After Brixton left the psychologist’s office he took a call on his cell phone from Will Sayers.
“What’s up?” Brixton asked.
“Lots,” Sayers said. “Thought you might be interested in getting together this morning.”
“Sounds okay, only I was going to spend some time digging into Alard Associates. I’ve learned that one of its people—an operative I guess he’s called—was found hanging in his cell in Papua New Guinea. Seems he’d been in Port Moresby the night Dr. King was killed. This is the same guy who not only got rid of the doctor’s plot of land, he also killed the doc’s native helper.”
“Sounds like a sterling fellow,” Sayers said. “Good timing that you called, Robert. I was going to bring you up to date on some snooping of my own that I’ve done into Alard Associates.”
“It’s a deal. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine. By the way, have you figured out yet how to use that new coffeemaker? If you’re still pouring instant coffee I’m suddenly unavailable.”
“Only the best for you, Bobby.”
Brixton growled into the phone.
“Sorry, Robert, I lost my head. See you within the hour.”
Sayers was watching TV when Brixton arrived. The president was in the midst of a news conference at which he’d responded to a question about a private security firm working under contract in Afghanistan to protect embassy workers. Two members of that firm had been accused of gunning down an Afghanistan family of six, and the Afghan government was calling for their indictment.
“I have instructed the Justice Department to look into this allegation,” the president said, “and I expect their findings to be available within three months.”
“Three months!” Sayers blurted, angrily turning off the TV. “Hell, take three years while you’re at it. Just another inquiry that’ll go nowhere. These private security firms get away with murder every day. There’s no oversight, no military rules of engagement for them. They’re a bunch of macho cowboys who can’t make it in a normal job and head overseas where they can shoot off their mouths and guns and get away with it no matter how many innocent people they kill.”
When Will Sayers was angry his voice boomed, and his face turned crimson. At such times Brixton feared that the big journalist would have a heart attack and drop dead in front of him.
“I could use a cup of coffee,” Brixton said.
Sayers pointed to the kitchen.
Brixton brewed a cup and brought it to where Sayers had settled behind his desk.
“Well, here I am,” Brixton said. “What do you have on Alard Associates?”
Sayers opened a file folder and withdrew some papers. “Let’s see,” he said, adjusting half-glasses on his nose, “it seems that Alard Associates is a specialty outfit that hires out to larger private security firms for work those larger firms don’t want to be bothered with—or linked with.”
Brixton sipped his coffee, smacked his lips, and said, “Good coffee. I’m proud of you, Will.”
“Did you come here this morning to talk about coffee, or shall we go further into what I’ve learned about Mr. Alard and his business?”
“Don’t get your hackles up, Will. By all means let’s stick with the reason I’m here, which was not for a free cup of coffee. Okay, so Alard does jobs the bigger firms turn down. That rings to me of nasty kinds of work, wet jobs, illegal jobs. Am I right?”
“Yes, you are right. Not that anyone has ever been able to pin anything on them. The group’s namesake, George Alard, is evidently a careful type, doesn’t take on assignments unless he’s confident that nothing can be traced back to him.”
Brixton pondered what Sayers had said before asking, “Do all these jobs involve overseas assignments?”
“For the most part but not every one. I have a good source who used to do contract work for Alard. He’s a good ol’ boy from your favorite city, Savannah, who came back from Afghanistan after a couple of tours with Special Forces with a chestful of medals for his sharpshooting skills, and a metal plate in his shaved head. He couldn’t find a job he liked back in the States so he signed up with a big security firm protecting our embassy people in Baghdad. He’s a hothead whose temper got him in trouble, so the firm got rid of him by sending him to Alard. The bigger firm has eight hundred security types in Iraq. Alard Associates employs maybe a hundred, mostly discards from the bigger firms. Anyway, my source tells me that he and some of the others have taken on assignments here in the States including—ready for this, Robert?”
“Shoot.”
“An apt word to use. My source was hired to assassinate a state politician in Georgia.”
“Hired through Alard Associates?”
“Yes, but that was never proved. My friend refused to reveal to the authorities who put him up to it, although he’s been a lot more forthcoming with me.”
“He killed this politician?”
“No. Fortunately the plot was thwarted before the trigger was pulled.”
“What about your source?”
“He came out of it relatively unscathed. The prosecutor, who rumor has it benefited substantially from an anonymous donor to his reelection campaign, decided to drop the charges for lack of evidence against my source. He walked free.”
“And I suppose he’s now running for governor.”
Sayers laughed heartily. “Not that bad, Robert, although he is doing quite well heading up a company that provides ghost tours of Savannah for tourists. It is, as you know, considered America’s most haunted city.”
“So I remember. After I left the police force and put out my shingle, I hired a receptionist whose husband ran one of those ghost tours.”
“Did you ever take one?”
“Me? No. I don’t believe it ghosts. You?”
“I’m open-minded. Have you had further discussions with Paula Silver about Senator Gillespie and the lobbyist Eric Morrison’s role in not burdening the senator with an illegitimate child?”
“I plan to call her today, or maybe swing by the restaurant where she works. I’m not sure there’s anything else she can tell me. It’s not like she was directly involved. What she knows comes from pillow talk with Morrison.”
“Still…”
“I’ll take another stab at her.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way around Lady Flo.”
Brixton stayed another twenty minutes during which Sayers brought him further up to date about his research into Senator Gillespie and the illegitimate child he’d fathered, and the role that Morrison had played in arranging the abortion.
“Let me know if you learn anything new from Ms. Silver,” the journalist said as he walked Brixton to the door.
“You’ll be the first to know,” Brixton said. But then he added, “Unless you want to ante up another fee for me, I’ll be taking on some new clients who pay my going rate.”
“I wish I had more to give you,” Sayers said.
“It’s okay, Will. Seeing a hypocrite like Gillespie exposed for what he really is will make it all worthwhile. Besides, I got to have dinner with a former Hollywood star. See ya.”
* * *
At noon, Eric Morrison and two associates left their offices on K Street for a lunch date with an executive of a major American medical equipment manufacturer whose firm was the backbone of the association representing that industry. The executive, Karl Simone, was looking to change lobbying agencies; Morrison Associates had come highly recommended. Ordinarily, Morrison would have been at the top of his conversational game when wooing a potential new client. But on this day every synapse in his body was close to firing off, and he dreaded having to make happy talk for two hours.
They met at Del Campo on I Street, N.W., which had become one of D.C.’s in restaurants and whose prices reflected that status. The possible client had suggested it to Morrison when he called and Morrison didn’t debate it. If a steak for a king’s ransom made him happy, so be it. It was deductible as a business expense—Uncle Sam would eventually pay for it—and a new client would generate some welcome additional monthly cash in the coffers, which lately had been diminished, partially due to the money paid to George Alard to torch Dr. King’s land. Morrison had personally pocketed the bonus paid by the pharmaceutical company’s VP rather than run it through the agency. “I’m entitled for sticking my neck out,” was his self-justification, something that he’d become especially good at in recent days.
His associates were aware that their boss was in a foul mood, and took the lead at lunch, presenting the usual dog-and-pony show of success stories for clients, letters of praise from elected officials thanking them for helping structure sensible and useful legislation in their industries, and copies of personal notes from House members and senators, which, the prospective client was informed, indicated the close personal ties the lobbying agency had forged with movers and shakers on the Hill.
Morrison chimed in occasionally, extolling his friendships with elected men and women who could do the client’s association the most good. He casually dropped into the conversation family events that he and his wife had attended—weddings, birthday parties, fishing expeditions, and private plane jaunts to exotic vacation spots—a well-rehearsed pitch that appeared to impress the young man seated at the head of the table.
But while Morrison managed to join the conversation, his mind was far from where they sat at Del Campo.
Paula Silver’s threatening phone call reverberated in his head, and her injection of a PI named Robert Brixton into yet another project with which Morrison had been involved was, at best, unnerving, if not downright scary.
His phone call to George Alard to set up another meeting had been impetuous, almost an act of desperation. Now, an hour from his seeing him, he seriously questioned the wisdom of getting together.
What would he ask Alard to do, try and convince this Brixton character to back off? Do the same with Paula Silver? To what extent would Alard go to accomplish that? Have one of his mercenaries threaten them?
Threaten them?
With what? Physical harm?
No, that was out of the question. He’d made it clear when arranging for the destruction of Dr. King’s acreage that there was to be no rough stuff, no bloodshed. That it had ended up with the doctor stabbed to death was unfortunate, but he, Eric Morrison, had had nothing to do with that.
As he listened to his colleagues wax poetic to the manufacturer’s VP about what Morrison Associates could do for him, Morrison came up with a revelation. This was all about money. That had to be it. Arranging for Dr. King’s acreage to be destroyed didn’t involve money, at least not the payment of it to persuade the doctor to drop his research.
But Paula Silver had made it plain during her call that she wanted money. That had to be Brixton’s motivation, too. They were both lowlifes, greedy hustlers who’d do anything for a buck. Gillespie had said the same thing. The question was, how much would it take to buy them off?
Paula would probably be content with a small amount, enough to move away from D.C. and establish her life in another city—$10,000? $20,000? Everything about her was cheap, he thought while nursing his second drink during the lunch.
But what about Brixton?
The background check that Morrison had arranged for, as cursory as it was, painted a picture of the private investigator as being unstable, maybe even a psychopath. He’d been in plenty of trouble, which meant to Morrison that he was in all likelihood perpetually broke, maybe a gambler. How much would it take to buy him off? More than Paula, but how much more?
Whatever the amount it would be within Morrison’s ability to pay. He knew that. The agency maintained an off-the-books slush fund with money collected from clients that had been established for just such purposes. Too, Senator Ronald Gillespie owed him big-time. The senator was loaded with money; surely he wouldn’t hesitate to spend some of it to buy off enemies like Paula and Brixton.
“Do you agree, Eric?” one of his colleagues asked.
“What?” Morrison said, snapping back to reality. “Oh sure, right, couldn’t agree more. You’re spot-on.”
The other associate said, “Eric has an especially close relationship with Senator Gillespie from Georgia. Isn’t that right, Eric?”
“Oh, yes, Ron Gillespie and I go back a long way. He’s a real champion of the PAA, goes to the mat for us every day. He’ll do the same for you, Karl, and your group, provided we’re on board to fight for you.”
“It’s all in the close personal relationships we’ve developed,” an associate told Simone. “It takes time and money to forge those relationships and…”
And so it went for the duration of the lunch. Simone seemed duly impressed, and after he’d left the table the consensus was that they’d “hit a home run,” “hit it out the park,” and other sports metaphors they were fond of using.
“I think we’ve got ourselves a new client,” an associate said. When Morrison didn’t respond he said, “You agree, Eric?”
“Yeah, definitely a home run. Look, I have to run to another appointment. You guys handle the bill, okay? I’ll see you back at the office.”
His two colleagues watched their agency’s namesake walk from the table and disappear into a crowd at the front of the restaurant.
“What’s with him lately?” one asked.
“Maybe his wife’s giving him a hard time,” offered the other.
“Or a girlfriend.”
“He doesn’t shack up with that movie actress anymore, does he?”
“No, that’s over. He had me run a background check on a private investigator named Brixton.”
“Why?”
The answer was a shrug.
“Let’s get back. We promised Simone a written proposal. Time to get to work.”