Give Us This Day

by Tom Avitabile

  “White House mess delivered dinner for two at 20:20.”

  “They had dinner at 8:20!”

  “And she waited for him to return. Will there be anything else, sir?”

  “No thank you, Brent . . . and again this is close hold.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  Williams turned to leave and Cass had a second thought.

  “Dinner for two? Had the first lady eaten beforehand?”

  “No, sir. FLOTUS was in Omaha as part of a six-state western swing this weekend. She’s wheels down, Andrews, at 13:00 Monday.”

  Cass just sat there. Williams, sensing he was dismissed, left.

  His wife’s away; he has dinner with her. Right after she learns of a major breakthrough in her case and about Cindy and me. Yet, I don’t find out till today. Cass’s thoughts were coming at a hundred miles an hour. He couldn’t believe Mitchell still held a grudge, but maybe with this dalliance with squeaky-clean Mrs. Morton, the wife of one of his most trusted commanders, Cass held a playing card to trump even the president’s considerable clout.

  .G.

  “So you will let me know the minute you two figure out what we might be up against?”

  “Sure thing, Brooke,” Peter said.

  “Tootles on your loo,” Kronos said.

  Brooke was momentarily stumped, and then she got what the human robot was saying.

  “Toodle-oo to you, too!” She buzzed George. “How did it go with Wasserman? When will Cynthia be in?”

  “Ahhh, that’s the thing . . .”

  Brooke didn’t like the sound of that. “Better come in here, George.”

  Thirty seconds later, George was standing before Brooke who was fuming.

  “He let her leave? Just like that? In the middle of our investigation?”

  “He says we never demanded she stay in New York, we just asked,” George said.

  “Lawyers . . . When will she be back from the Caymans?”

  “He didn’t know, but he’s going to call her and find out.”

  “Call him again, George. Let him know we are not happy. I’m not happy. And if he doesn’t produce her, here in my office, by Monday morning nine a.m. sharp, I’ll slap an injunction on him and her!”

  .G.

  Martadi, the woman at the front desk of the Seven Mile Beach Marriot Hotel in the Grand Caymans was starting to get short with the lawyer from New York who kept calling every twenty minutes. “No sir, she does not answer the phone and I have already checked the gym, the pool, and I have two boys on the beach who say she isn’t there. I already sent someone to her room. Okay, I will try it one more time.” As she put him on hold she let out a deep breath. This man was relentless. After letting Cynthia’s phone ring at least ten times, she switched back to the call from New York. “I’m sorry, sir, but still I get no answer . . . Sir . . . Sir, with all due respect, I have sent three bellmen to the room in the last few hours. She is not in the hotel or on the grounds. Yes . . . I have your number . . . I will. Thank you for calling the Marriot Seven Mile . . .” She pulled the receiver from her ear before she finished the standard goodbye sign off, because he had hung up. It did not improve her mood.

  .G.

  In the rehearsal room that night Dequa saw the suntanned Paul. The nod Paul gave him indicated that the loose end he had told Kitman about had been clipped. Dequa wished that Paul had a more cost-effective way of eliminating possible threats instead of two pairs of round trip tickets and two suites in two different hotels in the Caribbean, but he had to admit, no trace of his victims would ever be found. Besides, it was, in the end, Kitman’s and ISIS’s money. He turned his attention to the matters at hand. He put on the headset, started the iPod with the sounds of band practice blaring over the large PA speakers in the room and began speaking to all the men in the room over their headsets. “Tonight is the last night we will all meet together. From this point on, you will break up into your individual assault teams. The packets before you are to be returned to me before you leave the room. For the rest of the hour, memorize their contents. Then I will speak to each one of you separately about your orders.”

  Bored out of his skull, Paul drummed his fingers on the snare drum in front of him. Finally, Dequa called him over. He took Paul’s headphone plug and inserted it into a separate box so that just he and Paul could converse over the blaring noise of the rehearsal recording.

  “I have another special task for you. I hesitate to assign you, though.”

  “Why. Have I not done what is required in the past?”

  “This one is more sensitive, delicate, and not a lost soul to be preyed upon.”

  “This intrigues me.”

  “This may get you killed.”

  Paul didn’t like that. But he was too involved to say no. “Maybe not. Who is the target?”

  Dequa pulled out a stack of pictures. He laid them out inside the empty guitar case before them.

  Paul moved them around as he studied them. “I see what you mean . . .”

  “This one is no middle-aged hopeless romantic waiting for a white knight to save her . . .”

  “Yes. I can see that,” Paul, the man they called the Sheik of Araby, said.

  “The desire is to have her eliminated within three days.”

  “May I ask?”

  “She is a forensic accountant; she was seen at the Davidson woman’s home. We believe she may have learned much from your last ‘date.’”

  “So why should I fear an accountant?”

  “Although she works for FinCEN, we can’t trace her back more than three months. And she looks capable.”

  Paul looked again at the blonde in the picture. She did have the look of confidence that having skills might bring. “I might have to take a different approach with this one.”

  “The ‘how’ is not my concern. Just make sure she is gone in three days,” Dequa said.

  .G.

  Jeannine pushed the coin holder into the slot and heard the five quarters drop into the laundromat’s dryer. As it turned, she sighed, having crossed one more item off her to-do list. Even though she was sworn to secrecy, Jeannine was glad her boss was able to sneak away for a short weekend trip, to Camp David where she hoped that, between whatever meetings she had, she’d find a moment to rest in the beautiful Maryland countryside. Brooke had been going twenty-four/seven for three months before this new phase of the investigation kicked in and, she thought, really needed to recharge and reset. Besides, having her boss out of town for a short window from Friday night to Sunday afternoon afforded her the chance to catch up on the things in her own life that she had put aside, like the laundry.

  .G.

  Inspector Dvorak was getting uncomfortable. He had traced the dead man in the floodgate to Prague’s underworld of gay and transsexual haunts. Here in this dark club frequented by men, he was not just a policeman looking to solve a mystery, but also a target. Every inquiry into the picture of the dead man was almost surely followed up by some kind of proposition or lewd reference. If he were gay, he would be as happy as a dog in a butcher shop. But as it was, he was very happy with his wife and would not even consider cheating on her with a willing female, much less a member of the same sex. However, some of these boys were very good looking. He could see the attraction, but only as an observer of all things human, not as a participant.

  After getting hit on with an umpteenth proposition to “party,” he got a hit on the picture.

  “Oh my God! Ebner!” Ruben, the man in the leather jacket with white piping exclaimed.

  “You know of this man?”

  “Oh yes. Ebner was very much liked by the butches looking for a fatty.”

  “Fatty?”

  “You know, boys with a little meat on ’em. More cushion for the pushin’?”

  “Were you pushin’ Ebner?” Dvorak said
.

  “Me. Goodness no. I like ’em big and strong, like you.”

  Dvorak let that come on roll on. “Who was he dating?”

  “Dating is such a limiting word . . . but I know he was all damp over some Westerner. Fellow came in and just blew him away. I mean, yes, although they probably did that first!”

  “Maybe you didn’t understand but I am a policeman investigating a murder. So let’s knock off the happy talk. Got a name?”

  “No, but wait. . . . Hey, Sweet Cheeks, get your cute little ass over here.”

  Dvorak moaned then turned and was mildly taken aback as a young man in chaps—CHAPS, with nothing else on, exposing his bare rear end—walked over. “Yes. Oh, hello . . .”

  “Down, boy, he’s straight.”

  Dvorak scowled at Ruben.

  “Well, you couldn’t be any more obvious!” Ruben said defending his statement. Then he turned to Sweet Cheeks. “Who was the stud that Ebner was all gaga over?”

  “Oh, you mean, Paul?”

  “That was it, Paul!”

  “He was hot. Had that whole reluctant-straight-looking-to-explode thing going on. Delicious.”

  “This . . . delicious Paul got a last name . . . Sweet . . . Cheeks?” When in Rome, Dvorak thought.

  “Oh well, let me think . . . No. No, I don’t believe I ever caught his name, but I’d be his catcher any time!”

  Dvorak could only guess by the context what that meant. “Please focus. Were they ever here?” he said, pointing down to the floor.

  The two looked at each other. “Last Saturday night,” they said in unison.

  That fit with the fact that the body was found Sunday. “I’m going to have to ask both of you for your names in case I have more questions.”

  Dvorak took out his pad. When he was finished with Ruben and Sweet Cheeks, he went to the manager’s office to review the surveillance tapes of last Saturday night.

  Dvorak was frustrated. All the cameras in the club had good angles on Ebner, but there wasn’t one good shot of his date, Paul. Almost as if he was consciously avoiding the cameras, he thought. That would mean Paul had a purpose beyond fatty love. He could have training. “Tradecraft” was a word that flashed through Dvorak’s mind. If Paul was a professional, who and why would the target be a fat slob of a data analyst with bad taste in men? As he was leaving the club, he noticed a woman across the street. Actually, he noticed what she was doing.

  He crossed the street. When she finished, he spun around and put his head approximately at the height of the camera on the ATM she had just used. The camera saw the whole club entrance on the right side of what its frame would be, if it were aligned like his head was now.

  On his way home, Dvorak made two mental notes. One: review the bank’s ATM security cam. Two: equality has come a long way. Apparently, there are now gay—hitmen—although he couldn’t decide if that was a positive or negative development.

  .G.

  Dequa’s packet of information on his new target had her living in an apartment in the west 50s. He was there, across the street, at 5:00 a.m. Monday morning. At around 7:20 a blonde, looking just like her picture, exited the brownstone and got into a waiting government vehicle. Easy. Tomorrow I will kill the driver and sit in the driver’s seat and kill her when she gets in.

  His plan dissolved when the driver got out to open the door and his jacket swung open and he saw the man’s service weapon. As she got in, he also saw she was strapped. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  .G.

  One half-hour later, Paul walked up and down the street in front of the federal building where he had followed her by cab.

  Wearing a hat one time, sunglasses the next, then both, then just a jacket then none he walked casually along with one eye on the building. He did this to avoid suspicion and be less obvious on any surveillance cameras. An inert person in the same spot waiting for someone to leave would be spotted in short order.

  After all, this was the federal area. Huge, car-stopping mechanical barricades were cut into the streets. Guardhouses were everywhere and bomb-sniffing guard dogs inspected every vehicle that had the proper ID to enter. This four-block part of the city was essentially an armed federal fortress.

  In the end, Paul concluded that since this was not a suicide mission, he would have to find another way to get to his target.

  .G.

  Jeannine, holding the morning briefing book, greeted Brooke as she got off the elevator with a cup of coffee.

  “Thanks, Jeannine.”

  Jeannine leaned in and, in a conspiratorial tone asked, “How was your weekend?”

  Answering in the same manner, Brooke whispered, “Too short, but very good!” Then she took a sip and asked, “Did we hear from Cynthia Davidson or her lawyer?”

  “No, but George wants five minutes first thing.”

  “Okay, but make it in an hour. I’ve got a lot to catch up on here.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Chapter 19

  Bank On It

  Dvorak’s hunch that somebody may have been withdrawing money at the moment Paul left the club on Saturday paid off. He now had a clean image of Paul’s face, although his body was obscured by the shoulder of the patron of the bank who took up most of the high-definition frame that the ATM snapped every three seconds while someone was using the machine.

  Two hours later he had hits through Interpol’s face recognition network.

  Twenty minutes later he had “Paul Mumphries” at Havel Airport boarding a KLM flight to the Cayman Islands, traveling under a Dominican Republic passport. There, the trail went cold. He would have thought that Paul stayed on the Caymans’ sandy beaches but there was no hotel, land record, or credit receipts in that name after he did a few criminal network searches. That’s a cold trail, he thought, professionally cold.

  However, going down to the island to check into his further whereabouts was out of the question. He could hear his chief now, laughing him out of the office when he asked for the expense voucher to go to the warm, sunny Caribbean.

  So Dvorak did the next best thing. He sent out Paul’s picture and a “wanted for questioning in a suspicious death” notation across Interpol’s interconnects. Many countries all over the world including the US were on that network. The information was disseminated to the police agencies of those various nations on a regular basis. It was a painfully slow process but it was all he could do.

  After a week immersed in the counterculture shenanigans of the men who love men, Inspector Dvorak booked a cabin on a lake outside of Prague for he and his wife to spend his few days off together. His intention was to make love to her till it hurt as a way to anchor his feet in his own sexuality, which had been challenged all week. He drove home smiling, happily thinking, My poor wife.

  .G.

  While Mrs. Dvorak was breathlessly loving the new amorous, pounding attention she was suddenly receiving, over and over again, from her husband, his little “All Points Bulletin” across the worldwide network was also getting a work out.

  Officer Efrain Castro, a customs officer on night duty in the Grand Caymans ran the Czech Republic cop’s photo file through their facial ID system as a matter of clerical routine, cleaning up the stacks of stuff that came in during the day. The photo file got many hits. It seemed Paul Mumphries, aka, Paul Grundig, aka Paul Ludwig had been in and out of Cayman three times in the recent past. No stay was longer than two days. This was not uncommon for an island nation where many people, and countries, kept their money in their notoriously uncurious banking system. Although most didn’t travel under different assumed identities, especially since it would be a huge red flag. Another note was that “Paul of many last names” always returned to America.

  The Cayman officer posted his findings back to the Czech Republic but also flagged the American TSA. Maybe they could pick up the trail
.

  .G.

  McVickar Funeral Home in Chappaqua had been a family-owned business for one hundred and fifty years. Grandfathered in, it was originally a three-family house. But since they started offering cremation, local zoning laws and just the creepiness of it all, once the neighbors realized what was coming out of the chimney, forced them to move to the outskirts of town. That turned out to be bad for business. So the fourth generation funeral director, Ethan McVickar, was forced to move his his family’s home from the high-priced end of Chappaqua to seek a more affordable abode in the modest clime of Yonkers. He was in his office when the knock on the door caused him to check his watch: 7:30 a.m. on the dot.

  He went to the front door and unlocked it. “Good morning. Right on time. Come in; would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Well, let’s step into my office; you can explain what you are here for. I didn’t fully understand your proposition over the phone last night.”

  They sat at the small table in his office.

  “Mr. McVickar, I represent a party that wants to buy the house on Hillview Lane in Yonkers.”

  “I see. Well as I told you last night, my wife and I have our hearts set on that house. We like the schools and it’s on the end of the street so it has a minimum of neighbors.”

  “I understand; that’s why I have asked to see you this morning. After we spoke, I talked to my client and I am prepared to hand you a cashier’s check for five thousand dollars to walk away from the house and tear up your contract, no questions asked.”

  McVickar was impressed. “Wow, they really want it, don’t they?”

  “Yes they do. Do we have a deal?”

  “Look, Mr . . . I never got your name?”

  “Paul.”

  “Mr. Paul. We spent six months looking for a house that was just right. I am afraid I am going to have to say no to your generous offer.”

  “What if we raised . . .”

  McVickar held up his hand. “I appreciate your position but I’m afraid we are not going to change our minds at any price.”