Private Sector (18 page)

So, what do I say? Look, I suspect you’re up to something, and I’d like to know what it is, but if I step outside I’ll lose that chance? But one has to know it’s time to retreat.

I looked at Felix, and he looked at me, and then the two of us were outside. We contemplated the sky awhile. I finally asked, “You were a boxer?”

“Long time ago. Used to be pretty good, too.”

“Fight anybody I ever heard of ?”

“Not that good.”

I shrugged. “Miss it?”

“Nah. Like I said, I wasn’t never that good. Took some awful beatings near the end.” He pondered the pavement and asked me, “You, uh, you were pals with Lisa?”

“Good pals.”

“Uh-huh. She was special, y’know?”

“I know.” When you have extended discussions with former boxers, go with the flow. Too many hard shots in the noggin get the circuits a little scrambled.

That was his excuse.

My dog ate my excuse.

“She did me favors,” Felix informed me. “She was a lawyer, y’know.”

“Yeah. I went against her a few times. Those were my bad beatings.” He chuckled.

After a moment, I asked him, “What kinds of favors, Felix?”

“Legal things. I don’t read so good. My eyes . . . I probably got hit hard too many times. She filed some papers with the VA so I could get medical benefits . . . invested some cash for me. I don’t got much, only she made sure it was safe. Never was too good about those things.”

“You’re a vet?”

“Yeah. Korean War.”

I dug into my pocket and withdrew a business card. “I’m a lawyer, too. You need anything, I’m available.”

“Appreciate that.” He stuffed the card in a pocket.

We stared at the sky awhile longer. The night was clear, the normal fumes and pollution banished by a cold snap. Bright stars, a chalk white half-moon, a full and unencumbered view of a spectacular universe. Yet I think Felix and I felt a common twinge of guilt, even remorse, relaxing in front of Lisa’s townhouse, stargazing, while her body was reposing in a morgue.

Janet finally emerged, eyes red and puffy, as though she’d been crying. We walked back to the management office. None of us said anything.

But Janet remarked to Felix as we got in the car, “Don’t call the police until we tell you to.” She placed a hand on his arm. “Can you do that?”

“I gotta repair that window.”

“Please do. But nothing to the police yet, okay?”

“Uh . . . okay.”

Anyway, Felix dug my card out of his pocket and peered at it, until I recalled that he couldn’t read. I said to him, “My name’s Sean Drummond. I’ll call in a few days, okay?”

“Uh, okay.”

We departed. Possibly it was, as I mentioned to Janet, a case of bottom-feeding crooks tossing the home of a deceased person. The world is filled with foul sorts who profit in the misery of others. Or possibly the robbers were hopheads who trashed the place in a dope-induced frenzy.

A more dubious mind, however, might suspect that the chaotic tossing was in the nature of a ruse to disguise a more calculated and painstaking search of Lisa’s belongings. But why the sheer disorder and destruction? Far safer to put everything back in place, neat and tidy, exactly as Lisa Morrow lived her life, right?

Unless.

Unless something needed to be taken away, something that had to be studied, something that had to be examined in privacy. Lisa’s personal computer, for example. Army lawyers are notoriously overworked, and Lisa probably brought work home, and she would’ve been careful to have all the modern software protections, like a password entry that would require time and a skilled nerd to get past. Under that scenario, the TV, microwave, jewelry, and so forth were lifted to disguise the true purpose of the break-in.

The law breeds lawyers to respect facts and exercise skepticism about conjecture, hunches, and so forth. A leads to B, which leads to C, but A doesn’t leap to Z. And I might have considered it far-fetched had Janet not just persuaded Felix to withhold reporting the robbery. A to Z, right? She had just involved Felix in a crime, not to mention me, and, incidentally, herself.

So we sat together in my elegant leased Jaguar, her having certain suspicions, and me entertaining certain suspicions, neither of us sharing, so to speak. I didn’t like this silly game, but I was forced to play along—for the time being.

But Janet Morrow struck me as smarter than this. When we walked through that apartment, she had bypassed the other thefts and damage, headed straight for the bedroom, and noted only that the computer was stolen. Arbitrary? I think not. Dropping bread-crumbs for clueless Sean Drummond? Possibly.

But if Lisa had been murdered by a garden-variety serial killer, why would he break into her apartment and steal her things? Trophies? Or did someone else do the theft? Was there a relationship to her murder? I was getting a headache.

Also, I was getting a better bead on Miss Janet Morrow. That ladylike exterior, those lovely Boston manners, and those oh so properly reasoned responses concealed a truly conniving mind. Her sister Lisa once informed me that my approach to life was bull-headed. I took it as a compliment, though I’m not sure it was intended as such. Janet Morrow was a spider, building a web, and slyly collecting the men and pieces she felt she needed to solve this crime.

But another thought struck me. I had thought I knew Lisa fairly well. We had worked together for long days and nights on an investigation that was dangerous, tense, and in the end forced us both to search deeply into our souls about who we were and what we believed. I had seen her in court and around the office countless times, flirted with her intermittently for two years, and yet, I was quickly realizing, I had only scratched the surface.

Since her death, I had met her family, learned she had the big-time hots for me, that she was planning on leaving the Army to join a civilian firm, and that she was the type to take a duckling with broken wings under her care.

I was falling in love with Lisa Morrow, after the fact.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

O
N MY DESK THE NEXT MORNING WAS A MESSAGE FROM BARRY INFORMING me of a ten o’clock meeting in his office. Also a long manila envelope, containing an aerial photo of a few tiny specks in the middle of a big, blue ocean. A sidebar note said, “Johnston Island Atoll, look it up on the Internet: Behave. Clapper.”

Has that guy got a sense of humor or what? Actually he doesn’t, so I looked it up on the Internet. Average population around 100, all but a tiny handful being civilian contractors who rotate through on two- or three-day stints. The atoll contained a facility for the destruction of chemical weapons, a process with so many safeguards and catch-alls that the Army guaranteed it to be, like 99.999 percent accident-proof. That other .001 was, I presumed, why it wasn’t next to New York City. After the last chemical weapon was destroyed, the article continued, the atoll was slated to become a bird sanctuary for whatever kind of idiot bird wanted a perch on the highly prestigious endangered species list.

Clapper can be very annoying.

However, that reminded me, and I called his office and asked his executive assistant to run down Lisa’s previous assignments and task her former offices to conduct a file search for all sex cases she had handled or been involved with. I implied I was doing this at the behest of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division.

What was interesting was that the executive assistant did not say he had already received such a request—ten demerits for Spinelli.

As it was, I was fairly certain the whole drill was a complete waste of time. But in murder investigations the most unlikely routes sometimes turn out to be the path to a killer.

Speaking of a waste of time, the Pentagon naturally has a manual that details its procurement and protest procedures, and I spent the three hours before Barry’s meeting reading it cover-to-cover. I was a little tired of Mr. Bosworth rubbing my nose in shit, and if you want to beat the home team on their own turf, you have to work at it a little.

I entered Barry’s office at ten on the dot, and he looked up and said, “Well, well . . . look who’s
finally
shown up.”

What the . . . ? Four people were already seated around his conference table, jackets on the backs of chairs, empty coffee cups and water bottles strewn about.

Of all the lousy, crappy stunts—the little prick had purposely given me the wrong time. I don’t mind looking like an idiot, but I prefer to do it on my own terms.

I smiled and said to the group, “Okay, this guy walks into a bar and takes a stool next to a beautiful woman. He orders a drink, and pretty soon the woman leans over and whispers into his ear, ‘Hey, you big stud, I’ll screw you anywhere, anytime, any way you wish. ’ He ponders her offer, then turns to her and replies, ‘I’m sorry, what law firm did you say you were from?’”

Barry and Sally nearly vomited. The other two laughed so hard they nearly cried. Boy, I’m good at this game. I’d already identified the other two—clients.

The large woman at the end of the table said, “I’m Jessica Moner from Morris Networks legal. You’ve gotta be Drummond.”

“I’ve gotta be.” Regarding Miss Jessica Moner: mid-fortyish, platinum hair with brown roots, and fleshy, not really attractive features, made less attractive by a few gallons of rouge and this really tacky, orangey lipstick. Also, she was stuffed into a blue business suit that was either three sizes too small or she was a blowfish imitating a human. Given Morris’s fetish for the babes, I was a little mystified about where Miss Moner sat in his harem. But perhaps she was hired for her competence. What a novel concept.

Anyway, she pointed at the guy beside her and said, “Marshall Wyatt, from corporate accounting.” Marshall was skinny to the point of cadaverous, balding, wore a cheap gray pinstripe suit, an unpressed white shirt, and, as you might expect, peeking out of his pocket was a pencil holder. Really, not in a million years would I have guessed he was an accountant.

Anyway, I sat and informed them, “Sorry I’m late, but Barry begged me to come a little after the meeting started so he can look like the smartest guy in the room for at least a few minutes.”

Even Sally chuckled. Barry, however, chose to turn slightly pink and reply, “Since you’ve already missed an hour’s worth of discussion, Drummond, we’re not going to rehash it for you.”

Boy, Barry really knew how to punish a guy. Better yet, as time literally was our client’s money, they did not object, so he picked up where he had apparently left off, saying to them, “The point is, Cy will work the military appropriations committees on the Hill. Believe me, Jessica, you couldn’t find better. He used to sit on that committee and—”

“We know what Cy can accomplish, Bosworth,” Jessica informed him. “We came to your firm for his grease. That’s just not where we see the goddamn problem.”

“Where do you see the problem?” I asked.

“Your guys.” She was looking at me, I think.

“My guys?”

“Yeah.” She explained, “When it comes to Congress, it’s about who hires the biggest guns. Had Cy kept his dick in his pants, he’d still be running the place. A hundred guys up there still rush in to kiss his ass every time he shows up. Don’t take this personally, Drummond, it’s your fucking Pentagon giving us gas.”

I actually like women who don’t play games and lay it on the line. Also she obviously disliked Barry, so I was half in love already. I said to her, “Explain that.”

“Clearly, we won the contract on merit. But protests change the rules.”

“How?”

“Now it’s a matter of who can reach under the table and squeeze the hardest.”

“It’s crooked?”

“Not crooked. Bendable. Susceptible.”

“How?”

“Because this charge about Danny Nash can cause a shitstorm. The Pentagon doesn’t want the appearance of a problem. Pretty soon, Congress starts talking about investigations and everybody’s screwed.”

I said, “So the issue is how to shape our response so it does not appear there was any dirty dealing?”

“You think that’s easy? The press, the public, everybody believes the game is rigged anyway. This just feeds a preconception. Sprint and AT&T knew what they were doing.”

Barry nodded as though he shared that thought, and then he asked, “Does anybody have any ideas how to handle that?”

“I do,” I replied. In response to their astonished looks, I said, “Ignore it.”

Now everybody looked like I just farted. Everybody but Marshall that is, who had whipped out a pocket calculator and was vigorously punching in numbers, trying to ignore
us
.

Barry commented, “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”

Sally added, “That won’t work.”

Jessica said, “I’ll assume you’re not a fucking moron and ask you to explain that.”

So I asked them, “Did AT&T or Sprint mention Nash in their protests? Specifically,
him?
”

Barry replied, “Perhaps it was too subtle for you, Drummond, but it was very strongly implied.”

“To who?”

“You mean whom,” Sally said, contributing hugely to the issue.

“Oh . . .” Jessica muttered.

I explained, “John Q. Public hasn’t got the slightest idea Nash is on the board. We should not define their charge of impropriety and eliminate their risks.”

Sally asked, “What risks?”

Obviously the quick study of the group, Jessica replied, “You’re right, Drummond. They could step into a big pile of legal shit.”

Sally, appearing even more confused, asked, “What pile?”

I said, “Ask yourself why they didn’t specify Nash’s name.”

Jessica explained to Barry and Sally, “They’re worried about slander, leading to libel.”

I added, “Further implying a lack of substantiation. They’re praying we’ll respond with a specific defense. If we raise Nash’s name,
we
make him the topic of discussion, which frees them to publicly trash him.”

Barry, nodding his head also, commented, “Exactly what I was thinking.”

Jessica ignored the idiot and said to me, “But in one way or another it’s bound to come up.”

“Probably. Force them to do it. If they overstep, slap an injunction on their asses for slander. That’ll force them to disclose how little or how much they know.”