The Sentinel (15 page)

"This is your concerned photographer," said an electronic voice. "To whom am I speaking?"

Garrison turned toward the wall so he could speak without being overheard. He figured the caller was probably using a handheld electronic voice-changer device. Originally developed for spies, such devices were now commonly available in security-product stores. Garrison strained to hear any background noise coming from the phone. There was the sound of eerie music - a Wagnerian opera? He wondered whether the caller was playing the music to drown some other identifiable background noise.

"I represent the subject of the photo."

"Who is with you?"

"I'm alone."

"Walk across the street to the Sperling Finance Building at 1140 Connecticut. Wait in the coffee shop."

"Wait for what?"

"I'll meet you there."

"What's wrong with this place?"

"Are you refusing to meet me?"

"No. But I'm not going to play games all day either. Why don't you just come here? I'll buy you a drink and we'll straighten this out man-to-man." Garrison wanted to see how far the man would go.

"I'll be at the coffee shop. If you're not there, then I might change my mind and phone the
National Enquirer."

"What do you look like?"

"Just sit near the window. I'll find you."

The phone clicked. Garrison hung the receiver back on the hook. He turned to study the faces in the bar. No one was paying any attention to him. He paid for the drink and departed by a door leading to the street.

Garrison moved briskly along the sidewalk, making his way through a bustling afternoon crowd. He walked to the corner and crossed the street, heading toward the Sperling Finance Building. He darted into a candy shop and looked out the display window, waiting for someone on the street to stop suspiciously as surveillants do when their prey suddenly changes course. Nothing untoward occurred. As far as he could tell, no one was following him.

"Can I help you, sir?" said a female clerk.

"No, thanks."

Garrison exited the shop and continued down the street to the Sperling Finance Building, a multistory commercial structure of tinted glass. He went inside and walked across a tiled lobby to an information counter where a bored-looking female uniformed guard sat.

"Where are the pay phones in this building?"

She gave him a puzzled look. "In the basement and the coffee shop."

"Thanks."

As the guard stared at him, Garrison headed across the lobby. The coffee shop was next to a door that read: MOUNTAIN ESCROW INC. Walking into the coffee shop, Garrison was met by the heavy odors of coffee grounds and potato salad. There were about ten tables and not so much as a framed print on the wall or a plastic flower for decoration. The only customers were a young man and an older man, business types, sitting at different tables.
Cafe
Drab.
A middle-aged woman stood behind the cash register. Could she be the blackmailer's lookout?

Garrison purchased a cup of coffee. He sat at a table close to the window. He thought it unusual that a blackmailer who was daring enough to extort the First Lady would choose a coffee shop in an office building for a risky face-to-face meeting. The coffee shop provided no ready avenue of escape. It didn't fit with the ruse meeting at the Mayflower and an electronic voice-changer to hide his identity. On the other hand, Garrison knew that, in the end, criminals were screwy, that their actions were often inexplicable.

For the next hour, he diligently studied all those who entered. For a while he thought everyone who came in looked suspicious. But after thirty or so customers came and went, the feeling dissipated. He got up, walked to the hallway, and paced about for a few minutes to stretch his legs, then returned inside. The woman at the cash register kept eyeing him suspiciously. He purchased a hamburger and sat again. The hamburger tasted like potato salad.

By 1:30 P.M. those who'd eaten lunch or purchased takeout food had returned to work. Only Garrison remained. Tired, exasperated, and disappointed, Garrison decided that the blackmailer was being cagey and had set up the meeting just to determine whether he was walking into a trap. Garrison decided to head back to the White House.

Exiting the front door of the office building, he turned left and walked north to DuPont Circle. Crossing the park, he reversed course and headed back the way he came. In front of a clothing store, he studied the reflection in the window glass to determine if he was being followed.

Across the street, a heavyset man slowed his pace, then stopped. Holding a cigar in his teeth, he knelt to tie his shoe, and in doing so glanced in Garrison's direction. Unless Garrison's memory was playing tricks on him, he had seen the man in the Sperling Finance Building coffee shop. If he remembered correctly, shortly after Garrison had arrived, the man had entered, purchased something, then left. As Garrison had trained himself to do long ago, he described the cigar-smoker in his mind as if writing on a chalkboard: forty years old, five-eleven, two hundred pounds, olive complexion, black hair, and eyeglasses. He wore Levi's, white sneakers, and a green T-shirt with the word NASHVILLE stenciled across the front. Garrison figured the cigar-smoker was either the blackmailer himself or an accomplice sent to detect whether Garrison was alone.

Garrison continued on, walking to the corner, where he joined a group of pedestrians waiting for a red light.

Across the street, the cigar-smoker stopped and waited.

Garrison considered the alternatives. He could ignore the man and return to the White House to wait for another blackmail letter. Or he could do something. The mission was to stop the blackmailer from playing his game and to seize the photographs and burn them,

Garrison headed across the street toward him.

The cigar-smoker turned and walked north on Connecticut Avenue.

Garrison followed.

The cigar-smoker began walking faster, dodging pedestrians. He turned the corner at N Street.

Garrison ran after him. Reaching the corner, Garrison saw the cigar-smoker was out of sight. To Garrison's left, a bank building covered the entire block. On the other side of the street was a multistoried parking structure with open walls and a ground-level entrance/exit. He walked to the bank's entrance, where a tall, dark-haired woman was smoking a cigarette. She had a bank-employee photo identification card pinned to her suit jacket. Garrison held out his badge.

"Did you see a man in a green T-shirt and Levi's come by here just now?"

"He went in there like he was in a huffy," she said with a nod toward the parking garage.

"Is that the only entrance and exit?"

"Yes. What'd he do?"

"Shoplifter."

"Wow."

The way Garrison figured it, Mr. Cigar-Smoker was laying low in the parking garage. And he was probably watching Garrison.

Garrison turned and walked back the way he came. Turning right, out of sight of anyone in the parking garage. He ran back to Connecticut Avenue and rounded the corner. Making his way to an alley at the rear of the parking garage, he crawled over a retaining wall into the lot's ground level, filled with cars. Moving cautiously, Garrison scanned the entire level, glancing into cars. Then he walked up the ramp to the second level. It was full. He walked slowly along the perimeter, checking cars.

"Looking for someone?"

Garrison turned. The cigar-smoker was holding a gun on him, a Beretta automatic. Garrison felt his face and hands tingle.

"Yeah, you," Garrison said.

"Face the street."

Garrison estimated the distance to the gun. It was just out of reach. If Garrison made a move for his own gun, he would get shot.

"I came here to talk."

"We can talk after I search you."

The stogie was clenched in his teeth. Garrison figured he wasn't bluffing.

"Put the piece down," Garrison said. "Relax."

"Turn around, Goddamn it!"

Garrison reluctantly turned away and raised his hands. Sensing the man moving closer, he considered how to disarm him. He could drive his right elbow backward to catch him in the solar plexus....

Garrison felt a powerful blow at the back of his head. And all at once, he was overwhelmed by a black wave of pain, heat, and cold.

Garrison heard thunder and rain pattering on something near him, sounds from his childhood. He was lying in bed, dizzy and feverish with pneumonia. There was no money for a doctor and Garrison wondered if the illness, like the recent death of his father, was part of some horrible curse being visited on him - a punishment.

"I'm sick, Mom, " Garrison said to his mother, standing at his bedside.

She knelt and placed her hands on his chest, palms down. She looked up to the ceiling with that look on her face.

"Lord, please heal this boy!" she prayed. "Send down your healing angels and set him free of this affliction. Glory be to the King of Kings and the Savior of mankind, healer of the sick. You took his father, but please don't take him. He is an innocent boy and he doesn't deserve this punishment. Forgive him, Lord, and rid him of this fever and sickness."

"Mom, did God make me sick?"

"The Lord is putting you through a trial, son. Like the trial of Daniel in the lions' den. Close your eyes and pray. The Lord will cleanse you."

As his mother continued to pray for him, Garrison lay there weak and dazed. But rather than hope or resignation, he felt only anger. If God had killed his father, then the hell with God. Garrison didn't care any more. He had no fear because all God could do was kill him too.

Garrison had recovered, and his mother witnessed to the divine largesse in front of the congregation of the Bisbee, Arizona, Foursquare Tabernacle Church with the boy Garrison standing at her side. But when other parishioners asked Garrison to testify about his healing, Garrison said nothing. He didn't believe God cured him. He didn't trust a God who would kill his father. And he no longer trusted his mother. Money or not, she should have gotten him to a doctor.

"You're a man now, Pete," she said a few months later as she prepared to leave town in an Airstream trailer with a man she met at church. "There is no way you can go with us. I love you, son, but you're a man now. You can live with Uncle Travis until you graduate. You'll do just fine."

After she'd left, Garrison took a long walk along the train track at the edge of town. With tears streaming down his face he pondered how his mother could have done this to him.

"Are you okay, mister?"

Garrison opened his eyes. It was raining. He was lying on the parking garage roof.

A uniformed parking lot attendant, a young man wearing a baseball hat, was kneeling next to him.

Garrison saw double and tried to focus his concentration. Had someone fired a bullet into his skull? He struggled to sit up. He touched the back of his head. There was a painful bump, but no blood. He tried to focus on the attendant.

"Did you see what happened?"

"Some guy in a beige Jaguar. He raced out of here like a bat out of hell after he hit you. I got the license number. YFD 927. The ambulance is coming."

"No ambulance. I'm okay."

"You're sure? You're hurt, mister."

"I have to get out of here."