Ah, Treachery!

Chapter 26

The house at 3219 Volta Place in Georgetown was just where Nick Patrokis, a native Washingtonian, knew it would be — directly across the street from where the old Second Precinct police station had been before being torn down long ago to make room for houses large enough to suit assorted Federal judges, an occasional cabinet member, the odd New York multimillionaire and even, years back, a President’s mother-in-law.

The helmetless Patrokis rode his eleven-year-old Harley up over the curb and onto the sidewalk, cut the engine, removed his goggles and stuffed them into a pocket of his down-filled jacket. At shortly past 5 P.M. it was almost dark, the temperature was two degrees below freezing and streetlights had just come on, allowing Patrokis to inspect 3219, which was a small two-story brick house painted pale yellow with white trim. It sat on a twenty-foot-wide lot and he guessed it had been built sometime between 1840 and 1870. The front door was enameled dark green.

Patrokis rang the bell and the green door was opened seconds later by Shawnee Viar, still wearing her denim skirt, man’s white shirt and speed-lace boots. She stared at him silently, taking in the jagged scar, the bandana and the ring in his ear.

She said, “I like the ring.come in.”

Once in the foyer, Patrokis removed his jacket, looked around, saw the government-issue hat rack, got a nod from Shawnee Viar and hung the jacket next to her old blue coat.

“In here,” she said, turned and led the way into the living room. Patrokis followed but stopped when he was no more than two steps inside it. He looked around carefully, taking his time, noting the fireless fireplace, the eclectic furniture, the jammed bookcases and, finally, the dead man in the old oak and leather chair with its wide wooden arms.

“Touch anything?” he said.

“I touched him for the first time in, I don’t know, ten years — fifteen? I felt for a pulse in his throat. There wasn’t any.”

Patrokis went slowly over to the body of Henry Viar, stared down at it and at the semiautomatic that lay on the floor close to the dead man’s dangling right hand. He then turned to read the one line on the sheet of bond paper in the portable typewriter. With his back still to Shawnee Viar, he asked, “He have insurance?”

“I guess so. My mother did.”

Patrokis turned. “Your mother?”

“I found her after she shot and killed herself. But she was upstairs in the bedroom. It was, I don’t know, almost twenty-five years ago — nineteen-sixty-eight. I was ten and I’d just come home from school. She shot herself right here.” Shawnee Viar used a forefinger to tap her right temple. She turned, looked down at the gun on the rug, then up at Patrokis. “I think they may’ve used the same gun. Wouldn’t that be strange?”

“Very,” Patrokis said, squatting to inspect the dead man. “Would you like it better if he hadn’t killed himself and somebody else’d shot him?”

“I get a choice?”

“Maybe,” he said. “When people shoot themselves in the heart like this they almost always pull the trigger with their thumbs. They don’t have to but most of them do. And once they’ve shot themselves that way, the weapon’ll usually drop into their laps or between their knees to the floor.” He paused. “Unless they’re wearing skirts.”

“You’re an expert?” she said. “Some kind of authority?”

“I once investigated eight guys who did it to themselves in the heart, and twenty-two others who stuck their pieces in their mouths and did it the messy way.”

“What were you — a detective?”

He shook his head. “I was just somebody they sent around in Vietnam to investigate suicides. It was a kind of punishment duty. I investigated thirty-six of them.”

“Twenty-two and eight add up to thirty,” she said. “Not thirty-six.”

“The other six were homicides,” Patrokis said and turned to read the suicide note again.

“What’d you do to make them punish you?” she said.

His back was still to her when he said, “I tried to kill myself. I was going for a temple shot, like your mother, but somebody walked through the door, saw what I was up to and threw his Zippo at me.”

“What happened?”

“I still pulled the trigger but my aim was off.” He turned and tapped the right side of his head a few inches above and beyond his ear. “The round zipped in and out. They put a metal plate in.”

“Ever try it again?” she said.

“I found a cure.”

“What?”

“I discovered I had an overwhelming curiosity about what happens next.” He studied her for several moments. “You ever think about suicide?”

“Only when I’m awake.”

He nodded, then asked, “Well, what d’you want your father to be — a homicide victim or a suicide?”

She closed her eyes, swayed slightly, opened them and the swaying stopped. “I really do get a choice?”

Patrokis nodded again.

“Which is simpler?”

“For you? Suicide.”

“But you think somebody killed him, don’t you?”

“Yes. And if I think that, so will the cops. But I can pickup the piece with a pencil and lay it on his lap, or maybe let it fall between his legs to the rug and the cops’ll probably call it suicide. His prints’ll be all over it and they won’t find anyone else’s — unless you fooled around with it.”

“I didn’t touch it,” she said.

“When they find out he’s ex-CIA,” Patrokis said, “they’ll make a courtesy call to Langley, who’ll be relieved that Henry Viar died by his own hand and not by somebody else’s. A murdered CIA guy, even a retired one, always raises the specter of scandal, old grudges, treachery and nameless foreign powers. On the other hand, CIA suicides are usually regarded as regrettable but neat, logical and fitting.”

“Why was he killed?” she said.

“I don’t know, but if I don’t fix things, the cops might wonder why there’s no blowback on his right hand and how come the piece is lying where it is. Then they’ll ask you a lot of questions about where you were today and where you went and what you did and who you saw while poor Dad here was being murdered. If they think it’s suicide, they’ll ask you all that anyway but won’t pay much attention to your answers.”

“What else will they ask, if they think it’s suicide?”

“They’ll want to know if he had any money worries, health problems, or disappointments.”

“That’s all he did have,” she said.

The next question was as casual as Patrokis could make it. “You think he killed himself?”

“No.”

“You going to tell the cops that?”

“No.”

“Then I’d better call them,” Patrokis said and headed for the phone.

The last Metropolitan Police homicide detective left shortly after 11 P.M.and at 11:17 P.M.a very junior CIA employee dropped by to offer the agency’s condolences. Shawnee Viar listened to him in the foyer, thanked him and sent him off into the night.

“They used to send them out in pairs,” Patrokis said after she returned to the living room, where the only trace of her dead father was a half-empty pack of Pall Malls. “Condolence teams. One old guy and one young guy. I don’t think they have that many old guys left now.”

“You ever work for them?” she said. “Not really.”

“Either you did or you didn’t.”

“I handled the occasional chore for them. In Vietnam.”

“What about Central America?”

“I was out of it by then.”

“Of what?”

“Special activities.”

She turned and went to a small secretary desk. “I’d better show you something,” she said, lowered the desk’s lid and began opening drawers.

Patrokis waited, then said, “Show me what?”

“A picture of my dad and three guys in Central America. In El Salvador.” She searched the last drawer, closed it, turned and said, “It was here yesterday because he’d showed it to me the night before. Now it’s gone.”

“Who were they — the three guys?”

She stared at him, chewing on her lower lip. “I can show you one of them.”

“How?”

Instead of replying, she went to her large purse, took out the videocassette, examined it briefly and said, “I’ll have to rewind it.” She then switched on the TV set, slid the cassette into the VCR and pressed rewind. “Like a beer or something?” she said.

“I don’t think so,” Patrokis said.

They sat side by side in easy chairs and silence, waiting for the tape to rewind. She then used the remote to press “Play.” A wide static shot of the motel bedroom came on the screen. There was no sound and the camera didn’t move. Then Shawnee Viar and Colonel Ralph Millwed tumbled onto the bed naked except for her boots. The two-person audience watched the tape in silence. After it ended, she used the remote to switch off the set, then turned to Patrokis and asked, “Know him?”

“Colonel Ralph Waldo Millwed. Who picked who up?”

“It was a kind of mutual selection by the frozen pizzas in the Georgetown Safeway. On Wisconsin. He didn’t think I knew who he was but I did from that photo my dad’d showed me. He sure knew who I was all right.”

“How’d it play out?”

“After the sex stuff? He threatened to send a copy of the tape to Langley with his face whited out somehow.”

“Unless you did what?”

“Monitor everyone Hank saw, called, wrote or faxed and make two phone reports a day — one at noon, one at midnight.”

“What’d you say?”

“I called him by name, let him know my husband’d died of AIDS, which is true, and that I’m HIV positive, which isn’t true. I told him to stay away from Hank and me or I’d send the tape to the Army along with proof I’m HIV positive.”

Patrokis stared at her for a long time before he said, “You’re lucky.”

She frowned. “Lucky?”

“That you’re still alive,” he said.