The Minotaur (21 page)

If one of these men was, no hint of it came from
the FBI background investigations that had been completed for the
Senate confirmation process. The common thread was that they
were pillars of the establishment, the kind of men generations of
mothers prayed their daughters would marry. All eighteen were
white, well educated, leaders in their local communities, respected
by all those similarly situated. Several had previously held elected
or appointed office. Most were family men or divorced family men.
Thirteen of them had graduated from an Ivy League school. Tennis
was the most popular sport and golf a close second. Several were
yachtsmen. Every single one of them could be labeled indepen-
dently wealthy, most from old family money, a few from small
fortunes they had made themselves.

It was sickening. Wealth, privilege, power, spelled out in these
files in black and white. Oh, they had a few little peccadillos. One
man had flunked out of three colleges before he had completed his
education in a fourth. Three drunken-driving convictions. One ille-
gitimate child. One man had been known to frequent prostitutes in
his younger days, and one had been accused of being a closet ho-
mosexual by a disgruntled soon-to-be-ex during a messy divorce.
Luis Camacho, career cop, thought it pretty tame stuff.

For several seconds he sat and stared at the piles of folders
spread over the table. No cop, he told himself, ever looked seri-
ously at a more unlikely group of suspects. There wasn’t even one
man with a family or background that might be vulnerable to in-
tense scrutiny. Not here. These men had had every advantage that
birth, wealth, and social position could confer. Sadly he shook his
head.

If the key to X’s behavior was in his past, it was
going to remain buried unless a small army of agents with a lot of
time were told to dig deep. The agents Camacho could get. What
frustrated Camacho was his suspicion that he was running out of
time. What infuriated him was his conviction that no matter how
deep they dug, the investigators could come up dry. And without
something . . . some artifact . . . something tangible, how
could he sell a man to Albright as X? Albright would
want a man he could understand, with a motivation that could be
reduced to writing and passed from the Aquarium to the Kremlin
and would explain. The committee should have thought this prob-
lem through two years ago.

He went back to his office and found a photo of Terry Franklin
in the file. Actually there were four of them. The one he selected
was a full-figure shot taken with a hidden camera. Franklin was
looking just to the right of the camera, perhaps waiting for a car to
pass the parked van the photographer had used. This picture he
placed in an inside pocket of his sports coat. He glanced at his
watch. If he went to the Pentagon, he could probably still catch
Vice Admiral Henry, who rarely left before 7 P.M.

Terry Franklin stopped at a neighborhood bar after he got off the
bus from work. On the Friday evening of the longest week of his
life, he deserved a few drinks. Waiting for the ax to fall was squeez-
ing the juice right out of him. He had been a bumbling fool all
week, botching one job after another, having to ask the chief for
help with several problems that were so minor he had been embar-
rassed. The chief was solicitous, asking if he was having problems
at home.

The problem was he couldn’t think about anything else. He
could no longer concentrate on his job, his wife, the kids, anything.
He had to get his mind off it and he just couldn’t! Sitting here at
the bar, he glanced warily at the other customers, then bit his lip.
A panic-stricken scream was just beneath the surface. He was los-
ing it. It was like one of those nightmares he had as a kid—he was
fleeing from a hideous monster and his legs went slower and slower
and the monster was reaching out, within inches of catching him—
and he woke up screaming with pee soaking his pajamas.

He was going to have to get all this crap stuffed into one sock,
going to have to wire himself together so he could get from one end
of the day to the other. He had all of tonight, all day Saturday, all
day Sunday—three nights and two whole days—before he had to
face his demons on Monday.

He ordered another CC on the rocks. Sure, he could do it. No
one knew. No one was going to arrest him. No one was going to
toss him into prison with a bunch of homo thieves and killers.
After all, this is America, land of the gullible, home of the foolish.

He would deliver and collect on another dozen floppies or so.
Then he would empty his safe-deposit box and be on his way to a
new life. Perhaps Rio. He would lie on the beach all day and fuck
beach bunnies at night.

He sipped on his drink and thought about how it would be. The
life he had always wanted was right there within his grasp, so
close, within inches. But he was going to have to be realistic about
the monsters, going to have to keep trotting. No urine-soaked paja-
mas. No screaming fits. Amen.

He paid the tab and left two quarters on the bar. Outside he
forced himself to pause and examine the headlines on the newspa-
per m the vending stand. Same old crap. The world was still turn-
ing, things were burning down, trains were still crashing . . .

He walked the two blocks home with his head up, breathing the
spring air. It seemed just yesterday that it was so cold and misera-
ble. Spring is here. And I’ve got a fortune in the bank and no one
knows but me.

His neighbor was washing his car in the driveway. “Hey, Terry,
how’s it going?”

“Pretty good. And you?”

“Just fine. Say, I’ve been meaning to ask you. How’s the spy
business?”

Terry Franklin froze.

The asshole tossed his sponge into a bucket and wiped his hands
on his jeans. He grinned as he reached for his cigarettes. “Lucy has
been telling Melanie that you’re a spy. I laughed myself sick.

“So …”

Terry didn’t hear any more. He lurched for the front door.
“Lucy!” He slammed the door behind him and charged for the
kitchen. “Lucy,” he bellowed, “you stupid—“

Lucy was sitting with her mother drinking coffee at the counter.

Both women stared, openmouthed.

“What—what does Jared mean—about Melanie? What did you
tell Melanie?” He thought he was doing pretty well under the
circumstances, staying calm and keeping the legs going. But it
came out as a roar.

“Now listen here, Terry—” Lucy’s mom began.

“Lucy, I need to talk to you.” He grabbed her arm and half
lifted her from the stool. “Now, Lucy.”

“Let go of her, Terry!”

“Mom Southworth, please! I need to talk to—“

“No!” The old lady had a voice like a drill instructor.

“Lucy, what did you tell that moron Melanie?”

“I told her that—“

“Get your hands off her, Terry. I know all about you. You stu-
pid. greedy—” The older woman was fat, with two chins. Just now
Terry Franklin thought her the ugliest woman he had ever laid eyes
on.

“Shut up, you nosy old bitch! What the hell are you doing here
anyway? Lucy, I want to talk to you.” He grabbed her arm and
dragged her from the stool toward the downstairs half-bath. He
pulled her inside and slammed the door. “What in the name of
God have you been saying to Melanie?”

Lucy was scared witless. “Noth—“

“Did you tell her I was a spy?”

Terry didn’t need an answer; it was written all over her face. The
mother-in-law was pounding on the door and shouting. Something
about calling the police.

“You—you—” he whimpered as his legs turned to wood and the
monster’s fetid breath engulfed him.

Lucy opened the door and slid out as he sagged down onto the
floor and covered his face with his hands. His whole life was shat-
tered, smashed to bits by that silly, simple twati

It was 8:30 P.M. when Luis Camacho parked in front of Mrs. Jack-
son’s house and locked his car. It was a delightful spring evening,
still a nip in the air, but almost no wind. The foliage was budding.
Summer was coming and the earth was ready.

As he walked down the street Camacho glanced at the crack
house. Someone was peering though a curtain on the second floor;
he saw it move. No one on the sidewalk. Mrs. Jackson’s gate was
ajar, but not a light showed through the curtains.

He mounted the stoop and rapped on the door. As he waited he
glanced around. Street still empty- Such a beautiful evening. He
knocked some more. Perhaps she had gone to the store, or to a
neighbor’s?

Suddenly he knew. He tried the knob. It turned. He pushed the
door open several inches and called into the darkness, “Mrs. Jack-
son? Mrs. Jackson, are you here?” He gingerly pushed the door
open wider and reached under his jacket for the butt of the .357
magnum on his right hip.

All the lights were off. Camacho closed the door behind him and
stood in the darkness listening with the revolver in his hand.

Nothing. Not a sound. Not a squeak, not a creak, nothing.

He waited, flexing his fingers on the butt of the gun. All he could
hear was the thud of his own heart.

Slowly, carefully, he groped for the light switch on the wall.

She was lying near the kitchen door with her right leg twisted
under her, staring fixedly at the ceiling. In the center of her fore-
head was a small red circle. No blood. She had died instantly.

With the revolver ready he went from room to room, turning’on
lights and glancing into closets. Everything was neat, clean, tidy.
Satisfied that the killer was gone, he came back to the living room
and stood looking at Mrs. Jackson. He stooped and touched her
cheek. She had been dead for hours. Around the bullet hole in her
forehead was a black substance. A powder bum.

The phone was in the kitchen. Her purse sat beside it, the catch
still latched. Camacho wrapped his handkerchief loosely around
the telephone receiver before he picked it up. He dialed with a pen
from his shirt pocket. As he waited for the duty officer to answer,
he idly noticed that the fire under the coffeepot had been turned
off. A professional hit. With any luck the body would not have
been discovered for days and the time of death would have been
problematic.

“This is Special Agent Camacho.” He gave them the address-
“I’ve discovered a corpse. Better send the forensic team and the
D.C. police liaison officer. And call Dreyfus at home and ask him
to come over.”

Back in the living room he tried to avoid looking at Mrs. Jack-
son. Something shiny in a candy dish on the sideboard caught his
eye. He stepped carefully over the body and bent to look. A spent
.22 caliber Long Rifle cartridge. The killer hadn’t bothered to re-
trieve the spent casing! And why should he? Twenty-two caliber
rimfire ammunition was sold everywhere and was virtually un-
traceable. But how had this shell got here?

He went back to the corpse and stood near it. Then he stooped
down and felt her head carefully. Another bullet hole in the back
of her head. Okay, where is the second shell?

The FBI agent got down on his hands and knees and looked
under everything. He found it in a corner, half hidden by the edge
of the carpet, bearing the Remington “R.” Camacho didn’t touch
it.

So Mrs. Jackson had opened the door and admitted her killer.
Locks not forced or scratched up. She had started back toward the
kitchen, the killer behind, and he had shot her in the back of the
head. She had died on her feet and collapsed where she stood. He
had walked over to her and fired a second shot into her brain with
the pistol held inches from her face. That shell casing was ejected
by the pistol into the candy dish. The killer had then proceeded on
through the house, checking for other people, turning off lights,
turning off the stove, making sure nothing would cause a fire or
call attention to the house. Then he had left and closed the door
carefully behind him. He hadn’t bothered to lock it.
Even that was smart. No doubt the assassin had worn gloves, so
he left no fingerprints. If the local punks tried the knob and came
in to see what they could steal, they would probably not be so
sophisticated, and they would automatically become the prime sus-
pects in Mrs. Jackson’s murder. All very slick.

The bastard!

Camacho was standing by the front window looking at the crack
house when the lab van pulled up, followed immediately by a sedan
with city plates and two sedans with U.S. government tags. Two
hours later the forensic team and the other people departed with
the body. Dreyfus and a lieutenant from the D.C. force remained
with Luis Camacho.

“When are you going to raid that crack house, shut it down?”
Camacho asked the question of the plainclothes lieutenant as he
jerked his head at the building across the street.

“Who says it’s a crack house?”

“What’re you afraid of? Think the mayor might be in there?”

“Listen, asshole! If you’ve got any evidence that dwelling is be-
ing used for illegal purposes, I’d like to see it. We’ll do some affida-
vits, find a judge and get a warrant. Then we’ll raid the place. Now
are you all hot air or do you have some evidencel”

“We have a statement from a woman now dead. We sent a copy
over to you guys three days ago.”

“I saw that statement, then routed it to the narcs. All it said was
that there was suspicious activity over there. A little old woman
thought something nasty was going on in her neighborhood. Big
fucking deal! No judge in this country would have called that prob-
able cause and issued a warrant, even if that statement had been
sworn, which it wasn’t. Now where’s the goddamn evidence?”

“Whatever happened to ‘usually reliable sources’?”

The lieutenant didn’t reply.

“All you guys must belong to the ACLU.” Camacho stood look-
ing at the house, the peeling paint, the mortar missing from the
brick joints, the trash in front of the place, the light leaking around
drawn blinds. Just then a large old Cadillac hardtop came around
the comer and drifted slowly to a stop at the curb. Four young
black men got out. One went up the steps toward the door of the
house, which opened before he reached it and closed behind him.