by Matthew Iden
“Hello?”
“Mr. Zimmerman?” I asked.
“Yes. Who’s this?”
I hit the little red button to end the call and raised Dods’s camera. Zimmerman was framed nicely in the first two dozen pictures. He appeared to say hello a few more times, then scowled at his phone while clomping down Ordway the whole time. He might’ve said a naughty word before slipping the phone back in a pocket, but he’d reached the path to the apartment by then, so I didn’t have a chance to lip-read. With a quick pivot, he swung off the sidewalk and onto the path, trotted down the steps, and into the subterranean apartment.
I got out and put the camera in the trunk of my car, under the spare, hoping that was good enough security for the $1,200 camera. Chewing my lip, I walked to Zimmerman’s apartment as the sun dipped behind the trees. My midgame stance had turned to caution and discretion, and the smart thing to do would be to go home and email the pictures around to see if any of my contacts knew more about the Zim before I cornered him.
But something told me not to hold back, to complete the play. It wasn’t all hunch, there was some logic to it. Bracing a high-level executive at one of DC’s largest corporate real estate firms had gotten him killed and nearly shut down an entire avenue of investigation. But this was a solitary dude living in someone’s basement, printing his own business cards, and scaring up the odd real estate deal for development firms that forgot his name a minute after paying him his commission. If there was one target I’d found so far that was out on his own limb, Pat Zimmerman was it.
That much navel-gazing got me to the apartment steps. Light, muted by venetian blinds, glowed in slivers where the edge of the blinds didn’t quite meet the sill. Flickering lights of different colors told me the TV was on. Inside, a pot hit the floor with a bong. Pasta water for a cheap, midweek meal? I took a breath, went down the steps, and knocked on the door.
The lights of the TV died and I saw a shadow block some of the light spilling out the glass panes at the top of the door. The peephole darkened for a moment, then the door opened, revealing Zimmerman wearing a University of Maryland t-shirt flecked with pinhead-sized stains of tomato sauce.
“Yes?” he asked, frowning and suspicious. He was younger-looking in person than he had looked through the lens of the camera, a scruffy five-day beard—so blond and thin I hadn’t even seen it through the camera—notwithstanding.
“Hey,” I said. “Rheinsfeld sent me.”
“Who are you?”
“Ed Gibbon.”
“What happened to Harm?” he asked, surprised. “And Marty?”
I flinched, thinking he was talking about me, but a memory squirmed into my consciousness: Rheinsfeld calling for Harmon and Martinez at the press conference just as they were getting ready to jump me. Marty, Martinez. I shrugged like I could care less. “He put them on Denton and his crew of idiots. Decided they needed some stomping on. They caused a shit storm over at the Columbia Heights thing.”
“I heard it didn’t go so bad,” he said, doubtfully.
“We didn’t think so, either, but then one of the channels ran something like a full ten minutes of tape of those a-holes protesting,” I said, shrugging again. “Guess it was a slow news cycle. Anyway, fuck that. What’s going on down at the Quarters?”
“What do you mean?” he asked, but his face rippled with suppressed fear and anxiety.
“What do I mean? I just walked the plot and there is shit for progress. Just two old black guys getting bombed off whisky and Coke on the porch of that little store on Eighth.”
He made a face and blew out a huge breath. “That lady put everything six, seven months behind. I told Rheinsfeld that. She was as good as a spike, sitting in the middle of the development with that crappy little house. And she was starting to talk a bunch of the neighbors into passing on the displacement fee and vouchers.”
“Jackson, right?”
“Yeah.”
“But she’s dead. What’s the problem?”
Zimmerman threw his hands up. “How should I know? Gerson was supposed to pay the old lady a visit and unstick all that shit, but then she goes and takes a flying leap into a train. We can’t even figure out who owns the house now, for chrisssakes.”
“What do you mean?”
He scrubbed his face with his hands. “Turns out the old lady wasn’t on the deed, okay? It wasn’t hers to sell.”
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“I wish,” Zimmerman said, glum. “So even though she kicked, the deal’s frozen.”
“Gerson didn’t know who was on the paper?”
“If she did, she didn’t tell me.”
“Go online and find out,” I said. Yeah, right. “How hard could it be?”
“I did, but you should see the website,” he said, a note of desperation coloring his voice. “It’s like a brain-dead monkey put the thing together.”
“Okay,” I said. “So the spike was in the way, but the old lady is gone, which should be a good thing, but it looks like someone else owns the plot, which means…”
“…until I know who owns it, I can’t buy them off. And if I can’t buy them off, the development doesn’t happen,” he said, finishing my sentence. He put a hand to his head. “I can’t believe how this thing’s gone to shit. I found the deal—no, I made the deal—and brought it to Gerson. And now it’s gone belly-up in less than a year and a half.”
“We got any friends on the council who could grease this?” I asked, really fishing.
He shrugged. “Eminent domain? They don’t like the optics. Buying people’s houses and giving them vouchers is okay, but you get caught having the housing police drag someone out of their house kicking and screaming, you lose votes.”
“And now there are two bodies on this.”
“Yes,” he exploded. “And while I don’t mind cheating a bunch of losers out of their loser homes, I’m pretty fucking unhappy about being anywhere near a murder rap, let alone two.”
“Who is?” I asked, then waved a hand. “All right. Stay cool. I’ll talk to Rheinsfeld, tell him you’re doing what you can.”
“God,” he said, his shoulders slumping. “You’ll take care of him for me? That would be great.”
“It might take me a while to get to him,” I said, “but consider it done.”
I turned, climbed the steps, and walked down the street to my car.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“And what is it you wanted to see Representative Fincher about?”
I looked at the congressman’s first line of defense, a fortysomething aide with short, graying hair, manning the front desk like it was a pillbox on the sea cliffs of Normandy. She looked to me to have a permanent “No” ready upon her lips, but perhaps I was being unfair. The Longworth House Office Building was home to a lot of Congress-folk, and they were surely under a constant barrage of requests for favors, demands for action, and complaints from irate citizens. If I had her job, I wouldn’t even unlock the door. Aides and interns—did they still call them pages?—scuttled in and out of doors around us, barely pausing to raise their eyes from papers and smartphones as they passed through the outer office.
“It’s a personal matter,” I said, choosing my words carefully. If I said something like, Your son is going to get himself hurt, I’d find myself facedown on the floor with a Capital Police security detail sitting on my back. “I don’t mean to sound ridiculous, but it would probably be better if Mr. Fincher heard me out in person.”
The guardian shook her head. “Not possible, I’m afraid. I’m sure you understand we can’t just allow everyone who shows up unrestricted access to Representative Fincher.”
“How about I jot down a few words about the nature of my visit and then let the congressman decide?”
“I’m sorry. Representative Fincher is a very busy man. I’m sure you understand we can’t just stop the day’s business for him to read every note that comes across my desk
. But if you want to visit our website—”
“Ma’am, the information I have for the congressman will have a direct bearing on his reelection chances next year. And let’s just say Gordy Fincher isn’t the only one in this building who would be interested in hearing what I have to say. That’s not a threat. I’m just trying to let you know the gravity of the situation.”
Of course it was a threat and she knew it, but there are few elegant ways to respond to something like that. Luckily for her, one of the older aides who’d already passed through the office twice overheard my last few words I’d said and stopped in his tracks. He walked over to stand behind the desk.
“Hi, Mary,” he said, then looked at me directly. He was tall, about thirty, with the kind of self-assurance that swimming in political life gives people. “I’m Randy Towson, Representative Fincher’s communications director. Can I help you?”
“I think we can help each other. Is there a private place we can talk? I need five minutes.”
He gestured me to a set of chairs in the corner of the office, which seemed about as private as a cafeteria, but I got the sense that this was take-it-or-leave-it territory. I walked over and eased myself into a chair, he did the same, and we leaned forward conspiratorially. I had a weird, momentary feeling of being a Washington insider, talking about international trade deals or sending military aid to East African rebels.
“What can I do for you, Mr.…?”
“Singer,” I said.
“And why are you here today?”
“I’d like to speak to Gordon Fincher,” I said.
“I got that much from your conversation with Mary,” he said, smiling. “But why would Representative Fincher want to talk to you?”
“I think I can sum it up in a couple of words,” I said. “Danny Fincher. Karla Mongelli. Assault. Photos. Midterm elections. Is that enough to get started?”
Towson went very still, his eyes searching my face. I returned his look. He stood abruptly, saying, “Wait here,” and walked directly to the office door behind Mary. I leaned back and crossed my legs, ready to wait, but I didn’t need to. In under a minute, Towson leaned his head out of the door and waved me to come on back.
Gordon Fincher was a stocky man with a moon-pie face. Despite having just been briefed on a potentially career-ending issue, he wore a broad smile and a wide-eyed, just-us-folks expression. He didn’t go so far as to jump out of his chair and press the flesh, but I had the strange feeling that he’d ask for me to vote for him, once we’d gotten the little matter of my blackmail scheme out of the way.
Towson closed the door behind me and leaned against it. “Congressman, this is Mr. Singer.”
Fincher gestured to a seat, which I took. “Randy tells me you claim to have some pictures that you think concern me somehow.”
In reply, I leaned forward and put the manila folder I’d brought with me in front of him. Towson left his station by the door and came to look over Fincher’s shoulder. Inside were the stills of Danny Fincher’s late-night escapade behind FirstStep, blown up and enlarged, as well as a handful of the best digital pictures I’d taken that emphasized the similarities of Danny’s appearance to the figure on the security tape. Fincher turned each over, one at a time, like the leaves of a book. He raised his eyebrows at the first few—the grainy black-and-whites meant nothing to him—then went very still when he obviously recognized the more specific shot of Danny. He shuffled through the shots twice, then closed the folder, and glanced up at me. The smile and guileless face were gone.
“You’ve got thirty seconds to tell me what this is about before you have an FBI team on your ass,” he said.
I nodded. I’d expected something like that. “About a week ago, your son’s girlfriend, Karla Mongelli, fled to a women’s shelter here in DC called FirstStep, trying to get away from the beatings he was giving her—”
“Alleged,” Towson interrupted.
I turned to look at him. “Towson, pretty this up on your own time. We all know what Danny Fincher is and what he does. If you want to hear what I have to say, and not walk down the hall and hand these photos over to the chairman of the DNC, let’s not put lipstick on this pig.”
Towson’s face tightened around the eyes, but he said nothing.
I looked back at Gordon Fincher. “Danny didn’t like the direction things were going so he tried to, I don’t know, spring Karla out of prison or something, even though she’d gone there to get away from him. In the process, he injured a social worker, frightened the staff at the shelter, and put their mission in jeopardy. Not quite finished, however, he came back a few nights later and left a gift on the back stoop. Luckily for everyone involved it wasn’t dangerous, but, as a precaution, a bomb squad was called in. That was two nights ago.”
Both men were quiet.
“The social worker who was injured is my adopted daughter. I believe in her and I believe in what she does. Getting attacked while trying to protect other women shouldn’t be—and, going forward, won’t be—part of her job description. Violence also shouldn’t be something that the shelter has to guard against. I’m helping make sure that things like this don’t happen again.”
“How much?” Fincher asked.
“What?”
“How much money do you want?” Fincher asked.
“I don’t want money,” I said. “Allow me to repeat that for the recording you’re making. I don’t want any money. I want you to make it clear to your son that this is going to stop. Karla needs to be able to live without fear of retaliation—from him and from you—and so does FirstStep.”
“And, we can guess what you’ll do if we don’t,” Towson said. “But why don’t you tell us yourself?”
“You are a conservative Republican espousing a creed of family values and old time morals. Next year, you’ll be facing a midterm election against a liberal feminist who has women’s issues as her primary focus. What I’ve got in my hands is not only repugnant to your constituents, it’s raw red meat for your opponent. If I don’t get a promise from you that this stops now, and I mean today, then she will get all the information I’ve got on your son with plenty of time to use it in the run-up to the election.”
Fincher smiled and gestured to the folder. “A few fuzzy pictures? Her word against his? In a state like Kentucky? Mr. Singer, I think you’re overestimating your position.”
“Congressman, I put in thirty years with the DC Homicide squad before I retired,” I said. “I’ve got experience, motivation, and a whole lot of time on my hands. Exposing your son could be the only thing I eat, sleep, and breathe for the next twelve months. And, frankly, I doubt Karla is the first woman Danny’s smacked around or that this is the first time you’ve heard of it. Should we take odds on whether there’s a family or three back in your home district that got a check in return for keeping their mouths shut?”
They both looked at me, the smiles frozen on their faces while the wheels turned. I watched them for a moment, then decided they’d gotten enough stick. Now the carrot.
“But why even go there when the alternative is so simple?” I asked. “Both of our problems could be solved before I leave. Talk to your son. Send him home if you have to. But tell him to stop. Leave Karla alone. Leave FirstStep alone. While you’re at it, you might want to suggest that beating women for the hell of it isn’t an option, either.”
The three of us were quiet. I’d talked enough. I was happy to give them all the time they needed, but I wasn’t leaving until I heard something that sounded like “okay.”
Gordon Fincher looked up at Towson. “Randy?”
“This is thin,” Towson said slowly. “We could agree to your terms and you could turn around and wire this to every newspaper and blogger in the country anyway. What’s our guarantee you won’t do that?”
“Like anything else in politics, gentlemen,” I said, smiling and spreading my arms wide. “Trust.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
&nb
sp; “He looks familiar,” Faraday said, glancing up from the photo. “What’s his name again?”
“Pat Zimmerman,” I said. We stood in the middle of the campaign-manager-turned-lobbyist’s new office on—where else?—K Street, trying to stay out of the way as a small army of workers put the finishing touches on the place. Two painters, working with meticulous care, applied the main room’s crown molding while a third worker fiddled with the wiring for an overhead dome light. The smell of new paint and expectation was thick in the air.
“He was the broker for the Quarters?”
“Yeah. He’s a little clueless about the business, but a lot nervous that the development on the Quarters is going nowhere. Oh, and the fact that two people connected to this thing were killed.”
“You blame him?”
“No, but the point is that he obviously didn’t know why they’d been killed or who had done it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Gerson and Montero were higher on the food chain than Zimmerman is. And if someone was knocking off my betters, personally I’d be worried that it was their boss doing the killing.”
“You’re saying Wendy and Montero made some colossal mistake and Rheinsfeld took them out? To cover something up?”
“Or punishment of some kind. For stepping out of line or something.”
“That’s assuming Rheinsfeld isn’t just dirty, he’s actually criminal,” he said, doubtfully. “And that he’s willing to kill people over a land deal that’s just one of a dozen Atlantic Union is involved with. He’s a lousy excuse for a human being, but he’s no Mafia don.”
I sighed. “I know. And just because Zimmerman is clueless about who killed Gerson and Montero doesn’t mean he should know.”
He flicked the picture with a finger. “I’ll show this around, make some calls to see if the name Zimmerman rings any bells with anyone. But it might be a while. I’ve got my hands full with getting the new practice on its feet.”