Damage Control

by Michael Bowen

  “My name is Danny Klimchock. Someone asked me to get in touch with Josephine Robideaux Kendall at this number.” He said my name haltingly, as if he were reading unfamiliar words from a scrap of paper or a PDA screen. “Bit of a problem. I’m heading overseas on Tuesday, connecting through Dulles with a seventy-five-minute layover. I’m supposed to land at Dulles at ten-twenty-five in the morning. If you can figure out a way to get through security, we can hook up then. Otherwise I’m out of pocket for a week. So, one way or the other give me a call at the number on your caller ID screen.”

  The voice sounded dead ordinary. No particular regional accent, no rasp, no growl, no unusual cadence, no hint of threat or toughness—or cordiality, for that matter. Smooth enough, but without the upbeat, forced charm of a telemarketer. A CPA’s voice, or a Department of Transportation careerist’s. I wrote down the number he’d called from, including the area code: three-one-two—L.A.

  Rafe raised his eyebrows at me.

  “One of Uncle Darius’ friends came up with a Klimchock contact?”

  “Sort of. Friend three or four times removed.”

  “Not exactly making it easy for you, is he?”

  “Nope. But, as Uncle D sometimes says, food tastes better when you’re hungry.”

  Damage Control Strategy,

  Day 20

  (the third Tuesday after the murder)

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  The first ‘Like’ for our video came thirty-seven seconds after go-live at nine a.m., Eastern. The first ‘Share’ came six seconds later. You can’t type as fast as you can point and click, so the comments didn’t begin until 9:02. The first five pretty much captured the general tenor:

  “You go, girl! Shoot first and never mind the questions!”

  “Good luck, little lady!”

  “America needs rational gun control! The blood of innocents is on your hands, you trigger-happy bitch!”

  “Come to Texas! Y’all will have your permit before you’re all the way off the plane!”

  “.32? .32???? Shoot someone with a .32 and all you do is make him mad! Get yourself a .40 caliber S&W semi-auto, and use 165-grain ammo. NOT 180 GRAIN! And shoot for the guts!”

  That last one brought me up a bit short. This troll knew I’d applied for a permit for a .32-caliber weapon. Not exactly a state secret, of course: my application was a public record, accessible online. But apparently one look at my spunky face on a computer screen had stimulated this guy in Whoknowswhere to Google his way into the database and get detailed information from that application. A little creepy, for my taste. A girl likes attention, sure, but there’s attention and then there’s stalker-level obsession. A cold chill ran up my spine—and not in a good way. Seamus, what did you charm me into signing on to?

  I picked all this stuff up on my way to Dulles, where I planned to meet Klimchock. Getting myself on the gate side of security? No problem. I’d be flying to Phoenix in September for the annual CCC Conference: CCC standing for “Calcatraveamus Cunes Caerulius,” which is pidgin Latin for “Let’s Kick Blue Butt.” Bought a refundable ticket on a Delta flight leaving Dulles for Phoenix today. Printed out the boarding pass, sailed through security with nothing but a computer case for luggage, and here I was. After meeting with Klimchock I’d reverse course, trade in the unused ticket for one that would work in September, and not even have to pay a change fee.

  By that time I had less than half an hour before Klimchock’s ETA. A Starbucks cart at the west end of the gate area had me salivating. Unfortunately, Starbucks is on MVC’s naughty list because it donates to Planned Parenthood, which is radioactive for a lot of our clients. Don’t necessarily drink that particular Kool Aid myself, but the customer is always right—at least until I have that West Wing office. I figured that as sure as I decided to sneak a vente mocha, thinking no one would ever know, the CEO of one of our biggest donors would stroll off a jetway and catch me red-handed. So I trekked to the other end of the terminal where I found a pastry cart selling just regular, you know, coffee. Didn’t taste all that bad, didn’t cost four-seventy-five, and it got the job done. Hmm.

  I’d just about finished it when Klimchock’s plane pulled up to the gate. A little web research had told me roughly what he looked like but I came this close to missing him; turned out that web photo was a mite flattering. Not homely or anything, but most of his buzz-cut hair was gone, with just little gray tufts sprinkled here and there on his scalp. Bit of a stoop that you wouldn’t expect in a guy in his late thirties; maybe several months in a Russian prison does that to you. Nondescript blue sport coat and khaki slacks with a dress shirt. No necktie. Smiling, but kind of a cockeyed smile that had a wariness behind it: whatever you’re about to say, I’ve heard it before. He carried the kind of black attaché case that an employer might give you but that almost no one would buy for himself.

  He spotted me about the same time I did him, but he pretended he hadn’t. Flicked his eyes away real fast, the way men to do when a woman catches them staring at her cleavage. Probably didn’t want to tip me that he’d looked me up. I acted like I hadn’t noticed and approached him from his left with a peppy, “Mr. Klimchock?”

  “You have to be Josie Kendall.” Shifting his attaché case to his left hand as he pivoted toward me, he extended his right hand. I guess widening his eyes was his idea of faking surprise.

  “Sure am!” We shook. “Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me.”

  “Any friend of Jerzy’s.” He almost winked, but not quite. “Where did you get that coffee?”

  “Far end,” I said, gesturing east with my cup hand. “But there’s a Starbucks cart on the other side, if you’d prefer that.”

  “No thanks.” He shook his head firmly. “Joseph Stalin will get out of Hell before I pay five bucks for coffee. Besides, Starbucks donates to Planned Parenthood.”

  HELL-o. Seriously?

  I know plenty of wealthy conservative fundamentalists. Deeply religious and just as sincere as a little girl with her first kitten. They’re already saved, the way they see it, and they can’t be unsaved no matter what, but they’ll put in Saturdays on Habitat for Humanity projects anyway because Jesus loves them and when they do that it makes Him happy. If it weren’t for people like that, I might have to get an honest job. But I didn’t know any who’d made their money quite the way I figured Klimchock had made his.

  Hmmm.

  Before long we had our legs under a mini-table, with a cup of coffee and a croissant in front of Klimchock. About then—boing! My feminine sonar pinged to confirm that I’d excited male desire. Klimchock closed his eyes before biting into the croissant. Not sure whether he was saying grace or asking for help to keep from lusting after me in his heart. Whatever, when he spoke he was all business.

  “First I thought Jerzy had cheated me. Then I thought he’d conned me. I finally realized that he’d just conned himself. A million bucks actually did end up being half of all that was left out of one-point-two billion in cash flow that our venture had generated over not quite two years. Putin made money, the KGB made money, a boatload of Russian bureaucrats got rich—and Jerzy and I barely covered our costs, with a couple of nickels left over to help us remember the ride.”

  “How do you mean ‘conned himself’?”

  “It’s Russia.” Eyes shining, Klimchock looked the way I suppose conquistadors did when they glimpsed El Dorado over the horizon. “There’s just so much of so many things there: oil, natural gas, sturgeon eggs, small arms, big arms, really big arms, priceless art, diamonds from countries that aren’t allowed to sell diamonds, opium from Afghanistan, tin and manganese and bauxite and uranium and metals you’ve never even heard of from countries under forty-seven different kinds of trade sanctions. And it’s the Wild West! Wide open! Permanent boomtown! It seemed so easy at first. We figured that by my second quarter in-country we’d be clearing a million a month. A mo
nth! Clearing!”

  “And you’re saying he didn’t just sell you that story, he bought into it himself.”

  “Totally. He and I joined a very big club. Germans, Eastern Europeans, Frenchmen, Armenians, Greeks, Turks, Americans—and plenty of Russians. You just look at the stuff and your eyes light up. You know the risks, you know the government is basically a gang of thieves, you know how other guys have gotten taken. But you think, ‘I’m special. I’m smart. I’m savvy. I’ll be careful.’ You try to hustle Russia—and you end up like most of the others. Better than a lot of the others in our case. I got out with a whole skin, and Jerzy didn’t hurt anything except his feelings.”

  “Jerzy had mentioned…higher numbers to me.”

  “Yeah, that’s Jerzy.” Big grin. “Was Jerzy. His memory came equipped with a telescope that enlarged everything he looked back on.”

  “So him trying to shift federal solar-power grant money away from Sanford Dierdorf to a wind-power deal he had arranged—was that just Jerzy fantasizing?”

  “Not necessarily. That sounds real enough. No federal agency is going to leave one penny in appropriated funds unspent. If Jerzy had forced them to take the money away from Dierdorf, they would have looked for another place to spend it fast, and if Jerzy was sitting right there he’d be a prime candidate for it. But if that’s what he had in mind, he couldn’t let any grass grow under his feet.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because Dierdorf’s scam was approaching its sell-by date. As soon as a new administration comes in and gets its act together, the hustle is all over. Whoever Dierdorf’s rabbi is at the federal agency goes over to K Street to be a lobbyist, a new group of senior political appointees takes over, the GS-12’s who’ve been biting their tongues come out of hiding—and when that happens, stick a fork in Mr. Dierdorf ’cause he’s done.”

  “So even if Jerzy had gotten an audit started, the whole Dierdorf thing might have been history, even before the audit was finished?”

  Klimchock thought about that, chewing meditatively on flaky bread as tiny crumbs drifted from his mouth to sprinkle his shirt.

  “Have to go with yes on that one. Maybe Jerzy figured he could scare Dierdorf off just by getting something started; pull the cash switch before administrations changed; then make a quick buck for a year or so as the new kid on the block. Say two or three million. Nothing to sneeze at. Sounds like a long shot to me—but Jerzy was always an optimist.”

  “Do you think Dierdorf would have killed Jerzy to keep that from happening?”

  “Sure, in concept. Hard to make the cost-benefit work, though. A contract-kill is a big risk and a big expense, and Dierdorf would only be protecting another twelve, fifteen months’ worth of grant money. Dierdorf can be dumber than a box of rocks, though, and I suppose he might have talked himself into it.”

  “And then talked himself into having someone burglarize MVC’s office?”

  “I read about that.” Brushed crumbs from his shirt and gulped coffee. “Someone named, what, Reuter?”

  “Bart Reuter, yeah. Who lawyered up right away with a D.C. attorney Dierdorf had used before.”

  “Repeat business is the key to success.” Klimchock shook his head slightly and grinned. “My take on that one is, you might pin the hit or the heist on Mr. D, but you can’t make him take the rap for both.”

  “Not sure I follow.”

  “If Dierdorf killed Jerzy, then there’s no way he sends a mouth-breather to town for anything remotely connected to that murder. He may be dumb, but he ain’t crazy. No-necks have a habit of getting caught, and when they get caught they have a habit of talking.”

  “Well,” I muttered, “Reuter is one for two.”

  “You sound a little frustrated.”

  “I am.” I nodded. “Smart people tell me Jerzy was using me in some kind of bigger scheme, somehow, and maybe the using part hasn’t stopped even though Jerzy is dead. No one can come up with a theory for Dierdorf that makes sense, though—and who else is there?”

  “Well, there’s me—but that kinda thing isn’t my gig anymore. I had some time to think while I was behind bars in Russia. The main thing I thought was, ‘If I get out of this alive, I’m finding something steady with a 401k plan and no chance of ever eating black bread and borscht again.’”

  He fished a business card out of his shirt pocket. Orange on white:

  Klimchock Hydraulics And Thermodynamics

  Applied Engineering and Product Applications

  “We’re in the Solutions Business”

  “This is my latest line. Should have the website up by the end of the week. I’m an engineer. Engineers are boring, but they mostly die in bed.”

  I took the card, thumbed it, briefly noted that the addresses and phone numbers below the headline stuff were Idaho, not L.A. An italic line across the bottom jumped out at me: A Christian Based Company.

  “I hope this was helpful.” Klimchock said this with an air of finality as he glanced at his watch.

  “It was. Real helpful. Thanks again.”

  “Like I said, any friend of Jerzy’s…”

  This time he actually did wink. He gathered his things, sharing a friendly but superficial salesman’s smile as he did. Right on the verge of sauntering away, he paused, hesitated, then offered a final comment.

  “I just remembered something about a rent-a-thug named Bart Reuter. I heard he’d done some work for Dierdorf but hasn’t had a Dierdorf gig since he blew a handoff from a bag-man in South Dakota over a year ago. Fracked it up, you might say. I’m having trouble seeing Dierdorf behind Reuter’s escapade here.”

  Well, Josie, this just isn’t getting any clearer, is it?

  ***

  I called Uncle Darius on my way back to my car, because I just had to talk to someone about Klimchock. Darius came across as skeptical.

  “So a guy who thought a million-dollar payoff for two years’ work was chump-change found Jesus in the gulag?”

  “That’s what he says. I mean, it’s possible. Maybe he really did just add things up and decide to make a quiet, decent but modest living as an applications engineer working out of a small office in Idaho.”

  “Right,” Uncle D said. “And maybe you could be sincerely born again and still talk about murdering someone in cost-benefit terms, as if you were deciding whether to buy a software upgrade.”

  “Yeah,” I admitted, “that bothered me a bit. I could see using an applications engineering business as a front—but why fake the born-again stuff?”

  “Well, darlin’, all I can do is speculate. If you wanted me to speculate, I would say that ‘hydraulics’ and ‘thermodynamics’ covers a broad field with a large number of specific applications that involve United States Air Force procurement officers. And if you wanted instant entrée with a fair number of Air Force officers, especially out west, faking a born-again schtick wouldn’t be a bad place to start.”

  “Yeah, I can see that.”

  “Which doesn’t necessarily mean Klimchock was into anything shady,” Uncle Darius said. “You get the right buddies in procurement, you can make plenty of money without breaking law-one. Maybe noodge past a regulation here and there without exactly turning a square corner—but everyone does that, right? But you can also go for a lot more if you’re willing to take the risk. At any given moment you’ll find two or three gents in Leavenworth who can tell you all about it.”

  I probably sounded a little distracted as I thanked Uncle D and signed off the call. I couldn’t help thinking that if Klimchock was faking the Righteous Christian stuff, that would put him in a place a lot like one I’ve been in from time to time.

  My phone buzzed. Text from Seamus:

  NRA coming in pants over tease! Nd 2 follow ↑ ASAP!

  Right now, for example.

  Chapter Forty

  Standard Beltway b
ack-up for a weekday, with lots of people getting a head start on National Drive Like a Moron Week, so I found myself looking at a solid forty minutes for the modest hop from Dulles to MVC’s office in northwest D.C. Had to call Seamus back, of course. Happier than a Kardashian at a trunk sale, that was Seamus. Up to his ears in plans for the biggest campaign of his life, the campaign that wouldn’t just take him to the next level but to three levels beyond that; the equivalent of going from one more competent college basketball coach to a coach suddenly one win away from the NCAA title and a chance to play at the big table for the rest of his career; a shot at changing his life forever. He told me that as soon as I made it in, he and I would go balls to the wall on Message Management, Measured Ramp Up, Rhythm Discipline, Take Off Stage, Momentum Maintenance, and a couple of other things. Seamus saying them all together suggested a virgin with OCD seducing a nymphomaniac.

  Following the Seamus call came three minutes of blessed silence, broken only by a couple of naughty expletives provoked by clueless Beltway driving. Gave me space to think. I wasn’t any too comfortable with thinking right now, so I called Terry Fielding. Time to throw another bone to our designated media whore. Got voicemail.

  “Terry, Josie. Got something that I think would have to be off the record but it might be helpful anyway. You have the number.”

  Two more minutes. Thought about turning on the news but didn’t, because I figured it would be mostly about e-mails and I’d gotten to the point where hearing about e-mails made me sick to my stomach.

  Four chimes: incoming call. Quick, technically illegal glance at the screen: Tony, my lawyer. Put him on hands-free.

  “Is this a good time to talk?”

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  “Two things. Related to each other. First, committee counsel has finally made a first, tentative overture about whether there’s some way to tie that break-in to the Democrats.”