Mistress Read online

  “Because you’re quoting U2 song titles to me, Ben. You do things like that when you’re nervous. Next thing, you’re probably going to tell me which presidents liked jazz.”

  “Clinton, probably the most,” I say. “The leader of the Czech Republic gave him a tenor saxophone as a gift. Otherwise, I’d have to say—”

  Then I remember what Detective Liz Larkin said to me about memorizing presidential trivia as a way of bonding with Father, and I shut my mouth. No more of that. I wasn’t bonding with Father. Screw him—

  The club door opens again, and two men walk in who look like they could play professional basketball, tall and wide and menacing. My stomach does a quick flip, a flurry of how-did-they-find-me’s rush through my head, and the ever-imminent sweat breaks out across my forehead before I realize that these two guys are, in fact, professional basketball players for the Wizards.

  I take a moment while my heartbeat de-escalates to a human pace. I can’t keep this up much longer. I’m flinching at shadows.

  “Tell me something good, Ashley Brook,” I say.

  “Okay, I will,” she says. “That busted laptop you dropped off for our techies? They think they can recover the data on there. It’s going to take them a few days, but they think they can do it.”

  She’s right. That is good news, the first in a long time.

  “Tell them to hurry,” I say. “Because I’m running out of days.”

  Chapter 52

  Garfield Park is brimming this morning with exuberant children—bouncing around the playground equipment, kicking a soccer ball, or just running around aimlessly. I mix in with the mothers pushing their strollers down the park’s central sidewalk, but, as always when I come to check on my town house, I try to stay to the south, by the Southeast Freeway, as much as possible. Anyone watching my house, and hoping to ambush me there, would hang out on the park’s north end, by F Street.

  Which is where I’m heading right now. A couple of days ago, I rolled the dice and ran up to my town house and grabbed my mail. The entire sixty-second event took a lot out of me, as I felt sure someone was going to open fire on me, and I decided after that to have my mail forwarded to my office.

  Still, I feel the need to check on the place. It makes me feel borderline normal. Normal people have homes. Normal people spend a lot of time in them. I have to concede the irony here, though—as Liz Larkin correctly pointed out, I spent most of my childhood locked up in my house, inside looking out, and now I’m forced to stay outside looking in. Maybe life has a way of evening things out, like that Seinfeld episode where everything always evened out for Jerry—

  Stop. There he is, not ten yards away from me. Oscar the giant schnauzer, with that long gray beard and stump tail, on a long leash held by my neighbor, Mrs. Tooley. I can’t prove this, but my theory is that when Satan returns to earth, he’ll return in the form of a giant schnauzer. And maybe he already has.

  Maybe Father sent him. Maybe Father took a break from his poker game with Hitler, Stalin, Jeffrey Dahmer, and whoever invented disco to advise Lucifer on the best way to torment me.

  I move east of the sidewalk, trying to keep heading toward my town house but away from Oscar. To me, the best Seinfeld episode was the one with the library cop, Bookman, who was also the single best supporting character among many good ones. I’d put him slightly above Jacopo Peterman, but it’s a close call, admittedly. Am I the only person who thinks the Soup Nazi wasn’t as funny as some of the other characters? I mean, there’s no bad Seinfeld episode, but—

  Wait. What’s this?

  As I approach F Street, I see a few people congregating in the park, looking across the street in the direction of my town house.

  Then I see an MPD squad car.

  Then the door to my town house opens.

  And bounding down the stairs of my walkway, looking like the cat who ate the canary, is none other than Detective Liz Larkin.

  Chapter 53

  I duck behind a tree, as if I have something to hide, as if it’s a crime to stand across the street and watch the police search your house.

  I open my cell phone and dial Ashley Brook’s number.

  “Two quick questions,” I say to her when she answers. “What’s your favorite Seinfeld episode, and what does it mean when you say someone looks like the cat who ate the canary?”

  “I have a question for you, too,” she answers.

  “Mine first.”

  “Okay, well—if you look like the cat who ate the canary, it means you look guilty.”

  “Isn’t that being caught with your hand in the cookie jar?”

  “Oh. But the cat isn’t supposed to eat the canary, so it feels guilty. Right?”

  On the sidewalk just outside my house, Detective Larkin is conferring with two men in sport coats and blue jeans and two uniformed officers.

  “I thought it meant you look smug,” I say. “Self-satisfied. The cat’s happy because it just had a nice meal. It finally caught the canary.”

  “Hmm. Well, okay, my favorite Seinfeld episode? It’s a tie.”

  “You can’t have ties.”

  “I have a tie, Ben. Deal with it. The first is the one with the contest over who was ‘master’ of their domain; the second is the one where Elaine thought her boyfriend was black and he thought she was Hispanic, but they were both afraid to talk about it; and the third is the one about being gay, where they kept saying ‘not that there’s anything wrong with that.’”

  Fair enough. All of those would make my top ten. She left out the one where Kramer takes the furniture from The Merv Griffin Show and starts his own talk show in his apartment. Or the one about “shrinkage,” where George emphasized the point by wearing a T-shirt three sizes too small.

  Detective Larkin pulls out her cell phone and makes a call. The other four cops head inside my house.

  “Now, what’s your question?” I ask.

  “When was the last time you got any sleep?”

  “A week ago.”

  “You need sleep, Ben. You’re acting goofy. I mean, is this why you called me? To ask about Seinfeld and some stupid idiom?”

  “Is that an idiom or an expression?” I ask.

  “Is there a difference?”

  “Why are you answering a question with a question?”

  “Why are you?”

  One of the uniforms comes out of my house carrying my desktop computer. A second one emerges with a banker’s box, contents unknown.

  “There was another reason I called,” I say. “Text me the number for Fast Eddie.”

  “Eddie Volker?”

  “The very one.”

  “Why do you want to talk to Fast Eddie?”

  One of the plainclothes detectives pops his head out and calls to Larkin. She hangs up her phone and rushes up the stairs and disappears into my house.

  It looks like they found something good. Good for them, I mean. Not so good for me.

  “Because I think it’s time I finally got a lawyer,” I say.

  Chapter 54

  The Hart Senate Office Building is the third building that was constructed to hold United States Senate offices. The building is northeast of the Capitol, adjacent to the Dirksen Senate Office Building along Constitution Avenue, with a view of the Supreme Court Building.

  The reception area in the third-floor office is all earth tones. I’m seated in a chair that I’d best describe as sunrise orange—I just made that up, but I like it—while a middle-aged woman busies herself answering the phone and shooting glances at me over her bifocals.

  Her intercom buzzes, she picks up a phone, and then she gives me the go-ahead.

  Inside the main office, the colors are patriotic. Even the Iowa state flag, standing alongside the Stars and Stripes, fits in with the color scheme, though truth be told the Iowa state flag resembles the French flag more than it does the American flag. Kind of ironic, given that then-congressman Craig Carney was one of the politicians leading the charge to change the phrase fr
ench fries to freedom fries when the French were less than enthusiastic about our invasion of Iraq.

  I’m not sure why I’m meeting with the number two man at the CIA in a senator’s office. Carney used to be a congressman from Iowa, and he’s close with the Iowa senator who occupies this office, but why didn’t he just invite me to CIA headquarters?

  Carney is handsome, with a square jaw, steel blue eyes, and a full head of dark hair just touched with gray. Some of these politicians, when you get them off camera, let their hair down. I’ve never seen Craig Carney’s hair down. I don’t know if he’s capable of letting it down. He looks as polished as ever today in his crisp white shirt, navy blue tie with tiny red stars, and cuff links bearing the Stars and Stripes.

  Craig Carney is largely credited with helping Blake Francis win the Iowa caucus, which catapulted him from the middle of the pack into front-runner status for the GOP nomination. Carney was even on a short list of candidates for vice president. The president and Carney are very tight, to understate the point.

  Deputy Director Carney swivels in his leather chair and invites me to take the seat across from his walnut desk, which doesn’t look nearly as comfortable as his own seat. He makes a show of looking at his watch. “My schedule is full today,” he informs me.

  But he made time for me, I notice. I only called this morning. Usually it takes a week, minimum, to schedule some time like this.

  “So you wanted to talk about Operation Sunshine,” he says. That’s the operation the United States embarked on to give humanitarian relief to the people of Bolivia following a devastating earthquake. That was the excuse I gave for this interview.

  He smiles, and so do I.

  “I think we both know that’s not why I’m here,” I say. He wouldn’t have dropped everything, and wouldn’t have scheduled the meeting away from his office, if the subject were Operation Sunshine.

  He reveals nothing but his pearly white teeth. “If there’s something else,” he says.

  “Diana Hotchkiss, Mr. Deputy Director.”

  Carney nods soberly, turning on the furrowed-brow concerned look that DC politicians learn during their first-week orientation. “She’ll be missed.”

  I almost laugh. He threaded that one just about right.

  “Have you spoken with her recently?” I ask.

  I just want to see how he reacts. If Craig Carney is capable of sincerity, I’ve yet to see it. I could see this guy being president one day, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.

  He cups some almonds out of a dish on the desk and weighs them in his hand while he looks me over. I wonder if the senator who occupies this office knows that Carney is eating his almonds.

  “Tell me something, Ben. It’s Ben, isn’t it?”

  That’s the kind of thing I hate about this town. Those little put-downs, delivered politely but intended to degrade the other person. This asshole knows very well who I am. If he didn’t, I wouldn’t be sitting here on such short notice.

  “Yes, it’s Ben,” I say.

  “Ben, why would you ask me a provocative question like that?”

  “To provoke you.”

  “Yes, well—I guess that’s what reporters do. They shake trees.”

  That’s the same phrase Ellis Burk used.

  “Someone who shakes a tree, Ben, needs to be ready for what might fall on him.”

  “Oh, I’m ready, Mr. Deputy Director. If you had the week I’ve had, you’d be, too.”

  Carney takes some time with the almonds in his hand, making me watch him munching them one by one.

  “Well,” he finally says between bites. “You seem to have some information that I don’t. I wish I could help you.”

  You have to love these politicians. This is another thing they must teach you when you walk through the Capitol doors—how to say all kinds of things without answering the question. So far, this guy hasn’t admitted or denied that Diana is alive.

  “I think Diana was a spy for the US government,” I say. “Probably CIA. And I think she was trying to infiltrate something and she was exposed, compromised, whatever—her cover was blown. So you faked her death to throw the bad guys off the scent. Maybe you were protecting her. Maybe you were protecting classified secrets. I don’t know. I don’t even really care, if you want to know the truth. Capital Beat has never tried to expose classified intelligence information. That’s not what we do.”

  “Thank you,” he says. Even when he says thank you, it comes out like fuck you.

  “But here’s the thing,” I say. “Someone must think that I know what Diana knew, because they’re trying to kill me. And someone’s trying to frame me for Diana’s ‘death’ and the death of Jonathan Liu, the lobbyist. I might even get blamed for the cop who was murdered in that ambush the other day on Twelfth Street—a good friend of mine, by the way. So now I do care, Mr. Carney. And I’ll run a wrecking ball through whatever I have to in order to save my life and clear my name.”

  The deputy director leans back in his leather chair and narrows his eyes. I’ve just thrown a lot at him. But he doesn’t look surprised.

  “That all sounds very intriguing,” he says. “But I don’t see how I could possibly be of assistance to you.”

  “Oh, you can and you will,” I say. “And I’m going to tell you why.”

  Chapter 55

  “Oh, please do tell me, Ben.” The CIA deputy director seems amused. “I’m waiting with bated breath as to why and how I’ll help you—a reporter for some rag that nobody reads, pushing a story that nobody will believe.”

  I’d really like to smack this douche bag. I’ll have to settle for scaring him.

  “Mr. Carney,” I say. “You remember Gary Condit?”

  Typical of his manner, he doesn’t move an inch, but the giveaway is a slight twitch of his eye.

  “Congressman Condit didn’t kill Chandra Levy,” I go on. “All he did was sleep with her. Affairs happen all the time, and they sting you politically, but you almost always recover from them. You hold a nice press conference with your stoic wife at your side, humbly concede your imperfection with vague statements like ‘I’ve made mistakes’ or ‘I haven’t been perfect,’ throw in a reference to God and, if necessary, some rehabilitation or therapy—and voilà, you win reelection.

  “But Gary Condit, he had the bad luck of having an affair with a woman who wound up dead. So even though he had nothing to do with her death, he was tainted by asso—”

  “Do you have a point here, Mr. Casper?”

  So now it’s Mr. Casper. “Oh, I just wonder how it’s going to affect your political career when it comes out that you had an affair with a woman who killed herself.”

  Carney wets his lips. His face reddens, but he’s doing his best impression of a mannequin. It’s not hard for him. He’s had a lot of practice.

  “Kind of a catch-22, isn’t it, Mr. Carney? I mean, if we’re supposed to believe she’s dead, then you have to stick with that story, right? So now it’s former congressman and current deputy CIA director Craig Carney having an affair with a woman who jumped off a balcony. How do you think you come off in that story? Good? Bad? Ugly?”

  (Possible Clint Eastwood mind-scroll here. But I’m a little busy right now.)

  Carney’s jaw clenches. I know what he’s itching to say: That affair with Diana ended years ago. Which, according to Diana, is true. But we both know that’s just a detail. He’ll have to admit to the affair to make that distinction.

  “You look like the cat who ate the canary, Mr. Deputy Director.”

  He blinks his eyes rapidly, digesting that comment. Damn. I think I was right the first time, and Ashley Brook was wrong. I should have gone with the hand-in-the-cookie-jar line. Another lesson to all of you—go with your first instinct.

  After a long pause, which I have to put down as some of the best thirty seconds of my entire week, Carney clears his throat and comes forward in his chair.

  “Young man,” he says evenly, but I detect a tremble in h
is voice. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you can get in by blackmailing the deputy director of the CIA?”

  I shrug my shoulders. “Is it worse than a needle in my arm for murder? Remember, Mr. Carney, you all have done such a good job of fucking with my world that I don’t have much to lose.”

  I get out of my chair and button my sport coat. It’s a new one I bought yesterday at J.Crew on M Street, as I continue my nomadic existence. It’s a denim job, a more casual look for Benjamin Casper, reporter turned fugitive.

  “I have proof of your affair and I’ll publish it,” I say, framing my hands for the headline. “A conservative, law-and-order, family-values politician, now guarding our central intelligence, caught in steamy affair with top aide who killed herself in despair. Ah, but the police are also looking into the possibility that she didn’t jump, that maybe she was pushed off that balcony. She was murdered. Gee, who might be a suspect? It could take as long as, oh, ten or twelve seconds before every mainstream news outlet in the country is running the story. Are you ready for that kind of publicity? Is your wife?”

  I lean over the desk, so we can have a nice eye-to-eye parting. “The words Operation Delano might find their way into the story, too. It’s already been written, by the way. Killing me won’t stop the story.”

  I straighten up, nod to a visibly shaken Craig Carney, and head for the door.

  “You have twenty-four hours, Mr. Deputy Director,” I say. “Give me some answers, or you’ll be back in Des Moines selling tractors to farmers. And the president will be thinking of someone else as his next CIA director.”

  Chapter 56

  When I leave the Hart Building, I run down 1st Street to the Capitol South metro station. I look behind me for any sign of men in black chasing after me, or cars following me, but don’t see any. It had been a risk all along, scheduling that meeting with Craig Carney, but I’m hoping my threats held him off for at least a few hours while he ponders his next move.