Naturally, long before his stern warning made it halfway down the chain, the nosy Pentagon press learned all about his gag order. And predictably, they launched into an all-out frenzy. They began working the corridors, jawboning their favorite snitches, fighting to be the first to get the scoop, vacuuming for all they were worth.
To their immense surprise, there was remarkably little to learn. The stop order on the polymer had grown out of a vague warning from the Defense Criminal Investigative Service. Few knew the details, including anybody they talked to. No nasty charges had been preferred, no big investigation initiated.
It certainly smelled like a big story, rife with the promise of a loud and embarrassing scandal. The secretary’s information crackdown hinted at fear, and in their world, where there’s fear, there’s the possibility of a Pulitzer.
But with so little to go on, they were forced to hold their fire until, as inevitably happened, they found the crack in the ice.
In military parlance, the scandal light was lit. The reporters smuggled in booze and videos and sleeping bags, continued to work the corridors, huddled in small packs to share the latest scuttlebutt, and hunkered down in their cramped office carrels for the wait.
26
Rufus Clark was a two-bit Chicago private investigator with a less than promising practice. Nasty divorces, property disputes, and missing cats and dogs were his usual fare. Two thousand in a good month, and those were rare. He was thirty-two years old, single, with two illegitimate children, and still lived with his mother.
His lone claim to fame, pitiful as it happened to be, but one he proudly inflated to his clients, was one brief year he spent in the FBI, before being caught smoking a little weed and sleeping with some whores provided by a local crime lord whose questionable activities the Bureau was looking into. For once in his sorry life, Rufus got lucky. Too little evidence existed to do anything but show him the door.
Given his questionable background and severely limited policing experience, Rufus tended to jump at any work he could get without any serious consideration about its legality. So when Martie O’Neal called with a generous offer of $10K for only one day’s work, Rufus dove in.
He held the small photograph two inches from his nose and again studied the man across the lobby. Oh yeah, definitely him, he decided, taking a few steps closer.
Martie had e-mailed him the name, work address, this old DMV photo, a few instructive background notes, and a brief list of questions for Rufus to get answered.
His target was tall and thin, wearing a nice blue suit and holding a battered old briefcase as he stood by the elevator doors and waited. Rufus edged a little closer, within striking distance, just not enough to attract attention.
The elevator door opened and Rufus closed the distance fast and darted in before the door could close. Then it was just Rufus and his target standing side by side. His target was too busy watching the numbers as the elevator climbed to notice him.
“Excuse me,” Rufus blurted, producing a quizzical expression. “Don’t I know you?”
Weak, but the best he could do on such short notice. O’Neal had recommended the old tried-and-true government background check story, but in Rufus’s professional judgment, his target knew too much about Mia for that to hold any water. He was improvising and hoping it worked.
The target was staring at Rufus now. “Sorry, no.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure I’ve never seen you before.”
Rufus’s chubby face scrunched up as he examined the man’s eyes. “Wait, you’re… John, right? John Jenson, I’m positive it’s you.”
A look of surprise registered on John’s face. “That’s right.”
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
“Afraid I don’t. Sorry.”
“I went to Lincoln Park High, like you. Few years behind you, though. Same class as your little sister.”
“Which one?”
“Mia, but she probably wouldn’t remember me either. Her being real smart, and me sort of struggling. A National Merit Scholar or something, wasn’t she?”
“That’s right. We were very proud of her.”
“So where is ol’ Mia these days? Probably married, surrounded by a boatload of kids.” Rufus paused to offer a wink and smile. “Between you and me, I had a big crush on her.”
The elevator stopped on the eleventh floor and John abruptly stepped out. Rufus took a short hop and joined him. “Same floor, what a coincidence,” he announced with a big grin. “You work on this floor, or what?” he asked.
John pointed down the hallway to his right. “My accounting firm’s here.”
“Right. I’ve got an appointment down the other way.” He pointed a lying finger down the opposite hall. “So where’d Mia end up, anyway?”
“D.C. Went to law school at Harvard then landed in a firm there.” He said this with considerable pride.
“Yeah? One of those monster firms you always read about? Long hours, grinding away, no life.”
“Not anymore, no. She tried that for a while. After the loss, though, she left her firm and switched to government service.”
Rufus couldn’t think of a better way so he came right out with it. “What loss was that, John?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t catch your name.”
“Dennis,” he lied without any hesitation. “Dennis Miller.”
John’s eyes narrowed and he began inspecting Rufus more closely, roving from his scuffed black running shoes up his worn sweatpants, stopping at the torn T-shirt. Naming himself after a famous comedian was probably a mistake, but he’d seen him on TV the night before and it was the first and only thing that popped into his mind. Plus it might’ve been a good idea to dress a little fancier, Rufus realized, a little belatedly. He looked like exactly what he was, street scum looking to make a fast score.
“Sorry,” John said, sounding very final. “I don’t discuss family business with strangers.”
Rufus could hear, could almost feel the ten grand slipping out of his fingers. “Hey, it’s not like that, John. I’m no stranger. See, Mia and me, well, we were real close. I was just, you know, wondering what she lost.”
“Who are you meeting with down the hall?”
“Uh… my lawyer.”
John leaned forward and suddenly grabbed him firmly by the shirt collar. “You’re lying. There are no lawyers on this floor.”
“Hey, let me go. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The grip tightened and Rufus ended up on his tiptoes. “Who are you and what’s this about?” John hissed, showing his teeth.
It was time to scrap Plan A. Only Rufus didn’t have a Plan B. He shoved John as hard as he could and made a mad dash for the stairwell. He never looked back, never even glanced as he bolted eleven floors back down to ground level, then slipped out a side entrance of the building.
After three hours of riffling through old files in the city morgue, and another two in the library scrounging through death notices in the local papers, Rufus placed a call to O’Neal in D.C.
He quickly summarized his encounter with Mia’s oldest brother, as if the day had been an unmitigated success, worth the whole ten grand, if not more. Then he said, “Point is, something happened. Some severe loss that drove her out of her big firm and into government service.”
“So you figure she was looking for a new purpose in life. Serving some higher cause, that kind of gushy crap?”
“That’s what I heard in his voice, yeah.”
“What kind of loss would do that? She was making damn good dough.”
Rufus pondered the question. Probably a ninety percent cut in pay-why would anybody even consider something so damaging, so stupid? Made no sense to him. “Hell, I dunno,” he admitted emphatically.