The Echo of the Whip (7 page)

By the standards of the neighborhood, the house on Avenida de Cortez was more than modest but less than opulent; more than a million dollars but not quite two. Four bedrooms, four-and-a-half baths, a small pool, nicely landscaped with mountain views but no ocean vista.

McGill led a party of five to the front door and rang the bell. With him were John Tall Wolf, Deke Ky and the two LAPD detectives looking for the malefactor who had made off with Ms. Kersten’s frosted tots, Eloy Zapata and Wallace MacDuff. Mira answered the door dressed in a sleeveless white top, khaki shorts and flip-flops.

Her limbs were toned and tanned, her finger and toenails painted, but McGill thought her face, well formed and symmetrical, looked too lined and hard for a woman in her forties. He kept that thought off his mug and to himself. He extended a hand and said, “Jim McGill.”

She smiled, the expression igniting a glow and warming her features. “Yeah, I recognize you. Mira Kersten. Come in, I’ve got a big kitchen table where we all can sit.”

She led them through the house to the kitchen at the rear. Without being obvious about it, McGill, Tall Wolf, Zeke and the two local cops all surveyed points of entry where an intruder might break in. Without looking back at any of them, Mira said, “This place is wired wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling, best security system money can buy. Armed response time is less than two minutes. I don’t keep much cash here and the only jewelry I own is a watch and a few pairs of earrings.”

She looked over her shoulder at the men following her. “Just in case any of you were wondering.”

Tall Wolf asked, “What about trade secrets?”

She looked up at Tall Wolf. “And you are?”

He introduced himself. She already knew the cops’ names from phone calls they’d made to her. That and checking them out once she’d heard they’d be working her case. The Secret Service guy’s role was obvious.

“The Bureau of Indian Affairs?” Mira asked. “Well, that’s intriguing.” She looked to McGill for elucidation.

“Co-director Tall Wolf is an exceptional investigator and he carries the authority of the federal government with him,” McGill said.

A smart cookie, Mira understood just what that meant.

McGill wasn’t going to let himself get bullied by the LAPD. She liked that. She got everyone except Deke seated at a large circular table. The Secret Service agent said he’d keep a roving patrol outside the house. Mira didn’t object.

She offered her seated guests a choice of orange juice or coffee. McGill and Tall Wolf went with the OJ; the cops took the coffee. Mira brought their beverages and provided herself with a glass of a dark green liquid supporting a foamy head. None of the others asked if they might have a sip.

Mira turned her attention to Tall Wolf.

“To return to your question so you won’t have to ask it again, I shredded all the paper-and-ink records of my previous incarnation as a political campaign manager and saw the confetti go into a paper pulper. I would have burned the stuff only that wouldn’t have been environmentally friendly.”

“What about photographs and videos?” Tall Wolf asked.

Mira smiled and said, “You do have an interesting mind. They’ve also been disposed of as responsibly as possible, with a few hundred thousand exceptions owned by media outlets and a handful of peculiar paparazzi.”

McGill said, “So you’ve retired from politics? If that’s the case, how do you spend your time?”

Mira nodded to the LAPD duo. “Gentlemen?”

Zapata said, “She’s a talking head.”

“Dispenses wisdom on TV for most every local and state election anyone might give a damn about,” MacDuff added.

“And?” Mira prompted.

“She’s right more often than a lot of those dopes,” Zapata conceded, “about who’s going to win and by how much. If she handicapped horse races, people’d be lining up to buy her tip sheet.”

“How sweet,” Mira said. “I’ll have to remember that line at my next contract negotiation.” She told McGill and Tall Wolf. “Running political campaigns is a young person’s game. You stay in it too long, it will literally kill you. You hit forty, you start thinking about doing a TV gig.”

“Or become White House chief of staff?” McGill asked.

Mira beamed. “There’s only one Galia Mindel. She’s my second mom. So, are all you fine gentlemen going to help me become a mother before it’s too late?”

McGill said, “Each in his own way. As guests in town, John and I thought it would be polite to let the detectives speak to you first.”

Zapata and MacDuff did want first crack.

They weren’t crazy, though, about the idea that McGill was doing them a favor. That and he’d hear their line of questioning. They did their best to adapt to circumstances without audible complaints, knowing they’d get more information with good manners this time around.

Zapata said to Mira, “The gentleman from the BIA raised a good point a moment ago but maybe he didn’t take it far enough. Do you know of any video of you in other hands that might jeopardize your new line of work?”

Mira’s jaw clenched. Then she made a conscious effort to relax.

“If you mean, does anyone have a sex tape of me …” She thought about that. “It’s possible, I suppose, but if one exists, it was made without my knowledge. It also would have been made after I was divorced and single.”

“You sure about that, Ms. Kersten?” MacDuff asked.

“Positive, I’m very good at keeping my calendar. Between being genuinely interested in my ex-husband, physically, in the early part of our marriage, way too busy in the middle years, and not wanting to give him any edge in our divorce near the end, I was faithful to him for the duration of our marriage. After we split, there were other men, men only, and I practiced all the precautions I’d preached to my candidates: no outdoor frolics, nobody more than ten years younger and nothing more than a handshake for anyone coming out of rehab.”

McGill glanced at Tall Wolf. Both kept straight faces while smiling inwardly.

For their part, the detectives appeared to buy Mira’s answers. They seemed to be disappointed, though. They’d been hoping for a crime grounded in more familiar territory. Who the hell had ever heard of embryos being held for ransom?

“Why are you so sure your former husband is behind this theft?” MacDuff asked. “We’ve heard from Dr. Hansen at the fertility clinic that your ex wasn’t the only man involved in creating those embryos.”

Mira tensed again and this time she clung to her displeasure.

“Did she tell you who they were?”

Both LAPD cops shook their heads.

Zapata said, “No, ma’am. No names or even how many. Just that your ex wasn’t the only man in the picture here.”

That appeased Mira somewhat.

Until MacDuff added, “The doctor said she couldn’t breach her confidentiality obligation, at least not without a court order. But you, you can just tell us. Because we need to know who to question.”

Both L.A. cops looked to McGill and Tall Wolf to see if they’d object.

They didn’t.

Mira looked at McGill, too.

He said, “That’s a legitimate line of inquiry. You should tell them.” Then he turned to Zapata and MacDuff. “And you guys should see to it that there are no leaks coming out of LAPD.”

The good will McGill had earned a moment earlier from the detectives by telling Mira to cooperate vanished after he’d delivered his warning. The guy had some balls telling them what they should do. Then again, he’d been on the job. He knew all the angles a cop could play. Still …

Zapata pushed back, telling Mira, “We need to speak with the other men before you do.”

Now, she smiled. “Too late. I’ve already called them. You can waste your time if you want but it’s not any of them.”

“How do you know?” MacDuff asked.

“I’ve spent more than twenty years inside electoral politics. I know a lie when I hear one.”

No one at the table chose to argue with that. Zapata and MacDuff got the names and phone numbers of the other embryo co-creators. After a glance at McGill, they
requested
that Mira not call the men again, not before they had the chance to talk to them.

Mira looked to McGill for confirmation.

He said, “That’s reasonable.”

His approbation once again caused mixed feelings for Zapata and MacDuff. McGill had done the right thing, as before, but it chafed more than ever that they needed his approval. They left before their tempers got the better of them, saying they had all they needed for the moment.

Mira took the first sip of her noxious-looking drink.

“Soylent green,” she told McGill and Tall Wolf. “Made from the bodies of candidates I’ve defeated.”

“Good thing you waited for the cops to leave before saying so,” Tall Wolf said.

McGill smiled. Kidders, the both of them. Well, so was he, but it was time for Tall Wolf and him to get down to business.

“Okay, Ms. Kersten,” he said, “the LAPD didn’t get around to asking you the obvious question, what the thief wants in return for your embryos. Why is that?”

“When I spoke to them on the phone, I mentioned I was gathering all the cash I have.”

“And let them make the obvious inference,” Tall Wolf said.

“Yes.”

“Cops don’t like being misdirected,” McGill told her.

Mira shrugged. “Ed Whelan thinks I stole something he treasures.”

“You didn’t?” McGill asked.

“No.”

“Do you know who did?” Tall Wolf asked.

“No.”

“What does Whelan want?” McGill asked. “Please be specific.”

“Well, in part, Mr. McGill,” she said, “it’s an explanation of why your wife was impeached.” Before McGill could ask for an elaboration, Mira added, “Galia Mindel could give you chapter and verse but she knows it’d be safer if I tell you privately.”

Tall Wolf got to his feet. He looked down at McGill.

“You want me to go?”

McGill looked him and then at Mira, took a moment to consider. “No, stay.”

He rarely worried about his own well-being, but if things got dicey, he wanted someone else who knew the story to be able to carry on. Make sure things turned out right for Patti.

Margaret “Sweetie” Sweeney sat at the rectory’s kitchen table with a cup of green tea in front of her. Seated across the table was Father Desmond Nkrumah, the pastor of St. Al’s parish for the past two years. Sweetie had befriended him within days of his arrival. After taking a sip from his own cup of tea, the priest steepled his hands and said, “I’m sorry, Margaret, I simply can not forgive you for this act because I do not consider it to be a sin.”

Sweetie had attended morning mass, after Putnam had taken Maxi off to school.

Then she’d collared Father Dez after the service and asked him to hear her confession.

He’d asked, “Is this about what we’ve been discussing for quite some time now, Margaret?”

She’d nodded, and he’d said, “Let’s have a cup of tea in the rectory.”

He put a do not disturb sign on the kitchen door and brewed the tea himself.

“You’ve heard that the president has been impeached, haven’t you, Father?” Sweetie asked.

The priest nodded, “I have, yes. I was sorry to learn of this, but it does not change the purity of your intentions. You’ve done nothing wrong. We are all subject to the possibility that even our best plans might go amiss.”

“Amiss, Father? Erna Godfrey died, was choked to death, because of a plan I set in motion.”

The priest reached across the table and grasped both of Sweetie’s hands, his own warm from clasping his cup of tea.

“Margaret, the White House chief of staff and the president herself, women far more versed in politics than you, were unable to foresee the tragic outcome. You really must … pray for a moment of grace to see that you are only human.
You
need to forgive yourself. Otherwise you will be unable to be the mother and wife that your daughter and husband both deserve. Now, that would be a sin.”

Father Dez had learned from the start how devoted Sweetie was to her family.

Tears came to her eyes, and she bobbed her head. “You’re right. The president and Galia Mindel have people to help them. Jim McGill for a starter.”

Sweetie’s mind searched for other important allies.

The priest said, “If I’ve read the newspapers correctly, the chief justice, who will preside at the president’s trial in the Senate, was nominated by the president. Perhaps he is sympathetic.”

Sweetie marveled at Father Dez’s political discernment. He was an immigrant who had been in the country less than five years. But that was a Jesuit for you. Those guys studied the lay of the land wherever they went.

“Many of the chief justice’s rulings in his earlier postings were quite close to the president’s own positions on the issues, weren’t they?” the priest elaborated.

Sweetie didn’t have a clue; she tended to avoid the workings of the courts.

Unless they affected the way cops got to do their jobs.

That brought Sweetie back to the sorest point of what she felt was the worst mistake of her life. “Father, the reason I find it so hard to forgive myself is that
I
was an experienced police officer for a long time. I still think of myself that way. I was the one who should have foreseen better than anyone else the possibility of violence occurring within a prison.”

“Quite possibly,” Father Dez agreed. “Maybe this terrible misjudgment should tell you something. It may even have done so, scaring you badly, and that’s why you are so troubled.”

Sweetie knitted her brow.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Well, would you have made this tragic mistake ten years ago or even a year before it happened?”

Without any hesitation, Sweetie shook her head. “No way, Father. No way.”

“Well then,” the priest said, “perhaps the lesson to be learned here is that you should no longer think of yourself as a cop or even as a private investigator. Perhaps all your discomfort is a sign you should move on to something else.”

Sweetie’s mouth fell open. See herself as something other than some kind of cop? The idea had never occurred to her. Even so, she couldn’t think of a word of rebuttal.

And then a totally new self-concept entered her mind.