The Pelican Brief (25 page)

“What the hell is this?” he asked.

“Do you bitch about everything?” she almost whispered.

“Yes. Especially stupid things, and this is very stupid. Are we getting on this boat?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” He sneezed again, then coughed out of control. He could take her out now with one hand, but there were people everywhere. People in front, people behind. He took great pride in his cleanliness, and this would be a dirty place to do it. Get on the boat, play along for a few more minutes, see what happens. He would get her on the upper deck, kill her, dump her in the river, then start yelling. Another terrible drowning accident. That might work. If not, he’d be patient. She’d be dead in an hour. Gavin was a bitch, so keep bitching.

“Because I’ve got a car a mile upriver at a park where we’ll stop in thirty minutes,” she explained in a low voice. “We get off the boat, into the car, and we haul ass.”

The line was moving now. “I don’t like boats. They make me seasick. This is dangerous, Darby.” He coughed and looked around like a man pursued.

“Relax, Gavin. It’s gonna work.”

Khamel tugged at his pants. They were thirty-six inches in the waist and covered eight layers of briefs and gym shorts. The sweatshirt was extra large, and instead of weighing one-fifty, he could pass for one-ninety. Whatever. It seemed to be working.

They were almost to the steps of the
Bayou Queen
.
“I don’t like this,” he mumbled loud enough for her to hear.

“Just shut up,” she said.

The man with the gun ran to the end of the line and elbowed his way through the people with their bags and cameras. The tourists were packed tightly together as if a ride on the riverboat was the greatest trip in the world. He had killed before, but never in such a public place as this. The back of her head was visible through the crowd. He shoved his way desperately through the line. A few cursed him, but he couldn’t care less. The gun was in a pocket, but as he neared the girl he yanked it out and kept it by his right leg. She was almost to the steps, almost on the boat. He shoved harder and knocked people out of the way. They protested angrily until they saw the gun, then they began yelling. She was holding hands with the man, who was talking nonstop. She was about to step up onto the boat when he knocked the last person out of the way and quickly stuck the gun into the base of the skull just below the red baseball cap. He fired once, and people screamed and fell to the ground.

Gavin fell hard into the steps. Darby screamed and backed away in horror. Her ears were ringing from the shot, and voices were yelling and people were pointing. The man with the gun was running hard toward a row of shops and a crowd of people. A heavy man with a camera was yelling at him, and Darby watched for a second as he disappeared. Maybe she’d seen him before, but she couldn’t think now. She was yelling and couldn’t stop.

“He’s got a gun!” a woman near the boat yelled,
and the crowd backed away from Gavin, who was on all fours with a small pistol in his right hand. He rocked pitifully back and forth like an infant trying to crawl. Blood streamed from his chin and puddled under his face. His head hung almost to the boards. His eyes were closed. He moved forward just a few inches, his knees now in the dark red puddle.

The crowd backed farther away, horrified at the sight of this wounded man fighting death. He teetered and wobbled forward again, headed nowhere but wanting to move, to live. He started yelling; loud painful moans in a language Darby did not recognize.

The blood was pouring, gushing from the nose and chin. He was wailing in that unknown tongue. Two crew members from the boat hovered on the steps, watching but afraid to move. The pistol concerned them.

A woman was crying, then another. Darby inched farther back. “He’s Egyptian,” a small, dark woman said. That news meant nothing to the crowd, now mesmerized.

He rocked forward and lunged to the edge of the boardwalk. The gun dropped into the water. He collapsed on his stomach with his head hanging over and dripping into the river. Shouts came from the rear, and two policemen rushed to him.

A hundred people now inched forward to see the dead man. Darby shuffled backward, then left the scene. The cops would have questions, and since she had no answers, she preferred not to talk. She was weak and needed to sit for a while, and think. There was an oyster bar inside Riverwalk. It was crowded
for lunch, and she found the rest rooms in the back. She locked the door and sat on a toilet.

Shortly after dark, she left Riverwalk. The Westin Hotel was two blocks away, and she hoped maybe she could make it there without being gunned down on the sidewalk. Her clothes were different and hidden under a new black trench coat. The sunglasses and hat were also new. She was tired of spending good money on disposable clothes. She was tired of a lot of things.

She made it to the Westin in one piece. There were no rooms, and she sat in the well-lit lounge for an hour drinking coffee. It was time to run, but she couldn’t get careless. She had to think.

Maybe she was thinking too damned much. Maybe they now thought of her as a thinker, and planned accordingly.

She left the Westin, and walked to Poydras, where she flagged a cab. An elderly black man sat low behind the wheel.

“I need to go to Baton Rouge,” she said.

“Lord, honey, that’s a heckuva ride.”

“How much?” she asked quickly.

He thought a second. “A hundred and fifty.”

She crawled in the backseat and threw two bills over the seat. “There’s two hundred. Get there as fast as you can, and watch your rear. We may be followed.”

He turned off the meter and stuffed the money in his shirt pocket. Darby lay down in the backseat and closed her eyes. This was not an intelligent move, but
playing the percentages was getting nowhere. The old man was a fast driver, and within minutes they were on the expressway.

The ringing in her ears had stopped, but she still heard the gunshot and saw him on all fours, rocking back and forth, trying to live just a moment longer. Thomas had once referred to him as Dutch Verheek, but said the nickname was dropped after law school when they became serious about their careers. Dutch Verheek was not an Egyptian.

She had caught just a glimpse of his killer as he was running away. There was something familiar about him. He had glanced to his right just once as he was running, and something clicked. But she was screaming and hysterical, and it was a blur.

Everything blurred. Halfway to Baton Rouge, she fell into a deep sleep.

26
________

DIRECTOR VOYLES stood behind his executive swivel chair. His jacket was off, and most of the buttons on his tired and wrinkled shirt were unfastened. It was 9 P.M., and judging from the shirt he had been at the office at least fifteen hours. And he hadn’t thought of leaving.

He listened to the receiver, mumbled a few instructions, and hung it up. K. O. Lewis sat across the desk. The door was open; the lights were on; no one had left. The mood was somber with small huddles of soft whispers.

“That was Eric East,” Voyles said, sitting gently into the chair. “He’s been there about two hours, and they just finished the autopsy. He watched it, his first. Single bullet to the right temple, but death came sooner from a single blow at C-2 and C-3. The vertebrae were shattered into tiny chips and pieces. No powder burns on his hand. Another blow severely bruised his larynx, but did not cause death. He was nude. Estimate of between ten and eleven last night.”

“Who found him?” Lewis asked.

“Maids checked in around eleven this morning. Will you deliver the news to his wife?”

“Yeah, sure,” K.O. said. “When’s the body coming back?”

“East said they’ll release it in a couple of hours, and it should be here by 2 A.M. Tell her we’ll do whatever she wants. Tell her I’m sending a hundred agents in tomorrow to blanket the city. Tell her we’ll find the killer, etc., etc.”

“Any evidence?”

“Probably not. East said they’ve had the hotel room since 3 P.M., and it appears to be a clean job. No forced entry. No signs of resistance. Nothing that would be of any help, but it’s a bit early.” Voyles rubbed his red eyes, and thought for a while.

“How could he go down for a simple funeral, and end up dead?” Lewis asked.

“He was snooping around on this pelican thing. One of our agents, guy named Carlton, told East that Gavin was trying to find the girl, and that the girl had called him, and that he might need some help bringing her in. Carlton talked to him a few times, and gave him the names of a few student hangouts in the city. That was all, so he says. Carlton says that he, Carlton, was a bit worried about Gavin throwing his FBI weight around. Said he thought he was sort of a klutz.”

“Has anyone seen the girl?”

“She’s probably dead. I’ve instructed New Orleans to find her, if possible.”

“Her little brief is getting folks killed right and left. When do we take it seriously?”

Voyles nodded at the door, and Lewis got up and
closed it. The Director was standing again, cracking his knuckles and thinking aloud. “We have to cover our asses. I think we should assign at least two hundred agents to pelican, but try like hell to keep it quiet. There’s something there, K.O., something really nasty. But at the same time, I promised the President we would back off. He personally asked me to back off the pelican brief, remember, and I said we would, in part because we thought it was a joke.” Voyles managed a tight smile. “Well, I taped our little conversation when he asked me to back off. I figure he and Coal tape everything within a half mile of the White House, so why can’t I? I had my best body mike, and I’ve listened to the tape. Clear as a bell.”

“I’m not following.”

“Simple. We go in and investigate like mad. If this is it, we crack the case, get the indictments, and everyone’s happy. But it’ll be a bitch to do in a hurry. Meanwhile, idiot and Coal over there know nothing about the investigation. If the press gets wind of it, and if the pelican brief is on target, then I’ll make damned sure the country knows the President asked us to back off because it’s one of his pals.”

Lewis was smiling. “It’ll kill him.”

“Yes! Coal will hemorrhage, and the President will never recover. The election is next year, K.O.”

“I like it, Denton, but we have to solve this thing.”

Denton walked slowly behind his chair, and slid out of his shoes. He was even shorter now. “We’ll look under every stone, K.O., but it won’t be easy. If it’s Mattiece, then we’ve got a very wealthy man in a very elaborate plot to use very talented killers to take out two justices. These people don’t talk, and they
don’t leave trails. Look at our friend Gavin. We’ll spend two thousand hours digging around that hotel, and I’ll bet you there won’t be a shred of useful evidence. Just like Rosenberg and Jensen.”

“And Callahan.”

“And Callahan. And probably the girl, if we ever find her body.”

“I’m somewhat responsible, Denton. Gavin came to me Thursday morning after he learned of Callahan, and I didn’t listen. I knew he was going down there, but I just didn’t listen.”

“Look, I’m sorry he’s dead. He was a fine lawyer and he was loyal to me. I value that. I trusted Gavin. But he got himself killed because he stepped out of bounds. He had no business playing cop and trying to find the girl.”

Lewis stood and stretched. “I’d better go see Mrs. Verheek. How much do I tell her?”

“Let’s say it looks like a burglary, cops ain’t sure down there, still investigating, we’ll know more tomorrow, etc. Tell her I’m devastated, and we’ll do whatever she wants.”

________

Coal’s limo stopped abruptly at the curb so an ambulance could scream by. The limo was wandering aimlessly through the city, a ritual not unusual when Coal and Matthew Barr met to talk about really dirty business. They sat deep in the back of it, sipping drinks. Coal was indulging in a spring water. Barr had a sixteen-ounce Bud purchased from a convenience store.

They ignored the ambulance.

“I must know what Grantham knows,” Coal was
saying. “Today he called Zikman, Zikman’s aide Trandell, and Nelson DeVan, one of my many former assistants who’s now with the Committee to Reelect. And these are just the ones I know of. All in one day. He’s hot on this pelican brief.”

“You think he’s seen it?” The limo was moving again.

“No. Not at all. If he knew what was in it, he wouldn’t be fishing for it. But dammit, he knows about it.”

“He’s good. I’ve watched him for years. He seems to move in the shadows and keeps in touch with an odd network of sources. He’s written some crazy stuff, but it’s usually accurate as hell.”

“That’s what worries me. He’s tenacious, and he smells blood with this story.”

Barr sipped from the can. “Of course, it would be asking too much if I wanted to know what was in the brief.”

“Don’t ask. It’s so damned confidential it’s frightening.”

“Then how does Grantham know about it?”

“Perfect question. And that’s what I want to know. How’d he find out, and how much does he know? Where are his sources?”

“We got his car phone, but we haven’t been inside the apartment yet.”

“Why not?”

“We almost got caught this morning by his cleaning lady. We’ll try again tomorrow.”

“Don’t get caught, Barr. Remember Watergate.”

“They were morons, Fletcher. We, on the other hand, are quite talented.”

“That’s right. So tell me, can you and your quite talented associates bug Grantham’s phone at the
Post
?”

Barr turned and frowned at Coal. “Have you lost your mind? Impossible. That place is busy at all hours. They have security guards. The works.”

“It could be done.”

“Then do it, Coal. If you know so damned much, you do it.”

“Start thinking about ways to do it, okay. Just give it some thought.”

“Okay. I’ve thought about it. It’s impossible.”

Coal was amused by this thought, and his amusement irritated Barr. The limo eased into downtown.

“Tap his apartment,” Coal instructed. “I want a report twice a day on all his calls.” The limo stopped, and Barr climbed out.