A Murder of Justice

by Robert Andrews

  Milton handed the folder back to Frank.

  Frank took it, but Milton held on for a second or two. When he dropped his hand, his eyes met Frank’s.

  “Yeah?” Frank prompted.

  Milton got up. He faced Frank and Jose. He motioned toward the folder. “I thought we had that case good, Frank. Wired. Or I wouldn’t have let Emerson…”

  “I’m sure you did.”

  “I mean wired.”

  Frank started the car. He heard gunfire in the distance.

  Bam… bam… bam.

  The single shooter on the range.

  “I don’t feel like going back to the office,” he said.

  “Me neither.”

  “Where to?”

  “Long time since we been to the Smithsonian.”

  “National Gallery?”

  “How about the Air and Space?” Jose pondered this, then nodded to himself. “Yeah. I feel like Air and Space. Something mechanical. You know, with wings and wheels and engines and shit like that.”

  The National Air and Space Museum is one of Washington’s feature attractions. The busiest museum in the world pulls in more than nine million visitors a year. After flashing his credentials, Frank eased the Crown Vic down the ramp to the restricted underground garage.

  A minute or two later, he and Jose stood in the elevator as the doors whooshed open onto the main entrance hall, the Milestones of Flight gallery.

  Wow!

  Frank felt a smile inside. No matter how many times he’d been to Air and Space, the sight touched off the same schoolboy reaction.

  There stood Friendship 7, John Glenn’s spacecraft, scorched and battered by its fiery reentry through Earth’s atmosphere. High above Glenn’s capsule, Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis flew in formation with the Wright Brothers’ “flyer,” a boxy kite of white muslin wings and brown ash struts.

  For almost half an hour, the two men worked their way back through aviation history, from an Apollo lunar orbiter and Chuck Yeager’s Bell X-1 to the old classics-a Douglas DC-3, a beautiful Beech Staggerwing.

  They came to a stop in front of Otto Lilienthal’s hang glider, suspended as if in flight. Frank stared up at the frail craft. A manikin dangled in a harness below the birdlike wings of the century-old glider. A placard explained that Lilienthal had died in a crash. Several years later, the Wright brothers had used his data to build their own powered machine and launch a revolution.

  “Good choice, coming here.”

  “Yeah,” Jose said. He was looking at the Lilienthal glider too. “Something about airplanes… you got to do them right. There’s something clean about them. Bullshit and a fancy paint job can’t make them fly. Basics-all comes down to basics.”

  Frank’s mind skipped a groove or two. He’d been thinking about the glider; then he caught what Jose had said about basics. Skeeter popped up, and Frank connected basics to the killing.

  “Same gun killed Skeeter that killed Gentry,” he said.

  Jose didn’t respond.

  Frank went on. “Question is, same person? Two years. Long time for a killer to hold the same weapon.”

  “Yeah.” Jose sounded as though he were only half listening.

  Frank looked at Jose’s sad frown. “I know.” Frank sighed. “I feel the same way.”

  “Milt shouldn’t have folded like that.”

  “I know. But it must have seemed easy at the time to pin the rose on Austin. No red flags. After all, it wasn’t like Austin was a choirboy. And the snitch did know the holdouts.”

  Jose didn’t say anything, but the frown stayed put.

  “Emerson’s got to be sweating,” Frank said.

  Jose nodded. “Yeah. It gets out he pressured Milt…”

  “You know,” Frank ventured, “Milt always wanted that job running the range. Regular hours, no pressure. A good job to see him to retirement.”

  “You saying Emerson paid him off?”

  “Whether he did or he didn’t, that’s what it’ll look like. And Emerson knows it.”

  TWELVE

  … Zelmer Austin… hit-and-run?” Kate asked.

  Ahead on N Street, streetlamps cast pools of light on brick sidewalks laid before the Revolutionary War. Frank savored the feeling of well-being that came from sharing good food and wine with Kate. Earlier, while waiting for her at the bar, he had made a resolution to stay away from Gentry and Skeeter. The resolution held less than a minute after he and Kate had gotten seated. The rest of the dinner had been spent sifting through every nuance of the crowded day. Frank realized with a start that they’d had three coffees after dessert and that Cafe Milano was now packed with Washington’s Euro-emigres; as the night wore on here, the legs got longer and the skirts shorter.

  “So Zelmer Austin didn’t kill Kevin Gentry?”

  They reached Thirtieth Street and walked south toward Olive.

  “They found a pistol with him, but it was clean. No ballistics history. Zelmer himself was capable. Nasty piece of work. He’d been one of Juan Brooks’s enforcers. Slipped one first-degree charge, two on manslaughter.”

  “That man has questionable intentions, young lady.”

  Frank and Kate turned toward the sound of the voice.

  Charlie Whitmire walked down Thirtieth Street toward them, led by Murphy, a toffee-colored Wheaten terrier. Charlie, Frank’s next-door neighbor, could wear anything and still come across as fastidious. Tonight he had on a pair of khaki shorts and a faded Gold’s Gym sweatshirt. Short white hair and softly rounded features created the impression of an aging cherub, an impression destroyed by his roguish grin and floorwalker’s discovering eyes. Charlie and his partner, Jack, had lived on Olive Street for nineteen years, and they had been the first to welcome Frank to the neighborhood.

  “Hi, Charlie, Murph,” Kate said, stooping to scratch Murphy’s ears.

  They all walked down Thirtieth toward Olive.

  “Stopped by earlier,” Charlie said. “You were out.”

  “Cafe Milano,” Frank answered.

  “The place to be, right, Murph?” Charlie turned to Frank: “You’re going to be a busy boy.”

  “Always am, Charlie.”

  “Busier. I was talking with a friend on the news desk. She said the Gentry case is opening up again.”

  “You guys know already?”

  “Frank,” Charlie said in a reproachful tone, “this is a town full of spooks, investigators, and media monkeys like me. Secrets last only until the first phone call. Besides, you got something against freedom of the press?”

  “Hell no, Charlie. Some of my best friends are reporters.”

  Charlie threw his head back in mock distaste. “I am not a reporter,” he said with dignity. “I am a columnist. A sensitive, compassionate observer of life and living.”

  “You work for a newspaper,” Frank said.

  Charlie smiled big and slightly evil. “Newspapers! Thank God they exist, otherwise I couldn’t find work in mainstream society.”

  “Gentry?” Kate made it a question.

  “Oh,” said Charlie. “That. That came in over the wire. Also that a congressman… Rhinelander?… is calling for an investigation of D.C. Homicide.”

  They turned the corner onto Olive Street.

  “We’re headed home,” Frank said. “You and Murph want to come in for coffee or a drink?”

  Charlie looked tempted, then held up an empty blue plastic bag, the kind newspapers came in. “You owe me. Murph hasn’t gotten all her walk in yet.”

  Inside, Kate settled on the small sofa in the breakfast room. Frank stood at the kitchen counter and debated whether to take care of the coffeemaker or pay attention to the answering machine’s insistently blinking red eye. He compromised and checked the caller

  ID.

  “Jose,” he said, punching the answering machine’s Play button.

  “Hey, Frank,” came Jose’s voice, “don’t forget to pick me up, tomorrow-Savoy’s. Oh… case you missed it, the Gentry thing’s on the d
amn tube. Worsham at eight. Had an interview with Congressman Rhinelander.” Jose’s sigh filled the room. “Bend over…”

  Frank punched the Off button. “… and kiss your ass good-bye,” he finished. He stood staring at the machine, imagining how tomorrow would go.

  “Come here, big boy,” he heard Kate say.

  He got a warm, sensual feeling in his stomach. He turned in time to see Monty spring lightly into Kate’s lap.

  She held Monty against her breast. The big cat purred, eyes closed, head resting on her shoulder.

  Frank tried to freeze-frame the scene, knowing that he couldn’t.

  Life goes on. Any second she’ll move and the picture’ll be gone. Nothing stays the same. Memory’s a blessing, he remembered his father saying once. Without it, there’d be no tomorrow, because there’d be no yesterday.

  “What’re you thinking about?” Kate looked up at him and the picture went away.

  “Us,” he said.

  “What about us?”

  “Just us,” he said.

  Penny.” Kate’s whisper came through the dark, warm and close to his ear.

  Frank turned toward her and lined his body up against hers. “Ever play jackstraws?”

  “Pick-up sticks? Not recently.”

  “Remember how you have to lift off one stick at a time without disturbing the others? If you lift off enough to get the black stick, you win?”

  “Oh-kay?”

  “Just thinking about the other players in the game.”

  “Emerson?”

  “He’s one. Him… the media… this congressman, Rhinelander.”

  “All after the black stick?”

  “No. Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly?”

  “They got different black sticks. Emerson’s is a good set of numbers.”

  “So?”

  “So he sets up a machine that gives him good numbers. You work for Emerson and you want an ‘Attaboy,’ you give him good numbers.”

  “You and Jose don’t.”

  “No. We got to where we are before Emerson came on the scene. And we aren’t going any further. Two old-timers who’ve vested retirement and who aren’t sucking for promotion are bulletproof.”

  “But they’re expendable.”

  “That too,” Frank said.

  “And the congressman… his black stick?”

  “Rhinelander and the media will play off each other. He wants the publicity he’s going to get if he investigates the department. The media knows law enforcement that works doesn’t sell papers. So Mr. Rhinelander puts on a circus, shows that law enforcement’s broken, and the media sells papers.”

  Kate put her hand on his neck. At the blood-warm crossroads of neck and shoulder. “And you and Jose, your stick is getting the killer. Simple as that?”

  “It’s good enough. The shooters have their way, they’re going to sink the ship.”

  “And you and Jose stop enough of them, the ship doesn’t sink?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And the ship? Is it going to be a better ship?”

  Frank felt his pulse beating against her hand and wanted her hand there forever.

  “Not our job to make it better. Just to keep it floating.”

  THIRTEEN

  Frank pulled off Florida Avenue at Tenth Street. In the middle of the third block, he turned into a lot full of cars and pickups in various stages of tear-down or build-up. A cinder-block building squatted on the back half of the lot. An ancient coat of white paint had been beaten threadbare by the weather, and you could barely read “Savoy” in an orange Coca-Cola script above the entrance.

  The garage had the rich, organic man-smell of automobiles: grease mixed with motor oil, laced with slivers of solvent and brake fluid. From a hidden boom box Eric Clapton competed with the pneumatic hammering of impact wrenches. Frank found Jose in the last bay, head under an open hood, body bent over the front fender, peering into the engine compartment of a dark green convertible and in deep discussion with a mechanic beside him.

  Frank and Jose had found the ’65 Mustang in a Maryland barn after six months of weekend hunting. The top and upholstery had rotted, and generations of chickens had deposited layers of droppings on the paint. But the body hadn’t rusted, and the frame had lined up true. And there were the plusses: 83,000 honest miles, no power-anything, a heavy-duty sports suspension, and a 271-horse V-8 harnessed to a Borg-Warner four-speed transmission.

  “Getting rid of spare change?” Frank asked.

  Jose backed out from under the hood.

  “The Josephus Phelps foreign aid plan,” he said, putting a hand on the mechanic’s shoulder. A stocky dark-haired man straightened and showed a mouth full of white, even teeth.

  “Meet Gustavo Montoya. I’m putting his kids through college.”

  Montoya winked at Frank. “Just my daughter at Harvard.” He turned to Jose. “I have ready for you this afternoon. Six-thirty maximo?”

  Jose nodded. “Bueno.” He stood back and surveyed the car. “And they say houses are a money pit.”

  Frank let his eyes run along the Mustang’s lines. “That’s a classic. Classics are supposed to do that.”

  “You want a share of a classic?” Jose asked.

  “I’ll pass.”

  They left the garage and walked toward the car.

  “I missed the late news last night… the interview?… the congressman?”

  It took a moment to register.

  “Oh…” Jose said, “the congressman… Richie Rich… hundred-dollar haircut, designer glasses with those little lenses.”

  “He say anything?”

  “How he was outraged. How his subcommittee’s going to get to the truth…” Jose sniffed. “The usual political shit.”

  Frank unlocked the car and opened his door. “You ready for more?” He asked across the top of the car to Jose.

  “More what?”

  “The usual political shit.”

  Chair cocked back, his feet on Frank’s desk, Leon Janowitz was drinking coffee and reading the Gentry case file.

  “Make yourself at home, Leon,” Frank said.

  Janowitz looked up and smiled. He swung his feet off the desk and levered forward in the chair. “I heard I’m working with you guys.”

  “Jose and I decided to do our part, keeping kids off the street.”

  Janowitz looked wounded. “I turn thirty next month.”

  Frank gestured to the coffeemaker. “Making coffee’s my job.”

  “Mine is…?”

  “You,” Jose said, “are our one-man task force.”

  “I’m honored.”

  “What do you know about the Gentry case?” Frank asked.

  Janowitz tapped the file. “That Milton fucked it up and you guys got it on your plate.”

  “What’s this ‘you guys’ shit?” Jose asked.

  “We guys,” Frank corrected. “We guys got Gentry and Skeeter.” He pointed to the Gentry file. “Get into that. Deep as you can.”

  “And don’t talk to Milton before you talk to us,” Jose added.

  “Why’s that?”

  Jose held up a finger. “One, because I said so, young man, and two”-he held up a second finger-“because like you say, Milt fucked it up. No sense you startin’ from where Milt is… or was. Better you start from your present state of ignorance.”

  Janowitz nodded. “Okay.” He drained his coffee, got up, and tucked the Gentry file under his arm. “You guys going to the press conference?”

  Jose frowned and looked at Frank, who shrugged.

  “Yeah,” Janowitz said, “about the Gentry case. The mayor, Chief Day, and Emerson… front steps.”

  In the street, TV relay masts towered over mobile control vans. Headquarters doors opened. Three men clustered around microphones, with Mayor Tompkins, neat and bowtie precise, in the middle.

  “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” Jose whispered.

  He and Frank slipped through the crowd
to get closer. Tompkins drew an index card from his pocket. Cameras clicked.

  “I have a short statement. I’ll be followed by Chief Day and then by Captain Emerson of Homicide.” Tompkins paused and took a deep breath. “Yesterday, I learned that mistakes were made in the closing of a particularly tragic homicide case-”

  “ ‘Mistakes were made,’ ” Jose echoed. “They just happen. Nobody does anything.”

  “Bureaucratic immaculate conception,” Frank whispered back.

  “Accordingly,” Tompkins was winding up, “we are reopening the investigation of Mr. Kevin Walker Gentry’s homicide.” The mayor stowed the index card in his pocket and turned to his right. “Chief Day?”

  Noah Day, a big, hulking man, scowled as though, somewhere in front of him, the killer hid among the reporters and cameramen.

  “Ladies and gentlemen”-his voice sounded like granite boulders grinding together. “I have some background information for you…”

  He cranked up what department insiders dubbed “Noah’s Numerical Fog Machine”-an avalanche, a flood, a veritable tsunami of statistics and data. A rapid-fire chatter of numbers on everything that could be counted that had anything to do with crime and punishment.

  Jose let the numbers flow through part of his consciousness while he thought about Skeeter Hodges, then found himself thinking about Edward Teasdale. Then he worked on making the connection back. Something, perhaps the inflection in Day’s recitation, made him break off.

  “… but numbers don’t tell the whole story,” Day was saying as Jose surfaced and the meeting with Teasdale faded.

  Day powered into his standard closing. “And performance isn’t in the talking, it’s in the doing.” Like a bull eyeing a matador, he swung his big head back and forth, wanting to make certain the small brains in front of him had absorbed his wisdom.

  Apparently satisfied, he stepped back, and Emerson came front and center.

  “As Chief Day said”-Emerson smiled-“the performance isn’t in the talking, it’s in the doing.” He shot a suck-up glance toward Day, then looked out over the reporters. “Open for questions,” he announced.

  The gabbling and hand thrusting reminded Frank of third-graders trying to get the teacher’s attention.