Black Tide (31 page)

"Why they let them in," he corrected me. "There was another guard on duty that night, and maybe my dad recognized someone and maybe he didn't. He was getting to be an old man, and his eyes might have played tricks on him."

"Do you think he did recognize someone? And then later changed his mind?"

"I don't know. He never said much about this whole crappy thing afterward."

"Did your dad have any interest in art at all?"

"No, not at all." "Did anything unusual happen after the theft, like visitors, odd phone calls?"

''Jesus Christ," he said, exasperated, "you mean shit-ass phone calls like this?" and then he hung up on me, which was probably a reasonably good idea out in California.

Later that morning, I had started work on tracking down Craig Dummer, Ben Martin's partner that night, who hadn't left much of a trail since he had moved out of that duplex in Bainbridge. The police records that Diane had pulled for me still listed Bainbridge as his address, and still gave DiskJets as his place of business. I called DiskJets, pretending to be the New England Savings Bank, wanting to verify his place of employment for a car loan. A bored clerk at the other end said he had left on his own nearly four weeks ago, and there was no record of a new job. No relatives listed in his job application. No other information of any use. Previous place of employment? At that question the bored clerk seemed to perk up a bit, and she said, "Um, can you hold for a second?" and when she did that, I hung up, not wanting to have to explain myself to her nosy supervisor.

Calls to the Bainbridge town hall were of equal use, as well as a call to the Bainbridge post office. No change of address had been filed. Nothing else was available at the State of New Hampshire's Department of Motor Vehicles in Concord. You can do a lot with phone work, but this Friday wasn't one of those days.

Craig Dummer was on the move. I rubbed at the base of my aching head. I didn't like the coincidence of Felix Tinios receiving those postcards at about the same time Craig was leaving his home in Bainbridge.  I also didn't like Justin Dix, the museum security head, not having a better handle on Craig Dummer's location. When I had met him and had gone over the painting theft, he implied that he and other police officials always knew Craig's whereabouts. But he had been wrong, either through oversight or on purpose. Then there was Cassie, and her odd reactions. The tiff yesterday, was that real or manufactured? And earlier, she had said that Justin had problems and secrets of his own, and in looking through the information Diane had gotten for me about Justin Dix --- including his credit history --- I thought I had something. 

The security director of the Scribner Museum had trouble paying his bills, and the year he suffered the worst was the year the Winslow Homer paintings had been stolen. I fired up my Apple computer and in another hour or two of info-surfing --- including a couple of not very legal entries into the data banks of some credit bureaus --- I found that among his overdue bills, Justin had also suffered a car repossession, along with a partial garnisheeing of his salary at the Scribner Museum, the same year, the thefts had occurred.

"Who will guard the guardians, eh, Justin?" I whispered, while looking again at Diane's handwritten report. And for the benefit of any Roman ghosts haunting this particular stretch of the New Hampshire seacoast, I repeated myself in Latin:
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

For lunch I had a lobster roll, French fries and a salad, which I ordered from the kitchen at the Lafayette House, my hidden neighbor across the street. To get to my home means traversing the parking lot of the Lafayette House, but I reached a mutual agreement with the management of Tyler Beach's most famous hotel when I first moved here. They've left me alone, and I've kept an occasional eye on the parked cars of their guests during my comings and goings. Though I've never eaten or stayed at the Lafayette House, I have reached a slightly illegal agreement with the head chef. In exchange for ordering meals right out of the kitchen, I pay the menu price in cash, right to the chef's pocket, plus 10 percent. Both of us think we're getting the better deal --- he gets extra cash in his pocket that goes unrecorded, and I get great meals that I don't have to cook and clean up after.

But lunch and an hour or so of relaxed reading didn't make me feel any better. I went upstairs to the bathroom, took three aspirins and tried to convince myself to improve.

When I came out of the bathroom, I went into my study, past the ceiling-high bookshelves and to my desk, where the Apple Macintosh computer was still on, humming quietly away, its electrons doing a tremendous dance that made so much work and information gathering so easy. I sat down, letting the faint squeak-squeak of the chair work its way into the knot of my brain. I was still trembling a bit with energy from all that I'd done this day, and I felt a stirring of success. I had done well. I had learned a lot. I was on a roll, and I knew I shouldn't walk away yet. I knew from my past work at the DoD that there were days ---we called them Gold Star days --- when everything went right, when all the codes were broken, all the information fell together, all your calls and inquiries were answered. On Gold Star days, you worked until your eyes rebelled and your fingers trembled with exhaustion, because you were never sure when another bout of luck like that would happen again. From the files on my desk I picked up the one marked
Petro Star,
searching until I found the printout of Cameron Briggs' business interests, and got the number I wanted, for his main office in New York City. I looked at the time. It was just past two in the afternoon.

I dialed the long-distance number and it was answered on the first ring. "Briggs Associates."

Answered on the first ring. Not bad. Maybe there was hope for American business yet. I cleared my throat. "Public relations, please. "

"One moment." I was put on hold, and instead of the mind numbing monotony of hold music, I was given an audio feed of CNN Headline News. Nice touch.

A click, and then a woman's voice, "Public affairs, Mr. Rossum's office." 

"Is Mr. Rossum in, please?" "

Hold on."  As I listened to a CNN report on fighting in South Africa, I rehearsed the patter I was going to try. For the first time this day, I would identify myself as Lewis Cole, writer for
Shoreline
magazine out of Boston, Massachusetts, who was looking to schedule an interview with Cameron Briggs.

Another click, and a man's voice.

"This is Gus Rossum."

I opened my mouth to say something and then I stopped. And I hung up on him.

A few hours after that I walked out of my house and locked the door. I then got into my Range Rover and drove up the trail to the Lafayette House parking lot. I had changed from my shorts and T-shirt of earlier that day and was wearing my working clothes, which included a navy-blue blazer and necktie. My reporter's notebook was on the passenger's side of the Rover. I was prepping myself for a little work. My headache was gone.

As I drove north on Atlantic Avenue, heading for Wallis, I thought of Mr. Gus Rossum of the public relations department of Briggs Associates, and decided he was probably used to getting ,hung up on all the time. Probably number-two item in his job description. But unlike a lot of other callers he probably received, I had no malice in disconnecting my call to him. It wasn't personal. It was strictly business. In those few seconds of waiting for him come to the phone, I had decided that a truly Gold Star day could not depend on dancing the formal game of schedules, questions and return phone calls that PR people are so adept at performing.

So this evening, I was going to pass up that game and try another. Traffic was steady but not too heavy, and it only took a few more minutes than usual to pass over into Wallis, and there it was. The number 4 in brass on the brick wall, and I was doing quite nicely, thank you, for the wrought-iron gate was open. I turned left and went up the crushed-stone driveway. Little lamps set into the side of the driveway lit my way up to the house. There was a light gray Audi parked there, the same one I had seen the other day. The house and its two large wings were as big as I remembered them, and lights were on behind every floor-to-ceiling window.

I went up the brick steps to the wide front door as if I belonged there, carrying the reporter's notebook in my hand. Before I rang the bell I pulled my press identification card out of my wallet and slipped it into my shirt pocket. The bell made no sound that I could hear from outside, but the door opened up in less than a minute and a man answered, wearing lime-green shorts and a white hip-length polo shirt. He carried a golf club in his hands.

"Yes?" he asked, and from his tone and manner and from what Paula Quinn had told me, I knew I was standing before Cameron Briggs.

My Gold Star day wasn't over yet.

Chapter Eighteen

In working where I did, in the unofficial Marginal Issues Section of our little group, our workday was sometimes interrupted by the occasional visitor. It always followed the same pattern. We were told by E-mail or memo from our section leader, George Walker that a visitor would be by during a certain time. Our desks would have to be cleared of anything that could not be allowed to be seen by the uncleared or the uninitiated, which meant --- at least for our section --- that our desktops for the most part would be thoroughly empty.

Then the visitor would come by, herded by some higher ups. They'd go into George Walker's office --- the only one with a door --- and engage in about ten minutes of idle chitchat before coming out for the tour of our work area. That usually took about another ten minutes, since our section was so small. However, I recall once when a retired senator who was serving on some intelligence board, and who had a propensity for liquid lunches, stopped at our information center and railed on for long minutes about our subscribing to the Tass news service, back when there was a Soviet Union to be scared of. The ex-senator slurred a lot of his words, but basically, his point was that we shouldn't allow such Communist propaganda into the Pentagon.

From the pained look on his escorts' faces, I didn't envy them their job that day, or any other day, for that matter. On one particular visit, the gentleman coming by was a new Assistant SecDef for some office or whose main talent was being from the home state of the current President and a hefty campaign contributor. He had also been a big executive in one of those food conglomerates.

On most days, we called these visits sheep shows when George wasn't around, but on this day, cattle show seemed more appropriate. The man was large and bulky, with a bright red face and a grin that seemed stitched in with wires. George did his best, which wasn't much. I caught the eye of Cissy Manning, and she winked in my direction while going past the information center. My next-door neighbor, Carl Socha, had disappeared, though on some occasions he'd stay and on rarer occasions he'd actually Play the Game and be fawning and friendly and the best DoD black budget employee ever.

One day at lunch in the center courtyard of the five-sided palace --- known affectionately as Ground Zero --- I'd asked him why, and in a quite reasonable and serious tone, he'd said, "Lewis, I'm very good at what I do, but I'm also working against three hundred years of history in this country and about fifty years of history in this building, when my father and my uncles were only good in this department for being mess stewards or working in construction battalions. I'm doing everything I can to clamber up that hill, and if it means kissing butt on occasion, so be it. One of those nitwits we meet might one day get kicked upstairs to become SecDef and he might need a bright guy for his staff, and in the fine tradition of affirmative action programs everywhere, he just might pick me, and I might be in a position to help my brethren. So that's why I do what I do."

I'd said that was a hell of an idea, and asked him to pass the ketchup. Then on this occasion George Walker brought the new Assistant SecDef around to the different cubicles. He hemmed and hawed a bit when he came to mine, mainly because I was sitting in my chair, feet up on my desk, trying my damnedest to do the previous Sunday's
New York Times
crossword puzzle.

"Um," George said, not even daring to cross over the threshold into my office space, as if he was afraid I was going to contaminate him with some Bohemian virus. "This is, um, Lewis Cole. One of the more unique members of our section."

I nodded and went back to the crossword puzzle. I don't do the puzzle to impress anyone --- in fact, I do it in pencil, and I've never succeeded in even getting close to finishing one off.  I do the Sunday puzzle for two reasons, though: to stretch my mind and to bring myself back to earth anytime I feel like I'm getting too cocky for my own good.

The new guy, with his escorts and hangers-on grouped around him, poked his head in and said, "How's it going, young man?"

I was stuck on a five-letter word for a mountain range in North Africa, and I looked up and gave him my best government employee smile and said, "Not bad, but I sure could use a Coke and an order of large fries."

Well. Some faces dropped and others turned red, but the new guy gave a satisfied nod and went on with the tour, as though nothing had happened, and I wrote in the word ''Atlas.'' About five minutes later Trent Baker came by and said in his patrician New York voice, "I'm sure that you're quite aware that Mr. Walker is upset with you."