The Pelican Brief

by The Pelican Brief [lit]

  "I assure you that's not true. Trust me, Darby. You'll be safe. You've told me the story of your life. You must trust me."

  "I'll think about it."

  "That's not definite."

  "No, it's not. Give me some time."

  "Okay."

  She hung up, and ordered a bagel. A dozen languages rattled around her as the cafe was suddenly packed. Run, baby, run, her good sense told her. Take a cab to the airport. Pay cash for a ticket to Miami. Find the nearest flight south, and get on the plane. Let Grantham dig and wish him the best. He was very good, and he'd find a way to break the story. And she would read about it one day while lying on a sun-drenched beach sipping a pina colada and watching the windsurfers.

  Stump limped by on the sidewalk. She caught a glimpse of him through the crowd and through the window. Her mouth was suddenly dry and she was dizzy. He didn't look inside. He just ambled by, looking rather lost. She ran through the tables and watched him through the door. He limped slightly to the corner of Sixth and Fifty-eighth and waited for the light. He started to cross Sixth, then changed his mind and crossed Fifty-eighth. A taxi almost smeared him.

  He was going nowhere, just strolling along with a slight limp.

  CROFT SAW THE KID as he stepped from an elevator into the atrium. He was with another young lawyer, and they didn't have their briefcases so it was obvious they were headed for a late lunch. After five days of watching lawyers, Croft had learned their habits.

  The building was on Pennsylvania, and Brim, Stearns, and Kidlow covered floors three through eleven. Garcia left the building with his buddy, and they laughed their way down the sidewalk. Something was very funny. Croft followed as closely as possible. They walked and laughed for five blocks, then, just as he figured, they ducked into a yuppie corporate fern bar for a quick bite.

  Croft called Grantham three times before he got him. It was almost two, and the lunch was winding down by now, and if Grantham wanted to catch the guy, then stay close to the damned phone. Gray slammed it down. They would meet back at the building.

  Garcia and his friend walked a bit slower on the return. It was a beautiful day, and it was Friday, and they enjoyed this brief respite from the grind of suing people or whatever they did for two hundred bucks an hour. Croft hid behind his sunshades and kept his distance.

  Gray was waiting in the lobby near the elevators. Croft was close behind them as they spun through the revolving door. He pointed quickly to their man. Gray caught the signal and punched the elevator button. It opened and he stepped in just before Garcia and his friend. Croft stayed behind.

  Garcia punched number six a split second before Gray punched it too. Gray read the paper and listened as the two lawyers talked football. The kid was no more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight. The voice maybe had a vague familiarity to it, but it had been on the phone and there was nothing distinctive about it. The face was close, but he couldn't study it. The odds said go for it. He looked very similar to the man in the photograph, and he worked for Brim, Stearns, and Kidlow, and one of its countless clients was Mr. Mattiece. He would give it a shot, but be cautious. He was a reporter. It was his job to go barging in with questions.

  They left the elevator on six still yakking about the Redskins, and Gray loitered behind them, casually reading the paper. The firm's lobby was rich and opulent, with chandeliers and Oriental rugs, and on one wall thick gold letters with the firm's name. The lawyers stopped at the front desk and picked up their phone messages. Gray strolled purposefully in front of the receptionist, who eyed him carefully.

  "May I help you, sir?" she asked in the tone that meant, "What the hell do you want?"

  Gray did not miss a step. "I'm in a meeting with Roger Martin." He'd found the name in the phone book, and he'd called from the lobby a minute earlier to make sure lawyer Martin was in today. The building directory listed the firm on floors three through eleven, but did not list all one hundred and ninety lawyers. Using the yellow pages listing, he made a dozen quick calls to find a lawyer on each floor. Roger Martin was the man on the sixth floor.

  He frowned at the receptionist. "I've been meeting with him for two hours."

  This puzzled her, and she could think of nothing to say. Gray was around the corner and into a hallway. He caught a glimpse of Garcia entering his office four doors down.

  The name beside the door was David M. Underwood. Gray did not knock on it. He wanted to strike quickly, and perhaps exit quickly. Mr. Underwood was hanging his jacket on a rack.

  "Hi. I'm Gray Grantham with the Washington Post. I'm looking for a man named Garcia."

  Underwood froze and looked puzzled. "How'd you get in here?" he asked.

  The voice was suddenly familiar. "I walked. You are Garcia, aren't you?"

  He pointed to a desk plate with his name in gold letters.

  David M. Underwood. There's no one on this floor named Garcia. I don't know of a Garcia in this firm."

  Gray smiled as if to play along. Underwood was scared. Or irritated.

  "How's your daughter?" Gray asked.

  Underwood was coming around the desk, staring and getting very perturbed. "Which one?"

  This didn't fit. Garcia had been quite concerned about his daughter, a baby, and if there had been more than one, he would have mentioned it.

  "The youngest. And your wife?"

  Underwood was now within striking distance, and inching closer. It was obvious he was a man unafraid of physical contact.

  "I don't have a wife. I'm divorced." He held up his left fist, and for a split second Gray thought he'd gone wild. Then he saw the four ringless fingers. No wife. No ring. Garcia adored his wife, and there would be a ring. It was now time to leave.

  "What do you want?" Underwood demanded.

  "I thought Garcia was on this floor," he said, easing away.

  "Is your pal Garcia a lawyer?"

  "Yes."

  Underwood relaxed a bit. "Not in this firm. We have a Perez and a Hernandez, and maybe one other. But I don't know a Garcia."

  Well, it's a big firm," Gray said by the door. "Sorry to bother."

  Underwood was following. "Look, Mr. Grantham, we're not accustomed to reporters barging in around here. I'll call security, and maybe they can help you."

  "Won't be necessary. Thanks." Grantham was in the hall and gone. Underwood reported to security.

  Grantham cursed himself in the elevator. It was empty except for him, and he cursed out loud. Then he thought of Croft, and was cursing him when the elevator landed and opened, and there was Croft in the lobby near the pay phones. Cool it, he told himself.

  They left the building together. "Didn't work," Gray said.

  "Did you talk to him?"

  "Yep. Wrong man."

  Dammit. I knew it was him. It was the kid in the photos, wasn't it?"

  "No. Close but no cigar. Keep trying."

  "I'm really tired of this, Grantham. I've"

  "You're getting paid, aren't you? Do it for one more week, okay? I can think of harder work."

  "Croft stopped on the sidewalk, and Gray kept walking.One more week, and I'm through," Croft yelled to him. Grantham waved him off.

  He unlocked the illegally parked Volvo and sped back to the Post. It was not a smart move. It was quite stupid, and he was much too experienced for such a mistake. He would omit it from his daily chat with Jackson Feldman and Smith Keen.

  FELDMAN WAS LOOKING for him, another reporter said, and he walked quickly to his office. He smiled sweetly to the secretary, who was poised to attack. Keen and Howard Krauthammer, the managing editor, were waiting with Feldman. Keen closed the door and handed Gray a newspaper.Have you seen this?"

  It was the New Orleans paper, the Times-Picayune, and the front-page story was about the deaths of Verheek and Callahan, along with big photos. He read it quickly while they watched him. It talked about their friendship, and their strange deaths just six days apart. And it mentioned Darby Shaw, who had disappeared. But no link to the brief.
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  "I guess the cat's out of the bag," Feldman said.

  "It's nothing but the basics," Gray said. "We could've run this three days ago."

  "Why didn't we?" asked Krauthammer.

  "There's nothing here. It's two dead bodies, the name of the girl, and a thousand questions, none of which they answered. They've found a cop who'll talk, but he knows nothing beyond the blood and gore."

  "But they're digging, Gray," Keen said.

  "You want me to stop them?"

  "The Times has picked it up," Feldman said.They're run ning something tomorrow or Sunday. How much can they know?"

  "Why ask me? Look, it's possible they have a copy of the brief. Very unlikely, but possible. But they haven't talked to the girl. We've got the girl, okay. She's ours."

  "We hope," said Krauthammer.

  Feldman rubbed his eyes and stared at the ceiling. "Let's say they have a copy of the brief, and that they know she wrote it, and now she's vanished. They can't verify it right now, but they're not afraid to mention the brief without naming Mattiece. Let's say they know Callahan was her professor, among other things, and that he brought the brief here and gave it to his good friend Verheek. And now they're dead and she's on the run. That's a pretty damned good story, wouldn't you say, Gray?"

  "It's a big story," Krauthammer said.

  "It's peanuts compared to what's coming," Gray said. "I don't want to run it because it's the tip of the iceberg, and it'll attract every paper in the country. We don't need a thousand reporters bumping into each other."

  "I say we run it," Krauthammer said. "If not, the Times will beat our ass with it."

  "We can't run the story," Gray said.

  "Why not?" asked Krauthammer.

  "Because I'm not going to write it, and if it's written by someone else here, then we lose the girl. It's that simple. She's debating right now about whether to jump on a plane and leave the country, and one mistake by us and she's gone."

  "But she's already spilled her guts," Keen said.

  "I gave her my word, okay. I will not write the story until it's pieced together and Mattiece can be named. It's very simple."

  "You're using her, aren't you?" Keen asked.

  "She's a source. But she's not in the city."

  "If the Times has the brief, then they know about Mattiece," Feldman said. "And if they know about Mattiece, you can bet they'ie digging like hell to verify it. What if they beat us?"

  Krauthammer grunted in disgust. "We're going to sit on our asses and lose the biggest story I've seen in twenty years. I say we run what we've got. It's just the surface, but it's a helluva story right now."

  "No," Gray said.I won't write it until I have all of it."

  "And how long might that take?" Feldman asked.

  "A week, maybe."

  "We don't have a week," Krauthammer said.

  Gray was desperate. "I can find out how much the Times knows. Give me forty-eight hours."

  "They're running something tomorrow or Sunday," Feldman said again.

  "Let 'em run it. I'll bet money it'll be the same story with probably the same mug shots. You guys are assuming a hell of a lot. You're assuming they've got a copy of the brief, but its author doesn't have a copy of it. We don't have a copy of it. Let's wait, and read their little story, then go from there."

  The editors studied each other. Krauthammer was frustrated. Keen was anxious. But the boss was Feldman, and he said, "Okay. If they run something in the morning, we'll meet here at noon and look at it."

  "Fine," Gray said quickly and reached for the door.

  "You'd better move fast, Grantham," Feldman said. "We can't sit on this much longer."

  Grantham was gone.

  THE LIMOUSINE moved patiently in the Beltway rush hour. It was dark, and Matthew Barr read with the aid of a reading light in the ceiling. Coal sipped Perrier and watched the traffic. He had the brief memorized, and could have simply explained it to Barr, but he wanted to watch his reaction.

  Barr had no reaction until he got to the photograph, then slowly shook his head. He laid it on the seat, and thought about it for a moment. "Very nasty," he said.

  Coal grunted.

  "How true is it?" Barr asked.

  "I'd love to know."

  "When did you first see it?"

  "Tuesday of last week. It came over from the FBI in one of their daily reports."

  "What'd the President say?"

  "He was not that happy with it, but there was no cause for alarm. It's just another wild shot in the dark, we thought. He talked to Voyles about it, and Voyles agreed to leave it alone for a while. Now I'm not so sure."

  "Did the President ask Voyles to back off?" Barr asked the question slowly.

  "Yes."

  "That's awfully close to obstruction of justice, assuming of course the brief turns out to be true."

  "And what if it's true?"

  "Then the President has problems. I've got one conviction for obstruction, so I've been there. It's like mail fraud. It's broad and wide and fairly easy to prove. Were you in on it?"

  "What do you think?"

  "Then I think you've got problems too."

  They rode in silence and watched the traffic. Coal had thought through the obstruction angle, but he wanted Barr's opinion. He wasn't worried about criminal charges. The President had one brief little chat with Voyles, asked him to look elsewhere for the time being, and that was it. Hardly the work of felons. But Coal was terribly concerned with reelection, and a scandal involving a major contributor like Mattiece would be devastating. The thought was sickening-a man the President knew and took millions from paid money to have two Supreme Court Justices knocked off so his pal the President could appoint more reasonable men to the bench so that the oil could be harvested. The Democrats would fall in the streets howling with glee. Every subcommittee in Congress would hold hearings. Every newspaper would run it every day for a year. The Justice Department would be forced to investigate. Coal would be forced to take the blame and resign. Hell, everyone in the White House, except the President, would have to go.

  It was a nightmare of horrific proportions.

  "We've got to find out if the brief is true," Coal said to the window.

  "If people are dying, then it's true. Give me a better reason for killing Callahan and Verheek."

  There was no other reason, and Coal knew it. "I want you to do something."

  "Find the girl."

  "No. She's either dead or hiding in a cave somewhere. I want you to talk to Mattiece."

  "I'm sure he's in the yellow pages."

  "You can find him. We need to establish a link that the President knows nothing about. We need to first determine how much of this is true."

  "And you think Victor will take me into his confidence and tell me his secrets."

  "Yes, eventually. You're not a cop, remember. Assume it's true, and he thinks he's about to be exposed. He's desperate and he's killing people. What if you told him the press had the story and the end was near, and if he is inclined to disappear, then now's the time? You're coming to him from Washington, remember? From the inside. From the President, or so he thinks. He'll listen to you."

  "Okay. What if he tells me it's true? What's in it for us?"

  "I've got some ideas, all in the category of damage control. The first thing we'll do is immediately appoint two nature lovers to the Court. I mean, wild-eyed radical bird watchers. It would show that down deep we're good little environmentalists. And it would kill Mattiece and his oil field, etc. We could do this in a matter of hours. Almost simultaneously, the President will call in Voyles and the Attorney General and Justice and demand an immediate investigation into Mattiece. We'll leak copies of the brief to every reporter in town, then hunker down and ride out the storm."

  Barr was smiling with admiration.

  Coal continued. "It won't be pretty, but it's far better than sitting back and hoping the brief is a work of fiction."

  "How do you explain that pho
tograph?"

  "You can't. It'll hurt for a while, but it was seven years ago, and people go crazy. We'll portray Mattiece as a good citizen back then, but now he's a madman."

  "He is a madman."

  "Yes, he is. And right now he's like a wounded dog backed in a corner. You must convince him to throw in the towel, and haul ass. I think he'll listen to you. And I think we'll find out from him if it's true."