The Pelican Brief

Thirty-Three

The limousine moved patiently in the Beltway rush hour. It was dark, and Matthew Barr read with the aid of a reading light in the ceiling. Coal sipped Perrier and watched the traffic. He had the brief memorized, and could have simply explained it to Barr, but he wanted to watch his reaction.

Barr had no reaction until he got to the photograph, then slowly shook his head. He laid it on the seat, and thought about it for a moment. “Very nasty,” he said.

Coal grunted.

“How true is it?” Barr asked.

“I’d love to know.”

“When did you first see it?”

“Tuesday of last week. It came over from the FBI in one of their daily reports.”

“What’d the President say?”

“He was not that happy with it, but there was no cause for alarm. It’s just another wild shot in the dark, we thought. He talked to Voyles about it, and Voyles agreed to leave it alone for a while. Now I’m not so sure.”

“Did the President ask Voyles to back off?” Barr asked the question slowly.

“Yes.”

“That’s awfully close to obstruction of justice, assuming of course the brief turns out to be true.”

“And what if it’s true?”

“Then the President has problems. I’ve got one conviction for obstruction, so I’ve been there. It’s like mail fraud. It’s broad and wide and fairly easy to prove. Were you in on it?”

“What do you think?”

“Then I think you’ve got problems too.”

They rode in silence and watched the traffic. Coal had thought through the obstruction angle, but he wanted Barr’s opinion. He wasn’t worried about criminal charges. The President had one brief little chat with Voyles, asked him to look elsewhere for the time being, and that was it. Hardly the work of felons. But Coal was terribly concerned with reelection, and a scandal involving a major contributor like Mattiece would be devastating. The thought was sickening — a man the President knew and took millions from paid money to have two Supreme Court Justices knocked off so his pal the President could appoint more reasonable men to the bench so that the oil could be harvested. The Democrats would fall in the streets howling with glee. Every subcommittee in Congress would hold hearings. Every newspaper would run it every day for a year. The Justice Department would be forced to investigate. Coal would be forced to take the blame and resign. Hell, everyone in the White House, except the President, would have to go.

It was a nightmare of horrific proportions.

“We’ve got to find out if the brief is true,” Coal said to the window.

“If people are dying, then it’s true. Give me a better reason for killing Callahan and Verheek.”

There was no other reason, and Coal knew it. “I want you to do something.”

“Find the girl.”

“No. She’s either dead or hiding in a cave somewhere. I want you to talk to Mattiece.”

“I’m sure he’s in the yellow pages.”

“You can find him. We need to establish a link that the President knows nothing about. We need to first determine how much of this is true.”

“And you think Victor will take me into his confidence and tell me his secrets.”

“Yes, eventually. You’re not a cop, remember. Assume it’s true, and he thinks he’s about to be exposed. He’s desperate and he’s killing people. What if you told him the press had the story and the end was near, and if he is inclined to disappear, then now’s the time? You’re coming to him from Washington, remember? From the inside. From the President, or so he thinks. He’ll listen to you.”

“Okay. What if he tells me it’s true? What’s in it for us?”

“I’ve got some ideas, all in the category of damage control. The first thing we’ll do is immediately appoint two nature lovers to the Court. I mean, wild-eyed radical bird watchers. It would show that down deep we’re good little environmentalists. And it would kill Mattiece and his oil field, etc. We could do this in a matter of hours. Almost simultaneously, the President will call in Voyles and the Attorney General and Justice and demand an immediate investigation into Mattiece. We’ll leak copies of the brief to every reporter in town, then hunker down and ride out the storm.”

Barr was smiling with admiration.

Coal continued. “It won’t be pretty, but it’s far better than sitting back and hoping the brief is a work of fiction.”

“How do you explain that photograph?”

“You can’t. It’ll hurt for a while, but it was seven years ago, and people go crazy. We’ll portray Mattiece as a good citizen back then, but now he’s a madman.”

“He is a madman.”

“Yes, he is. And right now he’s like a wounded dog backed in a corner. You must convince him to throw in the towel, and haul ass. I think he’ll listen to you. And I think we’ll find out from him if it’s true.”

“So how do I find him?”

“I’ve got a man working on that. I’ll pull some strings, and make a contact. Be ready to go on Sunday.”

Barr smiled to the window. He would like to meet Mattiece.

The traffic slowed. Coal slowly sipped his water. “Any thing on Grantham?”

“Not really. We’re listening and watching, but nothing exciting. He talks to his mother and a couple of gals, but nothing worth reporting. He works a lot. He left town Wednesday and returned Thursday.”

“Where did he go?”

“New York. Probably working on some story.”

Cleve was supposed to be at the corner of Rhode Island and Sixth at exactly 10 P.M., but he wasn’t. Gray was supposed to race down Rhode Island until Cleve caught him, so that if anyone was indeed following him they would think he was simply a dangerous driver. He raced down Rhode Island, through Sixth at fifty miles per hour, and watched for blue lights. There were none. He looped around, and fifteen minutes later barreled down Rhode Island again. There! He saw blue lights and pulled to the curb.

It was not Cleve. It was a white cop who was very agitated. He jerked Gray’s license, examined it, and asked if he’d been drinking. No sir, he said. The cop wrote the ticket, and proudly handed it to Gray, who sat behind the wheel staring at the ticket until he heard voices coming from the rear bumper.

Another cop was on the scene, and they were arguing. It was Cleve, and he wanted the white cop to forget the ticket, but the white cop explained it had already been written and besides the idiot was doing fifty-six miles an hour through the intersection. He’s a friend, Cleve said. Then teach him how to drive before he kills somebody, the white cop said as he got in his patrol car and drove away.

Cleve was snickering as he looked in Gray’s window. “Sorry about that,” he said with a smile.

“It’s all your fault.”

“Slow it down next time.”

Gray threw the ticket on the floorboard. “Let’s talk quick. You said Sarge said the boys in the West Wing are talking about me. Right?”

“Right.”

“Okay, I need to know from Sarge if they’re talking about any other reporters, especially from the New York Times. I need to know if they think anybody else is hot on the story.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes. I need it quick.”

“Slow it down,” Cleve said loudly and walked to his car.

Darby paid for the room for the next seven days, in part because she wanted a familiar place to return to if necessary, and in part because she wanted to leave some new clothes she had purchased. It was sinful, this running and leaving everything behind. The clothes were nothing fancy, sort of upscale safari law school, but they cost even more in New York, and it would be nice to keep them. She would not take risks over clothes, but she liked the room and she liked the city and she wanted the clothes.

It was time to run again, and she would travel light. She carried a small canvas bag when she darted from the St. Moritz into a waiting cab. It was almost 11 P.M., Friday, and Central Park South was busy. Across the street, a line of horses and carriages waited for customers and brief excursions through the park.

The cab took ten minutes to get to Seventy-second and Broadway, which was the wrong direction, but this entire journey should be hard to follow. She walked thirty feet, and disappeared into the subway. She had studied a map and a book of the system, and she hoped it would be easy. The subway was not appealing because she’d never used it and she’d heard the stories. But this was the Broadway line, the most commonly used train in Manhattan, and it was rumored to be safe, at times. And things weren’t so swell above the ground. The subway could hardly be worse.

She waited in the correct spot with a group of drunk but well-dressed teenagers, and the train arrived in a couple of minutes. It wasn’t crowded, and she took a seat near the center doors. Stare at the floor and hold the bag, she kept telling herself. She looked at the floor, but from behind the dark shades, she studied the people. It was her lucky night. No street punks with knives. No beggars. No perverts, at least none she could spot. But for a novice, it was nerve-racking anyway.

The drunk kids exited at Times Square, and she got off quickly at the next stop. She had never seen Penn Station, but this was not the time to sightsee. Maybe one day she could return and spend a month and admire the city without watching for Stump and Thin Man and who knows who else who was out there. But not now.

She had five minutes, and found her train as it was boarding. Again, she sat in the rear and watched every passenger. There were no familiar faces. Surely, please, surely, they had not stuck to her on this jagged escape. Once again, her mistake had been credit cards. She had bought four tickets at O’Hare with American Express, and somehow they knew she was in New York. She was certain Stump had not seen her, but he was in the city, and of course he had friends. There could be twenty of them. But then, she was not certain of anything.

The train left six minutes late. It was half empty. She pulled a paperback from the bag and pretended to read it.

Fifteen minutes later, they stopped in Newark, and she got off. She was a lucky girl. There were cabs lined up outside the station, and ten minutes later she was at the airport.