Electing To Murder (32 page)

Now the extremely capable McRyan and Wire were investigating.

They were a danger.

The two of them were relentless and would not stop.

They presented him with one last loose thread to clip and the man to solve that problem was coming up his driveway.

T
he Judge sat on a folding chair in the bowels of Crisler Arena on the campus of the University of Michigan and poured over the electoral map as he listened to Michigan’s governor rev up the crowd for Governor Thomson, who would speak in five minutes. Michigan was largely in the bag, the governor up by eight points, but they wanted to be sure and much of their campaigning, and the media coverage it would garner, would seep into the northern Ohio media markets, which was prime vote territory.

Yet despite the enthusiasm in the arena, the Judge was dour. Something was going on at DataPoint and it was going to have an impact on the election. “Fucking Connolly,” he grumbled, as he stood up and heard the roars of the crowd come through the halls of Crisler Arena on the campus of the University of Michigan.

“You were right, of course,” Sally Kennedy said, standing ten feet back. She’d walked unnoticed into the anteroom a minute earlier and was watching the Judge pore over the map.

“About?”

“Connolly.”

The Judge twirled his cigar in his right hand. “I’ve met many a political operator in my day, Ms. Kennedy. And most of them understood there was a certain honor that came with doing this. They loved their country.”

“But they played by the rules, right?”

The Judge smiled, a kind of wistful smile, an acknowledgment that his views were now very old school, but they were also from a good school. “To quote my good friend, the forty-second president of the United States,” the Judge deadpanned in his best Clinton, “that depends upon what your definition of ‘rules’ is.”

Sally chuckled as did the Judge.

“So rules are relative in politics. You hit your opponent hard where he is weak and you pound away day after day. You might twist your opponent’s words out of context to get political mileage out of it. And if I could, I always liked to keep a surprise or two in my back pocket if I could to use the week before the election. All of that’s fair game,” the Judge said enthusiastically. “Guys like Ol’ Ed Rollins, Steve Schmidt, Jimmy Baker, Mary Matalin, Charlie Black, they were good people to go up against. They were patriots. They were Republicans that I could battle against and they would piss me off, oh my God, would they piss me off. But it was because they were
good
. I worked on Mondale’s campaign back in 1984, back when you were probably in elementary school.”

“Pre-school, actually,” Kennedy needled.

“Man, I’m getting old,” the Judge answered ruefully. “Well, in 1984, Fritz got his ass kicked. Of course, it’s the height of the Cold War and the president ran that ‘Bear in the Woods’ television spot. Have you seen that?”

“Sure, I saw it on YouTube when someone mentioned it a while back.”

“YouTube,” the Judge snorted and shook his head, acknowledging again how things had indeed changed. “Anyway. I remember calling Ed Rollins who was running the Reagan campaign a week before the election.”

“Before the election?”

“Oh hell yeah. It was over at that point, the only question was whether the Gipper would sweep everything or if we could at least hold onto Minnesota. So I called Ed and we laughed about that ad because it was brilliant. It really was and I had to tell him that. And it was good politics. Ed and his boys kicked our ass, but he did it with honor and integrity. Heath Connolly?” The Judge shook his head. “Connolly has no honor or integrity. I hate Rove. What he did to a good man in John McCain back in 2000 in South Carolina and then Max Cleland down in Georgia in 2002, a Vietnam Vet, a man who lost limbs in that war, engineering a campaign that questioned his patriotism, his commitment to protect this country, was reprehensible. It degraded the politics of our country and simply creates an environment where people like Heath Connolly flourish. He’s Karl Rove on steroids, EPO and HGH all at once. Connolly could give a shit about country.”

“But he wins,” Kennedy answered.

“And in the end I suppose that’s all that matters to lots of people,” the Judge answered. “Just not me. I’ll have to meet my maker someday. When I’m lying on my death bed, I want to know I did right. I don’t want to be like Lee Atwater, begging for forgiveness on my death bed for my sins against my fellow man when I’m dying. I want to go with a clear conscience knowing I did it the right way.”

“Connolly doesn’t have a conscience from what I can see.”

“Or a soul,” the Judge shook his head disgustedly. “He doesn’t care how you win, just win.” Dixon exhaled. “I think how you win matters.”

Sally nodded and looked down at the map and saw the Judge’s chicken scratch math off to the side of the map, with Ohio in Governor Thomson’s column, but Iowa, Wisconsin and Virginia flipped red. The election would end up 271 for the vice president and 267 for Governor Thomson. She’d done the math herself a few times already, running different scenarios on her notepad, assuming something was going on in the three key states.

“Judge?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t worry. We’ll find the answers. I’ve got faith.”

“In your boy?” Meaning Mac.

She nodded and then gave him a sly smile. “He likes to win too.”

* * *

Saturday afternoon on Water Street in Milwaukee meant it was time for Happy Hour drinks. As 4:00 p.m. disappeared in the rearview mirror, the bars along the avenue started to fill with partiers dressed in red looking to get tuned up for the football game. The Wisconsin Badgers would be playing the Minnesota Golden Gophers at 6:00 p.m. and the bar was starting to fill with Badger fans for the game; it looked like the Soviet Red Army was invading. In Wisconsin, with the successes of the Green Bay Packers and Wisconsin Badgers football teams, much of the talk in the bar revolved around the bruising Badgers rushing game or the aerial majesty of Aaron Rodgers. It was expected that the weekend would be one of winning. For Mac, sitting in a corner booth at Fitzgibbon’s, it all made his stomach turn.

“Why such a sour look on your face?” Wire asked, sipping at her Miller Lite. They were in Milwaukee so the beer would, of course, have to be a Miller product.

“The Packer and Badger fans,” McRyan answered, gesturing to the crowd. “My poor Golden Gophers, they never seem to be able to get over the hump. They play the Badgers tonight, and while the new coach has them going in the right direction, it could be really ugly here in a few hours. And the Packers? The team is great, fun to watch and I love Aaron Rodgers, he is a stud, and Lambeau Field? I’ve watched two games there and it is way cool. But the Packer fans?” He shook his head. “The worst. Absolutely insufferable.”

“They love their team.”

“Everyone loves their team,” Mac answered. “But only in Wisconsin,
only
in Wisconsin, do the fans actually delude themselves into thinking they’re part of the team. In Minnesota, we don’t say ‘we’ when talking about the Vikings. We say the Vikes will beat the Bears, the Purple will beat the Packers. In Wisconsin, they don’t say the Pack will beat the Vikes, they say ‘we’ will beat the Vikes. There is no ‘we.’ They are not on the field. The fans are not playing. They’re just fans, just like ones in every other city. It’s ridiculous.”

Wire laughed, the ever serious Mac McRyan whining about Packer fans. She pushed his buttons. “So they’re proud of their team. They’ve won five Super Bowls. I mean, how many have the Vikings won?”

Mac took a sip of his beer and glared at her. She half thought he might jump across the table and clock her.

They were just having one drink, nursing a small beer and then it would be back to water or coffee. The beer was part of a strategy that Mac and Wire concocted back at DataPoint. A Traverse was tailing them with two men. Once they spotted the tail, Ring put a car on them. For an hour, Mac and Wire drove around Milwaukee, eventually stopping and dropping their bags at a hotel before making the trek to the pub. Their tail stayed with them the whole way. The plate on the Traverse was for a rental. The name on the rental was for George Wilson. The rental was charged on a credit card with Black Rook Enterprises, another Cayman Islands Company with a PO Box.

Ring’s men did a background on George Wilson. Wilson listed a Florida address on his license. He had a clean criminal and driving record and a quiet credit history going back just two years. The license was a Florida license with an address that didn’t exist. It was another cover ID. George Wilson would be dealt with soon. First, they needed to meet with someone.

Mac and Wire parked on the street in front of the pub, easy for the two men to spot and see. In turn, the two followers were now sitting a block south on Water Street waiting. Ring’s men were in turn another block back and a block north on Water Street, watching them, and if they moved, Wire would know. She was wearing an earbud that tied her into communication with Ring and his units on the street. They had three units total watching. Since the two men were sitting in front, it would be easy for Ginger Bloom to slip into the back of the pub and find them in their corner booth.

Before he left DataPoint, Mac wrote instructions for Bloom on the back of his business card. She was instructed to go to her apartment, grab whatever it was that Gabe Martin gave her and then come to Fitzgibbon’s. She was to text Mac when she left the apartment, which occurred ten minutes ago. Mac instructed her to come in the back of the pub since their tail was sitting on Water Street. For her safety, two of Ring’s men followed her from DataPoint to her apartment and then the pub.

Mac got a text from one of the plain clothes cops: “She’s clean. Coming in the back door.”

“She should be in here in a second,” he reported to Wire as he took another sip of his beer.

Bloom knew the bar. She walked right in the rear entrance, took a left and found Wire and McRyan in the back booth, a beer awaiting her arrival. She sat down and immediately started peering around the bar, anxious.

“It’s okay, Ginger,” Wire said, reaching for her hand. “You weren’t followed here.”

Mac slid the beer over to her, “I thought after the day’s events, you could maybe use a drink.”

Bloom nodded and took a long, several-second pull from her beer, put it down, wiped her mouth with the back of her right hand and exhaled. “I needed that.”

“I figured as much,” Mac said sympathetically. “Now, what have you brought us?”

Ginger reached into her handbag and pulled out a letter envelope and handed it to Wire. “I hope I’m doing the right thing.”

Wire nodded and reached for Bloom’s hand, “You are. We’re trying to find Gabriel’s killer and we think whoever killed him is tied into whoever ordered Adam Montgomery and others killed.” Wire took out her pocket knife and opened the envelope. Inside was the business card for Kenosha Self-Storage, a slip of paper with No. 137 written on it and a key to a padlock. She showed the contents to McRyan who nodded.

“So what is the story on this envelope?” Mac asked.

“Gabe gave it to me the night before he was killed. He said if anything happened to him, I should give this to Adam Montgomery. Gabe gave me Montgomery’s phone number to call. The next day, Thursday, I tried to call Montgomery but he never answered his cell phone.”

“Did you leave a message?”

“No, Gabe told me to only talk directly to him, not to leave a message.”

“Was Martin scared?” Wire asked.

Bloom took a sip of her beer. “He didn’t look it outwardly, but it was a scary talk when we had it. He said he was probably being way too paranoid but I could tell he was worried, again not in his expression, but in the way he talked. Something was up but he wouldn’t really tell me what it was all about.”

“He was protecting you,” Mac answered. “He was in danger, from
what
we don’t yet know, maybe this locker tells us. That last day at work, how did that go?”

“It was kind of tense that morning and I know he was in Mr. Checketts’s office for a long time and I know it was a little heated, but that happened from time to time as Mr. Checketts could be pretty harsh on people if he wanted.”

“Business owner,” Mac commented.

“Exactly,” Ginger replied. “Anyways, he’d yelled at Gabe before so I didn’t really give it that much thought, especially when Gabe and I met for lunch. He said everything was cool, I didn’t need to worry and then we talked about normal things, so I assumed whatever he was worried about went away. Obviously it didn’t.”

The three of them went over Bloom’s story again, picking at certain elements but there was nothing more new to be gleaned. “Okay, Ginger, why don’t you finish your beer quick,” Wire suggested, “and then walk straight out the back door and go right home. Two police officers will follow you and then will watch your place for a while just to make sure everything is okay and hopefully the next time we chat, we’ll have answers for you.”

Bloom nodded, finished her beer in two more sips, slipped out of the booth and out the back door. Mac texted the officers waiting outside that Bloom was on her way out.

“So what do you suppose we’ll find in this locker?” Wire asked.

“I don’t know, but before we go down to Kenosha and find out, we need to do something about that tail.” Mac began working his cell phone.

“What are you looking up?”

“Street map for Milwaukee,” Mac answered. “I want to pull a Steve McQueen on our tail.”

Wire looked at him quizzically, “I don’t follow.”

“You ever see the movie
Bullitt
?”

Wire nodded and smiled. “
Now
I know what you’re talking about.”

* * *

Foucault yawned and shook his head. It was late afternoon and it would be dark in minutes, the sun starting to make its final rapid descent to the west. As he leaned back in the passenger seat, he alternately watched the front of Fitzgibbon’s Pub across the median of Water Street to his left, McRyan’s Acadia ahead one block parked on the north bound side and his rearview mirror for the Starbucks two buildings back to his right. Inside the Starbucks, Vigneault was buying coffee and sandwiches, taking advantage of the first chance all day they’d had to get something to eat and drink.