"Who knows? All I know is that I got the boot. If you didn't arrange it, then the only thing I can figure is that I pissed someone off. Maybe someone figured I knew too much."
"You mean about D day and all that."
"The Frau was interested in what the Man was up to with Pierpont, and asked me a few questions about what I had heard. I dummied up because I didn't want to get involved. Later, she hinted that she would like to find out what was going on. I didn't bite. I just wasn't going to put myself in a cross between her and the man. I'm not saying that is the reason I was forced to walk the plank, but it's a possibility. But what the hell. I'm not the first agent to get shuffled off a detail because someone thought he knew too much."
"Well, I had nothing to do with it."
"The way I see it, after you got in your jam with that pie-thrower, you knew you were on your way out the door. Maybe you thought weaseling your way onto her detail was a way to stay assigned at the House until you could slide back in with the Man himself."
Garrison stood. "I just told you I had nothing to do with it," he said staring him in the eye.
"Good luck in the assignment."
Prefontaine headed for the door.
Garrison sat and mulled over what Prefontaine had said. Maybe he was right. Maybe the President had been trying to limit agents from learning too much about First Family marital problems. During the Clinton scandals, Garrison had seen both agents and supervisors go and come from the White House. But it didn't matter. He had other things to think about: like an assassination conspiracy.
****
CHAPTER 11
THE NEXT MORNING Garrison hurried down a White House corridor, heading for the South Lawn.
"Garrison," someone shouted from inside the pressroom.
He stopped. Joe Kretchvane came to the doorway, smiling broadly. He was a journalist whose unauthorized biographies of Presidents Bush and Clinton and other VIPs had caused them great embarrassment. His writing technique was to ferret out unbecoming details from his target's enemies.
"Good morning, Joe."
"Agent Garrison. The Dragon Lady's Man Friday. Do you have a moment?"
"Not really."
"What's this I hear about a big Presidential threat investigation?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"I hear there's a divorce in the wind."
"Mine was final months ago."
"You know what I am talking about. Do you deny the Man and his Dragon Lady are going to split the sheets?"
Kretchvane was about thirty years old. His full beard and styled hair gave him a "Wolf Man" appearance. His beard was crusty, as if it had been dunked in soup a hundred times. He wore a T-shirt, a photographer's vest, and tennis shoes. Garrison detested him. But in Garrison's position, it never paid to show anger. It was impossible to win a battle with an unscrupulous boor like Kretchvane, or any newsie for that matter. Being a Secret Service agent was about blending in with the woodwork and protecting oneself by utilizing protocol.
"News to me," Garrison said.
"You're a bad liar."
"Joe, for as long as you've known me, have I ever answered even one of your questions?"
"No. But lots of people do. In fact I have them waiting in line. And that includes federal gumshoes like you. People have to have a reason for handing someone up. You've simply never had a reason to tell me secrets. One day you will. You'll get screwed and you'll want to get back at someone."
"How's your unauthorized biography going?"
"Did she tell you to ask that?"
"Who?"
Kretchvane tugged his beard. "Fuck you too, Garrison. But since you asked, I'll tell you that my book will be a best-seller. Not that the scoop in it compares to Clinton jacking off in the Oval office or Bush making a fool of himself, but the facts I've gathered about the First Lady are nonetheless compelling. I've got her. I've got her down."
"Such as?"
"Her father made his millions by being a crook. Her first husband married her for her money, and then dumped her. After he was killed in a boating accident, she told her attorney that she was glad he was dead. She once received treatment for depression. I have the medical records. But you know something, Garrison? I still haven't figured out exactly what makes her tick."
"Who knows what makes any woman tick?"
Kretchvane smiled. "You sound like Jay Leno."
"Do you ever have trouble going to sleep at night, Joe?"
Garrison moved to go by him and Kretchvane stepped in front of him, blocking his way.
"Not at all. You can tell the Dragon Lady that I know about the counterattack against me that she has planned."
"What counterattack is that?"
She's hired someone to ghostwrite an autobiography for her. She figures that publishing it at the same time my book comes out will soften the effect my book will have on her public image. She's a clever bitch, the Dragon Lady. But you tell her that I'm going to sell a lot of copies anyway. That's what the First Amendment is all about."
"Joe, may we speak off the record?"
"Certainly."
"If you don't get out of my way, I'm going to knock you on your ass."
Kretchvane smiled lewdly. "When are you going to get off her detail and go back to protecting the President?"
"Who knows?"
"Don't you think protecting the President's wife is below you?"
"No. Do you?"
"What do you think of her? Off the record."
"I'm not paid to think."
Garrison shoved by him and continued down the hall.
"Have fun at Camp David," Joe called.
Garrison found Walter Sebastian on the South Lawn, standing near the Presidential helicopter, directing some White House stewards in the process of loading the craft for the trip to Camp David.
"We're loaded up," Sebastian said. "This chopper will shuttle up and back twice, then stand by at the Camp for the Man. We will have another chopper for our detail."
"Can you handle the trip up for me?"
"You're not going?"
"I have to take care of a couple of errands," Garrison said. "I'll take a chopper up later today. I already ran it by the First Lady."
Sebastian nodded. "No problem. By the way, that asshole Joe Kretchvane has been asking questions about you."
"What kind of questions?"
"There's a rumor going around that you may have to take the lie-detector test again and that you showed deception on one of the questions. I heard it from one of the secretaries in the travel office."
"Like they say, there are no secrets in the Secret Service."
"You okay, Pete?"
"It's nothing. I botched one of the questions and someone is probably trying to make a big deal out of it. You know how they do."
"As I see it, lie-detectors are nothing but witchcraft anyway," Sebastian said. "Hell, I've seen guilty crooks pass polygraph examinations one after the other." Sebastian furrowed his brow. "The lie-detector tests are probably a ruse. Wintergreen is telling everyone he is testing every member of the detail because of some routine security matter, but I think it's much bigger than that. I think it's a major case. An internal thing. Why else would they bring in every polygrapher on the East Coast?"
"Who knows?" Garrison said, and his words didn't sound believable.
"Yeah, who knows?" Sebastian said studying him.
"What is this errand you have to take care of?"
"Huh?"
"The reason you are missing the flight."
"Uh, a neighbor has one of her old boyfriends stalking her. I told her I would go with her to Metro to make a report."
"What does she took like?"
"Why, you looking for a date?"
Sebastian smiled. "Ask her if she knows how to make decent chili."
"I'll do that."
Garrison anxiously departed the White House by the Executive Office Building exit.
He told himself he had to
be flexible, ready for anything. He was alone and would be dealing with a blackmailer. It wasn't going to be easy without backup. Anything could happen in Washington, D.C., an unusual city with hidden agendas, middlemen, procurers, espionage dead drops, and a murder rate that was higher than all the cities of Europe added together. Lacking the sophistication of New York or Paris. D.C. had its own established rituals, cliques, and secrets.
Walking in the direction of the Mayflower Hotel, he could feel the humidity on his face and clothing. It was tangible and onerous, a portent of a summer downpour that could ripple the Potomac, cleanse the Capitol dome, cause a thousand bureaucrats to fight over taxis, and cancel reservations at the Old Ebbitt Grille. It could release pent-up lightning, burst the storm drains along Massachusetts Avenue that would take the inefficient D.C. bureaucracy weeks to repair. It would also lower the District's daily crime rate by more than half because dope dealers would stay inside and have fewer business disputes.
At the Mayflower, a friendly doorman in a white uniform said hello to Garrison and opened a shiny, brass-framed door.
In a high-ceilinged lobby accented with elaborate flower arrangements, a group of Japanese tourists milled about near the front desk. In the lounge area across from a marbled check-in counter, two well-dressed young women sat at a small table, a middle-aged man was reading a book, and three businessmen huddled over some papers. Garrison thought no one looked suspicious. He moved past the elevators to the restaurant, a spacious, open room with white pillars among a sea of linen-covered tables, nearly all of which were occupied. He checked his wristwatch: 11:50 A.M.
Returning to the front desk, he turned right and entered the dimly lit Town and Country cocktail lounge, a wood-paneled replica of an English gentleman's club. On the walls hung framed prints of pointing beagles and setters. Two well-dressed men sat at the bar conversing. At the opposite end of the room some college-age men and women lounged on a sofa. To their right, glass doors led to the street. Garrison slid onto a barstool. A white-coated young bartender placed a linen napkin in front of him. Garrison wondered if the bartender might be working with the blackmailer. But it was just a thought. Garrison's best guess was that no one in the place had anything to do with the extortion letter. He ordered a Coca-Cola.
At precisely noon, the telephone rang. The bartender walked to the other end of the bar and picked up the receiver.
"Hello ... Hold the line." The bartender turned. "Is there a Mr. Garrison here?" Garrison motioned to the bartender. The bartender pointed to an extension phone on the wall. "Line one, sir."
Garrison picked up the receiver.
"This is your concerned photographer," said an electronic voice. "To whom am I speaking?"
Garrison turned toward the wall so he could speak without being overheard. He figured the caller was probably using a handheld electronic voice-changer device. Originally developed for spies, such devices were now commonly available in security-product stores. Garrison strained to hear any background noise coming from the phone. There was the sound of eerie music - a Wagnerian opera? He wondered whether the caller was playing the music to drown some other identifiable background noise.
"I represent the subject of the photo."
"Who is with you?"
"I'm alone."
"Walk across the street to the Sperling Finance Building at 1140 Connecticut. Wait in the coffee shop."
"Wait for what?"
"I'll meet you there."
"What's wrong with this place?"
"Are you refusing to meet me?"
"No. But I'm not going to play games all day either. Why don't you just come here? I'll buy you a drink and we'll straighten this out man-to-man." Garrison wanted to see how far the man would go.
"I'll be at the coffee shop. If you're not there, then I might change my mind and phone the National Enquirer."
"What do you look like?"
"Just sit near the window. I'll find you."
The phone clicked. Garrison hung the receiver back on the hook. He turned to study the faces in the bar. No one was paying any attention to him. He paid for the drink and departed by a door leading to the street.
Garrison moved briskly along the sidewalk, making his way through a bustling afternoon crowd. He walked to the corner and crossed the street, heading toward the Sperling Finance Building. He darted into a candy shop and looked out the display window, waiting for someone on the street to stop suspiciously as surveillants do when their prey suddenly changes course. Nothing untoward occurred. As far as he could tell, no one was following him.
"Can I help you, sir?" said a female clerk.
"No, thanks."
Garrison exited the shop and continued down the street to the Sperling Finance Building, a multistory commercial structure of tinted glass. He went inside and walked across a tiled lobby to an information counter where a bored-looking female uniformed guard sat.
"Where are the pay phones in this building?"
She gave him a puzzled look. "In the basement and the coffee shop."
"Thanks."
As the guard stared at him, Garrison headed across the lobby. The coffee shop was next to a door that read: MOUNTAIN ESCROW INC. Walking into the coffee shop, Garrison was met by the heavy odors of coffee grounds and potato salad. There were about ten tables and not so much as a framed print on the wall or a plastic flower for decoration. The only customers were a young man and an older man, business types, sitting at different tables. Cafe Drab. A middle-aged woman stood behind the cash register. Could she be the blackmailer's lookout?
Garrison purchased a cup of coffee. He sat at a table close to the window. He thought it unusual that a blackmailer who was daring enough to extort the First Lady would choose a coffee shop in an office building for a risky face-to-face meeting. The coffee shop provided no ready avenue of escape. It didn't fit with the ruse meeting at the Mayflower and an electronic voice-changer to hide his identity. On the other hand, Garrison knew that, in the end, criminals were screwy, that their actions were often inexplicable.
For the next hour, he diligently studied all those who entered. For a while he thought everyone who came in looked suspicious. But after thirty or so customers came and went, the feeling dissipated. He got up, walked to the hallway, and paced about for a few minutes to stretch his legs, then returned inside. The woman at the cash register kept eyeing him suspiciously. He purchased a hamburger and sat again. The hamburger tasted like potato salad.
By 1:30 P.M. those who'd eaten lunch or purchased takeout food had returned to work. Only Garrison remained. Tired, exasperated, and disappointed, Garrison decided that the blackmailer was being cagey and had set up the meeting just to determine whether he was walking into a trap. Garrison decided to head back to the White House.
Exiting the front door of the office building, he turned left and walked north to DuPont Circle. Crossing the park, he reversed course and headed back the way he came. In front of a clothing store, he studied the reflection in the window glass to determine if he was being followed.
Across the street, a heavyset man slowed his pace, then stopped. Holding a cigar in his teeth, he knelt to tie his shoe, and in doing so glanced in Garrison's direction. Unless Garrison's memory was playing tricks on him, he had seen the man in the Sperling Finance Building coffee shop. If he remembered correctly, shortly after Garrison had arrived, the man had entered, purchased something, then left. As Garrison had trained himself to do long ago, he described the cigar-smoker in his mind as if writing on a chalkboard: forty years old, five-eleven, two hundred pounds, olive complexion, black hair, and eyeglasses. He wore Levi's, white sneakers, and a green T-shirt with the word NASHVILLE stenciled across the front. Garrison figured the cigar-smoker was either the blackmailer himself or an accomplice sent to detect whether Garrison was alone.
Garrison continued on, walking to the corner, where he joined a group of pedestrians waiting for a red light.
Across the street, the cigar-smoker stopped and wait
ed.
Garrison considered the alternatives. He could ignore the man and return to the White House to wait for another blackmail letter. Or he could do something. The mission was to stop the blackmailer from playing his game and to seize the photographs and burn them,
Garrison headed across the street toward him.
The cigar-smoker turned and walked north on Connecticut Avenue.
Garrison followed.
The cigar-smoker began walking faster, dodging pedestrians. He turned the corner at N Street.
Garrison ran after him. Reaching the corner, Garrison saw the cigar-smoker was out of sight. To Garrison's left, a bank building covered the entire block. On the other side of the street was a multistoried parking structure with open walls and a ground-level entrance/exit. He walked to the bank's entrance, where a tall, dark-haired woman was smoking a cigarette. She had a bank-employee photo identification card pinned to her suit jacket. Garrison held out his badge.
"Did you see a man in a green T-shirt and Levi's come by here just now?"
"He went in there like he was in a huffy," she said with a nod toward the parking garage.
"Is that the only entrance and exit?"
"Yes. What'd he do?"
"Shoplifter."
"Wow."
The way Garrison figured it, Mr. Cigar-Smoker was laying low in the parking garage. And he was probably watching Garrison.
Garrison turned and walked back the way he came. Turning right, out of sight of anyone in the parking garage. He ran back to Connecticut Avenue and rounded the corner. Making his way to an alley at the rear of the parking garage, he crawled over a retaining wall into the lot's ground level, filled with cars. Moving cautiously, Garrison scanned the entire level, glancing into cars. Then he walked up the ramp to the second level. It was full. He walked slowly along the perimeter, checking cars.
"Looking for someone?"
Garrison turned. The cigar-smoker was holding a gun on him, a Beretta automatic. Garrison felt his face and hands tingle.
"Yeah, you," Garrison said.
"Face the street."
Garrison estimated the distance to the gun. It was just out of reach. If Garrison made a move for his own gun, he would get shot.
The Sentinel Page 9
