by Joseph Flynn
As often as not, McGill went unnoticed. When people did recognize him, they usually just smiled and called out hello. The exceptions were the elderly and the kids. Both groups wanted to talk with him, not infrequently from a distance of a few inches.
The kids’ questions were easy to answer.
Did he think the president was pretty? Gorgeous.
What sports teams did he like? The DePaul Blue Demons.
Had Michael Jordan played better in Chicago or Washington? Chicago.
Was he going to be president, too, someday? No. One president per family was enough.
The elderly had more serious matters in mind: war and peace, the economy, the environment, crime, immigration. Almost without exception they would rest a hand lightly on his arm as they spoke.
When an opinion was called for, McGill did not bob and weave. His answers were sincere and plainspoken, but he did preface whatever he had to say with: “Please understand, this is just my opinion, and I’d appreciate it if it stays between us.”
Nobody went running to the newspapers with McGill’s words of wisdom.
Quite often the old folks also asked for his help. With Social Security. Medicare. The Veterans Administration. At first, McGill didn’t know how to help. So he took people’s names and phone numbers and promised to get back to them. Soon, though, Deke carried with him a BlackBerry that stored the names and direct phone numbers of every top administrator in the federal and district governments. McGill passed them along to those in need of assistance.
And added, “Tell them Mr. McGill said you should call.”
Hoping he had the clout people imagined he did.
It turned out he did, and that was how his walking tours became news. Someone let it be known how helpful he’d been. Soon it became impossible for him to go out without a media horde at his heels and a throng of supplicants in front of him. No good deed went unpunished.
He had to start traveling in the back of Leo’s Chevy.
By the time the cherry blossoms appeared, he knew his way around town, at least a little. And he found office space to rent on P Street just above the Rock Creek Parkway. The building was a rehabbed three-story ivory-brick structure. It housed a commercial recording studio, A-Sharp Sound, on the first floor, and a small accounting firm, Wentworth and Willoughby, on the second. W&W actually moved down one floor to accommodate McGill Investigations, Inc. The Secret Service explained that in the event of an emergency Mr. McGill might have to be evacuated from the roof of the building by helicopter.
McGill apologized to the other tenants for all the bother he’d caused — which included the feds investigating every employee of both existing businesses back to infancy to see if he or she might be a threat to McGill’s life — and compensated his new neighbors with tickets to a Redskins game or a Kennedy Center performance, per their preference.
On the morning in May when McGill arrived for his first day of work, there was a line down the hall. By ten o’clock, the queue ran down the staircase to the ground floor and out the front entrance. The building’s owner, an astute Armenian immigrant named Dikran Missirian, quickly rented several café tables complete with Cinzano umbrellas. He provided complimentary sparkling mineral water and gourmet coffee to the crowd waiting to see McGill.
Business cards were exchanged all around.
Dikki made several valuable business contacts that day.
McGill netted not a single client.
Without exception, the ladies and gentlemen waiting to see him were lobbyists. Sugar, sorghum, and sweet corn were among the foodstuffs they represented. Trucks, trains, and planes were just a few of their preferred modes of transportation. Albania, Algeria, and Angola were but the beginning of the countries whose interests they advanced.
None of them had a criminal matter or even a straying spouse to investigate.
All of them offered retainers, six-to-seven figures per annum, in the event they might someday need professional investigative services. McGill politely listened to each of them and respectfully turned down all of them.
He explained that he worked cases.
Couldn’t take money on the mere possibility that something might come up.
Didn’t say he’d never sell access to his wife, the president, but everybody seemed to understand. Most of them were gracious about being rejected. They’d given it the old college try and were happy just to meet him and shake his hand.
A couple of type-A personalities, however, tried not to take no for an answer, and Deke Ky quickly put a whispered word into their ears. Both hard chargers abruptly turned pale and left the office on wobbly legs.
McGill appreciated Deke’s concern but didn’t feel that prospective clients, no matter how rude, should be threatened with either lengthy incarceration or swift death. He needed someone to run interference for him. Someone who could discourage the jerks with nothing more than a hard stare. So he got on the phone to Chicago.
“Sweetie? It’s Jim. If you’re not busy, I’ve got a job for you.”
Margaret “Sweetie” Sweeney had been McGill’s strong right arm on the cops in both Chicago and Winnetka. She’d even taken a bullet that rightfully should have been McGill’s. A rich suburban punk had kidnapped his ex-girlfriend and locked the two of them in his bedroom. Things got to the point where murder-suicide looked imminent. McGill’s plan had been to break down the door on the count of three. Sweetie went on two.
“So I’m gonna be what around here?” Sweetie asked when she arrived the day after McGill called. “The office manager, the dragon lady, the anchor on your more outlandish impulses?”
“My partner,” McGill said. “The bad cop to my good cop. Same as always.”
Sweetie noticed Deke looking at her. She knew right away McGill had told him about her. Now, the Secret Service hero was wondering: Could he really take a bullet for someone?
“Only one way to find out,” Sweetie answered the unspoken question.
Deke pretended he didn’t know what she was talking about.
“Patti would like you to stop by for dinner tonight,” McGill told her.
The president had a special place in her heart for Sweetie after learning what she’d done to spare McGill. And, of course, the grief Sweetie had later saved her from personally.
Sweetie smiled, and McGill thought, as he always did, that she looked like St. Michael the Archangel. Or a Valkyrie, if you preferred Norse mythology.
“Yeah, I’d like to see her, too,” Sweetie said. “Did she get my birthday card?”
“Made her day,” McGill answered truthfully.
The card had been addressed to Mrs. James J. McGill, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Chapter 2, Monday
For the next four weeks, with Sweetie stationed in the outer office like a desk sergeant, not a single lobbyist pestered McGill. Neither did anyone else. Word had gotten around official Washington: The president’s henchman was not a back door to the Oval Office. And the Metro Police seemed to have a mortal lock on all local criminal investigations.
It was beginning to look like McGill would have plenty of time for ribbon cuttings. Galia Mindel had sent him a request to provide a recipe for his favorite dish — to be included in a new edition of The First Ladies’ Cookbook.
Things were so slow that first Monday in June that Deke and Sweetie, who’d received her own concealed weapon permit, had gone to a firing range at lunchtime to shoot it out for the office deadeye championship. Leo, parked out front, had been left to hold down the fort.
Apparently, Leo let Chana Lochlan slip past him. More likely, he decided she wasn’t a threat and got her autograph.
McGill was eating a turkey sandwich at his desk and reading the Chicago Tribune’s sports section online when “the most fabulous face on television,” as judged by People magazine, knocked on his open door. “Mr. McGill, may I come in?”
The first thing that struck McGill was her size. With only moderate heels on her shoes, she had to be six fee
t tall. She was whipcord lean and even in her business suit gave the impression she was ready to compete in a triathlon. Then there was that fabulous face — a proud nose, a generous mouth, a defiant chin, and shoulder-length black hair framing big hazel eyes.
McGill swallowed the food he’d been chewing and gestured her to a guest chair. He knew who she was, of course. He’d even glimpsed her in person a time or two. Chana Lochlan was the White House reporter for the World Wide News (W2N) cable network. Her job was to cover McGill’s wife. In an honest and forthright way, if you believed in ad slogans.
To stick a knife in at every opportunity, as McGill saw it.
“Would you mind if we closed the door?” Ms. Lochlan asked.
McGill studied her as though she were a painting. It was a pretty darn nice face. All the more so for the first few faint lines that TV makeup usually covered. Still, it wasn’t quite in Patti’s league. But then the president had prepared for a career in politics by working as a model and acting in Hollywood movies. That and graduating from Yale with honors, building houses with Jimmy Carter and Habitat for Humanity, and doing innumerable other hands-on good works.
Chana Lochlan probably had a long list of virtuous deeds on her résumé, too, but McGill knew that wasn’t what people would talk about if they learned she’d been in his office with the door closed.
“We’re the only ones here, Ms. Lochlan. No need to close the door. If you’ve come to ask about an interview, there’s someone at the White House who handles those requests for me … I think.”
“I didn’t come for an interview.”
McGill blinked. Chana Lochlan was going to be his first client?
“You know, it’s true what they say about you,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“You do look a little like Harrison Ford before he went gray.”
“I used to say more like Rory Calhoun, but nobody seems to remember him anymore. Ms. Lochlan, are you here to talk about hiring me as an investigator?”
She looked over her shoulder at the entrance to the office suite.
McGill glanced at the time on his computer monitor. “We’ll have fifteen minutes to ourselves if you have something to say.”
“You’re not going to close the door?”
McGill shook his head.
“You’re a very careful man.”
McGill waited. She’d talk or she’d leave.
“A question or two first,” she said. “Does what I tell you stay with you? Or does it reach the president? I cover her, as I’m sure you know. I ask her hard questions. Maybe you even think some of them are politically motivated.”
McGill kept himself from nodding.
“But doing my job would be very difficult if the president knew what I had to tell you.”
McGill hadn’t considered the question before, but he thought it fair.
He said, “The president and I don’t keep secrets from one another — about our personal lives. But she doesn’t tell me if she’s going to have the Marines seize Lichtenstein. So it seems reasonable I should keep the details of my investigations from her.”
“Then I can expect confidentiality?”
“Yes.” A thought occurred to McGill. “I might, however, consult with my colleague in the firm.” Might. As if Sweetie would stand for his keeping secrets. “She’d be bound by the same obligation to confidentiality I would.”
That was agreeable to Chana Lochlan, though she took one more look over her shoulder.
“Two days ago, at my home in Georgetown, I was awakened by a phone call at 4:00 a.m. I picked up the phone and mumbled hello. The caller was a man. His voice sounded white, educated, Midwestern American. At a guess, he was thirty to fifty. He began by asking me a question. He said, ‘Do you remember the last time we made love?’”
McGill picked up a pen, opened a notepad. “Is your home phone number unlisted?”
Chana nodded.
“Is it on your business card?”
She shook her head.
“Have you ever given it to a source?”
“I made that mistake once, early in my career. But that was in New York.”
“And this man didn’t sound like that one?”
“Not at all. If I hadn’t been uncertain I’d heard the question right, I’d have hung up before the caller could go on. As it was, I heard him say, ‘Come on, Gracie, you remember.’”
McGill understood the significance of the remark.
“Chana is a Hebrew name meaning graceful. Graceful. Gracie.”
The newswoman raised her perfect eyebrows.
“My first wife and I have two daughters and a son,” McGill said.
“I know. I read your bio before coming here. But your girls are named Abigail and Caitlin. Your son is named Kenneth.”
“Abigail is also a Hebrew name. Meaning: gives joy. When Carolyn was pregnant with Abbie, we bought the best naming book we could find. Three kids later, names and their meanings got to be a hobby of mine. Anyway, your caller knew a nickname of yours. A private one?”
“Only my dad and my ex used it. I can’t remember anyone else calling me that.”
Some questions could be asked and answered without a word being spoken. Had the caller been her father? Chana Lochlan’s look said don’t even think about it.
“And it wasn’t your former husband on the phone?” McGill inquired.
She shook her head. “Michael died on his honeymoon with his second wife. Hang-gliding in Hawaii.”
“So some unknown male knows your unlisted phone number, calls you at home, also knows a private nickname, and intimates he was once your lover.”
“Intimates authoritatively,” Chana said. She took yet another look over her shoulder. They were still alone, but when she resumed speaking, her voice dropped to a whisper. “He took me through a reminiscence of lovemaking. He knows what I like. Knows in such detail that mere guesswork can be ruled out. He also knows …”
She stopped to look at the notes McGill was making. He tried to alleviate her discomfort. “Tell me only what you need to. If I have questions … I’ll try to be delicate.”
Chana Lochlan steeled herself and continued. “He knows my body: moles, freckles, birthmarks. Things I need two mirrors to see.”
“Did you get the feeling he was working himself up?”
“No. His voice was very gentle. Loving, even. When he finished, he made this little kissing sound and told me to go back to sleep. Amazingly enough, I did … and I dreamed of the lovemaking he’d just described. I could see his body but not his face.”
McGill thought in silence for a moment. He looked at Chana Lochlan’s eyes. Fear made flecks of yellow burn bright in the hazel irises.
“You think he’s coming for you, whoever he is,” McGill said.
“Yes, I do.”
“I do investigative work not protection.”
“And I work in the public eye, Mr. McGill. The minute I hire a bodyguard, I become a story, and that’s not what I want. I hope you can find this man and stop him from doing …”
“Whatever he has in mind.”
“Yes.”
McGill took the case. Chana Lochlan was gone before Sweetie and Deke came back. It was only when Sweetie asked if he’d had any calls while they were out that McGill remembered he was now a businessman and no longer a cop. He’d completely forgotten to discuss money with his first client.
Somehow, it had slipped her mind, too.
The President’s Henchman is available for the Kindle from www.amazon.com.
The Hangman’s Companion [excerpt]
Pont d’Iéna, Paris, Sunday, May 17th
1
The fight under the bridge at the foot of the Eiffel Tower turned deadly when the Frenchman kicked the urn out of the American’s grasp. The pewter vessel shot into the air and smashed against a bridge support, leaving a dark stain there and scattering the remainder of the ashes of the American’s late wife into the Seine.
Th
e Frenchman, Thierry Duchamp, an elite athlete, twenty-eight years old, was more than a little drunk and had been having a heated argument with a shapely blonde. Her makeup was smeared and she all but spilled out of her crimson silk blouse. The American, Glen Kinnard, forty-nine, a retired cop with a long list of excessive force complaints, had been standing on the walkway under the bridge. He’d been agonizing over whether to honor his wife’s last request, when the noisy French couple made their stumbling approach.
Kinnard was bone tired after a long, turbulent flight from Chicago. He’d had to stand in a block-long line to clear customs. Then he had to make several detours to exit Charles de Gaulle Airport because of some sort of minor terrorist scare. He hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours and he was jet-lagged to hell and back.
On top of all that, he wasn’t a patient guy even when he was fresh.
The only thing that had kept him from telling the raucous couple to show a little respect and shut the fuck up was that the French had been surprisingly kind to him since he’d arrived.
It had started off with the taxi driver leaning against his cab at the airport. He was a tough-faced little mutt, looked like he had a glass eye, was smoking a butt that smelled like he’d fished it out of a toilet. But he saw the pain on Kinnard’s face, took note of the urn the ex-cop had taken out of his suitcase. Saw how Kinnard cradled the urn like a baby. He nailed the situation at a glance.
Someone near and dear had died.
He held the door open for Kinnard like he was driving a limo not a cab. He tucked his fare’s suitcase into the trunk, and slid behind the wheel. Looking over his shoulder at Kinnard, he even spoke English after a fashion.
“My regrets, m’sieur,” the cabbie said. “Where may I deliver you?”
Kinnard gave the guy the name of the hotel where his daughter had booked a room for him. “The Hotel Saint Jacques.” He provided the address on the Rue de Rivoli.
