Jim McGill 03 The K Street Killer

by Joseph Flynn

  “That’s bloody marvelous.”

  “I didn’t put it together with the other shootings because it didn’t happen on K Street.”

  Hugh Collier mulled that over.

  “It might be unrelated,” he said. With a grin he added, “But where’s the fun in thinking like that?”

  Ellie said, “Exactly. We owe it to the public to find out if there’s a connection between the killings on K Street, the attempted murder of Putnam Shady and President Grant’s decision to leave the Republican party.”

  Hugh agreed. “It’s the only responsible thing to do.” Then he added a thought that had been running through his head. “Let’s see if we can’t weave a thread about the accusations of Erna Godfrey being tortured into the story.”

  He enjoyed his wicked thoughts, too.

  Metro Police Headquarters

  Lieutenant Rockelle Bullard went over the two lists on her desk a second time, frowning more deeply than she had on the first reading.

  Detectives Meeker and Beemer were sitting in her guest chairs and knew just how she felt. They’d had the same reaction minutes earlier when they’d been poring over and highlighting the pertinent information. Meeker was still keyed up; Beemer was just sitting back enjoying how good his feet felt in the padded oversized sneakers the lieutenant was letting him wear for the next ten days.

  When Rockelle looked up, Meeker said, “Pretty damn good guess, don’t you think? This friend of yours really that smart or is he getting some help?”

  Rockelle thought about that. Welborn was working with James J. McGill and Margaret Sweeney, two cops who had a whole lot more experience than he did. But Rockelle, like most of official Washington, had heard the story of McGill’s sick son by now. She doubted that the president’s husband had much on his mind but his boy.

  “He’s pretty good,” Rockelle said of Welborn.

  “Maybe he’s good at acting, too,” Beemer added. “Playin’ his part in a script somebody wrote for him.”

  That, Rockelle thought, was a more likely possibility. But hardly conclusive.

  “Somebody in the federal government wants to make the Metro police, and us in particular, look good?” she asked.

  “Us?” Meeker asked. “Me and Beemer ain’t on nobody’s federal radar, not unless Beem’s been cheatin’ on his taxes again.”

  “Fuck you, man,” Beemer said. “But he does have a point, lieutenant. Wasn’t us who got invited to your friend’s wedding.”

  “Okay, okay. So should I feel like I’m being set up?”

  Meeker said, “Could be Captain Yates just has a warm spot for you, cop to cop, you know. He’s solid with the president, you said, so what’s he gonna get out of handling this case his own self?”

  “He could become Major Yates,” Rockelle said.

  Beemer said, “That girl he’s marryin’ as rich as he said, maybe he don’t need to think about that.”

  “It all comes down to how much you trust the guy,” Meeker concluded.

  Rockelle thought about that.

  “Could be a fake out,” she said. “He gives me something that looks good to keep me happy and looking the wrong way. Then he goes out and breaks the case with Porky Pig.”

  Both detectives laughed at that.

  “So what’re we going to do, Lieutenant?” Meeker asked.

  Rockelle sighed. “Since we’ll be dealing with recent widows here, I’ll do the interviews. You two just keep quiet and listen as hard as you can, in case, for the very first time, I happen to miss something.”

  “Which widow we visiting first?” Beemer asked.

  “We’ll go in the order their husbands were shot: Mrs. Erik Torkelson is our first call.”

  “Chevy Chase, Maryland it is,” Meeker said.

  Rockelle called to clear the visit with the widow and the three cops hit the road.

  Welborn’s idea looked like it might break the case. The first three killings, anyway. Each of the lobbyists had reported a gun being stolen from his home. Each of them had been killed with a weapon firing the same caliber of bullet as the stolen gun.

  Hating coincidences the way any good cop did, they had to think the killer had used the victims’ personal weapons to do them in. It now fell to Rockelle to talk to the widows and see if she could determine how the thefts occurred and who the thief — and most likely the killer — was.

  If everything went well, Rockelle might be promoted to captain soon.

  If it didn’t, she was going to be the loud drunk at Welborn’s wedding.

  McGill Investigations, Inc.

  McGill sat behind his desk waiting for Harlo Geiger to arrive. Waiting for Sweetie, too. There was no way he would do so much as chat with the estranged wife of the speaker without a third party in the room. If need be, he could always ask Deke to step into his office, but the special agent had a demanding enough job, being the person ultimately responsible for seeing to it that the president’s husband came to no harm. Asking him to witness that nothing inappropriate happened between McGill and Geiger’s wife would be pushing things.

  When he’d called Sweetie from GWU Hospital, she said she would meet him at the office. He had expected she would be the first to arrive. McGill had stopped by Kenny’s room after leaving Dr. Jones to say goodbye to his son.

  Kenny had barely waved to him.

  He was still busy talking with Liesl Eberhardt.

  Kenny’s behavior — his interest in a girl — buoyed McGill’s sense of hope.

  He heard the door to the outer office open and two sets of footsteps enter: Sweetie’s, and someone wearing high heels? Harlo Geiger? If so, Sweetie had timed her arrival to a faretheewell. No big surprise there.

  McGill got to his feet in anticipation of meeting his new client.

  Instead of a would-be divorcée, he was greeted by his younger daughter, Caitie, with Sweetie following behind.

  Caitie, he now saw, was wearing tap shoes, a development of which he’d been unaware. He asked, “You’re studying dance now?”

  “Annie said it would be good to broaden my repertoire of talents. I’m taking singing lessons, too.” Annie Klein being Caitie’s talent agent.

  “Somehow your mother neglected to tell me any of this.”

  Caitie said, “I told her I wanted to surprise you, and then Kenny got sick.”

  “I don’t suppose you could take up the soft shoe?” McGill asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “Quiet dancing.”

  Caitie made a face. Clearly her father’s idea did not appeal.

  McGill looked at Sweetie. “Did she come here with you?”

  The outer door to the office suite opened and Sweetie turned to see who it was.

  “Putnam,” she told McGill. “He was chatting with Dikki, and, no, the Secret Service brought Caitie here at her request.”

  Caitie rushed to forestall any paternal criticism. “Dad, I was going crazy in the White House all by myself. Mom’s at the hospital with Kenny. Abbie’s at school. Patti’s always busy. And Blessing lets me beat him at gin. That’s no fun.”

  McGill took in all the clues he’d seen and heard and solved the mystery of his daughter’s appearance.

  “So you put on your tap shoes and drove everyone crazy.”

  Caitie couldn’t quite hide a smile.

  “Can you blame me?” she asked.

  “You want to go home?” he parried.

  “Not by myself and not until … Kenny’s better.”

  McGill sighed, and Putnam Shady took that as a cue to poke his head into the open doorway. He said, “I play gin, and nobody beats me, unless it’s fair and square.”

  Caitie sized up the man and his implicit challenge. “You’re that good?”

  “Put myself through college playing cards. Well, cards and pool. And betting college basketball.” Seeing McGill frown, he added, “But I never did drugs, drank only in moderation and worked at Saint John’s charity kitchen every Thanksgiving.”

  Putnam
’s résumé met with Caitie’s approval.

  She turned to her father and asked, “Dad?”

  Considering the parameters, McGill told Putnam, “Not at your house.”

  In the event of a second attempt on the lobbyist’s life, McGill wanted Caitie well out of harm’s way.

  Putnam said, “Margaret and I have been talking about taking precautions. I’ve booked a suite at the Four Seasons.” He told Caitie. “Room service is on me.”

  Caitie beamed.

  McGill held up a hand to stop any further pleading.

  “Sweetie?” he asked.

  “They’ll be fine.”

  McGill was still reluctant, but didn’t see a better option.

  “All right, Miss McGill,” he told Caitie, “you’ve finagled things to your advantage once again. But I need to speak with Mr. Shady for a while first. Give me a hug, and then wait outside.”

  His daughter clickety-clacked her way over to him and, God help him, he detected that she was already starting to find some rhythm moving in her shoes.

  Not wanting Caitie to put on a performance in the outer office, however, in the event she grew impatient with the length of the adults’ discussion, he told her, “Go talk to Deke. Ask him what the physical requirements are for becoming a Secret Service agent.”

  “You mean how many pushups and stuff like that?” Caitie asked.

  “Exactly.”

  Tapping her way toward the door, Caitie said, “Can I ask to see his Uzi?”

  “Only if you’re going to marry him.”

  That stopped Caitie for a moment.

  Then she blushed.

  And had the grace to dash from the room.

  Baltimore-Washington Parkway

  The car thief who had used the name Stephen Tully to rent the Ford he’d driven to tail Leo Levy yesterday, and later tail him to his house, ditched the car five minutes after McGill’s Chevy had chased him out of Leo’s garage. His pride still stung; he hadn’t been that close to getting caught since he was a kid.

  But, damn, he’d been even closer to pulling off the biggest heist of his career. Defeating the alarm on the garage door had been easy; picking its lock had been harder. Then he’d gotten inside and up close the Chevy didn’t look all that special. Yeah, it had been detailed to a showroom finish, but it still looked like a production line product.

  It was only after he’d taken a minute to stare at it that he got the first feel for its power. The thing just gave off a vibe that it could devour anything else on the road. Swallow Porsches whole. Then he noticed the tires. Nothing stock about those babies, wide and fat, looked like they could run over a spike-strip like it was confetti. The brakes on those wheels had to be brutes, too. And the engine … Jeez, he’d like to put the hammer down on that.

  For the first time since he was fourteen, the thief wanted to steal a car to keep for himself. That was crazy, of course. This car had to be sold overseas. Or he could ship it out of the country. Put it in storage somewhere. Reclaim it when he had the dough to retire abroad. He thought he still had some extended family in Germany.

  That’d be cool. Take the Chevy out on the autobahns, give the krautpounders a serious inferiority complex. With that daydream in mind, the thief went to work. It took him an hour and a half under the car to work past the security system: a combination of ignition cutoff, engine shut down, steering wheel and transmission locks, and a siren that could probably be heard on the far side of the planet.

  Finding and getting past all those measures gave him a sense of accomplishment.

  Sucked him in completely, just the way some prick figured it would.

  It never occurred to him to check the goddamn suspension system.

  But the moment he put a toe inside the car, music started blaring so loud it felt like his brain would liquefy. Fucking audio system must have had a dozen speakers. The thief ran from the garage with his hands covering his ears.

  But not before he’d heard and recognized the song that had assaulted him.

  Bobby Fuller. “I Fought the Law (and the Law Won).”

  Real funny, asshole, the thief thought.

  Someday, he’d come back and … ah, bullshit, he was never going to get even with this guy. It was going to be all he could do to run fast enough and far enough not to get caught. The bleakness of that assessment chilled the thief, left him feeling desperate. Wound up making him take the craziest risks of his career.

  He was hurrying past an auto dealership when he saw an empty car hauler in a lot out back. The truck could be used to transport up to seven passenger cars, but now it was unloaded, empty. The dealership wasn’t open yet and the thief didn’t see any security guards on hand.

  Almost without thinking, he ran to the lot’s gate and cut the lock. He was in the car hauler’s cab and had the engine turned over in what seemed like seconds.

  After the painstaking ordeal of trying to beat the security system on that fucking Chevy, stealing the truck was a gimme. Driving through Georgetown and Northwest D.C. and grabbing a Porsche 911 GTS, an Audi R8, a Mercedes SLS and a Tesla Roadster and putting them on the car hauler, all before their yuppie owners had finished breakfast, hadn’t been much harder.

  The thief had been uncertain about taking the American car; he’d had a nice German theme going and thought it would look visually consistent to anyone who glanced at the truck. But the Tesla fit in with the sports cars he’d stolen, and he doubted one in a hundred people would be able to say it wasn’t another German car.

  Besides, he was sure he’d need every dollar he could lay his hands on.

  He was going to have to lay low for a long time if he wanted to stay free.

  He pulled the car hauler up to the front gate of Spaneas Import-Export and left it there with the motor running and better than half-a-million dollars in sports cars on board. As before, he left a plain white business card with numbers for his off-shore account and prepaid cell phone on it. But this time he had added two words printed in block letters: Chevy’s next.

  It wasn’t, of course, but Teddy Spaneas didn’t know that. The thief figured the stolen car wholesaler would give him a quicker payment with perhaps a bump in his cut, if he thought the big prize would be coming soon.

  Walking toward the tourist-crowded Inner Harbor, the thief started to relax. He’d stop in at the first quiet bar he came to and have a drink. Then he’d book a flight to somewhere far away. Central America maybe.

  Looking back at the morning’s fiasco, he thought maybe he’d get away with it after all. He’d worn surgical gloves, had been careful under the car not to nick himself and leave any trace of blood, hadn’t so much as sneezed. He just might come out of this okay.

  Better than okay, what with the money he’d get for the cars he’d stolen.

  Only, getting on in years a bit, he shed a few hairs on his collar every day.

  One of them had fallen off his collar and onto the floor under the Chevy.

  He hadn’t noticed, but the Secret Service’s forensic team had found it.

  McGill Investigations, Inc.

  “So you’re saying one lobbyist’s worst enemy is another lobbyist,” McGill asked Putnam Shady. He had his pen and notepad out, and was paying close attention.

  Putnam nodded. “Yeah, if you want to think in symbolic terms. Mostly though, just like politicians, we usually move in a pack.”

  “Like hyenas?” McGill asked.

  “I usually say jackals,” Putnam said, “but hyena works, too. The point is, anybody with legislation to move has to have the money to match the other guy’s troops. Or to cow the pols and their staffs.”

  “Give me an example of two opposing blocs,” McGill said.

  “Energy companies and environmentalists. You’d think this would be a walkover for big energy. They’ve got more money than the rest of the country combined. But every so often the environmentalists pull some soon-to-be-extinct critter, like the snail darter, out of a hat and stop the big boys dead in their tra
cks. Boy, does that piss them off.

  “Then there are the truck companies and railroads. Both haul freight, each wants its operations subsidized by the government. So both sides hire lobbyists, neither side wins a decisive victory and subsidies morph with the times.”

  McGill said, “So nauseating as it may sound, it’s really in the interest of both sides’ lobbyists to keep the game close. Or at least in play. One side puts the other away, the winners have worked themselves out of a job.”

  Putnam smiled, “Theoretically, but I’ve never seen or even heard of that happening.”

  “If lobbyists need an opposition to thrive where does the enmity come in?” Sweetie asked.

  Putnam gave her a look. He wanted to reveal himself to her little by little, at times of his own choosing, but circumstances were not cooperating. Still, he knew it would be worse to evade, self-defeating to be dishonest.

  “Like I was saying about big energy,” he said, “nobody likes to lose. It’s like sports that way. You need another team to play against, but you still want to win every game. And just like athletics there are times when somebody will take a cheap shot. I’ve seen fistfights break out.”

  McGill said, “A fistfight is a long way from gunning someone down.”

  “Really?” Putnam said. He looked back and forth from McGill to Sweetie. “In your careers with the cops, you never saw a fight escalate fast: fists to knives to guns?”

  There was no denying that for either ex-cop.

  Putnam said, “Granted, the context is different. Actual bloodshed is not as likely to happen among lawyers and MBAs as among drug dealers and loan sharks, but it’s not impossible or even improbable in this case, at least the way I see things.”

  McGill still had trouble with the idea, but he didn’t want to underestimate Putnam.

  Sweetie was about to say something when it sounded as if Savion Glover had arrived in the outer office to give Caitie a tutorial in tap dancing. McGill and Sweetie went to the door to see what was happening; Putnam looked on over their shoulders.