“So, why did you call me?” Cantrell asked.
“You know everybody,” David replied. “You have forty years’ worth of sources, and I’m going to guess that they’ll be happy to talk with you about anything. I need to know what I’m really up against.”
“And you can’t approach these sources yourself.”
“Exactly,” David said. “After watching the news this morning, I was close to ratting myself out. Their case seems damn strong. Except, you know, for the part where they’re completely wrong.”
“Jails are filled with the innocent,” Cantrell said. “Just ask them.” As he spoke, he continued to seem more interested in the crowd than he was in David.
David craned his neck to check what he was checking. “What are you looking at?”
“For,” Cantrell said. “I’m looking for anyone who might see through your brilliant disguise. Unlike you, at this precise moment in time, I still have a great deal to lose.” It was classic Cantrell, simultaneously insulting and helpful.
“Why did you come if you knew I was going to be here?” David asked. At this point, life was literally too short to be subtle.
When Cantrell looked at him this time, David caught the first glimpse of real kindness in the grumpy old fart’s eyes. Nestled under thick, droopy lids and surrounded by squint lines, the irises were a remarkable blue, nearly gray. “First of all, I didn’t know you would be here. I merely suspected. But to your larger point— why am I here alone instead of with a SWAT team in tow — I told you before that I thought from the very beginning that the news reports were wrong.”
Grayson placed a hand on David’s shoulder in a fatherly gesture that stirred emotion in David’s throat.
“My boy, I am an old man. I’d been three times around the block before Woodstein got their first sniff of Watergate. My first big story was the DC riots of sixty-eight. Over that many years, you get a sense for people, a kind of sixth sense that is more compelling than any curriculum vitae. It’s never let me down.”
David scowled. “I don’t—”
“Listen,” Cantrell said, finishing the sentence in a way David had not intended. “You don’t listen. And that’s a terrible flaw in a reporter. It’s also a trait common to every reporter your age. Hell, maybe it’s common to every person your age.” The statement ended in a glare that somehow froze David’s vocal cords.
“In any event, while I find you to be arrogant, narcissistic, and in general way too full of yourself, you have never for a moment impressed me as a person capable of murder. Sitting here next to you, I’ve seen nothing to change my mind.”
For a second, David wondered if the appropriate response was to thank him. On further consideration, though, finding no compliment, he decided not to. “Still,” he said, “I appreciate you taking the chance and coming to see me. I wanted to ask you a favor.”
Cantrell held up his hand for silence.
Yeah, and I’m the arrogant one, David didn’t say.
“Your friend DeShawn Lincoln was not liked among his fellow cops. My sources have independently referred to him as twitchy, paranoid, obnoxious, and one who bristled at authority. The phrase common to all sources was ‘pain in the ass.’ And please know that I mean no offense to the dead, or to your friendship.”
David scowled. “You’ve already started looking into the case?”
“I’ve been at my desk since six this morning. I’m always at my desk by six. All of this notwithstanding, those who knew him all agreed that he seemed genuinely unnerved yesterday. Two actually used the word ‘frightened.’ The law of the police locker room being what it is, though, no one ventured to ask him why.”
“I assumed that he didn’t want to talk to his fellow cops because he feared that they were in on whatever bad things were happening,” David explained.
“Oh, how I love to depend on assumptions. They have served me so well over the years.” Cantrell did sarcasm better than most. “Based on what your friend Becky told me on the phone, I did some research on the shooting at the Wild Times Bar the other night. Before I get into it, though, tell me again what your friend said about the Secret Service.”
David shook his head. “He didn’t really say much of anything. There was just a mention that whatever bad things were happening, the Secret Service might be involved. Beyond being the victims of the shooting, I mean.”
“He suspected that the Secret Service might have shot their own?”
David checked himself before answering. “Admittedly another assumption,” he said, “but that’s what I got by reading between the lines.”
Cantrell inhaled deeply, and ran the back of his hand between his neck and the collar of his coat. “Interesting indeed,” he said. He scanned the park one more time, then poked David with his elbow. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s walk and talk.”
They headed north, away from the White House, which lay only three blocks to the south. As they headed toward Connecticut Avenue, it occurred to David that every morning and evening, the Secret Service closed this road in a rolling roadblock as the vice president headed back to his residence in the Naval Observatory. David’s legs felt stiff after having sat for so long.
“In such a short time, I haven’t had a lot of time to speak with witnesses,” Cantrell said. It was his habit to start with an apology before launching the game-changing revelation. “One of the bartenders, though, is friends with my nephew, and he told me that he thought for sure that Anna Darmond was there when the shooting started.”
David felt his jaw slacken. “The First Lady?”
“Exactly she.”
“The president’s wife. In a sleazoid bar.” David had a hard time wrapping his head around that one.
“She’s famous for nighttime jaunts,” Cantrell said. “And that would explain the Secret Service presence.”
David cocked his head as he tried to connect the dots. “So, you’re saying this was an attempted assassination?”
“I’m saying nothing of the sort, because no one can prove that Mrs. Darmond was even there. Andy Wahl, the ABC White House stringer for NBC, sort of floated the question during the morning news briefing, but the suit behind the lectern piffled the question away, as if to say such a thing was preposterous.”
“Did he actually say it was preposterous?”
Cantrell gave him a disappointed look. “Does this administration ever actually say anything?”
David tried to make it work in his mind. “Why wouldn’t it be all over the news? That’s not exactly a little thing.”
“It could mean the cover-up of cover-ups.”
David stopped for the light at L Street. “You say this as if you think it sounds reasonable.” He felt way too exposed out here in the commuting crowd, but between the cold-weather gear and the prevailing lack of eye contact among city dwellers, he might as well have been invisible.
Cantrell looked straight ahead as he said, “Not to patronize, but a few more years in this job will teach you not to make sense of a story as you’re collecting information. Once you have the facts assembled, they will make sense out of themselves.”
The light changed, and they stepped off the curb together. “You are patronizing,” David said, “and in this case, not well. We’re making assumptions based upon third-party rumors. That’s not the same as chasing facts.”
“Don’t believe it then,” Cantrell said. “I’m just passing along information. Out of the goodness of my heart, I hasten to add. And there’s more if you’d like to hear it.”
David waited for it, and then realized that Cantrell actually wanted an answer. “Of course.”