A Murder of Justice

by Robert Andrews

  “We’re developing a clearer picture of Kevin Gentry’s activities and associations that may bear on his killing and his connection with Skeeter Hodges.”

  Rhinelander listened without expression, his eyes hooded behind the small round lenses of his glasses. “Is this… picture bringing you closer to closing the case?” He put a smirking accent on “picture.”

  “I believe so.”

  “You believe so,” Rhinelander intoned solemnly. “When?”

  Tompkins cut in. “Are you asking for a specific date, Mr. Chairman?”

  Rhinelander smiled innocently at Tompkins. “Obviously, Mayor, we’d all like one. Just as obviously, though, I realize that’s not doable.” Turning his attention to Frank, he asked, “But can you tell me roughly?… A month? Two months? A year?”

  Frank shook his head. “I can’t tell you that either, Mr. Chairman. We could walk out of here this morning and run across something that’d wrap a ribbon around the case by dinnertime. But then again…”

  “But then again,” Rhinelander picked up, “it could join the other cold cases in your extensive files.” Without waiting for an answer, the congressman continued. “So it’s a matter of running down things? Exploring possibilities?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “A lot of dead ends too, I imagine?” Rhinelander was obviously building a case but trying, unsuccessfully, to camouflage it under a tone of empathy.

  “Dead ends too, sir,” Frank acknowledged.

  “I understand,” Rhinelander said, “that when the department was forced to reopen the Gentry case, you and Lieutenant Phelps pooh-poohed your superior’s recommendation to create a task force.”

  Jose leaned forward, looking down the table at Rhinelander. “Frank and I have been on the force a total of fifty years, Mr. Chairman. We’ve never seen a task force do much more than get in its own way.”

  “So it was a judgment call that restricted the investigation to you and Lieutenant Kearney?”

  “And Detective Janowitz.”

  “Oh, yes… the young man who is recovering from losing his arm.” Rhinelander made it an accusation. He turned to Tompkins.

  “Your Honor, let me tell you what my thinking is.”

  “Please do, sir,” Tompkins said, a chill in his voice.

  “I think we have a case that has escalated in complexity. From the unremarkable shooting of a drug dealer on the street we have moved to attempts by an international criminal cartel to assassinate American law enforcement officers on the streets of our nation’s capital.” Rhinelander angled his head toward Tompkins. “Are you with me so far, Mayor?”

  “I’m with you.” Tompkins’s tone dropped several more degrees.

  Rhinelander nodded in satisfaction. “And solving such a case depends, as Lieutenant Kearney observed, on tracking down possibilities and checking out dead ends… yes?”

  Tompkins nodded.

  Sitting back in his chair, Rhinelander touched his fingertips together just below his lips, looking very judgelike.

  “My thinking is that when a case grows so large in scope, so complex in detail, we must devote more assets to solving it.” Rhinelander paused, then launched further into the assault. “It appears, Mayor Tompkins, that your police department, having initially assigned too few assets, is now behind the curve. There is an irredeemable loss of credibility because of the handling thus far. Meanwhile, the case has expanded far beyond your ability to deal with it.”

  Tompkins answered with a flinty silence.

  “Let me explain the position I’m in, Mayor Tompkins,” Rhinelander said. “I’m responsible for appropriations for the District of Columbia.”

  “I’m well aware of that, sir.”

  “And I’m certain, you’re aware, then, that the curse of government is that there is never enough money to do everything for everyone.”

  Tompkins nodded curtly.

  “And so, my subcommittee must make decisions. Set priorities on who gets what,” Rhinelander said with a sigh of regret. “And I do not believe it is good government to reward incompetency.”

  “There is a point, Mr. Chairman?” Tompkins said.

  “Come now, Your Honor.” Rhinelander spoke with a let’s-do-business edge. “The District has great needs. Schools… medical care… Head Start… shelters for the homeless…” He threw his hands up. “The list is endless.”

  Lacing his fingers together at his chest, Rhinelander set aside the stick and offered the carrot.

  “I am willing to work with you on these problems, Mayor Tompkins,” he said in a conciliatory tone. “But it will be very difficult for me to convince my colleagues to fund these needs when the District government’s credibility is threatened by blatant examples of the inefficiency of its police department.”

  Tompkins was silent for a small eternity. A vein pulsed at his temple, and it wouldn’t have surprised Frank if the Mayor had walked. Then Tompkins blinked rapidly several times and the vein stopped pulsing.

  “What do you want, Mr. Chairman?” Tompkins asked, his voice leaden.

  “For the District’s good, Mayor, we need to get this case behind us. We need more assets, and as well, we need new thinking… new eyes. And that’s why I’ve invited Deputy Director Atkins here.” Rhinelander paused. “I believe the best course is to have the Bureau take over the Gentry and Hodges cases.”

  Atkins had the uncomfortable look of a man who wished he wasn’t there. He quickly added, “With, of course, local assistance from your department, Mayor Tompkins.”

  Rhinelander got a beatific smile. “Of course, Mayor, of course.”

  In a wordless procession through the Rayburn corridors, Frank and Jose accompanied Tompkins to the horseshoe driveway where the Lincoln and the motorcycle escort waited.

  An aide opened the rear door for the Mayor. A visibly disheartened Tompkins turned to Frank and Jose.

  “Gentlemen, I’m sorry. That crap Rhinelander handed out was undeserved.”

  Frank wanted to reach out and squeeze the man’s shoulder, but he didn’t. He said, “I guess politics is being satisfied with half a loaf, Your Honor.”

  Tompkins ducked into the backseat. He smiled cynically out at Frank and Jose. “Half a loaf? Sometimes, fellas, politics is being satisfied with one goddamn slice.”

  Frank and Jose watched as the mayor’s convoy made its way down the drive, turned right, and disappeared down South Capitol Street.

  “No question how Rhinelander knew about that task-force shit,” Jose said.

  Frank nodded. “Nobody ever accused Randolph Emerson of not knowing which side his toast was buttered on.”

  Jose’s cell phone chimed. He answered, then, covering the mike pickup, whispered, “R.C.”

  “You’re where?” Jose asked into the phone.

  A pause.

  “We’ll be right there,” he told Calkins. He folded the phone and turned to Frank. “We both gettin’ absentminded.”

  It came to Frank: The court order in his jacket pocket… Renfro Calkins waiting for Jose and him at the Riggs Bank. “After that crap in there”-he jerked a thumb back over his shoulder-“last thing I feel like doing is pushing a car that’s run out of gas.”

  “Aw, come on,” Jose urged, “our chance to give the Bureau a little local assistance.”

  A cross Pennsylvania Avenue, half a block east of the White House and opposite the U.S. Treasury, Riggs Bank is Washington’s oldest private financial institution. Riggs financed Samuel Morse’s invention of the telegraph. Abraham Lincoln opened his Riggs account weeks after Jefferson Davis closed his. And court order or not, Riggs took care that its safe-deposit boxes remained as secure as its billions in assets. It was early afternoon before a vice-president ushered Frank, Jose, and Calkins into a small vaulted room.

  The Riggs vice-president watched with rapt attention as Calkins opened his print kit, dusted the exterior of the steel safe-deposit box, and lifted the prints. When he had finished, Frank and Jose placed the box content
s in a heavy cardboard carton and signed the releases that returned the box to the bank.

  Six hours and four carafes of coffee later, Frank tossed his pencil down, cupped his chin in his palm and surveyed his desk, cluttered with notes, crumpled papers, and a take-out container that earlier had held a prosciutto and Taleggio cheese sandwich. Three hours before, R.C. had called in with a preliminary: unsurprisingly, he’d found several sets of Gentry’s prints on the exterior of the safe-deposit box. Martin Osmond’s had appeared as well, on the packet of receipts and, of course, on the will and the cassettes.

  Frank glanced at the whiteboard, covered with a hash of dates, times, names. He felt a sudden weariness welling up, a soul-deep exhaustion that had nothing to do with the hour or the stress of the day. He imagined he saw it too in Jose’s eyes.

  “Why’d it happen, Hoser?”

  “I think that’s pretty clear,” Jose said in a flat, leaden tone.

  “No,” Frank disagreed. “What happened’s clear. Why…?” He asked.

  Jose got up and stretched. “The U.S. attorney’s satisfied with what happened. We called Atkins. Question is, we gonna let Emerson know?”

  Their eyes met.

  “Well,” Jose said with a conspiratorial smile, “I had to ask.” He paused, then asked, “How about Tompkins?”

  Frank decided that Jose was working way ahead of him.

  “Think so, Hoser,” he said. Then, assurance building, “Definitely.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Just after nine, Frank found a parking place on Virginia Avenue opposite the Watergate complex. Jose got out and stood on the sidewalk, looking up at the tall yellow stucco building that was now a George Washington University dormitory.

  “Lost a real piece of American history there,” he said.

  Frank followed Jose’s gaze. The dorm once was a Howard Johnson’s. And not just any HoJo. This was the Howard Johnson’s where Nixon’s dirty-tricks team planned their break-in of the Democratic Party’s campaign headquarters in 1972.

  “I always wondered about those guys,” Frank said as he opened the car trunk. “I mean, two of those guys… E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy.” He lifted out the small tape deck. “I don’t think we would have made the cut: J. Adams Phelps and F. Delano Kearney don’t have quite the same ring.”

  Brian Atkins opened the door. He wore faded khakis, a chambray work shirt, and Top-Siders. Over his shoulder, Frank took in a large, softly lit living room. Two dove-gray sofas faced each other, framing a powerfully colored red and blue Persian carpet and a low, intricately carved Chinese bamboo-and-elm table. Against a wall, a very good seascape oil hung over a black lacquer sideboard.

  “Gentlemen, come in.” Atkins smiled. He momentarily eyed the tape deck Frank had slung over his shoulder, then turned to lead them to an enclosed balcony. Four teak chairs looked out on the Potomac, black and glistening in the night, and in the distance, headlights raced across Key Bridge between Rosslyn and Georgetown. In the background, jazz played on an unseen sound system.

  Frank noticed a highball glass on the coffee table between the chairs.

  “I’m having a little medicinal scotch,” Atkins said. “You guys?”

  “Beer?” Jose semi-asked.

  “Pilsner Urquell? Tecate?” Atkins offered. “I’ve somehow accumulated a regular United Nations in the fridge.”

  “Anything cold,” Jose said.

  Frank nodded. “Same here.”

  Atkins disappeared, and Frank stepped closer to the glass wall of the balcony. Five stories directly below, Rock Creek Parkway. To his right and at a greater distance, Georgetown Foundry and the waterfront, and, somewhere in the darkness, the bench where he wished he and Kate were sitting now.

  “Music too loud?”

  Frank turned. Atkins was setting two Tecates and frosted mugs on the coffee table.

  “Monk’s never too loud,” Jose said.

  “This’s early Thelonious,” Atkins said as the three settled into their chairs.

  “Riverside label,” Jose furnished. “With Gerry Mulligan?”

  Atkins silently saluted Jose with his scotch. He watched as the two men filled their mugs. Then he was all business. “You guys didn’t come here for beer and jazz.”

  Frank sipped his beer. It had a bitter metallic taste. “No, we didn’t.”

  “You said there’s something new.”

  “Some background first?” Frank asked. Getting a nod from Atkins, he put the beer down on the coffee table. “In the files we’re going to be turning over to the Bureau, there’re interviews in which two people told us that shortly before his death, Kevin Gentry was investigating Skeeter Hodges’s operation.”

  Atkins’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “Investigating?”

  “In preparation for congressional hearings,” Jose said.

  “That’s… interesting.”

  “You didn’t know?” Frank asked. “Neither Gentry nor Rhinelander said anything to you?”

  Atkins smiled. “Hell, they may have and I just forgot or didn’t pay attention at the time. Some committee on the Hill is always talking about investigating something or somebody.”

  “And then we go back to the weapon that killed Skeeter,” Jose picked up. “Two years before the shooting on Bayless Place, the same weapon was used to kill Gentry…”

  “And the shell casings that you found on Bayless had Pencil’s fingerprints,” Atkins finished. Then, as if making a mental note to himself, “That pistol… if we only knew where it went… where it is now.”

  “We may never know,” Frank said. “But there are some things we do know.”

  “Oh?”

  “We know that Gentry recruited somebody inside Skeeter’s organization.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Gentry told two people, who then told us… a guy he’d worked with at the Agency and the director of a think tank.”

  “The insider has a name?”

  “Martin Osmond,” Frank said

  Atkins got a reflective look. “The name’s familiar…”

  “He’s dead,” Jose said. “Died of a heroin overdose the same night Gentry was shot.”

  “So, two men, both dead for over two years.” Atkins sipped at his scotch, then shook his head. “We’re seeing a replay of the old adage that dead men tell no tales.”

  “But they leave things behind.” Frank pulled the safe-deposit key from his pocket and laid it beside his beer on the coffee table. “This is to a safe-deposit box Kevin Gentry maintained at Riggs Bank,” he explained. “Leon Janowitz found it in Gentry’s files in the Library of Congress archives.”

  Atkins leaned forward, picked up the key, examined it, then put it back on the table. “And in the box?” he asked.

  “A number of things,” Frank said. “A hundred and twenty thousand in cash. And Martin Osmond’s will.”

  “A… will?”

  “Osmond knew the game he was playing,” Jose said. “He left the money to his grandmother.”

  “And in a box controlled by Gentry,” Atkins said.

  “Gentry kept receipts,” Jose said. “Payouts began in June ’ninety-eight. They came out of a subcommittee account.”

  Atkins held up a hand. “Let me guess… The payments totaled a hundred twenty K. So it’s obvious… Gentry slipped up somehow. Or maybe Osmond. Anyway, Skeeter and Pencil decide to take them out.”

  Frank nodded. “That’s part of it. Some loose ends… like who killed Skeeter and, later, Pencil and his lady friend?”

  “And who nearly killed you and Leon Janowitz?” Atkins added. “We’ll be nailing all that down.”

  “Maybe we can help you,” Jose said.

  Atkins pointed to the key. “That certainly did.”

  “That box was full of surprises.”

  Something in Frank’s voice brought Atkins’s eyes up. “Oh?”

  Frank pulled an audiocassette from an inner coat pocket. “This isn’t the original,” he explained. “It’s a copy
of one Osmond made from the original… a cassette that Skeeter and Pencil recorded.” He put the cassette on the coffee table, next to the safe-deposit key. Then he reached down and brought up the portable tape deck, flicked it on, and inserted the cassette.

  “This’ll be interesting,” he said, as he pressed the Play button.

  A hammering rap blasted from the small tape player.

  Atkins winced.

  Frank turned the volume down. “A recorder in Skeeter’s car was picking this up. This was in June ’ninety-two.”

  “I still don’t…” Atkins said, frowning.

  The tape went silent. Then a burst of static. The sound of a car door opening. Frank pressed the Pause button.

  “The first voice is Skeeter Hodges.”

  “How you doin’?”

  It was a cruel, sly voice of arrogance and condescension.

  Frank pressed the Pause button again.

  Atkins stared at the tape deck, seemingly hypnotized.

  Frank reached for the Play button, waited, and looked into Atkins’s eyes. “And the next voice is yours.”

  “You called about a deal.”

  “Yeah. You want Juan Brooks?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know who I am?”

  “You’re James Hodges. You give me Brooks… what do you want?”

  “I walk. Me, my friends Martin Osmond, Pencil Crawfurd.”

  Frank punched the Stop button. Atkins had a thousand-yard stare-a man who’d seen a wished-away hell suddenly reappear, yawning open at his feet.

  “You and Skeeter cut the deal,” Frank said, dispassionately, even sadly. “He’d turn in Juan Brooks. You’d get the publicity. And he’d inherit Brooks’s outfit.”

  “And then Skeeter kept helping you.” Jose’s tone was less sympathetic, a tone borrowed from his father’s pulpit. “Skeeter would finger his competition. You’d shut them down. You’d put another notch in your badge, Skeeter’d add another piece of turf.”

  Atkins sat emotionless, rocking ever so slightly in cadence, matching what he was hearing against some internal master record.

  “You kept the heat off Skeeter,” Frank said in a hoarse whisper. “Warned him whenever the posse was saddling up.”