Crack-Up (5 page)

“I’ve heard of it.
 
So what happened?”

“Wasn’t there myself,” Keisha said, “but I’ve debriefed the team on duty.
 
We had Billy Campbell and Jake Dunbar flanking the protectee throughout the dinner.
 
It was Campbell who noticed her first.
 
The waitress, I mean, the assailant.”

“Why’d he notice her?”

“She seemed agitated.
 
Kept mumbling to herself.
 
The other servers were avoiding her too.
 
And her eyes kept throwing daggers at John.
 
So
Campbell
notified
Dunbar
, and they’d just positioned themselves a step closer to the table when the assailant struck.
 
She’d swiped a knife from the veal tray at some point earlier.
 
Dunbar
stopped it.
 
Broke her wrist mid-thrust.
 
John told his guests he’d actually felt the tip of the blade nudge his chest.”

Along the
Potomac River
, running parallel to our right, a crew team sliced its way through fog and water, shouldering their oars in rhythm.
 
My own left shoulder had begun to ache.
 
It always does when I hear bad news.
 
It’s the spot where I’d taken a bullet years before.

“The Helms family use
Treviso
’s a lot?” I said.

“For parties?
 
Yeah.
 
Five times in the past year.”

“Tell me about our assailant.”

“Her name is Sally Anne Bilchik.
 
Caucasian.
 
About five foot three inches tall, and a hundred and twenty pounds.
 
Thirty-four years of age.
 
Lives with her mama in
Friendship
Heights
, near the metro stop on
Wisconsin Ave.
 
Treviso
’s hired her ten weeks ago.”

“Had Sally been to the Helms residence before?”

“Once before, yes.
 
Charity event, about six weeks ago.”

“Nothing odd about her behavior that day?”

“Nothing noted,” Keisha said.

“Cops searched her home and automobile, right?”

“Yeah.
 
There was a big photograph of John Helms in the glove box of her car, and up in her room, they found a few newspaper and magazine clippings about him, and a personal diary, or journal, that makes mention of him half a dozen times.”

“A real under-achiever, as stalkers go.
 
The obsession must not be very old.
 
What else do we know about Sally Anne Bilchik?”

“When the cops executed their search warrant in
Friendship
Heights
last night, I tagged along, and I spoke, briefly, to the mother, and she wasn’t exactly surprised by this turn of events in her daughter’s life.
 
Sally’s a mess.
 
A loser from any angle.
 
High school drop-out.
 
Multiple substance abuser.
 
Botched suicide attempt.
 
Married three times, divorced three times—”

“Hey, now!
 
Watch it!”

“Watch what?” she said.

“Watch what you insinuate about divorced people.”
 
I’m one myself, you see.
 
Twice over.
 
“Maybe she’s just been unlucky in love, like certain others—”

“Ha!
 
You unlucky, Argus?
 
No, you’re just a born first husband is all.
 
Why you think I steered so clear of you—you and your handsome self—all these years?”

I didn’t mention there had been that one night, ten plus years earlier, high up in a hotel room in Miami, during the worst of President Cooper’s re-election campaign, when I was between wives, and hadn’t yet met Sarah, and we’d both had a few drinks and—well, our friendship survived that pleasant evening somehow.

“Go on,” I said through clenched teeth.

Keisha grinned at me, toying with her licorice-like braids, before checking her notes.
 
“Let’s see now . . . Plenty of scrapes with the law over the years, including four convictions.
 
One for domestic assault, two for writing bad checks, and one for possessing met amphetamine.”

“So she’s done time?”

“You bet.
 
Three separate trips to the big house.
 
Once for having her parole revoked.
 
Oh, and her mother says she’s been in and out of mental institutions since she was nineteen years old.”

“What’s the clinical diagnosis?”

“Paranoid schizophrenic.”

This revelation did not strike me as a coincidence, or even as unusual.
 
As I would soon explain to John Helms in person, the mentally ill are common celebrity hounders, harassers, attackers.

John Helms, you should know if you don’t, was more than just a computer industry icon.
 
He was also a symbol of wealth, of globalization, of
America
, of the future.
 
He averaged two death threats a month.

Yet not until Sally Anne Bilchik had anyone carried out an actual attempt on John’s life.
 
So I wasn’t surprised to find him looking wan and pale at the breakfast table.

“Argus, do you think it was just this woman involved?
 
My assailant, I guess you’d say?
 
Or could there be more to it?”

“Relax, John.
 
There isn’t any conspiracy or plot to take your life.
 
We already know this attack was the work of one lone, deranged individual.”

“Good, good.”
 
John pushed back from the table and stood.
 
Lacking his usual color and imposing air, he seemed, in his black Armani suit, like a sheep in wolves’ clothing.

I stepped in front of him.
 
“Don’t worry about your safety, John.
 
I do all the worrying for my clients.
 
I never stop.
 
See all this prematurely gray hair?
 
And my pubes are hardly better.”

John smiled.
 
“I’ll take your word for it.”
 
He gave an affectionate pat to my bad shoulder before stepping to the windows of the pantry.
 
In the backyard, a pair of Presa Canario fighting dogs pranced on the lawn, both leashed to the dog walker, getting their morning exercise.
 
“Why did she do that, Argus?
 
Why did that woman try to kill me?”

I studied John’s burdened profile, thinking,
A close brush with death makes pensive philosophers of us all
.
 
Luckily, the effect rarely lasted for long.
 
“This had nothing to do with you.
 
Your attacker, Sally Anne Bilchik, is mentally ill.”

“Sally Anne Bilchik,” John said, slowly, as if saying her name would help him understand.
 
“What’s wrong with her?”

I grew a tad uncomfortable.
 
“She’s schizophrenic, John.
 
Paranoid schizophrenic, to be precise.
 
I’ve, uh, I’ve had more than a bit of experience dealing with her like.
 
A good number of celebrity stalkers are schizophrenic.”

“What’s wrong with them?”

“Schizophrenia is an organic brain disorder.
 
The first symptoms usually don’t appear until late adolescence or early adulthood.
 
With paranoid schizophrenia, with people like Sally, the most common symptoms are delusions and hallucinations and unfounded feelings of persecution.”

Outside, the Presa Canario fighting dogs neared.
 
Their ugly heads were huge and thick, war helmet-like, mythological Greek monster-like.
 
John turned his gaze from them to me.

“Delusions?
 
Hallucinations?
 
Shouldn’t such people be locked up somewhere?”

“They are,” I said.
 
“Whenever it’s necessary.”

“When wouldn’t it be?”

“Thanks to modern medicine, and modern therapy, John, some schizophrenics are able to lead relatively normal lives.
 
At least for long stretches of time.
 
The psychotic episodes—the delusions and hallucinations and so on—might not recur for years at a time.
 
These are the lucky ones, stable enough, long enough, to prosper, to succeed personally and professionally, to get married and raise a family, to become whatever they want to be.
 
Accountants and lawyers and doctors, even psychiatrists.

“But, sadly, many more schizophrenics end up like Sally Anne Bilchik.
 
With her, the medicine, and the therapy, simply delay the next psychotic episode.
 
She’s in and out of jail and mental institutions.
 
Can’t hold a job, or a lover.
 
She decompensates with booze and pills.
 
She may eventually end up on the streets.
 
Worst of all is the madness itself.

“Why did she try to kill you?
 
Perhaps a voice in Sally’s head told her that John Helms had to die, to save America, let’s say, or to bring back Jesus.
 
Or perhaps she’d come to believe you two were married, and yet you seemed to be ignoring her, spurning her, pretending not to know her, and so she’d flown at you in a rage.
 
Or she may’ve decided you were Osama Bin Laden in disguise.
 
All we know for certain at this point is that she’d recently become obsessed with you.”

“Obsessed with me?”

“Yes,” I said.
 
“Based on what the police found inside her car and in her home.”

John turned back to the window.
 
Ten seconds ticked by silently before he said, “How could anything be more frightening, Argus?
 
Than never being sure of what’s real and what’s not?”

You understand
, I thought.
 
You understand
.

When he was ready for the ride to his office at Helms Technology I put him in the backseat of a black Lincoln Town Car fitted with armor-plating, run-flat tires, and bullet-proof tinted glass able to withstand military ball ammunition.
 
It was the safest vehicle in the entire fleet, protective overkill, a five thousand pound security blanket.
 
He knew about the features, but he didn’t appear comforted.

I remained behind at the Helms compound, using my laptop computer to compose a statement for the news media about the previous night’s attack—just in case the story leaked right away.

I was still working on the statement when my cell phone rang.
 
It was an unexpected call from my old boss, Nathan Pitt.
 
He was the current director of the United States Secret Service.
 
I’d worked directly under him for three years, back when Pitt had been Special Agent in Charge of the Washington Field Office.
 
In recent years, we’d been neighbors in
Georgetown
, and socialized some.
 
But this wasn’t a social call.

“I heard about what happened last night,” he said.

“Heard about what?”

“About John Helms.
 
Paul Trent gave me a buzz.”
 
United States Senator Paul Trent.
 
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
 
He’d been at the dinner.
 
Witnessed the attack.
 
Nathan Pitt and Paul Trent had known each other since college.
 
They were both Skull and Bones Yalies.