Gospel (50 page)

‘But first I need to get dressed, for if what you say is true – and I have no doubt it is, Dick – then I really need to see it for myself.'

The following night

‘U
S Chief of Staff Maxine Bryant will be named as the new US Vice President within days, according to several reliable White House informants,' read Sara, for the third time, from Marc Rigotti's headliner on the front page of today's
Boston Tribune
.

‘Sources from Congress, Senior Governmental Departments and influential lobby groups, said that Bryant, a loyal devotee to President Latham's administration and mother-in-law to the late Vice President Tom Bradshaw, was “odds on” to secure a majority vote in both Houses of Congress “as soon as possible” given the impending November Federal elections.

‘It is believed Mrs Bryant spent most of yesterday behind closed doors with the President – and was later joined by her daughter Melissa Bryant Bradshaw, who, it is said, gave her support to the nomination.

‘News of the impending announcement was met with a generally positive response, despite the expression of some critics who cited Bryant's age and somewhat cool demeanour as her two major drawbacks.

‘“Maxine Bryant is sixty-one,” said a prominent Southern Senator who declined to be named. “Admittedly she's a healthy, intelligent, energetic sixty-one, but given President Latham is seventy-five and in less than
perfect health, we're looking at one very senior administration which doesn't exactly spell ‘future'.”

“Bryant is probably Latham's safest bet,” said a Midwestern Congresswoman. “But safe isn't always smart and sometimes it lacks energy and promise. What do the public need? What do they want? They need, they want, another Tom Bradshaw, someone young and enthusiastic, charismatic and warm – basically everything Maxine Bryant is not.”'

‘It's no wonder she is trying to manipulate Congress,' said Leo King, accepting another Bud from Myrtle McGee's Proprietor, Mick McGee. ‘With critics like those she needs all the help she can get.'

‘Not that it makes any difference,' said Mannix, downing his second beer. ‘These so-called sources don't start shooting their mouths off unless they're sure what they're speculating on is a done deal.'

‘You're right,' said Sara. ‘But the true irony lies in their assessment of her as “safe”. If only they knew.'

They sat in silence for a moment, taking it all in.

‘So how long before they . . .' David began.

‘Announce it?' finished Simba. ‘Any day is my guess. The woman is a shoo-in. All that we're waiting for now, are the official bells and whistles.'

‘You Americans and your bells and whistles,' said Mick who had agreed to meet them at his ‘breakfast and lunch only' Harbourside café at the late hour of 9pm, to assure his four friends the privacy they needed. ‘Speaking of which, I'm more than willing to heat up some dinner for you sad and sorry lot but don't expect any “bells and whistles” on the menu tonight. Strictly basics only. The chef's long gone and I have to get ready for the morning breakfast rush. As for the beer however,' continued Mick, who was well aware of his lack of liquor licence, ‘
that
, I am pleased to say, is available in abundance – so long as my detective friend here promises not to report me.'

‘What beer?' said Joe, taking another sip from his imported brown bottle. ‘I thought this was ginger ale.'

‘My point exactly,' said Mick before returning to the kitchen. ‘Just holler when you're hungry.'

‘Thanks, Mick,' said David.

It had been a long twenty-four hours. Sara had spent another sleepless night in her North End brownstone. She had only spoken to David
briefly since their meeting with Montgomery yesterday morning, having spent the rest of the afternoon and all of today researching a list of non-detectable sedatives at Boston Public Library.

She had made a decision to try and put the ‘note' behind her. She reasoned, hoped, it could only have been Ramirez or one of his ‘flunkies', trying to get to them through her – and she was determined not to give him the satisfaction. The past few days had had her doing a lot of soul searching – a lot of trying to determine how she really felt about David – and how he felt about her. In the end she knew that she trusted him, for besides his editing of the truth to protect her, he had never given her any reason not to. Sometimes you had to take a leap of faith, she told herself. That was what love was all about, after all.

David and Mannix had spent much of the past twenty-four hours with Leo King, who, after telling them about Kate and Eleanor Caspian and their imminent arrival in the US, had sat with them running and rerunning Pieter Capon's original hotel video. They were right in that the missing four minutes contained extra footage of Ramirez and of Maxine Bryant – who apparently
was
at the hotel prior to her ‘official' arrival. It showed Ramirez re-enter the Vice President's suite at 8.03, and leave again four minutes later, only to meet with Bryant in the corridor, but it did little towards providing them with any proof of Bradshaw's real killers, and with this morning's speculation about Bryant's imminent nomination, time was running out.

‘Maybe we've looked at this thing too many times,' said David, turning to Sara and rubbing his now deep purple bruised forehead. ‘But we just can't get our heads around a logical chain of events. Ramirez edited the section between 8.03 and 8.07 when he entered the suite and then exited again to meet Bryant in the hallway. That gives him opportunity to administer the OxyContin but throws our sedative theory out the door. As for Bryant,' he went on, ‘she was only ever in the corridor and never entered her son-in-law's suite. And there is no audio on the tape so we have no idea what they were discussing.'

They sat there for a minute watching as Sara, the only person who had not watched the new tape, took it all in, her furrowed brow indicating the depth of her concentration.

‘The problem is,' said Mannix, ‘that what we have here is completely
explainable from the prosecution's point of view. We may have Ramirez entering the suite for a second time but only for four minutes. And let's face it, he had every right to be in and out given he was the top FBI man on the job.'

‘Joe's right,' said King, choosing a coke from the collection of cold drinks on the table. ‘And there's no reason why Maxine Bryant shouldn't have been there either. She can justify her presence with a million and one logical explanations. If Montgomery is right and Bradshaw was sedated, then we still can't piece together who or how or when. I hate to admit it, but the tape doesn't give us a damned thing.'

‘Yes it does,' said Sara, contradicting them all, ‘because if it didn't, Ramirez wouldn't have gone to the trouble of cutting it down in the first place. This tape tells us
everything
. It has too.

‘Look,' she said, taking in the three exhausted faces before her. ‘You three have been at this all day. Why don't you set me up and then go get some supper. I can watch this on my own. Besides, the last thing I need is three hungry men who haven't showered in the past twenty-four hours looking over my shoulder.' This in the very least brought a small laugh from the other three.

‘Seriously, you guys,
go eat
!'

And so, David, Joe and King set up Mick McGee's dusty twelve inch set and VCR in one of Mick's corner booths, with Sara grabbing a napkin to clean the scratchy glass as much as possible before Joe inserted the tape. They watched as the time code came up on the top left hand corner of the screen – starting at 7.25pm, exactly one hour before Melissa Bradshaw discovered her husband's body – with the camera positioned high, from the left, looking diagonally down on the Presidential suite door and the two secret service agents posted by the entrance being the only constants.

‘I wish we could ask those two guys what they saw,' said Sara, pointing at the secret service twins as she fast forwarded through the initial minutes of inactivity.

‘Impossible,' said Simba. ‘The Secret Service don't open their mouths without approval from their superiors and in this case there is no doubt they'd go straight to the FBI. Besides, this gives us as good a view as any.'

‘Okay,' said Sara. ‘I'm fine. I don't mean to be rude but you guys can . . .'

‘. . . take a hike,' finished Mannix with a smile. ‘Thanks, Sara.'

‘I can sit with you if you like,' said David, obviously still worried they had not had the time to talk properly about their own problems.

‘No. Go get something to eat,' she smiled, taking his hand and squeezing it, trying to let him know that she understood – that everything was going to be all right. ‘I'll call when I'm done.'

‘Okay,' he smiled back, and squeezed her shoulder before heading towards the front counter.

David took a seat on one of Mick's lime green stools, scanned the menu and sent Leo and Joe out back to check what Mick meant by ‘basics only'. Then he took advantage of the short moment of privacy to look over at her again; a surge of emotion now flooding through him with overwhelming clarity.

Look at her
, he said to himself as he watched her perch even further forward on her bench seat, her eyes squinting as if willing the truth to jump from the screen, a look of intense concentration on her beautiful face. She is so smart, so amazing, so . . . And then, mixed in with this swell of love . . . respect . . . pride, came a new wave of guilt – for Monday night's harsh words, for basically ignoring her for the past twenty-four hours, and most of all, for the woman who was still hiding in his apartment.

I don't deserve her
, he thought, despite knowing he had spent the past two nights on his living room couch.
I should have told her
, but then he realised perhaps it was better if she didn't know, given everything that had happened in the past two days and that Karin had promised she would move into another hotel and be gone by the time he got home tonight.

Finally, as he heard Joe and Simba call out that they were setting up a table in the kitchen, he made himself a promise. He
would
tell her, tonight. And he would apologise for his dark moods and snap judgements and for generally ignoring her over the past few days – and he would promise that he would never hide anything from her again.

Their dinner conversation was scattered; a mishmash of little details between mouthfuls of re-heated shepherd's pie and vegetables. There were so many unanswered questions and a serious lack of plausible scenarios. Their only hope was to try to place themselves in the minds of the killers on the night Tom Bradshaw was killed, and work through the chain of events step by step.

Leo King told them Hackenbacker's man at Quantico had come up
blank on the thirty quarters left at Toovey's apartment, which was exactly what they had expected.

‘Croker ran a check on the coins in Doyle's pocket and came up blank as well,' said Mannix. ‘It's no surprise. The guy is just too smart.'

‘I know,' said Leo. ‘But Ramirez has to slip up some place – and we have to be there when it happens.'

‘Don't worry,' said David. ‘We will be.'

David looked at his watch. Ten minutes, too early to check on her yet. His mind was racing, ticking off minor details as he finished the rest of his dinner. He wasn't hungry, but knew he needed the sustenance.

The problem was, they had so many balls in the air and they weren't even sure which ones were worth catching. Everything had to be considered, everything had to be followed through. He had worked enough criminal cases to know the truth was always in the details, and this was often where the prosecution fell down. Their predisposed assumption of a defendant's guilt often blinded them to other possibilities, and that was a major weakness which often resulted in their failure to second guess the defence's strategy.

Strategy
, he thought.
What damned strategy
? All they had was a montage of possibilities, a collection of disjointed ideas and assumptions, with no idea how in the hell they could pull them all together. Which made him think of his friend Tony Bishop, and another hard task ahead.

‘When will Ryan finish his background check on James Bishop?' he asked.

‘Tomorrow hopefully,' said King. The CIA Director had suggested he undertake a thorough investigation into Tony Bishop's brother before David approached his law school buddy with what he knew would be the shocking news of his brother's apparent drug addiction.

‘He wants us to have as much information as possible before you go to his brother,' Simba went on. ‘He'll try to find out exactly what his drug of choice is – how it may be affecting his work.'

‘I'm not looking forward to that conversation,' said David.

‘I don't blame you. But if we have Tony on side, and we can convince him to be part of the team that approaches his older brother, we have a better chance of getting James on board.'

‘It will ruin James' career,' said David.

‘It's ruined in any case,' said Simba. ‘Everyone on that list will be indicted for drug abuse. That's the law. At least this way, he has a chance of limiting the fall out. His cooperation will go a long way to . . .'

‘. . . reducing any prospective sentence,' finished David. ‘I know. It just sucks, that's all. James was a stand-up guy.'

‘They often are,' said Simba.

They sat there a little longer, finishing their dinners and downing the last of their drinks, David glancing at his watch every minute or so, impatient for some word from Sara inside.

‘Look at him,' said King to Mannix, obviously trying to lighten the mood a little. ‘The guy can't stand to be away from her for longer than twenty minutes. What d'ya think, Joe,' he grinned. ‘Does it look like the real thing to you?'