Immaculate Deception (13 page)

"Why was it so urgent?" Fiona asked.

His eyes widened and his eyebrows lifted, crawling up his
forehead to the grey hairline.

"Because of the baby, for chrissakes."

"The baby?" She felt the inner bong as the blood
rushed to her head.

"You knew?" she croaked.

"Of course, I knew. I'm the father. Beatrice is nearly
four months pregnant."

The Eggplant was always in a foul mood. It was an axiom of
the squad room. Heaven help those who confront him first thing on Monday
morning. There were various theories about why this condition existed, but one
unassailable truth. His weekends were hell.

His wife Loreen had badgered, coerced, abused, and
tormented him. On Monday morning he needed surrogates on whom to avenge
himself. On this Monday this need was fulfilled by Fiona and Cates.

"I have motives and scenarios," he shouted, his
palm a human gavel as he rapped the desk. "No clues. No dosers. This is
not a high-school psychology class. Worse, it is not police work."

This was a familiar script, but she detected a difference
in the delivery, an undercurrent not only of anger but of fear. He had smoked
down two panatelas and had lit a third.

Unable to sit behind the desk and suffer his real or
imagined frustration, he got up and badgered them without any obstacles
between. This was particularly offensive to Fiona who had to suffer through
eye-level confrontation with the Eggplant's crotch as she sat on his battered
leather couch crunched by years of abuse by overweight cops.

Eventually, she knew, he would work it out, find his
manhood again, repress the weekend pussywhipping until the following Monday.
Unfortunately, this was taking longer than usual to happen. The reason for this
did not emerge until he had raved and ranted for nearly half an hour.

"As you know," he said, showing the first clear
signs of spent ire, "we are a churchgoing family. We consult the Lord on
his day of rest for comfort and insight. Loreen insists on such a cleansing.
Good for the soul. We go as a family. It is a ritual of high order, of enormous
priority. For me to miss this experience creates a needless trauma in my
household."

He waved his panatela, wet end up in Fiona's face. She
allowed it, avoiding the stink by not breathing through her nose. She could
tell he was on the verge of revelation. No point in deflecting his attention by
flouncy rebellion.

Besides, she was not taking his rebuke seriously and she
and Cates had already exchanged numerous winks whenever the Eggplant looked the
other way. Nor did this long-winded outburst try their tolerance. It went with
the territory. Everyone in Homicide knew that suffering through one of these
explosions was an essential ingredient of the boss's therapy.

"Instead of this exercise in spiritual renewal, my
sacrosanct Sunday morning was spent at the mayor's breakfast table. He took his
morning coffee and I took his shit."

Serious stuff, she agreed. In the Eggplant's life the mayor
was Mr. Everything. By statute, position and inclination, he controlled the
police department. It was he who picked the chief, manipulated promotions and
generally, by whatever political intimidation he employed, ruled the cop roost
absolutely. Normally, the mayor exercised this control through his police
chief, but as they soon discovered, the Eggplant's meeting with the mayor was
one on one, an event that portended ill for the Eggplant's career plans.

"He wanted to know about the McGuire case. He made it
perfectly clear that he did not wish this to be an open case for too much
longer, that I had to stop feeding the press tantalizing bullshit. Then he
asked me what I had." He shook his head, then turned his eyes away from
them. "I gave him smoke. I blew it in a steady stream right up his
kazoo."

His ire shifted now as he telegraphed to them his chief animus,
his enormous contempt for the dark machinations of the bureaucracy. He forgot
to puff life back into his panatela and he walked to the window and spit out
his anger through the unwashed clouded window to the sun-dappled, sharply
shadowed streets.

"Lady and gentleman, our asses are sitting on a heavy
keg of political dynamite. His Honor, you see, is being leaned on by those high
powered dudes in the House of fucking Representatives, those stalwarts who give
us their monetary largesse in exchange for our toadying to their whims and
caprices." He shrugged and turned to face them again. "This is
strictly top-secret. I mean
top
—TOP. Got it?" He waited until they
had nodded, then lowered his voice and gave a paranoid roll to his eyes.
"My black ass is on the line, folks. He got the word direct from Rep.
Charles Rome who brought it down from the Mount of the Speaker himself." Rome's image, as he appeared at the Capitol service, rose in her mind. She remembered his
regal bearing, the deep authoritative voice, the doting Dresden doll perfect
wife following in his wake.

"This is real heavy-duty stuff. It seems that the
Speaker has gotten wind of a scheme afoot to make the McGuire demise appear to
be the work of a hit man paid for by the pro-choice people." He stuck the
cigar in his mouth and waved his hands. "I know. This is a poisoning. Not
a hit man M.O. None of that is relevant. The idea, as I hear it from the mayor,
is to make it look like an ideological killing, give it a political spin to
further the cause of the pro-lifers. Make hay for their cause. The reasoning
goes like this. It's the pro-lifers who are always getting stung by those
fanatics burning down abortion clinics. Now they got a chance to show that the
real crazies are on the other side. You get my drift?"

The early blind anger had spent itself. The logic of the
professional was taking over.

"May Carter stirring things up," Cates said.

He had, of course, been "apprahzed" of their
interview with her.

"That's of the 'how'. As I understand it, it's the
'why' that scares the big boys. Political nastiness is bad for both sides.
Makes them all look like assholes." He lowered his voice. "As if they
need more grist for that mill. Anyway, they say that as long as this
investigation drags on without a conclusion, then this other thing, the hit man
theory, stirs the political pot unnecessarily."

"Circling the wagons," Fiona said. "To
protect their vaunted image. That's always number one with the boys on the
Hill." She looked up at him. "Now give us the real hidden
agenda."

"The mayor explains it this way. And he ain't no
dummy. The majority is holding the line on abortion rights. The issue for
hizzoner is Congressional funding for poor girls to get an abortion. That's a
powerful goal for the pro-choicers. And there's political currency in it for
him. Hizzoner and the congressman sees this ploy, making it look like this was
an ideological killer, reinforcing the image that the pro-choice team are
murderers. The public opinion factor at work. In politics such pressure bubbles
upward. The pro-choice politicians see themselves caught in the middle and when
a politician is caught in the middle, watch out."

Her own political experience, through her father, gave her
some understanding of the scenario. Like all political stews this one boiled
and bubbled with trade-offs, deals, overblown rhetoric, fanaticism, chicanery
and hypocrisy. She patted Cates's knee which meant for him to accept the
Eggplant's view of it and that she would attempt to unravel it all later.

"And hizzoner wants it finished fast, before the idea
of a political killing gets loose," Fiona said.

"You got it. Lance the abscess before the pus spreads
in the body politic," the Eggplant said.

"Does that mean no more press?" Fiona asked.

"Can't you see my muzzle, woman?"

"There's one easy out," Cates said, too late for
Fiona to stop him. He could walk into fans faster than any cop she ever knew.
It wasn't exactly naïveté. Or being still wet behind the ears. Cates worshipped
at the shrine of the blindfolded lady with the sword and the scale. On this
issue he was without guile or subtlety. He had chosen this work to right
wrongs. Nothing so pedestrian as earning a living or "getting ahead"
interfered with that calling.

"Call it suicide, right?" the Eggplant smiled
down at him benignly, setting the trap.

"Because that's what it is," Cates said. "We
have no real evidence to the contrary. As you put it before. Only motives and
scenarios."

"That's what they want, Cates," the Eggplant
said. "You got it."

"So where's the problem?" Cates asked.

"Explain it to the pussy, FitzGerald," the
Eggplant said, puffing smoke into the air.

"It's not very complicated, Cates." She was sure
she had it down the way the Eggplant saw it. He had his foibles and
eccentricities but he knew his turf, both the grit of the streets and the
steamy underside of politics. The primary mission of the MPD, was to protect
the politicians, the bureaucrats and diplomats in the nation's capital, protect
their lives and property and their ability to function. The system was
politicized, top to bottom. Everything else was secondary, although keeping the
peace was a given, an essential part of the equation. It was, of course, a
two-way street. One hand, as they say, washed the other. The only common enemy
was the media.

Such a primary mission required, above all, discretion, the
keeping and use of secrets. Even the lowliest recruit knew that you didn't mess
with the big shots, that you kicked certain problems upstairs pronto. Sometimes
it got out of hand and was inadvertently pushed into a floodlit media circle.
Like that aide to President Johnson who got picked up for soliciting in the
men's room of the Y or the powerful drunken congressman who pushed his stripper
girlfriend into the tidal basin. No way to hide things like that.

But there were lots of little crimes, silly illegal
indiscretions that could have fatal political consequences. A gay pol found in
flagrante delicto with his underage closet twinkie. A swinger diplomat caught
in a cat house. A second-story job on a house owned by a pol, bought for his
mistress. A bureaucrat caught buying a spot of coke. Lots of little crimes.
Raids on high stake poker games. Closing down a raucous salt-and-pepper sex and
liquor party. Even drunk driving. All political career killers.

An official wink could pile up lots of chits. It didn't
qualify as real corruption, like bribery or obstruction of justice. Washington was no place for Batman and Robin.

The trick was to circle the wagons before the Indians
attacked. Keep stuff out of the computer. To the Eggplant and Fiona such things
were baggage you carried, like your piece and your badge. She would have to
explain it all to Cates. He would learn. To get anywhere in the MPD, he had to.

"Double-edged sword kind of thing," Fiona said.
"The woman was an icon for the pro-lifers."

"So?"

"She was pregnant by a man other than her husband. She
chose not to have her baby by taking poison. To pro-lifers that's a double
killing."

"But it's over. The woman has been buried. Who's to
know?"

"The cover-up fairy," the Eggplant said.

Cates looked confused.

He was talking political shorthand, knowing she would pick
it up. It was the way her father explained things. "I'm simplifying but
you get the message." Cates looked at her and shrugged. He was obviously
concentrating, carefully following the Eggplant's explanation. The Eggplant
looked at Fiona, his signal for her to explain it further.

"When you have two violently opposed forces in
politics there can be no secrets. The fact of Frankie's pregnancy is already
engraved in the medical examiner's paperwork. The Boston connection is a can of
worms, juicy stuff. We conclude suicide by decree, we open ourselves up to an
avalanche of inquiries. Why our conclusion? Why did she do it?"

"You got those answers, Cates?" the Eggplant
asked.

"So, we're damned if we do and damned if we
don't," Fiona sighed.

"Unless we get down to the skinny," the Eggplant
said. He shook his head. "I know it. I feel it in my gut."

"But they want you to end it," Fiona said.

"We are looking here for an ending, FitzGerald,"
the Eggplant said. "A truthful ending. A judgment of murder definitely
sours the political stew, agitates the cooks. Some politicians could choke on
it."

"But suppose we come up with nothing definitive, a
total absence of proof positive?" Cates said.

The Eggplant shrugged.

"My bones say murder," the Eggplant whispered.

He was still being stubborn. At first glance it seemed out
of character. She had seen the extent of his brown-nosing. But this was
different. Admittedly, he was operating in a narrow sphere, but it was just
wide enough to accommodate his instincts, at least for the moment.

"You tell that to the mayor, chief?" Fiona asked.

"Danced around it," the Eggplant admitted.
"Both he and Rome were in no mood for anything but suicide."

"And, of course, you explained the consequences of a
hasty rush to judgment?" Fiona asked.

"Say what?" They were also in no mood for
rebuttal," the Eggplant sighed.

"What did they say when you told them she was
pregnant?" Fiona asked.

His face froze and he looked at he with his cryptic rheumy
eyes. Then his mouth tightened into a joyless smile.

"I didn't," he said, nostrils quivering.

"Talk about cover-up," Fiona muttered.

"Didn't say, therefore didn't lie," he said.

"That's a bad-guy line," Fiona sighed.

"I know."

"Then, why not?"

He looked into space for awhile, then struck a match and
relit his panatela, inhaling, then puffing out his cheeks and expelling a smoke
stream.

"They weren't ready for it," he said into the
smoke's wake. "I'm saving them from themselves, giving them deniability.
Not to mention that I don't trust either of them."

There was, she knew, a two-edged truth in that. Lack of
trust was only one edge. The other was that he was also playing the loyal
flunky, setting himself up as scapegoat if it came out in the wrong way at the
wrong time, giving the mayor a chance to deny knowledge and point a finger at a
sub-sub subordinate, always the best choice of goat.