Last Call

by Matthew Nunes

  “I set the sting up to catch Jason on film, taking the tape, and saying more incriminating things than the tap on my phone had already caught. Sergeant DaSilva and Detective Lacombe came to help protect me, and the TV crew was there, as arranged.

  “Adam lost his head, and thought about solving Jason’s problem and collecting his money, all at once.”

  DaSilva didn’t flicker. He kept his basilisk stare on Singer, his arms folded.

  “As Sergeant DaSilva pointed out, ‘the law of unintended consequences’ took on its own life, somewhere along the way and one good man and two evil ones died.” I glanced over at Camille, and saw that she was crying, holding her drink in one hand as the ice melted.

  “Mrs. Morley, I’m sorry, but Jason was poisoned from an early age.”

  “I should have left that man and exposed him. I’m a coward, I guess. I kept trying to hold it together. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.” She wasn’t apologizing to anyone in the room, I knew. “Law of unintended consequences,” she said, bitterly. “Take it back a few more years, Mr. Costa. If I really want to think about it, this whole thing is my fault.”

  “No, Camille. That’s my routine. You do the best you can, and keep hoping it will get better. ‘Maybe this,’ and ‘I should have that’ is different from setting up a murder.” I gave her a half beat, but she remained silent, her careful makeup smeared by tears.

  “Back to recent events. Adam had failed and brought matters to the surface. I was a serious problem. Rob, I do hope for your sake that you contracted for this from your own funds. If you took Company money to do your personal work, I doubt that you’ll get much help from them.”

  Rob wasn’t biting.

  Camille was staring over at him. “His child would have been an orphan. Why? For me? You did that for me? Did you know me at all? I’d have continued as we were, for as long as you wanted. I would have divorced him for you, and blown his career apart for you. I’d have changed my life to be with you. You knew that. Do you remember? I was yours for the asking. You never asked. Just asked. You wanted to maneuver and control and you wound up killing. Of all you killed, you killed us, too.”

  The affect of her cold voice on him was hard to watch. Each word sank into him like a blade. Each one stole more life from him. If I’d briefed and trained her, it couldn’t have been worse. The room was so silent, that we could hear the curtains stir in the air conditioning. His breathing was audible. DaSilva moved slightly and I heard a joint crack.

  “How are we doing on time? Don’t want to miss your flight, do you?” I said.

  “I’ll call and cancel,” said DaSilva. Nobody protested as he went to the phone. “All set, your reservations for today are cancelled, but your tickets are useable.” He said it as if he’d provided a vital service. What he’d done removed any doubt that we were in complete control. They were going nowhere without our permission. Their lack of resistance spoke volumes. Mrs. Morley noticed that she was in a nightgown and robe.

  “I’d like to get dressed.”

  “Not just yet, ma’am, but your dignity is fine.” She settled back into her chair. DaSilva had struck the perfect note. He was polite, professional, and in absolute control.

  “So, Rob, back to business?” I spoke with an artificial lightness, trying to get his anger to focus on me. He didn’t take me up on it.

  “Lawyer,” he said, at last.

  “Oh, I think that may be premature, Singer. I think you want to hear me out.”

  “Heard enough.” His old-fashioned speech was gone.

  “Want to hear your way out? Does that interest you?”

  He looked up, a suddenly elderly man.

  “Cancel any contract that you’re considering, now, immediately. Irrevocably. I have a Dead Man’s Switch set up, but I want that community to know that I’m a sacred cow. That’s first. Second, resign from your position. You are too dangerous there, and you certainly don’t need your salary. If you do those two things, I’m out of your hair, out of your life.”

  “Why resign?”

  “Sergeant DaSilva here thinks you screw up, and when you do people die. Soldiers, kids, mostly. See, you get mixed up in things like that, and the best young men leap into the breach you created. Then they die, or get wounded, crippled, emotionally, physically, whatever. You’ve done enough for the country, I guess; or maybe you’ve done enough to it. Regardless, if you fail to resign, I’ll drop all of this right into the FBI, and your own Counter Intelligence folks. There’ll be audits, and you will be seriously screwed.”

  “How will you know if I comply?”

  I didn’t answer. I could have been speaking to a machine.

  “One more thing, Singer,” said DaSilva, “I want a statement from you, signed, that will never see the light of day unless some unpleasantness arises.”

  “No.”

  “Then all bets are off. Paul has his needs; I have mine. I want satisfaction. I want to know.”

  “Why is that so important to you, DaSilva?”

  “’Sergeant,’ Singer. It’s ‘Sergeant.’ I worked hard for it, and I earned it. I will have it. Say it.”

  “Why is it so important to you, Sergeant?”

  “It’s the last duty to an old friend.”

  “I have a question about my daughter, Mr. Costa,” Camille said.

  “That will be a condition for you, Mrs. Morley. She needs to be hospitalized, and immediately. You will have seventy-two hours to get that done, or I will.”

  “I know she’s fragile, but she gets treatment.”

  “I guess I’m going to have to back up for a minute, while Sergeant DaSilva gets his statement.”

  Seated at a table on the far side of the room, their voices murmured as DaSilva wrote, edited and rewrote to the point where Singer nodded. Then they went on. DaSilva’s assumption of authority over Singer was timed perfectly. To the CIA executive, I was the enemy, so Larry could be his mentor. He was starting the rebuilding process to get the help from his subject to a degree that an outsider would never understand. We had just broken a trained intelligence operative. It would have been harder, but we had the help of the woman he loved.

  “Well, Mr. Costa?” asked Camille Morley.

  “Once I realize how badly I’d misjudged you, I had to concentrate on Singer alone.”

  “Do you have any idea how cruel that was?” she whispered, glancing towards him.

  “I’ll be sick later, Camille.”

  “That night, I saw a middle aged guy come up to the bar, and I saw his wife, and two other couples. The two women I saw appeared to be around the same age. I saw them as ‘types’ rather than individuals, see what I mean?”

  “I’m sure you have a point, Mr. Costa.”

  “Getting there, but it’s important that you kind of see what I saw. I saw one of the women nearly full face, and one in profile. They fit the type, so I filled in the blanks on the one I couldn’t see. I’m sorry Camille, but I put your face on her.”

  “You think it was Charlene?”

  “I’m sure of it. What do you know about Charlene?”

  “She’s depressed, social anxiety. Earlier, we had to work on anorexia, but that’s over.” Her expression was the same as every worried parent I’d ever seen including mine, for that matter.

  “Camille, you know about your late husband’s secret closet?”

  “Of course. When he was feeling particularly controlling, he’d send me down to get tapes for him, before he came to bed.” She was blushing.

  “So tapes of Charlene and her first love wouldn’t surprise you too much?”

  She shook her head.

  “I know this is awful, but I need you to hold up, okay?” I said softly.

  She nodded.

  I went on, “She broke into the closet and took her tapes. I think there were tapes of your husband having sex with Charlene.”

  Her mouth formed the “O” from the “no” but no sound came from her.

  “While she was in that closet
, not far from her tapes were yours, Mrs. Morley. All of them. You understand, right?”

  “Yes. It was awful.” She bowed her head. “A woman with any self respect would have left him.”

  “My point was that she took all of the tapes that directly affected her, and told me about the closet. She knew it would point us at Jason, and hoped it would point me at you, too. She could have tried to save you. She chose not to.”

  “She left mine and took hers?” Her voice was like a small child’s on the final, magic Christmas.

  “I’m sorry. Her anger at you must rival how she feels about her father. She was the woman with Rob at the bar. I think she got wind of his plans somehow and she forced her way into it. I believe she wanted to see her father dead.”

  “Why would he indulge her? Rob, I mean. Why would he?“

  “He might answer that.”

  I stopped to listen to DaSilva and Singer. They seemed to be reviewing the contract with Adam.

  “I think he believed, honestly, that it would help her. His slip that let her into his planning might even have been deliberate. Maybe something in his past lead him to believe that it would make her better.”

  “Why hospitalize her, though?”

  “I think you’re next on her list, Camille.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re her mother. Her father was having sex with her. She denies it, but I’m sure of it. I don’t know when it started, but you could probably remember when she started to act troubled. Anorexia, trying to be unattractive to her father, might have been a response.”

  She looked exhausted, like something had just drained out of her. For the first time, she appeared old. “Thirteen. She was thirteen.”

  “Her brother may have—been encouraged by your husband. I’m not so sure of that, but he may have been her target, by sending me to that closet.

  “It’s likely that her emotions never got much past those of a thirteen year old girl. In many ways, still a little girl, a child. In others, hormones raging, and the beginning of sexuality. She could still play with dolls, talk to imaginary friends, while showing interest in boys.”

  She was almost smiling. “Yes.”

  “A girl that age would expect protection and sheltering from good parents, wouldn’t she?”

  “And I failed her.”

  “What we think isn’t important. She may have decided you weren’t up to being his wife. She may have been told you were frigid, so her father was entitled to her. Charlene has a stack of stored up resentments, stewing for a decade. Some could be valid, and some, the perceptions of a thirteen-year-old girl,” I said.

  Camille was sitting with her knees apart, and her forearms resting on her thighs. Her head hung forward with her hair hiding her face.

  “It fits. It makes so much sense. My God, my God, my poor little girl.” There was a primal woman’s moan, “You bastard, my little girl!”

  “Seventy two hours from five o’clock this evening Mrs. Morley. Seventy-two hours and one minute, and I contact my friends in the media, the ones who hound me every day. I’ve promised an exclusive to one of them. Are we clear?”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Call your lawyer, he’ll have a tame doctor on retainer. That’ll get her in there. After that, she could start to get better. I hope so.”

  DaSilva and Singer were sitting silently. I picked up the phone and handed it to him. “You still have conditions one and two to meet, Singer. Better get at it.”

  DaSilva rose and walked over to Mrs. Morley to have her witness the signatures. I saw signatures and the date at the bottom of each page, and initials all the way around. Perfect. I read page after page of beautifully clear handwriting.

  Singer made one phone call, and told the answering party that the game was a rainout.

  “You can resign upon your return, Rob. You have seventy-two hours. Not a minute more. That’s it. If I don’t see your resignation within seventy-two hours from five o’clock this evening, I will consider all of our agreements null and void, and I’ll blow it up, publicly. I won’t care who gets hurt, or how badly. Nothing will be private. Nothing. Do you understand me?”

  “You are making a terrible mistake, if you do that,” he answered.

  “You’re a fine one to talk,” said DaSilva.

  “Still, there are things you don’t know.”

  “About Charlene, you mean?” I answered.

  His chin sank to his chest and he was silent.

  “Seventy-two hours. There’s a flight in an hour.”

  “You got painfully close, Mr. Costa. Almost right.” It was a woman’s voice coming from the doorway. A young voice.

  “Hello, Charlene,” I said.

  She had a pocketbook slung over her shoulder, with a hand inside of it.

  The door closed softly behind her, slowed by a closer and air brake.

  “You missed a couple of things. You guessed about my father. I guess you really do have a knack. Bartenders are supposed to be insightful and great listeners. All kinds of wisdom, right?” The sarcasm was heavy, but the gun inside of that purse was too obvious to let me push her.

  “And mother, he even figured out what a waste of skin you were. Too polite to say so, though.” I saw the same heat coming from her as I’d seen at the health club. A primitive anticipation. Her forehead was shiny with feverish perspiration. She licked her lips, over and over again.

  I glanced over to see her mother sag even further. “It’s true, Charlene. I failed you. I failed your brother, too.”

  “Jason? Jason? My second lover? Oh, mother, he was very successful. Not to worry, he was just what he was supposed to be.” Her speech was so fast that it was difficult to understand. Her tone was getting higher, and I felt my neck prickling.

  “It’s all taken care of,” Rob interrupted. “They know everything, how I let you into the plan, everything.”

  “Oh, you let me? How fucking generous, Rob. You really are the gallant, aren’t you?”

  I saw that DaSilva had moved, so slowly as to appear still. He was moving to her side, so she’d have to turn to see him. Charlene saw him at the same moment and turned to face him. She seized the straps of the pocketbook with her free hand. She began to pull her other hand from the bag, and I caught a glimpse of the gun she was holding.

  “No! Charlene, stop!” It was Rob’s voice and he took a quick stride in her direction. She wheeled on him as the gun came clear. I brought mine up, and saw DaSilva do the same. Both guns were leveled at her, but the only threat she saw was Rob, who was too close to her for either of us to take a shot. He was too close for her to miss.

  ***

  He seized the gun as she fired and dragged her to the floor with him. He let out a long, soft groan after the shot. As far as I know, he never made another sound. Nothing in Charlene seemed human. She was uttering a stream of grunts and whispered shrieks, hammering at his fist with one hand, and pulling the gun with the other. A death grip is hard to break. As small as she was, it took both DaSilva and me to restrain her. The shy, pretty young lady may never have existed. When the police came, she was finally in handcuffs, sitting on a chair, while her mother cradled her.

  Camille Morley was crying, continuously and silently, while she was allowed to dress. At the door, with a female officer, she paused. “It was her, wasn’t it? She controlled it all. She manipulated Rob, she fooled me, her brother—all of us. Was she sleeping with him, too?”

  I shook my head. “No, that wouldn’t have been the button to push, He truly loved you, the best way he knew how. I’d be guessing, but I think she made sure he knew how badly you were being mistreated. Probably cried a lot and made him believe she was grieving for you.”

  She nodded, with tears still spilling over. “My fault. Your daughter, Mr. Costa, is she all right?”

  “She’s fine, Mrs. Morley.”

  “See that you keep her that way. I’ll find a way to live through this, if I know something came out right.”

&
nbsp; I understood, somehow, what she was trying to say. “She’ll have the best life I can help her find.”

  Her head sagged as she turned and left. I remembered the elegant and assured woman I thought I met in Washington. It was hard to believe that I was looking at the same person.

  We didn’t seem to have the strength to leave the room. “What do you think, Larry?”

  “His statement, your story? The tape, with Charlene’s little surprise? We have enough. I’ll get his statement on record with the DA, along with the tape from the wire and a transcript. The call to the killers won’t do any harm, and Mrs. Morley’s reaction.”

  “You were fantastic, by the way,” I said.

  “Yeah, next I’m gonna go out and beat the shit out of some little girl with a rubber hose.”

  “I know.”

  “I see what you were saying about using his weakness.”

  “Yup, I’m a fucking prince aren’t I? Not to mention that I thought the daughter was just along for the ride.”

  “I’d kind of like to have let them have their lives. I mean in a way,” said Larry.

  “In a way. Maybe if I could have been sure that he’d let me live, too.”

  “There is that.”

  I was home before one o’clock. I had three hours to kill before I went to Marisol’s school to pick her up.

  Chapter 31

  DaSilva had promised to contact Dana to update her. He could argue jurisdiction and bring her into the investigation. The FBI getting one over on the CIA would gain her a lot. She’d probably wind up thanking DaSilva.

  I called Dennis.

  “Good news?” he asked.

  I told him most of the story. “Christ, Paul, you wound up playing in the bigs. Shit. Are you sure it’s over?”

  “Some details and loose ends. You had a lot to do with saving my ass.”

  “So, maybe I can get a free drink out of that?” He laughed and hung up, promising to let the right people know. I hoped it was enough.

  The next morning, DaSilva and I went to the cemetery. I waited in the driveway, while he stood in front of Phil Lacombe’s grave. It was mounded with raw earth, covered with an artificial grass carpet. He patted the stone like a friend’s shoulder, and turned away.