The Kingmaker

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Jimmy was not an impressive-looking guy. Soft brown skin, average height, average build, average face, all of which added up to pretty honest advertising, since on Jimmy’s best day, he was just an average guy.

He was sipping from a big Starbucks coffee as he noodled through the history section when Katrina and I walked up behind him.

I tapped him on the shoulder. “Hi, Jimmy. This is my co-counsel, Katrina Mazorski.”

He spun around, nodded, and his face looked alarmed. He immediately whispered, “What’s this about three killings this morning? Tell me about that?”

“Between eight and ten this morning, somebody tried to arrange two murders. I was attacked by two thugs in the parking lot of my apartment, and some ersatz homeless guy tried to whack Katrina with a butcher knife while she was walking to her car.”

He studied my face to see if I was kidding and came to the obvious conclusion I wasn’t. “This isn’t my bailiwick, Sean. I’m a financial guy. I do money-laundering and bank fraud, not murder, or espionage.”

“Yeah, but I know you, so I trust you.”

“Any reason you don’t trust the rest of the Bureau?” he asked, appropriately suspicious.

“Working on my client’s defense, I’ve discovered there is probably a mole somewhere in our government. Somewhere very high up, a mole with extraordinary resources. I’m not saying Morrison wasn’t a traitor-I don’t know about that. I’m saying there’s another mole, and that’s why somebody tried to kill us.”

Jimmy was nodding his head. “And this mole is working for the Russians?”

“Right.”

“The attempt on your lives? What happened?”

“Mine was set up like a robbery that went wrong. Only the killers screwed up and gave themselves away, so I, uh, well, I killed them. The guy who tried to take out Katrina, he didn’t expect me to show up.”

“And you killed him, too?”

“I had to. He was swinging a butcher knife.”

He nodded, as suddenly six men and women came running at us from other nearby stacks. Before Katrina or I could do a thing, Jimmy was holding a pistol in his hand, and Katrina and I were getting our hands cuffed behind our backs, our rights read, our dignity trashed.

I was swearing at Jimmy, who was obviously wearing a wire, and he held up a hand. “Drummond, take it easy. I’m a federal agent. When you said you killed three guys this morning, I had to tell my boss. You gave me no choice.”

It obviously wasn’t supposed to work this way. In the movies, you see guys in desperate positions like mine, they call some old buddy and the old buddy cherishes the sacred bonds, protects their confidentiality, and takes care of everything. Either those movies are horsecrap or I’d overestimated my popularity.

Katrina and I responded like lawyers naturally do, keeping our mouths shut, although I’d already crossed the Rubicon, because Jimmy had me admitting on tape to killing three guys, and all hell was going to break loose.

Katrina and I were next led outside to two shiny Crown Victorias waiting beside the curb, as a crowd of gawkers and gapers gathered to watch a real-life arrest go down. This was a fresh and incredibly unwelcome experience for me, parading in front of folks like a common felon. Katrina was guided into the back of one car, and I was shoved into the other one.

On the ride to the garage under the FBI building, I contemplated the charges they could throw at me: conspiracy, manslaughter, fleeing a crime, hiding evidence. And those were merely the charges I could think of. The FBI and Justice Department have all those highly imaginative guys with Ivy League degrees who are geniuses at thinking up charges. No doubt they could do better than me.

We parked in an underground garage and then took the elevator to an upper-floor interrogation room. Jimmy hung around while a new guy entered the room. He had that weaselly look of the professional interrogator: long, skinny face, deadpan, droopy eyes, and a mouth with no wrinkles around the edges, like he never smiled or frowned or had orgasms. He walked hunched over, with his chin protruding out and a big, beaklike nose that poked suspiciously through the air.

He sat in front of me and said, “I’m Special Agent Michaels. Do I need to read you your rights?” Belafonte, the traitorous prick, leaned against the wall. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why Belafonte remained in the room. I’d made my confession to him, and his presence was to remind me I’d already spilled the big beans, so let’s not niggle over the gravy.

I shook my head. “Already done.”

He leaned toward me like this was some kind of melodramatic moment. “We have you on tape admitting you killed a man in Washington and two men in your apartment parking lot earlier this morning.”

“All that’s true,” I admitted, since it seemed damned silly to deny what I’d already admitted.

He leaned back and stroked his chin. “However, we have a bit of problem here.”

Technically, we didn’t have a bit of problem. I did, and not a bit of a problem, a mountain of a problem. I said, “I know.”

He continued in a perfectly dry tone. “The problem, Drummond, is nobody reported any deaths. Unless you want to count a lady who got shoved off the subway platform at the Fourteenth Street station this morning. Only the D.C. police caught the guy who did that. Or would you like to confess to that killing, too?”

“What are you talking about?”

“What I just told you, Drummond. No dead guys showed up near your apartment building. And no dead guys showed up near Miss Mazorski’s apartment, either. So what the hell’s going on here?”

“That’s impossible. This morning, at my apartment, the police came. I was interviewed by a detective. He took my statement.”

He was nodding, like, Yeah, sure, tell me more, convince me.

I said, “I’m not jerking you around. I walked out to my car and two guys approached me with a knife and gun. It was meant to look like a robbery, only it wasn’t. It was a hit.”

He was still nodding, only now he was biting his cheek. “And what happened to the bodies?” he asked, scratching the side of his nose, like, Gee, no shit, throw in a few Nazi spies and quit boring me?

“A meat wagon got them. It was an Arlington County Hospital ambulance. I watched them load the bodies.”

“What time?”

“Shortly before eight.”

He nodded at Belafonte, who nodded back and left.

“And tell me about that second attack,” he ordered.

“It happened right around the corner from Miss Mazorski’s apartment. Around nine-thirty… maybe ten. She was walking to her car and a guy who was made up to look homeless went after her with a butcher knife.”

“And you stopped him?”

“Only barely. Actually, she nailed him with some pepper spray and that blinded him.”

“And you what? You shot him?”

“No. I stabbed him.”

He was doing that head-nodding routine and scratching that big goddamn nose again, and I wanted to reach across the table and jackslap him. He was trying to be grating, and even though I knew that, and knew I should rise above his provocation, I was emotionally entangled.

I took three long breaths, then grinned. “Okay, asshole, I’ve got a surprise for you.”

“I love surprises. What do you have?”

I reached into my pocket and whipped out the trusty Bic pen that was crusted with dried blood and specks of gray matter around the tip.

I tossed it on the table between us and announced, “This is the pen I killed him with. I stuck it in his eyehole.”

It was one of those moments when you wished you had a Polaroid camera. He stared down at the pen but refused to touch it, partly because he knew better than to get his fingerprints on it, and partly because it grossed him out.

I couldn’t resist. “I believe it’s your turn, Special Agent Michaels.”

The door opened and Jimmy Belafonte, the big skunk, walked in. He looked at Michaels and shook his head.

I said, “What is this bullshit, Belafonte? You’re not allowed to talk to me? You checked with the Arlington police and they confirmed they didn’t investigate the double killing? Is that what you were signaling him?”

“That’s what it meant,” he admitted, avoiding my eyes, which was a good thing because they would’ve caused his whole body to explode in flames. He added, “And there’s no bodies in the Arlington County morgue.”

“So this is really weird,” I said, as much to myself as them. “Look at the blood on that pen,” I ordered Michaels. “If I’m lying, whose blood and brain matter is that?”

He stared at the pen. “You tell me.”

It was my turn to shake my head. Interrogators are taught to never, ever lose control of the interrogation, no matter what. That “you tell me” was his half-assed attempt to regain the upper hand. I was now asking the questions and his procedures said he couldn’t allow that.

“It belonged to a guy who was hired to murder my co-counsel.”

“And where’s his body?”

“How the hell do I know? We ran off before anybody came. But the cops came to the killing in my parking lot. I talked with them and I saw a meat wagon, and I’ve dealt with enough cops to know they were the real thing. The detective was named… uh, Christ, I can’t remember his name. But I can describe him.”

Michaels’s nose was sticking in my face. “No need. We already know what he looks like. A middle-aged detective in a suit who asked a lot of questions, right?”

I rubbed my forehead. I fought the temptation to tell him what a stupid ass he was. This wasn’t easy. “Somebody tried to murder me and Miss Mazorski because they want to keep the lid on something we discovered.”

“And what would that be?” he asked, and from his tone I knew there was no way in hell he was going to believe a word I said, much less the exorbitant tale I actually had to tell.

I pushed aside my reservations and said, “We discovered that my client, Bill Morrison, is probably being framed for treason. We talked to a lot of people and left a lot of impressions in our wake, and somebody wants to erase some of those impressions.”

“Uh-huh,” he said dismissively. “Let’s get back to these guys you killed. Who were they?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t check their wallets? Didn’t get their names?”

“I said I don’t know.”

“But you told Special Agent Belafonte you knew things.”

“Have you been listening to me?”

His expression did not alter the slightest bit. “You mean about the three dead guys that don’t exist?”

I gripped the edge of the table. I gave him my screw-you look. “Michaels, let’s rearrange the bidding here. They were professional hits.”

“And their bodies disappeared? Come on, Major, you’ve got to do better than this. Help me out here. Convince me you killed these three guys.”

Michaels and Belafonte exchanged quick glances, and while I wasn’t sure what they meant, it was so characteristic of these things, and so condescending, it pissed me off even more.

“Are you going to charge me?”

“We’re exploring that option right now,” Michaels said, very cavalierly, like, Why don’t you give me a hand here, because I’m having a tough time putting my finger on what crime you did.

I stood up.

“Sit down,” he ordered.

“No. Unless you’ve got a warrant, I’m out of here.”

Michaels looked at Belafonte, and Belafonte looked at me. In a very convivial tone he said, “Sean, maybe you should tell us more about the attempts on you and Miss Mazorski? What do you think happened to their bodies?”

I walked for the door, and Belafonte stepped in front of me.

I said, “Belafonte, move before I send your gonads into your ears and you spend the rest of your life with your earlobes getting hard every time you see a pretty girl.”

He studied my eyes to see if I was kidding. I wasn’t. I most definitely wasn’t. He almost jumped aside.

I walked into the hallway and began swinging open every door I could find. Two or three rooms were filled with suspects and interrogators and lawyers, and they all looked up in astonished shock when I stuck my enraged face in.

I finally hit the one with Katrina and her interrogator, a woman with a big ass who looked like Michaels’s twin sister, vulture nose, droopy eyes and all. She started yelling at me.

I walked in, grabbed Katrina’s arm, and dragged her out of the room, while her interrogator howled. We walked down the hall to the elevator, took it down five floors, then walked out of the building.

The telling thing was that nobody tried to stop us. No guys in blue or gray suits came running after us, waving guns and shields and frantically screaming at us to halt or else.

I said, “That was bullshit.”

She said, “Don’t you have any real friends?”

“I barely knew him. We went through the JAG course together. He always was a conformist jerk. What the hell was I thinking? So how far did you get with your story?”

She was shaking her head. “The bitch didn’t believe a word. She said there were no bodies.”

“Yeah,” I said, waving my arm for a taxi. “It was damned strange. Too strange.”

“Speaking of strange, what happened to the bodies?”

“You’ve got two options. One, the police have them and there’s some kind of monumental paperwork screwup. If it was just the D.C. police, what with their record on homicides, okay, maybe. But not at Arlington, too.”

“And option two?”

“We’re being played. Somebody in the U.S. government is hiding those bodies and suppressing the truth. Somebody in the FBI told those two interrogators to jerk us around and stonewall us. We’re being set up, Katrina.”

“Option two.”

“Right. They were watching us this morning. When the hit on me went wrong, they policed it up and made it look like it never happened.”

“Why didn’t they just kill you then?”

“I’d already attracted attention. We were in the parking lot of a big apartment building, and when the gunman’s piece went off, the noise probably drew a hundred gawkers to their windows. So the cops pull up and what are they going to do? Shoot me with all those witnesses? No, they’re going to go through all the normal rigmarole, take away the bodies, take my statements, and then drive off and act like it never happened.”

“Obviously a repeat performance at my place.”

“Right. Had we stuck around, some D.C. detective would’ve run us through the drill and then told us to go on our way.”

She watched the passing traffic. “I think our mole knows we’re coming and has more grease than we do. I’d say our mole is probably in the CIA and has been working with the FBI on the mole hunt, and she somehow wrapped the Fibbies around her little finger.”