Washington Deceased (9 page)

Chapter Thirteen

“Hello?”

“Uh…hi. Uh, could I please talk to Tony?”

“Who you wanna talk to?”

“Uh…Tony?”

“No one here nam' Tony.”

“Oh. I must have the wrong number. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“Thass awright.”

Click.

Blip-blip-blip-3096. Ring…Ring…Ring…Ring—

“Hello.”

“Uh…hi. Um, could I talk with Tony please?”

“I'm sorry?”

“Excuse me?”

“To whom do you wish to speak?”

“Uh, Tony.”

“
Tony
?”

“Yeah.”

“I'm sorry, but there is no Tony at this number.”

“Oh.”

“Good day.”

Click.

Blip-blip-blip-3096. Ring…Ring—

“Silver Spring Laundry and Dry Cleaning. Debbie speaking, how may I be of service to you?”

“Uh…hi. I mean, could I talk with Tony?”

“Just a moment and I'll transfer you.”

Ring…Ring…Ring—

“Tony Hansen here.”

“Um, I was trying to reach Tony Martinelli.”

“Who?”

“Tony Martinelli.”

“Never heard of him. Anything I can help you with?”

“Uh…no, thank you.”

Click.

1-blip-blip-blip-3096. Ring…Ring…Ring…Ring…Ring…Ring…Ring…Ring…Ring…Ring.

Click.

1-blip-blip-blip-3096. Ring…Ring…Ring—

“Yeah?”

“Uh, could I talk with Tony please?”

Click.

Wendy decided to review her notes before dialing the phone again. There are seventeen three-digit prefixes used with phone numbers in the District of Columbia. There are six used in northern Virginia. There are eight used in the part of Maryland surrounding D.C. This meant that there were thirty-one phone numbers altogether she had to check.

That seemed like an eminently manageable number. As the morning wore on, however, the chore Michaelson had assigned to her was getting to be a bit of a drag.

Thus far she had reached nine people who had told her that no Tony could be reached at the number she had dialed. She had established that someone named Tony, but not Tony Martinelli, did something at a place called Silver Spring Laundry and Dry Cleaning. She had come upon two numbers that were not in service. She had gotten no answer at four numbers, and no answer but a phone hung up in her ear at another. So she was a little over halfway through, except that she supposed she ought to make a couple of more tries at the no answers.

She sighed and went back to work.

It took her another forty minutes to complete the list. This is a long time to take to dial twelve telephone numbers, plus one more stab each at the numbers where there had been no answer the first time she had called. Considering that the average conversation, when any conversation occurred at all, lasted for no more than thirty seconds, it shouldn't have taken forty minutes to finish the assignment.

The truth was that strictly speaking Wendy didn't spend all of her time working at her task. There was a trip to the Coke machine. There was a visit to the ladies' room. There was a period of about seven minutes in a Designated Smoking Area out in the corridor. And then there were odd intervals spent staring into space, neatly redrawing the chart where she recorded the results of her calls, and otherwise procrastinating. And so it was with a feeling more of relief than of accomplishment that she finally finished.

She folded up her notepad, picked up her purse, and prepared to leave.

“Anything I can do to help?”

This question came from Randy Cox, whose office she was using and who chose this moment to saunter back into it. Wendy had disregarded Michaelson's instructions about using a public phone, preferring the desk and other amenities of a compliant acquaintance. She and Michaelson between them would make two critical mistakes this day, and this was the first one.

“I don't suppose you have a City Directory?” Wendy asked hopefully in response to Cox's question.

“No can do,” Cox said. “That's one thing we don't have here. Anything else?”

“I guess not. Thanks a lot for letting me use your office. It was a major help.”

“Don't worry about that. I saw the paper this morning. Anything I can do to help the senator I'm happy to do.”

“Thanks, Randy. I really mean it.”

“Okay. No problem.”

Wendy smiled at Cox, then circled around his desk toward the door. Cox moved farther into the office to give her room.

“Look, Wendy,” he said as she was about to go out, “do you mind if I ask you something?”

“Sure,” she said, responding impressionistically to the general thrust of what Cox had said rather than to the actual words he had spoken. “Go ahead.”

“What does the senator say happened yesterday?”

“I—that is, we, I mean I haven't had a chance to talk to him since the killing. The inmates were isolated before we were brought back to the B-4 building, and visiting hours were over anyway.”

“So you don't really have any way of knowing what statements any of the inmates have given to the FBI?”

“No.”

“I guess then you're basically just going on what Michaelson says he thinks the situation is?”

“Well, I suppose so, yeah.”

“Wendy, can I make one suggestion?”

“Sure.”

“Why don't you just call the senator and see what he has to say?”

“Randy, what are you trying to tell me?”

“The same thing I told you before. Based on everything I know and what everyone I've talked to says, Michaelson's worried about Michaelson. He's not worried about Desmond Gardner. If he thinks he can help himself by helping the senator he'll do that. But if he thinks he can help himself by burying your dad, he'll do that just as fast. If you think you can trust him, that's your decision. It just seems to me that the senator ought to be calling some of the shots here.”

Wendy dropped what she was carrying back on the desk and used Cox's phone to call Fritchieburg. Honor cottage inmates were permitted to receive personal phone calls between ten and noon, although she wasn't sure what impact a recent homicide in an honor cottage might have on this privilege. When she asked the prison switchboard for Desmond Gardner, a brisk, bureaucratic voice informed her that inmate Gardner wouldn't be accepting any calls except from his lawyer.

Her father's lawyer was Jeff Logan. A call to his number produced the information that he was in court this morning. Did she care to leave a message?

She didn't. There wasn't any message for her to leave. She wrote the number down for future reference on an envelope that she thoughtlessly appropriated from Cox's desk and tucked the envelope into a dogeared copy of a tabloid weekly newspaper that she likewise commandeered. She'd doodled some offhand notes on the newspaper during her phone conversations, and she supposed she shouldn't leave them lying around where anyone wandering casually into Cox's cubicle might notice them.

“Look,” Cox said as she prepared again to leave. “Don't forget what I said, okay? Anything I can do.”

“I'll remember, Randy,” she said. “Thank you.”

She made her way to the street and looked for a cab to take her to the Martin Luther King Jr. Library. It was close to 10:30 in the morning. The total fruit of her labors consisted of a chart showing the results of calls to thirty-one telephone numbers ending in 3096. Diligent effort between now and noon might add an address for each of those numbers. That was what she'd have to show for her first morning's effort at clearing her father of murder.

Chapter Fourteen

Michaelson sat placidly at his desk at Brookings, studying the list of documents that the Department of Justice had asked for from the Department of State in aid of prosecuting the recently deceased Sweet Tony Martinelli. He did this with a commingled sense of controlled excitement and growing satisfaction—something like the feeling you get in the midst of working the Sunday
New York Times
crossword puzzle when you know you're just about to figure out the theme, the leitmotif, the central conceit that will tell you the punning, multiple-word, twenty-seven letter answers to all the clues in quotation marks.

It wasn't that the array of documents conveyed any unambiguous message. The accumulated paper described on the IDR had a broad array of possible meanings. To figure out which of those meanings was the relevant one he'd have to look at the documents themselves.

How could he manage to do that? That, Michaelson was confident, was what was about to come to him.

There was something about the list that was odd—anomalous in the same way that the assignment of a mob enforcer like Martinelli to an honor cottage in a minimum security prison had been anomalous. What was it?

Patiently he read again through the list: a manifest; demurrage certificates; a bill of lading; a warehouse receipt; a letter of credit; a picture of a ship. Except for the photograph, as absolutely undistinguished a collection of ordinary, run-of-the-mill commercial documents as you could imagine. They were utterly common in their very specificity….

That was it. The list was specific, detailed, pinpointed, focussed. Not “all documents arising from or relating to the loading, unloading, carriage, transshipment, sale, lease or other commercial transfer of any and all cargo carried by the merchant vessel
Cracow
, including but not limited to any and all shipping documents, packing slips” and so on. Not, in other words, what lawyers would write if they were on their own. Instead, a small number of particular documents.

Michaelson turned to a clean page on his legal pad. He unlocked the bottom drawer on his desk and pulled out the State Department Personnel Directory—not the one available to the general public but the classified one, the one showing the professional history of each FSO, the one whose distribution is now restricted because the Russians used to use it to spot CIA agents hiding behind State Department titles. What he was looking for was simple: Everyone who had both been in a position to see the documents on the IDR and pay attention to them two years ago, and had been in Washington around the time the IDR was prepared.

By 11:15, he had narrowed his list to five people. He wrote down their names and, opposite each name, the position that person had held two years ago:

1. 1.
   Bruce Simmons, Commercial Attaché, U.S. Embassy, Mexico City
   
2. 2.
   Charles Blair, Legislative Liaison, Western Hemisphere Affairs
   
3. 3.
   Sharon Fleming, Assistant for Commercial Matters to the Counsel for Western Hemisphere Affairs in the Office of Legal Advisor
   
4. 4.
   David Lewis, Desk Officer for Mexico
   
5. 5.
   Cynthia Broder, U.S. Consul, Tampico, Mexico
   

He called Simmons first. Simmons was in a meeting. Michaelson left a message.

He called Blair second. Blair was on another line. Michaelson left a message.

He called Fleming third. Fleming couldn't come to the phone at the—no, wait a minute, Mr. Michaelson, Ms. Fleming says she can take the call.

“Richard, this is a distinct pleasure. What can I do for you?”

“Nice of you to say so, Sharon. Listen, for reasons that I won't bore you with unless you insist, I find myself trying to reconstruct the adventures of a merchant ship called the
Cracow
that was apparently disporting in the Caribbean about two years ago.”

“In a strictly unofficial capacity, of course.”

“Of course. I have no capacities at the moment other than unofficial ones.”

“Right.”

“Anyway, I was wondering if you and I could have a talk about this sometime in the next few days?”

“I don't see why not, Richard. Let's see. How does next Tuesday morning look to you?”

“I'm very flexible, being retired and having so much time on my hands and so forth. Is ten o'clock all right?”

“Fine with me. How's Marjorie?”

“She's fine as far as I know.”

“As far as you know. I'll see you Tuesday at 10:00.”

“Thank you, Sharon.”

“My pleasure, Richard.”

Michaelson wrote Tuesday/10 next to Fleming's name. He had begun to dial Lewis' number when Simmons called back.

“Good morning,” Michaelson said as he punched the button that aborted his own call and put Simmons on.

“Returning your call,” Simmons said. Simmons was all business. Being a commercial attaché tends to do that to people.

“Yes, thank you for doing so. The reason I called is that, bizarre as it may seem, I've acquired an interest in the peregrinations two years ago of the
Cracow
. That's a mer….”

“I'm familiar with the
Cracow
. What can I tell you about it?”

“What would be most helpful,” Michaelson said in a woolly, absent-minded professor kind of way, “would be if I could sit down with you for about twenty minutes and see if you could confirm my own findings.”

“Fine. 7:30 Monday morning.”

“I'll see you then.”

Michaelson wrote Monday/7:30 next to Simmons' name. He dialed Lewis. Mr. Lewis was on another line. Michaelson left a message.

He dialed Broder's number. Ms. Broder was away from her desk. Michaelson left a message.

Michaelson looked at his watch. It was 11:29. He drummed his fingers impatiently on his desk. If you've left a message in the morning, it really isn't good form to try calling again until at least the afternoon. He got up to get some coffee.

The phone rang. It was Broder.

“Thank you for returning my call,” Michaelson began. “I doubt that you remember me. I was just finishing up at Near East and South Asia around the time you were coming on, I believe.”

“We never worked together, but I've certainly heard of you,” Broder told him.

“I'm calling about the
Cracow
.”

“The
Cracow
?”

“Yes,” Michaelson said. “It's a merchant ship, presumably of Polish registry, though that surmise would bear verification. It was plying the Caribbean about two years ago. That's about all I know about it, and for reasons that are honorable but quite mundane I would like to refine and augment that data somewhat.”

“Can you tell me what the honorable but mundane reasons are?”

“Certainly. I'm at Brookings now. One of the younger fellows here is thinking of a monograph on the cost effectiveness of economic subsidies by the Polish government of its merchant marine. I was foolish enough to mention that I might be of help on some of the detail work and I'm afraid he took me up on it.”

“You did warn me that it was mundane, didn't you? I really don't know very much about it. I vaguely remember a ship of that name docking at Tampico—that's in Mexico….”

“Yes.”

“….while I was consul there. Why does that stick in my mind? Anyway, I'm not sure there's much else I could….”

“Ms. Broder, I would find it very helpful if we could sit down face to face and just go over some notes I've made, to see if there's anything I've gotten wrong that you could clear up for me.”

“I don't see any problem with that, although I'm afraid you'll be wasting your time.”

They settled on Tuesday at 11:00.

Shortly after Michaelson hung up, the PBX operator at Brookings rang him to say that a David Lewis had called while Michaelson was on the phone with Cynthia Broder. Michaelson returned Lewis' return of Michaelson's first call. Lewis was on another line. Michaelson's lip thinned slightly—one of the few physical manifestations of frustration that he allowed himself. Would Michaleson care to hold? Michaelson said that he would be happy to.

Seven minutes later, Lewis came on the line.

“Sorry to hold you up, Mr. Michaelson.”

Mister?
Michaelson wondered if the United States was really picking people that young to be desk officers for countries as important as Mexico.

“Call me Richard, please. Mr. Michaelson is what people call my father.”

“What can I do for you?”

“Well, I've put in my time at State and I'm over here at Brookings now, trying to think of ways to make myself useful. I've developed an interest in a merchant ship called the
Cracow
and its Caribbean voyage of about two years ago. I was….”

“That's not a Mexican ship, is it?”

“I don't know, to tell you the truth. The name certainly doesn't suggest it, and the Eastern European countries don't go in very much for flags of convenience, but you can never be sure.”

“The reason I ask is that Mexico has sort of been my bailiwick for the last two tours of duty and that's really the only area where I have any kind of detailed knowledge.”

“The
Cracow
did apparently put in at Tampico during the period I'm interested in.”

“Tampico?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Well, of course, a lot of ships put in at Tampico.”

“I should think they do. The particular ship in which I have an interest is the
Cracow
.”

“Oh.”

“It occurs to me that this topic is perhaps not best discussed over the phone. I wonder if we could meet sometime next week and see what if anything you could add to what I know or substract from what I wrongly think I know.”

“I suppose we could. How does next Friday sound?”

“It sounds fine if that's the best time for you. Tuesday at nine would actually be better for me,” Michaelson said.

“Well…Tuesday. That might be a problem. Better make it Friday.”

“Friday it is. Thank you very much. I'll see you Friday at 9:00.”

That, Michaelson thought as he hung up, should give you plenty of time to check with your boss and find out whether I'm cleared for any intelligence more specific than the fact that a lot of ships put in at Tampico. He noted the date and time of his Lewis appointment on his list.

He checked to see whether there were any more messages for him. There weren't.

He glanced at his watch, 11:54. He had promised Wendy that he'd try to meet her at Cavalier Books around noon. He decided that he was too old to worry about form. He called Charles Blair again.

The phone rang six times. The State Department cafeteria is uncommonly good, as government refectories go, and several steps above the eating establishments within walking distance of the State Department building. Hence, it is usually crowded. As a result, clerical employees who can get away with it tend to sneak off a few minutes early for lunch. It's good to know these things. Just before the seventh ring, Charles Blair answered his own phone.

“Charlie. Dick Michaelson. I gather that the Department has survived my retirement.”

“As much as it survives anything—which is to say, in a rather qualified way.”

Michaelson wondered if he would have ended up talking like that had he gone to Dartmouth.

“Charlie, there's something you can do for me.”

“What's that, Dick?”

“I'm in the private sector now, or what passes for it in Washington, and I don't have a title or a credential that I can throw at people any more to impress them or intimidate them.”

“So you have to rely on your friends.”

“Precisely. I would like, if I may, to speak with you for a few minutes at your convenience about a ship called the
Cracow
and its trading exploits in and around our southern coast about two years ago.”

“You said the
Cracow
is a ship?”

“Yes.”

“That's one of those big things that goes in the water, like the locals are always blowing up over in the Near East?”

“Please don't make fun of me just because I don't fill out FSO efficiency ratings any more,” Michaelson said, his voice still jovial.

“Sorry. Couldn't help it. You're in the right church but you've stumbled into the wrong pew. I'm basically a State Department lobbyist. I talk to congressmen. I know about quorum calls and unanimous consent. Ask me a question about international trade or ships on the high seas and you might as well be asking me about particle physics.”

“You're being far too modest,” Michaelson insisted.

“I'm altogether in earnest. I got roped into a discussion about international commodities trading about two weeks ago, for reasons that I still don't fully understand. Someone said that such and such commodities were fungible. I thought he was talking about baseball.”

“Now, Charlie….”

“You know who you should talk to is Bruce Simmons. He really knows his stuff in that area. I'd just be wasting your time.”

“Why don't you let me be the judge of that?” Michaelson asked, the amiability in his tone now a bit insistent.

“All right, I'll tell you what. For old time's sake, I'll consent to expose my ignorance to you.”

“Thank you.”

“But you're going to have to give me a chance to prepare.”

“Prepare?”

“Just send me a one-page letter identifying the topic—you know, the name of the ship, what was the big deal about it—and saying when you'd like to meet. That'll give me a chance to learn enough that I won't feel like a complete idiot.”

“If you insist.”

“Humor me. Oh, and Dick?”

“Yes?”

“Send a copy of that letter to Milt Daniels, will you?”