Damage Control

by Michael Bowen

  Didn’t faze Seamus, though. I entered to see him sitting there at his desk, looking as pleased as an altar boy who got all the candles lit on the first try. And to see a gun right in front of him, dead center on his desk blotter.

  Specifically, a handgun. Snub-nose revolver. Barrel maybe two inches long. Example of what liberals used to call “small, easily concealed handguns” in the days before the NRA got two-thirds of Congress in its hip pocket and the idea of someday regulating the things went to live with all the people speaking Esperanto.

  “Have a seat.”

  Seamus gestured toward a guest chair whose cushion he’d covered with two file jackets, so that I could sit down without getting my Spanx damp. I perched gingerly on the blessedly thick paper. Seamus picked up the revolver. He did this rather delicately, holding the butt with his left thumb and index finger and bracing the muzzle against his right index finger.

  “This is a Colt .32-caliber revolver. Do you know how to handle something like this?”

  “It may be possible to earn a bachelor’s degree in the State of Louisiana without acquiring a basic familiarity with firearms, but I don’t know anyone who’s ever done it.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” He put the gun down. “I’ve been thinking about that crack Rotunda made about us and the NRA.”

  “I believe that remark was a feeble attempt at satire rather than a serious suggestion.”

  “Even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut.” Seamus beamed; not a good sign. “I want you to apply to the District of Columbia city government for a concealed-carry permit for this weapon.”

  “I see.”

  “We’ll get a holster for you.”

  “Okay. That’s very thoughtful.”

  “The store already has it on order. Picked it out myself from the catalogue. Nice little thing. Dark brown, supple leather. Goatskin, I think, instead of cowhide. You could clip it to your belt or, if you didn’t want to actually have it on your body, it wouldn’t take up much more room in your purse than a couple of packs of cigarettes. Since you don’t smoke anymore, it’s perfect.”

  “Seamus,” I said, trying hard not to sound like I thought I was talking to a ten-year-old, “are you telling me that you’ve spent half the morning getting me set up to play Sam Spade’s wife? I mean, for starters, what if they deny my permit application?”

  “Oh, they’ll deny the application, all right.”

  “I’m not sure I’m following this.”

  “Don’t you see?” After favoring me with his pleading, frustrated artist look, he sort of gazed off into the middle distance with a dreamy expression on his face. “We make you the poster-girl victim of unreasonable gun regulation. A sixty-second TV ad with Josie front and center, brave and spunky. ‘I was attacked by a vicious thug in my own office in the very heart of Washington, D.C. I was beaten and I could have been sexually assaulted or even killed. The next time it happens, I want the odds a little closer to even. And you know what they used to say in the old West: God created man, and Colonel Colt made him equal. But Washington, D.C. will not let me protect myself. When I applied for a concealed-carry permit, Washington, D.C., turned me down because they didn’t think what happened to me was dangerous enough. The bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., are denying me my constitutional right to defend myself from murderous thugs.’ Then the voice-over: ‘Tell Congressman so-and-so to support legislation mandating accommodation of concealed carry for law-abiding citizens by every state and municipality in the country. If it happened to Josie Kendall, it could happen to your wife. Or your daughter. Or you.’”

  The sheer genius of the idea left me almost breathless. You see, the way you pay the rent as an activist-fund-raising organization is to find folks with an agenda like yours, take money from them, give some of the money to people who can advance the agenda, and keep the rest. Mostly you give the money to techies and copywriters and actors and voice-over talent to make issue-advocacy commercials—you know, just like campaign commercials, except without the word “vote.” Seamus was telling me he’d found a way for MVC to pay itself for copywriting and acting and maybe even voice-over. Throw a few bucks at camera guys and sound technicians working for scale and pay ourselves everything else. Gave me a glow just to think about it.

  “Blows me away, Seamus. When it comes to creative, no one can top you.”

  “I know how you feel about the victim card.” Seamus said this apologetically, almost sheepishly. “But Josie, this could get our foot in the door with the NRA! We could get a million-dollar buy-in for this in the next election cycle. Maybe two million—most of it straight to the bottom line.”

  Truth to tell, my not liking the victim card actually made Seamus’ idea all the more appealing. I could negate the victim stuff by standing up there and doing a ball-buster Amazon number, Wonder Woman with a Colt .32 instead of a magic lasso. But Seamus apparently thought he needed to sell me on this, and in politics you never waste a misunderstanding. Shrapnel from Uncle D’s last little bombshell was still rattling around in my head. I decided to see if I could do something about it.

  “Seamus, you know that I’m a team player. But I’m also in a somewhat delicate situation. I will sign off on this with no problem at all—but there’s just one thing I need to know.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Jerzy’s pitch-file included a picture.” I described the thing. “I’d like to know where your excellent nerds got it—because they sure didn’t pick it up at last year’s Star Trek convention.”

  He didn’t blink. Didn’t hesitate for a second. Didn’t flinch.

  “You will have that information by five o’clock tonight, even if I have to fire every goddamn one of them to get it.”

  At precisely three-thirty-seven p.m. I got the information.

  “Not sure this was worth all the drama,” Seamus said when he strode into my office. “I had to beg and threaten and swear and lie through my teeth. And you know how much I hate swearing. After all that, I was expecting to find out it came from the CIA or Mossad or something. Turns out we got it from an ex-fed supplementing his pension with a little private gumshoe stuff. His name is Theo McAbbott.”

  Chapter Thirty

  “No kidding!” Rafe looked up from the round steak he was grilling on our patio and beamed at me with radiant delight. “Theo? Extreme telephoto lens, picture of an armed man taken from hiding? Seriously? That rascal! Didn’t think he had it in him.”

  “Well, he did put in thirty years with the FBI.”

  “Solo covert visual surveillance is a step above standard field-agent gigs—especially with no back-up and no official cover.”

  I tasted my martini—very good—and considered Rafe’s comment. An uncomfortable thought had been nagging at me, and I figured I might as well get it on the table.

  “Are we sure he was off on his own? Any chance the Bureau might have brought him back in for one more case because he had special skills or something? ’Cause if he took that picture for the FBI, Tony won’t have gotten many points for me this morning when he turned over the copy I made.”

  “Hollywood stuff,” Rafe said dismissively. “When it comes to doing things by the book, the FBI makes the Marines look like Unitarians. No way they’d pull an alumnus off the scrap-heap to pitch in on a case.”

  “Makes sense, I guess. And I know a lot of retired agents sign on as security consultants with clients that have edgy business models. What with the three book contracts you got him, though, I wouldn’t think Theo would have to beef up his pension with penny-ante stuff like that.”

  “I don’t think he did it for money.” Rafe flipped the mini-steaks and nimbly retreated from flames that flared off the sizzling charcoal. “I suspect he did it to wake up his badge-and-gun memories, remind himself of what it’s like to work on a real case.”

  “So that he could channel that into his writing?�
��

  “Exactly, you Creole minx.” Rafe saluted me with a long-handled spatula as I smiled at his little nom d’amour. “His hook is that he’s writing from personal experience instead of just recycling Law and Order SVU scripts. When I looked at his first draft of the story we’re working on now, I told him it had a by-the-numbers feel to it. Kind of generic. I suggested that he dig down for a little Theo-stuff. Maybe this was his way of putting some more stuff there to dig for.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Whether it was this or something else, his prose got a lot more real after that. I think the one in the pipeline that we’ve been working on together might really ring the bell. Could be a break-out for him.”

  I stood up from the wooden deck chair where I’d parked myself. Took a little stroll around our patio, idly noting the red-pink-maroon variation of the flagstones. It really is a Hell of a coincidence, isn’t it? IF it’s a coincidence.

  “You know what, honey?” I said. “It would be really interesting to know who Theo was working for when he took that picture. ’Scuse me. Whom he was working for.”

  “Just on a wild guess, I’d say he was probably working for Jerzy Schroeder, wouldn’t you? I mean, a business rival and an ex-wife in the same picture? It’s a small world, but not that small.”

  “So your loyal client and your adoring wife were working simultaneously but independently with a guy who got his brains blown out—and you’re the one the police are investigating.”

  “Seems like there has to be a logical connection, doesn’t it?” Rafe took a sip of his G&T. “If I were in a speculating mood, I’d speculate that Schroeder probably got your name from Theo. Schroeder approached you, not the other way around, right?”

  “Right. That fits together. Be nice to pin it down, though.”

  Rafe scooped round steak onto buns on a platter that he’d set on a wooden platform attached to the grill. He put lettuce and tomato on mine and slathered his with steak sauce. I held out paper plates from a redwood table between the two deck chairs. He plunked one sandwich on each. As he completed that task he looked at me with gently raised eyebrows and spoke in a quiet, casual tone that triggers my Listen up, girl! reflex.

  “Theo won’t confirm that Schroeder was his client, but if he thinks we already know he might clear up the connection. Why don’t we just call him and ask?”

  Thought about it for a second, and damned if I didn’t come up with the right answer.

  “After we eat.”

  Don’t know why but, looking back on it, that simple dinner seems like a little vacation from the whole mess. Just sitting there in the humid July night on those adjoining deck chairs on a patio that might as easily have been in Columbus, Ohio, or Madison, Wisconsin, or Atlanta, Georgia, as Washington. A happily married couple, comfortable with each other, Rafe maybe thinking about trying hard for YES on having a baby, me getting more and more comfortable with that answer. Or the other way around. Just normal, you know? No murder, no investigation, no damage-control strategy, no media hustlers to worry about.

  I think Rafe had the same feeling. We kind of stretched the meal out, taking our time, as if we didn’t want our little vacation to end.

  It did end, of course. Took us over thirty minutes, but we’d finally eaten every crumb. While I policed things up, Rafe pulled out his phone and punched in Theo’s number. Rafe’s half of the opening banter ended with, “Let me put you on speaker as we’re walking inside. Josie is here with me.”

  “Hey, Josephine Kendall! You keepin’ it real, Empress?” ‘Empress’ because Napoleon’s Josephine had Creole blood—a little tease that Theo started using with me after Rafe made him take it out of Knuckle Rap.

  “Keepin’ the balls in the air, Theo.” I slid the patio door shut and locked it. “Listen, tiger, were your ears burning this afternoon?”

  “They’re always burning. Anything in particular?”

  “Well, there’s this picture.” I described it. “My boss got it from a freelance opposition-researcher, and the oppo-research guy said he got it from you.”

  “Did he now?” Theo is a handsome son-of-a-gun, and from the way his tone changed I imagined him running his fingers through hair that he somehow manages to keep thick and inky-black even though he’s in his late fifties. “Does this oppo-research guy have a name?”

  “Probably, but I don’t know it.”

  “Got it from me, huh? Well well well—what do you know about that?”

  “Josie and I don’t know a thing about it,” Rafe said, jumping in. “But we were kind of wondering whether you might have some insights that you could share with us.”

  “I’ll give that some thought. Say, you know, we haven’t gotten together for awhile. I’m kind of pinned here in the house cranking out the latest masterpiece, but maybe you two could come down here Friday night for pizza and beer. We could talk about anything that comes up. How does that sound?”

  Rafe arched eyebrows at me. I nodded.

  “Sounds great, Theo,” Rafe said. We’ll try to make it by six-thirty or seven.”

  “It’s a deal, then.”

  Rafe ended the call. We looked at each other. Didn’t have to exchange a word. Theo had come through loud and clear: He wasn’t sure how much he could tell us, but he for sure had something to tell.

  Damage Control Strategy,

  Days 6 and 7

  (the first Tuesday and Wednesday after the murder)

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Tuesday—boring. I spent most of it finding out what a pain in the butt applying for a D.C. concealed carry permit was going to be. A deal is a deal, though: Seamus had held up his end of the bargain, so I’d hold up mine. I told him I didn’t see how we could get the application in until Friday, and he said that was just fine, feeding one of my own lines back to me: “It’s more important to do it right than to do it fast.”

  Which brings us to Wednesday. Not boring. Wednesday was make or break for DeHoic and the Jerzy pitch-file deal.

  Her geek-squad showed up first thing in the morning, Washington Standard Time, i.e., nine-fifteen. Seamus told them to knock themselves out. One-hundred-sixty-three minutes later they called DeHoic with the news that we were cleaner than an IRS audit of a major campaign contributor: no file access after my chat with DeHoic (except mine, which I’d told her about), no file copying, no file forwarding, no file print-outs. In other words—Nice work, Josie.

  DeHoic herself showed up twenty minutes later, lawyer in tow. DeHoic wore gray again, but this time a dress, and with a more age-appropriate hat. Same matching heels and gloves. The lawyer, thank Heaven, wore navy blue: pantsuit and pumps that kind of matched. Seamus led them to our conference room—also gray, but that was a coincidence—where I waited with my laptop open and my fingers itching to type.

  Seamus and DeHoic went at it with each other for awhile in a mostly professional but occasionally badass kind of way. I took notes and the lawyer, as far as I could tell, provided decoration. The first time smoking came up Seamus explained how much he despised nanny-state nonsense like the D.C. Clean Indoor Air Ordinance but, shaking his head sadly, said that of course we had to respect its strictures. He figured that denying DeHoic nicotine would give him an edge in the negotiations, so the shameless scofflaw suddenly morphed into Mr. Civic Responsibility.

  They started off miles apart on price, and it didn’t look to me like they’d made much progress when DeHoic veered off into some of the non-price terms in the draft agreement Seamus had proposed. The first two or three went pretty fast, but then things hit a major snag.

  “Why do I have to sign off on this blather about using the file to promote Jerzy’s commitment to the environment?” DeHoic tossed her pen on the table in disgust. “No one is ever going to confuse me with Pope Francis.”

  “I agree. Not the slightest resemblance.”

  “I’m buying the file. Wh
y is it anyone else’s business what I do with it?”

  “Because it might be evidence in a criminal case,” Seamus said. “Therefore, I have to be able to show that we turned it over to you with the expectation that it would continue to be available, and that we would be surprised and disappointed if it turned out that the file was inexplicably lost or destroyed.”

  DeHoic pouted. Seamus waited. DeHoic spoke.

  “You have a great deal of money riding on this.”

  “Not enough.” Seamus shook his head. “Business is business, but prison is prison. You don’t have enough money to get me to do a hundred hours of community service, much less go to the slammer.”

  “So you’re saying this is a deal-breaker?”

  “Yep.”

  I showed the room a poker face, straight out of the Rampart Street Casino in New Orleans. Inside my head, though, I was whistling in admiration of Seamus’ bluff. Pay attention, girl. You just might learn something.

  “Let’s put this aside for now,” DeHoic said. “If we can agree on a price, we’ll circle back to it.”

  Sounded to me like a one-way ticket to nowhere. After all, they’d gone to the substantive stuff in the first place because they’d reached impasse on price. Seamus, though, smiled happily at her suggestion.

  The second round of price negotiations was great, if you like that kind of thing. Real movement. DeHoic and Seamus had suddenly gotten serious. Had me on the edge of my seat. I probably could have sold tickets. Even so, it took Seamus a solid twenty minutes to get DeHoic within sniffing distance of half a million. I smelled climax when he went into his credibility riff.

  “It’s called ‘credibility,’ Ms. DeHoic.” On the table in front of him, Seamus’ thumbs and index fingers spun a shiny black oblong—the goods we were really peddling, in the guise of offering our creative issue-advocacy services. “End of the day, credibility and professionalism are all MVC has to sell. We can’t slop out an issue-ad campaign with voice-overs that sound like they were done through tin cans connected with string. We need production values proportional to the importance of the issue.”