by Joseph Flynn
Fucking Patti Grant.
The host at Treviso gave Hugh such a bright smile, while barely taking notice of Ellie, that she knew it wouldn’t be necessary to call on one of her friends — if Hugh were in the mood for a paisan. They were given a very good table, and Ellie was sure the food and the service would be excellent.
“Wonderful choice,” Hugh told her, looking around as they waited for the glasses of Prosecco he ordered.
Ellie would have preferred scotch. Maybe even a boilermaker.
Hugh took note of her dour mood.
“Be of good cheer, old girl. We’ll concoct some wickedness before dessert.”
Ellie gave him a deadpan look and said, “Did you just call me old girl?”
He laughed. “I did attend public school in England.”
“Yeah, and what’s up with that? Calling private schools public. That’s somebody’s idea of a joke?”
“Well, of course, it is.” By now, Hugh had sussed things out. “You’re feeling unsure that the powers of darkness will prevail. Ye of little faith.” He studied her further. “You’d also like to find a bloke to give the old bones a rattle.”
“That obvious, huh? Well, what else is there when you don’t do drugs and a third drink will bring the first two up?”
Hugh put one of his hands over one of hers.
“Dear Ms. Booker, your appeal both personal and professional have been near enough to make me regret my gaiety.”
“Yeah? You’ll throw me one for the team?”
He laughed again. “Damn, it’s a close call, but I’m afraid I have to abide with my team. However, I will see if I can’t brighten your mood.”
They were interrupted by a waiter bringing their drinks. He also presented them with a platter of Ricotta and spinach fritters, the appetizer compliments of their host. That was it for Ellie. She placed her glass of sparkling wine in front of Hugh and told the waiter to bring her a Peroni.
She also told the waiter that when she and Hugh finished their meals he was to bring the check to her, and if anyone tried to comp their meals, she’d bust his nose for him. Taken aback, the waiter dared to glance at Hugh.
He nodded. “I’d do what she says; she can be dangerous.”
Ellie liked that.
“Better bring me a beer, too,” he added.
She liked that even better.
The waiter departed, quickly.
Hugh told Ellie, “I doubt that Uncle Edbert would let me increase your salary again so soon, but I will do something special for you. Now, try to relax and take a bit of a longer view. Patti Grant has made news of historic import with her abandonment of the Republicans. Her most favored enterprise policy is also a bombshell. She’ll upset all sorts of insider deals with that one. And my guess is she’ll make several more announcements soon that will cause uproars and leave all her enemies choking on her dust.”
“Including us,” Ellie reminded him.
“Only if we’re foolish enough to try to nip at her heels. But we’ll hang back, making our own plans.”
“Such as?” Ellie asked.
“We’ll continue to look into the lobbyist murders. We’ll pursue the torture — possibly the brainwashing — of Erna Godfrey. We’ll champion the cause of keeping Reverend Godfrey out of prison. That’s bound to be in the offing. I’m sure there will be any number of ways we can torment the president. Not that we have do it immediately. We’re here for the long haul, and to be — pardon the word — honest, it’s much more fun to plague your enemies than to coddle your toadies.”
Hugh was starting to perk her up. Still …
“What about Sir Edbert? I thought he wanted to skewer the president now.”
“He does. He’s a bloody-minded old bugger, but he’ll take his fun where he can get it. Leave that to me.”
Ellie took her glass of wine back. She raised it to Hugh.
“The long haul?”
He touched his glass to hers. “The long haul.”
They drank, smiling at each other.
“Tell me,” Hugh said, “if I were an ordinary bloke, what would you do to me if we were to spend the night together?”
Ellie lowered her voice and told him in great detail.
“God save this queen,” Hugh muttered. He looked about the restaurant and asked, “Is there any male here, other than me, that you might fancy?”
There were two young guys at the bar. Ellie nodded their way.
“The one on the right.”
“You won’t mind if I —”
“Not as long as you don’t give him any money.”
“Pay for the hotel?”
“That’s all right. Make it a five-star place.”
Hugh Collier strolled over to the bar to pimp out his producer.
What a guy, Ellie thought.
I-95
The black Porsche Cayman S that Kira had given Welborn as an early wedding present came equipped with hands-free calling. As he drove north on I-95, he made another call to Loch Raven Locketry in Baltimore and this time the phone was picked up by a guy with an old man’s voice who said, “We’re closed.”
“Federal agent,” Welborn replied.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Honest and true.”
Welborn didn’t do hardass well, but he was great at sounding earnest.
“What kind of federal agent?” the old guy asked, still suspicious.
“Air Force.”
“Air Force?”
Welborn said, “I know some Secret Service guys, if that makes you feel better.”
The old guy laughed and asked, “What’s any of this got to do with me?”
“Maybe nothing, but I was informed that your company … are you the owner by any chance?”
“Yeah, I am. Name’s Mort Greenberg.”
“Captain Welborn Yates. I was told your company received a cease and desist letter regarding the production of a lapel pin that —”
“That some meshugeh people in California thought resembled Porky Pig. The only time I ever received a letter like that, I laughed. A bigshot lawyer wouldn’t make his dry cleaning bill suing me.”
“Did you tell them that?” Welborn asked, a smile in his voice.
“What I told them, it was a one-off order and we weren’t going into the cartoon business so stop worrying. We’d ceased and desisted already; they didn’t have to bother us.”
“Do you remember who placed the order?” Welborn asked.
“Oy! That was more years than … than we bother with keeping records. As soon as we get past the point of needing papers for a tax audit, pfft, they’re gone. Sadie sees to that. She thinks we’ve got too much mess around here as it it, and she’s right.”
“Do you think Sadie might remember who the customer was?”
“Unless it was Eddie Fisher, no.”
Welborn didn’t want to lose a thread he thought still had possibilities, so he went with a hunch. “Mr. Greenberg, I don’t know anyone with immigration, so please don’t get upset, but do you hire American workers?”
“Always, nothing but. Full-time people doing the metalwork here at the shop. The art we always farm out. Got a good art school here in town, you know, the Maryland Institute College of Art, MICA they call it now. Makes me smile, an art school with a nice Hebrew name. But what’s all this got to do with anything?”
Welborn said, “I was just thinking. Legal workers use legal names. Maybe you remember the name of the person who designed or fabricated the pin. Maybe they might remember the customer.”
“Schmendrik,” Mort Greenberg said.
“I beg your pardon,” Welborn said, not being up on his Yiddish.
“I just called myself a fool. Of course, I remember who designed that pin. A bigger pain in the tuches you should never meet.”
He gave Welborn a name and an address in Baltimore.
“This is a stroke of luck,” Welborn said, “your remembering all this.”
“Some people you remember s
o you can avoid them.”
“I appreciate all your help, Mr. Greenberg.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be sure to call the Air Force the next time I want to visit my daughter in California.”
Welborn laughed and gave Mort his work number. “Give me a call. I’ll let you know if Air Force One is heading that way.”
“Oh, so now you’re friends with the president?”
“I work at the White House, just down the hall from the Oval Office.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Honest and true,” Welborn told him.
Metro Police Headquarters
The homicide team looking for the K Street Killer had completed their rounds, interviewing the widows Torkelson, Waller and Benjamin. Janice Waller was another meticulous family records keeper; Myra Benjamin had one of those memories that can make people a lot of money on Jeopardy. She just sat down at her kitchen table and wrote out a list of everyone who had entered her home in the past twelve months, including her children’s friends.
That was another class of people Rockelle had overlooked: kids.
After a moment’s thought, though, she didn’t see a child passing a gun along to his father’s killer. A kid got pissed off at his old man and there was a gun in the house, he did the job himself. Even if he lived in nice suburb.
Returning to her office, Rockelle assigned Beemer the task of alphabetizing and typing up the lists of visitors to the Torkelson, Waller and Benjamin homes. Beemer didn’t mind. His wife was the executive secretary to a poobah at the Smithsonian, typed so fast her fingers were a blur. Beemer had her teach him to type, and he practiced his speed — in case he ever felt his job got too dangerous and wanted a transfer to an administrative post.
Beemer was good enough to keep up with a conversation as he worked.
He said, “Y’all know we got a rat in this building.”
He meant the person who tipped off WorldWide News, the outfit that called Joan Torkelson for a comment on the pig pins.
Meeker said, “We know.”
Rockelle added, “I got my pick. How about you two?”
“Still working on it,” Beemer said. “I got maybe two guys and a woman.”
Meeker shook his head. “It’s one dude for me.”
Rockelle said, “Bruno Bettman.”
“Mr. Chuckles at the front door, yeah, he’s the one,” Meeker agreed.
Beemer paused in his keyboarding and looked at his colleagues.
“One of my three, too,” he said.
Beemer’s others were a public information lieutenant he had never liked and who talked to media people regularly as part of his job and the other was a female patrol sergeant who had gotten her ankle broken in a street scuffle and was doing rehab duty in the building, shuffling papers.
Beemer said, “I’ll be done here in a minute.”
Meeker told his partner, “Those other two of yours, they’re possibles, all right. But I still like Bettman better.”
“I do, too,” Rockelle agreed. “But we don’t want to come down on somebody just because we don’t like him or her. We’ll check out all three very discreetly.”
“Done,” Beemer said. He sent his work to the lieutenant’s printer.
With Rockelle’s permission, Meeker raided the office fridge, giving them all soft drinks. Diet for Rockelle and Beemer, full sugar for him. The lieutenant and Beemer envied Meeker’s high-burning metabolism, but got on him about it only when they could piggyback it to some other character flaw.
Beemer gave each of them copies of the guest lists from all three widows. Meeker and Beemer had glanced at the originals compiled by the women; Rockelle had deferred reading the names until now. Beemer did neat work and looking at the result in their own work space helped the three cops to focus.
Beemer finished first, having had the advantage of reading as he input the information. Rockelle finished next. The two of them waited in patient silence for Meeker to catch up.
He lifted his eyes and saw that both of the others were thinking the same thing he was.
“One name sure do stand out, don’t it?” he asked.
“Putnam Shady,” Rockelle said.
Beemer said, “Yeah, but he was supposed to be the dead guys’ friend.”
Meeker laughed. “Yeah, we all know friends always stick together, ‘specially in this town.”
The two detectives turned to their boss. “Lou?” Beemer said.
“Mr. Shady had his own house shot up,” she said.
“Without him getting hurt at all,” Meeker pointed out.
“Wouldn’t be too hard to get someone to shoot out a few windows,” Beemer added.
Rockelle smiled.
“What, you don’t think so, lieutenant?” Beemer asked.
“Yeah, getting someone to fire shots wouldn’t be hard. What’d be tougher is to find someone to do the job and not accidentally kill the guy who hired him.”
The two detectives laughed.
“Might even be accidental on purpose, if the shooter got paid up front,” Meeker said.
“On the other hand,” Rockelle said, “Mr. Shady strikes me as nobody’s fool. What if he’s playing both ends against the middle? He starts up with Torkelson, Waller and Benjamin. But he’s got a line in to Speaker Geiger, too. He shoots Brad Attles to get him out of the way, and he becomes the speaker’s shadow.”
“Damn,” Meeker said. “That’d make him one devious motherfucker.”
Georgetown, The Four Seasons Hotel
“My parents were scam artists,” Putnam told Sweetie.
Caitie McGill had been taken back to the White House by Deke Ky, never mentioning a word to the special agent about his Uzi, but proudly informing him that she’d finally managed to beat Putnam at a hand of gin, and with Putnam’s coaching had greatly improved her game.
Deke had managed to contain his enthusiasm.
“What are your parents’ names and what kind of scam did they run?” Sweetie asked Putnam.
“Their names are Charles and Mona Shady. Their con was an idea called Equine Performance International.”
Sweetie asked, “What was that supposed to be?”
Putnam and Sweetie sat in facing arm chairs. Their stockinged feet shared a common hassock. Putnam had a flute of Veuve Clicquot in hand. Sweetie held a can of Canada Dry ginger ale.
“A surefire way to play the ponies and win,” Putnam told her.
“There’s no such thing. Hard to believe anyone would buy that.”
“Buy it they did,” Putnam said, “in vast numbers. What made the sale was my dad was probably the greatest handicapper who ever lived.”
“I never heard of him.”
“And that was just the way he wanted it. He deliberately kept a low profile, but he’d have had to be invisible to keep the railbirds from knowing him and passing stories of how he won like clockwork. There got to be a joke how a race track was nothing more than Dad’s ATM machine. It was just a question of how much he’d withdraw on a given day.”
“What made him so good?” Sweetie asked.
Putnam emptied his flute and refilled it. “It was either a gift or a curse from God.”
“Had he done anything to deserve a curse?”
“Not that I saw, not until he and Mom cooked up EPI.”
“So a gift then,” Sweetie said. “But if he could make money at will, why would he come up with a scam?”
A sad smile formed on Putnam’s face. “I got a letter from my mother, postmarked in Panama, when I was in college. She explained the whole thing to me from her point of view. She wanted me to understand why she and Dad had done the things they did.”
“Why didn’t she just tell you?”
“Remember I told you I was raised by a black couple?”
Putnam had told Sweetie that a little over a year ago. In the context of the conversation, she hadn’t pushed for an explanation. She said, “Yeah.”
“Well, when I was six the scam blew up and Mom and Da
d left me in the care of our former housekeepers, Emory and Sissy Jenkins, so I wouldn’t have to live on the run. But they took my baby brother, Lawton, with them.”
Putnam took another sip of champagne.
He continued, “The thing about Dad was, he lived in mortal fear that his gift came with an expiration date. Mom tried to reassure him that wasn’t necessarily the case. She told him Michelangelo never forgot how to paint. But then she developed her own paranoia: What if, one day, Dad just dropped dead? She didn’t have his gift or any other, but they both managed to spend money almost as fast as Dad won it.”
Sweetie said, “Must have made for a nice life style but hardly a secure one.”
“Exactly. So the two of them decided they needed a backup plan. Something that would amount to a financial killing, set them up for life.”
“Enter Equine Performance International,” Sweetie said.
“Right. If there was one thing Dad knew besides the horses, it was that 99.99% of race track bettors were always looking for a system, a sure thing. So they decided to give them Dad’s system.
“If ever there was a sure thing, it had to be the way Charles Shady picked his ponies. So he went on the Internet just as it was starting to take off and revealed his secret. The response was enthusiastic.”
Putnam emptied the bottle into his glass. His eyes had lost a bit of focus, Sweetie thought, but he wasn’t slurring his words and his narrative hadn’t wandered. She continued to sip her soft drink.
“Your parents concocted something preposterous, didn’t they?” she asked.
Putnam raised his glass to her. “You must’ve been a pretty fair cop. Still are in a private sector sort of way.”
Sweetie was largely immune to flattery but she warmed to Putnam’s compliment.
“I do okay,” she said.
“So did my parents. Dad told the world he was really nothing more than your average bettor. His advantage was that he knew which horse in a given race, if any, had been bred by…”
Putnam raised an inquiring eyebrow.
Sweetie knew the proper reply. “Equine Performance International.”