Dark Ambition

by Allan Topol

  "You get undressed, too," she called over her shoulder.

  Ben quickly tore off his clothes and tossed them on a chair. Naked, he sat down on the edge of the bed, waiting for her.

  The bathroom door opened a crack. "Okay, close your eyes," she called through the opening. "I'll tell you when you can look."

  Ben did as he was told, trembling with expectation. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd been with a woman.

  She didn't tell him he could look, but he could smell her scent. So he opened his eyes anyway. Startled, he recoiled. What the hell? She was still fully dressed in her raincoat and black gloves.

  "Hey, what—" he said, standing up.

  She drove her fist hard into his stomach. The air sucked out of his body with a great whoosh. As he collapsed to the floor, she reached into her raincoat pocket and extracted a damp cloth, which she held tightly against his mouth and nose while grabbing his head from behind with her other hand. He flailed wildly, trying to grab the cloth and pull it away, but she was too strong. He could feel himself losing consciousness, the strength sapping from his body.

  When he came to, he was naked, lying facedown on the bed. Each of his hands and feet was tied to one of the posts of the bed. A piece of duct tape covered his mouth. His face was turned so that he could see her, sitting in a chair dressed in her raincoat and gloves and holding a small cylindrical silver object shaped like a pen.

  His first reaction was raw fear. What was she planning to do to him next? His second was anger at himself and his own stupidity in picking up a woman he didn't know in a bar. How could I have done something so idiotic?

  "I see that you're finally awake, Ben Hartwell," she said.

  He tried to open his mouth, but it was hopeless.

  "Sorry, I had to tape your mouth. I didn't want you to be able to scream. Still, that makes it hard for us to have a conversation, so I'll try to anticipate your questions. Right now you're wondering how I know your last name." She flashed an ugly smile. "I know everything about you. I know that you live at Thirty-five-ninety-one Newark Street. I know that your daughter Amy is four years old, a real cute girl with curly dark brown hair the same color as yours. She attends the Cleveland Park Preschool."

  Slowly she walked over to the bed and sat down on the edge. She held the silver cylinder in front of his face, pushed down on the top with her thumb, and a stiletto blade shot out of the bottom.

  Instinctively, he pulled his face away from the knife that gleamed in the light from the lamp on the bed stand.

  "Oh, you don't have to worry about your face," she said, almost purring. "I'm not interested in your face. No, what I'm considering is surgery on another part of your body." She flicked the blade upward. "What I'm going to do is to take this knife and insert it into your ass. Then I'm going to plunge it into your prostate and I'm going to cut away, slicing it like a peach. You won't have to worry about having another child. You'll never be able to have sex with a woman. Now, how's that sound to you?"

  He tried to shout, but he couldn't make a sound through the tape. From pure terror, sweat was streaming down his face.

  "When I'm finished with you," she said, "I'm going out to your house. I'll find your daughter, Amy, in bed. Then I'll cut her throat. You can bury her when they let you out of the hospital. Do you understand all that?" She touched the steel against his naked buttocks. "Nod if you understand me," she ordered.

  He moved his head up and down as best he could.

  "Now I'm going to tell you what you can do to avoid all of this," she said. "It's simple. All you have to do is agree to accept Clyde Gillis's confession, accept his guilty plea, take him to the judge, and persuade her to accept it as well. That's all you have to do. That isn't much, is it?"

  Ben didn't move.

  "Well?" she demanded.

  She pressed the blade against his buttocks, breaking the skin. He could feel a trickle of blood oozing down his leg.

  "Will you do it?"

  He had no doubt that she would do everything she had said. He nodded his head as vigorously as he could.

  Satisfied, she got up from the bed and stood about five feet away.

  "Before I leave, I want to tell you some things," she said. "First, if you don't do what you just promised, Amy's as good as dead. After that, I'll get you alone again and perform prostate surgery on you. You can bet the house on that," she said, laughing. "Second, I didn't tie the ropes too tight. If you keep twisting and turning, my guess is that you'll get out in about an hour, when I'll be at least fifty miles from here. Third, you don't have to worry about the little scratch on your butt. It'll stop bleeding in a few minutes. Consider it a souvenir of our evening together to remind you to do what you promised."

  She turned and walked toward the door. Before opening it, she said, "By the way, Ben, you shouldn't pick up strange women in bars. It's a dangerous thing to do."

  Chapter 19

  "I'm so glad you could join me this evening," Jim Slater said as she approached.

  He was standing in the red-carpeted corridor on the mezzanine of the Kennedy Center Opera House outside of the presidential box, chatting with a man and two women. Good grief, she thought, that can't possibly be Gloria Clurman, the Broadway and movie star.

  "Jennifer, have you ever met Gloria Clurman?" Slater asked.

  "Never have, but I'm thrilled."

  Having been briefed by Slater, Clurman gave Jennifer a warm smile. "Well, I'm happy to meet you as well. I'll never forget how you got the part of Madge in Picnic. I understand you did so much with it. Unfortunately, I wasn't in New York at the time. I would have loved seeing you."

  Jennifer radiated with pleasure. "That's quite a compliment, coming from you, Ms. Clurman."

  "Please call me Gloria."

  Slater turned to his other side. "Jennifer, meet Henri DuMont, the French ambassador to Washington, and Mrs. DuMont."

  After Jennifer shook Madame DuMont's hand and the ambassador kissed both of her cheeks, Slater said, "The three of them will be joining us for the opera and dinner."

  When the lights in the corridor flickered, Slater took her by the arm and led his guests toward the door of the box. Walking quickly by, Senator Blake from Massachusetts stopped to say hello to Slater.

  In the orchestra pit below, the musicians were doing their final tuning up. Slater whispered to Jennifer, "I hope you like Verdi as much as I do."

  "He's magical."

  He touched the tip of her chin. "You're magical."

  * * *

  It took Ben forty-five minutes of frantic twisting and tugging before he freed his right arm. In another ten minutes he unfastened the other three ropes. All he could think about was Amy and whether she was all right.

  It was late. Elana should be sleeping, but he had to know. He tried to compose himself enough to call. He was trembling so badly that he dropped the phone twice before he could punch out his home number. It rang three, four times with no answer. He hung up before the answering machine kicked in, then dialed again. "C'mon, Elana, wake up," he muttered, praying that it was only because she was sleeping that she hadn't answered. One, two, three rings. He was getting ready to hang up when he heard her sleepy voice. "Mr. Hartwell's residence."

  "Elana, it's Ben. I'm sorry to wake you. I have to know if Amy's okay."

  "She sleeping."

  "Can you go in and check on her?"

  There was no answer. Elana must think he was crazy.

  "Please, Elana," he said.

  "I go look."

  For a minute—which seemed to Ben like an eternity—there was silence at the other end of the phone. He held his breath until she finally returned.

  "Amy is sleeping."

  Ben breathed a huge sigh of relief. "Thank you, Elana," he said. "Sorry I woke you."

  His second call was to Art Campbell at home.

  "Something awful's happened," Ben said. "How soon can you get to my house?"

  Campbell was instantly alerted by the fear i
n Ben's voice. "Twenty-five minutes. You want a cruiser sooner?"

  Ben tried to make his tense and weary mind work. Amy was all right. The blonde was probably at least fifty miles from here, as she had promised. "Twenty-five minutes will be great," he said. "Come by yourself."

  In the mirror, he checked his rear end. The bleeding had stopped, but the two-inch gash looked ugly. He ran some warm bathwater, sat down in it, and soaped the wound. It stung like the devil. He forced himself to sit in the water while he counted to one hundred. Then he dried it off, only to find it had started bleeding again. Ben had a Band-Aid in his wallet and covered the wound awkwardly. Before leaving the hotel room, he stopped to look at his face in the mirror above the bureau. His eyes had a wild look. His hair was messed up. His arms and legs ached. The whole evening had a surreal quality, as if he had been watching himself in a horror movie.

  Christ, he was such a fool, picking up the blonde like that. He had nobody to blame but himself. Then his brain unscrambled, and he understood what had happened. No doubt about it, he had made things easier for her, but she would have gotten to him one way or the other. If not at the Willard, then at home—where Amy was. What sadistic games would that killer have played with a four-year-old to persuade him to do what she wanted?

  He tried not to think about the answer to that question as he drove home, speeding across the streets, running red lights in his desperation to get to Amy. As soon as he entered the house, he ran up to her room. It was just as Elana had said. She was sound asleep. He sat down on the rocker and watched her, finding comfort in her innocent face as she dreamed.

  That was where he was when Campbell arrived ten minutes later. Ben went down and opened the door.

  "You look like you just saw a ghost," the detective said.

  "Try George Nesbitt. I think I met George Nesbitt."

  Campbell felt a surge of adrenaline. He was ready to move. Winthrop's murder, plus the Gillis arrest and his bizarre confession, had been nagging him around the clock. Maybe now they'd get some answers.

  "Where is he?"

  "You mean she."

  Ben's words stopped Campbell in his tracks. He rubbed his eyes, trying to make sense out of what Ben had said. "The blonde?"

  "I can't be positive. There's a good chance."

  "You want to tell me about it?"

  Ben felt the ache in his behind. "Only if you won't think I'm a total fool."

  "That bad?"

  "Worse."

  Ben went into the other room, poured brandy into two snifters, and handed one to Campbell. Sitting across a small glass-topped coffee table from the detective, Ben took a long pull on his drink. God, that felt good. He needed it. His hands had almost stopped shaking.

  Slowly, Ben told the story of his evening, pausing from time to time to sip the amber liquid until the glass was empty. As he spoke, relief replaced his anger and outrage at what she had done to him.

  Meanwhile, Campbell listened silently, never touching his glass, but jotting in the small notebook that he had extracted from his jacket pocket.

  At the end, Ben said, "Okay, now you can tell me I'm the world's biggest fool."

  "You're the world's biggest fool. Do you feel better?"

  Ben gave a short, nervous laugh. "What do I do now?"

  Campbell shifted in his chair, sitting up straight. "You've got a number of choices."

  "Such as?"

  "You could do what she wants. Accept Clyde Gillis's confession, let him change his plea, and try to persuade the judge to accept it."

  That was the last thing Ben was going to do. "I may be a fool, but I'm not a coward. Her attack convinced me that your scenario from this afternoon is right. Gillis didn't kill Winthrop. Somebody else did, and somebody powerful in this town wants Gillis to take the rap. I won't be part of that. How can you even suggest that? You're a cop, for God's sake."

  Campbell held his hands up. "I wasn't suggesting it. I was only laying out your options."

  "Well, I don't like that one. Give me another one."

  "You could withdraw from the case and hope that satisfies her."

  "Same answer as the first one. Keep talking."

  "Go to Bill Traynor and the FBI, tell them everything that happened, and let them take it from here. It's their case."

  Ben had considered that possibility on the way home. "But suppose FBI Director Murtaugh's a part of the cover-up. If I do that, I'll be signing my daughter's death warrant, and mine as well."

  "That's possible."

  Ben picked up Campbell's untouched glass of brandy and took a long sip. "You got any good choices?"

  "Life doesn't always allow for good choices." Campbell wrinkled his brow, thinking. "I could provide police protection for you and Amy. Then you and I could quietly play detective, trying to find out who hired the blonde to kill Winthrop and attack you. Meantime, we don't say a word to the Feds."

  "How the hell do we solve the mystery ourselves?"

  "You won't like my answer."

  "Try me. Right now I'm desperate."

  Campbell took a deep breath. "The first thing you've got to do is bury the hatchet with Jennifer Moore. Start pooling all of your information with her. I'm convinced from talking to her earlier today, when I told her about the blond hair, that she knows something about Winthrop's death from her friend Ann that she hasn't shared with either of us."

  Ben grimaced. "She would never work with me. We have too much history."

  "I know all about your history. Why not ask her? Give it a try. You're not a couple of teenagers. You're both professionals, and you've got a common problem."

  Ben knew that his pride was stopping him. After what she had done, breaking off their engagement unjustifiably, the last thing he wanted to do was come pleading to her for help. "There must be another way," he said.

  "If there is, I sure don't see it."

  Ben decided to put that idea aside for the moment. "How good a job could you do protecting Amy and me?"

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Ben realized how stupid the question was. He knew the answer before Campbell said it.

  "There are no guarantees. Our police department's tight on money. Unlike the Feds, we don't have unlimited resources. On the other hand, the Gillis case is important to us. I happen to love this city. I hate seeing its image take a needless pasting. Besides, I'd like to repay my own debt to Bill Traynor and Fulton. I'm senior enough. I can get the people I need to do the job."

  "Will they be able to stay in the background? I don't want to frighten Amy. The kid's already seeing a shrink once a week."

  "I'll use plainclothes people as much as I can. I'll stay close to it myself." He looked Ben squarely in the eye. "But even with all of that, there's a risk. I don't want to mislead you. We're going up against some powerful people, and we don't even know who they are."

  "You think we have any chance of succeeding?"

  Campbell had no interest in that sort of question. "We can give it our best shot. That's all we can do. I also learned something that may be worthwhile this evening—while you were trying to get laid."

  "Yeah, what?"

  "Having my people canvass Clyde Gillis's neighborhood turned up nothing, but I talked to the guards at the jail."

  "And?"

  "Gillis had only one visitor this afternoon after the arraignment. His wife, Lucinda."

  "I knew that," Ben said abruptly.

  Campbell gave him a small smile. "But I'll bet you didn't know that when she was with her husband, she handed him a pen and paper. He wrote out something and handed it to her."

  Ben pounded his fist on the table. Now they were getting somewhere. "So they got to her, and she convinced him to confess," Ben said, thinking aloud.

  Campbell nodded, though he was puzzled. "It sure seems like that to me. I'm going to drop in on Lucinda Gillis for a cup of coffee in the morning and shake that tree."

  Ben didn't reply. He was trying to decide what to do. In the last couple of hours,
the stakes had escalated enormously. While Ben agonized over his decision, Campbell pulled a package of cigarettes from his pocket and tapped the pack on the arm of the chair. Finally, he broke the silence. "You've run out of time, white boy," he said, smiling at Ben. "What'll it be?"

  "We're getting to the bottom of this. I'll call Jennifer right now."

  Ben reached for the phone and dialed her home. He got the answering machine. "Jennifer, it's Ben. Please give me a call. It's important that we talk as soon as possible."

  He put down the phone.

  "She's probably asleep," Campbell said, "and she turned off her phone. You'll hear from her in the morning."

  "Either that or she's screening her calls, and she doesn't want to talk to me," he said glumly.

  Campbell laughed. "Jesus, you've still got a thing for this woman."

  "Oh, go fuck yourself. Stick to being a detective and stop trying to play psychologist."

  Suddenly, Campbell leaned across the table and put his two huge basketball player's hands on top of Ben's. His eyes narrowed and he gave Ben a long, hard stare. "I'm your friend. You sure you want to do this?"

  Ben wasn't going to flinch. "You didn't give me any better choice."

  "You're just a lawyer. You're not a cop. You have a young kid to worry about. This is big. Why not just get out of the way and let it happen without you?"

  "After tonight, I'm not sure that's possible. Our blonde—Nesbitt, or whoever she is—may still go after Amy if I don't find out who's pulling her strings first." Ben didn't add that his father's experience was influencing his thinking. His father hadn't let anybody push him around. He had been willing to take risks. "Besides," Ben added, "we're officers of the law. This Winthrop affair's starting to sound like Watergate. I don't want to let it happen."

  "That's great in theory, Ben, but it may crush you and me like a couple of paper cups on the beltway."

  "I'm willing to take that chance."

  Finally satisfied, Campbell leaned back. "All right. Let's get started. I'll get one of the artists we use to come over and make a drawing of the blonde."