The Enemy Inside (7 page)

The
Washington Gravesite
was stepped around gingerly like a poisonous serpent by any shrewd politician in the Capitol. It had a bite that was toxic and it seemed to be growing another rattle every year. Grimes didn’t need to know about Ives or the story he was working on. If she had known, she would have panicked. That and the girl. Ives, no doubt, would by now have told his lawyers about the little Asian beauty. They definitely had some mopping up to do.

“How serious is it?” she asked.

“It’s nothing for you to worry about. You just take care of the items on your agenda. You have two up this week. Make sure the votes go the right way.”

A pained expression crossed Grimes’s face.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” he asked.

“There’s a problem with the appropriation on the Siderail Software deal,” she said.

“What kind of problem?”

“I need one more vote. I was counting on Mendez. Senator from Arizona.”

“I know who Mendez is.”

“He won’t return my calls,” she said. “He’s avoiding me. His assistant says he has problems with the item, something about a manufacturer back in his state who wants a piece of the contract. Mendez won’t vote for it unless he gets a guarantee.”

“It’s too late for that,” said the man. “We need that bill.”

“Without Mendez I can’t get the item out of committee.”

“Don’t worry about Mendez. When the vote comes up he’ll be on board. But you should have called me. I can’t help you unless I know,” he said.

“How are you going to do that?”

“Leave it to me.”

Before he could say anything more, a man came into view walking quickly toward them. He was carrying a brown bag in one hand and a plastic bottle of Coke in the other. In his twenties, he had on a dark pair of slacks, a white shirt, and a tie. His collar was open. He had that hurried look, one of the sea of civil servants punching the clock for lunch. He plunked himself down on the other end of the bench and started opening the brown bag.

The man in the three-piece looked over at him and said, “Do you mind? This is a private conversation.”

The younger man was good-sized. He appeared fit. And apparently this was not his day to take shit. “You want privacy, find an office!” he said.

“I’d prefer you find another bench.” The man in the suit twisted the handle on his cane just enough to release the bayonet thread so that the razor-sharp blade slid a few inches out from the cane. He could have shown him the SIG Sauer nine-millimeter under his coat, but why go nuclear in a quiet park?

The man with the brown bag looked at the glint on the blade and swallowed. “No problem.” He didn’t even look up at Grimes. Instead he got up, grabbed his Coke, and walked quickly down the path away from them.

“Does that make you feel big?” she asked.

“I don’t have a problem with it. Oh, I forgot. That’s right, you don’t like weapons. I apologize,” he said. He gave her a sinister grin. “I forgot your crusade. That you authored all those bills to outlaw, what was it, assault rifles and large clips? And you worked behind the scenes so quietly to sell all that used US military brass to the Chinese, mountains of it, just so that crazy gun loaders in America couldn’t get their hands on any of it. That was a stroke of genius,” he said. “Must have really put the press on the gangbangers in South Chicago. Only being able to kill a hundred people or so a night now. All those years pushing the ATF button to push them in the face of the gun dealers. Put as many of them as possible out of business, along with the manufacturers. You’re just up to your little honkers in good works, aren’t you?”

He stopped for a moment and looked at her, the smile gone from his face. “But then, of course, you have a permit to carry, don’t you?” He knew she did. He sometimes wondered if she might bring her pistol, a snub-nosed .38, to one of their meetings and try to put an end to it. But it wouldn’t do her any good unless she turned it on herself. “Where exactly do you hide it?” he asked. He looked her up and down with a kind of lustful leer as if the next thing he might do was strip-search her.

A good number of the political class constantly railed against guns and gun owners and then used their influence to obtain permits so that they could carry concealed weapons themselves. This was done mostly when they were back in their districts. Firearms were frowned upon in the highly sanitized atmosphere of the Capitol, where security was now so tight that members of the public had to make appointments, sometimes weeks in advance, and get ten-printed just to do the public tour of the hallowed halls that for more than thirty years had been the scene of the collective crime.

“I got that permit years ago when I was being stalked!” She said it with a tone of defiance. The instant the words left her lips she knew it was a mistake.

“Oh, I hope he didn’t hurt you,” said the man.

She shook her head, said nothing. Why compound the error?

“Thank God for that!” He shook his head. “It’s a sick world out there. You do have to wonder what’s going on in some people’s minds. That an honest, hardworking public servant such as yourself would be the victim of a stalker. You do have to wonder what could possess someone.”

The way he said it and the fact that he seemed to be waiting for an answer made her feel like a bug pinned under his microscope.

“One who didn’t know better might think you had done something wrong,” he offered. “But then, of course, we know better. Like I say, it’s a sick world.”

She stood there, the quiet anger fixed in her eyes. He was right about one thing. She had no one to blame but herself. Back in the Senate Office Buildings or in the Capitol she was part of the aristocracy. Out here she belonged to him.

Under the dome she might be whisked into the private members’ elevator between floors, and be able to jump aboard the little private underground choo-choo that chugged them beneath the sweltering streets of Washington so they wouldn’t wear out shoe leather or have to mingle with the unwashed.

Here, faced with the reality that others knew her secret, she was forced to stand by silently and accept the humiliation. She hoped in time he would let her go. He assured her that they would at some point. Until then there was nothing she could do, nothing she could say. Serna had discovered Grimes’s secret and had tried to extort favors and money from her only to discover that she was standing in line, that the people in front of her had a prior claim and that they held it with a death grip.

SEVEN

M
r. Madriani, call for you.” Brenda Gomes, my secretary, looks over at me from her desk, her hand cupped over the tiny microphone on her headset.

I am out front looking for a file in one of the cabinets. “Who is it?” I mouth the words so as not to be heard at the other end of the line.

“Mr. Diggs,” she whispers.

“I’ll take it in my office.” Seconds later I am behind my desk, the phone to my ear. “Herman. Paul here.”

“Benjawan Tjahana,” says Herman. “I’m not exactly sure how she spells it. But the man says that’s how she pronounced it. He remembers because he was very interested. So interested he wrote it down. It seems your client didn’t lose his entire memory. According to the guy at the tattoo shop, she’s a real dish. A regular rare-earth man magnet,” says Herman.

“Lucky for us she made an impression,” I tell him. “Otherwise you might be looking forever.”

“Makes sense,” says Herman. “They needed something to attract Ives. What better bait?”

“Does he have an address for her? This man at the shop?”

“No.”

“Damn!”

“But he got her cell number.”

My eyes light up. “Good man!”

“And a good part of her life story,” says Herman. “Seems that dragon on her leg is pretty good-sized, from just above her knee to the sweet spot on the inside of her thigh. The little dimple,” says Herman.

“Sounds like you had a very detailed discussion with this man.”

“And he got pictures.” Herman allows this to settle in.

“Of her face?”

“Among other things,” he says. “They had a long time to talk while she was on the table and he was doing his art. Says she’s an Indonesian national. Came here on a student visa to study computer science at the local C.C.” Herman means the two-year community college. “That was eight years ago.”

“She’s overstayed her visa,” I say.

“Unless they offer advanced degrees in digital rocket science,” says Herman, “she’s in the country illegally. Could give us some leverage.”

“Or turn her into a rabbit,” I tell him.

“According to what she told the man at the shop she was working at a private club out near the beach.”

“What club?”

“He gave me the name and address, but he says you won’t find it in the phone book or on the net. It’s in a commercial building near the pier. From what he was saying, it sounded like one of those places wouldn’t pass muster with the health department.”

“Why is that?”

“Where the female help cleans the tables with their bare behinds after you eat. Businessman’s lunch,” says Herman.

“When’s the last time he saw her?” I ask.

“He did the dragon in two sessions. Last one was three weeks ago. She may still be working there. I paid him a few bucks and he e-mailed two of the pictures he took. I’m sending them to you soon as I hang up. The guy got a couple of very good ones.”

“I don’t need any thigh shots,” I tell him.

“How do you know until you look?” says Herman. He laughs. “A clear, crisp head-and-shoulder close-up, and one a little farther out. She’s wearing a robe from the shop. Do me a favor and forward them on to your client. Give him a call and make sure it’s her before we get too excited.”

“Will do,” I tell him.

“In the meantime, let me see if I can find this club, see if she’s still working there. If we get lucky maybe vice hasn’t closed it down yet.”

“If you strike out there, try her cell phone records. See if they have a home address.”

“That’s always sketchy,” says Herman. “The way young folk move around. She’s had more than enough time to blow through a two-year contract with the carrier, and if she’s nervous about anything . . .”

“You mean like being in the country illegally,” I say.

“That and who knows what else,” says Herman, “then there’s a good chance she’s probably prepaid. I long for the days of the old landline,” he says, “when people were nailed to the ground if they wanted modern conveniences. This keeps up, pretty soon they’ll be able to take a digital dump long distance online. Then you’ll never be able to catch ’em at home.”

“Send me those pictures,” I tell him. “And call me as soon as you find this place. That is, if she’s still working there. And do me a favor, Herman, don’t talk to her, not yet. Just locate her and call me. I don’t want to scare her off until we can nail her down.”

“How you gonna do that?”

“I don’t know. Let me think about it.”

EIGHT

I
f there was any debriefing to be done with Serna’s secretary, Proffit would do it himself. Serna’s original secretary had been lured away by another firm at an obscenely high salary more than a year earlier. Proffit had secretly guaranteed the woman’s increase in pay with the other firm for two years in order to get her to move on.

Vicki Preebles, her replacement, was hired by Serna, but from a short list of applicants, all of whom had been carefully selected and screened by Proffit beforehand. They were paid for their time and sworn to secrecy. They signed nondisclosure agreements in blood and were told that they would be legally drawn and quartered if they revealed anything told to them during the selection process.

Olinda Serna had been making a move on Proffit to replace him as managing partner for about eighteen months. She had been meeting privately with other partners in the firm, flying from office to office, lining up support for a palace coup. Proffit knew this from travel records and pieces of information he had gleaned from others in the firm, people who were loyal to him. He was taking no chances and no prisoners.

It was how he confirmed the details of the budding rebellion: pillow talk with Vicki Preebles. After she was hired by Serna, Proffit wasted no time setting Preebles up in an apartment, a place the secretary could never have afforded on her own salary, where, from time to time, he would visit her whenever he came to town, which was almost every week. He ordered in catered dinners, intimate evenings spent discussing office gossip, sometimes over champagne and, on more frisky occasions, shots of tequila.

Proffit was married. He had three grown children and two grandchildren. But he was not averse to mixing a little business with pleasure. Besides, it was a necessary arrangement. He could have just paid Vicki for the information, but that might not have purchased her loyalty. Emotional connections, though sometimes volatile, were invariably more trustworthy.

This afternoon the grieving secretary was still off work as he visited her.

“What will happen to me now that she’s gone?” asked Preebles. “I don’t want to seem cold or uncaring . . .”

“No one could accuse you of that,” said Proffit. “And there’s no need to explain. I understand. Don’t worry. You have a solid future with the firm. A job as long as you want it.” He smiled warmly as he lay bare chested in his boxers atop the thick feather comforter on her bed.

Preebles was under the covers, naked, lying on her side, one breast partially exposed, her nipple hard as a nail head and twice as large.

Proffit picked at the carefully arranged pieces of fresh fruit from a large platter that lay on the bed between them. It looked like a scene from one of DeMille’s Roman orgies. The only things missing were the slaves with their feathered fans and the jingling belly dancers.

“Yes, but who will I work for?” she asked.

He knew she was going to be trouble. But there was time for that later. “We will find a job for you that you will love. I promise.”

“Why couldn’t I just work for you?”

He shot her a quick glance. When he found her studying his face he rapidly turned his eyes back to the fruit.