Monument to Murder (11 page)

CHAPTER   16

The man known as Dexter pulled into the parking lot of his favorite McDonald’s and went inside. He ordered what he always ordered, a cheeseburger, fries, and a soft drink. He’d just settled at a table and removed the wrapping from his burger when the man he was to meet walked in and joined him. This particular McDonald’s had been the chosen scene of their infrequent clandestine meetings for the past six months. Was it time for a change? Probably.

“Aren’t you eating?” Dexter asked.

“I’m not in the mood. I just came from a meeting at the White House.”

“The president?”

“No. Some of his intelligence people. They say the old man is furious at how things went down with Mutki.”

Dexter had just raised the burger to his lips. He paused, lowered it, and said, “Why would he feel that way? It went smoothly.”

“It isn’t a matter of
how
it went, Dexter. It’s a matter of
where
it happened.”

Dexter took a bite, chewed, and said, “We chose the ideal place for it to happen. We researched it thoroughly before he came.”

“It shouldn’t have happened here in the States, not in Washington, D.C.”

“You should get something to eat,” Dexter said. “It looks strange for you to be sitting here without eating.”

His luncheon companion drummed his fingertips on the table.

“You were well aware,” Dexter said, “that the method, timing, and location were our choice, just as it’s always been. It can be no other way.”

“It may be necessary to reevaluate that, Dexter.”

Dexter shrugged, finished his burger, and dipped a fry into ketchup. “That, of course, is up to you and your people,” he said in a casual tone that mirrored his lack of concern. “But I remind you that the process put in place by the highest echelons of your agency has served you well.” His smile was thin. “Get something to eat. I’m uncomfortable sitting with you.”

His companion leaned across the table and said in almost a whisper, “I don’t appreciate being on the receiving end of the president’s wrath. Surely you can understand that.”

“Of course I do, but it really can’t be a concern of mine or my people. We do what we do, and we do it well. Political ramifications or administrations don’t interest us.”

His visitor stood and Dexter assumed he was going to the counter to order. Instead, he left and disappeared into the parking lot.

•  •  •

Fletcher Jamison, president of the United States, was in a foul mood. Foul moods were not the exception for this president. His temper was, as those close to him had experienced, volcanic. Jamison was a tall, angular man with a heavy five-o’clock shadow that seemed to match his frame of mind, a black, grainy beard line that accentuated his jowls, which were prominent, and his scowls, which were numerous. There were those who thought he looked something like former President Nixon, although he was considerably taller than the thirty-seventh president of the United States. Others said he was “Lincolnesque” because of his height and prominent nose. Physical comparisons failed to define Jamison, the nation’s forty-fifth president. It was his style, his demeanor that characterized him for those with whom he interacted in the White House and in Congress. “He has a mean streak,” some whispered after an especially brutal session with him. “He has a nasty gene,” others said.

Voters seldom saw that side of him, although his tough talk on a variety of issues, domestic and international, promised them a man who wouldn’t kowtow to anyone, friend or foe, just the sort of president the country needed in hard times. His hair-trigger smile and large hand that landed on the shoulders of thousands of voters endeared him to them, a stern father figure who would undo all the mistakes of the past administration, who would reestablish America as the best and most powerful nation in the world, calling the shots around the globe and putting home-grown laggards on notice that they’d better get their act together. Although it was never played—the separation of church and state was still sacrosanct—you could almost hear “Onward Christian Soldiers” played each time he left the White House and mingled with the masses.

He’d conducted a meeting earlier that day with a member of his National Security staff whose primary responsibility was as liaison with the Central Intelligence Agency. The topic was the death of the Kurdish journalist Afran Mutki. Jamison had recently expressed his unhappiness with Mutki’s postings from Iraq in which he scorched the Iraqi central government for its treatment of the Kurds, and Jamison had made his feelings known to his staff.

News of Mutki’s death had reached Jamison after he and his wife had retired for the evening to their private quarters on the second floor. The president took the call, smiled, hung up, and shot his fist into the air.

“What was that about?” the first lady asked from where she sat browsing through
Washingtonian Magazine.

“That Kurdish journalist, Mutki, is dead,” Jamison answered.

“That makes you happy?” she asked absently.

“He was stirring up trouble for the Iraqi government, and that meant trouble for me. These writers who think they know so damn much give me a royal pain in the ass. They get it wrong most of the time. What the hell do they contribute except confusion?”

She continued skimming the magazine.

“How was
your
day?” he asked.

“Busy, as usual. I got a call from Mitzi. She sounded upset.”

Jamison snorted. “Your friend always seems upset. What’s the matter this time, her napkin supplier on strike?”

She lowered the magazine to her lap and said, “That’s cruel.”

“No, it’s accurate. She’s a hysteric, Jeanine.”

“She is not. Anyway, we’re having lunch here tomorrow.”

“What’s she upset about?”

“I don’t know. She said she’d tell me at lunch.”

“She’s so damn dramatic. Don’t forget we’re having the Israeli PM here tomorrow.”

“That’s at four. Mitzi and I are meeting at noon.”

“Are arrangements set for dinner with the PM?”

“As far as I know. I’ll confirm everything in the morning with the staff.”

Jamison sat in his favorite chair and looked out the window. “You happy?” he asked.

His question surprised her. Of course she was happy. She was living in the White House with all the accompanying perks, the first lady of the land, the pinnacle of power for a woman. Happy? Was politics corrupt?

“You didn’t answer me,” Jamison said.

“I’m happy. I wish there was a little more time to escape, just escape, but yes, I am happy. Are you?”

“I’m not sure I’d call it happy, Jeanine. Winning the election made me happy. Why shouldn’t it? This country needs a new direction and I’m the one to lead it there. I just never realized how many people there are who’d like to take me down.”

“You knew that when you decided to run.”

“I know, I know, but they’re warped, Jeanine, warped, vicious people. They look for every little thing to criticize. If it weren’t for the Secret Service I’d have taken a bullet like the Kennedys by now.”

“Don’t talk that way, Fletch.”

“It’s true, babe.

She dropped the magazine to the floor, went to him, sat on his lap, and caressed his cheek. “We need some time away from here,” she said.

“That’d be nice.”

“I’m going to Savannah for that fund-raising event for CVA. Maybe we could—”

“When’s that?”

“Next week. Maybe we could spend a few days down on Tybee Island with the Warrens.”

He shook his head. “Not a chance.”

“Then I suppose we’ll just have to find an hour of escape right here.”

She kissed him softly on the lips, then increased the pressure. They left the couch, slipped out of their bedclothes, and climbed into the king-size bed.

“If that red phone rings I’ll scream,” she said with a playful giggle.

“Don’t worry about that, babe,” he said. “If the world is about to blow up I’ll just suggest it be put off for an hour. Hell, I am the president of the United States.”

She laughed again as she straddled him. “An hour?” she said. “Sure you can make it last that long?”

CHAPTER   17

Annabel Lee Smith arrived at her Georgetown gallery early the next morning. A shipment of four rare, painted baked clay Mayan plates had arrived the afternoon before and she wanted to create an appropriate display for them. She’d purchased them in Mexico the preceding month from a collector with whom she’d dealt before, and based upon her growing expertise in things pre-Columbian she was confident that she’d made a wise purchase, and one that conformed to U.S. regulations regarding the importation of antiquities.

Walking into the gallery always filled Annabel with a sense of calm and pride. She’d developed her interest in pre-Columbian art while in undergraduate school and had devoured every book she could find on the subject. She continued her study of it during law school and after she’d gone into practice, always thinking of opening a gallery but unable to make the dramatic decision to abandon law to pursue her dream.

Meeting and falling in love with Mac Smith had been the turning point. He’d encouraged her to take down her Esq. shingle, find the right location, and indulge her passion. The space in trendy Georgetown was charming and she loved being part of the neighborhood’s commercial community. Owning the gallery brought her into contact with pre-Columbian collectors around the world and she’d made numerous trips to seek out rare finds.

She’d never looked back.

By ten o’clock, she’d arranged the plates on a large, glass-covered pedestal in the center of the gallery, having taken a few minutes to circle it slowly and admire the presentation. She had then retreated to her office at the gallery’s rear to compile a list of area collectors who might be interested in the new arrivals, and was busy with that task when the chime sounded, indicating that someone had entered. She got up from her desk and went to greet her first potential customer of the day.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning,” Emile Silva said. “Mind if I just browse?”

“Please do. Do you have an interest in pre-Columbian?”

“I’ve just begun to develop one,” he said.

“That’s wonderful. If you have any questions, please ask.”

Like any shop or gallery owner, Annabel took a moment to size up her visitor. He was of average height, and she estimated his age as mid-to-late thirties. Black hair cut short and fringed with a hint of gray at the temples framed a square, solid, dusky face. He wore blue jeans that looked to Annabel to be more expensive than run-of-the-mill ones, a pale blue button-down shirt, and alligator loafers sans socks; he was a good-looking man whose compact muscular build testified to regular workouts.

“It’s a very nice gallery,” he said as he perused items along one wall.

“Thank you,” she said.

She busied herself behind the counter while he browsed without comment. After ten minutes he said, “Thank you. The pieces are very nice.”

“Would you like to be on my e-mail and mailing list?” she asked.

“No, I don’t think so.”

The door opened and Annabel’s husband came through it.

“This is my husband, Mackensie,” Annabel told the visitor. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get your name.”

Silva smiled, fixed Mac in a hard stare, shook his head, and left the gallery.

“A buyer?” Mac asked.

“Just browsing. See? I arranged the new plates.”

He admired the display along with his wife. “Looks great,” he said.

“I hope they sell.”

“You didn’t know him?” Mac asked.

“Who?”

“The man who just left.”

“No.”

“He wasn’t anxious to give his name.”

Annabel laughed. “He probably didn’t want to be inundated with e-mail and mailings from me. I don’t blame him.”

“Free for lunch?” Mac asked.

“Sure.”

“Founding Farmers by the World Bank, say twelve thirty?”

“See you there.”

They kissed, then Mac stepped out onto the sidewalk where Silva stood looking into an adjacent shop window in which expensive women’s shoes were displayed.

“Beauty of a different sort,” Mac commented as he came up beside him.

“What?”

“Women’s shoes and pre-Columbian art. Beautiful but different.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s right,” Silva said.

The men looked at each other without saying anything else before Silva walked away.

Mac watched him navigate shoppers and disappear into another shop. There was something about the man that bothered Mac. He’d become an astute judge of people, honed by dealing with every possible variety of criminal when practicing law. This man with whom he’d had only the briefest of contact triggered something visceral in the former attorney, nothing he could put his finger on but there nonetheless. It was in the eyes, he decided. There was a coldness there that Smith had seen too many times before, a lack of affect that he’d learned was characteristic of a certain type of man. He made a mental note to suggest to Annabel at lunch that, should the man come into the gallery again, she be on her toes.

Silva, too, had had a negative reaction to this man who was the gallery owner’s husband. This was someone to stay away from and Silva was sorry that he’d visited the gallery. He didn’t know why he felt that way but the presentiment itself was sufficient. Maybe it was the aftershave lotion this man named Mackensie wore, or an odor emanating from his pores. No matter. This was a man who could spell trouble for Silva—for anyone—someone to be avoided. Not that his reaction to Smith mattered. He would never visit the gallery again or have occasion to bump into Annabel’s husband anywhere else.

He was scheduled to meet with Dexter at noon and had decided to spend the latter part of the morning perusing Georgetown’s shops, which he enjoyed doing. Annabel’s gallery was just one of his stops. He had no interest in pre-Columbian art, or any art for that matter, but it had looked like an attractive space in which to kill time.

Emile had assumed that his meeting with Dexter would be at the office building near the Pentagon, but he was mistaken. Dexter had said something about the need to avoid going to that place and had suggested a Burger King on K Street, which amused Silva. Meetings not held at the office were always conducted in fast-food restaurants because Dexter, and those for whom he worked, had decided that such places were safe, based on the assumption that men involved in high-level nefarious activities wouldn’t stoop to that gastronomic level. It didn’t matter to Silva, although he detested fast food and would have preferred to meet in higher-class establishments like 701 or Citronelle, The Palm, or Tosca. But his job wasn’t to make decisions. His job was to kill, something at which he was very good.

As he drove to his rendezvous with Dexter, Mac Smith’s face kept injecting itself into his thoughts, and Annabel’s, too. She was a beautiful woman—too beautiful for her husband. He played out a fantasy of slowly slashing the husband’s throat while a naked Annabel looked on. That brought a smile to his face as he pulled into the lot and parked.

Dexter was already at a table wedged into a corner away from others. “Order something,” he said when Silva came to the table. Silva returned with a tray holding a chicken sandwich and a Diet Coke.

“You pick the nicest places to meet,” Silva said through a smile.

“It serves its purpose,” Dexter responded.

“Why was my trip abroad canceled?” Silva asked.

“It became inconvenient to send you.”

“Pity. I was looking forward to getting away. So, why am I here today?”

“We may have another assignment for you.”

“Where?”

“That hasn’t been decided yet. But in the meantime I want you to leave the city for a few weeks until the Mutki affair cools down.”

Silva laughed and tasted the sandwich. “I never realized how much of a storm that would create.”

“It was handled poorly.”

Silva frowned. “Not by me,” he said.

“By everyone. Our sponsors have made their displeasure known to me.”

Dexter’s mention of his “sponsors” triggered a series of thoughts for Silva. He’d never been sure who gave the orders for someone to be eliminated using the group headed by Dexter that was headquartered in the Virginia office building. That facility was relatively new. When Silva first started working for the enterprise there had been no central location. All orders came from hotel suites. But it was decided—by whom, Silva didn’t know—that it would be best to establish a business front with space to house the various instruments, technology, and weapons used to carry out the group’s missions.

Emile Silva had intended to make a career out of the marines. But a series of incidents in which his rage overflowed, resulting in physical attacks on fellow servicemen, led to a decision by his superiors that he was mentally unstable, unable to function in the corps’ structured environment. He’d fought that finding but had been unsuccessful, and left the service with a general discharge—and a need to seek revenge on those former comrades-in-arms whose testimony had been the basis for his dismissal. One in particular topped his retribution list.

Silva and Buddy Carcini had become friends while in uniform, as much of a friendship as Silva, constitutionally a loner, was able to develop with anyone. Carcini was a fast-talking Italian from New York who appreciated Silva’s cockiness and jaundiced view of the world, and of authority. They were competitive in many aspects of their service, on the shooting range, in hand-to-hand combat drills, and in a special sharp-shooting unit both had applied for and been accepted into.

It was off the base where the problems between them emerged and festered. It seemed to Silva that Carcini spent every hour off-duty chasing girls from the local town. Silva went along with him on some of his hunts but was never comfortable with his buddy’s sweet talk to each young woman they met. It wasn’t that Silva was shy. He could talk as good a story as Carcini, and a number of the girls made it obvious that they were taken with him. But when it came time to follow through, to entice a girl into a local motel or into the backseat of a borrowed car, Silva backed off, much to Carcini’s amusement. But after a few episodes like this, Carcini’s amusement turned to sarcasm, and then to questions about whether Silva was a closet homosexual.

Silva had finally had enough. One night as Carcini slept in their barracks, Silva pulled a switchblade knife from where he’d secreted it in his bunk, silently went to Carcini’s bunk, clasped a hand over his mouth, and pressed the blade against the New Yorker’s throat. “If you ever call me a fag again,” Silva hissed, “I’ll cut your throat from ear to ear.”

The next morning, Carcini saw blood on his pillow. When he looked into the mirror, he saw that the knife had traced a four-inch-thin red line just beneath his Adam’s apple. He considered not reporting the attack but the cut was too blatant to go unnoticed. Besides, he’d had it with Silva. And there was patriotism to be considered. The marine corps didn’t need a flaming fag in its ranks. He told his superior what had occurred, and the captain passed the story up the chain of command. This wasn’t the first experience the brass had had with Silva and his penchant for settling every argument with physical force. It was time to get rid of him, and Carcini’s testimony was the basis for his removal from the corps.

Silva maintained his proud bearing as he walked out of the hearing. He paused where Carcini was seated, smiled at him, and left the base and his career in the United States Marines behind.

It took several years for the right circumstance to present itself for Silva to be in contact with Buddy Carcini again. Carcini had left the corps and was working and living in Chicago according to posts on his Facebook and Twitter accounts. Silva, who’d supported himself in Washington as a bouncer at topless clubs and by applying muscle for local bookies and mobsters, went to Chicago, staked out where Carcini worked and lived, and spent three days shadowing him. On the third night, when Carcini left a girlfriend’s apartment at three in the morning, Silva followed him to where he’d parked his car.

“Hey, Buddy, remember me?” Silva asked as Carcini, who’d had too much to drink, fumbled to insert his key in the lock.

Carcini turned and squinted in the dimness of the streetlight.

“Emile, Buddy. Emile Silva,” he said with a throaty laugh.

“Oh, Jesus, I’ll be damned,” Carcini said. He extended his hand. Silva grabbed it, pulled him close, and rammed a knife into Carcini’s throat, severing the jugular vein. His former friend slid to the pavement and was dead in less than a minute. Silva wiped the knife on Carcini’s shirt and walked away, a satisfied smile on his face. He took the next available flight back to Washington and assumed that the murder of his former friend and fellow marine would become another in Chicago’s unsolved-cases file. He knew one thing for certain: he’d never felt more alive than that night.

He continued to work odd jobs in the D.C. area until one night when he met a well-dressed man in a bar. They fell into an easy conversation and the topic of what Silva did for a living came up. He mentioned his work as a bouncer.

“You can handle yourself, huh?” the man said.

“I do pretty well.”

“Ever been in the military?”

Silva said that he’d been a marine, and after some gentle probing by the man he told him why he had left the corps. “I don’t like to be pushed around,” Silva added as an explanation for having threatened his fellow serviceman, leaving out the reference to his sexuality.