A Murder of Justice (17 page)

 TWENTY-THREE

T
rees! Yes, damn it! I said,
trees!
”

All six feet, six inches of Senator Daniel Dugan Patterson stood behind his desk, phone at his ear. He listened for a moment. What he heard evidently met with his approval—his almost feminine lips pulled into a smug smile.

He hung up and, with his hand still on the phone, gazed out the window at the panoramic view down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Treasury and the White House. The man’s lean body didn’t fit a round face made even rounder by large horn-rimmed glasses. The glasses, the unruly silver hair, the rumpled blue seersucker suit, and the yellow paisley bow tie gave him the air of a slightly distracted college professor, which he had been at Harvard between stints in the administrations of four presidents.

“Pennsylvania Avenue,” he whispered to himself. “America’s main street. And the silly bastards complain about the cost of a few dozen trees.”

He shook his large head as though to clear it of silly bastards, then turned and regarded Frank and José with the
perplexed look of a man finding a stranger using his toothbrush.

“And who are you?”

“Ah . . . police,” Frank said. “District Homicide.”

Patterson’s bewilderment hung on for another moment.

He fished in his jacket pockets until he came up with a pack of three-by-five cards, then shuffled through them until he found one that seemed to satisfy him. Holding it high in front of his face, he studied it, his mouth slightly open. He nodded and tucked the cards away.

“Yes. About Kevin.” He pointed to Frank. “You are . . .”

“Frank Kearney.”

“And you?” Patterson swung the finger around to José.

“José Phelps.”

Patterson nodded. “Very good, gentlemen. Please sit.” He gestured to a leather sofa and took a nearby chair for himself.

“So,” he said, “you didn’t catch Kevin’s killer.”

“No, sir, we didn’t,” Frank said.

“But you’re going to do so now.” Patterson spoke it kindly, but with a flat irony.

“Takes being lucky and being good, Senator,” José said. “We’re good. But we still need luck.”

Patterson’s expression softened. Leaning forward in his chair, he rested his hands on his knees and thrust his head at Frank and José.

“How can I help?”

“Mr. Gentry—”

“Kevin.” Patterson whispered the correction.

Frank nodded and began again. “Kevin . . . came here from the State Department in 1991. He stayed seven years . . . tell us about him.”

With a sad smile, Patterson shook his head. “Neither you nor I have enough time for me to tell you all I remember. Suffice it to say I was lucky to have him here. The office was lucky to have him. The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it is so rare. Kevin was a bright fellow who could run easily
ahead of the rest while devoting time to those who struggled at the back.”

“Why’d he leave?” José asked.

“Staff work on Capitol Hill is repetitive,” Patterson said. “After a while, a job here resembles riding a carousel . . . one moves, but ’round and ’round through the same scenery. Kevin needed to move in a different direction.”

“And the job with Congressman Rhinelander offered that?”

Patterson’s lips parted as though he was preparing to speak; then something happened behind his eyes, a flicker like a camera shutter. He hesitated, then said, “Rhinelander offered a different challenge from what Kevin could find here.”

“What was that?” José asked.

“Why,” Patterson said quickly, “the challenge of the District of Columbia, of course.”

“Of course?” Frank raised his eyebrows.

Patterson looked at Frank and José as if at students in a seminar.

“This country,” he began, “is coming apart.” He flung his arms out dramatically. “Coming apart!”

He aimed a questioning look at Frank and then José as though trying to detect a hint of ignorance or disagreement.

Finding none, he continued. “The District is a microcosm of our disintegrating society. . .the proverbial miner’s canary. Understand what ails the District and perhaps . . .
just
perhaps . . . we might be able to save ourselves. And if not ourselves, pray to God, we might be able to salvage the next generation, or perhaps the one after that.”

For a moment, no one spoke. Then José said, “That’s a pretty bad picture.”

Patterson tilted his head back and laughed. Light danced across his glasses.

“Actually, Mr. Phelps, it’s quite optimistic. I used to think salvation out of reach.”

“So we haven’t passed the Plimsoll line.” The thought
had struck Frank while Patterson was talking, and he was surprised that it just came out.

“The Plimsoll line,” Patterson repeated thoughtfully, turning it over in his mind. “Yes,” he said, drawing it out.
Yessss.
“Yes! Samuel Plimsoll!” he said, with a catch of excitement. “That’s good. That’s
very
good.”

“My father made the connection.”

Patterson grinned mischievously. “Fathers manage to do that, sometimes . . . commit a modest bit of wisdom.”

“When was the last time you talked with Kevin?” José asked.

Patterson’s face clouded. “The day he was killed. We had lunch.”

“What’d you talk about?”

“Cabbages and kings. Our lunches were always a dog’s breakfast . . . odds and ends of this and that. The smallest of details, the largest of pictures.”

“Anything in particular?”

“Insofar as the details were concerned, Kevin was absorbed in the upcoming hearings on the District appropriations.”

“Do you remember any of those details?”

Patterson shook his head. “Oh . . . the procedural worries . . . witness lists, staff coaching of the subcommittee members, publicity . . . that sort of thing.”

“And the big pictures?”

“When we got to that, it was always the same. . . . Bits and pieces might change, but essentially we always ended up talking about numbers and levers.”

Patterson took in Frank’s and José’s expectant looks.

“Numbers,” Patterson explained, “the statistics . . . the harbingers of society’s tomorrow . . . crime, illiteracy, disease, divorce, children born out of wedlock.” He paused as though somewhere in his head a tape was bringing in the latest figures.

“And the levers?” Frank prompted.

“The levers,” Patterson said, “yes, the levers. The means by which we might shape society’s tomorrows. From
Archimedes . . . ‘Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the earth.’ ”

“And Kevin’s place to stand was on Rhinelander’s subcommittee.”

Patterson nodded.

“And the lever?”

“He was still searching.”

Frank glanced at the antique wall clock, now getting on to six.

“Last question . . . Did Kevin ever mention anyone who might have a motive to kill him?”

“No. But I never believed his killing was a random act.”

“Oh?”

Patterson’s chin dropped to his chest, and he looked at Frank and José over the tops of his glasses. “The fates don’t allow such a man to die at the whim of another.”

With that, Patterson’s attention seemed to drift away. Frank and José stood.

“Thank you for your time,” Frank said.

Patterson continued staring off into the distance, or perhaps into another time. Without acknowledging Frank and José, he took off his glasses and wiped his eyes.

“There’s no use being Irish,” he said to himself, “unless you know the world is going to break your heart.”

L
ook!” José pointed with theatrical alarm. “Someone’s been in our office! And there he is . . . in your chair!”

“You’re right, Papa Bear,” Frank said. “And I bet he ate up all our porridge too.”

In what was becoming his trademark position, Leon Janowitz was cocked back in Frank’s chair, feet on the edge of his desk. Arms extended, he was reading from an accordion-folded computer printout.

Still holding the printout, still cocked back in Frank’s chair, he turned to face Frank and José.

“You guys get a bigger office, a hardworking fella like me wouldn’t have to borrow a place to sit.”

“Hardworkin’ fella like you, Leon, shouldn’t be sittin’,” José said. “Oughta be out savin’ the world.”

Frank nodded toward the printout. “What you got there?”

Janowitz folded the printout, tossed it onto the desk, and dropped his feet to the floor, righting himself in a controlled crash.

“Subcommittee financials.” Janowitz tapped the printout with his fingertips. “And xeroxes of Gentry’s appointment calendar.”

“Why the frown?” Frank asked.

Janowitz stared for a moment at the printout and the sheaf of xeroxes as though searching for the answer, then looked at Frank and José.

“You know how sometimes you know there’s something right under your nose? But you really aren’t seeing it?” He turned to the paperwork on the desk and shook his head.

“Sometimes,” José suggested, “you’re lookin’ too hard.”

“Or too long,” Frank added. “TGIF. There’s something called weekend. We do get one every month or so.”

Janowitz smiled. “I haven’t forgotten.” He reached down to a shopping bag on the floor and pulled out a bottle of champagne.

“Mumm demi-sec,” he said, gazing lovingly at the label. “Mrs. Janowitz and I will be in New York tomorrow night. We will be ensconced in the Plaza Hotel, drinking champagne, fucking ourselves absolutely silly, and forgetting there’s any such thing as crime and punishment.”

Frank felt suddenly tired and at the same time envious. “You figure out how to do the last, let Hoser and me know.”

A
few minutes later, on the sidewalk outside headquarters, Frank and José watched Janowitz head toward his car, shopping bag in hand.

“We ever that young?” José asked.

Frank took in Janowitz’s bounding stride. “We ever that smart?” he asked back.

Both men stood quietly, until José broke the silence. “Bothers you, doesn’t it . . . him leaving the force.”

Frank didn’t say anything immediately. Then, feeling a sense of loss, he said, “It’s like watching a priest walk away from the Church.”

Janowitz started his car. The headlights flashed on.

“Helluva church we’re in,” José said.

Frank watched Janowitz back out of his parking place and drive down the block. He watched until the taillights disappeared around the corner.

“Wonder if there’s another room at the Plaza.”

 TWENTY-FOUR

W
hat’re you doing?” Kate asked, her eyes still shut.

Frank trailed a fingertip down her cheek toward the corner of her mouth. “How’d you know I’m doing anything?”

“I can just tell.”

“I was watching you breathe.”

“Exciting?”

“Very.”

She opened her eyes and turned to face him.

“A good weekend.” She smiled.

The Caps had beaten the Penguins in the playoff opener Friday night; on Saturday, Renée Zellweger had been hilarious in
Bridget Jones’s Diary
; and Sunday had been spent sleeping late, with breakfast at Clyde’s, antique browsing in Kensington, and dinner at Saigonnais.

“A very good weekend.”

Kate sighed. “Too bad they’re only two days long.”

“You’re a lawyer.”

“Yes?”

Frank traced down her cheek again. “Get a law passed. Make weekends forever.”

Kate turned slightly and nipped at his finger. “Nobody’d get any work done.”

“Getting work done is the source of all mischief.”

“Profound.”

“You want profound on a Monday morning early?”

“I’ll tell you what I want on a Monday morning early,” she said.

A
light rain stacked up the morning traffic along Pennsylvania Avenue to Washington Circle. Twenty-third Street thinned out, and Frank found a semilegal parking spot behind the Federal Reserve. José was waiting under the C Street entrance at State. Frank paused to take in the boxlike building.

He and Hoser had been here . . . what . . . six months before? A montage of mental images . . . a once beautiful woman dead in a Georgetown park, the statue at Hains Point with its defiled cargo, and, of course, here, David Trevor.

“Good weekend?” Frank asked.

“Almost forgot how to do weekends.”

“Think Leon survived the Plaza?”

“No doubt,” José said. “Kid sets a fine example. Who we seeing here?”

Frank checked his notebook.

“Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs. Guy by the name of Khron . . . Sidney Khron.”

S
idney Khron, a spare, balding man with rimless glasses, stared into his computer screen. He rapped his keyboard, clicked his mouse, stared some more. Then he turned to Frank and José.

“We don’t have those records.”

“Kevin Gentry?” Frank asked. “Kevin Walker Gentry wasn’t in the State Department? Not in Western Hemisphere Affairs?”

Khron took a deep breath and studied the ceiling, then made eye contact with Frank.

“No. I mean . . . yes. Yes, he was in the bureau. No, we don’t have his records.”

“We were told,” José said patiently, “that you had access to the personnel records of everybody who’s been assigned to Western Hemisphere.”

“There are . . .
exceptions
,” Khron said primly.

“Exceptions for what?” José asked.

“For many things.”

“Such as?”

Khron’s face resembled a lifeless mask. “I’m not authorized to say more.”

“But Gentry’s one of those exceptions?” Frank asked.

Khron thought about the question and decided to duck. “I’m not authorized to say more,” he repeated.

“Why?” Frank persisted, knowing as he asked that he wouldn’t find out.

“Because I’m not,” Khron replied. “There are privacy issues concerned.”

“Privacy? Gentry’s dead.”

Khron dropped his hands into his lap. “Nevertheless,” he said with finality.

Frank stood, then José.

“Who do we have to see?” Frank asked.

R
andolph Emerson’s face darkened the longer he listened. When Frank and José had finished, he stared wordlessly at the two men.

“The State Department’s general counsel?” he finally asked.

“That’s who we have to see,” Frank said.

Emerson got an aggrieved look. “First, we’d have to see the chief. Then go to the mayor.”

“Mayor wouldn’t have to do it,” José said. “The U.S. attorney—”

Emerson cut him off with a slicing motion of his hand
and launched into a death spiral of calamity. “Still, we’d have to go to the chief, then the mayor. That’d stir up some shit. U.S. Attorney’s Office is a bunch of Republicans. They’d leak it. Then the papers’d get a hold of it . . . more shit.”

Emerson picked up velocity. “And do we know what we’d get for it?” He jabbed the air with an angry fist. “I mean, we go to the mayor, we spin him up, we get the papers down on our asses, then we get nothing. We look like fools.”

As though disaster had already struck, as though his career had been carpet-bombed, Emerson collapsed into his chair and glared accusingly at Frank and José. “We could go through all that and get nothing.”

“Even nothing’s something sometimes,” José said.

“We’ve got to check it out, Randolph,” Frank said.

Emerson’s lips thinned. “No we don’t,” he said gratingly.

Frank turned to look at José and found José was looking at him, silently signaling a question. Frank nodded a yes.

“We,” José said, “Frank and me . . . we’re running the investigation. We’re responsible.”

Emerson tensed, knowing he wasn’t going to like what he was going to hear.

“Either we go after Gentry’s records,” José said evenly, “or you find somebody else.”

“You mean—”

“We mean,” Frank said, “we’re off the case.”

“You can’t do that.”

“You don’t want to bet,” José said.

“Maybe you could get somebody else, Randolph,” Frank suggested. “Like . . . Milton?”

Emerson gave Frank a dead-fish look, then started a slow smile.

“Okay, we’ll ask. We’ll ask our pals at the Bureau. They wanted in on this case. Let them bend their pick.”

. . . A
nd this guy Chrome at State said there were ‘other considerations’?” Brian Atkins asked.

Frank, José, and Robin Bouchard were at a small conference table in Atkins’s office. Atkins sat at the head of the table, listening carefully, jotting in a small leather notebook.

“Khron,” Frank corrected. “The go-to guy at State to get the records released is the general counsel.”

“General counsel.” Atkins paused, then nodded. “That’s Tommy del Gado.” He fastened Frank with a look. “Your department wants us to deal with State?” He spoke like he was putting Frank on record.

“We’d appreciate it,” Frank said, feeling his gut tighten.

“How about Pencil Crawfurd?” Atkins asked.

“Still hanging out with Elvis,” Frank said. “But we’ll find him.”

“Any idea what spooked him?”

Frank shook his head. “No, not really.”

“Okay.” Atkins got up and tucked the notebook in an inner suit jacket pocket. “You guys find Elvis and Pencil, we’ll rattle State Department’s cage.”

W
ell, your basic good news, bad news,” José said outside on Pennsylvania Avenue.

“Good news?”

“The Bureau gets to handle the pussies at State.”

“And . . . ?”

“We had to get the Bureau to—”

“—handle the pussies at State,” Frank finished. José was right. It did rankle, Randolph Emerson passing the buck to Atkins and the Bureau. Emerson making José and him come down, hat in hand, asking the big boys for help. It was a bush-league play.

“At least Atkins didn’t rub it in,” José said. “Now we can concentrate on finding Elvis.”