Damage Control (20 page)
Authors: Michael Bowen
On my way back I managed to reach Tony and tell him to go ahead and sign off on the plea bargain. After all, a deal's a deal. I even remembered to throw in
pas de merde
so that he'd know the message was genuine.
After that, things went downhill. The adrenaline rush from the fight and the aftermath had run dry, so the delayed reaction from the punishment I'd absorbed set in. My nose had been hurting since DeHoic had pasted me with that gun in her paw, but now it dialed the hurt up a couple of notches. I suddenly noticed that I had to squint to make out the numbers on my dashboard. Started feeling a little woozy, and even thought I might toss my cookies. No way I could gut this out all the way back to D.C. Fortunately, Siri came up with a regional medical center less than ten miles farther on. I made it, but not by any large margin.
I figured I'd have to wait forever in the emergency room, but one good look at me and the admitting nurse said something about “stat” into a loudspeaker as soon as she'd photocopied my insurance card. Next thing I knew I was lying in a bed and a resident was talking to me about surgery. Concussion; broken nose; hairline fracture in the bone around my right eye; and blood leaking into the socket. I told him to track down a surgeon without waiting for any paint to dry.
When I woke up I saw Rafe sitting beside my bed. I tried to start an explanation that wouldn't sound too idiotic, but he gently shushed me. I was so spaced out on painkillers that I would have had trouble making any sense anyway.
Speaking of painkillers, it beats me how people can get addicted to them. Wallowing in a gauzy cocoon where you feel like you're only about half there, can't read, can't think quick or clearly, can't say anything smartâif that's your idea of high, I'll take normal, thank you very much.
Sometime Saturday afternoon I started to come out of it enough to check my iPad, but I just picked up little scraps of news and gossip. The only one I remember is that Theo McAbbott was getting some buzz, what with his second book showing up twenty feet from Marine One. Recapitulations of reviews for that book and his first one and, of course, courtesy of Rafe, jabbering about the one he had in the pipelineâwhich was suddenly “much anticipated.”
Rafe sat by me every blessed waking second. Seamus came by on Saturday. Very upbeat about the NRA thing, but I could tell from his face that he was worried sick. He was absolutely convinced that making me a YouTube star was what had somehow gotten me beaten up. Told me to take the next couple of weeks off. The box of chocolates he brought me came from the hospital gift shop, but it's the thought that counts.
They finally discharged me Sunday morning. Rafe drove me home. I felt pretty clear-headed by then, especially because I'd made it a point to get by without Percocet since Saturday afternoon. Aches and pains, of course, but nothing migraine-level in my head and the mouse around my eye had shrunk quite a bit. I felt like I could finally explain how I'd ended up on the casualty list.
“You're probably wondering what the Hell happened to me.”
“I have a pretty good idea what the Hell happened to you, Josephine Robideaux Kendall. I had a little wink-wink, nudge-nudge talk with your uncle.”
“Oh.”
“Uncle Darius was a bit vague about whether you'd gotten what you came for
chez
Schroeder,” Rafe said then. “Did you?”
“Only time will tell for sureâand I have no idea how long it will take.”
“As my wife sometimes says, that doesn't come as a complete surprise.”
“Okay, then.” I took a good breath and squared my shoulders. “Now, Rafe Kendall, I think you have a thing or two you might want to share with me.”
“When we land,” he said.
“When we land? Land where?”
“Paris. You're young and resilient, so today, Monday, and Tuesday should be enough time for you to rest up, and you won't need more than a couple of hours to pack. We have first-class tickets on Air France leaving from Dulles on Wednesday evening. Lie-flat seats, so we'll be able to sleep on the flight. Even with a shiner, you'll still be the most beautiful woman in Paris. As soon as we land, I'll answer every question you have.”
Paris. Whoa!
Rafe nailed it on my bounce-back. By the time we went to bed Monday night I'd say I was up to eighty percent, and by Tuesday afternoon if it weren't for the bandages and a bit of colorful swelling around my eye, you wouldn't know anything unusual had happened to me.
We hadn't even left for Paris yet, much less landed there, so we didn't talk about my questions and Rafe's explanations while we shared a little snack in his home-office around three p.m. on Tuesday. Instead, we talked about Ann DeHoic.
“I think she's even smarter than Jerzy was,” I mused. “And she's as ruthless as they come. But she just doesn't have his instincts, his natural feel for the scam, the sheer joy he took in putting together a caper. When she tried to pull off the hustle herself instead of just helping him do it, she got in way over her head.”
“Thank God for that. If she'd had better criminal instincts, you might be dead.”
“You're right. I won the fight, but I still ended up in the hospitalâand I'm not sure she got much more than a headache out of it. She was a lot stronger than I thought she'd be.”
“She was stronger but you were tougher. You had the guts to step in and take her last punch, even though you knew it'd hurt like Hell, because you figured it would open her up to a counter-punch that would end the fight. Which it did. You had a rough weekend, but you came out of it okay.”
I had a rough month, buddy, not just a rough weekend. But maybe that's what it took for me to grow up. I'm not a moral adolescent anymore
.
Didn't say any of that because Rafe's sententiousness threshold is even lower than mine. I thought it, though. I was still running it through my head when the phone rang. After glancing at the caller-ID screen, Rafe mouthed “lawyer” at me and answered.
“Hey, Mike. Josie is here with me. I'm going to put you on speaker.”
“Get CNN on the biggest computer screen you have. Click the arrow on the lead video.”
Rafe complied. Glued to the grainy digital footage that started streaming, I only half-registered words at the bottom: “Breaking Newsâ¦FBI tapes just releasedâ¦Fleeing fugitive.” Shot through the windshield of a trailing car, the video showed a black SUV rumbling down a narrow, paved strip in otherwise open country. Ahead of it, a Gulfstream jet chugged down the macadam, looking like it was desperately trying to pick up speed. The SUV seemed to gain for a moment, then fell farther back. A stand of pine trees at the end of the runway seemed terrifyingly close. The jet got its wheels off the ground and started to climb, but not quite fast enough. Part of the landing gear caught on a treetop. The jet cartwheeled through the air over the pine, out of sight beyond the tree line. Flames bursting upward well above the treetops, though, sent an unmistakable message: crashed and burned.
“Dierdorf?” Rafe asked.
“So they say. Got an unexpected visit from the FBI and decided to run for it. Didn't have enough runway for a proper takeoff and either took a chance or decided too late to abort. Either way, you only make that mistake once.”
“I'm guessing they'll stamp âSOLVED' on the Jerzy Schroeder case now,” Rafe said.
“They almost have to. You can't indict a corpse, even in Maryland. I mean, only a paid Dierdorf hit-man could plausibly have murdered Schroeder, right?”
“Works for me.”
“They'll grill the Hell out of Reuter. He'll say he didn't do it. They'll say, âThen who did?' And he'll either keep his mouth shut, which will make him look as guilty as Hell, or throw some recently deceased Dierdorf thug under the bus. If he has trouble coming up with a thug who died with Dierdorf in the plane crash, they might give him a hint. Either way, case closed.”
“Primo analytics,” Rafe said. “Thanks for calling.”
“Always glad to be the bearer of good news. By the way. Fella named Danny Klimchock called. Said he has an intuition that the Department of Energy may shift Dierdorf's solar power subsidy to another solar power company that will require some applied engineering services from Klimchock. Figures a Washington lawyer might prove helpful. No ethical conflict that I can see, but would that raise any kind of client relations concern on your part?”
“Nope. Full speed ahead, take no prisoners.”
“Thanks.”
Rafe clicked the phone off and turned toward me, smiling like a sales rep who'd just snagged the Coors concession on fraternity row at LSU.
“I guess you did get what you came for at Schroeder's house.”
“Copy that, tiger.”
I didn't start on Rafe the moment we put round rubber down at Charles de Gaulle International Airport outside Paris. I waited until we'd checked into Le Tremoille near the Champs Elysées and unpacked and gotten a five-star brunch delivered by room service.
Then
I teed off.
“All right. I've got this much. You knew right from the git-go that something didn't smell right about Jerzy Schroeder coming to a raw rookie like me to handle his Dierdorf project. You turned to McAbbott, who found out from friends he still has at the Bureau that Dierdorf was both big-time bad news and Jerzy's current target of opportunity. So you hired McAbbott to flesh that out with his own surveillance efforts. He came through with the picture of Jerzy's ex next to Dierdorf and a couple of shady characters tied to a Jerzy scam.”
“You figured all that out by yourself? You're a pretty smart girl.”
“Not as smart as you. Once you'd put those pieces together, you realized that Jerzy planned to kill me and frame Dierdorf for the murder, because the only way I could realistically help him pull off a subsidy swap was by providing a convenient corpse. So you had someone forge a bill of sale showing that you'd gotten rid of your hunting rifle years ago, even though you still had it. Who handled the forgery, by the way?”
“Well, if there were a forgery, it would be deliciously ironic if Schroeder had arranged itâin exchange, say, for inside information about Dierdorf.”
“From McAbbott.”
“I suppose so, if you want to speculate.”
“You bought a telescopic sight for the rifle, had it expertly mounted, and did some target practice at a gun store well outside the area. You paid cash for a pair of shoes that you'd get rid of after you wore them the day you killed Jerzy. You hoped the Feds would moot Jerzy's whole plan by arresting Dierdorf, but they didn't move fast enough. When we were talking during our run a couple of days after the murder, you unintentionally let slip that you thought Jerzy was taking me to a meeting with Dierdorf. You had that thought because McAbbott told you that Jerzy had generated documentation supposedly showing that Dierdorf would be in the area that day. When you learned that, you knew Jerzy was about to take me out and you couldn't wait any longer. Leaving your cell phone with McAbbott at his place, you hustled out to Jerzy's house the day Dierdorf would supposedly be in D.C., perched in a tree at the back of the property, and ambushed Jerzy when he came out of the house with me. You committed cold-blooded murder to save my life.”
“Did I now?”
“Yes, you did.”
“And how did I get McAbbott to go along with all this felonious behavior without paying him a huge amount of moneyâwhich a comprehensive forensic audit has shown I didn't do?”
“You offered him something worth much more than money to an author: sizzle and the promise of celebrity and fame. One-moment-in-time stuff. Book events with lines stretching out the front doors and way down the sidewalks at Barnes and Nobles in twenty cities. You pulled strings and called in chits and did favors and asked for favors until you got a shot of a senior aide carrying
Knuckle Rap
while she was walking behind the President of the United States. Things you ordinarily wouldn't have done for any client of yours short of an ex-Secretary of State. Suddenly McAbbott's upcoming thriller is big-time Beltway buzz-bait. Every paper that matters will review it and two or three will do profiles of him. Amazon will have to lay on extra staff just to cover the pre-orders. Most authors would kill for that. McAbbott only had to help you killâand then back up your alibi to the hilt. The only thing I can't figure out is how you kept the cops from finding the serial number of your rifle when they did the infrared trick.”
“Hypothetically, you mean.”
“Fuck hypothetically.”
“Well, your buddies at the NRA have fixed things so that anyone willing to attend a gun show can buy a rifle without proving his identity, going through a background check, or using a credit card, as long as there are sellers there who aren't federally licensed firearms dealersâand there always are. Completely anonymous transactions. So, hypothetically, I could have just bought another Winchester three-oh-eight, machined off the serial number, used my own rifle for the executionâor what you for some reason keep calling the murderâand left the gun-show rifle I'd bought for the police to find. Raising the serial number would confirm that it wasn't mine, giving the police one more reason to drop me from the suspect list.”
“But ballistics would show that that rifle wasn't the murder weapon.”
“Ballistics is only an exact science on television. If, hypothetically, the killer used a soft-nosed bullet that would split into lots of tiny fragments by the time it made the exit wound, proving anything with a ballistics test would be a pretty chancy proposition. And if the ballistics test did exclude the rifle they found, that would just be one more frustrating dead end for them. Hypothetically.”
“So you did it.”
“That's a very creative conjecture on your part. But tell me this: if all of what you think you've figured out were true, how would you feel about it?”
I don't think he really had to ask. I'll give you eight to one he could pick up my vibe without any verbal hints from me. I took a deep, cleansing breath, though, told myself to relax, and answered his question.
“Well, I hate to traffic in gender stereotypes, but we modern, twenty-first century women aren't hung up on intellectual or emotional consistency. We want men who are polite and thoughtful and considerate and generous lovers and respectful of our intellects and who love us for ourselves alone,
et cetera
. That's what we love. But while we're loving all that stuffâwell, bad boys turn us on. Big time. And it doesn't get badder than slaying a dragon for us when we're in distress.”
“Even if it's not a fair fight?”
“What were you supposed to do? Try to follow Jerzy and me and wait until he had the gun to my head before you shot him? Dragons don't fight fair. From a strictly bad-ass point of view, they don't deserve an even break.”
“So you get a kick out of vibrating to the shivering thrill of dangerous company at eleven o'clock in the morning?” Rafe asked.
“Yeahâor pretty much any other time.”
That tore it. Rafe and I started playing all our favorite Washington bedroom games from our first few months together: Majority Whip; Discharge Petition; Naughty Intern; Motion to Table; Binding Resolution; and Monica's First Cigar. We didn't leave the room for three days.
I was afraid Rafe might overdo it a bit on Naughty Intern. I'd decided that if he did, I'd know where he was coming from so I'd just suck it up and take it. He didn't, though. Overdo it, I mean. Much. Partly he's a real gentleman, and partly I laid on the Creole charm with a trowel, and partly I just plain wore him out.
I guess by then I'd gotten real good at damage control.