Washington Deceased (16 page)

“I'm not certain,” Michaelson said. “But I think the next place we should look is the address on the subscriber's mailing label on this newspaper.”

***

“November 19th,” Wendy read silently from the screen. “Check received from Gunderson. No indication of other mail, telephone or personal contact. Nothing done or requested in connection with check.

“November 26th: Check received….”

Wendy suddenly stopped reading and sat up straight. Something was wrong. What was it?

She couldn't hear snoring anymore, that's what.

She looked over to the makeshift bed in front of the sofa. Cox wasn't there.

All at once the hard rock sound of The Who blared through the apartment at ear-splitting level. Wendy jumped in her seat. She looked over at the stereo equipment. Cox was standing there, naked. He was holding in his right hand a heavy, copper-colored paperweight, molded to resemble parchment and engraved with the first words of the Constitution. In his left hand he was holding the envelope she'd snatched from his desk to write down Jeff Logan's phone number—the envelope addressed to Diana at Post Office Box 3096. He started to walk toward her.

Wendy jumped out of the chair and swiveled around to face him head on.

“I'll scream,” she shouted at him.

Half smiling, he jerked his head toward the stereo.

“Scientifically certified to be the world's loudest rock band,” he said. “Go ahead and scream. No one'll be able to hear you. Even if they do, they'll think it's part of the music.”

He stopped three feet away from her and waited for a moment to let the hopelessness of her situation sink in.

“You know what, Wendy?” he said. “You're going to bimbo heaven.”

Chapter Twenty-one

Wendy kicked at Cox with her left leg. A politician's daughter, she aimed the kick at his testicles. Cox blocked her foot before it could get near that vulnerable territory, but the heavy leather boot she was still wearing jolted him all the same, even though it only slammed into his forearm and thigh. He staggered backward a step.

Using the instant's respite to dash for the door, Wendy got the first bolt thrown but heard Cox coming up behind her before she could reach the second. Cox's left hand slammed into the door a heartbeat after Wendy darted away from it.

She scampered toward the couch. Warier now, Cox turned and slowly closed the distance between them. Wendy's head fake toward the kitchenette threw Cox off balance for a moment but he recovered before she could skitter past him. Reversing the false start, she jumped to the couch. His face glistening, Cox turned and looked up at her, now about six feet away from him.

“This is pointless, Wendy.” He didn't sound winded yet. “You're just going to get yourself hurt worse than you have to.”

“You come one step closer and we'll see who gets hurt.” The brave words sounded hollow to her but Cox, who had started to move toward her again, hesitated.

“You stinking little informer,” Wendy spat at him. “You miserable, low life—” She paused a moment, for her inventory of epithets wasn't particularly well stocked. “weenie,” she finished then, less than triumphantly.

“
Informer
?” Cox demanded.

“You set my father up. Then you sold him out to the feds. Now you're helping the government kill him to shut him up.”

“Wendy,” Cox said, “one of us is confused. If I were working with the government, I'd hardly have to kill you over what you saw here tonight, would I? And if the government for some reason wanted to kill the Senator, whom it has conveniently tucked away in prison, why would it need my help?”

Certainty evaporated from Wendy's face. Satisfactory answers to these questions didn't come instantly to mind.

“If your I.Q. were twenty-five points higher,” Cox said then, “you'd be dangerous.” He started toward her again.

A harsh rasp cut through The Who. Cox glanced toward the door. Someone was buzzing his apartment from downstairs. Wendy leaped feet first from the couch directly at Cox. She got the sole of one boot on his face and the sole of the other on his chest, knocking him down and sprawling near him. Something hard pressed her head. She grabbed it—it was one of Cox's shoes—and hurled it at the tiny window near the kitchenette. It missed by eight inches. Scrambling to her feet, she hurried toward the buzzer.

Downstairs, Michaelson pushed the white button opposite the name R. Cox a second time. He waited for another long moment while nothing happened, then glanced at Marjorie.

“Looks like no one's home,” he said, his voice disappointed and frustrated.

Then there was a yawp from the speaker in the entryway where they were standing.

“Help!” a female voice that was almost drowned out by insanely loud rock music said. Nothing else came over the speaker, and the buzz that would open the inside door didn't come.

“Hey!” Michaelson yelled as he began pounding on the inside door, trying to attract the attention of the guard at the security desk inside. Marjorie, better schooled in the lessons of detective novels, simply began pushing every doorbell in the entryway.

This is it, Wendy thought as Cox slapped her full on the face with his open palm, driving her away from the buzzer/speaker. He's got me. Falling heavily to the floor, she felt blood flowing from the inside of her cheek and cursed herself for not thinking fast enough to just buzz in whoever it was without bothering to talk to them.

Cox stood over her, straddling her, awkward in his nakedness because of the care he was taking to guard his scrotum. She waited for the paperweight to fall and for her world to go black forever.

It didn't fall. Instead, he reached down with his left hand and backhanded her across the face. She yelped with pain and saw white and red flares go off behind her eyes. Only then, after he was sure she was stunned and his loins were safe, did Cox raise the paperweight.

Tougher than Cox gave her credit for, Wendy spread her legs apart as fast and as hard as she could. Cox's feet flew out from under him and he toppled backward to the floor. The paperweight flew from his right hand.

Wendy bounded to her feet and pounced on the heavy piece of copper, which had skidded several feet across the carpet. With designs on braining Cox with it, she turned and raised it. Cox was also on his feet by now, though, and she thought it the better part of prudence to retreat. Brandishing the paperweight as fearsomely as she could manage, she fell back to the area just in front of the couch.

Cox kept his distance, standing by the computer, more or less directly across the apartment from her.

“You should see yourself,” he said. “That head has to be hurting.”

“It is,” she nodded. “But it's still in one piece.”

“Those people downstairs aren't going to help you, whoever they are,” he continued. “Probably just cranks anyway. Even if they're not, the guard won't let them past.”

“They'll still know that a woman called for help from this apartment.”

“Chance I'll have to take,” Cox said. “You have to understand something. I'm not going to prison. I'm not going to spend the next five years afraid to bend over in the shower.”

“Well I'm real sorry for whatever inconvenience it causes you,” Wendy sputtered, “but I'm just going to have to do my best to stay alive.”

“It's pointless, Wendy. Look, if those people downstairs were going to help, they'd be here by now. This is a small apartment. I'm bigger and stronger than you are. It's just a question of time. Sooner or later I'm going to get you and we're going to do what we have to do. The only question is whether you're going to get the shit kicked out of you first.”

The presumption infuriated her. She didn't blame him for calling her a bimbo. She'd earned that one. Treating her like a wimp, though, like someone who'd go docilely to slaughter just to avoid getting punched too hard in the meantime—that left her livid with rage. From the rage she drew inspiration for an effort at verbal abuse less insipid than her last one.

“We'll see who kicks the shit out of who, you arrogant asshole,” she shouted. “I don't know if you've noticed, you tweedy little buffoon, but I'm the one that's winning this fight so far.” In a paroxysm of righteous anger, she wound up and threw the paperweight as hard as she could directly at Cox's head.

Cox dove to the floor. The Constitution paperweight flew past him and smashed through the screen on his computer.

Downstairs, meanwhile, Michaelson and Marjorie were preparing to confront the apartment's security guard, who was running toward the lobby door without offering any evidence of cooperative intentions. He turned a lever lock and jerked the door open.

“Let me explain,” Michaelson said rapidly.

“You're creating a disturbance,” the guard said simultaneously, “and you'll have to—” He stopped in mid threat. His mouth opened. “Mr. Michaelson,” he said then. “I haven't seen you for over ten years.”

“What a pleasant surprise,” Michaelson said, managing a smile. “Marjorie, allow me to introduce Lance Corporal Walter Sedgwick, United States Marine Corps, late of the security detail responsible for a near eastern embassy that I had the honor to serve in as deputy chief of mission. Corporal Sedgwick, Ms. Marjorie Randolph, of the Virginia Randolphs, proprietress of what is far and away the best bookstore in Washington.”

Sedgwick seemed unsure whether to salute or shake hands, his confusion compounded by the fact that the can of Mace he had pulled from his belt and was still holding would have complicated either activity.

“We heard a woman call for help from Room 814,” Michaelson said. “Perhaps in view of the urgency of the situation we could cut the formalities short and proceed directly there.”

“Yessir,” Sedgwick responded. He admitted them and set off at a run for the elevators.

In Cox's apartment, meanwhile, the protagonists had clinched but it wasn't altogether clear who had caught whom. Cox was indeed bigger and stronger than Wendy, which gave the punches he was landing on her rib cage telling effect. On the other hand, Wendy's teeth were harder than his right ear lobe, which was now between them and would soon be perforated by them. He pinned both of her arms with one of his and he periodically lifted her off the ground, but this didn't keep her from flailing with her knees and feet, to the acute disadvantage of his shins and thighs.

When Sedgwick opened the door, his first thought was that the couple before him was dancing, in pretty much the usual way, to the overture from the rock opera
Tommy
that was at the moment blaring from two speakers in the apartment. A second glance, however, convinced him that the situation was more serious.

“All right!” he barked in tones that easily overrode the music. “That's enough!”

Michaelson stepped into the room, crossed to the stereo equipment, and turned the amplifier off. The sudden absence of noise was for a moment startling.

“He threatened to kill me,” Wendy said.

“I can explain,” Cox said.

“What a sight this place is,” Marjorie said.

“I'd better call the police,” Sedgwick said.

“Wait a minute,” Michaelson said. “Please.”

Everyone looked at him, as if sobered by the injection of civility. “Corporal Sedgwick, I would appreciate it very much if you would hold off on calling the police for the moment. Marjorie, would you please escort Ms. Gardner to the bathroom and help her into something more suitable to the circumstances. Mr. Cox, you and I have some talking to do, and we have to do it very quickly.”

***

“When are you going to let me out?” Wendy demanded of Marjorie ten minutes later when she was still closed in the bathroom.

“As soon as I get these last little bits of ear lobe out from between your front teeth, dear. Young ladies of your station shouldn't go about with human flesh between their teeth.”

“Would someone at least tell me what's going on? I deserve that much.”

“If I gave you what you deserve,
cherie
,” Marjorie said matter of factly, “you wouldn't sit down for a week. Fortunately for both of us, I have neither the authority nor the energy for such an ambitious undertaking. But don't press me too far.”

***

“Mr. Cox,” Michaelson was saying at about the same time, “you are going to prison. You can go to prison for the nonviolent crime of corruption in office, or you can go to prison for kidnapping, attempted murder and whatever the legal term for beating a woman half your size is. I leave it to you to decide which of these alternatives is likely to have less insalubrious consequences for you.”

“What are you getting at?”

“I want to walk out of here with all the knowledge and documentary information you have concerning compromising relations between an individual named Gunderson and persons associated in any way with the United States Congress. In exchange, I will give you until 1:30 tomorrow afternoon before I report what I know to the authorities. I suggest that you use the time not for flight but to consult an attorney, have him get in touch with the appropriate government personnel, and cut the best deal he can for you. If you come across with everything you know, I will try to persuade Ms. Gardner not to press charges on the basis of tonight's activities.”

“How much time do I have to think it over?”

The bathroom door opened. Marjorie and Wendy came out.

“None,” Michaelson said. “Yes or no.”

“You win,” Cox sighed.

***

It didn't take long. Forty-five minutes later, Michaelson, Wendy and Marjorie were back in the lobby, where Sedgwick had promised them a reasonably private telephone.

“Who do you want to call?” Wendy asked.

“Stevens,” Michaelson said. “We need Billikin's cooperation in the long run, but we need Stevens' cooperation in the next twelve hours. The operative principle is first things first.”

“Why is Stevens going to cooperate with us?”

“Mr. Stevens is going to cooperate,” Marjorie explained primly, “because by cooperating he is going to get an opportunity to shove the solution to this crime down the collective throat of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and make them like it.”

“Precisely,” Michaelson said.