The Year’s Best Science Fiction Twenty-Sixth Annual

by Gardner Dozois

  “Yes, ma’am. The President says no one can enter.”

  “Surely he didn’t mean me.”

  Surely he did. But Haskell bit the comment back. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

  “I have a few personal items that I’d like to get, if you don’t mind. And the Director instructed me that in the case of . . .” and for the first time she paused. Her voice didn’t break nor did she clear her throat. But she seemed to need a moment to gather herself. “In case of emergency, I was to remove some of his personal items as well.”

  “If you could tell me what they are, ma’am, I’ll get them.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “The Director doesn’t like others to touch his possessions.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said gently. “But I don’t think that matters any longer.”

  Any other woman would have broken down. After all, she had worked for the old man for forty-five years, side by side, every day. Never marrying, not because they had a relationship—Helen Gandy, more than anyone, probably knew the truth behind the Director’s relationship with the Associate Director—but because for Helen Gandy, just like for the Director himself, the FBI was her entire life.

  “It matters,” she said. “Now if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  She tried to wriggle past him. She was wiry and stronger than he expected. He had to put out an arm to block her.

  “Ma’am,” he said in the gentlest tone he could summon, “the President’s orders supercede the Director’s.”

  How often had he wanted to say that over the years? How often had he wanted to remind everyone in the Bureau that the President led the Free World, not J. Edgar Hoover?

  “In this instance,” she snapped, “they do not.”

  “Ma’am, I’d hate to have some agents restrain you.” Although he wasn’t sure about that. She had never been nice to him or to anyone he knew. She’d always been sharp or rude. “You’re distraught.”

  “I am not.” She clipped each word.

  “You are because I say you are, ma’am.”

  She raised her chin. For a moment, he thought she hadn’t understood. But she finally did.

  The balance of power had shifted. At the moment, it was on his side.

  “Do I have to call the President then to get my personal effects?” she asked.

  But they both knew she wasn’t talking about her personal things. And the President was smart enough to know that as well. As hungry to get those files as the Attorney General had seemed despite his Eastern reserve, the President would be utterly ravenous. He wouldn’t let some old skirt, as he’d been known to call Miss Gandy, get in his way.

  “Go ahead,” Haskell said. “Feel free to use the phone in the office across the hall.”

  She glared at him, then turned on one foot and marched down the corridor. But she didn’t head toward a phone—at least not one he could see.

  He wondered who she would call. The President wouldn’t listen. The Attorney General had issued the order in the President’s name. Maybe she would contact one of Hoover’s Assistant Directors, the four or five men that Hoover had in his pocket.

  Haskell had been waiting for them. But word still hadn’t spread through the Bureau. The only reason he knew was because he’d received a call from the SAC of the New York office. New York hated the Director, mostly because the old man went there so often and harassed them.

  Someone had probably figured out that there was a crisis from the moment that Haskell had brought his people in to secure the Director’s suite. But no one would know that the Director was dead until Miss Gandy made the calls or until someone in the Bureau started along the chain of command—the one designated in the book Hoover had written all those years ago.

  Haskell crossed his arms. Sometimes he wished he hadn’t let the A.G. know how he felt about the Director. Sometimes he wished he were still a humble assistant, the man who had joined the FBI because he wanted to be a top cop like his hero J. Edgar Hoover.

  A man who, it turned out, never made a real arrest or fired a gun or even understood investigation.

  There was a lot to admire about the Director—no matter what you said, he’d built a hell of an agency almost from scratch—but he wasn’t the man his press made him out to be.

  And that was the source of Haskell’s disillusionment. He’d wanted to be a top cop. Instead, he snooped into homes and businesses and sometimes even investigated fairly blameless people, looking for a mistake in their past.

  Since he’d been transferred to FBIHQ, he hadn’t done any real investigating at all. His arrests had slowed, his cases dwindled.

  And he’d found himself investigating his boss, trying to find out where the legend ended and the man began. Once he realized that the old man was just a bureaucrat who had learned where all the bodies were buried and used that to make everyone bow to his bidding, Haskell was ripe for the undercover work the A.G. had asked him to do.

  Only now he wasn’t undercover any more. Now he was standing in the open before the Director’s cache of secrets, on the President’s orders, hoping that no one would call his bluff.

  As O’Reilly led him to the limousine, Bryce surreptitiously checked his watch. He’d already been on scene for half an hour, and no back-up had arrived. If he was supposed to secure everything and chase off the NYPD, he’d need some manpower.

  But for now, he wanted to see the extent of the problem. The night had gotten colder, and this street was even darker than the street he’d walked down. All of the streetlights were out. The only light came from some porch bulbs above a few entrances. He could barely make out the limousine at the end of the block, and then only because he could see the shadowy forms of the two beat cops standing at the scene, their squad cars parking the limo in.

  As he got closer, he recognized the shape of the limo. It was thicker than most limos and rode lower to the ground because it was encased in an extra frame, making it bulletproof. Supposedly, the glass would all be bulletproof as well.

  “You said the driver was shot inside the limo?” Bryce asked.

  “That’s what they told me,” O’Reilly said. “I wasn’t called to this scene. We were brought in because of the two men in the alley. Even then we were called late.”

  Bryce nodded. He remembered the coroner’s bigotry. “Is that standard procedure for cases involving minorities?”

  O’Reilly gave him a sideways glance. Bryce couldn’t read O’Reilly’s expression in the dark.

  “We’re overtaxed,” O’Reilly said after a moment. “Some cases don’t get the kind of treatment they deserve.”

  “Limo drivers,” Bryce said.

  “If he’d been killed in the parking garage under the Plaza maybe,” O’Reilly said. “But not because of who he was. But because of where he was.”

  Bryce nodded. He knew how the world worked. He didn’t like it. He spoke up against it too many times, which was why he was on shaky ground at the Bureau.

  Then his already upset stomach clenched. Maybe he wasn’t going to get back-up. Maybe they’d put him on his own here to claim he’d botched the investigation, so that they would be able to cover it up.

  He couldn’t concentrate on that now. What he had to do was take good notes, make the best case he could, and keep a copy of every damn thing—maybe in more than one place.

  “You were called in because of the possibility that the men in the alley could be important,” Bryce said.

  “That’s my guess,” O’Reilly said.

  “What about the others down the block? Has anyone taken those cases?”

  “Probably not,” O’Reilly said. “Those bars, you know. It’s department policy. The coroner checks bodies in the suspect area, and decides, based on . . . um . . . evidence of . . . um . . . activity . . . whether or not to bring in detectives.”

  Bryce frowned. He almost asked what the coroner was checking for when he figured out that it was evidence on the body itself, evidence not of the crime, but of certain kinds of sex acts.
If that evidence was present, apparently no one thought it worthwhile to investigate the crime.

  “You’d think the city would revise that,” Bryce said. “A lot of people live dual lives—productive and interesting people.”

  “Yeah,” O’Reilly said. “You’d think. Especially after tonight.”

  Bryce grinned. He was liking this grizzled cop more and more.

  O’Reilly spoke to the beat cops, then motioned Bryce to the limo. As Bryce approached, O’Reilly trained his flashlight on the driver’s side.

  The window wasn’t broken like Bryce had expected. It had been rolled down.

  “You got here one James Crawford,” said one of the beat cops. “He got identification says he’s a feebee, but I ain’t never heard of no colored feebee.”

  “There’s only four,” Bryce said dryly. And they all worked for Hoover as his personal house keepers or drivers. “Can I see that identification?”

  The beat cop handed him a wallet that matched the ones on Tolson and Hoover. Inside was a badge and identification for James Crawford as well as family photographs. Neither Tolson nor Hoover had had any photographs in their wallets.

  Bryce motioned O’Reilly to move a little closer to the body. The head was tilted toward the window. The right side of the skull was gone, the hair glistening with drying blood. With one gloved finger, Bryce pushed the head upright A single entrance wound above the left ear had caused the damage.

  “Brunner says the shots are the same caliber,” O’Reilly said.

  It took Bryce a moment to realize that Brunner was the coroner.

  Bryce carefully searched Crawford but didn’t find the man’s weapon. Nor could he found a holster or any way to carry a weapon.

  “It looks like he wasn’t carrying a weapon,” Bryce said.

  “Neither were the two in the alley,” O’Reilly said, and Bryce appreciated his caution in not identifying the other two corpses. “You’d think they would have been.”

  Bryce shook his head. “They were known for not carrying weapons. But you’d think their driver would have one.”

  “Maybe they had protection,” O’Reilly said.

  And Bryce’s mouth went dry. Of course they did. The office always joked about who would get HooverWatch on each trip. He’d had to do it a few times.

  Agents on HooverWatch followed strict rules, like everything else with Hoover. Remain close enough to see the men entering and exiting an area, stop any suspicious characters, and yet somehow remain inconspicuous.

  “You said there were two others shot?”

  “Yeah. A block or so from here.” O’Reilly waved a hand vaguely down the street.

  “Pulled out of one car or two?”

  “Not my case,” O’Reilly said.

  “Two,” said the beat cop. “Black sedans. Could barely see them on this cruddy street.”

  HooverWatch. Bryce swallowed hard, that bile back. Of course. He probably knew the men who were shot.

  “Let’s look,” he said. “You two, make sure the coroner’s man photographs this scene before he leaves.”

  “Yessir,” said the second beat cop. He hadn’t spoken before.

  “And don’t let anyone near this scene unless I give the o.k.,” Bryce said.

  “How come this guy’s in charge?” the talkative beat cop asked O’Reilly.

  O’Reilly grinned. “Because he’s a feebee.”

  “I’m sorry,” the beat cop said automatically turning to Bryce. “I didn’t know, sir.”

  Feebee was an insult—or at least some in the Bureau thought so. Bryce didn’t mind it. Any more than he minded when some rookie said “Sack” when he meant “Ess-Ay-Cee.” Shorthand worked, sometimes better than people wanted it to.

  “Point me in the right direction,” he said to the talkative cop.

  The cop nodded south. “One block down, sir. You can’t miss it. We got guys on those scenes too, but we weren’t so sure it was important. You know. We coulda missed stuff.”

  In other words, they hadn’t buttoned up the scene immediately. They’d waited for the coroner to make his verdict, and he probably hadn’t, not with the three new corpses nearby.

  Bryce took one last look at James Crawford. The man had rolled down his window, despite the cold, and in a bad section of town.

  He leaned forward. Underneath the faint scent of cordite and mingled with the thicker smell of blood was the smell of a cigar.

  He took the flashlight from O’Reilly and trained it on the dirty snow against the curb. It had been trampled by everyone coming to this crime scene.

  He crouched, and poked just a little, finding three fairly fresh cigarette butts.

  As he stood, he said to the beat cops, “When the scene of the crime guys get here, make sure they take everything from the curb.”

  O’Reilly was watching him. The beat cops were frowning, but they nodded.

  Bryce handed O’Reilly back his flashlight and headed down the street.

  “You think he was smoking and tossing the butts out the window?” O’Reilly asked.

  “Either that,” Bryce said, “or he rolled his window down to talk to someone. And if someone was pointing a gun at him, he wouldn’t have done it. This vehicle was armored. He had a better chance starting it up and driving away than he did cooperating.”

  “If he wasn’t smoking,” O’Reilly said, “he knew his killer.”

  “Yeah,” Bryce said. And he was pretty sure that was going to make his job a whole hell of a lot harder.

  Kennedy took the elevator up to the fifth floor of the Justice Department. He probably should have stayed home, but he simply couldn’t. He needed to get into those files and he needed to do so before anyone else.

  As he strode into the corridor he shared with the Director of the FBI, he saw Helen Gandy hurry in the other direction. She looked like she had just come from the beauty salon. He had never seen her look anything less than completely put together but he was surprised by her perfect appearance on this night, after the news that her longtime boss was dead.

  Kennedy tugged at the overcoat he’d put on over his favorite sweater. He hadn’t taken the time to change or even comb his hair. He probably looked as tousled as he had in the days after Jack died.

  Although, for the first time in three months, he felt like he had a purpose. He didn’t know how long this feeling would last, or how long he wanted it to. But this death had given him an odd kind of hope that control was coming back into his world.

  Haskell stood in front of the Director’s office suite, arms crossed. The Director’s suite was just down the corridor from the Attorney General’s offices. It felt odd to go toward Hoover’s domain instead of his own.

  Haskell looked relieved when he saw Kennedy.

  “Was that the dragon lady I just saw?” Kennedy asked.

  “She wanted to get some personal effects from her office,” Haskell said.

  “Did you let her?”

  “You said the orders were to secure it, so I have.”

  “Excellent.” Kennedy glanced in both directions and saw no one. “Make sure your staff continues to protect the doors. I’m going inside.”

  “Sir?” Haskell raised his eyebrows.

  “This may not be the right place,” Kennedy said. “I’m worried that he moved everything to his house.”

  The lie came easily. Kennedy would have heard if Hoover had moved files to his own home. But Haskell didn’t know that.

  Haskell moved away from the door. It was unlocked. Two more agents stood inside, guarding the interior doors.

  “Give me a minute, please, gentlemen,” Kennedy said.

  The men nodded and went outside.

  Kennedy stopped and took a deep breath. He had been in Miss Gandy’s office countless times, but he had never really looked at it. He’d always been staring at the door to Hoover’s inner sanctum, waiting for it to open and the old man to come out.

  That office was interesting. In the antechamber, Hoover had memor
abilia and photographs from his major cases. He even had the plaster-of-paris death mask of John Dillinger on display. It was a ghastly thing, which made Kennedy think of the way that English kings used to keep severed heads on the entrance to London Bridge to warn traitors of their potential fate.

  But this office had always looked like a waiting room to him. Nothing very special. The woman behind the desk was the focal point. Jack had been the one who nicknamed her the dragon lady and had even called her that to her face once, only with his trademark grin, so infectious that she hadn’t made a sound or a grimace in protest.

  Of course, she hadn’t smiled back either.

  Her desk was clear except for a blotter, a telephone, and ajar of pens. A typewriter sat on a credenza with paper stacked beside it.

  But it wasn’t the desk that interested him the most. It was the floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets and storage bins. He walked to them. Instead of the typical system—marked by letters of the alphabet—this one had numbers that were clearly part of a code.

  He pulled open the nearest drawer, and found row after row of accordion files, each with its own number, and manila folders with the first number set followed by another. He cursed softly under his breath.

  Of course the old dog wouldn’t file his confidentials by name. He’d use a secret code. The old man liked nothing more than his secrets.

  Still, Kennedy opened half a dozen drawers just to see if the system continued throughout. And it wasn’t until he got to a bin near the corner of the desk that he found a file labeled “Obscene.”

  His hand shook as he pulled it out. Jack, for all his brilliance, had been sexually insatiable. Back when their brother Joe was still alive and no one ever thought Jack would be running for president, Jack had had an affair with a Danish émigré named Inga Arvad. Inga Binga, as Jack used to call her, was married to a man with ties to Hitler. She’d even met and liked Der Führer, and had said so in print.

  She’d been the target of FBI surveillance as a possible spy, and during that surveillance who should turn up in her bed but a young naval lieutentant whose father had once been Ambassador to England. The Ambassador, as he preferred to be called even by his sons, found out about the affair, told Jack in no uncertain terms to end it, and then to make sure he did got him assigned to a PT boat in the Pacific, as far from Inga Binga as possible.