The Window Washer

by Eric Rill

  26

  Millie Landry fluffed up her dyed-blonde hair and tugged her skirt down over her ample hips as she approached the double doors to the boardroom. She was a fifty-something woman who had been a homemaker until her daughter entered kindergarten. That’s when she had divorced her husband, whose idea of work was downing a six-pack before a liquid lunch. Then, at the age of thirty-one, she had returned to Ohio State to finish her last two years of law school. After that, there was a fifteen-year fast-track career at a big downtown law firm, where she specialized in white-collar crime. Her mentor at the firm was politically connected and got her a job as chief counsel with the attorney general. Working for him for three years had been cruel and unusual punishment—even for someone as cunning as Landry. He was a womanizer, a braggart, and a loudmouth. So she’d had lunch with her mentor one afternoon to explore the idea of returning to run his firm’s white-collar-crime division. She left without a job offer but with his backing to run against her boss in the next election.

  The months running up to the election had been sheer hell. The attorney general had made sure of that. Landry had put every ounce of energy into the campaign but was still trailing by more than ten points until a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch saw the AG leaving a nightclub at two in the morning with one of the waitresses. The reporter followed them and confronted him with a hastily called photographer when the attorney general left the waitress’s apartment over in German Village three hours later. The front-page photo of the attorney general with his hair disheveled, his tie slung loosely over a creased white shirt, and a sheepish grin, turned it all around. The voters of Franklin County don’t like liars or adulterers and would never vote for the likes of Congressman James Traficant like they had for years up in Youngstown. Millie Landry ended up winning in a landslide.

  She slid open the heavy doors and nodded at the group that had been hastily convened by her staff: the head of the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation (BCI); the head of the Ohio Organized Crime Investigations Commission (OOCIC); the head of the State Computer Crime Force; and Clancy Howell, a lawyer in charge of undercover operations for the attorney general’s office. All of them had brought their own minions, ostensibly to take important notes but, equally as important, also to demonstrate to Miss Millie, as they called her behind her back, how dedicated they were.

  Landry took her place at the head of the oblong mahogany table, taking a quick peek at the rush-hour congestion on Broad Street, seventeen floors below. “Clancy, I’ve got a dinner meeting at eight o’clock down at Martinis, so let’s cut to the chase.”

  Everyone in the room was used to Miss Millie’s no-nonsense attitude. “Let me bring you up to date,” Howell said, forming a pyramid with his hands. “As you all probably know, we have infiltrated the Pascale family’s operation here in Columbus. Our operative was successful in gaining their confidence and has been working undercover for several months.…”

  “We know all that, Clancy,” the AG said, her finger turning white as it pressed down on her fountain pen. “Get on with it.”

  “Yes, Millie.…”

  No one except Howell, who had been in law school with her, could bring themselves to call Millie Landry by her first name.

  “The details of Tommy Castellano’s murder are in the report that I handed out before the meeting,” he said, holding up a five-inch-thick document. “What wasn’t in my report, because it happened afterward, is that she—I mean the operative is a she—was arrested for Castellano’s murder.” Howell glanced over at Millie Landry. He knew he couldn’t reveal Angela’s identity and shouldn’t have even mentioned that she was a she. There would be hell to pay for that later.

  “The police found a debit card belonging to her and money in her account,” Howell said, surveying the room to see what kind of response there would be.

  “Did she turn?” the AG asked in a blunt tone.

  “We don’t know for sure, Millie,” Howell replied. “But it certainly seems that way.”

  “Did she kill this guy?” the AG asked, pressing him.

  “We couldn’t come up with a motive—unless it was self-defense,” Howell responded. “I mean, she was there to keep tabs on him.”

  “What if she had been contaminated and thought he wasn’t giving her what she was due?” Landry asked, tossing a Nicorette into her mouth.

  “Sure, that could have happened, but it’s likely that it didn’t. It would be pure conjecture.”

  The attorney general jumped out of her chair. “Conjecture? That’s not what you said when the county prosecutor’s office called you up when the local homicide dicks were looking for an arrest warrant. Are you telling me you let them nail her and you doubted she was guilty?”

  “We needed to play it like she wasn’t a cop. We figured we had time to straighten everything out, and this way we wouldn’t be tipping our hand to Pascale—and we could keep the operation going.”

  “And?” Landry asked, the rest of her face matching the crimson blush caked on her puffy cheeks.

  Howell avoided the AG’s stare. “The whole thing fell apart. Pascale’s guys stopped laundering down here. They went back to the old way, doing everything out of Cleveland.”

  “And the girl?” Landry asked.

  “We think she’s still in the Bottoms.”

  Landry made her way halfway around the table, until she was leaning over Howell. “What do you mean, you ‘think’?” she blurted out, her saliva spraying his craggy face.

  “Millie, what I meant was, the last we knew, she was shacked up with Lawrence Grant’s kid. No reason to think that would have changed.”

  “Is the kid involved?”

  Howell shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. He might have been in on it, or might have even done it.”

  Landry arched an eyebrow. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that one of our guys spoke to the two homicide dicks handling the case,” Howell replied. “One is sure it’s Angela; the other doesn’t think it’s either one, but concedes neither has an airtight alibi and—”

  Millie Landry stuffed the manila folder in her briefcase and stood up, indicating that the meeting was over. “Thank you all for coming,” she said. “Clancy, would you stay behind for a moment.” Everyone mumbled some sort of thank you to the AG as they left the boardroom.

  Landry dropped into the chair next to Howell. “Clancy, we can’t afford any missteps on this. The election is coming up and so far I’m slightly ahead, but within the statistical range where we can get beat. If we nail those assholes from Cleveland, the public will eat that up.” Her eyes drilled into him. “Look,” she said, lowering her voice, “I want another term before I retire, and you want my job four years from now. Let’s not blow it.”

  “I’m on it, Millie.”

  Landry leaned in close and lowered her voice, even though no one was within earshot. “Make sure that girl doesn’t screw everything up,” she said. “Do whatever you have to do.”

  27

  Maggie Parks tapped her pen on her knee as she listened to Special Agent Bob Albertson, who was in charge of the Cincinnati Field Office, one of fifty-six in the United States, describe his eagle putt on the sixteenth hole at Catalina Country Club two years before. The assembled agents in charge of their respective resident offices in Dayton, Columbus, Cambridge, and Middletown listened intently, as if they hadn’t heard it before. Albertson had his feet propped up on the conference table, exposing hairless, pasty-white legs above his short gray socks, as he described the twenty-three-footer like it was the first time he had ever told the story. When he finished, and a few brownnosers asked a perfunctory question or two, or feigned amazement, he leaned farther back in his chair, patted his ample belly, and allowed a smug grin to cover his pallid face. Behind his back, Albertson was known as “Casper the unfriendly ghost.”

  “Gentlemen, the purpose of this meeting isn’t to hear about my golf game,” he admonished with a smirk, “but rather to get togeth
er to go over our outstanding cases. So, let’s get started.”

  One by one, they went through the status of their resident offices. The FBI maintained four hundred such offices in smaller communities. Maggie hated the fact that they called Columbus a “resident office.” Columbus was one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States, with a population of well over a million when you counted the suburbs. And other than being home to the Reds and the Bengals, Cincinnati was, in her opinion, an antiquated behemoth, just like Albertson.

  The meeting lasted just under an hour. Then Albertson and his assistant met one-on-one with the agents to go over “sensitive cases.” Maggie was subbing for Leo Rigby, who was on vacation. She was first up.

  “Where are we on Operation Deep Sleep?” Albertson asked after the others had left.

  Maggie drew her hands over her face and then looked over at Albertson. “You told Leo to wrap it up,” she reminded him, her jaw tight.

  “Yeah. Right. Too much money doled out and no results,” Albertson replied.

  “These guys aren’t a bunch of Mickey Mouse scumbags,” Maggie said. “Pascale runs a sophisticated operation. It takes time and money to infiltrate them. And you didn’t give us enough of either!” Rigby had told Maggie that putting the kibosh on the operation was his idea. She hadn’t bought it then and now she knew she had been right.

  “When Castellano got whacked, there wasn’t much left to pick through,” Albertson explained. “And we figured we got all we were going to get from the tapes.” All wiretaps were sent directly to the Cincinnati office. Rigby and Maggie got back summaries of most of them, but never the actual transcripts. Most field offices didn’t work that way, but Albertson did. And so far, no one had complained to Washington. Albertson glanced over at his assistant. “Would you excuse us for a few minutes? I’ll come get you when I’m ready.”

  As the young agent gathered his briefing papers and left the room, Maggie wondered what on earth was coming that Albertson didn’t want to say in front him.

  “Remember the taps we put on Castellano’s apartment?” Albertson said as his assistant closed the door behind him. “Well, there was one thing I never told you, or Leo,” Albertson said, sliding his chair back so he could stick his feet up on the table again. “Castellano had made an alliance with Bernie Levin.”

  “An alliance?” Maggie parroted.

  “Castellano figured Lawrence Grant was expendable and was about to crack from the pressure, so he ordered Levin to get rid of him.” Albertson stretched out his arms and clasped them behind his head. “And he wasn’t wrong. My feeling was that Grant was becoming a liability for us as well.”

  “I don’t get it. Why would Castellano do that, and more importantly, why would Levin agree? He and Grant were partners for umpteen years.”

  Albertson dropped his feet to the floor again and leaned across the table. “Because Levin was a greedy son of a bitch,” he said, opening his mouth wide to emphasize his point. “Same reason he was laundering money.”

  “Yeah, but he was making tons as it was,” Maggie protested.

  “Don’t you get it? They don’t do it to put bread on the table. They do it for power and control. Why do you think all these hot-shit CEOs work until they can barely stand up without a cane? Christ! They have more than they’ll ever be able to spend and they can’t drag their money to the cemetery in a U-Haul. But if they quit, they would be just another rich guy with no one to boss around—no thrills to wake up to.”

  Maggie thought that was an apt description of Albertson—sticking it out until his fifty-seventh birthday, the mandatory age for retirement—a career FBI man who thrived on the power he had and the control he exerted. And cared less about justice than most of the criminals she had come in contact with. “So, what happened?”

  “This is really need-to-know,” Albertson said, watching how Maggie processed his hackneyed line.

  Maggie rolled her eyes. “Give me a break. What happened?”

  “We had a tape— ”

  “Had?” Maggie asked.

  “Sometimes it’s better when there’s a technical glitch and things get erased. Know what I mean?” he said, a weak smile on his face.

  “No. I don’t,” Maggie stated firmly, wondering if Albertson was recording this conversation.

  “Castellano wanted Levin to take Lawrence Grant out,” Albertson repeated. “But things didn’t work out. Seems Levin was going to wait for Grant to get home one Saturday after he got back from the office. Supposedly that Saturday was when the rest of the Grants were going to go to the neighborhood baseball field to watch the kid play. Levin was going to spread some liquid on the floor and make a trail to the back door, where he would drop a match when Grant got to the house.”

  “How do you know that?” Maggie asked.

  “We got it on tape,” Albertson said. “I guess young Grant’s wife and kid were getting ready to go to the park, and while Levin was in the basement doing whatever he was doing, the wife came down for a smoke—the police report said Grant told the fire inspector the cigarette pack they found was her brand. She must have dropped a match and—poof—they all blew up.”

  “You son of a bitch!” Maggie screamed, loudly enough for the others in the waiting room to hear. “And you didn’t tell anyone?”

  Albertson’s face turned crimson. He put his index finger to his lips, signaling Maggie to lower her voice. “Who should I have told, and what good would it have done?” he said in a controlled but furious tone.

  “Leo and me, for one,” she exploded. “And Washington for another.”

  “You just don’t get it, do you?” Albertson glared at her. “If Washington found out we knew about it—”

  Maggie’s eyes practically popped out of their sockets. “You mean this wasn’t a tape you heard after the fact?”

  “We—and that includes you—” he continued, “would have been toast.”

  Maggie drilled her eyes into Albertson. “Not we—you,” she asserted.

  “It doesn’t work that way. And you know it, Maggie. It’s called guilt by association. It would have been you, me, and Leo—all down the drain.” He stopped for a minute and then continued in a steady voice. “And I for one plan to get my pension.”

  Maggie’s mouth dropped open. Albertson had basically just told her he could have prevented an attempted murder. True, Lawrence Grant was a money launderer, but that doesn’t carry a death sentence in Ohio—at least it shouldn’t. And then she thought about Nick Grant’s wife and kid. “Jesus, you’re one fucking asshole,” she hissed, grabbing her briefcase.

  “Where are you going?” Albertson protested, his eyes widening.

  “I’m out of here,” Maggie said, slamming the door behind her.

  *

  Maggie raced toward the elevator and down to the parking garage. The Columbus office had confiscated a 2013 Mercedes E320 from a drug dealer just before Rigby went on vacation. She had cajoled him into letting her drive it for a couple of weeks—a standard but not widely publicized perk for agents. Unlike the homicide cops up on Marconi who had to check their cars in and out after each shift, FBI agents were allowed to take whatever cars were in the pool home with them. Most of the time they were crappy sedans, but sometimes they lucked out, like with this Merc, and Maggie had been enjoying every minute of it. She dropped her laptop and her briefcase on the passenger seat, slammed the tank-like door, and reached inside her black suit jacket for her pack of Camels. A few deep draws later, she swore she wasn’t going to let that asshole Albertson get away with what he had done—but just how she was going to handle it, she had no idea.

  She backed out of her spot and followed the winding ramp down to the ticket booth. She had to wait almost five minutes and two light changes until she was able to break into the evening rush-hour traffic that snaked in front of the Peck Federal Building.

  Interstate 75-North was a parking lot. Enough was enough—she would spend the night in Cincinnati and make it back to Columbus
in time for her breakfast meeting with Lawrence Grant. He was getting itchy after Castellano’s murder and needed some hand-holding if she was going to continue using him in her Pascale investigation. She yanked the wheel to the right and hugged the inside lane until the Sharon Road exit. There was a Red Roof down on the right, but she never felt secure in those motels with outside corridors and easy room access. She took a left and then swung onto Chester Road, finally stopping under the porte cochere of a high-rise hotel. The rate would be stiffer, but with her government discount it would be less, and besides, she was planning on sticking Rigby with the bill anyway. He couldn’t expect her to sit through a day with Albertson and then a few hours of traffic getting back to Columbus. She could already feel the cold chill of vodka sliding down her throat. She would hand that bill in for reimbursement too.

  Maggie flashed her credentials at the young girl behind the desk and asked for the government rate. The girl told her the rack rate was $219, but that her rate was $135, and she was going to get upgraded to a suite. Maggie was used to some preferential treatment as an agent, but she chalked that up to nobody’s wanting to mess with the FBI. She wondered what kind of suite she would have gotten if the owner had been behind the desk and she had been with the IRS.

  She took the elevator up to the third floor. The suite consisted of two rooms—a large living room with a TV and wet bar and a bedroom big enough for a king-size bed, two chairs, and a game table. She placed her laptop in the top drawer of her night table, tucked her briefcase under her arm, put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door, and headed down to the lounge.

  Maggie climbed onto a bar stool between two businessmen and ordered an Absolut on the rocks. The man beside her started to make small talk. When he found out she was an FBI agent, he launched into a tirade about how his brother-in-law had been rousted unfairly by her fellow agents down in Covington, Kentucky, in some white-collar-crime investigation. Maggie’s mind replayed her meeting with Albertson as she nodded perfunctorily in response to the man’s ranting. She held up her empty glass and the bartender promptly brought her another one, which she downed in one gulp.