Drummer In the Dark

by T. Davis Bunn

  Wynn wished for something intelligent to say. But her perfume and her looks and her eyes were a potion that robbed him of what little sense he ever had. “You’re a lobbyist.”

  “Indeed so. K Street is home to the most expensive of our breed. The hottest guns for hire.”

  “Who are you representing tonight?”

  “No one, good sir.” She reached out a hand, as though wishing to touch his arm, then thinking better of it. Instead she traced a finger down the outside of her sweat-beaded glass. “Tonight I am merely hunting prey.”

  A senior official of the British embassy inserted himself at that point. Wynn did not hear the name, scarcely saw him at all. The man’s flushed cheeks and fruity laugh revealed he was as hard struck by Valerie as Wynn. She took the opportunity to move a single step closer to Wynn, permitting him to feel a trace of her heat, showing the intruder the unified front of a couple together. The man got the message and, with a diplomat’s ease, passed over a card and departed.

  Valerie stepped back a little, but not as far as before, using the intruder as an excuse to draw them slightly closer. “I confess to an ulterior motive.”

  “Name it.”

  “Oh, you should never be so swift to agree to anything in this town, good sir. Tit for tat, that’s the name of the Washington game. Work everything to your ultimate advantage.” She grazed his arm with her jacket, scalded him with a look. “Whatever I ask, you should ask for more in return.”

  He watched her take a slow sip from her glass, eyes never leaving his. “Information.”

  This was not the response she had been expecting. “I beg your pardon?”

  He started to ask about the Jubilee Amendment, decided he would first read the file. Besides, the priest and his words did not fit into this scene. “My staff.”

  She lowered her glass. More guarded now. “Yes?”

  “I can’t get a handle on their response to my appointment. They were respectful, alert, and didn’t seem to care.”

  “Not the least bit worried about impressing the new boss, you mean.”

  “That’s it exactly.”

  “They are power addicts.” The diction more precise now. “Washington draws them like the mother lode. They will do their job, work eighteen-hour days, and if you don’t get along, just move on. I know of numerous unfilled places among the two Houses, chiefs looking for experienced staffers. There is no time to train newcomers, you see. No time for anything.”

  “So all my staff have worked in other congressional offices?”

  “Congress, committees, two have pulled stints in the White House. All but one are Washington old-timers.”

  “Carter Styles,” he guessed.

  “Very good, Congressman. I must be very careful not to underestimate you.”

  “How do you know these things?”

  “It’s my job. I have a file on every congressman, senator, senior staffer, cabinet member, and White House flunkey. Every one of them needs to be tracked and identified. What they are passionate about, which issues they could be flexible over, where they go, who their allies are.”

  “It sounds like I could learn a lot from you.”

  “So much. So very much indeed.”

  Wynn was intrigued by the way this woman switched from business to intimacy with a look, a word, a tip of her tongue tracing the edge of her teeth. “You had some request of your own?”

  “Graham Hutchings was a professional acquaintance. I have long wanted to go by and pay my respects, but it’s not a journey I wish to make on my own. I was wondering if I might possibly impose.”

  “You don’t want me.”

  “Oh, Congressman . . .” Valerie finished with a very pretty smile.

  “No. Really.” Utterly serious now. “Esther Hutchings and I are enemies from way back.”

  “Then this is the perfect opportunity for you as well. You must go by and pay your respects, Wynn. Listen to me. I know this town. You’ve been appointed to replace a man who has been debilitated by his work. A visit is required. It is the absolute minimum in decorum. What is the worst that could possibly happen?”

  “She might gnaw my head off.”

  “I doubt that very much.” This time the hand did come to rest upon his arm. “Now you really must regale me with the tale of this bad blood. I positively thrive on such gossip.”

  “Not a chance in this world.”

  From coquettish to serious in the span of one breath. “Go, Wynn. Do this thing. Or you will be buried by people unearthing the tale and spreading it far and wide. Embellished, inflamed, and made immeasurably worse.”

  He accepted his defeat by finishing his drink and setting the glass on the tray of a passing waiter. “All right.”

  “Excellent. Shall we say six-thirty Friday?” She graced him with a full-wattage smile. “Come now, Wynn. It won’t be that bad. And afterward I’ll offer you a fine dinner somewhere. My treat.”

  As she walked away, Wynn caught sight of the priest slipping through the exit. The little man did not necessarily look his way, perhaps he just glanced at the room as a whole. But it was enough to repaint the evening a darker shade and turn Wynn’s idle longing to dust.

  8

  Thursday

  JACKIE AWOKE to a skyless dawn. She stretched muscles made doubly tired by hours of frustrated cleaning, and stepped onto her tiny balcony. Somewhere close overhead the firmament was swallowed and gone, replaced by a seamless gray nothing. No wind, no sound, nothing to mask the humid heat or the din already rising from the awakening city. One look was enough to confirm that the weather perfectly suited her plans for the day ahead.

  Her reflection in the single remaining fragment of her bathroom mirror looked grim and weary. She prepared camp-style coffee, boiling water in a battered pot, then pouring it directly over the grounds in her only intact mug. As she sipped the bitter brew, Jackie surveyed the final three bags of formerly precious trash.

  The apartment was utterly bare. Every scar and yellowed seam was revealed, every fray and stain in the carpet, every fabrication of a life precariously stitched together. Jackie felt more than exposed. She felt violated.

  Jackie dressed in her standard mourning garb—black calfskin boots, black jeans, black T-shirt, black velvet hair ribbon. She did not need her shredded wall calendar to know the date. The monthly routine was branded upon her soul with a lifetime’s acrid heat.

  She closed her flimsily repaired door and carried the last of the trash bags downstairs. As she walked down the drive, a voice called from out front. Jackie carried the bags with her, both because they were in her hands and because it would be a genuine excuse to leave.

  Millicent’s doctor asked her, “You all right?”

  “Fine.” At least she was not damaged where it showed.

  “Millicent said something about wolves in gray jackets.”

  “I was burglarized.” She glanced at her watch, not because she was late, but merely to show she had things to do.

  The doctor gave no indication he had noticed. Now that he was semiretired, Dr. Crouch fought to slow all the world to his own pace. He was old enough to remember when house calls were expected, and too stubborn to change. “You call the cops?”

  “There wasn’t anything stolen. Just wrecked. And you know Millicent.”

  “She didn’t want to open the door for me, thought maybe a social service type was hiding behind a tree.” He frowned at the bags. “You still ought to file a report.”

  She gave a noncommittal shrug. “How is Millicent?”

  “Crazy as a loon. But other than that, not too bad. You still doing her shopping?”

  “Twice a week. Today, in fact.”

  “Get her some Cream of Wheat. Had to hide her bottom dentures. Looks like her gums are infected again.” He stared at the sagging empty porch. “She moved her mattress and bedsprings into the front parlor.”

  “All by herself?”

  “Sure didn’t get any help from me. Millicent says there’
s less moonlight on the street side, which means the beasts don’t howl so loud.”

  “She told me the burglars were cursing something awful,” Jackie replied, hating how she had caused the old lady to worry.

  “She keeps the downstairs rooms clean as a whistle, is all I know. She takes her medicine and she dresses herself, in a manner of speaking. ’Course, the way things are now, yellow leg warmers with a neon green cocktail dress and black sneakers might be high fashion.”

  Jackie started toward the curb. “Let me know if I need to do something for her.”

  Crouch called after her, “Know what Millicent told me this morning? You’re a good daughter. I said she could take that right to the bank.”

  Jackie dumped her load with the other bags and lengthened her stride back to the Camaro. Crouch’s words merely darkened the day’s already bitter cast. She backed down the drive, ignoring the doctor’s hesitant wave. The motor rumbled deep-throated taunts all the way to her mother’s nursing home. Good sister, daughter, student, fiancée—all the lies she had watched crumble, all the energy lost to pretending it didn’t matter.

  The nursing home’s front door expelled the harsh scent of industrial cleanser. The place was extremely Catholic and packed with religious ornaments and nurses in the white headdresses of the full-on devout. Jackie had come here because it was the only Medicare bed available when her mother had suffered the stroke. Now she counted it as one of the luckiest days of her life. Nobody else would have put up with her mother for this long.

  Like many of the home’s staff, the manager was Ghanaian, stoic, and quietly sympathetic. The heavyset woman rose from her desk and beamed a welcome far too genuine for this place. “Miss Jackie, what you doing here so early? I didn’t expect you before lunchtime.”

  “I’ve taken a couple of days off work. Thought I’d come over before things got busy.”

  “If I had me a day free, sure to goodness I wouldn’t be spending it here.”

  Jackie started grimly for the stairs. “How’s Mom?”

  “She’s drinking her own bile and dying just as fast as she knows how. Same as always.” Knowing dark eyes followed her departure. “Don’t you go be doing the same, mind.”

  AFTER JACKIE’S FATHER had dumped them, her mother had gone through a series of bad jobs and worse men, finally landing as a waitress at a HoJo’s on Route 50. The place had been so rough she would seldom let her children come in for the free meals offered to all employees’ families. And there she remained, right up to the moment Preston struck it rich and rented her a fine little place on a lake. Their mother had never acknowledged the gifts, for that would have meant also accepting that a man in her life had done something good.

  Jackie let herself into her mother’s room. The upper half of her mother’s bed had been slightly elevated. Evelyn Havilland lay there inert and pale. Eyes closed. Chest hardly moving. Face slack. Taking revenge on life and everyone she had ever known by shutting them out. Jackie carried the chair over from its station beside the opposite wall, seated herself by the bed, and waited.

  “These people do everything they can to hurt me.” The mouth scarcely moved. The eyes never opened. “You satisfied now? You should be.”

  “Hello, Mom. Would you like something to drink?” Jackie picked up the plastic cup from the bedstand and saw it was empty. “Let me get you some water.”

  Evelyn Havilland said nothing more until Jackie had fitted the plastic straw into her mouth and let her sip. “A decent daughter’d have gotten me out of here. Found me a place with people who know how to do things right. But not you. Oh no. Too much trouble, finding your own mother a decent place to breathe her last.”

  Evelyn turned her head then, just a fraction. Far enough to shoot her daughter a glimmer from shadow-filled eyes. “Probably just as well you didn’t try. You’d only have made a mess of it anyway.”

  Jackie found a fly buzzing about the room to focus her attention upon. It was a trick she had used since childhood. A dust mote in sunlight would do. A sound from beyond the room. Anything to keep from being opened and penetrated.

  “I always knew it would come to this. Lying here waiting for the end, looking at a daughter who’s wasted every chance she’s ever had.” Pausing now, building up the venom. “And every man.”

  A bad day. Sometimes Jackie could slip in, spend an hour beside the inert figure in the bed, exchange no more than a few words. Converse only with her memories and all the old pain. Such days were a delight compared to these, when she was forced to remember how she never had the chance to be young.

  “Not a day goes by, I don’t regret the horrible mess you made with Shane. I adored him, you know.” Another pause to refill the fangs. “Didn’t even learn about it from my own daughter. Oh no. Shane had to be the one to come and tell me you’d run away. I couldn’t believe it even then. Told him no daughter of mine would be that stupid.”

  Jackie rose and picked up the chair. Deliberately she placed it back against the wall. There to wait another month for the only visitor her mother had. She masked her movements as she did her thoughts. Wondering what her mother would do if she lifted the chair and swung it down upon her head. Thank her, probably.

  “You’re going to see your brother’s grave now, I suspect. What a loser he turned out to be. The ultimate disaster. Just like his father. Hung around just long enough to ruin my life. Never could take the bad times, neither of them.” Evelyn swiveled her head back up, closed her eyes. “Don’t have a daughter, don’t have a son. All that sweat and worry for nothing. Might as well not have lived.”

  “Bye, Mom.” Jackie left the room without a backward glance. Her work here was done.

  JACKIE SPOTTED THE TAIL while she was buying flowers. It was mostly the way the man stood and stared at her. Then she noticed the car, and something sparked inside her brain; he had been following her since the nursing home. She’d never been involved in a surveillance job, but while working around the office she’d learned the signals. Jackie checked in both directions but could not identify another suspicious car or tracker. She glanced back in time to see the man lock his car and hurry across the street. That was definitely an amateurish move, letting her spot him beside his wheels.

  She paid for the flowers and headed through the cemetery gates. Just inside she turned and faced him full on. The man knew he had been spotted, there was no disguising it now. But to her surprise, he did not duck back or head down a side lane. Instead he merely stood there, hands bunched together by his belt buckle, and waited. She continued along the gravel path, warmed by the thought that this might be one of the men who’d trashed her apartment. It was enough to grant the day a momentary reprieve. She would love to meet those guys, give them a piece of whatever was available and heavy.

  The cemetery was packed with mourners and gardeners. Jackie made the turning down the now-familiar lane and glanced back. He was still there, yet showed nothing to suggest either hostility or threat. What he looked like was a Latin hunk. Olive complexion, early fifties, extremely well groomed. Clothes with a European cut, shoes so well polished they reflected like black mirrors. The day was an oven set on wet-bake, yet he walked in jacket and tie. He held to a respectful distance, a professional mourner waiting for her to show him the proper place to grieve.

  The problem was, she had no interest in sharing this part of a lousy day. So she checked to make sure there were a couple of gardeners nearby, then walked straight up to him. “You want something?”

  “Forgive me, Ms. Havilland. I have no wish to disturb you in this hour of communing with your brother.”

  She recognized the voice instantly. Not Latin at all. Arab. But just as handsome up close. “You’re that guy. The Arab on the telephone. Esther’s emergency contact.”

  “That is correct.” He bowed slightly, a gesture as formal as his tone. “Nabil Saad is my name. I am Egyptian. Again, forgive this intrusion. But we needed to meet. And the contact required someplace more private than your apartment.
”

  She took a moment to inspect him, trying to get a handle on this sudden appearance. Nabil Saad was not tall, standing only a few inches above her own five-seven. Flecks of silver decorated the dark hair at his temples and crown. He wore a jacket of tiny gray-and-black herringbone. It looked incredibly expensive, probably silk. White-on-white shirt, black gabardine pants, perfectly knotted silk tie. Face both hard and soft, eyes liquid and black as night. And calm. Standing and accepting her inspection in silence.

  Jackie said, “Excuse me, I’m a little confused here. Last night I got the impression you didn’t want to have anything to do with me.”

  “My objections had nothing to do with you personally. But Esther Hutchings had no right to hire you as she did, without our approval. Nor did she ask permission to give you my name.”

  Jackie hoped her confusion did not show. “But she did.”

  “Indeed so. Esther has never been prone to listen to anyone when her mind is made up. And now you have been attacked, and you have my name. Esther needed to make contact with you. Esther’s file spoke of this monthly pattern. I elected to come meet you myself.”

  “So there’s this file on my private life that’s been passed around?”

  “You must forgive us all, Ms. Havilland. Such intrusion is not excusable.”

  “I totally agree.”

  “And yet we are faced with an impossible situation. Lives are at stake.”

  “That friend you mentioned on the phone last night?”

  “She was like the daughter I do not have.” Nabil Saad’s features opened to reveal an ocean of sorrow. “Our cause was her life’s work. Yes. Her passion. And it killed her. Of that I have no doubt.”

  Jackie found herself unwilling to press further. Not when his pain so closely resembled her own. She found herself wondering what it would be like to care so passionately about a cause, or have someone else carry such grief for her own passage.