“You’re kidding, right? Anyway, you said dinner. The only meal they serve is breakfast, and I’m pretty sure we’ll be past the cutoff.”
The warm laugh again. “We’ll come up with something to eat, Mr. Reeder. I’m not asking you to brown bag it. As for the... accommodations? I like my privacy, including coming and going as I please. Under the radar, so to speak.”
“I think it’s time for you to start calling me Joe.”
“Not ‘Peep,’ as the media would have it?”
“No. I hate that nickname.”
“You could have it worse. As a boy they called me ‘Adam Ant.’ So make it Adam.”
“All right, Adam. But frankly, with your money, you could rent a floor at a five-star hotel and have plenty of privacy, and they’d probably get you in and out without anyone knowing.”
“I could. But it’s easier for me to rent an entire Holiday Inn Express in the suburbs, have them put ‘Welcome Conventioneers’ on their sign, and keep a truly low profile. Which would you choose?”
“If I had the dough,” he admitted, “probably your way.”
“It’s only common sense,” Benjamin said, invoking the catchphrase that had been his calling card since he began his investment business.
“I do apologize for the early call,” he went on, “but I have to allow for making my way to you, and there are arrangements to handle. Shall we say six? Just go to the front desk.”
The rest of the day, Reeder wondered what kind of business Benjamin might have for him. Hiring ABC Security didn’t require one CEO calling the other. Several years ago, Reeder had sold 49 percent of his firm to investors — he wondered if Benjamin had secretly been one of them.
Now that ABC was making more money than ever, was America’s savviest investor coming after the rest of the company? If so, Benjamin approaching Reeder personally might have to do with a sort of celebrity-to-celebrity courtesy. Otherwise, in the greater scheme of things, ABC would seem small damn potatoes to a wheeler-dealer like that.
Benjamin’s astounding phone call had brought Reeder to Arlington National Cemetery to think things through, to mull it over. Back up the hill, he heard the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns click his heels together. Judging from a sound Reeder had heard many times, the guard was at the north end of the mat. So was Reeder. The guard would turn toward the tomb and face east, but wouldn’t see Reeder. His bench at the bottom of the hill was behind a low wall. Of course, the guard might note the plume of Reeder’s breath.
Silently, Reeder counted to twenty-one with the guard.
As Reeder’s lips formed the last number, the guard’s heels clicked and the count began again. In twenty-one seconds, the guard would take twenty-one paces south, click his heels, then turn east again. Reeder knew the ritual as well as any guard who ever walked the mat.
To him it meant peace and serenity, its symbolism and every click of the guard’s heels giving him a little surge of patriotism, of purpose. He never spoke of this, had never shared it even with his late friend Sloan, and certainly not Melanie or Amy. Patti Rogers might get it, former Army MP that she was. He knew some, perhaps many, would consider him an aging cornball, mired in a red-white-and-blue past that never really existed. Their loss.
With a sigh, he rose. Ready for the meeting, whatever it might be.
Back in his Prius, just reaching to turn the key, he was interrupted by the trill of his cell. No more ignoring that! He checked the caller ID — PATTI ROGERS.
“Hey, Patti. Anything yet?”
Her hello was: “Do you have your friend’s computer?”
“No, but I can get to any home computers through his wife. The cops would probably have any work machine.”
“What would your friend Chris have had with him on a job? In his motel room? A tablet maybe?”
Reeder thought for a moment. “Seems like the last time I was at his office, he used a laptop. Cops should have that, too. I’ll check. What about his two phones?”
“Nothing much on either. Miggie says Chris’s computers are our best shot.”
“Thanks, Patti. I’ll talk to his wife, Beth, later tonight. Right now I’ve got a meeting with Adam Benjamin, of all people.”
“Did you already talk to Miggie?”
“Huh?” How had she made a leap from a billionaire to a computer geek? “Why would you—”
Interrupting, she said, “Only thing Miggie found on your friend’s cell were a couple calls from that Common Sense Investments group of Benjamin’s.”
“Huh. You think Chris may have had money with them?”
“Don’t know,” she said. “My bad for not running his financials.”
“I’ll ask Beth,” Reeder said, mostly to himself.
“Should I have Miggie run those financials?”
“Please.”
“Anything else?”
“No.” He smiled at the phone. “But it’s nice to know Uncle Sam’s finest is at my beck and call.”
“Anything for a taxpayer. But there’s a quid pro quo here — I want to run something past you, next time we’re together.”
“Yeah?”
“Something my unit’s getting nowhere with.”
“Sure. Dinner tomorrow night?”
She said, “Right. I’ll buy. I’ll pick where.”
Even with rush hour traffic, the drive to Falls Church wasn’t bad, though it got dark quickly once he got going. At the Holiday Inn Express, Reeder saw at once that things looked off. Three black SUVs were parked at the curb in front of the entry doors. Though neighboring motels and restaurants were doing good business, the Holiday Inn Express lot was empty but for a half-dozen vehicles along one side of the building, employees probably. Those conventioneers welcomed by the hotel’s marquee must have been out on the town...
So Reeder didn’t have a whole lot of trouble finding a parking place. Inside, past the automatic doors, he saw a female desk clerk at left and four men scattered around the small lobby — sofa, easy chair, table by the breakfast area, one casually chatting up the young glazed-looking brunette. They wore black suits and various one-tone ties and guns tough to spot under their suit coats. Tough if you weren’t an ex — Secret Service agent.
The sofa guy rose. At fifty-something, he was ten or more years older than the others, and might have been ex — Secret Service himself, earpiece, wrist mic. Dark hair clipped close, brown eyes wary.
Reeder skipped the desk clerk and her chaperone and went over to the man who’d risen upon his entry.
“Mr. Reeder?” he asked. Voice polite, eyes hard.
As if Reeder’s mug and white hair hadn’t been splashed all over cable news for the last year. “Right. Here to see Mr. Benjamin. But you know that.”
He nodded. “If you’ll follow me...”
While the two who were still seated stayed behind, the desk clerk’s chaperone fell in behind Reeder and his escort, in a kind of hi-ho-hi-ho line. They walked down a corridor a short distance to a first-floor room.
The fiftyish bodyguard, Reeder just behind him, knocked at room 103.
A security man inside opened the door and allowed them in. Just another Holiday Inn Express room, not fancy but acceptable, if you were some midlevel or lower executive. Across the room, a man and a woman sat on opposite sides of a round table, sleek high-end laptops back to back. Both sexes wore business suits in shades of gray; midthirties, shortish dark hair, the female’s a lighter shade of brown, tied up in a bun.
When Reeder entered, neither acknowledged him even with a glance, though both closed the lids of their computers. Sitting in a wing chair in one corner, a guy around Reeder’s age did not take his attention from his smartphone at this new arrival; his suit coat lay folded on the back of the chair with a military care that went with his short brown hair. An inch-and-a-half scar along his right cheekbone started just under his eye.