Washington Deceased (6 page)

“That's right.”

“Well,” Michaelson said, “it's not a theory I'd reject out of hand. I'll make some phone calls and see what I can find out. If it's just a self-important political hack trying to make mischief, I should be able to track down someone who can sort it out.”

“I appreciate that, Dick. I really do.”

“I'm happy to do it.”

“There's something else,” Gardner said then.

“Yes. Wendy said that you thought you might be at risk in some way. Physical risk.”

“That's right. I—” Gardner stopped abruptly and began striding toward the door. “Look. Do you mind if we get out of here for a bit, go out and talk on the lawn?”

“Lead the way,” Michaelson said.

“I know what you're thinking,” Gardner said, glancing over his shoulder as he stepped through his door. “This isn't a prison, it's a country club, and it's a little bit priggish to act claustrophobic about it.”

“Not—” Michaelson began.

“I don't blame you. All I can say is, I don't care what it looks like from the outside, it's still a prison. It's not a country club. If I get turned down for parole in two months, I have to wait at least six months before I can be considered again. The thought of spending that much more time in here makes me feel like there's something very unpleasant crawling around my insides.”

Chapter Seven

There were two ways out of the building from Gardner's room. Gardner chose the one that didn't go past the Building Security Office, with its succession of bottlenecks and the petty aggravation of CO-2 Smith's personal scrutiny.

He led them to the basement and then, just past the Supply Room, down an intersecting hallway that led to an outside door. They walked up metal steps to the lawn. Gardner's pace slowed at this point, and they proceeded at a sedate stroll around the back of the building to the other side.

“Generally speaking, you get a particular kind of inmate in a place like this, particular kinds of crimes,” Gardner said. He pointed out Squires and Lanier playing tennis. “Take those two guys for example.”

“I'd say that they don't exactly look like burglars, but I don't really know what burglars look like,” Michaelson said.

“They're not burglars, that's for sure. Squires was a lawyer. He signed on with a big firm and two years later they'd told him to take a hike, because he's not a can do kind of guy. So, he opened his own shop, scrapped around, and one fine day a new client called him. The client said he had this little problem with some money he was a little nervous about. Could Squires solve this problem? Can do, said Squires, who'd learned his lesson. Now he's doing time. You see what I'm driving at?”

“No,” Michaelson said.

“Or take Lanier. Lanier was a computer software designer and programmer. It was the perfect job for him. He's basically a propeller head who'd love to spend twenty hours a day playing with a keyboard, and he found a company that'd not only let him do that but paid him for it. Unfortunately for him, he got a dream.”

“It must have been an expensive dream,” Michaelson commented.

“In more ways than one. He thought he'd figured out how to write a program that would translate the human voice directly into type. You know, you dictate into one end and a memo comes out the other.”

“It sounds like the kind of thing that could put his children through college all right,” Michaelson said.

“Problem was, he needed about two million dollars to go from concept to prototype. He couldn't interest anyone else, so one night he cranked up his Hewlett Packard, infiltrated a ledger six states away, and authorized himself his own little R & D budget. He ran through about six hundred thousand dollars before he got caught, and all he had to show for it was a lot of chips and circuit boards that didn't have a hell of a lot of other applications. The judge said he could have three years to think things over.”

“All right,” Michaelson said.

“Then we have Stepanski,” Gardner remarked, nodding toward a muscular, smiling, curly-haired man playing basketball with Banich. “He and his twin brother and their little brother all went to Nam together. They stuck together and came through okay. Back in New Orleans they started a little construction business.

“Then someone passed the word that a certain percentage of the city and parish construction projects have to go to minority-owned businesses. Larry Stepanski set up his janitor, who's black, with his own construction company on paper. That company got its share of the minority set asides. It subcontracted the work to Stepanski Construction. Everyone got a cut. Everyone was happy.”

“I had no idea that kind of thing was a federal crime,” Michaelson said.

“It's not a crime, it's a loophole. Everyone knew exactly what was going on. The local officials had nice minority business numbers to send to Washington. The bureaucrats in Washington had nice results to report to Congress when appropriation time came.”

“Then why is Mr. Stepanski in prison?”

“Time passed. Stepanski's twin brother died. Of AIDS. Stepanski hadn't had any idea. He was totally devastated and basically went on a six-month drunk. Meanwhile, interest rates skyrocketed and the baby brother was in over his head. By the time Stepanski pulled himself together, the company needed a lot of cash fast and the only plausible source was a loan shark.

“That left the problem of paying off the loan shark. Then Stepanski heard that his progressive federal government was willing to make loans to minority business enterprises. Stepanski trotted out the janitor, got a loan, and was just about to pay off the shylock when the federal authorities found out what was going on and Stepanski learned that this wasn't quite the same thing as helping local officials massage their community development statistics.”

“So Mr. Stepanski went to prison for attempting to defraud his government?”

“Right. Then there's Banich. He'd been hustling, promoting, looking for a big break all his life. Then one day, some product idea fell in his lap. He was certain he had the next IBM, Xerox and Apple Computer rolled into one. All he needed was a little venture capital, but he couldn't find any capitalists quite that venturesome. So he went to a bank and fudged things a bit on his net worth statement. Unfortunately for him, the bank was insured by the FDIC. If the idea had gone over like he thought it would—sincerely thought it would, now—then he would've paid back the bank and no one'd care about the lies on the net worth statement. But the idea didn't go over and the bank took a hit and Mr. Banich has to serve time behind bars.”

“Who's the gentleman over there?” Michaelson nodded toward McCutcheon, sitting crosslegged on the grass, looking at but not watching the tennis game.

“His name's Tommy McCutcheon. He's owned a bar in Boston for a long time. One year, he couldn't afford to pay his taxes, so he didn't file a return. For six months he waited for the thunderbolt. Nothing happened. Nine months and nothing happened. Twelve months and nothing happened. So he didn't file a return again. Went on for twenty years. Then, finally, a computer burped and he got nailed.”

“You seem to be remarkably conversant with the stories all these men have to tell,” Michaelson commented.

“Gift of gab,” Gardner nodded. “First quality of a politician. I built a career out of making it easy for people to talk to me. Everybody has a story to tell, and everybody's favorite subject is himself.”

“Present company included?” Michaelson asked quietly.

“Excuse me?”

“You have a story to tell, just like all the others. Do you want to tell it to me now?”

Gardner smiled without showing his teeth and shook his head.

“One of the points I wanted to make with this little run-down,” he said, “was that not one of these guys believes that he deserves to be here. None of them deny that they're guilty. None of them say that they didn't do what the government indicted them for. But all of them rationalize it. All of them will say, one way or another, that there's so much other stuff that people get away with that's so much worse than anything they did that it just doesn't make any sense for them to be in prison and the other guys to be on the outside.”

“And do you feel that way too? About yourself, I mean.”

“No,” Gardner answered. “I don't rationalize. I've held onto that much self respect. I committed a crime. I peddled my influence. I betrayed my trust. I compromised my office.”

“Nothing's ever quite as simple as that.”

“Oh, I could make excuses. It wasn't pure venality. The guy had been paying me $250 to $750 a month for several years. For consulting services. And I consulted whenever he wanted me to. He'd ask a question and I'd answer it, on my own stationery, without using any government staff. All open and aboveboard. Perfectly legitimate.”

“But he decided to ask for something more,” Wendy said bitterly.

“That he did. He asked me for a mark-up copy of a pending tax bill twenty-four hours before it was supposed to be made public. I knew it was wrong. I knew it was different from what I'd done before. But I also knew I was trapped. I couldn't do without those checks every month.”

“So you delivered what he asked,” Michaelson said.

“It seemed like such a small thing. I mean, it wasn't like I was selling my vote or anything like that. That's what I told myself. Then I saw Desmond Gardner on that videotape, handing over the big brown envelope with the mark-up bill in it, and getting a little white envelope with his check. I saw that and I realized that I was just as guilty as I could be. I realized I'd really been guilty all those years when I accepted those consulting fees. I was bought and sold without even knowing it. He put me on layaway, and paid for me on the installment plan.”

“All right,” Wendy said. She said it with some vehemence, and Gardner and Michaelson looked quickly at her. “All right,” she repeated, more softly. “But that doesn't mean you should spend one more hour in prison than you ought to just because some lawyer back home thinks you know something you don't know.”

“Amen to that,” Gardner said smiling.

“I'm going to have to excuse myself in a couple of minutes,” Michaelson interjected at that point. “One of the well known infirmities of age. But before I do, I'd like to get back to the point we were about to discuss when we adjourned to here from your room. About your being in danger.”

“Right,” Gardner said. “That was the other point of my little disquisition on what all of my fellow inmates here at Honor Cottage B-4 are doing time for.”

“Forgive my dullness,” Michaelson said, “but what was that other point exactly?”

“There's one inmate I haven't told you about,” Gardner responded. “You see that simian type over there leaning against the backstop on the far side of the tennis court, watching Lanier and Squires play?”

“Yes.”

“That's Sweet Tony Martinelli. He comes from Miami.”

“And why is Mr. Martinelli in prison?”

“I don't know what the technical legal term is, but when I was in Congress we called it labor racketeering. Had a great ring to it that really played well back home…labor racketeering. Martinelli's speciality was persuading union members not to be overly inquisitive about what's happening to their pension funds, and convincing non-union members that it was better not to interfere with illegal work stoppages that got called to shake down employers. He was a thumb breaker. Literally. That was his technique.”

“I imagine it was very persuasive indeed.”

“Now, I'm sure you've picked out the difference between Martinelli and the rest of us here at the Honor Cottage,” Gardner said.

“You mean that you and your fellow inmates are all guilty of white collar crimes—paper crimes, essentially—whereas Mr. Martinelli is a professional perpetrator of violent crimes.”

“Right,” Gardner confirmed. “Violent crimes traditionally associated with what is politely called organized crime, so as not to abrade the sensibilities of ethnic groups that don't like you to call it the mafia.”

“You're suggesting that he's somewhat out of place here.”

“You could say that. You might say that if this really were a country club, we would've blackballed him.”

“In fact,” Michaelson continued, “if I take your point, he is so far out of place here that you suspect his presence must have been procured in irregular fashion and for a reason.”

“That, I'm afraid, is exactly right. If the U.S. Attorney back home thinks I must know something about corrupt dealings in sugar quotas, then whoever was doing the dealing must think I know something about it too.”

“And that person, you fear, may have arranged for Mr. Martinelli to come here to shut you up.”

“That's what I'm afraid of,” Gardner admitted. The bantering tone was gone from his voice. When he turned to face Michaelson, the fear showed plainly on his livid features. “I spent enough time in Washington to learn something about organized crime. Those guys aren't as fastidious as the U.S. Attorneys are. They don't fool around with winks and nudges. They just kill you.”

Chapter Eight

“If I retrace the path we took to get here,” Michaelson asked, “at what point will I reach the vicinity of a men's room?”

“You can't do it that way,” Gardner said. “First, the door we came out of can't be opened from the outside except with a key that I don't have. Second, you have to use the public restroom in the front of the building anyway. Visitors aren't allowed in the inmates' latrine.”

“Then I hope you'll excuse me,” Michaelson said, and strode purposefully toward the front of Honor Cottage B-4.

“I'm glad he's wandered off for a moment,” Wendy said, as soon as Michaelson was out of earshot. “There's something I wanted to ask you.”

“So I gathered,” Gardner said, smiling. “So did he. That's why he invented that little excursion.”

“Was I that obvious?” Wendy asked, blushing as her face softened into a sudden, fetching vulnerability.

“You were transparent, Princess. What's on your mind?”

“Are you sure you can trust him?”

“As sure as you can ever be about anybody. Why?”

“What do you really know about him?”

“I know that he knows the right buttons to push. I know that he can call people all over the senior bureaucracy and get his calls returned. I know that he's willing to help me. What more do I need to know?”

“Why should he be willing to help you?”

“I guess you'd have to ask him to find out for sure. I hoped he'd be willing to help because I did him some favors back when I was still in a position to do favors.”

“They must have been pretty big favors.”

“They weren't, by Washington standards anyway. But I did at least one of them for—for reasons he particularly approved of. Why don't you tell me what your problem with him is, Wendy?”

“I talked to Randy Cox yesterday,” Wendy said then.

“What did Randy have to say?”

“Randy said that Michaelson has his own agenda.”

“I certainly hope he does,” Gardner snorted. “He wouldn't be much use to me if he didn't.”

“I'm not sure I understand.”

“Nobody in Washington's going to give you anything just because you're a nice guy with a lot of years of faithful service recorded in your personnel file. If you want something, you have to be in a position to give something in return, now or later. I needed more than somebody with a name from the past. That's why I asked you to contact someone with his own irons in the fire.”

Wendy shook her head. “It all seems so—so amorphous somehow. Everything about Washington. There's no solidity to it.”

“Smoke and mirrors,” Gardner said, nodding, favoring her with a standard-issue, Washington-insider, I-know-things-you-don't-know expression. “That's the nature of the city. Look, I can't come up with some ontological proof that Michaelson's trustworthy. You've just gotta go with your gut on these things.”

“I'm not going to just fob you off with a lot of qualitative rhetoric, am I?” Gardner asked.

“I hope not.”

“Okay. I first met Dick Michaelson fifteen years ago, when I was still in the House.”

“Was this overseas?”

“Yes. I was on a codel.”

“Codel?”

“Congressional delegation visit overseas. I guess now that I'm out of Congress for good I should just call them junkets, like other taxpayers do.”

“Okay,” Wendy said, returning his ironic smile with one of her own that offered no concession. “Tell me about this junket.”

“Our subcommittee felt that the national interest imperatively required us to inform ourselves about conditions in Bahrain, which is one Islamic country where you can get a scotch and soda or anything else you want, any time of the day or night. On our way to Bahrain, we passed through the country where Dick was in charge of the U.S. mission. While we were there, things got a little out of hand.”

“With the natives or the congressmen?”

“Both, actually, but the immediate concern was the natives. I woke up one morning to find a full-scale riot going on outside the embassy. Huge crowd. Chanting anti-American slogans. Burning the American flag. The whole thing.”

“I don't remember that.”

“You were four years old, safe and sound at home with your mother. The entire incident only lasted about eighteen hours.”

“I bet it seemed like a lot longer to you.”

“It sure did,” Gardner agreed. “Anyway, as soon as I realized what was going on, I rushed to Dick's office. He was standing at the window, looking out at the crowd, talking on the phone. You have the picture?”

“Mm hmm,” Wendy murmured. She enjoyed her father's stories, and she enjoyed the glimpse of the pre-prison Desmond Gardner that shone through when he told one of them.

“Okay. I hurried in. Just as I got there, Dick looked over his shoulder at one of the junior Foreign Service Officers on the embassy staff and said something like, ‘Security Condition Two, Mr. So and so.' He said this like he was telling Mr. So and so what the temperature is outside. Well, this junior FSO announced Security Condition Two over an intercom and instantly all hell broke loose. All of a sudden all these guys were rushing all over the embassy, feeding code books into shredders, dumping files into the fireplace and so forth.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Bad enough. Congressmen don't get hazardous duty pay. I went over to Dick to see if he could give me a rundown on exactly what was happening. I saw that he'd already been hurt and I got even more nervous. Just as I reached his desk, this big rock hit the window he was looking through. Made an incredible racket. My aide was right behind me, and he grabbed me and pulled me down behind the desk. Guess what Dick did.”

“I give up.”

“He looked over his shoulder and said, ‘That's security glass in the window. It'll take a rocket launcher and a twenty millimeter projectile to shatter it.' So my aide was feeling a little sheepish, lying there on top of me with the window still completely intact and Dick still standing completely unruffled in front of it. So the aide said, ‘Suppose they've got something around twenty millimeters out there?' And Dick said, ‘In that case, it won't make any difference whether you duck or not.' ”

Wendy looked at her father for a long moment.

“And based on that little male bonding experience, you trust him?” she asked, cocking one eyebrow. “I'd say it showed he was brave, cool and arrogant. That's not the same thing as trustworthy.”

“What's trustworthy? He gave us the facts without sugarcoating and without melodramatic window dressing. He did it in a situation where he didn't have to and a lot of guys wouldn't have. If you need more than that to trust someone in Washington, then you'll never trust anyone there. Besides, I said that was the first time I met him—not the last time.”

“A coy allusion to—what, exactly?”

“I was on the Joint Intelligence Oversight Committee. I got to know Dick pretty well—well enough to believe in him.”

“Do you know me well enough to tell me why?” Wendy demanded.”

“Sure, but it's the kind of thing that's hard to put into words. It's a feeling that builds up over time, not a logical deduction that you arrive at in a burst of insight.” He sighed briefly as he examined his daughter's skeptical and unyielding expression. “Let me give you one more example.”

“Okay.”

“About five years ago, when Dick had been rotated stateside again, I heard a rumor that a paper in Washington was going to run something embarrassing about one of my aides. Nothing criminal, nothing unethical, nothing involving any wrongdoing, nothing that compromised his efficiency or that anyone had any legitimate interest in knowing. Just a little offbeat taste that the reporter could use to milk a few cheap laughs out of a story on Washington sexual mores.”

“And you had Michaelson try to do something about that?”

“As a matter of fact I did.”

“What did he do?” Wendy asked, finding herself a little edgy about what the answer might turn out to be.

“He sent me a photocopy of an expense voucher that the reporter had submitted seven years before to the Asian American Press Association to cover the cost of a trip to New Caledonia. He sent along a note that said, ‘Never try to buy an American journalist—it's costly enough getting them for free.' ”

“I don't get it.”

“The Asian American Press Association was a vehicle the CIA used to funnel payments to cooperative journalists. Of course, to make the cover credible, they also had to give some money to reporters who had no idea there was any CIA connection and who thought they were just getting an occupational perk.”

“Which category was the repoorter you were worried about in?”

“It didn't make any difference. The CIA wasn't saying and even if it was none of this guy's colleagues would've believed it. If I'd circulated that voucher to half-a-dozen jealous competitors, the reporter would've been stuck with the same kind of unfair, embarrassing story about himself as he was trying to lay on my aide.”

“So what happened?”

“I showed the voucher to the reporter and we arrived at an understanding. My aide's name never showed up in print.”

“And this makes you
trust
Michaelson?”

“It does.”

“Men are incredible.”

“I guess we are.”

“Let's go back to this embassy riot you were talking about,” Wendy said. “You did say Michaelson was hurt when you came in to him the day it happened?”

“Yes. When I got there there was still blood on the sleeve of his coat and one hand was heavily bandaged.”

“Mm hmm.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Look, why don't we talk about something else?”

They talked about something else. They talked about several something elses while minutes slipped by. They didn't notice the tennis game between Squires and Lanier end. They didn't notice Martinelli walk over from where he had been watching, pick up a stray tennis ball, and with unwonted courtesy pop it into the can Lanier held out. They didn't notice the basketball game between Banich and Stepanski conclude. They didn't notice how long Michaelson was taking on what was supposed to have been a trip to the men's room. When Michaelson finally came back, Wendy automatically checked her watch and was astonished to see that it was after eleven o'clock.

“I guess we've been talking a long time,” she said, more or less to Michaelson.

“Understandable,” Michaelson said. “By the way, there's been a mildly interesting development.”

“What's that?”

“The warden of this facility has expressed an interest in giving us a tour of the Administration Building as soon as we're through visiting.”

Wendy and her father exchanged glances. Desmond Gardner smiled briefly.

“What does that mean?” Wendy asked Michaelson.

“I don't know. But it seemed to me that the only way to find out was to say yes, so I did.”

“When is he expecting us?”

“No particular time. The guard here said that he'll call the warden's office as soon as we leave, and the warden will have us picked up at the sector B gate.”

Wendy looked back around at her father.

“I guess we might as well go now,” she said. “The sooner we get moving on this problem the feds have created for you, the sooner we'll have it straightened out.”

Gardner held out his hand. She took it and they started to shake. Then they fell against each other and hugged.

***

“You seem preoccupied,” Michaelson said to her, after they had been waiting in heavy silence for going on five minutes at the sector B gate.

“I guess I am,” she said. She looked away and waited for a moment. Then she added, gesturing with her head toward Honor Cottage B-4, “He trusts you, you know.”

“Yes, I do know.”

“Why are you helping him?”

“Does it matter?”

“I wouldn't have asked the question if it didn't.”

“Excellent point,” Michaelson conceded, nodding at her. “I'm helping your father because one time in the course of our careers he had a choice between advancing his own ambitions and doing something that I asked him to do, with nothing but my word to go on as to why he should do it.”

“What did you ask him to do?”

“To delay service of a congressional subpoena on a subordinate of mine until he could reach a duty station sufficiently remote that his testimony would have to be taken in writing.”

“Why did you ask him to do that?”

“For good and sufficient reason,” Michaelson said evenly. “The point is that your father did it, and did it simply because he believed me when I told him that it would be good for America that it be done.”

“Listen,” Wendy said in a voice suddenly testier and challenging, “do you mind if I ask one thing, as a favor?”

“Not at all.”

“Would you mind very much not bullshitting me anymore?”

Michaelson's wince lasted scarcely a second but Wendy caught it.

“I'm sorry if my profanity offends you,” she said, her tone scarcely suggesting contrition, “but that's the way women talk these days, and I really would appreciate it if you'd—do what I asked.”

“It's vulgarity rather than profanity,” Michaelson commented mildly, “inasmuch as it involves no invocation of the Deity or anything held to be sacred, but merely an expression thought in polite society to be indelicate. In all events—”

“I don't believe this,” Wendy muttered, crossing her arms across her chest.

“—I wasn't wincing at your use of a barnyard obscenity per se, but at your conversion of a very useful Anglo Saxon noun into a verb. I surmise that what I was doing, in your conception, was either lying to you or feeding you a load of bullshit, depending on whether you wished to express yourself concisely or colorfully. The shorthand combination of these two approaches that you resorted to seems to me a compromise that is unhappy from both the grammatical and the rhetorical points of view.”