Abandon

Three

Harris staggered out of the hole-in-the-wall Georgetown bar, an old favorite where he could place a gentleman’s bet and not have to worry about anyone sniffing in disapproval. He was tired and he’d had too much to drink. After twenty-four hours, he could no longer drum up any energy for steering clear of friends or enemies. He had no attention span for going into hiding.

It was late on a dark, hot summer night. Who the hell would bother hunting him down now?

When he reached M Street, he recognized a Washington Post columnist and a prominent U.S. senator getting into a private car, and gave them a surreptitious middle finger, hating them for the life he’d squandered. Once, he’d had his own driver. Now he was reduced to cabs, buses and an ancient Honda that was a bother to keep on the road. It wasn’t a question of finance as much as of prestige.

People who had nowhere to go didn’t need drivers or fancy cars.

He smelled of stale cigarette smoke, sweat and alcohol. He walked past nice bars, nice restaurants, heard music and laughter and saw people who looked good, were good. He’d been like them once, filled with hope, ambition – and hubris. He’d known he was smarter than most people. He could not fail.

Now he had the FBI hunting him.

And worse.

The heat and stifling humidity started him sweating again. His shirt stuck to his back. His eyes stung. He wanted to vomit, but not on M Street. Not in front of people who used to respect him.

Then again, why the hell not? Who did they think they were? They had their own secrets and compulsions. Everyone did.

“Harris, for God’s sake.”

For a moment, Harris didn’t realize who was speaking to him, but he looked up and saw Cal Benton, as if he’d materialized out of nowhere. “ Cal?”

Cal hooked a hand around Harris’s forearm just beneath the elbow. “You’re drunk.”

“Tipsy. I have higher standards for drunk.”

Cal smelled of antiperspirant, as if he’d given himself a fresh swipe before getting out of his car. He was sweating, too, but he’d have to be inhuman not to sweat on such a night. “In here,” he said, tugging Harris toward a nearly empty coffee shop.

“If we’re seen -”

“We won’t be.” Cal opened the glass door, pausing to glare at Harris. “Unless your new friend Special Agent Rook is on his way.”

Harris licked his lips. Even after three beers, he felt dehydrated, parched. “Who?”

“You slimy, corrupt son of a bitch, Harris.”

Cal ’s reaction was a sign of panic. Incipient fear. “Here’s the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?”

“Damn you to hell.”

Harris didn’t respond. What was the point? Over the past five years, he’d grown accustomed to people damning him to hell. Cal shoved him onto a rickety chair and briskly went to the counter, soon returning with two coffees.

“Those paper cups burn my fingers,” Harris said, hearing the whininess in his own voice. He’d always hated whiners. “Don’t they have any of those little cardboard holders?”

“No. Start drinking. You need to sober up.”

“I am sober.” Harris leaned over slightly, so that he could inhale the steam from his coffee. “Too sober.”

“Damn it, Harris,” Cal said with a hiss. “I’ve been looking for you since last night. I saw you at the hotel with your FBI agent. What the hell were you doing? Anyone could have seen you.”

“Special Agent Rook and I were just having a quiet drink. I know a lot of FBI agents.”

“I checked him out. Rook’s a tough customer. He’s not talking to you out of the goodness of his heart.” Cal placed his elbows on the small table and clenched and unclenched his fists, staring at them. Finally, he regarded Harris not so much with hostility as disdain. “He’ll throw you under the bus, you stupid bastard.”

“I haven’t told him anything about you, Cal. I wouldn’t. You’re not the one -”

“Rook doesn’t care about you.” Cal didn’t raise his voice. “He cares about what information you can give him to help him advance his career. That’s it.”

“He’s ambitious, but he’s not dishonorable.”

“Dishonorable?” Cal snorted in disbelief. “Only you, Harris. People don’t care about honor anymore. They care about results.”

Harris wished he could think clearly, but thoughts floated by him, just out of his grasp. Nothing felt nailed down. It was as if he was on a current of air that was taking him wherever it wanted, and he had no control.

He leaned over his coffee, the steam rising into his eyes. “Rook can save Bernadette.”

“From what?”

“From you, Cal.” Harris raised his gaze to the man across from him. “And from Jesse.”

There. He’d said the name. Jesse Lambert. The devil.

Harris had known Cal even before he’d started seeing Bernadette, but only in the past three months had their fates become intertwined. Cal was hard-driving and ambitious, a womanizer who had seemed, at least in the early days of his marriage to Bernadette, ready to settle down.

Bottom-feeder that he was, Jesse Lambert had sensed Cal was ripe for the picking. With impeccable timing, he’d pounced at Cal ’s weakest moment.

And Harris had helped.

“You should give him the money,” he said. “Trust me, Cal. I know of what I speak. Give him the damn money now. Then get out.”

Cal averted his eyes. “If I give Jesse the money, there’ll be no getting out. Ever.” He returned his gaze to Harris. “I’ll turn into you.”

“If you don’t pay him, he’ll kill us both.”

“He’s a dealmaker, Harris, not a killer. We’re offering him a deal. Don’t weaken now.”

Harris could hear the disdain for him in Cal ’s voice. After all, Harris was the one who’d brought Jesse Lambert into Cal ’s life.

Into Bernadette’s life.

That was what ate at his soul. In using Cal, Harris knew he was also using the one friend he had left in the world.

“Jesse is the devil, Cal,” Harris said quietly. “And we made a deal with him.”

Cal didn’t respond right away. He drank his coffee, eyeing Harris, his expression unreadable. Jesse Lambert had walked into Harris’s life five years ago, preying on his insecurities and compulsions – and Harris had let himself be victimized. The gambling scandal that had ended his career was the least of his transgressions. Because of Jesse, he had betrayed his friends and the public’s trust for financial gain.

You let the devil have his way with you.

Three months ago, Jesse had returned to Washington, wanting fresh meat in return for his silence about Harris’s wrongs.

Harris had thrown him Cal Benton.

Cal ’s work and his marriage to Bernadette Peacham provided him with the kind of access and information that Jesse could use. He stayed in the background, maneuvering, manipulating. But when Jesse came to collect, Cal had refused to pay up.

“It’s time to give the devil his due, Cal.”

“We will, but on our terms. We’re not stealing his money. We’re delaying payment in return for Jesse getting out of our lives.”

“We?”

Cal leaned forward. “Don’t think Jesse doesn’t know you helped me.”

Harris could feel the blood drain from his face. A few weeks ago, he’d dropped one tidbit about Jesse Lambert to Cal, and Cal had run with it, uncovering Jesse’s true identity. Cal had a complete dossier on their devil. Names, addresses, bank accounts. His insurance policy, he called it. His game was straightforward but dangerous. Using information Cal provided, Jesse blackmailed people – among them a popular U.S. Congressman, a powerful Senate aide and a well-to-do, well-connected Washington widow. Jesse remained in the background, anonymous. Cal and Harris were the ones who arranged payments. In three months, they’d amassed $1.5 million. In cash. They were to split five hundred thousand, and Jesse was to get a million.

Only Cal was withholding the million until Jesse exited from their lives.

He’d keep the dossier. If Jesse ever breathed Washington air again, it would end up in the hands of federal investigators. They wouldn’t need to know a thing about Cal or Harris’s involvement with Jesse to nail him.

“Going to the FBI won’t save you,” Cal said.

“I haven’t given them anything. I just thought if they were looking…” Harris trailed off and blew on his coffee, wishing he could understand his own motives, his own thinking. When he’d first gotten in touch with Andrew Rook three weeks ago, his plan had seemed so logical and sensible. Now, he didn’t know. Finally, he shrugged at Cal. “I guess I hoped Jesse would think twice about killing us if I’d talked to the FBI.”

“Does he know?”

Harris shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“You’re a sniveling weakling, Harris. You’re trying to save your own skin. That’s all.”

“If only you’d been faithful to Bernadette…” Harris pushed aside his coffee and sank into the cheap wooden chair. He felt crumpled, saggy and old. He’d broken so many promises over the years – to his ex-wife, his children, his friends. To himself. “I don’t want her to get caught in the cross fire.”

Cal ’s jaw tightened visibly, and he spoke through half-clenched teeth. “She won’t.” There was no hesitation in his tone, no regret, no guilt.

Harris stared at his coffee, a film forming on it as he tried to get his head around his thought. “But it’s not fear of humiliation that sucked you into Jesse’s orbit, is it, Cal?” He looked up, giving Cal a knowing, bitter smile. “You wanted the action. The risk. The same impulses that prompted you to take your little tootsie to Bernadette’s house for the weekend got you into the pickle you’re in now.”

“Would you have preferred I’d capitulated and let Jesse put out the pictures for the world to see? How would that have helped your good friend Bernadette?”

They were graphic pictures. Harris had seen them. Cal Benton copulating with a very young, inexperienced, beautiful Congressional aide in the bedroom he and his wife had once shared. They were the kind of scenes that would not only ruin him, but the aide and Bernadette. Her authority in the courtroom would be diminished with those images in people’s heads.

But Cal hadn’t cooperated with Jesse Lambert for noble reasons – or even just to protect himself. He liked living on the edge. Jesse had seen that quality in him and used it to his advantage, luring Cal into his world of blackmail, extortion and fraud.

“I played Jesse’s game,” Cal said. “Now I’m pushing back, hard, because that’s all he’ll understand. You don’t fool me, Harris. You don’t give a damn about my sainted ex-wife.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I want you to stop talking to the FBI.”

“I haven’t told them anything of substance -”

“Good. Don’t.” Cal gave him a long look. “You can’t weaken. You can’t waver. Stick with me, Harris. I know what I’m doing.”

“No, you don’t.” Harris couldn’t remember when he’d felt so tired. “You don’t have a clue.”

Cal sniffed with impatience. “Go into hiding, then. Leave Jesse to me.”

“I already have gone into hiding. I just – tonight…” He broke off, not knowing how to explain his actions. “No one knows where I’m staying.”

“Rook?”

Harris shook his head. “No one.”

Cal slumped in his chair in relief. “That’s good, Harris. Excellent.”

“My advice, still, is to give Jesse his money and the dossier you have on him.”

“He won’t know if I’ve made copies of the information – if I have it all stored in my head. No, we’ve done what we’ve done, Harris. I have his money, and I have enough to put him away for decades. He’ll cooperate.”

Harris didn’t think so.

But Cal was on his feet. “Go, Harris. Leave Jesse to me.” He smiled, his arrogance and confidence back. “Hide.”

Harris didn’t respond, and Cal left, not so much as glancing into the coffee shop as he passed by the window on the street outside. Harris remembered himself in court, holding the attention and respect of everyone present. He’d squandered his reputation – that life – because of weakness, greed and the constant search for excitement. But he’d learned a few things during those years. He could recognize a violent man when he saw one.

And Jesse Lambert, he thought, was a violent man.

Twenty minutes later, Harris stepped out of a cab in front of the shabby rooming house on a bad street in southeast Washington. He’d fled here last night after his meeting with Andrew Rook, terrified of the consequences of his own actions. Harris had fought a sense of impending doom all day. It was what had driven him to the Georgetown bar. His fear had made him careless.

The odor of fresh dog excrement permeated the hot, humid night air. What the hell was wrong with people, not cleaning up after their pets? With a hiss of disapproval, Harris unlocked the separate entrance to his small studio apartment, in an ell off the run-down main building. He could hear someone vomiting down the street. Thanks to the smart management of a family trust by a financial advisor who loathed him, Harris remained in possession of a beautiful home on a prestigious street in Georgetown. But he couldn’t go back there, at least not for now.

He pushed open the door, then shut it tight behind him, blocking out the vomiting, the cars, the heat, the smell. He caught his breath, letting the cool air and his isolation soothe his taut nerves. He could ignore the seedy furnishings.

“Feeling sorry for yourself, Harris?”

Harris swung around as if he had heard a ghost. Or had he imagined the voice?

The devil’s voice.

“I’d feel sorry for myself if I were you,” the hidden intruder went on, his voice deadly calm and familiar.

Jesse Lambert.

Harris recognized the arrogance, the flat, bland accent.

At his worst, he would never match this man for pure evil.

“What are you doing here?” Even to his own ear, Harris’s voice sounded pinched and frightened. “Come out where I can see you.”

“By all means.” Jesse moved into the doorway of the tiny entry. Behind him, the studio apartment – rented by the day and sometimes by the hour – was dark, casting his face into shadows. “Don’t think the FBI will come save you. They’re not out there, Harris. They haven’t found you. You’re not important enough for them to have you under surveillance.”

“That’s because I haven’t told them anything. What do you want?”

Jesse was dressed entirely in black. His hair was black, with random flecks of gray. He’d let his beard grow. He was in his early forties and looked wild, as if he’d just come out of the mountains or off a pirate ship.

But his eyes, Harris noted, were virtually colorless, utterly soulless.

Jesse held a knife in one hand. Casually, as if it should cause no concern.

Harris was no expert on weapons, but he knew it wasn’t a kitchen knife. One side of the blade was serrated, the other side smooth. Both would cut. An assault knife of some kind, he thought.

“You don’t need that,” he said.

“I’m afraid I do.” Jesse ran a thumb along the smooth edge of the blade, as if he wanted to test its sharpness, see his own blood. “A knife is fast, quiet. In many situations, it’s more useful than a gun. You agree, don’t you, Harris?”

Harris tried to ignore the thudding of his heart, and summoned the last shreds of his dignity, his honor. He’d let himself be lured and manipulated by this man and by Cal Benton, by his own greed and compulsions, his own need for drama.

Stonily, he said, “It’s Judge Mayer.”

Jesse laughed, a hollow sound that conveyed neither pleasure nor fellow-feeling. “I like that. You’d go to the gallows with a stiff upper lip, wouldn’t you?”

“I would hope not to go to the gallows at all.”

“A little late, Judge Mayer.”

“I suppose so,” he said without flinching. “I made my deal with the devil.”

“Oh, yes.” The colorless, soulless eyes flashed, and the light seemed to dance on the knife blade. Jesse lowered his voice. “So you did.”

In the cheap entry mirror, Mayer recognized his own stark look of fear.

No, he thought. Not fear.

Dread.

He took in a shallow breath. “I don’t have your money, Jesse. I don’t know where it is. That’s the truth. Double-crossing you wasn’t my idea.”

Outside, car tires screeched, but it was silent in the small, rented room. Harris had stayed here before. It was his refuge – his hiding place. He’d been so sure no one would think to look for him here.

“How did you find me?” he asked.

“You’re a creature of habits.”

“The bar…you followed me. Did you see me having coffee with Cal? Why didn’t you follow him?”

“He’s not the one who went to the FBI. Don’t try to pretend you’re the innocent here. Cal couldn’t have betrayed me without your help.”

Harris thought of his foyer at home, with its antique mirror and half-moon table. Once it had been filled with the sounds of running children and his wife’s welcome when he came home. He’d lost them all.

One beat, two beats passed. Harris absorbed the reality of just how much trouble he was in.

Finally, Jesse went on. “How much do you and Cal know about me?”

Harris didn’t hesitate. “Everything.”

He should have laid it all out for the FBI from the start and let the chips fall where they may. Instead, he had tried to play Andrew Rook the same way he’d played everyone else in his life who’d wanted to help him, to trust and believe in him. Subterfuge and betrayal were his art. His entertainment. He’d thought, why not practice what he was good at on the FBI? Rook was investigating, but he had little to go on. Harris had seen to that. He’d kept his revelations vague, promising specifics in future visits – keeping Rook’s interest without giving him anything concrete. Rook was in fish-or-cut-bait mode now. At their next meeting, he’d want details.

But Cal was right, Harris thought. He didn’t care about helping the FBI. He cared about saving his own skin.

The devil had come for his due, indeed.

“If you knew everything about me, Harris, you and Cal wouldn’t dare try to double-cross me.”

As if to further drive home his point, Jesse pressed his thumb onto the tip of his knife, drawing a pearl of his own blood.

“You’re a violent man, Jesse.” Harris felt some of his former presence on the bench come back to him. He’d never flinched in the face of what he had to hear and see in the courtroom. “You don’t use violence as a tool to get what you want. Violence is what you want.”

“That’s my secret, is it?”

“It’s your secret and it’s your weakness. Your obsession.”

Jesse smirked as he licked the pea of blood off his thumb. “You Princeton types. You’ve read too many Greek tragedies. I want my money. I want everything you and Cal have on me. I want to know what you know.”

“I’d never use what I know against you, and Cal won’t, either. It’s his insurance policy – to keep you out of his life. Jesse…” Harris gulped in air. Did he dare hope he could negotiate a deal with this man? “Jesse, you can trust me not to talk.”

“Seeing how you’ve been meeting with an FBI agent, no, you lying son of a bitch, I can’t trust you not to talk.” Jesse sprang forward and placed the knife blade at the side of Mayer’s throat. “I want my money.”

“I can’t -”

“You can, Harris. You can get my money.” He lowered his knife and stepped back, the split second of explosive anger dissipated. “We’ll find a way. Together.”

Through violence, Harris thought.

Through death.

“In the meantime,” Jesse said calmly, with a smile so cold it could only be the devil’s, “tell me something. Just between us.”

“What?”

“Who was the redhead with Judge Peacham last night?”