Put a Lid on It (6 page)

Benjamin said, “You don't want some public defender hack, Francis. If you feel you need an attorney, and you may be right about that, I wouldn't argue the issue, we can surely find you one in the greater DC area who would—”

“Yeah,” Meehan said, “and I know where you'd find him, too. Not very far down in your pocket. The great thing about Elaine Goldfarb is, I
know
she isn't one of yours.”

“Certainly not,” Jeffords said.

“Very well,” Benjamin said. “We'll see what we can do about a secure telephone and obtaining the services of Ms. Goldfarb. She won't be licensed in the state of Virginia, you realize.”

“If I have to take you birds to court,” Meehan told him, “I'll get somebody local.”

His smile thin, Benjamin said, “Yes, that would be a new role in court for you, wouldn't it? In the meantime, if you've done breakfast…”

“Long ago,” Meehan said.

“Fine.” The smile turning sad, Benjamin said, “I am sorry, but I know you understand, you'll have to return to your room awhile. There are magazines on that table over there, you're welcome to take some with you.”

They all stood. “It's a boring room,” Meehan said. “I just wanna mention that.”

“We'll make your stay in it as short as possible,” Benjamin promised. “In fact, I'll hope to see you in the cafeteria at lunch.”

“I think I can probably make it,” Meehan said.

13

A
T LUNCH, IN
another room in the same building, this one a plain bright cafeteria on the second floor with much the same view as everywhere else in this place, surrounded by people in olive drab uniforms or scruffy civvies, everybody carrying around brown trays with blah food on them, Benjamin said, “It's all worked out.”

Meehan looked up from studying his cheeseburger. “What is?”

“Ms. Goldfarb will arrive at Norfolk International at two thirty-five this afternoon,” Benjamin said. “You will meet her.”

“With an escort,” Jeffords added.

“I know,” Meehan said, around the cheeseburger, which tasted better than it looked.

“While at the airport,” Benjamin went on, “you will be able to make a phone call from any one of the pay phones there, with your escort nearby but not listening.”

“Sounds good,” Meehan said. “I'll need change,” he said, and bit into more cheeseburger.

Benjamin blinked. “Change?”

Jeffords explained, “They don't have cash money in the MCC.”

“Oh, of course.” Benjamin turned politely to Meehan. “How much?”

His mouth full of cheeseburger, Meehan raised his left hand and splayed the fingers out twice.

Benjamin's look turned sardonic. “Ten dollars? I think not. Jeffords will give you three.”

Neither Meehan nor Jeffords was happy about that.

Meehan kept an eye on the route, in case he ever had to take it on his own some time; another of the ten thousand rules. Grandy, Currituck, Moyock; the town names in North Carolina were weird, but somehow not easy to remember. Then they crossed into Virginia and got Hickory and Great Bridge, and there they were on Battlefield Boulevard; can't these people get over it? Battlefield Boulevard led them to an interstate, which snaked them through Norfolk to the airport, right in the middle of town.

It was the same car as last night, with the same team; Jeffords next to Meehan in back, the two Busters up front. They'd changed their shirts, but not their topcoats and squared-off hats.

From the parking lot, they moved like a highly trained close-drill team into the terminal building where, amid the announcements and the lost children and the teenagers traveling with their skateboards, Jeffords grudgingly counted out three dollars in quarters and dimes and nickels into Meehan's palm. “Thanks, Dad,” Meehan said, and Jeffords gave him a sour look.

The bank of pay phones was clustered in a little campground of its own off to the side of pedestrian traffic. One Buster stood off to the right, the other equally to the left, and Jeffords paced back and forth in the near distance, getting in the way of people carrying heavy luggage.

By necessity, Meehan's telephone directory was kept in his head. He dialed the number, pumped in change, and the nasal voice that he knew was female only because he'd seen its owner a few times over the years said, “Cargo.” Cargo Storage was the name under which Leroy worked.

“Leroy, please.”

“Who shall I say?”

“Meehan.” It always bothered Meehan to speak his name aloud on the telephone, but sometimes you had to.

“Leroy isn't in at the moment,” she said, which is what he'd known she would say. “Can he get back to you?”

“I'm at a pay phone at Norfolk International Airport,” Meehan told her.

“What a weird place to be.”

“You don't know the half of it,” he said, and read the number off to her, and hung up.

Both Busters immediately moved toward him, but he held up both hands, one to either side, to deter them, so they backed off to position A, glancing toward Jeffords to be sure it was okay.

Meehan pretended to be actively using the phone for the next seven minutes, holding the receiver to his ear while keeping the hook depressed with his other hand. Then at last, once Leroy had reached his own secure phone, this one rang. Meehan lifted the hook, and a different nasal voice said in his ear, “What the fuck you doin in Norfolk fuckin Virginia?”

“I hope to tell you some day,” Meehan said. “For right now, I want to know, if I happened to come into possession of some antique guns, all American, Revolution, Civil War, would you be interested?”

“Antique guns? So you mean a collection.”

“Yeah.”

“Lemme think, lemme think. Is it Lewes-Moday?”

“What?”

“Which collection is it? Who owns it?”

“I dunno yet.”

“You're a strange bird, Meehan,” Leroy told him. “When you find out whose house you're in, call me back.”

“No, hold on, I'll find out.” Gesturing to Jeffords, he said into the phone, “What was that name you said?”

“Lewes-Moday. If it's Lewes-Moday, I don't want it. They got photos of every fucking piece, they injected bird DNA in the stocks, nobody's gonna dare go near a piece of that.”

“Okay, hold on.” To Jeffords, now next to him frowning deeply, he said, “Whose collection is this?”

Jeffords looked shocked, then mulish. “I can't tell you that, not at this point.”

“Is it Lewes-Moday? Just tell me if it's Lewes-Moday.”

“I've never heard of Lewes-Moday,” Jeffords said, as though he felt obscurely as though he'd been accused of something.

Into the phone, Meehan said, “It isn't Lewes-Moday. What I think it is, I think it's somebody in the northeast, a rich guy, political, probably an estate or some—”

“Oh, Burnstone!” Leroy said. “Absolutely! You get your hands on Burnstone, you got a deal.”

“One second.” Meehan looked at Jeffords, who was practicing his poker face. Looking deep into those eyes, Meehan said, “Burnstone.”

“I can't tell you—”

Meehan said into the phone, “It's Burnstone. See you soon.”

14

H
ER PLANE WAS
thirty-five minutes late, which isn't bad for an airplane, and at first he didn't recognize her among the passengers drifting brain-damaged into the terminal. He'd only seen Elaine Goldfarb three times in his life, always in the MCC, she on the other side of the black metal desk, dressed like a yak, so it took a few seconds to realize that
this
woman was
that
woman.

She presented herself differently out here; not more attractive, more aggressive. Her skinny body was encased in fairly tight black slacks and clacking black leather boots and a gleaming black leather jacket, with an open zipper. Her steel-wool hair was controlled by a golden barrette at the back in the shape of a narrow bouquet of roses, and large gold hoop earrings dangled to both sides of that sharp-nosed sharp-jawed face, making her black-framed eyeglasses look more than ever like spy holes in a fortress wall.

So this is how she dresses to go on the road; challenging. Don't dare fuck with me. Interesting. A woman wouldn't want to offer any challenges in the MCC.

She had as much trouble recognizing him as he'd had with her, apparently, because she looked right through him until he raised his hand as though to attract teacher's attention. But that was okay; again, the context was different. She'd only seen him in the brown jumpsuit, probably looking as crappy and defeated as he'd then felt. Out here, in his own clothes, with a little scheme working, operating with people who turned about as rapidly as a battleship, he not only felt better, he no doubt looked better as well. Other, anyway. So he raised his hand, and when she furrowed her high brow at him he said, “Yeah, it's me, after all.”

So she came over to him, there in the middle of the terminal, people all over the place going on about their own business, and she said, “You're
out?
”

“Kinda,” he said.

“Francis Meehan,” she said, as though to double-check her data.

“The same,” he agreed.

“You want to be called Meehan.”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Well, you're the last person I expected to see here,” she said. “I'll call you Meehan if you'll tell me
what
the hell is going on.”

“Listen,” he said, “could you spring for coffee? They only gave me three bucks, and it's gone, and it's okay if we go to the coffee shop and sit down and get on the same page here.”

“Everything you're saying,” she told him, “comes within a whisker of making sense.”

“Coffee,” he said. “You buy.”

“That figures,” she said. “Lead on.”

So he led on, aware of the Busters on his flanks, watching him like carnivorous sheepdogs, knowing Jeffords also lurked somewhere in the vicinity, and they went to the open-fronted coffee shop that the Busters had already checked out, to be sure there was no back exit. They sat at an empty table in the front row, just off the pedestrian area, which was also part of the deal. While waiting to be waited on, Meehan said, “You had no trouble. Flights and all.”

“All I know is,” she said, “I got a call at the MCC this morning, five minutes after I arrived, hadn't even seen my first client yet, I'm told to forget my caseload for today, other people are taking over, I'm to go home and pack for a trip, certainly overnight, maybe longer, a Mr. Eldridge will come pick me up at ten-thirty.” She gave him a suspicious look. “Who's this guy Eldridge?”

“Never heard of him.”

“Really? Very strange guy,” she told him. “Nervous, skinny, young, talked all the time, didn't say a single solitary useful thing.”

A very very old waitress arrived then, to ask them what they wanted, and turned out their desires were modest: black coffee for him, a diet decaf cappuccino for her. The waitress tottered away, and Meehan said, “What the hell's a diet decaf cappuccino?”

“A state of mind,” she said. “Tell me what's going on.”

“Well,” he said, “there's a presidential election coming up, pretty soon.”

“Stop right there,” she told him. “I'm forty-one years old, I don't have the life expectancy for this.”

“It's short,” he promised. “The people working to help the guy get reelected, they found out there's an October Surprise coming up—You've heard of October Surprises.”

“Everybody's heard of October Surprises,” she assured him.

Not bothering to correct her, he said, “They want to stop this October Surprise, and to do it they need a burglary, and—”

“Oh, my God,” she said. “Watergate? Don't they
ever
learn?”

“Well, yeah, they learn,” Meehan told her. “This time, they learned they oughta get a pro—”

“So they look in prison,” she said sardonically.

“Go ahead, have your cheap joke,” he said. “The fact is I'm pretty good at what I do.”

“Usually, maybe.”

“Nobody's good
all
the time,” he said.

“In your business,” she told him, “you have to be.”

“Well, that's true. Anyway, they get access to federal things, like the MCC, and some Parks Department place they've kept me in since then, and they want me to go get this October Surprise for them.”

“And what am
I
supposed to do?” she demanded. “Start preparing your insanity defense?”

“I told them I wanted you,” he explained. “These people are politicians, I don't trust them, they make me uncomfortable.”

“Well, your instincts are good, anyway,” she said.

“So we're negotiating,” he went on, “and I felt I didn't want to be alone in the room, and you're the only lawyer I know, so I said, get me Elaine Goldfarb or there's no deal, and they said okay.”

“Well, whoever they are,” she said, “they've got clout. They got you out of the MCC, and they got me. But what am I supposed to
do?
”

“Watch my back. Isn't that what lawyers do?”

“In a way,” she said, then frowned at him. “But you're still in serious trouble with the law,” she pointed out. “I'm surprised you didn't just tell these people, sure, no problem, then run for the hills.”

“They've got two sturdy ex-cops bird-dogging me,” Meehan told her. “Unfortunately, I'm not running anywhere.”

The waitress returned, bowed beneath the weight of their coffees and the check, in a big leatherette book. She distributed all, faded away, and Elaine Goldfarb said, “I see one of them, over there. Oh, and there's the other one.” She frowned, which created unfortunate gray vertical lines between her thick black eyebrows. “Who's the one lurking over there?”

“A politician,” Meehan told her. “Named Jeffords. He's the one got me out of the MCC.”

“I'm surprised they let
him
out,” she commented, and sipped cappuccino. “So what happens now?”

“You got luggage?”

“Of course I've got luggage. What do you think I am, a Camp Fire girl?”

“Okay, fine,” he said. “If you agree to be my lawyer, we call oley oley infree, collect everybody, collect your luggage, and go back to the Outer Banks.”

“The Outer Banks!” She reared back to look him up and down. “You get around more than the average federal prisoner, I'll give you that,” she said.