by Sam Bourne
Maggie took another look. It was him: the thin-faced man from the Monteleone bar, now being ushered into Vic Forbes’s house, a place that was off-limits to the press. And yet he had been there, among the journalists, in what was, in effect, the media hotel. What was going on?
Tim was back at her side and Maggie said nothing. She scribbled a few lines in her notebook, then agreed that they stroll back to the Monteleone together. They re-entered the pedestrian throng of Royal Street, full of shops open to the heady spring evening. As they passed a display of scented candles and an array of gothic masks for Mardi Gras, Tim launched into a long story about the cricket club he had founded in New York, allowing Maggie to stop listening and to think.
The simplest explanation for what she had just seen was that the man was indeed a plain-clothes cop who had earlier been at the bar of the Monteleone undercover. But why? Surely he hadn’t been eavesdropping on the hacks: of what possible value could that be?
They were back at the hotel now, Maggie reluctantly agreeing to return to the Carousel Bar, where the table of international journalists had reformed, albeit with a slightly different cast list. This time, though, she insisted on whisky.
Within twenty minutes, the thin-faced man was back, once again taking a table on his own, once again pulling out his laptop as if to begin journalistic work.
Maggie excused herself from the group and, with no clear plan, strode right over to the man. ‘Excuse me,’ she began, hoping she was looming over him.
‘What is it?’ he said. American, the accent rougher than she was expecting. Not Southern; closer to New Jersey.
‘Who are you?’
‘I’ll tell you if you tell me.’ He cracked a smile, showing bad teeth.
‘My name is Liz Costello. Irish Times.’
‘Lewis Rigby. I write for the National Enquirer. Freelance.’
That was not what she was expecting. ‘As in the supermarket tabloid?’
‘Yeah, the supermarket tabloid that broke the biggest political story of the last year, thank you very much.’
‘Mark Chester’s love-child? That was you?’
‘Not me personally. But yeah. You wanna sit down?’
Maggie pulled up a chair, forming a new strategy in light of this fresh information. ‘So,’ she said, her voice friendly and collegiate now. ‘You here on the Forbes story?’
He smiled, as if licking his lips at the prospect. ‘You bet.’
‘Right,’ Maggie said slowly. ‘It’s just I had a tip that earlier today a reporter for “the Enquirer” bribed a serving officer of the New Orleans Police Department in order to gain access to a crime scene. It didn’t sound like the kind of thing the Philadelphia Enquirer would get up to, so it must have been you. You know that’s a felony in all fifty states, with very heavy penalties.’
He turned ashen.
‘Yep. My source has hard evidence.’ The bluff was the oldest trick in the negotiator’s book. Through years of talks, Maggie had discovered that even the wiliest operators would fall for it.
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to blab. Not to the police, not to the Enquirer.’
‘You’re not?’
‘We’ve all got a job to do.’
He let out a long gulp of air.
Maggie continued. ‘Just so long as you share whatever you’ve got with me.’
‘You gotta be kidding. There’s no way the Nat-’
‘-National Enquirer is going to want to face charges of corrupting a police officer. Too serious. Which is why you’re going to get on the phone to your friend and ask him to arrange another visit to the house. With me as your pal.’
It took him approximately five seconds to compute what he’d heard. ‘But no photographs, all right? Those are my exclusive. Otherwise I’m screwed.’
‘Deal.’
His brow remained furrowed. ‘How can I trust you not to take it somewhere else?’
‘You can’t.’ Maggie smiled. ‘But you don’t have much choice.’
He gave a short, glum nod.
‘So,’ Maggie said, gesturing for them to leave the bar. ‘When shall we do this?’
‘There’s only one time we can do this. He’s only on duty tonight. We’ll go there right now.’
17
New Orleans, Wednesday March 22, 23.03 CST
The TV trucks were still there but, Rigby counselled, one was local and, at this hour, off the air while the other was Japanese: nothing to worry about. Yesterday there had been two dozen. The New Orleans Police Department had been repetitive in its consistency, drilling away at the message that they were looking for no one else in connection with the death of Victor Forbes, that the admittedly bizarre circumstances of his demise all but confirmed that it was death at his own hand, whether deliberate or not was hard to determine and might never be known.
The message had seemed to penetrate. Maggie had clicked on the TV the instant she got into her hotel room after checkin: hopping channels, she had detected a change in tone. True, Fox, and the nutjobs, were still crying murder, but the mainstream voices were calmer. ‘A personal tragedy for Mr Forbes seems to have brought to an end what threatened to be a political calamity for President Baker,’ said some precociously serious twenty-something talking head from The New Republic.
Rigby insisted on waiting across the street, standing in the shadows where he would not be seen. Eventually the policeman Maggie had seen earlier – African-American and at least six foot two – came into view. Rigby stepped out to meet him. He nodded his head towards Maggie and uttered the single, reluctant word, ‘colleague’. The cop shrugged, as if to say ‘Like I give a shit’.
In silence he led them under the tape and up the stairs. No furtive looks over his shoulder, he acted as if this were perfectly normal police procedure. Anyone watching would assume they were witnessing nothing more than a police officer opening up a crime scene to, say, two senior detectives.
Once inside, with the front door closed, he handed them each a pair of latex gloves, produced from a box. He put on a pair too, then turned on the lights. ‘You know the rules, but I’ll say it again. You don’t move anything, you don’t take anything. You got five minutes, max.’
Maggie’s eyes swept over the room, trying to capture as much information as she could. Hardwood floors. Minimal furniture. Paintings on the wall: Holiday Inn prints rather than art. A coffee table bearing two large books: aerial shots of the earth and an atlas. No photos anywhere. It looked unlived in, like a corporate rental. It felt empty.
‘Is this how it was, officer?’ Maggie asked. ‘Or have you taken anything away?’
The policeman turned around, his bulk seeming to fill the room. Unsmiling, he seemed offended, not so much by the content of the question as at the very idea that he had to talk at all. ‘Nothing has been removed from this area, as far as I’m aware. Some items were taken from the bedroom for further forensic examination.’ He concluded with a glare. ‘No more questions.’
Rigby had already moved across the ground floor and was on the first step of the spiral staircase to the bedroom, apparently grateful for the chance to take a second look around, even if it had cost him an extra few hundred dollars.
Maggie followed, peering into the kitchen/diner area, which stood at the rear of the open-plan living room. The breakfast bar’s surface was spotless. She flipped open the oven: apparently unused.
By now, she was lagging behind. She could hear Rigby’s footsteps through the ceiling. He was doubtless standing at the spot where Forbes had been found dead.
She clanked her way round the wrought-iron staircase, emerging onto a small landing giving onto three rooms: bathroom, bedroom and a small study.
She remembered another tip from Nick du Caines. ‘First place any profile-writer heads to is the bathroom,’ he had said during their rapid-fire tutorial. ‘Bloody goldmine in there. Ask to go to the loo and then check the meds cabinet. Viagra? You can then saunter out and
ask your interviewee sensitive questions about impotence. Rogaine? Very nice, especially if you’re doing an actor. But the motherlode is Xanax. Or Prozac. Or Lithium. That’s very heaven. You put on your most caring face and ask if the rumours are true: “Are you currently being treated for depression?” Jack-bloody-pot.’
Maggie darted in, noted the cleanest shower curtain she’d ever seen, and opened the medicine cabinet: empty, save for one tube of toothpaste and a can of shaving foam. No brush, no razor.
Across the landing, she could see Rigby standing in the centre of the bedroom, apparently photographing every surface he hadn’t caught last time.
She looked into the study. Even through the doorway she could see that it was as full as the downstairs was empty. Side on was a glass desk, dominated by a vast computer screen. It was flanked by two others, each angled into the other. As she got nearer, she saw shelves packed with what looked at first like the toys of an adolescent boy: a remote-control helicopter on one, a couple of miniature cars on another. Only after a few seconds did she see that both carried small cameras.
She looked towards the bedroom, anxious that she not waste time: the officer would declare the visit over at any moment and she needed to have seen it all. She looked under the desk to see a curtain of cables, dangling in space, connected to nothing. So those were just monitors on the desk; the police must have taken the machines.
She heard a creak, the sound of Rigby leaving the bedroom.
She passed him on the landing. ‘I’ll just take a quick peek.’
‘You want to focus on the beam by the window,’ he said, in a show of helpfulness. ‘That’s where it happened,’ he said, miming the shape of a noose. Then he headed, camera in hand, for the study.
She stepped in, bracing herself. But there was no need. This room was as soulless and empty as the one downstairs. A bed, a side table, an old-fashioned armoire. No photographs anywhere.
Knowing the futility of the move in advance, she pulled open the drawer of the bedside table: empty. If there had ever been anything in this place that might have shed light on Vic Forbes, the police had clearly removed it. What Maggie had assumed was going to be a crucial first step – not a breakthrough, but a start – was turning out to be a dead end.
A raised voice from half-way up the staircase. The cop: ‘We need to clear this premises in the next ninety seconds.’
It was then that she heard it.
The first sound came so soon after the policeman had spoken that she assumed that it must somehow be connected to him: perhaps an alarm he had triggered, or a Taser being warmed up.
But when the second buzz came, she could tell that it was much closer. It was inside this room.
No longer moving gingerly, she yanked open the armoire. A row of suits: mostly grey, some dark blue. She rifled through them, each one revealing precisely nothing. (And not, she noticed, a dress or garter belt to be seen. Police must have taken those too.)
She wheeled around, looking first at the bed, then staring up at the beam where Rigby had told her Forbes had been found dangling. Nothing.
She squatted, checking the floor of the closet, her hand patting furiously in the dark, feeling for anything that might explain that noise. Straightening up, and on tiptoes, she checked the top shelf, again using crude touch to do the searching. Nothing.
Then it came once more, a low buzz, lasting no more than two seconds.
She patted her own pocket, feeling for her phone. She pulled it out, but she knew that was pointless: her phone was set to sound, not to vibrate.
‘Come on.’ Rigby was at the door. ‘We’re leaving.’
The cupboard door was still open, standing as a barrier between them, preventing him from seeing her hands. And it was her hands that realized what had been slow to reach her conscious brain. They began groping at the pockets of the suits, one after another until, at last, inside a jacket whose scent was different from the others, they found what they were looking for.
Turning to face the man from the Enquirer, she shone what she hoped was her warmest, most engaging smile – even as she closed the cupboard door with one hand while the other took the small device and, without daring to look at it, slid it into her own pocket.
18
Washington, DC, Wednesday March 22, 22.15 ‘So now it’s your decision.’
‘I know.’
‘You’ve spoken to colleagues. They say you’ll have the full weight of the Republican party in Congress behind you.’
‘They say that. You know how much verbal agreements are worth in this town.’
‘I do, sir. They’re not worth the paper they’re written on.’
That one word had done it, as she surely knew it would. Sir. Said like that, in that sweet, eyelash-fluttering way of hers. He felt his loins stirring. This little routine he had with Cindy always turned him on, but she was playing it more expertly than ever tonight, the demure-yet-pert Southern belle with a hint of sauce beneath that courtly exterior. She only had to call him ‘sir’ in that educated Charleston accent, and he was transported back to the nineteenth century: he was master of the house and she was bending over to submit to his will…
He looked at his watch: ten fifteen. He would have to act fast. But still he wanted to go through the arguments one last time. ‘If this is to work, Cindy, then the Forbes stuff is critical. It’s just the lunatics right now, but we have to make the base believe. Tell me again. What’s Rush been saying?’
‘He’s saying the American people have the right to raise questions. No more than that.’
‘Beck?’
‘Good. He interviewed an expert on murder cases that were faked to look like suicide.’
‘So you think this could stick? If I’m to make this move, our folks have to be dead certain that Stephen Baker had Vic Forbes killed.’
Obligingly, Cindy turned around, giving him a chance to see her from behind, and bent over to retrieve a piece of paper from her briefcase – taking rather longer to do so than was strictly necessary.
‘We don’t have many allies down there, not after-’ She paused, reluctant to say the word that had inflicted such damage on Republicans. ‘After Katrina. Governor Tett is ours, obviously, but he’s surrounded by Democrats. Especially in New Orleans itself.’
‘Journalists?’
‘The good news is that the National Enquirer is sniffing around.’
‘That is good news.’
‘If there’s something to find, they’ll find it.’
He looked out of the window, contemplating the long sweep of twinkling lights that was the American capital. He watched the slow red winking at the top of the Washington monument.
‘You do realize how serious this is, don’t you, Cindy?’
‘I do.’
‘This is the big one. It’s the bunker-buster. If we get it right, Baker will be finished.’
‘And you, sir, will only just be started.’ She fluttered her eyelashes again, signalling a return to character. ‘Strike me hard if I’m wrong.’
That was it, the surge of lust was now too great to resist. Senator Rick Franklin glanced down at the portrait on his desk, the one that showed him and his four children smiling warmly at the lens, while his wife of eighteen years gazed adoringly up at him: the full Nancy Reagan, as that particular pose was known in the political communications industry. He turned the picture face down, so that it lay flat against the wood, right next to the discreet statuette he had received when he was anointed a ‘Hero of the American Family’ by the Christian Coalition.
He looked at his watch. If they were quick, there was time.
‘Now, Cindy, I am about to follow the rules of this house and administer the punishment that you deserve. First, is the outer door of the office locked in the usual fashion?’
‘It is, sir.’
‘Second, are you wearing that underwear that you know tempts your master?’
‘The one sir calls “the eyepatch”?’
‘That
’s right.’
‘Yes, sir. I’m ashamed to say I am.’
They were practised enough, the Senator and his aide, that they could run through the whole ritual – all the way to climax (his) – in a matter of minutes.
Once it was done, he felt ready to make the move that he knew would define his career and might well alter the course of American history. He zipped up his fly, buckled his belt and nodded that Cindy, now straightening her stockings, should stay.
He dialled the number Cindy had put in front of him, the first move in a sequence that he had never had to follow before; heard the operator answer and realized, with a rush of adrenalin, the import of what he was about to do.
‘This is Senator Rick Franklin. I need to speak to the President of the United States.’
19
New Orleans, Wednesday March 22, 23.45 CST
The device she had found had been burning a hole in Maggie’s pocket for the best part of an hour. Lewis Rigby had insisted they bury the hatchet with a drink. No hard feelings and all that.
Throughout their conversation, though her eyes didn’t waver, Maggie did not listen to a word the grubby little hack was saying. Instead all her brainpower was channelled into her fingertips, as she turned the object she had snatched from Forbes’s suit pocket over and over in her own.
It was round and flat, a disc; and yet it had buzzed. It was too thin to be a cellphone, even a novelty one. There were no buttons, nor one of those clam-shell flaps that might conceal them. A moment of panic seized her, one she hoped Rigby did not glimpse as she pretended to be fascinated by the story of how exactly he had come to tap the cellphone of the former mayor of Atlanta just in time to hear him call the Hot Guys chat line.
What if she had been half-right? What if the buzzing sound had indeed come from the wardrobe, and from the suits, but she had reached into the wrong pocket? What if she had had the chance to grab Vic Forbes’s cellphone, only to come away with a flipping bar coaster or whatever this piece of crap was?
