“Yes, by special courier. I’m sending it to Rochester, New York, to the Donex Photo Interpretation Laboratory, part of the Eastman Kodak system there. They’re supposed to be the best commercial photo examiners in the country. We should know in a week.”
“I don’t want to know how much this is costing me,” said Mel.
“To save some money,” Jack said, “we could fire young Fong. Really, he’s going to fire us when he gets the chance.”
“I am not Young Fong,” said Fong. “ ‘Young’ is Korean. I’m Chinese.” He said it pure deadpan, and everyone laughed. The goddamned kid was funny too.
“Okay, so David, get busy on your calls. FN here, FN overseas, the Bureau, some governmental or law school ethics think tank. Hmm, Dershowitz ought to be good for a quote, maybe Schumer, anyone else?”
“GSA.”
“No, they’ll come in officially sometime later. Look for whistle-blowing pork barrel outfits. I’ve got some good numbers for you.”
“What about gun people? Someone in the NRA who—”
“No, no, they’ll just run your ears about the evil Times and how we use the Second Amendment for toilet paper,” said Mel.
“I’ll call Remington,” said David. “They’re the ones that stand to lose their cash cow. God, whoever realized there was so much money at stake? Anyhow, I’ve developed a relationship there and I think I can get to the president.”
“Good, David, and check with Fong Young if you have any other ideas and he’ll OK them,” Mel said, again to great laughter and Fong’s embarrassment. “Okay, meeting adjourned. Go, go, go, get away from me, I need to sneak a drink from the pint in my drawer.”
Everybody filed off, and David trotted away to package the photo and begin his calls. A few people clapped him on the back, there was a punch on the arm, a thumbs-up and a wink, but best of all someone genuinely, and without irony, congratulated him.
It was Fong.
32
She was right, of course.
He sat in his motel room in Indianapolis, depressed.
Starling, the young FBI agent, seemed to have dealt him a mortal blow. You have imposed a meaning on these events. You have not discovered a meaning. And your imposed meaning stems from your anger at Tom Constable, billionaire lefty, business genius, owner of lefty networks, famous playboy and sportsman, above it all, husband to movie stars, friend of Castro, hero to millions, shit to millions of others, such as me.
The way you get Constable is simple: the man behind this thing has to be wealthy and powerful. He has connections in the government, he has immense resources, he knows everybody; in the end, he simply has the resources nobody else really does. Therefore you have assumed his involvement.
You have no proof.
It was true. Other than the marriage to one of the victims, there was not one single objective fact that connected the four deaths—five, counting Carl, six, counting Denny—to Tom Constable.
The guilty parties could have been some other players entirely—political, criminal, governmental, any entity with some power and some leverage in the spook world, and these days that could be just about anybody.
What do I know? he asked himself. Know as fact, know as reality, know as physical presence in the world?
I know somebody made very good shots to kill the four. Very good. Too good.
I know baked paint debris linked to the ceramic coating on the iSniper911 was found on Carl Hitchcock’s rifle, and the iSniper911, in skilled hands, was capable of permitting the kind of shooting that took down the four.
Who knows? Maybe it was Carl. Maybe he secretly spent seven grand on an iSniper911, put it on his own rifle, did the deeds, then took it off, tossed it in the river, put his old Leupold back on, and blew his brains out. Maybe he was so titillated by the accuracy the unit offered, he wanted to claim that as part of his legacy too. If he was nuts enough to conceive of the plan in the first place, anything is possible.
Or maybe it was some other iSniper school grad, with the same anti-lefty agenda, and he just wanted to take out those bastards, but he didn’t want to pay the price. So he put the thing together; he was one man; he was somehow able to do it and was just sitting in his trailer enjoying the big show. Meanwhile, as he said he was, Tom Constable was going crazy with all the speculation and he wanted to put it to an end, and being a big-foot asshole, he put a lot of pressure on poor Nick, and it had nothing to do with nothing. And again, it was just coincidence that he was in the shotgun chair with Denny Washington when the Latin Kings decided on payback for Denny’s takedown of some Chi-town Two Four gangbanger now sitting in Joliet and getting cornholed each night by the Black Pagans or the White Aryans or maybe the crazy Salvadoran gang, MS-13. And the object that was in Ozzie Harris’s hands was nothing of relevance to this case; and the look of Jack and Mitzi’s house, its tidiness, which Denny picked up on, that was more coincidence; it was just that Jack happened to spend ten minutes straightening up that day. And the fluctuation in the mood of Jack and Mitzi? New meds, possibly?
Ach. Ugh. Oof.
He wished he were still a drinking man. The lure of the bottle was immense now. Boy, would it be nice to go for a fine dip in the bourbon pond, feel the world turn blurry and mellow, slide away greased by delight and optimism. Oh, it would be so nice now. The bottle was so tempting.
He shook his head. His hip hurt. He’d left his new painkillers in his room in Chicago, which, incidentally, he was still paying for. It was a dull buzz, not a throb so much as a grind. Somehow the sword blade—that fight seemed so long ago, in a Japan he hardly remembered—had ruptured the surface of the stainless steel ball joint, and that irregularity had cascading consequences of unexpected pain. That had to be taken care of. He was tired of the limp; he was tired of being on the wagon; he was tired of looking for conspiracies where only coincidence existed on top of bad luck and strange but not impossible occurrence.
Okay, he thought, train back to Chicago. Check out, settle up. Go to Denny’s funeral. Give the Sig to the police and cooperate with them. I am guilty of nothing; it was righteous self-defense shooting and I wasn’t even carrying illegally. Get your head out of the screwball conspiracy bag. Then fly back to Washington, clear it up with the FBI, and if they have made any progress, fine. If not, then that is the way of the world.
Then back to Idaho. Back to the porch. Back to the rocker. Back to my daughters, to my wife, to the world.
He called her.
“Okay,” he said, “this one’s over. Coming home. Standing down.”
He explained brightly how he’d been mistaken and launched off on a fool’s crusade, an old goat’s dream. But his new plan would change all that. He told her about going to Chicago to somebody’s funeral, then back to Washington to straighten things out with Nick and his people, and then he’d be coming home, for good. Gosh, it would be so great.
“Bob,” she said, “I love you so and want you with me, but you are lying to me, and you are lying to yourself. I can hear it in your voice, and if you don’t get it settled in a way that satisfies you, it will suck the pleasure out of the peace you’ve earned. I know you. You are samurai, dog soldier, marine fool, crazy bastard, marshal of Dodge, commando, the country-western Hector. You are all of those things. They are your nature. The girls and I are just where you park when you’re not warring. You love us, yes you do, but war is your life, it’s your destiny, it’s your identity. My advice, old man, is win your war. Then come home. Or maybe you’ll get killed. That would be a shame and a tragedy, and the girls and I will weep for years. But that is the way of the warrior and we have the curse upon us of loving the last of them.”
“You’re terrific,” he said. “You help me see clearly.”
“If you have a problem, solve it the old-fashioned way.”
“And that would be?”
“The way your people and my people always solve problems. Hard work. Hard, hard work. Now hang up, have lunch, and get to work. Goodbye. Call me on DER
OS.”
All right.
It was clear now: he had to locate some kind of connection between Tom Constable and the deaths of Jack Strong and Mitzi Reilly. Something real, something palpable, something authentic.
What do I know?
I know that Strong and Reilly knew Tom Constable; I saw the picture of the four of them, Joan Flanders being the fourth, at some dinner. But that proved nothing. That proved only that in a glittery, jet-setty kind of life lived by minor celebrities, people whose pictures got in magazines, these two couples had known each other socially. That indicated nothing meaningful, mere acquaintanceship. They were both strong left; why shouldn’t they have had a social relationship?
The question was, did Strong have a way of reaching Constable, an e-mail address, a special cell phone number, a contact? That would indicate something more than a casual relationship.
The second question was, how does a guy in a hotel room in Indianapolis with no powers, no contacts, no sponsorship, no authority, no resources, find that out—fast?
Impossible.
Can’t be done.
It took him three minutes.
He went to the University of Illinois Chicago Circle Web site, clicked on the Department of Education, found that of course it hadn’t been updated since the deaths; then he went to the departmental secretary, a Eustace Crawford, number given. He reasoned that secretaries know things, they see things, they get things. But nobody has talked to this one, because Jack Strong was never investigated; he was the victim of the obviously mad marine sniper who simply chose him for his symbolic value.
Bob made the call, thinking, concentrating, ordering himself: verb-subject agreement. No ain’t, no don’t, no profanity. You are some mealy little nobody who makes his living doing things for other people.
“Education, Ms. Crawford. May I help you?”
“Ms. Crawford, I wonder if you remember me,” he lied. “My name is Daryl Nelson and I’m a special assistant to Mr. Tom Constable. I spoke to you many times in the last few weeks before the tragic passing of Jack Strong.”
A pause indicated she didn’t, but there is a certain something in people that makes them reluctant to disappoint strangers.
“Uhhh—Well, I suppose, Mr., uh, Nelson, you know it was so terrible around here, the deaths, they were such wonderful people.”
“Yes ma’am, and I’m sorry to interrupt at this time of tragedy. Actually, I put this call off as long as I could.”
“Yes sir. Well, I suppose, is it something I can—”
“Ms. Crawford, you know that Mr. Constable was a friend of the Strongs, I’m sure; you’ve seen the picture in the house, the four of them, when Mr. Constable was married to the late Joan Flanders?”
“I have seen that picture, actually. I loved Mitzi. The Strongs knew so many people. There was something so magnetic about them.”
“Yes ma’am. Well, here’s the problem: Jack and Mr. Constable had a friendly e-mail relationship. Maybe too friendly. You know that Mr. Constable has a weakness for speaking his mind in public and he sometimes says unfortunate things.”
“Yes. I remember that time he called George Bush a war criminal on Jay Leno.”
“Yes, that sort of thing. Well, in private, it’s even worse. Here’s what he’s afraid of—that somehow some of the private e-mails Mr. Constable sent to Jack could get into the newspapers or, worse, onto the Internet; you know all these terrible blog people. It would be very embarrassing and I don’t think Mr. Strong would have wanted that.”
“No, I’m sure he didn’t.”
“Now, I know his e-mail has a secret code, of course, a sign-in. Obviously, I don’t know it. But I’m guessing, in the normal course of actions, someone such as yourself in daily contact with him might have noticed what that code was. He might have even called you and asked you to check for messages that came into that account.”
“I have some idea.”
“Of course I’m not at all suggesting you give it to me. What I am asking is a favor. If you could get into his e-mail account and run a quick scan or a search of some kind; you might search for ‘Tom,’ or you might try the name ‘Ozzie’ or ‘O. Z. Harris,’ he was a friend of theirs in bad health in Chicago over the last few months. If you come up with a batch of messages, again, don’t open them.”
“Do you want me to delete them?”
“No, I would prefer if you would change the entry code, to something of your own preference. Our firm will make an official petition to the university to recover them, but their existence right now is very troubling to us, and to know that the code had been changed would be a very good thing.”
Don’t let her say, Oh, I’ll just forget the e-mails and change the code now. It’s a very good idea irrespective of Mr. Constable’s wishes.
But that seemed not to occur to her.
“I’ll check,” she said.
Two minutes passed, and then he heard the phone being picked up again.
“Well,” she said, “if Mr. Constable was TomC@Starcrostdotcom, then there were quite a few. They turned up when I searched for the Ozzie Harris name. Quite a few in fact, as if they’d been talking heatedly about Ozzie.”
“This would have been in September, just around the time of Ozzie’s death on September third?”
“Yes, exactly. Just to check, I did open the first. Mr. Strong was going to write a book about the seventies, and he’d found some items or relics that he thought might be of interest to TomC and he hoped they could continue their discussions, which he thought would have an excellent outcome for both of them. That was Mr. Strong, always trying to help. He had such a feeling for the underdog.”
“Ms. Crawford, that’s great. So you will change that code, and our conversation will be private, and I might say, you have earned Mr. Constable’s appreciation. He will reach out in some way to show that appreciation; that’s the kind of wonderful man he is.”
“It was my pleasure, Mr. Nelson.”
He put the phone down, exhausted at the effort of sounding so well-spoken for so long. But he had it. Tangible, objective proof of a contentious relationship between Tom Constable and the Strongs immediately prior to the killings. It wasn’t something he’d made up, some “interpretation” that an old man who saw conspiracies in the choice of public restroom toilet paper had come up with. It was real.
Also real: “items” or “relics” of interest to TomC. That would be whatever it was that had been taped to the frame of Ozzie Harris’s box spring for thirty-odd years, which now, in play, had the power to change lives and move mountains—of Tom Constable’s money.
It was clear what had to happen next.
Whatever it is, Constable has it.
So I’ll go get it.
33
It had been a quiet few days as David waited for the return of the photo and the report from the Rochester lab. He’d broken a minor item: his friend Bill Fedders—boy, was that guy wired or what?—had heard from somebody that Nick Memphis had a somewhat neurotic relationship with another sniper, a man named Bob Lee Swagger, who had, briefly, been the number one Most Wanted man in the country, fifteen or so years ago, and who, when the case against him for the murder of a Salvadoran archbishop was disproved, disappeared. Evidently this Swagger and Memphis had had adventures and engaged in some barely legal shenanigans, which somehow redounded with great credit to Memphis and got his career back on track.
But the point was that Swagger—“Bobby Lee Swagger,” the name sounded like someone had run an algorithm on every NASCAR driver in history, Banjax joked—had somehow had a Svengali-like hold on Memphis, and maybe Nick’s reluctance to push forward the case against Carl Hitchcock was some kind of psychological projection; he saw Hitchcock and Swagger as the same man, that tough-as-nails southern shooter marine NCO type so appealing to the immature mind.
“I mean, it seems funny on the face of it,” Bill had told David at lunch at Morton’s. “Memphis is an educated professional of great attainm
ent, and evidently this Swagger is kind of a cowboy type, unlettered, cornball, barely a high school education, but possessing some magic charisma that certain types of people fall for every time.”
“Weird,” said David, who could make no sense of it at all. He hated the kind of man he sensed this Swagger to be, some kind of macho blowhard who radiated aggression and stared down every man in the room. Football captain, cop, jock, that kind of guy, hopelessly obsolete in America today, but too dinosaur to realize he was dinosaur. Dinosaurs: not too keen on self-awareness.
“But if you think about it, it makes a little sense,” explained Bill. “Think of it as the puppy and the cat. The puppy comes into the household where the cat is a god. The cat can do anything—leap, fight, climb, race, hunt, kill—and he does it with utter disdain, ignoring the puppy, as if the puppy is too insignificant to notice and completely unable to ever impress him. And that is how the relationship is cemented in each mind, forever and ever. But what happens over time is that the cat grows old and feeble while the puppy grows into a sleek, magnificent animal that dominates every single transaction it enters. It has become the god. However, when it looks at the scrawny, desiccated, mangy old fleabag of a cat, with its rotted teeth and bloated stomach, it still sees deity. For him, the cat will always be the god, even if to the whole world, the cat is long past its prime and headed to the sharp end of the vet’s needle.”
“Maybe I could do a piece on that relationship. A holding story. To keep the scandal in the news.”
“I’m sure there’s not much on this Swagger. But there might be a little.”
David worked it hard and came up with more myth than reality. No one had ever written a book about Swagger, and he’d never been the marine celebrity with the SNIPR-1 license plate that Carl Hitchcock had been, he was no gun show autograph seller and nobody had ever named rifles, ammo, or shooting matches after him, but it didn’t take long to establish his bona fides as a war hero. He’d been a real mankiller in Vietnam, and two sources confirmed some ambush of a North Vietnamese unit heading toward a Green Beret camp. He’d won the Navy Cross for that. His kills were fewer than Carl’s, to say nothing of that new guy, Chuck McKenzie, but still, he’d spent a long time in the boonies.
A Bob Lee Swagger eBook Boxed Set: I, Sniper, Night of Thunder, 47th Samurai Page 86