Jim McGill 05 The Devil on the Doorstep

by Joseph Flynn

  The doorman gave him an assessing look.

  “Forgive me if I’m out of line, sir,” the man said, “but would you care for a smoke?”

  He took a pack of Marlboros out of his coat. Odo looked at it. A cowboy’s favorite cigarette, he thought. He’d never had one and —

  Odo smiled and shook his head. “Merci, non.”

  Marie would never have known, but he had too much to live for to go back to smoking.

  He contented himself to breathe the clean, cold air.

  Pennsylvania Avenue — Washington, DC

  Having lost his primary objective, Rutger Bierman cast about in his mind for a new one, a target of opportunity that would be a stunning achievement. He would be the man who blew up — what? What did he know about Washington? Very little. This was his first, and last, trip to the United States.

  He’d entered the country through Mexico, legally. The crush of people, Americans and Mexicans, entering El Paso from Ciudad Juárez, was like nothing he’d ever seen. People of all ages, sizes, shapes and colors. He was spellbound by the diversity. No one thought to comment on the sallowness of his complexion. What mattered was that his papers were in order.

  As if a good German would have it any other way.

  He smiled through his pain, used his few words of English to get past the border and found his way to the bus station. Took what seemed like an endless motor trip across a country so vast he could not begin to comprehend it. He felt more dead than alive when he arrived in Washington. At the bus terminal, before he was picked up, he found a tourist brochure for the city. On the cover was —

  His new target. The White House. The palace where the American president lived. Stopping for a red light, he pulled the brochure out of a pocket. The address was right there under the picture of the building: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

  Rutger fed the information into the truck’s GPS system. A map appeared on the screen, showing a red line between his present position and his destination. Rutger smiled, until car horns began sounding behind him. He looked up and saw the light was green.

  For just a moment, he felt an impulse to detonate his bomb right there.

  Take all the impatient swine behind the truck to hell with him.

  Only he was certain his stepfather would think of that as a misuse of resources. Destroying the White House, on the other hand, that would have to earn Mama an even greater reward. And, who knew, maybe there would be wine and women waiting for him in the next life.

  Beer and women, if he was really lucky.

  Rutger stepped on the gas just in time to be the only vehicle through the intersection.

  Karma wasn’t instantaneous, but he was paid back soon enough. Despite what his GPS map showed him, Pennsylvania Avenue was blocked off to automotive traffic. Scheisse. Shit. He could see the damn building he wanted to destroy. He could also see the policemen with automatic weapons. If he tried to run the barricade, he would be killed immediately.

  Having seen the grand building, though, he was determined to get at it.

  He would look for another point of access.

  Four Seasons Hotel — Washington, DC

  Leo was running late, and Odo felt an increasing temptation to change his mind and take the doorman up on his offer of a Marlboro. The cowboy cigarette, could it possibly be any better than, say, a Gauloises or a Black Cat? There was only one way to know for sure.

  The thought brought him up short. The devil on the doorstep. True, one cigarette would not kill him, but if he found that he liked Marlboros and took to smoking them regularly, that might kill him. Leave Marie a widow and his children fatherless. That would be unforgivable.

  Even if he had only the one cigarette, he would have to brush his teeth, gargle, shower, shampoo, have his clothes dry cleaned. Do everything possible to leave no trace of his lapse for his wife to find. The price, in inconvenience if nothing else, was too high.

  And yet … Odo’s eyes were about to track back to the doorman’s pocket.

  When he saw Leo’s car turn into the driveway to the hotel.

  It was followed not long afterward by a boxy truck.

  Above the truck’s cab were the words: Special Moments Party Planners.

  Rutger Bierman sagged behind the wheel of his truck, feeling as if he’d been driving the damn thing his entire life. Would be damned to do so for eternity. He driven up and down more Washington Streets than he could recall. Now, at least, he was back on Pennsylvania Avenue, but he didn’t know whether he was driving toward the White House or away from it.

  Did that even matter, he asked himself? Having had some time to think about the situation, he’d decided the Americans wouldn’t be so foolish as to block off access to the White House from one direction only to allow it from another. That would be stupid.

  So, not only had his primary target been taken from him, the one he’d conceived of for himself was beyond reach. He not only felt like a failure, he was also becoming increasingly sure that this would be his last day alive. His whole body burned, ached and throbbed. Through all the pain, he recognized his very will to go on was being consumed.

  If this was life, give him death and quickly.

  But not so fast he didn’t get to trigger his bomb, leave some lasting impression that he’d once been alive, had mattered to someone for something. He saw a sign ahead, Four Seasons Hotel. Was that a place where the rich stayed? He didn’t know. But he saw a shiny black car just ahead of him pull into the driveway.

  It looked like the kind of vehicle in which a member of the bourgeoisie might ride.

  So maybe the hotel was the kind of place where …

  His father, the man he’d never met, might like to cause some trouble.

  Rutger followed the black car into the driveway.

  Odo saw immediately that something was wrong. Leo had navigated the driveway smoothly. That was as it should have been. Odo had been up and down that stretch of pavement both in a car and on foot. It was perfectly smooth. Just what one would expect of a roadway leading to such a fine lodging place.

  The driver of the truck, though, made abrupt pulls on his steering wheel as if slaloming left and right to avoid craters in the pavement. He was impaired in either his vision or his mind. Or he had something else distracting him.

  Leo stopped McGill’s Chevy in front of Odo, got out of the car and said, “Hey, Odo, sorry about —”

  Odo hurried around the front of the Chevy and handed the guitar case to Leo, saying, “S’il vous plait.”

  He brought the Beretta out of his pocket, clicked off the safety and using both hands pointed the weapon at the driver of the oncoming truck. He remembered what he’d told Yves about the Vietnamese using simple means to prosecute their war. How drones weren’t necessary to make your point. Long before they had come into global vogue, vehicles filled with explosives had been used in Vietnam.

  Odo’s uncle had been in the French army that had been chased out of that country.

  He’d told his nephew his war stories, none of them happy.

  Odo stepped forward, placing himself between the truck and the hotel. He was not sure whether the face of the driver would be Asian, Arab or … German! Odo recognized those Teutonic features the moment he saw them.

  Grandpère Sacripant had been in the Resistance during the Second Great War. France and Germany might be allies for the moment. Others might have forgiven the Germans. Odo’s family had not.

  He held up his left hand and yelled, “Halt!”

  The driver, who’d seemed to be looking for something on the seat beside him, lifted his eyes, and now he held something in his right hand. Odo couldn’t see what it was. He saw perfectly, however, the twisted, malice-filled smile on the German’s face.

  He shot him four times before diving out of the truck’s path.

  Annecy — France

  René Simonet threw open the door to the gallery he owned and entered the premises at a run. He came to a quick stop ten feet from Yves Pruet,
who sat upon a wooden chair facing him. For a man in late middle age, Simonet managed to center his balance deftly, ready now to move to his right or left or spin and run. The problem with any of those maneuver was that the man facing him calmly held a handgun on his lap.

  The fellow would have to be a truly miserable marksman to miss him no matter which way he moved. Especially should he charge straight ahead. Simonet stayed put and raised his open palms to his sides, as if to say, “What now?”

  “Do you know who I am?” Pruet asked.

  Simonet sighed and said, “Someone who knows who I am.”

  The magistrate nodded, and inclined his head to another chair.

  One Simonet had not placed in his gallery.

  “Pull the chair over and sit in front of me.

  Simonet complied and said, “You wish to interview me?”

  “I am a juge d’instruction.” An investigating magistrate.

  “Pruet.”

  “Oui.”

  Simonet knew that ninety-five percent of the cases a magistrate referred to a court ended in the conviction of the defendant. He had no wish to live out his remaining years in a cell. The guillotine would be preferable, were it still available.

  “If I tried to attack you, would you shoot me?”

  “Yes, but not fatally.”

  “You are that good?”

  “My bodyguard makes me practice far more often than I would like.”

  Simonet heard the ring of truth in that complaint.

  The only thing worse than going to prison would be doing so as a cripple.

  “What do you want to know?” Simonet asked.

  “Why did you kill Charles Louvel?”

  “Don’t you mean, ‘Did I kill Charles Louvel?’”

  Pruet said, “If you lie to me again, even by implication, I will shoot you for my own pleasure. Perhaps in les couilles.” The balls.

  Simonet squirmed in his seat. Could this quiet fellow really be that good? Did he dare take the chance that Pruet was bluffing?

  The thief said, “He was standing between me and freedom.”

  “Freedom to steal my family’s painting.”

  “If you wish to be technical. My argument is Renoir belongs to the world.”

  “Charles Louvel belonged to his family and mine.”

  A look of consternation crossed Simonet’s face as an unhappy memory came rushing back. “He was a stubborn old man, and he would not get out of my way. If I had run to another door, he would have cried out and brought the whole household down on me.”

  “So you thought you had a right to make off with someone else’s painting?”

  “As I’ve said, Renoir and all the other cultural treasures of France belong to the people.”

  “I see, and how large a part of our population have you invited to the top two floors of this building to view their common cultural heritage?”

  Simonet started to rise. Pruet waved him back into his seat with his gun.

  “Do not concern yourself about the paintings. There was no fire. No smoke damage.”

  The thief’s face drooped and he said, “I have been betrayed?”

  “By the people you deceived, yes.”

  “I paid them better than any —”

  “You paid them with the proceeds of your crimes, no doubt. They feel terrible about that, too. Now, back to the matter at hand, Charles Louvel. He would not allow you to run out the back door of my father’s house. Where his body was found.”

  Simonet drew himself up into a self-righteous posture. “Yes.”

  “I advise you to be careful with your attitude of indignation, m’sieur. My temper is quite short.”

  “You would enjoy shooting me, wouldn’t you?” the thief asked.

  Pruet said, “I have another punishment in mind, something that will please me even more.”

  Simonet didn’t understand what that meant, which scared him all the more.

  Pruet said, “Back to Charles Louvel. He told you he wouldn’t let you leave. You didn’t want to put the Renoir down and wrestle with him, so what did you do?”

  The thief’s face and voice turned hard. “I deceived the old fool. I said I would take one last look at the painting, give it to him, and he would stand aside to let me leave.”

  “And how was your deception carried out?”

  “The painting had been hung in a shamefully careless manner, hanging from two hooks by a thin braided wire. I pulled one end of the wire free from the frame. It required almost no effort. I saved that Renoir from a possibly calamitous fall.”

  Unmoved, Pruet asked, “What did you with the wire?”

  “As I pretended to hand the painting to the old man, I looped it around his neck and garroted him. He died in Renoir’s embrace. That was better than he deserved. He was unable to make a sound and raise an alarm.”

  Pruet said, “Very well. You are free to go.”

  Simonet blinked. Didn’t believe Pruet for a second.

  “You are joking.”

  “If you can get through the door by which you entered, you are free.”

  The magistrate raised his gun, waved it to prompt the man to go.

  For just a flickering moment, Simonet had hope. If the magistrate had gone mad, who was he to argue with his good fortune? He jumped to his feet, spun and —

  Saw a dozen members of the Louvel family waiting for him. The doorway was clogged. The sidewalk outside the gallery window was filled with a storm cloud of angry faces. To try to push his way through that mob, Simonet knew, was to invite being torn to pieces.

  When he turned back to Pruet, he saw the magistrate was standing at the head of another furious crowd. There was no escape for him in that direction either. No way out at all.

  Pruet said, “I have told all these good people to try not to kill you. I really do have something worse in store for you, should you live. Nonetheless, everyone here would like to have a word with you, and I could not deny them that courtesy.

  Pruet stepped aside.

  Watched as the thief’s past closed in on him.

  Dumbarton Oaks — Washington, DC

  In a house not far from Galia Mindel’s home, though three times its size, agents of the FBI’s art crime team, operating under the specifications of a federal search warrant and observed by Deputy Director Byron DeWitt, swarmed through the house of billionaire Hiram Busby. Within minutes, they found a concealed entrance to a windowless new wing of the structure.

  Natural light did flow into the half-dozen rooms through skylights fitted with linear polarizing filters on the glass, as Pruet had suspected. Aerial snoops would not be able to eavesdrop on what lay beneath the high-tech screen. On the walls of the six rooms were the authentic versions of the paintings on display at Inspiration Hall: the works Busby had supposedly donated and masterpieces looted from the Drucker and Ransom collections. Nothing like stealing from your rich pals, DeWitt thought.

  The head butler of the house, one Corwin Alcott, told the FBI that Mr. Busby was not in residence. He provided a list of the man’s other homes in the U.S. and abroad, but warned he might not be in any of them as he also had two yachts, two long-range business jets and often spent time in top hotels around the world.

  Alcott, after some stern prompting, also provided the feds with all the phone numbers and e-mail addresses he had for his employer.

  Asked if he knew what was hanging on the walls in the new wing of the house, Alcott said, “No, sir. None of the staff here has been allowed into that area.”

  All the servants on the property had their fingerprints scanned just to be sure.

  DeWitt waited for the art crime people to finish their inquiries before he asked his only question, “Who handles the insurance on Mr. Busby’s art collection?”

  The Oval Office

  The president and McGill watched the news broadcast on NBC. Brian Williams was anchoring the coverage. A banner on the screen read: Sen. Howard Hurlbert Murdered.

  Williams provided
such news as was available. “Senator Howard Hurlbert of Mississippi, the founder of the True South Party, who may well have been the president-elect if not for a change of heart by the last member of the electoral college to cast her vote, was found dead this morning in his McLean, Virginia home by his housekeeper, Cesara Muñoz. Ms. Muñoz told police she cleaned the Senator’s Virginia home every Sunday morning. Today, when she showed up for work she found the senator dead, apparently from three gunshot wounds to his chest. She called the police, and in the hope of catching the killer, the McLean Police Department and the Virginia State Police have decided to share the details of the crime with the public.

  “Reached at her Mississippi home for comment, a tearful Bettina Hurlbert, the widow of the late senator, characterized the killing as an assassination, and said she didn’t want the federal government to play any role in the investigation of the homicide.”

  The network went to a commercial break.

  McGill asked, “Seen enough?”

  The president nodded. McGill turned the TV off.

  A perfunctory knock sounded at the door and Galia stepped into the Oval Office.

  “You saw?” the president asked Galia.

  The chief of staff nodded. “It’s only a matter of time before that woman accuses you of being behind her husband’s murder, Madam President.”

  “The thought did occur to me.”

  McGill nodded and added, “Good thing the First Michigan Militia was disarmed before this news got out.”

  “We’ll have to watch for more paramilitary activity.”

  “You’re right about that,” McGill told Galia.

  “Before anything else happens,” the president said, “I have to make a televised announcement condemning the killing and, Bettina Hurlbert be damned, assigning the FBI to head the investigation. Killing a member of Congress is a federal crime.”

  McGill thought, teach me to hope things were looking up.

  The FBI would have to find the killer fast or … no, it wouldn’t be a good idea for him to get involved, McGill realized. That would be made to look like a coverup, no question. He might even be accused of being the killer. Unless Hurlbert was shot while he was on the Mall. Might turn out that his alibi would be provided by Harlan Fisk.