Free Fall (34 page)

This whole month was starting to get downright surreal.

"How long on those photos?"

"Get me the information tomorrow morning and I'll have it in a couple of days." Pause.

"Mark. I'm serious about the job we'll put together a compensation package I guarantee you'll be happy with. Think about it."

The Washington, D. C." weather had taken a turn for the worse and the wind was driving the cold between the gaps in Mark Beamon's topcoat. He adjusted his tie to be a more efficient wind block and stopped at the beginning of a brick walkway that split off toward a large brownstone set off from the road.

It was more ornate than the one Tom Sherman called home, but was somehow less impressive. Perhaps it was the overly efficient use of landscaping to make the tiny front yard look larger than it really was. Or maybe it was just his mood. The far-fetched suspicions that he'd formed the night before hadn't faded as he'd hoped. If anything, they'd gained force.

He still didn't know why he'd been summoned by Hallorin's man, having had only a brief logistical conversation with Roland Peck's secretary.

Whatever it was, though, he was fairly sure it would further complicate his life.

Beamon walked slowly up the walk and rapped on the heavy leaded glass that made up most of the front entrance. A moment later the door was pulled open and Beamon found himself face to face with the tallest Asian woman he had ever seen.

"Mr. Beamon?" the woman said in thickly accented English that sounded strangely formal.

"I am Mrs. Peck. Please come in."

Beamon stepped through the doorway, getting close enough to her to use his own height for perspective. She couldn't have been any shorter than six one, with a haircut that looked like it had been done with a ruler, and makeup that favored shades of dark gray. The long, black dress she wore was buttoned high around her neck, but hung in a way that accentuated the obviously surgically enhanced breasts jutting from her chest.

All in all, the impression was not that of your average corporate wife.

She looked more like the product of an unholy union between a Russian power lifter and a Chinese witch.

"Nice to meet you, Mrs. Peck," Beamon said as she pushed the heavy door closed behind them.

"Call me Mark."

She didn't smile and didn't reciprocate his offer to put their relationship on a first name basis, instead she gave a short nod of acknowledgment and turned to walk down the entry. Something in her gait suggested that Beamon should follow. He did so at a safe distance.

"My husband told me to offer his apologies for the last-minute change in plans. It seems that he was delayed at a meeting in Virginia and would have been inexcusably tardy if he had tried to make it back to the office for your meeting." Beamon got the impression that she was less speaking than exactly imitating her husband's words.

"Not a problem, ma'am. In fact, your house is actually easier to get to from where I'm staying."

He looked around him as they weaved through the old house, trying to get a feel for the Pecks as human beings, but not finding much he could hold onto. Furnishings were clearly the work of a professional decorator, obvious from the way the artwork matched the color scheme and was exactly the right size for the space it occupied. There were no personal photographs in evidence, nor were there any objects out of place.

Everything seemed to have been purchased in the spirit of old, brown, and too heavy for one person to lift.

"Perhaps you would like to wait in Mr. Peck's office," the woman said, stopping in front of an open door. Apparently she wasn't on a first name basis with her husband either. Beamon let her have it with his warmest smile and walked past her into the deceptively large room.

"Mr. Peck called only moments before you arrived and is on his way.

Can I get you anything while you wait?" she said, already turning and walking back toward the center of the house. The question had clearly been rhetorical.

The office was more expressive than the house that surrounded it. The generally unavoidable massive desk, leather chair, and expensive rugs were nowhere to be found. In fact there was no desk at all only three round tables, each about four feet in diameter, placed in separate corners of the room. Each was piled high with papers, as was the floor around the edge of the room, and each was surrounded by three simple chairs. The fireplace cut into the far wall looked like it hadn't been used in a hundred years and now housed too many hardback books to count.

As near as Beamon could tell, there wasn't a single drawer or file cabinet anywhere.

As would be expected, one wall was covered with framed photographs, but they seemed to be kind of a shrine to David Hallorin. It took a couple of minutes, but Beamon finally found the other similarity between them almost all of them also included a thin, red-haired man that Beamon assumed must be Roland Peck. The pictures seemed to be in chronological order, going back some twenty years based on Hallorin's appearance and dress. In the early ones, Peck looked to be no more than a teenager.

Beamon moved slowly along the wall, examining the pictures until he was within about a foot of one of the three tables scattered around the office.

He stood where he was for about a minute, pretending to concentrate on a photo of Peck and Hallorin at a picnic, and listening for anything that would suggest someone outside in the hall. The only noise in the house sounded like kitchen utensils clanging together and was well distant.

Satisfied that he wasn't being watched, Beamon leaned over the table next to him and began casually nipping through the stacks of papers on it.

Vinyl-bound financial reports, mostly. All from companies and partnerships he'd never heard of but that undoubtedly made up a portion of David Hallorin's empire.

He moved on to the next table, which seemed to contain only items relating to Hallorin's campaign. Despite the fact that there was no apparent order to the scraps of papers and articles lying there, Beamon was careful not to move anything out of its place something told him that Peck knew precisely where every paper clip in this office was nestled.

Highlighted articles about Hallorin and his running mate dominated, with bound transcripts of his opponents' speeches running a close second Beamon shuffled around the table a few feet and found a teetering stack of legal pads, the first of which was covered with elegant handwriting in red ink.

Its content was marginally more interesting than the rest of the stuff he'd rifled so far, but still contained nothing that could tell him why he was there or implicated Hallorin in anything unethical. For the most part, the short sentences and paragraphs contained the clever, seemingly off-the-cuff, retorts that Hallorin was quickly becoming renowned for.

"I didn't think it would be my responsibility to defend the African-American community tonight, but I feel obligated to point out that there are more whites on welfare than blacks." That one had been replayed a thousand times on TV Hallorin had used it to zing Phillippe Mohamed on Oprah.

Beamon lifted the edge of the top pad with the end of a pencil and peeked at the one under it, still mindful of the open door. This one consisted of quotes relating to Hallorin's more radical ideas attributed to his dead wife. Beamon had never heard any of these specifically, but he had recognized the strategy they represented during the media's coverage of the campaign. Whenever Hallorin got backed too far into a corner, he would nail his opponent with a quote from beyond the grave.

No politician alive would attack the memory of a man's wife. What a scumbag.

How did people live like this? Beamon wondered as he revealed the next pad with the end of his pencil. Not only did politicians have to care fully consider every word that came out of their mouths, most of it was pre written for them.

The third pad seemed to be full of dumb-ass economic and political metaphors, "Just because I'm stupid enough to run into a burning building when everyone else has the sense to run out, doesn't necessarily mean I'd make a good president."

Beamon skipped over that one and was starting in on the next when he heard the unmistakable sound of a door opening somewhere in the house.

He stepped away from the table and looked behind him at the one he hadn't made it to. Murphy's Law. It probably had a photo of Hallorin killing Jimmy Hoffa or making a deal with space aliens right on top.

Beamon crossed the office and was quietly browsing the Hallorin shrine wall again when the flesh-and-blood version of the red-haired man in the photographs jerked through the door.

"Mr. Peck, I presume," Beamon said, striding across the room and offering his hand.

"It's nice to meet you."

Peck looked him in the eye a little too hard. He was no doubt dying to look around and see what Beamon had been pawing through in his absence, but wouldn't allow himself the luxury. Beamon suspected that Broomhilda was going to get a serious tongue-lashing for letting him wait in the office. If she was lucky.

"I'm so sorry I'm late, Mr. Beamon. All I can say is that it couldn't be helped. Absolutely couldn't be helped." He clipped off each word as though he was trying to win an award for pronunciation.

"Call me Mark."

"Roland," Peck said, and offered Beamon one of the chairs surrounding the table next to them. He looked vaguely nervous and moved in quick, birdlike motions.

"I appreciate you making time for me on such short notice, Mark."

"My pleasure," Beamon lied.

"I have to say, though, I was surprised to get your message."

Peck dragged his chair away from the table and sat down with a good five feet between them. It was a strange configuration for a meeting: two men seated in what looked like kitchen chairs, facing each other with nothing between them.

"David was very impressed with you. Very impressed," Peck said, as though that was an explanation.

"The feeling was mutual," Beamon lied again.

"I know you're a busy man, so I'll get to the point."

Beamon was thankful for that. Not only was he dead curious, but there was something about this little man that made him uncomfortable.

"We have a position open "

"In the campaign?"

Peck smiled even that was a jerky motion and shook his head.

"No, no. I have very little to do with the senator's political life. I work on his corporate side the opening is in our security division."

Beamon had to fight to keep from laughing. Could it be? Yet another job offer? Getting himself fired, disgraced, and indicted was turning out to be one of the best career moves he'd ever made. Any day now that kid he used to beat up in grade school was going to call and offer him a quarter of a mil to sit around and get fanned by beautiful women.

"You understand," Peck said, his sharp features suddenly reconfiguring themselves into a severe expression, "that everything we talk about tonight is completely confidential?"

Beamon's nod seemed to satisfy him.

"Should David not win the election this year ..." To his credit, Peck's tone carried an uncertainty to it that actually didn't sound practiced.

"... he does not intend to stay in politics. He feels that he's accomplished everything he can as a senator, and I've been urging him to come back and take an active roll in the management of his companies.

I'm not confident that Robert Taylor has the faintest idea how to turn the economy or the country around, and if this recession is going to continue, we need David Hallorin back at the helm."

Peck let that sink in for a moment and then continued.

"Obviously, the senator had been very open about his, um, innovative views and had been equally vocal in his criticism of the Middle East.

Frankly, he's made enemies. Some we know about, some we don't."

Beamon nodded his agreement. Hallorin's proposed foreign policy toward the Middle East had been summed up by the press as "send 'em back to the Stone Age." In his mind, if America could lead the world away from fossil fuels, the Arabs wouldn't have the money to buy the nuclear toys and delivery systems that they so coveted. A practical idea to be sure, but less than popular with your more Allah-loving fundamentalist wackos.

"In any event," Peck said, "we are going to need much more sophisticated security capabilities than we have now. Much more. As opposed to having separately run security organizations for our different companies as we do now, we intend to create a central control point that all the separate offices would report to. As I envision it, we would have a consistent policy for all the different corporate arms and fairly sophisticated intelligence capabilities."

"Makes sense," Beamon said in the silence that ensued. He still wasn't sure what to make of all this.

Another coincidence?

"The senator was very impressed with you. Very impressed. He wanted me to ask you if you would be interested in setting up and running our new security system."

Beamon felt his eyebrows rise uncontrollably.

"Excuse me?"

"The position would pay four hundred and fifty thousand dollars per year with stock options that will probably amount to another two hundred thousand dollars or so. You'd be given a generous budget for setting up the program and acquiring staff of your choice."