The Pelican Brief (24 page)

“I don’t have a story yet, Smith, but she’s talking to me. Read this.” Grantham handed over a copy of the newspaper account of Callahan’s death. Keen read it slowly.

“Okay. Who’s Callahan?”

“One week ago today, he handed a little paper known as the pelican brief to the FBI here in town. Evidently, the brief implicates an obscure person in the killings. The brief gets passed around, then sent to the White House, then beyond that no one knows. Two days later, Callahan cranks his Porsche for the last time. Darby Shaw claims to be the unidentified female mentioned there. She was with Callahan, and was supposed to die with him.”

“Why was she supposed to die?”

“She wrote the brief, Smith. Or she claims she did.”

Keen sank deeper into his seat and placed his feet on the desk. He studied the photo of Callahan. “Where’s the brief?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s in it?”

“Don’t know that either.”

“Then we don’t have anything, do we?”

“Not yet. But what if she tells me everything that’s in it?”

“And when will she do this?”

Grantham hesitated. “Soon, I think. Real soon.”

Keen shook his head and threw the copy on the desk. “If we had the brief, we’d have a helluva story, Gray, but we couldn’t run it. There’s gotta be some heavy, painful, flawless, and accurate verification before we can run it.”

“But I’ve got the green light?”

“Yeah, but you keep me posted every hour. Don’t write a word until we talk.”

Grantham smiled and opened the door.

________

This was not forty-bucks-an-hour work. Not even thirty, or twenty. Croft knew he’d be lucky to squeeze fifteen out of Grantham for this needle-in-the-haystack Mickey Mouse crap. If he’d had other work, he’d have told Grantham to find someone else, or better yet, do it himself.

But things had been slow, and he could do a lot worse than fifteen bucks an hour. He finished a joint in the last stall, flushed it, and opened the door. He stuck the dark sunglasses over his ears, and entered the hallway that led to the atrium where four escalators carried a thousand lawyers up to their little rooms, where they would spend the day bitching and threatening by the hour. He had Garcia’s face memorized. He was even dreaming of this kid with the bright face and good looks, the slim physique draped with an expensive suit. He would know him if he saw him.

He stood by a pillar, holding a newspaper and trying to watch everyone from behind the dark shades. Lawyers everywhere, scurrying upward with their smug little faces and carrying their smug little attaché
cases. Man, how he hated lawyers. Why did they all dress alike? Dark suits. Dark shoes. Dark faces. An occasional nonconformist with a daring little bow tie. Where did they all come from? Shortly after his arrest with the drugs, the first lawyers had been a group of angry mouthpieces hired by the
Post
. Then he hired his own, an overpriced moron who couldn’t find the courtroom. Then, the prosecutor was of course a lawyer. Lawyers, lawyers.

Two hours in the morning, two hours at lunch, two hours during the evening, and then Grantham would have another building for him to patrol. Ninety bucks a day was cheap, and he would give this up as soon as he got a better deal. He told Grantham this was hopeless, just shooting in the dark. Grantham agreed, but said to keep shooting. It’s all they could do. He said Garcia was scared and wouldn’t call anymore. They had to find him.

In his pocket he had two photos just in case, and from the directory he had made a list of the firms in the building. It was a long list. The building had twelve floors filled mainly with firms filled with nothing but these fancy little esquires. He was in a den of snakes.

By nine-thirty the rush was over, and some of the faces looked familiar coming back down the escalators, headed no doubt for the courtrooms and agencies and commissions. Croft eased through the revolving doors, and wiped his feet on the sidewalk.

________

Four blocks away, Fletcher Coal paced in front of the President’s desk and listened intently to the phone in
his ear. He frowned, then closed his eyes, then glared at the President as if to say, “Bad news, Chief. Really bad news.” The President held a letter and peered at Coal over his reading glasses. Coal’s pacing back and forth like Der Führer really irritated him, and he made a mental note to say something about it.

Coal slammed the phone down.

“Don’t slam the damned phones!” the President said.

Coal was unfazed. “Sorry. That was Zikman. Gray Grantham called thirty minutes ago, and asked if he had any knowledge of the pelican brief.”

“Wonderful. Fabulous. How’d he get a copy of it?”

Coal was still pacing. “Zikman knows nothing about it, so his ignorance was genuine.”

“His ignorance is always genuine. He’s the dumbest ass on my staff, Fletcher, and I want him gone.”

“Whatever.” Coal sat in a chair across the desk and folded his hands in a little steeple in front of his chin. He was very deep in thought, and the President tried to ignore him. They thought for a moment.

“Voyles leaked it?” the President finally said.

“Maybe, if it was leaked. Grantham is known for bluffing. We can’t be certain he’s seen the brief. Maybe he heard about it, and he’s fishing.”

“Maybe, my ass. What if they run some crazy story about that damned thing? What then?” The President slapped his desk and bolted to his feet. “What then, Fletcher? That paper hates me!” He moped to the windows.

“They can’t run it without another source, and there can’t be another source because there’s no truth
to it. It’s a wild idea that’s gone much further than it deserves.”

The President sulked for a while and stared through the glass. “How did Grantham find out about it?”

Coal stood and began pacing, but much slower now. He was still painfully in thought. “Who knows. No one here knows about it but you and I. They brought one copy, and it’s locked away in my office. I personally Xeroxed it once, and gave it to Gminski. I swore him to secrecy.”

The President sneered at the windows.

Coal continued. “Okay, you’re right. There could be a thousand copies out there by now. But it’s harmless, unless of course our friend actually did these dirty deeds, then—”

“Then my ass is cooked.”

“Yes, I would say our asses are cooked.”

“How much money did we take?”

“Millions, directly and indirectly.” And legally and illegally, but the President knew little of these transactions and Coal chose to stay quiet.

The President walked slowly to the sofa. “Why don’t you call Grantham? Pick his brain. See what he knows. If he’s bluffing, it’ll be obvious. What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve talked to him before, haven’t you? Everyone knows Grantham.”

Coal was now pacing behind the sofa. “Yeah, I’ve talked to him. But if I suddenly call out of nowhere, he’ll be suspicious.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” The President paced on one end of the sofa, and Coal on the other.

“What’s the downside?” the President finally asked.

“Our friend could be involved. You asked Voyles to back off our friend. Our friend could be exposed by the press. Voyles covers his tail and says you told him to chase other suspects and ignore our friend. The
Post
goes berserk with another cover-up smear. And we can forget reelection.”

“Anything else?”

Coal thought for a second. “Yeah, this is all completely off the wall. The brief is fantasy. Grantham will find nothing, and I’m late for a staff meeting.” He walked to the door. “I’ve got a squash game for lunch. Be back at one.”

The President watched the door close, and breathed easier. He had eighteen holes planned for the afternoon, so forget the pelican thing. If Coal wasn’t worried, neither was he.

He punched numbers on his phone, waited patiently, and finally had Bob Gminski on the line. The director of the CIA was a terrible golfer, one of the few the President could humiliate, and he invited him to play this afternoon. Certainly, said Gminski, a man with a thousand things to do but, well, it was the President so he would be delighted to join him.

“By the way, Bob, what about this pelican thing in New Orleans?”

Gminski cleared his throat and tried to sound relaxed. “Well, Chief, I told Fletcher Coal Friday that it was very imaginative and a fine work of fiction. I
think its author should forget about law school and pursue a career as a novelist. Ha, ha, ha.”

“Great, Bob. Nothing to it then.”

“We’re digging.”

“See you at three.” The President hung up, and went straight for his putter.

25
________

RIVERWALK RUNS for a quarter of a mile along the water, and is always crowded. It is packed with two hundred shops and cafés and restaurants on several levels, most under the same roof, and several with doors leading onto a boardwalk next to the river. It’s at the foot of Poydras Street, a stone’s throw from the Quarter.

She arrived at eleven, and sipped espresso in the rear of a tiny bistro while trying to read the paper and appear calm. Frenchmen’s Bend was one level down and around a corner. She was nervous, and the espresso didn’t help.

She had a list in her pocket of things to do, specific steps at specific moments, even words and sentences she had memorized in the event things went terribly wrong and Verheek got out of control. She had slept two hours, and spent the rest of the time with a legal pad diagraming and charting. If she died, it would not be from a lack of preparation.

She could not trust Gavin Verheek. He was employed by a law enforcement agency that at times
operated by its own rules. He took orders from a man with a history of paranoia and dirty tricks. His boss reported to a President in charge of an Administration run by fools. The President had rich, sleazy friends who gave him lots of money.

But at this moment, dear, there was no one else to trust. After five days and two near misses, she was throwing in the towel. New Orleans had lost its allure. She needed help, and if she had to trust cops, the Fibbies were as clean as any.

Eleven forty-five. She paid for the espresso, waited for a crowd of shoppers, and fell in behind them. There were a dozen people browsing in Frenchmen’s Bend as she walked past the entrance where her friend should be in about ten minutes. She eased into a bookstore two doors down. There were at least three stores in the vicinity from which she could shop and hide and watch the front door of Frenchmen’s Bend. She chose the bookstore because the clerks weren’t pushy and killing time was expected of the customers. She looked at the magazines first, then with three minutes to go she stepped between two rows of cookbooks and watched for Gavin.

Thomas said he was never on time. An hour late was early for him, but she would give him fifteen minutes and she’d be gone.

She expected him at precisely noon, and there he was. Black sweatshirt, red baseball cap, folded newspaper. He was a bit thinner than she expected, but he could lose a few pounds. Her heart pounded away. Be cool, she said. Just be cool, dammit.

She held a cookbook to her eyes and peered over it. He had gray hair and dark skin. The eyes were hidden
behind sunglasses. He fidgeted and looked irritated, the way he sounded on the phone. He passed the newspaper from hand to hand, shifted his weight from foot to foot, and glanced around nervously.

He was okay. She liked the way he looked. He had a vulnerable, nonprofessional manner about him that said he was scared too.

After five minutes, he walked through the door as he was told, and went to the right rear of the store.

________

Khamel had been trained to welcome death. He had been close to it many times, but never afraid of it. And after thirty years of expecting it, nothing, absolutely nothing, made him tense. He got somewhat excited about sex, but that was it. The fidgeting was an act. The jittery little movements were contrived. He’d survived face-offs with men almost as talented as he, and he could certainly handle this little rendezvous with a desperate child. He picked through the safari jackets and tried to appear nervous.

He had a handkerchief in his pocket, because he suddenly had caught a cold so his voice was a bit thick and scratchy. He had listened to the recording a hundred times, and he was confident he had the inflection and rhythm and slight upper Midwest accent. But Verheek was a bit more nasal; thus, the handkerchief for the cold.

It was difficult to allow anyone to approach from the rear, but he knew he must. He did not see her. She was behind him but very close when she said, “Gavin.”

He jerked quickly around. She was holding a
white Panama hat and speaking to it. “Darby,” he said, pulling the handkerchief out for a fake sneeze. Her hair was a gold color and shorter than his. He sneezed and coughed. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “I don’t like this idea.”

Darby didn’t like it either. It was Monday and her classmates were going about their business of clawing through law school, and here she was camouflaged to the max and playing cloak and dagger with this man who could get her killed. “Just do as I say, okay. Where’d you get the cold?”

He sneezed into the handkerchief and talked as low as possible. It sounded painful. “Last night. I left the air on too low. Let’s get out of here.”

“Follow me.” They left the store. Darby took his hand, and they walked quickly down a flight of stairs leading to the boardwalk.

“Have you seen them?” he asked.

“No. Not yet. But I’m sure they’re around.”

“Where the hell are we going?” The voice was scratchy.

They were on the boardwalk, almost jogging, talking without looking at each other. “Just come with me.”

“You’re going too fast, Darby. We look suspicious. Slow down. Look, this is crazy. Let me make a phone call, and we’ll be safe and secure. I can have three agents here in ten minutes.” He was sounding good. This was working. They were holding hands, running for their lives.

“Nope.” She slowed. The boardwalk was crowded, and a line had formed beside the
Bayou Queen
, a
paddle wheeler. They stopped at the end of the line.