by Joseph Flynn
DeWitt liked that a lot. He drove Putnam back to the Greenwood School to pick up his car.
“Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Shady. You’ve been a big help.”
“Yeah, well, I like the idea of a subversive working at the FBI.”
DeWitt laughed.
“Here’s one more thing for you to think about,” Putnam said. “I’m not sure where it might lead but I found out this morning that Representative Philip Brock had some quiet conversations at The Constellation Club with Senator Howard Hurlbert shortly before the senator was killed.”
DeWitt didn’t say a word, but his mind began to race.
Putnam noticed the uptick of energy in the fed’s eyes.
He said, “Brock was also Busby’s pre-opening guest at Inspiration Hall. I saw the list of everyone who got that special privilege. Could be just a coincidence, but who knows? I’m going to pass this information along to my wife. So James J. McGill will get it, too. Maybe all you fine law enforcement minds should get together and sort out what it might mean.”
“That’s a fine idea, Mr. Shady. Thanks again.”
“Right, just don’t tell anyone other than my wife and Mr. McGill I cooperated with the FBI.”
DeWitt promised he wouldn’t.
A minute later, driving back to his office, DeWitt got a call from Galia Mindel.
The Residence — The White House
The president told McGill which of his half-dozen suits he should wear to do the WWN interview with Ellie Booker. “You look best in the Pierre Cardin.” Textured black wool, two button coat. The suit’s slim cut was yet another reason for McGill to stay in shape. One donut too many and he’d start popping seams.
He’d bought the suit almost four years earlier when he and Patti had spent a week’s holiday in Paris. The look was classic enough, he’d been assured, that it would never appear dated. Whenever McGill got dressed up, he thought he’d come a long way since his days of shopping at Sears men’s store.
He relied on Patti’s advice for a choice of shirt, tie and shoes, too.
“And get a trim,” his wife told him.
The White House used to have its own barber shop, but the Department of Homeland Security had taken over the space. Somehow, McGill hadn’t been consulted on the decision. He accepted the new reality with grace. The young pixie who’d cut his hair during his time in Paris had given him a referral in Washington.
“Would you like to do my makeup?” he asked Patti.
“If I had the time, I would. But WWN has good people. They’re big on pretty faces over there.”
McGill batted his eyes at her.
“You will remember to be serious, Jim?”
He stopped kidding. “I will. I’ll put my game-face on. The hard part will be not to call out certain people for being the bastards they are. But I’ll watch out for that, too. I’ll do you proud, Madam President.”
“Thank you. Now I have to get back to the grind.”
She gave McGill a kiss and departed for the Oval Office. The hair stylist came, snipped and left in a flash. McGill put on his meet-the-American-people clothes and was ready to do his star turn when the White House photographer popped in.
“President’s request, sir,” he told McGill.
He took six shots, and McGill was almost out the door when his cell phone sounded.
Father Inigo de Loyola was calling. “It’s is done, amigo. Your shocking idea has been brought to reality at the parish of Saint Martin de Porres. You know where this is?”
“Roughly. It’s in South East, right?”
“Sí.” The priest gave McGill the street address.
“Was this done with the hierarchy’s approval?”
“They are still discussing the matter. Father Dennehy, the pastor at Saint Martin’s, grew impatient with their dithering. He went ahead on his own.”
“Has the sign attracted any attention?”
“It is functional, but we have draped it. Father Dennehy and I thought you should have the honor of revealing your idea to the world.”
“So there’s no media present yet?”
“No. But some curious parishioners have gathered. Will you be joining us soon?”
“I’ll be there shortly.”
McGill placed a call to Ellie Booker.
“I can expect you any minute, right?” she asked.
“Would you like to delay our interview for, say, sixty minutes to get some video you can add to it?”
“Pictures are always good, if they’re relevant and have some punch.”
McGill told her what was planned at Saint Martin de Porres.
Ellie asked, “Anybody else know about this?” Meaning other media.
“Not yet. You want me to pick you up?”
“Meet me at the church,” Ellie said, “I’ll get there before you do.”
She sounded like a firefighter rushing off to fight a blaze.
McGill smiled and got out of the White House without further delay.
McGill Investigations, Inc. — Georgetown
Sweetie knew she had influenced Putnam in any number of ways, all to the good as far as she was concerned. To a somewhat lesser degree, he had influenced her, too. She had been a late adapter to cell phones, and still preferred the dumb models to smart phones. She particularly disliked the idea she could be tracked just by having her phone on.
McGill had told her, “I know it’s unlikely, but what if someone overpowered you and —”
“The guy was as dumb as he was strong?” Sweetie asked. “He might forget to check if I had a phone on me?”
“Okay, what if I am in a bad spot and need help?” McGill asked. “I have just enough time to call you before the spit hits the fan and yell for help.”
Sweetie was averse to vulgarities; McGill accommodated her whenever possible.
“Yeah, you’re a noted hysteric,” Sweetie said, “always flying to pieces.”
McGill never was able to give her a good reason to get a smart phone. She did it just to humor him. But she absolutely refused to be trendy and get an iPhone. Until Putnam had told her just recently, “Maxi asked me for one.”
“Give me one good reason she should have an expensive phone like that.”
“I’ve got one. She has phone envy, and then there’s FaceTime.”
Putnam explained that video calls were easy on the iPhone, and when either of them wanted to call Maxi, they’d be able to see her as well as hear her. That did have appeal, Sweetie had to admit. Still, she asked, “Aren’t there other brands that can do that?”
“They can’t do it with iPhones, and if Maxi and I have them …”
Grumbling, Sweetie said she would let herself be coerced.
“Cajoled,” Putnam said.
They settled on persuaded as the description, and that day at the office Sweetie was glad of it. She looked up the year Joan Renshaw had graduated from Northwestern and then called the University of Illinois alumni office in Champaign and asked if they had a grad named Lisa Stone in the same year’s class.
Sweetie explained that she was a former Chicago cop now working as a private investigator. She dropped McGill’s name and asked if the alumni office would call Ms. Stone and have her call Sweetie. They were happy to oblige.
So was Ms. Stone, and the first thing she asked after saying hello was, “Do you have an iPhone?”
“Of course,” Sweetie said.
“Let’s do FaceTime then.”
They established a video link, and Sweetie saw the first professional benefit of owning the phone. If you were a cop or a PI, you could see if the person you were talking to was telling you the truth. Facial expressions were a dead giveaway to a trained observer.
Unless you were dealing with a sociopath.
Ms. Stone seemed anything but. She was bright, cheerful and somewhat starstruck.
“You really work with James J. McGill?”
“I do, and have for a long time.”
“Have you ever
met the president?”
“I saw her just the other day at the White House.”
“Really?” Lisa Stone looked like she was the one studying Sweetie’s face for any sign of deception. Finding none, she laughed and said, “That must be so cool.”
The woman had to be forty years old, but in some ways, at least, remained young at heart.
“Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?” Sweetie said.
“About what? I can’t imagine why a private investigator would want to talk with me.”
“I’d like to confirm some information I was given about Joan Renshaw.”
“Oh.” Ms. Stone turned glum. “Poor Joanie. I don’t know what could have come over her, and now she’s in jail.”
Sweetie saw the regret was real, but something else caused Lisa Stone to look away from the camera for just a moment. She knew something that she didn’t want to reveal. Sweetie chose to go after easier information first.
“Did you once lose a bet with Joan that involved your washing her car.”
Lisa Stone’s good humor was back and she rolled her eyes.
“I sure did. It was a school pride bet. Illinois versus Northwestern. Both our basketball teams were pretty good our senior years. She won: I lost; I paid off.”
“You washed her car four times in a month?”
“No, just three.”
“She let the last one slide?”
Ms. Stone shook her head. “Oh, no. Joanie never let anything slide, not even when we were kids growing up. She told me she’d defer the last car wash for another favor, and she called me on it fifteen years later. You know what she asked me?”
Sweetie felt sure she did. “You took a picture of her with Roger Michaelson.”
“How did you know?”
“I heard about that picture. Michaelson won that basketball game for Northwestern.”
“He sure did, the sonofagun. Anyway, I grew up to be a professional photographer. I shoot layouts of high-end homes for glossy coffee-table magazines, but I know how to take a portrait, too. The shot I took for Joanie would have cost anybody else a few thousand dollars. You could buy a lot of car washes for that kind of money.”
Sweetie saw the memory had brought back some feelings of resentment.
She soft-pedaled her next question.
“Anything else you’d care to tell me about Ms. Renshaw or Mr. Michaelson?”
Sweetie saw Lisa Stone nod. The secret she’d withheld earlier was going to emerge.
“Right after I took that picture of the two of them, I took Joanie aside, asked her if she was going to make a move on Roger. She laughed and told me maybe if he’d gone on to play in the NBA instead of becoming a state’s attorney. From the time we were kids, she told me she was going to marry some rich man, and then she got that job working with Andrew Hudson Grant and, darn, if it didn’t look like she wasn’t going to make her wish come true.”
Joy departed Lisa Stone’s face once more.
“But I guess we both know that didn’t happen, for a couple of reasons.”
Mr. Grant meeting Patti Darden, and then getting killed.
“Thanks for your help, Ms. Stone.”
“Hey, can you do me a small favor or two?”
“If I can, sure.”
“Please tell the president I voted for her and say hi to Mr. McGill for me.”
“Will do,” Sweetie said.
It was a small price to pay to learn Roger Michaelson had told her the truth.
And that Joan Renshaw had been a gold-digger.
Chapter 15
St. Martin de Porres Church — Washington, DC
The church was a rather grand structure for a fairly modest neighborhood in the southeastern corner of the city. Constructed of pale gray limestone at the beginning of the twentieth century, admission to the church might be gained through any of five tall archways. Above the central arch a circular stained glass window measuring twelve feet in diameter admitted the light of an ascending sun and flooded the church with hand-crafted rainbows during morning Mass.
On the support column to the left of the central archway a glassed-in display board enumerated the daily and Sunday schedules of services. On the support column to the right of the central archway a cloth draped a new display case. Whatever it was, it would be impossible to miss for anyone entering the main doors of the church.
Fathers Inigo de Loyola and Alphonsus Dennehy stood in front of the cloaked fixture.
“We are certain to hear from the archbishop about this, Al,” de Loyola said.
Dennehy shrugged. “What can he say? We got ahead of ourselves? We should have waited for the nobility to give us the nod? I’ll do an extra fifteen minutes of penance the next time I confess my sins.”
“You might become a pariah like me, a man with a calling but no fixed occupation.”
“Fine. I’ll go back to Boston, resume smoking, have two drinks with dinner instead of one and become an Episcopalian. I hear they’re hurting for clergy.”
De Loyola laughed. “A fine plan. Save a place at your table for me. Oh, look, a television truck has arrived. There’ll be no hiding our disobedience now.”
“Indeed. Our celebrity will be established beyond doubt. Maybe we can get our own TV show with, who is it? Oh, yes, WWN.”
The two priests saw an intense young woman and a man with a video camera bolt from the van and head their way. The dozen or so neighborhood residents who’d been lingering on the small plaza in front of the church saw their numbers swell with the arrival of the television truck. The chance to do a man-on-the-street interview was not to be missed.
Watching the TV people scurry toward them, de Loyola said, “Mr. McGill will be here momentarily. He is a man of his word.”
“Good to know someone is. You know the one thing I regret about this, Inigo?”
“What’s that, Al?”
“That I didn’t think of this idea first.”
U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations — U.S. Capitol
The chairwoman of the committee, Senator Darla Kozinski, Democrat of Maryland, nodded to her colleague Senator Tom Hale, Republican of Alaska: The fix was in. Two billion dollars of construction money for a federal prison in Alaska had been attached to the Farm Bill. Now, all Hale had to do was keep the other members of the GOP on the committee in line, get them to vote unanimously for the bill now, and oppose any filibuster attempts when the bill came to the floor of the Senate for a full vote, and the funding would be his.
Assuming the House went along with it.
And a reconciliation committee of the two bodies of Congress didn’t scotch it.
Still, with the president backing the effort from the Democratic side, and Hale urging all his long-time Republican colleagues to vote for his project, things looked good.
Madam Chairwoman even went so far as to shake Hale’s hand.
She was another Senate veteran who understood what it meant to take a decade to finally get big money for your state. He appreciated the sentiment. He wasn’t so sure about the optics, though, the two of them shaking hands publicly before a vote. Putting the fix in was one thing; letting the public see it happen was another.
Hale never noticed that the moment of comity had been photographed.
He still had the uneasy feeling Galia Mindel and the Democrats were pulling a fast one on him somehow. True, he was getting every thing he wanted and more, but hoary words of warning still rang in his mind: Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.
Even if everything was kosher, Hale was troubled by his own conscience. That wasn’t something that happened often, but even if the whole plan worked exactly the way he wanted, he was already looking for ways to wriggle out of the commitment he’d made to Galia to support infrastructure projects in other people’s states. Let those suckers put their noses to the grindstone for ten years. Then, maybe, he’d support them.
As for Galia Mindel and the president, they’d be gone before long, but he�
��d hold his seat until he breathed his last.
Madam Chairwoman called for a committee vote. The ayes had it. Thirty to zero.
The unanimous vote both thrilled Hale and made him even more uneasy.
Senator Kozinski leaned over and whispered into Hale’s ear, “Now get your friend, Representative Dalton, to do her part in the House.”
Senator Hale left the committee room to do just that.
FirePower America — Falls Church, Virginia
Auric Ludwig took two showers in his office’s private bathroom, one to lave himself clean of the stench of jail, the other to scour the stink of the betrayal perpetrated by his former attorney, Ellis Travers. He dressed in the spare suit he kept in the office closet, all the while assuring himself that there had to be a criminal defense lawyer in Washington or New York who could keep him from ever spending another night in lockup.
Problem was, every time he persuaded himself that people like him didn’t go to prison, he heard Rockelle Bullard’s voice telling him he was going to get the high end of the sentencing range for obstruction of justice: thirty years. He couldn’t begin to imagine the horrors of that reality. For one thing, with his blood pressure, he doubted he had that much time left.
Even if he were able to survive physically, his mind would never stand up to such a vile existence. He knew, of course, that a gun in a home was far more often used for suicide than to defend against an intruder … and he was beginning to think that might be a reasonable thing.
No, no, no. He would not give in, not even to his own demons.
He would triumph, as always. He would —
Respond to his secretary’s buzz on the intercom.
“You asked to be alerted to any news regarding James J. McGill, sir. He’s going to appear on WWN momentarily.”
“To say what?”
“There was no word on that, but there’s a video setup in front of a DC church.”
A church? What the hell could that be about?
Ludwig turned on his television.
St. Martin de Porres Church — Washington, DC