The Miskatonic Manuscript (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens Book 2) (36 page)

Located near the southernmost tip of the state of New Jersey, at the base of the Cape May peninsula, Ocean City was a fading town of about 10,000 permanent residents, though as many as 100,000 vacationing beach-goers could swell the local population in the summer months. So a vehicle with out-of-state plates drew no special attention. Tony had been very careful to park legally — which took some doing — even though he’d ‘borrowed’ the Connecticut plates from a long-term parking lot earlier in the day.

Ocean City had prohibited the sale of alcoholic beverages since its founding in 1879, though, so the late afternoon soda-pop crowd in the restaurant’s meeting room wasn’t exactly whooping it up.

The shindig had been arranged to introduce the Democratic Party’s candidate slate for the Fall elections, and said candidates seemed to be the major focus of attention, earnestly explaining their plans to better fund the local fire department and the vastly expensive coercion-based government schools to small clusters of attendees. But the informant had been correct, the white-haired former congressman, now about 80, was in attendance, seated at a table with a few cronies and a few empty chairs.

Tony ran his fingers through his Beatle-length hair to make sure he looked presentable and walked up to the old gent, whose cane was leaning against the table.

“Ambassador Howard?”

“Yes?”

“Mark Ritchie. I left a phone message,” Tony said, smiling and proudly stroking his new mustache. “We’re doing a Focus piece on the history of the War on Drugs?”

“I was told there was a message, but I’m afraid I didn’t listen to it. You’re with the Sentinel?”

“No, sir. The South Jersey View.”

The local weekly would have a small staff; the former congressman would probably know them, at least by name, or would ask how
his friend the editor was doing. The regional daily, formed a few years back by the merger of three or four struggling smaller papers and based in the next county over, would have a larger and more transitory staff. An unfamiliar name wouldn’t be a problem.

“I’ve got most of the background I need, sir, I just had a few final questions.” Tony helped himself to a vacant folding chair. “I’ve got to say, when you look at the milestone legislation, the stuff that really gave police and prosecutors the tools they need to hamstring these drug operations, your name keeps turning up.”

He hadn’t actually asked “Do you have a minute to answer a few questions?” That would have provided an opening for a “submit them in writing to my secretary” dodge. Never ask a question that can produce an answer you don’t want to hear. A good trial lawyer had once taught him that. Given the chance to take care of things quickly here and not have to see ‘Mark Ritchie’ again — and given that this was an event where an old warhorse of the party would be expected to at least be civil to the gentlemen of the press — plain old plowing ahead was the key. Flattery would get you everywhere.

“Well, son, I was head of the Subcommittee on Crime, so those things do come across your desk. We had a great staff that wrote most of the actual legislation. But yes, if you want to get it enacted, the chairman signs on as sponsor. That’s the way things get done.”

“You represented South Jersey in Congress for twenty years,” Tony Waranowicz began, glancing briefly at his notebook but never breaking his stride. “I know you sponsored the asset seizure act, where the authorities can seize boats, planes, real estate, even cash from suspected drug dealers.”

“That’s right. That’s been a major tool. Do you know they seized more than two billion dollars in assets from drug kingpins last year alone?”

“I did know that, sir, and that’s quite a tribute to that law’s effectiveness. Some of those assets can be turned right around and used by police, too. Fancy sports cars for undercover stings like on
Miami Vice,
things like that.”

“That’s exactly right.”

“What a lot of readers may not understand, though, is that the government gets to keep those assets even if they never actually bring these criminals to trial — even if they never file any actual criminal charges, is that right?”

“Well, son, that’s why it’s such an effective tool. Proving a criminal case can be difficult, especially the way they launder their cash, run it through offshore corporations or whatever. But the way we set up that law, it’s the boat or the car or the cash that’s accused of the crime, the crime of being involved with the drug business, and the previous owner has to prove you’re wrong before he can recover those ill-gotten gains. He has to prove the cash is innocent, you see, show where he got it. Needless to say, not many of them can meet that test.”

“That’s amazing. It doesn’t concern you, though, this idea of people having their property seized before they’re actually convicted of any crime — these reports of policemen in towns along Interstate 95 pulling over black motorists and seizing large sums of cash, without any real evidence those men are drug couriers — just taking the cash and never bringing any charges?”

“Well, son, I don’t see what role a driver’s race should play in it. But let me put it this way. If you got in your car and drove a thousand miles to visit relatives halfway across the country, you’d carry credit cards and travelers checks, right? Would you carry more than ten thousand dollars in
cash
?”

“No, sir, I guess not.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“And then you sponsored the Designer Drug Enforcement Act of 1986, which made it illegal to manufacture or possess not only drugs which had been listed as illegal, but even drugs with a chemical structure which is
similar
to a controlled substance, or which are” — Tony glanced at his notebook again — “‘represented or intended to have a stimulant, depressant, or hallucinogenic effect on the central nervous system of any given person,’ even if no one has actually gotten
around to evaluating that molecule and showing why it should be declared illegal.”

“You see, son, they were manufacturing new chemicals, new molecules, so fast that no one could keep up with them all, they called them ‘designer drugs.’ It was taking years to identify each one of these street drugs, analyze it, prove it was harmful, and get it listed. This streamlined the whole deal and nipped that in the bud, so they couldn’t peddle those harmful, mind-warping drugs to kids just by switching around a few molecules, a few atoms in the molecule.”

“OK.” He jotted a quick note. “And it doesn’t worry you that this may prevent chemists from developing drugs, molecules, that could be useful to mankind?”

“Useful? You may not realize, young man, that taking any of these drugs, marijuana, LSD, any of them, causes mutations, that the children of people who took these drugs, even years ago, can have birth defects, they can be born as disabled retarded mutants. Furthermore, if you’ve taken LSD or these other hallucinating drugs, even once, you can have flashbacks, years later. You can be driving down the road and suddenly you think some kind of monster is attacking you, people have had these flashbacks years later, just out of the blue, driven across the median into oncoming traffic and caused terrible crashes, fatalities.”

“Gracious,” Tony scribbled in his pad. “I guess we don’t want to leave that out.”

“I should think not.”

“And then you managed to ban even chemicals that don’t have any of those effects, by themselves, but which can be used to
manufacture
these kinds of drugs.”

“You’ve done your homework, son.”

“Now, do any of these laws ever run up against the Ninth Amendment, sir? Some people argue Article One Section 10 of the Constitution doesn’t specifically give Congress any power to fight a War on Drugs, at all.”

The ex-congressman smiled the smile of a weary warrior, realizing that once again he faced questions so puny he could swat them down with one hand behind his back. “Son, I’ll defer on questions like that to the superior legal minds of the gentlemen and ladies of the Supreme Court. If you’ll look up a case called Wickard versus Filburn, you’ll find the Supreme Court ruled in 1942 that an Ohio farmer wasn’t allowed to grow wheat in excess of federal price-support quotas, even though he intended to feed it to his own livestock, on his own farm, because doing so might ‘have an impact’ on interstate commerce in wheat. So no, I’m afraid that’s a dead letter. No, we don’t worry about your ‘Ninth Amendment,’ anymore.”

And there it was. They ignored a Constitution that was supposed to limit their powers, they admitted it, and there was no court in the land where you could put them on trial and convict them on their own admission that they’d violated their own voluntary oaths of office to “protect and defend” that Constitution and its amendments, every day they were in office. No “due process” could reach them.

But Tony couldn’t afford to break his rhythm. “Let’s see, in 1985 you co-sponsored legislation to ban the so-called ‘cop-killer’ bullets which were supposed to be able to penetrate an officer’s bulletproof vest, and in 1998 you made it illegal to manufacture, import, or possess any firearm which can’t be detected by an airport metal detector or x-ray machine, that right?”

Tony didn’t bother mentioning that the panic over Glock’s “plastic gun” had turned out to be ridiculous. Advanced ceramics held some promise, but no matter what material you used to make the grips or magazine, no one had yet designed a safely functioning, multi-round handgun without a steel barrel and chamber, fully visible to any airport scanner — leaving aside the question of how you could square the Fourth Amendment with the warrantless searching of millions of Americans not suspected of any crime by “airport scanner” as a condition of letting them travel, in the first place.

“I didn’t do those things single-handed, son. But I played a role, yes. I believe I can say I was always there for our fine police officers.”

“And what do you say to these people who argue that the Second Amendment was written by people who had just fought the American Revolution, that its specific purpose was to make sure the average citizen would always have the kinds of weapons necessary to kill government soldiers and police, the way George Washington and James Monroe did?”

“Well, what do you think? Damnedest nonsense I ever heard. A right to kill police officers? I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but I don’t think even the NRA would argue we shouldn’t protect our police against criminal gangs!” snorted the ex-congressman, citing the nation’s largest gun-control organization, which had always held that every existing gun-control law should be rigorously enforced.

“You sound like a man who’s had some hands-on experience, Mr. Ambassador. You started out as a county prosecutor back in the sixties, trying some of these kinds of cases right here in Ocean City.”

“I did. That’s taking me back a ways.” The old man chuckled.

“Then in 1995 Bill Clinton named you ambassador to the little Latin American nation of Apesta, where you coordinated U.S. military anti-drug missions from the Multi-national Counter-Narcotics Center. I believe there was even a New Jersey fighter wing involved.”

“The 377th Fighter Wing flew cover for our drug interdiction efforts in South America, that’s correct.”

“Wow. That’s some front-line action. You had quite a career. You must be very proud.”

“I just tried to do my part.”

“And having had thirty years to watch the results, any regrets? Any of those laws you’d like to see repealed, any that you’ve called on the people now in Congress to repeal?”

“Repeal? No, I don’t think so. We gave law enforcement the kind of tools they needed. But now young man, if you’ll excuse me, I’m afraid I’m going to have to wrap this up. It’s been a pleasure, but nature calls.”

“Oh, sure, sure. Didn’t mean to hold you up. Appreciate your time, sir.”

The white-haired old man took hold of the edge of the table and pushed himself upright, took his cane, nodded and smiled to the old couple sitting at the far end of the table, raising one eyebrow in a secret joke about eager young reporters, and set off with a purposeful stride toward the restrooms. Tony “Mark Ritchie” Waranowicz stood up as well, headed toward the refreshment table, eyeing the white plastic tub half-full of unopened cans of diet soda embalmed like corpses in a bath of cool water that had once been crushed ice and, on the next table, the fresh-from-the-supermarket tray of cut-up vegetables and “ranch dip.” But then, at the last moment, he altered course, veering to follow the former congressman down the short hallway toward the restrooms when he saw the old man would be alone there for a few moments.

“Sir, I just had this one more question,” he said, hurrying his steps.

“Yes?” asked the old man, stopping and turning around, balancing both hands on his cane, obviously growing impatient.

“Just wondered if you’d ever asked yourself, sir, ‘What would happen if you fought a War on Drugs, and somebody fought back?’”

“What?”

At which point Tony “Mark Ritchie” Waranowicz, still closing the distance between them at a hurry-up pace, drew the “ZT” brand carbon-coated steel combat knife with the special “No Fingerprints” handle from the Velcro sheath where it had been resting, point in the bend of his elbow, along the inside of his left forearm under his heavy cotton long-sleeved shirt, and slid its sturdy black blade upward between the ribs of the former congressman’s chest. He’d had to reject the Gerber, the Eickhorn, even the old Fairbairn-Sykes knives as too long, their handles sticking out well into his palm, finally settling on the newer ZT, at slightly less than 10 inches. It took some strength to get the blade through the chest muscles, he’d practiced the thrust multiple times on a couple of raw, defrosted turkeys tied to a tree in the woods behind his house. Then he worked the blade from side to
side a little, making sure it had sliced completely through the major muscle of the former ambassador’s heart.

“Hey! What the hell?” asked the old man, before he dropped his cane and started coughing.

Tony caught the slumping old-timer, settling him into a sitting position in the little chair beside the old-fashioned wall-mounted pay phone. Tony squatted down, leaned the old man’s cane between his knees, and patted the Fearless Drug Warrior on the back for a few moments until the old man went still.