“You let them do it,” he said immediately. “You can’t be messin’ with a federal homicide investigation. That’s double OJ one. You remember: obstruction of justice?”
“I didn’t intend to interfere,” she said. “I only—”
“You just want to freelance. Nobody likes a freelancer, Miss. Snow. Just about the time the squad is setting up the collar, along comes the freelancer and blows the case, every damn time. You gotta remember, there’re three parts to a homicide: there’s the killing, there’s finding the perp, and there’s building the case that puts the perp away. First part’s always free: The perp hands you the killing. And there’s lots of cases where we know who the perp is. The hard part is building the case, ‘cause these DAs aren’t gonna waste their time, you can’t build the case. That’s the part the free lancers usually screw up. Nobody needs an extra player.”
This wasn’t going at all the way she wanted it to. But then she had an idea.
“I appreciate all that, Captain. I’ve been in the investigations business, remember? But I may not have a choice.”
“Meaning what?”
She told him about being followed on Friday night from Collins’s house, and also about seeing the same man and vehicle on Water Street near the boathouse.
“You report this?”
“I did. To the District police.”
“Uh-huh. You report it to the NIS?”
“No. I don’t know what’s behind it, and I have no way to make a connection—”
“Ah-ha-ha, Miss. Snow. We tryin’ to have it both ways, aren’t we? First you’re tellin’ me that you may already be involved in the Hardin case—because you think you were followed when you were with this Collins guy. But then you say you didn’t tell the NIS because there ain’t no facts connecting the man in the truck with the Hardin case? C’mon, you want to freelance.
Right?”
Grace was getting angry. “I don’t care what it’s called, Captain Vann.
The Policy director at NIS said he had been instructed by the admiral’s executive assistant to put the Hardin case in the routine hopper along with all the other unsolved black homicides. I rather think that stinks.
My other problem is that I saw Wesley Hardin down in that boiler. I’m having a hard time getting that image to fit nicely in the routine hopper.”
Vann went silent. Grace let him think about it. She could hear his desk chair protesting as he fidgeted around. When he finally spoke, he sounded even more tired.
“Damn, I hate Mondays. All the other unsolved black homicides? Man actually say that?”
“He did. Then he realized what he’d said, so he tried to muddy the waters. Look, I don’t know what, if anything, I can do, and I know all about helpful outsiders fouling up official investigations. But first there has to be an investigation. I don’t think there’s going to be one, beyond a lot of eye-rolling bureaucrats going through the motions. But I’m convinced that the key to this case is the fact that his sister died shortly before he did, and that his death has something to do with something or someone here in Washington.”
“And what do you want from me, Miss. Snow? A papal dispensation?”
“I want to speak to Mrs. Hardin. With a little preliminary softening up having been done by you. With you there, if at all possible.”
“Hmmpf. That’s what I was afraid was comin’. Tell me something’. Where’s that Navy guy, Collins, stand in the game?”
“He’s been returned to his regular duties in the Pentagon.”
“He in the game or out?”
“I have to assume he’s out. He told me Friday that he could get into a lot of trouble if he stuck his nose back into the Hardin case. He implied that some powerful people had warned him off.”
“Smart boy.”
“Well, I’ve already given up my job, so I have nothing to lose in that regard, do I? Will you help me? Or even just think about it?”
He was silent again for about thirty seconds. Then he surprised her.
“Miss. Snow,” he said in a very official voice, “you’re implying that there is a conspiracy of silence surrounding the Hardin case. That maybe some high-level executive assistants at NIS and in the Pentagon are manipulating this case so as to neutralize its effective prosecution.
Have you forgotten something? I’m the executive assistant to the Deputy Chief of Police for Criminal Investigations. How do you know I’m not part of it, Miss. Snow?”
It was Grace’s turn to be silent for a few seconds. She had not missed the sudden change in his speech: the precision of his syntax and the cold, political essence of his question. She thought about it, then saw through it.
“Because if you were, Captain,” she replied evenly, “you would have agreed to help me right from the beginning of this conversation. That way you could control or manipulate what I was doing and thus protect your principals. In my experience, EAs are not singular spiders; they like to work the web with all the other EAs, and they rarely work just for their own benefit. Besides, you’re still talking like a human.” Vann chuckled. “A human. Ouch,” he said. “Okay, I guess you got me, Miss.
Snow. My guile is getting like my nostalgia: It ain’t what it used to be. I’ll tell you what: I’ll talk to Angela Hardin, sort of feel her out. I’m not promising anything, hear? There’s … well, there’s history to deal with there. I’m gonna have to ask her to look into her heart, and that thing’s in pieces, you know? And in the meantime, don’t you go doing anything. Thinking is okay. I always admire people who think. But don’t do anything until I say it’s okay, understood?”
“All right. I promise.”
“Okay. I’ll get back to you.”
She thanked him and hung up. It was a start.
“C&P telephone customer Service. This is Wanda.
How may I direct your call?”
“I need to speak to Loretta, in Billing,”
Malachi said.
“Loretta’s line is busy, sir. She’s assisting other customers,” the voice said. “I can put you through to the next available billing adviser.”
“No, let me hold, please. Loretta has been helping me and I don’t want to have to explain the whole deal again.”
“Thank you, sir. Please hold, sir.”
Malachi waited, the yellow gummy with Snow’s phone number in his hand.
After four minutes of breathless telephone company advertising, a new voice came on the line.
“Billing. Loretta speaking. How may I help you?”
“Loretta, this is Mr. Wizard.”
“Hey, Wiz baby. What’s happening’ in the wonderful world of science? And what’s our number today?”
He gave her the number. “And our name might be Snow, and we may even be unlisted.”
“Oooh. Unlisted. We’re important. And expensive, like the address I’m seem’ right here. And, Miss. Grace E. Snow, can we confirm that our address is two-onethree-five P Street Northwest?”
Malachi wrote down the street address. “Absolutely.
Your computer does good work, Loretta. It’s two hundred times better than mine.”
“Aw, baby, you too kind.”
“Thanks, Loretta. Keep your bills dry.”
He hung up and went into his study, where he fished two hundred-dollar bills out of the desk safe and folded them into an envelope, which he addressed to Ms. Loretta Smith, care of C&P Telephone’s Washington offices, Billing Department. He marked personal on the envelope. Loretta was part of the old Monroney empire.
As part of the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company’s Billing Department, she could call up any customer’s account as long as he could provide the phone number. One hundred for info on a listed number; two hundred for unlisted. As long as she did no manipulation of the screen data, the phone company’s security systems would not pick up on it—people called in all the time to ask questions about bills, and the operators always asked for the phone number, which doubled as the account number. Th
ey also always checked the address to confirm; Loretta simply asked it out loud.
He went back out to the kitchen and fixed himself the first of the day, a short one, because he still had to drive back to Virginia. He took his drink back to the study and sat down. So the lady in the garden had been Grace E. Snow. He wondered if they called her Gracie. Probably not—she didn’t look like a Gracie. More like a Grace Kelly with dark hair. And she lived in Georgetown, so there was money there. He tried to remember how a woman who looked like that—polished, trim, expensively dressed—used to make him feel, but there was nothing there anymore.
That’s because you’re a fucking eunuch, Malachi. Since your evening with Inge, Inge of the broken bottle, Inge of the perfect aim, the only thing you feel for women is the urge to improve their traffic-safety consciousness with an F-250.
He closed his eyes and tried to get a hold of himself.
Think rationally, logically. What was it about the Snow woman? She was not the normal fit for the NIS, that was for damn sure. Then he remembered what Englehardt had said: “Miss. Snow doesn’t work here anymore.”
And she had confirmed that. So why had she been visiting Collins? It hadn’t looked like a date, not with her going home in a taxi early in the evening. But maybe that was how the Navy boys did it. It used to be a standing joke among his buddies in the sergeants’ mess that an officer took two weeks to get from a woman what any sergeant could get in thirty minutes.
Officers had to talk about it beforehand; sergeants talked about it afterward. Collins the rowboat man, Snow the Yuppie princess from Georgetown. But had the visit been work or pleasure? And could these two powder puffs possibly be contractors set in motion by the captain and his crowd to take care of the one remaining loose end?
He shook his head. He couldn’t see it. Not those two.
Snow was a remote possibility; as he knew only too well, women were capable of any fucking thing at all. He had met a fifty-year-old woman hitter once who had scared the hell out of him with her ice-cold intensity. She purportedly did wet work for the Agency, although lots of people out on the edge in this town claimed to work for the Agency. But Malachi remembered thinking that if he had known there was some kind of contract out on him, just the sight of that woman would have had him diving behind a wall. She looked like a killer. This Grace Snow looked like nothing of the sort. And the Navy guy. Again, no way, no matter if James Bond had been a commander. That would imply a degree of deep cover that the Agency might be capable of, but never the Navy.
He downed the whiskey and sighed. It was time to get the Ford back to its hidey-hole. If there was somebody in motion in his backfield, it wasn’t these two, which meant that he had to increase his vigilance. He decided to dismiss Collins and Snow; sometimes it was just as useful to know who wasn’t coming after you.
He closed up the house and set out to drive the Ford back to Arlington, but then he had an idea. Maybe he’d go by and actually see where the mysterious Miss. Snow lived. He decided to circle around the Capitol grounds and take Pennsylvania Avenue all the way over to Georgetown. It would not be quick, but, it being a Monday night, most of the commuter traffic would be clearing out by now. He took Pennsylvania all the way to its junction with M Street, got off M as soon as he could, and zigzagged his way over to P Street. Once past Wisconsin, he had to go slowly on P with its cobblestones and old trolley tracks, but he was able to drive right by 2135 P Street Northwest. There was a 500 series BMW locked in behind wrought-iron gates; he automatically memorized the license number. He went around the block one time, noting that there was an alley off the next street north, Volta Place. The alley actually had a name, but the street sign was partially obscured by the low branches of a tree. The alley was almost directly behind Snow’s house. He caught a glimpse of some construction equipment at the end of the alley.
Satisfied that he had seen enough, he headed back down toward the Key Bridge and Virginia.
dan fought a strong urge to close his eyes as he stroked up the river.
The current was uncompromisingly hard and fast, but there was too much flotsam sheeting downstream for eyes-closed concentration. He wore one of those bicycle helmets with a small round mirror on an extension arm to watch for problems. He was in the burn phase of his workout, his muscles complaining, but doing so in unison, as he made tiny adjustments in oar strength to maneuver the scull between branches and other debris careening down the river.
The water smelled of mud and wet greenery, and the sound of the spring current was audible, its echoes reflecting off the sheer stone palisades of the Virginia side as he approached Chain Bridge. The chair had developed an annoying squeak, which finally broke his concentration, and he eased off to a bare headway pace. Another single came steaming by, its occupant shooting Dan a knowing look as Dan eased up and prepared to come about. There were usually more rowers out, but this current was on the verge of meanness. The only advantage other than the intensity of exercise was that the river was deeper, allowing a wider area in which to row. The big eights and fours from the university had all headed downstream to the more placid reaches of the river, trading off the malodorous vapors of the Blue Plains sewage-treatment plant for calm water.
No, thank you very much, Dan thought. He scanned the upstream water briefly before beginning a sculling turn, then settled back into a slow, comedown rhythm that would take him the two miles back down to the boathouse.
He wondered briefly if Grace would be there again.
He had found himself thinking about her ever since the phone call late Friday night. And try as he might, it had little to do with the Hardin case. He backed the starboard oar slightly to avoid a wicked-looking whirlpool that had surfaced in front of him, but then he relaxed as the knifelike shell responded, scooting easily around the outer tangents of the disturbance. He looked on either side and found himself momentarily in formation with two largish tree branches. Must have been a hell of thunderstorm up on the Shenandoah to bring all this stuff down.
So why don’t you call her tonight? Because it’s Monday and you said you would call her Tuesday. So? You want to see the woman, you don’t play by teenage rules.
Hell, you could call her from the boathouse. It can’t be more than ten minutes to her house. Yeah, but it’s rush hour.
He grinned then, recognizing the wiggling of a semihooked fish. He shipped his oars and just let the current take him. An older man with a British accent had caught up with him at the river landing one evening and asked him why he felt compelled to row all the way back downstream.
Returning to the real world that enticing, old boy? The trick is to go like hell upstream, then soak up some of the serenity of the river on the way back down. Enjoy it up while you can; pandemonium awaits at the boathouse driveway. The river was beautiful, even when it was feeling its oats. And she is, too, he thought. Claire was prettier. Claire is gone.
Claire was more fun, not so serious, not so damn New Englandish. And yet, Grace is elegant, quick, even sexy.
Claire was sexy. Claire is gone. A wave of sadness overtook him like one of those sudden squalls that could dash down the river all the way from the cataracts at Great Falls. Heretofore, a summons to the ghost of Claire was all that it took to extinguish any sparks of interest in another woman. But Claire is gone. Grace is ten minutes from the boathouse.
Maybe fifteen.
Maybe she’s not there.
Maybe she is.
He landed the boat without doing any significant damage and toted it up to the boathouse. He called her from the lobby after hanging up the boat, and he got the answering machine. He started to hang up, but then he said to hell with it and identified himself. She picked up, startling him.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “One of the defenses of women who live alone, I’m afraid.”
“Yeah, well, I was still trying to figure out what to say to your machine when you picked up. But basically, I’m down here at the boathouse, and I was wondering, uh …”<
br />
“Would you like to come by, Dan?”
“Uh, yeah, I would, actually. I’ll even take a shower.”
“That’s nice to hear.”
Dan felt his face redden. Want to tell her you’ll use soap and everything? Wash behind your ears?
“What’s the best route from down here?” he asked quickly.
She gave him succinct instructions, and he said he’d be there in twenty minutes. It was more like half an hour, what with a fender bender on M Street and a broken-down Metro bus on 33rd. Dan remembered her house, but he missed her driveway the first time past.
After much backing and filling, he was able to maneuver the Suburban into the space across her driveway, which was really only two ribbons of brick leading into the tiny yard. The Suburban looked like a beached blue whale against the diminutive front yard. He surveyed his makeshift outfit: slacks and sport shirt he happened to have in the car from the cleaners, his uniform shoes, and a black leather Navy-uniform belt. Oh well, he thought, beats cutoffs, a sleeveless sweatshirt, and a pair of canvas sneakers that qualified as EPA violations.
The front door of the house opened and Grace stepped out. She was wearing gray wool slacks, a long-sleeved ivory-colored blouse, and some flat leather shoes. She wore a slim gold bracelet on her right wrist, and Dan thought he could detect a hint of makeup. He caught himself staring when he should have been getting out of the car, and then he scrambled to get the door open. If she thought his outfit peculiar when he walked up the steps, she contained it well. She took him through the living room and the study and then into the kitchen, where she had laid out some white wine and a tray of crackers and cheese.
“If you’ll bring the wine, we can try my garden this time,” she said over her shoulder. “But first we have to put this permit in your car window. Otherwise, you’ll get a ticket for blocking my driveway.”
He took the permit back out to the car and then went back through the house and out to the garden, picking up the wine along the way.
“This is very pretty,” he said as they walked down the brick walk to a patio table and chairs. “Makes my garden look medium scruffy.”
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