Hour of the Assassin

by Matthew Quirk

  Nick hoisted himself up from the carpet onto the rear seat. He stretched his neck, eyes on the passing city.

  “Just a minute,” he said, and slid his entry set back into his pocket. Car ignitions were hard, but car doors were easy.

  “I gather you saw the cops, then.”

  “Yes,” Nick said. “Were they legit?”

  Jeff looked at him in the rearview. “What the fuck kind of question is that? What are you into?”

  Jeff still cursed like a marine, but the barrel-aged East Texas drawl had a way of softening it.

  “How much did they tell you?” Nick asked.

  “That Malcolm Widener was murdered, along with a guard. Your prints were all over the place. Your car was outside. You were stalking him, sending him threats, and are on the run.”

  He took a right turn, then fixed his eyes on Nick’s in the rearview. “They said he had his throat cut.” Jeff looked back to the road, staring straight ahead, cold, silent. Nick watched his face in the mirror.

  He’d known Jeff Turner as a model the-worse-the-better infantryman back in the day, telling jokes that were filthy even by corps standards as they trudged under a broiling Mojave sun with ninety pounds on their backs, part of a long desert training exercise.

  Nick marveled when he saw that kid he’d once known, now a successful DC contractor, wearing a well-cut suit as he worked the room at the Army and Navy Club or a security conference. Jeff’s business was thriving, and it was all his own. He had toned down the jokes, barely.

  There were moments, though, when Jeff’s happy-warrior charm seemed put on, like he was doing an impression of his old self.

  Nick would see something behind it—fear, maybe, the baseline dread that follows you back from war, that rings in your ears forever like tinnitus.

  After the marines, Jeff had gone back to work as a contractor for a company that handled a lot of State Department VIP protection and other details in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Nick didn’t know the full story, didn’t even know where Jeff had been, but he had ended up in a gunfight. A trauma team in Germany had put his arm back together with four surgeries, and he had spent a year rehabbing it after he returned. Nick had seen that arm, the scars branching over the skin like aspen bark.

  He had tried to feel Jeff out on it when he visited with him, but Jeff didn’t bite, and Nick didn’t press. Nick understood that; he never talked about the things he’d seen. Being there was enough. He’d catch Jeff sometimes when he thought no one was looking, lost in the dark, it seemed, or back in that truck as the rounds punched through the metal, and the guy would just shake it off with a smile.

  Maybe it was too rough to talk about. Maybe Jeff’s insane work schedule was his therapy, keeping his mind too occupied to drift back there.

  Jeff and Delia. They were so different, but war had touched them both. That was what drew people to security work sometimes. It was a way to build up your defenses, to take back control.

  He felt for the guy and had always wanted to protect him from whatever he was carrying. Now this shit. Police knocking on his door. Bodies close to home.

  “Do you believe what they said about me?” Nick asked.

  Jeff looked in the rearview. “Fuck you. No. Should I?”

  “No,” Nick said. “I was in that house on a job, a security audit. I walked into a murder scene. I checked Widener’s vitals, but it was too late.”

  “What about the paperwork? The letter of authorization? All that?”

  “It’s gone. Stolen. Deleted.”

  “So it was . . .”

  “A setup.” Nick let out a low laugh. He knew how false that sounded.

  They drove on. Nick looked to the right.

  “Turn in here,” he said, and pointed to a copse of bare trees along the Potomac, just north of the Watergate.

  39

  They parked and climbed out of the car. Nick crossed the grass and started down a path toward the river while Jeff followed.

  The sun dropped low in the sky, hidden behind the trees.

  Nick needed open space. With each breath he could taste the fresh air coming off the water and the forests of Roosevelt Island.

  He walked closer to the bank and looked down at a structure of rotting wooden beams. It was a remnant of the locks and canals that once stood there, a water gate near where Rock Creek flowed into the Potomac.

  He turned and looked up at the Watergate complex, towering across the street. He and Karen used to come here to walk and picnic by the boathouses with a couple of sandwiches from the Italian Store in Arlington. She told him those ruins were how the building got its name. The curving facades and fountains and strange concrete teeth along the balconies had once been someone’s idea of the future, but now, in this gray sunset, it just seemed dated and notorious.

  Jeff stood a few feet to his left, his head turning slowly to take in the woods rising along the river on the Virginia side, the Key Bridge, the bluffs, the rocky islets upstream. Three Sisters, they were called, for the three granite stones. A hawk arced near the bridge and disappeared among the trees on the far side.

  If you looked at it right, you could forget, for a moment, the capital that hemmed it all in.

  Jeff turned to him. “What’s your next move?”

  Nick glanced at the path they had left behind. Two women walked by. He kept his voice low.

  “I need a lawyer, but I need more proof of what really happened before I start thinking about turning myself in.”

  “What do you have?”

  Nick had a few leads: the car registration, Ali Waldron’s name and photo. He could point the police toward Hopkins. But with all the evidence against him, he needed more.

  “Not enough,” Nick said.

  “You want to unpack that for me, bud?”

  “No. For your sake, Jeff.” The fewer people who knew all the details of this, the better.

  “Nick, everything points to you.”

  “If I killed him, I would have done a better job.”

  Jeff winced. “Don’t lead with that if you talk to the cops, all right? You’re going to have a hard time convincing anyone without some serious evidence.”

  “I know. They got into everything I have. My safe at work. My computers.” He thought of those messages that had been planted. They even knew how he talked: No one is safe. “It’s like they’re inside my damn head.”

  “How would you do it?” Jeff asked.

  Nick crossed his arms.

  “You’re the best at this game,” Jeff said. “Put yourself in the shoes of whoever’s behind this. Frame yourself.”

  Nick looked down at the water. “Someone close,” he said. He would use an inside man, a person Nick trusted, someone with access.

  “Like who?” Jeff asked.

  Nick rocked slightly side to side, his mind going too fast to stop. He thought of Karen. It was strange how she knew all the players in this. She’d gone to school with them. She might have been at that party where the woman died for all he knew. He pushed it away, felt sick for even thinking she had anything to do with this. The stress and lack of sleep had him seeing ghosts. He wasn’t going down that road.

  “Listen,” he said. “You don’t want to know the particulars. I think that’s all part of why I was set up. I found out about something that serious people are trying to keep secret.”

  “Have you ever seen me scared?”

  “No. That’s part of the problem. I don’t need you mad-dogging this thing. Don’t worry about the why. I’ll handle that.”

  “Then what can I do?”

  “I need to find someone. I have her phone number. She’s the only real connection between me and the people who framed me. Could I fix her location with that? I wanted to see if a trace was possible before I called her.”

  Jeff squinted. “Nah. That’s police stuff. There are people you could pay off. Private investigators, bail bond guys. They have access to these data brokers who buy it all from the cell companies. They
’ll look someone up for the right price.”

  That meant having Jeff break half a dozen laws.

  “I don’t want you exposed on this, too.”

  “Get a lawyer and hire me through him. I’ll do it for a dollar, and it’ll all be privileged. I want to help you out here.”

  “You know someone good? If I’m going to fight this, I may end up going after some heavy-duty people. I need a major player, somebody who can run the whole battlefield, the media, the politics, someone who knows all the backroom shit of who’s out to get who.”

  Jeff thought about it for a moment. “Ellsbury.”

  “You know Graham Ellsbury?” He was a fixed star among DC’s constellations of power, the parachute you pulled in the midst of a career-ending scandal. His clients were all congressmen and celebrities and CEOs.

  “I work for him all the time. This is about twenty thousand feet over your head. You’re going to want somebody with juice.”

  “Can you get him quickly?”

  “For you, sure. But you should lay low until then. He’ll know how to approach the police the right way, and when.”

  “You think I can trust the police?”

  “He can get you to the right people. If whoever did this can kill a CIA director, they could have some police working for them, too. I don’t know. I wouldn’t trust anyone or anything until we figure out a way to approach the law through Ellsbury. He’s so high-profile that they couldn’t risk icing one of his clients in custody.”

  Nick pictured it. A jailhouse assassination. Hanging from the bars. A mysterious slip and fall and his lying with a broken neck beside the gang toilet.

  “Sorry, man,” Jeff said. “I’m not going to soft-focus this thing for you. It’s bad.”

  “I appreciate it.” He didn’t want a shoulder to cry on. That wasn’t Jeff’s thing. He was answers and action, and that was what Nick needed right now.

  “What else can I do?”

  “Set the meeting with Ellsbury. If it’s possible to do it without mentioning my name, that’s even better. Just say it’s for a friend of yours or something. I’ll have more by the time we talk to him.”

  “Gun? Money? A place to stay? Name it.”

  “I’m set.”

  “Nick, let me—”

  “I’m all right, man. You’re doing plenty. Just drop me off near your office.”

  “Will do.”

  Nick looked south, past the Watergate and the Kennedy Center, watched the river flow like mercury toward the monuments.

  “This town,” Jeff said. “Makes you miss Baghdad sometimes.”

  40

  Nick cruised out of DC in Delia’s car. He had a plan, or the beginnings of one. He was building up evidence, piece by piece, pointing to the people who were really behind Widener’s murder. Ellsbury was an unimpeachable lawyer. He would know what to do and who to talk to. It would let Nick get right with the police and start unraveling who was behind all this in a legit way.

  He pulled over on a side street. If he couldn’t trace Ali Waldron’s cell, there was an easier way to get to her. He swapped SIM cards in his phone and dialed her number.

  Three rings, four.

  The line connected. No hello, just the faint coming and going of breath.

  “Ali?” he said, upbeat, like an old friend.

  No answer.

  “It’s me. Where are you?”

  A slow inhale from her end, then the line went dead.

  Nick looked at the phone. Had she recognized his voice? That was fine. Consider it a warning shot. He was getting closer. He would find them.

  He changed the SIM cards back and took off.

  Nick reached his neighborhood a half hour later. He palmed the wheel to the right, cruising past the houses, every stop and turn coming automatically, like a piece of music he had played a thousand times.

  He saw families gathering around their tables, and parents coming home with shoulder bags stuffed with binders. He smiled and paused for a moment to savor the sheer normalcy of it.

  Nick was up against Washington at its worst: the corruption and blood sport of high politics. It was so easy to forget the other face of the capital, the tribe of earnest wonks and civil servants—with their lanyard credentials and advanced degrees, their pleated khakis, Ann Taylor dresses, and tote bags stuffed with books—working to keep the government and the city’s thousand other institutions running.

  That was the real DC, as much as the graft, though a quiet job well done never made the nightly news.

  Headlights flashed across Nick’s vision as a car turned down a side street. He caught a glimpse as it passed: a black Chevy Tahoe.

  It kept driving, heading out of the development. He needed to watch for any surveillance before he went inside his house, anyone lying in wait.

  He killed the lights and pulled up to the curb down the block.

  He had to check himself, to stop himself from completing the routine: pulling in, opening the mailbox with a creak, swinging open the front door, and calling for Karen, waiting for her voice, her touch.

  Now he sat alone, gun at his side, scanning this quiet street like a thief.

  Karen’s car was in the driveway. The living room light went on and he saw her walk toward the kitchen. She was home early. She was safe. That was why he had come, to make sure.

  But there was another piece. She might know about the woman who had died and what Emma Blair might have seen. She might have been at the party. He wanted to understand how she fit into all this.

  Karen had grown up in that world of money and politics. Those were the people she worked for now as a communications consultant, testing, refining, and targeting their messages.

  After Karen’s first husband had died, she’d found out he had left her in serious debt after a string of failed investments. She’d had to go through a bankruptcy to settle it all. It devastated her, left her with almost nothing, but she still had her connections to that stratum where everyone seemed to know each other, loved nothing more than the name game: “Oh, Harvard? What year? Did you know . . .”

  She was a master at it, connecting people, making connections for herself. By the time they had started dating she was already building her firm up from scratch into what would later be a DC powerhouse.

  He had always been in awe of Karen’s fierceness, her work ethic, her mind, but there was still something extraordinary about how quickly she had grown that business.

  Nick checked his mirrors. No sign of the Tahoe. The street was clear. He got out and approached the house slowly, walked up on the lawn to check the backyard, and then went to the front door. He slid his holster back a few inches on his hip and went inside.

  After he shut the door, he turned to see Karen in the hall, still wearing her dress from work. She stood still, her eyes wide, staring at him as if he were a stranger.

  After a moment, she walked over and put her arms around him, held him tight.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “The FBI was here, Nick. They were looking for you.”

  41

  Karen took a step back. “I stopped by the house after a meeting in Tysons and they were here. Two agents. They needed to talk to you. They wanted you to come in safely.”

  She said “safely” like it was the most dangerous word in the English language.

  “Why would they say that?” she asked. “What’s happening?”

  “It’s a misunderstanding,” Nick said. “Part of the job sometimes. I’m taking care of it.”

  He led her into the kitchen. She leaned against the table and put her cell phone down on a place mat beside a water glass.

  “Where’s your car?” she asked, looking toward the front window. She would have seen his headlights if he’d pulled into the driveway. Her eyes went to the keys in his hand, with the set for the Outback clipped on a red ring.

  “I had to borrow Delia’s,” he said.

  She shook her head, as if nothing was making sense. “
They asked if I saw you last night.”

  Last night. The news about Widener’s murder was everywhere. Of course she had put it together.

  “Why were you asking me about Malcolm Widener and Emma Blair this morning?”

  “Karen.” He chose his words carefully. “You know I hate to keep things from you. And I know you can see right through me so I shouldn’t even try.”

  She leveled her eyes at him. It was true.

  “I would only ever do it if I had to. It’s better for me to hold off on explanations for now. I’m going to talk to a lawyer. I’ll work this out.”

  Her lips drew in. He could read the strain in her face. He was surprised she didn’t press. Karen wasn’t one to be kept in the dark, but she seemed to take it better than he had expected.

  He looked like trash, he knew. She could see the desperation.

  “I need your help,” he said. “I’m close to something that could make all of this go away. Did you ever hear about a woman named Catherine Wilson? She died at a party at a country house that belonged to the Whitley family.”

  “I went to school with her. She was younger, though. Sweet girl, shy back then.”

  “Were you at the party where she died?”

  “No. I was in Paris that summer. I’ve been to it, though, a couple of times, and I heard about Catherine. It was tragic. That party was always out of control.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She drank too much, blacked out or something, and fell.” Karen looked down at her hands. “It was an accident. Everyone was just gutted. All those families, all those kids had grown up together.” Her eyes met Nick’s. “Do you think there was foul play?” she asked. “What does this have to do with Malcolm Widener?”

  “Was he there?”

  “He could have been.”

  “Do you know who was there that night?”

  “No. I know the people who usually went but it was big, maybe a hundred, a hundred and fifty people.”

  “Would there have been anyone there who is very high-profile today? Anyone who might be particularly concerned about his reputation? A political candidate? An appointee or judge up for a nomination?”