A Murder of Justice

TWENTY-ONE

Robin Bouchard met Frank and Jose at the corner of Ninth and D, across from Bureau headquarters.

“When he heard about Pencil skipping, Atkins asked me if there was anything we could do to help,” Bouchard explained. “I suggested he have you guys over, he could ask you himself.”

“And so dinner,” Frank said.

“And so dinner.” Bouchard motioned to a nearby doorway.

Jose did a double-take. “The Caucus Room? I can’t float a second mortgage.”

Bouchard shrugged. “Atkins has a slush fund, and the Bureau cafeteria has rats.”

“Nice of him to worry about us,” Jose said.

Bouchard did his wise-guy grin. “Atkins isn’t doing a Dudley Do-Right.”

“He getting heat?” Frank asked.

“Probably.”

“You don’t know?”

Bouchard shook his head. “I’m not on his share-my-soul list.” He paused at the door. “Matter of fact, this is the first time I’ve been here.” He pulled the door open.

Inside, a hostess in something very Italian and very expensive smiled as though greeting an afternoon lover. Bouchard mentioned Atkins’s name. The hostess’s smile grew wider.

“The Roosevelt Room, gentlemen,” she purred.

She led the three down a lushly carpeted corridor past larger dining rooms, to a mahogany door with heavy brass fittings.

Jose whistled softly.

“I’m impressed,” Frank said.

The private room resembled a Victorian library: leather-bound volumes in walnut bookcases, green shaded reading lamps beside morocco-leather club chairs, a massive globe in a bronze cradle near a coal fireplace. Oil portraits of the Roosevelts, Theodore and Franklin, bracketed the fireplace.

Near a set of double doors that apparently led into the kitchen, a slender white man in a severe dark suit whispered to a young black waiter. Frank couldn’t hear what was going on, but from the body language, he guessed the two were getting their signals straight for the coming dinner crowd. The waiter’s eyes shifted to Robin, Frank, and Jose, and the suit turned around.

“Gentlemen?”

“Here for dinner with Mr. Atkins,” Robin said.

The man came closer, and Frank could read his silver name tag: “Thurmond.”

Thurmond then led them to a table closest to the window.

“Mr. Atkins,” Thurmond said, “likes to sit facing the door.” With that, he walked to the waiters’ station and returned with three menus. “Dobbs will take your orders when you’re ready.”

Bouchard took a seat that covered the door, with Frank and Jose opposite. “A menu for Mr. Atkins?”

Thurmond tilted his chin upward and smiled. “I know what he wants.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“Baked scrod, new potatoes and spinach, iced tea.”

“Scrod a house specialty?” Bouchard asked.

“Ah… no.” Thurmond said it as though concerned he was revealing a secret. His voice dropped to the confiding whisper of a Frenchman offering dirty postcards. “Beef… and coconut cake.”

Bouchard grinned. “Helluva combination, Mr. Thurmond.”

Thurmond returned a conspiratorial smile. “A combination to die for.” He paused, then turned and disappeared through the swinging doors into the kitchen.

“We got a choice,” Bouchard said. “We suck up to Atkins and order scrod, or we go with the house.”

“Scrod taste better than it sounds?” Jose asked.

“Has to, Hoser,” Bouchard said.

A moment’s silence as the three men looked over their menus. Frank glanced up from his and found Jose and Bouchard, their menus closed, eyes on him.

Bouchard signaled to Dobbs, who came over and took their orders. Then he turned to Frank and Jose. “So what’s new?”

Jose told him about the meeting with Cookie, how Pencil had been fingering Zelmer Austin for Gentry’s killing.

Bouchard listened intently for a few moments before he raised one hand an inch off the table and nodded toward the door.

From behind Frank and Jose came Brian Atkins’s voice. “I invite you to dinner and I’m late.”

Bouchard, Frank, and Jose started to get up, but Atkins waved them down.

“You guys looked at the menu?”

Bouchard nodded. “We’ve ordered.”

Atkins grinned. “Hope you went with the beef. My cholesterol’s got me stuck with the scrod.” He made a face. “An acquired taste.”

Bouchard gestured toward Jose. “We were just catching up.”

“I was telling Robin about a meeting,” Jose said.

Atkins nodded. “Go on.”

Jose backtracked, working his way through the meeting with Cookie. In the middle of it, Dobbs brought Atkins’s scrod, New York strip steaks for Frank and Bouchard, and a Delmonico for Jose.

Atkins looked longingly at the steaks, then sipped his iced tea. “So Pencil dropped the dime on Zelmer Austin? That Austin did Kevin Gentry?”

“And now, Pencil’s split,” Frank said.

“You think it spooked him, hearing that the same weapon that killed Skeeter killed Gentry?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Where does that lead?” Robin asked. “Is Pencil afraid that the same guy who did Skeeter is going to come after him?”

“You’ve got to remember,” Jose said, “two years ago, Pencil was pushing the story that Zelmer Austin killed Gentry. Now Pencil finds out it isn’t so… or that other people know it isn’t so.”

Frank cut in. “Then again, we don’t know for sure that Zelmer didn’t do it. Just that the admin case against him doesn’t hold up.”

“I’m getting an overload,” Bouchard said. “What all this boils down to is… what?”

“Finding Pencil,” Atkins answered. He turned to Frank and Jose. “I know you guys are already working that. Could we help?”

Frank paused. He felt Jose’s shoe nudge his.

“Emerson wanted to set up a task force,” Frank said, searching for a graceful out, “but Jose and I wanted to keep it small. It’s just us and another detective.”

Atkins nodded emphatically. “I think you were right. I wasn’t envisioning a bureau pile-on. No publicity. Just one person.” At “person,” Atkins put his hand on Bouchard’s shoulder.

Frank and Jose exchanged glances. Both nodded.

“Deal,” said Jose.

Neither Frank nor Jose said anything until they were on the sidewalk.

“What about that?” Frank asked.

“Great coconut cake,” Jose replied.

“No… What Atkins was up to?”

“They want in,” Jose said. “Atkins was nice about it. But we’d said no, he would have gone to Emerson…”

“Who’d have folded like a cheap suitcase…”

“And probably gone ahead with that brain-fart of his about a task force. At least we got Robin and no publicity.”

“We got Robin,” Frank amended, “but I’m not betting on no publicity.” He paused, playing out possibilities in his head. “Yesterday afternoon, Rhinelander calls Atkins. Whines about having us on his ass…”

Jose picked up. “… Atkins sees an opportunity to get the Bureau in on the case…”

“… and score points with Rhinelander at the same time,” Frank finished.

Ahead, down Pennsylvania Avenue, windows shone on the Capitol’s West Front, and the dome glowed white against a dark velvet-blue sky.

Nothing in this town works along a straight line. Everything moves along a curve just in front of you. And you can never see around the curve.

Frank pointed toward the Capitol. “Tomorrow morning, why don’t we drop up and see how Janowitz’s doing?”