Damage Control (16 page)

“Yeah, I can see that.”

“Which doesn't necessarily mean Klimchock was into anything shady,” Uncle Darius said. “You get the right buddies in procurement, you can make plenty of money without breaking law-one. Maybe noodge past a regulation here and there without exactly turning a square corner—but everyone does that, right? But you can also go for a lot more if you're willing to take the risk. At any given moment you'll find two or three gents in Leavenworth who can tell you all about it.”

I probably sounded a little distracted as I thanked Uncle D and signed off the call. I couldn't help thinking that if Klimchock
was
faking the Righteous Christian stuff, that would put him in a place a lot like one I've been in from time to time.

My phone buzzed. Text from Seamus:

NRA coming in pants over tease! Nd 2 follow
↑
ASAP!

Right now, for example
.

Chapter Forty

Standard Beltway back-up for a weekday, with lots of people getting a head start on National Drive Like a Moron Week, so I found myself looking at a solid forty minutes for the modest hop from Dulles to MVC's office in northwest D.C. Had to call Seamus back, of course. Happier than a Kardashian at a trunk sale, that was Seamus. Up to his ears in plans for the biggest campaign of his life, the campaign that wouldn't just take him to the next level but to three levels beyond that; the equivalent of going from one more competent college basketball coach to a coach suddenly one win away from the NCAA title and a chance to play at the big table for the rest of his career; a shot at changing his life forever. He told me that as soon as I made it in, he and I would go balls to the wall on Message Management, Measured Ramp Up, Rhythm Discipline, Take Off Stage, Momentum Maintenance, and a couple of other things. Seamus saying them all together suggested a virgin with OCD seducing a nymphomaniac.

Following the Seamus call came three minutes of blessed silence, broken only by a couple of naughty expletives provoked by clueless Beltway driving. Gave me space to think. I wasn't any too comfortable with thinking right now, so I called Terry Fielding. Time to throw another bone to our designated media whore. Got voicemail.

“Terry, Josie. Got something that I think would have to be off the record but it might be helpful anyway. You have the number.”

Two more minutes. Thought about turning on the news but didn't, because I figured it would be mostly about e-mails and I'd gotten to the point where hearing about e-mails made me sick to my stomach.

Four chimes: incoming call. Quick, technically illegal glance at the screen: Tony, my lawyer. Put him on hands-free.

“Is this a good time to talk?”

“Sure. What's up?”

“Two things. Related to each other. First, committee counsel has finally made a first, tentative overture about whether there's some way to tie that break-in to the Democrats.”

“Sure. All we'd have to do is lie.”

“Yeah.” Tony's voice sounded languid, and I imagined him crossing his legs at the ankles and putting his feet up on the corner of his desk as he leaned back in his old-fashioned, tufted leather, swivel chair. “I explained that, and I was the second lawyer staff counsel had heard it from, so apparently MVC's counsel has explained it as well. But they'd still like an in-depth look into what the whole thing was about so they can make their own judgment.”

“I assume we're going to slow-walk that,” I said. “Start with a backgrounder at maybe the fifty-thousand-foot level.”

“Right. MVC's counsel is drafting that.”

“Good. 'Cause I'm sure not interested in paying you to do it.”

“But you can only slow-walk something for so long.”

“Okay. Then we start making noises about pending criminal investigations.”

“Uh, yeah.” Tony's voice no longer languid. “That's the second thing.”

“Less tease, more—uh, ‘more matter, less art.'” Caught myself just in time on that one. Channeling Uncle Darius all of a sudden.

“The prosecutor in the burglary case called. He wants victim input on a possible plea bargain.”

“Well I'm a reasonable person. As long as they cut off one his hands, I'll go along with it. Even if it's just his left hand.”

“Uh, yeah.” Tony chuckled to show that he knew I wasn't serious. “Technically, we can't do that in this country.”

“Since when? I thought President Obama had adopted Shariah law for D.C.”

“That was just a rumor started by your friends at CCC.” Chuckle. “The terms they actually have in mind are ninety days on work release and two years probation. For first offense non-violent attempted burglary, that's actually pretty steep by D.C. standards.”

“Work release for a
burglar
? I mean, his
work
is stealing things.”

“Focus, Josie. You're paying me a lot of money to appreciate your dark sense of humor.”

I focused, all right.
Blinding
insight. Came in a flash, all at once, the whole package, no doubt about it. The NRA pitch, the proposed plea bargain, and the request from the committee all became well-machined components that I fit together effortlessly in my head into a humming, perfectly functioning spin machine. I swear, at times like this it is so
wonderful
being me.

“Tony, here's where we want to end up. We want them to offer that plea bargain, or something like it, but
over
my objection. We don't want the case to go nowhere for X months until Reuter jumps bail. We want it resolved, sooner the better, but with me on the record against the resolution
even though
it's the resolution we want. How do we get there?”

“Take an extreme position. Say we won't be happy with any sentence short of eight months net hard time, all on the inside. No work release, no good time, no weekend privileges. No way that will ever happen, so they'll cut us out of the negotiations.”

“And what if we hint that a Congressional committee has a potential interest in this guy?”

“In that very unfortunate case,” Tony said soberly, “the District of Columbia authorities will do everything in their power to wash their hands of Mr. Reuter as fast as they possibly can.”

“So we get what we want, the committee gets blamed for mixing politics with justice, and the committee blames the prosecutor for gumming up its investigation. Perfect. We have a plan. And I expect a discount on this one, because I did most of the heavy lifting.”

Tony seemed a little dazed when he signed off. Maybe
dazzled
would be a better word for it. Didn't have time to revel in my brilliance because my phone immediately rang again. Terry Fielding. Kept it on hands-free.

“Why would it have to be off the record, whatever it is?”

“Because there's only one possible source for this particular ‘it,' so ‘deep background' wouldn't really fool anyone,” I said.

“Well, if ‘it' is that the cops have finally finished tracking their flat feet through your money and accounts, there might well be another source for it. One but not two. Yet.”

Political reporters' basic rule: If your source has a name you can print, then one is enough. If you're using anonymous sources, though—‘a person close to the investigation', ‘someone familiar with the facts but not authorized to speak publicly'—you need two. At least. And they have to be independent. So Terry was coming through to me loud and clear.

“So, if I were to tell you that we understand they've wrapped up the accounting stuff, I'd just be corroborating something you know independently.”

“I'll take that as corroboration. How about corroborating that they didn't find anything?”

“All I know is that there was never anything to find, so what you say comes as no surprise.”

“Ooh, nice one. You might have a future in this business, Josie.”

***

I spent the rest of the day taking notes—
lots
of notes—while Seamus went over his grand strategic plan: Multi-million-dollar NRA campaign for uniform federal concealed-carry standards and licensing in any jurisdiction that failed to act on license applications within 10 days.

“Do you think Fox News will call it ‘Josie's Law'?” I asked.

“Only if you get killed. And that's something I wouldn't ask of you.” Big smile. “Which reminds me. You and I need to sign up online for NRA memberships before lunch.”

Damage Control Strategy,
Days 21 and 22

(the third Wednesday and the fourth Thursday after the murder)

Chapter Forty-one

Seamus and I spent a lot of Wednesday on conference calls with NRA guys—and maybe one gal. They were all really happy, and the dimmer ones were pleasantly surprised, to learn that Seamus and I were both NRA members. I imagined these folks carrying big pistols in shoulder holsters under their three-piece suits or strapped to their waists over cashmere slacks as they sat around mahogany conference tables in wainscoted meeting rooms with assault rifles in gun racks mounted on the walls.

“Not ‘concealed carry,'” one of them interjected early on. “‘
Constitutional
carry.'”

Right.

The discussions seemed tentative and exploratory at first, with hints of skepticism about whether Seamus' idea really warranted “a big spend,” as one of them put it. By the third conference call of the day, though, the NRA folks were doing a great job of selling themselves on the idea. They kept launching into rapid-fire chats with each other that seemed to treat Seamus' proposal as almost a done deal.

“We have a draft bill yet?”

“Guy from one of the Dakotas—what's his name, Wilcox or something?—sent one over yesterday. Piece of shit. Got the lawyers working on it now.”

“Sponsors?”

“We could have sixty co-sponsors in the House and eight in the Senate within twenty-four hours.”

Don't think I've ever seen a facial expression combine serenity and contentment so perfectly as the one on Seamus' puss while this back-and-forth went on. Finally a question came through for him.

“What's the timing on your next impulse?” He meant when would we post the next video.

“Monday.” I could tell Seamus had pulled that one right out of his posterior.

“Can you get us a preview by first thing Friday morning?”

“Can do.” The absolute confidence in Seamus' voice contrasted a bit jarringly with the panic written all over his face—but our potential client couldn't see the panic.

So we killed a lot of Thursday at Shooter's Paradise in northern Virginia. Our next post would have to punch up the visual ante from the first one. Josie having an exasperated phone conversation with a civil servant wouldn't exactly fill that bill. That meant a trek to the indoor shooting range in the back of the store. Opening shot of the .32 in its brown leather holster and, next to it, a yellow box of Winchester .32 caliber ammunition. The props sat on a rough-hewn wooden shelf a little over waist high. I started speaking from off-camera.

“My name is Josie Kendall. This is my weapon.” My hands drew the revolver. “I bought it for my own protection after I came face to face with a thug who'd broken into my office in downtown Washington, D.C. He was arrested, but he's already back out on the streets.”

Now all of me—not just my hands—turned to face the camera, holding the gun between my breasts, in both hands, with the muzzle angled toward the ceiling.

“If there's a next time, I want to be ready. I need to be ready.” I deliberately but efficiently loaded cartridges into the cylinder. “I know how to load this weapon. I know how to clean this weapon. I know how to aim this weapon. And I know how to fire this weapon.”

Snapped the loaded cylinder into the frame. Turned away from the camera and focused on an outline of a life-sized human figure, black lines defining arms, legs, torso, and head on slick white paper, with a bull's-eye target where the heart would be. Squeezed off six shots at one-second intervals. Got the torso with every shot. Not what you'd call a tight group, but an assailant with that much lead in him would be all through assailing for awhile.

Camera pulled back to focus on me. Turning to face it, I spoke as I snapped the cylinder out and used the spring-rod at its center to push the empty shells out. They made a nice, serial clatter as they bounced off the concrete floor.

“But the District of Columbia won't let me protect myself. My permit application is still pending after two weeks. The thug who attacked me got out of jail a lot faster than I can get someone to act on my permit application. I just hope they issue the permit before it's too late.”

There. Done. Forty-five seconds of screen time. Between rehearsal, set up, flubbed lines, and multiple, from-the-top do-overs, we needed almost five hours to get it recorded. I swear that Seamus loved every blessed minute of it.

Chapter Forty-two

I read Terry Fielding's article online when I got back to the office. Didn't seem like all that much at first:

SCHROEDER MURDER INVESTIGATION
GOING NOWHERE
– OR SOMEWHERE NEW?

Police efforts to find a suspicious money trail linked to the ambush slaying of Jerzy Schroeder on his Maryland estate three weeks ago have turned up nothing useful, according to a source connected with law enforcement who spoke on condition of anonymity because public disclosure of the results has not been authorized. Another person familiar with the investigation confirmed that nothing was found.

With no results to show for weeks of painstaking police work focused on one theory about the murder, law enforcement authorities nevertheless declined to confirm hints that the focus of their efforts has shifted.

“We have never limited the investigation to any one person of interest,” Maryland State Police spokesperson Melissa Dallywahl said by e-mail yesterday. “Or of potential interest. We have identified a number of possibly fruitful lines of inquiry and, with the cooperation of the D.C. Metropolitan Police and other law enforcement agencies, we will continue to pursue them. We have not ruled out any theory; nor have we identified any possibility that we intend to examine to the exclusion of other possible explanations for this extremely serious crime.”

Experienced observers of procedures usually followed by metro-area police agencies investigating major crimes point out that it is in fact common for police to focus on what they view as the most likely suspect and solution as soon as they have identified one. Several independent sources confirmed that Maryland police indeed appear to have done that in this case, theorizing that Schroeder was murdered out of jealousy as the result of an adulterous affair. They appear to have been unable to develop solid evidence to support that theory, however, and there are now strong indications that they have begun to look actively at another possibility, involving a different suspect and a different motive. To some observers, Ms. Dallywahl's reference to “a number of possibly fruitful lines of inquiry” suggested oblique confirmation of that inference.

I had to admire the nimble way Terry had tiptoed through the defamation minefield. He hadn't identified Rafe as the suspected homicidally jealous husband or me as Jerzy's
objet d'amour.
Anyone who'd been following the story would get the hint, but that wasn't Terry's fault, was it?

I also liked “experienced observers,” which meant Terry and another reporter he has lunch with. That's an old-school way for reporters to put their own background knowledge into a story without just coming out and saying so.

So it seemed like the story should really pep me up. Looked like Rafe was off the hook, with the spotlight on someone else: Dierdorf, presumably, but maybe Klimchock or even DeHoic, for all I knew. Didn't matter to me, as long as it wasn't Rafe. If “other law enforcement agencies” meant the FBI—and it sure as Hell didn't mean the National Park Police, did it?—then it looked like Jerzy the gangster rather than Jerzy the lover was the one who'd caught a bullet.

Somehow, though, I just couldn't feel good about the thing. Something in it tied a nasty knot of anxiety in my belly—almost enough to make me lose my taste for the martini waiting for me at home.

Almost.