The Genesis Code

by John Case

  ‘I’m sure she is, but . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who is that man?’ She giggled.

  ‘You mean Buck? Buck’s my baby-sitter.’

  Buck kept his eyes on the page.

  ‘Oh,’ Victoria said, and paused. ‘You mean a bodyguard?’ She sounded thrilled. ‘I’ll try Deva Collins.’

  Momentarily, the researcher was on the line, asking what she could do. ‘I need a rabbi,’ Lassiter said.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  Deva wasn’t familiar with the in-house slang. ‘Rabbi’ was Judy’s term for the individual often consulted at the very beginning of an investigation. Usually a journalist, sometimes an academic, the rabbi acted as a tour guide through the terrain that made up the background of an investigation: the garment industry, the metals trade, the AMA. In this case Lassiter needed someone who could talk about molecular biology in plain English. He explained this to Deva.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Of course. I’ll find someone.’

  ‘Good. And I was hoping maybe you could brief me on the religious material. There’s a lot to read. Maybe you could organize it in terms of who’s who, Baresi’s contribution to the field – that sort of thing.’

  She laughed nervously. ‘I don’t know . . . I’m not an expert or anything.’

  ‘I don’t need an expert.’

  ‘Well, then . . . I’ll give it a try, if you like. Do you want a memo?’

  ‘Or we could talk.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said, sounding flustered. ‘I always like to organize my thoughts on paper.’

  He told her that would be fine, and asked her to have someone in Research do a pull-together on Callista Bates.

  ‘All right,’ Deva said, doubtfully. She paused, trying to contain her curiosity. ‘Is this for a different case?’

  He hesitated. Finally, he said, ‘No.’

  ‘Oh . . . well . . . I’ll have the memo for you by tomorrow night. Will that be okay?’

  He told her that would be terrific. When he hung up the phone, Buck turned a page of his book and said, ‘Callista Bates . . . now that was a fox.’

  An hour later Lassiter was sliding into the cramped passenger seat of a gray Buick that waited at the curb outside Lassiter Associates.

  ‘Pico – he’ll be the driver after tonight,’ Buck said as he easily maneuvered the car through the icy streets. ‘Pico loves this baby. Me? I’m afraid to step on the gas pedal too hard. There’s a hell of an engine under there.’

  Soon they were on Memorial Bridge, crossing the frozen Potomac. Buck filled him in on the car’s features as they hurtled past the Pentagon, heading south on Shirley Highway.

  ‘People talk about bulletproof? They don’t know what they’re talking about. This here’s half-inch Lexan,’ he said, tapping on the side window. ‘Good stuff. Stop anything – almost. But if they want you bad enough? They’ll use C-4.’

  The car looked normal from the exterior, but it was cramped on the inside, and so well insulated that when the doors closed, Lassiter’s ears had popped. The reason the interior was so tight, Buck explained, was that a lot of the space in the standard model had been sacrificed to armor-plating, an outsized fuel tank, and hydraulic devices that could raise the chassis for off-road driving.

  ‘I feel like James Bond,’ Lassiter said.

  Buck smiled. ‘Everybody says that.’

  They stopped at a 7-Eleven to get a twelve-pack of Bud Light, and then at a Blockbuster store to rent a couple of Callista Bates videos. When they arrived at the Comfort Inn, Lassiter waited in the car while Buck registered. Sitting there, while the car was parked, was like sitting in a bank vault.

  Finally, Buck walked gingerly across the icy lot and climbed into the car. ‘I got adjoining rooms,’ he said, ‘and a VCR.’ Taking the car around to the back of the inn, he led Lassiter up the stairs to the third floor.

  ‘We could have stayed at the Willard,’ Lassiter said. ‘I would have popped for it.’

  Buck shook his head. ‘This place is better. Someone’s looking for Joe Lassiter, he’s not going to start at a Comfort Inn in the burbs.’

  Their rooms were at the end of the corridor, across from the stairwell. Connected by a door in the adjoining wall, they were relatively large and nicely furnished, with king-sized beds and a panoramic view of the traffic on Interstate 95.

  ‘I got a Triple A discount,’ Buck said proudly. ‘Sixty-four dollars a night! And that’s with taxes and breakfast.’ He went to the windows and pulled the drapes closed. ‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘a hotel like this, security’s pretty good. They lock the doors at midnight – you have to get buzzed in. Also, there’s an armed guard, right in the lobby. A big hotel like the Willard, they got a doorman.’ The bodyguard shook his head. ‘Like he’s gonna help.’

  Lassiter stretched out on the bed and read the blurb on one of the video boxes.

  Fast Track – Comedy – 114 minutes, 1987. Callista Bates. Dave Goldman. Harvard hijinx as grad students plot to make a killing on the stock market.

  ‘Callista Bates’s timing is better than a Rolex – four stars!’ New York Times

  ‘We sprained our thumbs laughing!’ Siskel & Ebert

  Blockbuster says: If you liked this movie, check out A Fish Called Wanda. Available for rental at all locations.

  The second video was a sci-fi film.

  Piper – SciFi – 127 minutes, 1986. The Pied Piper story, updated and reset in Hamlin, Ohio. In her Oscar-nominated role as ‘Penny,’ Callista Bates is a punkish panhandler whose blues-harmonica saves the town from an infestation of rats infected with a deadly virus. When the aldermen renege on their promises, they soon wish they’d paid this Piper.

  ‘Stunning.’ New York Daily News

  ‘Terrifying!’ Premiere

  ‘Callista’s irresistible. You’ll want to follow her, too!’ Rolling Stone

  He remembered the buzz about Piper, remembered wanting to see the movie, even remembered watching the Oscars with – who was it? Gillian. Gillian rose up in his memory – dimpled smile, milk-white breasts. Whatever happened to her?

  The Academy Awards were an interminable bore, but Gillian had insisted. He’d given in with bad grace and endured a night of nudge-nudge jokes, hokey sets, and overproduced musical pieces – made all the more intolerable by Gillian’s annoyed resistance to seduction. She’d been glued to the couch, bouncing at times, rooting for her favorites. When the ‘Best Actress’ award was finally announced, the camera followed the winner as she made her way to the stage, and then returned to Callista Bates. Gillian had been outraged that Callista didn’t win, but she – and Lassiter and everyone else – was charmed when the actress impishly pulled out a harmonica and played it for the camera, the deep mischievous look in her eyes reminding everyone that ‘Penny’ knew how to deal with being stiffed.

  He never did see the movie, and he barely remembered 1986. That was the year he’d incorporated the firm. He’d been hiring people like crazy and leasing space, and there was more business than he could handle. He remembered working sixteen-hour days, but apart from that, the whole year – and Gillian, too, he guessed – had dissolved into a blur of work.

  Buck was on the telephone, ordering pizza from a local place that boasted of ‘a real brick oven’ and free delivery.

  ‘Buzz me up from the desk; I’ll come down to get it. Don’t forget the salads.’

  Then Buck called Pico and Chaz – the rest of the ‘team.’ They were checking out Lassiter’s house in McLean. After a brief conversation Buck let out a surprisingly high-pitched laugh. ‘No,’ he said. ‘They don’t. Look – I’ll call you in the A.M.’ He hung up and turned to Lassiter. ‘You live in the country?’

  Lassiter shook his head. ‘Most people don’t think of McLean as the country, exactly.’

  ‘Pico saw a deer. Scared the shit out of him.’ He laughed. ‘You know what he asks me?’

  Lassiter shook his head.

  ‘Do they bite?’

 
; They sat on the sofa and watched Fast Track and ate pizza. The beer was cold, the salad crisp, the pizza better than it should have been.

  And the movie was funny, very funny – but every once in a while Lassiter could see how close to the edge it really was. A director with a heavier hand, actors less gifted, and the whole thing could have been a disaster.

  It was Callista who held it together. She had a genius for comic timing, and made the most of a role that turned a cliché on its head. She wasn’t a dumb blonde, but a scheming one who knew how to play dumb when it was to her advantage.

  Buck seemed to know the movie by heart, signaling bits in advance by elbowing Lassiter. ‘This is where they go to the World Trade Center – look at the little guy in the background!’ And then he’d lose it.

  About halfway through the film Lassiter was alerted to one of these high points by a smack on his arm. ‘Oh this, oh man, look at this.’

  Dressed in a dark suit and a pillbox hat with a lacy black veil, Callista is posing as a mourner at a funeral home. Surrounded by banks of flowers, her partner-in-crime reclines in an open coffin, pretending to be dead. Slowly, Callista walks up the aisle and, kneeling at his side, begins to pray. Or so it seems, until the camera dollies in and it’s clear that she and ‘the corpse’ are arguing with each other through gritted teeth.

  ‘Give me the key,’ she demands.

  ‘I can’t! They’ll see me move.’

  ‘Then which pocket is it in? I’ll get it myself!’

  ‘And leave me here? I don’t think so!’

  To the alarm of the nearby funeral director, and the consternation of other mourners, Callista begins to go through the dead man’s pockets.

  ‘I swear to God, Walter, if you don’t give me the fucking key, I’m going to kill you!’

  ‘You can’t kill me,’ the corpse says, rising on one elbow. ‘I’m already dead! That’s the whole point!’

  Whereupon the funeral director faints, Callista seizes the key, and –

  ‘Hold it!’ Lassiter said. Grabbing the remote control, he stopped the film and punched Rewind.

  ‘Oh man!’ Buck complained. ‘What are you doing? This is one of the funniest parts!’

  Lassiter stuck his hand in the air and made a distracted, shushing sound. Buck gave a sudden, sage nod as he recalled that Lassiter’s interest in Callista Bates had nothing to do with entertainment. ‘I’m gonna hit the can,’ he said, looking hurt. ‘Maybe I’ll get some ice.’

  Lassiter nodded without listening, rewinding the film, then reforwarding it to the frame he wanted – where the camera closed in on Callista’s veiled face. He hit the Pause button, and the close-up shuddered on the screen.

  He stared at it, and there was no mistake. This woman had been at Kathy and Brandon’s funeral.

  Callista Bates.

  Standing in the Comfort Inn, his eyes on the jittery TV screen, Lassiter remembered the funeral as if it, too, was a movie.

  The polished wooden coffins, small and large, Kathy’s and Brandon’s, resting in the deep, rectangular pits that had been dug to receive them . . . each casket bearing an artful scatter of white roses, dropped there by the mourners. One final rose falls in cinematic slow motion, bouncing slightly on impact.

  A man – it is Lassiter himself – stands at a discreet distance, waiting to receive the muttered condolences of those gathered to pay their respects. The first of them is, as so many of them are, unknown to him: an attractive blonde, dressed in black, wearing an old-fashioned hat with a gossamer veil.

  For a moment Lassiter came out of his reverie and stared at the image on the television screen. Then he closed his eyes to revive the memory.

  At the funeral, the woman looks familiar, but he can’t place her. One of Kathy’s neighbors, maybe, or a mom from Brandon’s preschool. The boy is about Brandon’s age, with dark curly hair and Mediterranean skin. He’s embarrassed that he can’t remember the woman’s name, and he sees himself lean forward. ‘Don’t I know you?’ She shakes her head: ‘I met your sister in Europe –’

  Suddenly, the television lurched into sound and motion as the pause mechanism released its hold upon the woman on the screen. Callista stuffed the key in her pocket and pushed her way past the mourners and –

  The sound seemed much too loud, as if someone had turned up the volume inside Lassiter’s head. He snapped off the television and tried to think. At Kathy and Brandon’s funeral, she must have introduced herself to him – and her son – but although he was certain of this, he couldn’t remember the names. Not for the life of him.

  With a sigh, he sat down on the couch and popped open a beer. Callista Bates, Marie Williams, whoever she was – she and her son had been alive in November. But were they still, and if so, where?

  Buck pushed through the door, carrying a plastic bin of ice. ‘Hey,’ he said, gesturing to the dark screen, ‘thanks for waiting. I appreciate that.’

  They finished the pizza, most of the beer, and watched the rest of the movie. Lassiter scrutinized the film intently for a few minutes, but soon he was into the movie again, just laughing, and waiting for Buck to jab him in the arm.

  When it was over, Lassiter showered while Buck made telephone calls. They watched the news together, then a few minutes of the Knicks, pasting the Bullets. Finally, Buck got to his feet. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’m gonna hit the sack. But I’ll be right next door, so . . . toodle-ooh.’

  Toodle-ooh. Woody used to say that. And thinking of Woody reminded Lassiter of something – or almost did. Whatever it was, he couldn’t quite remember; and there was something else, as well. Something about Callista’s ‘Marie Williams’ identity. And then it hit him:

  What if it was Grimaldi? What if Grimaldi was the source of the other inquiry on Marie Williams’s credit report?

  Lassiter climbed out of bed and went to his briefcase. Removing a file, he opened it to Williams’s credit report and looked at the last page:

  Inquiries: 10.19.95 – Allied National Products (Chicago).

  Chicago. ‘John Doe’s’ old base.

  If it hadn’t been for Grimaldi’s telephone call to the Embassy Suites, where he’d rented a room as ‘Juan Gutierrez,’ the Italian’s identity might still be a mystery. Lassiter looked at the date of the credit check and saw that it was made about two weeks before Kathy had been killed.

  Which didn’t prove that Grimaldi was behind it – after all, Lassiter thought, he had run his own inquiries through an information broker in Miami. Still . . . if someone were looking for ‘Marie Williams,’ and all he had to go on was an old address, a credit check would be a useful first step. If he got lucky, it might generate a new address, and even if it didn’t, he’d have her credit card numbers. And once he had those, Grimaldi could trace her comings and goings – unless she was running away. Which she was. And because she was, she’d ditched her credit cards – and that had probably saved her life.

  The driver, Pico, was a handsome Cuban of few words, and he got them to Lassiter Associates in record time, negotiating the clogged and icy downtown streets as smoothly as Michael Jordan going to the hoop.

  While Buck sat in the outer office, flustering Victoria by his presence, Lassiter asked Research to run a credit check on Kathleen Anne Lassiter, who was formerly of 132 Keswick Lane, Burke.

  There was a moment of silence, and then the researcher asked, ‘Isn’t that –’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Okay . . . I’ll do it right away.’

  Then he called Woody.

  At some point during the night he’d remembered what it was that made him think of Woody – or not Woody, but one of his brothers. Andy or Gus. Or Oliver.

  When Joe Lassiter and Nick Woodburn had been students at St. Alban’s, Woody’s family was famous. Not famous in the way that Lassiter’s was – but because of its size. Its sheer size.

  There were eleven children – seven boys and four girls – a number so out of whack with the norm in D.C.’s private schools that, wherev
er the Woodburns went, a mantra followed them. ‘They have eleven kids – and they’re not even Catholic – not even Catholic! – not even Catholic!’

  It was popular among Nick’s friends to speculate about why Mrs. Woodburn was constantly pregnant, and also to tote up the tuition fees every time another Woodkid toddled into Pre-K at Sidwell, St. Alban’s, or National Cathedral. Lassiter spent half his childhood at Woodburn’s house in Georgetown – a house that came with its own name, its own ‘grounds,’ and enough siblings, friends, and sidekicks to play Capture the Flag on a monumental scale.

  When Lassiter telephoned him at the State Department, Woody took the call, but only to say, ‘I can’t talk. I’m in a meeting.’

  ‘It isn’t you I want to talk to,’ Lassiter said. ‘It’s one of your brothers.’

  ‘Normally it would amuse me to guess, but –’

  ‘The one at the tabloid.’

  ‘Gus? Gus would have been dead-last on my list. Wait a sec’ – here you go.’

  It was harder to reach Augustus Woodburn, the managing editor of the National Enquirer, than it was to contact his brother, who was merely the head of one of the most secret components in the American government. In the end, Lassiter had to settle for a secretary’s promise that ‘A.W.’ would be given the message.

  Gus had always been in love with journalism. He’d edited the St. Alban’s Bulldog, interned at the Post, and reported for the school paper at Yale – until his senior year, when he dropped out to marry a professional water-skier. Moving to Florida, where his wife worked at Cypress Gardens, Gus found a job on the Enquirer.

  In any other family he might have been seen as a black sheep. But the Woodburn clan was large enough to be forgiving, and as Woody put it, ‘You wouldn’t believe who that kid can get on the phone.’

  What made Lassiter think of Gus was that he’d seen the kid on television once, while he was flipping through channels. It was one of those round-table shows where a predatory moderator orchestrated a shouting match among a group of pundits and reporters. Lassiter would have blown right by except that the sneering host was introducing ‘Mr. Augustus Woodburn, managing editor of the National Enquirer. The topic: Media Ethics.’