Close Call

by Laura Disilverio

  Sydney calmed down. “He’s a sleaze.” She gave it more thought. “Which isn’t to say he doesn’t have a certain appeal, a combination of confidence and charm. But he’s still a sleaze.”

  “Yeah, rumor has it that ‘Fidel’ is a real misnomer. I don’t know why his wife puts up with it. She doesn’t seem like the usual milquetoast, stand-by-your-man political wife, willing to suck up any amount of humiliation in order to call herself FLOTUS one day.”

  Like Julie Manley had been. Sydney let the thought go. “She’s an architect, right?”

  Reese nodded and tossed a bit of beef to a hopeful Earl. “Uh-huh.”

  “So, not much chance she knows any contract killers.”

  “Not so fast,” Reese said. “Before she married Montoya at nineteen, her name was Katya Van Slyke, but her mother’s maiden name was Utkin.” At Sydney’s blank stare, she added impatiently. “Do you live under a rock?”

  “I certainly don’t follow DC gossip, if that’s what you mean. I know firsthand how vicious and wrong it is.” Sydney slammed the counter in exasperation and her cardboard container jumped, rice fountaining from it. Earl eagerly licked up the pieces that hit the ground.

  “It’s not gossip—” Reese started. “Never mind.” She grabbed a sponge and wiped up the rice. “Katya’s uncle is a significant figure in the Russian Mafiya. He lives in New York. Her parents have always been careful to distance themselves from him, and of course there’s no visible connection between him and Montoya—I don’t even think Uncle Matvei was invited to the wedding—but I daresay he could pass a phone number to his niece if she asked. And then there’s Jimmy.”

  “Montoya’s son? I’ve seen him in the background when Montoya does events.”

  “Jimmy’s got a gambling problem. Maybe addictive personalities run in the family—sex for Fidel, gambling for Jimmy. I don’t know who he bets with, or if he owes money, but I can find out. If he’s underwater with the wrong guys, Jimmy might be eager to come into his inheritance sooner rather than later. I’ve got a contact, a bookie friend—acquaintance, really—who owes me. He’ll tell me who Jimmy’s into.”

  “So much for Fidel’s personal life,” Sydney said, relieved that Reese knew how to find things out, just as she’d thought she would. “Now there’s only this.” She thumped the box of threats.

  “Let’s get to it.”

  An hour later, they’d both read all of the letters and taken notes. Sydney felt slimed by the hatred and vitriol pouring from the pages. The mail and email and social media drubbing she’d gotten after the scandal had been bad, but a lot of this was worse. No one had threatened to sodomize her and flay her alive before feeding her body to hogs. They were sitting on Reese’s back deck, looking out over a rough-mown field so green it hurt her eyes, dotted with dandelions and wildflowers. Butterflies flitted. Birds twittered and chirruped from a line of woods edging the property. The people who’d written those letters couldn’t live in the same world that she did.

  Reese set down the last page and sat staring into space, drumming her fingers on the glass-topped table.

  “Montoya seems pretty convinced the Imminent Revelation folks are the ones who hired the killer,” Sydney said. “His second choice is his opponent in the election, with the national Democratic Party chair a distant runner-up because of what he calls ‘intellectual differences.’” Sydney made air quotes.

  “Yeah, he slept with the guy’s wife,” Reese said.

  Sydney didn’t ask her how she knew that. Reese knowing things was why she was here.

  Her sister rose. “I need a drink. Get you anything?”

  It was only three thirty. “A bit early for me. Water?”

  Reese returned minutes later bearing what looked like a gin and tonic for herself, a half-full bottle of gin with a monkey on the label, and a bottle of chilled Perrier for Sydney. Reese drank a good third of the G&T, then set it down.

  Sydney rolled the cold Perrier bottle across her forehead before opening it. It hissed. “You’re—you were—the investigative reporter … how do we go about figuring out if any of these people or groups really hired a hit man?” She felt like she’d drifted into a spy novel, or The Godfather, using terms like “hit man” and “take out.” Next thing she knew, she’d be saying “iced” or “sleeping with the fishes” or “collateral damage.”

  Reese shrugged one shoulder. “We talk to them, carefully. We talk to people who know them, even more carefully. We do our research before we talk to anybody.” She knocked back most of the rest of her G&T with a rattle of ice.

  “We’ve only got until Tuesday,” Sydney reminded her. She sifted a page from the pile. “I think Montoya’s right about the Imminent Revelationists. There’s something angrier, more violent in their letters than in most of the others. They sound serious. They’re calling out Montoya for ‘polluting Adam’s pure blood seedline by giving Jews, faggots, and the mud people access to America’s land and treasure.’ Repulsive. They threaten to blow him up, behead him, and give him a foretaste of the flames of hell, which must mean they want to burn him. I think we should look at them first.”

  “Agreed. You do that—it’s a computer drill. I’ll work my sources to find out more about Jimmy Montoya’s situation and see if Katya’s been lunching with Uncle Matvei.” Reese poured another slug of gin into her glass and sipped.

  Sydney worked hard to keep any hint of judgment or concern off her face, remembering Connie saying something in passing about Reese’s drinking. She’d tuned it out at the time, as she’d tuned out any mention of Reese.

  “Do you really donate to Winning Ways?” she asked, suddenly remembering Reese’s remark before she’d hit her.

  Reese swirled the liquid in her glass, letting the silver arc of it slice just to the rim, a hair’s breadth from sloshing over. “People donate anonymously for a reason.”

  Sydney could have pushed it, but she let it go, a pea-sized bubble of happiness or hope rising within her from the knowledge that her sister had been donating to the cause closest to her heart. It might just have been guilt money, Judas’s thirty pieces of silver, but it might also have been a bridge, a way to stay connected. She would think of it as the latter.

  Setting the glass down, Reese pulled her laptop closer. “You know,” she said, “we haven’t paid any attention to that bit about ‘Time for round two.’ That may offer an alternate way to figure this out.”

  “How so?”

  “If we take ‘round two’ to mean that they—the killer and his client—have already killed someone else, who was it? What’s the connection with Montoya?”

  “Another politician,” Sydney said immediately. “Maybe they both supported a bill the mysterious client wants killed. Pun intended.”

  “À la The Pelican Brief ?” Reese said skeptically. “How many politicians would you have to kill off to affect legislation? Still, we should check it out. What kind of timeline is reasonable? Six months?”

  “Go back a year,” Sydney said, watching Reese’s fingers fly over the keyboard. A bee buzzed around her water bottle and she waved it away. “How many congressional members died in office in the past twelve months?”

  It took only moments for the search engine to return an answer. “Three.” Reese turned the screen so Sydney could see it.

  While Sydney read, Reese recapped. “Congresswoman Beth Howser, from the Fifth District in Colorado, died of a heart attack last August, just a year ago. Rodney Portentos, Congressman from Alaska, was killed in a car wreck in February, and Armand Fewell, Maryland’s senator, died in a hunting accident.” She sipped her G&T and licked a drop off her lower lip.

  “That’s why there’s the special election, to replace him,” Sydney said slowly. “Was there any doubt about it being an accident? What happened?”

  Reese scanned an article or two. “Doesn’t seem to be,” she said. “He was hunting turke
y in South Dakota in May with a buddy, one Jermaine Washington, when he almost stepped on a rattlesnake, jumped and dropped his shotgun, and it went off. He was hit in the face and throat. Unlucky. They got him to a hospital and thought he was going to be okay, but he developed sepsis and died six weeks later. Not the way I want to go.” She continued to scroll down the screen.

  Sydney made a note to talk to Jermaine Washington or Fewell’s wife. “If he was murdered, it seems like the killer almost screwed it up.” She tapped her pen on the table, thinking. “Car wrecks can be arranged,” she said, “and heart attacks can be faked.” She felt faintly ridiculous even suggesting it.

  “True,” Reese said, “but unlikely. The Colorado Springs Gazette says Howser had a history of heart issues; it was her third heart attack that killed her.”

  “Probably not murder, then,” Sydney agreed.

  “And Portentos’s crash was a single-car wreck on an icy road in Fairfax County.”

  “No cut brake lines or bullet hole in the tire?” Sydney asked, only half kidding.

  “What kind of movies do you watch?” Reese asked, cocking a disdainful eyebrow.

  Sydney didn’t want to confess that she liked exactly the kind of action-packed thrillers that Reese’s eyebrow was implicitly condemning. “The ‘round two’ bit could also refer to something personal to Montoya, couldn’t it? Maybe someone has a grudge against his family, a personal thing, not a political thing.”

  “Possible. You’ll have to ask him if any family members have died recently, though, because Montoya is too common a name, and it’s not worth digging up his family tree to figure out his mom’s maiden name and all that crap.” Reese shut her laptop, downed the rest of her drink in one go, scraped back her chair, and stood, putting a hand on the table to steady herself. “Let’s get going.”

  “Going? Where?”

  “Your place. I’ll get my gear. Ten minutes. I want to have a look around before dark.”

  “Wait.” Sydney stood, too. “I told you, you don’t need to move in with me.”

  Reese gave her a level look. “If you think I’m putting in the time and effort to track down Jason’s killer and the guy who hired him, only to have him put a bullet in you, you’re batshit crazy. He’s already been back once to plant the gun. Until we get this figured out, I’m sticking to you like stink on shit.” She headed for the stairs, no sign of the G&Ts in her steady walk.

  “I don’t need a bodyguard,” Sydney called after her. The thought of having Reese around 24/7 made her itch with discomfort.

  Reese spoke over her shoulder. “If you don’t have any Monkey 47 on hand, put the bottle in your purse.”

  Sydney caved to the inevitable, stowed the gin bottle in her purse, and looked at Earl. “I suppose you think you’re coming, too?”

  He wagged his whole rear end and panted.

  “Right. Then we’d better find you some food, because I don’t think you’ll like kiwi yogurt.”

  She located Earl’s food, and she had the bag and a bowl tucked into the trunk of her Nissan Altima by the time Reese came back downstairs.

  27

  Sydney

  Later that evening, Sydney sat on her guest bed because Reese had said the balcony opening off the master bedroom made the room too vulnerable. When she’d testily asked what made Reese an expert on home security, her sister had said she’d picked up a few pointers while writing Secret Silence, her blockbuster about a Secret Service agent who was a serial killer. After poking about the house for twenty minutes, making notes, Reese had made Sydney drive them to the nearest hardware store, where they’d bought new locks and window latches. Reese installed the top-of-the-line deadbolts while Sydney put together a light dinner. The whirring of the drill intermittently drowned Earl’s toenails clicking on the hardwood floor as he followed Sydney from stove to counter to fridge, hoping. The scents of tarragon and baked chicken still pervaded the house.

  Reese was planning to sleep on the pull-out sofa downstairs. They hadn’t talked much at dinner, and, when Sydney went upstairs, Reese was hunched forward studying her laptop screen, legs tucked under her, sipping a G&T and making notes on a legal pad. The living room was dark except for the computer’s glow; it limned Reese’s face, scooping hollows under her eyes, and made the chrome on Jason’s bike glow. Earl had curled up on a blanket she’d unearthed from the linen closet and folded into a pad for him. Sydney felt certain he’d give warning of an assassin’s entrance, since he’d already barked at Indigo, two youngsters rollerblading on the sidewalk, a squirrel traversing a branch, and numerous dog walkers, joggers, and commuters on their way home from the Metro. She thought about thanking Reese when she said good night, but didn’t.

  With a pillow scrunched at the small of her back and her laptop open beside her, Sydney let backed-up tears fall. She wore Jason’s old plaid robe. It still smelled like him, which was mostly comforting. Shortly after she and Reese had gotten back from the hardware store, his parents, who lived in a tiny apartment in an assisted living facility, had called with details of the service, which was planned for the week after next in Saratoga Springs, New York, his home town. They’d also asked Sydney to clear out Jason’s condo, keeping anything she wanted and disposing of the rest of his things as appropriate. If she came across anything small that she thought they would like, she should send it along, his mother said, her voice cracking with age and grief.

  “You’re not supposed to outlive your children,” his father said through a barrage of throat clearing and nose honking, futile attempts to disguise his tears. That had cued the build-up of tears that Sydney had kept damned in her throat all evening, not wanting to break down in front of Reese.

  Now, cried out, she blew her nose, collected the pyramid of sodden tissues to throw out, and opened her email.

  One of the letters from Montoya’s box—from Aaron Fisher, the Big Kahuna or Grand Wizard or whatever he called himself of the Imminent Revelation—lay beside her. Her Internet research earlier had revealed Fisher to be a product of Oral Roberts University and an ordained minister. The Imminent Revelation’s slick website featured a photo of a fortyish man in a suit, who looked more like a businessman than the leader of a paramilitary organization devoted to influencing U. S. elections “by any means necessary.” However, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League, who maintained thorough databases on hate groups, cited the IR and its founder as being among the most dangerous groups in the nation and the most likely to resort to “organized and scripted violence” to achieve their aims. True believers all had a two-inch-square entwined A.S., for “Adam’s Seed,” branded on their chests. Sydney shuddered when she thought of it. She could not afford to underestimate Fisher, assuming she got to meet him.

  She typed his email address into the “To” line on her computer. A plan for approaching him had come to her while she’d read up on his cult. She hadn’t shared it with Reese, afraid her sister would put the kibosh on the idea. Fingers flying, she told Fisher they had a common goal: to keep Fidel Montoya from being elected.

  I can make it happen, Sydney wrote. Let’s meet. She sent the message and relaxed against the pillows. Die cast. She’d gotten in touch with a bunch of right-wing kooks. She hoped they’d respond in a conventional way, via email, rather than with a bomb or a bullet.

  28

  Paul

  Saturday, August 5

  Early Saturday morning, Paul gingerly peeled back the bandage from his shoulder. In the sputtering fluorescent light of the DC motel room’s tiny bathroom, the skin around the stitched bullet hole looked shiny and red. He poked at it, wincing. Infected. He didn’t need this crap now. He hadn’t been able to pry any antibiotics out of the doctor he’d visited, not when the rapid strep test came back negative. Who knew they had strep tests that gave almost immediate results these days? Last time he’d had a strep test, decades ago, it had taken over two days to g
et the results. His shoulder pulsed with pain and he pressed the heel of his hand against it, hoping to shut it up. Drenching a thin washcloth with the hottest water he could stand, he held it to his shoulder, letting the heat draw the poison to the surface. Repeating the process several times, he stared into the medicine cabinet mirror, seeing not the late-middle-aged man stripped to the waist whose skin was losing its grip on his musculature, sliding inexorably south, but his fifth-grade self reclining on the couch, his mother holding a hot cloth to his big toe with its infected ingrown toenail. Like she had, he pushed at the inflamed skin until the pus oozed out, dabbing it away with toilet tissue he pulled from a spare roll. He swabbed the area with the alcohol he’d picked up at a drug store and rubbed in antibiotic ointment before re-bandaging it. That would have to do.

  Shrugging into a green polo shirt, he reviewed Plan B. There were contingency plans as well, but he didn’t want to have to resort to them. The client’s insistence on making the job look like an accident complicated things. Putting a bullet through a man’s temple was so much simpler. Or tossing a grenade into his bedroom, like that mission in Hanoi—Ho Chi Minh City, as the gooks had taken to calling it—in ’75. Simplicity and surprise were two of the principles of warfare that Clausewitz had espoused, and now Paul had neither on his side. He preferred Sun Tzu’s war-fighting philosophies, but had to admit Clausewitz had a good thing going with his nine principles. Something about numbered lists was appealing, he thought, lacing his cross-trainers. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Letterman’s Top Ten lists.

  The one good thing about this target, though, was that he could find out where Montoya was going to be at any hour of the day merely by checking the congressman’s website for his appearance schedule. This close to the election, the candidate was stumping full-time, speaking at Kiwanis meetings over breakfast, visiting schools and factories in the mornings, lunching with union leaders, and so on, right up until his black-tie speaking engagement at an American Bar Association banquet that night. Folding up the print-out of Montoya’s schedule, Paul put his gun in the gym bag and slung it over his good shoulder. Plan B called for interpreting “accident” in a somewhat liberal fashion.