Free Fall

by Kyle Mills

  “Don’t be so melodramatic.”

  “Melodramatic? You set me up!”

  “I had nothing to do with your suspension turning into criminal charges—you did that all by yourself,” Sherman said, forcing down some of the vodka in his glass with a distinctly pained look on his face. “I needed the best, and you suddenly became available. I hoped that you would find Darby before anybody else got hurt, that you’d turn her over to my attorney, and that you’d collect your fee and use it for your defense. She’d lead me to the file and it would be over. It would finally be over.”

  “And Tristan Newberry?”

  “Darby killed one of theirs—one of Hallorin’s men. Did she tell you that? We’d have had to call it even. Of course, I knew you wouldn’t make it that easy on me.”

  Sherman picked up the photograph of himself and Hoover, turning it over carefully in his hands. “You’d think it would be hard to remember being this young. But I can. I can remember it all—what it was like to be starting life instead of winding it down, what it was like to have one of the most powerful men in the world think you walked on water. I would have done anything for him. And I did.”

  Beamon’s discomfort was growing exponentially as the conversation continued. He’d planned exactly how this confrontation would play out. He would start with the upper hand, thanks to some explosive theatrics, self-pity, and the fact that he was on the moral high ground for once. Then Tom would explain the entire thing—how there was a bigger picture that he didn’t see, how it had all been necessary. Then he’d let Beamon in on the master plan. With Sherman there was always a master plan. Complex, subtle, and infallible. But none of that was materializing. Beamon found himself completely unprepared for what he was seeing. Tom Sherman, hopelessly weakened by guilt and uncertainty.

  “J. Edgar Hoover was a nut, Tommy.”

  Sherman shook his head. “No. People try to judge him based on the current context. You can’t take a person out of their time. In many ways, he was a great man. In many ways, he wasn’t. But I couldn’t see his faults, I let myself get blinded.”

  “How old were you?” Beamon said, suddenly feeling an overwhelming urge to come to his friend’s defense. “Twenty-eight? Twenty-nine?”

  Sherman shrugged. “When the old man died, the Prodigy project landed in my lap. No one in senior management wanted anything to do with it. Times were changing. No one had the stomach for the political blackmail anymore. No one had Hoover’s … conviction.”

  “Conviction?” Beamon said in a sarcastic tone.

  “The people in it were Democrat and Republican, rich and poor, liberal and conservative. It had the potential to hurt everyone. I had to make a decision.”

  “Why didn’t you just burn the fucking thing, Tommy? Or at least put it in a safe deposit box somewhere?”

  He looked up from the photograph, finally meeting Beamon’s eye. “I’m surprised you’d ask me that question. Aren’t you about to be prosecuted on a trumped-up charge of destroying evidence?”

  Beamon leaned back in his chair. “I see your point.”

  “No, as long as the file existed, no one was going to get divisive and try to come back at the FBI for assembling it. The stakes were too high for both sides. And if it ever came out that the file did exist, it could eventually be produced from a government archive—horribly misfiled, of course. And then I would simply say that the FBI had determined that the evidence in the file was obtained illegally and therefore decided not to pursue indictment”

  “All the angles,” Beamon said. “You had all the angles even back then.”

  “I thought I did.”

  “You hadn’t anticipated a viable third-party candidate.”

  Sherman shook his head. “Why would I? It wasn’t in the realm of possibility at the time. When Hallorin came out with his comprehensive declassification plan, I didn’t think anything of it—too many years had passed. When I found out that he was using that piece of legislation as cover to search for Prodigy, he was already three steps ahead of me.” Sherman put his glass on the desk and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “So now, during one of the most fragile times in American history, the political process has been completely subverted. And innocent people have died. All because of me.”

  Sherman walked over to the sideboard to refill his glass. He actually looked as if he’d shrunk, as if he was physically smaller than he had been last time they’d seen each other. It seemed impossible, but Tom Sherman, the man who had always been absolutely unshakable, looked like he was on the verge of collapse.

  “Why didn’t you just come to me, Tommy? Why would you send me into this blind?”

  Sherman couldn’t seem to find it in himself to turn around and face him. “I told myself that it was because I didn’t want you any more involved than necessary, that you wouldn’t be able to handle knowing the file existed as delicately as it needed to be. I told myself all kinds of things. The truth is simpler, though. I was ashamed. I just wanted it to all go away. I told myself that you’d find the girl, the way you always do, before anyone ever knew you were involved. You’d have the money to pay for your defense and I’d have…” His voice trailed off as he finished pouring the drink.

  “What, Tommy? A clear conscience?”

  Sherman turned and started out of the office. “It was already too late for that. I just wanted an end to it, Mark. I’m sorry.”

  forty-nine

  “Take this exit,” Beamon said.

  “This is nuts, Mark. The Dulles Airport exit is just ahead. That’s the one we should be taking.”

  Beamon adjusted the sleeping bag, which was protecting his new suit from the truck’s grimy seats. Three thousand dollars. It hadn’t been easy to find a suit that expensive with the economy where it was, but he’d managed it. All neatly charged to Reynolds, Trent, and Layman, or more precisely, what was left of his best friend Tom Sherman.

  “What are you trying to accomplish here?” Darby pressed, easing onto the ramp and aiming the truck through northern Virginia’s light afternoon traffic. “This is a trap and you’re walking right into it. You know you can’t trust that son of a bitch.”

  Beamon had been more than a little surprised when he’d answered his cell phone the day before and heard David Hallorin’s voice on the other end. The offer of a meeting and a truce was strained, but had sounded strangely sincere.

  “But we can trust him, Darby. We can trust him to do what’s in his self-interest. Right now, it might suit him to make a deal. And if that’s true, we’ve got to take advantage of his mood.”

  “I’m not sure I want a deal anymore.”

  “Look, Darby, we’ve got nothing to work with, here. We aren’t going to win this thing—the best we can hope for is not to lose. If he wants to talk, I’m ready to listen.”

  She shook her head. “This isn’t going to work, we both know it. And we can’t just let them—”

  “Let them what? We can’t bring your friends back. I’m sorry, but we can’t. We talked about this. If we were on a mountain instead of the outskirts of D.C. you’d put them out of your head and try to save yourself. Right?”

  Her knuckles had turned white around the steering wheel as her frustration became nearly unbearable. “I thought you said your friend was going to help us?”

  Beamon hadn’t told her about Sherman’s involvement—she had enough to worry about without going there. “I honestly don’t know if he can anymore.”

  Her face softened a little. “Is he okay? I mean, I don’t know him, but he looks—”

  “He’ll be fine,” Beamon said, though he didn’t really believe it. He’d lain awake most of the night replaying his conversation with Sherman, trying to figure out what had happened to his friend.

  Much of Sherman’s meteoric rise through the ranks of the FBI could be traced back to Hoover’s admiration of him as a young man. And much of that admiration, it now turned out, could probably be traced back to Sherman’s handling of the P
rodigy operation. That seemed to be more than his friend could bear. Right now, he was wallowing in the thought that his entire career—which, for him, pretty much translated into his entire life—was built on an illegal operation that he was ashamed of and now had blown up in his face. He’d be thinking that everything he was—his honor, morality, empathy, accomplishments—was a lie. That he, and not Hallorin, was responsible for the deaths of Tristan Newberry and the others. And all that self-flagellation had left him completely paralyzed.

  Darby took her eyes from the road and looked over at Beamon—not a particularly dangerous act, since her truck couldn’t break forty-five miles an hour anymore. “This smells like desperation, Mark. Take it from me, desperate acts get people killed. Let’s just get out of here. See the world with that credit card of yours for a few years. They’ll forget about us.”

  “They won’t. And you know from experience, staying ahead of them is easier said than done. Besides, I’m not prepared to live the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. And neither are you.”

  “Let’s make a damn stand, then,” she said, turning her attention back toward the road. “I mean, if we’re going to do something desperate and stupid, why not make it count?”

  “I’m with you. What are you proposing?”

  “I don’t know. There’s got to be something.”

  “This is it. Darby. Our best shot.”

  She sighed loudly and yanked repeatedly on the wheel, bouncing herself up and down in the seat “Okay. But at least let me go in with you.”

  “And do what?”

  “I don’t know. What do you macho types say? Watch your back?”

  Beamon laughed. “There are some pretty stringent rules in the macho-type club that you may not be aware of. One of the most heavily enforced is that you don’t let a skirt watch your back. I’m afraid I can’t make an exception, even for you.”

  “I could help.”

  “I know you could. But they want us both. As long as they don’t know where you are, my chances of walking out of there are about ten times better.”

  “Better than what?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “It seems that our fortunes have changed since we last met, Mr. Beamon. Mine for the better and yours for the worse. I understand that you decided not to take the deal the FBI offered?”

  Beamon stood in the middle of the office and stared at the wall behind David Hallorin. He could feel Roland Peck, the only other person in the room, studying him.

  Hallorin’s observation was, of course, accurate. Following Taylor’s announcement that he was pulling out of the race, the Republican machine had blown itself apart Half its leadership was hopelessly scrambling to find a precedent that would allow them to postpone the election, and the other half just seemed to be running in circles talking to themselves. The Democrats had taken a surprising amount of Taylor’s support—skillfully nurturing the fears of those conservative voters who were smart enough to see David Hallorin for the scary son of a bitch he was. It hadn’t been nearly enough, though. Hallorin’s lead looked like it was going to settle in around the nine-point range, and tomorrow he was going to be voted the next president of the United States.

  Hallorin didn’t seem at all disconcerted by Beamon’s silence and waved at one of the chairs in front of his desk. Beamon sat down in it without thinking and immediately regretted the act He probably looked like an obedient sheepdog—not the way to gain standing over a man like Hallorin.

  “I have to admit, for a while, we were under the impression you were dead,” Hallorin said through a thin smile. The air of superiority the man wore was so thick it was almost opaque as he fed off his position of dominance over Beamon. It was like a drug to him.

  “I think you must have me confused with the man you hired, Senator. I’m curious. Who was he?”

  It was Hallorin’s turn to fall silent.

  “They’ll find him when the snow thaws. I assume that he was a cop at some point in his life, so his prints will be on record.”

  It was Peck who spoke up. “His name was Frank Sorvino.”

  Beamon had heard it before. LAPD, retired. By all reports an investigator of exceptional ability and almost limitless moral flexibility.

  “I’m a rather busy man, Mr. Beamon, so let me get to the point. I called you here to see if we can come to an understanding.”

  Beamon didn’t answer right away, concentrating on staying perfectly calm. This was his and Darby’s last chance. As slim as it was, he couldn’t afford to blow it by letting this meeting degenerate like the one he’d had with Taylor. “About the Prodigy file?”

  Hallorin’s face remained an emotionless mask. “I assume that if you had any proof that this file actually exists or of wrongdoing by me, you’d be using it”

  “I’m apolitical, Senator. I don’t even vote. It’s not my job to protect the American people from themselves. That’s the beauty of a democracy. The people get exactly what they deserve.” He silently admonished himself for tagging on that last piece of personal philosophy. Control. For once in his life, he had to maintain control.

  “Your point, Mr. Beamon?”

  “My point is that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

  Hallorin folded his arms across his chest and stared at the floor for what seemed like a long time but probably wasn’t. “I guess I do owe you a debt of gratitude,” he said finally.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You created the environment that made all this possible. The release of the Vericomm tapes that you timed so perfectly—the complete moral bankruptcy of the American government laid out in glorious digital audio. You made our job so much easier. In a sense, I’m going to ride the wave of voter resentment you created, right into the White House.”

  Beamon had repositioned himself slightly so that he could keep Roland Peck in his peripheral vision. He could see that the angular, little man’s nervous movements were becoming more and more urgent as his boss spoke. Perhaps David Hallorin had the same weakness as many of his peers—he needed to show off how smart he was.

  “Do you remember, Mr. Beamon, when the American Dream was that you could work hard and achieve anything no matter where you started in life? Now people dream of tripping over a crack in the sidewalk and suing the city that laid it. Or of winning the lottery.”

  Beamon nodded to show that he was listening but had no idea where this was going.

  “You see, the American people are like children. When things are going well, they demand their independence. But when there’s trouble on the horizon, they run back to their mothers and expect everything to be made all better.”

  “And in this analogy, you’re the mother?” Beamon said, and then cursed himself for opening his mouth. Fortunately, Hallorin’s ego seemed to have grown so large that it had taken over the commonsense center of his brain. The sarcasm was lost on him.

  “In a sense, I am. I’m willing to tell them what to do, how to solve their problems in a way that’s simple enough for them to understand. They don’t have to think for themselves at all. It’s fortunate for America that the file did exist, don’t you think? Robert Taylor has been this country’s cross to bear for thirty years. I’m the only man that can lead us out of the hole he’s dug.”

  Hallorin seemed to believe the legend he’d created for himself, to have convinced himself that it wasn’t all a lie carefully manufactured for him by his staff.

  “For the longest time I couldn’t figure out why you weren’t attacking Taylor in your campaign,” Beamon said, looking directly into the eyes of the man who had engineered an explosion that had killed seven people. A man who was paving his way to the White House with the bodies of children.

  “The file was the key, Mr. Beamon. Certainly there have always been people aware of its existence, but the concept—myth—of assured mutual annihilation kept it buried. It’s truly amazing, when you think about it—that our government is manned with such
cowards that no one used it before me.”

  More like dumb luck, it seemed to Beamon. And that was something that had been bothering him. If someone had found it before Hallorin, what would keep them from taking what they wanted and burning the rest?

  “So how can we coexist, Mr. Beamon? I assume you’ve thought about this.”

  Beamon shrugged. “We just forget the whole thing. I don’t pursue it, and you forget about Darby Moore and me.”

  Hallorin let out a short laugh. “That seems a bit one-sided to me. It’s my understanding that you don’t have anything to pursue.”

  That was true. There was the explosion that had put Hallorin back in the running, but how could he even come close to proving anything about that? The evidence he had was as unproducible as it was circumstantial.

  “Who are you working for, Mr. Beamon?” Roland Peck cut in.

  “For the longest time, I thought it was you,” Beamon said honestly, then continued with a little white lie. “Now I don’t know.”

  No one spoke for a long time, probably a good two minutes.

  “You haven’t asked for enough, Mark,” Hallorin said finally, his tone taking on a pedantic air. “Do you know why the FBI’s using you as a scapegoat?”

  “Because they don’t like me?”

  Hallorin smiled. “Because they can. Politicians are schoolyard bullies—stupid and cowardly. Once you understand that, and the fact that they are solely out for personal gain, they’re surprisingly easy to predict and manipulate.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re driving at.”

  “How anxious do you think the FBI would be to put you through this if the president of the United States and the Senate majority leader were to write letters and express their displeasure at the action?”

  Beamon thought about that for a moment. “Not very, I suppose.”

  “In fact, your job and your reputation would be returned to you very quickly, don’t you think?”

  “And how could I ever repay you for your kindness?”