A Murder of Justice

TWENTY-FOUR

What’re you doing?” Kate asked, her eyes still shut.

Frank trailed a fingertip down her cheek toward the corner of her mouth. “How’d you know I’m doing anything?”

“I can just tell.”

“I was watching you breathe.”

“Exciting?”

“Very.”

She opened her eyes and turned to face him.

“A good weekend.” She smiled.

The Caps had beaten the Penguins in the playoff opener Friday night; on Saturday, Renee Zellweger had been hilarious in Bridget Jones’s Diary; and Sunday had been spent sleeping late, with breakfast at Clyde’s, antique browsing in Kensington, and dinner at Saigonnais.

“A very good weekend.”

Kate sighed. “Too bad they’re only two days long.”

“You’re a lawyer.”

“Yes?”

Frank traced down her cheek again. “Get a law passed. Make weekends forever.”

Kate turned slightly and nipped at his finger. “Nobody’d get any work done.”

“Getting work done is the source of all mischief.”

“Profound.”

“You want profound on a Monday morning early?”

“I’ll tell you what I want on a Monday morning early,” she said.

A light rain stacked up the morning traffic along Pennsylvania Avenue to Washington Circle. Twenty-third Street thinned out, and Frank found a semilegal parking spot behind the Federal Reserve. Jose was waiting under the C Street entrance at State. Frank paused to take in the boxlike building.

He and Hoser had been here… what… six months before? A montage of mental images… a once beautiful woman dead in a Georgetown park, the statue at Hains Point with its defiled cargo, and, of course, here, David Trevor.

“Good weekend?” Frank asked.

“Almost forgot how to do weekends.”

“Think Leon survived the Plaza?”

“No doubt,” Jose said. “Kid sets a fine example. Who we seeing here?”

Frank checked his notebook.

“Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs. Guy by the name of Khron… Sidney Khron.”

Sidney Khron, a spare, balding man with rimless glasses, stared into his computer screen. He rapped his keyboard, clicked his mouse, stared some more. Then he turned to Frank and Jose.

“We don’t have those records.”

“Kevin Gentry?” Frank asked. “Kevin Walker Gentry wasn’t in the State Department? Not in Western Hemisphere Affairs?”

Khron took a deep breath and studied the ceiling, then made eye contact with Frank.

“No. I mean… yes. Yes, he was in the bureau. No, we don’t have his records.”

“We were told,” Jose said patiently, “that you had access to the personnel records of everybody who’s been assigned to Western Hemisphere.”

“There are… exceptions,” Khron said primly.

“Exceptions for what?” Jose asked.

“For many things.”

“Such as?”

Khron’s face resembled a lifeless mask. “I’m not authorized to say more.”

“But Gentry’s one of those exceptions?” Frank asked.

Khron thought about the question and decided to duck. “I’m not authorized to say more,” he repeated.

“Why?” Frank persisted, knowing as he asked that he wouldn’t find out.

“Because I’m not,” Khron replied. “There are privacy issues concerned.”

“Privacy? Gentry’s dead.”

Khron dropped his hands into his lap. “Nevertheless,” he said with finality.

Frank stood, then Jose.

“Who do we have to see?” Frank asked.

Randolph Emerson’s face darkened the longer he listened. When Frank and Jose had finished, he stared wordlessly at the two men.

“The State Department’s general counsel?” he finally asked.

“That’s who we have to see,” Frank said.

Emerson got an aggrieved look. “First, we’d have to see the chief. Then go to the mayor.”

“Mayor wouldn’t have to do it,” Jose said. “The U.S. attorney-”

Emerson cut him off with a slicing motion of his hand and launched into a death spiral of calamity. “Still, we’d have to go to the chief, then the mayor. That’d stir up some shit. U.S. Attorney’s Office is a bunch of Republicans. They’d leak it. Then the papers’d get a hold of it… more shit.”

Emerson picked up velocity. “And do we know what we’d get for it?” He jabbed the air with an angry fist. “I mean, we go to the mayor, we spin him up, we get the papers down on our asses, then we get nothing. We look like fools.”

As though disaster had already struck, as though his career had been carpet-bombed, Emerson collapsed into his chair and glared accusingly at Frank and Jose. “We could go through all that and get nothing.”

“Even nothing’s something sometimes,” Jose said.

“We’ve got to check it out, Randolph,” Frank said.

Emerson’s lips thinned. “No we don’t,” he said gratingly.

Frank turned to look at Jose and found Jose was looking at him, silently signaling a question. Frank nodded a yes.

“We,” Jose said, “Frank and me… we’re running the investigation. We’re responsible.”

Emerson tensed, knowing he wasn’t going to like what he was going to hear.

“Either we go after Gentry’s records,” Jose said evenly, “or you find somebody else.”

“You mean-”

“We mean,” Frank said, “we’re off the case.”

“You can’t do that.”

“You don’t want to bet,” Jose said.

“Maybe you could get somebody else, Randolph,” Frank suggested. “Like… Milton?”

Emerson gave Frank a dead-fish look, then started a slow smile.

“Okay, we’ll ask. We’ll ask our pals at the Bureau. They wanted in on this case. Let them bend their pick.”

… And this guy Chrome at State said there were ‘other considerations’?” Brian Atkins asked.

Frank, Jose, and Robin Bouchard were at a small conference table in Atkins’s office. Atkins sat at the head of the table, listening carefully, jotting in a small leather notebook.

“Khron,” Frank corrected. “The go-to guy at State to get the records released is the general counsel.”

“General counsel.” Atkins paused, then nodded. “That’s Tommy del Gado.” He fastened Frank with a look. “Your department wants us to deal with State?” He spoke like he was putting Frank on record.

“We’d appreciate it,” Frank said, feeling his gut tighten.

“How about Pencil Crawfurd?” Atkins asked.

“Still hanging out with Elvis,” Frank said. “But we’ll find him.”

“Any idea what spooked him?”

Frank shook his head. “No, not really.”

“Okay.” Atkins got up and tucked the notebook in an inner suit jacket pocket. “You guys find Elvis and Pencil, we’ll rattle State Department’s cage.”

Well, your basic good news, bad news,” Jose said outside on Pennsylvania Avenue.

“Good news?”

“The Bureau gets to handle the pussies at State.”

“And…?”

“We had to get the Bureau to-”

“-handle the pussies at State,” Frank finished. Jose was right. It did rankle, Randolph Emerson passing the buck to Atkins and the Bureau. Emerson making Jose and him come down, hat in hand, asking the big boys for help. It was a bush-league play.

“At least Atkins didn’t rub it in,” Jose said. “Now we can concentrate on finding Elvis.”