Try Try Again (10 page)

The staff members sat down, and Liv briefly explained what
she hoped to accomplish. “Now,
The Post
said that Congressman
Barnes had been investigating some misdoings – I don’t know what, but perhaps
you do. Maybe he was getting too close on the trail of a big contractor or –
something.” she finished lamely. “Help me out here, if you can. I swear there’s
no way Charley Dukes is going to be found not guilty, and I’m not going to
plead him not guilty, either. So anything you can think of –.”

The staffers looked at each other, and finally one said,
“There was this thing, ah, he asked us to see if Tom Conning had been up to –
well – selling his Senate vote. There was some rumor Conning was in the hip
pocket of one of the big defense contractors. But we analyzed his voting
pattern for the past five years, and couldn’t find anything, even at the
committee and subcommittee levels. No vote-selling, or even vote giving-away.
Conning is a loyal back-bencher and mostly just does what the party whip says.”

Another staffer added “When we’d come up empty on the
vote-selling idea, the Congressman said we’d found something useful against
Conning anyway. None of us knew what he was talking about.” The other three
staffers nodded.

Liv cleared her throat. “What about Congressman Barnes’
personal life? Was there…?” All four smiled at the same time. One said “You
mean mister straight arrow himself? No drinking, no smoking, not even chewing
gum! And none of us were allowed to use that stuff either. At least anywhere
where he could see it.”

A third staffer chimed in. “No sex, except with his wife and
sometimes I even doubted that!” The other staffers gave him an annoyed look,
but let it pass.

Was all that virtue just too damn innocent? Just the sort of
cover a drug dealer, or a white-slaver, or an agent of Al-Whatever would love
to have? Liv asked more questions, especially as to how well Barnes’ staffers
knew him, how they could have known about any secrets he might have had. No
luck. He socialized with his staff frequently, they said, and his only close
friends were other congressmen and some old friends from Grantwood.

Finally she mentioned illegal drugs, but the others just
laughed.

Baffled, Liv thanked the staffers and rose to leave. But
then she had a thought. “Charley Dukes lived in D.C., you know. How would I
find out where to look for his friends, if he had any; where he hung out?”

The others looked at each other. Finally, one said “Dunno. I
guess the D.C. police could help you. Dukes had a record, right?

“Do you know anyone…?”

There were several shaking heads. One said “Sorry, D.C. cops
don’t come to the Hill very often. I don’t know anyone there.”

Liv thanked Barnes’ staff for their help and left. On the
way out of the building she ran into Sandelli, who was returning from his
meeting. He wished her well and asked her to let him know if she was ever in
the market for a new Hummer. She drove home slowly, considering her options.

The next morning, Liv phoned the D.C. Metropolitan Police
and lied, saying she was with the State’s Attorney’s office for Grantwood
County.

“Brent Nielsen?”

“That’s right; I work with Brent.”

“This must be about that killer; he lived around here.”

“Yes, it is.”

“How can I help you?”

“I need to know where he hung out, places he went to,
friends he had. Anything like that.”

“Why do you care? He confessed, didn’t he?”

“Yes, but he may have had accomplices.”

“Oh, OK. – possibly.”

“Can you help me?”

There were three “hmm”s and four “haw”s, and then “We have
some regular patrols in that area, where he lived I mean. Give me your number
and I’ll ask a couple of the guys where he was likely to hang out if they know,
ask them to call you.”

“Thank you very much, Chief.”

“Ah - that’s lieutenant.”

Liv felt good: she’d made progress.

After a few hours of worrying she’d be fired even before the
trial for impersonating a member of the Despised Opposition, Liv’s phone rang.
It was a Sergeant Delray, making a call he clearly felt was a stupid bother.
She had to “please” the Sergeant a few times, and “I’d be awfully grateful”
twice more, but he finally came up with the names of six bars or clubs within
walking distance of Charley’s home. Patrolmen think they’d seen Charley in or
near some of these places, most likely the Bottoms Up! or the Starfleet Academy
or the Stirrup. Couldn’t be sure you know, nobody paid attention to Charley
until he killed that Congressman, y’know.

“But wasn’t he a dangerous criminal?”

Sergeant Delray laughed. “Never hurt anybody, just stole
stuff and made a nuisance of himself. He’d wave a gun around, and actually
fired into the ceiling of a drugstore once. – ‘use of a firearm in a felony’ –
but overall he was pretty harmless. –That was before, of course.”

“Do these clubs have security cams?”

“No way. Nobody in that part of town would go there if they
thought they’d be on camera.”

“How about cameras on the street?”

“Digitally recycled after thirty days, and they’re mostly
just for traffic violations anyway.”

“Well, thank you, Sergeant,” she said.

“Any more questions,” the Sergeant said, “call somebody
else.” He hung up.

So Charley Dukes was harmless. What had happened?

The next day, Liv put on her weekend sloppies instead of
business attire. She dressed as sexlessly as possible, which wasn’t difficult,
since that was the way she usually dressed. She put her hair in a bun to look ‘severe’,
she thought, not like long-haired women who – well, maybe none of that was
true. What the hell. She took a deep breath. She felt nervous. But those clubs
– they lived in dread of being shut down by city inspectors or the police, so
they couldn’t be too bad, could they? Could they?

She drove toward D.C., parked at an outlying Metro lot, and
took the Red Line to the NOMA stop. By this time it was almost dark, so she had
a leisurely dinner and waited until the nearest bar on her list might have
acquired a crowd.

There was a notice posted on the door of her first bar,
Starfleet Academy. It had been shut down by D.C. health inspectors two days
before for persistent rodent infestation and lack of hot water. If that was
Charley’s favorite haunt, her trip had been for nothing.

She arrived at the Bottoms Up! just after nine, walked up to
the bar, ordered a beer, and asked the bartender if he’d ever met a Charley
Dukes, and did he used to hang around here? She showed him Charley’s picture.

The bartender professed ignorance. In all those Hollywood
movies, this was the time to slip him a hundred-dollar bill and ask “how’s your
memory now?” but she didn’t have that kind of money to spend, and she thought
what she could afford – about ten dollars – would insult the traditional film cliché.
So she didn’t offer him money. She was almost expecting him to rub two fingers
together and say something like “I could remember, with a little persuasion,”
but he didn’t.

He gave her a look of friendliness, not lust or suspicion. It
was obvious the name “Charley Dukes” meant nothing to him. “Just a minute,” he
said. He headed to an older man several stools away at the bar and asked him
something Liv couldn’t hear. They spoke for a few seconds and then the
bartender returned. “Jake, over there, knows Charley Dukes a little but, hasn’t
seen him in a year or so. Jake’s always here, so I guess Charley isn’t around
these days. Sorry I can’t help you. But if you’ll give me your cell number, …”
The lust appeared. Liv thought of giving him her wicked witch face, but
refrained and thanked him instead.

She showed Charley’s picture around to the rest of the
suspicious but small crowd, without mentioning his name. Someone asked her if
she were undercover, and she immediately said “Yes” without thinking. Oddly,
that seemed to relax the gathering. She felt uneasy about telling them she was
undercover, but she hadn’t actually used the word “police.” Not her problem if
they thought she was a cop. Too late, it occurred to her that undercover cops
wouldn’t say they were undercover cops or they wouldn’t be under cover.

“OK,” one man finally said. “That’s Charley Dukes. Used to
come here but I haven’t seen him since …” He looked around, a few others
nodded. “March? End of winter, anyway.”

“So you don’t know where he hangs out now?”

“How about the D.C. jail?” came a voice from the back of the
room. Tried there?” There was general laughter.

The bar crowd retreated into their usual feigned ignorance. Liv
thanked them and left.

Liv was running out of bars. She looked at the notecard
she’d brought. The next place was the Stirrup Bar and Grill on New York Avenue,
several blocks away. She could have walked, but took a cab instead.

About nine thirty she entered the rundown place and sat at
the bar. Males approached her one by one, but a few fierce looks sent them
hurrying back to their seats.

There was a small stage in back, where a stripper was going
through her bumps and grinds without enthusiasm. Only a few men were watching
her, the rest concentrating on their drinks. All the place needed was Humphrey
Bogart with a dangling cigarette, but smoking was illegal here.

“Hi,” she said to one man carefully, “I’m told Charley Dukes
used to hang out around here. I’m his lawyer and I’d like to speak with someone
who knows him.” There was no immediate response.

After she had asked more people in the bar about Charley
Dukes, feeling more exposed and foolish and uneasy by the minute, one bar-fly
who introduced himself as Mike, offered to give her information for a double
shot of bourbon. They retired to a table.

“Yeah,” he said, “we’re all proud of our local hero here, in
the news and all that. Quite a jump from sticking up 7-11s! A real pro – who’d
have thought? – but I guess we’ll never see him anymore.”

By this time, several men and women had gathered around the
pair nodding, and saying that they too remembered Charley, knew a whole lot
about him, and how about a drink for us, too?

A woman said, “Yeah, a man called Art asked for Charley and
then came by a few more times and I saw them talking together, very serious.”

“When was this?”

“Oh, two-three weeks maybe. But Art hasn’t come in here
since that shooting.”

Mike said he remembered an Art hanging around with Dukes
once in a while for the last few weeks, too, but he didn’t know any more except
Art was expensively dressed and seemed to have good taste, at least as far as the
whiskey brands he asked for that the Stirrup didn’t have, and (Liv thought) in
comparison with others at the Stirrup, whose liquor expertise began and ended
with proof divided by price.

Asked to describe Art in more detail, Mike could say only
that he was medium height, medium build, a white male about forty – a
description that fit millions of Americans. “Oh yeah,” he added, “I think he
was wearing a wig. Maybe not. If it was, it was a pretty good one.”

Two men told Liv that Charley used to carry a gun and he’d
held up some stores, but sometimes it wasn’t even loaded. That confirmed the
Sergeant’s comments, she thought. But – perhaps Art hadn’t known how harmless
Charley really was.

A “Snookie” joined in: “Art paid for Charley’s drinks, but
only took a sip or two of his own.” Considering the quality of the bar drinks,
thought Liv, I wouldn’t wonder.

“Do you know what kind of business Art had with Charley?”
she asked. “Specifically, that is, if you can help me out here.”

No one offered an answer. Then a man at another table, who’d
been listening, offered Charley seemed increasingly nervous during his meetings
with Art. Another offered that Art had “acted strange.” When asked to define
“strange,” he couldn’t do any better than say, “not like us.” Another added Art
hadn’t been back to the Stirrup since the last time they saw Charley with him,
a comment Liv had heard before.

Someone else said, “Art didn’t know any of us but Charley,
didn’t pay attention to us, seemed like a kind of snob, wouldn’t say Hi to
anybody but Charley.”

Liv had taken all this in, and it certainly sounded like a
conspiracy of some kind. They could have been planning a holdup. But wasn’t
Charley an improbable conspirator for a murder, just as Brent had said?

“What do you suppose Art wanted Charley for?” she asked.

A Max said, “Don’t know” (he glances at the others).
“Something, I guess. Well – a job of some kind, I guess. What else could
Charley do that was worth anybody’s time or money?”

So there was something, after all. An “Art” who could well
have bought Charley’s services. But no one in the club professed to know Art,
and she believed them. So Art had picked Charley out some other way than
hanging out in bars, had zeroed in on him. A one-applicant job search.
Interesting.

Later, a little wobbly from the watered drinks she had downed
to look ‘normal’ to the bar crowd, Liv drove carefully back to Grantwood. She
felt energized in spite of the liquor. A good bunch of people, she thought.
They’re real. But then a speeding car brought her attention back to the road. ATTORNEY
DRUNK DRIVING CHARGE she imagined the headlines reading. In her firm, that was
a near-fatal no-no, and they wouldn’t help with her legal defense.

Eventually she arrived home, flung herself on her bed,
curled up in a ball, and went to sleep just as the first uneasy light was
beginning to appear from the general direction of Philadelphia. She dreamed she
was back in the Stirrup, having drink after drink, asking for more, gradually
becoming too drunk to lift her head, asking the others to just turn her over and
pour it into her mouth, please. One more? Please? Please?

She woke up late in the morning, wondering if that’s what
her father had gone through, that night he died on the floor of a bar when she
was twenty-eight, and hated him, and had to do something about the body.

Later that day, Liv returned to the county jail and asked
for Charley Dukes. This time, they were put in a small room alone. The guards
had concluded, apparently, Charley was the tamest hardened criminal they’d ever
met and he didn’t need six keepers at all times.

Liv smiled. Charley stared at her, not in a mean way, but as
if to say her time on his case was a complete waste, so why bother?

“You’re wastin’ your time,” he said, confirming his look. “I
did it. Go home.”

Liv paused; dramatically, she hoped. After a few seconds
Charley seemed to know that something was about to happen. He frowned. Enough,
thought Liv; I’ve got his attention. “Who the hell is Art!” she almost yelled.

Charley jerked in his seat and his eyes widened, but he
controlled himself quickly. He said nothing.

“Well,” said Liv, “I guess I’m on the right track. I was at
the Stirrup in D.C. yesterday, so I know about Art. Tell me about him.”

“Nothin’,” said Charley. She noticed he didn’t bother
denying that there was an Art.

“Nothing what?” she insisted. “Your drinking buddy.”

“So? I’ve got lots of drinking buddies.”

“I think he paid you to kill Ezra Barnes.”

“No,” said Charley, “no. I had my own reasons.”

“What were those?”

“I told the cops.”

“They didn’t believe you.”

“Well, tough shit.”

“No, Charley,” she said, “none of your stories were true. You
were paid. And you’re covering for the man who paid you. Or maybe he stiffed you;
the police didn’t find any money.

“Why are you covering for ‘Art’? How can you feel any
loyalty for him now?” Charley said nothing. Liv decided to lie, a practice
she’d never been good at but it was honorable in the trade, and what the hell.
“I’ve got security footage of Art,” she said, “from outside the Stirrup. If you
help us catch him, I’ll try to get you a break on your sentence. But the D.C.
police are on his trail; they could have him any time now. We could ID him
first. That might go a long way for you.”

Charley was silent for several minutes, apparently hoping
that Liv would just disappear. Finally, he sighed and said “I don’t know any
Art. And even if I did, I never knew who he was, never saw him when he wasn’t
in the Stirrup.”

“Did he say where he lived or worked? Anything? Married?”
Charley shook his head.

Liv sighed, got up. “I guess I’ll see you at the trial,” she
said. “Look, I’m going to plead diminished responsibility, even though that
probably won’t fly. Lifetime of poverty, beat up by your Dad…”

“He never did that!”

“Never had a Dad,…”

Charley rose from his chair. “Leave my goddamn life alone!”
he shouted, “And especially my Dad! I don’t want to hear about it and I don’t
want anyone else to hear about it either. I’ve had a shitty life and I’m a
shitty creep. – Go plead that!” He sat down, deflated, and turned away.

Liv left. It occurred to her she’d accused Charley of having
the same childhood she’d had. Takes one, she thought.

About the same time Liv was in the Grantwood County jail
speaking with Charley for the second time, Sebastian George was sitting at his
own kitchen table in a newly gentrified part of Northeast D.C., assessing his
likelihood of arrest and even survival. He wasn’t really concerned  Charley
might have mentioned an “Art,” or even that Art been seen at the Stirrup with
Charley. He’d been ultra-careful, left no evidence, couldn’t be traced.

Charley could ID him by sight as Art, as could a number of
hangers-out at the Stirrup; but again there was no evidence Art had done
anything wrong, just Charley’s word. And Charley would never talk, because of
the threat on his daughter’s life. And George would never go near the Stirrup
Bar and Grill again, not that he’d ever wanted to be there in the first place.

His real worry was if the prosecutor would believe Charley
was a hit man in a conspiracy. His plan (Sybille Haskin’s plan, whatever it
was) would be endangered if anyone thought Charley had been paid to make the
hit. That would set off a major investigation. George didn’t know what kind of
damage an investigation would do to Haskin, or why; but she’d been very
up-front about it: one guy, one crime, acted alone, that’s it.

His hope, now, was that the prosecutor would understand he
had a stronger case if were to argue Charley had acted alone. A stronger case
for the death penalty, that is, or life imprisonment. So the possibility of a
conspiracy might never come up in the trial. George could only hope.

He took another sip of his favorite cocktail, one he’d invented
but never admitted having a taste for: bourbon and lemonade. Occasionally, he’d
made up fanciful names for that combination, something that could be ordered at
a bar. “I’ll have the Kentucky Squeeze, please,” or “the Pucker-Upper,” or something
like that. If life hands you lemons, get drunk.

And another sip. When he had a buzz on he was more apt to be
self-critical than he was when sober. Confessing to his own inner bartender, he
called it. Well, let’s see what had gone wrong, and why, and what could yet go
wrong.

His first mistake – he raised a forefinger – was feeding
Charley the story Barnes had cheated on a drug deal. It seemed funny to him at
the time, considering Barnes’ reputation – but he assumed Charley would never
tell anyone that story, because Charley would be dead.