Power Play (An FBI Thriller)

by Catherine Coulter

  Davis said, “Hey, I already know what jokes work.” He paused for a moment. “And my brain isn’t manic. It’s a finely tuned instrument. Do you know, though, I think she’d have taken Jitterbug down herself once she got over her surprise at his popping out of the box like that. I gotta say it’s possible she really didn’t need me. Tough, that one. Lots of red hair, like yours, Sherlock. I bet she’d impress you.

  “I did follow her home to this swank gated mansion on a huge lot in Chevy Chase, halfway down Ridgewood Road, through this big secure gate with a guardhouse, cameras, and an intercom. It’s all woods out there, with very few houses. The ones that are there are big and set back and very private. The guardhouse was empty, but she didn’t have to speak to anyone on the intercom. Nope, the gate opened up fast, which means there were cameras inside monitoring. I was right behind her in my plebian Jeep on her big circular driveway. Before we’d even stopped, this big guy comes running out of the house, makes a beeline right at me like he’s going to rip my tonsils out. She climbs out of her BMW and calls out something like ‘Hooley, it’s okay.’

  “Since I had to come to work and couldn’t toast her with the bourbon, she patted my face and gave me another kiss. Hooley’s standing only six feet away, his arms crossed over his chest, measuring me for a coffin. He was a bodyguard, I’m sure of it. I’m thinking maybe she’s someone important.”

  “Well, what’s her name?” Coop McKnight said.

  “Does anyone recognize the name Natalie Black?”

  Sherlock stared at him. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Davis’s town house

  Euclid Avenue, Washington, D.C.

  Monday, early evening

  When Davis pulled his Jeep into his driveway, he saw a big yellow Harley idling at the curb, the rider still astride it all in punk-black, from boots to helmet to thin black leather gloves. Now, what was all this? Maybe it was Jitterbug’s brother, out for revenge. He ambled over to where the Harley and its driver sat waiting. As he neared, the driver revved a loud scare-the-birds-out-of-the-trees hello. He loved the sound of the Blockhead engine.

  It wasn’t Jitterbug or one of Davis’s informants—none of them had that kind of juice, and the Sportster 1200 Custom was a nice one, a hog right up there in the Harley food chain. Who, then? He smiled as he came to a stop a foot from that gorgeous machine with its beefy front end. “I like the hissy-fit yellow paint job. Haven’t seen that color before. You like the pull-back handlebars?”

  Off came the helmet and out fell a reddish-brown braid, thick and heavy past her shoulders. He’d heard one of the agents in the unit call the braid a fishtail. Okay, he could see that. She was wearing dark sunglasses. She pulled off her leather gloves and began drumming her fingers on the fuel tank. Her nails were clean and buffed, and she wore no rings. “The handlebars were a pain until I got used to them. Now they’re good.” She eyed him up and down. “Mom said you sort of moseyed, like you had all the time in the world. I told her you sounded like a druggie yourself. She said no, couldn’t be, you were an FBI agent, plus you were too cute to be stupid. You’re Special Agent Davis Sullivan?”

  “Yeah, that’s me. Who are you?”

  She pulled off her sunglasses. Would you look at those pale green eyes. He’d never seen that color before, well, yeah, he had, that very morning. She was striking, like her mother.

  “I’m her one and only kid.” She leaned over and shook his hand. “Thank you for keeping my mom out of deep doodoo this morning. She seems to be getting herself into weird situations lately, and I try to be around to help her out, only I wasn’t this morning, so thank you again. She couldn’t believe that little twerp wanted to carjack her new Beemer, right in front of the shopping mall. All she was doing there was picking up her dry cleaning.”

  Even though she’d thanked him—twice—Davis could tell Biker Babe wished she could have been the one to be there to do the saving, not him. Her hair wasn’t as stark red as her mom’s. Her dad must have diluted the mix, but she was pale-skinned like her mom, with nary a freckle in sight. He smiled. “You’re welcome. So she said I saved her?”

  “Not exactly, but close enough. She said you never dropped your cup of coffee, said you calmly put it down, and when it was over you picked it up and took a sip. She admired that. She said you smelled like cordite and lime, like the aftershave my father used to use. I can still see him, patting his face with it while he hummed show tunes.” She stopped, shook her head, reset. “From what she said, I think the guy’s brain was on overload and he’d probably have crashed and burned without your help.”

  Yeah, that’s what he’d thought, too, but he couldn’t help himself. He said, “Nah, the guy was still in the manic stage, unpredictable, on the edge, but you’re right, Ms. Black. You look like your mother.”

  She gave him a lazy smile. “Thank you.”

  “If I hadn’t been there, Ms. Black, I think your mom would have cleaned Jitterbug’s clock herself, made him very sorry he was in that particular shopping mall and had a hankering to joyride in a shiny black Beemer.”

  “Jitterbug—good name. I went by Washington Memorial to check on him, found out the moron’s real name is Paul Jones. I hope he’s not a descendant of a very fine American hero John Paul Jones.”

  “If so, it’s time the gene line closed its doors. You want to come in? Give the beast here a rest? You can pull him in behind my Jeep.”

  She looked at his town house, then at him, up and down, and revved the engine. “Mom said you had a real smart mouth.”

  “Me? Never. And my place is clean since my housekeeper was here today, so even the john sparkles. No food, though, since Monroe doesn’t cook.”

  “Monroe?”

  “He’s a retired firefighter and my housekeeper, what you’d call real anal. I once saw him using an ancient toothbrush he’d pulled off his tool belt to get after some dirty grout in the shower.”

  She grinned. “Don’t you just hate that dirty grout?”

  “Never really noticed it until Monroe pointed it out.”

  She studied him a moment longer, then pulled her helmet back on, fastened the strap, and pulled on her gloves. “I’d like to, but I can’t. Can I have a rain check?”

  “Any day but Sunday, that’s my busting-around-with-family day.”

  She nodded. “Thanks again, Agent Sullivan, for helping my mom. I gotta go.” She roared away from the curb and down Euclid Avenue like she owned it.

  “Who was that hot cracker?”

  Davis turned to see Mr. Mulroney standing right behind him, a bag of groceries from the Mini-Mart cradled in his bony arms, a bag of Fritos Scoops! sticking out the top. And was that a can of bean dip? His mouth watered.

  “Do you know, I never found out her name.”

  “What’s wrong with you, boy? I never thought you’d be that turtle-slow.”

  “I guess all that black body armor on that sweet hog sizzled my brain.”

  Mr. Mulroney, eighty-four and a half, said as he turned away, “At least she wears a helmet, and that’s gotta mean her brain’s not a bowl of cold oatmeal.”

  When had that saying been popular? He watched Mr. Mulroney navigate himself and his groceries safely into the town house two doors down from his, then he glanced once more down Euclid, but she was long gone. He liked her smart mouth and her sense of humor. He pulled off his leather jacket, slung it over his shoulder, and whistled as he walked into his spanking-clean entrance hall. He looked around, breathing in the scent of Pine Sol, Monroe’s favorite cleaner. He walked into his shiny kitchen, pulled a bottle of water from the spotless refrigerator and drank deep. He said to the bottle, as he wiped his mouth, “Curiouser and curiouser.”

  England

  Two weeks ago

  Natalie was driving a steady fifty miles per hour in a light rain on the M2, heading south from London toward Canterbury, handling her sporty dark green Jaguar with a good deal of skill since she’d taken defensive driving lessons, thanks to Bru
ndage’s endless nagging. She loved the Jag, even driving on the wrong side of the road, and called her Nancy.

  The rain picked up, nothing new in that, and the traffic remained on the heavy side, nothing new in that, either, but smooth and steady on the major thoroughfares. After living in London for more than a year, an umbrella—brolly—was as much a staple of her wardrobe as her shoes or her purse. She’d had nearly an hour and a half to think about what she was going to say to George’s mother. Vivian had liked her, at least before George’s death, had told her in her rasping smoker’s voice that she was a modern young woman with spunk and spit. Since Vivian was older than dirt, she naturally saw even a menopausal woman as young.

  Natalie turned off the M2 onto A2 before Dunkirk, then some minutes later she turned left onto the narrow two-lane country road. Another ten minutes and she’d reach the small town of Blean, not ten miles from Canterbury, and George’s country home.

  Her windshield wipers moved rhythmically, a steady metronome, the sound oddly comforting, and the Good Lord knew comfort was in short supply these days. There was no traffic on this pretty stretch, lots of tree-covered hills and patchwork fields and valleys, and some scary windy roads, several sharp curves above deep gullies, and few guardrails. She was only a few miles from Whitstable when she became aware of the big black sedan behind her, closing fast. Okay, so the idiot wanted to pass, on this road, in this weather, at this particular spot. It didn’t make much sense to her, but she slowed and pulled over since she was near the deep curve that gave onto a thirty-foot drop. There wasn’t a guardrail here, so she had to pay attention.

  But the sedan didn’t pull out to pass, it pulled closer until it was maybe six feet from the Jag’s rear bumper. She couldn’t see the driver, the windows were dark-tinted, but she knew to her gut that someone in this car wanted to hurt her, maybe even send her over the cliff edge, down, down, to the bottom of the deep gully.

  The big Mercedes slammed into her and she was thrown hard against her seat belt. Her Jaguar shuddered with the force of the hit, the wheel jerking her onto the gravel on the shoulder, the wheels spinning out, so close to the edge. The air bag deployed, blinding her, but she knew exactly where she was, and saw the cliff edge looming, saw herself going over, striking the huge boulders on the way down, tumbling over and over until she hit the bottom of that rock-strewn gully. She didn’t want to die, didn’t want her life to end like this, at the hands of someone who hated her, someone she didn’t know. She fought to straighten the wheel as the air bag collapsed and she could see again. She managed to ease the wheels off the deadly gravel and back onto the road. She saw the Mercedes coming up alongside her, waited, waited, then an instant before he struck her, she stomped hard on the accelerator. Her Jag shot forward, swerving to hug the centerline. She saw the Mercedes in her rearview mirror, accelerating to catch her. She waited, waited until he was ready to come alongside, then jerked her wheel inward, sending her vehicle straight toward the stretch of hillside. The Mercedes hit her rear bumper and went airborne, nearly flying off the cliff, but the driver somehow managed to pull the car back into the road.

  He was better than she was. No choice now, she floored it. The Jaguar gave her its all, but still he came on, faster now, more determined, and she could smell the exhaust from the big engine. She saw her life, fleeting moments that held only deadening fear, and she knew she was going to die, braced herself for it, and whispered, Perry, I’m so sorry.

  Davis’s town house

  Washington, D.C.

  Tuesday morning

  When Davis’s cell sang out the awesome beginning of “Psycho Killer” at seven a.m., he was wet to his skivvies, sailing an America’s Cup catamaran, its huge sail spearing up into the blue sky, flapping loud overhead. They were heeling so far to port he feared they were going to capsize. Odd thing was, a huge custom yellow Harley was lashed to the low side of the boat, adding five hundred and something pounds. He jerked awake, let the Talking Heads clear out his mind. When he answered, his voice rough and deep from sleep, he supposed he really wasn’t surprised to hear Natalie Black’s voice. “Special Agent Sullivan. I know it’s Tuesday morning and your alarm will go off in precisely fifteen minutes, right?”

  He stared at his cell. “No. Seven-thirty.”

  “A lovely morning hour. It’s time to rise and shine and sally forth into this very fine day, but dress warmly or you’ll chilblain your toes. I let you sleep in since you enjoyed such a lovely fun-filled Monday night with a very pretty blonde, oddly enough, of Latin origin. You might want to call your boss, tell him you’ll be late again. I’ll expect you at my house for breakfast in an hour.” And she rang off.

  He called Savich, who was eating Cheerios, and heard Sean in the background saying he wanted to play tight end for the Patriots like the Gronk, maybe in a couple years when he got big enough. Davis told him about Ms. Black’s call. All Savich said was “I hope there’s not another Jitterbug waiting for you, Davis.”

  Thirty minutes later, as Davis drove his Jeep toward Chevy Chase, he wondered if Ms. Black Leather Biker Babe would be eating grapefruit with them. And how had Mrs. Black known about Elena from Treasury?

  Natalie Black’s house

  Chevy Chase, Maryland

  Tuesday morning

  Davis pulled his Jeep close to the discreetly inset intercom next to the huge wrought-iron gate on Ridgewood Road, saw the guardhouse was empty, and pushed the button. He looked up, smiled into the camera, and tried to look as nonthreatening as a sheepdog.

  A man’s deep voice came through the intercom, “Yeah, I see it’s you, Mr. Hotshot. Mrs. Black told me to let you in.” He finished off with a snort. Davis didn’t think they were going to be best buds, sharing a beer at the Feathers.

  Davis pulled in front of the beautiful old house, which had probably been built around the beginning of the twentieth century. It had a full three stories with a deep wraparound porch, at least a half-dozen chimneys, and big windows everywhere. It was painted a soft light blue with chocolate trim, though he thought it could use a bit of a touch-up. He stepped out of his Jeep to see a young guy in a green feed cap riding on a mower in clean straight lines over the large front lawn. He breathed in a hint of early spring jasmine, his mom’s favorite, triggering a memory of being a teenager and wanting to go back to sleep. It wasn’t breath-seeing cold, but close enough. He zipped up his leather jacket.

  The front door opened and there stood the big man again, Hooley, who’d come busting out of the house yesterday morning, eager and ready to jerk out his tonsils until Natalie had called him off.

  Davis eyed Hooley now, his beefy arms crossed over his beefy chest, a black turtleneck stretched around his thick neck, looking like he could punch out Muhammad Ali in his heyday, and wondered if Hooley’s IQ was a match for his muscles. He walked past the bodyguard, knowing the middle of his back was being tracked. It didn’t occur to him that Hooley was thinking Davis looked like a pussy with a smart mouth, and not even contemplating the size of his brain until he said, “You shouldn’t be here, yahoo,” and he cracked his knuckles for emphasis. “We don’t need you hanging around bragging about how cool you are.”

  Davis turned, gave Hooley an appalled look. “What? You’re saying you don’t think I’m cool, Beef?”

  “My name’s Hooley, jerk-off. My granny looks cooler than you racing in her wheelchair.”

  Not bad. “You should visit the Bonhomie Club sometime, meet Fuzz and Marvin. They’ll tell you what a cool guy I am.” He grinned.

  After a moment, Hooley grinned back. It looked painful. “I’ve heard about the backroom poker games there. Follow me. Mrs. Black likes to have breakfast in the sunroom.”

  Davis followed Hooley through a maze of hallways, all wide and high-ceilinged, with original art on the walls, ancient Persian carpets on the polished wood floors. They walked through the kitchen, a modern marvel beneath carved crown moldings from ten decades ago, into the sunroom, obviously added on, a small screened-in
room with space heaters going full blast, looking out over a big backyard, beautifully kept, the big stone fence covered with ivy, thick trees behind it.

  “Agent Sullivan. Welcome to my home.” Natalie Black rose, shook his hand, gave him a big smile, waved around the room. “I like it out here even when it’s cold outside. You can be toasty with the space heaters and you feel like you’re cocooned in nature’s bosom. My husband always—well, never mind that.”

  “I should have recognized you yesterday, Mrs. Black,” he said.

  “Actually, I’m glad you didn’t right away, Agent Sullivan. Apparently, we both know about each other now, since I checked you out as well.”

  She was wearing jeans, sneakers, a loose burgundy Redskins sweatshirt, her red hair in a ponytail. If she was wearing makeup, he couldn’t see it. She did indeed look like the biker babe’s mom. Because he was a cop, he saw the strain in her eyes, eyes the same light green color as her kid’s.

  He shook her hand, waited for her to sit, then sat down himself. He drank orange juice, then his coffee, rich and thick. He could feel it hitting his bloodstream, had to be the finest feeling there was.

  “Hooley, all’s good here. Go to the kitchen and have some breakfast.”

  He said toward Hooley’s retreating back, “If Hooley’s a bodyguard, then why wasn’t he picking up the dry cleaning yesterday morning? Or at least with you? I mean, the shopping center is a good five miles from here. Why were you alone?”

  “My Beemer’s new. I wanted to drive her myself. Do you like the coffee? It’s a special blend.”

  “Sure, I was thinking it may be even better than Starbucks.” He looked at her closely for a moment. She looked tired, nearly at the end of her tether. He said, “In cosmic terms, Mrs. Black, our acquaintance is what you’d call brief, so I strongly doubt you’d invite me for breakfast to discuss the upcoming midterm elections. I know you’ve got big problems, so that probably means you invited the cop. What’s going on that you’d need a cop in addition to a bodyguard? As to that, why do you have a bodyguard?”