I, Sniper

7

When the Seventh Floor calls, you have to go. It was J. Edgar’s rule, back when the floor was the fifth and the building was across and down Pennsylvania, but it still held. Nick was glad he’d worn a tie that day. He dipped into the washroom and gave his face a scrub, but the lines driven into his flesh by a week of twenty-hour days and a lot of flight and airport time weren’t helpful. He ran some water through his hair, toweled off, went out and found his jacket, and took the elevator up to seven for the director’s office.

He was waved through by the Big Guy’s secretary and two uniformed Joes who formed a security perimeter even this deep in the heart of the federal beast. He’d been in this office before, with its altar of flags, its glory wall summing up the director’s-this director’s-career, its shelves of unread books, its mementos and naval flourishes (the brass telescope!) and so forth. And he’d seen this view, which looked to the southeast over Pennsylvania and the Archives’ Grecian pretensions toward the dome of the Capitol, giving the room an absurd fake-movie quality, on the presumption that all offices in Washington had views of the Capitol, with its red-white-blue bunting flopping in wind jets.

But the director sat with two men, by dint of haberdashery alone-well-fitted blue suits with subtle striping; dark, shiny mahogany loafers affixed with the je-ne-sais-quoi languor of tassels; fresh, un-dry-cleaned red power ties-of a higher professional political ranking. Each face was smooth and ruddy (Botox? only a coroner would know for sure), each head of hair lush and vibrant, each profile taut, each body toned (hours per diem in the gym). It took a while, but Nick recognized the heartier of the men as a congressman from out west somewhere; the other guy had lawyer or prominent lobbyist written in his flesh.

“Nick, sorry to interrupt,” said the director, “but I wanted to get these two interested parties a little shot of face time with our lead guy on Sniper.”

“Nick,” said the congressman, rising, hand out, “Jack Ridings, Wyoming, thanks so much for giving us a few,” and the other quickly fell into line, IDing himself behind the well-turned-out presentation as Bill Fedders, no affiliation but by implication powerful affiliation.

“Nick’s one of our heroes,” the director said. “He still limps a little because he was wounded in a gunfight while busting up that armored car robbery in Bristol, Tennessee, last year. How’s the leg, Nick?”

“Well, my basketball days are over, but I can still jog and ride a bike, so it’s a fair trade. I never could hit a jumper anyway.”

“Nick, can you catch the guys up? Jack’s the representative for T. T. Constable’s western holdings and Bill’s T. T.’s private attorney, and Mr. Constable-”

“ ‘Tom’ is what we all call him,” said the slicker of the two, with a conspiratorial warmth, as if he were letting them in on some inside skinny. “He just came up with the ‘T. T.’ for publicity purposes. The man is insatiable.”

“Tom, then,” said the director. “Tom is very concerned with the progress in his ex-wife’s death.”

“Sure,” said Nick. “No problem. Most of it’s been in the papers.”

So, this was a private confab with the forces of Constable? Constable, wealthy beyond measure, the famous star’s equally famous hubby for eight years, fingers in all the pies there were-Constable was big-footing it. He needed private assurances that this thing was getting full attention from the Bureau-as if something this insanely high-profile wouldn’t of its own accord-and insisting on a little inside dope. That was fine, that was okay, that was the way the town worked, and if you were going to have a career in the town, you had to play by its rules.

The rules were: Information is power. But power is also power. Power must be not so much obeyed as acquiesced to, massaged, assured. The key to all transactions was the congressman, who got his big donors and supporters private audiences with linchpin feds. It had always been that way, it would always be that way. Now Tom Constable-T. T. in the papers, Tom only to friends and intimates-wanted to be in the loop. In a way, Nick was surprised it had taken so long. Constable had a yen for attention himself, which may be why he married Joan in the first place, and he’d been front and center on all the Sunday talkers about the tragedy of his second wife, how much she’d given, what a crime it was that this tragedy took her, how it was as if she hadn’t survived the war she had tried so hard to stop. Of course Jack and Mitzi and the poor funnyman Mitch more or less disappeared during this orgy of calamity, but again, that was the way of the big foot. Nobody ever said it was fair. It wasn’t supposed to be fair. The process, in fact, in the language of engineers, was operating as designed.

Nick quickly ran through the actions his investigation had taken and tried not to overplay his hand. The director supplied that ingredient.

“See how fast Nick cut to the heart of it. He knew exactly where to go to smoke this guy out and it took, what, Nick, less than three days?”

“We didn’t begin to look at the pattern until after the second incident,” said Nick, “and we became lead agency. But we had the name one day after the third incident, went public with it the second day, and had our man early in the morning on the third, though for all of us involved, there was no breakdown by days. Nobody went home, we worked straight. It was great staff work. My people really did it. I just tried to stay out of the way.”

“I’m sure Nick is being modest,” said the congressman.

“I think I speak for Tom when I say the Bureau’s actions have been extraordinary,” said Bill. “Really fine work. Now what happens?”

“Well,” said Nick, “as the defendant is dead, obviously there won’t be any trial. What we do, we assemble the case just as if he’d survived, and we’ll issue a report. When we do that, we’ll officially declare the case closed. Chicago, New York, and Ohio will then declare their cases closed. And then-well, that’s it.”

“What happens if someone comes along,” asked the congressman, “and says, ‘Hey, you got it wrong, it was actually Freemasons from the Vatican and the Uzbeki mafia that did it?’ That could happen. And then it’s all dragged out again. I think Tom’s a little worried about Joan’s life becoming some kind of cash cow for cranks.”

“You know,” added the smoother Bill, “unlike, say, ’sixty-three, we have the Internet, we have bloggers, we have anybody with or without a thought in his head having instant worldwide contact with billions of others of questionable competence. The result, I’m sure you’re aware, is a kind of festival of the bizarre, of the mendacious and the frankly exploitative. Good God, some are saying that Tom killed Joan because she was going to tell the world Tom dresses up in women’s clothes! Or he never forgave her for not having his child. Or she cheated on him with a key grip on the set of Justine’s Revenge. Others are saying Mitch Greene was a Russian agent and was about to turn himself in and reveal Tom as a spymaster. I mean, can you imagine? I can’t even repeat some of the viler stuff.”

“Well, there’s a kind of systemic guard against that,” said Nick. He was smart enough to lean a little forward, as if he were divulging some real inside dope, when what he was about to say was clearly known by everyone above the precinct level. “See, once law enforcement closes the case, it goes into the records as ‘case closed.’ That’s a percentage, and every department, especially big-city departments or state police agencies and the political bureaucracies behind them, want their percentage as high as possible every year. I don’t think the director will fire me if I tell you we do too. So the reality is that nobody wants to reopen a closed case that’s on the good side of the ledger. Practically speaking, that means when the guy with the psycho best seller idea comes to us, we just say case closed and refer him to our document. Which, of course, he’s already seen on the Internet. When that final doc comes out, it really does, in our experience, pull down a curtain that never comes up.”

“Nick, may I call you Nick?” asked Bill.

“Sure, everybody does.”

“Nick, is there a time frame here you could share?”

“Well, this one is unique, given the celebrity of the victims and the killer, the media attention and so forth, so of course we don’t want to rush anything or make any mistakes that can later be attacked or reinterpreted. So I’m thinking another week at the least.”

“Ah.” If Bill was disappointed, no hint of it showed on his pampered, sleek, confident face, but in time he did make a further comment.

“I’m wondering,” he said, “if we can’t hasten it just a bit. Tom is extremely disturbed by Joan’s death, and it’s unnerving the way it’s just hanging there in the open right now. This is painful for everyone, and Tom is also speaking for the heirs and families of the other survivors as well, and that poor, crazed sergeant. So I’m wondering if we can’t speed the process somewhat. Get it out, get it done with, get it put to bed and closed, and we can return to our lives and begin the healing.”

“I understand that,” said Nick, “and we are working extremely hard. But, sir, it is a complex investigation, given the disparity of the four victims and the geographical spread, and my fear is that if we do somehow misstate or miss something, that’ll just be fodder for these goblins. Look at the Kennedy thing, how that went on for years and ultimately compromised a generation’s belief in the United States government.”

“I see, I see,” said Bill. “Then possibly here’s a way we could go. Could we leak something to, say, NBC News or the Times? I happen to know a young guy at the Times who could be very helpful. And that paper almost speaks with the authority of the state, and an early peek at the findings of the investigation would do a lot to calm this grotesque speculation.”

“Well,” said Nick, knowing it to be a bad idea. You couldn’t trust those guys anymore, and some hotshot egoist reporter with a desperate need to advance his own career could completely mess things up.

“I appreciate Tom’s interest,” said the director, “but I don’t think we’ve got anything comprehensive to leak yet. I’d be very happy to keep you gentleman, and Mr. Constable, in the loop, and when we have something near an end product, we’ll get back in touch and then maybe we can work something out. In the meantime, Nick, consider yourself officially interfered with by the Seventh Floor and pressurized to bring it to a boil faster, because there are so many interested parties. It’s wrong, it’s unfair, it sucks, but it’s Washington.”

Everybody laughed at the director’s skillful jest, which nevertheless carried the weight of authority behind the humor.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to walk Nick back to the task force real estate; it was good of you to drop by and express your concerns.”

Everybody rose, shook, palavered inconsequentially for a bit, and then the director herded Nick back to the hallway and shoved him down it toward the elevators.

“Sorry, but Constable has juice with the administration, and when he leans, I have to pretend to give a little.”

“Yes sir,” said Nick.

“For some reason, they want this thing moved ahead. I know you’re working your ass off, but it’s so much better for all of us if you can release sooner rather than later and if you can slip something to the Times.”

“As soon as I can, sir, believe me, I’ll-”

“Just let me ask you, what’s the hang-up? Do you need more people? Is it a manpower issue or a technology thing? Whatever support you need, I’ll give it to you one hundred fifty percent. I want this thing over too.”

“Yes sir. No, it’s not really manpower, it’s-”

He paused.

“ ‘Memo to Special Agents: Never pause thoughtfully in the presence of the director. Thoughtful doesn’t get you to the Seventh Floor, only results do.’ ”

“Yes sir. It’s this, then. I’ll lay it out. Not a major issue, I think, but it is something I’ve-we’ve-never encountered before. It’s weird; it’s got us somewhat baffled.”

“An anomaly?”

“A huge anomaly. I’ve never seen an anomaly this big.”

“What is it?”

“Here’s the anomaly: there are no anomalies.”

The director grunted.

“This is real life,” Nick said, “there’s always an anomaly, some little random fact that doesn’t make sense or seems stuck in there and is connected to nothing. Someone gets somewhere too fast or not out of breath; someone’s looking out a window and sees something and misinterprets it; a fingerprint from seven years ago turns up on a scene and screws up everybody. That’s the universe we work in: squalid, messy, human, full of the unexplained or the untidy. The unusual is to be expected; it’s even banal. But in this case, nothing. It all fits. There’s nothing left over, nothing unexplained. Everything is perfect, from the ballistics to the forensics to the arterial spray patterns to the fiber samples to the fingerprints to the paper trail to the witness accounts to the time line to the coroner’s report to the DNA testing. It’s not messy enough. It’s too neat and it makes me very nervous.”

“But you can’t put your finger on any one thing, is that it?”

“Exactly. We go over it and over it and we’re stymied. Every day we get something new and it always fits just right, like a puzzle.”

“Well, let me just caution you that you don’t want to get too overwhelmed by what is, after all, well and truly nothing. I mean the prime craziness of the conspiracy gooney birds is the notion that the less the evidence, the more proof the authorities saw of conspiracy. Less was never less, it was always more. The absence of evidence was seen as more significant than evidence itself.”

“Good point,” Nick conceded. “Still, there’s a thing I want to do. Let me run it by you.”

“Go ahead.”

“A wild card.”

“Hmm,” said the director.

“Meaning somebody from outside our culture, not in our boxes, with our prejudices, who would look at it with a fresh eye.”

“A neutral observer.”

“Actually, someone inclined to disbelieve our explanation. Someone who’d fight us. Someone with an instinct for our weaknesses. Someone who’s very good on guns, particularly the dynamics of shooting, because he’s won a batch of fights with big iron. Someone whose life experience inclines him to revere the marine sniper and who would never make an axiomatic assumption about a marine sniper’s guilt. His mind doesn’t work that way. Then, he was himself a marine sni-”

“Swagger.”

“Yes.”

“Christ, Nick, no doubt he’s quite the operator, but can he be controlled? I mean, we spun his adventures in Bristol to our advantage, no doubt about it, but he was just that far from being out of control. Nick, suppose that fifty he fired at that helicopter had missed and hit a busful of orphan piano prodigies on their way to prayer camp.”

“I’d be a crossing guard in Mississippi,” said Nick.

“And I’d be your supervisor, making twenty-five cents more an hour. Nick-”

“He’s smart,” Nick said. “Almost nobody knows more about this stuff than he does. And he’s honest. He’ll call it as he reads it, no bullshit, no PC, no spin. He’s straight nineteenth-century lawman in that regard.”

“Matt Dillon!” said the director. “Here we go again. You ride him hard, you control him heavy, you have three more days. We need that report sooner, if not faster than sooner.”