Top Hook (24 page)

“Which I didn't do.”

“Which you didn't do; therefore, somebody else did. Therefore, when somebody elsewhere in the world mentions Top Hook, I think there's a connection.”

“What's it got to do with Shreed?”

He shook his head. “End of conversation.” He patted her hand. “Hey! New thought. Your Navy pal there, Valdez—”

“Yeah, Harry hired him! And he proved my computer had been tampered with. He's the best, just the best!”

Dukas called Triffler over. “Dick, tell Lieutenant-Commander Siciliano what your interviewee told you about her and Valdez.”

“Oh—Well—This is hearsay, okay? But, um—he said that you and Mister Valdez were, um—‘very close.'”

“We were. He saved my life.”

Dukas interrupted. “The implication was
very
close.”

She stared, then exploded. “That's bullshit! I was his division officer; I couldn't operate without his special skills—I took him with me when I traveled because I fucking
needed
him, but—! Who the fuck said that?”

“I can't tell you,” Triffler muttered.

“Tell her,” Dukas said.

“Regulations say—”

“Tell her!”

Triffler straightened. “Guy named Ray Suter.”

To Dukas's surprise, she threw herself back and laughed. She blew a lock of hair off her forehead. “That slimy sonofabitch! He would have been my first guess. Oh, shit, Suter the Seducer! The only thing nastier than a woman scorned is a man scorned.”

“You think that's the only reason he'd say something about you and Valdez—revenge?”

“What other reason is there?”

“Well—he works for Shreed.”

“What, you think they're a conspiracy?” She made it a joke.

To Dukas's surprise, it was Triffler who defended the
idea. “They don't have to be spies or something to work together to discredit you and your husband. They both got reason to dislike you. Or—” He cocked an eye at the chart on the door. “If Shreed really is behind it, then Suter's a perfect patsy for him if he's trying to lay blame on you. Especially if he knows that Valdez is the one who cleared you on the computer stuff—if he can smear you and Valdez as lovers, then what Valdez did for us is suspect. See?”

Dukas shook his head. “No way either Shreed or Suter could know about that.”

“Oh, no? You filed a report with Menzes, right? You don't believe there's a leak out of that office?”

“No, I don't.”

Triffler shrugged. “Dream on.”

“We've got to believe in something, Dick! We gotta have a place to stand! You can't investigate a case if there's no truth anywhere.”

Rose stood. “Hey, hey, guys. Lighten up. You're on the same side, remember?”

Triffler and Dukas looked at each other. Triffler shot his eyebrows up and down, a rather Groucho Marx gesture, and then he said to Rose, “You're not leaving us, I hope.”

“I am. I'm having lunch with Admiral Pilchard,
at
the Army-Navy Club, and then this afternoon I'm doing some congressional offices.” She stuck out her hand. “A real pleasure, Dick. We'll be seeing more of each other, I know.”

Triffler made pleased sounds. Still seated, Dukas watched them, surprised again by this new side of Triffler. Then Rose kissed Dukas's cheek and said she'd call him really soon. “Don't compartmentalize too much,” she said as she bent over him. “It's bad
for your emotional health.” And then she was gone,

leaving a faint ghost of perfume.

“That's some pretty woman,” Triffler said.

“She's married.”

“So am I. So?”

“I didn't know that!”

Triffler looked down at Dukas. “There's lots you don't know. In fact—Dukas, they tell me that those guys worked for you in Bosnia thought you walked on water, but the way I figure it, you were all from different countries, so nobody spoke the same language and they never got to know you. I do speak your language and I never yet heard you say one positive, personal thing. For your information, my wife is named Germaine and is big-time cute; I have two kids; the boy is a freshman wide receiver at DeMatha and the girl is a super-smart student at St Anselm's. I have loving sex on a regular basis and I'm a Redskins fan. And what that pretty woman who was just in here sees in you, I don't get!”

Dukas had meant to get around to a little personal stroking just as soon as he got on top of the case. Anyway, he had thought that maybe Triffler was gay and he hadn't wanted to pry.

Maybe, when all this was over, he'd work on his management skills.

Because of what she had overheard about George Shreed on Mike Dukas's phone, Emma Pasternak called her investigator. She was in a hurry—she was always in a hurry—but she knew she had to do this one exactly right.

“George Shreed,” she said. “You with me? I asked you to—Right, that guy. Okay, I want
everything
you've
learned about him, and I want it messengered to me by four today so I can take it home with me—okay?”

The woman on the other end said that that was fine, no problem, but was there a problem, because it sounded like Emma was taking this away from her?

“No, God—! No, I picked up a piece of information from another source, and I need to see exactly where I am. What I'm looking for today is Shreed's Navy record—he was a pilot in Vietnam, a carrier called the
Midway—
You got that in the file? Great!”

Emma dropped her voice. She sounded almost uncertain. “Unh—one thing, hon—don't get me wrong on this, but do you by any chance have any kind of, um, computer surveillance or anything on Shreed's house?” She listened to the angry denials from the other end. The woman there was almost spluttering. “Okay—okay—just asking, hon, just asking! Because somebody asked
me
, as if I'd do such a thing, and I thought—you know, I just thought—maybe—Okay, okay—don't get on your high horse—”

The plantings around Sally Baranowski's were out of control. They looked as if they hadn't been trimmed since last fall. The grass needed cutting.

Not a happy house
, Rose thought. She pulled into the driveway, which was only two ribbons of cracked concrete that led nowhere—no garage, no car port, only a grassless area where a VW Golf seemed to be leaning against the house.

She rang the doorbell and stood back so that Sally Baranowski wouldn't feel threatened. A lot of experience with young pilots and even younger enlisted people made Rose believe that Baranowski's phone calls might have been far more about Baranowski herself than about George Shreed. Maybe simply wanting to make contact. Maybe simply wanting to feel good about having done one positive thing. Or maybe simply wanting to be rescued?

Rose was aware of a darker dark behind a window. No lights, except at the back of the house, but something there behind closed drapes now. Then, a sound at the door. And a wait that seemed to threaten to last until the stars came out.

“What is it?”

The door had opened almost soundlessly, so little that Rose could see nothing through the crack. But the voice had been a woman's, and there was an odor, probably food and—vodka?

“Hi. Mrs Baranowski?”

“What is it?”

Rose moved in a little and put her right toe against the door. “I'm Rose Siciliano.”

The other woman's hesitation gave her time to brace her leg and put a hand on the door near the knob; then Sally Baranowski tried to push the door shut and Rose, reacting against it, put her right hip forward and pushed with her hand.

“I don't want to talk to you!”

“Please—Sally—we've talked—”

“No, we haven't—go away—”

Close to the door now, with the other woman just on the other side, Rose got the smell of vodka more strongly. It disgusted her and threw her off for a moment, but she knew she recognized the woman's voice; she swung her hip hard against the door and it yielded, and Rose slipped inside.

“Please let's talk,” she said into the near-darkness.

“Go away!”

“Sally, you tried to help me—you did help me; you helped a lot—Let's talk.”

“That was a mistake. That never happened. I don't know you.”

“You know my husband.”

The woman backed away. Rose moved forward until she could see a spill of light from the kitchen and the woman partly silhouetted against it. As if defending some indiscretion, the woman said, “I didn't know your husband at all well. Not at all.” If she was drinking, the alcohol wasn't affecting her much.

“Alan talked about you. He said you backed him when George Shreed was against him.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Look, I don't want to bust into your house if you don't want me. But I'd like to just talk. Can't we do that?”

“I've been told not to talk to anybody.”

“When?”

“Today. My boss told me that I was talking out of turn and I'd better stop.”

“But you—He couldn't know.”

“He did. You told somebody, didn't you?”

“Only the people who are helping me. None of them would tell!”

Sally Baranowski chuckled. It was a surprisingly rich sound, as if she really enjoyed the joke. “You don't know the Agency. Everything is a secret, and there aren't any secrets.” She moved; Rose heard the movement rather than saw it. “Come on into the kitchen.”

The tiny kitchen was like the yard, but worse. Dirty dishes had been stacked on the drain board. The window of the microwave was filthy. Fast-food containers jutted from the yellow trash bin, which was too full to close. A vodka bottle stood on the table.

Rose knew that Sally had a child but saw no sign of one. Maybe upstairs? A tough atmosphere for a kid. As if sensing her interest, Sally said, “My daughter's at my mother's. I sent her home because I thought my husband might—” She shrugged. “We're having a real ugly separation.” She tried to smile. “He already took my dog.”

“I'm sorry.”

Unhappiness is like an environment: it alters the body and the face, even the clothes. Sally Baranowski was taller than Rose, and she had been slim but had put on pounds that made her warmups bulge at the waist. Depression, not alcohol, made her face older than her
years, which Rose guessed at late thirties. Her ginger hair hung slack. “Not your concern. Can I fix you a drink? I'm drinking too much, as I'm sure you've heard. You have heard, right—you've discussed me with all these people who are helping you?”

“Only four people.”

“But you
did
discuss me.” She lit a cigarette. “How'd you identify me?”

“One of my friends recognized your voice.”

Sally's eyebrows went up; her lips pursed, the expression one of mocking acknowledgement. “Some Deep Throat I am.” She leaned back against the loaded countertop. “I don't want you to stay. They might see your car.”

“'They'? Isn't that a little paranoid?”

“I don't know what's paranoid. I don't know anything any more. What do you want to talk to me about?”

Rose sat down. The chair seat was a little sticky; so was the table when she put her fingers on it. “Why do you think George Shreed was behind the accusation that I betrayed classified material?”

She tapped ash into the dirty sink. “I was in a meeting where George pushed your investigation really hard. I think something had happened, like it was going to be called off, and he went ballistic. It wasn't even the right meeting for it.” She shrugged. “So, I called you up.”

“Do you hate Shreed?”

Sally thought about that. “Yeah, I suppose so. He destroyed my career.” She chuckled again. “My marriage, I destroyed by myself.” She drank from a glass that had been standing on a windowsill over the sink. “Your husband's a nice guy. I liked him.”

“Let me help you.”

“No, no, it's me who's helping you. What are you,
drunk?” She smiled. “You want to help me, do the dishes?”

Rose stood. “You got a sponge?”

“I'm joking.”

“I'm not. I like to do things. Come on—let's clean up a little.”

“My place is filthy, right?”

“Right.” Rose smiled. “You want to wash or dry?”

“I want to get drunk and pass out. But I'm not that far gone yet, and I have terrible hangovers. Plus I have to go to work every day, and would you believe that I take that very seriously? Even now.”

And then she began to talk. She dried and Rose washed, and Sally talked and Rose listened. Later, they sat in the now cleaner kitchen and Rose drank a weak vodka-and-tonic and Sally made coffee. “I don't want to be a drunk,” she said. “I really don't. But God! You get tired of yourself. Weepy, whiney, self-pitying you—I mean me.” She chuckled again. “I haven't told you anything you came to hear.”

“As a matter of fact, you have.”

“What, you came to hear my life story?” She knelt suddenly and put her hands on Rose's arm, looking slightly up at her. “Look, I wanted to help you because I saw Shreed blow up over you, and I know what a bastard he is. But now—they
know
, which means that he knows, and that man can do
anything.
I can't help you any more.”

“Maybe I can help you.”

Sally shook her head. “Stay away from me. I'm poison now. Anyway, there's nothing else I know.”

“You don't know what you know, do you? You worked for Shreed; you've watched him; maybe somehow you know why he came after me.”

Sally shook her head. “You may just have been
standing there. A target of opportunity. George sees the world in only one way—his. He's incapable of seeing somebody else's point of view. He sees the world this way, and he sets out to do something to the world, and if you're standing in the way, too bad for you!”

“What's he trying to do to the world, that I'm standing in the way?”

“No idea. No idea at all.”

“He put the blame on me for something about a project called Peacemaker.”

“I didn't have anything to do with that. I was running Section 6 then—that's George's old stand, which I got when he was moved up—so I didn't sit in on meetings or anything that involved Peacemaker. Only afterward, we heard that it had been aborted by the White House, and maybe there was a security leak. Are you supposed to be the leak?”

“What's Section 6?”

“I can't really tell you that. All I'm supposed to say is that we vetted certain aspects of operations.”

“Peacemaker didn't qualify as an operation?”

Sally hesitated, then grinned. “You're quick—quicker than me and this vodka, anyway. No, I guess it's okay to say—Peacemaker was someplace else.”

“But Shreed was in it, I know, because he had this slimy character named Suter planted on the Peacemaker project team. I know, because I was there.”

“Holy God, Ray Suter? Mister Makeout?”

Rose's eyebrows went up. “You, too?”

“Sweetie, he tried to come on to me the first time we were alone—
and
I was married then. I still get the eye from him.”

Rose stared at her and smiled. “He's George Shreed's assistant.”

“Oh, I know that—” Sally straightened. “Oh, no—I'm not going to bed with Ray Suter so you can know what George Shreed is up to!”

“You wouldn't have to go to bed with him.”

Sally put down the almost empty glass. “You're dangerous, lady. Good at your job, right?” She took out another cigarette. “And I thought George Shreed was ruthless!”

“Sally, I only meant you could talk to him. You might hear something.”

“Actually, he can be kind of charming.” She blew smoke out of the side of her mouth. “Don't count on anything.”

Rose stood. “Don't risk it. I know you're worried about—them.”

“Yeah. But I'm soberer now—drunks are paranoid, did you know that? My father was an alcoholic. They lie, they cheat, they steal, they think everybody's against them. Comes with the territory.”

They talked a minute or two more. Rose asked no more questions. Sally steered her through the dark house with one hand on an arm. At a front window, she paused and looked out through a narrow gap in the curtain, just as she must have when Rose rang the bell. “Just checking,” she said. “So I'm a
little
paranoid.”

The sky was dead black—no stars, no moon. “I gotta run; it's going to rain!” Rose said goodnight and walked to her car and turned to wave.

Before she got into the car she found that all four tires had been slashed.

It began to rain at ten o'clock. By ten-twenty, the rain was heavy, and the cars slowed and the sidewalks were empty. Crime went down.

The gutters were swept clean, and the rubbish flowed down storm grates into the sewers, where gathering rainwater rushed through black tunnels and splashed into the rivers. By midnight, three underpasses in the city were flooded and cars could not go through. By two in the morning, the North Branch of the Anacostia was running fast and brown. The fish ladder in Riverdale was entirely under water. A supermarket cart that had lain on its side, exposed like the skeleton of some beached sea creature, disappeared in the flood and washed three hundred yards downstream before it caught in a dead tree. The banks, mud and concrete riprap, were cleansed of the trash and glass and condoms that had been piling up for weeks.

Ray Suter woke and heard the rain and decided that today was the day.

Dukas was in his office at seven next morning and on the phone to Abe Peretz at seven-ten.

“Mike, what the hell are you doing awake at this hour?”

“I've been awake since five. I've had two women in my apartment all night.”

“That would keep you awake, all right.”

“Abe, I was sleeping on the floor, because Rose was in my bedroom and somebody you don't know was on the sofa. Listen up—I need some advice and maybe some help.” He told Abe about the slashing of Rose's tires. She had called him from Sally Baranowski's and asked for
his advice, and he had told her to call the police, and then he had got AAA and had picked the two women up and taken them back to his place.

“Okay,” Abe said. “I got the picture. What d'you want from me?”

“I need a place for this woman to stay a couple days while she gets over being scared to death. You got a big house. How about it?”

Abe hesitated, then sighed. “Bea'll have a cow.”

“So, cows give milk. Tell her it's for national security.”

“Yeah, fat chance. Anyway, sure, I'll make it okay.”

“This woman I'm sending to you, Sally Baranowski, she was giving us information about Shreed. Rose went to see her, and bingo! her car tires are slashed. Funny coincidence.”

“So you think—Mmm.”

“I'm thinking of you getting mugged and beaten up. See, if the way he works is first he sends a warning—like you first getting your orders changed, then getting beaten up—and then he really gets nasty, then Sally really maybe has something to worry about. That's why I want her safe for a while.”

“But how did he find out about her?”

“It looks like there's a leak in CIA Internals.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Yeah. And I can't go to my man there, because if he knows I'm talking to Sally, he's going to say I'm violating inter-agency policy and he'll tie me up in official bullshit and I'll be spending all my time trotting around Washington covering my ass. So talk
gently
to this woman and see if there's anything else you can get out of her—anything like similarities to what happened to you. I'll be honest with you, all of a sudden I think we're dealing with a dangerous man.”