Washington Deceased (8 page)

“Thank you,” Michaelson said as he stood up from the desk in the Building Security Office that Grissom had appropriated. “By the way. Do you have any explanation as to why no fingerprints were found on the apparent murder weapon?”

The thick-set, blue-eyed man looked up quickly.

“Your question assumes that no prints were found. I haven't said that that was the case.”

“No, you haven't,” Michaelson agreed. “On the other hand, you haven't asked to take my fingerprints or Ms. Gardner's, as you certainly would have done had you found anything on the gun.”

“I'm not saying we did and I'm not saying we didn't,” Grissom said. “But if we didn't, I'd guess it's because whoever did the shooting was wearing gloves at the time.”

“Thank you again,” Michaelson said. “Most illuminating.”

***

“I wish we'd looked around the cottage more when we had the chance,” Wendy said, dully and without real conviction, mostly to break the stiff silence she and Michaelson had ridden in for the first twenty minutes after leaving Fritchieburg.

“I don't think the FBI will miss much that we would have seen,” Michaelson answered, then shook his head in irritation at his own peevishness.

Michaelson wondered why he hadn't told Wendy the first time she asked how his finger had been maimed. Bad form. No better answer than that. Just wasn't done. In the Foreign Service, everyone knew about that kind of thing and no one talked about it.

“This won't do,” Michaelson said, mostly to himself.

He exited from the highway immediately after a white-on-blue sign that promised Food, accompanied by a drawing of a knife and fork for the benefit of any drivers whose verbal skills were unequal to that syllable. Wendy looked at him in surprise. Pulling into the drive-through lane of a McDonalds, he stopped at the window, ordered two black coffees and handed them to Wendy. Instead of heading back for the highway, he circled to the rear of the parking lot and backed the car into a space.

“We can talk freely here,” Michaelson said.

“About what?”

“Anything at all. You can cry here, for example, if you feel like it. It won't bother me. If it would embarrass you to weep in front of me, you should feel free to go to the ladies' room and get your crying done there. But if you are going to cry, or remonstrate with me, or curse in frustration, or bemoan the situation on general principles, or do anything else essentially unproductive, please get it over with so that we can start to work. We have a lot to do and not much time to do it in.”

Wendy stared at him in silence for a few moments. Steam from her coffee curled up in front of her face.

“I'm not going to cry,” she said then.

“So much the better. Now then—”

“What are you so cranky about all of a sudden?”

“I hope I'm not cranky. I am a bit impatient. There's a difference, you know.”

Another quiet moment passed while Wendy digested the surmise that Michaelson was through talking to her like an indulgent uncle addressing a spoiled but adorable niece. That was what she got, she supposed, for telling him to stop patronizing her.

“You're right,” she said after the three-second silence. “I'm sorry. I should be as impatient as you are. I know perfectly well that my father is incapable of killing someone—but everyone back there at that prison is absolutely certain that he murdered Tony Martinelli.”

Michaelson's face softened. He took a sip of his coffee.

“Back at the prison,” he said, “you told me that you wanted me to be completely honest with you, give you the whole story on everything I told you. Did you really mean that, or was that just for the record? Think before you answer.”

“I meant it,” Wendy said without taking an instant to think about the question. “I meant it exactly the way I said it.”

“Very well then. In that case, I'll tell you that in my judgment what you just said is wrong on both counts.”

“What do you mean?”

“First, I know Senator Gardner in many ways much better than you do. You know him as your father. I know him as a creature of Washington. I assure you that he is perfectly capable of killing a human being—and of doing so in cold blood and without a flicker of remorse.”

“All right,” Wendy said, keeping her voice low in an effort to control it. After all, she'd asked for it.

“Second,” Michaelson continued, “while the gentlemen back at the prison no doubt suspect your father very strongly, it's clear that they are far from certain about his guilt.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because if they were certain that your father killed Sweet Tony Martinelli, he would have left the Honor Cottage in handcuffs—and you and I might well have left it the same way.”

Chapter Eleven

“Have you ever read
The Inspector General
by Gogol?” Michaelson asked.

“I doubt it. Is it in Cliff's Notes?”

“I'm not entirely sure. There was a movie made of it many years ago, though. Starring Danny Kaye, I believe.”

“I must've missed it.”

“Pity,” Michaelson murmured.

He reached up to the dashboard of his Omni, where a plain cheeseburger and a plain hamburger rested on the paper sack he had flattened there. He and Wendy had finished their coffee before they had finished talking about what Michaelson wanted to cover, so Michaelson had made an excursion on foot back to the McDonalds whose parking lot they were using. He took the top half of the plain hamburger bun off and replaced it with the entirety of the plain cheeseburger.

“Why did you order something that had to be specially grilled?” she asked. “Doesn't that defeat the purpose of going to a fast food place?”

“At a place like this I always order something that I know hasn't been prepared in advance, so that I can be sure they'll have to put it together and cook it on the spot. It comes out hot and marginally less homogenous than the standard-issue stuff.”

“Oh,” Wendy said. “Why did you ask me if I'd read
The Inspector General
?”

“I think it explains why F. Whitmore Stevens was so accommodating to us back at the prison earlier today.”

“How about if you explain it to me then?” Wendy proposed.

“Fair enough. In
The Inspector General
, the corrupt officials in a nineteenth century provincial Russian village get word that the Czar's inspector general is making his rounds, investigating abuses and hanging and flogging corrupt officials. They realize that when he hits their village they'll have to do everything they can to convince him that things are shipshape. About this time, a vagabond wanders into town. The officials believe that he's the inspector general in disguise. They proceed to fall all over themselves treating him like a prince.”

“I don't understand yet.”

“You and I, in perfect good faith, went to Fritchieburg as ordinary citizens interested in visiting an inmate we knew. Warden Stevens, however, apparently concluded that this was a clever disguise, and that we were secretly there in another capacity.”

“Why do you say that?” Wendy demanded.

“Because he took more than an hour out of his busy day to escort us around his domain and otherwise shower attention on us. He could have had only two possible purposes for doing this. One: to impress us. Two: to figure out what we were up to.”

“I give up. What were we up to?”

“Nothing. But the more we assured people we weren't up to anything other than visiting your father purely as private citizens, the more persuaded he was that we must have been playing a deeper game.”

“Like what?”

“Like spying on the Department of Justice.”

“Spying for who?” asked Wendy, for whom the objective case was as much a mystery as the masterpieces of Russian literature.

“The Department of State. Or, conceivably, the White House.”

“But why would our government spy on itself?”

“To find things out.”

“Well, obviously,” Wendy sputtered. “But why—”

“Why create a cover story for a confidential emissary instead of just having someone on the President's staff or the Secretary of State's pick up the phone, call the Attorney General, and ask him whatever his or her boss wants to know?”

“Yeah.”

“Because what they want to find out is something they can't reasonably expect to learn in that way. If the Secretary of State's staff makes that phone call, the response will be the bureaucratic equivalent of Go to Hell. If the President's staff makes it, the response will be evasion, delay and obfuscation.”

“Why?” Wendy insisted.

“Ms. Gardner, you have just put your finger right on it. Why indeed?”

“I don't know.”

“Nor do I. But there are possible reasons we could speculate about.”

“Like what?”

“One: The information relates to an investigation that the Justice Department is afraid might be squelched for political reasons if word of it leaks out before enough evidence is assembled—an investigation of powerful congressmen in the same party as the administration, for example. Two: Someone is acting beyond his authority and wants to cover his tracks until it's too late to do anything about it. Three: Something embarassing has happened—something that you wouldn't want to see above the fold on the front page of the
Washington Post
. Four: Someone has made a deal that he suspects might not stand up very well to public scrutiny.”

“Wow.”

“A palindromic reaction not entirely inappropriate under the circumstances.”

“You're making fun of me,” Wendy said, her eyes suddenly blazing.

“You're right. I am and I shouldn't be. I apologize.”

“Okay,” she said then, instantly mollified. “But even assuming that there's something like that that someone in the Justice Department is worried about, why would Stevens think that we were the ones looking into it, rather than any other people who visit out there?”

“Good question. I know of no obvious answer. We have two clues. One: We came out to see your father. Two: My background is with the State Department and I'm reputed to have contacts in the offices of the executive branch that deal with foreign affairs and national security.”

Wendy shook her head. Half of her Big Mac lay untouched and stone cold on a napkin unfolded over her lap.

“This is getting heavy,” she averred.

“In more ways than one. All the more reason to get to work.”

“Fine.” Wendy's face snapped around and looked directly at Michaelson. “Where do we start?”

“We start by driving back to Washington and getting a good night's sleep. First thing tomorrow morning I have an appointment to see some gentlemen at the Department of Justice. I've begun to look forward to the meeting.”

“What do I do?”

“You work on the number 3096.”

“Where did 3096 come from?”

“That was the number printed on the bottom margin of the picture of that equestrian yuppie in Martinelli's room.”

“Okay,” Wendy nodded. “What do I do with it?”

“I'm not sure. I suppose it could be a dozen different things: a code, the last four digits of a phone number, the numerical part of a street address, a price, some kind of oblique time-and-date reference or something else.”

“If it's a code, can we break it?”

“Not with only four characters.” Michaelson looked through the windshield while he chewed mechanically for a few moments. “We have to start somewhere,” he said then. “Let's assume it's a phone number.”

“Why assume that?”

“It's the most plausible of the possibilities I've thought of so far. No better reason.”

“Why would someone write down just the last four digits of a phone number?”

“Because he was confident he could remember the first three but not all seven, and because he didn't want it to be instantly recognizable as a phone number if someone else saw it.”

“Okay.” Wendy looked dubious. “What do I do?”

“Get yourself ten dollars worth of quarters. Find a public phone. Start dialing that number, preceded by every three-digit prefix used in Washington and the surrounding area. When you get an answer, say that your're trying to find Tony and make a careful record of what the person you're talking to says.”

“Is that all?” Wendy asked sarcastically.

“No. After you've done that, go to the main branch of the public library and ask to see the City Directory.”

“What's the City Directory?”

“It's sort of a reverse phone book. Find an address for every phone number in this area that ends in 3096.”

“All right.” Wendy released a little explosion of breath. “Anything else?”

“A couple of things. One: While you're doing this, don't under any circumstances give your name, or address, or a phone number where you can be reached. Two: Don't try to contact me, especially at Brookings. Go to Cavalier Books on Massachusetts Avenue. I'll try to check in there at noon and four.”

Wendy waited for a moment to see whether Michaelson would go on. The abrupt transition from schoolgirl-being-patted-on-the-head to subordinate getting precise instructions that were supposed to be unquestioningly obeyed had taken her a bit by surprise.

“Are you serious?” she asked, locking her blue eyes on his dark ones.

“Perfectly, Ms. Gardner,” Michaelson said.

Chapter Twelve

“Mr. Michaelson, the United States Department of Justice takes an extremely dim view of people being murdered while in federal custody.”

“An attitude shared by citizens and taxpayers,” Michaelson assured the round-faced, flat-nosed man behind the desk. “At least by this one.”

“If there's anything you'd feel comfortable telling me that might shed some light on the apparent murder at Honor Cottage B-4 that coincided with your presence at Fritchieburg, you'll find me most attentive.”

“
Apparent
murder?” Michaelson asked softly, raising his eyebrows. “Surely you've ruled out the possibility that Mr. Martinelli died of natural causes?”

“Lawyerly reflex,” the man said, shrugging. The other two men in the room smiled tolerantly.

The man behind the desk was about Michaelson's age. His salt-and-pepper hair was thinning. His brown eyes still glinted with the pugnacious
joie de guerre
of a career trial lawyer, even though it had been twenty years since he'd last addressed a jury. He was the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division at the Justice Department. His name was Frank Halloran.

Michaelson was sitting in a maroon leather mate's chair in front of Halloran's desk. A yard or so away from Michaelson in a matching mate's chair sat an intense, thin-faced, brown-haired man in his early forties named Martin Billikin. He was in charge of the office responsible for prosecuting white collar crime—“crime in the suites,” as it had come to be called. He was scowling.

Michaelson's appointment this morning had been with Billikin. When he had presented himself at the Justice Department, however, he had discovered that the conference had been expanded to include Halloran. Some wag once said that the Justice Department's White Collar Crime Office exists so that the graduates of Notre Dame Law School can keep an eye on the graduates of Harvard Law School. Billikin's manner suggested that he took that bromide rather seriously.

The last man in the room was in his mid-twenties. Halloran's introduction of the man had been perfunctory, and only five minutes later Michaelson no longer remembered his name. He sat on a nondescript couch against the inside wall of the office. He was writing furiously on a legal pad resting on his lap. He was the only one in the room taking notes.

This younger fellow's job, Michaelson surmised, was to prepare a Memorandum of Conference—memcon in the jargon. When the meeting was over he'd go back to his desk and draft what would amount to minutes of the session. Halloran and Billikin would review and revise the draft and when a version they were happy with had emerged that version would go into a file somewhere. Or, more likely, several files.

Why a memcon? Michaelson wondered. Why not a tape-recording or a stenographic transcript? Because those would be verbatim, he concluded. The memcon wouldn't. The memcon's version of the opening exchange between Halloran and Michaelson, for example, would read something like, “Mr. Halloran commented on the gravity of the situation represented by an inmate's violent death in federal custody. Mr. Michaelson said that he recognized this.”

“One thing I can certainly tell you,” Michaelson said to Halloran, “is what I made this appointment to talk with Mr. Billikin about in the first place, before yesterday's unfortunate events.”

“And that is what?” Halloran asked.

“The United States Attorney from former Senator Gardner's home state sent someone out to see Gardner not long ago. This person intimated that unless Gardner agreed to provide information about an unspecified and rather vague matter perhaps involving corrupt congressional dealings on a sugar-quota bill—although even that much is inference—the U.S. Attorney's office would oppose Gardner's soon-to-be-pending application for parole.”

Halloran glanced at Billikin. Billikin said nothing, and the slight twitch in his facial muscles was indecipherable to Michaelson.

“No approach of that kind has been authorized by Washington,” Halloran said. By Washington Halloran meant himself. “If some local U.S. Attorney is trying to manufacture a criminal investigation in an area as sensitive as that, he will either show us that he has something very tangible to go on or he'll get sat on.”

“
If
?” Michaelson asked. “You mean he could be doing something like that without your knowing about it?”

Halloran nodded, without bothering to shrug.

“U.S. Attorneys aren't part of the professional civil service. They're political appointees, named by the President on the advice and consent of the Senate. They range from political hacks with delusions of grandeur to the cream of the local trial bar, serving out of a sense of civic duty. To a large extent, unless they screw up, they can run their own shops.”

“I suppose one of them in the political hack category might believe that breaking a messy congressional scandal wouldn't hurt him in a later race for elective office.”

“It's been done,” Halloran conceded. “It's not the easiest way to get a political career started, but for a lot of guys it could be the only way.”

“You know,” Michaelson said then, “I can't help thinking that it's a bit too much to believe that the overture by the U.S. Attorney that Gardner described was a complete shot in the dark. It seems to me that he must have had some reason to hope that his approach would bear fruit.”

“Is that a question?” Halloran said, smiling.

“No, I guess it isn't. But if there's something you'd feel comfortable telling me that might shed some light on the apparent anomaly, you'll find me most attentive.”

“That sounds vaguely familiar.”

“Why not? After all, it worked for you,” Michaelson observed.

“That remains to be seen. I'll say this much: Anyone in Washington who says that the office he or she runs is leak-proof is either a liar or a fool. But the Criminal Division of the Justice Department is a lot closer to watertight than most of the outfits in this town. If anyone here told some cracker-barrel crimebuster out in the boonies about an investigation implicating congressional corruption, he'd find his ass over at the Environmental Protection Agency litigating toxic waste dumps in North Dakota in January so goddamn fast he wouldn't know what hit him.” (In the memcon, this would come out, “Mr. Halloran said that unauthorized disclosure of information concerning the fact or substance of possible investigations involving other branches of the government would be viewed as a matter of the gravest concern.”)

“I see. So, obviously, if your boldest subordinates wouldn't tell something like that to a Presidentially appointed United States Attorney, you're certainly not going to tell it to me.”

“That is correct.”

“There is one other thing I can tell you,” Michaelson said. “I was reluctant to do so at first. When you hear what it is, you'll appreciate my reticence.”

“I can hardly wait.”

“I've decided to mention it because, after thinking the events of yesterday over carefully, it has become quite clear to me that former Senator Gardner is certainly not the one who killed Mr. Martinelli. Fortified by that certainty, I will advise you that Gardner regarded Mr. Martinelli's assignment to Fritchieburg in general and Honor Cottage B-4 in particular as extremely odd, and felt that Mr. Martinelli represented a threat to Gardner's own safety.”

“What was his theory?” Halloran asked, his expression suggesting only the mildest interest.

“I don't know that he had worked out the details with any degree of rigor. I suppose one sinister interpretation would be that Martinelli might be there to frighten him so badly that he'd run to the authorities and beg them—that is to say, you—to listen to everything he knew about corrupt bargains in Congress.”

“Do you believe that?”

“As a matter of fact I don't.”

“Good. Because it isn't true.”

“At the same time,” Michaelson added, “I must say that Martinelli did seem to me to be stunningly out of place at Honor Cottage B-4.”

Halloran paused for a moment before he responded. The youngest lawyer's blue Bic pen scribbled over the top page on his legal pad, clearly audible in the otherwise quiet room. Then Halloran spoke in a blunt, emphatic voice.

“Anthony Martinelli was assigned to the minimum security facility at Fritchieburg, and once there was assigned to Honor Cottage B-4, in accordance with sound policy properly applied. You have to understand, Mr. Michaelson, that since you are here in a non-official capacity there are certain things that I simply can't tell you.”

“I have been made to understand that quite clearly.”

“Anything that's a matter of public record, of course, is a different story.”

You're getting old, Michaelson, the former FSO told himself. The man shouldn't have to draw you a picture.

“Public record,” he said out loud, “The file relating to the late Mr. Martinelli's latest scrape with the law falls in that category, I take it?”

“The portion of it filed in court certainly does.” Halloran nodded at Billikin. Expressionlessly, Billikin produced from his briefcase a thin, legal-sized file in a brown, top-hinged cover. On the face of the cover was a typed label reading,
United States of America
v.
Anthony Martinelli
, Case No. 90-Cr-2402, United States District Court, Southern District of Florida.

Michaelson opened the cover. The material in the file was in reverse chronological order. Each item had a numbered tab on the margin. A typed table of contents was on top.

Michaelson glanced at the table of contents. The indictment showed up at tab 7. Michaelson knew nothing about criminal procedure, and was therefore puzzled. He looked more closely at the table of contents. Tabs 1 through 6 appeared to be identified as grand jury subpoenas
duces tecum
, addressed to different people. Beware of lawyers speaking Latin, he thought despairingly. No, wait. Buried in the middle of the subpoenas, tab 4, was something else. At least it didn't say subpoena. It said IDR.

Michaelson turned to tab 4. Printed in boldface across the top of the page was interdepartmental document request. This particular IDR was one page long. It had gone from the Department of Justice to the Department of State. Michaelson spent forty-five seconds reading its text. It seemed like a very long forty-five seconds.

He closed the cover and handed the file back to Billikin.

“Is there any way that I could have a copy made of that file?” he asked Halloran. “At my expense, of course.”

“Certainly there is,” Halloran said. “Just file a request with the Freedom of Information Act officer on the first floor. We're usually able to respond within three weeks.”

Michaelson smiled and stood up.

“Thank you very much for your time,” he said.

***

Twelve minutes later Michaelson was wondering rather petulantly whatever had happened to soda fountains in drug stores. That used to be what a drugstore
was
: a place with a soda fountain that incidentally sold aspirin and several other things. Yet, on ducking into the first Peoples Drugstore he had come upon after leaving the Justice Department building, he had found no counter or tables to sit at while writing and, worse, no napkins to write on.

So he made do. He snatched a paperback at random from the bookrack, walked determinedly to the first available horizontal surface—it happened to be the camera and electronics counter—and began writing on the inside of the paperback's back cover. When he was through, some fifteen minutes later, he had reproduced the substance of the six categories of documents listed on the IDR he had seen for forty-five seconds in Halloran's office:

1. 1.
   Manifest of the ocean-going merchant vessel Cracow, MV [several digits], for a voyage taking place between February 10th and May 17th two years before;
   
2. 2.
   Demurrage certificates for the same vessel over the same time-period;
   
3. 3.
   International uniform straight bill of lading issued by Tracomex Corporacion, Tampico, Mexico on or about May 1st two years before covering a shipment to New Orleans, Louisiana, USA;
   
4. 4.
   Warehouse receipt no. T/M [several digits] brokered by Coudert Freres, New York City, during the period from April 25th to April 30th two years before;
   
5. 5.
   Letter of Credit No. [several digits] in the amount of $18,203,500 (U.S.), issued by the Mexican National Bank, Mexico City, for the account of Planters & Traders Parish Brokerage, New Orleans, payable upon presentation of specified documentation to GUMCO; and
   
6. 6.
   A photograph of the
   Cracow
   riding at anchor at Tampico Roads, off the coast of Mexico.
   

When Michaelson had finished writing, he relaxed and straightened up. He noticed that a security guard and two cashiers were eyeing him rather warily, as if they expected him at any moment to begin declaiming about the wages of sin or the Fourth International. Michaelson was neither offended nor, upon reflection, surprised by this. It
did
look a bit peculiar, he supposed, to see someone go into a public place and spend a quarter of an hour beavering away at something in the back of a paperback book as if he were struggling with a piece of Talmudic exegesis.

Squaring his shoulders, he walked with immense dignity to the nearer cash register. Solemnly, he presented the book to the cashier and tendered $3.47 in payment for it. The cashier completed the transaction, looking Michaelson up and down uncertainly as she did so. She slipped the book into a sack and gave it to him. He imagined that he heard a collective sigh of relief when he finally walked out of the store.