Damage Control

by Michael Bowen

  “Sure. All we’d have to do is lie.”

  “Yeah.” Tony’s voice sounded languid, and I imagined him crossing his legs at the ankles and putting his feet up on the corner of his desk as he leaned back in his old-fashioned, tufted leather, swivel chair. “I explained that, and I was the second lawyer staff counsel had heard it from, so apparently MVC’s counsel has explained it as well. But they’d still like an in-depth look into what the whole thing was about so they can make their own judgment.”

  “I assume we’re going to slow-walk that,” I said. “Start with a backgrounder at maybe the fifty-thousand-foot level.”

  “Right. MVC’s counsel is drafting that.”

  “Good. ’Cause I’m sure not interested in paying you to do it.”

  “But you can only slow-walk something for so long.”

  “Okay. Then we start making noises about pending criminal investigations.”

  “Uh, yeah.” Tony’s voice no longer languid. “That’s the second thing.”

  “Less tease, more—uh, ‘more matter, less art.’” Caught myself just in time on that one. Channeling Uncle Darius all of a sudden.

  “The prosecutor in the burglary case called. He wants victim input on a possible plea bargain.”

  “Well I’m a reasonable person. As long as they cut off one his hands, I’ll go along with it. Even if it’s just his left hand.”

  “Uh, yeah.” Tony chuckled to show that he knew I wasn’t serious. “Technically, we can’t do that in this country.”

  “Since when? I thought President Obama had adopted Shariah law for D.C.”

  “That was just a rumor started by your friends at CCC.” Chuckle. “The terms they actually have in mind are ninety days on work release and two years probation. For first offense non-violent attempted burglary, that’s actually pretty steep by D.C. standards.”

  “Work release for a burglar? I mean, his work is stealing things.”

  “Focus, Josie. You’re paying me a lot of money to appreciate your dark sense of humor.”

  I focused, all right. Blinding insight. Came in a flash, all at once, the whole package, no doubt about it. The NRA pitch, the proposed plea bargain, and the request from the committee all became well-machined components that I fit together effortlessly in my head into a humming, perfectly functioning spin machine. I swear, at times like this it is so wonderful being me.

  “Tony, here’s where we want to end up. We want them to offer that plea bargain, or something like it, but over my objection. We don’t want the case to go nowhere for X months until Reuter jumps bail. We want it resolved, sooner the better, but with me on the record against the resolution even though it’s the resolution we want. How do we get there?”

  “Take an extreme position. Say we won’t be happy with any sentence short of eight months net hard time, all on the inside. No work release, no good time, no weekend privileges. No way that will ever happen, so they’ll cut us out of the negotiations.”

  “And what if we hint that a Congressional committee has a potential interest in this guy?”

  “In that very unfortunate case,” Tony said soberly, “the District of Columbia authorities will do everything in their power to wash their hands of Mr. Reuter as fast as they possibly can.”

  “So we get what we want, the committee gets blamed for mixing politics with justice, and the committee blames the prosecutor for gumming up its investigation. Perfect. We have a plan. And I expect a discount on this one, because I did most of the heavy lifting.”

  Tony seemed a little dazed when he signed off. Maybe dazzled would be a better word for it. Didn’t have time to revel in my brilliance because my phone immediately rang again. Terry Fielding. Kept it on hands-free.

  “Why would it have to be off the record, whatever it is?”

  “Because there’s only one possible source for this particular ‘it,’ so ‘deep background’ wouldn’t really fool anyone,” I said.

  “Well, if ‘it’ is that the cops have finally finished tracking their flat feet through your money and accounts, there might well be another source for it. One but not two. Yet.”

  Political reporters’ basic rule: If your source has a name you can print, then one is enough. If you’re using anonymous sources, though—‘a person close to the investigation’, ‘someone familiar with the facts but not authorized to speak publicly’—you need two. At least. And they have to be independent. So Terry was coming through to me loud and clear.

  “So, if I were to tell you that we understand they’ve wrapped up the accounting stuff, I’d just be corroborating something you know independently.”

  “I’ll take that as corroboration. How about corroborating that they didn’t find anything?”

  “All I know is that there was never anything to find, so what you say comes as no surprise.”

  “Ooh, nice one. You might have a future in this business, Josie.”

  ***

  I spent the rest of the day taking notes—lots of notes—while Seamus went over his grand strategic plan: Multi-million-dollar NRA campaign for uniform federal concealed-carry standards and licensing in any jurisdiction that failed to act on license applications within 10 days.

  “Do you think Fox News will call it ‘Josie’s Law’?” I asked.

  “Only if you get killed. And that’s something I wouldn’t ask of you.” Big smile. “Which reminds me. You and I need to sign up online for NRA memberships before lunch.”

  Damage Control Strategy,

  Days 21 and 22

  (the third Wednesday and the fourth Thursday after the murder)

  Chapter Forty-one

  Seamus and I spent a lot of Wednesday on conference calls with NRA guys—and maybe one gal. They were all really happy, and the dimmer ones were pleasantly surprised, to learn that Seamus and I were both NRA members. I imagined these folks carrying big pistols in shoulder holsters under their three-piece suits or strapped to their waists over cashmere slacks as they sat around mahogany conference tables in wainscoted meeting rooms with assault rifles in gun racks mounted on the walls.

  “Not ‘concealed carry,’” one of them interjected early on. “‘Constitutional carry.’”

  Right.

  The discussions seemed tentative and exploratory at first, with hints of skepticism about whether Seamus’ idea really warranted “a big spend,” as one of them put it. By the third conference call of the day, though, the NRA folks were doing a great job of selling themselves on the idea. They kept launching into rapid-fire chats with each other that seemed to treat Seamus’ proposal as almost a done deal.

  “We have a draft bill yet?”

  “Guy from one of the Dakotas—what’s his name, Wilcox or something?—sent one over yesterday. Piece of shit. Got the lawyers working on it now.”

  “Sponsors?”

  “We could have sixty co-sponsors in the House and eight in the Senate within twenty-four hours.”

  Don’t think I’ve ever seen a facial expression combine serenity and contentment so perfectly as the one on Seamus’ puss while this back-and-forth went on. Finally a question came through for him.

  “What’s the timing on your next impulse?” He meant when would we post the next video.

  “Monday.” I could tell Seamus had pulled that one right out of his posterior.

  “Can you get us a preview by first thing Friday morning?”

  “Can do.” The absolute confidence in Seamus’ voice contrasted a bit jarringly with the panic written all over his face—but our potential client couldn’t see the panic.

  So we killed a lot of Thursday at Shooter’s Paradise in northern Virginia. Our next post would have to punch up the visual ante from the first one. Josie having an exasperated phone conversation with a civil servant wouldn’t exactly fill that bill. That meant a trek to the indoor shooting range in the back
of the store. Opening shot of the .32 in its brown leather holster and, next to it, a yellow box of Winchester .32 caliber ammunition. The props sat on a rough-hewn wooden shelf a little over waist high. I started speaking from off-camera.

  “My name is Josie Kendall. This is my weapon.” My hands drew the revolver. “I bought it for my own protection after I came face to face with a thug who’d broken into my office in downtown Washington, D.C. He was arrested, but he’s already back out on the streets.”

  Now all of me—not just my hands—turned to face the camera, holding the gun between my breasts, in both hands, with the muzzle angled toward the ceiling.

  “If there’s a next time, I want to be ready. I need to be ready.” I deliberately but efficiently loaded cartridges into the cylinder. “I know how to load this weapon. I know how to clean this weapon. I know how to aim this weapon. And I know how to fire this weapon.”

  Snapped the loaded cylinder into the frame. Turned away from the camera and focused on an outline of a life-sized human figure, black lines defining arms, legs, torso, and head on slick white paper, with a bull’s-eye target where the heart would be. Squeezed off six shots at one-second intervals. Got the torso with every shot. Not what you’d call a tight group, but an assailant with that much lead in him would be all through assailing for awhile.

  Camera pulled back to focus on me. Turning to face it, I spoke as I snapped the cylinder out and used the spring-rod at its center to push the empty shells out. They made a nice, serial clatter as they bounced off the concrete floor.

  “But the District of Columbia won’t let me protect myself. My permit application is still pending after two weeks. The thug who attacked me got out of jail a lot faster than I can get someone to act on my permit application. I just hope they issue the permit before it’s too late.”

  There. Done. Forty-five seconds of screen time. Between rehearsal, set up, flubbed lines, and multiple, from-the-top do-overs, we needed almost five hours to get it recorded. I swear that Seamus loved every blessed minute of it.

  Chapter Forty-two

  I read Terry Fielding’s article online when I got back to the office. Didn’t seem like all that much at first:

  SCHROEDER MURDER INVESTIGATION

  GOING NOWHERE

  – OR SOMEWHERE NEW?

  Police efforts to find a suspicious money trail linked to the ambush slaying of Jerzy Schroeder on his Maryland estate three weeks ago have turned up nothing useful, according to a source connected with law enforcement who spoke on condition of anonymity because public disclosure of the results has not been authorized. Another person familiar with the investigation confirmed that nothing was found.

  With no results to show for weeks of painstaking police work focused on one theory about the murder, law enforcement authorities nevertheless declined to confirm hints that the focus of their efforts has shifted.

  “We have never limited the investigation to any one person of interest,” Maryland State Police spokesperson Melissa Dallywahl said by e-mail yesterday. “Or of potential interest. We have identified a number of possibly fruitful lines of inquiry and, with the cooperation of the D.C. Metropolitan Police and other law enforcement agencies, we will continue to pursue them. We have not ruled out any theory; nor have we identified any possibility that we intend to examine to the exclusion of other possible explanations for this extremely serious crime.”

  Experienced observers of procedures usually followed by metro-area police agencies investigating major crimes point out that it is in fact common for police to focus on what they view as the most likely suspect and solution as soon as they have identified one. Several independent sources confirmed that Maryland police indeed appear to have done that in this case, theorizing that Schroeder was murdered out of jealousy as the result of an adulterous affair. They appear to have been unable to develop solid evidence to support that theory, however, and there are now strong indications that they have begun to look actively at another possibility, involving a different suspect and a different motive. To some observers, Ms. Dallywahl’s reference to “a number of possibly fruitful lines of inquiry” suggested oblique confirmation of that inference.

  I had to admire the nimble way Terry had tiptoed through the defamation minefield. He hadn’t identified Rafe as the suspected homicidally jealous husband or me as Jerzy’s objet d’amour. Anyone who’d been following the story would get the hint, but that wasn’t Terry’s fault, was it?

  I also liked “experienced observers,” which meant Terry and another reporter he has lunch with. That’s an old-school way for reporters to put their own background knowledge into a story without just coming out and saying so.

  So it seemed like the story should really pep me up. Looked like Rafe was off the hook, with the spotlight on someone else: Dierdorf, presumably, but maybe Klimchock or even DeHoic, for all I knew. Didn’t matter to me, as long as it wasn’t Rafe. If “other law enforcement agencies” meant the FBI—and it sure as Hell didn’t mean the National Park Police, did it?—then it looked like Jerzy the gangster rather than Jerzy the lover was the one who’d caught a bullet.

  Somehow, though, I just couldn’t feel good about the thing. Something in it tied a nasty knot of anxiety in my belly—almost enough to make me lose my taste for the martini waiting for me at home.

  Almost.

  Damage Control Strategy,

  Day 23

  (the fourth Friday after the murder)

  Chapter Forty-three

  “Love the script,” the voice over the speaker in Seamus’ office said Friday morning. “Love the vocals. Just love ’em.”

  I closed my eyes, balled my fists, and gritted my teeth. Waiting for ‘but.’

  “Great,” Seamus said in a wary voice—wary because he also figured ‘but’ was coming.

  “But we wonder if maybe we could, you know, punch up the visuals just a bit.”

  “We?” As Seamus spoke that word I had no trouble imagining the rage flaring inside his glass head.

  “I mean you, of course, on our nickel. We wouldn’t ask you to keep working on spec.”

  “How many nickels?”

  “Let’s say ten thousand just to cover your costs on this visual punch-up. Dollars. Ten thousand dollars. Not ten thousand nickels.”

  The disembodied voice chuckled in a way that made me think of a found-footage horror movie. I got real focused real fast. For ten thousand dollars up front, Seamus would agree to any visual punch-up short of full frontal nudity—and I’m not completely sure he would have balked at that.

  “What do you have in mind?” Seamus asked.

  “Well, do you think you could see your way clear to shooting the thing one more time, just the way you did it, everything the same—except this time, at a place near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, called Sportsman’s and Shooter’s Supply?”

  “Yes.”

  “This afternoon?”

  “Yes, uh, I mean, if we can get the videographer on short notice.”

  “Don’t worry about the videographer. We’ll provide one. You just have your pretty little lady with her snub-nose and her attitude there at, say, two o’clock. How about that?”

  “You got it.” Seamus glanced at his watch and gulped.

  “Good. Real good.”

  All of a sudden I didn’t need to worry about having any time on my hands on Friday. Took us most of the morning and early afternoon to get there. Found a huge, ramshackle wooden building, as if someone had taken a Western town street-front from a Hollywood set for a cowboy movie, except with actual walls and rooms behind the façade, and set it in the middle of a parking lot for a 1950s drive-in theater. A boardwalk shaded by an overhang must have stretched a good two hundred feet along the storefront, with dozens of people strolling along it. Two men and women in Amish dress had lifted a beautifully joined oak gun cabinet onto the boardwalk, presumably so that they coul
d try to sell a line of the things to the store’s proprietor when he got a chance to look at it.

  Guy named Caleb Early was waiting for us. Big, bushy beard, homespun jeans and shirt, warm smile, and nestled in an open holster strapped to his right hip—something Wyatt Earp might have carried. He walked us to a shooting gallery in the back, taking us past so many guns and rifles that it seemed like every soldier in the Iraqi Army could have dropped one while running away and there’d still have been plenty left. Sleek, squeaky clean, and well-lighted, the gallery looked big enough to accommodate an entire class of FBI trainees.

  The videographer had already set up a tripod-mounted camera that you could have used to film a made-for-TV rom-com. Her name was Cat. Just Cat, no last name. Cat the videographer. Said so right there on her card. The baseball cap she wore and the equipment bag she carried both had NRA logos on them. If she was constitutionally carrying, at least she had the weapon out of sight.

  The human outline target this time had white lines on a black background rather than the other way around. Hmm…And the bull’s-eye target heart looked like it was about the size of a dinner plate.

  Two rehearsals, then we started shooting. Finally got through it on the fourth try. Even using a snub-nose—much less accurate than a gun with four-inch barrel, like the one Jerzy and I had plinked with—six holes, three fairly high in the torso, one actually in the heart. Seamus examined the target critically.

  “Maybe we should go one more time and see if we can get at least four bullets in the heart-lung area,” he said. “For, you know, optics.”

  “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” Cat said distractedly. “By dinnertime tonight this little movie will show six shots in the kill-zone. I only shoot with a camera, but I never miss.” She unbolted the camera from the tripod and hoisted it to her right shoulder. “Let’s go up front and get a shot of Josie paying for the ammunition and gallery time. For, you know, optics.”