The Brea File (31 page)

But why Macimer? What had been gained by that?

Macimer stepped out of the car into the morning glare. He did not notice the two men who had parked their gray Fairmont sedan so that the morning sun reflected off the windshield, rendering them almost invisible. They watched him enter the hospital before the man in the passenger’s seat spoke briefly into the car radio.

* * * *

Joseph Gerella had been removed from the critical list of the Shock Trauma Unit at Georgetown University Hospital. Macimer found him in a semi-private room on the third floor. The adjoining bed was empty.

For several moments Macimer stood motionless in the quiet room, thinking that Gerella was asleep. Over the years Macimer had seen many people beaten, brutalized, shot, overdosed on drugs, drowned, stabbed, hacked and mauled—the endless march of society’s victims. His stomach no longer automatically heaved at the sight of violence or death. Nevertheless, the condition of Joseph Gerella sickened him. The reporter’s face was swollen and distorted under his heavy layer of bandages. His chest was similarly wrapped, his right arm in a cast. His breathing was a labored wheeze. His jaw had been wired shut, leaving an opening only large enough for a glass straw, forcing him to breathe through his nose.

Only one eye was visible. It was open, staring at Macimer.

That single eye followed him as he drew closer to the bed. Without a framework of facial expression to define it, Gerella’s stare was impossible to read. Impaled by that one eye, Macimer felt compelled to say, “You’re wrong if you think the Bureau had anything to do with this.”

Gerella fumbled with his free hand for the tray at the side of the bed. Macimer saw a 5x7-inch pad of white notepaper and a felt-tip pen. He handed them to Gerella. The reporter printed his reply with his left hand while balancing the pad awkwardly on his stomach. The letters were childish in construction: Gerella was right-handed. His message, blocked out in capital letters, read: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PRC?

Straight for the jugular. Staring at the note in silence, Macimer felt an ungrudging admiration. Gerella wouldn’t quit.

“What do you know?” he asked. “The people who attacked you searched your apartment. What were they after, Gerella?”

The eye was not surprised. Packard would have discussed the search with his reporter, trying to learn what might be missing.

“I know you received some communications from an informant,” the FBI man said. “Pages from a missing FBI file concerning the PRC case.” He leaned closer. Two eyes were better for glaring than one. “This is important, Gerella.
What was in those pages?
”

Gerella attempted to print a response. The note pad slipped from his stomach and he grabbed for it with his free hand. His eye snapped shut and his body quivered with pain from the sudden movement.

Macimer retrieved the pad. He held it firmly in place while Gerella completed his awkward message. The reporter sank back as if exhausted, his eye closing.

After reading the message quickly, Macimer went back over it, frowning. NAMES & ASSIGNMENTS. FBI. AUG 28 – 81. PRC.

He waited for Gerella to look at him again. The single lid rose slowly, the eye staring. “That’s all? An assignment roster, something like that?” When Gerella blinked slowly in the affirmative, Macimer asked, “In and out times? Destinations?”

His mind raced ahead of the reporter’s confirmation. Assignment and activity listings were routine. Signing out was mandatory in most situations. What could be important about these records? Important enough to kill for?

Or was there, buried somewhere in those routine postings, proof that could be linked with other documentation to show that someone was not where he was supposed to be that day?

All it needed was someone—Vernon Lippert—to start looking!

Controlled excitement. Not so overriding that Macimer lost sight of something different in Gerella’s expression, a hostility that expressed itself even with most of the reporter’s face masked in bandages. Gerella fumbled for the note pad once more. Laboriously he printed out a terse note. Reading it, Macimer understood Gerella’s silent accusation. YOUR NAME – ON LIST!

For another moment Macimer met the probing stare of that single baleful eye. The fact that a roster of assignments for the People’s Revolutionary Committee FBI Task Force on August 28, 1981, should contain his name and assignment neither concerned nor surprised him. He had been chasing a phony tip that day that took him to Fresno, well away from the action….

He felt a prickling sensation. He was remembering the unknown informant who had not shown up at the motel in Fresno where Macimer waited.

“You shouldn’t have withheld those records from the FBI,” he said. “If you’d come to us in the first place, your informant might still be alive.”

He saw the shock in Gerella’s visible eye. There had been nothing in the information released to the media about the Roosevelt Island murder to allow Gerella to make the connection to his informant.

“He was murdered last night,” Macimer said bluntly. “And the rest of the file is gone.” Watching Gerella’s eye close tightly, the lid squeezing, Macimer felt the other man’s pain. His own anger eased. “You were wrong in withholding evidence, Gerella, but you were right about something else—something you said that first night we talked. About how important it is to keep the law on a tight rein. We need rules to go by, just like everyone else. What happened to you was a taste of the anarchy that takes over when any man can make his own rules.”

Macimer saw the puzzled speculation in Gerella’s eye. It was still there when the FBI man walked out.

* * * *

From the hospital lobby Macimer called the WFO. He instructed Harrison Stearns to try to locate Agents Collins and Garvey in California and have them stand by. The order was urgent. Macimer would be in the office in twenty minutes.

“Should I get the Sacramento office in on it? I mean, let them know it’s urgent?”

“No,” said Macimer. “Just find Collins and Garvey yourself. I don’t want anyone else involved.”

The temperature that afternoon was in the low eighties and humid. Chip Macimer had disappeared with some friends and an ice-cold six-pack. Kevin had gone to the community pool. Alone in the house, Linda Macimer answered the phone when it rang. She recognized Carole Baumgartner’s voice. When Linda said her mother was out, Carole surprised her. How would Linda herself like to get out of the house and play some tennis?

Twenty minutes later, happily relaxing in the comfortable passenger seat of Carole’s white BMW coupe, Linda said, “This is neat! Am I ever glad to get out of that house.”

“I thought you were all one big happy family there.”

“Mom and Dad love it. You know, we’ve always bounced around from one place to another, so we never had a real house of our own.”

“But you don’t like it?”

“I did… but not now.” Linda shivered, her bare arms prickling with gooseflesh in spite of the rush of warm air through the open window. “I hate being there alone.”

“You should have a boyfriend stay with you.”

Linda glanced at her quickly, her enthusiasm cooling. “Did Mom ask you to talk to me?”

“I told her I wanted to,” Carole Baumgartner admitted frankly. “But no… she doesn’t know about today. In fact, when I called this afternoon I knew Jan was going to be at the travel agency—she told me last night.” Carole laughed lightly. “Jan is afraid I might try to win you over to my side.”

“What side is that?”

“You don’t know?” Carole laughed again, a warm and throaty laughter. She was, Linda thought, a very beautiful woman. And so cool, so smart, so… sure of herself. “I’m supposed to be an extremist of the women’s movement. Hard core, you know, up the bastards. My side is…” Her expression became gentle, sympathetic, infinitely wise. “… the woman’s side. And make no mistake, Linda. That means your side.”

* * * *

The Horizon Hills Country Club looked invitingly plush with its unnaturally green lawns and the dun-colored modern architecture of its buildings. Linda was wearing her tennis shorts and a T-shirt. Carole Baumgartner changed into a smart tennis outfit in the locker room. Her arms and legs were smoothly muscled and evenly tanned. She looked no more than thirty, Linda thought. It was hard to believe she had a teen-age daughter of her own.

There were a half-dozen tennis courts, all of them busy. The still, warm air was filled with the steady plop of ball against strings, sunlight glinting off aluminum and steel and carbon tennis rackets, the busy courts showcases of expensive and fashionable outfits, expensive and less spectacular skills.

Carole Baumgartner had reserved a court, and in a few minutes she and Linda were out on the hard surface, quickly falling into a ritualistic pattern of serve-and-volley, serve-and-volley. Linda had been playing regularly for two years and could more than hold her own with most of the girls in her high school class. She liked to play deep, relying on her ability to return shots steadily from the back of the court until her opponent made a mistake. Carole played aggressively, constantly forcing, attacking the net. She kept the younger girl running. In spite of her seventeen-year-old legs, Linda had to beg for a breather after the second set.

They settled at a table on a wide flagstone terrace overlooking the tennis courts and, off to the right, the sixteenth tee of the golf course. Linda regarded Carole admiringly as the older woman ordered a drink for herself and, after an inquiring glance, a 7-Up for the girl. Carole wasn’t even breathing hard after two sets of tennis.

“I think we’ve had enough exercise for one day,” said Carole. “You could be very good, you know, if you worked at it.”

“You
are
good.”

Over a tall Collins that was mostly shaved ice and gin, Carole Baumgartner talked amusingly about the club and its members and the current popularity of tennis. She assured Linda that at least a half-dozen members could beat her in straight sets. “It’s become a mid-life goal,” Carole said with a smile.

“I bet they don’t look as good doing it,” Linda burst out. The gushy sound of the words caused her to flush.

“Do you think a woman’s looks are terribly important? How she looks to a man, for instance?”

“That isn’t what I meant,” Linda said, her flush darkening.

“I know you didn’t. And I don’t want you to think I don’t like being told how good I look. I work very, very hard at it, believe me—but I don’t do it for anyone else. I do it for
me
. I think that’s what I want you to understand.”

The girl watched and listened intently as Carole talked. She thought she was beginning to understand better why her mother and Carole were such good friends. And yet, in spite of what they shared, the two women were so different.

“Your mother told me how you’ve felt since that night those brave warriors with their brains between their legs roughed you up. No, don’t be upset with me, Linda—listen to me. Your mother and I are very good friends but we don’t always see eye to eye. She’s just as much a champion of women’s rights as I am, but your mother’s problem is that she tries to be
reasonable
. She thinks it’s important to be reasonable. I don’t think so at all. What’s important is not to let yourself be
used
, whether it’s the way those bastards used you or any of a thousand other ways. Believe me, there are lots of others just as bad, and it doesn’t hurt to know that. Let’s face it, the girl who was with them was being exploited and abused, too.” Carole paused. “Do you mind if I tell you a story?”

Linda hesitated, for the older woman’s swift darts of thought made her feel awkward and ignorant and unsure, but yes, she
did
want to listen. She felt that Carole was sincerely trying to tell her something important, and that it was not the conventional reassurances she had heard from others until she wanted to scream. They had not felt Xavier’s knife at their throats. They hadn’t felt his arm crushing their breasts. “Please… go on.”

“It’s about my mother,” Carole said. “I felt about her the way you must feel about Jan. She was very beautiful. An intelligent, vivacious, lively woman. She had half the young men in Charlotte chasing her, so, as the old joke has it, she caught my father. He was a good catch, everyone said. Scion of an old family, a doctor, handsome, formidable sportsman, huntsman—Daddy was all the things men were supposed to be in those days.” Carole’s eyes seemed to darken. When she went on, pensively, she seemed to be talking as much to herself as for Linda’s benefit. “I was fifteen when she killed herself. The funny thing is, now that I have women friends—now that I have
time
for them, can get to know them, women like your mother—I’ve learned that my mother’s case wasn’t all that unusual. Oh, they didn’t all commit suicide. Some of them started in on the Southern Comfort and graduated. Others became… strange. My mother had so much
energy!
So much to offer! But her life bottled it all up, it had no way to come out, it wasn’t even considered quite
proper
, like a good woman enjoying sex. She did everything she was supposed to do, played her pretty role to perfection. Everyone thought how marvelously happy she must be, what a perfect couple she and Daddy were. No one knew what was happening to her, not even Daddy. Least of all Daddy! No one could understand…” Carole broke off, gulped an inch of her Collins. Her gaze, birdlike, pecked around the terrace, quickly appraising the sleek women and a scattering of leathery men there on a lazy summer afternoon at the club. The gaze darted back to Linda, measuring her. “Do you know what I’m saying, Linda?”

“Yes, I… I think so.”

“We have choices now. We don’t have to be shortchanged. We don’t have to be… used.”

Linda nodded eagerly. She was flattered by the interest in her shown by this older, wiser, so much cleverer woman, and she was excited by the knowledge that Carole Baumgartner was, undeniably, encouraging and supporting the rebellious thoughts and emotions Linda had been nurturing since the night of the robbery. Carole had not talked to her like her school friends, who had been more stimulated than alarmed by her tale of being held at knife’s point by a very macho young Latin criminal. Nor like her mother, anxious and concerned but unable to escape an authoritarian role, unable to conceal that tone of knowing best. Carole had spoken to her like a real friend, an adult—another woman. Carole’s interest, her concern, even the story about her mother added substance to Linda’s confused emotional state. She was not simply reacting out of fear and revulsion. She was beginning to see and understand some harsh realities. Doors were opening in her mind that she hadn’t even known were there.