Damage Control

by Michael Bowen

  I held it together for Rafe’s sake. He was about to have beady-eyed forensic accountants crawling up his net worth, and he sure didn’t need his wife turning into a basket case on him on top of that. I was working myself up to telling him about St. Matt’s—I felt a little sheepish about the Mass thing—when he came up from behind and wrapped his arms around me.

  “I get it,” he whispered into my ear. “I honestly do. At this moment all you can see for yourself between now and menopause is lawyers and subpoenas and eight-hour prep sessions for committee hearings.”

  I nodded, without trusting myself to speak. I will NOT start blubbering on this man.

  “You have to be strong with everyone else,” he murmured. “But you don’t have to be strong with me.”

  Well that did it. I wheeled around, buried my head in a chest that still smelled of Dial soap, and bawled my eyes out. Just cried and cried for more than a minute while Rafe silently held me, arms enlaced around my back and pressing me against his body.

  Okay. Got it out of my system. Catharsis so complete I should spell it with a kappa, the way the Greeks did when they invented it. Felt tons better. Moving back one step, I looked up at Rafe’s face. I didn’t deliberately make my expression adorable; couldn’t help it; just happened.

  “Honey, would it be okay if I went to five o’clock Mass—or do you have plans?”

  “How about if I go with you?”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  My little chat with St. Monica went well, as far as I could tell, even though it was a bit one-sided. Rafe and I had a nice bistro-style meal on the way home. I discovered that I’d worked up a very healthy appetite—always a good sign. Thought of an assignment for Uncle D. So from the end of Amanda’s call to the moment we walked back in the door around seven-thirty, my emotional attitude had done your basic one-eighty.

  Then Terry Fielding called. As the designated media-whore, he, unlike other reporters, got the privilege of talking to me.

  “Deep background, right, Terry?” Figured we’d better get that straight right from the git-go. “‘Person familiar with the investigation,’ right?”

  “Yeah, sure.” He sounded impatient, as if my little nicety amounted to fussing with seating arrangements at an execution. “Listen, Josie, important question: have the cops asked you about Jerzy having a handgun?”

  “Sure have. I told them he had a revolver he used for plinking around the farm.”

  “Well, he also had an automatic, and it wasn’t designed for casual pot-shots. They found it in a holster hooked to the back of his belt, under his sport coat, when they examined his body. Beretta nine-millimeter. Major piece of hardware.”

  “Well, I’m not the type of gun enthusiast who can identify makes and models by sight. I can see your point, though. That is definitely not the weapon I saw him with. No idea he owned anything like that.”

  “Not clear he ‘owned’ it, Josie, ’cause here’s the thing. That Beretta had been purchased over a year ago—by Sanford Dierdorf.”

  “Whoa!” My head started to spin a bit. I mean, WTF? “Jerzy stole Dierdorf’s pistol? How? Why? I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t get it either, Josie. No one gets it. But Jerzy getting dead while he’s four feet from you is one thing. Getting dead while he’s four feet from you and armed with a pistol stolen from an obvious suspect adds a whole new level to this thing.”

  “Yes, I can see where that is an interesting development.”

  “‘Interesting development’ doesn’t come close. This thing is shaping up as a four-alarm cluster-fuck.”

  “Four-alarm cluster-fuck.” Kind of a colorful phrase, isn’t it? I made a mental note of it, in case the occasion to drop it into a conversation with a Sunbelt billionaire might present itself somewhere down the road. Meanwhile, though, I kept thinking. Thought hard and fast. In the damage-control strategy Rafe and I had worked out, Terry was in charge of spinning Rafe off center-stage. At the same time, though, I was in charge of sweating shekels out of Ann DeHoic—who wouldn’t want the world to know about a picture showing her with Dierdorf. Whose gun someone had stolen and given to DeHoic’s ex-husband. Who happened to be carrying it when he passed away. I’d put that picture on hold until Thursday for my own lawyer, but reporters just don’t have lawyerly patience. They don’t have any patience at all.

  In other words, the two objectives were now in conflict. No, they weren’t ‘in conflict.’ They were slugging it out in a fight to the death, trying to kill each other with their bare hands. Telling Terry about the picture was telling the world. Eight-to-three that would scare DeHoic and her money away from MVC.

  In other words, couldn’t be simpler: Rafe or my career? Which one do you choose, Josie?

  “Terry, I need to tell you about a picture.”

  Damage Control Strategy,

  Day 5

  (the first Monday after the murder)

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Monday better than Sunday, but we’re talking about the world limbo championship of low bars there.

  Got to work by eight—the Josie equivalent of the crack of dawn—because I wanted to make sure Seamus saw me at my desk when he strolled in. Called Tony the lawyer and told him I’d be zapping the picture to him ASAP and he could forget about the Thursday embargo and get it to his FBI contact pronto. I knew I’d get zero credit for disclosing it if the FBI didn’t get it from me until after Terry Fielding mentioned it in a follow-up story—and Terry’s next story could appear as early as this afternoon.

  Next on my list: Uncle Darius. I had taken three deep breaths and had my index finger hovering over his speed-dial button when an e-mail from Seamus hit my screen. The e-mail had a link. It would have taken priority over the Uncle D call even if it hadn’t. Clicked the e-mail open.

  “Happy Valentine’s Day.” S

  WTF? Clicked on the link. A piece posted ten minutes ago in Impolitic popped up:

  IT’S NOT A GAME, OKAY?

  Opinion by Major Fitz

  Assassination-style murder of a rich guy is a big story, and we’d all like a piece of it. Totally get that. Terry Fielding has gotten himself a couple of three sources—God bless him; that’s what reporters are supposed to do. He’s running with the story while the rest of us play catch-up. Very frustrating. Get that too. And we’ve all heard D.C. insiders from the President and Attorney General on down solemnly invoke an ongoing investigation as a pretext for stonewalling the press when the real reason for their laryngitis is a standard-issue damage-control strategy.

  But this isn’t about partisan abuse by the IRS or channeling procurement contracts to political chums or erasing e-mails sent on official business. It isn’t about any of the usual Washington BS. It’s about a murder. A homicide. A human being shot down in cold blood by either a professional killer or someone doing a damn good imitation of one. The killer needs to get caught, the crime needs to get solved, and that needs to happen without any witnesses getting killed along the way. This is the one political story in a thousand where the ongoing investigation dodge actually has a patina of legitimacy about it.

  Most of us only know of one civilian source with potentially useful information. A number of reporters have been hassling her, blowing off police concerns about her talking out of school. There’s a difference between due diligence and stalking, and a non-trivial part of the D.C. Fourth Estate has crossed that line.

  It’s time to knock it off. Past time, in fact. This isn’t the usual Beltway game. This isn’t a game at all. This is real life and deadly serious. So go after the story, sure. But let’s get up off our lazy butts and develop our own sources, the way Terry Fielding has, instead of hounding someone who’s already a victim and could become a bigger one.

  ***

  Wow. Whoa. I mean, damn. Seamus nailed it: Fitz had written me the sweetest valentine I’d ever gotten. Not only would the Lizzie Nygr
ens of the world be ducking for cover, but Congressman Adler R. Saris would think twice about getting too aggressive with the comic-opera burglary investigation he was ginning up.

  There was not a doubt in my mind about where this came from. This had to be what Rafe was pitching to Fitz when I saw them in earnest conversation at that Indian Embassy reception Saturday night. It’s one thing for a girl to be married to a saint; I was married to a talented saint with a skill set and a contact list that could make him seem damn near omnipotent. I had Rafe on my side. What could a couple of gangsters, a puny Congressman, a brace of cops, and the FBI do against me?

  Giddy stuff, for sure—suddenly I couldn’t wait to get home. Unfortunately, a steel-reinforced load of gray, concrete, you-fucked-up-girl guilt competed with the soaring, romantic high. I’d cheated on Rafe because I’d given in to a thrill sparked by a bad boy with a gun, a soul-stirring shiver of danger. Sandra Jane Burke would have said I was hardwired for it. A conversation a dozen years in the past in Sandy Jane’s bedroom came back to me.

  “Francoeur,” Sandy Jane had said. “You’ll go to the junior prom with him. Nappy Lejeune thinks you’re all that and a mess of grits and he’d crawl over broken glass for you, but Nappy is on the chess team at SAG, and Francoeur is an outside line-backer”—‘SAG’ being Saint Aloysius Gonzaga Prep.

  “Nappy is first board on the chess team, and Johnny Francoeur is second-string on the football team,” I’d snapped back, in full pissed off adolescent mode.

  “Makes no difference. Females are hardwired to prefer ectomorphs as mates. We don’t choose breeding partners based on whether they’ll go to PTA meetings; we pick them based on whether they can kill woolly mammoths and protect us from saber-toothed tigers and serial rape.”

  “Right. And Adam and Eve were playing with dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden before they ate the apple.”

  “I’m talking Darwin, not Billy Graham. Nappy laughs at your jokes and loves talking current events with you and thinks it’s really cool that you want a career in politics. But Francoeur has a letter on his sweater because he runs into people and they’re on the ground after he does. When he quits fooling around and actually picks up the phone and asks you to be his date, you’ll say yes.”

  Reverse psychology—a Sandy Jane specialty. She thought I should go with Nappy and she was trying to make me pick him out of sheer cussedness, just to show I wasn’t a puppet of Natural Selection. It worked, too. But she almost blew it three seconds later. Sitting there cross-legged on her bed, back resting against the wall, Marlboro Light dangling from the right corner of her lips, she threw in what she must have thought would be the clincher.

  “Francoeur dated Cheryl Dannault last summer. I saw her once wearing sunglasses on a cloudy day.”

  That produced the belly-drop Sandy Jane was going for—and a real zing along with it. Risk. Danger. I don’t mean I wanted a black eye, any more than you want lung cancer when you smoke your first cigarette, or a fractured skull when you bungee-jump. But the thrill, the idea of facing the possibility and going ahead anyway—that had reached me. Thinking about it now, I finally understood why Sandy Jane had popped into my head during my run with Rafe.

  I ended up going to the junior prom with Nappy. Sandy Jane came with Francoeur. I should’ve seen that one coming right down Broadway, but I didn’t. She had the grace to smile sheepishly when she saw me, shrug an apology and say, “Hardwired.” So we stayed friends. I dated Nappy the rest of my way through Carondelet and into college—right up until he entered the seminary. That seminary thing made him the second man I’d loved who suddenly wasn’t there for me anymore. Maybe that’s when, somewhere inside me, I started wondering what I’d missed.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  No time to bother Freud about it now, though. Had to call Uncle D. He answered on the first ring, with a question.

  “You know what day it is, darlin’?”

  “Um, Monday?”

  “It’s the last day of my period of supervised release over the glorified speeding ticket that piss-ant Assistant United States Attorney in northern Virginia nailed me with. As of one minute after midnight tonight, I am officially free of all constraints imposed as conditions of my release from prison. Among other things, that means I will be able to be in legal contact with convicted felons. For the last three years I have been restricted to contact with felons who haven’t been convicted yet.”

  I would not personally put influence-peddling in the same class as going, say, fifteen miles over the speed limit. At least not when it involves an attaché case full of hundred-dollar bills—Uncle D was always a traditionalist. Especially when it turned out Uncle D hadn’t had any influence to peddle. But I had heard my dear uncle’s rant about how an Assistant United States Attorney, whose own mother wouldn’t recognize him in the shower, had more tyrannical power than the NSA and CIA put together. Several times. Didn’t want to hear it again. So I did not demur. Wouldn’t have mattered even if I had. Without waiting for any comment from me, Uncle Darius went right on.

  “In other words, I will wake up tomorrow morning strapped, locked, loaded, and game-ready. Just drop the leash, get out of the way, and let me go.”

  “Now, Unc, I definitely don’t want you doing anything remotely felonious. I don’t know what the adjective for ‘misdemeanor’ is, but I don’t want you doing that, either.”

  “I know you don’t, Josephine. Your Mama raised you better than that.”

  “What I have in mind is getting a little background information on this solar power thing that Jerzy Schroeder was trying to cut out of the federal subsidy game when he passed away.”

  “That’s the Sanford Dierdorf hustle, right?”

  “The very one. Now there’s this big solar power conference in Denver starting on Wednesday. I wonder if maybe you could get yourself out there and just sort of mingle, soak up the gossip, have a drink now and then with folks who look like they’re in a chatty mood. Then this weekend I could debrief you and we could talk about what to do next.”

  Something like ten seconds of silence followed. Even three silent seconds in a conversation involving Uncle Darius is highly unusual. Ten seconds was completely unprecedented. I didn’t have a chance to think about it, though, because Seamus put his head in my doorway. He pointed his left thumb and little finger at his ear and mouth respectively, then pulled his hand away and thrust it toward the floor. As soon as you hang up. Then he pointed his right index finger at me, swiveled his hand, and pointed it down the hall. Come to my office. I nodded to show I understood what he wanted. By the time Seamus disappeared, Uncle D had found his voice.

  “I will surely be delighted to do this, Josephine but, uh, I am er, a little, uh, embarrassed—”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Unc. I should have said this up front. I would not dream of you being out of pocket when I’m the one asking you to do me a favor. I’ll arrange your flight and hotel on my American Express and e-mail you the details. And if you need some walking-around money too, you just let me know, okay?”

  “I surely will. Thank you.”

  “No, thank you, Uncle D. Happy hunting, now.”

  I could actually hear the big smile in his voice. I had an anxious moment wondering whether he could charge hookers to a hotel room in Denver. Guessed no. Didn’t really matter anyway. Even if he ran the bill up to two thousand or so, it’d be worth it to have him out of sight and out of mind for the better part of a week. I was just about to hang up when he said, “One more thing.”

  Managed to keep my impatient sigh from going into the mouthpiece.

  “What’s that, Uncle D?”

  “Just before you called I stumbled over something you might want to know. Can’t tell you where I got it, ’cause it’s not after midnight yet.”

  “Understood. I’m listening.”

  “The police have identified the burglar who broke into your office S
aturday night as a Blackwater alumnus named Bart Reuter. Hell of a name for a burglar. Sounds more like a starting pitcher for a West Coast baseball team.”

  “I believe I read that this morning, Uncle D. Except for the Blackwater part, which is very interesting.”

  “He’ll make his first court appearance sometime in the next hour or so. He is lawyered up. His lawyer’s name is Sabrina Teitel.”

  “Well, as a matter of fact I did not know that.” I scratched out a frantic note. “Thank you. That is most helpful.”

  “Well, it’s going to get a lot more helpful. Two years ago Sanford Dierdorf had to appear before the general counsel of the Department of Energy and answer some sharp-edged questions. The lawyer who prepped him for that and sat beside him while he was doing it was Sabrina Teitel.”

  “Oh.”

  “You have a real good day now, Josephine.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Traipsed down to see Seamus. The carpet was no longer squishy-wet, but aside from that his office still qualified as your basic mess. Building Services and Seamus himself had done their best on Sunday to clean up the worst of the damage, but when you’ve had fire and rain inside the same office in five minutes, it’s not going to look good as new overnight.