“Not good guys.”
“No,” said Jenny stonily. “Not good guys.”
Walsh put the shell casing down and plonked his elbows onto the desk. “Come on, Jenny, is this for real?”
Jenny nodded, but added nothing. She didn’t want to go into it any further. At the moment, she was feeling very shaky.
Walsh studied her closely. “Are you in any kind of trouble?”
“No,” she said. “Of course not. Just curious.”
“You’re sure?”
Jenny forced a smile. “Can I take you up on that coffee now?”
“Sure thing.” Walsh stood up and moved to a cluttered sideboard. Finding a Styrofoam cup, he poured some coffee from a warming pot.
Jenny took a sip. “I see you haven’t upgraded.”
“Good old Maxwell House. Starbucks will have to make do without me.” He sat back and let her drink in peace. After a minute, he wrinkled his brow and said, “What else can you tell me about this ‘real club’?”
Jenny searched her mind for anything else Bobby Stillman might have said. “One more thing,” she said. “One of their phrases was Scientia est potentia.”
“ ‘Knowledge is power.’ Good motto for a bunch of spies.” He banged his palm on the table, and said, “Can’t help you, Jen. This one goes right over my head. Me, I’m a twentieth-century man. T. R. to the present. Not my area, I’m afraid.”
“It was a long shot. I’m sorry to have taken your-”
“Not mine,” Walsh went on. “But Ken Gladden might be able to give you a hand. He’s our resident Founding Fathers freak. You might even find him in his office if you hurry.”
44
The daily exodus was in full swing, the ninety minutes of madness when New York’s working masses trudged from office to subway, train, and ferry, and headed home. The slope from Broadway to Vesey Street was packed with commuters as tightly as sardines in a can. Everyone leaving early to beat the storm.
“Just keep walking,” said Bolden as he drew up alongside Althea Jackson. “Keep looking straight ahead. I can hear you just fine.”
“Why, Tom, what in the…”
“Eyes to the front!”
“What is this, the army?” Althea demanded.
Bolden checked over his shoulder. He had shadowed Althea for several blocks. If he hadn’t known her so well-her clothing, her hairstyle, the way she walked carrying her feed bag of a purse and listing ten degrees to port-he would have lost her five times over. If she was being followed, he couldn’t tell.
“Did you find her?” he asked.
“She’s at NYU Hospital. ‘Currently being treated’ is what they said.”
“Being treated? What does that mean? How is she? Is she in surgery? What condition is she in?”
“ ‘Currently being treated.’ That’s all they said. I asked them all those questions and didn’t get a single answer.”
Bolden swallowed his worry and frustration. “Did you speak with the doctor?”
“I didn’t speak with anyone except the operator.”
“Come on, you could have said you were family.”
“I tried, Thomas, but that was as far as I got.”
“Okay. Take it easy.”
They walked a few more steps, bumping against a group waiting for a signal to turn. Pedestrians pushed into them, forcing them to step forward. Bolden felt caged. He had to resist the instinct to turn around and check the faces behind him. The light turned. After a few seconds, the pressure lessened. Lodged in the human thicket, the two crossed the street.
“I’m scared,” said Althea. “There are men all over your office. They took out your computer, boxed your files.”
“Police?”
“Lord, no. Police left at two. Right after I saw you. They had manners. These ones?” Althea shook her head with distaste.
“Who are they?” Bolden asked. “Guys from the firm? Tech support? Maintenance?”
“I’ve never seen any of them. I tried to watch over them, make sure they didn’t take anything personal, but they kicked me out. Put down the blinds. They’re saying you shot him. They’re calling you a murderer. I said you most certainly did not. I told everyone who’d listen that it was some kind of accident. No one believes me. Everyone keeps telling me to watch that tape on the television.”
“That’s something, isn’t it?”
“Thomas… you didn’t shoot him, did you?”
“You were there. You saw what happened.”
“I know. I thought that it was the guard who fired, but since I’ve seen that tape on the television…” She shook her head, as if mystified.
“No, Althea, I did not shoot Sol Weiss. I loved Sol. Everybody loved Sol. It was the guard who shot him.”
But in his topsy-turvy world, he was beginning to wonder about that, too.
“And you didn’t go hitting little Diana Chambers?”
“No, Althea, I didn’t.”
“Then why are they-”
“I don’t know,” said Bolden, too forcefully. “I’m trying to figure it out.”
He considered telling Althea to take her son, Bobby, and leave town for a few days. God knows he was endangering her by asking for her help. He decided against issuing any kind of warning. The safest thing for her would be to show up for work the next day, and the day after that. He gave her a month before they found a justifiable reason to fire her. Probably after the Trendrite deal closed.
“What did you get on Scanlon?” he asked.
Althea frowned. “Not much. A few mentions in the late seventies about some military work. Training troops and the like. Scanlon Corporation was bought out by Defense Associates in 1980. No price given. It was a private transaction.”
“Defense Associates. Never heard of them. Did you run a search on them, too?”
“Defense Associates went bankrupt nine months after they bought Scanlon. That’s all I was able to find out.”
“Did you dig up the bankruptcy filing?”
“The what?”
“The bankruptcy filing.”
“Oh, you mean the one that lists Mickey Schiff as a company director?”
Bolden darted a glance at Althea. “Schiff? He was still in the marines in eighty.”
“No, child. According to the filing, Lieutenant Colonel Michael T. Schiff retired, was a director of Defense Associates when it went belly-up. That other man you wanted to know about. Russell Kuy… I’m not even going to try to pronounce that name… well, he was its president.”
Bolden digested the information. He wouldn’t exactly call it good news, but it was a start. The question was, what had happened to Scanlon in the interim? If Defense Associates had gone belly-up, why were there civilian military contractors with the Scanlon logo tattooed on their breastbone chasing him all over Manhattan?
“Small world, isn’t it?” she said.
“You mean about Schiff working for Defense Associates? I guess so.”
“No, I mean about Mr. Jacklin working for them, too.”
“Excuse me? Do you mean James Jacklin?” If Bolden’s thoughts had been elsewhere, the mention of Jefferson’s chairman and founder brought him back to the here and now.
“I never knew Mickey Schiff had worked with Mr. Jacklin. At least, I know why you had me looking at Scanlon. You being in charge of Jefferson Partners for the firm and all.”
“I’m sorry, Althea. It’s been a tough day. I’m not following you.”
“James Jacklin was chairman of Defense Associates. Thomas, you okay? You’re even whiter than usual.”
In 1980, James Jacklin had just finished his four-year tour of duty as secretary of defense. Bolden hadn’t known that he’d left a failed business venture behind him. He suspected few others did, either.
“I’m fine, Althea. I hadn’t been expecting to hear about Jacklin, that’s all.”
“I did a search on him, too. Got too many articles to print. I just brought the ones about Scanlon and Defense Associates.” She paused. “One other thing. You know who got left holding most of the worthless debt? We did. Harrington Weiss. HW was listed as Defense Associates’ largest creditor.”