Official Privilege

by P. T. Deutermann

  “Do you remember which file that was, ma’am? If I had a name, I can find out if we’re duplicating our efforts here.”

  “It was some hit-and-run, I remember that. Old one —two years back.

  Don’t remember no names, though.

  Too many names down here.”

  “Well, thank you, ma’am. I think I better stop right here and go back to the NIS and talk to Miss. Snow. No point in both of us bothering you, is there?”

  “Yeah, that’s true. Maybe they just be checkin’ up on you, see if you get ‘em all, you doin’ your survey. Folks is always checkin’ up on folks around here.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. I’m going to go see what’s going on here. Appreciate your help, though.”

  He hung up. Miss. Snow, from the NIS. Pulling a two year-old hit-and-run file. Miss. Snow. The captain had said the investigator had been “our man.” No; wait—go listen to the tape again. He got up, went into the hall, and ran the tape. One of the principal investigators has been ours all along. So they had two people working it.

  One from NIS—Miss. Snow. Another one from—where?

  Who was the second guy? He went back to the kitchen, drank some more coffee. Couldn’t just call NIS. They might have little old ladies out there, every Washington agency had them, but the NIS variety would be trained not to talk to outsiders. And he couldn’t just call some Pentagon number in the sky. If the captain found out, it might spook him and his principal.

  So where else? Philadelphia. The news story had broken in Philadelphia.

  A Navy spokesperson had been quoted. What was Navy up there? Well, that shipyard, of course.

  He called long-distance information and got the main number for the shipyard. He selected another voice program and an identity as a new staffer on the House Armed Services Committee. The shipyard operator put him through to the shipyard commander’s office, where he identified himself and asked to speak to the spokesperson for the shipyard. He was switched over to another number, then a third before a civilian secretary told him he had to talk to the Navbase PAO.

  “Navbase?”

  “Yes, sir, Commander Naval Base Philadelphia.

  Comnavbase. They have a CHINFO type on their staff; she’s the spokesperson for all the Navy activities up here. That’s probably who you’re looking for.”

  CHINFO. He remembered that word from his seance with Elizabeth Hardin.

  The secretary gave him two numbers: one for the public affairs office at Navbase, and a second for the commander’s office. He chose the PAO, again using the identity of the committee staffer.

  The PAO was not available. “Could she call back?” he was asked. Malachi hesitated. As a rule, he never left his own phone number for a callback.

  He said no, he was out of his office, away from his desk, but it was urgent, the chairman needed to know something. He asked when the PAO would be back in. The secretary did not know. Malachi said he would try again, then hung up.

  He sat there, chewing on his lower lip. From his Array days, he knew that calls from a congressional office had to be reported up the chain of command— especially if they came from one of the Armed Services committees. That could possibly get back to the captain, too, and one phone call to the HASC might expose him. No. Somewhere else in Philadelphia. The cops?

  The Philadelphia media? Too hard to sustain the cover story. He needed someone low level, a worker bee. “Always be a snake,” Monroney had said, “stay down in the grass.” They had found Hardin’s body on the base —where would they take it? Maybe there was a naval hospital up there; a naval base usually had a Navy hospital.

  He called the base operator again, but she told him the naval hospital had been closed down two years ago.

  Thank you very much. So where would they take the body? They’d want an autopsy, so maybe the city morgue. It took him four more calls to get a number for the Philadelphia County Medical Examiner’s Office, but there he ran into a cop, one Officer Wykowski.

  Damn. He walked through his House committee staffer routine again.

  Wykowski listened politely and asked him for his number—standard procedure: “We gotta call you back, make sure you are who you say you are.”

  Malachi almost did it, but then he hung up. From a pay phone, maybe, but pay phones didn’t come with a voice synthesizer. He could imagine the cop laughing at him on the other end, and he hoped the guy didn’t have caller ID. But they probably got calls from reporters all the time trying to disguise who they were. So who you gonna call, there, Ghostbuster?

  The Navy spokesperson had been from the naval base headquarters. Maybe the congressional angle wasn’t such a good idea. How about just a reporter? He selected another voice program and called back, this time to the commander’s office. He identified himself to the Yeoman Third Class Hardy who answered as a reporter with the Washington Times. He had a quick question: What were the names of the Navy investigators working the Hardin case, the body in the battleship?

  “You’ll have to call the PAO, sir,” Hardy said.

  “I called them; they referred me to your office. Look, I know one of the names. It’s a Miss. Snow from the NIS. But my sources indicate that there are two.” He decided to take a long shot. “I need the name of the other one, that captain they sent up with Miss. Snow.”

  “He was a commander, sir, but I can’t give out their names.”

  “Okay, Yeoman Hardy, I understand. Thanks.”

  He now had Miss. Snow and Commander X. Back to the PAO. The newspaper had said that Hardin’s mother had gone up to Philadelphia to ID the body. Snow and the commander would have been there for that, he was sure of it. He switched voice programs as the PAO’s office picked up, and this time he was Officer Wykowski from the Philadelphia city morgue, needing a name to finish his monthly report.

  “Those two Navy people who were here on the Har din case, that guy they found in the battleship? I got two names, one’s a Miss. Snow; the other’s a Commander somebody, but some jerk spilled coffee on his name.”

  “You mean Commander Collins.”

  “Yeah, okay, that works. It starts with a C. Looked like Cowin or something. I just couldn’t read the rest of it. ‘Predate it, lady.”

  Malachi smiled and hung up. Commander Collins and Miss. Snow. He pulled out a Department of Defense phone book and went to the back. Collins.

  Bunch of them: two on the Navy headquarters staff, one on the Army staff, one on the Joint Chiefs—two captains, one commander, one lieutenant commander. The lone commander was Collins, Daniel L., in the Division of Politico-Military Policy, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, office code 6He. He went back to the Navy index, looked up the NIS, and then tried to find Snow, but there was no listing for her at NIS. He toyed with the idea of calling there, too, but let it go. He had two names; now he would go wrap up some other business and then go scare up some faces to put with those names.

  on wednesday morning, Dan asked Grace to call Captain Vann at the Municipal Center and arrange for Vann to come to the Pentagon at 1100.

  In the privacy of the back room, they had kicked around how much or how little to tell Vann about the bureaucratic warfare dimensions of their working together. Dan had been leaning toward a fairly restricted data dump, but Grace argued for full disclosure.

  “He’ll see through any smoke screen we put up to explain why I’m here, and why you are not at NIS,” she had pointed out. “Cops are some of the best bureaucrats there are. And he’s probably our only hope to get to Mrs. Hardin.”

  “I’m just concerned about folding outsiders into this investigation; it’s a Navy deal.”

  “But it’s a homicide, not a collision at sea. We’ve already established that Hardin’s killing is probably not related to his job as a Navy paymaster, so whatever’s behind the murder is buried in his personal world, maybe the civilian world of Washington. That’s Vann’s turf.”

  And yours, Dan had thought, but he had been persuaded.

  Grace wa
s good at that, he noticed; must be that Jesuit training at Georgetown. As agreed, Dan went to meet Vann, who was waiting on the sidewalk in front of the south parking entrance, looking somewhat conspicuous among the stream of uniforms entering and leaving the building. Dan cleared Vann and his oversized side arm through the guard station, after much admiring comment about the weapon from the two Federal Protective Service cops, and then took him up to 614.

  “First time in the Pentagon, Captain?” Dan asked as they worked their way through the maze of rings and corridors.

  “Came over here for a shooting in the parking lot few years back,” Vann replied. “Some weird Harold shot a

  Navy officer at random. But I’ve never been inside the building, no.”

  Dan made introductions when they got to 614, then closed the door to the back room when they were ready to begin. Grace had been making some phone calls while Dan had been picking up the detective. She looked glum.

  “Suspicions confirmed on Santini,” she reported.

  “They’ve done nothing. A ‘change in priorities’ is the excuse of the day. And NIS is ‘researching’ the USS Luce’s previous investigation.

  They hope to get me a copy by the end of next week.”

  “Next week? Yeah, that’s definitely in the suspicions confirmed regime.

  I’ve got Navy JAG digging up a copy; we’ll see who gets us one first.

  Let’s fill our guest detective in on what’s going on. You want some coffee, Captain?”

  It took an hour. Vann had said he could give them forty-five minutes, but he sat impassively in an elderly desk chair “as Dan ran over the time limit. Dan gave him the political background behind the investigation’s organization, replayed what they had seen and heard in Philadelphia, including their meetings with the retired rigger and Mrs.

  Hardin, and then walked him through the case boards. When it was over, Vann shook his head slowly.

  “What you’ve got,” he said, “is jackshit. Two-year old, two-year-cold jackshit.”

  Dan nodded, looking at the sparsely populated fact board. “We know.”

  “Less than jackshit,” Vann continued. “If Hardin was killed in Philly and dumped in that battleship, it was probably done by a squad of eye-talians who were following orders—like your rummy rigger said. And you said yourself that only the riggers could get inside that ship. The chances of finding out who was giving those orders, in South Philly, are zero. You habeas one corpus, but have no visible motive. You have nobody who gained, unless there was a big insurance policy out there somewhere.

  Was there? Surely you’ve checked?

  “We’ve done a lot of hypothesizing and speculating about a connection between the two deaths,” Grace said. “The salient feature is that it’s just too coincidental, both of them dying that close together. But that’s all we have—speculation. Which is why we want to talk to Mrs.

  Hardin.”

  “She won’t want to talk to you,” Vann warned. “Far as she’s concerned, she handed over two pretty good kids to the U.S. Navy and they both ended up dead.”

  “I should think she’d be desperate to know why this happened,” Dan said.

  Vann shook his head. “You should think? Pardon me, but you talkin’ like a Martian. You simply have no idea of what it means to have two out of two black kids, in one family, coming up from the District, make it out of the streets and into the white man’s professional world.

  Black kids in this town, half of ‘em are s’posed to end up dead before they’re twenty-one. That’s what a lot of parents and their kids have come to believe these days.

  That there’s some law of averages working to thin out the black-kid population. So when it turns out that way, it’s just life in the black lane, see? That woman is beyond anger, but mostly she’s resigned to her fate.”

  “But how about you, Captain?” Grace asked quietly.

  “You resigned to just letting this thing go by? Surely you can see that there’s too much coincidence here.”

  Vann was silent for a moment, staring at the middle distance between them, his thin face working. Then he looked down at his watch.

  “I gotta boogie,” he said. “I saw the Hardin thing on the national news last night. What’s the Navy gonna do?”

  “Do?” asked Dan.

  “Don’t shit a bullshitter, Commander. This thing gets media heat, the Navy’s gonna damp it down, put it on a slow track until the heat goes elsewhere. Lemme ask you something: Can you assure me that you’ll still be running this investigation by next week?”

  Dan looked at Grace before answering. Vann caught the look.

  “Uh-huh. I tell you what. You still in business by the beginning of next week, you call me. But I’m not putting Angela Hardin through the wringer of a federal investigation unless there’s a future in it, you dig?”

  “I suppose we could do it without you,” Grace said.

  “Bet you can’t,” Vann said, staring at her. “She’ll tell you to go away.

  And then what you gonna do? Subpoena her? Take her into the back room?”

  “Oh c’mon,” Dan interjected. “We wouldn’t do anything like that, Captain, and you know that—she’s lost both her children, for Chrissakes. But neither one of us is willing to just let this thing go, even if the politics do start to get in the way.” Vann snorted. “Here’s the thing,” he said. “This is the only unsolved homicide you got. Over there in town, we’ve got the world’s supply of unsolved homicides, mostly because people won’t talk to us, and mosta them ‘cause they’re scared of getting whacked themselves. This thing is hopeless.”

  “Well, will you think about it?” Dan asked. “Just don’t shut your mind to it, until we see what else we can develop. Will you do that?”

  “I’ll think about it. Now, who’s gonna get me out of this place?”

  When Dan returned to the office after escorting Vann out of the building, Grace was on the phone, having an animated discussion with someone, and there was a message on his desk directing him to go see the 06 EA, Captain Manning. He reread the message while trying not to eavesdrop on Grace’s conversation, but it was difficult.

  “What do you mean, ‘a coincidence of interests’?” she said, her voice rising. “What kind of gobbledygook is that? A week ago, you were trying like hell to get this investigation away from Opnav and back to NIS. And now you and Opnav are getting in bed at the policy level? What for, to kill it? A homicide, Doug?”

  Grace looked over the phone at Dan and then averted her eyes, but he could see from the flush around her throat that she was genuinely angry.

  Doug.

  That had to be Englehardt. She hadn’t used his first name at that initial meeting, so maybe Doug really was her rabbi at NIS. And they’re talking about killing off the investigation? He looked at the yellow phone message: “See EA.” He put the message form down where Grace could see it, mimed that he was going up to the front office, and left.

  Summerfield intercepted him as he came out of the back room.

  “Jackson said the EA wants to see you,” he said.

  “What’s up?”

  “Don’t know, Captain, but it sounds like Grace is in there talking to her boss at NIS. She mentioned killing off the investigation. Sounds to me like some serious circling of the wagons has been going on.”

  Summerfield walked up the hall with him. “You see the Washington Post this morning?”

  “No, sir. I don’t usually read the paper until lunchtime.”

  “There’s a little piece in there about the Hardin case, and it makes the connection with the family here.

  There’s also a sidebar on how interesting it is that Opnav is running the investigation instead of NIS. No reasons offered, but there is some speculation about Tailhook and the USS Iowa case. The usual NIS bashing.

  It’s in the Metro section.”

  “Wonderful. That sidebar—somebody up front lift a leg?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”


  Dan stopped in the corridor just before they reached the 06 front office. “But how can they kill it off now?” he asked. “With all this publicity, ‘inquiring minds’ will want to know.”

  “They probably won’t kill it off, exactly. But go see the EA. He might be ready to enlighten you.”

  Dan walked into the front office and reported to the EA, who was on the phone. Manning waved him imperiously toward one of the chairs while he continued his conversation. Dan walked to his familiar waiting position at the picture gallery. There were three other staff officers waiting to see one of the flags, and the yeomen were all busy at their word processors. The DCNO’s personal aide, an extremely presentable young lieutenant, was on the phone making a big deal over room reservations in London for the DCNO. Dan could hear the drone of a large helicopter turning up on the helipad outside. Just another normal day at the office, Dan thought.

  A part of him was hoping against hope that the investigation would go elsewhere, perhaps back to NIS, where it belonged. The Hardin case itself looked hopeless in terms of finding whoever had killed the lieutenant, especially if the murder had its roots on the streets of Washington, D.C. “You talkin’ like a Martian,” Vann had said. As far as Dan was concerned, inner-city Washington was another planet. He had been startled by Vann’s almost casual statement about the expectations black parents in the District had for their children. And, he realized, there was something else: If the investigation was shelved, Grace Snow would be leaving.

  “Commander Collins.” Manning was looking at him.

  Dan walked back over to stand in front of the EA’s desk.

  “There have been some decisions made about the Hardin investigation,”

  Manning announced, consulting his notebook.

  “Made by whom, may I ask?” Dan said.

  “You may ask,” Manning replied. “Let’s just say that, as far as you are concerned, they were made by competent authority. You are hereby directed to suspend your investigatory efforts and to compile your findings into a summary preliminary report, which you shall transmit under memorandum to the Assistant Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Plans and Policy, Rear Admiral Carson, the convening authority. You are then to resume your regular duties in Op-Six-fourteen. I will have this to you in writing as an amendment to your convening order directly, but Oh-six B will expect that report by the close of business today.”