by Jack Du Brul
He turned to Mercer. “Sorry about that. Let’s go get a drink.”
He put a strong arm around Mercer’s shoulder and led him away. Mercer turned his head and saw the look of utter hatred Aggie directed at her father.
“You don’t have any kids, do you?” Max asked as the bartender fixed another gimlet and refilled the host’s champagne flute.
“No. I realized young that I can barely take care of myself, so how the hell could I care for a child?”
Max smiled, relaxing slightly. “She’s my greatest joy and I’ve been proud of every one of her accomplishments, even if they were designed to get back at me. Do you know she graduated at the top of her class at grad school? She got a degree in environmental engineering, of all things. She is quite brilliant, but she wastes it on these quixotic quests. I guess she never really had to grow up. I spoiled the hell out of her. Hell, I still do, by letting her screw around with that ecological group.”
Mercer had no interest in the problems between Max and his daughter. Though he lent a patient ear, he had to make one comment. “Max, she’s a grown woman. Shouldn’t she be making her own choices?”
“If I let other people have choices, none of this would be here today.” Max waved his glass around the room. Mercer couldn’t tell if he was being flippant or serious.
“I shouldn’t burden you with this.” Max’s public persona was back. “She and I still get along on occasion. Here, have another drink.” Mercer allowed Max to put yet another gimlet in his hand. “Will you excuse me? I’ve got to go say hello to Connie Van Buren.”
Max Johnston drifted back into the crowd, leaving Mercer thankfully free again. He finished the first drink Max had given him then took a small sip from the second. He smiled to himself as he looked around the opulent room. It didn’t matter how rich a person was, common problems still reared their ugly heads.
Max Johnston wore his somewhat openly. He was a widower, his wife having succumbed to an alcohol-induced suicide wish. Mercer recalled her drinking problem when he’d first met Max in Houston. An hour into the party, Barbara Johnston was so drunk that Max had to have his chauffeur take her back to their limousine. Six years later, after countless rehab programs that the media intrusively reported, Barbara washed down a bottle of sleeping pills with a fifth of vodka. Her suicide note said, “Gone to sleep, please wake me when life is easier.” And now Max was fighting with his daughter in front of some of the most powerful people in the country.
If that was the price of success, decided Mercer, Max could have it all.
He didn’t see Aggie as he scanned the room, and felt a small measure of relief. Speaking to her now would be uncomfortable at best. Within a few minutes, he was talking with the co-chair of the Johnston Group’s scientific arm, the ugly scene of a moment earlier all but forgotten.
Half an hour later, he became aware of her perfume. He hadn’t noticed it before, it was so subtle. Mercer noted the wolflike stares from the men and the jealous glances from the women and knew Aggie Johnston was behind him. He turned around. She looked as if she’d recovered from the confrontation with her father, but he noticed a shadow behind her impossibly green eyes that hadn’t been there before. Mercer knew it was best to act as if nothing had happened rather than rattle off some platitude about relationships.
“I never got a chance to rebut your attack on my profession.”
Aggie gave Mercer a smile of thanks, a small lift of her lips that pleased him inordinately. Yet when she spoke, sarcasm edged her voice raw. “My father’s company retains four entire law firms and a whole army of public-relations experts. They make excuses faster than the rest of the company produces environmental disasters. I’m sure you can toe the party line with the rest of them.”
She paused, regarding him clinically. “Let me guess. You’ll tell me how what you do creates jobs all over the world and gives hope to starving people who are still living in the nineteenth century. Does this sound about right?”
Mercer guessed she was a typical “cause and effect” protester. If there was an effect in the world, she’d join the cause. She would no doubt belong to numerous organizations, favoring new ones as they gained popularity. Harry White derisively called these people “flavor-of-the-month liberals.” It wouldn’t matter that some of her beliefs might be diametrically opposed to others as long as they were politically correct and au courant.
He used this to his advantage when he came back at her just as hard. “Do you know how many millions of young girls are denied a useful life because they have to carry water to villages often miles away? They are reduced to the level of pack animals because they don’t have access to a well and a mechanical pump. Accessible water is such a commonplace item that you simply take it for granted, but to many in the world it is a luxury that they can only dream of.
“Those jobs that I help create, the ones you scoff at, can free those women. When a company I work for starts paying employees, it affects not only them but their families and villages. It gives people hope. Christ, to deny them that is to return to the colonial period of human exploitation. Is that what you want?”
It didn’t matter how beautiful he thought she was, he would never allow himself to be pushed around. His reputation, both good and bad, stood as his testament and he would defend it no matter what.
Her smile was patronizing and taunting. “Nice try, Dr. Mercer. To most, that would have worked. Though I believe in women’s rights and I deplore our treatment, I am an environmentalist, not a feminist. I’m not a Socialist or an anti-technologist either, so the rest of your arguments are moot. I have my beliefs and you have yours. They do not correspond.”
“Did anything I said during that class yesterday make sense to you?” Mercer was hoping for a common ground, a reason to keep her near him.
“No, not at all. It might have impressed the students, but clichés and hyperbole don’t impress someone who is truly informed. And as to your theory that humans are conforming to evolution by destroying our environment, well that’s just bullshit and you know it.”
He found her use of profanity alluring. “Mark my word, as we learn more about evolution and extinction, we’re going to find that behavior contributes as much to a species’ demise as changes in environment or any other factor. If our actions contribute to our destruction, then that’s the deal nature dealt us. Period.”
“And you see no reason to change that?” she challenged.
“I see no way to stop it. The Chinese government plans to provide refrigerators to every household in the country. The antiquated technology they use would pump out so many CFCs and other ozone-depleting gases that any counteraction in the West would be futile. We couldn’t regulate fast enough to prevent the greenhouse effect you so fear. Why isn’t the Planetary Environment Action League trying to stop them? Groups like yours are adept at stirring controversy and garnering headlines, but you don’t attempt to offer workable solutions. You don’t have enough facts behind your outcries, so you appeal to emotions to get your point across. You probably agree with the results of the Earth Summit in Rio, right?”
“I attended it,” Aggie shot back proudly.
“Do you remember Article 15 of the Rio Declaration?”
Aggie shook her head.
“I forced myself to memorize it because it made me so disgusted, I never wanted to forget it. ‘Lack of scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.’ That means there doesn’t need to be proof for action to be taken. Taxpayers’ money can be spent on some problem that may not even exist. Unbelievably, the United States signed this garbage, potentially handing over billions of dollars with no way of knowing how the money is being spent.
“You think you’re trying to change the way mankind cares for the planet? Another document signed at Rio called Agenda 21 effectively states that the only way to stop environmental damage in the Northern Hemisphere is to pour tons of money into the
third world nations of the Southern Hemisphere. Does that make any sense to you? I certainly don’t get it. Like I said in class yesterday, if you’re ashamed of our accomplishments, I’m sorry, but some of us are proud of them.”
Mercer turned to walk away, leaving Aggie speechless and a little slack-jawed. “Just a bit of trivia before I go. The very same scientists you rely on for proof of global warming were writing articles in the 1970s stating that pollution was actually cooling the planet, forcing us into a new ice age. When you can back up your clichés and hyperbole with facts, we’ll talk again.”
He was gone before Aggie could react.
Because Mercer had been the last to arrive at the party and was the first to leave, the valet was able to pull his Jaguar to the porte cochere only moments after he strode through the front doors. Mercer was angry at himself for getting into the conversation in the first place and wished he’d been thinking with his big head rather than his little one. He couldn’t deny an attraction, but that was as far as he’d let it go.
Mercer slid into the seat and closed the door with a slam. Just as he pulled the shifter from park, white knuckles rapped the passenger window. Startled, he pressed the power lock button and Aggie Johnston slipped into the Jag. Without a word, Mercer pulled away, the engine growling happily as he applied too much throttle.
As Mercer jinked onto the main road, Aggie pulled a pack of cigarettes and a gold lighter from a small purse. She glared at him, defying a comment about her smoking as she lit up, the flame like a harsh flare in the intimate glow of the dash.
He waited out her silence, wondering where this would lead and secretly happy she’d followed him.
“I hate him almost as much as I love him.” Mercer knew she was speaking about her father. “In so many ways he’s the kindest, most thoughtful man I think I’ll ever meet, but I can’t help opposing him. He’s a health nut, so I started sneaking cigarettes from the staff when I was fourteen, hoping to get caught, but he never noticed. He still doesn’t know I smoke. Because he made all of his money in the oil business, I decided, even before I knew what it meant, that I would become an environmentalist.”
The window slid down and Aggie tossed her spent cigarette into the darkness. “I sometimes wonder if he’s noticed anything I’ve done. Lord knows he never noticed my mother’s desperation until it was too late.”
Mercer knew that she just wanted to talk, so he remained quiet.
“She killed herself when I was getting my master’s. I found out from the chauffeur Dad sent to bring me home for the funeral. You’d think that she and I would have been close, but we really weren’t. I cried at the funeral and I still cry sometimes now, but it isn’t loss that causes it. It’s pity. She was a pitiable person, really.
“My only strong memories of her are when she was drunk and one time, just before her suicide, when I nearly caught her in bed with another man. I wanted to blame my father so badly, but I can’t. She had a self-destructiveness that forced her to stay, to give her a reason to keep abusing herself with booze and affairs. She would have killed herself even if she had left him. You talked about mankind’s fate earlier. Well, the fate of Barbara Johnston was to die by her own hand, and nothing was going to stop it.”
Mercer glanced at Aggie. Her hands were trembling as she lit another cigarette, but her voice had remained steady. It didn’t take a trained psychologist to understand the emotional conflicts that made up her personality and motivated her actions. Her anger at her father had driven her to champion causes that opposed him. And that anger didn’t stem from her mother’s death but her own inability to stop it. Everything warned him to stay away from her, but he found himself drawn by her contrast of toughness and vulnerability.
“Where do you live?” he asked as they approached the nation’s capital.
“Georgetown. I have a condo on the canal.”
They didn’t speak for the rest of the trip, but somehow the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. She directed him to her street with one-syllable prompts or simple nods of her head. Her condo building had once been a warehouse along the C&O Canal. Mercer knew that the units started at a quarter of a million dollars and rose dramatically from there.
Rain had started falling, pelting the windshield with dappled splashes as he pulled up to the building’s entrance. Aggie waited for the wind to die down, her purse held across her lap, her slim body enfolded by the wide bucket seat of the Jaguar. When she spoke, her voice was soft, almost timid.
“I didn’t want to fight you tonight. In fact, I think I wanted to seduce you.” She looked at him, waiting for a reaction that he refused to give. “When I first met you, I had this noble image of you. I thought you were different from the rest of them. I guess it was just a schoolgirl crush.”
She opened the door and unlimbered herself from the car. Before she vanished into her building, she ducked her head back into the Jag. “I’m glad I learned disappointment at a young age.”
The door closed softly and she was gone.
“The old Mercer charm strikes again,” he muttered, hurt by her statement.
Rather than giving himself time to digest what had just occurred, he decided to thrust it out of his mind until later. But as he dialed his car phone and listened to it ring three thousand miles away, he knew that Aggie’s outburst about being disappointed had been directed more at her father than at him. About her desire to seduce him, well, she wasn’t the first woman he’d blown it with and most certainly wouldn’t be the last.
The ringing stopped. “You have reached the home of Howard Small. I’m sorry I’m not here to take your call. Please leave a message after the tone.”
“Damn it.” Mercer cut the connection without leaving a message.
AT eighteen years old, Jamal Lincoln had lived a life that was all too common in Washington’s poorest neighborhoods. A gang member at thirteen, he saw his first action two weeks later when he was caught in the cross fire of a deal gone bad. He’d picked up the gun his cousin Rufus dropped when a nine-millimeter blew his teeth out the back of his head, and sprayed rounds as fast as he could pull the trigger. He didn’t hit anything, but the feeling it gave him was the beginning of a life that would have an inevitable outcome.
A week after that shoot-out, he’d pumped two slugs into the chest of a convenience-store clerk and used the thirty-seven dollars that that man’s life had been worth to buy his first vials of crack. He slowly worked his way up through the gang, promotions coming as his body count rose. He lost his virginity at fourteen when Nyeusi Radi, the gang leader who bragged that his name meant “Black Thunder” in Swahili, gave him a prostitute for his birthday. Jamal was still in school and spent his time roaming the hallways or lurking outside school grounds selling drugs and recruiting for his gang. On both counts he was too adept. By the time he was seventeen, he had survived enough firefights to become one of Radi’s chief lieutenants.
Radi was twenty-four, a millionaire with time running out. Everyone knew that his luck would end soon. The life he led would kill him eventually, and the longer he held on, the closer his death came. And Jamal, now eighteen, was next in line to take over the gang, make the real money, have the real power. That’s why he resented being sent on this mission outside his turf to nail some guy he’d never even heard of.
Earlier that night, Radi had invited Jamal into his crib, a series of large rooms carved out of a rundown apartment block in Anacostia. Radi had told him what to do and gave him a clean piece; all the while this creepy white dude watched them from a couch near Radi’s desk. Everything about the white guy screamed cop, but the dude didn’t even blink when Radi told Jamal to waste this other guy out in Arlington.
As Jamal was leaving the room, the white guy came up off the couch and grabbed him by his bare bicep. Jamal’s arms were big, roped with muscle held taut beneath glossy skin. The guy’s fingers were thin, pale, and bony, yet they sank so deeply into Jamal’s arm that he was staggered by the pain.
“Make it loo
k like a mugging. Take his watch, wallet, whatever you want, but make sure he’s dead. If he isn’t, you will be.”
“Who da fuck you think you are, motherfucker?” Jamal shouted, trying to pull his arm away.
The hand around his bicep tightened, forcing Jamal to his knees. “Willis, tell your dog to stop yapping, or I’ll tear his arm off and beat him to death with it.”
“Jamal, do the guy, all right? Don’t ask no fucking questions.” Nobody ever called Radi by his given name, and nobody ever put an edge of fear to his voice, but he was frightened by the white man in the dark suit.
“I’ll do it, Radi.” Jamal looked toward his leader, surprised to see him heave a sigh of relief.
According to the recently stolen Rolex he wore, Jamal had been pacing the street for three hours. No cops had cruised by during the wait, and Jamal had seen only a few brothers, mostly zebras, blacks trying to pass themselves off as white. He felt fairly safe, a little exposed but anonymous enough. No matter how he felt, there was no way he was going to leave the neighborhood until he’d done the guy. He didn’t want to face that white dude ever again.
He’d thought about ducking into the bar up the street, especially since the rain started. His fake ID was good enough, but he didn’t want anyone getting a good look at him. Once the guy was dead, all a witness would be able to say was that the attacker was a young black male in a dark leather coat. Christ, that’s half the fucking city.
Jamal saw the sweep of light across the dark buildings and knew that a car had turned onto the street. He spun and saw the headlights of a vehicle about six blocks up, just past that bar. The big Glock 17 in his pocket suddenly seemed lighter. It was eleven-fifteen and all the other houses had been quiet for hours. This had to be his man coming.
A beat-up Chevy Cavalier pulled out from the parking spot directly in front of Tiny’s just as Mercer turned onto his street. Not one to avoid providence, he pulled his Jag into the spot without so much as a second thought and headed into the bar. It was a quarter past eleven on a Saturday night, and there was no way he was going home without a nightcap or two.
