by Gayle Wilson
He glanced at it before he wadded it up in his fist. “Would you do one more thing for me?”
“Something more challenging than disposing of a body?” she asked, smiling at him.
“Not even close. As a matter of fact, I think you might just enjoy this one.”
HE PUNCHED the number on the paper Colleen had given him into the hospital pay phone, then turned so he could see the door to Nicki’s room. He could have asked Jameson to stay, but this was a call he preferred to make in private. Despite what he’d said to his sister, he wanted a few minutes alone to digest the information he was about to be given.
There’s such a thing as a personal judgment. I’ve made mine. It isn’t subject to change.
The words echoed in his head as he listened to the distant ringing. After the fourth or fifth ring, he was ready to hang up. More than ready, he realized. He was relieved.
He had already taken the receiver away from his ear when someone answered. He brought the phone back up quickly, aware of a slight tremor in the hand that carried it.
“You asked me to call,” he said into the mouthpiece.
“You’re a hard man to get in touch with,” the man on the other end of the line said. “I took a chance your sister might know how to reach you. The number you gave me seems to be out of service.”
The satellite phone. Michael couldn’t even remember where it was. He hadn’t thought about it in the long days he’d spent haunting this corridor and the surgical waiting room upstairs.
“Sorry. We had some excitement.”
“Yeah? I heard the D.C. police just cleared a couple of murders they’ve had on the books for almost a year. That have anything to do with your excitement?”
“It might have,” Michael acknowledged.
Apparently the identification of those prints had triggered an official request for information, which the DPS had shared with the cops. He hoped that sharing had been reciprocated.
“If I’d known you were going to go off on your own,” his former colleague said, “I wouldn’t have worked so hard on getting the stuff you asked for.” Despite the admonishment, there was a thread of amusement in the deep voice.
“It wasn’t something I planned,” Michael said truthfully.
“You never did, as I remember. Things like that just seemed to happen whenever you were around. So, you still need the information?”
Michael toyed with the idea of saying no. It couldn’t matter what this man had found. What he’d said to Colleen was nothing less than the truth. How he felt about Nicki wasn’t subject to change.
If that’s true, then what’s the danger in hearing it?
After all, there might be other things that he needed to know in order to protect her. Other people involved besides the man he’d killed. Until he had all the facts, he wasn’t in any position to know what he needed to guard against.
“Give me what you’ve got,” he said.
He closed his eyes, leaning forward so that his forehead rested against the cool, slick surface of the tile. For the first time he was conscious of a dull ache at the back of his neck and in his shoulders. Tension or tiredness. He turned his head from side to side, willing the muscles to relax.
“The women Delano is suspected of killing were prostitutes, only when they frequent the elite circles those two operated in, I guess you don’t call them that. There was some heavy capital backing the ladies, enough to get them invited to private parties given by both sides of the aisle. Their job was to troll for any of our representatives who might have a wandering eye. From all accounts they had everything they needed to attract attention—looks, style, intelligence. The ability to be all things to all people.”
“I take it they were successful,” Michael said dryly.
“Lots of guys up here think power bestows sexual prowess. Old goats buy into their kind of flattery because after all, they chair a frigging big committee. Why shouldn’t some twenty-something be interested in them? So yeah, you could say they were successful.”
“And that’s what got them murdered?”
“I don’t know what got ’em murdered. Maybe they were too successful. Or maybe they weren’t successful enough.”
“Meaning?”
“They weren’t working alone, and the blackmail wasn’t of the financial variety. More in the way of influence brokering. Vote right, Senator, and the pictures of you wearing a whip and nothing else won’t get sent to your wife or your constituents. There were probably a lot of our esteemed legislators who didn’t grieve when those two turned up dead. That doesn’t mean they were in on the killings.”
“What about Delano?”
“He’s got a long record of arrests, but no convictions. Good lawyers from a firm that represents a number of mob honchos. Delano seems to have had some slight past association with one of them. Somebody named Helio DeMarco. From everything I can find out, however, Demarco wasn’t involved in the call-girl operation.”
“Maybe somebody got tired of having his balls in a vice.”
“And so they hired Demarco and company to loosen the tension? It’s possible. The men who were caught in that blackmail aren’t the kind who would enjoy rolling over. I can see one of them deciding to fight fire with fire. They had a lot at stake.”
“Was Franklin Gettys one of them?” Michael asked.
He had passed the name on when he’d set this into motion. Nicki was convinced Gettys was behind the attempts on her life, but he couldn’t see how the incident she’d described tied to what he was hearing now.
“Gettys is always trolling, but he fishes in his own stream. And he makes sure there are plenty of pretty young things swimming around him to take the bait.”
“You’re saying he wasn’t being blackmailed.”
“Not that we could discover. That’s not to say it isn’t possible.”
If the people he’d put on this couldn’t discover a connection between Gettys and the women who were killed, Michael would be willing to bet there wasn’t one. That didn’t preclude him from having any connection to what was going on, however.
“How about Gettys working from the other end. Helping to entrap his colleagues.”
“Gettys is one of my favorite assholes, but he doesn’t seem to be involved in this, Mike. Not from either direction. The only interesting part of the Gettys question is the intern.”
A now-familiar coldness stirred in Michael’s stomach. He had been trying to concentrate on the information and had deliberately avoided asking about Nicki. It seemed there was no longer any way to put that off.
“Nicola Carson,” he said, his voice controlled.
“A latecomer to the party, by the way.”
“Latecomer?”
“I’m not quite sure how her name got tied to this in the first place, but that didn’t happen until after the murders.”
With his left hand, the one that had been pressed against the tile, Michael pushed away from the wall. His heart rate had accelerated because he believed he knew where this was going. He glanced down the hall toward Nicki’s door again before he asked the vital question.
“Are you saying she wasn’t part of the prostitution setup?”
“Any compromising situations Carson might have gotten involved in were all private. And they sure didn’t make the papers. She had couple of boyfriends since she’s been in town, none of whom were in positions of power, and they sure didn’t take her to the events we’ve been talking about. Before that, she was a scholarship kid who grew up poor and ambitious. She wanted out, but she didn’t take any shortcuts to do it. She went to school, worked hard, kept her nose clean and got some attention from the right people. She did work for Gettys, which set off alarm bells, just because Franklin’s the scumbag he is. She’s never been seen in his company socially, however, and there were no calls from him to her home or cell phone or vice-versa.”
“You’re saying she wasn’t involved in any of this,” Michael said flatly.
The
tension seemed to have drained from his body as his friend talked. He fought the urge to lean against the wall again.
“As far as entrapping senators? Pure as the driven snow. She isn’t clean as far as people connecting her name to it. Apparently that’s why Delano targeted her.”
“So how did she get tied to the scheme?”
“Mistaken identity maybe. There was an Elaine Carson who ran with a couple of the women who were involved. She was a good friend of the first victim. Or Nicola’s name could have surfaced some other way.”
“Like what?” Michael asked.
“You want to hear what I know or what I think.”
“I’ll take both.”
“I think somebody mentioned her name to the wrong people, and that was obviously done after the fact.”
After the deaths of the two women. “To set whoever killed the others after her?”
“Since that was the effect, you could assume that was the intent.”
An axiom he’d heard innumerable times in intelligence work.
“She pissed someone off, and so they made her a target?” Michael asked, wondering if Gettys was crazy enough to do this because Nicki saw something in his office that he didn’t want her to see.
“Or it was an accident. Confusion with the other Carson. There’s always a ton of gossip in this town. We thrive on it. Somebody mishears a name, one that sounds familiar because it is familiar, but only in a different context. They repeat it to someone else and it goes from there. It could have happened in a dozen ways.”
“What about the other women in the scheme? The ones who didn’t end up dead?”
“They seem to have done what Carson did. They’re lying low somewhere. That’s another thing that argues against her involvement, by the way. Most left town after the first murder. Within hours after the second one, they were all gone. Smart enough to figure out that the killing of one of them might not have been random. Two meant there was a contract. Nicola didn’t leave after the second death, however. She was still in town for at least a couple of months.”
And given her response to the first threat on her own life, the attack in the Metro station, if Nicki had had any connection to the murdered women, she would have been gone. She hadn’t left Washington because those deaths hadn’t meant anything to her. Not on a personal level.
“And nobody can remember hearing about Carson’s involvement with this until after she was gone,” his friend said. “Her name hadn’t surfaced in connection with the blackmail. Maybe when she disappeared somebody put two and two together and got five. Or maybe the story was a cover-up for what really happened to her. I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what that was, are you?”
“Delano tried to kill her. She escaped.”
“And hid until he found her again? That’s what? Eight, nine months? Maybe we should hire her.”
Delano had found her again, however, which seemed to lead back to the Half Spur and Gettys.
“By the way,” his friend said as he was arriving at that point, “we’re not the only ones demonstrating an interest in Nicola Carson lately. A couple of people I talked to said some reporter’s been asking questions. And within the last couple of weeks. A Jeremy Canton. You know him?”
“I’ve heard the name,” Michael said.
He had, of course. Colleen had asked Canton to check into Nicki’s connection to the call-girl ring. It seemed he’d done so.
“He’s been asking about the source of the original story—that Carson was connected to the murdered women. Said he was asking for a friend. I don’t know if that’s important, but I can tell you that it made people more cautious in answering our inquiries than they would have been if he hadn’t gotten there first. They were real wary as to why they were being questioned, not once but twice, about a missing intern.”
In Washington, having people asking the same questions about any criminal activity tended to create paranoia. Maybe Canton had asked the right people, or maybe…
The thought was sudden, but with it, a lot of things fell into place. If Canton let slip on whose behalf he was asking, it was possible that whoever had planted that story could have traced Nicki to the Royal Flush through the inquiry he and Colleen had set in motion. Son of a bitch.
“That’s all I got,” his friend said, unaware of the possibilities he’d just opened up. “Nicola Carson wasn’t involved. I can’t tell you definitively how her name got tangled up in that mess. And I don’t see anything that connects the murdered women to Gettys, either. I think that’s all you asked about.”
“Any idea who hired Delano?”
“Not a clue. Somebody who has mob contact, obviously, but that doesn’t eliminate all that many people.”
“Some congressman or senator who was being squeezed.”
“That would be my guess, but the field’s wide open. We don’t know all the people who were blackmailed. We know who went to the police, but they’re not the ones out hiring hit men. Those we don’t know.”
“I owe you,” Michael said.
“Buy me dinner the next time you’re in town. I have expensive tastes.”
“Done.”
“Take care,” his friend warned. “However innocent Nicola Carson may be, she’s been judged guilty in the court of public opinion. The people who were stung in this operation are used to getting their way and be damned to anyone or anything standing in it.”
“I’ll remember that.”
He would. There were still too many loose ends to be complacent about having taken care of Delano. After all, he had almost let the bastard kill Nicki. The next one who tried might have better luck. Or better aim.
HE EASED THE DOOR OPEN and stepped into the darkness of the hospital room. After it closed behind him with a pneumatic wheeze, he stood in the darkness listening to the soft pings and beeps of the monitors. They were almost comforting.
“I missed you,” Nicki said.
His eyes hadn’t adjusted enough to realize she was awake. He walked over to the bed, where there was more light from the machines, and kissed the hand she held out to him.
“Some business to take care of.”
“Anything I should know about?”
“I was returning a phone call to an old friend.”
It took a second or two for her to understand the veiled reference. He wasn’t even sure how he knew when she had. Maybe a change in the tension of her fingers, still held in his.
“So now you know,” she said softly.
“It’s been a long time since I cared.”
She nodded, seeming to accept that. “Have you told Colleen?”
“I told her I was bringing you back to the Royal Flush. I haven’t talked to her since I made the call.”
“Did he tell you anything that makes sense of all this?”
“Maybe. Some things that helped, anyway. The man I killed was wanted in connection with the murders of two women involved in the call-girl ring. My source thinks his targeting you may have been a simple case of mistaken identity. An Elaine Carson was involved with some of the principles. Maybe someone got the two of you confused. It could have happened in any number of ways. Maybe something as simple as you working for a senator and they were targeting them.”
There didn’t seem any reason to mention the other possibilities his friend had suggested. Not yet. Maybe when she was stronger.
“No connection to Gettys?”
“None they could find.”
“If it had been there, you believe they would have found it?”
“They’re good at what they do.”
She nodded, her eyes unconvinced.
“He’s dead, Nicki. It’s over. No matter why he came after you, he can’t hurt you anymore. I promise you that.”
She nodded again, seeming to accept what he said, maybe because there was no other choice.
“Remember the first day at the ranch?” she asked.
“On the Half Spur?”
Her lips tilted in
to a slow smile. It had been an eternity since he’d seen that.
“At the Royal Flush.”
The first time they’d made love. In a dim bedroom with the scent of lavender around them.
“I remember,” he said.
“I asked you to hold me. To keep the nightmares away. I know the nightmares are over, but…I’d still like you to hold me while I sleep.”
“They probably wouldn’t approve,” he said, tilting his head toward the door behind him.
“They haven’t been shot.”
“Do I detect a play for sympathy?”
“What you detect is a proposition.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” he said, despite his immediate physical response to the suggestion. She was far too fragile.
“Then just sleep beside me. No one could possibly object to that,” she said, still smiling at him. “Not even you.”
“It seems to me that’s what you said the first time you lured me into your bed,” he said, answering her smile. “It didn’t turn out quite that way.”
“Well, now we’ve had some practice. Maybe this time we’ll get it right.”
For the first time in a very long time, Michael thought as he watched her move over to make room for him in her bed, he had—finally—gotten it right.
Epilogue
“What kind of surprise?”
“I swear, you’re like a kid at Christmas,” Michael said.
“I thought that’s what you wanted. Rabid anticipation. Are we going somewhere?” Nicki asked as, with his hand at the small of her back, he directed her toward the living room.
He could understand why that would be appealing. He wished like hell they could. Neither of them had been off the ranch since she’d been released from the hospital.
He hadn’t wasted the time they’d been housebound, however. The Royal Flush was now as much a fortress as money and expertise could make it. Security cameras had been installed and fed their information to monitors in the basement surveillance room. He had also had an invisible electronic fence put in that would warn him when anyone approached or left the compound. Anybody attempting to sneak onto the ranch now would have a much harder time than Delano had.