Rosslyn June 26
Julia Lancette did not recognize the phone number. The 456 exchange—which flashed on her caller-identification readout—indicated the call was coming from the White House. She answered with a curt “hello.”
“Ms. Lancette, please,” a male voice said.
“Who’s calling?” she asked.
“Jake Grayton.”
“Hold on.” She punched the hold button. She had seen him at Wenner’s office yesterday. Why would he be calling? She reconnected the call and tried to speak in a slightly different voice.
“This is Julia Lancette.”
“Hi, this is Jake Grayton,” he said. “I hope this doesn’t sound too strange, but Mrs. Novek said I should give you a call. We almost met—but didn’t—in the director’s office. And she thought we might share some interests. So I was wondering—to get to the point—if you’d like to have dinner.”
Damn straightforward, she thought.
“You’re not too busy these days, Mr. Grayton?” she asked.
“Yes, but we all have to eat and I didn’t promise a long dinner. And call me Jake.”
“I don’t know, Jake.”
“We can invite Mrs. Novek to join us.”
Lancette laughed and then silently chided herself for doing so.
“See?” he said. “We’ll have fun.”
“This is not really the time to be having fun, is it?”
“Then we won’t. I give you my word.”
First, a whacked-out CIA shrink, she thought, now a date with one of the big honchos in the community. Perhaps she should borrow a touch
of Dr. Charlie Walters’s paranoia. Her mother’s voice sounded in her head: “You can never know if a chance is a good one or a bad one, so take it.” As Lancette had gotten older—and remained unmarried—her mother had become more daring in the advice she offered.
“Sure,” she said. “When?”
“Tonight? Tomorrow?”
She was free that evening. She was free most nights when she wasn’t being forced to Anacostia by a gun-toting colleague.
“Tomorrow looks good,” she said.
He suggested an expensive, well-known Cajun restaurant.
After she finished with Grayton, Lancette tried to do some work. An American banker had been gunned down, mob-style, in Moscow. Might he have been an agent? An asset? The Agency, she knew, had increased its contacts with business executives working overseas, especially in Russia. She considered which offices should be sent an ICEMAN request on this case.
It was hard to keep her mind on the task at hand. She was puzzling over her conversation with Walters. What, if anything, should she do in response? Should she inform Wenner? Tell him that she had been kidnaped by a CIA psychiatrist who claimed his ICEMAN report had been spiked? A report that contained vague information. Walters’s superiors would probably brand him as overly excitable—which Lancette could confirm—and argue that he was not reliable. Surely, they had some excuse, real or manufactured, to fall back on, should their handling of the report be questioned. Perhaps it would be best to determine first if Walters should be taken seriously.
She left her office and crossed the street to a Vietnamese restaurant. So many had sprouted in northern Virginia in the years after the war. The most loyal customers were former Company men and ex-military officers who gathered in these establishments to sop booze and repeat their stories of glory days in inglorious times. Four white-haired men—she recognized their made-in-the-military bearing—were shouting at each other at the 5THbar. She found the pay phone and dialed Walters’s number. This was not complete security, she knew. But better than none. A woman answered, and Lancette asked for Dr. Walters.
“He’s not in,” the woman said. “He’s on travel.”
“Oh, the Africa trip, right?” Lancette said. “I forgot.”
“He’s on travel,” she repeated. “Would you care to leave a message?”
“No.” She put the receiver down. Well, she thought, he had told her the truth about being packed off. Still, that did not provide much guidance.
She picked up a Washington phonebook.
“Fuckin’-A!” one of the men at the bar yelled. “I fucked her—not you! Remember you met her fucking sister at one of those pussy parties at the Duc Hotel after a cocktail thing at Mau’s.”
The owner of the restaurant rushed over to quiet the customer. Once a captain in the special police in Saigon, the owner now served gin to Americans who used to advise him on how to wage war. Some people win even when they lose, Lancette told herself.
She found a listing for a business called the Gauntlet. That was the name on the cap worn by the man in Walters’s story—the man who bore a tattoo similar to the one found on the assassin of President Bob Hanover. There was an address on 5th Street Northwest. It was near downtown Washington, in a desolate neighborhood. She knew there was a police station three blocks away. During her initial orientation at the CIA, she had been told that operations people were required to memorize the locations of all police offices and hospitals in the metropolitan area. As an analyst-to-be, it was not necessary for her to do so. Nevertheless, she had committed the list to memory.
Outside the restaurant, she hailed a cab. She gave the driver an address that would be a block away from her destination. As the taxi headed across the Key Bridge, she watched the local college crew teams rowing on a muddy Potomac. You can never know if a chance is a good one or a bad one, she said to herself.
There was no sign on the front of the building, a four-story brownstone with peeling paint and shuttered windows. Next door was a boarded-up shop. In its brick facade, a few faded painted words remained: Goldstein’s Pawn. On the other side was a collapsing building. Its windows were gone, replaced by bricks and cement. Glassine envelopes were scattered on the sidewalk. Further down the block was a square of land filled with rubble and surrounded by a cyclone fence.
Three young black men were hanging across the street. She knew they were watching her. She walked to the rear of the building. There were several tall oak trees behind it. The trees obscured the view of the balconies attached to the second and third floors. She heard voices coming from the closed-up brownstone and returned to the street.
Next to the front door was a mailbox. A small piece of paper bearing the handwritten word Gauntlet was taped to the receptacle. She pressed the doorbell.
A large white man—about six-and-a-half-feet tall and weighing three hundred pounds—answered the door. He was in his mid-forties and had a curly red beard that came to a point halfway down his chest.
“Don’t open until six,” he said and started to shut the door.
“Wait,” she said.
The door closed with force. She rang again.
The same man opened the door.
“Not open,” he said.
“I’m not here for that,” she said, wondering what “that” might be.
“Then what you want?”
“Can I come in?” she asked.
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“On what you want? You a lawyer?”
“No. I’m looking for someone.”
“You’re a dick?”
“No, just trying to help a friend.”
“Bullshit,” he said. “Bull-fucking-shit. But come fucking in anyway. Sun’s not good for me. Doc says I’m susceptible to melanomas.”
She stepped into the building. In the hallway, a pair of steer horns hung from the ceiling. On the wall to each side was a mounted wagon wheel. The place was dark. But she could see that the entire first floor was one open room. Tables and chairs were set up. Cowboy posters were on the wall. Ornate saddles were mounted on stands. A jukebox was glowing. There was a bar at the end of the room. Three men were sitting at it. A young man wearing a white apron was mopping a dance floor.
“I’ve had three fucking melanoma operations,” the bearded man said. “Doc says that I need to live like a god-damn vampire.”
He guided her to the bar and told her to sit. He took a place behind the bar.
“Big Daddy Lopez,” he said, introducing himself.
The men at the bar looked at Lancette with little interest. They each had a buzz cut. “So he told him,” one was saying, “that he couldn’t take it anymore. That either he put his name on the lease or that was it—”
“But I ain’t no spic,” Lopez said to Lancette. “My name’s Lopez. But as far back as we can trace, ain’t no spic blood, just a spic name, okay?”
“Okay,” Lancette said.
“Who you looking for? Not me, right?”
“No, not you. Looking for a fellow who, I think, used to work here a few years ago. He—”
“Why you looking for him?” He took a draw from a long-neckedbottle of beer.
“Someone asked me to help find him—”
“Thought you said you’re no dick.”
“No dick? Hey, stop talking about Gregory!” one of the men shouted at Lopez. The others laughed. The young man mopping the floor glowered at them.
“Mind your own fuckin’ girlie business,” Lopez said to them. His attention returned to Lancette.
“Who asked you to help?”
“It was”—she thought for a moment—“his family.”
“And what’s his name?”
“They’re trying not to use his name. He—”
“Sounds like a scam, sweetie. How do they expect to find him?”
“Well, they believe he’s using a different name now—and they don’t know what that name is. But he’s hard to miss. He has a scar on his ear and a glass eye.”
She said nothing about the tattoo. The tattoo found on the assassin had been described in the media. If she mentioned it, Lopez would know why she was interested in the man.
She paid close attention to Lopez’s face. It did not change as she described the man.
“And why are they looking for the hombre-with-no-name?”
“I don’t know all the details. Something to do with a will. He might have some money coming his way.”
“Yeah, right. Money coming his way, so maybe I’d want to help out then, right?” Lopez laughed.
The front door opened and a man came in carrying a valet bag.
“Big, I forgot,” he said. “Did you say chaps or jeans tonight?”
“Chaps, you ditz,” Lopez yelled.
“Don’t get yourself in a huff,” the man said. “I brought both.”
“Think you can help?” Lancette asked.
“What else does he look like?”
“Glass eye, a scar on his ear, I said.”
“And?”
Lancette looked puzzled.
“In a place like this, that’s not enough,” he explained, grinning.
He’s jerking me around, she thought.
“Wouldn’t you know if he worked here?” she asked.
“I’ve been running this place about two years now. Bought it from a couple of faggots who moved to Indiana for some god-damn reason. But I’ll ask around. Maybe. Hold on.” He opened the beer chest and then slammed it shut.
“Fuckit, Gregory,” Lopez said to the man with the mop. “Told you to make sure we had the Corona. I don’t see one here.”
“They haven’t delivered it yet,” Gregory replied.
“And don’t you think I should know that.” Lopez lumbered out from behind the bar to tend to the beer problem. While he was gone, Lancette listened to the men at the bar.
“Fucking Sarge keeps busting my balls,” one said.
“Thinks he knows?” asked another.
“Don’t think so. Even so don’t think it would matter. He’s just a ballbuster. Gotta report back for an overnight.” He placed an empty beer bottle on the bar. “Later, boys.”
He looks like a Marine, Lancette thought.
“Later, Big Daddy,” the fellow called to Lopez.
“See ya, Slick,” Lopez yelled back, as he returned to the bar. “Semper Fi them in the you-know-what!”
He smacked a fist into his palm.
“So say I find something,” Lopez said to Lancette, “how do I reach you?”
“I’ll come back,” she replied.
“Wrong!” he said. “Most of our patrons come here and don’t want to be found. So I don’t want people knowing Big Daddy runs a finder service. You come by once, that’s a fluke. You come by again, and they ask, what’s up? So I’ll call you. Let me have one of your cards. This is fuckin’ Washington, if you’re legit, you got a card, right?”
“Sure,” Lancette said. She pulled out a business card and handed it to him.
“Janet Lang, Inter-Business Media,” he read. “What’s that?”
“A news service. I’m a desk editor.”
“Okay, pretty lady, Big Daddy will call you if he comes up with the right prize.”
One of the men at the bar had gone over to the jukebox. He dropped in a quarter and punched the buttons. As Lancette left the bar, she heard a woman singing:
He takes me to
The places you
And I used to go.
She knew the song: Patsy Cline’s “Why Can’t He Be You?”