Whitewash

by Alex Kava

  “It’s not only about money, old lady. She saw me. And no matter how plain this mug of mine is, I’m not changing it,” Leon told her.

  The whole time he tried to keep his eyes off that container. It had made his mouth water when he thought it was pork chops. Now that he knew it was stuffed tight with hundred-dollar bills it made his mouth water even more. “Besides, what makes you think I won’t tell you what you wanna hear, slit your throat and take that container full of cash anyway?”

  She sat back and nodded like she was considering it. She reached for her glass, rattled the ice to stir it up a bit and took a long sip of the whiskey.

  “Now see, I was thinking you were a businessman, not a petty crook.” She continued to sip her whiskey. She was pretending it didn’t matter to her one way or another whether he took her deal. “Doesn’t make sense for a businessman to do something that’s not necessary.”

  “She saw me,” he said. It was as simple as that.

  “What if I guarantee she won’t remember a thing about you? Me, either, for that matter.”

  Leon laughed. “How the hell can you guarantee a thing like that?”

  The old woman sat forward, hesitated, but only for a second. Then wrapping the foil around the huge loaf of cash she slid it over to him.

  “Is that enough of a guarantee?” she asked.

  Son of a bitch, Leon thought. There had to be over a quarter of a million dollars in that foil.

  He looked up at her and this time she caught his eyes and held them. Over the years Leon had seen a lot of things in his clients’ eyes: revenge, greed, power, even hate. But he’d never seen anything like this.

  Leon opened up the foil. He brought out the solid stack of bills and held it in his hands. It was still cold from its storage in the freezer. It was, indeed, a tight stack of hundred-dollar bills, more than twice the money he’d ever been paid for a hit. He rewrapped it in the foil, including the small chunk from the middle of the table. He stuffed it under his arm and stood up.

  “You’ve got yourself a deal,” he said.

  Then he left.

  82

  Wednesday, June 14

  The Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial

  Washington, D.C.

  Natalie Richards despised the media. She hated the way they portrayed her boss and she knew for certain that they didn’t always get the facts right. Even before Jayson Blair made up stories for the New York Times, quoting people he’d never talked to, let alone met, Natalie had developed a healthy distrust of reporters from her own assorted experiences. Natalie’s boss, however, considered the media a necessary evil, so Natalie wasn’t surprised to get immediate and full support of her plan.

  She had met Gregory McDonald only once, last year when he was an investigative reporter and part-time anchor for ABC News. McDonald was credited with many breaking exposés, including the corruptive handling, or rather mishandling, of FEMA funds after Hurricane Katrina. His work was respected and awarded by his colleagues, but more importantly to Natalie, he had gained the trust of Washington insiders as being tough, accurate and confidential.

  Ironically, Natalie hadn’t met him while he was working on a story. Instead, they were introduced at a Christmas party thrown by Warren Buffett, of all people. Natalie’s invitation had been an accident, at best, especially when her boss had to cancel at the last minute. In the middle of celebrities, politicians and media people, Gregory McDonald had been kind enough to spend time talking to her about teenage boys—he had three of his own—and their expectations for Christmas. At the time he had no clue who Natalie was or who she worked for and that alone had won Natalie over.

  Today she was pretty sure no one would recognize her here at the Roosevelt Memorial, either. Nor would they expect to see her dressed in blue jeans and a Smithsonian Museum T-shirt. She wore sunglasses and carried a canvas tote bag over her shoulder imprinted with a colorful panorama of the Washington monuments. With any luck she looked like just another tourist. Maybe she had a bit of Emma Peel in her, after all.

  As she waited for McDonald, she couldn’t help wondering if this story would be the one to propel him to the evening anchor position he was rumored to be in line for. She shifted the tote bag from one shoulder to the other. It’d be nice to think some good could come out of such a mess.

  A man walked up to read one of the monument plaques behind her. He wore running shorts and a T-shirt and lugged an old backpack. She stepped aside and checked her watch. The mall was crowded with June tourists, a few loners and families but mostly field trips of docile senior citizens or screeching high-school students.

  The man with the backpack stepped around to stand beside her and she was about to give him her best “shove-off” look when she recognized his smile.

  “You sure are skinnier and much shorter than I remember,” she told Gregory McDonald.

  “Cameras add ten pounds.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s exactly why I stay away from them.”

  Natalie glanced around. A new group was making its way from room to room in the Memorial. No one seemed interested in the two of them. Satisfied, she nodded toward a bench along the wall.

  “Timing’s everything in your business,” she said to McDonald as she pulled an envelope from her tote bag and handed it to him. He didn’t hesitate or ask any questions. He simply took the envelope and slipped it into a side pocket of his backpack.

  “I understand the same is true in your business,” he said with no threat or urgency, his tone as casual as if they were two friends chatting about the daily grind of their careers. Then as he stood and adjusted his backpack, ready to leave, he added, “You know I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t ask. So is your boss planning to run next time around?”

  She knew without further explanation that he meant “run for president,” of course. The speculations were already swirling around, but Natalie’s boss had managed to avoid answering while keeping all options open.

  Natalie simply smiled. “Let’s just say if your timing’s right you’ll be the first to know.”

  83

  Jason handed off the information he found on Arthur Galloway, but Senator Allen no longer looked interested. Jason knew his boss’s mind was, no doubt, preoccupied with more important matters. The Appropriations Committee was set for a vote early tomorrow morning. Jason wouldn’t be there. He was scheduled to be in Florida, seeing to the reception details, what he believed would still be a celebration.

  Senator Malone’s vote would be enough, and yet Senator Allen hadn’t stopped pacing his office, the nervous energy jerking the muscles in his jaw all the way down to his shoulders.

  “Is there anything else you need?” Jason asked and was surprised to see a grin, no, more of a smirk.

  “We’ve done all we can,” he said, without stopping his march, and then adding, like a general preparing for battle, “I won’t go down without a fight.”

  Now back in his office, Jason couldn’t concentrate. He had a hell of a lot of work to do before he left for Florida tomorrow morning. He hated being away from the office for three whole days and hated even more the idea of coming back to these piles on his desk.

  He had stayed up late, surfing Google and the Net for more connections between Sidel and Zach. The South Beach Resort had been the only one he could find. Maybe it had been a coincidence. To make matters worse, his secretary had brought him a bulging envelope of forms that needed to be filled out and returned ASAP. The label read Contract Renewal. From what Jason could tell, after a quick glance, they looked like standard, mindless stuff—exactly what he needed. He didn’t have the attention span for anything more.

  Jason pulled out the forms, ready to start filling in the blanks when he noticed EchoEnergy preprinted in the contractor space. He double-checked the envelope and then the description of the contract. This was one he didn’t know about and yet it was up for renewal, which meant, in this case, the one-year deadline was coming up.

  Jason always prepared th
e Appropriations Committee contracts that the senator introduced and endorsed. And certainly Jason would have remembered one being awarded to EchoEnergy. He flipped through the pages, but he still didn’t recognize any of it. From what he could tell, it had bypassed a subcommittee vote because it had been considered part of the overall disaster package after the onslaught of hurricanes over the last several years. Senator Allen’s signature was scrawled across the bottom of the final page with several indecipherable initials in two other approval lines.

  Jason grabbed a pen and began filling out the form. So what if he hadn’t seen this cross Senator Allen’s desk? There had been hundreds of these after the devastation left by the hurricanes. And though it was a bit odd that Senator Allen hadn’t mentioned anything, it wasn’t unusual. So what if it slipped Senator Allen’s mind that EchoEnergy had already been awarded a multi-million-dollar contract with the federal government to dispose of hurricane debris?

  Jason sat back and pushed away from the form on his desk. He contemplated throwing a dart, but chose instead to twist and turn it between his fingers.

  It wouldn’t slip the senator’s mind. It would have been another bragging point, a testament of the good and brilliant things EchoEnergy was capable of. In fact, Jason didn’t even know EchoEnergy could process hurricane debris. He thought it was only chicken guts. Why wouldn’t there have been mention of it on their tour? That did seem odd. Eliminating hurricane debris and turning it to oil would be a huge accomplishment Sidel couldn’t resist bragging about.

  So why wasn’t he?

  As he leaned back in his office chair, tapping the feathers of the dart against his temple, Jason had a bad feeling in his gut. This wasn’t right. Something was going on and he didn’t like it. He released the dart and absently looked up at the dartboard.

  He’d missed the bull’s-eye.

  84

  Pensacola Beach, Florida

  Eric took Howard by surprise. At least that’s what it looked like. Howard mumbled something into the phone and quickly got off.

  Eric wondered if it may have been Howard’s old friends who were supposed to be sailing up from Miami. For friends Howard sure seemed to be a bit on edge about their visit, and there didn’t seem to be much that put Howard on edge.

  Howard didn’t talk about his former friends or his previous life. Neither did Eric. None of the group that hung out at Bobbye’s did. Eric knew through his own sources that once upon a time Howard Johnson had made millions of dollars trafficking drugs from South America up through Miami. The story was that the feds had made Howard an offer to rat out his suppliers. Instead, Howard decided to thumb his nose at all of them and simply retire before the feds had anything on him and before his suppliers got paranoid. No matter how much of the story was true, Eric was convinced that sort of a life wasn’t one somebody just walked away from. He was looking for Howard’s friends to be old friends and he wouldn’t be surprised if they had a little something for Howard.

  “The Minnesotans canceling out?” Eric asked, giving Howard a chance to share his covert phone call.

  “No, I haven’t heard anything from them.” He glanced at his watch. “I expect they’ll be here in the next hour.” Then he pointed to the TV and the ever-present Fox News channel. “Florida authorities are searching for your friend in Chicago. Media’s on it up there, too. They had an interview with some professor at the university where she taught. One of her students, too. Nothing new, just your basic ‘I never knew she was capable of such a thing’ interview.”

  “Jesus!” Eric knew it was only a matter of time before the media discovered their dad, maybe even Eric. “Do me a favor. Don’t mention it to Bree, okay?”

  “Sure, no problem.” Howard continued his morning routine, opening the cash register and checking the Visa/MC machine, but then he stopped and turned back to Eric, as if there was something he’d been meaning to tell him. His eyes were serious under bushy white eyebrows.

  Here it was, Eric thought. Time for true confessions. Howard was finally ready to give him the dirt on what he was really up to.

  “You’re a good friend,” Howard said, emphasizing friend.

  It wasn’t at all what Eric expected him to say. And now Eric realized he’d mistaken the look in Howard’s eyes. Howard wasn’t getting ready to confess and come clean. He was encouraging Eric to.

  “Look, it’s none of my business and you don’t have to tell me a damn thing. It’s just…Gallo, Galloway…” He shrugged and picked up the inventory clipboard, leaving the conversation there and letting Eric decide to tell him or not.

  “It’s complicated,” Eric said and scratched at his bristled jaw like his answer required some thought. He knew it wouldn’t matter all that much if he admitted he’d changed his name.

  “Sure, I understand.” Again Howard shrugged his huge shoulders, this time the gesture so animated he set in motion the pattern of sailfish on his boat shirt. A gesture that betrayed his words.

  It surprised Eric, though not enough not for him to risk an explanation. He’d already gotten too close to Howard, too friendly. It was better that Howard think he was a liar than for him to know the truth, that Eric was only interested in Howard’s drug connections.

  “I definitely know about stuff being complicated,” Howard said just when Eric thought the subject was closed. Maybe he’d luck out, after all, and get Howard to share, not only information, but a piece of the action.

  “If something ever happens to me I’d like you to have all my models.” He waved his hand up at the shelf that surrounded the shop, a foot from the ceiling and crowded with perfectly crafted and finely detailed boats and ships from various eras.

  Again, he surprised Eric. He knew the collection, one that Howard continuously added to, was his prized possession. Never mind that he owned a successful deep-sea fishing service as well as the prime real estate the shop and the parking lot sat on. The model collection was something Howard built with his hands, something uniquely his.

  “What are you talking about?” Eric tried to dismiss the tremendous gesture, almost hoping it was some kind of trick. “Nothing’s gonna happen to you.”

  “I’m just saying in case something does.”

  “What’s gonna happen? Nothing’s gonna happen.”

  “What you’re doing for Sabrina…not many friends would risk their necks like that,” Howard told him, his eyes still running over his collection, avoiding Eric’s. “Not any of mine would. You’re a good man.”

  Eric wasn’t prepared for any of this.

  85

  Sabrina stared at the small, purple notebook. It fell out of the file folder she had taken from Dr. Lansik’s desk last Friday. She’d stuffed the folder into her briefcase and forgotten about it. Now there was the notebook on Eric’s floor, its worn corners and scratched vinyl cover reminding her of her deceased boss. She recognized it. Lansik usually carried it around with him everywhere. O’Hearn had once jokingly called it Lansik’s purple bible.

  She started flipping through pages. Not even halfway through, she realized the notes in the margins appeared to have nothing to do with the notes on the pages. Lansik seemed to be writing in code in his own notebook. On the pages everything was in black ink. In the margins the notes were written in blue ink, a few in red. Sabrina couldn’t be sure, but she thought some of gobbledygook might be computer code.

  There were formulas of some kind, too, but none she recognized. And toward the back of the notebook in a lower corner, printed in red, was what looked like a phone number with the name Colin Jernigan, DOJ above it. The number was important enough that Lansik had scratched a red box around it, outlining it with such pressure the pen had broken through the paper on a second or third pass around one of the corners.

  That’s when Eric came in the apartment front door. Sabrina slammed the notebook shut as if she’d been caught reading some illicit papers. Okay, so maybe she still didn’t trust him.

  Eric noticed. Of course he noticed, but all he s
aid was, “Bring that along. Let’s get some lunch.”

  “Out in the open? Just like that? I thought I was supposed to be hiding.”

  “There’s no better place to hide than in plain sight.”

  They walked to a restaurant called Crabs and got a table on the deck overlooking the crowded beach. It was noisier here than at the marina, with shouts and laughter interspersed with lifeguard whistles. Several of the beachside bars added to the fray with their loudspeakers blaring Bob Marley and Britney Spears. Eric ordered a combination seafood platter. Sabrina ordered the grilled grouper sandwich when she really wanted an egg salad and her old routine back.

  She kept the notebook on the bench beside her, not sure she knew what she had found and not sure she wanted to share any of it with Eric. She sat back and watched him. His eyes were everywhere except on her. She glanced over to see what had his attention and saw two uniformed cops at another table. She wondered if Eric was concerned they’d recognize her, or was he worried about himself? Was that the reason he had become Eric Gallo? Eric’s roaming eyes reminded her of her dad’s, darting off around her. Thinking about her father made her stomach ache. How had this gotten so out of hand?

  “We need to see if Dad’s okay.” She said it out loud before she changed her mind. It brought Eric’s eyes to hers. “He might be in danger,” she added when she didn’t see sufficient concern. Then, as if she had reverted to twelve years old, she heard herself say, “Or don’t you care about him anymore?”

  She thought she saw a flicker of anger before he looked away. This time he was distracted by his young friend, the one with the shaved head and patient, kind eyes. Eric slid over on the bench and made room for him. He handed Eric an envelope as he plopped down his laptop.

  “Bree, you remember Russ.” Eric said it so casually that Sabrina stared at him, wondering how he could treat this ordeal like she was on vacation. And yet at the same time she noticed Eric’s eyes again, taking in the entire deck, scanning the beach below, watching and looking. Maybe he wasn’t so casual.