McGuire sat staring at Capitol Hill, where new commissioners were confirmed. His fingers were rubbing the armrest and his feet inched the chair back and forth on its rollers. I wondered if he ever sat still.
He looked up at me. “Sit down, Chris.” I pulled up a chair while he tried on his rubbery smile. It looked sick, like a minister’s smile at a big contributor’s dirty joke.
“You’re late this morning,” he started, then fished for some banter to match his smile. “You out getting laid or something?”
“That’s very droll. Particularly under the circumstances.”
“You can’t lose your sense of humor.”
That would be a shame, I thought. “Why don’t you call the Lehman household, Joe. They’re starving for a joke.”
“Look, I’m as sick about this Lehman thing as you are.” He waited. I didn’t answer. “Did you find out anything in Boston?”
“Not really.”
“Then where the hell were you yesterday?”
“Out getting laid.”
His smile evaporated. “Don’t bullshit around. Where were you?”
“I was at Lehman’s house.”
The chair stopped moving. “I didn’t say you could do that. What were you doing there?” His voice quickened into staccato.
“I was hoping to find something.”
“The day after the guy was killed?” McGuire sounded both appalled and intrigued.
“That’s right.”
“Christ, do you realize how we look? One of our guys bothering people after the husband gets killed. That’s just awful.” His mind shifted. “Find anything?”
So much for compassion. I wondered who else wanted to know. The attache case sat at my feet, the memo still in it. “Nothing much. Old financial statements, junk like that.”
His eyebrows converged anxiously. “Are you sure?”
Something was wrong. “Did something happen here that I should know?”
The question brought on his cheerless smile. “You’re meeting with William Lasko this afternoon. At 3:30.”
Lasko again. The news hit my stomach like an indigestible lump. I didn’t trust myself to say anything. So I tried to stare out an explanation. His frozen smile was a ghastly rictus of embarrassment.
“Lasko’s attorney called this morning and asked for a meeting.” He paused. “A Mr. Catlow,” he added vaguely.
The last was very cute. I figured McGuire must have almost forgotten Catlow’s name, since Monday. I wanted to remind him, then knock out his teeth. But I didn’t. I waited for more.
He gave it in a reluctant voice, as if the words were extracted by my silence. “Lasko thinks this case clouds his reputation. He’s asked for a meeting to answer any questions we may have.”
That was straightforward enough. But something in McGuire’s voice tipped me.
“Do you have a stenographer to take it all down?”
That was it. McGuire shook his head at the floor, not facing me. “No. This is just an informal meeting.” He tried to say it casually, as if this was our standard routine.
I wanted to do something. Anything but sit. But I sat, and let the anger simmer. When I spoke it came out dry and precise. “I don’t need to tell you that this meeting is worse than worthless, do I, Joe? I mean, you do know that?” He stared back at me, looking both trapped and outraged. I went on. “With no transcript, we’ll never prove perjury. He’ll lie to us anytime it suits him.”
“He’s the President’s friend. Remember that. And he’s coming to us voluntarily.”
“Little wonder. You know damned well why he’s coming. In return for lies that will never hurt him, he’ll find out exactly what I know. He’ll listen to the questions. If I ask him about Sam Green, he’ll find out about that. If he’s tied with Green somehow, he’ll get to Green before we do. If I know something from Lehman, my questions will tell him that. If he lies to me about fact ‘X’ and I can’t follow it up, he can figure I don’t know about fact ‘X.’ That’s the way it works. Maybe I should just start reporting to Lasko direct.”
“The man has influence, damn it. And you don’t have a fucking thing on him.”
“I think Lasko had Lehman killed.”
His eyes flashed. “Look, I don’t want you talking that kind of irresponsible garbage.” He spoke with the emphatic contempt of a drill sergeant. “I’ve put up with your shit around here, for the time being. But you start smearing anyone else and you’re out on your ass.” His voice held a sort of submerged dread beneath the anger, as though silence would make murder less real.
So I said it again, very slowly. “I think Lasko killed Lehman.”
He flushed. “Say that outside this office and you’re fired.”
“Does that include to the Boston police?”
“Especially the Boston police.”
I stood up, not trusting myself to continue. “Is that all?”
His voice rose in anger. “No, it isn’t. You horsed around at Lehman’s house without authority. You’ve gone over my head on the Lasko subpoena. Now you’ve appointed yourself a detective. If you think Woods is going to keep covering your ass, forget it. When I fire you, I’ll have all the reason in the world. And no law firm will hire you to run coffee.”
It was almost out in the open, I thought. I balled my fists in my pockets to steady myself. “I wouldn’t fire me just yet, Joe. It would stink too much.” Our eyes locked. “Are we through now?” I asked.
McGuire’s gaze broke. He nodded, his eyes angled away from me. An uneasy mix of anger and chagrin haunted the gesture. Against the bare wall, he looked as solitary as the last tenant in a condemned building.
I picked up my case and walked to the door. I opened it, then leaned back. “By the way, Joe, have you started making funny phone calls?”
I was looking for recognition in his eyes. All I got was anger-and puzzlement. I slammed the door and left.
Suppressed rage overcame me. I moved half-blind through the corridors, back to my section. It was still there, the clatter and greyness, as if nothing had changed. A mail boy delivered a stack of memos and the agency newsletter. Three of the girls sat at Debbie’s desk, talking and stirring their coffee with the serene complacency of civil servants. It was a big day. One of the girls had won the ECC bowling championship.
I looked around the fringe of offices, feeling like a visitor from Botswana. Feiner stared out of his office, saw me, and looked away. A strange face brushed by me, attached to a flying shirttail. They had hired someone new. I went toward my office.
Debbie glanced up and followed me inside the office. She just looked at me for a while. “Are you all right?” she finally asked.
“I guess.”
Her eyes were still and serious. “I’m sorry about your witness,” she said simply.
Somehow, it was the most normal reaction I’d seen in three days. Then it struck me that Mary had said much the same thing. I tried to puzzle out the difference. I couldn’t. “Thanks,” I finally said.
She nodded. “If you’d like to talk-” The sentence drifted off, as if to tell me it was optional. I told her I’d do that, and ran out of things to say. She went back to her desk, closing the door behind her.
I threw my attache case on the desk and sat down. I was still staring at the case when Robinson knocked on the door. His face was keen and sympathetic. “What happened, for Christsakes?”
He sat down while I told him-about everything but the memo. It helped, getting it out. But the memo stuck in my throat. So, somehow, did the phone call. Perhaps in daylight it seemed childish. Anyhow, I held it back.
Robinson was weighing it all. “So you think Lasko killed Lehman?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
He nodded. “It makes some sense.”
The grimness of the thing filled the room, as if Robinson had confirmed Lehman’s death. Robinson felt it too. He fished awkwardly for something to divert me. “You know,” he said finally, “there’s only so much you can do by yourself.”
“How do you mean?”
He leaned back with the air of a man telling a parable. “A few years ago, I had a secretary who’d always fall asleep at her typewriter with her nose running. One day I took a good look at her arm. Needle tracks all over. So I tried to have her canned. She found out and filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity counselor, claiming I was a racist.”
“What happened?”
“I got my ass chewed by personnel, and had a talk with some pompous shit about my latent racism. The upshot was that I was ordered to have weekly counseling sessions with my secretary, to help her along. They lasted three weeks. The fourth week I couldn’t take it any more. I recommended her for a promotion. She’s now supervising a typing pool of thirty girls, between naps.”
I shook my head. “The point is,” he added, “that it goes with the territory.”
The story seemed to have some vague but depressing relation to my work, perhaps even to Lehman. Robinson’s acceptance bothered me. I tried to think of something constructive.
“The Boston office served the subpoena for Lasko’s financial stuff on Wednesday. Think you can get them to air express those down today?”
“Some of them.”
“Let’s look at them this weekend. There has to be something else going on that ties in with all this.”
“I’ll do it,” he said crisply. “Anything else?”
My mind was still on the memo. “You do know we’re meeting with Lasko at 3:30?”
His eyes looked puzzled through the thick glasses. “So I hear. I can’t say I like the rules.”
“It wasn’t my idea, Jim.”
He nodded. “I had guessed that. Did you talk with McGuire?”
“We had words about it,” I said dryly. “I had my second almost-firing this week.”
Robinson’s bemused look returned and focused on his fingernails. “Ever wonder why he doesn’t can you?”
“Yep. My answer is that it’s too much trouble to boot me in the middle of this.”
“Then the question you should ask is why he put you on this one in the first place. Anyone else would have been less trouble.”
It was as if he had sniffed out my suspicions and was conducting a veiled debate. With me and with himself. I wanted to tell him about McGuire and Lasko’s lawyer. And about the memo. But that would put Robinson in the middle, between McGuire and me. He didn’t want to be there.
“I’ll think on it, Jim. And I appreciate your help.” I felt as if I were closing out his friendship, selling him short. But he didn’t need my problems, and I couldn’t make him hold out on McGuire. I let him go.
I got up and closed the door after him. Then I pulled the manila envelope out of the attache case. Lehman’s memo. I fingered it, wondering if the absurd scrawling could somehow kill me too. I stared for a long time. Then I opened up my desk drawer and looked in. The bottom of the drawer was two layers of metal. I took my letter opener, jammed it between the layers at the front of the drawer and pried. It lifted minutely, making a crack between the two layers. I pulled it back out, and took the memo out of the envelope. I copied the cryptic words on a note pad, ripped it off, and stuffed it in my wallet. I replaced the memo in its envelope. Then I re-pried the layers with the opener. I took the envelope in my left hand and tried to slide it between the layers. It fit. I slowly shoved it all the way in.
I thought for a while. It was a turning point, I knew. I could hide it, or give it up and try to walk away. But I had probably come too far the first time I read it. I closed the drawer and locked it.
I leaned back in my chair and waited for William Lasko.