by Paul Heald
“But how?” Melanie looked sympathetic. “How do we smoke out the bad guys? I’m sure not everybody in Arkansas is crooked. Hell, Senator Randolph might not even know what’s going on.”
Thor’s phone, now on the table, vibrated again.
Stanley pointed to it and smiled. He caught the eye of everyone in the room before speaking.
“Let’s text the Arkansas cell number. Let’s go to Little Rock, sit down in a café close to the federal building, and text the number in cell phone.” He pantomimed tapping a message: “Urgent. At Fred’s Café with documents for you. Come now.”
The room fell silent.
“So, we just sit, drink coffee, and wait for the Mexican connection to show up?”
“Why not? That way, we know we’ve got the right person.” Stanley grabbed a pepperoni off the last remaining slice of pizza and popped it in his mouth. “We’ve just been assuming it’s Randolph. It could be some other congressman. All we’ve found is the trail of reported donations. Maybe some Arkansas congressman or woman has taken a bunch of money under the table from Swinton or Zingales or both.”
Thor sat and listened as his three companions excitedly discussed how to best smoke out the owner of the Arkansas phone number. The near-death experience in North Carolina had created a bond between them, and they talked as if they were old friends who had known each other for years. He admired their willingness to take on the combined forces of government, farm, and factory, and he ached to take part in their plan.
He took advantage of a pause in the conversation and cleared his throat. “The texting idea is brilliant, guys, but it will work only as long as the bad guys think your Mexican hit man is still alive and his phone is uncompromised.” The priest let the realization sink in. “If you’re going to do this, you need to move very quickly.”
He was gratified to see Melanie nod her head vigorously.
“Father Thor is right. We’ve got to get moving.” She grabbed the laptop and opened up Google Maps. “Nine hours from here to Little Rock. That will give us some time to think. You guys took Stanley’s rental car here, right? We’ll use it, since my car is known.”
She saw the surprised looks on the faces of the reporter and the professor. “You guys are in, aren’t you?”
They looked at each other and smiled broadly.
“Roadtrip,” James said.
“Roadtrip,” Stanley replied.
As the three got up from the table, Thor blurted out, “What about me? Should I come too?”
Melanie thought for a moment. Her bearing was erect, almost regal. No wonder James and Stanley called her The Boss. He had a sudden understanding why she had never married. It would be hard to find someone who was not intimidated by her.
“No,” she said. “We need someone to stay totally off of the radar screen.”
She thought for a moment. “I want you and Miriam to be our backup plan. If things go badly in Little Rock, I want you to contact Miriam’s source in Homeland Security. You know pretty much the whole story. Write it all down and be ready to email it to him, and to James’s editor, if we give you the word or if we disappear.”
“Make a video, too,” the professor added. “Use my slides and tell everything you know on camera, and have something ready to post on YouTube if something happens to us.” Melanie and James nodded enthusiastically. “If we go down, we’re taking everyone with us.”
In less than fifteen minutes, the three were gone and Thor had summoned Miriam to start on the multimedia nuclear option suggested by Melanie and Stanley. He felt better now that he had an official role to play, but he wanted to do more. Realizing that the success of the venture turned on delaying the identification of the body in North Carolina, he decided to open a new Gmail account at the public library and start sending emails to the media and the authorities investigating the case. A couple of calls from a new pay-as-you-go cell phone would not be a bad idea either. Soon, an anonymous informant would be telling the story of the Arab visitor who had been asking suspicious questions about the lake dammed outside of Highlands. To a southern sheriff, a dead Mexican might well be confused with a dead Arab terrorist, and the confusion might buy the others additional time to crash the party in Little Rock.
* * *
The following morning found Melanie, James, and Stanley sitting in different corners of a coffee shop in downtown Little Rock, lattes in hand and laptops open on the small tables in front of them. Café Libris had formerly been a used-bookstore and the walls were still lined with an eclectic mix of fiction and nonfiction titles. Any displayed book could be swapped for a newly donated volume or taken home for a dollar, but none of the titles distracted James’s attention as he instant-messaged with his companions. Melanie had sent a text from the captured cell phone ten minutes earlier, and there was still no sign of an answer.
During the long drive to Arkansas, the three had explored several different strategies for approaching the Little Rock contact. The text needed to require movement on the part of their prey, and they struggled to craft a message that would draw its recipient out without creating undue suspicion. They settled on the following: Trouble in Georgia. Envelope in Café Libris. Find Goya Sketches in art section. Contact later with instructions.
They had worried that the unexpected text would raise alarm bells, but they couldn’t come up with a better approach. If all went well and someone arrived to fetch the nonexistent envelope, Melanie would head directly to the federal building, pass through security, and wait for the person to enter. Whoever responded might be worried about someone following but would likely not anticipate that a pursuer lay ahead. James would also leave early and sit in the car outside, ready to track elsewhere if the federal building was not the respondent’s destination. Stanley would stay behind in the coffee house, watching the disappointed envelope hunter and taking discreet pictures with his cell phone.
Fifteen minutes after the text was sent, a middle-aged woman in an expensive gray skirt and white cotton blouse walked into the café and slowly approached the counter. While she ordered her drink, she looked carefully around, first at the handful of occupants of the tables and then at the wall of art books to her right.
I’ll bet that’s her. Melanie messaged her companions and kept her head down. I’m going to the courthouse. If she doesn’t look for the envelope, text me and I’ll come back.
The attorney was two blocks down the street and three blocks from the federal building when she got a text from James. It’s her.
Melanie walked quickly to the federal building and passed through security. She meant to follow the woman to her office, and that could be accomplished most discreetly if she were the first through the line and was studying the elevator directory when her quarry finally appeared. Melanie could step into the elevator with the woman and act pleasantly surprised when it turned out they were going to the same floor. If the woman left the café and walked elsewhere, then James would tail her and text the location.
Melanie sat on a low couch in the foyer of the building and held her phone in her hand. The cool marble and high ceilings reminded her of the courthouse in Clarkeston, where she had spent a tumultuous year clerking for one of the most famous judges in US history. She would forever associate the unforgiving stone of old federal buildings with her first murder case.
On her way to you, James texted.
She smiled at the message and looked up at the smartly dressed woman entering the building with a look of consternation on her face. She was maybe forty, striking dark hair framing a face where the glamour of high cheekbones was offset by an almost juvenile choice of makeup. Melanie had seen this before in the South: the sight of that first wrinkle triggering an overreaction that everyone noticed except the cover girl. It was a pity, because she had a killer figure.
Melanie turned to study the building directory and a few moments later slipped easily into the elevator with the unsuspecting object of her pursuit. They both got off on the third floor, and t
he prosecutor paused to sip from a stained ceramic water fountain to let the woman pass her and head down the long hallway. At the end of the corridor was the office of senator Elbert Randolph. The woman disappeared past a pair of heavy walnut doors into his chambers.
Ten steps later, Melanie entered and greeted the senator’s receptionist with a broad smile. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but was that Senator Randolph’s wife who just came in?”
The young man’s eyes widened, and he shrieked. “Oh God, no! That was Sharon Williams, the chief of staff.” He started to explain why Melanie’s apparent confusion was so humorous, but then he repositioned the black-frame hipster glasses on his face and asked in a rather singsong voice how he could help.
“Well,” she explained, “that’s quite a coincidence, because I’m here to see Ms. Williams.” When he looked at her funny, she added, “Obviously, for the first time.”
“Do you have an appointment?” He pushed his spectacles down and studied the computer screen.
“No,” she confessed, “I don’t, but I’m quite certain that she’ll want to talk to me.”
“What’s your name?” He put his hand tentatively on the phone.
She smiled sweetly. “Just tell her that I sent a text about twenty minutes ago, and I just missed meeting her at Café Libris.”
He looked doubtful but placed the call anyway. He looked up in surprise and nodded his head after he passed along Melanie’s verbal calling card. “She’ll see you right away. Just follow me.”
He led the prosecutor down a short hall to the left of his desk. Just past a beveled wooden door embossed with the senator’s name, the receptionist turned and ushered her into a spacious office dominated by a large glass desk and conference table. The woman with the thick foundation and unnaturally red lips stood in the corner, arms across her chest, eyes flashing in confusion as Melanie sat down on a small sofa without invitation and suggested to the receptionist that he was now free to leave.
Williams glared but nodded her dismissal of the young man and waited to speak until the door was shut. Her voice lacked any trace of a southern accent, any trace of an accent at all. Despite her deep Georgia roots, Melanie could do this, too, wipe away childhood and present a generic front to an adversary.
“Who the fuck are you?” Randolph’s aide-de-camp slipped behind her desk and sat with her arms crossed, rocking nervously back in her chair.
“Let’s talk about that with the senator.” Melanie smiled and flicked a piece of lint off the top of a pant leg. “All you need to know right now is that I have a phone that used to belong to a rather violent Mexican friend of yours.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Oh, I think you do.” Melanie leaned slightly forward. “You see, your guy has been following me and a friend of mine. He has two numbers on his speed dial, yours and his boss’s in Sabines, Mexico. And neither he nor his boss are people that you really want to be associated with, Ms. Williams.” She paused. “And these are certainly people that the senator does not want to be associated with.” She paused again. “That’s why we all need to sit down together and have a little talk about the cotton and textile markets. Me and my friends, and you and the senator.”
More than a hint of panic seeped into the chief of staff’s eyes. “I’m sorry, but he’s down in Texarkana checking out flood damage.”
Melanie had read about a storm that had troubled the region the previous week. “Well, he’ll need to come back, then. We can wait until tomorrow afternoon for our meeting.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible.” She shook her head decisively. “He’s scheduled to leave straight from there to Washington.”
“Oh,” Melanie laughed, “it’s very possible.”
She stood up and prepared to leave. Years of practicing before some of the toughest federal judges in the country had made impromptu responses second nature.
“You really do not want me taking my story to the media or to the Justice Department, do you?” Melanie said. “Think just for a moment about what your Mexican buddies have done. If you want to keep this all under wraps, you’ll get the senator back here by tomorrow. Let’s say we all get together around two?” The prosecutor put on what her colleagues called her “bad-news happy face,” the deceptively cheery expression she adopted when informing a defense attorney that the best deal the government could offer was life without hope of parole.
She stared sweetly at Williams until she saw a tiny nod of assent.
“Excellent!” Melanie said enthusiastically. “See you tomorrow!”
XXXI.
KNOTS
Stanley shook his head in amazement as Melanie recounted her meeting with Senator Randolph’s chief of staff. She had been supposed to follow the woman, identify her office and her name, then retreat to discuss the next logical move with James and him. Instead, she had freestyled her way into a meeting with the senator himself. A meeting that would take place in less than twenty-four hours.
“I saw an opportunity,” she explained with a shrug. “We need to act quickly, because once the body in North Carolina is identified, our options start shrinking.”
“Okay,” the professor asked, “just what are our options?”
The three companions sat in the corner of a steak house with a coach lantern and rough-sawn wood motif on the outskirts of Little Rock. Stanley and James had had the rental car ready and waiting outside the federal building when Melanie emerged, and they had driven quickly away from the downtown area to a commercial cluster on the bypass that housed their anonymous chain hotel and a number of mediocre restaurants. No one had followed them, and they had little fear of being recognized so far away from the scene of their covert downtown operation.
“Well,” she sipped a frosty mug of beer and pitched a peanut shell on the floor, “a lot depends on how we read the senator tomorrow. If he’s smack in the middle of a conspiracy to bribe the WTO and kill off everyone who knows about it, then we have no choice but to run to the Justice Department and duck for cover.”
“I thought you said that we don’t have enough to prosecute him,” James asked.
“We don’t.” Melanie shook her head. “We’ve got nothing on him except his voting record on the subsidies and an old friendship with Swinton, who happens to sell his cotton to Zingales, who we suspect is behind the Mexican gunman. Even if we had subpoena power, I doubt these people are sloppy enough to have left any significant paper trail. I’ve got nothing to bring a case with, but that’s not the point.”
She took another sip and continued. “If the senator is the real bad guy and he knows that we’ve told everything we know to Justice, then he won’t dare touch us. It would be an admission that we were onto something. My career might be in the shitter if we tell the story of our little adventures, but I don’t think that he’d take out a contract on any of us. It’d just be too dangerous and really wouldn’t get him anything.”
“What if the senator is clueless, and it’s Williams who’s calling the shots?” Stanley still had not decided whether he was going to attend the meeting with the senator the next day. At this point, he was still anonymous. If he stayed in the rental car while Melanie and James confronted the senator and his chief of staff, then he could skip back to California unnoticed and unthreatened by any physical or political retaliation. On the other hand, he’d flown to Spain and Switzerland, been shot at, and spent the night on a ledge overlooking a roaring waterfall. He had some skin in the game, as Warren Buffett was fond of saying, and he wanted to see the story through to the end. Most of all, he found it hard to imagine letting Melanie and James walk alone into Randolph’s office with only their wits to protect them.
“And Williams might not have ordered the deaths of Diana, Jacob, and Brenda,” James interjected. “That could have been Zingales acting on his own.”
“Maybe,” Melanie replied, “but think about it: why does she need to be on the dead man’s speed dial?”
The waiter laid down a plate in front of each of them, well-scored cuts of beef sizzling on stainless-steel platters, and James ordered another round of beer. All three cut into their steaks and were surprised to find that the chef had managed to achieve the proper level of pink in each portion.
“I’ve been thinking,” James said after taking a bite of his porterhouse, “about what we want from the meeting. Number one, we don’t want to be looking over our shoulders for the rest of our lives. We’re on the radar screen of some really bad people, and I think Melanie is right in thinking that we’ve got to get the story out in such a way that killing us makes no sense.”
He speared a piece of meat and marinated it in the juices collecting in the corner of his plate. “I also agree that unless the senator or his aide wants to confess, we’re never going to have enough hard evidence to convict anyone. And if we pushed Justice for a full-blown investigation, then all of the lizards are going to crawl back under their rocks and we’ll never get the whole story.”
“So, what do we do?” Stanley asked. “We’ve got the phone. Don’t we sort of have them by the balls?”
“We got them by a ball,” the journalist responded cautiously, “and I think that we should give it a good hard squeeze.” He sat back and focused his attention on his co-conspirators. “What if we make a deal with Williams and the senator? What if we offered to say nothing to the FBI or Justice in return for some kind of an affidavit spelling out what happened to Diana, Jacob, and Brenda? We’ve pretty much pieced together the rest of the story. We’ve got motives for the killings, but we’ve got no details. We don’t even know where Diana and Jacob are buried. If we knew the location of their bodies and knew how they died, then I could publish one hell of a story.”
Stanley, whose academic work had familiarized him with the need to authenticate data, understood immediately. “If we have an affidavit that correctly identifies the location of the bodies, then it’s self-validating. It becomes the spine of the whole story, and you could lay out everything we know about the bribe, the WTO, the subsidies, and the Mexican textile connection. The whole thing will hang together, and your editor will let you publish.”