Rhinelander article.

  Composure recaptured, he asked, “So, what have we here?”

  Chief Day hulked in his armchair, large head forward, looking disappointed and petulant, like a bullfrog whose fly had gotten away.

  “What we have,” Day rumbled, “is a pile a shit.”

  Tompkins shut his eyes briefly and moved his lips as if saying a prayer or counting to ten. He turned to Randolph Emerson.

  “What we have,” Emerson glided in smoothly, “is an investigation that started as an everyday street shooting and is escalating into a political witch-hunt.”

  Tompkins looked weary. “An… every… day… street shooting,” he recited, wringing out all the meaning from Emerson’s words. He thought about that for a moment, then cocked his head and regarded Emerson. “Tell me, Captain Emerson, where are the witches in this everyday street shooting?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “What pitfalls do you see?

  “Gentry,” Emerson said. “Congress didn’t care whether Skeeter Hodges or Pencil Crawfurd lived, died, or flew to the moon. But connect them with the killing of a… a…”

  Emerson ground clumsily to a stop. Frank watched a touch of color rise in his cheeks.

  “The killing of a white congressional staffer?” Tompkins supplied.

  Emerson added, “Who’d been with the Agency in Colombia.”

  “And,” Tompkins added, “whose killer wasn’t caught even though we said he’d been.”

  Emerson winced slightly, but recovered with an ingratiating smile. “The District’s a punching bag for Congress, Mayor,” he said. “We don’t get a vote. So we’re a safe target for any politician who has an itch to scratch.”

  Frank could tell from Tompkins’s stony expression that he wasn’t buying into the victimization line that had always worked for Emerson with Malcolm Burridge, the former mayor.

  “Tell me something new and different,” Tompkins said dryly. “But while you’re at it, tell me how the Post learns these things before I do.”

  “You know how the leaking game’s played, Mayor,” Emerson said, scrambling for firmer ground. “Anybody who’s got a beef with the establishment, anybody who comes out on the losing side of an argument… all they have to do is make a phone call.”

  “A phone call,” Tompkins said softly to himself. Then he regarded Emerson. “So now we have a Colombian connection because the Post says we do? Is that it?”

  “It is a possibility,” Emerson said.

  “I read it in the Post and therefore it must be so,” Tompkins mused. His eyes shifted down the table to Frank and Jose.

  “And you, gentlemen? You’re on the ground floor. What connections do you see?”

  Frank looked at Jose. With a nod, Jose passed the lead to Frank.

  “We see four dead people who are connected to each other. That’s the basics.”

  Holding up both hands, Tompkins interrupted. “Four? There’s Hodges, Crawfurd, Gentry… who’s the fourth?”

  “Chantara Wilkerson, the woman in Crawfurd’s house, Your Honor.”

  Tompkins’s shoulders dropped-yet another weight added to the burden on his back.

  “Four dead people,” he said in a hollow voice. “And you say there’s a Colombian connection?”

  Jose cleared his throat. “We say we don’t know.”

  Tompkins turned a questioning glance toward Emerson.

  “But it’s a potential,” Emerson persisted.

  “Life’s full of ‘potentials,’ Captain,” Tompkins said. “We can’t chase them all down.”

  “I’m only saying,” Emerson came back, “all’s you need is a hint of a Colombian connection and Rhinelander will be adding that to his campaign against home rule.”

  “I appreciate your political acuity, Captain,” Tompkins said, with exquisite precision. “What you’re telling me is that this case might be too big for you to handle.” Tompkins fixed Emerson with a prosecutor’s look. “Is that it?”

  Frank had the feeling he was standing on the rim of a bottomless canyon.

  “Is that it?” Tompkins
repeated very softly.

  Emerson jiggled on his tightrope. “I’m only saying, Your Honor, that our jurisdiction and assets are limited.”

  Tompkins affected sudden enlightenment. “Ah… I see, your forte is taking care of local crime.”

  Frank looked over to Jose and got a quarter-wink. If Emerson caught the irony, he didn’t show it.

  “That’s right, Your Honor. We get into the international arena, it’s a different ball game.”

  “And that’s a game in which we should not play?”

  Emerson made a show of thinking about it, then clasped his hands together on the conference table. “I’d like to talk to our liaison at the Bureau and explore passing the investigation to them.”

  Tompkins remained impassive. He turned to Noah Day.

  “Chief Day, you have anything to say?”

  A large, black Buddha, Day sat with his hands laced across his paunch. “Like I said, this’s a pile a shit. I’m backing Captain Emerson.”

  Tompkins turned toward Frank and Jose. Frank knew what he’d have to say if Tompkins asked, and part of him wanted Tompkins to ask and another part didn’t.

  Tompkins studied the two detectives for a long moment, then turned back to Emerson.

  “For now, Captain, let’s keep this in house.”

  “Liaison can just talk to the Bureau…” Emerson began.

  Tompkins shook his head. “Once you put something on the table, you have to address it. And I’m not ready for that.” He looked sternly at Emerson. “Not yet, Captain.”

  He pushed his chair back and stood. “Thank you all, gentlemen. At least I know some of what I don’t know.” A wry smile wrinkled across his face. “Problem is, I don’t know all that I don’t know.”

  Well, what about that?” Frank asked, as soon as they were alone in the hallway outside Tompkins’s office.

  Jose checked over his shoulder. “Emerson’s selling.”

  “Tompkins isn’t buying.”

  “Isn’t buying yet,” Jose amended. “And Emerson hasn’t finished selling.”

  Hi, guys,” Leon Janowitz said. Cocked back in Frank’s chair, he held up the Post front page. “You seen this?” he asked brightly.

  “Little man, all spick-and-span,” Jose chanted, “where were you when the shit hit the fan?”

  Janowitz gave up Frank’s chair.

  “Which fan was this?” he asked.

  “The one in the mayor’s office,” Frank said.

  “Brutal?”

  “Emerson tried to give the case away to the Bureau,” Jose said. “Mayor held off.”

  “Sounds like a full-court press.”

  “Meaning?” Frank asked.

  “Meaning that I just came from Al Salvani’s office. He says Rhinelander wants to talk with you and Jose. Off the record.”

  “About?”

  “Salvani wouldn’t say. Maybe he didn’t know.”

  “When?”

  “He’ll call.”

  “I guess we hold our breath,” Jose said.

  “But wait!” Janowitz said, imitating a TV pitchman. “There’s more!” He unzipped his canvas briefcase and held up a slender folder. “Army records center finally came through. Copies of Kevin Gentry’s Two-oh-one file, evaluation reports, discharge physical.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Gentry’s military files in his lap, Frank rested his head back against the passenger seat. The trail to CIA and Colombia was there-UCLA political science, Army commission into Military Police, Ranger school, and service in the Army Attache Office, Bogota. Outstanding efficiency reports, top-notch physicals.

  A man on paper… a paper man… two-dimensional… black-and-white.

  He put Gentry out of his mind and, half drowsing, took in the trees and the river. He liked the GW Parkway. An endangered species in an age of interstate takeovers. Built in the 1930s, it had become a commuter freeway, but it still kept its original character as an extended park along the Potomac, from Great Falls in the north to Mount Vernon in the south.

  “What you thinking about?” Jose asked.

  It took him a moment to realize Jose was talking to him.

  “Why you think I’m thinking?”

  Jose took his eyes off the road long enough to shoot Frank a look that said, “Come on.”

  Frank sorted through the jumbled thoughts and images.

  “We got us a first-class fur ball, Hoser. One day, everybody’s got the same picture down cold. Then somebody pops Skeeter. All of a sudden, it’s like somebody took the picture apart like a jigsaw puzzle and tossed all the pieces up in the air. We don’t know who did Gentry… or why. We don’t know how Gentry fits. Hell, we don’t really know Gentry. And we don’t know why Pencil’s dead along with his woman.”

  “And,” Jose added, “we don’t know about the cartels.”

  Frank motioned toward the roadside sign indicating Chain Bridge Road.

  “And to finish out our day, Congressman Richie Rich demands our presence.”

  Jose slowed and stopped at the top of the ramp, then turned east on Chain Bridge Road.

  Less than a mile down the road, Frank pointed to a “Private Road” marker beside a drive that disappeared into a thick stand of trees.

  “I think that’s it.”

  The winding drive led through the trees to a low hilltop and a massive gate between two stone columns. A chain-link fence Frank estimated to be at least nine feet high ran from the columns into the dense woods on either side.

  “Welcome to Fort Knox,” Jose grunted. He stopped the car, lowered his window, and reached out to punch a button on a pedestal-mounted squawk box.

  A short static burst, and a disembodied voice followed, asking for name and identification. Jose held his badge case out to the camera lens set in beside the loudspeaker. A moment’s pause and the gate slid silently open.

  For fifty or so yards through more trees, the drive dipped, then rose again. The trees dropped away with a final turn.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Frank breathed.

  The house crested the highest ground of Arlington Ridge, the basalt granite promontory channeling the Potomac into the rapids below. Three stories of pristine white wide-plank siding, a mantle of greened copper roof with ornamental cupolas and weathervanes. A rolling lawn impeccably trimmed, magnolias towering over the two-story columned portico, a raked gravel drive. The scene echoed with the sounds of horse’s hoofs and carriage wheels.

  Jose laughed. “Reckon Miz Scarlett’s home, Massa Rhett?”

  A large-boned blonde woman in a severe black dress answered the door. She wore no makeup, and her hair was pulled back to a tight bun. She took Frank’s and Jose’s cards, muttered a “Please wait” that sounded like a command, and closed and locked the door.

  Jose made an exhaling sound over his lips. “Wouldn’t want to mess with that,” he whispered.

  Frank nodded. “Woman looks like she might have a collection of tattooed lampshades at home.”

  A moment later came the sound of a bolt being drawn back, and the door opened.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen, I’m Cornell, the house manager.”

  Cornell spoke with an English accent and carried himself with the muscular poise of a gymnast. His dark brown hair had been meticulously bleached at the tips, and he wore gray slacks and a dark blue Lacoste knit shirt. On first glance, Frank judged him to be in his late twenties or early thirties, but another look revealed lines etched around the eyes and mouth; lines that came with an understanding of the capriciousness of life.

  “We’re here to see-” Frank began.

  “Yes,” Cornell said with a professionally pleasant modulated voice, “this way.” He turned and led them inside.

  Large black-and-white square tiles paved a foyer Frank imagined he could fit his row house in and still have room for a basketball court. The curving ebony arms of a dual marble staircase swept down from a mezzanine encrusted with crystal chandeliers.

  Frank realized that he and
Jose had stopped to gawk, when Cornell turned around.

  “It is, isn’t it?”

  “It certainly is,” Frank said, recovering.

  “Mrs. Rhinelander found it in Alabama,” Cornell said in a passive tone.

  Puzzled, Frank asked, “The staircase?”

  “No.” Cornell smiled with the mischievous delight of an amateur magician enjoying his audience’s mystification. “The house. She had it disassembled and brought here.”

  Cornell led them toward a door between the two staircases.

  Frank felt a whispering gust of air in his face as Cornell swung the heavy door open. Muted lighting and dove-gray walls blurred the dimensions of the gallery, drawing the eye to paintings that seemed to float magically in a mist.

  A critic might have called the collection eclectic. Frank found it jarring. A Madonna and Child icon gave way to an oil of two wrestlers, their side-lit bodies twisted and straining against a dark background.

  “George Bellows.” Cornell gazed thoughtfully at the wrestlers. “Magnificent muscular definition, don’t you think?” he asked, without expecting an answer.

  Halfway down the gallery, a low bench along the left wall faced a still life hung on the wall opposite. The painting looked familiar. Frank stopped to examine it more closely.

  Cornell put on a tiny condescending smile, almost a smirk.

  “It looks like a Cezanne,” Frank ventured.

  “It is a Cezanne. Still Life with Apples and Peaches, circa 1905.”

  “Unh-hunh,” Frank said, now more certain. “I’ve seen it before.” He turned to Cornell. “The National Gallery?”

  Cornell grudgingly awarded Frank a passing grade. “Mrs. Rhinelander lent it to them. We’ve just gotten it back.”

  As they continued down the gallery, Frank thought he recognized a Chagall and something that looked authentically old Dutch-certainly not a Vermeer?-but by now he wouldn’t have been surprised to see Guernica or the Mona Lisa.

  They reached the end of the gallery, and Frank looked back, taking it all in.

  “Very nice.”

  “The same contractor who built the Pompidou Center,” Cornell said with a burble of proprietary pride in his voice. “Separate climate control keeps the humidity and temperature constant. The light is concentrated in three spectral bands. Brings out the color and depth but doesn’t damage the paintings.”