Lou’s friend was grateful. Through the years, he gave Lou enough good tips to close out two dozen felonies: armed robberies, attempted murders, a handful of homicides. His information always panned out. Lou figured he was probably still doing some dirt himself—his tips were too good; he was too close to the violence to not be part of it. Lou never pressed him, though. He didn’t want to know.
The source was one of the toughest men Lou had ever known. And one of the most loyal. He was loyal enough to take out the chief or die trying.
“No!” Lou said. “Listen to me, I don’t want you to go anywhere near Soulsby. Don’t try to kill him. Don’t hurt him. Don’t scare him. I don’t want you to do anything. I’ll handle this myself, do you understand?”
“Whatever you say,” Lou’s ex-colleague said reluctantly. “But someone’s got to do something about that motherfucker.”
“Let me handle it,” Lou pleaded.
The informant nodded. Then he got back in the rental and sped off.
Lou took a deep breath and went for a walk to clear his head.
About an hour after Lou met with his informant, I stepped into a city government building across the street from police headquarters and took an elevator to the fourth floor for the mayor’s press conference.
Barry said he’d scoured the country and decided Soulsby was the best choice for the job of chief. He shook Soulsby’s hand. The new chief, clad in his dress blues, smiled from the Potomac River to the Washington Monument.
Over and over, Soulsby thanked Barry. He giddily hugged the mayor. Then Soulsby announced a series of white-shirt transfers.
Oddly, he said nothing about Lou Hennessy or homicide. The presser broke up.
A TV guy, a radio guy, and I stepped up to Soulsby. The TV guy made small talk with the chief and asked a couple of questions. The radio guy asked a question, too.
“What about Captain Hennessy?” I asked. “What’s happening in homicide?”
Soulsby’s grin disappeared.
“Captain Hennessy is being transferred to night patrol,” he said.
“That sounds like a demotion,” I said. “Sounds punitive.”
Soulsby pointed at the radio guy’s tape recorder and barked, “Turn that thing off.”
The radio guy complied.
Soulsby said he would tell us why Hennessy was being busted down to night patrol—but only if each of us agreed the information was off the record.
The TV guy nodded yes. The radio guy nodded yes. I should have said no. I should have demanded that Soulsby explain the transfer on the record. But I knew that if I didn’t agree, Soulsby would ask me to leave and then tell the other two reporters.
Okay, I nodded.
“Hennessy’s under a criminal grand jury investigation. I can’t go into detail, but it’s bad,” Soulsby said. “It will all come out in a few weeks.”
I went light-headed for a few moments. Lou the target of a grand jury investigation? No way. The new chief had just lied to me and two other reporters. Right to our off-the-record faces.
The three of us questioned Soulsby about the purported investigation: When had it started? What crime was Hennessy suspected of? Would he be indicted?
Soulsby parried. He provided no specifics. “The details will eventually be revealed,” he said. “It will eventually come out.”
Goddamn, I thought. He’s attacking the reputation of the best cop on the force, and one of the best men I’ve ever known. He’s using the cover of “off the record” to smear a fellow cop. The lying motherfucker.
After a couple of minutes, our little scrum broke up. I stepped into an elevator to leave the building. The doors started to close. A hand reached in; the doors spread open. Soulsby stepped into the elevator. I hit the Down button.
He gave me a stiff nod. I decided to give him a chance to step back from what I was certain was a lie.
“Chief, I think maybe you misspoke back there,” I said. “You didn’t really mean to say that Captain Hennessy is the target of a grand jury investigation, did you?”
Soulsby turned to me and squared his shoulders. “I did not misspeak,” he said. “He is the target, and the details will come out in a few weeks or in a few months. You’ll see.”
We reached ground level. The elevator doors opened. I stepped out, rattled. How could Soulsby lie so easily, about something so important, with such conviction? The chief stepped out and marched away. He didn’t look happy. I’d taken only a few steps when I realized I’d forgotten to pick up a copy of the press release. It listed the names of all the white shirts Soulsby was promoting and transferring. I’d need it for my story.
The police department’s Public Information Office was on the third floor of headquarters, across the street. The office would have copies. I walked over, went to the elevator, and hit the button.
A moment later, the elevator doors opened—and out stepped Lou. We exchanged hellos. Lou asked, “How’d the press conference go?”
“Soulsby’s really happy about being named chief,” I said. “He kept hugging Barry. I thought he was going to kiss him.”
“What’d Soulsby say about me?”
It’s a cardinal rule of journalism that off-the-record information is to be treated with extraordinary care. But ask ten journalists to define the term and they’ll provide ten different definitions. Some definitions will be decisively dissimilar. Some will differ in nuance. Many journalists, including me, would say that unless there is an explicit agreement with the source that the information not be repeated, it’s okay to try to confirm it with someone else, as long as the original source isn’t revealed.
I was virtually positive Soulsby was lying.
But suppose he wasn’t? If Lou was the target of a grand jury investigation and I didn’t check it out and it got reported elsewhere, my editors would chew me out, for starters. One way or another, I had to check out the chief’s statements.
I hadn’t planned on telling Lou that Soulsby was assassinating his character. But he’d caught me by surprise.
I responded to his question with a question: “Do you know anything about being the target of a criminal grand jury investigation?”
Like that, Lou’s face turned into a mask of rage. His teeth showed. His eyes got wide. His nostrils flared. He clenched his fists and rocked from side to side.
“That lying son of a bitch!” Lou snapped. “I knew he’d do something like that! I just knew it! That no-good, lying son of a bitch!”
Uh-oh. Lou had always been preternaturally calm, even as he led the investigation into the massacre at headquarters, even after he learned he was the intended target. I’d never seen him so much as mildly annoyed. Now he was enraged, maybe even dangerous.
Lou grunted.
I felt myself shrinking into my clothes.
Lou looked at me as if he didn’t recognize me, then stormed off. I stepped into the elevator, sensing I’d stepped into something bad, hoping that Lou didn’t run into the chief anytime soon.
In his state of mind, he’d tear Soulsby apart.
As soon as I returned to the office, I told my editor about Soulsby’s statements and my encounter with Lou. Keith said he’d run it by our boss, Jo-Ann Armao.
Keith wandered back to my desk a few minutes later. He said he’d told Jo-Ann what happened. “You probably shouldn’t have said anything to Hennessy,” he said.
“Just be careful from now on,” Keith added. He didn’t seem alarmed.
I called Kevin Ohlson, the spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and asked whether Lou was targeted by a grand jury.
“Absolutely not,” Ohlson said, his tone incredulous. Another reporter had already called to ask the same thing, he said.
“What’s going on?” Ohlson asked.
“I don’t know.”
The next day, Lou ran into Soulsby in the basement parking lot at headquarters. He asked: “Are you telling people I’m the target of a grand jury? Lie to me all you want, but don’t lie
about me.”
Soulsby put his palms up. “No, it’s not like that. Come up to my office and I’ll explain.”
“Fine. I’ll see you in a few minutes,” Lou said.
The chief took an elevator to his fifth-floor office. Lou hustled up to the homicide squad room, on the third floor. The idea came to him as he marched up the stairs: He’d deal with the chief like a lying perp. He slipped a small recording device into his suit coat pocket and went up to see Soulsby.
A couple of minutes later, Lou sat in front of the chief’s big desk and asked Soulsby if he’d told reporters he was the target of a grand jury.
“No, I never said that,” Soulsby replied.
“I hear that’s exactly what you said to some reporters,” Lou shot back.
“No,” Soulsby said. “They kept asking me questions about you, pressing me. It didn’t come out the way I meant, but I didn’t say the grand jury was after you.”
“So why are you transferring me?” Lou asked.
“The unit’s disorganized,” Soulsby said. “You’re not using the computer system to keep track of investigations.”
What the hell, Lou thought. He’d created the tracking system.
Lou bore down: “Why did you lie about me?”
“I didn’t lie,” Soulsby insisted.
“Chief, you realize that if you did tell those reporters I was under a grand jury investigation, I’d have to arrest you. You understand that it’s illegal to talk about an ongoing grand jury, don’t you?”
Soulsby looked like he wanted to cry, Lou thought. For a heartbeat, he almost felt sorry for the chief.
Lou knew his time was limited. His rage was growing, but it was manageable, for the moment. It was time to put it to use.
“Stop lying about me,” Lou said.
Soulsby looked down at his desk. Lou reached into his coat pocket and activated the tape recorder he’d brought with him.
“I’m not lying,” the chief muttered.
Lou stood up, his anger surging like a tsunami. “If you ever lie on me again, I swear to God, I’ll get you! If you ever lie on me again like that, Chief, you and I are going to have a problem! I’ll tell you that right now!”
The chief stayed calm. He said he wasn’t lying.
Lou wanted a confession.
“You’re a goddamn liar! There’s no grand jury investigating me anywhere! You call the U.S. Attorney’s Office right now!”
Calmly, Soulsby said, “I did not say there was a grand jury—”
“Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit! You lying son of a bitch. Don’t lie on me like that! Tell me what you said—”
“Sit down,” Soulsby said, his voice barely audible.
Part of Lou wanted Soulsby to get up and come at him. The chief was a moose—six foot four and about three hundred pounds. Lou was six-one, two hundred pounds; he was in good physical condition. Fueled by rage, he likely would have pummeled the big chief, if they’d come to blows.
Lou screamed at the top of his lungs, “I ain’t sitting down! You lie like shit! I’m going to tell you something: I knew you’d come up with some bullshit. I knew it!”
Soulsby denied lying once again.
“If you ever lie about me again, I swear to God, I’ll get you!”
The office door flew open. Soulsby’s administrative lieutenant and secretary ran into the room. The lieutenant looked at Soulsby and asked if he should call for backup. Soulsby waved him off.
Lou wheeled to face the lieutenant and the secretary.
“The two of you can stay! He’s lying about me! I want you to hear what he’s saying!”
The chief told his lieutenant and secretary to leave. They looked at each other, bewildered, a little scared. Soulsby told them again to leave. They did.
Lou resumed berating Soulsby. The chief sat there and took it. Lou screamed himself out and stormed from the office.
Lou listened to the tape in his car in the basement. The quality wasn’t great. He could hear himself yelling and swearing and Soulsby making his weak denials. Why would he just sit there and take such a tongue-lashing from a subordinate? The chief had had no plausible defense. But he hadn’t explicitly confessed.
Another idea came to Lou. He pulled out his cell phone and called Jeff Greene, a retired homicide detective working as an investigator for a K Street law firm. Jeff was tight with Soulsby. They’d golfed together back in the late eighties, when Jeff was a detective and Soulsby commanded homicide.
But Jeff was tighter with Lou. He’d helped train Lou as a detective.
Lou laid out his idea.
“Come on over,” Jeff said.
Ten minutes later, Lou stepped into Jeff’s office and closed the door. Jeff called the main police dispatch number. He told the officer in charge who he was and that he needed to raise Soulsby.
Soulsby called a few minutes later. Jeff put the call on speakerphone so Lou could hear the chief. Lou was hoping Soulsby would confess to his old friend.
“I’m really troubled that Lou, who’s been a friend for more than twenty years, is being treated this way,” Jeff said.
“I’m sorry that it happened,” Soulsby said. “I didn’t mean for it to come out the way it did, but the reporters kept throwing questions at me.”
“What do you mean?” Jeff asked. “Did you say he’s the target of a grand jury?”
“I’m sorry,” Soulsby said. “What should I do?”
The chief’s tone was apologetic. His words were slurred. Lou and Jeff both thought he’d been drinking.
“Maybe you can smooth this over, put Lou back in homicide,” Jeff suggested.
“I can’t do that,” Soulsby said. The chief said he knew that Lou had taped their conversation.
Before taking the tape recorder into his meeting with Soulsby, Lou had asked a homicide lieutenant to plant a wire on him. The lieutenant had balked. The lieutenant must have told Soulsby of his plan, Lou realized. Well, he couldn’t really blame the lieutenant—Soulsby was the chief, after all.
Soulsby said he had to go. He and Jeff hung up.
Jeff and Lou looked at each other.
“We should’ve taped that call,” Lou said.
The next day, Lou went straight to the police medical clinic. “I’m under a lot of stress,” he told a shrink. “The chief is slandering me, telling people a grand jury is investigating me. I want to rip his throat out. I’m afraid of what I’ll do if I see him.”
The shrink told Lou to go home, right away, on paid stress leave. The doctor wanted Lou gone. He didn’t even ask Lou to turn in his gun.
A couple of nights after Lou taped himself confronting the chief, he called and invited me to join him and Jeff at a little Italian restaurant on New York Avenue, a block from the hamburger joint where he’d met his ex-cop informant.
Lou and Jeff were at a table in the back. The lighting was dim, the tablecloths checked red and white. The late-night, post-dinner crowd was light. There was no one within earshot of their table. I sat down, feeling as if I was dropping into a scene from The Godfather.
Lou had played the tape for me the day before. I wasn’t thrilled—you could draw a straight line from my asking Lou if he was the target of a grand jury investigation to Lou’s confrontation with the chief. But I was impressed that Lou had screamed at his boss. How many people have dreamed of doing that?
The waitress came to our table. Lou and Jeff each ordered a beer. I asked for a cranberry juice.
“I wish I knew what this was about,” Lou said.
“This is a huge scandal,” Jeff said. “If it gets out that the chief lied about the homicide commander, that he concocted a criminal investigation, he will be out—gone.”
I sat there and said nothing. The waitress returned with our orders. Lou and Jeff nursed their beers.
Jeff threw out theories: Soulsby just lies. He can’t help himself. That’s what he did here. Or: Soulsby is jealous. He lied about Lou because he hates that homicide has gotten good press.
Jeff finished his beer and said he had to go home.
He said good night and left. I stared at his abandoned mug.
“Soulsby would run over his own mother to be chief,” Lou said. “If Barry’s doing dirt, Soulsby wouldn’t hesitate to cover for him.” Each of the theories had merit. At the moment, I was focused on my own role. I was in the middle of the story—a bad place for any journalist to be.
“I wished I’d handled it differently,” I said. “Should have let you find out from someone else.”
“You shouldn’t sweat it,” Lou said. Someone from the U.S. Attorney’s Office had called him the day Soulsby was named chief, saying reporters were asking whether he was the target of a grand jury. “I would’ve found out anyway.”
I wanted a beer. No, five beers. Maybe ten. I thought about where that would inevitably lead. How soon would I be back on S Street, copping rocks with a strawberry?
No, that wasn’t an option.
I brooded about the situation. Where was this going? If things got hot, would my bosses stand by me? What would happen if Soulsby found out I was a crack fiend in recovery? Would he or his people attack me? What might Barry do with that nugget?
Lou was as stand-up a guy as anyone I’d ever met. I didn’t know if I could count on my editors at the Post, but Lou was as steadfast as a thousand-year-old oak. I needed someone I could trust. Of course, by buying large volumes of crack, I’d helped fuel the violence that Lou had been combating. I wasn’t sure how he’d react to that news flash. It was time to show some trust, I decided.
I took a deep breath. A handful of editors and co-workers knew about my addiction. I’d told my parents and siblings, though I hadn’t gone into any detail. I’d told a couple of girlfriends. But no one else.
“Lou, there’s something I should tell you. I wasn’t in the best shape when I moved here to D.C. When I was in L.A., I started using crack. I tried to stop when I got the job at the Post, but that didn’t last too long. I kept using, and it got pretty bad. I don’t know how many thousands—tens of thousands—of dollars I spent scoring. I’d pick up girls, strawberries, to make the buys, to insulate myself from jump-outs. It got pretty bad. Right before Christmas four years ago, my boss took me to rehab. I stumbled once a couple months later, but I’ve been clean ever since. Just thought you should know.”
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