Oath of Office

by Michael Palmer

  “I need your help finding this girl,” she had said to him on the ride from the movie theater back to the White House. She handed him the stack of photographs that Double M had given to her.

  Ochoa studied the images and set them facedown on his lap. “Is she a prostitute?” he asked.

  Darlene was stunned. “How did you—?”

  “Just a lucky guess. Secret Service agents like to think we’re a special breed of law enforcement, but underneath the dark suits and shades, we’re really all just cops at heart. This her fingerprint?”

  “Yes. And that’s a sample of her voice. Her name may be Margo. That’s all I have.”

  “That’s a lot. I’ve got a few friends working with D.C. vice. If it’s all right with you, I’ll let them look these over, and see what they come up with.”

  What they came up with was the name Margo Spencer, a doe-eyed sixteen-year-old, seasoned call girl, who disappeared shortly after Russ Evans resigned, but before his case was prosecuted. In fact, without access to their star witness, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. opted not to bring the case to trial at all. Evans’s disgrace, the head of the office begrudgingly decided, would have to be punishment enough. The police and FBI could not explain why Margo had disappeared. Because of her age, she’d been spared the limelight that had shone on other women who played a part in the downfall of other well-known public figures.

  “I would imagine she’s laying low until the noise surrounding Evans dies down,” Ochoa said.

  “I don’t think so, Victor,” Darlene replied. “I think she’s afraid of the people who hired her.”

  Ochoa’s contacts gave him the names and photographs of three women who they believed might have been friends with Margo. The three, known to vice as Jewel, MonicaBelle, and Debbi, were still holding on to their looks, and worked for various high-end escort services. They also periodically fed information to vice in exchange for being left alone. Ochoa had been tipped that they often met at Chef Chen’s after finishing an evening of work. The best he could do was to get a message to the one named Jewel that there would be easy money to be made should the three of them stop by Chen’s at two.

  Darlene did not sip her wonton soup, so much as she kept stirring it with her plastic ladle. The meetings, first with Evans at the Bar None, then with Double M in the alley, had her on edge, and she had been eating very little.

  Victor might be able to sneak her out of the White House once, he told her, perhaps twice more, should the girls be no-shows this morning, but each such departure carried with it increasing risks, most notably with Martin. His tension, as he stepped more and more out onto a rocky campaign trail, was becoming almost palpable, and Darlene felt increasingly uneasy around him. Kim had actually and earnestly suggested they find a way to get some counseling, but Darlene laughed off the notion, replying that trying to do so would be like asking her husband to deal with his fear of heights through a set of skydiving lessons.

  She was settling herself down by playing through a number of the more wonderful memories of the early years of their marriage when, at 2:15, the front door swung open and three striking women strode into the restaurant. Darlene looked over at Ochoa, and he confirmed her suspicions with a nod.

  The women did not look exactly as they did in their photographs. MonicaBelle, a redhead, was now a platinum blonde with her hair tied back. Jewel wore glasses, and Debbi had morphed from a pixie-cut brunette to shoulder length. They wore elegant stiletto-heeled boots and skintight designer jeans that Darlene put at three hundred a pair, minimum. Their gold jewelry jangled like wind chimes, and she caught the aroma of perfume mixed with the odor of cigarettes as they passed. A closer look, and she upped her initial estimate of their ages to thirty or even somewhere north of that. MonicaBelle and Debbi slid in across from Jewel two booths away. Before too much longer, Darlene found herself thinking, life was going to start getting harder for the trio.

  Ochoa waited for the women to place their orders before he approached.

  “Oh, handsome,” Debbi said, curling her lower lip in a pout, “I’m afraid our meters stopped running a while ago.”

  The three burst out laughing. Ochoa joined in at a reduced level.

  “This is easy money,” he said. “You don’t even have to get up.”

  “Oooh, kinky,” Jewel said, and the trio exploded again.

  Ochoa waited until their mirth had drifted off. Then he swung a chair over from the table behind him, made sure no one was watching, and slid three hundreds in front of each of them. “I’m not here for that,” he said. “I just want to talk.”

  Jewel flipped the bills with the edge of her thumb. “This won’t even get us through five minutes at Nordstrom’s makeup counter,” she said.

  “Sorry, I’m low budget.”

  “Fed?”

  “Sort of … Yes or no?”

  The women took a silent poll, and nodded. Quickly, the nine hundred vanished.

  “I’m not alone,” he said, motioning for Darlene to join them.

  “Oh, you are a kinky one,” Debbi murmured, her accent Hispanic.

  Darlene took the space next to Jewel.

  “So who’s your cute friend?” MonicaBelle asked Ochoa.

  “My name’s Brenda,” Darlene said.

  Jewel’s pale blue eyes fixed on her, and for a moment Darlene thought her disguise had failed. Then the call girl simply smiled, nodded, and said, “How’re you doin’, Brenda?”

  Ochoa was on his feet, hands on Darlene’s shoulders, ready to move out the door if necessary, but the scattered patrons in Chef Chen’s seem to be paying little, if any, attention to them.

  Darlene motioned him back into his seat. “Ladies, this handsome guy is Victor. His job is to keep me safe, and thankfully, he’s very good at it.”

  “He’s the one who sent that note to me at the agency, right?” Jewel asked.

  “You got it,” Ochoa said.

  “My kind of man,” MonicaBelle said. “Great hands. That’s how I judge a guy—by his hands.”

  Darlene moved the group closer. “Listen, we need your help locating a girl whom we think you know. Can Victor show you some pictures?”

  MonicaBelle appeared suspicious. “You gonna try and take back the cash if we don’t know her? Because—”

  “No,” Darlene said. “The money is yours regardless.”

  The girls took another quick poll, then shrugged their agreement.

  “Okay,” Jewel said. “Show us what you got.”

  Ochoa brought out a stack of police photographs. He and Darlene chose to avoid any of the ones Double M had taken with his cell phone. He spread the pictures across the table, arranging them so that each woman had some images to examine. Debbi and Jewel looked them over, but their expressions revealed nothing. MonicaBelle, on the other hand, connected with the girl right away.

  “This is Angela,” she said.

  Darlene tried to conceal her disappointment. “I’m sorry, I should have told you,” she said. “The girl’s name is Margo.”

  “Yeah and my name’s Queen Latifah if the price is right,” MonicaBelle answered.

  “What are you saying?” Ochoa leaned across the table to ask.

  “I mean she might have said her name is Margo or Fargo or whatever,” the woman said. “But I know this girl well. We used to work for the same service. She was younger than me, so I kind of looked out for her. A real looker, in my opinion—natural, if you know what I mean. Didn’t need no makeup—at least not yet. Girl’s name was Sylvia … Sylvia Winger. But she went by Angela.”

  Was.

  Darlene and Ochoa exchanged tight-lipped glances.

  “Well, Angela, or Margo, was coerced by somebody into framing a good friend of mine,” Darlene said. “We promise that we mean her no harm. We just want to talk to her.”

  “That’s impossible,” MonicaBelle replied.

  “Almost anything is possible. I’m pretty well connected.”

  “You could be the pop
e, for all it matters, but nobody can keep Angela safe now. She’s dead.”

  The words, though no longer totally unexpected, fell like hammer strikes.

  “Oh, that’s terrible,” Darlene said, her voice breaking. “Do you know what happened to her?”

  “She moved to Tampa to be with her mom a few months ago. I got a postcard from her.”

  “Do you know how she … died?”

  Without Margo, Martin would never believe Double M’s recording was real.

  “She drowned,” MonicaBelle said simply. “Washed up on a beach after she’d gone missing from a party. Her mother found my number in her things and called to tell me. You can imagine how she was feeling. Angela was a baby.”

  “I’m so sad. Would it upset you if Victor tried to learn the details of her death?”

  “We don’t mind,” the woman said. “You really seem like a nice person.”

  “So are you—all of you.” Darlene didn’t have to force the sincerity in her voice. She extended her hands, and the three escorts covered them with theirs.

  Darlene nodded to Ochoa, who pulled a BlackBerry from his jacket pocket as she looked over his shoulder, watching him key the name Sylvia Winger and the word Tampa into the Google search box. Margo’s photo—possibly from high school, appeared in a search result set that included the girl’s obituary. They read through the short paragraph, and then an earlier account in the Tampa Tribune of her death.

  “It says here that the toxicology was positive for alcohol. Three times the legal limit. No one seemed to know or care where she was partying.”

  “Accidental drowning,” Darlene said to the women. “It makes sense the police here didn’t know about her death. It wasn’t suspicious, so the Tampa cops had no reason to publish her picture on any of the law enforcement databases.”

  “I never knew her to be that heavy of a drinker,” MonicaBelle said, “but then again, I didn’t know her all that well.”

  “Victor,” Darlene said, her voice strained, “I need to make a call. I’ll be in my booth. I’ll be right back, ladies. This would be a good time to have the waiter bring your food.”

  Back at her booth, she retrieved the cell phone Double M had given her, accessed the preentered contact number, and then pressed Send.

  Double M answered on the second ring. “You found her?” he asked excitedly.

  “She’s dead,” Darlene said softly, close to tears over the hardness of the world for so many like Sylvia Winger. “We may be at a dead end, ourselves. My husband has forbidden me to discuss the Russ Evans case with him or even to mention his name. I believe you when you say the risk involved if we can’t get Russ Evans back to work is substantial, but without the girl’s testimony, there’s nothing I can do to help.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” Double M said. “I think I have another idea.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Cap pulled off the road and onto the gravel shoulder about a mile from the Kings Ridge police station. The heavy sense of loss among them had taken over. George, who had done a remarkable job of maintaining his composure, stumbled out of the car, dropped to his knees, and pounded the ground, sobbing. Then he vomited. Afterwards, he washed out his mouth from a bottle of water that Lou had accepted from William Chester, and cried some more.

  “They shot him,” he sobbed. “They fuckin’ shot him, and now Notso’s gone forever.”

  Lou crouched down and set a comforting hand on the young man’s shoulder. Then he helped him back to the Prizm.

  “We don’t know for sure that he’s gone,” Lou said. “Maybe they took him somewhere. He could be a prisoner—a hostage.”

  “Who’s they?” George shouted.

  “Well, if you believe Chester, it’s somebody who doesn’t work for him.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t believe Chester at all,” George said. “That guy’s a liar. He wouldn’t last five minutes on the street without all that money to protect him. People would see through him in a second.”

  Daybreak was approaching. Scudding clouds concealed the bright moonlight. Only the drone of nighttime insects broke the otherwise heavy silence.

  Lou thought about his own family. He and Graham were not that close—certainly not the kind of friends George and his cousin Notso were. He wondered how he would react if Graham had violently died. He would certainly demand answers and would likely stop at nothing to get them. Lou and George might have come from different worlds, but for them at least, the language of family was a constant.

  Headlights from an approaching car illuminated the roadway behind them. Reflexively, the three of them dropped down beside the Prizm. Lou tensed while Cap reached for a rock to use as weapon. The car rumbled past them without slowing. Lou felt his tension ease. He took out his smartphone and went straight to Google.

  “Wish you didn’t turn that gun over to Chief Stone,” Cap said to George, dropping the rock.

  “He asked for it and he’s a friggin’ cop. What in the hell was I supposed to do?”

  “You did right. Sorry, pal. I’m a little short on sleep.”

  “When did Stone want us back here?” Cap asked Lou.

  “He said eight. Do you guys want to go home and shower, then come back?”

  “That’s only a few hours from now,” Cap said, checking his watch. “I can call someone to open Stick and Move. What do you say we go back to those fields and do some more searching on our own.”

  “I’m in,” Lou said, stifling a yawn. “I don’t have to be at the ER until tomorrow.

  “What are you looking up?”

  “Corn.”

  “Learning anything?”

  “Maybe. Back at the house you asked Chester about the number of ears on a stalk. It says here one or two—three at the very most. But I can’t find anyplace that says four or five, and look, there’s a five right there.”

  “They look like torpedoes,” Cap said.

  Lou broke off an ear from the top of a stalk, stripped it, and snapped it in two at the center. Then he started counting kernels.

  “This is incredible,” he said. “It says in this article here that because of the way an ear develops, there are always an even number of rows of kernels—usually fourteen or sixteen. This one has twenty-four. Multiply the number of rows by the number of kernels per row, and you get how much corn there is per ear. This article says between four hundred and six hundred, depending on whether the ear has fourteen or sixteen rows. Well, this monster has about fourteen hundred.”

  “Plus all those extra ears per stalk,” Cap said.

  “Exactly. That’s a powerful lot of corn.”

  “It’s more than that,” George said. “It’s Frankencorn.”

  “What?”

  “Frankencorn. I did a paper on the genetic modifications in the fishing industry, and they used the term Frankenfish to describe these genetically engineered humongous salmon.”

  “So that’s what you think these ears are?”

  George snapped off an ear, peeled the leaves, and held it up, turning it from one side to another. “That’s it, exactly,” he said. “I’m sayin’ it’s Frankencorn. Freaky corn. I’m sayin’ it ain’t natural. GMO, baby. Genetically modified organism.” George flipped the ear aside disdainfully.

  Lou went back to his smartphone. “It says GMO is pretty common now in the corn business. In fact, it’s the rule more than the exception, but mostly because the ears have engineered resistance to the pesticides that are sprayed on them. Same for most agricultural plants. Whatever it is, it certainly seems as if this Frankencorn isn’t the result of some superfertilizer like Chester claims.”

  “But if GMO is so common,” George asked, “why would Chester lie about it?”

  “That’s what I’m asking myself,” Lou said. “Why would he lie?”

  CHAPTER 35

  Sebastian Bachmeier donned a pair of safety glasses, then released the top button of his meticulously pressed lab coat. His unshaven face was sunken from lack of sleep, but h
is ice blue eyes sparked with excitement. Though he was a strapping German, standing six-foot-three or -four, Sebastian looked pocket sized when compared to the massive array of scientific equipment crammed inside his laboratory.

  He was standing in front of a long conveyor belt that at first glance appeared to be painted gold. But a closer inspection would show it to be covered with kernels of corn. The belt zigzagged like an amusement park ride throughout the enclosure. When Sebastian spoke, his deep, accented voice reverberated off the steel walls of the underground facility like the cries of a lost spelunker.

  “This is experiment number seven-thirty-eight in our efforts to create an effective biolistic delivery mechanism to transfect gold particles coated with the DNA plasmid we have code-named MB45R directly into the corn seed. This represents the final set of experiments before certifying the process we have dubbed RAPTURE for commercial readiness. Though the outcome of RAPTURE will obviate the time-consuming and resource-intensive sexual process for creating hybrid corn seed, rest assured, this transformative technology cannot be extended to human reproduction.”

  Sebastian chuckled at his own humor. His giddy mood resulted from years of seventy-hour workweeks that were about to pay off to the tune of a multibillion-dollar technologic breakthrough. Sebastian paused here, mesmerized by the significance of the moment.

  “Soon, farmers the world over will be able to custom-order corn seed with the unmatched yield potential of our TruGrow genetics. I am now going to demonstrate the process used to make the TruGrow corn seed. This technique not only delivers the holy grail mark of three hundred bushels per acre, but also dramatically speeds up the time to market by using actual kernels instead of the widely accepted tissue-culture process.”

  Sebastian approached a gleaming stainless steel apparatus suspended directly above a section of the conveyor belt. A long bazooka-like tube extended downward from the apparatus, its muzzle about an inch above the corn kernels.

  “I have increased the PSI of the helium powering our gene gun, ensuring low transfection efficiency to obtain the optimum number of transfected neurons in the kernel’s targeted cells. To save time, I have preloaded the gun with pellets coated with a mix of positively charged gold particles and the MB45R DNA plasmid. In ten minutes’ time, the gun’s self-loading mechanism will transfect enough corn seed to plant a thousand acres. It would take six months to replicate this process using hybrid corn and tissue cultures, with substantially lower yield.”