Under Siege

CHAPTER FOUR

On Sunday, T. Jefferson Brody woke up alone in his king-sized bed in his five-bedroom, four-bathroom, $1.6 million mansion in Kenwood. After a long hot shower, he shaved and dressed in gray wool slacks and a tweed sports coat that had set him back half a grand.

Ten minutes later he eased the Mercedes from the three-car garage and thumbed the garage-door controller as he backed down the drive.

T. Jefferson Brody should have felt good this morning. Friday he had deposited another fat legal fee in his Washington bank and shuffled another equally fat fee off to the Netherlands Antilles on the first leg of an electronic journey to Switzerland. He had done some calculations on an envelope last night, then burned the envelope. The sums he had managed to squirrel away were significant in any man’s league: he had over four million dollars in cash here in the States on which he had paid income taxes and six million in Switzerland on which he hadn’t. That plus the house (half paid for) and the cars, antiques, and art (cash on the barrelhead) gave him a nice, tidy little fortune. T. Jefferson was doing all right for himself.

The fly in the wine of T. Jefferson Brody was that he wanted a lot more. He knew there was a lot more to be made, a whale of a lot more, and it just didn’t seem that he was getting a share commensurate with his contribution. The things he did — the things only he could do — enabled his clients to make mountains of money, yet he was left with the crumbs that dribbled from their napkins. Just fees. Never a percentage of the action. Of course, lawyers traditionally have received fees for their services, but T. Jefferson Brody’s services weren’t traditional.

As he drove down Massachusetts Avenue into the District this morning for breakfast with the representative of his oldest, though certainly not richest, client, T. Jefferson tried to decide if he should announce a fee increase or something equally nebulous that would put more money into his pocket. He would wait, he decided, to hear what the client wanted.

These people were going to have to realize that T. Jefferson Brody was a very valuable asset to have in their huddle. T. Jefferson delivered. Always. Money talks and bullshit walks. Somehow he would have to make that point. Professionally and unobtrusively, of course.

He checked his car with the valet at the Hay Adams Hotel and walked purposefully through the lobby to the elevator. Whenever Bernie Shapiro came to town he always stayed in the same suite, a huge corner job with an excellent view of Lafayette Park and the White House.

Bernie opened the door, grunted once, and closed it behind the visitor. “When’s it gonna get cold down here?”

“Weird weather,” T. Jefferson agreed as he took off his topcoat and laid it on a handy chair. “Maybe the climate is really getting warmer.”

“Like hell. Nearly froze my ass off in New York these past two weeks.”

Bernie Shapiro was a bear of a man. He had been fearsome in his youth; now he was merely fat. The years, however, had added no padding to his abrasive personality. He sank into an easy chair and relit the stump of cigar that protruded from his fleshy jowls. “Breakfast’ll be here in a few minutes,” he muttered as he eyed his visitor through the thick smoke.

The attorney found a chair and took in the luxurious room and the White House, just visible from this angle through the naked tree branches.

Classical music played on the radio beside the bed a tad too loud for comfortable conversation. This was a normal precaution. The music would vibrate the window glass and foil any parabolic mikes that might be pointed in this direction by inquisitive souls, such as FBI agents.

The men discussed the Giants’ and Redskins’ chances this year as they waited for breakfast to be delivered. The knock of the room-service waiter came precisely on the hour. After all, this was the Hay Adams.

When the white-jacketed waiter had wheeled the serving cart back into the hall and closed the door behind him, Bernie opened his briefcase and extracted a device artfully crafted to look like a portable radio. This device detected the electromagnetic field created by microphones. Bernie pulled out the antenna, then walked around the room, paying careful attention to the needle on the dial as he paused at light switches and electrical outlets, swept the antenna over the food and slowly down Brody’s back and front. The operation took about two minutes. Finally satisfied, Bernie nodded toward the conference table laden with food as he collapsed the antenna and flipped switches.

The lawyer seated himself and poured a cup of coffee while Bernie put the device back in his briefcase. Only when both men were seated and had their food on their plates did the serious conversation begin.

“We’ve decided to expand our business. What with everybody making acquisitions and expanding their profit potential, it seemed like the thing to do.”

“Absolutely,” T. Jefferson agreed as he forked into the eggs benedict.

“We thought we would get into the check-cashing business at several likely places around the country. We’ve located a little business here in Washington and want you to buy it for us. You’ll do all the negotiating, set up some corporations, front the whole deal.”

“Same as the DePaolo deal?”

“Pretty much.”

“What’s the name of the company you want to buy?”

“A to Z Checks. The owner ran into some trouble Friday evening and the business now belongs to his widow. I want you to make her an offer. Better wait until Tuesday. The funeral’s tomorrow. The business is ten outlets. We’ll pay a flat four hundred thousand, but if you can get it for less you keep the difference.”

“Okay.”

Bernie got to work on his sausage as Jefferson Brody turned the project over in his mind and decided it offered few problems. A couple of dummy corporations and some negotiating. Assignments of the leases on the outlets — he knew from experience that these storefront operations were always leased — and the usual business papers. All very straightforward.

“If the widow won’t take our offer, you let me know.”

“What’s the business make in profit?”

“About a hundred grand a year.”

“Your offer sounds reasonable. But if you don’t mind my asking, why do you want this business?”

“That’s the second half of the project. The crack business here in Washington is turning some hefty dollars. Six organizations here in the area have all the trade. Anyone else tries to get started, they shut them down. These organizations are all getting along and turning decent money, with the usual friction at street level for turf.” Bernie waved that away as a problem not worthy of discussion. “The real problem is washing the dough after they got it. That’s the service we’ll provide. We’ll take the cash and trade it for government checks — welfare, ADC, Social Security, and so on — and the usual private checks, deposit the checks in a business account, then run the money through dummy corporations which will feed it to legit businesses owned by us. Other real businesses with absolutely no connection to the first set will feed money back to our crack friends. They’ll get a nice legit income from a corporation they own and nobody can ever prove a thing. I think they’ll really like this operation when it’s explained to them. We won’t need you for that though.”

“What will you charge for this service?”

“Twenty percent.” Bernie grinned.

Brody felt his eyebrows struggling to rise. He made an effort to control his face.

“They’re paying ten to fifteen percent now. So they’ll be less than enthusiastic at first. They’ll change their minds, though, and see the benefits of our proposal.”

“Will ten outlets do enough business to handle the volume you’ll need?”

“I doubt it,” Bernie said. “We’ll probably double the number of outlets within a month, then open other outlets in other cities. A to Z is going to enjoy an explosive expansion.”

They discussed the intricacies of it. The key to staying in business was having a bulletproof cover story. “You’ll need a bank, maybe two,” Brody told his client as they pushed their plates toward the center of the table and poured coffee.

“Yeah. There’s a savings and loan in Alexandria that should become available in the next week or so. The head cashier had a bad accident on the freeway Friday. Guy named Harrington.” Bernie grinned. “Fridays are not good days around here, apparently.”

The lawyer chuckled his agreement.

Bernie continued: “This Harrington was washing money for Freeman McNally.” McNally was the largest crack dealer in Washington and also one of T. Jefferson Brody’s clients. Bernie Shapiro may or may not have known that. Brody survived by never, ever mentioning one client’s affairs to another client. He had absolutely no intention of breaking that rule now.

Bernie continued: “A guy on the inside figured out what Harrington was up to and talked to a guy who knew somebody. One thing led to another, and now we got a deal with this guy on the inside. Tomorrow or the day after the regulators will be called in. Three or four days after that, the place will probably be for sale cheap. You’re going to buy it for us.”

T. Jefferson Brody grinned this time. “Okay. But we’ll need some front people for this one. Little tougher to buy an S&L.”

“Our guy inside will get a piece, and he’ll come up with three or four names. We put up all the money and he’ll run it for us. You’ll do the legal work, of course.”

They discussed it for over an hour. When they had ironed out the details, T. Jefferson Brody thought it time to broach the subject of his fee. “Bernie, this new enterprise should be very profitable for you.”

“Should be.” Bernie lit a fresh cigar.

“I want to raise my fee.”

Bernie puffed serenely on the cigar and stared through the smoke at the lawyer. “We pay you fifty a month, Tee.”

“I know. And I do excellent work that enables you to make really major money. In good conscience, Bernie, I think my fee should be higher.”

“You’re a fixer,” Bernie Shapiro said, his eyes on the attorney. “If we go down the tubes, you’ll still be standing there high and dry. You take no risks, you invest no money, you’re shielded by client confidentiality. Fifty a month is enough.”

Brody tried to interrupt but Bernie raised his palm. “We never expected you to do our work exclusively. If we thought you’d violated a confidence, Tee, tried to shave a little for yourself from one of our deals, or played both ends against the middle, we’d find another lawyer. We’d even send flowers to your funeral. But you don’t do things like that. So we pay you a fifty-thousand-dollar monthly retainer for whatever little chores you do, regardless.”

T. Jefferson Brody opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Bernie Shapiro smiled. He had a good smile. “Think of it this way, Tee. You don’t even have to go to the trouble of billing us. We send the check on the first of the month even if you spent the previous month on vacation in the Bahamas. Isn’t that so?”

Brody nodded.

“Thanks for dropping by this morning, Tee. Tuesday you start with the widow.” Bernie stood and held the lawyer’s coat. “Stay in touch.”

“Sure.”

“Remember, Tee. Greed is bad for your soul.”

As T. Jefferson Brody drove away from the Hay Adams in his Mercedes coupé, Henry Charon left his hotel, a significantly more modest establishment than the Hay Adams, and set forth upon the sidewalks. This morning his course took him toward the Supreme Court building, immediately behind the Capitol. He circled the building slowly, examined the tags on the parking spaces, and stood looking at buildings across Second Street. Then he wandered in that direction.

Assassinating people was exactly like hunting deer. The hunter’s task was to place himself to take advantage of a momentary opportunity. The skill involved was to get to the right place at the right time with the right equipment and to make the shot when fate and circumstances offered.

He should have been a military sniper, Charon thought, not for the first time. He would have been good at the work and he would have enjoyed it. Yet snipers need wars to employ their skills. An assassin is in demand all the time.

He came back to the unsolved problem of potential informers in the organization or group that wanted to hire him. He had no idea who these people were, though he supposed that with a reasonable effort he could find out. If he found out, what then?

Perhaps the thing to do was to plan now for a permanent disappearance, a permanent change of identity. The drawback was time. He didn’t have enough time to do it right. And if done incorrectly, such a move would be worse than doing nothing at all.

Afterward, could he devote six months to proper preparation, then vanish? Would he have six months?

Mulling these and similar questions, in the alley behind the buildings facing Second Street Henry Charon found a dumpster sitting directly beneath a fire escape. He moved the large metal trash box and pulled on rubber gloves. Apparently no one was watching. Vaulting to the top of the dumpster, he curled his fingers around the lowest rung of the ladder and pulled it down. With one last glance around, Charon was on his way up.

The building didn’t even have a burglar alarm. It was old, with wooden-frame windows. He used a credit card on a latch and was inside in seconds. The elevator worked. He took it to the top floor. The offices on this floor were empty and dark this Sunday afternoon. Henry Charon went looking for the stairs.

The door to the roof had a lock that yielded to a set of picks. Charon stepped out on the roof and took in the scene at a glance. The view down into the Supreme Court parking lot was partially obscured by defoliated tree branches. That didn’t bother him. He had made many a shot through much thicker brush and foliage and at much longer ranges. The Supreme Court building was about a hundred yards from here and the Capitol about five hundred. The adjacent buildings were of the same height as this one. An eighteen-inch-high combing provided cover around the edge of the flat roof. Excellent.

Thirty seconds after opening the door, Charon had it closed and locked. Back down the stairs he went, out through the top-floor office window to the fire escape, down the ladder to the top of the dumpster. He was walking briskly toward Constitution Avenue a minute and nine seconds after he closed the door on the roof.

Jack Yocke carefully proofed his follow-up story on Friday’s beltway murder. He scrolled it slowly up the screen as he checked every word and comma.

The heart of the story was a speculation by a Montgomery County police lieutenant that some frustrated speeder might have potted Walter P. Harrington in a moment of rage because he was a sadistic jerk who always drove at fifty-five miles per hour in the fast lane. Yocke had dressed it up some for the Post, but that was the essence of the story. No new evidence. The bullet that killed Harrington had not been recovered. No witnesses to the killing had come forward. The widow was devastated. The funeral was Monday.

Off the record, the Montgomery County police had admitted that the killing would probably never be solved unless the killer got drunk and talked too much. Jack Yocke had passed that information to the editor so he would not expect follow-up stories.

As he punched keys to send the story of Walter P. Harrington on its electronic way, Yocke saw Ottmar Mergenthaler stroll through the newsroom on his way to his cubicle. Mergenthaler waved him over.

“Hey, Jack, you busy right now?”

“Nothing that can’t wait.”

“That Colombian drug kingpin is having a press conference. Want to go with me?”

“Sure.”

“Gotta get a tape recorder, then we’ll do it.”

In the car Jack asked, “How’d you get this plum, anyway?”

Mergenthaler chuckled. “I know the lawyer representing Aldana. Guy name of Thanos Liarakos, big criminal defense mercenary. Known him for years. He always represents mob guys and dopers. They’re the only crooks who can afford him. Gets one off the hook just often enough to be able to charge outrageously and still have all the work he can handle. Anyway, he called and said Aldana was demanding a jail-cell press conference with a network TV crew, but I could come if I wanted.”

“What’s he going to say?”

“Liarakos didn’t know. He strongly advised Aldana against talking to the press, but the client insisted.”

“There goes his claim that media hype has prejudiced possible jurors — prevented any possibility of a fair trial.”

“Yep. Looks like Aldana isn’t the type to take advice from lawyers, no matter what they cost to keep around.”

“Has he really got a net worth of four billion dollars?”

“Who the hell knows? I’ll bet even Aldana doesn’t.”

Four billion! What is that …? Four thousand million? The sum was beyond comprehension. Oh, the government throws around numbers like that, but not individuals. Four billion was more than the gross national product of Iceland. You could buy Arkansas for that amount, own your own state. You could hire every whore in North and South America and keep them as your private harem in the state you owned on the Mississippi. And if the feds didn’t like it, you could hire every lawyer in New York and Washington to raise hell in every court in America. “That’s a lot of money,” Jack Yocke muttered.

“Too much.”

Yocke snorted. “That’s heresy, Ott! There’s no such thing. Bite your tongue.”

There was a mob at the district jail. Reporters and cameramen crammed the entryway. After Yocke and Mergenthaler elbowed their way to the desk, they found the desk sergeant engaged in a shouting match with a local TV anchorman as the cameras rolled.

“You can’t keep us out. We’re the press!”

“I don’t give a fuck who you are. The only people who get in are people on this list.” The sergeant stabbed the sheet of paper on the counter in front of him with a rigid finger. “You ain’t on it. Now get the hell outta here or we’ll find a cell for you. And turn off that fucking spotlight!”

“This is America!”

“Read my lips, asshole! Out!”

“Mergenthaler, Washington Post.” The reporter slid his credentials across the dark wood at the sergeant, who consulted his list while the TV anchorman made yet another eloquent protest.

“You’re on the list. Through that door over there.”

“I have another guy with me from the Post.”

Yocke displayed his credentials and was waved through as the sergeant addressed himself to the still spluttering TV man: “No. No! No! What part of no don’t you understand?”

Two policemen searched them for weapons while a third checked Mergenthaler’s tape recorder. Then they were led down a long corridor that had decades worth of dirt caked on its dark, once-green walls. Up a flight of ill-lit stairs, through another security checkpoint, through steel doors that slid open as they approached and closed behind them, and past rows of brimming cells. The occupants jeered and shouted obscenities.

The reporters were led through another steel door into a booking room of some sort where a camera crew was busy setting up lights and two cameras. This room had several steel doors besides the one they had entered. One was partially open and Yocke peeked. Beyond was a suite of four cells, padded, cells for psychos. Apparently the cops didn’t want Aldana out in the multiple-occupancy cells with the common criminals.

The network correspondent, whom Yocke recognized but didn’t know, nodded at Mergenthaler, then consulted a notebook while a woman worked on him from a portable makeup box. She combed his hair and squirted hairspray. One of the technicians tested a pin-on microphone as a uniformed cop watched without expression.

Mergenthaler found a spot where he could observe and not be caught by the cameras. Yocke leaned against the wall beside him.

The minutes passed. Five, then ten.

Occasionally someone coughed, but mostly they stood silently. Waiting.

What kind of man was this Aldana? Jack Yocke tried to picture the man he thought would appear, based upon what he knew about him. A thug, he decided. Some sort of hate-filled Latin American barrio bastard who thought Adolf Hitler was the prophet of how to win and rule in the coming chaos. Sounds like the title of a self-help best-seller. Yocke wondered if there was a big book in Chano Aldana’s future.

A darkly handsome man in a gray suit came out of one of the doors. He squinted against the floodlights, then said hello to the TV talker and Mergenthaler.

“My client will be out in a moment. Here are the rules. He has a statement to make, then the TV people get five minutes to ask questions. After they finish, Mergenthaler gets five minutes.”

“I don’t want Mergenthaler here while we’re filming,” the correspondent said.

“When will you run your interview?” Thanos Liarakos asked.

“Tonight probably, and on the morning show tomorrow.”

“I don’t see any problem.” The lawyer frowned. “He isn’t going to scoop you. And you can film while he asks questions, if you wish.”

No, the TV people weren’t going to do that. Under no circumstances were they going to take the chance that Mergenthaler might ask more perceptive questions on camera than their man.

“Show business,” Mergenthaler whispered sourly to Yocke. Speaking louder, he asked, “Mr. Liarakos, do you know what Aldana will say?”

“No.”

“Has he discussed it with you?”

“No.”

“Did you recommend to your client that he hold a press conference?”

“No comment.”

“If the prosecutors ask the judge for a gag order, will you fight it?”

“I never speculate in that manner.”

“Can Aldana get a fair trial here in Washington?”

“I don’t think that he can get a fair trial anywhere in the United States.”

“How much longer do we have to wait?” grumped the TV man.

“I have one question, Mr. Liarakos,” Yocke said. “Jack Yocke of the Post.”

“He with you, Ott?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

“Are you satisfied that your client has arranged to pay your fee, which reportedly is very high, with money that is not the proceeds of any criminal activity?”

Liarakos frowned. “No comment,” he said crisply, and disappeared through one of the steel doors.

The TV man grinned broadly at Yocke. A trace of a smile flickered across Mergenthaler’s lips.

Time passed slowly. The TV man kept glancing at his watch.

After seven minutes, the door opened and two uniformed cops came out, then two men Jack Yocke took to be U.S. marshals. Liarakos followed them, then a Latin-looking man of medium height wearing a trim mustache. Other cops and marshals followed, but this was the man who captured Yocke’s attention.

As he arranged himself in the chair and the television lights came on, Yocke stared. The man was pleasantly plump, with full cheeks that would turn into saggy jowls in a few more years. He looked like a middle-aged banker who hadn’t raised a sweat since his school days. He was clad in slacks and a short-sleeved white shirt, no tie. He blinked at the glare of the lights and looked around warily as a technician hooked up the lapel mike.

When the technician was out of the way and one of the marshals had been waved out of camera-shot, the correspondent began. “I understand you have a statement to make, Señor Aldana.”

Aldana looked straight at the camera.

“I am Chano Aldana,” he said with a noticeable Spanish accent. “I am your worst nightmare come to life. I am the faceless, starving masses whom you refused food. I am the slave you delivered in chains to the merciless altar of the moneylenders. I am the sick you refused to heal. I am the beggar you turned away from the feast. To me has been given the key to the bottomless pit. And I have opened it.”

The network correspondent stood for several seconds with his mouth ajar, his face slack.

“Señor Aldana, are you guilty of the crimes of which you are accused?”

“You are the guilty ones. Not I.”

“Are you the head of the Medellín cocaine-smuggling cartel?”

“I am a Third World businessman.”

When it became obvious that was the whole answer, the correspondent persisted, “Are you a cocaine smuggler?”

“I have never smuggled cocaine.”

“Your statement seems to imply that people working for you will cause violence if you are not released. Is that what you mean?”

“I meant what I said. Precisely. The people who know of my reputation will tell you that I am a man of my word.”

When Mergenthaler’s turn came and the TV lights were off, he asked, “What did you mean, ‘To me has been given the key to the bottomless pit’?”

“I am He who was thrown out of Heaven. I am He you have kept away from the feast. To me has been given the key to the pit and I have opened it.”

“How about one straight answer. Are you or are you not involved in the cocaine-smuggling business?”

“I have never smuggled cocaine.”

“Do you really have a net worth of four billion American dollars?”

“I am a wealthy man. I do not know just how wealthy.”

“At last, a straight answer.”

Aldana’s upper lip curled into a sneer and his eyes narrowed. His gaze locked on the journalist, he rose from the chair. As the marshals led him through the door that led back to his cell, he kept his eyes on Mergenthaler until the door cut off his view.

“He’s crazy as a bedbug,” Yocke said in the car.

Ottmar Mergenthaler sat motionless behind the wheel, the ignition key in his hand. “Too bad Geraldo Rivera missed this one.”

“He didn’t scare you with that staring act, did he?”

Mergenthaler glanced at the younger man. “Yeah. He did.”

The columnist examined the key and carefully placed it in the ignition switch. “He’s insane and has armies of hired killers that have murdered hundreds of politicians, judges, and police in Colombia. They’ve blown up airliners, bombed department stores and newspapers, and assassinated dozens of journalists who refused to be quiet. They don’t care who they kill. They truly don’t.”

The columnist started the car and engaged the transmission. “Yeah, Jack, that man scared me.”