Quantico Rules

by Gene Riehl

  Still, Randall’s opposition had been remarkable—which made her apparent change of heart even more baffling—but I knew better than to waste time puzzling over it. Fifteen years inside and around the Beltway had taught me nothing if not cynicism. Something had changed hands, that much was clear. Money, sex, power, or a combination of all three, and it was simply useless to wonder which of them or why.

  Lisa’s rap on the door broke my train of thought, and I joined her in the passageway. We descended the stairs and a minute later walked through the lobby and into the attached café.

  We chose a Chinese-red vinyl booth at the very back of the half-full room. The café buzzed with dozens of conversations. A veteran waitress shuffled up to us, pad in hand, pencil at the ready. Her short brown hair was mussed, her face and the front of her light-blue smock sagged with wrinkles. She handed over the menus, gave us a full twenty seconds to make a choice.

  “What can I get you folks?” she demanded in a tone heavy with the suggestion that she’d been watching the clock for at least an hour already, that it would be just fine with her if we had nothing at all, that it was a long damned way for her to walk just so we could eat.

  I looked at the menu, a photomontage of greasy piles of meat and potatoes, then picked the least objectionable, a double cheeseburger with a side of fries. Lisa grimaced, then ordered a chicken salad for herself. There wasn’t any picture of it, I noticed. Probably didn’t sell three a year.

  But when the food came I realized I’d made another of my hasty judgments. The cheeseburger was among the best I’d ever eaten, not overdone, a smoky flavor I found irresistible. The fries were crisp and greaseless, the coffee an exceptional blend of vanilla and some kind of nut. For her part, Lisa dispatched her salad with a speed that made it unnecessary to ask how she liked it.

  We ate without a lot of conversation, but afterward, coffee cups filled with that wonderfully aromatic blend, we got back to business. Or tried to, anyway. The morning had been pretty much a washout. With the chilly reception from the sheriff and nothing at all out of Reverend Johnson and the hospital, there wasn’t much to talk about.

  “You want to go back to the sheriff?” Lisa asked after awhile.

  “Why not interview the trees?”

  She got my point. “The reverend, then. Maybe he’s had time to repent.”

  “We’re not through with him, trust me, but I’m not going back there empty handed.”

  She grinned. “We could try door-to-door.” She impersonated my much deeper voice. “Anybody here,” she growled, “know what Brenda Thompson did, and why she did it?” Lisa laughed out loud, then reached across the table to touch the back of my hand.

  “Did you bring the Thompson PSQ?” I asked.

  She lifted her briefcase, put it on the table, and opened it. Pulled out a document of about two dozen typed pages, the personal security questionnaire the judge had filled out to get us started on her background investigation. She handed it to me and reached into the briefcase for a second document.

  “I made a second copy” she said, “just in case.”

  We sat—she with her copy, me with mine—turning the pages, looking for something the month-old investigation might have missed.

  “Hey,” Lisa said, pointing at the questionnaire, “Brenda Thompson has a grandmother around here … not exactly around here, but not all that far away. We could drive there in an hour.”

  I shook my head. “We don’t do grandmothers.” Immediate family only is the rule in background investigations and it’s one of the few Hoover-era rules that still makes sense. “You ever heard of the grandma principle?”

  “Let me guess. Grandma might know, but she’ll never tell.”

  “Hitler’s grandmother would have described him as impulsive, a little trouble getting along with others, but all in all a very good boy.”

  “Funny … but a bit facile, don’t you think? My grandma wouldn’t bad-mouth me either, but she’s too religious to lie if the FBI asks her a direct question.”

  “You got one? A question for Thompson’s granny, I mean?”

  “I sure do. What happened to make Brenda go to Brookston, then lie about it the rest of her life? How’s that for starters?”

  “Too subtle. But your point about your own grandmother isn’t a bad one. A woman Thompson’s grandma’s age is probably just as religious. Probably more devoted than ever to keeping her soul in good shape.” I took another sip of coffee. “Where does she live?”

  “Williamsburg. Southeast of here, seventy miles, maybe a bit farther. If we leave right now we can see grandma today and still get back here in time for a late dinner.”

  I slid toward the end of the booth. “Little Red Riding Hood probably said the same thing,” I told her, “but if you do the driving, I’ll watch for the wolves.”

  THIRTEEN

  Before we left the Brookston Inn, I stopped at the front desk to check for messages. Nothing, the desk clerk told me. I told him to forward any calls to my cell phone. I thought about the records nurse at the hospital, but didn’t mention her. Despite my bet with Lisa, it was unlikely she’d call. Helena Evans might hate her boss’s guts, but she knew better than to blindside him.

  She fooled me.

  My cell phone rang before Lisa and I were halfway to Williamsburg. We were crossing the Mattaponi River on State Highway 33 near the town of West Point when I had Nurse Evans on the line.

  “I can’t talk long, Agent Monk,” she said. “Faydeux took the afternoon off after you left, and I got to thinking about what you’d said about Judge Thompson. About how she might not get the job if you can’t complete your investigation.”

  “I was hoping you might.”

  “I can’t give you records, not without copying them, and I can’t risk that. What I can do is read you a short list of names. You wanted the names of black women admitted to the hospital in the month of June 1972. At least that’s what you told me.”

  “If you give them to me, I can get a subpoena.”

  “Would my name come up?” For the first time there was fear in her voice.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Okay,” she said, “you got a pen? There are five people on the list.”

  I told her to go ahead. She gave me the names, I wrote them down.

  “Gotta go,” she said. “Hope this helps.”

  I laid the phone aside. Behind the wheel, Lisa glanced across at me, grinning. “Where you gonna take me to dinner?”

  “Anywhere you want … as much as you can get on your tray.”

  She grunted. “Read me the names.”

  “What’s the point? You feeling clairvoyant all of a sudden?”

  “Humor me.”

  “Irene Cavanaugh’s the first one—by date of admission—and the second is Lynette Williamson. Then Jasmine Granger, Glen Ellyn Tate, and Samantha Brown.” I looked at her. “Anything come to mind?”

  “Samantha Brown, maybe. Has a made up sound to me, like a stage name or something.”

  “I want to be there when you use that to get a subpoena.”

  “How much farther to grandma’s house?”

  I checked the map. “We’ll hit I-64 in a few miles. Head south. About twenty miles to Williamsburg, looks like.” I folded the map, tucked it into the pocket built into the car door.

  Lisa flipped on the wipers to counter the latest shower. We continued along the two-lane road until we got to I-64, then took the Interstate to Williamsburg, looked for an exit that would take us to the banks of the James River. A few minutes later we were there.

  Waterside House, the luxury nursing home in which Brenda Thompson’s grandmother now lived, stood on a low rise not much more than a hundred yards from the river. Lisa parked in the paved lot on the west end of a five-story brick building that looked more like a colonial mansion than a place people came to die. We stood together on the brick walkway bisecting an elegant sweep of front lawn. The judge had to be paying a fortune for this kind of luxury,
I decided. A pile of money to have Grandma Williams wheeled out once a day into the exclusive southern breezes. I couldn’t help wondering about that. Brenda Thompson made a very good salary, but she did not come from money, and her financial disclosure statements didn’t show any unusual wealth either.

  Lisa stared at the main building. “What a dump,” she said.

  “More like a honeymoon hotel than a nursing home, isn’t it?”

  “What I’ve heard, a lot of the same stuff goes on.”

  It was just as nice inside.

  We peeked into a large room just off the lobby, where a number of residents napped in front of a humongous television screen. The Home Shopping Network, I saw, a screen filled with immense styrofoam fingers bearing gargantuan faux-diamond rings, an even bigger person extolling their affordability. I glanced out the nearest window at a flock of river birds above the water, some motionless in an updraft, others diving like missiles into the food-filled water. Growing old might not be so awful done this way, I thought, then looked back at the listless gathering in the TV room and shook my head. Dying is dying, no matter where you do it.

  At the front desk the receptionist called for someone to take us to Prudence Williams. A few moments later a large man in a snow-white uniform came around the corner and escorted us to a room on the fourth floor. Inside the room, fresh-cut flowers stood on the dark-wood night-stand by the bed, along with a silver water pitcher and crystal glass. The orderly told her who we were, then left us alone.

  Prudence Williams lay on the bed, her tiny body half-covered by a white comforter, her miniature face rumpled as a used bath towel. She wore a stunning red satin jacket and a tan hearing aid rode the right temple piece of her frameless glasses. Perfume hovered, an expensive scent that I recognized but couldn’t name. Unfortunately, her expression did not match the bright conviviality of her jacket.

  Grandmother Williams wasn’t pleased to have a visitor, I guessed from the sour look on her face, but maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe it wasn’t visitors she objected to, but the FBI in particular. As had been the case with Reverend Johnson, she’d lived through a dreadful time without much help from her local FBI agents. She waved a bony hand at the upholstered chairs next to the bed. We sat.

  “Who did you say you are?” she asked before we could even get settled. Her voice was even skinnier than she was.

  I glanced at Lisa. I told you we’d be wasting our time, I wanted to say.

  “FBI, ma’am. I’m Special Agent Puller Monk.” I hoisted my credentials so she could see them. “And this is Special Agent Lisa Sands. We came to talk about your granddaughter, Brenda. About her nomination for the Supreme Court.”

  “The Supreme Court? What about the Supreme Court, Mr. … Mr. … who?”

  “Monk, Mrs. Williams, Puller Monk. I need to ask you a few questions about Brenda. What kind of person she is, what she was like as a child.” The lady tipped her head toward me, and I raised my voice. “About her days as a college student out in California.”

  “She doesn’t live in California, Mr. Bunk.”

  “Monk, ma’am, with an ‘m.’” I spoke a little louder. “No, she doesn’t live there, but she did study at Berkeley.”

  Grandma frowned, leaned even closer toward me and cocked her head. I slid my chair a bit closer. “What kind of a student was she?” I hollered.

  She shrank backward. “Sweet Jesus!” she yelled, “what you tryin’ to do, Chuck, blow my hearing aid into the goddamn river?”

  I pulled back, then glanced at Lisa before trying again. “I’m very sorry, ma’am. I just have a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  Good God, I thought, it was the Grandma Principle to the tenth power, and even worse. The woman was not only deaf, but meaner than hell at the same time. I reached for my briefcase, ready to close up shop, until I caught Prudence Williams shaking her head.

  “Please forgive me,” she said. “I know I shouldn’t yell, but it’s so frustrating sometimes. Either I can’t hear, or I hear so well it drives me nuts. I can’t remember what happened two minutes ago, but I can’t forget terrible things that happened eighty years ago. Hell, I’m not even sure it’s my own life I’m remembering!” Her head quivered with the force of her words. “Take my advice, Mr. Dump, don’t get old. Old sucks.”

  Before I could stop myself, I burst out laughing. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I don’t hear someone your age use that expression every day. And it’s Monk, ma’am, with an—”

  “Of course it is,” she said.

  So she wasn’t crazy, I decided. She wasn’t a crotchety old bitch, and she could call me anything she wanted to.

  She waggled her stubbly chin toward the table to the right of her bed. “Pour me some water, will you?”

  I poured water from the pitcher on the nightstand into the glass next to it, leaned close to hand it over. As I did so, I took a moment to study the woman’s eyes. There was something wrong here, I realized. In that desiccated face, her eyes were wrong.

  I recalled a famous picture of Robert Frost during the Kennedy inauguration ceremony. The poet’s face had been ancient, a landscape of craters and crevasses more like the surface of the moon than a human face, but his eyes were completely different. Young. Clear. Ageless. Prudence Williams’s eyes were exactly the same. They should have been bloodshot, the pupils hidden in red and yellow murk, but they weren’t. They were as clear as Frost’s had been. She might not be a poet laureate, but she sure as hell wasn’t senile either.

  “What was Brenda’s childhood like?” I asked.

  “Her father was a no-good bastard who took off the second she was born. My daughter wasn’t a whole lot better. I reared Elizabeth after the court sent her to me. And I’m glad I did.”

  “Her father’s name was Willie Thompson?”

  “No-good bastard!”

  “Her three brothers all have different last names.”

  She stared at me. “Where you been livin’? That ain’t no thing.”

  I managed not to laugh this time, but I could sense Lisa starting to shake. It was just too bizarre, to hear street talk come out of that mouth. I found myself looking forward to hearing what she’d say next.

  “So Brenda used the name Thompson even after she married.”

  “That’s right, Mr. Punk. Somethin’ wrong with that?”

  I shook my head. “When Brenda was in college, she had a roommate, Dalia Hernandez.”

  “Never heard of her.”

  I left Dalia for later. “Brenda told us she spent a few weeks in a town near here, a place called Brookston, just after she finished at Berkeley, just before she went on to Yale. Do you recall that?”

  Prudence Williams’s face screwed itself into concentration. “What-ston? Around here someplace? Why the hell would she do that?”

  “She told me her aunt Sarah Kendall was dying and she came back to Virginia to help out.”

  “Sarah who?” She shook her head. “She never had no aunt named Sarah.”

  She blinked several times, then yawned before closing her eyes. She stayed that way, motionless, until I wondered if she’d gone to sleep. Or worse. I turned to Lisa, then leaned over the bed, ready to listen for some sign of breathing. Suddenly her eyes snapped open, and I sank back into my chair.

  “But that don’t mean much either,” she continued, “that this Sarah what’s-her-face wasn’t an actual family member. Hell, where I come from everyone is aunt somebody or other.”

  Her head sagged against her pillow, her eyes closed. This time she spoke without opening them.

  “But I don’t remember no Brookston. Brenda would have written to me about it, I’m sure, but I just don’t remember.”

  “Did you save her letters, ma’am? Would you have any from her college days?”

  “Lord, no! There were hundreds of them!” She looked around the room, seemed to consider expending a gesture before giving up the notion. “Where the hell would I keep them? Why you want to see a pile of old le
tters anyway?”

  “I need to verify what your granddaughter told me, about Brookston I mean. I thought you might have one she mailed from there.”

  Prudence Williams surveyed the room then smiled, her teeth a gleaming tribute to the artisan who’d made them. “Pays for all this, my little Brenda.”

  I felt my shoulders beginning to slump. As a non sequitur her answer was just as perfect as her teeth. While the old girl wasn’t completely daffy, she wasn’t entirely there either. I didn’t bother checking with Lisa before I started to put away my notebook. Suddenly Prudence Williams held up her hand.

  “Wait. Don’t go. Please don’t go yet. I just might have a letter.” She pointed at an antique chest of drawers under the window across from the foot of the bed. “Might be in the drawer over there.” She motioned me toward the chest. “What else have you got to do, Special Agent Monk?”

  I smiled. Now the lady knew not only my name but my title.

  Lisa walked to the chest of drawers, followed Grandma Williams’s instructions to the proper drawer, recovered a small bundle of age-yellowed envelopes encircled by a brittle rubber band, brought the bundle back to the bedside and handed it to her. Prudence Williams slipped off the rubber band, selected half a dozen letters from the packet and held them out in a hand that trembled enough to make the envelopes shake. I took them, examined the postmarks, and shook my head.