High Treason

by John Gilstrap

  “I knew that.”

  “No, I mean serious trouble.” He pulled his hands from his pockets, cupped them, and blew into them before stuffing them back. “If what you and your friend are implying is true, then the Secret Service is framing you for murder. In my experience, if the feds want to hurt you, you’re going to end up hurt.”

  David scowled and stretched his neck on his shoulders. This wasn’t turning out to be as helpful or empowering as he’d hoped.

  “So, why did you call me?” Cantrell asked.

  “You know everybody,” David replied. “You have forty years’ worth of sources, and I’m going to guess that they’ll be happy to talk with you about anything. I need to know what I’m really up against.”

  “And you can’t approach these sources yourself.”

  “Exactly,” David said. “After watching the news this morning, I was close to ratting myself out. Their case seems damn strong. Except, you know, for the part where they’re completely wrong.”

  “Jails are filled with the innocent,” Cantrell said. “Just ask them.” As he spoke, he continued to seem more interested in the crowd than he was in David.

  David craned his neck to check what he was checking. “What are you looking at?”

  “For,” Cantrell said. “I’m looking for anyone who might see through your brilliant disguise. Unlike you, at this precise moment in time, I still have a great deal to lose.” It was classic Cantrell, simultaneously insulting and helpful.

  “Why did you come if you knew I was going to be here?” David asked. At this point, life was literally too short to be subtle.

  When Cantrell looked at him this time, David caught the first glimpse of real kindness in the grumpy old fart’s eyes. Nestled under thick, droopy lids and surrounded by squint lines, the irises were a remarkable blue, nearly gray. “First of all, I didn’t know you would be here. I merely suspected. But to your larger point— why am I here alone instead of with a SWAT team in tow—I told you before that I thought from the very beginning that the news reports were wrong.”

  Grayson placed a hand on David’s shoulder in a fatherly gesture that stirred emotion in David’s throat.

  “My boy, I am an old man. I’d been three times around the block before Woodstein got their first sniff of Watergate. My first big story was the DC riots of sixty-eight. Over that many years, you get a sense for people, a kind of sixth sense that is more compelling than any curriculum vitae. It’s never let me down.”

  David scowled. “I don’t—”

  “Listen,” Cantrell said, finishing the sentence in a way David had not intended. “You don’t listen. And that’s a terrible flaw in a reporter. It’s also a trait common to every reporter your age. Hell, maybe it’s common to every person your age.” The statement ended in a glare that somehow froze David’s vocal cords.

  “In any event, while I find you to be arrogant, narcissistic, and in general way too full of yourself, you have never for a moment impressed me as a person capable of murder. Sitting here next to you, I’ve seen nothing to change my mind.”

  For a second, David wondered if the appropriate response was to thank him. On further consideration, though, finding no compliment, he decided not to. “Still,” he said, “I appreciate you taking the chance and coming to see me. I wanted to ask you a favor.”

  Cantrell held up his hand for silence.

  Yeah, and I’m the arrogant one, David didn’t say.

  “Your friend DeShawn Lincoln was not liked among his fellow cops. My sources have independently referred to him as twitchy, paranoid, obnoxious, and one who bristled at authority. The phrase common to all sources was ‘pain in the ass.’ And please know that I mean no offense to the dead, or to your friendship.”

  David scowled. “You’ve already started looking into the case?”

  “I’ve been at my desk since six this morning. I’m always at my desk by six. All of this notwithstanding, those who knew him all agreed that he seemed genuinely unnerved yesterday. Two actually used the word ‘frightened.’ The law of the police locker room being what it is, though, no one ventured to ask him why.”

  “I assumed that he didn’t want to talk to his fellow cops because he feared that they were in on whatever bad things were happening,” David explained.

  “Oh, how I love to depend on assumptions. They have served me so well over the years.” Cantrell did sarcasm better than most. “Based on what your friend Becky told me on the phone, I did some research on the shooting at the Wild Times Bar the other night. Before I get into it, though, tell me again what your friend said about the Secret Service.”

  David shook his head. “He didn’t really say much of anything. There was just a mention that whatever bad things were happening, the Secret Service might be involved. Beyond being the victims of the shooting, I mean.”

  “He suspected that the Secret Service might have shot their own?”

  David checked himself before answering. “Admittedly another assumption,” he said, “but that’s what I got by reading between the lines.”

  Cantrell inhaled deeply, and ran the back of his hand between his neck and the collar of his coat. “Interesting indeed,” he said. He scanned the park one more time, then poked David with his elbow. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s walk and talk.”

  They headed north, away from the White House, which lay only three blocks to the south. As they headed toward Connecticut Avenue, it occurred to David that every morning and evening, the Secret Service closed this road in a rolling roadblock as the vice president headed back to his residence in the Naval Observatory. David’s legs felt stiff after having sat for so long.

  “In such a short time, I haven’t had a lot of time to speak with witnesses,” Cantrell said. It was his habit to start with an apology before launching the game-changing revelation. “One of the bartenders, though, is friends with my nephew, and he told me that he thought for sure that Anna Darmond was there when the shooting started.”

  David felt his jaw slacken. “The First Lady?”

  “Exactly she.”

  “The president’s wife. In a sleazoid bar.” David had a hard time wrapping his head around that one.

  “She’s famous for nighttime jaunts,” Cantrell said. “And that would explain the Secret Service presence.”

  David cocked his head as he tried to connect the dots. “So, you’re saying this was an attempted assassination?”

  “I’m saying nothing of the sort, because no one can prove that Mrs. Darmond was even there. Andy Wahl, the ABC White House stringer for NBC, sort of floated the question during the morning news briefing, but the suit behind the lectern piffled the question away, as if to say such a thing was preposterous.”

  “Did he actually say it was preposterous?”

  Cantrell gave him a disappointed look. “Does this administration ever actually say anything?”

  David tried to make it work in his mind. “Why wouldn’t it be all over the news? That’s not exactly a little thing.”

  “It could mean the cover-up of cover-ups.”

  David stopped for the light at L Street. “You say this as if you think it sounds reasonable.” He felt way too exposed out here in the commuting crowd, but between the cold-weather gear and the prevailing lack of eye contact among city dwellers, he might as well have been invisible.

  Cantrell looked straight ahead as he said, “Not to patronize, but a few more years in this job will teach you not to make sense of a story as you’re collecting information. Once you have the facts assembled, they will make sense out of themselves.”

  The light changed, and they stepped off the curb together. “You are patronizing,” David said, “and in this case, not well. We’re making assumptions based upon third-party rumors. That’s not the same as chasing facts.”

  “Don’t believe it then,” Cantrell said. “I’m just passing along information. Out of the goodness of my heart, I hasten to add. And there’s more if you’d like to hear it.”
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br />   David waited for it, and then realized that Cantrell actually wanted an answer. “Of course.”

  Cantrell gave a satisfied smirk. “All of the witnesses to the shooting last night spoke of a third big SUV as the vehicle containing the shooters. According to my nephew’s friend—the bartender—the guys in the shooting vehicle grabbed a homeless guy who looked to be dead and threw him in the back of their vehicle and then tore off with him.”

  David scoured his memory. “I don’t remember a report of a dead homeless guy.”

  Cantrell shot him with a gloved finger-gun. “Bingo.”

  “What bingo? What are you trying to tell me?”

  “That whoever these guys are, whatever they’re doing, they’re also covering up a murder.”

  “Did anyone else see this dead homeless guy?”

  “I’m sure they did,” Cantrell said. “I just need to find them. Problem is, from what I can tell, of the people the cops interviewed after it was over—the few that were left after they all ran the other way—none of them mentioned the homeless man.”

  “Maybe because he wasn’t there?”

  Cantrell smacked the back of David’s head. “Get in the spirit of things, will you? You’ve got dead Secret Service agents, you’ve got a government-looking van, a vanished dead guy, and the likelihood that the First Lady was there. I don’t scream ‘conspiracy’ very often, but I’m screaming it now. And then there’s the not insignificant detail that the person who wanted to talk to a reporter about it ends up murdered, with the reporter he was going to talk to framed for his killing.”

  David had to stop. They stood just outside the Mayflower Hotel, amid the morning taxi-catching scrum. Hearing Grayson Cantrell sum it all up like that made things seem suddenly hopeless. David had never been much of a fighter—he talked a good game, but for the most part just rolled over when the going got too tough—and he had no idea how to take on the federal government, if that was what it was coming to.

  “Maybe the homeless guy was the target of the hit,” David said. It felt like a random comment under the circumstances.

  “Maybe,” Cantrell agreed. He lightly grasped David’s arm at the elbow and urged him forward. “Let’s keep moving. But if that were the case, it would mean that the rest was all coincidence—that the Secret Service just happened to be there, and that the corresponding likelihood of the First Lady being present was just one of those things.”

  David gave a wry chuckle. “If the alternative is some great national conspiracy, I think I prefer the coincidence.”

  “As you wish.”

  They walked in silence for the half block that took them to the complicated intersection where Connecticut Avenue met M Street and Rhode Island Avenue. David didn’t like where his head went without talking. “I really do thank you for this, Grayson.”

  “You’re very welcome.”

  “And what’s the quid pro quo?”

  Cantrell recoiled, clearly feigning insult. “I’m shocked, young man. Shocked I tell you. Isn’t it possible that I am merely feeling altruistic?”

  “Never occurred to me.”

  Cantrell laughed. “See? You really do have reporter’s instincts. But this time, contrary to character, I truly am acting merely out of the goodness of my heart.”

  David’s gut tightened. “Um, why?”

  Cantrell laughed harder at whatever he saw in David’s face. “Good God. Is it really my reputation to be such a prick?”

  “I’m actually not sure what you want the answer to be,” David said.

  “No answer is necessary. Perhaps when all of this settles out, you’ll be able to set the record straight and tell all who will listen that Grayson Cantrell is willing to lend a helping hand to a needy colleague.”

  “So you’ll help me with the story?”

  “I thought that’s what I’m doing now,” Cantrell said. A veil of sadness edged out some of the twinkle in his eye.

  “Well, you are,” David said. “But now that everyone’s looking for me, I thought that maybe—”

  Cantrell shook his head slowly. “I can’t do shoe-leather work for you,” he said. “More precisely—more honestly—I won’t do shoe-leather work for you.”

  David’s stomach fell. It’s precisely what he was going to ask, and while he recognized that it was an outrageous favor, the disappointment tasted bitter. “Okay,” he said.

  Cantrell sighed. “Look, David. I’m an old man. The job that I used to love bears little resemblance today to what it was like back when I loved it. In a year or two, when I retire, I want to be remembered for my decades of hard work as a journeyman reporter.”

  “But this—”

  “Hear me out. I’ve lost my taste for the big kill. I don’t want the big story anymore. I can’t afford the risk.”

  David scowled.

  “You’re young. You can swing for the fences and take big chances. If you get the story wrong, you have years to recover. If I go for the big one and blow it, that’s all I’ll be remembered for. The rest of it—all those years—won’t mean anything. It’s as if I would never have existed. I can’t live with that.”

  The emotion on Cantrell’s face looked a lot like shame. David didn’t begin to understand the rationale behind the older man’s words, but he recognized finality when he heard it.

  “Well, thanks then,” David said. “I think.”

  “You think I’m a coward,” Cantrell said. “And that’s okay. Perhaps I am.”

  “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

  “Now who’s patronizing?”

  David felt his ears turn red. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. That’s not my place. I’m just feeling very alone right now.”

  “Reporters are about getting the story. We’re not used to being the story. It’s a lonely place to be.”

  Lonely and crushing and soul stealing. Panic inducing. David didn’t know how he was going to breathe through the encroaching panic attack.

  “Are you interested in a suggestion from a cowardly old man?” Cantrell asked.

  “Right now, I’m just interested in conversation. Human contact.” A beat. “I’d love to hear whatever you have to tell me.

  “Your blog,” Cantrell said. “I believe it’s called Kirk Nation, right?”

  “You mean you don’t read it?”

  “I don’t partake of the medium that will soon kill the medium that pays my bills. But I understand that many people do read it.”

  “About a hundred twenty thousand hits a day,” David said.

  “That’s nice. Barely ten percent of what our readership used to be.”

  “But nearly a quarter of what it is now,” David countered.

  “Indeed. I was thinking that you might do well to write a piece that posits exactly the scenario you outlined to me this morning.”

  “But I don’t have the facts.”

  “It’s the Internet, David. When did hard facts become a requisite for writing a story?”

  “Kirk Nation is not like that.” David hated it when these Stone Age paper guys took shots at the future that they feared to enter.

  “Hear the rest,” Cantrell said. “And I meant no harm. The point of writing the piece would not be to report the facts, per se, but rather to float out a bit of bait. Given that you are the focus of an international manhunt, what you posit by way of this incident will get a lot of attention.”

  “From the very people I’m trying to avoid.”

  “From everyone. If you put it out there, people will start asking questions. If your theory is right, it should trigger a panic somewhere. When people panic, they make mistakes.”

  “They also start shooting people.”

  Cantrell’s eyes flashed. “Well, there’s that, yes. But that’s more of a constant in your personal equation than a variable, is it not? The important fact is that people will start pressing for more details. The universe can support only a finite number of lies. With enough people searching for the tr
uth, the cover-up will collapse. At least it should.”

  David let the words bounce around his head for a while. “That’s a pretty aggressive strategy,” he said. “It’s a little putting on a Speedo to go out and kick a hornet’s nest.”

  “Imagery that I neither want nor need,” Cantrell said. “From where I sit—and remember, I’m the coward among us—a passive approach largely guarantees you a grave or a jail cell. If the hornets are going to sting you anyway, why not make a game of it?”

  “Pretty damn high stakes,” David thought aloud. Then, to Cantrell: “This is the First Lady we’re talking about. This could have tentacles that reach to the White House. I’m just one guy. I don’t have any White House sources. I don’t have a single layer of protection.”

  Cantrell put a hand on David’s shoulder. “It’s your life, son. You’ve got to live it the way you want. Do you own a gun?”

  “A gun! Who the hell am I going to shoot?”

  “Yourself, I’d think,” Cantrell said. “If it comes to that. Die or live. Run or live. Hide or live. Go to prison or live. Each is the opposite of living, as far as I’m concerned. It’s just a matter of choosing your method.”

  Suddenly this entire meeting felt like a terrible mistake. David felt his world collapsing into a dark, dense void. Cantrell was right, of course. Not about the suicide—he’d never be able to do that—but about the need to be aggressive.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come along for the ride?” David asked.

  “I’ve never been surer of anything in my life. And I’m sorry it’s that way.” As he looked down at his feet, the slate-gray sky gave up a few flakes of snow. Not enough to accumulate, but more than enough to start snarling traffic in Washington.

  “I guess that’s it, then,” David said. “Thank you, Grayson.”

  “Billy Zanger,” Cantrell said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Billy Zanger. He’s a deputy assistant press secretary at the White House. Maybe a deputy deputy. He’s junior, but he was appointed by President Darmond. You might even be older than he. He’s a child. No offense.”

  David was well beyond being sensitive to insult. “What about him?”