The 500: A Novel (6 page)

I didn’t see Gould pass by through the sauna windows, so I took my leave and headed for the changing rooms. The lockers were all mahogany with little brass plaques indicating their owners. I found Ray Gould’s. It was directly opposite Henry Davies’s. Using a lock at a place like the Met Club seemed a little silly—what, was someone going to swap out your Cartier for his Rolex?—and yet Gould had a Sargent and Greenleaf padlock. It’s the hardware the DOD uses to lock up its secrets, and Gould apparently needed to secure his uneaten French fries.

It never seems obvious when you cross the line. Was it when I began trailing Gould? When I lied to the steward? When I slipped into one of the guest lockers in the back corner of the locker room? Or when I stayed there for hours, until I heard the last guest clear his throat, saw the lights die through my little ventilation slits, and heard the door slam shut and lock, echoing through the tiled halls?

Wherever the line was, I was certain it was now way behind me. And this was no high-school smash-and-grab. I imagined that the trilateral-commission types who frequented the place wouldn’t take kindly to my trespass. But for some reason I didn’t have the same visceral need to get the fuck out of there, to keep on the honest path, that I’d had back when I opened up the safe in the office at Barley. There was something about being behind Henry’s shield of respectability, about having legitimate ends for my sketchy means. I’d forced my way into this club, but if I played my cards right I could turn that trespass into a real admission to this world.

Or maybe, trapped in a mahogany box with five or six hours to think, I’d managed to talk myself into believing anything.

By 11:30 p.m., I figured I was safe. I stepped out. There was no chance of breaking the Sargent and Greenleaf, not without liquid nitrogen. Trapped in the basement, I’d had plenty of time to consider other approaches. Gould’s locker shared a back panel with the locker behind it, which was empty. Whoever built the place had been more concerned about varnish and fluting than security. It was simply a matter of backing out about thirty-six wood screws, which was easier said than done because, after a careful search, I concluded that I’d have to do the whole thing with the tip of a key.

Five hours. My fingertips red and swollen from the work. My nerves shot from bolting back to the safety of the guest locker every time I heard that old building creak or saw a glimmer of light near the locker-room entrance. I knew these old run-the-world types liked to wake up early. At Davies Group, they were always suggesting six a.m. breakfasts (you know, after squash). When the gray-blue of predawn started showing through a basement window, I started to sweat. When I heard the rattle and clank of the stewards’ arrival, my heart rate revved up like a hummingbird’s. Blood welled around my cuticles from working the screws. I could hear voices upstairs when I yanked the last fastener out and pulled back the panel.

There was a jock and an old squash duffel in Gould’s locker. In the duffel there were twelve brown bags: $120,000 total, in neat stacks of cash. No wonder I couldn’t sway him.

Never return to the scene of a crime. It’s good advice. But unfortunately, by the time I extricated myself from the Met Club and arrived at work, I really had no other choice.

I asked Marcus where the Gould-Davies meeting was taking place.

“The Metropolitan Club,” he said. I felt nauseated.

“Lunch?”

“Breakfast,” he said, and glanced at the time on the phone on his desk. “About now, probably.”

So, still reeking of nervous sweat after my long night of B and E, I found myself strolling up to Seventeenth and H Street Northwest, with the Secret Service glaring down from the tops of the high-rises around the White House. Closed-circuit cameras kept watch on every corner. And there was the police officer examining the broken window latch in the rear of the Metropolitan Club, where I had made my escape two hours before. There were a half a dozen cops in the lobby and, of course, the same steward from yesterday.

He gave me a not-so-friendly look. I told him I was there to see Henry Davies and took a seat in the library. He kept his eyes fixed on me as he went back to talk to the cops. I could see into the dining room from where I sat. It was the size of a football field, so it took me a while to catch sight of Davies, who was sitting at a table across from Gould, spreading jam on a croissant.

What could I do? Walk into the middle of the Met Club, publicly accuse Gould of taking bribes, then politely explain to the gathered dignitaries, Davies, and various thick-necked representatives of the Metro Police that I’d come across my circumstantial evidence by stalking the guy and breaking into and out of these hallowed halls? Davies had me the most worried. He’d offered me decency and I’d repaid him with crime. Just another con man. It was in my blood. Any shot I had at an honest life was a gross mistake, soon to be corrected.

I tried to follow his and Gould’s conversation from their gestures and watched it segue from chitchat to substance, as Davies moved a little closer, over the table. I was watching for the ask. The yes-or-no that would decide my fate. I saw Davies lean in farther, then sit back. Then nothing. Gould looked pensive. Neither spoke. Was that it?

I was watching so intently that it took me a while to notice that two of the cops were now staring at me. When I looked back at the table I saw Gould make a pained expression and raise his hands. It was clear enough. He was saying no. Just like that, the decent life slipped away.

So what the hell did I have to lose?

Three cops were now having an earnest discussion, their eyes fixed on me. I fished out my cell phone and called the Metropolitan Club. A moment later the phone started ringing at the reception desk. I told them I was the assistant to Gould’s boss, and that the call was urgent. Then I watched the steward make his way across the checker tiles to interrupt Davies and Gould’s meeting.

As Gould walked out of the dining room, I walked in, fast, past the cops. One broke away and stayed between me and the exit. As I approached his table, Davies seemed oddly unsurprised to see me there.

I leaned over and whispered, “Gould is on the take,” then showed him a picture I had shot with my phone: the money stacked in the duffel. Davies didn’t ask any questions. His demeanor didn’t change.

“Go,” he whispered. A police officer saw to that. He gripped my arm in a very persuasive come-along hold and steered me back toward the library, where the other police and the steward were waiting.

“Were you on the premises here yesterday, son?” a plainclothes detective, presumably running the show, asked me.

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you wait right here with us.”

The cops asked the steward for Admiral Cassidy’s number. More patrol cars pulled up outside, lights flashing. Two officers flanked me. I was fucked. My mind flashed forward through every step—handcuffs, squad car, the holding cell with the center-stage toilet and the crowd of DC’s funkiest lowlifes, the interviews, the shitty coffee, the worthless public defender, the arraignment: that judge looking down at me like the one ten years before had. But this time there were no second chances. They’d finally recognize me for what I was, a hustler in a suit I didn’t pay for. I couldn’t even see around the wall of blue polyester cop uniform to find out what happened between Davies and Gould.

“Can I help you gentlemen?” It was Davies, standing behind me. The steward withered under his stare. The cops backed off a few inches.

“You know this man?” one asked.

“Of course,” Davies said. “He is an associate at my firm. One of my best.”

“And he is an acquaintance of Admiral Cassidy?”

“I had hoped to introduce them yesterday, but I was held up at the office. I was thinking of putting this gentleman up for membership here at the Met. Anup, this is Michael Ford.”

“Pleased to meet you,” the steward said. I could see he was bristling behind his practiced smile.

“Likewise,” I said.

“Now, what is this all about?” Davies asked.

“Just a misunderstanding, sir,” the steward replied.

“Then you gentlemen will excuse us?”

“Of course,” the detective said.

Davies’s manner was obliging, but he clearly commanded the scene. I finally had a chance to look into the dining room. Gould still sat at the table, staring down at his coffee like it would tell him the future. He looked sucker-punched.

“It’d probably be best for you to leave,” Davies whispered to me. He had this sphinxy look I couldn’t peg. I still wasn’t sure if my cat-burglar act had saved the day or detonated my career. Maybe he’d fobbed off the cops so he could mete out the punishment himself. Just before I left, he told me, “Be in my office at three.”

His suite was at the end of the seemingly endless executive corridor. I knew I was being a little dramatic, but I couldn’t shake the image I’d seen in a dozen movies of the final stroll down death row. He kept me waiting in a little hallway outside his office until 3:20. I’d been up for roughly thirty-four hours; fatigue weighed down my body like a dentist’s lead blanket. Finally, I saw Davies striding up the hallway. He walked straight into his office and beckoned me in behind him. I stood as he stopped beside his desk.

He pinned me for a while with that same inscrutable look then took something out of his pocket and held it up between his thumb and index finger. It was a wood screw, and it looked awfully familiar. I’d twisted in enough to secure the locker’s back panel, and I’d covered the empty holes with the wood trim. I guess I’d forgotten one.

“Play any squash recently, Ford?”

I’d keep my mouth shut until I could see where this was going. Davies stood twisting the screw slowly between his thumb and finger, then he tossed it up in the air. I snatched it a foot in front of my chest.

“Gould said yes,” Davies said.

“And the police?”

Davies waved it away. “And don’t worry about the admiral. He’s getting a little soft, introduces himself to his own reflection.”

“I apologize for—”

“Forget about it. Your exploits may have been a little bit more cowboy than I’d have chosen, but the important thing is we got to yes. Fifty-eight million dollars.”

“Fifty-eight?”

He nodded. “I signed on a few more parties this week.”

“And what happens to Gould? Do you go to the inspector general at Commerce, the police?”

Davies shook his head. “Ninety-nine percent of these cases get buried. If he had a bunch of body parts in there, it would be a different story, but the sad fact is a hundred-twenty-grand sweetener is nickel-and-dime stuff in this town. Though I’m glad you caught it.”

“So how did you bring him around? Just threaten to out him? Is it like…” I tried to find a nice word for it.

“Blackmail?” Davies said.

“No, sir, I didn’t mean to suggest—”

“You haven’t hurt my feelings,” Davies said, laughing a bit. “
Blackmail
is a little too crude a term to describe the work we perform. Though it would be a refreshingly direct alternative. Picture it. You show a guy a photo of himself ass-end up in a motel with some pross, and say, ‘Campaign finance reform now, or it’s curtains for you.’ ”

Davies considered that for a moment. “It has a certain straightforward appeal, I’ll admit. But no. Gould is a smart guy. You need only say you’ve heard he may have gotten in over his head. You say you might be able to help him avoid any unpleasantness. Usually you don’t even have to say that much. Suddenly he’s all ears, suddenly so agreeable. People don’t acquire power by being dim, at least not when it comes to their own self-interest.

“It’s win-win,” Davies went on. “Typically the guy knocks off whatever the hell he was up to faster and more certainly than any ethics investigation could ever have gotten him to. Meanwhile we advance the policies we believe in. We make the best of their bad behavior.”

I stood by the window, considering that little wood screw between my still-raw fingertips.

“You were thrown into the hardball pretty suddenly, Mike. You never see it in the papers. But that’s how things are done. I think you’re cut out for it.”

It didn’t feel right. Maybe it was that strange reluctance you get when you’re offered something you’ve wanted so badly for so long: you’re scared to take it once it’s yours. Or maybe I just wanted things black and white. I wanted that decent life without a shred of gray. And now I’d found out that what I was running toward was tangled up with what I was running from.

“There’s something you should know, sir. Full disclosure. About that trouble—”

“I know everything I need to know about you, Mike. I hired you—well, not because of it, but because of the good you can do with it.”

He stuck his hand out. “Are you still on board?”

I could see the capital’s skyline through the window behind him. The kingdoms of the world and all their glory.

“Yes, sir,” I said. We shook.

“Good,” he said. “Now call me Henry. The way you say
sir
makes me feel like a goddamn drill instructor. And tell the real estate agent you’ll take that place on Ingleside Terrace.”

The house in Mount Pleasant. “I may hold off for now, find somewhere with a little lower rent, sock away some more savings.”

“Rent?” Davies said. “No. If you like it, buy it. Understand this, Mike. You never have to worry about money again.”

“Well, I do have some past debts, school loans. Maybe now isn’t—”

He slid a folder across the desk. “The civil case against Crenshaw Collection Services. Ready to file. The criminal complaint will be set by Wednesday. We’re going to tear their spines out.”

He led me to a pair of French doors before I could even register what was happening.

“Now, Marcus will be your mentor, but I thought I’d introduce you to the rest of the gang.”

He opened the doors into a conference room that put the Met Club to shame. The principals—a gallery of the weightiest heavies of them all—were waiting for me.

“Everyone, I’m pleased to present Michael Ford, our newest senior associate.”