D.C. Dead (11 page)

“I can’t argue with that. I don’t suppose Brix Kendrick would have any trouble wanting her. Except that his days already seemed pretty full.”

“Yeah,” Dino said, “he must have been short of time with Muffy waiting for him in the afternoons, and he couldn’t have been seeing somebody else in the evenings, because he was busy being an ideal husband. The question is, how could he get it up that often, at his age?”

“How old was he?” Stone asked.

“According to the FBI report, both he and Mimi were fifty-one, the age at which half of American men have what is politely called ‘erectile dysfunction.’”

“Well, Brix was obviously not having those problems, because he was keeping at least two ladies happy on a regular basis.”

“Maybe his wife had cut him off, for one reason or another,” Dino suggested. “And believe me, they don’t really need a reason.”

“Horniness is not a motive for murder, especially when he couldn’t possibly have been horny.”

“Shame is a motive for suicide, though,” Dino pointed out.

“I guess,” Stone said.

They got into the car.

“Where to?” Dino asked.

“Home, James. We’ve got nobody else to talk to, except each other.”

TEDDY FAY AND LAUREN CADE finished cleaning their hangar apartment and got into a shower together.

“You know,” she said, soaping Teddy’s back, “this place isn’t half bad.”

“Have I ever asked you to live in a place that was half bad?”

“No, you’ve done very well by me in that regard. Tell me, what are we going to do with ourselves in D.C.?”

“Well,” Teddy said, starting to soap her front, “I’ve got some work to do on a couple of gadgets.” Teddy had made a fortune inventing kitchen tools that were sold on late-night television. “Gotta keep the money tap running.”

“I won’t argue with you about that,” Lauren said. “I want to see the National Gallery and the Smithsonian. I’ve never been to Washington before.”

“There are enough museums and galleries to keep you busy for a year,” Teddy said. “Not that I think we’ll be here for a year. I know you get antsy if you’re too far from a beach for too long. I just want to be here long enough to throw Todd Bacon and his crew off the track.”

fonept each TODD BACON, AT THAT MOMENT, was in San Diego fielding phone calls from his team, and he was baffled by the result. They had found three instances of Cessna 182 RG landings at West Coast general aviation airports, but each of them had been traced to owners who were obviously not Teddy Fay.

“You look puzzled,” his number two said.

“Aren’t you? Where the hell did he go?”

“Well, if he isn’t on the West Coast, that leaves forty-five other states where he could have landed. Oh, and did I mention Canada?”

“Don’t be a smart-ass,” Todd said.

“Todd, if we don’t get a solid lead soon, they’re gonna pull the plug on us,” number two said. “We’re going to find ourselves in some South American jungle looking for drug factories, and I don’t like bugs and snakes.”

“I’m thinking,” Todd said, “I’m thinking.”

22

STONE, DINO, AND SHELLEY TURNED UP AT FAIR SUTHERLIN’S place fashionably late; they were the first ones there. Fair lived in a small, elegant apartment building on a broad avenue near Dupont Circle, and her space, its furnishings and pictures indicated an income of which her government salary was but a small part.

As Dino was introducing Shelley, two other couples arrived, and before those introductions had been made there were six couples present, including a network anchorman, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a right-wing Republican senator, each with a wife in tow. Everybody was terribly glad to see everybody else.

A young man in a white jacket took drink orders, and a young woman in a white jacket poured champagne for those who did not have another choice. They drank for forty minutes, then someone opened a pair of sliding doors, and the twelve took seats around a long, beautifully set table.

“Fair,” the senator’s wife said, “I don’t know how you have amassed so many beautiful things in your short life.”

“By the deaths of my parents and all four of my grandparents,” Fair replied. “I’m an only child, and I have three very complete sets of china, silver, and crystal, in opposing patterns. By the way, since Stone, Dino, and Shelley are new at my table, I should tell them about my one rule: no politics will be discussed.”

There were murmurs of assent, then there was complete silence for a little more than a minute.

“How ’bout those Redskins,” the anchorman offered.

“Not until next month,” Fair said.

The senator spoke up. “Stone, Dino, tell us about how your investigation is going.”

“First of all, Senator,” Stone said, “I am not shocked that you know about our investigation. Second, as you must know, we can’t discuss it before we have made our final report to the president, and maybe not even then.”

The columnist gave a snort. “I would imagine that the collective knowledge about your investigation by those present at this table amounts to very nearly everything you have learned so far. For instance, I hear that you had a conversation with the notorious Milly Hart yesterday.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that,” Stone said, “but I would be interested to know why she is notorious.”

“Because she’s a high-priced hooker,” Dino said.

The table made an affirmative noise.

“What is Ms. Hart’s story?” Stone asked the columnist.

“Well, let’s see if I can encapsulate it in one short paragraph,” the man said. “Well-brought-up girl comes to Washington and works for an important senator, one Gerald Hart, of Virginia; marries senator; senator dies, leaving a widow surprised that he left her so little; senator’s federal pension is insufficient to keep widow in style to which she has become accustomed; then someone offers her funds to tide her over, affection presumed; then someone else offers, and pretty soon widow is living stylishly again.”

“I hear Milly has a stylish clientele, too,” the anchorman’s wife said.

“Was Brix Kendrick among them?” the columnist’s wife asked, directing her question to Stone.

“You tell us,” Stone said, “please. We’re new in town.”

“Frankly,” said the anchorman, “I don’t know how Brix could afford her, on his White House salary.”

The senator grinned. “Perhaps someone should audit Brix’s books at the White House,” he said, pointing his fork at Fair. “After all, he reigned over a considerable budget. My committee has seen the numbers.”

“Senator,” Fair said, “the audit has already been done, and everything was in apple-pie order.”

“Apple pie can be messy,” the senator replied.

“Not
our
apple pie,” Fair said.

“Oh, that’s right,” the senator said. “Will Lee is notoriously proper about budgets.”

“And notoriously transparent, too,” Fair responded.

“No skeletons in that closet, then,” the senator admitted.

“Well,” said the columnist, “not the budgetary closet, anyway. There are, of course, other closets, and upright, dull Brix was, apparently, occupying a crowded one.”

That got a laugh from the table.

“I should think,” the senator’s wife said, “that that would make Brix neither upright nor dull. I can’t imagine how a man of his age could manage so well.” She shot a meaningful glance at her husband across the table, and he looked uncomfortable.

“Someone has pointed out to me,” Stone said, “that, at fifty-one, Brix’s age, half of American males are experiencing erectile dysfunction. Has it occurred to anyone that Brix might be among the other half? Or perhaps among an even smaller percentage who are raging bulls at that age?”

“Hugh Hefner is in his eighties,” Fair said, “and he seems to be holding up well.”

The senator snorted. “All that guy has to do is lie still,” he said, “and they do it for him.”

The anchorman laughed. “I hope I can lie that still when I’m his age.”

“I hope so, too, dear,” his wife said.

Shelley spoke up. “Would anyone care to hazard a guess as to who else is on Milly Hart’s preferred list?”

“At least one senator, I hear,” the columnist said, raising his eyebrows in the direction of the senator present.

iv>

“I wouldn’t know about that,” the senator said. “And even if I did, senate cloakroom gossip is privileged.”

“Only if we can’t pry it out of you,” Fair said.

Everybody laughed.

“He’s apparently right,” his wife said. “He won’t even tell
me
what’s said in that cloakroom.”

“I recall,” the columnist said, “that Warren G. Harding, when he was a senator, is alleged to have impregnated a young woman on a sofa in that cloakroom.”

“That the young woman was impregnated by Warren G. is not in doubt, though the geography in question is a little hazy. I think that information,” the senator said, “was traced to the young woman herself, though she may have embroidered her story for effect. It did not come from one of Senator Harding’s colleagues, though.”

Everyone moved back to the living room for coffee, and Stone asked Fair for the powder room.

“I believe it’s occupied,” Fair said, “but use my bathroom.” She pointed to a door.

Stone opened it and found himself in a very feminine bedroom. He crossed it and found the bath, and while he stood at the toilet, he could not keep himself from opening the medicine chest on the wall before his nose. He found prescription bottles for a painkiller, a sleeping pill, and a couple he did not recognize.

Also, he was intrigued to find a clear plastic case containing four lipsticks, the same brand that he had been told about by Shelley, apparently part of a promotion, none of which was Pagan Spring. There was, however, an empty space in the case. One lipstick had been removed.

He stopped by her dressing table on his way back to the living room, but found no Pagan Spring there, either. He was, he reflected, going to have to make a trip to a drugstore.

23

TEDDY FAY HAD FINISHED BRINGING HIS HANGAR APARTMENT up to his standard of living, and now he sat at his work table, putting the final touches on a peeler/slicer combination for his usual client. He prepared it for sending to a mail drop in Missouri that would, in turn, forward it to the addressee. In due course, if his client found it acceptable, and Teddy was certain he would, funds would be wired to a numbered account in the Cayman Islands, making Teddy awash in cash. Royalties from later sales would keep the stream flowing.

Bored with the fine work, he turned his thoughts elsewhere, and a whim struck him. He donned a fresh pair of latex gloves and opened a packet of very common stationery, sold in many drugstores, then uncapped his silver Montblanc pen.

My dear Miss Holly Barker: It has been some time since we last communicated, and longer still since we actually met, and I felt I should express a few thoughts to you.

I am aware that you have risen quickly in the estimation of your colleagues at the Agency and that with the rather self-serving help of Lance Cabot, the ultimate careerist, and the approbation of Director Katharine Rule Lee, you have moved up in the Agency’s structure with considerable speed. I am aware, too, that you have been assigned, from time to time, to supervise operations. This, again, is self-serving on Lance’s part, since it is important to him to have an assistant deputy director with actual experience with running agents.
iv, you /div>

However, there is beginning to appear a blot on your copybook, as it were, and you must take steps to correct that, if you do not wish your progress up the ladder to be impeded in committee. I refer, as you may have supposed, to the assignment of young Todd Bacon to his current task, and to his repeated failures to complete it successfully.

Young Todd is, in many respects, the ideal officer. He is a planner, meticulous and thorough, and can even be inventive. He lacks, however, the most important qualities of the best operatives: imagination and the ability to improvise on the move. Like a mediocre chess player, he thinks only of the next move and not the two or three down the road.

That having been said, the Agency has always needed people like Todd Bacon to do the planning and dogwork that every operation requires, without actually serving at the pointed end of the mission, where dash and quick thinking are required for success. It occurs to me that young Todd is very nearly at the point where it would be difficult if not impossible to move him sideways into a position where he could contribute on a consistent basis and earn himself some praise and, eventually, a pension.

I know, of course, that his current assignment is off the books and, thus, not subject to the usual committee scrutiny that accompanies most operations, but that very fact puts you, and to a lesser extent Lance, in the hot seat. Lance, to the lesser extent, because if there should be heat to be taken, he will arrange for you to take it.

So, it is time for one of two things to happen: either close the books on Todd’s mission and reassign him (it occurs to me that the boy might eventually do well in my old department, Technical Services—he is, after all, proficient with computers, weapons, and the like), or, the other thing: assign someone with both the professional and personal qualities to make a success of the mission.

However, there are thorns in those rosebushes, too. First, it would be difficult to transfer a successful officer from sanctioned missions to an off-the-books one without stunting his career or, perhaps, making a larger number of Agency people aware of what he is doing. And even should he be successful, no one will ever know about it but you, Lance, and the director, at least until that officer gets around to publishing his memoirs in Sweden or writing a roman à clef Nor will it do you much good with the director, since she will, along with her estimable husband, be on her way in eighteen months or so.