The Enemy Inside

TWENTY-TWO

Early the next morning, on the flight home, I settle back into my seat, close my eyes, and drift into that netherworld between consciousness and sleep. The pulse of the jet engines drowns out the idle chatter around me as I think about Graves and his silly parables. The ham-handed antics in the hallway with the German business card. He must think I’m some rube.

He has what we need. He admitted as much. His copy of the document he prepared for Arthur Haze with all the details of the story they’re working on. The item he copyrighted in order to secure the loan. It was probably tucked into one of the filing cabinets in his office as we sat there talking.

But Graves is no fool. You can bet it’s not there this morning. It would be too easy to roll into his shop with a subpoena and grab it before he or Haze could act to stop us. He would have moved it by now. Why couldn’t the man make it easy on all of us and just tell me?

After talking to Graves, I’m convinced that we already know almost everything there is to know. His statements to me to the contrary, I believe, were bravado, an attempt to cover for the fact that Alex had already lifted the curtain on his show. What else could Graves say? Then you really don’t know anything, do you? Nice try. I think the only thing we’re missing are the details. But then, of course, the devil always lives there. What we need is a name, dates, account numbers, and perhaps a few other hard verifiable facts that we can present to a court.

Serna was blackmailing somebody. Of that I am certain. Whoever it was either killed her or had someone else do it. From what Alex told us, it was probably some powerful pol in Washington who had an offshore numbered account. How much is in it or where the money came from is anyone’s guess. But if I had to, I would say that it’s not their failure to pay taxes that is the problem. God knows that enough appointed and elected officials have “forgotten” to pay tax on earnings they made overseas in recent years and have received nothing but a slap on the wrist from the IRS, collection of back taxes, and payment of a penalty at most.

But what if the source of the funds is a foreign bribe? That’s an entirely different kettle of fish. With the IRS and Treasury stomping around in the weeds looking for American taxpayers hiding money overseas, a high-profile politician with a hidden slush fund in a Swiss bank would be in a highly agitated state.

Somehow Serna found out. Perhaps she was given the information by the whistleblower, Betz, before he went into the slammer. That would make sense. The reason they couldn’t kill Betz was because he had something buried, insurance against accidental death, information that kept him breathing. But it wasn’t enough to keep him out of prison. He tried to cut a deal with the feds, and they weren’t buying. I make a mental note to find out when he was sentenced, where he’s serving his time, and to check for any news stories surrounding his trial. Whoever Serna was extorting killed her. This makes perfect sense.

It’s the other piece of the puzzle that gets clumsy. Why did they go after Alex and try to rope him into the accident? If Graves was the one with the details, killing Alex wouldn’t solve their problem. Then again, people act on what they know or what they think they know, and sometimes on what they see. If it was Ives who was assigned to investigate Serna, and we know that it was. If that’s what they saw, then going after Alex made sense. This would be true especially if they couldn’t be sure how much he knew.

With my eyes still closed, I finger the small business card nestled deep in the side pocket of my suit jacket. I pull it out, open my eyes, and look at it again. For once I wish I’d taken German in high school instead of Spanish. The long unintelligible word under the man’s name “Auslandskonten.” I wonder what it means.

Proffit stepped off the long escalator into the crowded underground cave that was the Washington Metro station at Crystal City. Early-morning rush hour and the place was mobbed. Under the high honeycombed arch of the ceiling, civil servants and sexy young secretaries in short skirts moved like a herd of wildebeest toward the platform and the rails that would take them downtown to work.

Ten minutes earlier Cletus had left Vicki Preebles back at her apartment, told her to sleep late and come into the office around noon. One of the perks of banging the boss.

He sipped on his Starbucks cappuccino through the little hole in the cup’s plastic cover. Somebody jostled him from behind and he burned his lip. He looked down and saw three or four dots of milky foam as they dribbled down the lapel of his suit coat.

“Shit!” He stopped in midstride, shifted the cup from one hand to the other, shook the burning liquid from his fingers, and tried to brush the foam off his jacket. Like Moses parting the waters he forced the flood of people behind him to flow around if they wanted to get to the train platform.

This morning the place was like a game of bumper cars. Proffit would have preferred to use one of the firm’s hired limos with a driver to run shuttle between the office and Vicki’s place, but to do so would have left a record of his sleepovers. He didn’t need any wagging tongues at work, or anonymous e-mails to his wife from pissed-off secretaries who had to show up for work at eight. Better safe than sorry.

Proffit’s marriage at this point was more business than pleasure. His wife, a federal judge, was pleasant enough in a social setting, but alone with Cletus she was a stone-cold idol. She knew what he was up to. To rub her nose in it was to play with fire. Press the issue and she could probably show him that she still knew her way around in a divorce court. He didn’t want to find out. They tolerated each other because it suited their purposes. Besides, Proffit knew that she had been sleeping with one of her clerks for almost a year now, taking nooners at a local hotel whenever the docket was slow. Leave well enough alone. He could ride the Metro with the unwashed.

He glanced down to check the folded silk handkerchief in his chest coat pocket, to make sure it wasn’t stained with coffee or wrinkled, then proceeded on his way. He held the cup out and danced around a cluster of commuters in order to move toward the edge of the platform.

People jostled back and forth in front of him like cross traffic at an intersection looking to position themselves toward the front or back of the train when it came. A man in a dark trench coat packing a briefcase shot across his path like a comet just inches in front of him. Proffit had to come up short just to avoid showering the guy with hot coffee.

“Excuse me!” said Proffit.

“You’re excused.” The guy turned and looked over his shoulder as he said it.

Proffit did a double take.

The man quickly disappeared into the mob. To Proffit, he looked like the original mad professor, a shock of messed-up graying hair on his head. He recognized him immediately from the photographs e-mailed to his office the day before. Photographs from the investigator Proffit had hired to track the lawyer, Madriani, from the airport when he arrived, to his meeting the previous afternoon.

It was Tory Graves. Small damn world, thought Proffit. Too small. He was itching to get back to L.A., a town big enough you didn’t have to worry about running into people you didn’t want to see. His mind on other things, he didn’t even notice the other man, the one moving around behind him carrying the tarnished bird’s head cane.

Proffit felt the wind coming out of the tunnel, the singing steel of wheels on rail as the train approached. People pushed toward the edge of the platform. Clete found himself carried along in the swell of this human sea. His feet seemed to float across the rubberized mat toward the strip of concrete at the very edge. The round embedded red and yellow warning lights in the concrete strip began to flash.

In the distance he could see the lights on the train as it barreled through the tunnel speeding toward them. People kept pushing inexorably toward the tracks. All along the platform they jockeyed for position, the train getting closer, the wind on his face. Cletus felt himself leaning as someone pushed him from behind, another hit his hand.

Suddenly there was the screeching metal as the brakes shot on. Women were screaming as a dull thud echoed through the cavern like the sound of a melon smashing on concrete. The cup flew from Proffit’s hand and splattered across the window on the leading car just above the spider of shattered glass and blood. The train shook and rattled, then stopped abruptly several hundred feet from its normal position.

Proffit realized that someone had been shoved off the platform in front of the train. It’s what happened when you dallied with the unwashed. He straightened his suit coat, turned around, and plowed through the sea of humanity headed for the escalator and a taxi up top.

Seventy feet down the tracks the Eagle polished the silver handle on his cane with his handkerchief. There were times when a long narrow stick came in handy. After the Venusian eruption at the gas station in San Diego he had decided to take care of this loose end himself.