Dev Conrad - 03 - Blindside (11 page)

When we were in the rental and driving away, I said, ‘Pierce is going to be pissed.'

‘“Pierce.”' I heard his wife call him Lou one night.'

‘Figures.'

‘You find anything?'

‘Something. I don't know what it is yet.'

‘Poor Jimmy. The last time I saw him, he was wearing that stupid Captain America jacket I bought him.' She sounded as if she couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry. She made a sound that was a mixture of both.

We drove back to the hotel in silence. She found a radio station that was apparently all rap all the time. I had my Glock in the glove compartment. I wanted to kill that station real, real good.

After I pulled into the hotel parking lot, I said, ‘You've been a big help.'

‘Will you let me know what you found?'

‘I will.' But I didn't say when.

‘By the way, I saw his aunt or whatever she was at the press conference. She's hilarious.'

‘That seems to be the consensus.'

She started to slide out the door. ‘My mother said that my father wrote Burkhart a thousand-dollar check last night and so did most of the people at the country club. I hope you can nail his ass. He's even creepier than Pierce.'

I smiled. ‘You mean Lou?'

‘Yeah,' she said and was gone.

As I was driving back to campaign headquarters I passed a billboard that came to me with the force of a religious revelation.

There she was in living black and white. Burkhart had his arm around her and it was only appropriate. The copy read: ‘Help me and my wife take our country back.'
BURKHART FOR CONGRESS
.

It was the woman I'd seen snapping photos of Jim Waters.

ELEVEN

I
got a cup of coffee at a Starbucks' drive-through and then sat in the parking lot taking the duct tape off the package with my pocket knife. Was this what Jim Waters had died for? Had he been given the chance to tell his killer where it was? Or had the killer simply meant to kill him and wasn't concerned with this small taped package? Then again – long shot – there was the possibility of a random killing.

I got it open. Inside the package was another package. This was wrapped in plain brown paper. But from the edges of the merchandise I had a pretty good guess what was waiting for me. One of two things.

The brown paper required only my fingers. I set it on the pile of duct tape and exterior paper. And there it was. I'd guessed a CD or a DVD. Turned out to be the latter. Nothing was written on the clear plastic container or on the DVD itself.

What had Waters gotten involved in? There are ops on both sides who break the law whenever they feel it's necessary. Had Waters been spying for one of them on the other side?

I started thinking about the dinner I'd planned to have with Waters. Had he been going to tell me something about spying or this DVD? For most amateurs involved in crime there comes a point where panic sets in. Second thoughts, doubts, terror. For the career criminal and the professional political op, the game has rewards that are both monetary and psychological. It's pretty cool pulling off stuff and getting away with it. A few years back an op from the other side had been charged in federal court for numerous violations of law. He was a past master at brochures that gave his clients deniability. They just magically appeared. Mostly they were sexual innuendo. He went in for quotes from people who claimed to have known the opponent at various times in his life. Both the quotes and the names were bullshit. But they kept the drumbeat of sleazy whispers going strong.

In a sleepy little town in Georgia he hired two white men gussied up in some kind of uniforms to misdirect the battered buses from a local black church. They told the drivers that there was a detour between the church and the polling places in town. They were directed to a dirt road that was laced with nails and broken glass and sharpened pieces of metal. The buses never made it to the polling places for the people to vote.

His greatest hit was phone jamming one of our candidate's lines for a day and a half so our man couldn't get his calls out. The election was decided by sixty-seven votes and the other side won. When the prosecutor started listing all the crimes the guy had committed the op couldn't help himself. He broke out in this grin that the jury could plainly see. He was proud of himself. The jury found him guilty on six counts and he was sentenced to eight-to-ten in a federal slammer.

I called my hotel on my cell. ‘Is it possible to get a DVD player in my room?' I had an older Mac that couldn't play DVDs.

‘Of course, sir.'

‘I should be there within a half hour. I'd appreciate it if it was waiting for me.'

‘No problem, sir.'

I spent ten minutes on the phone to the home office in Chicago.

‘So you're not coming back tomorrow?' Howard, who runs the day-to-day far better than I ever could, said with a fair amount of exasperation in his voice. I prefer to be on the road.

‘I know you owe Tom Ward a lot, Dev. But we really need to sit down with Finney and tell him to get his act together. He's desperate and it really shows. We need to help him.' Finney was a one-term congressman on our side who'd had, to be honest, a completely undistinguished first term. The word was he liked Washington nightlife a lot more than he should have and the newspaper back home had started printing the gossip right from the start. Now he was floundering, damaging himself with pontifical speeches about the rights of all mankind and the greatness of America that lay just ahead, neither of which he gave a flying fuck about and neither did anybody else. The amazing thing was that he was only trailing a few points behind his opponent, another John Wayne-type who was always seen on the tube fondling his rifle with a suspiciously sexual pleasure. Finney could still pull it out but he didn't have much time. He'd dumped his previous consultant three months ago and signed on with us. Unlike Jeff Ward, he hadn't accumulated enough gossip to do him terminal damage.

‘How about a Skype meeting?' I said.

‘That'd be all right.'

‘Go ahead and set something up and I'll be there.'

‘That murder of yours is all over the fucking place.'

‘Yeah, I know.'

‘But I like that granny.'

‘I've got an in with her. How about I line you up, Howard?'

He laughed. ‘Actually, she is kinda cute.'

I was just about ready to leave the Starbucks' parking lot when my cell toned again.

‘Hi, Dev. It's Kathy. I'm glad I caught you. There's a detective by the name of Fogarty who wants you to stop by the police station as soon as you can. She said it's important.'

‘But she didn't say why, of course.'

‘Cops never say why. They have a badge. They don't have to.'

‘Remind me to get one of those badges for myself.'

‘Get me one, too, while you're at it.'

I'd never seen so much glass on a police station. The architect had made it so friendly and accessible I almost thought I'd gone to the wrong place. Kathy had given me simple directions but maybe I'd misread them. But no, there above the wide glass double doors were the words
POLICE STATION
. And on the sloping landscaped lawn were hedges clipped with such fuss a king would have been pleased.

The interior was bright and open and the front desk was more corporate than law enforcement. An attractive thirty-something blonde in a short-sleeved blue uniform shirt was typing on her computer. When she heard me she immobilized me with a white smile straight from a toothpaste commercial.

I know men are supposed to have sexual fantasies every few minutes or so but I divide mine between sex and romance. I'd had a number of affairs since my divorce but none had led to anything lasting. My fault, I'm sure. So when I see somebody as fetching as this policewoman, sex and romance commingle in my mind and romance often wins out. Yes, I'd like to go to bed with her but first I'd like to get to know her. I gave up one-night stands after about two years of them following the divorce.

‘May I help you?'

And then she did it. She raised her left hand and upon a certain finger was enshrined a certain kind of ring, one generally associated with the institution called marriage.

‘I'd like to see Detective Fogarty.'

‘Your name, please.'

After I told her, she said, ‘Why don't you take a seat over there. She's got somebody with her right now. But she shouldn't be long.'

This was the same speech you heard in dental offices.

I sat down on a tufted dark blue couch that was so comfortable I had to resist the impulse to close my eyes and take a nap. Detective Fogarty would no doubt be impressed if she had to wake me up.

She appeared in a few minutes, a slender black woman barely tall enough to pass the height requirement. In her white blouse and black skirt and somber black-framed glasses she resembled a grad student more than a detective. Of course there were clues as to her real profession: the badge and gun clipped to her belt. She didn't look much older than thirty.

‘My office is right down the hall. If you'll follow me, please.'

She stood aside to let me walk in first. She pointed to a chair in front of her small metal desk. She was apparently a woman of few words. She closed the door then walked around to her own chair and sat down.

Numerous degrees, plaques, and a few photos of officials looking important covered the east wall. The right was given to framed photos of her family. All ages. A history there. If your eye was careful enough you noticed that the backdrop for many of the shots – including the two of her as a teenager – was the inner city.

She caught me looking. ‘Vanity.'

‘Not at all. The vanity is all those photos with you and those city officials. The family pictures are great.'

‘You know I never thought of it that way. But you're right. That's a very good point.'

‘I'm not as dumb as I look.'

She laughed. ‘That remains to be seen.'

‘Good one.'

She picked up a yellow Ticonderoga pencil and began to tap it against her left hand. ‘I dragged you down here because you appear to be the last person James Waters talked to before he was murdered.'

‘The last person you know of, you mean.'

‘The last person we know of so far.' Then: ‘I'm told you and he were going to meet for dinner.'

‘He didn't show up.'

‘Did he contact you to say he wouldn't be there?'

‘No. The next time I heard his name mentioned was when I heard about his death.'

‘That's when you met Lieutenant Neame, I suppose.'

‘Right.'

‘I'm taking over the case. The lieutenant is busy with two open cases that the mayor is very concerned about.'

‘I see.'

She dropped the pencil in her pencil holder and then folded her hands on the desk. ‘I realize that you didn't have much of a chance to talk to him. I've already figured out your itinerary for the day.'

‘I probably spent seven or eight minutes talking to him in total.'

‘But he still wanted to go out and have dinner.'

‘Nothing notable about that, Detective Fogarty. Political people love to talk. War stories about old campaigns, kibitzing about how the new one is going. From what I've been able to gather he was a pretty lonely guy. Probably needed the company.'

She nodded and then gave me one of those assessing looks that are meant to intimidate. ‘What if he knew something he wasn't supposed to?'

‘If he did I don't know what it was.'

‘But he wanted to go out to dinner. You'd met him in a meeting for a very little time and yet you invited him to dinner.'

‘Well, “invited” is a little strong. We were going to have a little food, that's all. It wasn't anything formal.'

‘Did you get the sense that he wanted to tell you something? Was there any urgency when he talked to you?'

In fact, there had been. ‘No – I mean, I didn't notice any.' She wanted to keep me talking in case I'd accidentally say something she wanted to hear. I had to be careful. As much as I hated it, I needed to protect Ward, at least for now.

‘I see. You weren't concerned when he didn't show up?'

‘There was no chance to be concerned. Lucy Cummings called and woke me up from a nap and told me what had happened. That changed everything.'

‘The staff people I interviewed this morning said that they were worried about James Waters. Said that he had seemed agitated lately.'

‘Again, I knew him so briefly I had nothing to judge that against. He seemed anxious I suppose, but everybody gets that way when a campaign is this tight. And Burkhart has a lot more money than the Ward people do.'

‘They're both wealthy.'

‘True. But Burkhart has access to a lot of right-wing money. They're spending millions this election cycle.'

‘That's what I hear.' She gave me the police stare again. ‘So you're a hired gun.'

‘In a way. I'm here as a favor to Jeff Ward's father. He saved my father's life back when they worked together. Tom Ward was my father's protégé.'

Her phone buzzed. She hit the intercom button. ‘Yes?'

‘Just wanted to remind you that you have the meeting in the chief's office in less than ten minutes.'

‘Thanks, Julie.' Her full attention came back to me. ‘So you're here just as a favor. You're an established hired gun who's seen all kinds of problems with campaigns over the years. I have the sense that you're also good at reading people. Picking up on their moods, maybe even their thoughts through their expressions and body language.'

‘You're giving me way too much credit.'

She brushed aside my humble pie. Irritation crackled in her dark eyes. ‘But somehow you don't pick up on somebody who to everybody else is clearly in some kind of distress. And he asks to talk to you and you don't sense any urgency.'