My King The President (5 page)

“I don’t see why not.”

“Great! When can you get away?”

“I don’t know. Tomorrow, I suppose. I was going to run up to the cabin for a few days but that could wait. Why do you want the boat up there if you’re staying at the Mayflower?”

“I may need some place I can get away to that no one knows about. I’ve registered the boat slip in your name.”

“I see. Well, if we go up the ditch all the way, taking the Dismal Swamp canal to Norfolk, and motor-sail up the Chesapeake when the wind isn’t right, we probably can get into the Potomac in four days, maybe five. Count on a week or less altogether to Georgetown, weather permitting.’’

“Okay. Tell Sammy I really appreciate it, and I’ll make it worth his while.”

“Uh, huh. I guess you can afford it now. If I had your luck, I’d keep right on going—to Vegas. By the way, I think I have the answer to one of your riddles.”

“Which one?”

“The ‘wheel in the air’ reference. When you were a kid, if you’d read more Bible than Ian Fleming, you’d remember it was Ezekiel. Now. Who among the influential-and-powerful in Washington is named Ezekiel?”

The connection hit me like a thunderbolt. Ezekiel
Koontz
. Former Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, advisor to several Presidents, as recognizable a Washington fixture as the renovated Monument, and nearly as old. “Koontz? The
Judge
?”

“Who else could it be, pal?”

“Jesus, I really
am
rusty!”

I called room service, had a dinner sent up, which I ate without tasting, and went to bed early. Slept badly, but at least with a clear idea of who the target of my first “interview” would be.

Chapter 4

Over the years, I’ve learned the hard way to let my fingers do most of the walking. Next to dependable transportation, a working telephone is the number one tool in any investigator’s bag. I called Walt at five after eight and used the magic word, “Walt, could you please go down to the morgue and scope out something for me?”

“Right. Anything you can find; history, family, politics, the whole spectrum. Do a complete printout, and a short, say, two-page summary.”

Walt Erikson’s stock took a quantum leap up, and his glib answer made me also realize how far technical advances had come during my three-year absence. “Yeah, there is one other thing. Does the paper still have video tapes of Tyndall’s first State of the Union address?”

“Yessir. They’re in the vaults.”

“Oh.” That was disappointing. Once in the
Post
’s
sanctum sanctorum,
they could not be removed. You could look at them there, but you could not take them out, and I wanted very much to watch that famous speech again, this time with new eyes. “That’s too bad. I really wish—”

Surprisingly, Ernie picked up, and I asked him to set up an interview with Judge Koontz as soon as possible. He said he’d get on it right away. Immensely satisfied, I hung up, redialed and ordered breakfast from room service, then settled back in the bed, propped up on three pillows and went to work on my legal pad. Having, unfortunately, not inherited Cal’s fantastic memory, I had long ago resorted to an old, but time-tested system of basic analysis. Precinct cops use a blackboard and chalk or white boards and grease pens. I use a plain legal pad and pencil. I call it my daily rip sheet:

WHAT YOU KNOW/ FACTS

WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW

YOUR NEXT MOVES

Over breakfast, I studied my first daily sheet. Damn little to work on, that was for sure. While I took my shower and shaved, I had a hard time pushing away a new thought, which had wedged itself in.
Also please look after Liz.
Did Mac’s beautiful sister need looking after? Why? Maybe Father Flaherty could tell me that. He might also know where Abby was. I sure as hell didn’t want to call Thurmond Frye. I was putting on my tie when the phone rang.

“Funny you should want stuff on Judge Koontz. Timing, I mean. It was just announced. He was appointed to head up the new Commission. We’re running a big front page piece on it today.”

“What new Commission?”

“Congressional. You know, like the Warren Commission after Kennedy got shot.”

At that moment, I couldn’t say why, but those words sent every nerve sensor off in my brain like the burglar alarm at Fort Knox. “Interesting. Thanks for the call, Walt.”

Since I was a boy learning the ancient game of chess, Cal always preached to me that the best thing to do when caught by a surprise move is to immediately attack. “Would you believe? I was on my way to see you. You’ve just saved me a taxi ride.”

“Not yet,” I lied again. “Why? You in the habit of coming all the way over here for morning coffee? The Mayflower coffee shop’s good, but not that good.”
Gambit
.
Counter
.
Answer a question with a question
.

“Came to talk to you, of course. Come on. My treat.”

We took the far corner table, and since Frye didn’t bother to remove his coat, I knew this would be a short session. We ordered and I waited for him to make his next move. Thurmond Frye was what Cal calls a gray man. Gray hair, gray eyes. Gray skin. Gray everything. A man more comfortable in shadows than sunlight. He was also a throwback to an earlier age. The J. Edgar days. Not one of those button-down, smug lawyer types the FBI usually recruits now. He was big; he was smart, wary, and innately dangerous. Like a giant mongoose. I’d badly underestimated him once, in Mexico, then got lucky and managed to pull him out of a very tight spot when we got caught by some nasty
Federales
in a place where neither of us should have been. He owed me one, but we both knew neither of us would ever bring it up.

“I had word you were back,” he said. “What are you doing here, Jeb?”

I took a moment to sip from the heavy mug. I knew it was Frye’s style to know the answer to a question before asking it. It was cover story testing time. “I’m going back to work. Temporary thing, doing some guest articles for Ernie Latham at the
Post.
”

“Yeah, I know about that. I checked with him this morning. I hope that’s all you’re doing, because if you’re up to anything else, I would not be a real happy guy, and you wouldn’t want me to be a real unhappy guy, would you?”

“Nope.”

“And if I thought you were up to your old amateurish tricks, or poking your nose into my investigation, it could definitely cause a boil on my ass. Not fatal, but irritating as hell, and boils have to be lanced. You follow?”

“I’ll ignore that. Look, old friend, turned out that business down in Mexico was productive for me and could just as well have been for you. By the way, I’m sorry your book about it was a dud. Things don’t always work out the way we’d like. So, do your little articles and go home, Jeb. There’s no big story here. I doubt if the Koontz Commission thing will take a more than a week.”

“I take it you’re ignoring the rumors, too.”

“Rumors are just that. Nothing more. Facts so far indicate a pretty open and shut. No conspiracy. What did you want to talk to Mrs. McCarty about?

Clever bastard. You won’t trip me up that easily
. “Personal condolences, that’s all.”

“You can’t. She’s in seclusion. Hey, don’t give me that look. She requested it. Wants to be as far, figuratively and literally, from Washington as she can get. Can’t blame her for that.”

I was forced to play my only ace. “You owe me one, Frye. I want to at least talk to her on the phone, and I know you can set it up. She and Mac were both friends of mine. Good friends. I promised her I would at the funeral. Remember?”

An almost imperceptible tinge of red began to show around his jaw line. “I’ll see what I can do. Meantime, don’t let me find out you’ve been lying to me today. Have a good one, Jeb.”

He stood, dropped a five on the table and left me sitting there. He hadn’t even touched his coffee. This had been a warning. Shot across my bow. Something didn’t fit, though. Thing was, as I sat there mulling it over, that if President Tyndall’s murder was indeed so “open and shut”, why was Thurmond Frye concerned about me butting in?

I waited another ten minutes to be safe, and went out. It had started raining again, but there were plenty of cabs available.

A youngish, probably overworked priest at St. Michaels named Ralph told me Father Flaherty was away on a required retreat in Maryland and would be gone two weeks. Whether that was true or not, or whether Flaherty had chosen to purposefully escape Washington and all that was going on, I had no way of knowing. I hadn’t been expecting that, and had already sent the cab on its way. So, I trudged through the rain the two blocks to Reilly’s, cursing myself for forgetting, in my haste, to grab either a hat or an umbrella.

That Sean Reilly recognized me was something of a surprise. What he said to me when he came to the booth I’d sat down in was a bigger one. “Mornin’, Mr. Willard. Tim said you’d be back. Somebody here you should talk to.” He looked around to see if any of the early customers were watching. They weren’t. “Come with me, please.”

I followed him through the café doors into a neat, rather large kitchen. A stout, smiling woman whose face looked like a well-polished apple turned from the grill, wiped her hands on her apron, then stuck one out to me. “I’m Moira, Sean’s better half.” She cocked her head to the right. “Go on in.”

Sean pulled a brown curtain aside, revealing a small dining room, behind which was a staircase. I barely heard him tell me the stairs led up to their living quarters, because sitting at their linen-covered table, stirring a cup of coffee, was Liz McCarty. She looked up, managed a small “Hi,” and then looked back down into her cup. I noticed several things at once. She was dressed in a waitress uniform, her hair pulled back and pinned, she wore no makeup, and, she had been crying all morning long.

In the softest of voices, Reilly said, “Take all the time you need, honey. We don’t have much of a crowd yet. Glad to see you, Mr. Willard. You’re welcome in my house anytime.”

I sat down opposite the embarrassed girl. Gave her one of my best smiles and another one to Moira Reilly who silently placed a cup of delicious smelling coffee under my nose. “What’s wrong, Liz?”

Long pause. Fidgeting. Lip-chewing. Then it came in jets, between sobs. Had to leave school just shy of finishing Master’s at University of Virginia… Kicked out of apartment in Charlottesville… Clothes tossed out
into the
freaking street
… Volkswagen trashed and burned by students… Nowhere to go… No money… Mac had been paying bills… Co-signing student loans… They knew I was his sister… Moira and Sean came through… Gave me a bed and a job… “Why, Jeb? Why in God’s name did he do it?”