Drummer In the Dark

by T. Davis Bunn

  Colin watched the Porsche fire up and rumble from the parking lot. Softly he asked the night and the rain, “Who are you doing this for, and what have they got on you?”

  43

  Wednesday

  WEDNESDAY MORNING JACKIE showered and dressed and drove to Eric’s development. This time she simply parked on the street and walked by the gatehouse. The subterfuge was over. If security wanted to question her and call ahead, that was their problem. But no one said a thing. She followed the street to where the town houses bordered the golf course. A central lake in front, acres of green beyond. The place sparkled.

  The morning dimmed the instant she saw Eric’s face. “What happened to you?”

  “Take a wild guess.” He backed away from her and the day ahead, took another look at the mirror over his sideboard, and dabbed his eye with ice wrapped inside a towel. His left eyebrow was gouged with a bloody furrow, his eye was black, his bruised cheek so swollen he could have been holding a pear in his mouth. “I’ve been at it for an hour. The swelling hasn’t gone down and the color’s gotten worse. What am I supposed to say to the guys?”

  “Who hit you, Eric?”

  “Don’t go dumb on me, okay? Come in here.”

  She stayed where she was. “We can talk right where we are.”

  “It’s safe, Jackie. That’s your name, right?” He stepped back into view. “I’m not the one doing the whacking around here. And we are definitely alone.”

  Reluctantly she moved into the house, letting the door close behind her. Tasted the air.

  “Come on through, will you? I’ve got to get to the office.” Eric waited until she had followed him through the entrance, then swept a hand over the cash piled on his dining room table. “Fifty-three thousand dollars. Free and clear. Take it and get out of my life.”

  “I can’t—”

  His voice rose a full two octaves. “Get a good look at my face, will you? This is what it’s cost me so far, having you show up out of nowhere and shove me into the twilight zone.” He pushed the money toward her. “I’ve been stashing this away for Shane. I knew sooner or later he’d be coming through that door, telling me it was payback time.”

  “This was for Shane?”

  “You don’t listen so good. This is yours. Shane’s got what, another two years before he’s up for parole. I’ll scrounge up another bundle for him.”

  “I need that information, Eric.”

  “Don’t you get it? Those guys are going to wipe me out!”

  Jackie found herself at a loss. Causing such havoc and pain was not part of her game plan. But the need for information compressed her heart into a space half its size. “What if Shane agrees to never get on your case?”

  “What?”

  “I have to have answers, Eric. What if Shane will agree to let you keep the money and never bother you again. Not ever.” She could scarcely believe she was saying the words. “Say he writes out a letter and I get it notarized, that you had nothing to do with it, and as far as he knows, you’re a perfectly honest employee?”

  Eric gaped. “He’d do that?”

  “If he did, you could keep the money and maybe even get a decent night’s sleep.”

  He fumbled his way into a chair. Touched his eyebrow, winced, probed the side of his eye. Mused aloud, “None of these guys will talk to me. That’s how I got winged, trying the front door approach. They must’ve been warned.”

  She tried to hold her attention exclusively on Eric and ignore the screaming in her brain over what she had just set herself up to do. “You’re talking about the traders at First Florida?”

  “Who else?” Eric was still walking through potential strategies. “Hayek has gotten a truckload of new money from someplace.”

  “How much?”

  “We’re talking an entire new fund. Four big ones, maybe more.”

  “Four billion dollars in new trading capital?”

  He looked at her then. “What you said, it’s for real? Shane will cut me free?”

  “I’ll go see him today.” Every word was a nail driven into her bones. “So Hayek set up these new traders to manage a new capital fund of four billion dollars. And this could be the Tsunami project?”

  “I don’t know exactly how large the thing is or what it’s called. But it’s got to be pretty huge. First he set them up as a new in-house trading division, but that went down the tubes. Whether he then bought the bank to house them is anybody’s guess.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “What I’m saying is, these guys are totally cut off. There’s no way I’ll get them to come clean.” He thought a moment longer. “What if I could get you the access code to one of their computers?”

  “You can do that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. But that would be it, okay? Nothing more. You’d have to find somebody to make the tap and interpret the data.” He used both hands to swipe away mounting terror. “If I try this and get caught, I’m fried.”

  “Find me a computer access code for one of the Tsunami group and we’re done,” Jackie confirmed. “When can you get it?”

  “No idea. Call me in two days. No, call me soon as you’ve talked to Shane. We’ll meet, you’ll show me the paper. Signed, sealed, notarized. I want to know this is for real before I commit.”

  44

  Wednesday

  LA TARBOUCHE, THE LEBANESE restaurant on K Street, had been the client’s choice, not Valerie’s. The place had the sort of suede and chrome pretentiousness that appealed mightily to people eating on someone else’s ticket. Across from her sat the chief of the American Investment Managers, or AIM, the trade association that represented investment banks and portfolio managers and hedge funds.

  He smiled as the waiter set down his plate of salmon tagin. In the restaurant’s meager lighting the lobster sauce looked yellowish green. There were six of them together in the quietest alcove the restaurant had to offer. Valerie sat beside one of the firm’s four partners, and her direct boss. Three other associates were also present, so the partner could bill AIM for their lunch hour. Valerie was there because the AIM chief had specifically requested her presence.

  He used his fork to point at Valerie’s own salad and said, “That rabbit food’s not going to take you very far.”

  “I don’t have much appetite today, I’m afraid.”

  “You will.” The AIM chief wasn’t bad as lackeys went, fairly polished and able to mouth almost anything with sincerity. But he had the annoying habit of claiming his superiors’ comments as his own original thoughts. “I’ve been watching you operate, Ms. Lawry. You’re our kind of people. Sharp, hard-hitting, take no prisoners. I want you to head up our account.”

  The senior partner dropped his fork. “Don’t you think that’s something we should discuss—”

  “I’ve talked it over with my people, and that’s how it’s going to be.” As though the decision had been his to make. “Far as we’re concerned, it’s a done deal.”

  Valerie wished she could be pleased. But she remained locked upon the morning’s bizarre beginnings. As she had left her Georgetown home, Jim Burke had called and demanded they meet him in a Rock Creek Parkway rest area. He had tersely spelled out directions and cut the connection.

  Valerie made the drive in dark despair, knowing Burke had been sent to deliver the killing blow. She had let the Hutchings Amendment slip by her. They wanted her head on a chopping block somewhere private. She spent the drive searching frantically for some defense and coming up blank.

  But when she pulled in behind the airport limo, Burke emerged only to hand her a cellphone and point toward the private overlook. With the morning traffic thundering behind her, Valerie lifted the receiver and waited for Hayek to attack.

  Instead, the man had sounded almost jovial. “You must forgive this rather unorthodox means of communication, Ms. Lawry. But matters are coming to a head just now, and I wish to be utterly certain that our conversation is neither overheard nor recorded.
This will be our last chat until things have settled down. I would be grateful for your assessment of events.”

  He gut told her a carefully worded PR exercise was not required here. “Things,” she replied, “do not look good.”

  “Please explain.”

  “We’ve been blindsided. The appropriations bill was passed with the Jubilee Amendment attached, and this morning I’ve heard they plan to push the bill through Conference Committee at a record pace. Which means the time we have available to act is cut to a minimum.”

  “Then fight harder.”

  “We will, I assure you. We can pressure—”

  “I want you to do more than pressure. I want you to create absolute havoc.”

  Valerie hesitated. “Havoc comes at a very high price in Washington.”

  “Spend it.”

  “Just a minute. Please. You have to understand, we’re talking about people who shape national agendas. To make this a highly public issue will require bringing in the type of consultants who work on presidential races and shape national party politics. These people are not selling us their time. They’re selling access. Which they can use only so often. This means the price they charge is astronomical, far beyond anything we could logically bill our clients.”

  “I will handle that. You will be hearing from the AIM representative today, just to make things official.”

  “It would be wiser to hold off on a full frontal attack until the bill returns to the House and Senate floors for the final vote.”

  “Impossible.” Hard and definite. “Timing is critical. I want national attention, I want battle, I want upheaval. And I want it now.”

  “Nothing at this point can be guaranteed. No matter how much money you throw at it.”

  She might as well not have spoken at all. “Whatever it takes, Ms. Lawry. Aim for havoc. I assume you do not require me to spell that out for you.”

  VALERIE’S BOSS WAS nothing if not smooth in the clinch. “Well, certainly, Ms. Lawry is one of our most prized associates, and we’re delighted to see her appreciated by our top clients.”

  As the waiter stepped in to refill their glasses, Valerie smiled coldly at her boss. His gaze flicked her way and held. Message received. Associate was no longer sufficient. She wanted her own partner’s chair.

  “We’re also extremely concerned about the amendment the House attached last night to the appropriations bill,” the AIM chief went on. “Of course you’re aware of this.”

  Valerie allowed the partner to stutter a moment before supplying, “We are.”

  “I asked for this meeting to tell you that we want you to defeat it now.”

  Valerie pushed her salad to one side, leaned forward, and took control. “It’s not that simple.”

  “We’re paying you to make it simple.”

  “The Conference Committee is stacked against us. There are a number of waverers, but not enough for us to be certain we can turn the tide.”

  “So you’ll have to work a little harder. That’s how you justify your outrageous fees, coming through in moments like this. I want you to kill this thing while it’s still in committee. Under no circumstances is this amendment to make it back to the floors for a final vote.”

  A SINGLE BUILDING took up the entire eighteen-hundred block of K Street. The central atrium was eleven stories high and home to a semitropical forest and a stainless steel waterfall. The floor was tiled in a mosaic of marble and granite, the elevators at opposite corners guarded by dual security desks. The upstairs office suites came in two flavors, rich and opulent for the partners, cheap and tacky for everyone else. K Street rents were among the highest in Washington, and associates clustered in cubicles the size of padded cages. Natural light was something associates rarely glimpsed. The furniture was cubed and coldly modern, the atmosphere charged with desperate ambition, the infighting vicious.

  Valerie’s sudden elevation to chief lobbyist on the AIM account meant her entry into the conference room was met with hostile envy. She fed on it as she would a carnal feast. “We are about to enter lockdown mode. Everything else on your desks is to be scrapped. We are going to attack, and we are going to do so tomorrow.”

  While the shock registered, she bisected the chalkboard behind her with a line and continued, “We have to grimly salute the opposition. They have managed to place the amendment in an appropriations bill the President considers crucial and that contains perks for almost every district. Our only hope is to eliminate this one amendment while the bill is still in committee. But we are not into stealth tactics here. I fear the committee itself has been stacked against us. We must therefore create so much heat around this specific amendment with all the Senate and all the House that the committee members are forced to change direction.”

  Someone along the table said the obvious. “This is going to cost them a bomb.”

  “Bomb is the proper term,” Valerie agreed. “They are paying us for nuclear assault, and that is precisely what we are going to deliver.”

  45

  Wednesday

  JACKIE SAT OUTSIDE the prison gates, studying them as she would the doors of death itself. The prison parking lot was surrounded by a high stand of loblolly pine, shielding the Beeline Expressway drivers from all but a fleeting glimpse of chain link and glinting razor wire. Jackie listened to the whispered wail of her own heart. Start the motor, back out of the lot, take the entrance ramp in either direction. Put some solid distance between herself and the most idiotic thought that had ever entered her brain.

  Why she had made such a preposterous offer to Eric she could not begin to say. Every ounce of logic told her there was still time, she could go back and heft that sack of cash and name it her very own far-away fund. But despite her finest arguments and the rising cry of her own heart, she started toward the gate and the line of visitors passing through security.

  The same guard was there doing escort duty. “Figured you for somebody who’d said all her good-byes.”

  “So did I.”

  He moved ahead of her down the path. His belt creaked in time to his steps, and his keys and baton jangled like alarms of coming flames. “You see it all in this game. People can get stuck on just about anything, they try hard enough.” He pushed open the metal door leading to the front hall. “Start seeing pain as just another part of their day, instead of a wake-up call to make tracks. You hear what I’m saying?”

  This time Shane was already waiting for her. Which made leaving the guard’s safety and walking over all the more difficult. She covered the distance to the table as if she were scaling a ninety-degree incline. He waited for her to sit down to say, “I’ve been hoping you’d come back. There’s so much more I wanted—”

  “Eric Driscoll has fifty-three thousand dollars he’s been stowing away for when you get out of prison. The only way he’ll help me is if you forget the money and agree to let him go.” It wasn’t even close to the smoothness she needed. But the bile in her throat caught all the right words and stripped them down to a slurred rush. She fumbled in her purse, drew out the envelope, forced her fingers to pull free the single page and flatten it on the table between them. “I want you to sign this.”

  He read the few sentences, stating unequivocally that Eric Driscoll had nothing whatsoever to do with Shane’s embezzlement, and anything stated to the contrary was merely a lie. She could run it by the office afterward and have a friend supply the notary stamp—a small crime compared to what she was doing to herself right now.

  Shane kept his head down long enough for Jackie to begin fearing one of the old explosions, when the rage spewed like acid. She reached into her purse and pulled out the pen, wishing it were something far more substantial. A machete, maybe. Or an Uzi.

  But when Shane spoke, it was in a cautious manner that was not his own and never had been. “He’s right, you know. I didn’t turn him in because I wanted somebody there to pave my way back to easy street.”

  He raised his gaze then. And revealed no rage. R
esignation, maybe. Bitter regret. A trace of longing. But all he said was, “Can I use that?”

  Numb fingers dropped the pen on the table. Not wanting to make the slightest contact with this man. “I don’t understand you.”

  “I’m not surprised.” He scrawled his name along the page’s bottom. Penned in his social security number. “Not much in my past for you to hang this on.”

  She grabbed the paper away, folded it, and jammed it inside the envelope. She had to fight off the urge to leap up and away. “Why are you doing this?”

  His eyes had always been his best feature, that and his ability to lie with grace. “It wasn’t for you. Not just, anyway.”

  Jackie used both hands to rise. All her strength was captured by the words boiling up inside. The words she couldn’t choke off, no matter how much she tried. When they emerged, it was the sound of a strangled intruder who gasped, “I accept your apology.”

  She turned and fled, moving so fast she had to wait for the guard to catch up and unlatch the barrier. Which gave her time to glance back. Shane was still seated at the table, staring down at his folded hands.

  46

  Wednesday

  THE MORNING WAS so gray even the Capitol’s garden was muted, the flowers only slightly more tinted than the surrounding granite. All the trees wore minty adornments. The air tasted of diesel and conflict and coming rain.

  Outside the Dirksen Senate Office Building’s largest committee room, Wynn found Father Libretto in tight-knit conversation with Kay Trilling and Carter Styles. As soon as he spotted Wynn, the priest disengaged from the others and approached with hand outstretched. “Congressman Bryant, forgive me for interrupting your morning.”