Washington Masquerade (13 page)

“We need to talk to him,” Izzy said. “Something is bugging him, something deep inside his memory. Sounds to me that he's blocked something he saw.”

“Stick with him, Izzy.” She looked at her watch. “I'll be back.”

She got to the Four Seasons just as Dolly's white Jaguar pulled up and was taken by the parking valet. She looked harassed, wore no makeup and a kerchief on her head, indicating that her hair was not as well groomed as usual. They embraced.

“I'm so sorry, Fi.”

“I'm here, baby.”

She nodded and they found a deserted spot in a far corner of the lobby. Dolly looked around her furtively, checking out the other people passing through or seated at other places. Obviously nervous, she had the look of a hunted animal.

“It's Phil. He's got a problem. It's making him crazy. He's depressed and very, very upset, not sleeping, not himself.”

She looked around her again. Her voice had sunk to a whisper.

“What is it?”

“He couldn't keep it in. He's not supposed to say, but he told me. You're in it, Fi. Who else could I talk to? Who else can I trust? Phil believes his career is on the line. More than that, he's scared.” She opened her purse and took out a tissue, wiped her tears, and blew her nose.

It's the Burns thing. They want him to… the way he characterizes it… to cook the books.”

“You'll have to be clearer than that, Dolly.”

“I know, I know. What they want….” She drew in a deep breath. “…they want him to find the link between Burns and an assassination threat on the President's life.”

“A link?”

“Actually a hint of a link, as if his shop is looking into the possibility. You know how it works. The media seizes it, and it keeps going until the idea sinks in. You know what I mean, Fi? He's in charge of the Secret Service.”

Fiona studied Dolly's face. Her lips were trembling and her eyes flitting from side to side in terror.

“Is there a hint?”

“That's the point. Phil told me he and his people have combed through every conceivable threat. This is all top secret, really secret. He's not supposed to… he has hinted that there are many, many threats, anonymous letters, calls, e-mails. God knows what, especially in this climate, all hush-hush. People can be awful. Of course, there is a whole host of countermeasures and intelligence. Fi, he does not confide in me about that. These are only assumptions.”

She was clearly defensive, knowing the role of the wife of someone with top-secret clearance on matters too sensitive even to discuss. Fiona was certain Dolly was straddling a fence on this issue. Fiona remained silent, letting her work it out.

Fiona watched as Dolly bit her lips, breathing deeply. She stopped talking abruptly, and her eyes scanned the lobby area fearfully. When she spoke again, Fiona had to lean close to hear.

“I know only one thing, they're making my husband crazy.” She looked around her again, her nostrils dilating as she sucked in a deep breath. Clearly the woman was in the midst of a panic attack. “The problem is, Fi, there is nothing there. No link. Nothing.”

“He told you this?”

She nodded.

“I had to press him, Fi. I went beyond… too far. I'm his wife. I wanted to… I needed to know what was bothering him.” Her whisper was barely audible. “He told me. I now think he believes he has betrayed his trust. He is brooding about it. He acts as if he's caught in a trap. He…”

“Are you saying…?” Fiona interjected suddenly, realizing that she was talking above a whisper. She quickly modulated her voice downward.

“Are you saying that they want him to find a way to manufacture a threat and involve Burns in it?” Bolger's assertion slid into her mind. Did this mean that what they had was true?

“Phil could never… no way. The thing about Phil, Fi—you've known him for a long time, as long as me—one thing he's not is devious. He is a man of high principle and integrity. He couldn't do anything against the grain. You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do,” Fiona acknowledged, remembering again, the awful experience of her first time. Perhaps, that too, was against the grain, some subconscious sense of moral failure. However that event related to the current dilemma, she suspected that Phil could not be a party to a fraud.

“But, Fi, sometimes they twist you so hard….”

Fiona looked into her friend's face, a mirror of her emotional agony.

“Who are
they
?”

“I don't know. They are… well…
they
. I'm making assumptions. They? He was not specific—not the President, he made that clear—people inside, people with intelligence connections and real political clout. Who knows what goes on beneath the surface? I don't want to know. All I know is they… yes,
they
, whoever they are, are making him crazy. You know how it works?
They
make a suggestion. Rumors start that you are not playing with the team, that you're disloyal. Even if it isn't true and you deny it, you're out—career shot, all you worked for gone. Them.” She bent her head back as if she was pointing with her chin. Fiona had no trouble deciphering the gesture. Dolly was imagining her husband caught in a web of paranoia and deceit.

“It's a perfectly logical suspicion, Dolly,” Fiona said soothingly. “I agree that there are lots of shadowy things that take place in the government—people protecting their turf, backbiting, payback, strange mysterious goings-on. I try not to believe in conspiracy theories, but that doesn't mean that there are no people in government capable of indulging themselves in such activities.”

She was reaching for words that might blunt her friend's anxieties, knowing they were hollow and speculative.

“I just don't want to see Phil hurt. You know what I mean? His career ruined by rumor and innuendo or him being forced to lie to some grand jury. There are always grand juries in Washington. Things are getting so ugly.” She paused, looked around her again, visibly frightened. She shook her head.

“Phil says just because he can't find it in his shop, doesn't mean it's not true.”

“Or they know something he doesn't,” Fiona said, yet another strategy to calm Dolly down with some measure of false optimism. There were always eager geeks in government willing to act outside the boundaries for reasons both sinister and virtuous, willing to carry out or advocate disinformation, to further established policy or merely foment trouble for nefarious reasons. Dolly sucked in another deep breath and expelled it as a long sigh.

“Damn! You're the only one I can trust about this, Fi. If Phil knew I was talking to you, he'd throw a fit. I'm violating his trust.” She shook her head and brought out another tissue. She was sobbing now.

“Help Phil through this, Dolly,” Fiona said, feeling deep empathy for her friend's emotional state. “What else can I say? I wish I could be more helpful. Hell, you know that I'm one of the point men on the investigation of Burns' death. Of course, there are ideas about government involvement, rumors, hints, speculations, the usual bullshit. But I can't let these asides unduly influence me. I know they exist. I don't totally ignore them, but in the end we deal in facts, hard facts, Dolly.”

Dolly cast her eyes downwards and shook her head.

“Phil couldn't live with bearing false witness, creating facts that don't exist. Not my Phil.”

“I'm not so sure I could live with it either, Dolly. Or you, as well.”

Fiona continued to study her face, watching her expression. She looked up and their eyes made strong contact.

“I needed this, Fi. I needed you to hear it.”

“I know. Just stay calm. Phil may be overreacting, and you may be overreacting to Phil's dilemma. Sometimes… you remember the old saying: ‘Today is the day you worried about yesterday, and all is well.'”

Dolly smiled for the first time since they had begun their conversation.

“Dumb cliché,” Fiona said.

They stood up and embraced.

“I love you, my great dear friend,” Dolly said, kissing Fiona's cheek.

“And I love you, Dolly. Just hang in there, baby.

“I'll try.”

She disengaged and Fiona watched her move out of the lobby. For a brief moment, her memory shot back to her discussion last night with Larry, who could happily co-exist with hypocrisy. A sudden wave of guilt assailed her.

***

“He goes in and out,” Izzy said when she got back to the hospital. “He's too doped up to make sense—talks about seeing colors in his head, traffic lights, red, yellow, green. The doc says that it's par for the course in head injuries. No point in hanging out here.”

Fiona agreed and they got in the car and sped back to headquarters, which was still swarming with reporters, who they managed to dodge. She debated whether or not to discuss with Izzy what Dolly had told her, finally opting on the side of silence, knowing that there would come a time when she was obliged to enter it into the record.

The Chief was in as worse a mood as she had ever seen him. The ashtray was overflowing. Again they moved to the men's room, which was empty.

“The Mayor was livid, jumping up and down. I asked—no, begged—for more time. Worse, I lied, said we had promising leads. My nose got longer.”

He laughed but it was joyless and hollow. Fiona was sure of the subtext. He did not want his charge, our homicide pew, to look lesser in the eyes of the public and his status-conscious wife. He was on center stage, in the spotlight. At this point, he was the reluctant celebrity hero. Above all, he did not want to look like a puffed-up fraud, just another incompetent black official unable to compete on the white man's playing field, doomed to fail. Perhaps the Mayor, a racial brother, felt the same way, and the Chief was working hard to exploit the emotional leverage to gain the extra time.

She could see his dilemma clearly, now that the case had exploded into the national arena and beyond. He did not want to expand the investigation with all the resultant fanfare, and fail. Nor did he want the Feds to steal his thunder, just in case they found the magic key that unlocked the mystery. An exercise in pure ego, she knew, an opportunity to project himself into the major leagues of law enforcement, and in the process, vindicate himself to the jury of his peers, the Gold Coast black elite. She gave herself an
A
for insight, which changed nothing in the matter of the investigation.

They went over all the obvious aspects of the case, providing Hodges with a detailed overview. Again, she did not interject what Dolly had told her, judging it not to be relevant at the moment, and unwilling under any circumstances to betray a friend's confidence. Not yet. The Chief listened carefully, his eyes narrowing in concentration.

“It's like we're looking in one direction, and everyone else is looking in the other direction.”

“Murder by Presidential proxy,” Izzy said. “The universal conspiracy motive, believed by both the naïve and the sophisticated.”

“That's what they want us to believe,” Fiona said. “Everybody who is anti-President can get his fifteen minutes of fame on television and the Internet. Not much downside for them. Besides, the hit-man idea is sexy, the stuff of movie thrillers. Popular culture trumps all. Suicide is boring.”

“Boring, yes,” Izzy interjected, “also defies logic. Burns was not depressed, apparently, showed no signs—happy home, good daddy to his kids, devoted wife, plenty of dough. In my book, not a chance.”

Fiona and the Chief exchanged glances and nodded in agreement.

“Round and round,” Fiona said. “On the other hand….”

“Is there another hand?” Hodges asked.

Fiona pondered for a moment then speculated aloud.

“Maybe Burns observed, saw, heard something so horrendous, something he uncovered, so life changing that he couldn't bear it, and in the spur of the moment, suddenly a trigger goes off in his head. Outta here, his mind says, get me the hell outta here.”

“It's dramatic,” the Chief said. “I'll give it that.”

“Possible,” Fiona said, “hardly probable, worst of all, unconvincing, unless we discover what this life-changing experience was. Without that, no closure is possible. We go down the hole with Alice in Wonderland.”

“What about the subway driver?”

“Head trauma,” Fiona said.

“Makes no sense, talks about colors. He connects more with his traffic accident than the subway train. Lights changing, red, green, yellow—makes no sense.”

The Chief paced the room. Fiona knew he was deep in cogitation. Someone banged heavily on the door. Hodges paid no attention.

“We've got a pot full of whys and wherefores,” he said, finally stopping his pacing. “Where was he going on the subway?”

He pulled a diagram of the Washington subway system out of his pocket. They gathered round for a better look. He pointed with his finger to the Metro Center station, a hub that connects all the lines.

“He could only have been heading here,” he said, pointing to the Glenmont stop in Maryland, “or here, Greenbelt.”

“Or changing at Fort Totten,” Izzy said, “then going on to the train that goes to Branch Avenue.”

“Everything connects at Metro Center,” Fiona said. “If he was in disguise, he was also confusing any surveillance, going back and forth.”

“Or heading to a specific destination.”

“Which was?” the Chief asked.

Nobody answered the question, nor did they expect it to be answered. Instead they reviewed yet again what they had learned from Mrs. Burns, Jack Perkins, and Charlotte Desmond, the three people who were apparently the closest to Burns. All had alleged that they saw no specific change in Burns' attitude or behavior.

“But he had changed,” Izzy insisted. “He got rid of Charlotte. He begged off his squash games with Perkins and was not fulfilling all his carpooling dates.” Izzy grew silent.