by Dale Wiley
He was speaking at some sort of stump political rally, and there were only a smattering of cameras watching. He was in a flannel shirt, which looked ten years old, and he had several nervous tics as he spoke. He was nearly eighty-five. “To think our brother was killed by one of those loonies from that god-forsaken institution which our government funds is unconscionable. The young man himself should be tarred and feathered, and the NEA should be disbanded.”
I let the sentences, disconnected as they were by the white-on-black print of closed-captioning, roll around in my head for a second before I realized Senator North had just convicted me on national TV. Of course, the media had been doing this since the beginning, but they were at least kind and judicious enough to use “alleged” and “purported” and all of those other fudge words. No fudge words here. I went to the table, grabbed a piece of the Watergate stationery, and wrote, Things To Do Once I Clear My Name. The first—and only—item on the list was, Sue Kenneth North for slander.
Saturday
Chapter
* * *
Twenty-Five
Neither Tabitha nor I slept very well, but I’m sure we did better than Greer. He looked like a postcard from the dead when we all quit trying to sleep about six. Tabitha took our orders for breakfast and called room service. Tabitha fed Greer, and he was hungry enough he actually ate something. Afterward, we let him go to the bathroom, with me standing guard, freeing up his legs and handcuffing one arm to the towel rack while he went. I let Greer know I had no compunction about hitting him, even if I didn’t believe at this moment I’d pull the trigger. Of course, I knew I really could never pull the trigger, but I thought it was a nice hedge.
I had to give Greer a sixth-grade teacher look to get him to sit back down, but he finally did without my having to slap him around, and, for this, I was grateful; after all, I really did want to kiss up to him and get him to come around to our side. I had Tabitha call her cardiologist friend. She had come up with a story about how he was actually doing Greer a favor, because he wanted to spend the whole day with her rather than going to work, and the man readily agreed. She gave him all the details and phone numbers he would need, and Greer gave a sly smile, at least a bit impressed.
In another whispering conference, Tabitha and I decided we would wait until nine or ten to call Helper; we didn’t want to overplay our hand. She went off to take a shower while I watched the silent captive. Then it was my turn to shower while she stood guard.
Afterward, Tabitha told me CNN was reporting Timmons’ funeral was that afternoon, with the burial to take place at Arlington National Cemetery. This hit me hard. I thought of the can of worms I had opened when I got that call. Of course, there was no guarantee Helper would’ve found the message, made the call—or even had the gumption or desire to stop the assassination anyway—but it’s hard to remind yourself of those kind of details when you believe you really did play a part in someone’s death. Tabitha walked by and touched my nose, and that made me smile.
It still wasn’t even 7:30, and we both knew we couldn’t make any inquiries about agents until nine.
I had only quickly glanced at the stack, so all I knew for sure was one agent had rejected the novel. We were on our own when it came to the rest. “Do we really want to play hit or miss?” Tabitha asked.
“I can’t think of a better way …” I said, but as soon as the words came out of my mouth I had an idea. I called New York information for the number of the Theresa Ramon Literary Agency. I did this for five other agents—all female—then hung up, satisfied. “When it gets to be nine, I’ll just call and pretend like I’m Helper and be annoying. I’ll ask if they’ve read my manuscript yet. If they say yes, we rejected it, I’ll say, ‘sorry, I didn’t get the letter,’ and, if they haven’t read it, we’ve got our mark. Tabitha nodded.
We waited. And waited. And waited. We watched TV, read the morning’s Post—I was rating lower placement on page one as police seemed to have nothing new—and stared at the clock, trying to will it to nine o’clock. Finally, at five after nine, I called the Theresa Ramon Literary Agency and got the cold shoulder from a receptionist. Ms. Ramon would contact me when she had read the manuscript, and she could not comment further. I got similar responses from the next two. And then I called the Patricia Mickelson Agency, where the secretary informed me Ms. Mickelson—who was the only agent in the firm—had been out of town on “family business” for a week and was extremely backed-up in her slush-pile reading.
Perfect. Tabitha would become Patricia Mickelson, Literary Agent, and lure Helper to our lair. I noticed Helper had listed both home and office numbers on his letter, so it wouldn’t be weird for her to call him at the office, and I gave Tabitha a crash course in what to say.
She waited patiently through a maze of switchboards and secretaries before finally sighing, “My name is Patricia Mickelson. I am a literary agent, and I’m interested in discussing a manuscript he sent my way. I’m in DC, staying at the Watergate, and I would very much like to talk to him before I leave.” She gave all of this information, plus the room number, to that poor secretary in a tone only a lawyer could love. And five minutes later, my archenemy rang my hotel room.
Tabitha answered with an extremely brusque “Hello,” and then allowed her voice to sweeten as she realized it was Helper. She was in town, she said, cutting a deal for a Senator’s autobiography, and she wanted to talk to Helper before she left. She winked at me, as he was falling all over himself on the other end of the phone, and finally made an appointment to meet Helper at the Watergate bar at eleven.
Tabitha put the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, and she and I made up the bed and straightened up so when Helper came everything would look fairly normal. She also had an excellent idea and called the front desk for a tape player. This would serve two purposes: First, we could try to document Helper’s conversation one additional way. But if Helper was as smart as I thought he was, he would imagine we were doing something to record everything, so if we turned it off, we might just convince Helper he really was speaking off the record. After that, I tried to read the Post, but couldn’t do so without immediately getting mad. The article—written, of course, by the now-captive Gerald Greer—butchered the press conference, bending and twisting everything in order to make it look like I was even guiltier. I wanted to go slap him but knew it wasn’t a good idea.
I now realized in the best-case scenario I would be the guy who is accused and then publicly vindicated but still the subject of popular suspicion. You see, the newspapers put your name in black ink when they believe you’re guilty, but they never really erase anything. Most people go on and read the articles that say you’re innocent and believe them with the same whole-hearted ferocity with which they believed the ones that said you were guilty, but they would probably think I did something to deserve my fate. And, of course, in this case, I did, to some extent. But they didn’t need to know this.
Still, that was a good deal better than the rest of the alternatives, which included Riker’s Island and an amorous cellmate, or, possibly even worse, death at the hands of some trigger-happy cop. After all, I was armed and presumed to be dangerous. That meant most cops in America would fire a bullet into my back without thinking twice, unless they thought they were being filmed.
About ten, Tabitha changed into the secretary’s outfit again. It would certainly pass muster for someone who wanted to believe he was speaking to his future literary agent. At ten thirty, we took Greer into the closet. I extracted a promise from him that he would at least listen and not make any noise, and I think he was beginning to believe me enough that he really meant it when he said he wouldn’t. Then I placed handcuffs in one of the bureau drawers and the tape recorder right next to Gideon’s Bible. At 10:45, Tabitha went downstairs, where she was supposed to meet Helper.
Twenty minutes later, she returned, practically arm-in-arm with my nemesis.
Chapter
* * *
Twenty-six
They came bursting in the door talking about Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. “Not releasing it in paperback was brilliant,” Helper said confidently. “Brilliant.”
“Have a seat,” Tabitha said, indicating the only leather chair we had left. She moved to sit by the couch.
Our antics had seriously depleted our chair supply.
“Would you like a drink?”
Helper said he would, and Tabitha poured him a scotch and soda out of the mini-bar. He grabbed it, thanked her, and sat back down.
He looked smooth and poised. He was wearing a dark brown suit and a green tie, and he draped one leg across the other like the whole world owed him a big favor. He smiled at Tabitha, measuring her to see if her interest was only literary.
I waited to pick my spot. I wanted to wait until he took a drink so he would be the most vulnerable. But he seemed to forget about drinking out of the glass sitting in front of him. Instead, he absently ran his finger around the rim and spoke in hyperbolic similes about his writing.
Few understood his work, he told Tabitha, who was somehow managing to keep a straight face. But that was the way it often was—only much later were visionaries understood. I wondered how many agents Helper had turned off with this spiel and then realized this was probably his first encounter; most were turned off enough by the stilted writing they received in the mail.
When he mentioned the word “paradigm,” I had had enough. I eked out of the closet’s sliding door—careful not to reveal the other occupant—and pointed the pistol straight at him. I glared at him and fixed one of his eyebrows in the sights and thought for more than a second about squeezing off a round just for fun. He sat motionless, his face flushed and frantic, while I considered his fate.
“Trent,” Tabitha said softly.
I turned and saw she looked nearly as worried as Helper. I shrugged and lowered the gun, and Tabitha looked considerably relieved as she moved to handcuff him.
“You’re a lunatic,” Helper said. He ran his tongue across his lips and frowned as Tabitha secured him to the chair.
I hoped Greer would notice he hadn’t seemed overly surprised.
“You wish,” I said, now back in whatever control of the situation that I could possibly be expected to have.
“They’ll know I’m here …”
“Bullshit. You fell for it.”
He glanced at his shoes and back at me. “I’m not going to say anything. You’re probably taping this.”
“Why would I do that?”
He started to speak but stopped. “To get your ass out of trouble.”
“Well, that’s your choice.” I winked at him. “But we’ve got a long wait. I’m safe here. I can stay until Christmas.”
“You don’t need more crimes on your list. You already have enough.”
“But I want to talk about your list, Mark. How many crimes are on your list?”
He laughed. “You’re taping this.”
I didn’t want to seem too anxious to turn off the tape recorder, afraid this would make him even more suspicious. So we continued our pointless verbal sparring for several minutes more. But Helper wasn’t going to budge.
He was still scared, still blinking like I was blinding him, but he was in control enough to keep his mouth shut. So I walked over, opened up the drawer, and pulled the tape recorder out. I turned it off, walked to the bed, and let him see. “Good enough for you?”
“There’s probably another,” he said.
It was my turn to laugh. “I’m not that well-connected.”
“How did you wind up here?”
“I might tell you once you tell me your side.”
“I don’t have a side.”
I rolled my eyes. I was starting to get tired of Mark Helper. “What do you have against me? Why have you set me up like this?”
“I didn’t have a damn thing against you.”
“But?”
He looked at Tabitha, as if to remind me that he wasn’t going to let other ears hear his confession.
“She is just as involved in all of this as I am.”
Helper looked skeptical. “How?”
I waved the gun. “I get to ask the questions.”
“I don’t have to say anything,” Helper said. “You’re the one who’s going to jail. You don’t have anything on me. You could’ve made up that phone call.”
“But you know what I found when I broke into the McHolland Foundation, don’t you?” I asked. He bit his lip and looked at the floor. I told him I knew about Daedalus Travel. His complexion got whiter. I told him about his trust. His head jerked up.
“So, Mark, I’m tempted to just call up the police and tell them everything with you sitting here. Show them the documents. I’m guessing they’ve heard at least some of this, because I’m betting the reason you killed Timmons was because he somehow got wind of your little scam.”
“That’s the problem,” said Helper, who was looking at me when he wasn’t blinking. “I had no intention in the world of having him killed. There were a thousand other ways of getting the problem solved. I told them to do something, to find some way to discredit him, to make up something that would divert his attention, or maybe we could blackmail him. I never would’ve killed him. But those two idiots I agreed to work with said this was the only way.”
“That was dumb,” I said, “because I’m betting someone else found out about all of this in the first place, not Timmons.”
“Exactly. He was a staffer. And they wanted to kill him too.”
I saw my opening. “So actually,” I said, putting the gun down and leaning against the desk, “I’m your best witness. I can tell the police about the message I took, and we can show you didn’t get it.”
“But there’s still the other murder,” he said.
“You thought Roger was me, didn’t you?” I asked.
He looked me straight in the eyes and nodded. I stopped breathing for what seemed like an hour. It was so menacing to hear it.
“You’ve got to tell me,” I said, “to let me help you.”
He rolled his tongue against his upper lip.
“Tell me,” I said, “and you can decide.”
It took several more minutes, perhaps just to let the severity of his situation sink in. I was pretty sure with Helper in tow and Greer on my side, I would be willing to turn myself in, but I had plenty of reservations still. I wanted it to be on my terms. But Helper finally caved, probably because he didn’t have anyone else to tell. He didn’t trust his allies anymore.
Helper said he and two friends—from the other two foundations—had formed Daedalus Travel in order to make money by defrauding their employers. They set it up as a corporation, doctored the books, and didn’t pay much in taxes, taking the chance that they wouldn’t get audited. It wasn’t big money, but it was easy. They made five or six hundred dollars on every flight, every time anyone went to a conference, or came to a panel, or went on a site visit. Helper said he had been the one to engineer everything necessary to get the government contracts. Since most everything was on computer, it was all very simple.
“But what if someone caught on?” said Tabitha.
“Who was going to catch on? The three financial officers at the companies were the ones defrauding them. If an auditor came along, it just looked like we had been taken for a ride. Our names weren’t associated with Daedalus Travel, and we even went so far as to pay a bum who we knew we’d never see again to get the papers notarized and rent the mailbox. We had the money routed through so many accounts that it would be practically impossible to trace.”
“Then why did you panic?”
“I didn’t. My ‘friend’ at the Cheely Foundation—Benjamin—he panicked. One of Timmons’s staffers called him and asked what he knew about Daedalus Travel. It was because he was in charge of the budget, not because he was a crook. I told him that. But he panicked anyway, and James at the McHolland Foundation was nearly as bad.”
“A
nd they were right, in that we didn’t want the cash cow to be slaughtered, but they were wrong to panic. It doesn’t do any good. But they came into this thinking exactly what I told them not to think—that they would never, ever get caught. And when they realized they might, they went berserk.”
James and Benjamin talked about murder, but Helper wanted to discredit Timmons or turn him around by blackmail. But his partners planned behind his back and saw their opportunity when Timmons was a late addition to the Right to Bear Arms rally. That way, it would look more like a political killing, tied to ideals instead of money.
“And if not for us meddling kids?” I wondered if Helper had even watched TV as a child.
Helper chuckled. “Yeah. You looked so perfect. When I came back to the office about five o’clock and found out about the killings and saw your message, I called James and told him about you. Then I saw your note. I had been angry and horrified, but, when I saw that, I was honestly scared. I got your name from Becky, my secretary, who called your boss and found out. I wondered if you had talked to anyone already. James’ highly-skilled hit man went to your apartment and found the message from your friend. He put the bullets in the dumpster, got a cross directory, and found out where she lived. I only had a vague description of you from Wanda, and the hit man thought he got you when he killed the other guy.”
“His name was Roger,” I said.
Helper looked at his shoes.
I let that sink in. “Did you try to run over me that next morning?”
“Yeah. James had paid off someone in the police department, so the guy not only got assigned to the case but was funneling us information from the first moment. We found out it wasn’t you around three in the morning, and our intrepid guy was waiting for you.”
“There were still loose ends …”
He wanted to gesture, but his hands were bound. “But we didn’t care anymore. We were just trying to get away.”