Liars & Thieves

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“My name is Mikhail Goncharov,” the Russian said slowly.

He was sitting on the screened-in porch of the Graftons’ beach house with Callie. Sections of the morning newspaper were strewn around. She had been translating news stories for the archivist, trying to get him interested in something… anything.

His declaration silenced her. She folded the section of newspaper she had been reading and placed it on her lap, then sat watching him, waiting for more. After a long pause he said, “I am retired from the SVR.”

“Are you married?” she prompted.

He had to think about it. His bland, relaxed expression slowly disintegrated. “Bronislava. She is dead! They killed her.”

He looked at his hands, looked around the porch as if seeing it for the first time. “She always wanted children but they never came. Now she’s gone… Life leaks away grain by grain, like sand running through your fingers. Then one day there is no more left.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Yes. Sorry.” He stopped looking around and seemed to focus his gaze inward. His shoulders sagged and his chin dropped toward his chest.

Jake Grafton went with me to pick up the van. It was indeed ready, with a spiffy new paint job and professional lettering on both sides. The New York commercial plates looked nice, too. “How much trouble am I going to have with those plates?” I asked the fat man.

He took his cigar butt from his mouth and spat on the concrete. “Depends on how long you plan on driving that thing,” he said. “Truck they’re off of was in a wreck. It’s in a Brooklyn shop for repairs and paint. Going to be there about ten more days. When it comes out, I figure somebody will start squawking.”

“Good enough,” I said, nodding.

I had visited the bank where Willie and I had our business account earlier that afternoon and had withdrawn some cash. Then Grafton and I went over to Willie Varner’s, left him five hundred, and dropped off a six-pack.

I introduced him to Grafton, just gave Willie his name. “Most of the stitches came out this morning,” Willie said. “Damn things were itching like crazy.”

“That’s good,” I told him. “Now all you need are some tattoos to cover up the scars.”

“I’ve had enough needles to last me, Tommy. Any more and they’re gonna have to hold me down.”

“Think you could help me out some next week? In New York. I’m going to need someone who has it together.”

“Doin’ what?” he asked, eyeing Grafton. In his jeans and T-shirt, the admiral didn’t look like a cop, but Willie was a careful man.

“Monitoring some bugs in a hotel. I’ve got a guy to help, but I don’t know if I can trust him.”

“Don’t ever do nothin’ with people you don’t trust. Nothin’ at all. Don’t even be around them. How many times I told you that?”

“That’s why I’m asking. Think you can do it?”

“Long as it don’t involve heavy liftin’ or hard lovin’, I can probably help a little. I’m stiff and sore as a diseased dick but the brain is working. I’ll tell you now, though — you, too, Grafton — I don’t want to go back to the joint. Shit goes down, I never heard of your sorry ass. They’ll have to burn down Washington and sift the ashes to find me.”

“I can live with that.”

“Don’t wanta shoot nobody neither.”

“I’ll drop by this weekend and see how you’re doing. We’ll talk about it then.”

“No offense, fella,” Willie said to Grafton, then focused on me. “You come back, be alone.”

“Sure. Hang tough.”

At the garage I inspected the paint job and climbed in the van to inventory the contents. The fat man stood outside with Jake Grafton, who didn’t have anything to say. I could see them in the rearview mirrors, just standing there, the fat man chewing his cigar and Grafton looking like a man waiting for a bus.

I checked carefully. Even if the guy running the chop shop hadn’t stolen anything, the men working for him might not be as honest. Everything appeared to be as I had left it. Then I hit the jackpot — found another dozen bugs in a small box under the computer. I checked them over. Yeah, I could use them.

Grafton was hard to figure. Sure, I had worked for him several times in the past when he was an admiral on active duty in the Navy. While he was tan and lean enough for a man his age, he didn’t look like anyone special. He was, though. The people who knew him best, folks like Toad Tarkington and Rita Moravia, swore by him.

He’d been on the phone more or less continuously since he found me camping out in his beach house. I didn’t think he was talking to his stockbroker. Of course I was curious. Be nice if he shared some info with me.

When I got out of the vehicle I pulled the roll from my pocket and counted out twenty hundreds, which was all of it, into the fat man’s hand.

“A pleasure doing business with you,” he said as he pocketed the money. He dropped the key to the van in my hand. “How’s Willie?”

“Stitches came out this morning. He says they were itching like hell.”

The fat man chuckled. “Tell him I say hi,” he said, and went into his office. I got in the van and backed it out of the garage. Grafton followed me back to Delaware in his car.

Maybe I ought to ask the admiral for the lowdown — the straight skinny. That thought was immediately followed by another: I had assumed that he knew more than I did. Was that true? Surely he knew that I didn’t help murder those people at the Greenbrier safe house. Or did he?

Why was he helping me, anyway?

Jake Grafton was following along a hundred yards behind Carmellini, just keeping him in sight, when his new cell phone rang. “Hi.”

“Hi, yourself.” Sarah Houston. “I am up against the wall here at work. I am supposed to be working with the cryptographers, yet I am spending scads of time on my computer.” Jake well knew what she was doing on that computer — spying on Dell Royston and trying to learn what he was telling interested government agencies about the hunt for the Russian defector and the corpses that kept cropping up. “I’ve run out of wriggle room.”

“Tommy will pick you up at your apartment on Saturday morning. Pack for a couple of days. Bring your laptop.”

“Oh, Lord. You know I can’t stand him.”

“I can’t imagine why. He’s reasonably smart, well within the bell-shaped curve on looks, showers daily. Seems like every other girl in town hits on him.”

“That’s why.”

“We need your help. He’ll be there day after tomorrow.”

As he drove along, Jake smiled. So Sarah liked Carmellini. Who would have suspected that?

When we got back to the beach house there was little light left in the sky. A thick overcast lay just over our heads, one churned by a stiff wind. I wasn’t hungry, but when Callie offered me a beer I thanked her and took it to the porch. Goncharov was already upstairs, in bed I suspected, though I doubted he was sleeping. The man was fighting too many demons.

The Sunday papers were still there piled up, and since I hadn’t read them, I pulled out the latest and turned on the reading light. After I went through the baseball standings and read about the latest tour event, I glanced through the political news.

Normally I don’t read political stuff. Just not interested. Maybe that’s the sign of a poor education, but I’ve only got one piddly little vote and one stomach lining, so I sleep better not knowing what the elected ones are doing on a daily basis. If you avoid television, as I do, they are remarkably easy to ignore.

The storyline du jour was the possibility of a female vice-presidential candidate. The five women the pundits thought most eligible for a political mating were three senators and two governors, who were given a lot of column inches.

A page over I stopped to read Jack Yocke’s column. I had met him at Grafton’s house a year or so ago, and he seemed like a decent sort. He had a different slant on the woman veep issue, however. According to Yocke’s unnamed sources — journalese for rumor — the president was considering the possibility of nominating his wife, Zooey Sonnenberg, for the vice-presidential spot.

Wow! If it happened, that would really be news. Not the biggest story since the resurrection, but close. Sonnenberg, who didn’t use her husband’s name, was a politician in her own right, and a controversial one. When she was young she had used her position as the female scion of a prominent wealthy family to make a big splash in the antiwar movement during the height of the Vietnam protests. She had advocated leftist causes in the years since, although she had been moderating her stances since her husband got elected to drive the bus. According to Yocke.

He went on to analyze the political chemistry. The president’s strongest support was from the conservative wing of his party. Zooey would strengthen him with the liberals, the theory went. She would even steal votes from women of the other party, which was a politician’s nirvana. Jack Yocke said that Zooey Sonnenberg on the ticket would be just what the doctor ordered to reelect the president.

I tossed the paper down and turned off the light, wondering where Yocke had gotten that tidbit.

The country was overdue for a woman vice president, but Zooey Sonnenberg? The first lady? The president’s wife?

After a while Grafton joined me in the darkness. “Callie says Goncharov has his memory back.”

“Thank God,” I whispered fervently. “What did he say?” I said, speaking louder.

“She didn’t question him about the files. Didn’t think this was the time.”

I took a sip of beer to hide my disappointment.

I saw the flash of his teeth in the darkness as he grinned at me. “This is going to work out, Tommy. We’ll get these people.”

“How?”

“You’ll see. Just bug that hotel. Pick up Sarah Houston at her apartment on your way to New York and take her along. She can’t be of much help if she stays in her office.”

“I have to go back to Washington tomorrow,” I told the admiral, “to make some preparations. Probably spend the night with Willie Varner, leave for New York the following morning. Do you think I should ask Joe Billy Dunn to help?”

“You’re worried he’s talking to people at Langley?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you decide if a person can be trusted?”

I took a deep breath as I thought about the answer to that one. I’d made my share of mistakes through the years. Kelly Erlanger sprang immediately to mind. “Gut feeling, I suppose.”

“How much help do you need?”

“One or two other people. Willie can work the van. I can teach him enough in half an hour to stand in for me.”

“Who would you use if you decide not to use Dunn?”

“There’s a couple of folks who helped me on a couple of things in the past. Man and woman who run a little electrical business, Scout and Arlene.”

“Are they honest?”

“Arlene used to be a crackhead. Was a street-corner hooker to pay for her habit. She beat it, though, which puts her pretty damned high in my book. Scout’s a thief. Willie sent me to them a couple years ago, says they’re good people. I can understand a guy like Scout, maybe because he’s so much like me. I know when he might be tempted and when he wouldn’t. And he thinks I’ll kill him if he crosses me.”

“Dunn doesn’t believe that, does he?”

“Well, he might,” I said, thinking of his reaction to the pistol I shoved in his face. “On the other hand, he might think he can kill me first. The thing is, I don’t know who he’s been talking to, what he really thinks, if he can be bought.”

“Can you be bought?” Grafton asked.

“Hell, yes. Take a lot of dough, though. Whatever I am, I’m not cheap.”

The admiral chuckled. After a bit he went on. “Dunn’s been talking to your department head. He’s a good man. I think it’s safe to take him along, but if I were you I’d keep this conversation under my hat.”

“Okay.”

Grafton finished his beer in silence. I thought about asking him to level with me, to tell me all of it, but I chickened out.

“’Night, Tommy,” he said, and rose from his chair and went inside. In a little bit I heard him and Callie go upstairs.

Maybe I just didn’t want to know. Maybe I wanted to think that someone smarter than I was knew where the aces and kings were. Maybe I should just write a letter to Dear Abby. She would probably tell me to get my head examined.

I kicked off my shoes and stretched out on the porch swing. Pulled an afghan over me because the evening was cool. The wind was buffeting the building, and I figured it was going to rain soon. Going to be a good night to sleep. I thought about Kelly Erlanger for a while, wondered if she was still alive. Thinking about her was a waste, so I thought about Anna Modin until I dropped off.