The Survivors

by Robert Palmer

  “Hold off on that. I’ve got somebody else I want to talk to first.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “I think it’s one of those government watchdog groups. It’s up in Georgetown. I hear they’ve got all the dirt on Braeder.”

  “Suit yourself.” He went back to playing with his salad. “So this is about your mother?”

  “She worked for Braeder. I found out recently she was fired three months before she killed herself. Somebody told me she got in trouble because of some designs taken from the company. At this point, it’s just a lot of information to sift through.”

  He came and sat next to me, where Dell had been. “How are you doin’ with all this?”

  “OK, I guess.”

  “You guess?” He nudged my hand. “I haven’t seen your wrist looking so bad since sophomore year.”

  I’d had a bad patch that year, nearly had to take a semester off. Tim had been through it all, keeping our dorm manager out of my hair, reeling me in from three different blackouts. He even sat in on my classes to take notes for me. And here I was asking for more favors.

  “What does Felix have to say about what you’re doing?” he said.

  “He’s not happy about it.”

  He frowned into my eyes. “Ditto on that one from me, buddy.”

  I sighed, and he grinned and slapped me on the knee. “Enough of this maudlin junk. You gonna eat that sandwich?”

  TWENTY-TWO

  As I got off the elevator back at my office, a man was limping down the hall. His hands were covered with grease. He was past me before the patch on his shirt registered: “Mario’s Locksmith.”

  “Did you get the locks changed?” I said as I stepped through the door.

  Tori was standing beside her desk, twisting so she could look at her backside. There was a greasy handprint a couple of inches south of her left cheek.

  “Jeez,” I said. “I just saw him.”

  “Snuck up behind me, the little monkey.” She gave a deadly smile and ground her stiletto heel into the carpet. “I think I broke his toe.”

  “I’d love to see the worker’s comp claim he’s going to file.”

  “That kind of thing happens almost every time I ride the Metro at rush hour.” She frowned at me. “What is it with you men, anyway?”

  I put my hands meekly in my pockets. “I dunno.”

  She shook her head and handed me a couple of message slips and a page printed from the computer. “These came in while you were gone.”

  The printout was a photograph of a man I didn’t recognize, talking to two other men who had their backs turned to the camera. “What is this?” I said.

  “Cass Russo e-mailed it to you.”

  “Dammit. She was going to show me this picture on her phone. I told her I didn’t want to see it.” I tossed it in the wastebasket.

  Tori cocked her head, expecting an explanation.

  “She was eavesdropping on her father. Some man came to their house last night, and they talked about me. That must have been him in the picture, with Eric and Griffin O’Shea.”

  Tori giggled. “Somebody’s got a crush on you.”

  “A crush on anybody who’ll pay attention to her.”

  I turned to the message slips. One was from Scottie, just checking in. He wanted to know what time we could talk today. For a while at least, I was going to be his best friend again.

  The second message was from Howard Markaris. On the line for “Company” Tori had written “VP Braeder.”

  “Who is he?” she said.

  “A pretty big deal. He was going to meet with Jamie Weston today to talk about Scott Glass and me. I guess Weston gave him my number. How did he sound?”

  “An old fox, phony and full of himself. I gave him a little Bette Davis and he didn’t notice at all.”

  Tori could do a bang-on impression of Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Lauren Bacall, and a dozen other old starlets. She was a hit at parties—but then she would have been a hit if she stood in the middle of the room doing nothing.

  “He wants me to meet him at Off the Record at five thirty?” I said.

  “You didn’t have anything on your calendar, so I told him it would be all right unless you called to cancel.”

  “Does anybody go to Off the Record anymore?” That was the bar in the Hay Adams Hotel. It was the place to see the great and near great—during the Lyndon Johnson administration.

  “Sure,” she said. “I went there on a date last spring.”

  “How did it go?”

  She gave me a Bacall look from under her eyebrows. “I was in bed by eight thirty.”

  We held the stare for a while. “I won’t dignify that by asking if you were alone.”

  “Of course you won’t. You’re a gentleman.”

  I turned for my office.

  “But you’re going to think about it all afternoon,” she said.

  The Hay Adams is located across from Lafayette Square, a block from the White House. From the outside, the gray stone facade and portico quietly says old money. The foyer was plush with dark paneling, thick carpets, original oil paintings. Lots of old money.

  In the Off the Record room, it was prime time. Most of the tables were occupied, as were all the seats at the bar. It was quiet, though, the hush that comes with three-thousand-dollar suits and Hermès handbags. Except for the two bartenders, I was the youngest person there by ten years.

  I was halfway to the bar when Howard Markaris motioned to me from a table in the corner. I recognized him from Cass Russo’s photograph. He had steel-gray hair in a military brush cut. He might have been anywhere from sixty to eighty years old, but he was still ruggedly handsome, with a lean face and sharp, dark eyes.

  He stood up to shake hands. “Doctor Henderson, I’m Howie Markaris. Thanks for seeing me.” His voice was rumbly and southern.

  A server appeared. He was drinking beer, so I told her to bring me what he was having. She bowed and left us.

  “Sorry about dragging you here,” Markaris said. “I had something in the Old Executive Office Building earlier. It was convenient.”

  The Old Executive Office Building—architectural name-dropping. That was where they put all the White House staffers who didn’t fit in the White House itself. “That’s all right.” I looked around the room. “It’s good to see how the other half lives.”

  He chuckled. “The other half of one percent.”

  The server had come back with my beer. Markaris waited for her to turn away, and clinked our glasses together. “How about we drink to your mother?”

  His expression was neutral, letting me play it the way I wanted.

  I lifted my glass. “Sure. To her.”

  We drank and I said, “Jamie Weston gave you my telephone number?”

  “Actually, Agent Weston wasn’t much help. In fact, she seemed quite suspicious of me. It makes sense, considering I went so far over her head. Phil Tallun at the Justice Department is an old friend, but he can be a rhinoceros at times.” He drew a line through the condensation on his glass. “I must say, Agent Weston is confused about some things—like who you really are.”

  “You didn’t correct her on that?” I said.

  “I decided to leave that to you.”

  “Thanks, I guess.”

  He smiled, enjoying having me at a disadvantage.

  “So why did you want to see me, Mr. Markaris?”

  “Howie.”

  “Fine. Why did you want to see me, Howie?”

  “To clear the air, to help you out . . . to remember your mother. Lots of reasons, but they all amount to the same thing.”

  “You knew her?”

  “Braeder was small back then. I think we had forty full-time employees. Everybody knew everybody. But honestly, I didn’t know your mother well. I worked on the production side, and she was in design.”

  He used a lot of words when he talked but didn’t give much concrete information. I had patients like that, masters of avoidance.
r />   “What is it you do now for Braeder?”

  “I’m a jack-of-all-trades. I’ve been with the company so long, I know everybody everywhere, all the ins and outs.”

  “Including where all the skeletons are buried?”

  He laughed easily. “You know the business we’re in. We can’t afford to have skeletons.”

  “You still haven’t told me how you found me.”

  “Sure. Lois McGuin. She said you’d stopped by her home for a chat. She’s a dear lady but wound a little too tight, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I only talked to her for half an hour. It’s hard for me to judge.”

  “Spoken with true discretion.” His eyes crinkled, making that a joke between friends.

  He took a swig of his beer and set the glass down carefully. “Let’s put our cards on the table. You and your friend Mr. Glass want to understand what happened with your mother. I get that, I really do. So what do you want to know?”

  “Mainly about that summer. Why did my mother lose her job?”

  “Lois explained to you about the stolen design plans. I think it’s obvious—”

  “My mother admitted she stole them?”

  “Not in so many words, no.”

  “Lois said my mother wouldn’t talk to her about those plans. Did she say anything to you?”

  “No. Like I said, I was on the production side of things. We were opening a new plant in Puerto Rico.” He leaned close to tell me the secret. “Cheap skilled labor. Can’t beat the Commonwealth for that.”

  I was trying to put my finger on why he annoyed me so much. He was too easygoing, too confident. A little hitch in his attitude, and I might have felt more comfortable with him.

  “When your mother left the company, I was in San Juan,” he said. “I never spoke to her about what happened.”

  “Who did she talk to then? Eric Russo maybe?”

  He had his beer in his hand, and he set it back down without taking a drink.

  “You went to see Eric last night, didn’t you?” I said.

  Now his surprise was obvious. “You’ve done your homework, Doctor. I won’t ask how you know that.”

  “I wouldn’t tell you anyway.”

  Recovering quickly, he smiled and took that drink of beer.

  “All right, all cards on the table,” I said. “Last night I went to see Lois McGuin, and as soon as I left she called you. You ran straight to Eric Russo. It looks like you’ve got some problem you’re trying to cover. So tell me what I’ve stepped into here.”

  He looked across the room at the bar. A woman was there, about fifty years old, probably the prettiest in the place. She’d gathered a bevy of men around her, and they all laughed at a story she was telling. “Do you recognize her?” Markaris said.

  “No.”

  “Allison Pence. She had her own TV show about fifteen years ago, Washington behind the Scenes. The joke around town was they should have called it Washington between the Sheets. It was a big hit, bringing down oversexed politicos. Then one day she went on the air and admitted she’d been hiring prostitutes to go after those guys, set them up for the hidden cameras. She said she’d found religion, apologized to everybody she’d hurt, and just walked away from it all.”

  “So?” I said.

  “Do you believe in the power of guilt?” He nodded and answered his own question. “Of course you do—you’re a psychologist.”

  He drained his beer. The server started over to see if he wanted another, and he waved her off.

  “I’ve never really felt like I worked for Braeder,” he said. “I work for Ned—Ned Bowles. He hired me, brought me along. If we live long enough, he’ll be the one to get rid of me. Lois McGuin is one of the same breed. She owes everything to Ned. After you went to see her last night, she called him, told him about the questions you were asking. Ned asked me to come and talk to you.”

  “The things I tried to find out from Lois weren’t going to hurt anyone.”

  “Oh, but they were. Ned always felt terrible about what happened to your mother. He fired her, flat out. She kept phoning him, begging for a second chance. She even showed up at his house one time. He called the police on her. It wasn’t long after . . .”

  He didn’t want to finish, so I did: “That she went crazy.”

  “Ned felt he should have handled things differently. You don’t get to be what he is without being strong, but he flat broke down when he found out what happened to your family. I’ve never seen him so cut up. Guilt—you see?”

  “Did she ever explain to him why she took those plans home?”

  “I don’t know,” Markaris said. “Ned’s never talked to me about that.”

  He looked across the room again at Allison Pence. All of the men had drifted away except one—the evening’s lottery winner. He was drinking hard, eager to get on with things, rubbing up against Washington’s lost glory.

  Markaris looked back at me. “How would you like to meet Ned, get your own answers from him?”

  “That’s what this was all about? You were checking me out to see if I was fit to meet the king?”

  “Your middle-class defensive streak is showing, Doctor. But yes, taking you to meet Ned was an option we discussed.”

  “OK, set it up.”

  “It already is. Ned is having a get-together Saturday at his place in Middleburg. Can you be there at eight o’clock?”

  He knew I’d say yes, and his smugness was really wearing thin. “I guess so. Middleburg you said? Should I dig out my polo outfit?”

  He laughed a little. “No—maybe next time.”

  He glanced at his watch and seemed surprised by how late it was. “Sorry, I have to go.” He took out a pad to write directions for me. “Ned’s place is kind of out of the way, but once you find Lelandsville Road, you can’t miss it.” He tore the sheet off and handed it to me, then leaned close to give me his crinkly, best-friends smile. “Be sure to bring your checkbook.”

  With that, he tossed a twenty on the table, winked at the server, and walked away.

  I followed him out and found him standing at the curb. As usual, there was a demonstration in progress in Lafayette Square, some half-naked man chained to a cross while others prayed around him. Markaris shook his head. “Why waste their time? Really—who pays attention anymore?”

  I wanted to get under his skin, if only a little, so I said, “Maybe they figure God does.”

  He gave me a look out of the corner of his eye. “Maybe so.”

  “There’s something I wanted to ask,” I said. “Do you know a man named Peter Sorensen?”

  I knew immediately I’d scored. He turned to me, his face completely serious. “Where did you get that name?”

  “I’ve heard it around. I understand he knows all there is to know about Braeder.”

  “He might think so.” A dark sedan had rounded the corner and was headed our way. Markaris edged into the street. “But I wouldn’t trust Pete Sorensen to give a straight answer if I asked him what day of the week it was.”

  “So I shouldn’t talk to him?”

  “You can do whatever you want, Doctor. But if you do see him, you’ll figure out pretty quickly that Pete’s got a real agenda, and it’s not a very rational one. That doesn’t make for the best conditions for getting to the truth.”

  “An agenda, really? That’s an oddity in Washington.”

  He chuckled softly. The dark sedan was there. “Saturday night at eight then?” he said.

  “Count on it.” I put my hand out, and he shook it quickly, dismissing me.

  I took my phone out and watched as the car glided away. He looked back once and gave me the same wink he’d given to the server in the bar.

  TWENTY-THREE

  I took out the paper with Peter Sorensen’s address and phone number. The way Markaris reacted when I mentioned Sorensen’s name had turned up my interest. It was late, but maybe somebody would be around to answer the phone at the Defense Contracting Institute.

&nbs
p; A man picked up after a few rings. “Yes . . . hello?” The voice was distracted, echoing through a speakerphone.

  “Is this is the Defense Contracting Institute?”

  “It is, yes.”

  “I’m trying to reach Peter Sorensen.”

  “Speaking.” I heard him mumble something harsh, maybe a curse. Then: “Sorry. I’m fixing my dinner. I should know enough to use an oven mitt.” He set something down with a clunk. “How can I help you?”

  I told him I wanted to talk to him about Braeder Design Systems. “Hmmm,” was all he said.

  “I’m trying to put together some information on Braeder from twenty-five years ago, when they got their first big contracts.”

  “Interesting period for them. How did you get my name?”

  “Charlene Russo. She’s—”

  “Russo?” he said, suddenly coming alive. “Eric’s wife?”

  “Right.”

  “There’s a blast from the past.”

  “Here’s another one—Howard Markaris. He told me I couldn’t trust anything you said.”

  Sorensen sniffed. “Markaris is an oily reptile. Who did you say you were?”

  “My name is Cal Henderson. I’m a psychologist here in the District.”

  “Why is Braeder important to you?”

  “It could help a patient of mine.”

  “A psychologist checking out Braeder. That’s certainly fitting.” He paused and I could hear silverware clinking. “All right, we can talk. Off the record, of course.”

  “Of course.” What record was I going to put it in anyway?

  “I should be done eating in half an hour. Drop by any time after that.”

  “At the Institute? How late will you be there?”

  He chuckled. “Like I said, anytime. Oh, and you’ll have to knock. The doorbell is broken.” He slurped something off his finger and hung up.

  I’d parked my car in a public lot a few blocks from the Hay Adams. On the way, I dialed Scottie’s number. As he’d warned me, I had to leave a message. He called back before I’d gone fifty feet. From the first word, I could tell he was angry.