A Murder of Justice

THIRTY-SEVEN

Monday morning, Frank and Jose stood under the Rayburn portico and watched Seth Tompkins blow into the horseshoe driveway in grand mayoral style: sleek black Lincoln with U.S. and D.C. fender flags snapping, two motorcycle escorts front, two rear, lights blazing.

“Looks like the Queen of Sheba coming aboard,” Jose said.

The sight cheered Frank. It was like Ali making his way down the aisle to the ring. Coming on big, bold, and brassy, with absolutely no doubt about the outcome.

“Float like a butterfly,” Frank whispered.

We ready, fellas?” Tompkins asked as Frank and Jose led him down the corridor to Rhinelander’s offices.

“Politics your turf, Mayor,” Jose said.

Tompkins grinned. “Turf? Jungle’s more like it, Jose.”

Marge, Rhinelander’s gatekeeper, stood as Frank and Jose entered with the mayor. She opened a door into a short hallway.

“They’re waiting inside, Your Honor.”

“They?” Tompkins asked.

“The chairman and Director Atkins.”

Rhinelander sat at his desk. He was swiveled around to face Atkins, who was in an easy chair to Rhinelander’s left. Both men looked up as the door opened. Tension hung in the air as though a conversation had been cut off in mid-sentence. Frank guessed it had been Atkins who’d been talking-the FBI director seemed adrenaline-charged, while Rhinelander had a subdued, thoughtful air.

Rhinelander underwent a lightning transformation. A smile of appreciation flashed, a man awed by a particularly spectacular sunrise. “Mayor Tompkins! Thank you for coming!” he gushed.

He waggled an impatient hand at Marge. “Three more coffees,” he told her.

He stepped out from behind his desk and shook hands with Tompkins, then Frank and Jose. “I see you’ve brought two of the department’s finest, Mayor.” He gestured toward a small conference table. “We’d be more comfortable here.”

Taking his position at the head of the table, Rhinelander patted the place to his right. “Please, Mayor. Let me take this opportunity to tell you that you’ve brought a sense of dignity and honor back to your office.”

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman.”

Tompkins said it with a cool detachment, and Frank noticed that the mayor sat with his hands folded in his lap.

Concerned, Rhinelander turned to Frank. “And you, Lieutenant Kearney, you had a close call. I trust you’re all right?”

“Yes, sir, I am. Thank you.”

“And Leon?” Rhinelander asked. “How is he doing?”

“Still listed as critical.”

Rhinelander shook his head in sympathy. “He worked well with my staff. A bright young man.” He pointed to Frank. “You be sure to let me know-let me know personally-if there’s anything we can do.”

“I will, thank you.” Frank felt a hot acid stabbing in his stomach. Smarmy bastard. Much more of this and he’d be reaching for the Maalox.

“In view of recent events,” Rhinelander began, “I thought we might put our heads together and… ah… review the bidding.”

“Bidding, Mr. Chairman?” Tompkins’s inflection made “bidding” sound frivolous.

If Rhinelander noticed, he gave no indication. “It would be most appropriate, I think, to reach a consensus on two issues. First”-he raised his index finger-“I believe we must define our problem. Second”-another finger-“we must agree on the assets we need to resolve the problem.” He paused and looked expectantly at Tompkins.

“And the problem is?” Tompkins asked.

“Quite bluntly, Mayor, the problem is a widely held perception that we are getting nowhere in closing the Gentry-Hodges case.”

Tompkins started to respond, but Rhinelander held up a hand.

“Please let me finish,” he said almost petulantly.

He’s cooked the meal, and by God, we’re gonna eat it. Frank forced himself to take a deep breath and keep his hands away from Maalox.

“Let me lay out some fundamental elements,” Rhinelander said, “and I think the task we face becomes clearer. The murder of this drug lord Hodges revealed that the District police department had not properly closed the investigation of the killing of my chief of staff, Kevin Gentry.”

Rhinelander paused to look around the table. To his left, Atkins sat impassively, gazing off into space. Tompkins had an expression of studied neutrality. From the corner of his eye, Frank caught Jose’s hands, busy rolling a ballpoint pen between his fingertips.

“We then discover that Kevin had been a CIA operative in Colombia. And there is the manner of Pencil Crawfurd’s killing. These alone justified a hypothesis of a Colombian connection.”

Rhinelander gestured toward Frank and Jose. “I appreciate, Lieutenants Kearney and Phelps, your department’s reluctance to consider such a hypothesis. But now, we have a car bombing that nearly kills Sergeant Janowitz and you, Lieutenant Kearney. Add all this together and it would seem that we have the hallmarks of a Colombian operation.”

Rhinelander turned to Tompkins. “Have I been inaccurate, Mayor?”

“No,” Tompkins said glumly.

Rhinelander turned to Atkins. “Director Atkins?”

Clearly unhappy, Atkins nodded. “Unfortunately, I think you’re right, Mr. Chairman.”

“Now”-Rhinelander briskly slapped both hands palm down on the edge of the table, a man satisfied with the stage he’d set-“let me ask you this, Mayor… where are you now… this morning… in closing this case?”

Tompkins looked around to Frank and Jose. “Gentlemen?”

Jose and Frank exchanged glances, and Jose gave Frank a go-ahead nod.

Worse than a goddamn press conference. Frank took another deep breath while he hastily framed a basic vanilla response.

“We’re developing a clearer picture of Kevin Gentry’s activities and associations that may bear on his killing and his connection with Skeeter Hodges.”

Rhinelander listened without expression, his eyes hooded behind the small round lenses of his glasses. “Is this… picture bringing you closer to closing the case?” He put a smirking accent on “picture.”

“I believe so.”

“You believe so,” Rhinelander intoned solemnly. “When?”

Tompkins cut in. “Are you asking for a specific date, Mr. Chairman?”

Rhinelander smiled innocently at Tompkins. “Obviously, Mayor, we’d all like one. Just as obviously, though, I realize that’s not doable.” Turning his attention to Frank, he asked, “But can you tell me roughly?… A month? Two months? A year?”

Frank shook his head. “I can’t tell you that either, Mr. Chairman. We could walk out of here this morning and run across something that’d wrap a ribbon around the case by dinnertime. But then again…”

“But then again,” Rhinelander picked up, “it could join the other cold cases in your extensive files.” Without waiting for an answer, the congressman continued. “So it’s a matter of running down things? Exploring possibilities?”

“Yes, sir.”

“A lot of dead ends too, I imagine?” Rhinelander was obviously building a case but trying, unsuccessfully, to camouflage it under a tone of empathy.

“Dead ends too, sir,” Frank acknowledged.

“I understand,” Rhinelander said, “that when the department was forced to reopen the Gentry case, you and Lieutenant Phelps pooh-poohed your superior’s recommendation to create a task force.”

Jose leaned forward, looking down the table at Rhinelander. “Frank and I have been on the force a total of fifty years, Mr. Chairman. We’ve never seen a task force do much more than get in its own way.”

“So it was a judgment call that restricted the investigation to you and Lieutenant Kearney?”

“And Detective Janowitz.”

“Oh, yes… the young man who is recovering from losing his arm.” Rhinelander made it an accusation. He turned to Tompkins.

“Your Honor, let me tell you what my thinking is.”

“Please do, sir,” Tompkins said, a chill in his voice.

“I think we have a case that has escalated in complexity. From the unremarkable shooting of a drug dealer on the street we have moved to attempts by an international criminal cartel to assassinate American law enforcement officers on the streets of our nation’s capital.” Rhinelander angled his head toward Tompkins. “Are you with me so far, Mayor?”

“I’m with you.” Tompkins’s tone dropped several more degrees.

Rhinelander nodded in satisfaction. “And solving such a case depends, as Lieutenant Kearney observed, on tracking down possibilities and checking out dead ends… yes?”

Tompkins nodded.

Sitting back in his chair, Rhinelander touched his fingertips together just below his lips, looking very judgelike.

“My thinking is that when a case grows so large in scope, so complex in detail, we must devote more assets to solving it.” Rhinelander paused, then launched further into the assault. “It appears, Mayor Tompkins, that your police department, having initially assigned too few assets, is now behind the curve. There is an irredeemable loss of credibility because of the handling thus far. Meanwhile, the case has expanded far beyond your ability to deal with it.”

Tompkins answered with a flinty silence.

“Let me explain the position I’m in, Mayor Tompkins,” Rhinelander said. “I’m responsible for appropriations for the District of Columbia.”

“I’m well aware of that, sir.”

“And I’m certain, you’re aware, then, that the curse of government is that there is never enough money to do everything for everyone.”

Tompkins nodded curtly.

“And so, my subcommittee must make decisions. Set priorities on who gets what,” Rhinelander said with a sigh of regret. “And I do not believe it is good government to reward incompetency.”

“There is a point, Mr. Chairman?” Tompkins said.

“Come now, Your Honor.” Rhinelander spoke with a let’s-do-business edge. “The District has great needs. Schools… medical care… Head Start… shelters for the homeless…” He threw his hands up. “The list is endless.”

Lacing his fingers together at his chest, Rhinelander set aside the stick and offered the carrot.

“I am willing to work with you on these problems, Mayor Tompkins,” he said in a conciliatory tone. “But it will be very difficult for me to convince my colleagues to fund these needs when the District government’s credibility is threatened by blatant examples of the inefficiency of its police department.”

Tompkins was silent for a small eternity. A vein pulsed at his temple, and it wouldn’t have surprised Frank if the Mayor had walked. Then Tompkins blinked rapidly several times and the vein stopped pulsing.

“What do you want, Mr. Chairman?” Tompkins asked, his voice leaden.

“For the District’s good, Mayor, we need to get this case behind us. We need more assets, and as well, we need new thinking… new eyes. And that’s why I’ve invited Deputy Director Atkins here.” Rhinelander paused. “I believe the best course is to have the Bureau take over the Gentry and Hodges cases.”

Atkins had the uncomfortable look of a man who wished he wasn’t there. He quickly added, “With, of course, local assistance from your department, Mayor Tompkins.”

Rhinelander got a beatific smile. “Of course, Mayor, of course.”

In a wordless procession through the Rayburn corridors, Frank and Jose accompanied Tompkins to the horseshoe driveway where the Lincoln and the motorcycle escort waited.

An aide opened the rear door for the Mayor. A visibly disheartened Tompkins turned to Frank and Jose.

“Gentlemen, I’m sorry. That crap Rhinelander handed out was undeserved.”

Frank wanted to reach out and squeeze the man’s shoulder, but he didn’t. He said, “I guess politics is being satisfied with half a loaf, Your Honor.”

Tompkins ducked into the backseat. He smiled cynically out at Frank and Jose. “Half a loaf? Sometimes, fellas, politics is being satisfied with one goddamn slice.”

Frank and Jose watched as the mayor’s convoy made its way down the drive, turned right, and disappeared down South Capitol Street.

“No question how Rhinelander knew about that task-force shit,” Jose said.

Frank nodded. “Nobody ever accused Randolph Emerson of not knowing which side his toast was buttered on.”

Jose’s cell phone chimed. He answered, then, covering the mike pickup, whispered, “R.C.”

“You’re where?” Jose asked into the phone.

A pause.

“We’ll be right there,” he told Calkins. He folded the phone and turned to Frank. “We both gettin’ absentminded.”

It came to Frank: The court order in his jacket pocket… Renfro Calkins waiting for Jose and him at the Riggs Bank. “After that crap in there”-he jerked a thumb back over his shoulder-“last thing I feel like doing is pushing a car that’s run out of gas.”

“Aw, come on,” Jose urged, “our chance to give the Bureau a little local assistance.”

A cross Pennsylvania Avenue, half a block east of the White House and opposite the U.S. Treasury, Riggs Bank is Washington’s oldest private financial institution. Riggs financed Samuel Morse’s invention of the telegraph. Abraham Lincoln opened his Riggs account weeks after Jefferson Davis closed his. And court order or not, Riggs took care that its safe-deposit boxes remained as secure as its billions in assets. It was early afternoon before a vice-president ushered Frank, Jose, and Calkins into a small vaulted room.

The Riggs vice-president watched with rapt attention as Calkins opened his print kit, dusted the exterior of the steel safe-deposit box, and lifted the prints. When he had finished, Frank and Jose placed the box contents in a heavy cardboard carton and signed the releases that returned the box to the bank.

Six hours and four carafes of coffee later, Frank tossed his pencil down, cupped his chin in his palm and surveyed his desk, cluttered with notes, crumpled papers, and a take-out container that earlier had held a prosciutto and Taleggio cheese sandwich. Three hours before, R.C. had called in with a preliminary: unsurprisingly, he’d found several sets of Gentry’s prints on the exterior of the safe-deposit box. Martin Osmond’s had appeared as well, on the packet of receipts and, of course, on the will and the cassettes.

Frank glanced at the whiteboard, covered with a hash of dates, times, names. He felt a sudden weariness welling up, a soul-deep exhaustion that had nothing to do with the hour or the stress of the day. He imagined he saw it too in Jose’s eyes.

“Why’d it happen, Hoser?”

“I think that’s pretty clear,” Jose said in a flat, leaden tone.

“No,” Frank disagreed. “What happened’s clear. Why…?” He asked.

Jose got up and stretched. “The U.S. attorney’s satisfied with what happened. We called Atkins. Question is, we gonna let Emerson know?”

Their eyes met.

“Well,” Jose said with a conspiratorial smile, “I had to ask.” He paused, then asked, “How about Tompkins?”

Frank decided that Jose was working way ahead of him.

“Think so, Hoser,” he said. Then, assurance building, “Definitely.”