The Liar's Lullaby (35 page)

“The president can’t shed any light on that.” Lewicki stuck his hands in his pockets and walked to the windows.

“I can’t take your word for that. Tasia and Searle Lecroix are dead. And the president can certainly shed light on why Tasia showed up at the concert armed with his Colt forty-five.”

“The media has made hay over that, but reasonable people understand that the president hadn’t seen that weapon in twenty years.”

“The president hadn’t seen Tasia in almost twenty years, either, yet last week he secretly met with her in Virginia. Three days later, she left Searle Lecroix a message saying things had gone haywire, that her life was in danger, and that if she died, quote, ‘It means the countdown’s on.’ ”

Lewicki paced in front of the windows as if positioning himself. As if other people were opponents. Or lunch. Pausing, he opened a window and drew a breath of fresh air. The sounds of city traffic floated in. He stared down at the street.

“Prove that’s a threat to the president. Give me one good reason,” he said.

 

 

I
N THEWING mirror, Ivory watched the motorcycle cop approach her car. That helmet and mirrored sunglasses, the tight uniform, like the Gestapo.

They knew she was using her sister’s ID. Her driver’s license had Noel’s name on it. Her lousy sister, Noel, fat crazy Noel who only loved music and singers and for that got shot in the head by the same SFPD that was now storming toward her car.

She set the Glock on her lap. She looked out the windshield at the street. Crowded, packed with cars and trucks parked for delivery, pedestrians, skyscrapers. Nowhere to run. The cop swelled in the mirror, his badge filling it.

He tapped on the window.

She raised the gun, put it to the glass, and pulled the trigger.

J
O’S TEMPER IGNITED. “ONEGOOD REASON? YOU DON’T WANTA GOOD reason. You want any excuse to knock me down.”

Turning from the window, Lewicki stepped toward her, eyes sharp. “Tasia played games. Love, life, war, it didn’t matter. She played people against each other like they were toys in her playhouse of mania. So I want one single shred of evidence that the night she died, she wasn’t playing one last game, killing herself with Rob’s forty-five to ruin his reputation.”

“Toys in her playhouse? What—”

Vienna stepped between them like a referee. “Cut this out.”

Jo pointed at him. “Please clarify what you meant by—”

“Stop it.” Vienna put up a hand. “Now.”

Jo closed her mouth, but wondered what had inspired Lewicki’s remark. Vienna turned to him.

“Look who’s talking—the champion of gamesmanship. Don’t deny it, darlin’. I remember your toast at Rob and Tasia’s wedding. But there aren’t any prizewinners here. Tasia’s dead.”

Lewicki stepped back. The breeze carried street sounds through the open window. Abruptly he turned and leaned an ear toward the glass.

Vienna softened her glare. “Kel, if you won’t do this for Tasia, do it for me.”

He had gone as silent as a gargoyle. He held up a hand to quiet her.

“What?” she said.

He took out his phone. Before he could push any buttons, it rang. He turned his back on Jo and Vienna. “Lewicki.”

Vienna put her hands on her hips, annoyed. Jo, feeling confused and curious, tried to catch her eye, but Vienna waved her off.

“Yeah, Bill. I’ll have them take me straight to Grace Cathedral . . . what? No, just . . .” He looked out the window again. “Thought I heard something. Popping sound. But everything’s all right?”

He listened, and snorted. “Call her Senate office. We’ll go to the Hill ourselves when I get back.” He beckoned Vienna. “I may need videoconferencing capability. Does that TV have a cable hookup for telepresence?”

He pointed at the plasma screen above the credenza. Vienna looked ready to slap his butt clean through the wall.

With a sharp knock, the receptionist opened the door. Dana Jean’s easily surprised face looked unusually subdued. “Sorry to disturb you. Vienna, the car’s here to take you to the service.”

“All right.”

Dana Jean left. Vienna crossed to the window and stared at Lewicki until he lowered the phone.

“I’m leaving you and Jo to your argument. I have my sister’s funeral to attend.” Her expression was piquant. “I’ll be waiting at the church, with your boss, when you finish hashing this out. And you will.” She stepped closer. “I’m short a pallbearer. I know you cared for Tasia. I need to find a man who can carry something heavy.”

Vienna let her stare linger on Lewicki. He actually blanched. She turned and swept out the door, trailing the scent of roses.

Abashed, Lewicki glanced at Jo. He raised a finger, mouthed,
One minute,
and spoke into the phone. “Bill?”

He turned back to the window, speaking rapid-fire.

Steamed, Jo looked at the music on the conference table. She was close, she felt it, almost like she could touch the meaning with her fingertips. And Lewicki was close to walking out.

Chord progression. A minor. C major. A third chord, she couldn’t decipher by sight. She put her fingers on the notes.

E major.

She stopped. “Oh Jesus.”

She looked at the next line. The melody echoed the chord progression. The lyrics read,
He wants me . . .

Beneath it was a D chord, followed by an E.

“Dead,” Jo said.

Lewicki glanced at her, eyes guarded.

She picked up the sheet music. “I’ve solved the puzzle.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Tasia wrote a code into these songs. The words are the setup, the question. The notes are the answers, the payoff.” She put her index finger on the staff.” ‘After Me.’ The chord progression. Look.”

Lewicki did. “A minor, C, E.” He looked up sharply. “What?”

“Ace.” Jo scanned the next words.“ ‘He wants me.’ ”

“Ace? What are you saying? Ace Chennault? Tasia’s ghostwriter?”

“Yes. Look.” Jo punched the sheet music. “The repetitive chord progression. It’s not random. A-C-E, and then, every fourth measure, A-C-E . . .”

“With a rest, followed by another C.”

“Ace C. Ace Chennault.”

“He wants her? He was in love with her?” Lewicki said.

“No. Look at the chords.” Jo’s pulse was jumping in her veins. “D major, E major, A minor, D,” Jo said.
He wants me . . .
“D-E-A-D.”

Lewicki looked at her, perplexed. “This is the music Tasia left, with her ‘If you read this, I’ve been assassinated’ recording?”

“Yes.”

Jo read further through the lyrics.
What’s next? Who’s next?

The air seemed to brighten. She reread the notes she’d translated from A-B-C to Do-Re-Mi.

Re-Ti-Mi-Fa-La-Do.

Re. Ti. “R. T.”

Mi. Fa. La. Do. Unfocus a bit, play loose with the spelling, and it became: M’Fa’la’d.

“R. T. McFarland,” she said. “Robert Titus McFarland.” She grabbed the music. “One thing? One reason—I got it. Tasia says in here that Ace Chennault wants her dead, and the president is next.”

Lewicki looked at Jo like her hair had just sprouted snakes. Into the phone he said, “Hold on.” He covered the receiver with his hand. “This is not a joke?”

She held up the music. He saw that she was not joking. Still, he looked skeptical. She grabbed the music for “Liar’s Lullaby.”

This was a puzzle too. What was the key?

Jo looked at the top of the first measure, where Tasia had written “Counterpoint/Round.”
Round, round, get around.
Melody, harmony, counterpoint, lyrics.
The truth is in my music.

Counterpoint meant two contrasting melodies, combined. That much Jo remembered from Sister Dominica’s music class. And round—

“Damn.” Could it be as simple as that? As simple as “Frère Jacques” or “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”?

She scrawled the first verse on her scratch paper, triple-spacing. Then she wrote the second verse, interspersing its lines between those of the first. The alternating lines intertwined, and a new composition appeared: the lyrics as they’d be sung in a round.

Jo looked at Lewicki. “It was an assassination plot. Tasia was supposed to set the president up to be killed.”

Lewicki shook his head. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Read the goddamned words. ‘You wanted me to be your choir, load the weapon, call his name, help
you
build the funeral pyre.’ Jesus Christ, ‘Unlock the door, he dies in shame’—she got McFarland alone in a hotel room in Virginia. That was supposed to be an opportunity for somebody to shoot the president. And she’s saying the man who lured her into setting up the meeting is still out there.”

Lewicki shook his head, but with less vehemence. “I think you’re seeing what you want to see.”

“No.” She stepped toward him. “Vienna Hicks is a formidable woman. You know that full well. Her sister was equally formidable. Her bipolar disorder didn’t make her any less intelligent or driven. And on the last night of her life, it came out in a flood of creativity.” She spread her hands. “If she wasn’t a powerhouse, do you think Robert McFarland would ever have married her?”

“Good point.”

He took the music and the scratch paper from her. Slowly, as he read over it, he inhaled. “Why would she write it out in code?”

“ ‘Load the weapon’ may refer to the Colt forty-five. Do you think she wanted to confess to being under the sway of some Rasputin who persuaded her to take a loaded gun to a meeting with the president?”

“What’s the refrain mean?” he said. “It’s got to mean something, right?”

She took the sheet music. She was so focused on reading the lyrics, it took a second before she realized:
He believes me.

She focused.
Look and see the way it ends.
Ends . . . She skipped to the final verse.

She whispered the words. Fell into your embrace . . . ran the race . . . face . . . grace . . .

All the same . . .
“All the words end in ‘ace,’ ” she said. “Ace Chennault.”

“Are you sure?”

“Pain,” Jo said. “Christ. It’s a reference to the guy online who calls himself Tom Paine.” She explained. “He’s a screed-master, whips extremists into a lather. Tasia’s saying that he’s actually Ace Chennault.”

Jo remembered Chennault in the hospital after Noel Petty had brained him with a rock. “He has a tattoo around his ankle.
Semper T
. . . ‘Always—’ ”

“Fuck,” Lewicki said. “Fuck me to shitting hell and back.
Sic semper tyrannis
?”

“What’s wrong?”

He pulled out his phone. “It’s what John Wilkes Booth shouted after he shot Abraham Lincoln.”

I
VORY SIDESWIPED A PARKED TOYOTA, BOUNCED OFF WITH A SCREECH, and rebounded into a mailbox. She could barely see for the screaming in her head.

Porky Pig was down. She’d shot him. Shot the bastard in the face.

Leaving the sideswiped Toyota and the mailbox behind, she gunned the car into a parking garage. Ninety seconds, and she’d taken out a rice burner and a Gub symbol. Score three. She was on a roll.

She jammed the car into a disabled space, grabbed her bag, and jumped out. She ran into the building, some kind of office, and into the women’s room.

She stripped off her glass-spattered sweater and stuffed it into the trash. She put on her Blue Eagle Security uniform shirt. Trying to button it, she felt like an old woman playing a washboard in a jug band, her hands were shaking so hard.

Shot Porky. Shot him
down.

She brushed safety-glass chips from her glorious white hair. No turning back now. She pulled on the helmet and shades, and slammed through the women’s room door. She stormed out of the office building and headed downhill, back to the skyscraper on Sacramento where the Gub Suburban was waiting.

She sent Keyes a text.
Go.

The new world was about to come into being.

 

 

T
HE TEXT MESSAGE arrived while Ace Chennault was in line at a busy Hertz office near Union Square. His windbreaker covered the Blue Eagle Security shirt. To the other people in the queue, he looked like a guy with a sports bag, shuffling up to the counter. He didn’t look like a man loitering in public, waiting for instructions. He didn’t look like a suspicious character, the kind the Secret Service would zero in on.

He read Keyes’s message.
It’s go.

The address was beneath that. Chennault felt his world expand.

Tasia had received letters from the law firm at that address, Waymire & Fong. Her sister worked there. He’d rifled through those letters, early on, hoping to unearth scraps of usable intelligence.