For the second time in an hour, his cheeks flushed and the back of his neck heated up. He looked up at the television to gather himself, but Barbara Walters was so blurry that not even another face-lift could straighten her out. Franciscus looked away, pinching his nose between thumb and forefinger. Going all fuzzy twice in the same day. What the heck was the matter with him? He fished a hankie out of his pocket and blew his nose.
Just then, he heard a welter of voices raised in heated argument from the back of the storeroom. A minute later, Matty Lopes reappeared. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “File’s gone.”
Franciscus stood and walked to the counter. “Someone check it out?”
“No, man. It’s like ‘gone’ gone. The whole thing has been ripped out of its folder. Like ‘stolen’ gone. I called Albany. Same thing. Gone. Not even an update slip. Nothing. Just ‘gone.’ ”
“Since when?”
“I got no idea. No one’s got any idea. The thing’s just gone. You sure you telling me everything about this case?”
“Cross my heart.” Franciscus was thinking that every case, both open and closed, belonged to someone and was registered as such on the central computer. “Who was the catching detective?”
“You want, let’s check.” Lopes unlatched a waist-high gate and waved him through. “Come on back. I’m pissed, let me tell you. This is my house. Nobody takes my stuff without asking.”
Franciscus followed him past the rows of shelves stuffed to the ceiling with case files. One day, they would all be scanned and stored on the mainframe, but that day was still a way off. At the back of the room, there was a table with five desktop computers. Instructions for their use were taped to the wall. Lopes sat down and motioned for Franciscus to take the place next to him. Consulting a scrap of paper, he keyed in the case file number.
“Theodore Kovacs,” said Lopes, when the information had appeared. “Died 1980. Three months after the bombing.”
“How old was he?”
“Thirty-one.”
“Young to have his gold shield. What was the cause?”
“Special circumstances.”
Franciscus traded glances with Lopes. “Special circumstances” was department shorthand for suicide. In copspeak, Theodore Kovacs had eaten his gun. “Jeez,” he muttered. “Who was the backup?”
It was also a rule that two detectives had to sign off on a case.
“That’s it. Just Kovacs.” Lopes pointed at the screen for Franciscus to take a look.
“Come on,” said Franciscus, sliding back his chair. “Can’t file without two names. You going to tell me that someone broke into the computer and stole that, too?”
For once, Matty Lopes didn’t have an answer. Shrugging, he shot Franciscus an earnest look. “Seems like this case ain’t so cold after all.”
31
Guy de Valmont walked down the corridor in the rolling gait that was his calling card. A casual stride, one hand in the pocket, the other ready to wave a hello, fire off one of his charming salutes, or brush the pesky forelock out of his eyes. He was a tall man, and thin, in his skivvies all bones and right angles. But the miracle of Braithwaite and Pendel of Saville Row, combined with his naturally broad (but bony) shoulders, gave him the haphazard and elegant carriage of an English gentleman. To de Valmont, there was no higher calling.
It was his fifty-third birthday, and to celebrate, he’d allowed himself an early glass of bubbly. The zest of it was still fresh in his mouth, the mark of a good vintage. His birthday, along with the gala dinner that evening, and perhaps, too, the champagne, had put him in a rare, contemplative mood. He was not concerned with his age, so much as with the realization that he had spent twenty-five of those fifty-three years at Jefferson. Day in, day out, with four weeks of vacation a year… well, more like eight weeks lately. Still, twenty-five years doing the same damn thing. Lines of worry appeared on de Valmont’s pale forehead. Where had they gone?
It seemed like yesterday that he and J. J. had founded the place. Jacklin, then in his forties, with his tenure as secretary of defense freshly behind him, and he, Guy de Valmont, the Wall Street wunderkind, who’d thought up the harebrained scheme. Buy troubled companies with other people’s money, turn them around, wring every last cent of cash out of them, then get rid of them, either via an IPO or, preferably, an outright sale. On paper it looked easy, but twice in those first years they’d almost gone bust, buying the wrong companies, using too much cash or too much leverage, and never enough common sense. That was before Jacklin got the inspiration that would make Jefferson great. The revolving door, he called it. The currency-thin barrier between Wall Street and Washington, D.C. Oh, it had always been there, right back to Andrew Jackson’s “Kitchen Cabinet.” But until now, it had been something whispered about, something not quite kosher. Jefferson came along and practically institutionalized the thing.
De Valmont whistled softly, taking up “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.” The occupants of the offices to his left and right read like a Rolodex of the high and mighty. Billy Baxter, budget director for Bush I. Loy Crandall, air force chief of staff. Arlene Watkins, chief of the General Services Administration, the office that okayed all contracts between civilian corporations and the government. The list went on. Counsel to the President. Senate majority leader. President of the Urban League. Director of the International Red Cross. The only one missing was the head of the Boy Scouts of America.
They were all at Jefferson, making up for years of government penury, feathering their nests for retirement, or for their children’s retirement, or their children’s children’s. Pay at Jefferson was generous. (He, himself, had become a billionaire long ago. In fact, he’d passed the five-billion marker somewhere around his fiftieth birthday.) And all Jacklin asked was that they make a few calls, pull a few strings, cash in a few favors. Swing a vote to increase funding for this or that project. Soften regulations to allow export of a new military technology. Amend a piece of legislation to include another state. If companies in Jefferson’s portfolio benefited, all the better.
“J. J.?” he called, sauntering into Jacklin’s palatial lair. Jacklin had insisted it be at least ten square feet larger than his office at the Pentagon. De Valmont spotted him poring over some documents at his desk. He walked closer, realizing that Jacklin had turned his hearing aid down. All those artillery rounds in ‘Nam had left him deafer than a bat. De Valmont stopped a foot behind his back.
“Bang!”
Jacklin jumped out of his socks. “Damn it, Guy,” he said, his cheeks flushing red. “You scared the crap out of me.”
De Valmont ignored the outburst. “You’ll never guess who I just spoke with. Tom Bolden from HW.”
Jacklin’s face froze. “The kid who shot Sol Weiss?”
“One and the same.”
“Whatever for?”
“He called. Asked me if I knew anything about Scanlon.”
“Scanlon! God, there’s a name from the past.”
“And not one we’d particularly care to remember. He sounded upset.”
“I’d imagine so. What’d you tell him?”
“That I was busy and that I’d look into it and call him back.” De Valmont shrugged and studied his nails. He needed a manicure. He couldn’t go to the dinner this evening looking like a Goth. “What do you think he’s found?”
“Sir!”
“Yes, Hoover. Still here.”
Hoover shook his head, startled. “I thought you’d gone somewhere.”
“Standing right by your side.” Guilfoyle lowered himself to a knee. “What do you have?”
“A restaurant at Sixteenth Street and Union Square West called the Coffee Shop. Bolden called the place twice the same day that Miss Dance visited the pharmacy. He used an ATM right around the corner at twelve-sixteen P.M. Oh, and they don’t take credit cards.”
“The Coffee Shop,” said Guilfoyle. “Good work.” He hurried to his desk overlooking the operations center and picked up his cellular phone. Unlike standard-issue models, this phone carried a sophisticated scrambling device rendering his transmissions a collage of squawks and beeps and indecipherable white noise to surveillance devices. The phone he called was equipped with a similar device, capable of unscrambling the transmission in real time.
“Sir,” answered a deep, unsatisfied voice.
“I have some good news.”
“I’ll believe it when I hear it,” said Wolf.
“We’ve pinpointed where Bolden will be at noon. The Coffee Shop at Union Square.”
“You’re sure?”
Guilfoyle peered over his desk at the lines of technicians busy at their consoles. Heads bowed, hands racing furiously over keyboards, they brought to mind the galley slaves of ancient Greece. Men enslaved by machines. “Cerberus is,” he answered. “I want you to take in a full field team.”
“How many men do we have in the vicinity?”
“Eight, not including you and Irish. They can form up on your location in twelve minutes.”
“Any shooters?”
Guilfoyle ran a mouse over the red pinlights indicating his men’s locations on the wall-mounted map. In turn, the name of the operative and his field grade appeared in a box beneath it. “Jensen,” he said. Malcolm Jensen. A former marine sniper. “I want you to act as his spotter.”
“His spotter… but sir-”
“Jensen will need someone who knows what Bolden looks like. We can count on him being in some kind of disguise. You’ll have to keep a sharp eye.” Wolf began to hesitate, but Guilfoyle cut him off. “I can’t have you in the middle of things. Bolden knows your face by now. We can’t risk spooking him. That’s final.”
“Yes sir.”
“I think Mr. Bolden’s given us enough of a run for our money. Don’t you?”