Head Shot (25 page)

Mr Savage is in his office; if you'd like to go on up in the elevator, I'll let him know you're on your way.'

Rusty Savage was waiting for them as the lift doors opened. Doherty greeted him warmly, and introduced his companion as they walked towards an office across the hall. 'It's an honour to meet you, sir,' said the American, taking the Scot by surprise. 'I know who you are, and I know what you did at that conference a couple of years back.'

Skinner looked at him, a touch warily, wondering how much he knew; most of the detail of that incident had been kept away from the media.

'It's okay,' Savage grinned. 'I heard the whole story at the time from the former White House chief of staff. The Man Himself is in New York for the weekend, otherwise I know he'd have wanted to meet you.'

'He might not have wanted to hear what we want to talk about, though,' muttered Doherty.

'Yeah, what is that, Joe? You were damned mysterious when you called me.'

'I had to be; I know that the Bureau isn't bugging your communications, but I can't be a hundred per cent sure about anyone else.'

'Wow,' Savage whistled. He looked around his modest office as he closed the door behind him. 'You can relax in here, though. We have these offices swept for devices once a month; there's nothing recorded here, unless we want it to be. Sit down, guys.' He poured three mugs of black coffee from a jug by his walnut desk and handed one each to his visitors.

'Now, what's so red-hot that it's come between me and my Sunday golf game?'

'A double homicide,' the deputy director answered. 'A week or so back in the Adirondacks National Park in New York State.'

'Leopold Grace and his wife,' said Rusty Savage at once. 'I heard about it. Tragic altogether, that such an eminent couple should die like that. Mr Grace was a Democrat from way back, and a personal friend of the former first family too. Matter of fact I had a cal from one of the new senator's aides a couple of days back, asking me if I could let her know about funeral arrangements.

'Still, how come the Bureau is involved? And what's your interest, Mr Skinner?'

'Mr Grace was Bob's father-in-law.'

Surprise flashed across the official's face. 'Ahh,' he exclaimed. 'So that's why you're here. When Joe said he was bringing you along, I didn't ask why. I just assumed you were on some sort of an exchange visit.'

He looked back at Doherty. 'That doesn't answer my first question, though, Joe. How come you guys have picked up on this? The man wasn't a public figure any more; although he was a former chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee, and his word was still the law, when he offered an opinion on something or someone.'

'Do the names Bartholomew Wilkins and Sander Garrett mean anything to you?'

Savage leaned back in his chair, sipping his coffee as he thought.

'Bart Wilkins,' he murmured at last. 'Chicago, Illinois, I think; he was head of a law firm, like Mr Grace, and retired, like Mr Grace. But his involvement in active Democratic politics ended way back, when Governor Dukakis was adopted as candidate to fight Bush the Elder in 1988.

'Wilkins thought it was a disastrous choice ... he was right, as it happened . . . and withdrew from the Illinois party executive.

'Sander Garrett? Yes, that name rings a bell; I remember meeting him in Los Angeles a while back, probably in the mid-eighties. He wasn't a Califomian, though; he was from Nevada as I recall, and involved with the Party as a volunteer fund raiser.'

Doherty nodded. 'That's very interesting. Let me throw another name at you; Jackson Wylie.'

'Leo Grace's former partner,' Savage replied at once. 'He worked for him in the attorney general's office nearly forty years ago, and fol owed him into the law firm in Buffalo. He's still an active Democrat, and a member of the State Committee.'

'I think you'l find he's less active from now on,' the deputy director drawled, with a trace of a wry smile playing at one corner of his mouth.

'How come? Who's upset him?'

'The guy who blew up his cruiser yesterday afternoon, with him in it.

He's dead. My team confirmed this morning that the explosion was no accident.'

'Dead?'

'As a rucking doornail, Rusty; and so are Wilkins and Garrett. They were both murdered in their homes within the last month. Their kil ings 172

. . ok like they happened in the course of burglaries; but they nla nro hits, both of them, as were the Graces' deaths. The Wylie Homicide wasn't disguised as anything; there was enough explosive one of his cabin lockers to have made a good-sized hole in the battleship New Jersey.

'So that's why we're here, my friend. We have a problem and so have there's someone out there who's making serious inroads into the rol of registered Democratic voters. If he isn't stopped, you could start to

run out of them.'

'How can I help?'

'We're looking for connections,' said Skinner. 'We have several already from the backgrounds on the victims, gathered by the police officers who originally investigated their killings. We know that these men were al active members of your Party. We know that they were al lawyers. We know that they all worked in Washington in the sixties, during the Kennedy administration.

'But that's as far as it goes. There's something we don't know, something that links al four men together, something that's got them killed. There's nothing in the files of my father-in-law's old firm. We have people asking similar questions about Wilkins and Garrett, but if there's nothing in Buffalo, there's unlikely, in my view at least, to be anything in Chicago or Las Vegas.

'So we're here. You're the end of the road, more or less. We need to go as far back as we can into your records, to see whether they got involved in something through the Party that's led to this.'

The Democrat official took a deep breath and pushed himself up from his chair. He walked over to the window and looked out over the city, back up towards the seat of national government. 'You tried the State Department?' he asked. 'Or the attorney general's office?'

They were questions that Skinner himself had not asked, but Doherty answered. 'Of course I have. There's nothing that helps us.''

Savage turned back to face them. 'In that case, guys, I'm sorry, but I'm don't think I'm going to be able to help you, either.' He paused.

'You are correct to assume that we do store biographic material on our activists, usually going back to the earliest days of their work within our movement. However, these days we keep very few long-term paper records; just about everything we have is on computer. Last week, when I heard about Mr Grace's death, I went into our mainframe and cal ed up his file. It wasn't there; I asked our head of information technology what had happened to it.

'He looked into it, and reported that it had been erased; we've lost all the bios beginning with the letter G, and al of the Was, too. We interrogated al our users, but nobody admitted to doing it, accidental y or otherwise. His conclusion, although he couldn't be certain, was that someone had hacked in and done it.'

He frowned down at them. 'Looks like now we know for sure.'

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'This is a mistake,' he whispered to no one, as he stood on the dark landing. He had knocked on George Rosewell's door, just in case; there had been no answer but he had decided against taking another unauthorised look inside. He had almost gone back downstairs, but instead, against his instincts, he had rung Ivy Brennan's doorbell.

'Hello, Mr Detective.'

She was tal er than she had been, the first time she had looked up at him in that doorway. He glanced down and saw that she was wearing thick-soled shoes, with high heels. She was better dressed too, in a close-fitting blue dress, and this time, there was none of the waif about her.

'Come in,' she said, holding the door wide for him.

'Are you going out somewhere?' he asked, as he fol owed her through to the living room.

'No. I was expecting someone, so I thought I'd get dol ed up for him.'

'Who? Rufus's dad?'

'No, thicko! I was expecting you.'

'Now listen, Ivy. . .'

She laughed, a sound as gentle as wind chimes fanned by an opening door. 'Don't get al heavy on me, now. I could have stayed the way I was; no make-up and all smelly, like the first time you came here. Would you have preferred that?'

He smiled, in spite of himself. 'No; this version's more to my taste.'

'Oh,' she murmured, turning and stepping close to him. 'Do you fancy a taste, then?'

'Ah, Christ,' Mario exclaimed. 'I knew I shouldn't have come here!'

'Ah, but you did, though. In spite of al your better judgement, you did.'

His grin was gone; he glared down at her. 'You know fuck al about my uncle, do you, girl.'

'I know that he's dead, because I saw it in the Mail today. That's how I knew he was your uncle, because you're mentioned in the story, you and your cousin, Paula. I know her, though; she owns a sauna, round the corner from here and along the road a bit.'

McGuire gasped with surprise. 'Are you on the game?'

'Certainly not!' she laughed, in a tone of mock protestation. 'I'm a good mother, I'l have you know, and I'm not a junkie.'

'I've met many a working girl who was a good mother,' he told her.

'As for being a junkie, you're acting like you're on something.' He seized her wrists and turned them, looking for needle tracks along the flat of her pale forearms and in the folds of her elbows, but they were unmarked.

When he let her go, she took a pace back from him, and hoisted up the blue dress, showing him the inside of her thighs. 'D'you want to check there as well?' she challenged. 'D'you want to check anywhere else?'

She slid the dress higher; she was wearing a G-string, but he could tell that she was blonde, for real.

'Just chuck that,' he warned her, 'or I'm out that door right now.'

'Are you really?' She reached behind her and, in a flash, pulled down a long zip, and wriggled her shoulders. The dress fel in a circle at her feet. 'See? Not a needle mark anywhere.' Her tiny body was almost classic in its proportions; a little wide in the hips, perhaps, after Rufus, but otherwise perfect. Smal , bud-like pink nipples seemed to wink up at him. 'Want to make certain?' She slid her thumbs inside the black thong and began to roll it down.

Suddenly he was aware that every muscle in his body seemed to be tensed; he could feel them bunched under his shirt and jeans. He could feel them, and more. With an effort of wil he turned, and headed for the door.

'Okay!' she called after him. 'Okay, I'l behave myself. Just don't go.'

He stopped in the doorway. 'Get dressed, then.'

'I'm doing it; I'm doing it. There.'

When he turned, her back was to him. 'Zip me up.' He did as she asked, drawing the dress closed and tight to her.

'One thing you should know about me,' he told her. 'I love my wife.

Anyone who harms her, or who even threatens it... in any way ... is in big, big trouble. Understand me?'

She nodded. 'Yes. That's why you want to find George, isn't it? He hurt her before he went away. Now he's in bother with you.'

'Is he ever.'

'So you haven't found him.'

'Not a trace. He's either gone back to Portugal or he's in the Water of Leith.'

176

'I don't think the fish would fancy him.'

And then she grinned up at him. 'You have to admit, though, I did give it a good try. Did you like the quick flash? Just a bit?'

The girl-waif-woman look was back in her eyes; somehow, he found it disturbing, as if the poisoned apple had been offered and he had begun to reach for it.

'A work of art. Ivy,' he said, acidly, 'but a bit smal for me. Never mind, though; one day you'll make some guy a fine desk ornament.'

'Ohh! We do have a way with the insults, don't we. Although that's not what that lump in your jeans was saying, a minute or so back.

Stil ... far be it from me to come between a man and his wife. Want a coffee?'

'No, thanks. But if you have any mineral water, I'd take some.'

She nodded and went through to her small kitchen, returning with a bottle of San Pellegrino and two tumblers. 'That's how I got to know Paula, by the way,' she said, holding up the bottle as he took one of the glasses. 'I shop in her deli; I go in there quite a lot with Rufus. She likes him; she's very fond of children.'

'She's very fond of men,' he grunted, 'but I'm not so sure about kids.'

'She is; take my word for it. Anyway, she's my pal. She told me about the sauna; that's how I knew where it was. And that's where I saw your uncle.'

'You real y did know him?' Mario exclaimed. 'That wasn't just rubbish?'

'Well, I wouldn't exactly say I knew him. I did exaggerate a bit when I phoned you. I was passing the place one day, and I saw him. The door was open and he was standing, framed in it.'

He looked at her, doubtful y. 'Are you sure it was him? Beppe had nothing to do with those businesses. There was no reason for him to go there.'

'Most men go to places like that for a pretty good reason.'

'Not Beppe.'

'I'm pretty sure,' Ivy assured him. 'That was a good photograph in the Mail, and when I saw him, he was dressed much the same.'

'Okay, you saw him once. But how does that tel you who kil ed him?'

'I didn't just remember him because I saw him. Like I told you, he was standing there, and he was having a screaming argument with someone.'

'Beppe? He wasn't the screaming type.'

'He was when I saw him.'

'And who was he screaming at?'

'Ah well, I laid that on a bit thick too, when I cal ed you. The other person was inside the place, I couldn't see who it was and I couldn't hear their voice, other than that it was raised. But I can tell you this, your uncle was shouting at whoever it was as if he wanted to kil them. If the other person was as mad with him as he was with them, all you have to do is find him.'

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'Well, Sauce, what do you have for me this morning?'

'Weekend reports, ma'am,' the probationer replied. 'The front desk said that Mr English normal y checks them over first thing on a Monday morning.'