by Tom Lewis
Since I had nothing to lose, I thought it best not to have to tell Frye, or anyone else, that there were no diaries. Nor did I want to talk to anybody but Cal about Jean Tyndall. I needed to buy some time, and stood there a minute trying to think of a way to dodge Frye and his assistant. One crazy idea finally came to me. It had worked once before. Might again. “Ernie, I don’t want to talk to those guys out there just now. Is Dean Pittman still on the sports desk?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Could you do me favor and call him? Ask him to meet me in the first floor men’s room. Also, after I’m gone, please call my Dad at the Mayflower. Ask him to meet me at the dock.”
“Okay.” He reached for the phone and I walked out to face Frye. “Now, guys, I’ll answer all your questions, but first, I have to go pee. Be right back.”
Dean Pittman and I are the same height, build, and have more or less the same complexion. In the past, people at the Post had often gotten us mixed up. He was already inside the men’s room when I got there. “What’s up, Jeb?”
“Remember the time we pulled that switch when you had to duck out on that lady golfer? About five years ago?”
“Sure, I do. You saved my ass that day.”
“I need you to save mine today. Right now. You up for it?”
“Why not?”
It cost me twenty bucks, a good hat and a brand new London Fog raincoat, but when he left, doing a credible hundred yard dash to the front door, I figured it would take Frye and his buddy at least two, maybe three blocks to run him down, only to be triple pissed when they realized they had chased the wrong guy. That was plenty of time for me to snatch Walt from his desk and hustle to the parking ramp. The Plymouth made it out, and all the way to Georgetown with me hunkered down in the back seat. Walt pulled into the parking lot of the Sheraton and stopped the car before he said anything, bless him, and then asked me who I was running from.
I climbed from the back seat to the front. “Walt, I don’t want to get you into any more trouble than I probably already have. With Ernie, I mean. Look, you’re a really bright guy, and you must have already realized I’m working on something pretty important, and in the process, I’ve made some people just a tad upset.”
“Like Judge Koontz?”
“Like Judge Koontz and the FBI! If I told you anything more, much as I’d like to, I could put you between a rock and a hard place, and I don’t want to do that. I hope you understand.”
“I think I do. Need-to-know kind of thing, right?”
“Exactly. So if you want to cut out, now’s the time.”
“Not me. What do you want me to do?”
“How are you coming with those names?”
“Still working on it, but I did manage to track down your Master Sergeant.”
“Mackenzie? Where is he?”
“In the V.A. hospital at Bethesda.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“I’m not that good, Jeb. I don’t know.”
“Never mind, I’ll find out. There is one other thing. Could you set up a computer in my hotel room? Maybe tie it into yours at home?”
“Sure I can, with about a thousand bucks.”
“Ouch. Well, it’ll be worth it, I think.” I figured Walt could find a better bargain on a computer than Cecil could, so I wrote him a check on the spot. “How soon could you—?”
“Not a problem. Maybe by tomorrow.” He grinned at me. “First thing, I’m going home and call in sick. Won’t fool Ernie Latham, but what the hell.”
“Good man. Listen, I may not be at the Mayflower when you get everything ready. Here’s my room key. I can get another one when I get back.”
“You’re going to Bethesda?”
“I don’t want you to know where I’m going, Walt. Need-to-know, remember?”
“Oops. Forgot. Okay. See you later.”
“Thanks again, Walt. For everything.”
I watched him drive away after he’d said you-know-what one more time.
I went inside the Marina office and asked the Harbormaster if he’d heard anything from LAST WORD. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Cap’n Tyson called in first thing this morning. Weather permitting, they should get here before dark tomorrow.”
My worried looking father drove up twenty minutes later. “Where the devil have you been? I’ve tried two dozen times to call your room.”
“Relax, Cal. Come on, lets have an early lunch, and I’ll fill you in.”
The Marina restaurant served decent shrimp salads. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was, and ate two of them before we started talking. I say we, but it was yet another of my solo recitals. Cal listened to my considerably edited version of from Liz’s appearance to my improvised escape from Frye without comment, his frown growing deeper by the minute.
“…And, Walt’s getting me a computer. By the way, I just checked, the boat should be here by tomorrow night.”
“When did you hear about Jean Tyndall?”
“On the way back from Carolina. No way that woman committed suicide, Cal.”
“The newspapers said she left a note. Hand-written, saying she was depressed and ‘couldn’t live any more without her beloved husband’, something like that.”
“I don’t care what the media says. That note has to be a phony. She was no more depressed than her pet goldfish. She hated him, remember? So, somebody offed her, but why?”
“Because she knew something they didn’t want to come out?”
“Right. What really bothers me the most, though, is what she said about Tyndall nearly turning the country into a police state.”
Cal toyed with his coffee spoon. “He’d made a good start at it already, hadn’t he? Sum up, pal: A soldier or border patrolman every hundred yards along the entire Mexican border? Marines and National Guardsmen running and guarding the twenty new Federal tent prisons in Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico? Navy personnel checking every passenger coming into the country by plane, ship, or pony cart? Army and Air Force searching every purse, suitcase, and golf bag, not to mention the people carrying them, in every airport in the country? M.P.’s and Shore Patrol by the thousands walking the streets alongside beat cops? Plus all the stuff we most likely don’t know about. You tell me.”
“Question is, how far was he going to take it?”
“Who knows? Absolute power corrupts absolutely. What did his wife call him? My King? Any number of a million people could have wanted him dead. But if Judge Koontz and his buddies helped him get elected, why would they want to kill him? Nothing makes sense. At least not yet. Maybe your old friend Frye was right. Maybe there really isn’t anything behind these conspiracy rumors after all.”
“You don’t believe that any more than I do, Cal.”
Cal shook his head. “Well, if Mac McCarty didn’t have a personal grudge, why did he do it, then? He was, by your account, a very smart, stable man. Loved his family more than anything. Unless he had a big money problem nobody knows about yet, there’s nothing in his background to suggest somebody blackmailing him into such a desperate deed. Who could have been pulling his strings hard enough to make him pull the trigger?”
“That’s what I’ve been asking myself over and over. Listen, you want to take a drive?”
“Where to?”
“Bethesda. There’s a guy in the V.A. hospital there I want to talk to.”
Cal drove while I worked on my rip sheet. It was too full of whys. I reduced them down to the main three:
1. If there was no conspiracy behind Tyndall’s death, and Mac had acted alone, why did he set me up with clues to the Judge and Sergeant Mackenzie?
1. Why was Jean Tyndall murdered? What could she know worth killing her for then going to the trouble to make it look like suicide?
3. If the Judge was so Simon pure, why did he react so strongly to my diaries bluff?
So far, I had nothing. Spinning more wheels than Cal’s Chevy.
We found Master Sergeant Joe Mackenzie asleep in a semi-private room, almost unheard of i
n a Veteran’s Administration hospital. And, he had company. A chubby woman of maybe fifty or so was sitting by his bed, holding a limp hand. She looked up, smiled, and before we could introduce ourselves, said, “I’m Betty Kucinski, Joe’s wife. Well, common law wife, I mean. You men from the government?”
Keeping my voice down, I said, “No, ma’am. I’m Jeb Willard, and this is my father. Just private citizens. We’d like to talk to Sergeant Mackenzie when he wakes up.”
Betty shook her head slowly. Looked back at the ruddy, smooth-shaven face with the military haircut. “So would I. I guess you don’t know, do you?”
“Know what, ma’am?”
“Joe cain’t talk. Not to nobody. He’s had a bunch of strokes. Ain’t said a single word since he’s been here. Don’t even recognize me, and I’ve come to see him every day for two straight years. I feed him most of his meals, empty his bedpan, read him the funnies on Sunday, but he don’t even know I’m here. But you know what? I have a lot of faith. One of these days, he’s gonna wake up and know me, and I’m gonna shout glory hallelujah and praise the Lord all up and down these halls. You gents are the first ones not in uniform ever to come see him. That’s why I thought you was from the government.”
“I’m sorry, Miz Kucinski. Really sorry.”
“Oh, thanks, but that’s all right. The Lord moves in mysterious ways. One of these mornings Joe’s gonna pop up outa this bed and want some cold beer and then some never-you-mind. If you’ll leave me your phone number, I’ll let you know when he does. What did you want to talk to him about?”
“I’m a free-lance writer. I’d like to have heard his story. It occurred to me that a lot of people would like to hear about his adventures with General Tyndall.”
“Yeah, he’d have a lot to tell, all right. Too bad.”
I wrote down the Mayflower address and phone number, which she tucked in her blouse. “You gotta have some faith in this world, Mr. Willard. A lotta faith.”
“Yes, ma’am. We do that,” I said, and followed Cal out, feeling absolutely defeated.
On the drive back to Washington, Cal tried his best to lift my spirits, first by filling me in on the latest Tryon’s Cove gossip, which I had no interest in whatsoever, then by relating some of the Tyndall stories he’d written about himself. I paid no attention to those either, until one struck a nerve.
“They say the first twenty days and nights in office, he called every single Federal judge in America personally. It was rumored that he either insulted or bribed a lot of them enough to retire, and then appointed a batch of the hardest law noses he could find to replace them. Until now, I had always wondered where he got his list. Plus, don’t forget, two Justices from the Supreme Court left the bench as well. Garner retired and Brewster died. Old Snow White must have been one busy boy indeed.”
“You’re right, Cal. I had completely forgotten that.”
“An angle to check out, don’t you think?”
It was, for sure, and I promised myself to dig into it.
We parked the car in the Marina lot and took a cab to the Mayflower, having agreed to meet downstairs for dinner again soon as we each cleaned up. Cecil gave me a spare room key; using fewer words than I’d ever heard him say, which surprised me. I usually couldn’t get him to shut up. I took the elevator to my floor wondering why he’d been so close-mouthed for a change. I found out the moment I opened the door and saw all the lights turned on and a man sitting on my sofa.
It was the one who had been with Frye earlier at Ernie’s office. He wasted no time telling me his name, Special Agent Barnes, showing me his FBI credentials, and opened his mouth to say something else, but I got in the first shot. “I hope you have a warrant, mister.”
He pointed to the document lying open on the coffee table. “Right there. By the way, that was a neat little trick you played this morning. I kind of got a kick out of it, but my boss was not amused.”
“What do you want?”
“The diaries, of course. Where are they?”
I gave my room a quick look around. If it had been tossed, there was no sign, but then, these guys were pros. They wouldn’t have left anything out of place, not even a cigarette butt in an overfilled ashtray. I sat down. Sighed. “Go back and tell Frye there are no diaries. I made them up. They were a ruse to get Judge Koontz all riled up, that’s all. It worked, too.”
“You’re telling me McCarty’s diaries don’t exist?”
“Figments of my overactive imagination. Of course they don’t exist. Besides, if they did, do you think I’d be stupid enough to keep them here?” I don’t know why I said that. Maybe I was overtired as well as angry. Maybe I wanted to needle Frye a little more than I should have. Anyway, I said it, and Agent Barnes certainly heard it. “I’ll tell him what you said, Mr. Willard. Count on it. He also had a message for you. Actually two messages.”
“What?”
“The first was to forget about that private phone call you wanted. Abigail McCarthy had a total breakdown when we told her the news about her mother. She’s in a special hospital. No visitors.”
“Christ! Okay, what was the second one?”
“I think you made him really mad this morning. He said to tell you not to leave town.”
“That’s a switch.”
Barnes shrugged. “I’ll be going, now. I think you’ll find everything’s in place. My compliments on your taste in clothes. Nice stuff hanging in that closet.”
The shower I took after he left helped my muscle aches, but not my temper, which was strained further by the knock on my door just as I was putting on my shirt. Cecil came in with his arms full of more clothes, apologizing for taking so long to shop for me. Nevertheless, he wanted to be paid, and with tip, I was suddenly another thousand dollars poorer.
Chapter 9
I slept well into the morning, and woke up worried. After Barnes’ visit, I was sure I’d have a tail on me the moment I left the hotel. Neither could I be certain Frye didn’t know Cal was staying at the Mayflower, and knowing how thorough Frye was, he’d probably have Cal followed as well.
I could have kicked myself for not having thought about that the night before, when Cecil was on duty. Maybe he could help anyway. I went downstairs.
There was no use asking the manager or his assistant to give me Cecil’s phone number. All hotels have policies and rules to protect their employees. But I knew another way. As many times as I’d over-tipped Georgio, the headwaiter, I didn’t think it would cost me too much to get what I wanted. I was wrong. It cost me plenty! I ate an early, light lunch, and walked to the bank of phones in the lobby, noticing two unfamiliar men lounging there, and reading magazines. They were good, I’ll grant them that. I never caught them so much as glancing my way, ready to jump to it if I went out.
I dialed, praying I’d get lucky. A male voice I didn’t recognize answered, told me Cecil was asleep, and “wished to know” what I wanted with him. I told him I was Cecil’s number one business contact, gave him my name, and asked him to have Cecil call me as soon as possible. It was “Something extremely important to me, and very profitable for him,” I said. The voice said he’d give Cecil my message and hung up. I hoped whoever that voice belonged to was the recipient of most of Cecil’s loving generosity, and wouldn’t hesitate to awaken the gander that laid his golden eggs. This time I was right. I hadn’t been back in my room five minutes before my phone rang.
“I got your message, darling. “How may I help you?”
“Cecil, I’ll make it well worth your while if you can come to the hotel early. I need something only you can supply.”
“I do love the sound of that. I can be there around four this afternoon.”
“I love you, Mr. Hathaway.”
“Don’t I wish. See you at four.”
I hung up, noticing Cal leave the elevator on his way to the restaurant. I caught up with him, sat down and waited for him to order. “Aren’t you going to eat?” he said.
“Already have.” I
told him about the two FBI men planted in the lobby.
Cal never missed a bite. “Saw them this morning when I came down for breakfast. They could be a problem.”
“I know. I’ve been working on it. I just talked to Cecil. I think he can—”
“Excuse me, Mr. Willard.” Georgio was addressing Cal, not me. “You have a phone call. You can take it at my desk if you like.”
Cal thanked the headwaiter and followed him to his station. He returned a couple minutes later, saying, “That was Sammy. They just pulled into the marina with your boat. Wanted to know if you wanted a phone hook-up as well as water and electricity. I told him you did.”
“Good thinking. Speaking of phones, did you think to bring your cell phone with you?”
“I’m never without it when I travel anywhere. Why?”
“Just in case I need to talk to you while you’re driving down to the cabin. By the way, when are you planning to leave?”
“Tomorrow morning, if Sammy and Pete don’t mind. What’s next on your agenda?”
I blew out my cheeks. “Nothing I can do until Walt brings that computer.” I glanced at my watch. “Bet you a buck he’s here right after lunch.”
I would have lost that bet. I paced my room until half past three before he showed up, loaded down with boxes. It took him three trips to his car to bring it all up. There was no surface of my room furniture large enough to hold the computer and monitor except the coffee table. “No problem,” Walt said, “I brought an extension cord that’s long enough.”
I called Cal, thinking he might be able to help, since I was hopeless with electronic gadgets. He arrived at practically the same time Walt brought in his final load, and they both began tearing into the boxes. They were maybe half way through their work when Cecil’s familiar knock came. I looked at my watch. Five till four. He was a greedy five minutes early. I asked Walt where he’d parked, then for his car keys, which he handed over without question. Like a kid with a new electric train, he was already absorbed with computer construction. I let Cecil in, led him over by the window, out of the way, and told him what I wanted. With what I was offering, it didn’t take too much arm-twisting.
