Solid Oak

by William F Lovejoy

  Then he looked at the envelope. The blood had dried. With his thumbnail, he slit the flap open and dumped out the contents. Five sheets of folded paper and fifty used one hundred dollar bills tumbled onto the table top.

  The cash was his, for even considering the case, and he lined up the bills and inserted twenty-five of them in his own wallet, folding the rest and slipping them into his pocket. He certainly was not leaving them for the maid to clean up.

  Unfolding the sheets of paper and pressing them flat on the Formica top, he noted that a good twenty pound bond classic laid paper had been used. The Treasury Department was going first class.

  He looked at each of the three-by-four photos paper-clipped to three of the pages as he read the three descriptions. Tourist class descriptions. Dinmore was not very adept.

  Pushing up out of his chair, Malone went to the bed and sat down resting back against the headboard. He ignored the phone on the bedside stand and used his own disposable cell phone. He punched out a memorized number.

  “Room 224.”

  “It’s me, Bobbi.”

  Bobbi Galway blew her top. “Jesus Christ! You don’t call here!”

  “Go find an outside phone.” Malone read her the number for his cell and hung up.

  It was almost 11:30 by the time she called back, and he was chewing on a ham sandwich he had ordered from room service. Malone had skipped his usual hearty breakfast.

  For starters, she said, “Don’t ever call the office again.”

  “It’s against the law?”

  “I know you had a good career. But you quit. People who associate with you don’t get promoted.”

  “I can understand that, but I didn’t want to wait to hear your cheery tones.”

  “What’s wrong?” she demanded.

  “Does something have to be wrong?”

  “It usually is when I talk to you. Infrequent as that may be.”

  She was right, of course. They’d maybe talked by phone a half dozen times in the past three years.

  “This guy Dinmore that you put onto me. Why’d you have reservations?”

  “You don’t like him?”

  “I haven’t had the chance to get to know him,” Malone explained truthfully.

  Her temper was getting back to what was normal in the past three years, half angry. “It’s just that, though he’s spent some time in Treasury’s intelligence section. . . .”

  “You didn’t tell me he was Treasury.”

  “I left that up to him,” Galway said. “Anyway, he’s got intelligence experience, but I always felt he was trying to skip rungs on the career ladder. He’s an assistant to an undersecretary now.”

  “Was.”

  “Was? Was what?”

  “Was an assistant to an undersecretary.”

  “He’s been promoted again?” she asked.

  “Promoted to dead.”

  “Shit. How did it happen, Oak?”

  Malone gave her the short version.

  “And you got a list of names from him?”

  “I’ve got three names and three short bios. For an intelligence operative, he wasn’t very thorough.”

  “So what, now?”

  “I’ve lost our contact. . . .”

  “Your contact.”

  “. . . and normally, I’d just drop it. However, I did receive my retainer, so I think I might explore it for a couple days, as long as I’m already on this coast.”

  “And your idea of exploring it is to have me do your work for you?”

  “Think of it as a public service, Bobbi. My tax money being returned to me in a tangible and utile form.”

  “Screw you, too. Everything I have access to is confidential.”

  “Precisely. Got a pen?”

  Malone could hear her fumbling in one of those big purses she always carried. “You’re going to owe me lobster, at the very least.”

  “And a nice white wine to go with it,” he agreed. “Mears, James Lattimore. Dixon, Lanette Eleanor. . . .”

  “Wait! Don’t you have addresses, or something more?”

  “Yeah. I’ll give them to you. And since Tracy Evan was from Treasury, I even have Social Security numbers.”

  “All right. The last name?”

  “Corridan, Patrick Delaney.”

  A little gasp on her end of the line. “You don’t mean it?”

  “The right old sod himself.”

  “You have a shitty brogue, Malone.”

  “I’m too many generations removed, love.”

  “But Senator Corridan! What could he be involved in?”

  Malone had wondered about that himself. “Hell, I don’t know, Bobbi. Bound to be dirty, though, don’t you think?”

  “You son of a bitch!” she shouted. “He’s my father-in-law!”

  “Yeah. I knew that.”

  *

  Until 3:30 in the afternoon, all he got was the goddamned voice mail, and he kept hanging up on that.

  At 3:32, somebody real finally picked up on the other end, and Dean Mal took a quick look around. The Seventh Avenue bar followed neighborhood saloon guidelines. There was a lot of sawdust on the floor and a lot of initials carved in the table tops and a bored bartender reluctantly responding to the growing population. It was cool and dark. A drunk sitting at the bar next to where Mal had been seated had his eye on Mal’s nearly full bottle of Budweiser.

  The telephone was wall mounted midway between the men’s and the women’s. A rush of water gurgled on the men’s side, and a squat man wearing a yellow hardhat emerged, gave Mal a sideways glance, and then went back to the bar.

  “Hello?”

  He recognized the female voice called May. “It’s me.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “You were right. Mr. D met someone.” Mal shifted the grip of his left hand on his attache case. His hand was sweaty for some reason.

  “Bastard. Who did he meet?” May had a throaty, sexy voice, like one Mal had heard in a movie somewhere. He wondered what she looked like.

  “I never saw him before. Tall, skinny guy.”

  “They talked?”

  “That’s right. They talked for a couple seconds, but I didn’t hear what they talked about.” He watched while the drunk whipped his hand out, grabbed Mal’s beer bottle, and took a long pull from it. He put it back down in front of Mal’s stool, and then looked around the bar to see who had caught him.

  “And you followed your instructions for that contingency?”

  Mal cleared his throat. “Mr. D will no longer be a problem.”

  “So. The other man?”

  “The fucker’s quick,” Mal admitted, and then lied, “I didn’t have a clear angle on him.”

  “You’re saying you missed?”

  “I’m saying he wasn’t part of the deal, part of the instructions.”

  “So. He got away.”

  “I don’t think he stuck around for the cops. I didn’t.”

  “How long did they talk?”

  “Not long.”

  There was a long pause. Then: “It’s not a time to take risks. Find him and eliminate the risk.”

  “Same arrangement?”

  “Yes. We’ll meet the terms.”

  “I don’t have clue one about this guy.”

  “Let me check. You call back.”

  “Okay.” Mal hung up and walked back to the bar, carrying the attache case. He flexed his biceps and felt the oiled muscles clench nicely under the cotton and flannel of his shirt and suitcoat. Dean Mal was proud of his condition and his physique. He worked out daily, when he was not working. He didn’t have to work full time at anything, and he enjoyed that distinction.

  Coming up behind the drunk, he tightened his right hand into a fist, pulled it back to belt level, and then drove it forward in a short arc that had the energy of a pile driver behind it. The blow caught the drunk in the kidney, he yelped, slammed into the edge of the bar, then slid off the stool and collapsed onto the brass foot rail.r />
  The bartender spun his head toward the source of the yell.

  Mal sat down on his stool, picked up his bottle, and dumped the rest of it on top of the drunk. “You’d better let me have another. This one’s been contaminated.

  Chapter Three – Wednesday, June 12

  Malone got up at 7:00 on Wednesday which was 10:00 back home, so he was well rested. He ordered eggs, pancakes, sausage patties, toast and a pot of coffee from room service. While he was waiting for it, he stripped the Walther, cleaned and oiled it with a toothbrush and the small bottles of solvent and oil he carried in a small Ziploc bag. He checked its magazine, and then reassembled it. He liked to be assured that his weapons were in prime operating condition. Little bits of rust or dirt could jam things up right when it was least appreciated.

  He took a while with breakfast and the New York Times. The story was on page four and was brief, only a couple inches. The dead man lacked ID and had not yet been identified. Witnesses said there had been another man at the scene, and the reporter noted that the NYPD would like to talk to him.

  Malone took a long, hot shower, having to bend his knees frequently to get his shoulders and head under the soft spray for the low mount of the shower head. Wiping the steam from the mirror with one of the towels, he shaved carefully and studied the reflection. The gray-blue eyes were as clear and steady as ever, but it seemed to him that the widow’s peak of his blond hair was becoming more prominent. It was a time of recession for everyone. And the medium-length cut was showing a trifle more gray along the sides, over his jutting ears. Like his body, his face was full of hard angles and flat planes and sharp junctures. It was lean to the point of being cadaverous, but the deepwater tan tended to blend some of the angles. In the hairline along his left temple, there was one pinkish scar. That one was the result of shrapnel from a roadside IED. It had given him concussion, a month’s rest and recuperation, and a warped outlook on life.

  There were four more scars on his body—the worst a long, jagged, purple welt above his left kidney—but none of them counted. They were not the result of declared wars, police actions, or war games, and he had not received a single Purple Heart for any of those four.

  Malone dressed in a beige suit with a light pinstripe and a light brown shirt. He was down to the suit since his sport coat developed stains. He checked over his array of ties, and then said aloud, “To hell with a tie. I’d rather be me.”

  Snapping open one of the plastic trash bags he carried for soiled clothes, he shoved the sport coat into it and then rolled the sack and jammed it into the soft sided Samsonite case. He left the two magazines for the Walther in the false bottom of his Dopp kit and packed the automatic in his suitcase. His packing regimen was the reason he always had to check a bag through rather than carry it aboard a commercial airliner. Plus, he made certain the airlines were aware of the times he transported a firearm. They were good with it as long as his destination was good with it. He took the elevator down to the lobby, checked out, and bought a string of stamps. With water from a fountain, rather than his DNA, he glued them to the envelope with Dinmore’s wallet, wiped it down with a handkerchief, and mailed it to the little woman in Maryland. Then he found a cabbie who was kind enough to summarize the whole political history of New York City between the Marriott and LaGuardia. Malone studied the bridge, looking for rampant rust and ominous cracks, and the skyline while listening to the drone of the Brooklyn accent. Manhattan looked better from the Queens side of the river than it did from the Manhattan side.

  He used to like the city, and he thought that maybe he had changed more than it had changed. Or maybe the years in his previous job had simply hardened him toward too many places and too many people. It was not a good thought, and Malone vowed to watch himself a little more closely. It wouldn’t do to get all involved in nostalgia.

  Selecting United because it had not had recent headlines about aircraft maintenance, he stood in line at the ticket counter. He looked at the destination monitor and thought that, if he were really as smart as he thought he was, he would catch the noon flight to San Francisco, get back in his beat-up Silverado, and drive across the bay to his house in Sausalito. Get Abby and Andy and take the Tacky II out and forget about Tracy Evan Dinmore.

  But Dinmore had given him $5,000 and a little of his blood.

  “May I help you, sir?”

  “Try to get me to Washington, will you?”

  She did, and Malone was aboard a Canadian Regional Jet fifty minutes later.

  At Reagan National Airport, he used a men’s room to retrieve the semiautomatic, an ankle holster, and the trash bag with the sport coat. He dumped the bloodied sport coat in a trash can. Blood stains were too easily identified, and these were now 200 miles from the scene of the crime. Outside the terminal, he found that trading locales had done nothing positive for either temperature or humidity. The swamp bottom that was the nation’s capital was overcast, but the cloud cover only trapped the heat close to the earth’s surface.

  His taxi driver took the Arlington Bridge over the Potomac and then 23rd Street north after circling the Lincoln Memorial. Abe had not changed much. The capitol appeared greener than New York City, and there were more young women strutting the streets at lunch time than there had been five years before. At least it seemed that way. Malone had been based in D.C. for thirteen years, but he could not say that he missed it.

  This driver knew where he was going and dropped him off at Mr. Chen’s Organic Chinese Cuisine on Connecticut Avenue precisely at 12:15. It was a ways north of the primary government buildings, but he figured his luncheon guest didn’t want to be seen with him anywhere too chic, or too close to possible observers.

  Bobbi Galway was waiting at a table by a window, drinking Perrier. “You’re late.”

  Malone grinned as he dropped his suitcase beside the table and took the chair across from her. “Forgot to change my watch.”

  “I already ordered for us.”

  “Ah, Christ! You mean beans and alfalfa and crap?”

  “It’s good for you.”

  “Can I have a drink, at least?”

  “You’ve got iced green tea coming.”

  “Jesus, Bobbi. What’s old age doing to you?”

  Good things, actually. She would be 43 or 44, he guessed, and he had not seen her in person since he dropped out of the race five years before, but the lines of her throat and jaw were as taut as the day she married Robert Corridan six years ago. She had nice lean planes to her face, like Jamie Lee Curtis, and gray eyes that appeared inquisitive and were. She had been hyphenated then—Galway-Corridan, and when Bob was killed, she went back to Galway. Her hair was a deep auburn, almost black, cut too short for his taste, and swept back along the sides. Curly on top. The style revealed her ears, though, and they were small, nicely formed, delicate as sea shells. She had a pert nose, highlighted a tad by earlier perspiration, as were her high cheekbones. At five-seven, she was tall, and her robust figure was not disguised by the pale blue summer suit. Bobbi Galway believed in her femininity.

  “You look awfully good, love, but pale,” he told her. “Too many sprouts and too much time under the fluorescents.”

  “You look skinnier than I remember,” she said. “Have you been ill?”

  He took that as sarcasm.

  Malone leaned back in his chair and patted his stomach. “The result of fine beef, good booze, and late sleeping.”

  “Alone?”

  “Alas.” Most of the time.

  “I thought you quit in order to live a normal life. You’re forty-six, right?”

  “I tried normal, Bobbi, but it wouldn’t stick on me. The metabolism burns at a higher rate.”

  “And that’s why your answering machine says, ‘Malone International Investigations?’”

  “I like to travel. How did you come to mention my name to Dinmore?”

  “I knew what you were doing, Oak, and I’d heard rumors,” she said. “About your international investigatio
ns.”

  “Ah, rumors. Lifeblood of the industry.”

  “So what did. . . .”

  She was interrupted by the arrival of lunch which, to Malone’s surprise, was excellent. Spicy Szechuan beef with green peppers and onions

  “Okay?” she asked.

  “I love you.” He collected several slabs of homemade wheat bread.

  “Well?” she asked him.

  “My apologies. I am rejuvenated. I’d be even more rejuvenated if I could get a bottle of beer.”

  “It’s fattening.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “What did Tracy want?”

  “How well did you know him?” Malone asked.

  “Like I told you, he was once a Treasury intelligence operative. We had a couple contacts.”

  “So he gave you a call and asked if the CIA could loan him an assassin?”

  “Oh, shit no! Is that what he wanted?”

  “What did he ask you, Bobbi?”

  “Specifically, if I knew of a contract player outside of government agencies who would take on a confidential assignment. That was all.” Her eyes were showing a combination of curiosity and intensity. “He was looking for a hit man?”

  “In a veiled way on the phone, that was the suggestion. He was willing to pay in six figures if it proved necessary, is what he told me.”

  “And that’s what you do, Oak?”

  “You think I should ignore all the education and training I was provided by Uncle?”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “That’s right. It’s not.”

  She toyed with something edible on her plate while their waitress poured more green tea. It was good, too.

  “And the names you gave me? They were the targets?”

  “The way he put it on the phone, there were three principals involved in the deal. He was suspicious of their activities. I asked him to provide me with bios on each of them, which he did, but I don’t know which one is the joker, or if all of them are. And he didn’t get around to telling me.”

  “I can’t believe Patrick is part of anything sinister,” Galway said.

  “Maybe it’s not sinister.”