“Let me try my own,” she said. “It might be instructive.” And so that’s we did. Over the next few sessions, Caroline Brooks probed into the inner recesses of my psyche. Think of a janitor poking around the hidden chambers of a high tower, collecting guano as rats scutter and pigeons take awkward flight. I didn’t envy her the task, but I didn’t dwell on it either. I had something else to keep me occupied, the job that had brought me to Washington in the first place. I had a murder to deal with, and nothing focuses the mind, if not the narrative, more than a murder.
It didn’t matter who the dead woman was, only that she was dead. That’s not cold, that’s fact. If she had still been alive, you would have edged your way in front of her in line at the megaplex and not given her a second’s thought. But in her dying she was worthy of a story. In her dying she suddenly mattered to someone with money, which meant she mattered to me.
The dead woman’s name was Scarlett Gould. She was only a couple years out of University of Maryland, blonde, petite, one of the army who make their post-collegiate way to Washington to forge a career in the belly of the beast. In college, while majoring in communications, she had interned at a wildlife advocacy foundation and after graduating had settled in full-time, working to protect the seals and the whales and the ivory-billed woodpecker, so endangered, she liked to say, that it might already be extinct. She had dumped her college boyfriend a few months after moving to the District and switched her Facebook status to single. She tacked batik on the wall of her small apartment in Adams Morgan just above an Ethiopian restaurant. She doted on her baby nephews and had a cat named Didi. She maybe drank too much. She liked to dance. She bought boots that were too expensive. She read romance novels and played Ramones songs badly on her acoustic guitar. She was all hopped up and ready to go, ready to go now, until she was found by a neighborhood teenager who was walking her dog in Rock Creek Park.
The girl and the dog, a large black Labrador on a retractable leash, were on the southern end of the Western Ridge Trail, just below the tennis courts, when the dog’s head suddenly perked. The dog raced away from the trail and down a hill toward the river. The leash fully extended, the dog kept yanking, the teenager followed. The dog stuck its nose in a patch of snow between two bristly shrubs, rummaging. When it finally looked back at the teenager, there was a cold blue hand in its mouth.
That image—the screaming teenager, the maroon-flecked snow, the blue hand in the black dog’s mouth—all of it sparked a conflagration of public interest. But that had happened a year and a half before we arrived in Washington, and the police investigation into Scarlett Gould’s murder had gotten exactly nowhere. The main suspect was Bradley Beamon, Scarlett Gould’s college boyfriend, who had taken their breakup badly. Beamon had sent the victim a series of threatening text messages and Facebook posts, calling her all manner of misogynistic slander, and had threatened to ram an ivory-billed woodpecker up her . . . yeah. The boy remained under suspicion but also remained uncharged. The press had stopped reporting, the public had turned to more pressing scandals, the case had gone cold.
Our job was to make sure it stayed that way.
“They’ve gone and reassigned the investigation,” said Riley, staring at the computer screen. “That’s why we’re here. They grabbed it away from the original detectives and handed it to a pair from the cold case division with orders to examine everything with new eyes. The head cop must be getting pressure to solve this.”
“We need to find out where the pressure’s coming from,” I said. “Who are the new detectives?”
“Pickering and Booth, according to the reports. Experienced, successful, but not without issues. They got some press last year for closing a ten-year-old murder and dragging the suspect back from Mississippi. Before that there was a scandal involving Pickering. It was front page of the local for a few days and then died.”
“Find out everything you can about the two of them,” I said. “Their family situations, their finances, whatever shortcuts they may have taken in the past.”
“You looking for dirt, chief?”
“Piles of it,” I said. “We’re here to bury a landfill. But they can’t know we’re looking into them.”
“Got it,” said Riley.
“Kief will give you whatever help you need.”
“I think I can manage.”
“I’m here if you need me,” said Kief. “Right here, on the couch, if you need me.”
Mr. Maambong had rented us a suite, along with three additional rooms on the same floor of a venerable downtown hotel. The suite was large and a little shabby, with wide sofas and brown easy chairs and a long dining room table. From the windows we had a sterling view of the White House with the Washington Monument rising behind it. Riley had set up two laptops, a monitor, and a laser printer on the dining table to serve as our command post. Gordon was standing by the counter that served as the kitchen, peeling an orange. Kief was sprawled on one of the sofas, with a bottle of beer resting on his belt buckle.
“The girls here don’t smile at you, have you noticed that?” said Kief.
“They’re just not smiling at you,” said Riley.
“They smile at me in Miami. Even the pretty ones way out of my league.”
“Pity smile,” said Gordon. “It’s a sad state when the only action you’re getting is a pity smile. Where’d you find the beer?”
“Minibar. In Miami there’s a friendliness. It’s the culture.”
“Culture?” said Riley. “In Miami?”
“But here,” continued Kief, “everyone is so damn serious, with their oh-so-important jobs working for their oh-so-important dickhead politicians. They can’t be bothered to smile at someone who might be less important than they are.”
“You must be feeling rich, little Kief, raiding the minibar,” said Gordon.
“I took it from Phil’s minibar,” said Kief, raising the bottle. “What? I mean he gets the sweet suite and all we have are those crappy rooms.”
“The suite’s where we work, dumbass,” said Riley. “It’s for all of us.”
“Until there’s a sock on the door.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said into their laughter. “Kief, I also need you to find out what kind of forensic evidence they have and where they store it. I want a plan in place to contaminate what they have so that it’s unusable in furthering the investigation or at trial.”
“Fire will do the trick. Fire always does the trick. Do you want me just to go ahead and light the sucker?”
“Not until I say so. We might want to contaminate it in a specific way.”
“Messing with state’s evidence, man,” said Gordon. “That’s a thing.”
“We’ve done worse,” said Riley. “While Kief and I are digging up dirt on the cops and scouting their evidence, what are you and Gordon going to be up to?”
“We’re here to divert the police investigation,” I said. “The one thing we don’t want to do is divert the damn thing to the truth. That means we have to shadow the official investigation with one of our own. Gordon and I will start taking care of that.”
“How are we going to tromp around the same territory as the new detectives without getting our asses handed to us?” said Gordon.
“Leave that to me,” I said. “Tomorrow I’ll pick us up a shade.”
The sky was bright, the day was filled with promise, and the bar was a dive. Pretty damn perfect all the way around. Sometimes, when the stakes are too high you have to lay both sides of a bet to keep yourself whole. This was that kind of play. I wore my tight-suit, gelled-hair getup with the brown briefcase. I wanted to look young in the eyes of the aged, I wanted to be underestimated. People will often debase themselves to help a fool.
The Raven Grill was a dark, narrow room in the northern part of the city, wedged between a Laundromat and a dry cleaner. The grill portion of the name was an inside joke. The pale wooden bar was long and worn, the leather on the mismatched stools was cracked. Four old-timers
played cards in a booth; a man with a mustache and a worn suit huddled over some foul brown concoction at the bar. I sat one stool over and ordered a beer. The barkeep didn’t give me a second look, which was the best thing about the place, that and the picture of Jimi Hendrix on the wall behind me.
“I have just enough time for a quick swallow,” I said to no one in particular. I drummed the bar top. “You’ve got to take your moments when you can, am I right?”
The man one stool over didn’t respond, but a slight shrug let me know he was listening. He was thin, balding, on the wrong side of sixty. There was something dignified in the way he held himself, as dignified as one can be drinking alone in a bar like that in the middle of the day.
When the bottle of beer was slapped down before me, I took a long pull like I needed it. “Cheers,” I said.
“Customarily, one says that before one drinks,” said the man with a Latin accent.
“I was thirsty.”
He didn’t smile or look at me, just stared forward, like some answer to the universe was on the other side of the bar top, maybe in the bags of chips and pretzels hanging from the rack on the wall. That was about it for food in that place; I supposed the pretzels were grilled. I finished the beer, motioned to the barkeep to bring me another, and indicated she should supply the man one stool over with another of whatever crap he was drinking as well.
“I guess I have time for one more,” I said, “but then I’ve got to go. Got to go. Cheers.”
“Proper form that time,” said the man, lifting his freshly poured brown sludge in thanks while still not shifting his posture.
I took a long pull. “I’m just going to finish this, and maybe have one more, but then I’ve got to, got to, got to find myself a lawyer.”
He turned at that, the man one seat over, his body opened up to me like a flower and the thin lips beneath the mustache spread into a wary smile even as his eyes stayed mysteriously sad. “Are you, perhaps, my young friend, searching for an attorney?”
“Not just any attorney,” I said. “The right attorney. One who recognizes opportunity, because I have opportunity in my back pocket for a mouthpiece sharp enough to recognize it.”
“Ah, I see. Opportunity you say. For an attorney. Which is a coincidence, I must say, because by mere happenstance I just so happen, myself, to be an attorney.”
“No.”
He lifted his hands and spread them wide as he bowed his head into the gap. “Just so happen.”
“Well then,” I said, “this might be both our lucky days. The name’s Triplett, Dick Triplett.”
“Alberto Menendez, attorney at law, and at your service.”
“Al?”
“Alberto.”
“Not Al? Al is so friendly.”
“Alberto.”
“Okay, so much for friendliness. Alberto, why don’t you grab us a booth and I’ll order us another couple of rounds.”
We seated ourselves on either side of a white Formica table beneath a photograph of Dylan. There was a tabletop jukebox that we ignored, and a mess of drinks I brought over that we didn’t. Oh, and I sprang for a bag of pretzels to serve as lunch. I didn’t want Al to think me a cheapskate.
“What kind of lawyer do you happen to be there, Alberto?”
“Oh, I am what they call a jack-of-all-trades,” he said in his courtly voice. He had the face of a benevolent landowner, with scores of peasants toiling in his fields, but with a family that had imploded. A leopard of the high hills of Mexico. “I have learned not to limit myself in service to my clients’ interests. You want a will, I will make you a will. You have an immigration issue, I can work with ICE to solve it, if it is solvable. Sadly, not everything is solvable. You have a DUI, I know whom to talk to.”
“Who?”
“That, my friend, must remain my secret. Not all the dark arts of the law can be given away over a cheap glass of bourbon.”
“Maybe I should have bought you something top-shelf.”
“This place only has bottom shelves, and sadly, they have become the shelves for me.”
“What about PI?” I said. “Any experience? Do you do good old-fashioned plaintiff’s work?”
“I have done some in the past, yes? Life is full of uncertainties. Negligence is everywhere, not to mention unspeakable violence. I would be a poor servant if I didn’t protect my clients’ interests when the worst occurs.”
“And how did that work out for you, bottom line?”
“Let me ask you something, Mr. Triplett.”
“Dick.”
“Yes. Are you, perhaps, an attorney yourself?”
“As a matter of fact.”
“Where did you attend law school?”
“Pacific McGeorge.”
“Never heard of it.”
“No one has.”
“And so that leads me to conclude this was not a chance encounter.”
“Don’t get too clever on me, Alberto, you might make me nervous. I am looking for local counsel. I need someone discreet enough to remain quiet about the peculiarities of the case, someone desperate enough to take it with my conditions attached, and someone sturdy enough to handle the pushback that will surely come. I asked around and your name came up as fitting the criteria. Especially regarding the desperate part.”
“And you thought it necessary to meet me here, in this unfortunate place, under false pretenses?”
“Showing up in your office in the middle of the day wouldn’t do much good, would it, Alberto? And the pretense, as you can understand, was all about evaluating you before I made my offer.”
“Did I pass your precious evaluation?”
“I liked that you didn’t let me call you Al. Every Al I’ve ever known has been an asshole. And you seem to have discretion.”
“Perhaps, before you go any further, I should—”
“If you are trying to tell me about that unfortunate matter in the Patel case, I already know.”
“I would think that information, and the Bar Association’s swift reaction, would have dissuaded you.” He lifted his drink, swirled it a bit before knocking down a stiff gulp. “It seems to have dissuaded everyone else.”
“On the contrary, it is what brought me here. I believe in second chances. And I believe in desperation. I think you’ll do, Alberto, if you agree to my conditions.”
“These days there are always conditions. And what are yours, pray tell?”
“Here’s the story,” I said, before leaning forward and lowering my voice. “I have a lead on a wrongful death. The case would have to be brought here, but I’m not licensed in DC. In any event, I don’t want my name attached to the case in any way, shape, or form. That’s the first requirement. Whatever heat comes down, you have to handle it without getting me involved.”
“What kind of heat are we talking about?”
“I don’t know exactly, but I expect pushback. So I need someone who can take care of himself when pushed.”
“If you know about the Patel case, then you know the answer to that.”
“You ask me, he had it coming. You were going to put the money back, of course you were. Look, what I’ll need you to do is sign up the clients on your own and handle any inquiries from the authorities while leaving my team free to do the investigation in your name.”
“And then I will handle the litigation?”
“I don’t expect there will be litigation.”
“Then I will handle the settlement negotiations.”
“I don’t expect there to be any settlement negotiations.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
“All I expect there to be is an investigation and pushback. The police may even be involved. It could get messy. My guess is you’re the man to handle the messy. But if, by chance, things turn in unanticipated ways and there is a case to move forward, then you will handle the litigation and any settlement discussions, and when the proceeds pour in, your firm will pay me a substantial referral fee.”
/> “How substantial?”
“Fifty percent.”
“It is usually a third. In my experience, it has always been a third.”
“That’s where the desperation comes in.”
“Forty.”
“We’re not negotiating, Alberto. Whatever settlement or verdict you get, you will transfer, quite quietly, fifty percent of your firm’s fee to an account I designate.”
“After expenses?”
“No. The expenses are your problem. Fifty percent flat. I will, however, as consideration for all your trouble, and all the possible mess, pay you a nonrefundable retainer. Say five thousand dollars.”
“I suppose we’re not negotiating that either.”
“Would seven make you happier?”
“Not happier, but less hungry. Up front?”
“That goes without saying.”
“It sounds, how should I say, all of it, a trifle shady, my friend.”
“More than a trifle, Alberto, but that is why I didn’t go to Williams & Connolly, or Willkie, Farr. That is why I came to you.”
He sat hunched over his drink, spinning the glass back and forth between his palms, thinking for a moment. “You know, it could have happened to anyone.”
“But it didn’t happen to anyone.”
“And now here I am, deep in the shady.” He stopped spinning his drink and took a swallow, winced. “The bourbon in this place is a crime, but at least it’s a petty crime. There was a time I drank only the best. When only the best was good enough.”
“We all have our sob stories.”
“When would the retainer payment be made?”
“As soon as you sign the referral agreement and then get the requisite signatures on a contingency fee agreement. I drafted both.” I opened the briefcase, pulled out two documents with blue backing, and slid them across the table. He took a pair of glasses out of his jacket and put them low on his nose as he looked over the documents. After a moment he raised his gaze above the lenses to peer at me.
A Filthy Business [Kindle in Motion] Page 14