Deadly Waters (34 page)

“That will do, Mr. Becker,” said the judge. “I get your point. You can sit down, please.”

Against the prosecutor’s objections, the judge set a two million dollar bail, for which Taylor wrote a check. By three that afternoon Taylor was again at home sitting on his living room sofa, a bottle in his hand. The events of the previous four days seemed to have been another dream, a play of light and garish colors that had been no more real than his vision of standing in a snowy field and struggling to keep warm.

XCIII

12/24/10 10:40 EST

A few days earlier, on Christmas Eve day, a time when most government employees had already left for their vacations, Ronald Goodman entered Margaret Smythe’s Pentagon office pulling a file cabinet on a dolly. He did not knock or ask to enter; he simply bolted through the door, two bulky workmen bearing boxes full of papers behind him. He set the cabinets down against one of Margaret’s interior walls and stepped back to have a look at it.

“I’m going to need more room for my rare book collection,” said Ronald, trying to visualize the final results.

“Excuse me,” thundered Margaret, setting down her laptop. “Have you lost your mind, Ronnie? You’re not even in this hallway anymore! Your office is a little hole on the next floor up!”

“Oh, I haven’t lost my mind,” said Ronald. “You, however, have lost your job, Maggie.”

He handed her a letter on official DoD stationary he had carried atop the filing cabinet. The signature of the Secretary of Defense himself was at the bottom of the creamy white page.

“What...” gasped Margaret, espying the plot against her only when her last chance to act had escaped her.

“You haven’t seen
The
Post
?” asked Ronald. “Of course you haven’t. I paid the whatsyoumacallhim, the paper lad, not to deliver your paper this morning. Your receptionist was told to keep her mouth shut if she wanted to have a job in the future. Here, I wanted to be the one to bring you the news,” he said and presented her with the day’s paper, also conveniently stashed atop the cabinet.

On the front page of the capital’s leading newspaper was a headline in two inch high letters proclaiming: “INVESTIGATION OF DAMS MUFFED BY DoD UNDERSECRETARY.” There was a picture of Margaret and a story that began: “The buck stops at the office of Undersecretary of Defense Margaret Smythe, chief of the military’s counter terrorism department. Long rumored in the Pentagon to owe her position to her striking good looks and other personal charms, senior Defense Department staffers point to Ms. Smythe as the party responsible for suppressing the government’s investigation into the 2009 dam bombings in the Colorado River drainage area. Classified documents made available to
The
Post
indicate that Ms. Smythe, an appointee of the previous administration, personally directed federal investigators not to follow leads that would tie the bombings to domestic terrorists but to pursue only evidence against the Colombian suspects already in custody.”

The ground gave way beneath Margaret, and she could only catch snatches of the rest of the article as she fell into the abyss. “Openly hostile to law enforcement officers and to the present administration,” she read. “...Was it simply incompetence or something else? ...Senator Hasket, when telephoned at his home in the retirement community of Sun City, Arizona, denied that he and Smythe had ever been lovers...confidential sources confirm that Smythe often took credit for work that was not her own... ‘I don’t want to play the political card,’ the Secretary of Defense told our reporter at his Arlington home, ‘but sometimes these operatives from the other party undercut our best efforts’...’treason might not be too strong a word’...inside sources agree: ‘she’s dead meat...’”

“There are two--count ‘em, two--betting pools among the peons here in Foggy Bottom,” said an obviously delighted Ronald, so animated by joy that the soles of his

shoes clicked like typewriter keys on the linoleum floor. “One was taking bets on when you’ll be fired this morning. A couple hundred losers bet you’d hang around until lunchtime. I knew the boss wasn’t going to give you so much as a warning phone call, you see, that’s what I knew; although the secretary wanted just to send you a note in the afternoon mail. The other pool is on whether you’ll be arrested or not and if so, for what? My money says you’ll walk, sweetmeats. In spite of everything, they want you and the rest of the mess to go away. They’ll rub your snout in your own excrement for a while, put on a good show, then they’ll let you go free, Maggie.”

“I can’t breathe!” Margaret croaked.

She clutched her throat and made a rasping gurgle that was as sad as the sound the last robin of summer makes when it sends its final plaintive call over the season’s last dying hedgerow. Ronald had never been happier.

“You need some fresh air, darling,” he suggested. “I’ll get the MPs to show you out. Don’t worry about your documents, your computer files and what not. They’re going to be impounded. Evidence, you know. Oh, and I’ll be sure your last check gets to your condo.”

He told one of his beefy helpers it was time to go and find a couple of the military policeman he knew were roaming the long concrete hallways outside Margaret’s door. She rushed to Ronald and threw her arms about him, clinging to his chest and shoulders like a shipwreck victim gripping the last overturned lifeboat.

“I could love you,” she groaned. “I could. Just give me the chance.”

The two African-American receptionists in Margaret’s outer office, both of whom she had ordered about for the past two years like a Prussian colonel making demands on raw recruits, peeked into the door at the pathetic scene that was unfolding therein. One of them passed a finger across her throat, and they laughed in unison.

“I could love you too, Maggie,” said Ron, checking his watch while Margaret struggled to hold onto him. “I fear today we don’t even have time for a quickie.”

“I can’t believe this is happening!” squealed Margaret. “No one will hire me. I couldn’t get a real job back in Des Moines.”

“Des Moines?” said Ronald, genuinely shocked by the revelation. “You always told me you were from Alexandria. Your father worked for the government in Iowa, didn’t he? I slept with someone from Des Moines?”

Margaret was still affixed to Ronald’s side in the instant the MPs entered her once sacrosanct office. She fought for a couple seconds against them, before she suddenly

went slack and succumbed to their overwhelming force. White-faced and staring into the space before her, Margaret let the men lead her past the snickering receptionists and the equally delighted ladies of the steno pool, who had rushed into the hallway outside her door to watch Margaret get hers, and to take a photograph of the moment on their cell phones.

“Good-bye, honey!” one of the pink-collar workers gaily called out to the fallen undersecretary. “Remember, when the soap drops in the prison shower, don’t bend over to pick it up!”

The forty or so assembled on-lookers roared their approval of the last cruel remark. Even the stern MPs had to chuckle despite the grim drama they were participating in. Margaret alone ignored the joke and walked forward as though a gallows awaited her in the parking lot.

Polls taken after the Christmas Holiday showed the president’s approval ratings had surged, as he had taken swift action as soon as he had learned of how he had been betrayed. The same polls showed growing disdain for the former president, who apparently had attempted to undermine his successor. Margaret Smythe did not go to prison. As Ronald Goodman had predicted, a few months of unrelenting humiliation in the media was sufficient punishment, and thereafter the public was allowed to forget the scandal. In 2012 the television program “Inside Confidential” found her working as a waitress in the Harsh Brothers’ Truck Stop in Kotby, Iowa. She had by then changed her name to Kathy Morrison and had gained forty pounds and dyed her hair black so the customers would not recognize her.

XCIV

12/31/10 11:05 PST

On New Year’s Eve day, in his enormous private office, Erin Mondragon stood across from a man whose real name he did not know. He had told the messenger from his attorneys to wait in the lobby downstairs while he conducted the meeting. The unknown man had entered the Mondragon Building via the parking garage and was dressed in a janitor’s coveralls so that the FBI men Mondragon knew were watching the building from across Market Street would not pay him special attention.

This was the man his security guard Trey had sought out for him a month earlier. Mondragon knew the stranger as an acquaintance of another man he had met in prison, and he knew a couple of the stranger’s aliases and a little of his terrible reputation. The office had been electronically swept in case the FBI had any bugs in the room, the blinds were drawn shut, and Erin had turned on the radio to mask anything the two of them might say.

“I should call you...?” asked Mondragon.

“Carnie,” said the other man. “Like I told you, I was in the carnival, once.”

Like John Taylor, Mondragon had been in jail for several days until the judge had set bail. The experience had not frightened him; it had left him more restless than before, and while he wanted to present a stoic front to this large and unkempt man, he could not stay off his feet. “Carnie,” as Mondragon had already ordered himself to call the man, put Erin in mind of one of those odd cave creatures that have never felt sunlight and are left pale and misshapen from years of darkness The man had size, bulk, perhaps even considerable strength in his huge frame. For all his mass, as he sat in his chair his white muscles and fat shifted to his right in an unnatural shape that disgusted Mondragon, as this unsightly chunk of humanity sagged against the side of his dirty coveralls.

Mondragon turned off the overhead lights and left on a single small lamp on the table between the two men. The florescent rods had hurt the newcomer’s little black eyes, and he had shaded his visage with a flat white hand until Erin gave him some comforting darkness.

“You and I have a mutual friend, Carnie,” said Mondragon, “who says you are the man for the job.”

Carnie grunted in reply. Mondragon guessed he meant “yes.”

“It is unfortunate I have had to contact you,” Mondragon continued. “Mr. Taylor is an old friend. Under other circumstances, I would try to protect him.”

The stranger examined the metal arm of his chair, and grunted another time. “Got anything to drink?” he asked in nearly well enunciated English.

“Not now,” said Mondragon, unable to read the man’s lackadaisical manner. “I never drink while I’m doing business. Drinking too much is Mr. Taylor’s problem. Much too much drinking. Being away from the bottle too long would get the better of him, eventually. They’ll lock him up in a cell for months next time. He’ll break in time. I know it. He knows as much himself, whenever he is sober. A man in your line of work should have learned, Carnie, that drinking is one of the things that can make you vulnerable.”

“What’s
vulnable
mean?” asked Carnie, wiping his mouth and nose with the back of his hand.

“It means people can screw you,” said Mondragon.

“I had an old lady like that one time,” said Carnie. “She was vulnable to about anything in pants. Had to shoot the bitch.”

“Very good,” said Mondragon at the same time he thought, Erin, you are in difficult straits to be trusting in this imbecile. He cleared his throat and went on: “Let’s say you do what I ask of you.”

Carnie nodded.

“Here is ten thousand dollars for your expenses, and for the extra friend you spoke of,” said Mondragon and gave the man an envelope filled with cash. “There is also a key inside this envelope that will open a luggage box at a public station somewhere in the Bay Area. The two hundred thousand dollars I promised you will be awaiting you there when the job is completed.”

“What kind of station?” asked Carnie, examining the key he had found among the wad of money. “Airport, bus, train?”

“I’ll tell you when the job is completed,” said Mondragon.

“There ain’t no number on this key. Somebody filed it off or something.”

“I will tell you the number, too,” sighed Mondragon. “Call me at this number. It’s a pay phone a couple blocks from here. That’s when I’ll tell you where to go.”

The pale man shrugged, which Mondragon also took as an affirmation.

“You will leave the building through the parking garage in your cleaning company van, as would a real janitor,” said Erin. “Now then, Mr. Taylor is closely watched. Up to a couple dozen men, both federal agents and local cops. The house itself is bugged. Phone lines, everything. Don’t even think of going near there. Your window of opportunity will be between 11:10 and 11:30 tonight on Highway 101 and Interstate 80 on the way to Oakland. Should you fail to make contact, if you lose him on the Bay Bridge or there abouts, we are dead. Do I need to say any more?”

Carnie grunted.

“You can approach, that is, get close to Mr. Taylor’s car only after he gets off the side streets and onto the freeway,” said Mondragon. “He will not be going fast in traffic; he won’t try to lose the cops, you understand. The range of the scrambler is less than fifty yards.”

“That funny thing that looks like a blow dryer?” asked Carnie.

“Yes,” said Mondragon, pacing with his hands behind his back. “I don’t understand the physics of it. I know police in Ohio have used it to stop speeders. The thing sends microwaves to mess up the embedded computer chips. Shuts down an automobile in about a minute. Use it when you get near the bridge.”

He gave the device to Carnie, and took care to add: “Take the device out of town, pour gas on it, and burn it when you’re done.”

“Why they gonna think this guy jumped?” asked Carnie.

“Mr. Taylor has been under a lot of stress lately,” said Mondragon, talking to a point above the pale man’s head, as it was unsettling to look into the stranger’s face and see the spider web patterns of his red blood veins beneath his nearly transparent skin. “As I say, he drinks. He might be said to be an alcoholic. I and my attorneys will spin his suicide into an instance where the feds pushed an unstable man too hard.”

“OK,” said the man, and started for the door, but Mondragon called him back.

“You are certain you know how to use the device?” Erin asked him.

“You point it at the car,” said Carnie and pointed the electronic weapon at a chair.

“You will have to be close,” Mondragon reminded him. “If any other cars get between you and Mr. Taylor’s, you will stop them as well. That will raise questions when the police investigate. I can live with questions, so long as they are left unanswered.”

“Whatever,” agreed Carnie, and this time when he headed for the door he left for good.

Mondragon was alone in the office most of that day. By one o’clock his attorneys and business associates were headed home to prepare for holiday parties that evening. Erin phoned the escort service that provided the young women he needed for his everyday and special occasion needs and told them he was not feeling well. Among the impressive-looking but unread leather books on his office shelves, he found during that long afternoon an old copy of the Stanford yearbook, wherein he located a photograph of his pal, John Taylor Jr., Class of 1965.

“To E.,” John Taylor had written over his picture, “will see you on the farm this summer. Am looking forward to some of your family Cabernet this next fall.”

How like John, thought Mondragon, snapping the book shut. He never could think more than five months ahead.