Close Quarters

FIFTY-THREE

Walter Conkley was feeling relaxed for the first time in days. After a second meeting with Marcella Cready, this one at her apartment and going into far greater detail about his meetings with the Dupont Group, of dates, times, topics under discussion and even some recording of recent talks, he’d experienced a sense of enormous relief at what she had agreed to. His own position as a newfound ‘Deep Throat’ would be protected at all costs, and Cready had claimed the discovery of enough information on Benson and his friends in the Dupont Circle Group to confirm that she would be going after them with everything that she had.

He took a deep breath and chuckled with an almost childish sense of excitement. An enormous weight had been lifted from his shoulders and he felt like a new man. Cready’s reputation in Washington DC was awesome. She was the pit bull of investigative news-hounds, and once she began looking into a case, the end was already in sight. All she had to do was drop the investigative package on a news editor’s desk and the fallout was both guaranteed and earth-shattering.

He decided to walk while mulling over his next move. Staying on in the White House might prove less than comfortable after the story broke, and he’d already made a few enquiries into property in the Catskills in New York State. He had lots of stories to tell, and there was always a demand for memoirs and nuggets of gossip from people in the know, like himself. He could already imagine an ‘insider’ column syndicated in various newspapers, and who knew — maybe a book deal?

He headed northwest to Connecticut Avenue, then drifted along, needing the exercise, his mind in a whirl as he considered the possibilities open to a single man with enough money to keep himself comfortable in a world that wouldn’t ask too many questions. Time to forget his lack of discretion and the way he’d allowed himself to be sucked in by others; time to kick back and let others listen to the daily fights and squabbles among the movers and shakers of home and foreign policy in the bear-pit that was Washington.

He found himself close to the Parrotts Woods area and wondered how he’d managed to walk so far without noticing. He smiled to himself. Maybe this was an indication of a newfound interest in life; being free and able to do whatever the hell he wanted, when he wanted.

He decided to eat somewhere special for dinner, and took out his cell phone. A little early to celebrate perhaps, but he felt he owed himself at least a little something nice. A French menu, perhaps. And a nice Burgundy — a Brouilly. He could already taste it along with the sense of victory.

He checked the street and turned to cross when he saw no traffic.

The phone screen flickered brightly as his thumb accidentally brushed the keys, and he glanced down automatically, eyes off the road. It was enough. His mind filled with thoughts of pleasures to come, while slowly registering the unchanged home screen and no incoming messages. Simultaneously, his auditory senses became aware of the roar of a powerful vehicle engine approaching very fast.

His final thought was that it was too fast for these streets.

When he looked up, it was too late.