Official Privilege

by P. T. Deutermann

  on tuesday afternoon, Grace was filing her 1993 tax returns in the upstairs file cabinet when she heard the phone ringing downstairs. Since her mother had died, she kept only the downstairs telephone ringer activated, as she had developed something of a dread of phone calls in the night. She walked to the head of the stairs, where she could hear the answering machine, and listened.

  When she recognized the voice of Moses Vann, she quickly went into the bedroom and picked up the portable bedside phone.

  “Captain Vann, I’m here,” she said as the machine made an offensive noise and clicked off abruptly, as if annoyed.

  “Miss. Snow. I’m glad I caught you.”

  “Coming from a policeman, that sounds ominous, Captain.”

  “Yeah, well.” He laughed. “I say ‘got you’ and people get really scared, you know? But something interesting’s come up on the Hardin case. The department got a phone call.”

  The Hardin case. Grace sat down abruptly on the edge of her bed. She had not thought about the Hardin case since … well, since seeing Dan last night.

  “An anonymous tip of some kind?”

  “You must be psychic. That’s exactly what it was.

  Somebody dropped a dime.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Well, it was kind of a thin dime, but basically, the caller asked a question. I’m calling to find out if you might be interested in coming in, tomorrow morning, say around eleven o’clock. And maybe bring your Navy friend with you, that Commander Collins.”

  “Well, I can make it. I’ll have to call Dan to see if he can. As I think I told you, he doesn’t have as much freedom of action as I do right now.”

  “You think you can talk him into it?”

  “I can try.”

  “Yeah. Because this call may be doubly interesting to him. How’s about asking him, anyway. He says no, it ain’t the end of the world. But make sure he understands that we’ll be off the record, what you feds call a nonmeeting meeting.”

  “Ex-feds. But, yes, we had those all the time in SEC.

  I’ll call him. Please don’t misunderstand, Captain Vann: The Hardin case bothers him as much as it bothers me.

  It’s just that he can pay a price if some of your captain counterparts over in the Pentagon find out about it.”

  “Like I said, that makes the call even more interesting.

  Give it a shot, Miss. Snow. But either way, I’ll see you in my office at eleven. Just come on up to the third floor, like you did last time.”

  Vann hung up and Grace did likewise. She lay back across the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Damn it, she thought. She didn’t want her next phone call to Dan Collins to be about the Hardin case. She didn’t want him to think her only interest in him was the murder.

  She sat up and went downstairs to get her phone book.

  It was almost five o’clock. Dan should still be at the Pentagon. As she was flipping through the book, the phone rang again. Now who could this be? Maybe Dan.

  She listened as the machine went through its spiel, and then she heard a young man’s voice.

  “Miss. Snow, this is Lieutenant Garrison calling from Naval Investigative Service headquarters. As you may remember, I’m the naval aide to the director. I was calling to see if you were available to speak with Admiral Keeler. My number—”

  Her phone call from NIS—she had forgotten all about that, too. Feeling a flare of irritation, Grace picked up and hit the machine’s record button as she lifted the handset. “I’m here, Lieutenant Garrison. But before you put the admiral on, I want to make sure this is a private conversation. I don’t want any EAs or other undersirables hanging on the extension, is that understood?

  Otherwise, there will be no conversation.”

  She waited while the lieutenant digested this bit of news. She knew that she had no way to keep Rennselaer off a muted extension phone, but she also wanted to put these guys on notice that this was not a social call.

  “Uh, I’ll see what I can do about that, Miss. Snow.

  Stand by one, please.”

  She went on hold. She peered into the little window of the answering machine to make sure the reel was turning. The machine could record up to one hour of conversation on its microcassette. It was a holdover from her days with SEC, when she sometimes took calls after work from informants or prospective witnesses who were in the perspiration stage.

  “Miss. Snow, the admiral’s coming on.”

  Good for him, she thought as she waited. There was a clicking noise and then the smooth voice of Admiral Keeler filled the earpiece. Grace had seen the admiral several times, although she had spoken to him only once. He was a handsome man, in his late forties, and he looked to Grace as if he would make a good con man or politician. She had seen many men who looked like him running some very pretty schemes on Wall Street.

  “Miss. Snow. I’m sorry we’re having to communicate under these awkward circumstances. I’m afraid we haven’t handled the matter of your departure from our ranks all that well on our end.”

  “You certainly haven’t, Admiral. You had the chance to arrange for my departure in a much more gracious manner. But, apparently, your executive assassin decided to put your stripes on and try a little hardball instead. Or was this your idea, Admiral?”

  “No, no, Miss. Snow, it wasn’t. I always prefer a discreet maneuver to a head-on collision. Captain Rennselaer thought he was acting according to my wishes.

  These misunderstandings sometimes happen, you know.”

  Grace understood full well that the EA was being used in one of his most important roles, that of lightning rod in case one of the admiral’s decisions went off the rails. The principals would let the EA make or announce the move; if it began to draw an adverse reaction, the principal could always step forward, disassociate himself from the offending idea, and blame the EA. It was a game that principals and EAs all understood well and used often.

  “Well, now you have a final chance to rectify your EA’s little misstep, Admiral,” she said. “Let me tell you my terms: I want a fulsome goodbye letter, signed by you, saying that you accept my resignation from the NIS and government service with the deepest regret. You will declare in the purplest prose how much I contributed to the success of the organization’s mission, how much you will miss my services, and how wonderful our professional association was during my tenure in the Policy Division at NIS, etcetera, etcetera. Clear so far, Admiral?”

  “Exceptionally so, Miss. Snow. And I presume that your final performance appraisal should be similarly incandescent.”

  “Yes. I wouldn’t want NIS to be inconsistent in its treatment of a departing and much-valued employee. I

  think Captain Rennselaer ought to sign it, too. Maybe one of those arrangements where he signs it and then you countersign your approval.

  And we’ll have no mention of Career Services, shall we?”

  “Absolutely, Miss. Snow. Investigations Policy Division all the way.

  Tell me, do you plan to work in government again, Miss. Snow?”

  “If I do, Admiral, it will be as a political appointee, only this time I’ll come in at the beginning of an administration.

  Perhaps we’ll have the pleasure of crossing paths in the investigations business again some day.”

  “That would be interesting, I’m sure, Miss. Snow.

  And now, for your part—”

  “For my part, Admiral, I await your paperwork.

  When I’ve seen it and deemed it satisfactory, I will then call off my family’s legal staff in Philadelphia.”

  “I see.” There was a pause. “And how will we know that this, um, little contretemps is actually over, Miss. Snow?”

  “When you move on to your next star and your next assignment without having undergone a very public and personally costly lawsuit, Admiral.

  It’s what I don’t do that you hope and pray for, Admiral. And the people I don’t talk to. But don’t worry—we’ll have a lock, won’t w
e?”

  “A lock, Miss. Snow? I’m not quite—”

  “A lock, Admiral. It’s an underworld term—from my days when I worked on real criminal investigations for a real live government agency. There are probably some people on your staff who know what the term means.

  Ask Captain Rennselaer. I’m sure he knows what a lock is. But basically, once you have signed out all this pretty paper, I would have a fairly difficult time asserting in court that you terminated me unfairly and without due process, right?”

  “Ah. I see, Miss. Snow.”

  “I knew you would, Admiral. So, I await the official correspondence.

  Which is coming soon, is it not?”

  “Very soon, Miss. Snow.”

  “Goodbye, Admiral. And you, too, Rennselaer.”

  She hung up and exhaled a deep breath. That had been as nasty as she could make it. Hopefully, they would see the sense of a paper solution, because she had little stomach for the other route. And besides, she had been the odd duck in the NIS pond, not them. But still, she had been around the government long enough to know that there were civilized ways to handle these situations. And she also knew that glowing departure appraisals could become pivotal in the future if she ever did want to go back into government, especially as an appointee. All those security checks would certainly involve a look into her civil service files. And most of all, in her opinion, these executive-whatevers needed to learn that when they lunged out from under their rocks at someone, there was always the possibility of being trampled upon. She opened the answering machine and popped out the microcassette, sealed it into an envelope, and marked it SD box.

  She retrieved the phone number for OP-614 and dialed it, looking at her watch. It was nearly 5:30. The phone rang several times, but no one picked up. He’s already out on the river, she thought. She hung up, called Dan’s home phone number, and asked his machine to have him call her at home.

  by some miracle, Dan found a parking spot for the Suburban directly in front of his house. He sat in the car for a moment to survey his unexpected good fortune.

  It was a balmy evening, with most of the large trees lining the street in full bloom. And full pollen, he noticed. The windshields of adjacent cars were covered in a light yellow-green dust. He decided to go down to the little bistro at the foot of Prince Street for a quick dinner. Since Monday night, he had been packing civvies over to the boat club after work instead of coming back to the house in malodorous sweats. He got out, locked up the car, and walked down the hill, crossing Union after waiting for a parade of tourists to go by.

  Thankfully, they kept on going, walking right past the little restaurant.

  There was a positively smashing young blonde sitting at one of the sidewalk tables—which prompted Dan to take an outside table. She gave him a brief smile but then looked pointedly at her watch, making it clear that she was waiting for someone. Dan sat so as to be able to see her, and immediately he compared her with Grace. The blonde was younger, much younger, with more color in her face and flashing a lot of leg in her abbreviated skirt. She was very pretty, he decided, but hot-pretty.

  Grace was more of a cool beauty, infinitely more elegant, probably a hell of a lot smarter, and possessed of a faintly mysterious air. Most of what he would want to know about the blonde was there for the world to see, but there was a lot he did not know about Grace Ellen Snow, and that intrigued him. The fact that she was closer to his own age than the young beauty across the way also made a difference. Although he had been out of the market since Claire’s death, he had discovered that women with thirty-five years of life’s experience were far easier to talk to than the ones who were ten years younger. The extra decade of living allowed an immediate mutual recognition that most of life’s little traumas were not something unique to one’s own experience. It also helped that Grace was not obviously hunting, as most of the middle-aged women he had met since California were.

  The waiter appeared, checked briefly with the blonde, and then came over to his table with a friendly greeting; Dan was a regular.

  “Commander Collins, good evening, sir. A glass of KJ chardonnay? And I recommend the mussels tonight.

  Maybe with a little angel-hair pasta in a fresh tomato and basil sauce.”

  “Sounds great, Mario. A small side salad with that and I’ll be set.”

  “You got it, sir.” The waiter hustled back inside, returned with his wine, and refilled the blonde’s ice water.

  When he left, Dan raised his glass in a small salut to the young lady, who gave him a much better smile this time.

  “If he stands you up, he’s a Communist,” he declared across the tables.

  “He’s a lawyer,” she said lightly. “A junior associate.

  I’m getting used to it.” Dan almost said that if he was a lawyer, he was already a Communist, then decided to hold his peace when she turned her face away. See how mature I’m getting, he thought. Learning to keep my trap shut.

  Make a wiseass remark about lawyers and find out that she’s a lawyer, too. That was more his usual style. Grace is a lawyer. Damn, that’s right. But not one of those jackal ambulance chasers or auto-accident specialists.

  Just that afternoon, he had seen a great bumper sticker that read support a lawyer: be a doctor. No, Grace was a specialist in white-collar crimes—a hunter who pursued her prey through drawers of paper, intricate networks of bank accounts, tax forms, and computer files. It was a sterile sort of policing, where the bad guys were primarily guilty of making too much money.

  Mario returned, bearing a large bowl of steaming-hot mussels, a side dish of pasta, and the small salad, all of which he set down with a flourish. He knew that Dan came for dinner, not for contrived delays between several courses.

  “Here you are, sir. Everything all together, just the way you like it.

  I’ll get you a plate for those shells. And here’s your bill. I apologize for that, but after Friday night, the manager told me to bring the sidewalk bills out early.”

  “That looks great, Mario. What happened Friday night?”

  “Some older guy was having dinner here—kind of a strange dude. Big guy, funny voice, sort of ugly, kind of a mean look to him. He ordered dinner, and right in the middle of it he jumped up and ran outta here like his pants were on fire. I was inside and saw him booking out.”

  “He stiff you?” Dan asked, reaching for his wine.

  “No, he left some money—more than enough, actually.

  But it was seriously weird.”

  “Where’d the guy go?”

  “Don’t know. He disappeared by the time I got out here. I was picking stuff up here—it was this table, actually —and then this enormous pickup truck comes around the corner and goes down Union, going like hell, you know? I didn’t get a good look at the driver, though. Don’t know if it was him or not. Weird shit.

  Lemme get you that shell plate.”

  Dan was halfway through the mussels before he made the connection. A white pickup truck had followed Grace home. And from behind his gate, he had heard what sounded like a big vehicle making a hard turn onto Union.

  He put his fork down and looked up the street. He could see the Suburban out in front of his house. Through the trees, yeah, that works. Some guy wants to watch my house, he can do it from here. Can’t cover the back gate, of course, but if he wanted to see me come and go, or someone who’s visiting me come and go, yeah, this works fine. But why? And was he watching me or Grace?

  The missing lawyer finally showed up in a bustle of briefcases, a portable flip phone, and apologies to the blonde. To Dan’s disappointment, the guy was handsome, well dressed, and, based on the smile on the blonde’s face, worth waiting for. Definitely a Communist, Dan concluded. He finished dinner, left cash to cover the bill and the tip, waved through the window at Mario, who waved back, and headed up Prince Street.

  He stopped by the Suburban to retrieve his exercise clothes and his briefcase, then went into the house, where he found
the answering machine blinking at him.

  He listened to the message and immediately called her.

  He had to wait for her machine to do its thing. He announced himself and then paused. She picked up.

  “Hi,” she said. Her voice sounded bright.

  “Hi yourself. Sorry to be delayed in getting back to you. I was restoring my blood-garlic levels down at one of the local bistros. Keeps away vampires, you know.”

  “Got a big problem with vampires in Old Town?” she asked.

  “Only at the Tax Board. What’s up?”

  “It’s the Hardin thing,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  “Yes, oh. It seems someone has made an anonymous phone call into the District police department. Captain Vann called me this afternoon. He wants to meet, and he asked me to convince you to come with me.”

  Dan thought about it for a second. “When?” he asked, stalling for time.

  “Tomorrow at eleven. At the Municipal Center. It’s right next to the Judiciary Square Metro. Dan, I told him that you might not be able to do this. I explained that people can make life difficult for you if you stick your nose back in; that I’m a free agent and you’re not.”

  “Did you hear back from the NIS people? The admiral make his manners?”

  She laughed. “Yes, he did call, and I was not terribly polite. But I think they’ll give me my piece of paper. He played the stupid EA gambit.”

  “I’ve met some sneaky EAs,” Dan said, “but never a stupid one. Let me see what I can do about this meeting.

  I’ve got a JCS paper due at morning briefing— that’s seven-forty—but I’ll talk to Summerfield. Vann didn’t say what the phone call was about?”

  “Only that he needed to talk to both of us—you especially, I think. He thought the fact that the EAs had warned you off the Hardin case made the tip doubly interesting.”