Private Detective: BENNINGTON P.I.: A thrilling four-novel political murder mystery private detective series...

by D. W. Ulsterman

  The man’s fear was removing what little semblance of control or courage from Talbot. The last thing in the world he wanted to have to do was leave with Arman and his men. That was good, let him stew in the fear for a day, and by tomorrow, he’d tell me everything. And by then, I was hoping to have a few more answers of my own.

  I’ll see you tomorrow Talbot. Arman, keep him safe.”

  Arman nodded and then motioned for his men to dispose of Tony’s body and tie up the still just waking Deckler.

  “Call you later, Frank. Let you know where he is being held.”

  With that bit of necessary business out of the way, I returned to the interior of the Off the Record, stopping at the bar to retrieve the manila envelope Reg was holding for me. The place was now packed, with a number of familiar political faces milling about the bar. My usual table had been taken by a young Asian woman and an older man I recognized as the chief of staff for a New Jersey senator. The man had long had a taste for the Far East.

  “Any place quiet I can sit down and look through this envelope, Reg?”

  Reg scanned the bar and when no available space was found, shook his head.

  “Sorry Frank, this time of night is almost always packed. Since when are you the quiet reading type? You turning into an old man on me?”

  I chuckled.

  “Hell, I took that turn a long time ago. No worries Reg, I’ll just get a room upstairs.”

  Upstairs referred to the famous Hay-Adams Hotel, a place commonly used by the newly elected President of the United States prior to their official move into the White House. Rooms there weren’t cheap, but man did I love the history and ambience of the place. Rumor was the place was haunted by the ghost of Marian Adams, who killed herself on the hotel site in 1885, just prior to its completion. Ghosts or no ghosts, back in my harder drinking days, I spent many a night and morning sleeping off a bender in one of their typically small, but tasteful Old World charm rooms.

  Mere minutes later, with Walt’s manila envelope safely tucked inside of my jacket, I was being escorted to the third floor of the Hay-Adams to a corner room with a peek-a-boo view across the street of what is basically the front lawn of the White House. I was pretty sure I’d stayed in the same room a few other times over the years, though those memories remained somewhat lost in the hazy fog of party nights past.

  Anyone who has seen pictures of the White House Oval Office will have an idea of the décor inside a Hay-Adams hotel room: high ceilings with intricate designs on both ceiling and crown molding, a mix of off yellows and beige colors, and French colonial style furnishings. Basically, it was my kind of place.

  So finally some peace and quiet as I sat down at the small work desk available in the far right corner of the room and withdrew the file taken from Walt’s storage locker, the file with the handwritten note that Talbot was not to be trusted. Walt was right on that, leaving me to wonder what other insights were housed inside the confines of the manila envelope.

  What were you up to with all this Walt?

  The assorted papers inside of the envelope were nearly an inch thick. Much of it was assorted notes in Walt’s handwriting, several others were what appeared to be bank statements of some kind, and in the very back was a graph shaped like a pyramid with several names written into varying levels within the pyramid. Each name appeared to also have corresponding multiple numbers next to them. At the very top of the graph, Walt had written Global Electric. Interestingly, unlike all of the other names within the pyramid, there were no numbers assigned to Global Electric.

  As I surveyed the names inside of the pyramid, I quickly recognized some of them. One was a former Vice President of the United States. Another was a recently retired senator, another had been U.S. Secretary of State, and yet another was a former Secretary General for the United Nations. Whatever puzzle Walt had been putting together, he was involving some very serious people.

  Several more pages were part of some kind of global temperature study conducted by a professor from a small state university in Idaho. The name of a professor was circled at the top of the study, and then underlined each time the name re-appeared throughout the remaining pages, indicating that whoever this professor was, Walt considered him important. Whether that importance indicated friend or foe, I had no idea.

  Within the manila envelope was a smaller sealed envelope that when opened, revealed several photographs. Each one had the CEO of Global Electric in the presence of many of the names inside of the pyramid graph, including the former Vice President and the former U.N. Secretary General.

  Another scrap of paper had written on it in black marker, T3 Group. I sat back with my eyes closed trying to recall if I had ever heard of the term T3 Group, but came up blank. Its placement in the file indicated Walt thought it important, but why he did so was again, yet another unanswered question.

  I picked out the bank statement papers. There was no indication of what bank they represented, leaving me to wonder if my initial reaction as to what those papers actually were was incorrect. On the left was a series of dates, in the middle was a row of seemingly random numbers, and on the right of the pages was another row of numbers with decimal points.

  Deposits?

  If the row of numbers on the right did in fact represent monetary deposits, the amounts indicated were considerable, with a total approaching nearly sixty million dollars.

  You can buy a whole lot of push and shove in this town for sixty million, and more than a few body bags.

  Shit. I had to admit, I was hoping for a lot more clarity than what Walt’s envelope delivered. He was clearly putting together a big environmentalist conspiracy angle, involving some names that most would recognize, but how much of it was real, and how much was just his conjectures I didn’t know. And at the end of the day, I didn’t see anything in all that stack of papers that could be pinned on somebody.

  It didn’t make sense. Why the hell was Talbot willing to have Walt killed over this stuff? There was no proof, just a list of names and some pictures. Talbot was talking about the temperature outside and light bulbs.

  C’mon Frank, clear your head and think this out. You’ve got to be missing something here.

  My attempted pep talk with myself fell flat, leaving me in the hotel room chair staring at the wall as the muffled sounds of traffic filtered into my room from the street below.

  Whatever I was missing refused to reveal itself, no matter how many times I went over the envelope’s contents in my head. I also knew that if I went to Talbot tomorrow without any real understanding of what Walt was researching before he was killed, Talbot would shut up and not reveal what he knew as well.

  I stared back at that same wall for another hour, before fatigue began to make its way through me, my body soon giving itself gratefully over to the impermanent darkness of sleep.

  19.

  The next day began with a phone call that woke me up just after 9:00. It was the attorney, Stanislov Nedkov.

  “Good morning, Mr. Bennington. I hope I didn’t wake you?”

  Now I’m not one of those more polite personalities that tries to hide the fact a phone call did in fact wake me. I always figure you should let the caller know that yeah buddy, you woke me up and I’m not so happy about it.

  “I’m up now. What do you want?”

  The attorney’s tone suggested good news, which frankly, I was more than happy to receive after several days of shit sandwiches.

  “I received confirmation from the District Attorney’s Office that there is no pending arrest being considered against you Mr. Bennington. They searched your apartment, found nothing to tie you directly to Mr. Till’s death, and now it appears the investigation is, at least for the moment, winding down.”

  While I was grateful for the good news, it seemed odd how law enforcement was so determined to drag me into Walt’s death and now appeared to be simply shrugging its shoulders over the matter. Did Stanislov have that kind of pull with the local authorities?

>   “Why the sudden change Mr. Nedkov? Just the other day you sounded like I needed to prepare for a real deal cavity search. Now they’re just backing off?”

  The attorney paused for a few seconds before responding.

  “If you mean to ask whether someone with influence acted on your behalf, I don’t know. I assure you, my own powers of persuasion are not that effective. I would suggest you enjoy the news, and carry on with your life Mr. Bennington. If I hear anything else, I’ll be in touch.”

  I placed my cell phone atop the nightstand and looked up at the ceiling above me, again trying to see what my gut told me was right in front of me. There was something important in all those papers Walt had worked to hide away. Something that got him killed.

  Walt hired me to help him. Before that, Talbot said he was working with Walt. Something then happened between the two of them…something that made Walt leave a warning for me not to trust Talbot.

  So who the hell hired Walt and Talbot - and why?

  My stomach reminded me it was time for breakfast. Not wanting to bother with getting fully dressed yet, I simply called down to room service for some scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee.

  Twenty minutes later, the food was delivered by an earnest looking young man with neatly trimmed and styled brown hair who reminded me of the many interns who drifted into and out of the Capitol Building with such regularity. Fresh faced boys and girls still brimming with hope and idealism that they had come to a place where good deeds go unpunished, and all is well with the world so long as the right people are elected. It normally took no more than a few months for these poor naïve bastards to realize the place they had actually arrived in was the Devil’s den itself, where corruption was king, and innocence just a little side dish on the path to power.

  “Please sign here sir. It just goes on the room’s account and you take care of it upon check out.”

  The hotel had upgraded its billing system since I last stayed there. The young man held one of those new electrical pad devices with a display screen showing my name and room number, the cost of the breakfast, and a space at the bottom of the screen for me to sign.

  Now I understand the whole innovations are a good thing, but I gotta tell you, I miss the old pen and paper days. It just seemed more real to me, you know? Like all that paperwork inside of Walt’s manila envelope. He was old school too, and old school is something I both appreciate and understand.

  Like all the paperwork in Walt’s envelope.

  A brief tingle ran up my spine, as I realized I teetered on the brink of something big. A break through. Understanding. A clue.

  A display screen showing my name and room number, the cost of the breakfast…

  “Is everything ok, sir?”

  I nodded without looking back at the hotel employee, trying to keep my mind focused on the image that was struggling to reveal itself to me.

  “Yeah, thank you.”

  I closed the hotel room door slowly and looked down at the small breakfast cart.

  Walt’s paperwork… A display screen showing my name and room number, the cost of the breakfast…

  Though the desk was just a few paces from where I stood, the time it took to cover the distance inside of the small hotel room felt like forever as my mind raced to clamp down on what I believed was finally an explanation as to what Walt had uncovered.

  I took out the stack of papers once again and withdrew the one with the pyramid graph and the names with the corresponding numbers that Walt had written in by hand. Each set of numbers next to each of the names was eight digits.

  My hands shook slightly as I fumbled through the other papers trying to locate the two I believed to be some kind of bank statement. When I found them, I placed the bank statement alongside the pyramid graph, my eyes scanning carefully from left to right.

  The numbers matched.

  I located the sheet with the pyramid graph that had the names and what I earlier thought to be multiple random numbers. Those numbers weren’t random though. I was able to match those exact numbers to the middle set of numbers in one of the rows contained in the bank statement. For instance, the number Walt had assigned to the former United Nations Secretary General within the pyramid graph matched up to a number on the bank statement, and on that same row was then a monetary amount indicating just over nine million dollars, money that Walt’s graph made clear linked back to Global Electric.

  I repeated this process with every name contained in the pyramid graph, each time matching that name up with a deposit line on the bank statement pages. This was the puzzle Walt had figured out. How he did it I had no idea, nor why he did it, leading me back again to the question of who had hired him in the first place.

  I looked down to see my hands were still shaking, and I could feel a thin layer of sweat covering my forehead. If this truly was what it appeared to be, this thing was big, and frankly, I knew it was something far too big for me to navigate alone. Doing that would get me killed.

  And that’s why Walt came to me. He knew he needed help with this. Probably thought my political connections could give him an idea of who to hand all of this over to. That still doesn’t tell me who had him doing this work in the first place though.

  My cell phone indicated it was nearly 10:00. I had another hour before the hotel check out time. Time enough to eat my breakfast, take a quick shower, and hopefully by then, figure out what the hell my next move would be.

  I was halfway finished with breakfast when my cell phone rang again, the number indication simply stating “unknown caller”.

  “This is Bennington – who’s this?”

  A female voice responded immediately.

  “Mr. Bennington, please listen carefully. You have no more than a minute to vacate your room before they arrive. Do not use the elevator. Do not leave through the lobby. One minute Mr. Bennington, go - NOW.”

  20.

  Something in the woman’s voice, her tone, her calm sense of urgency, convinced me the intended warning was legit. I stumbled about clumsily getting dressed and was halfway to the door only to realize I had left Walt’s file sitting on the desk.

  “Shit!”

  I turned back, grabbed the paperwork and jammed it back inside of my jacket while opening the hotel room door slowly, poking my head out into the hallway for any sign of someone approaching.

  Thankfully, the hallway was clear.

  Do not use the elevator.

  The stairwell was to my left, while the elevator was located on the opposite end of the hallway to my right. I jogged toward the stairwell, feeling my lungs already straining from the kind of exertion I tended to avoid if at all possible. As my hand reached out to open the stairwell door, I heard the sound of the elevator opening from down the hall.

  Someone was coming.

  Closing the door behind me as quietly as possible, I then peered through the small glass window that was in the upper center of the steel framed door. Two men, shoulder to shoulder, walked with determined focus down the hallway toward my room. Each were dressed identically in matching navy blue suits, deep red ties, and crisp collared white dress shirts. The man on the left was slightly shorter though at least ten years older, perhaps as old as sixty. His thinning, grey hair was cut short against his scalp. His long, lean face deeply lined around the eyes and mouth, and his eyes were a hard granite blue that even from the nearly sixty feet that separated us, sent a shiver running down me as I felt my pacemaker assisted heart pounding inside of my chest.

  The other younger man had softer features, combined with a full head of dark hair combed neatly to the left side. Even though the two walked side by side, his body language made it apparent he deferred to the older man.

  I receded further to the side behind the stairwell door so just my right eye could watch as the two men stood directly in front of my hotel room door and the younger of the two then knocked forcefully three times. They stood and waited for a response that would not come. There was something in how they stoo
d so still and quiet after knocking on the door that convinced me if I had still been in that room, I would never have come out of it alive.

  Deciding then I had seen more than enough for now, I began making my way slowly down the stairs, hoping the sound of my descent would not echo through the stairwell door above me and into the hallway where the two men stood. A minute later and I was back on the lobby floor, though still hiding inside the stairwell.

  Do not leave through the lobby.

  My phone rang, the noise startling me and causing me to look up in panic, fully expecting to hear a door opening from above me followed by footsteps intent on tracking me down.

  Thankfully, the stairwell remained, but for my own presence, quiet. The caller id once again indicated “unknown caller”.