by Glenn Rogers
“That's a good observation,” I said. “A good investigator has to notice things like that.”
She gave me a kind of girlish, awe shucks grin. “But it doesn't tell us anything,” she said.
“It tells us there's something there and we have to keep digging until we find it.”
She nodded thoughtfully. Then she said, “But I got the feeling that you had something to tell me.”
I smiled. “You'd make a good investigator.”
“Most women probably would, don't you think?”
“Well,” I said, “based on my experience in the FBI, some women are excellent investigators. Some are not. It depends on how they combine intuitive insights with rational analysis. It's the same for men. Being able to read people and situations, which women are usually good at, has to be combined with good logical analysis. The person who can do that, male or female, will be a good investigator.”
“Investigations 101?” June said.
“Something like that.”
“Okay, so what do you have to tell me?”
I told her about Alex and explained what he had found. I gave her copies of some of the original documents Alex had gotten for me. I also told her about the congressional aide in Falls Church.
She listened thoughtfully to everything I said. Then she looked at the documentation I gave her. As I watched her process what I’d told her, I was aware of how Time and Newsweek had described her: one of the smartest, toughest women in America.
I sat quietly and let her think. She took her time. Her eyes did not meet mine for probably two or three minutes. When they did, they were cold blue steel. “So,” she said, “it appears that my father is not only complicit in the production of shoddy equipment that resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians and military personnel, he also appears to have participated in unconscionable experimentation on human subjects.”
Hearing her say it made it sound even more horrible than it was.
“Yes,” I said.
“And there's a witness who can verify these things,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Do you have any doubts about the veracity of these charges?”
“No.”
She nodded.
“What you're not sure about is who tried to kill you, the father of Jane's son, or my father.”
“Actually,” I said, “it may not be your father, it may be someone who believes he is protecting your father and the company. Your father may not have anything to do with the attempts on my life. He may not even know about the attempts on my life.”
“Or he may,” June said.
“He may.”
She took a deep breath, stood and walked to a large window that looked out toward Los Angeles. It was a spectacular view. I don't think she saw it. With her back to me as she looked out the window, she said, “I've opened a real can of worms, haven't I?”
She wasn't really talking to me, so I didn't respond.
“I need to know,” she said. “I need to know about my sister, and I need to know about my father.”
I nodded, mostly to myself because June was still facing the windows.
When she turned to face me, she repeated what she’d said.
“I understand,” I said.
She went to her desk, took her checkbook from her purse and wrote me another check. She held it out to me. “Traveling to Virginia and to Boston will be expensive. You'll need additional funding.”
I took the check. It was for ten thousand dollars. That was more than enough to cover the expenses I anticipated.
“When will you leave?” she asked.
“Tomorrow.”
“Where will you go first?”
“Falls Church.”
“Will you call me when you learn something?”
“I will. But before I go, I need you to get me a list of the names, five maybe, of people at Harvard I can approach who will remember Jane.”
“I’ll email it to you this afternoon.”
Chapter 34
It was lunchtime when I left June's office. I was hungry and there was a pretty good Chinese place, Chen's, not far from the Lindell Industries corporate offices. It was always crowded at lunchtime because the food was good and the portions were large. I pulled in their lot and parked my Wrangler between a BMW Z4 and a Porsche 918 Spyder. Nice cars. But I thought my dirty black Jeep, sitting high off the ground on wide knobby tires, lent an air of brutish sophistication to the lot.
I went inside the crowded restaurant and found a small table in the back of the room, on the right. It was the last empty table. Chen's looked like most other Chinese restaurants: a fish tank near the entrance, Chinese murals on the walls, Chinese lanterns hanging from the ceiling. Booths lined the walls. Tables with chairs filled the center of the large dining room. A waitress came by with water and took my order. I opened Plato’s Republic on my iPad and read while I waited. After a few minutes, an attractive Asian woman approached my table, somewhat timidly. Like nearly all Asian women, she was smallish, slim, with long silky black hair. Soft spoken. Pretty.
“Excuse me,” she said, just barely loud enough for me to hear her, “all the tables are taken. Would you mind sharing your table?”
“Not at all,” I said.
She smiled, hung her purse on the back of the chair, and sat down opposite me.
“My name is Kim,” she said.
“Nice to meet you, Kim. I'm Jake.”
“I've never eaten here before,” she said. “Is the food good?”
“Very good,” I said. “That’s why there are no empty tables.”
A waitress came by with water and a menu and Kim ordered.
When the waitress left, Kim said, “I'm here on business.”
I looked up from my iPad. “Really.”
“My first time in Los Angeles,” she said. “I just flew in this morning from San Francisco.”
“So what do you think of our fair city?” I asked.
“It's flat.”
I chuckled. “Compared to some sections of San Francisco, most of L.A. is pretty flat. We do have some hills, though, scattered around here and there.”
She smiled. “Would you like to show them to me?”
I'm six three and in good shape. Several women have told me I'm good looking. I don't know about that. What I do know is that women do not usually take the initiative in trying to meet me. Heidi was making that effort, but she’s my neighbor so that doesn’t really count. But here it was happening for the second time today. Earlier, there had been the woman in the park. Now this nice looking Asian woman was asking me to show her around L.A. That sort of thing just doesn't happen to me. Yet it was happening. Or was it?
“Well, Kim,” I said, “as pleasant as that prospect sounds, I am involved in an important piece of business myself and will be flying to the East Coast first thing in the morning. I have a lot to do in preparation for my departure. So, unfortunately, I have no time for distractions, regardless of how attractive they might be.”
She gave me a little girl pout and stuck out her bottom lip a little. “You sure? We could have a lot of fun.”
“I'm sure.”
“Well, maybe another time.”
“Maybe,” I said.
Our food arrived. As we ate, she asked me questions about L.A. I told her what she might want to do in her spare time. When I finished, I told her it had been nice talking with her. I left money for my bill and a tip on my side of the table and left the restaurant.
As soon as I was out of the building and past the front window so I could not be seen from within the restaurant, I took my .357 from under my left arm and held it down along my right leg. I stepped around the corner of the building and waited several feet beyond the corner, gun cocked, raised, and ready.
Almost immediately Kim came around the corner, gun in hand, a Ruger SR22 semiautomatic with a silencer on it. She expected me to be getting into my car. She'd have walked up behind me, put a bullet in my back an
d then another in my head, and then have hurried on her way. But I wasn't getting in my car. I was standing there waiting for her.
Her reaction time when she saw me was fast but not quite fast enough. As her weapon was coming up, I fired. The impact of the shot knocked her back. Her weapon discharged, the round tearing a hole in my tan corduroy sport jacket and grazing my left shoulder.
I called McGarry and told him what happened. He said he'd send a car and have a dispatcher radio instructions regarding my identity. No point in me being hauled to the ground and cuffed. Then I called Alex. I wanted him, as well as the LAPD, to run her prints. This woman was a real pro. I wanted to know what there was to know about her. Alex said he’d send someone over.
It took McGarry about thirty minutes to get there. He suggested I go to the emergency room to have my shoulder looked at. I told him it was just a scratch. He had an officer take my statement and told me I could go.
As I turned to leave, McGarry said, “Am I going to have to dispatch another car to the Eros club?”
I turned to him and said, “I hope not.”
Chapter 35
I had told McGarry my wound was just a scratch. In truth, it was a little more than that. The slug had left a gash a quarter inch deep across the top of my shoulder. So before going to the Eros club I went home and cleaned and bandaged my wound. It was going to be sore. My tee shirt, shirt and sport jacket were ruined so I tossed them. I put on a clean shirt and selected a light brown herringbone sport jacket. I checked myself in the mirror. Not bad.
As I drove to the Eros club, my initial inclination was to bust in there, beat up a bunch of guys, shove the barrel of my .357 in Norman's face. I’d remind him of what I said would happen if he sent anyone else after me. I’d cock my gun, tell him I was going to pull the trigger when I got to three, and then start counting. There was a part of me that very much wanted to do that. I was angry enough to do it and I had the skill set that would allow me to do it. But in another part of my mind, I knew that would be the wrong thing to do. Wisdom dictated a more reasoned approach.
When I got to the club, I parked and went in. The large guy behind the window remembered me. I said I needed to see Mr. Hanson. He called Hanson's office and got the okay to let me go up. He buzzed me through without charging me the cover fee.
The music in the club was still too loud, the lights still too dim. The girls on stage were still naked and collecting lots of tips. I noticed something else this time: the girls not on the stage wore a G-string and high heels and nothing else. How had I not noticed that last time?
I made my way around the perimeter of the seating area to the door opposite the entrance. The stairwell up to Norman’s office was adequately lit. At the top of the stairs, I stepped onto the small landing and knocked on the door to Hanson's office.
Marvin answered my knock and stepped aside as he opened the door so I could enter. Norman, owner/operator of the Eros strip club and broker of assassins, sat behind his desk reading Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. The inherent contradiction generated an air of absurdity that made me smile.
Norman said, “Jake. What brings you into my humble surroundings?”
I studied him for a moment. Norman waited.
Finally, I said, “Tell me you didn't send her.”
“Send who?”
“Attractive Asian woman. Called herself Kim.”
He looked me straight in the eye and said, “I did not send anyone. After our talk, I called my client and cancelled our contract. Someone else sent your attractive Asian woman.”
“Who was your client?” I asked. I knew he wouldn't tell me, but I still needed to ask.
“You know I can't tell you that,” Norman said.
“Yeah, I know. And that's okay. Because I’ll find out who it is. It's just a matter of time.”
“I believe you,” Norman said. “I had my people do a background check on you. Impressive. That’s why I cancelled the contract.”
“It's not all that impressive,” I said. “It's just a matter of being willing to do whatever needs doing in order to get the job done.”
“Including breaking the rules?”
“Depends on the rule,” I said.
He smiled. “I like you, Jake.”
“That makes my heart go all pitter-patter.”
He laughed. “I'm sure it does.”
We studied each other for a moment.
Shaking his head as he spoke, Norman said, “I didn't send anyone after you today. And I will not. Not because I'm afraid of you. I'm certainly not. But because I respect you.”
I didn’t believe him. He was working an angle. I just didn’t know what it was. So I said, “Yeah, I'm a real boy scout.”
“Not only did you serve our country as a Marine, you were wounded. And as an FBI agent, you took a bullet to protect a young policeman. You even did a favor for a friend of mine when his daughter found herself in a difficult situation.”
I thought for a moment. Are you referring to Karen Fitzgerald?”
Norman smiled.
“Aubrey Fitzgerald is a friend of yours?” I asked.
“A family friend,” he said. “When I was a boy I called him Uncle Aubrey.”
I studied him a moment.
“You knew who she was,” Norman said.
I nodded.
“And you knew who he was.”
I nodded again.
“Any other agent would have busted her. You didn’t.”
“She was just a kid. She made a stupid mistake. She deserved a chance to make something better of herself.”
“And she did,” Norman said. “She just graduated from college. She’s going to go to graduate school. Wants to be a psychologist.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“I think of her as a young cousin. She’s family. You saved her.”
“I didn’t save her,” I said. “I just gave her a chance to go down a different road.”
“And that makes you,” Norman said, “in my estimation, a man who deserves respect.”
“And that’s why you’re not going to take another contract on me?”
He chuckled. “That’s one reason.”
“There’s another?”
“Society needs people like you, Jake. There'd be no advantage in eliminating you.”
I smiled. “Assuming you could.”
He smiled. “Assuming I could.”
We were both silent, studying each other. Then Norman said, “Drop by any time, Jake. My door will always be open to you.”
“Why would I be interested in that?”
He shrugged. “In my line of work I hear things. Things that might be of interest to you. Perhaps even helpful.”
“And why would you be willing to share that kind of information with me?”
“Like I said, I respect you and society needs people like you. If I can help you in some small way, I help society. I try to be helpful whenever and however I can.”
“I'm not interested in quid pro quo.”
“I not suggesting quid pro quo.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“I'm just saying that occasionally I might be able to help you with some information I have. No strings attached. If you ask and I can help, I will.”
“But you won't tell me who wanted me killed.”
“Unfortunately, that's not one of the things I can help you with. I will help you when doing so does not jeopardize my own wellbeing. And I realize,” he added, “that that sounds self-serving.”
It did. But I understood his position and couldn't really fault him. I also believed that he had not sent Kim—or whoever she had been.
I stood. “Okay, Norman. If you hear anything about who's trying to kill me, and it would not jeopardize your wellbeing to tell me, give me a call.”
“I shall.”
Marvin opened the door for me and I left.
Chapter 36
It wasn't until I was packing for my trip that I realized
I needed Alex to help me with another detail. I called him.
“Sure,” Alex said. “I can make a call. What do you want?”
“I prefer a revolver, a .357.”
“Like I don’t know that. All right. Let me set it up and I'll get back to you with a pick up location.”
Ten minutes later, Alex called back.
“There's a place just outside Arlington, on the way to Falls Church, on Wilson Boulevard. It's called Alamo Guns and Ammo. Talk to Ed. It's paid for. Just pick it up. Ammo, too.”
“Thanks, Alex.”
“No problem,” he said. “Just try to be judicious in its use.”
“I won't shoot anyone who isn't trying to shoot me.”
I flew into Reagan International Airport in Washington, D.C., and rented a Ford Explorer. It was ten miles to Falls Church. On the way, I stopped at Alamo Guns and Ammo and picked up the .357 Alex had arranged for me. It was a nice Smith and Wesson. It came with a box of twenty-five hollow points—same kind I normally use. Nice.
I found a hotel close to where I was going to meet the witness and checked in. The clock in my room said it was five thirty-seven. Dinnertime. But my body was still on west coast time. At home, it was just a little after lunchtime. I decided to use the hotel's workout room and pool to work up an appetite. At seven thirty I was exercised, showered, and dressed. I went out to find a place for dinner. I found a place called Argia's Italian Restaurant that served up some pretty good spaghetti and meatballs.
At eight-thirty the next morning I was in McDonalds where the witness had scheduled the meeting. I was to look for a woman in a blue jogging suit sitting alone in a booth. I was to approach her and ask if her name was Joan. It seemed somewhat silly, but if I wanted the information she was offering, I had to follow her rules. I’d gotten there nearly an hour early and ordered a couple of Egg McMuffins and a cup of tea. As I ate, I studied the other customers. None of them merited any serious concern. By eight-fifteen everyone that was there when I came in had finished their breakfast and left. I got another cup of tea and watched for a lady in a blue jogging suit.