I suppose I looked surprised, because he swiftly added, “In fact, she accepted. She asked for a few weeks to put in her resignation and get things cleared up with the Army. We were expecting her to start next month.”
“I don’t believe it.”
He acknowledged this with a nod. “A salary of three hundred and fifty thousand, a cut of the annual take, and the usual assortment of gratuities this firm generously provides its partners. We intended to move Lisa to our Boston office, where she’d be near her family.”
Okay, I believed it. In fact, it did explain his sudden discomfort, and also why Lisa wanted to talk to me about the firm. The Army is where you came to be all you can be, but there comes a time for all of us to get all you can get, and I suppose Lisa had reached that point.
“Have you heard anything about her funeral?” he asked.
“I’m arranging it. I’m also supposed to settle her estate and help get her family through this.”
“Take whatever time you need. She made a lot of friends here, so please be sure to let us know. And Sean… anything I can do… let me know.”
I heard a grunt of disapproval from Sally. But I said I would, and Cy wandered off to notify the rest of the Washington office that there was still an opening in the Boston office for a new partner.
I returned to my office and immediately called the Fort Myer military police station to inquire if a certain prick named Chief Warrant Spinelli worked there. Indeed he was a prick of thoroughbred proportion, the duty officer confided, but he wouldn’t be in until
5:00 P.M.
I assumed Spinelli had experienced a long night and an even longer morning. The murder of a female JAG officer on military property raises a lot of eyebrows-eyebrows of the wrong variety in the Military District of Washington, a sort of grazing pasture for general officers, some of whom have little better to do than stick their fingers up their posteriors, and their bossy noses into your business.
There was, of course, a television in my office, and I decided to catch the 5:00 P.M. local news. After fifteen minutes of chatter between a pair of overly jocular anchors, the male anchor said, “And in other news, the body of Army captain Lisa Morrow was found dead in a Pentagon parking lot, apparently murdered. The police are investigating.”
Other news? What the…? My phone rang. I picked it up and a female voice said, “Major Drummond?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“This is Janet Morrow. We met this morning.”
“Oh, right… what can I do for you?”
“I just checked into the Four Seasons in Georgetown. I was wondering if we could meet for dinner.”
“I, uh-”
“Please. I’d like to go over a few details about Lisa’s funeral and estate. You mentioned you were handling that.”
No-I distinctly recalled her saying she’d handle the funeral and estate. So this was interesting.
However, she sounded perfectly sincere, and possibly she was perfectly sincere. I wasn’t betting on it, of course.
But no wasn’t even an option.
CHAPTER NINE
I raced home and slipped into a blue blazer and tan slacks, appropriate attire for 1789, the Georgetown restaurant where Miss Morrow had suggested we meet and eat. Among those in the know, 1789 is a well-regarded D. C. powerplace. Though to be socially correct, it’s an evening powerplace, which I guess is different from a midday powerplace, which I guess means only real schmucks eat breakfast there. As long as nobody made me drink sherry.
When I was a kid, my father did a tour in the Pentagon, which was my initiation to our capital and its weird and idiosyncratic ways. We lived in the suburb of North Arlington, some four miles from the city. Washington, back then, was a government town populated mostly by impoverished blacks, penny-pinching bureaucrats, and a small coterie of political royalty. Even in those days it was an expensive town, but my mother was a wizard with Green Stamps, so we lived like kings. Just kidding-but my father’s commute wasn’t all that long.
More recently, Washington has become a roaring business town, attracting a whole new breed of denizen; entrepreneurs, wealthy executives, bankers, and, with the smell of money, corporate lawyers. Military people these days live in North Carolina and commute. The city never had any pretension of being an egalitarian melting pot, yet the sudden influx of money, and monied classes, has upset whatever precarious balance once existed.
Back to me, however. I returned to the city to attend George-town University undergrad, courtesy of Uncle Sam’s ROTC scholarship program, and, five years later, was hauled, comatose, to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center after I learned the Army lied; I wasn’t really faster than a speeding bullet. I was an infantry officer, the branch that handles the Army’s dirtiest jobs, like killing bad guys in wartime, and painting rocks in peacetime.
A bullet had damaged an organ-a spleen, if you care to know-that needs to function effectively if you walk long distances with great weights on your back, a quality jackasses and infantry officers have in common, among others. I was already a captain, and the Army’s personnel branch checked for shortages in my rank and years of service. The Army, you have to understand, views itself as a big machine, and when a nut can no longer be a nut, it can maybe become a washer, but not a screw or a bolt. Personal talents and desires are obviously secondary. In fact, I recall telling the personnel officer handling my case that as a wounded war hero, the service owed me a debt and should repay it by letting me choose. He thought that was hilarious.
So I was eventually informed I could become a chaplain, a supply guy, a lawyer, or a civilian. Wrong, wrong, maybe, wrong. As I mentioned previously, I’m Catholic, and while I’m drawn to fancy uniforms and elaborate ceremonies, that vow of chastity goes a bridge too far. A supply guy?… Get real. I wasn’t ready for civilian life, and therefore defaulted into law and returned to my alma mater for a degree.
Which meant I’d lived in Washington nearly fifteen years, off and on. I love this city. I love the inspiring monuments to great deeds and great men, the monumental cathedrals of power, the everyday reminders that this city truly is the Shining Light on the Hill. It’s the people I can take or leave. The town has more than its share of oily scoundrels and the pompously high-minded, and it can be impossible to differentiate between the two, or which inflicts the most damage. Anyway, I passed through the portal into 1789 at 6:30 and the maitre d’ steered me to the table where Miss Morrow was coolly sipping a cocktail. I asked him to have a waiter bring me a beer and sat down.
So we studied each other a moment. She was smartly dressed in a red pantsuit, no makeup, no jewelry-to include, I idly noticed, no wedding or engagement bands. I could detect no physical resemblance between her and Lisa, excluding their sizes, and the not inconsequential fact that both were stunners, with all the requisite plumbing, bumps, and protuberances associated with their chromosome. It was salt and pepper, however-one blond and fair, the other raven-haired and darkly gorgeous. Plus, Lisa, as I mentioned, had the most sympathetic eyes I ever saw. Janet’s were more… intolerant.
She awarded me what might be labeled a wan smile and said, “Thanks for joining me. I was brusque this morning, and I apologize. I was.. . upset.”
“Perfectly understandable.”
“It was very kind of you to fly up and tell us personally. Did you ask to do that?”
“I asked.”
Her eyes strayed around the restaurant, and then back to me. “How long did you know Lisa?”
“A few years. We did an investigation together in Kosovo. Afterward, we tilted in court a number of times.”
“That must have been interesting.”
“It was. I got my ass kicked. Each time… every time.”
She chuckled. “What was she like in court?”