Liars & Thieves

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“It’s someone high in the government,” Jake Grafton said after listening to my tale. “They’ve kept it out of the newspapers and have police cooperation — those factors alone point to someone very high up.”

Dorsey O’Shea thought he was ignoring the most important point. “There is a body lying in my foyer in a pool of blood,” she said coldly. “I want someone to remove it and the corpse lying beside the house.”

“Indeed,” Jake Grafton murmured after an appraising glance at Dorsey.

“Just who are you, anyway? Tommy evaded the question when I asked who owned this house.”

“I’m a retired naval officer, Ms. O’Shea.”

“I have a great-uncle who was an officer in the Navy. As I recall, he commanded some kind of ship. That was years ago, of course.”

Grafton glanced at me, then murmured, “Umm.” I managed to maintain a straight face.

Dorsey decided the long-retired nautical relative was a conversational dead end. She pressed on. “What can you do about this mess?” she asked the admiral.

His reply came immediately. “I don’t know. Tommy and I will have to discuss that.”

“I’m going to have my entire foyer torn out and redesigned,” she said. “Unless that room is drastically changed, I will see that dead man and all that blood every time I pass through it.” She pressed her fingertips against her forehead. “I haven’t talked to the police, and I think I should. They may arrest me. I feel so out of control… so…”

We were going to have to hold Dorsey’s hand for most of the evening if I didn’t do something fast, so I said to her, “Didn’t you tell me the other night that you had an invitation to go to Europe?”

“Yes.”

“Who invited you, anyway?”

“Dino LaGassa. He wanted me to join him on his yacht in July. You met him several years ago at the Spencers’ party. He’s tall, with long hair and—”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, as if I remembered the guy and gave a rat’s ass. “Ol’ Dino. Truthfully, this might be an excellent time for you to go to Europe. I recall you mentioning that you know three or four people who are spending most of their time there. Call them when you get to Europe. If you don’t know or like Dino well enough to drop in for a visit, you might look up some of these other folks. When the police get around to investigating, you can make a statement for the authorities in Europe to pass along or come back and make a statement. In the interim you can hire a lawyer.”

“I have a firm I use from time to time.”

“Right.”

She brightened. “Perhaps I should go.” She paused before she added, “It was self-defense, that man I shot. He broke into my house. Two women, there alone — my God, surely there will be no question! When the police investigate, I’ll be delighted to cooperate.”

“I’m sure the authorities will see it as self-defense,” Jake Grafton said.

“On the other hand, perhaps I should go to the police now, make a statement, tell them how it was. They can get the bodies, I can arrange for a contractor, then go to Europe with this behind me.”

“What if they arrest you?” I asked.

She sat staring at me, her mouth slightly agape.

“Tommy can call you from time to time, keep you advised how things are going here,” the admiral said sympathetically. He could read her like a book. It had taken me six months, way back when, to figure her out. Slow on the uptake — that’s always been one of my failings. So Grafton was an admiral and I was just a grunt in the spy wars.

“I don’t have any clothes,” she pointed out with a frown.

“Do like the common people do,” I said curtly. “Buy some.”

She ignored the tenor of my remark. We discussed the location of her passport — a dresser drawer in her bedroom — and I promised to get it for her tomorrow.

On that note we went inside to see about dinner. I confess, I was feeling better already. I had someone to share the load with, and I was getting rid of Dorsey.

Once inside, Dorsey sailed off to the restroom. That’s when I whispered to the admiral, “Corpses get so gross if you leave them lying around the house.”

“I’ve heard that,” he said, nodding solemnly.

Mrs. Grafton — Callie — opened cans and defrosted and warmed a precooked ham. Kelly chattered with her in a language I assumed was Russian while Callie worked. Every now and then Callie glanced at Dorsey or me as the tale progressed. I had had about all of Dorsey I needed for a few years, so I sat beside the admiral’s mom and chatted her up.

After we had gone through the usual questions — where do you live, did you grow up there, etc. — and the conversation slowed to a trickle, the admiral said, “Tomorrow is Mother’s birthday.”

“What do you want for your birthday, Mrs. Grafton?” Dorsey asked brightly.

“I don’t want any more fucking robes, I can tell you that,” the old lady declared. “Got more of them than I’ll ever use.”

Jake winked at me, I bit my lip to keep from laughing, and Dorsey looked flustered.

I decided this would be a good time to show Admiral Grafton the submachine gun, so I did that while the beautiful Dorsey O’Shea, an heiress and socialite who had never worked a day in her life, attempted conversation with an old farm woman from western Virginia who had known nothing but hard labor all of hers.

“Nice shooter,” Jake Grafton said to me as he hefted the MP-5. “Right out of a government arsenal.”

After he looked it over I returned it to the corner near the porch where I could get to it quickly.

“Do you really think letting Dorsey go to the airport is a good idea?” I asked. Yeah, it had been my idea, but now I was having second thoughts. “If there’s a warrant out for her, they’ll red-flag her passport. She’ll be arrested at the airport.”

“I’ll lay money there’s no warrant for her,” Jake said. “For you, sure. Erlanger, perhaps. But why Dorsey?”

“Someone has to take the fall for the bodies at her house.”

“You, more than likely.” He looked me square in the eyes. “The real question is what degree of cooperation the person organizing this chase is getting from the various law enforcement agencies. The more he wants, the more he has to reveal. Do you really think he wants Dorsey hauled in on a material witness warrant to tell the authorities everything you told her?”

“I guess not.”

“I doubt it, too.”

Dinner went reasonably well, considering. While things were looking up, I couldn’t get those killers out of my mind. They were out there, they had the resources of the police agencies at their disposal, and I knew it was just a matter of time before they found Kelly and me. When they did, it was going to be really bad. Our lives were on the line, and perhaps the lives of Dorsey and now the Graftons. As Dorsey so elegantly pointed out, the circle kept expanding with everyone I talked to. How much time we had left I didn’t know, but I could feel it slipping away.

I wondered how Willie Varner was getting along. Poor Pulzelli, sliced up by assholes who knew damn well he didn’t know diddly-squat.

I guess I had a sour look on my face, because Callie Grafton said, “Is the food okay, Tommy?”

“Sorry. I was thinking about something a thousand miles away.”

She smiled gently.

“What I want to know, young man,” the admiral’s mom asked loudly, “is how you got into this house without a key.”

“He’s a cat burglar,” Dorsey said with her mouth full, defying all the social conventions. “He picks locks.”

“Well, hell,” said old Mrs. Grafton. “A man’s gotta do something in this world, don’t he?”

I gave her a big grin. Some of these old ladies were real dears.

We were drinking coffee afterward when Jake Grafton excused himself and went upstairs.

Twenty minutes later he came downstairs and motioned for me to follow him.

As we stood beside his car, he said, “I’m going to make some telephone calls from a pay phone, just in case.” He pulled a small address book from his pocket just far enough that I could see what it was.

“Who will you call?” I asked. He knew half the people in government, yet one or more of them were hunting me with a vengeance.

“Relax,” he said. “I know a few people who can be trusted.” With that, he got in his car and drove away.

Jake Grafton pulled into a filling station with a pay telephone mounted on a pedestal where drivers could use it without leaving their cars. After getting five dollars in quarters from the station attendant, Jake stood beside the phone to use it. He dialed a number from his address book.

“Hello.”

“Sarah, this is Jake Grafton.”

There was a moment’s hesitation before Sarah Houston said, “How are you this evening, Admiral?”

“Sneaking right along. Howgozit at NSA?”

“So-so.”

“By chance, are you alone?”

“Yes.” She didn’t sound full of enthusiasm, but then her history with Jake Grafton had its serious ups and downs. The name her parents gave her was Zelda Hudson. She was a certified genius who became a master computer hacker, programmer, and network guru. She got her start in business hacking into government and defense contractor computers to steal secrets to sell. Although she was getting rich on that gig, she masterminded the theft of a U.S. Navy submarine in order to get richer; Grafton had hunted her down, and she wound up pleading guilty to thirty-seven felonies. Later he had been instrumental in springing her from the pen to help set up a computer network to hunt down terrorists importing nuclear weapons into the United States. Of course she had had to change her name: The FBI provided a new identity, and she became Sarah Houston. After that adventure Grafton even managed to get her a research job at the National Security Agency.

Tonight Jake told her, “A friend of mine tells me someone took out a CIA safe house on the Greenbrier River in West Virginia this past Tuesday, killed most of the folks there. Have you heard anything about it?”

“Not a peep. Nor would I.”

“There have been no public announcements, no requests for local police assistance, none of that. I want to know what the agency is doing to find the killers.”

“I can’t get into the CIA computers,” she said flatly. “Once upon a time, but not in this day and age.”

“There was a fire and a bunch of bodies — at least six, perhaps a dozen. The local fire department responded. The bodies must have gone somewhere, and someone must have queried the FBI fingerprint files in an effort to identify them. More than likely the FBI is involved.”

“I could check that,” she said tentatively.

“There was a shooting in downtown Washington early Wednesday morning,” Jake continued. He read her the address that Tommy had given him. “And two people were shot on an estate in Montgomery County, Maryland, Wednesday morning.” He gave her that address, too. “I need to know who these people were, who they worked for, what is being done to investigate these crimes.”

“You still in the Navy, Admiral?”

“Nope.”

She gave an audible sigh. “I suppose you don’t want anyone to know that you and I are inquiring?”

“You’re a mind reader.”

“And you have a good reason for asking these questions?”

“You bet.”

“Want to share it with me?”

“No.”

“When I got up this morning, I thought life was going too well. If I didn’t owe you big-time, Admiral, I’d tell you where to stick that telephone.”

“Ain’t it great having friends?”

“I want you to know that I like my job and don’t want to go back to the joint. You’re asking me to hang it all out, risk everything.”

“Yes.”

She said a cuss word, then said, “Call me back tomorrow night at this number, about this time or later.”

They said a curt good-bye.

I bunked on the porch of the Graftons’ beach house that evening, the MP-5 within easy reach. When he got back that evening, the admiral told me he had called Sarah Houston. That’s all he said. I had been working for him when he sprung Sarah because she was the best hacker on the planet. If anyone could figure out what was going down, Sarah would be the one.

I handed him the automatic when he went upstairs to bed and kept the MP-5.

After the house quieted down and the lights were out, Kelly Erlanger came downstairs and crawled under the blanket with me. She was wearing pajamas — didn’t say anything, just curled up with her back to me and drifted off to sleep.

I was beginning to wish that she was a little more romantic. After everything we had been through this past week, maybe this wasn’t a good time. Still…

She was gone when I woke up, sometime before dawn. There was a nice breeze. I lay in the darkness listening. Occasionally a vehicle passed on the highway. The rumble of the surf was steady as clockwork. I was about to get up when I heard footsteps in the crushed-seashell street. The noise woke me completely.

I rolled off the couch as quietly as I could, picked up the MP-5, and crawled forward a few feet to a place I where could see up and down the street. I eased the silenced muzzle of the weapon forward, tried not to breathe.

Something was out there, something evil.

There — under the last streetlight, near the beach, someone with a big dog on a leash, walking toward the boardwalk over the dune.

Was I going to spend the rest of my life jumping at every footfall, every little noise?

A little disgusted with myself, I went inside and made a pot of coffee.

At ten after one on Friday afternoon I parked the car on a deserted country lane on the top of the bluff overlooking the Potomac and hiked through the woods toward Dorsey O’Shea’s mansion. I carried the submachine gun in my arms and had the automatic in my pocket. That morning I offered to leave the MP-5 with Admiral Grafton, but he said he had an old pistol in a drawer upstairs, and that would do.

Needless to say, I had no desire to run into anyone on this hike — uniformed police looking for someone to drag off to the clink would be bad, but camouflaged killers packing submachine guns lying in wait for anyone happening by could be fatal. I had seen those shrub-heads in their ghillie suits, so I knew how hard they would be to see. I took my time, kept the eyeballs going as I slipped through the woods, watching every step, every twig and branch, alert for anything that shouldn’t be there.

Believe me, I was sweating. One mistake and I was a goner. I knew it and was doing this anyway, which says more about my testosterone level than it does about my intelligence. Actually I didn’t have a choice — I was already in this mess up to my eyes. Marching into a police station and making accusations looked as attractive as a weekend of Russian roulette. Anyone who could reach into a CIA safe house to whack someone could get to me in any hole I picked.

When I got my first glimpse of Dorsey’s house, I got down on my belly and lay still for the longest time, looking and listening. Finally I crawled to where I could see better.

Lying there on the forest floor felt good. I didn’t want to move. Thought of a dozen reasons why I shouldn’t.

Finally I forced myself to do it. Stood and walked to the side of the house and pressed my back to it. Worked my way along the house to the corner and eased one eye around it.

The body of the man I had killed wasn’t there.

After a careful look all about, I walked over to where he had fallen and examined the grass and earth. The rain had almost washed out the bloodstains. I eased on over to the spot where I did the shooting. Sure enough, someone had picked up the spent cartridges. I have good eyes, and I looked — and didn’t see a single one.

Dorsey had given me a key to the kitchen door. Although she was a rich single woman living alone on the edge of one of the nation’s worst sewers — Washington, D.C. — Dorsey didn’t have a burglar alarm in her house. Go figure. I pushed the door open, then stood waiting for the hail of bullets that didn’t come. Finally I sucked it up and eased through the doorway.

I kept my shooter at waist height, leveled and ready, my finger off the trigger, and moved as slowly and silently as I could.

I was dripping wet with perspiration. If they didn’t hear me coming, they would smell me.

The body was gone from the foyer. Dorsey was going to be pleased to hear that whoever had carted off the corpse had also cleaned up the blood. I couldn’t see any stains.

I did the whole house room by room, floor by floor. Only when I was absolutely certain that I was the only person in the building did I go back to Dorsey’s room and root through her drawer for a passport. She gave me a list of things she wanted, makeup, dresses, swimsuits, and such, but I didn’t bother. She was wearing her Rolex and had her purse with credit cards, checkbook, and address book — she was ready to fly. Young women in her socioeconomic group didn’t wear jewels, which meant hard times ahead for guys like me if that trend didn’t change. Maybe I should stay with the government.

I locked the place up when I left, took a last look around, then set off back through the woods.

Who removed the bodies?