Edge

Chapter 2

I WAS SITTING in one of our director’s scuffed chairs next to a man who clearly knew me, since he’d nodded with some familiarity when I entered. I couldn’t, however, place him beyond his being a federal prosecutor. About my age-forty-and short, a bit doughy, with hair in need of a trim. A fox’s eyes.

Aaron Ellis noticed my glance. “You remember Jason Westerfield, U.S. Attorney’s Office.”

I didn’t fake it and try to respond. I just shook his hand.

“Freddy was briefing me.”

“Agent Fredericks?” Westerfield asked.

“That’s right. He said we have a principal in Fairfax and a lifter who needs information in the next few days.”

Westerfield’s voice was high and irritatingly playful. “You betcha. That’s what we hear. We don’t know much at this point, other than that the lifter got a clear go-ahead order. Somebody needs information from the subject by late Monday or all hell breaks loose. No idea what the fuck hell is, though. Pardonnez moi.”

While I was dressed like a prosecutor, ready for court, Westerfield was in weekend clothes. Not office weekend clothes but camping weekend clothes: chinos, a plaid shirt and a windbreaker. Unusual for the District, where Saturday and Sunday office hours were not rare. It told me he might be a cowboy. I noted too he was also sitting forward on the edge of his chair and clutching files with blunt fingers. Not nervously-he didn’t seem the sort who could be nervous-but with excitement. A hot metabolism burned within.

Another voice, female, from behind us: “I’m sorry I’m late.”

A woman about thirty joined us. A particular type of nod and I knew she was Westerfield’s assistant. A tight hairstyle that ended at her shoulders, blond. New or dry-cleaned blue jeans, a white sweater under a tan sports coat and a necklace of impressive creamy pearls. Her earrings were pearls too and accompanied on the lobes by equally arresting diamonds. Her dark-framed glasses were, despite her youth, trifocals, I could see by the way her head bobbed slowly as she took in the office and me. A shepherd has to know his principals’ buying habits-it’s very helpful in understanding them-and instinctively I noted Chanel, Coach and Cartier. A rich girl and probably near the top of her class at Yale or Harvard Law.

Westerfield said, “This is Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Teasley.”

She shook my hand and acknowledged Ellis.

“I’m just explaining the Kessler situation to them.” Then to us: “Chris’ll be working with us on it.”

“Let’s hear the details,” I said, aware that Teasley was scenting the air, floral and subdued. She opened her attaché case with loud hardware snaps and handed her boss a file. As he skimmed it I noted a sketch on Ellis’s wall. His corner office wasn’t large but it was decorated with a number of pictures, some posters from mall galleries, some personal photos and art executed by his children. I stared at a watercolor drawing of a building on a hillside, not badly rendered.

I had nothing on my office walls except lists of phone numbers.

“Here’s the sit.” Westerfield turned to Ellis and me. “I heard from the Bureau’s Charleston, West Virginia, field office this morning. Make a long story short, the state police were running a meth sting out in the boonies and they stumbled on some prints on a pay phone, turned out to be Henry Loving’s. For some reason the homicide and surveillance warrants weren’t cancelled after he died. Well, supposedly died, looks like.

“They call our people and we take over, find out Loving flew into Charleston a week ago under some fake name and ID. Nobody knows from where. Finally, they tracked him down to a motel in Winfield this morning. But he’d already checked out-a couple of hours ago, around eight-thirty. Clerk doesn’t know where he was going.”

At a nod from her boss, Teasley continued, “The surveillance warrants are technically still active, so the agents checked out emails at the hotel. One received and one sent: the go-ahead order and Loving’s acknowledgment.”

Ellis asked, “What would he be doing in West Virginia?”

I knew Loving better than anybody in the room. I said, “He usually worked with a partner; he might be picking somebody up there. Weapons too. He wouldn’t fly with them. In any case, he’ll avoid the D.C.-area airports. A lot of people up here still remember what he looks like after… after what happened a few years ago.” I asked, “Internet address of the sender?”

“Routed through proxies. Untraceable.”

“Any phone calls to or from his room in the motel?”

“Mais non.”

The French was irritating. Had Westerfield just gotten back from a package vacation or was he boning up to prosecute an Algerian terrorist?

“What does the order say exactly, Jason?” I asked patiently.

At a nod from him, Chris Teasley did the honors. “Like you were saying, it was solely a go-ahead. So they’d have had prior conversations where they laid out the details.”

“Go on, please,” I said to her.

The woman read, “ ‘Loving-Re: Kessler. It’s a go. Need details, per our discussion, by Monday midnight, or unacceptable consequences, as explained. Once you get information, subject must be eliminated.’ End of quote. It gave an address in Fairfax.”

Unacceptable consequences… all hell breaking loose.

“No audio?”

“No.”

I was disappointed. Voice analysis can tell a lot about the caller: gender, most of the time, national and regional roots, illnesses, even reasonable morphological deductions can be made about the shape of the nose, mouth and throat. But at least we had a confirmed spelling of the principal’s name, which was a plus.

“Kessler’s a cop in the District. Ryan Kessler, detective,” Westerfield explained.

“Loving’s response?”

“‘Confirmed.’ That was it.”

“The primary wants the ‘details’”-Westerfield did air quotes-“by late Monday. Details…”

I asked to see the printout. Noted a slight hesitation on Teasley’s part, then she passed it over when Westerfield gave no reaction. I read through the brief passage. “Grammar, spelling and punctuation are good. Proper use of ‘per.’” Teasley frowned at this observation. I didn’t explain that “as per,” what most people say, is redundant; she wasn’t my protégée. I continued, “And matching commas around the appositive, after ‘details,’ which you hardly ever see.”

Everyone stared at me now. I’d studied linguistics a long time ago. A little philology too, the study of languages from analyzing texts. Mostly for the fun of it, but the subject came in useful sometimes.

Ellis toyed his neck sideways. He’d wrestled in college but didn’t do many sports nowadays that I knew of. He was just still built like an iron triangle. He asked, “He left at eight-thirty this morning. He probably has weapons so he’s not going to fly… and he doesn’t want to risk being seen at an airport here, like you were saying, Corte. He’s still about four hours away.”

“His vehicle?” I asked.

“Nothing yet. The Bureau’s got a team canvassing the motel and restaurants around town.”

Ellis: “This Kessler, what does he know that the primary’s so interested in extracting from him?”

“No clue,” Westerfield said.

“Who exactly is he, Kessler?” I asked.

“I’ve got some details,” Teasley said.

As the young attorney dug through a file, I wondered why Westerfield had come to us. We’re known as the bodyguards of last resort (at least Aaron Ellis refers to us that way in budgetary hearings, which I find a bit embarrassing, but apparently it plays well on the Hill). The State Department’s Diplomatic Security and the Secret Service guard U.S. officials and foreign heads of state. Witness Protection cloaks the noble or the infamous with new identities and turns them loose in the world. We, on the other hand, handle situations only when there’s an immediate, credible threat against a known principal. We’ve also been called the ER of personal security.

The criterion is vague but, given limited resources, we tend to take on cases only when the principal is involved in matters like national security-the spy I’d just delivered to the CIA gentlemen yesterday-or public health, such as our job guarding a whistle-blower in an over-the-counter tainted-drug trial last year.

But the answer became clear when Teasley gave the cop’s bio. “Detective Ryan Kessler, forty-two. Married, one child. He works financial crimes in the district, fifteen years on the force, decorated… You may’ve heard of him.”

I glanced at my boss, who shook his head for both of us.

“He’s a hero. Got some media coverage a few years ago. He was working undercover in D.C. and stumbled into a robbery in a deli in North West. Saved the customers but took a slug. Was on the news, and one of those Discovery Channel cop programs did an episode about him.”

I didn’t watch much TV. But I did understand the situation now. A hero cop being targeted by a lifter like Henry Loving… Westerfield saw a chance to be a hero of his own here-marshalling a case against the primary, presumably because of some financial scam Kessler was investigating. Even if the underlying case wasn’t big-though it could be huge-targeting a heroic D.C. police officer was reason enough to end up on Westerfield’s agenda. I didn’t think any less of him because of this; Washington is all about personal as well as public politics. I didn’t care if his career would be served by taking on the case. All that mattered to me was keeping the Kessler family alive.

And that this particular lifter was involved.

“Alors,” Westerfield said. “There we have it. Kessler’s been poking his nez where it doesn’t belong. We need to find out where, what, who, when, why. So, let’s get the Kesslers into the slammer fast and go from there.”

“Slammer?” I asked.

“Yessir,” Teasley said. “We were thinking Hansen Detention Center in D.C. I’ve done some research and found that HDC has just renovated their alarm systems and I’ve reviewed the employee files of every guard who’d be on the friendly wing. It’s a good choice.”

“C’est vrai.”

“A slammer wouldn’t be advisable,” I said.

“Oh?” Westerfield wondered.

Protective custody, in a secluded part of a correctional facility, makes sense in some cases but this wasn’t one of them, I explained.

“Hm,” the prosecutor said, “we were thinking you could have one of your people with them inside, non? Efficient. Agent Fredericks and you can interview him. You’ll get good information. I guarantee it. In a slammer, witnesses tend to remember things they wouldn’t otherwise. They’re all happy-happy.”

“That hasn’t been my experience in circumstances like these.”

“No?”

“You put somebody in detention, yes, usually a lifter from the outside can’t get in. And”-a nod toward Teasley, conceding her diligent homework-“I’m sure the staff’s been vetted well. With any other lifter, I’d agree. But we’re dealing with Henry Loving here. I know how he works. We put the Kesslers inside, he’ll find an edge on one of the guards. Most of them are young, male. If I were Loving, I’d just find one with a pregnant wife-their first child, if possible-and pay her a visit.” Teasley blinked at my matter-of-fact tone. “The guard would do whatever Loving wanted. And once the family’s inside there’re no escape routes. The Kesslers’d be trapped.”

“Like petits lapins,” Westerfield said, though not as sarcastically as I’d expected. He was considering my point.

“Besides, Kessler’s a cop. We’d have trouble getting him to agree. There could be a half dozen cons he’s put inside HDC.”

“Where would you stash them?” Westerfield asked.

I replied, “I don’t know yet. I’ll have to think about it.”

Westerfield gazed up at the wall too, though I couldn’t tell at which picture or certificate or diploma. Finally he said to Teasley, “Give him Kessler’s address.”

The young woman jotted it in far more legible handwriting than her boss’s. When she handed it to me I was hit by another blast of perfume.

I took it, thanking them both. I’m a competitive game player-all sorts of games-and I’ve learned to be humble and magnanimous in victory, a theory I’d carried over to my professional life. A matter of courtesy, of course, but I’d also found that being a good winner gives you a slight advantage psychologically when you play against the same opponent in the future.

They rose. The prosecutor said, “Okay, do what you can-find out who hired Loving and why.”

“Our number-one priority,” I assured him, though it wasn’t.

“Au revoir…” Westerfield and Teasley breezed out of the doorway, the prosecutor giving sotto voce orders to her.

I too rose. I had to stop at the town house and pick up a few things for the assignment.

“I’ll report from the location,” I told Ellis.

“Corte?”

I stopped at the door and glanced back.

“Not sending the Kesslers to the slammer… it makes sense, right? You’d rather get them into a safe house and run the case from there?” He’d backed me up-Aaron Ellis was nothing if not supportive of his troops-and would go with my expertise on the question. But he wasn’t, in truth, asking for reassurance that it made tactical sense not to put them in protective custody.

What he was really asking was this: Was he making the right decision in assigning me, and not someone else, to the job of guarding principals from Henry Loving? In short, could I be objective when the perp was the one who’d murdered my mentor and had apparently escaped from the trap I’d set for him several years before?

“A safe house’s the most efficient approach,” I told Ellis and returned to my office, fishing for the key to unlock the desk drawer where I kept my weapon.