PrivateSector

CHAPTER NINE

I raced home and slipped into a blue blazer and tan slacks, appropriate attire for 1789, the Georgetown restaurant where Miss Morrow had suggested we meet and eat. Among those in the know, 1789 is a well-regarded D. C. powerplace. Though to be socially correct, it’s an evening powerplace, which I guess is different from a midday powerplace, which I guess means only real schmucks eat breakfast there. As long as nobody made me drink sherry.

When I was a kid, my father did a tour in the Pentagon, which was my initiation to our capital and its weird and idiosyncratic ways. We lived in the suburb of North Arlington, some four miles from the city. Washington, back then, was a government town populated mostly by impoverished blacks, penny-pinching bureaucrats, and a small coterie of political royalty. Even in those days it was an expensive town, but my mother was a wizard with Green Stamps, so we lived like kings. Just kidding-but my father’s commute wasn’t all that long.

More recently, Washington has become a roaring business town, attracting a whole new breed of denizen; entrepreneurs, wealthy executives, bankers, and, with the smell of money, corporate lawyers. Military people these days live in North Carolina and commute. The city never had any pretension of being an egalitarian melting pot, yet the sudden influx of money, and monied classes, has upset whatever precarious balance once existed.

Back to me, however. I returned to the city to attend George-town University undergrad, courtesy of Uncle Sam’s ROTC scholarship program, and, five years later, was hauled, comatose, to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center after I learned the Army lied; I wasn’t really faster than a speeding bullet. I was an infantry officer, the branch that handles the Army’s dirtiest jobs, like killing bad guys in wartime, and painting rocks in peacetime.

A bullet had damaged an organ-a spleen, if you care to know-that needs to function effectively if you walk long distances with great weights on your back, a quality jackasses and infantry officers have in common, among others. I was already a captain, and the Army’s personnel branch checked for shortages in my rank and years of service. The Army, you have to understand, views itself as a big machine, and when a nut can no longer be a nut, it can maybe become a washer, but not a screw or a bolt. Personal talents and desires are obviously secondary. In fact, I recall telling the personnel officer handling my case that as a wounded war hero, the service owed me a debt and should repay it by letting me choose. He thought that was hilarious.

So I was eventually informed I could become a chaplain, a supply guy, a lawyer, or a civilian. Wrong, wrong, maybe, wrong. As I mentioned previously, I’m Catholic, and while I’m drawn to fancy uniforms and elaborate ceremonies, that vow of chastity goes a bridge too far. A supply guy?… Get real. I wasn’t ready for civilian life, and therefore defaulted into law and returned to my alma mater for a degree.

Which meant I’d lived in Washington nearly fifteen years, off and on. I love this city. I love the inspiring monuments to great deeds and great men, the monumental cathedrals of power, the everyday reminders that this city truly is the Shining Light on the Hill. It’s the people I can take or leave. The town has more than its share of oily scoundrels and the pompously high-minded, and it can be impossible to differentiate between the two, or which inflicts the most damage. Anyway, I passed through the portal into 1789 at 6:30 and the maitre d’ steered me to the table where Miss Morrow was coolly sipping a cocktail. I asked him to have a waiter bring me a beer and sat down.

So we studied each other a moment. She was smartly dressed in a red pantsuit, no makeup, no jewelry-to include, I idly noticed, no wedding or engagement bands. I could detect no physical resemblance between her and Lisa, excluding their sizes, and the not inconsequential fact that both were stunners, with all the requisite plumbing, bumps, and protuberances associated with their chromosome. It was salt and pepper, however-one blond and fair, the other raven-haired and darkly gorgeous. Plus, Lisa, as I mentioned, had the most sympathetic eyes I ever saw. Janet’s were more… intolerant.

She awarded me what might be labeled a wan smile and said, “Thanks for joining me. I was brusque this morning, and I apologize. I was.. . upset.”

“Perfectly understandable.”

“It was very kind of you to fly up and tell us personally. Did you ask to do that?”

“I asked.”

Her eyes strayed around the restaurant, and then back to me. “How long did you know Lisa?”

“A few years. We did an investigation together in Kosovo. Afterward, we tilted in court a number of times.”

“That must have been interesting.”

“It was. I got my ass kicked. Each time… every time.”

She chuckled. “What was she like in court?”

“Devious, brilliant, and ruthless. She had a knack for coming up with the most wildassed defenses and making them stick.”

“She was good, then?”

“No. She was the best.”

She stared into her drink and seemed to contemplate, I don’t know

… something. For some reason she reminded me of Lisa. I had to think about it before I put my finger on it-it was that same throaty, edgy voice I previously mentioned. Similarities between the living and the dead can be eerie. Also, they can cause you to transfer a false sense of familiarity and affection. This can be misleading and, in the wrong circumstances, dangerous.

Eventually she said, “We’re not certain about Arlington National Cemetery. Her family and friends are in Boston.”

“I understand. Military honors come either way, but consider Arlington. The Army’s Old Guard puts on a great show, it’s a lovely setting, and she’ll be in the best of company.”

She replied politely, “You make a good argument. We’ll think about it.”

We then lapsed into a moment of friendly silence. We had gotten past the morning’s rudeness, established that Lisa’s death was emotionally affecting for us both, and some kind of unspoken bond had been forged. Miss Morrow was very deft at moving things along, I noted.

So we slowly drank our drinks and chatted amiably for a few more minutes. Nothing deep or really relevant; more in the nature of two strangers thrown together by a common grief and searching for some common ground. I learned she was twenty-nine years old, had attended Harvard Law, that she liked boating, was a big runner, preferred red wine, liked to read in her spare time… and so forth. She wasn’t outwardly defensive, evasive, or anything. In fact, she remained impressively well-mannered, ladylike, expressive, great posture, and, if you’re interested, had really great legs. Yet, she was not particularly talkative or open. Clearly, she had an agenda and did not intend to expose more of herself than necessary.

What she learned about me I wasn’t sure. I did note that her questions were both more disarming and more penetrating than mine, and it struck me that she was probably quite adept at drawing out witnesses in a courtroom, or ascertaining if her blind date is a phony shit.

Also, her eyes were a sort of striking sea blue tone, which makes for a lovely contrast with black hair, and they had this almost foxlike quality to them, like she could see and detect things you might not want seen or detected.

In summary, she was getting up to speed on me, and I was learning about her hobbies. So I said, “Your business card mentioned you’re an assistant DA.”

“That’s right. Five years now.”

“Like it?”

“I like putting assholes behind bars.”

“The Lord’s work.”

“Amen.” She smiled and added, “Of course, the politics and bureaucracy I could do without.”

I smiled back. I’d given her an opening.

Without pausing, she asked, “If you don’t mind my asking, Sean, what’s your take on why Lisa was murdered?” This was asked with disarming casualness, like, Could you please pass the salt? Very cool.

“And what makes you think it wasn’t a simple robbery?”

“I’ve helped prosecute nearly thirty killings. I think I have a feel for the patterns.”

“I’m listening.”

“Start with the victim. Lisa was too street-smart. She would’ve handed over her purse.”

“Perhaps she saw the robber’s face and he wanted no witnesses. Or maybe he has a thing against women, or he was hopped up on something, or has a screw loose.”

“Those are all possibilities. But consider the method. I had the taxi drive me by the Pentagon parking lot this afternoon. Lots of overhead lighting, cars coming and going… no thief with a brain in his head would pick such an exposed spot.”

“Good point. Maybe he was an idiot.”

She nodded, but said, “Also, her neck was broken from behind, hardly the direction a robber approaches his victim.” We looked at each other awhile before she said, “It doesn’t look like a robbery. It looks like something else.”

“And what would that be?”

“Premeditated murder.”

I pondered this, then said, “Motive, Counselor. Lisa wasn’t involved in anything dangerous. She’d just finished a year working in a civilian firm where her work was both nonprovocative and mundane.”

“She was a criminal lawyer before that. How many criminal cases did she work on?”

“A lot. Possibly hundreds.”

“Last year, half a dozen lawyers were murdered for representing a party in a divorce case. I’ve had death threats, and I’ve been stalked. Isn’t it possible she made enemies?”

“Let’s not confuse possible with likely.”

“But you have to consider it.” She added, “Would your CID know what to look for?”

“She had six years’ worth of cases. I wouldn’t know what to look for.”

“Yes, but wouldn’t it make more sense to have a couple of experienced attorneys poking through her files than a warrant officer who has never tried a case and wouldn’t know a tort from a tortilla?”

“What?”

“You get my point.”

“Yes, I get your point.” I twirled my finger in my beer suds. “And it’s a bad one. Lawyers don’t investigate murders, we prosecute and defend after the dust settles.”

“I’m aware of the technicality.”

“It’s more than a technicality.”

“Well… let’s change the way it works.” She added, “You claim she was your friend.”

So we were down to this. Shame on her.

Appearances suggested that Miss Morrow was smart, disciplined, and, as the present setting indicated, stubborn, willful, and manipulative. Throw in her looks and “no” was a word I was willing to bet she did not hear often from the opposite sex. Her type don’t play fair. They get those two male brains pitted against each other, and the lower one cheats by draining all the blood out of the higher one. You get suffocated into doing idiotic things that aren’t in your best interest.

Actually, I fully intended to stick my nose into Lisa’s murder investigation. I don’t go gently into the night when you murder someone I care deeply about. Legal professionals, like me, and, I suppose, like Janet, are professionally and personally aware of the odds in these things. Less than a third of murders get solved and only half those lead to convictions. I wasn’t expecting to solve the crime or anything, but I could and would prod, second-guess, and make myself a royal pain in the butt for the investigators.

Add to that, Warrant Officer Spinelli pissed me off and it was now my God-given obligation to piss him off back. Petty and vindictive, I know, but it’s the regrettable code I live by.

In fact, my ulterior motive for offering my services as survival assistance officer was to afford me the legal authority to sniff through Lisa’s personal effects and see if I found anything suspicious. Of all the thousands of people who walked out of the Pentagon that chilly evening, why her? Also the method of her death-it struck me as too personal. I thought the killer wanted to feel her, wanted to connect, wanted to make her murder an intimate experience.

Robbery? Maybe. Or maybe not.

So I briefly weighed the pros and cons of working with Miss Janet Morrow. On the plus side were her intimate knowledge of the deceased, her experience and expertise as a big-city criminal attorney, and she was obviously beautiful and sexy. Other men aren’t as impervious to feminine wiles and charms as me, and her looks could open a lot of doors. Also, I liked her voice. And she had great legs.

Moving to the minus column, Janet Morrow lacked emotional distance. The cardinal rule of murder investigations is to focus on the perp, not the victim. Also, a certain coldheartedness is needed to sort facts from fiction, and there are times when the victim’s own faults or mistakes led directly or indirectly to their deaths. Dispassion is required and dispassion is impossible from a victim’s sister.

“It’s out of the question. Sorry,” I informed her.

She studied my face. “You’re wondering if I have the emotional mindset to handle this?”

“That thought crossed my mind.”

“It won’t be a problem.”

“Of course it will.”

“No… it won’t.”

“Nobody can shut down their emotions that way.”

“I can.” Trying to appear sincere, she added, “I shed my tears this morning. I won’t cry again until this thing is finished.”

“No… I’m sorry.”

She waved an arm and the waiter rushed over. She looked up at him and said, “Check, please.”

I said to Janet, “Please don’t take this personally.”

“I won’t.” She smiled at me and dropped a twenty on the table. She got to her feet and asked, “Where do we start?”

“ We don’t.”

She took my arm and began leading me. “You drive. I took a taxi.”

“Sure. What hotel did you say you were staying at?”