The Shadow Cabinet (20 page)

Buster and Fuzzy had leased the building six months earlier. They'd hired a carpenter to remodel the rear, where the working laboratories were located—a ballistics cabinet, a few kilns, a chemical and toxology lab, even a small pathology unit run by a Pakistani pathologist from a local hospital who moonlighted for them several nights a week and on weekends. They contracted lab work from county and rural police departments, but also took on assignments for a few overburdened government labs, like the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms at Treasury, which they'd been helping with some demolition cases. The front offices, which they were remodeling themselves, were far from finished. The shell of wooden studding was only half covered by Driwall, and the concrete floor, as yet untiled, was powdered with a fine gypsum dust that lay over desktops, file cabinets, and chairs.

“So tell me what you know about this Signet Security,” Wilson suggested. “Tell me who's behind it.”

“I'll tell you, but one thing you've got to understand,” Buster said. “It's not all bullshit, like you were saying the other night when Bob Combs was on the tube. This thing has been bothering me for a couple of months, since last summer when I talked to this guy on the Hill.”

“All right, but what's it have to do with Signet Security?”

Buster had gotten a telephone call that summer from an ex-next-door neighbor in Alexandria, a staff aide to a Louisiana congressman. A Baptist, he'd discovered what he believed were controlled substances in the backseat of the family car one Sunday morning. His son had used the car the night before and he was worried, not so much about his son, but about the habits of the boy's high school friends, one of whom had just returned from Thailand, where his father had been assigned with the Agency for International Development. He knew about the drug problems in Bangkok, particularly among the young AID and embassy dependents. He'd asked Buster to analyze the substances. The lab analysis showed the green berries to be decorations from a florist's corsage and the pills to be a harmless medication, probably from a girl's purse. Buster hadn't charged him for the analysis, and the relieved father had taken him to lunch.

“He's feeling real good about his son, but it turns out he's down in the dumps about his job,” Buster said. “The congressman he's working for is a hack, a Louisiana wild turkey, way back in the bayous someplace, and my friend is looking for another staff slot, up front where the action is, like with Combs. Then he tells me he had a talk with Combs about filling a staff vacancy.”

“When was this?”

“Just after the election last year. Combs's senior aide is thinking about taking an assistant secretary's job at State or Defense—”

“Shy Wooster,” Fuzzy interrupted. “Shyrock Wooster, the jerk that got that Greek broad into the sack in Athens, remember? Superdick.” Wilson didn't turn. “Hey, Haven, are you listening?”

Wilson nodded. “Yeah, I know Shy Wooster.”

“Just like you knew him the other night when I couldn't remember. How come you didn't say?”

“Shy Wooster isn't worth bothering about. Go ahead, Buster.”

“So anyway, he tells me that after he talked to Combs about filling this staff vacancy, a guy comes around to see him, like an FBI interview. This big guy walks into his office one day, flashes this official-looking badge, and starts banging away with the questions. My Baptist friend is a little shook up about the questions this guy is dishing out—a real body-bag third degree. It turns out this guy isn't FBI at all, but an ex-FBI tough who's the security adviser for Senator Combs and his right-wing money machines.…”

Wilson waited, watching Buster's face.

“Signet Security,” Fuzzy announced. “Signet Security belongs to him.”

“His name's Bernie Klempner,” Buster said.

“What kind of questions were they?” Wilson asked.

“You name it. Gambling habits, organizations he belongs to, sex life, any crazies in the family, does he know any homos—that kind of garbage. So my friend is a little bent out of shape. My friend thinks Bob Combs is the best thing to come down the pike since prohibition, but by the time Klempner works him over, he's feeling like he's been punched out with his pants down in the men's room by some vice squad undercover team—”

“That's what your friend said?” Wilson asked warily.

“My friend? Oh, no, this guy's a Baptist—he's got Listerine breath all day long. He just said he was upset—‘unclean,' I think he said.”

“Did he get the job with Combs?”

“No, it turns out Shy Wooster doesn't want the State or Defense slot, backs off at the last minute, and my friend is out in the cold. He gets a nice folksy letter from Senator Bob saying he'll keep him in mind if something opens up.…”

Wilson listened silently. None of these revelations seemed significant. He was more curious about Signet Security.

“But my friend's still a little pissed about this Klempner third degree,” Buster continued, popping the lid of a beer can from the six-pack beside him. “So one day he's having coffee over in the Senate cafeteria and he bumps into one of Combs's secretaries, a blue-haired old biddy who's been with Senator Bob yea years, ever since he had those car agencies down in South Carolina. She's a Baptist too, takes a summer retreat down in Spartanburg or wherever it is, and has bunions on her knees to prove it. So she gets to talking about how sorry she is my friend won't be joining Combs's staff.”

Wilson was conscious of Fuzzy Larson's omniscient smile from behind the desk.

“My friend asks her about Klempner,” Buster said, “and she gets real confidential all of a sudden, like she's afraid the goddamned table is wired up. So she tells him how come Combs has to be real careful and why these foundations of his, Moral Minutemen, the New Congress Coalition, and these other peckerwood outfits have to have a security expert like Klempner to run their background checks. She tells him how many crackpots and crazies write to Combs, hate mail, a lot of it, some so bad they have to be turned over to the FBI or the executive protection service. Klempner has real tight contacts with the FBI, she says, and he handles the liaison work. But that's not all. She says some of this mail is from wackos on the far right, the oddballs who really get juiced on this right-wing snake oil Combs is hustling and want to set up political action committees, get jobs with his foundations or even come to Washington and work free for Senator Bob and his crusade. She tells my friend Combs could really get burned that way—the crazies from the lunatic fringe, the idiot John Birchers, the old Klansmen who want to turn in their bedsheets for one of Senator Bob's red-white-and-blue Uncle Sam suits. Crypto-Nazis, fascists, America Firsters, anti-Semites, you name it—”

Buster's indignation had carried him away and Wilson broke in patiently: “Is that what she said? Combs's own secretary? Klansmen?”

Buster reconsidered. “No. ‘Misguided patriots,' maybe, I don't remember exactly, maybe some kind of code word, but that's what she meant—”

“You mean you think that's what she meant.”

“What she was saying,” Fuzzy volunteered impatiently, “was that all of this publicity Combs has been getting is bringing a lot of weirdos out of the woodwork.”

“I understand that.”

“So Klempner checks them out,” Buster resumed, “checks them out to make sure they're on the up-and-up, that they're not going to give Senator Bob a bad name. But that's not the hooker. The hooker comes at the end, when this old biddy tells my friend how Combs has to be careful, how he has to watch his step to make sure he isn't sandbagged by someone working for him or one of his foundations—she said embarrassed, maybe, not ‘sandbagged'—the way his poor brother Dorsey almost did him in yea years ago when he went off the deep end.”

Buster had stopped, his silence pregnant with mystery. Wilson waited patiently, watching Buster get up from the table and step through the skeleton of studding into his adjacent office, where he dug through the drawer of a filing cabinet.

“Dorsey Combs,” Fuzzy said, “the senator's half-brother. You ever heard of him?”

“No. I didn't know he had a brother.”

Buster returned with a folder and dropped it in front of Fuzzy. “No one else knows much about him, either. That's when we decided to take a look. Go ahead, Fuzzy, read him the story.”

Fuzzy read from the file folder on his desk, detailing a long chronicle of misdemeanors and arrests, beginning with aggravated assault and disorderly conduct in Selma, Alabama, in the late fifties and moving on to Montgomery, Birmingham, and Atlanta. The charges included assault with a deadly weapon, inciting a riot, pandering, indecent exposure, and transporting a minor across state lines for purposes of prostitution. Charges had been brought in Laurel, Mississippi, Ozark, Alabama, and Nashville, as well as in Washington, D.C., in 1968.

“That's what Buster was talking about at The Players Monday night,” Fuzzy said, “only no one asked. The guy's a jailbird, a record as long as your arm.”

“What's it sound like?” Buster asked. “What's it read like?”

“The civil rights trail,” Wilson said. “Is that what it was?”

“You're goddamned right, all the way. Every lunch counter, bus ride, prayer meeting, sit-in, or march by the Freedom Riders, Dorsey Combs was there, lying out in the high weeds with his knuckle duster and ax handle. I'll bet brother Bob wasn't far behind, either. But that isn't all. Bring him up to date, Fuzzy.”

Larson read from the folder. ‘“Inciting a riot, Spartanburg, May '80. Charges dismissed.' ‘Detained, Knoxville, August '81, suspicion of transporting a minor across state lines for immoral purposes.' This guy's really got obnoxious habits, doesn't he? ‘Charges dismissed.'” He closed the folder. “What do you think, Haven, busy or not?”

“Busier than a monkey with two peckers,” Buster said. “How about it, Haven? Are we just blowing smoke rings or have we got something?”

“Where'd you get that?”

“A friend,” Fuzzy said.

“A friend where?”

“I've got a buddy with the Bureau, an old skeet-shooting pal,” Buster explained. “Last September, Fuzzy and I got to talking about all this shit I'd picked up and I had this friend do an indices check for me, a name check. They've got those computerized indexes and he rolled the tape—”

“That's privileged information—”

“For God's sake, Haven,” Buster said. “He did it with his eyes closed, O.K.? Come on, that's not the point. You notice anything funny about this Dorsey Combs?”

“You told me, the civil rights trail.”

“Nothing else? Come on, Haven, get your wig on. Think a minute.”

“The charges were dismissed,” Fuzzy said. “From the late fifties until '72, this Dorsey Combs spent about twenty-eight months in the slammer; nothing since.”

“So?”

“So? His brother's big-time now,” Buster said, “real big-time. He can pull strings.”

“You think that explains it? Tell me more about Signet, this man Klempner. That's what I want to hear about.”

Klempner had started Signet Security five years earlier, specializing in industrial security and surveillance systems for a few large pharmaceutical firms protecting their research laboratories against industrial espionage. He'd expanded into similar systems for computer manufacturers. He was technical adviser to a few companies designing surveillance systems hardware, and security consultant to a number of local think tanks and private foundations, like those of Bob Combs. But his ties to the FBI were a little ambiguous. Foreman had heard that two years earlier Klempner had worked a trick with Treasury, Commerce, and Justice that had resulted in three indictments for high-technology export violations. Signet had played the middleman and the U.S. Attorney had gotten three convictions for shippers of U.S. high-tech surveillance equipment to Latin American and Middle East destinations.

“He quit the FBI after a few problems, I heard,” Buster said. “Strong-arm stuff, an illegal entry—something like that; I'm not sure. All I heard was that Klempner was working a case, steps on the wrong toes, and someone files a complaint. They put him on leave without pay and have an investigation. It turns out Klempner was bending the law, but the whiteshirts in the front office were too polite to ask. He tells them to stick it, resigns, and the Bureau gets off the hook. How about a beer?” He opened another can.

“Forget about Klempner; it's Combs we want to talk about,” Fuzzy said.

“No beer, thanks,” Wilson said. “So maybe Signet is an FBI front?”

“I don't think so, but it comes pretty close,” Buster continued. “This friend at the Bureau tells me Klempner can get a hunting license anytime he wants it. So I came right out and asked him. ‘You mean Signet Security is an FBI operation, a front?' ‘Not exactly,' he tells me. ‘O.K., how close?' ‘Like white on rice,' he says. ‘He can get a hunting license anytime. Anything he turns up, he lets the Bureau know, and vice versa.' I figure that means black-bag operations. Klempner can go in and do a job without a court order, the stuff turns up on an FBI desk the next morning, they attribute it to a good source, and get an investigation started before the upstairs lawyers know what hit them.”

“It's not that easy,” Wilson said, getting to his feet.

“Let's get back to Combs,” Fuzzy said impatiently. “Buster's got an idea.”

The sunlight was beginning to fade from the wooden trusses and the skylight overhead. Wilson moved across the floor to look at an oilskin map of Washington hanging on the wooden studding. A few orange-headed pins were grouped in a small pattern near an Alexandria suburb. “What are these pins for?” he asked.

“Some maniac's loose,” Fuzzy said. “We've got six stiffs back in the cooler. Our Pakistani is doing the autopsies. Some really grim shit.”