A Murder of Justice (23 page)

“That’s not what I meant.”

Sims looked at Frank as though trying to get behind his eyes.

“I know,” Sims said wearily. “I know.”

Silence stretched out until he took a deep breath. “Kevin had recruited somebody. A source.”

“For?” Frank asked, feeling the adrenaline kick in and his pulse pound in his throat.

“He didn’t say, exactly. I got the idea he was stoking up for some kind of investigation.”

“Source have a name?”

“Sure. But Kevin didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask.” Sims paused. “Look, it was a couple of buddies eating tacos and drinking Coronas. Most of the conversation was guy stuff . . . football, women, jobs. The part about his source took up less than a minute. It wasn’t anything you’d talk about in a bar.”

“Male?” Frank persisted. “Female?”

Sims shook his head. “No idea . . . none.”

“When do you think he recruited this source?”

Frank waited. Sims stared toward the river and the bridge with its lane of lights. Frank waited some more. Finally Sims looked at him.

“Summer ’ninety-eight.” He nodded, as if confirming
that something inside had whispered the answer. “June, sometime.”

Kevin Gentry was standing out in sharper relief now, but Frank still had the sense of being surrounded by something he could not see.

“Do you think,” he began carefully, “there’s any chance Gentry got involved in something he shouldn’t?”

“Meaning?” Sims asked.

“Like you said, the money could buy a person’s soul.”

“No!” Sims cut off each word: “Absolutely. . . fucking . . . no!” Then, more softly, “There’s only a few people I’ve trusted with my life. Kevin was one.”

“I had to ask. Women friends?”

“Nobody serious. He was a refuge from a hatchet-fight divorce. Had a saying that second marriages—”

“Were a triumph of faith over experience,” Frank finished.

Sims gave him a sidelong grin. “You’ve been there too.”

“Anybody he was working with before he was killed?”

Sims thought, started to shake his head, then held it. “Woman, first name Elena. She ran one of those associations up on Dupont Circle.” Sims worked on it more. “Institute for . . . ah, yes! Institute for a Free Drug America.”

“You mean ‘drug-free’?”

Sims grinned. “Nope. Free drugs. As I recall, they want to give the stuff away.”

“Elena?”

“Yeah. Like I say, I don’t think I ever had the last name.”

Frank looked at his watch. “It’s been a day.”

The two men headed toward the front of the memorial. The floodlights had been turned off. The Park Service guide sat on one of the steps, filling in a report on a clipboard she held on her knees. Side by side, the two men went down the steps.

“By the way,” Frank said, “he ever say anything about his boss?”

“Not really. I got the impression the boss was a guy who
bought his way through life with other people’s money. Kevin said once that Rhine . . . Rhine . . . ?”

“Rhinelander.”

“Oh, yeah.” Sims laughed. It was a good laugh, one that reminded you of Friday afternoons at a bar with a buddy, and a beer in front of you that was probably one too many but wouldn’t matter until tomorrow morning.

“That Rhinelander’s idea of heaven,” Sims said, “was to be the best-dressed at a Hamptons wedding.”

 THIRTY-ONE

J
osé pulled over to the curb in the 2200 block of P Street. He pointed to a dingy gray stone building across the street.

“Twenty-two-oh-oh.”

A used-book shop took up the first two floors. Signs in the third- and fourth-floor windows advertised an orthodontist, a law office, and a holistic massage therapist. A sandwich sign on the sidewalk outside the bookshop promised Madame Jana’s palm readings upstairs, no appointments needed.

“Nothing about free drugs,” Frank said.

José switched off the engine and flicked open his seat belt. “Shit, Frank, they put up a sign for free drugs, we’d need an armored car and a Marine battalion to get us through the mob.”

On a door at the rear of the third-floor hallway, a plastic frame held a yellowed three-by-five-inch card: “Institute for a Free Drug America—Please Knock.”

Frank knocked. The paint-scrabbled door was surprisingly more substantial than he thought it would be. No sound from inside. Crystalline strains of a New Age score
drifted from the direction of the holistic massage therapist’s suite. Idly, he let his eyes explore the hallway. He almost missed the lens set into a shadowed recess in the ornate crown molding behind him. He traced the molding. Several feet away, another lens. This one he figured provided a long shot down the hallway. He flipped open his credentials case, and held it up and smiled for the hidden cameras.

A buzzing rattle shook the door. Frank turned the knob and pushed.

In and to his right, a balding man with a frizzy fringe of iron-gray hair sat at a desk. Frank guessed late sixties, early seventies. Olive complexion, black eyes, sharp nose, the look of a fierce but weathered hawk. He wore a black suit that might have arrived at Ellis Island a hundred years ago.

“Yass?”

“I’m Detective Frank Kearney.” Frank offered his credentials and motioned to José. “My partner, José Phelps.”

The old man took in the credentials, then searched their faces. He had the suspicious eyes of an émigré.

“And you want?”

“We would like to talk with Ms. Elena Navarro,” Frank said.

The old man sat impassively for a moment, still measuring the two in front of him. Then he pointed to two armless wooden chairs against a wall.

“Sit,” he ordered. Then, almost an afterthought, “Please.”

The old man got up and opened a door behind him. Hand on the knob, he angled his head around and gave Frank and José a severe glance, as though to make certain they’d obeyed. He stepped through and pulled the door shut with a solid click.

Earlier that morning, Eleanor had handed Frank and José a thin folder.

“Elena Navarro,” she’d said, “president of the Institute for a Free Drug America. It’s a 501(c)(4) outfit.”

“A charity?” Frank asked.

“Charity’s a 501(c)(3),” Eleanor corrected. “The IRS describes a (c)(4) organization as one that is operated to promote the common good and general welfare of the people of the community.” Eleanor recited it as if reading straight from the tax code.

“Promote the common good by giving away heroin?” José had asked.

That had given Eleanor an opportunity to get in her second correction. “ ‘Decriminalization’ is the PC term,” she’d said primly.

The door opened. The old man thrust his head in, looking even more hawklike.

“Come,” he gestured with an impatient wave.

He led Frank and José down a passageway toward a closed door. On the right, a row of wire-meshed windows looked across an alley to a soot-crusted brick wall punctuated by a similar row of windows. On the left, a large bay of cubicles with what appeared to be a platoon of truant high school kids rapping on computer keyboards. A poster for Mel Gibson’s
Braveheart
dominated a cubicle occupied by a white kid in dreadlocks. Someone had highlighted the banner—“Every man dies, not every man really lives.” Next to Gibson, another poster, red background, with a bereted Che Guevara in black. Frank guessed that Che had been dead years before the kid at the computer was born.

“ ‘Hasta la victoria siempre,’ ”
Frank muttered, reciting the call to arms beneath Che’s image.

“Ever onward to victory.” The old man rasped out his dry translation without breaking stride. He knocked at the closed door, then opened it. He stood aside and with a curt gesture motioned Frank and José in.

Seated at her desk, Elena Navarro glanced up at Frank and José over a teetering parapet of books, newspapers, and magazines. To her right, one of those giraffelike engineer drawing lamps; to her left, a telephone with a massive speed-dial keyboard that looked capable of coordinating a small war or directing a shuttle launch.

She stood, and Frank saw that she was taller than he’d
thought. She wore a white silk blouse and black slacks. Her black hair was pulled behind her neck, emphasizing her high cheekbones and delicate nose.

Same dark eyes and complexion as the old man,
Frank thought.
Five-foot-eight, maybe five-nine . . . one-fifteen, at the most one-twenty . . . late thirties.

Navarro smiled at the old man.
“Gracias, Bidari.”
Her voice was a resonant contralto.

The old man stood in the doorway. He glared at Frank and José menacingly. When he pulled the door, his suit coat fell open. Frank thought he caught a glimpse of webbing at the left armpit.

Navarro smiled as the door finally shut. “Bidari was my father’s best friend,” she said, as if this explained something more. She pointed to a sofa, then sat down and crossed her legs.

“You are here about Kevin Gentry.”

She spoke with such assurance and in such a precise classroom-honed English that Frank felt a rebellious impulse.

No, ma’am, we’re here to sell you tickets to the policemen’s ball.

Instead he asked, “How did you meet?”

“We met just after he became Congressman Rhinelander’s staff director.”

“That would have been . . . what? Early ’ninety-eight?”

“January. Just after the Christmas recess.”

“And the purpose?”

“The Rhinelander subcommittee drafts and proposes narcotics legislation.” Navarro laid it out slowly, patiently. She paused, then added, “Our institute is a proponent of changes in current narcotics legislation.”

“Yeah,” José said, in his let’s-rumble voice, “you want to give the stuff away.”

Navarro’s eyes widened, and she cocked her head as if readjusting her initial measurement of the two men before her. She smiled, and Frank saw that she could be an attractive woman.

“No.” The tone softened. “We are market-oriented. We advocate that narcotics be sold legally”—here the smile came on, slightly mocking—“much like alcohol, tobacco, and coffee.”

“So I just drop into the Starbucks or 7-Eleven and pick up an ounce of blow?” José asked.

“Yes.” Like the first, provocative flick of the matador’s cape. Navarro sat back in her chair, relaxed, confident, knowing what would come next.

Frank waited for José to do what he knew José would do.

José thrust his head forward. “We got too many addicts now.”

“Yes,” she agreed, adroitly letting him slip by. “And if we legalize narcotics we shall probably have more.”

Realizing Navarro was using his momentum against him, José pulled up short. “Right,” he said, “so . . .”

Navarro made a small, polite “Wait” gesture with her right hand. “Please. Let me finish. We would see an increase in addiction. But we would destroy the narcotics business.” A beat. “The
business
,” she repeated. “Addiction is a
medical
disease. The illegal narcotics business is a
social
one. You cannot treat the two with the same medicine.

“Think about this.” She leaned forward. “How much violence . . . how much killing . . . comes not from the drugs, but from the
business
 . . . the illegal business of buying, distribution, selling?”

Navarro’s cheeks had an excited flush, and her voice deepened.

“Narcotics do not corrupt. It’s the criminal business that buys politicians and even . . . even police. We have our ‘war on drugs.’ And we have brave and principled people fighting it. Kevin Gentry was one. But it is a war we are losing. And when you are losing a war, you change your strategy.”

“To preemptive surrender?” Frank asked.

“No. Merely rational recognition of human nature. Congress cannot outlaw sin. But it can keep evil people from making money from it.” Navarro sat back and smiled
ruefully. “But you did not come here to argue the merits of legalizing narcotics.”

“You were close to Kevin Gentry,” Frank said.

“Yes.” No longer the missionary, Navarro brought her guard up.

“When he was killed, he was preparing for a subcommittee hearing.”

Navarro answered cautiously. “Yes.”

“The usual annual D.C. budget review.”

Navarro’s look said “Listen carefully.” When she seemed certain she’d be understood, she spoke quietly. “Perhaps.”

“Perhaps?”

“Kevin had it in mind to expose the drug business in the District.”

“You knew this?”

“We helped him build a case.”

“How?”

“I said we exist to put the illegal narcotics dealers out of business.”

“Yes . . .”

“Those young people you see outside. . . they may seem like children. But they are very good researchers. We made this research available to Kevin.”

“Research about the business? What in particular?”

“In particular the Juan Brooks empire and his successor, James Hodges. It was quite an enterprise, you know.”

José looked doubtful. “Bunch of skinny kids on computers build a case on Skeeter?”

Navarro smiled. “Those skinny kids know the streets as well as computers. And we collect everything . . . things prohibited to you . . . rumors, hearsay. We even collect lies. Over time, patterns emerge, even in lies. And we are not bound to courtroom standards of evidence.”

“Could we have a copy of what you furnished Mr. Gentry?” Frank asked. “Hard copy if we can, computer discs if we can’t get that.”

Navarro nodded and made a note. “That was two years
ago. We will have to pull it together. Do you want an update?”

Frank shook his head. “Maybe later. Right now, we’d like to see what Mr. Gentry saw.”

“The hearings Mr. Gentry was planning,” José asked, “Skeeter Hodges and his crew going to be the feature attraction?”

“Yes. We did an extensive organizational and economic analysis.”

“Economics?”

Navarro smiled cynically. “If the Hodges activities were legal, they’d be the third-largest moneymaker in the District behind the federal government and the Redskins.”