The Capitol Game

26

Rufus Clark was a two-bit Chicago private investigator with a less than promising practice. Nasty divorces, property disputes, and missing cats and dogs were his usual fare. Two thousand in a good month, and those were rare. He was thirty-two years old, single, with two illegitimate children, and still lived with his mother.

His lone claim to fame, pitiful as it happened to be, but one he proudly inflated to his clients, was one brief year he spent in the FBI, before being caught smoking a little weed and sleeping with some whores provided by a local crime lord whose questionable activities the Bureau was looking into. For once in his sorry life, Rufus got lucky. Too little evidence existed to do anything but show him the door.

Given his questionable background and severely limited policing experience, Rufus tended to jump at any work he could get without any serious consideration about its legality. So when Martie O’Neal called with a generous offer of $10K for only one day’s work, Rufus dove in.

He held the small photograph two inches from his nose and again studied the man across the lobby. Oh yeah, definitely him, he decided, taking a few steps closer.

Martie had e-mailed him the name, work address, this old DMV photo, a few instructive background notes, and a brief list of questions for Rufus to get answered.

His target was tall and thin, wearing a nice blue suit and holding a battered old briefcase as he stood by the elevator doors and waited. Rufus edged a little closer, within striking distance, just not enough to attract attention.

The elevator door opened and Rufus closed the distance fast and darted in before the door could close. Then it was just Rufus and his target standing side by side. His target was too busy watching the numbers as the elevator climbed to notice him.

“Excuse me,” Rufus blurted, producing a quizzical expression. “Don’t I know you?”

Weak, but the best he could do on such short notice. O’Neal had recommended the old tried-and-true government background check story, but in Rufus’s professional judgment, his target knew too much about Mia for that to hold any water. He was improvising and hoping it worked.

The target was staring at Rufus now. “Sorry, no.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure I’ve never seen you before.”

Rufus’s chubby face scrunched up as he examined the man’s eyes. “Wait, you’re… John, right? John Jenson, I’m positive it’s you.”

A look of surprise registered on John’s face. “That’s right.”

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

“Afraid I don’t. Sorry.”

“I went to Lincoln Park High, like you. Few years behind you, though. Same class as your little sister.”

“Which one?”

“Mia, but she probably wouldn’t remember me either. Her being real smart, and me sort of struggling. A National Merit Scholar or something, wasn’t she?”

“That’s right. We were very proud of her.”

“So where is ol’ Mia these days? Probably married, surrounded by a boatload of kids.” Rufus paused to offer a wink and smile. “Between you and me, I had a big crush on her.”

The elevator stopped on the eleventh floor and John abruptly stepped out. Rufus took a short hop and joined him. “Same floor, what a coincidence,” he announced with a big grin. “You work on this floor, or what?” he asked.

John pointed down the hallway to his right. “My accounting firm’s here.”

“Right. I’ve got an appointment down the other way.” He pointed a lying finger down the opposite hall. “So where’d Mia end up, anyway?”

“D.C. Went to law school at Harvard then landed in a firm there.” He said this with considerable pride.

“Yeah? One of those monster firms you always read about? Long hours, grinding away, no life.”

“Not anymore, no. She tried that for a while. After the loss, though, she left her firm and switched to government service.”

Rufus couldn’t think of a better way so he came right out with it. “What loss was that, John?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t catch your name.”

“Dennis,” he lied without any hesitation. “Dennis Miller.”

John’s eyes narrowed and he began inspecting Rufus more closely, roving from his scuffed black running shoes up his worn sweatpants, stopping at the torn T-shirt. Naming himself after a famous comedian was probably a mistake, but he’d seen him on TV the night before and it was the first and only thing that popped into his mind. Plus it might’ve been a good idea to dress a little fancier, Rufus realized, a little belatedly. He looked like exactly what he was, street scum looking to make a fast score.

“Sorry,” John said, sounding very final. “I don’t discuss family business with strangers.”

Rufus could hear, could almost feel the ten grand slipping out of his fingers. “Hey, it’s not like that, John. I’m no stranger. See, Mia and me, well, we were real close. I was just, you know, wondering what she lost.”

“Who are you meeting with down the hall?”

“Uh… my lawyer.”

John leaned forward and suddenly grabbed him firmly by the shirt collar. “You’re lying. There are no lawyers on this floor.”

“Hey, let me go. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The grip tightened and Rufus ended up on his tiptoes. “Who are you and what’s this about?” John hissed, showing his teeth.

It was time to scrap Plan A. Only Rufus didn’t have a Plan B. He shoved John as hard as he could and made a mad dash for the stairwell. He never looked back, never even glanced as he bolted eleven floors back down to ground level, then slipped out a side entrance of the building.

After three hours of riffling through old files in the city morgue, and another two in the library scrounging through death notices in the local papers, Rufus placed a call to O’Neal in D.C.

He quickly summarized his encounter with Mia’s oldest brother, as if the day had been an unmitigated success, worth the whole ten grand, if not more. Then he said, “Point is, something happened. Some severe loss that drove her out of her big firm and into government service.”

“So you figure she was looking for a new purpose in life. Serving some higher cause, that kind of gushy crap?”

“That’s what I heard in his voice, yeah.”

“What kind of loss would do that? She was making damn good dough.”

Rufus pondered the question. Probably a ninety percent cut in pay-why would anybody even consider something so damaging, so stupid? Made no sense to him. “Hell, I dunno,” he admitted emphatically.

“And you found nothing at the morgue?”

“Nope. Her parents are still kicking, all the brothers and a sister are still sucking oxygen. You sure she was never married, right? No kids, not even a bastard.”

“Never,” O’Neal answered, sounding deeply unsettled.

There was something here, O’Neal was sure, and he was even more desperate to find it. He was being paid for his instincts in these matters-and right now his gut was screaming that the key to Mia Jenson was that mysterious loss, whatever it was.

He wished he had more time to think about it, but things were coming unhinged fast. The morning had become a nightmare. Castile was supposed to call in about the break-in to Jenson’s house, but the call never came. Repeated attempts to reach Castile, both at his house and on his cell, went unanswered.

O’Neal had a team out now trying to hunt down the missing burglars; unfortunately, it was a ridiculously small team, two men, a pair of sad losers he ordinarily wouldn’t have dispatched to the deli for a sandwich.

Problem was, O’Neal had everybody with the slightest tinge of competence working overdrive to find someone much more important.

Jack Wiley had fallen off the face of the earth.

O’Neal hadn’t yet informed Walters that Wiley had slipped his net.

He prayed he would never have to.

Martie’s prayer went unanswered. The call he dreaded came at six that evening in the form of Mitch Walters in a foul mood, demanding an update.

He started with Mia. Martie explained about the meeting with her big brother in Chicago, about the mysterious “loss,” and reassured Walters that TFAC was deploying as many resources as possible to unearth the story. In this case, “as many resources as possible” equaled a sorry louse whose total PI experience was hunting down lost cats and peeking into bedrooms. But he didn’t admit that, of course.

“What about her home?” Walters asked. “Your boys pay her a visit yet?”

“Last night,” O’Neal answered, hoping that was the end of it.

“Did they leave her a little gift?”

“I think so.”

“You think?”

“We’re, uh, having a slight glitch getting in contact with our contractors.”

“A glitch?”

“Nothing to worry about, Mitch. They went in last night and disappeared for a while. These boys are pros. They don’t bring no ID, they don’t bring cell phones. We’ll get it sorted out. Like I said, don’t worry.”

He almost laughed with relief when Walters asked, “What about Jenson’s office?”

“Working on it. I warned you it would take preparation and time. Won’t be long,” he promised.

There was a pause. Martie closed his eyes and hoped Walters was finished.

Finally Walters asked the question O’Neal desperately didn’t want to hear. “Where’s Wiley right now?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just say that Wiley wasn’t as cooperative as we hoped. We’re worried about Jenson making contact with him again. Tell me you’re keeping a good eye on him.”

Another long pause, this one on O’Neal’s part. He pinched his nose and confessed, “He, uh, well, he seems to have slipped away.”

“Tell me I didn’t hear that.”

“Sorry, Mitch. Yesterday, after he left your building, he went downtown, parked in a public garage, and disappeared.”

“This better be a joke, O’Neal. But I’m not laughing.”

“No, it’s quite true, Mitch.” He paused and struggled to keep his voice level. “Seemed innocent at the time, a momentary slip-up in coverage. But we reconsidered. Wiley obviously planned this escape a while ago.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s not complicated. We have his charge card numbers, his phone accounts, his bank account numbers, all of which we acquired seven months ago. He’s not using any of them. His bank accounts were electronically emptied out yesterday. He’s gone totally underground.”

Walters began cursing at O’Neal, unleashing a world of anger and fury. O’Neal held the phone away from his ear until Walters’s well ran dry. It took a while.

“That’s not helping anything,” he said to Walters.

“You’re fired,” Walters replied back.

“Don’t be stupid, Mitch. You can’t fire me right now. You need me more than ever, to put this thing back together.”

He could hear Walters breathing heavily on the other end. A few more scattered curses and threats flew across the line, but they lacked any semblance of conviction, just empty shots fired after the surrender to an ugly reality. “Find Wiley,” he barked in his most menacing tone. “Do whatever it takes, find him.”

“That’s not so easy. He’s a smart guy, and like I said, he prepared for this. But I have a suggestion.”

“What is it?”

O’Neal explained his plan-it was a great idea-and Walters quickly agreed to do his part.

It was impossible to sleep or nap.

Jack had his feet up on the coffee table and his eyes glued to the television in his hotel room, watching as William Pederson, a smooth-talking lizard in an Armani suit, stood outside the big cylinder that was home to CG’s headquarters, issuing his firm’s first response to the nasty rumors roaring about the city.

Pederson was enjoying himself immensely, juking and jiving into the forest of microphones jammed in his face. “No, we really have no idea what prompted the secretary’s shutdown order. We’re investigating now.”

“Is it true the polymer wears off?” one reporter yelled.

“I won’t say it’s possible and I won’t say it isn’t. We’re running tests now.”

“Why wasn’t it tested before?” bellowed another.

“Who said it wasn’t? I assure you it was, quite vigorously.”

After that wonderfully vague and obviously self-conflicting answer, Pederson’s eyes shifted to a reporter in the back of the mob wearing a conspicuously nice suit; an obvious plant. “Sir,” the “reporter” screamed on cue, “wasn’t the polymer invented by somebody else?”

Pederson acted as though the question annoyed him. His eyebrows knitted together. He stared down at one particular microphone. He tried his best to impart the impression that he was only answering under duress. “Yes, that’s right,” he said gravely. “Among the possibilities we’re exploring is that somebody ran a scam on us.”

The mob of reporters fell silent.

The same “reporter” in the back, a swarthy man with a big nose, asked, “You said it was a scam?”

“Well, let’s say it’s possible somebody committed a few indiscretions. Some of the documents we were given during the purchase of the company that discovered the polymer now appear, well, questionable.”

“You mean doctored or falsified?”

“We’re seeking two men, Jack Wiley and Perry Arvan, in our effort to get to the bottom of this.”

“Are you saying you were defrauded?”

“I’m saying no such thing.” A brief, well-timed pause-could he say it any clearer? He was screaming it from the rooftops to any idiot who would listen. “I’m saying that we’re seeking these two men to help clarify a few questionable matters. In fact, it’s so important to us that we’re offering five million dollars to anyone who helps locate them. Again, Jack Wiley and Perry Arvan are the names. Their photos are posted on our corporate website for anyone interested in the five million reward.”

Jack had an urge to laugh that was quickly tempered by an even stronger compulsion to hop the next flight out of the country and flee to Brazil, or anywhere, really. Anywhere, that is, where there was a thick, impenetrable jungle, accommodating legal authorities, and the possibility of disappearing forever.

Instead he picked a phone from his stack of cell phones, dialed a number, and had another quick conversation with his lawyer.