As chair of the appropriations committee, Hugh Fitzgerald was party to the nasty details the public could never see. Like the fact that a crack division of the army had run out of food for two days-not a biscuit or tin of peaches to eat. Another had gone short of water, preventing it from joining in an attack. His favorite tidbit belonged to the marines. An entire battalion had actually run out of bullets during a prolonged engagement in the Sunni Triangle. Bullets. The little devils cost fifty cents apiece, and the fightingest men on God’s green earth had run out of them. Even those dirty little Arab bastards had bullets. They had ’em by the truckload.
“Here you are, Senator.” Marta padded into the room and handed him the evening’s cocktail.
“Gracias,” he said. “Yes, yes, muy generoso. You’re too good to me.” He took a generous sip and set down the glass. “Come, Marta, sit next to me. An old man requires some attention after a long day.”
Marta squeezed onto the arm of the leather chair. She was a svelte woman, barely a hundred pounds. Her black hair was pulled into a ponytail, and she smiled at him with dark, mournful eyes. Slipping a hand behind his neck, she began massaging his shoulder.
“That’s better,” he said. “Very good, indeed.”
Fitzgerald closed his eyes and let Marta’s hands do their work. It was hard to believe such a slight woman could be so strong. Her fingers were like steel. He sighed as her kneading broke his tension into little pieces and banished it to another place. He decided he needed more of this and fewer battles on the Hill.
Six point two billion dollars. He couldn’t get the figure out of his mind.
He might be able to push off the bill this session, but it would be back the next, and then with another billion or two tacked on for inflation. Part of him thought this the best course. Delay. The fox couldn’t raid the henhouse if he didn’t have any teeth. On the other hand, there was the security of the country’s men and women to think of.
Fitzgerald considered Jacklin’s offer of a post at Jefferson Partners. There were worse places to end a career, he conceded, even if he did despise the vain, cocksure man. Politics, however, had forever ruined his ability to hold a grudge. There was no such thing as friendship on the Hill, or its opposite. There was only pragmatism. He imagined himself strutting the halls of the investment bank, welcoming clients to his large, well-appointed office. A view of the Potomac would be mandatory. There would be prestige and power and money by the boatload. He didn’t have to look far to see what a partner at Jefferson earned. Jacklin and his ilk were billionaires to a man. Billionaires. He’d seen a few of the homes and the cars purchased by men who’d made their name on the Hill, then gone and sold it to Jefferson.
Fitzgerald had grown up on a dairy farm in the thirties and forties. Having money meant buying a new set of clothes for Christmas and putting three meals on the table each day. If they were lucky enough to make a trip to the coast each summer, they were considered rich. His father never made more than two thousand dollars a year his entire life.
A billionaire. If Jacklin cared so deeply about the troops’ well-being, he should throw a few hundred million of his own into the kitty. Not that he’d notice it gone.
The strong, supple fingers continued their work, kneading away the tensions of the day, clearing his mind. Fitzgerald weighed his alternatives. Another run for office. Six more years working the corridors of power. Six more years of horse-trading… and with it, the promise of expiring under the Chesapeake sun. It was too much for a Green Mountain boy to take.
Of course, he could return home to his wife, take up a teaching post at the university, and earn even less than he did now. He snorted loud enough to make Marta jump. “Excuse me, dear,” he said, opening his eyes and gazing at the kind, loving woman next to him. And Marta?
Reaching out a hand, he patted her leg. She grasped it, and slid it toward her thigh.
“Lord, no,” exclaimed Fitzgerald, guiding his hand back to a safer area. “The very thought exhausts me. I’ve got a party to go to this evening. Any hanky-panky, and I’ll be out till the morning.”
Marta smiled. She was hot-blooded, was what she was. He brought her close and kissed her on the cheek. He could not leave his Marta.
Six point two billion dollars.
These days, it wasn’t that much money, was it?
Later, he told himself. He would decide later.
53
Franciscus hurried down the hall into the booking room. A beige, waist-high machine that resembled a copier stood in the corner. It was a LiveScan machine-officially labeled the TouchPrint 3500. It had been three years since he’d rolled a suspect’s fingers over a messy inkpad and struggled to get ten decent prints onto a booking sheet. To make matters worse, not to mention waste infinitely more time, the suspect’s prints had to be taken twice more as he advanced into the bowels of the criminal-justice system. Once for the state police in Albany, and again for the Department of Justice in D.C. These days, all you did was press the suspect’s fingers one at a time onto a card-size scanner, check on the pop-up monitor that the print was properly recorded, and-bingo!-it was transferred automatically to Central Booking downtown, Albany, and D.C. All at the touch of a button.
Franciscus flipped open the peripheral scanner and laid the transparency onto the bed. A piece of paper set on top was necessary to ensure a good read. The LiveScan machine hummed as it digitized the prints and copied them into its memory. Franciscus keyed in instructions to send them to the NCIC, the National Crime Information Center in Clarksburg, West Virginia, as well as the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division. The collected databases would check the prints against any on file. The list ran to federal employees, current and past military personnel, aliens who had registered to live in the United States, and the department of motor vehicles in forty-eight states.
Franciscus left the room, closing the door behind him. It would take an hour or so for the system to come up with any matches. If, and when, LiveScan found one, it would notify his PC. As he advanced down the hall, he spotted Mike Melendez’s head popping out of the squad room.
“Hey, John!”
“Short Mike. What’s doin’?” Franciscus could see that Melendez was worked up about something.
“I should be asking you. Chief’s on the phone.”
“Whose chief is that? You mean ‘the Loot’?”
“The friggin’ chief. Esposito. On line one.”
“Impossible. It’s after five.” But Franciscus made sure he hustled to his desk.
“The Chief” was Chief of Police Charlie Esposito, “Chargin’ Charlie” to his friends, “Charlie Suck” to others, but to all the highest-ranking uniformed cop in the city. Only the commissioner and his deputy stood above him, and they were appointees. Franciscus and Esposito had processed through the same class at the academy back when their peckers still stood straight up. But where Franciscus had gone to work for love of the job, Esposito had always had his eye on the brass ring. He’d never made a single decision without asking himself first how it was going to advance his career. Officially, they were still friends.
“Detective John Franciscus,” he said, unable to keep himself from standing a little straighter.
“John, this is Chief Esposito. I understand you’ve been looking into some old police business?”