The Caesar Clue (The Micah Dunn Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

“Hell, I thought it was a client,” he said. “I hope you’re not looking for work.”

  Lanky, my own age, with longish brown hair and a wry sense of humor, John O’Rourke had helped me years before, when I’d been desperate for work. These days I did his investigations and we met every couple of weeks for lunch, always trying to find the perfect spot. He, too, was divorced, but unlike me, he had yet to find a companion to suit his requirements.

  I went back into his office with him and flopped in the chair before his desk.

  “I don’t need work,” I said. “I’ve just been offered a permanent job.”

  His eyes narrowed slightly behind his horn-rims and he leaned back. “Really. And what kind of job is that?”

  “To tell you the truth, John, I don’t really know. At least, the ramifications are a little obscure.”

  “And you don’t know if you should take it, or you wouldn’t be here.”

  “You got it. Look, what I’m about to tell you is client to lawyer, right?”

  He nodded and I told him about the Morvant phone call and everything that had happened as a result. “So now I’m being offered a return to active duty, and I’ve got to admit it’s tempting.”

  He balanced a pencil between his palms. “But you’re still not sure.”

  I exhaled and the shaking started all over again. “Christ, John, if you knew how many times I’ve dreamed about something like this or gone over the day when I hit that mine, thinking about how different it all would’ve been. … I’m not complaining about the arm, you understand. I can do fine with one. There are guys with no legs or with no movement below the neck. I just mean the having to leave the Corps. I loved it. I loved it better than anything else in my life.”

  O’Rourke, who had been a draft protester in those years, sucked in his breath. He had his own injury, a slight limp from a Chicago policeman’s club.

  “It’s hard to give up what you love,” he said softly.

  “But,” I began again, arguing the other side, “that was twenty years ago. Everything’s different. My life is different. We’re at peace, at least theoretically. I might be a misfit. Hell, we were fighting what we thought was a good war, but it turned out to be a rotten war. I can’t ever be the person I was.”

  “No.”

  I got up. “Mind if I use your phone to call the captain? All of a sudden I think I need some fatherly advice.”

  He pushed his phone toward me and started to get up but I waved him back down and dialed, hoping my father would be home.

  After six rings I was about to hang up when I heard his voice.

  “’Lo?”

  “It’s me,” I said. “Look, I couldn’t talk much earlier because I was afraid the line was bugged.”

  “Bugged?” he exploded. “Jesus, lad, what kind of mess have you got yourself into this time?” Beneath the bluster, though, his tone was warm and I knew he was glad I’d called him back.

  “Well, I thought maybe you could help me with it, actually. Of course, I don’t want to make problems for you. I know you’re busy and, like you said earlier, you have your life and …”

  “I can make time. Now what the hell is this all about?”

  When I’d finished telling him there was a long silence.

  “Dad?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  More silence, then,

  “You know, I never thought much of your idea of joining the jar heads, always figured it was some kind of juvenile rebellion, passing up a naval commission for one of theirs after the academy. But a man’s got to do what makes him feel alive. For me it was always the waves and a steel deck under my feet, and thirty knots into the battle. But that’s because I’m a destroyer man. You aren’t. For you it’s man against man. I can understand that. The question is, does this thing that’s being offered to you make you feel good again, like you did before?”

  “I … I’m not sure,” I stumbled. “I guess most of all I’d like things to be the way they were and yet …”

  “Yet they never will be. Everybody you knew is gone. There’s a new crew. Most of ‘em haven’t ever fought an honest war, ship against ship or army against army. Still, I guess somebody has to do it. Do you want to be one of those people?”

  I couldn’t think of any answer, because I was trying to see myself without the apartment, in a foreign city. Would Katherine even want to come?

  “Another thing,” the Captain said. “Whatever these people are telling you, you have to realize a man with one lame arm isn’t going to do much undercover work. Will you be happy working out of an embassy or consulate? Watching the others do the black stuff?”

  “That’s occurred to me,” I said. “But at least I’d have my commission back.”

  “True enough. So in the end it’s a decision only you can make, which you damn well knew when you called.”

  “I know. But I needed to bounce it off somebody.”

  “Hell, that’s what I’m for. But there’s one other thing I can do, maybe. I still have a few contacts on active duty. And one or two in the intelligence community. Let me ask some questions about this so-called group. I’d kind of like to know who they answer to. Maybe you would, too.”

  “That’s for sure,” I said fervently. “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Aw, hell.”

  I replaced the receiver and turned to O’Rourke.

  “Well?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I haven’t made up my mind.” I sat back down. “Look, what do you know about Emerson Stokley?”

  “Stokley?” O’Rourke’s brows rose. “Actually, I probably know pretty much.” He chuckled. “He’s one of the few politicians I’ve ever sent money to.”

  “You?”

  “Well, it was him or that asshole Bordelon, who wanted to get us out of the U.N., impeach the liberal members of the Supreme Court, and send the troops to Nicaragua. Stokley’s a moderate, but he has to pay lip service to certain elements or he wouldn’t get elected around here. And I think he’s more than just a pretty face for the cameras.”

  “God, and you’re the man who marched in sixty-eight.”

  “Hell, nowadays Jerry Rubin’s a Yuppie.” He put his hands behind his head and leaned back again. “Actually, I’ve known Em Stokely since we were in Tulane Law School. I was a year ahead of him. He wasn’t a bad guy. He comes from a rich family, but there was nothing stuck up about him. I think he actually had a few original thoughts. He felt the war was right and he served two years right after he graduated. I disagreed about the war, but he had the courage of his convictions. In fact, he might’ve been in Nam while you were there.”

  “We never met,” I said.

  “No. Anyhow, when he came home and opened up a law office we met every once in a while. I always had the feeling he was restless, looking for something; his niche, I guess.” O’Rourke looked through me, into the past. “He went through a raft of girl friends and then he married a truly beautiful lady and he seemed to settle down. First thing you know he was being elected to the city council and then to Congress. For the last twelve years he’s been quietly building his seniority and working behind the scenes to form coalitions on important issues. Just between us, I have a feeling he’s a closet liberal.”

  “That really is damning news,” I said.

  The lawyer laughed. “And, he gives excellent constituent service,” he went on. “I had a client with a tax problem and Em’s office worked overtime to get things straightened out. He’s built a good organization. And he tries to make it home every weekend, to tend to constituent problems.”

  “He sounds like everybody’s buddy,” I said. “Except that somebody obviously doesn’t like him.”

  “Well, from what I hear it wouldn’t have mattered what his name was. He was just getting a little too zealous for the drug lords.”

  “Apparently,” I agreed, turning over everything in my mind for the fortieth time. “Tell me something, John: Since they’ve brought him back home, where do you think he’ll be?
One of the private hospitals?”

  “There or at home. The family has a plantation called Godsend down near Twelve Mile Point. If you want, I can find out. I’ll call his local office.”

  I stared out of the window as O’Rourke dialed and identified himself to the person on the other end. Through the blinds I could see the shadows of people passing on the sidewalk. Adolfo Rivas. Was he out there somewhere? Might he even be trailing me at this moment? Christ, I was being paranoid. What would Rivas want with me? I was incidental, at most. There was no way he could know about the offer Cox had made me.

  O’Rourke’s voice brought me out of my thoughts.

  “He’s at the estate,” he said, hand cupped over the mouthpiece, “him and his wife, under heavy guard, of course. They’ll probably be there for the next week or so. This is supposed to be top secret, but this guy owes me. Anything else?”

  A sudden impulse hit me. “John, ask if I can get in to talk to him.”

  “What?”

  “Look, just vouch for me. Tell your friend I’d like a few minutes of the congressman’s time. If I’m going to get as involved in this as I seem to be getting, I think I ought to talk to the only victim of this Rivas who’s still alive. Maybe he saw something, I don’t know. And if Rivas tries again, I’d like to have some idea of the layout.”

  O’Rourke’s brows went up again and he swiveled his chair away from me, as if the negotiations would be too delicate for other ears. I got up and went into the front office.

  There was still time to back off. I’d gotten in out of professional curiosity, and because a woman who’d wanted to be my client was now dead, and I took that personally. But now it was more than personal: It was a deep-seated itch that needed to be scratched, vanity and a longing for a past life. It was an abandonment of all objectivity and I told myself I should know better. This wasn’t sixty-eight and Rivas wasn’t some elusive VC organizer. All we had done twenty years ago had been for nothing, even, I thought, flinching, my arm, and yet here I was proposing to get into the game again. Why should it be any different this time? Because the cause sounded purer? Or did the cause matter at all? Was it just the need I’d suppressed, which Cox had so cleverly brought back up to the surface?

  O’Rourke’s chair squeaked and I heard the phone being replaced. He came back into the reception room.

  “He’ll call back after he checks it out. I had to do some heavy begging. I may even have to go to a Saints game.”

  John O’Rourke was a devout hater of all organized sports.

  On another impulse, I lifted the phone on the secretary’s desk and dialed Sal Mancuso’s number. Luckily, he was in.

  “Anything on the girl’s apartment?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Goddamn feds could fuck up a train wreck. They turned the place upside-down. And somebody managed to wipe away all the prints. We not only can’t prove which body, or part of a body, belongs to the Morvant woman, but we can’t get a set of her prints. Now, that’s a hell of a thing. I’m so pissed I could wire the attorney general. We ran the name Julia Griffith and all variants and came up with a sixty-five-year-old retired schoolteacher from Marrero who has an unpaid parking ticket.”

  I thought of mentioning my talk with Cox but decided against it. All I needed was to get between two feuding agencies.

  “Sorry, Sal.”

  “Sure,” he said, disgruntled. “Let me know, will ya, when the next body turns up.”

  I stood quietly for a moment, my hand in my pocket. The apartment, wiped clean, almost as if somebody wanted the Morvant girl’s identity kept a secret. …

  And then I remembered something. The pictures I took from the apartment. One of them was of Julia Morvant. Maybe I had her prints after all!

  8

  I went back to my apartment. The photos were where I’d left them, locked in my desk drawer. I found a Ziplock bag and started to place them in it, stopping to look at the photo of Julia. Was there humor I detected in the curve of her lips or was it superiority? Whatever it was, I felt a strange attraction to her that I couldn’t explain, as if she was someone I might have been close to years ago and suddenly met again.

  The ringing phone jarred me from my reverie. It was O’Rourke.

  “The word is okay,” he said, sticking to our prearranged code. “You know how to get there?”

  “It would be hard to miss. What time?”

  “One. Good luck.”

  “Thanks, John.”

  I drove over to Central Homicide and stood around while they called Mancuso from his desk. I took him into the hallway, where no one would see us, and dropped the bag with the pictures into his hand.

  “From Marconi and Morvant’s apartment,” I said. “Some of the photos show the Morvant girl, according to the writing on the back.”

  “And you’ve been holding out on me?” he asked, squinting.

  “I forgot about them until just now. But look, my advice is to check them all for prints. There’s a good chance, if she showed any of them to Julia, then there’ll be some prints still on them.”

  “If there are, we’ll find ’em,” he vowed. Now we were even.

  I took the bridge east, to the West Bank, a geographic anomaly explained by the fact that the West Bank extends all the way north to a cusp in the crescent that holds the city. There’s a lot of history in Algiers, but it’s long ago been replaced by shipyards and government facilities. There’s a naval station, a naval hospital, and a border patrol unit. There’s the Fisher Housing Project, where you wouldn’t want to go without a couple of ranger platoons, and an Abrams tank for support. But there are also middle-class neighborhoods, with comfortable houses and shade trees, a golf course, and even a psychiatric facility.

  The main highway is a four lane called General de Gaulle Drive, after a visit years ago from the French leader. It passes banks, shopping centers, and fast-food joints. I stopped at one to eat an early lunch.

  Sitting alone at the plastic table, I thought about Julia Morvant and wondered what it might have been like to meet her. Now, of course, I would never know.

  I left at twelve-thirty, heading southeast, across the Intracoastal Canal Bridge, and down the other side. At the bottom I went right onto a blacktop, past a Vietnamese culture center that seemed strangely out of place, and a mile and a half later I reached the levee, where I turned right again.

  Now I was in a rural area called the Lower Coast, passing straggly bits of forest and roads that went nowhere. Here and there, on the right, were handsome estates, set back discreetly from the road, and beside them, curtained off by more forest, shacks with stacks of old tires in front and chickens pecking at the roadside.

  Godsend was one of the larger holdings, set back well from the road. A single wooden pole barred the shell drive, as if any barrier were necessary to tell people that you didn’t come here uninvited. The drive itself wound through an alley of pecans, across a manicured lawn, to a white mansion in the antebellum style. O’Rourke told me that it had been built in the 1930s, on the site of the original Godsend, which had been constructed before the Civil War, between a bayou, to the rear, and the Mississippi.

  As I pulled into the driveway a man appeared from a guardhouse concealed in the nearby foliage and asked my name. I gave him my driver’s license and he checked a clipboard, then called to confirm on a hand radio. A few seconds later he nodded and the wooden pole lifted.

  My tires crackled on the shells and I drove slowly, as if entering a sacred place. To the left of the house was a gazebo, which conjured up an image of lemonade, poetry readings and sedate conversation. On the other side of the drive, an ancient black man rode a mower over the last few rows of offending grass.

  I slowed even further as I neared the house. There were two cars already parked in front, a Mercedes and a Lincoln Town Car. Both had congressional plates.

  There were homes like this in Charleston and I’d visited my share, but no matter what my commission said about being a gentleman, I was not o
f the gentry and money always made me faintly uneasy, as, I suppose, it does many people.

  The front door was opened by another elderly black man in coat and tie.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “This way.”

  I entered a large, tastefully furnished room, but I’d hardly had a chance to take in my surroundings when another, younger man appeared. With skin as fair as the old retainer’s was dark, and carefully styled brown hair, he seemed to fit in with what I’d seen so far. He squinted behind thick glasses and a couple of pens stuck out of his top pocket. There were some ink smudges on his fingers.

  “Mr. Dunn,” he said, offering me a quick handshake that showed he didn’t have a lot of time. “My name is Nelson Benedict. I’m the congressman’s aide. I hope you won’t object to a search.”

  As if on key, another man appeared from nowhere with a magnetometer and I held out my right arm as he passed it over my body. He started for my left side, where my other arm hung limply, but Benedict waved him away.

  “It’s all right. I’m sorry, Mr. Dunn, but after what happened we have to take precautions.”

  “Are the congressman and his wife able to see me?” I asked.

  “The congressman is,” said the aide. “He’ll decide whether you can speak to Mrs. Stokley. They’re both resting upstairs.”

  “Were you there when it happened?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I was in the village, picking up some supplies. There was going to be a sort of an intimate little dinner with some of the local officials.” He ushered me toward a staircase. “I understand you’ve been recommended to help work on this,” he said, lowering his voice.

  “It’s been suggested,” I said.

  “I hope you find them,” he whispered.

  “I haven’t agreed to anything yet,” I said.

  “I see.” He stopped in front of the door, then turned to face me before knocking. “You’d best know: The bomb left the congressman temporarily deaf. You’ll have to write out your questions, though he can answer well enough. But not too much, please: He was almost blinded, as well.”

  “Thank you for telling me,” I said.