The Starshine Connection

by Buck Sanders

  Quickly, and with no attempt at decorum, Slayton patted down the senator the way he would have shaken down a junkie in the Bronx. The agents assigned as the senator’s bodyguards stood stupidly by, recognizing Slay-ton and deferring to him. Reed himself had not uttered a sound since getting his lip split.

  “As a hypocritical example of both trends, that is, drugs and danger to life, Franklin Reed stands—or leans—as a prime example of a criminal of the highest caste. As you can see, this revelation has the senator somewhat dazed. Gentlemen?”

  The agents Slayton had stationed outside and briefed on the barest details of the action rushed forward. Slayton took a fistful of Reed’s coat in one hand and spun him back around.

  “Take this man into custody. His scummy bootleg Star-shine syndicate has screwed up lives and killed people—and for the record, he tried to have me killed, as well as others.” All this was in the form of a loud, general announcement not admitting of interruption. Some of the people present would make useful witnesses. “The Filibuster King has just been busted.” He put his bandaged face against Reed’s semiconscious one before he relinquished his grip. “You’re under arrest, you sonofabitch,” he breathed.

  Slayton saw the startled crowd of faces around him as Senator Reed was escorted away, sagging fast.

  Most of the people were still jabbering to each other in a vain attempt to determine exactly what had happened. Reed’s wife had recoiled and fallen solidly on her ample rump. After being helped up by a stranger, she burst into tears and went limp against his shoulder. In the background, Roxy’s eyes were bright with mischief; she did everything but clap her hands together at the sudden and controversial spectacle. Slayton relaxed as soon as Reed was gone and the people who had broken from the line sensed he was no longer hostile.

  Winship’s expression vacillated somewhere between outright horror and the resignation of a man on the gallows trapdoor. Cornelia looked almost as if she were holding him up.

  Slayton made for them. Cornelia was shaking her head in confusion. “Ben—?”

  “Come on, Ham,” he said. “I’ve got an interesting videotape I want you to look at downstairs. It seems that our beloved Southern Senator Reed is the head pimp behind the Starshine ring.”

  Downstairs from the banquet rooms, there was a modestly provisioned recreational area that included a widescreen video-beam projector. Slayton had prepared this area as well for his evening’s coup.

  Winship sat in silence as he watched the videotape Slayton had assembled from the materials confiscated at the Marina apartments. The names and places blubbered out by the terrified Brian Hill made too much sense.

  “Remember Rutledge, the name we found in the ledger?” Slayton said, pacing before the screen. “Turns out that he’s the link between the CIA and our men. The link between Rutledge and Senator Reed is—surprise!—Reed’s special executive assistant. Reed finds out about the Treasury investigation and orders his flunky to take care of me at the same time we make a connection between the flunky and Starshine. He turns around and orders the CIA to infiltrate his own apartment and catch me in the act—only the CIA doesn’t know I’m there. They’ve got other orders to get away unscathed, which translates as shoot-to-kill. The innocence of the flunky is preserved; why would he set up his own place as the stage for the hit?”

  “Ben,” Winship said, with delicacy, “You have just punched out a United States senator…”

  “Correction,” said Slayton. “A U.S. senator who also happens to be responsible for several deaths, for about two thousand offenses against Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, for conspiracy, and for that all-time favorite of the tabloids, misappropriation of federal funds. He used government money to seed the distillery operation in California. I spent last night checking. Hill sang like a bird. I have a report on what happened to the money collected for his moral legislation campaign already on your desk, sir.”

  “Terrific character witnesses you’ve come up with,” Winship muttered. “Hookers, gang members, and porno kings.”

  “But sir, we’re overlooking the central point, which to me is—that man tried to have me killed more than once. He’ll try to fob off the rap on one of his many flunkies. But he did it; he pulled the strings. He’ll probably get a suspended sentence and make a fortune off a book. He tried to nail me once in Washington, in the townhouse. He warned L.A. I was coming, courtesy of Rutledge’s hotline to the Treasury. All he had to do was order the machine to bump me off. Here in Washington he could order the hit indirectly. But he was the only one they would take orders from in Los Angeles. I had the warehouse locations monitored. Lucius Bonnard has an interesting collection of recorded phone calls on line for you, sir.”

  Winship, sagging in the chair, straightened slightly. “But that doesn’t change the fact…”

  “It’ll take a lot of sweetening, sir; I know that already. It would be best if I blew town for a while anyway. I have unfinished business in Los Angles; loose ends that need Boy Scout knots.”

  “I feel like a Mafia don,” said Winship. “I can’t believe I’m sanctioning this, that I’m not yelling. You know Reed will never go to prison.”

  “I knew that, sir.”

  “That was the reason for that theatrical display?”

  Slayton closed his eyes in affirmation.

  “Extreme. Irregular. Uncalled for, Ben.”

  “I realize that, sir. I’m prepared to turn in my resignation on your suggestion.”

  Winship sank into granite silence, tapping his fingers together contemplatively. After about a minute, he rose and headed toward the door. “I might as well get started soothing the ruffled feathers upstairs,” he said. “Good god.” He shook his head.

  Ben Slayton rejoiced privately as soon as the door closed. He felt only a twinge of guilt that he had manipulated Winship almost as ruthlessly as he had handled the grimmer details of the Starshine business.

  A few beats after Winship took his leave, Roxy came boiling through the door, running across the empty rumpus room and leaping into Slayton’s arms.

  “Thrills, excitement!” she cried. “That was really insane up there. You’re a hero to some of the people who hated the speech, you know.”

  “Hm.” Slayton caught her mechanically. “You were eavesdropping, I presume.”

  “Couldn’t hear a syllable,” she said. “Door’s too thick. Anyhow, it’s obvious that that gruff old goat who just shambled out of here is your boss, and you just got called on the carpet. How bad?” She seemed stimulated and happy, and Slayton let it wash over him. It made him forget about the bandage on his nose and the unpleasant taste of keeping his sense of honor roughly intact.

  “Next Tuesday they chop off my head and display it on a pole outside the White House.”

  “There, see, it isn’t so bad.” She laughed. It was not a giggle, and Slayton appreciated that. “You still have time to make merry. You even have time to make Roxy—if you hurry up about it.” She averted her head, surprised but pleased with her own boldness. She was about one glass of bubbly over the six-foot mark.

  “You mean you wish to incriminate yourself, too? Don’t you know I’ve been exiled?”

  “To Elba?” she said, deadpan.

  “No.”

  “Then it makes no difference, because you’re not leaving tonight. I can tell. Unless you’re busy. I can always go home—to my empty, desolate, barren home—and cry. Unless you’re not busy. Are you busy?”

  Slayton thrust his hands into his pockets. “Not now. It looks like my trick did work, after all.”

  “Los Angeles? Really? Sounds dreary as hell,” Roxy said.

  “I have to take care of three people,” he said, after considering it.

  She kissed him briefly. Not with too much passion; it was more, a passing kiss of shared secrets. “You fell in love with somebody there, I’ll bet,” she teased.

  “Not exactly,” Slayton said. “I just did someone wrong by leaving her to fend for herself. She seemed
tough and ballsy enough. I read her wrong. We both turned out to be less than chrome-plated. She admitted it, and helped me. I didn’t admit it, and ignored her. I think what I need to do is work up some humble; everything else will be okay after that.”

  “Nothing else’ll do it? Bribes? Flattery?”

  “It’d be misinterpreted. I don’t want to buy her off.”

  “Sounds like you’re doing okay so far. What else?”

  “I have to go to a funeral. A friend of mine is in a drawer in the L.A. County morgue.” He thought of the partners and friends he had buried throughout the years of his trade, people who had been important to him, and decided no one would be riled at his attachment of the label friend to someone like Kiko, even though they had been acquainted for something less than a day.

  Roxy did not want to pursue the topic of death any more than she favored the topic of other women. “What’s the third thing? Third person, I mean.”

  “I have to take a little old Mexican gentleman out to dinner. He lives all alone somewhere down in Baja, or close by the border, in the middle of the desert near the Mesa Locote, the ‘crazy plateau.’ I have something of his that I need to return. I think I might spend some time down there, a month or so. He needs help with his place. He could use somebody to lug heavy stuff around and fix his roof; somebody who can drive into town for him. I think that’s where I’ll probably be.”

  “Sounds nice,” she said, still interested.

  “His name is Ramon Dagoberto Enrique Lucia Jesus de la Villa Ortega,” he said, deciding that mentioning the man had also saved his life would be making the whole trip too much like favor-swapping, the triviality of paying debts rather than repaying honor. “Chispa, to his buddies. Which I don’t think he has many of.”

  “There, see?” she said. “You have it all figured out. You don’t have anything to worry about!”

  “And I have to bring Winship a souvenir from Mexico. And I have to calm down a very excited dude named Lucius. And about a million other things. Jesus… hey, I almost forgot.”

  “What?” She had been getting ready to chide him again for chastising himself.

  “Thanks for latching onto me tonight, and thanks for ending me up right here.”

  Her brow grew cloudy. “See? There you go again, talking to me like I’m a fifteen-year-old. Don’t thank me like that!” He looked up; her tone seemed to indicate bona fide annoyance.

  She caught the expression on his own face and laughed, rolling over on top of him. “Thank me like this.”

  Slayton wrapped Roxy up in his arms—thankfully.

  DRUG-DEALING PSYCHOPATHS

  are killing off the Washington elite

  with their newest brew, a poisonous

  blend of drugs and alcohol.

  Whispers suggest

  a Goliath in government is the

  criminal behind the scenes.

  FIGHTING FOR AMERICA

  is Ben Slayton, the millionaire

  whose expertise in finance, sports cars,

  and women is matched by his skill

  as an agent of the U.S. Treasury.