Collateral Damage (12 page)

“I was talking about support, not exposure.”

“If there's no exposure, you don't need support. Langley ran for cover and left Halliburton hanging. Fine, not our most heroic moment. But without the leaker, there wouldn't have been anything to run from. No scandal, no feeding frenzy in the media, no congressional hearings, no special prosecutor. Whoever leaked that story is the guy you ought to be saving all this festering resentment for.”

“Thank you for your candor,” Michaelson said with finality. “You've made your position clear. I know where to reach you.”

After seeing Connaught out, Michaelson returned to his office and began filling his briefcase with materials he'd need for this afternoon's symposium. He brought a bit more vehemence than was customary to this process. There were two reasons for his irritation.

First, he'd been wrong about Connaught. He had assumed that Connaught was still working for the CIA and that his ostensible position with one of the political parties was a none-too-convincing cover. He now thought it plain that Connaught was doing exactly what he claimed to be doing. Whatever it was Connaught wanted, there was no earthly reason for the CIA to give two hoots about it. Besides, if Connaught had still been getting his checks from spook central, he could credibly have offered Michaelson bribes far more tangible than a vaguely limned place at the table.

The second reason was that, without realizing it, Connaught had fingered him. Connaught apparently didn't know that Michaelson was the State Department alumnus whose covert bureaucratic action had saved an element of Near Eastern foreign policy at the cost of destroying Jim Halliburton's career. And in some strange way, that just made it worse.

Chapter Seventeen

A new pretty girls smoking cigarettes
T-shirt complemented C-Sharp's desert camouflage pants and combat boots as he climbed to the mezzanine at Club Chat Fouetté that evening. He moved toward Phillips, who was gathered in a group with Michaelson, Willie, and Project near the railing that overlooked the stage below.

The nightspot showed considerably more life than it had on Michaelson's first visit. Waiters wearing white cowboy hats and black leather pants with nothing in between scurried among a handful of early patrons. Two techies in work clothes were on ladders, hanging crimson leather straps in the shape of the AIDS awareness symbol from fishing line strung over the small stage.

“Hey, Ageless,” C-Sharp said affably. “Janos said you wanted to see me. What's happening?”

Phillips raised one eyebrow as he turned toward C-Sharp.

“Willie,” he said, “C-Sharp wants to know what's happening. What's happening?”

“Charlotte Brontë jokes,” Willie said solemnly. “Like, what brand of cooling equipment did Rochester use?”

“I give up,” Phillips said.

“Jane Air. Who did Rochester leave his money to?”

“Jane Heir?”

“Right,” Willie affirmed with a vigorous nod.

“Uh, guys?” C-Sharp said. “Hello?”

“Oh, I have one,” Phillips said. “How did Rochester explain the mistake with Cheetah the monkey?”

“Jane Err?” Willie guessed.

“Bingo,” Phillips said.

“Oooh-kayyy,” C-Sharp said. “See ya.”

“Don't you have a riddle for us, C-Sharp?” Phillips asked.

C-Sharp looked back over his shoulder.

“No,” he said, with a thin, I-don't-like-this-game smile.

“Then we'll change genres,” Phillips said. “Something contemporary. Let's see. Here's one for you: What happened at Calvert Manor in very early February, a few weeks ago?”

“I don't have the faintest idea. And I have a set in about seventy-five minutes with no sound check done yet.”

He completed his original pivot but found Project in between him and the stairs. After a moment's aggravated indecision he whirled around to confront Phillips.

“Okay,” he snapped. “What's going on?”

“I think you do know,” Phillips said in a cajoling tone. “You just have to put your mind to it.”

C-Sharp raised his hands palms out to chest level in a placating gesture.

“Look, guys. Here it is. I have no clue. No clue. Got it?”

“It would have been something fairly dramatic,” Phillips said. “Something that would get your attention when it happened and stick in your memory afterward. Something involving Catherine Shepherd. Something that made her feel naughty and caused her to write a pietistic punishment sentence five hundred times on February third.”

“I wasn't living there, okay?”

“You were doing other things there. On a regular basis.”

The four-man semicircle arching around C-Sharp got a little tighter. C-Sharp's eyes swept the group as he gulped a quick breath through his mouth. He backed up until his hips brushed the top of the mezzanine railing. At the instant of contact he sketched a panicky jump forward as if he'd been shocked. Although Phillips, the nearest, was still several feet away, sweat popped out on C-Sharp's forehead and upper lip. A palsied shake took over his left hand.

“Something dramatic involving Catherine,” Phillips repeated soothingly. “Something you didn't mention to the police. Just tell us, and then you can go play with your friends.”

“I don't know dates, I can't—”

“Don't worry about dates. You know what we're talking about, don't you, C-Sharp? He knows, doesn't he, Willie?”

“He knows.”

“Tell us, C-Sharp.”

Eyes squeezed tightly shut, C-Sharp brought clenched fists up above his shoulders and then pumped his forearms back to his sides, like a true believer doing isometrics.

“The only thing I can think of,” he said, “was this one night when I guess she and Preston had a fight.”

“What did they fight about?” Phillips demanded.

“I don't know. It was upstairs. I was in the kitchen. I had the munchies.”

“There's a surprise,” Willie muttered.

“I heard raised voices, but sounding like people do when they're trying not to raise their voices. Then Preston comes slamming downstairs and crashes out the back door.”

“What time?” Phillips asked.

“Say not quite three a.m. We'd gotten back from a gig maybe half an hour before.”

“Where was Cindy?”

“She had crashed.”

“Continue,” Phillips said. “Keep going till you hear the applause.”

“Okay,” C-Sharp said, accompanying the comment with a long, weary exhalation of breath. “Maybe ten minutes later there is this un
godly
scream from upstairs. ‘PRESSSTONNN!!!' I mean it cleared my sinuses out, man.”

“Catherine?”

“Yeah.”

“Uh-huh. Don't stop.”

“She comes racing downstairs in a robe and nightgown. Before I know it she's out the door. Screaming all the way. Cindy's at the top of the stairs yelling. ‘Don't let her run around out there alone! Stay with her!' So I hustle out and spot Catherine going into the garage. I follow her in. Garage door is closed and the lights are out till I turn one on. There's an engine running and I can smell exhaust. And there's Preston.”

“Where's Preston?” Phillips asked impatiently.

“Behind the wheel in Cathy's car. Engine turned on, like I said. Staring through the windshield like a zombie. I was freaked, man.”

“‘Like a zombie'?” Phillips said to Michaelson, shaking his head sadly. “The last pop music composer with a decent sense of simile was Neil Sedaka.”

“Anyway,” C-Sharp said, “Catherine pulls the car door open and throws herself on Preston. She's sobbing. She's sorry she's sorry she's sorry, oh-Preston-Preston-Preston, yatta-yatta-yatta, the usual chick-shit, y'know. So Preston melts and they eventually go back inside all over each other. I was 'bout ready to puke.”

C-Sharp stopped talking and looked around hopefully at the faces confronting him.

“Oh, what a shame,” Phillips said, shaking his head theatrically in hammy disappointment. “And you were doing so well, too. Wasn't he doing well, Willie?”

“Real well,” Willie said. “We were all proud of you, C-Sharp.”

“Yeah,” C-Sharp said. “Okay. That's it. Gotta go.”

“Not yet,” Phillips said as Project again intercepted C-Sharp. “You see, I think you left something out. Catherine Shepherd, distraught after a lovers' spat, suddenly starts thinking like a cross between Sherlock Holmes and René Descartes? ‘Let's see,' she reasons coolly, ‘I heard the door slam but I didn't hear Preston drive off. Therefore he must be sitting in the garage, contemplating suicide.' I don't think so. I know we didn't give you much time, but is that the best you could do?”

“What can I say?” C-Sharp protested. “That's the way it happened.”

“No,” Phillips said. “The way it happened was that Preston came downstairs and talked to you. He told you to wait for three to five minutes after he slammed the door, and then to rush upstairs and feed the suicide theory to Catherine. I want you to tell me if that's the way it happened, C-Sharp. And I'm liable to get cross if you lie to me again.”

“Have it your way,” C-Sharp said, shrugging.

“One more chance,” Phillips said.

C-Sharp put his hands on his hips, bent slightly at the waist, and carefully examined the floorboards for five seconds.

“This stays here, right?” he demanded.

“As in no one tells Cindy?” Phillips responded. “Let me put it this way. Cindy's going to get told in the next five minutes unless you cut to the chase.”

“Okay,” C-Sharp said then, his voice flat and dull. “That was the plan. What you said. And that's the way it went down.”

“Very well,” Phillips said. “Now, C-Sharp, if I were you, I'd look for ways to keep Avery Phillips happy from this moment until I lose interest in this tawdry little farce.”

He pivoted sharply away from C-Sharp and began marching toward the stairs. Turning to follow him, Michaelson was mildly surprised to see a striking, dark-haired woman in a close-fitting, ankle-length dress of pink satin starting up the stairs. His first, improbable thought was, Liza Minelli—here? Then something about her eyes tickled a key in the back of Michaelson's memory. When he got a full look at her face as she passed through a puddle of light, his double take achieved full wattage. A moment or two later, he heard Phillips, already halfway down the stairs and passing the pink-clad figure.

“Evening, Janos,” he said.

“
Gays and Dolls
,” Willie sighed with contentment. “
Luke Be a Lady Tonight
.”

Michaelson had managed to wipe any suggestion of surprise off his features by the time he was out on the sidewalk with Phillips and his two companions, trudging toward the spot where Phillips had illegally parked his Mercedes sport utility vehicle.

“Can I cadge a ride back to my apartment?” Michaelson asked. “Save me interzone cab fare.”

“Sure,” Phillips said.

Michaelson slipped into the backseat with Phillips, blandly ignoring the intense scrutiny that Project directed at them from the passenger seat in front. Willie drove.

“I take it you're not going to tell me what Demarest went after for you,” Michaelson said.

“No, I'm not. Why should I?”

“To show that you learn from experience. A clearheaded gent like you should think, ‘I mustn't leave Michaelson in the dark. That's the mistake I made last time.' You sent Demarest back in blind, and that didn't work out very well, did it?”

“Not ‘back in.' I wasn't the one who sent him in the first time.”

“We both know who sent him in the first time,” Michaelson said. “You were one of the people he showed the receipt and the memo to, and he couldn't figure out why you didn't pat him on the head and tell him what a clever boy he was.”

“Poor Preston,” Phillips sighed. “He was such a dunderhead.”

“But you knew, somehow, that there was in fact something worthwhile still there. Demarest had found it but didn't know what it was. You knew what it was, but you couldn't find it. You decided to have Demarest get it for you, but without telling him what he was looking for. The end result was that the information stayed in and a corpse came out.”

“He knew the risks,” Phillips said.

“I keep hearing that. Now you know the risks.”

“Risks run both ways.”

“Before, perhaps,” Michaelson conceded. “You felt you couldn't completely trust Demarest. He was stupid and he thought he was smart, so there were two solid arguments in support of your position. But you can trust me and you know it. If I give you my word, I'll keep it.”

“Your word about what?”

“That I'll offer you the same thing the other side is offering me: a seat at the table. If we collaborate and I come up with whatever you're after, we'll shop it jointly or not at all.”

“And otherwise?” Phillips asked.

“Every man for himself.”

“I'll take my chances.”

“I don't understand your position,” Michaelson said. “Your approach has cost one human life so far. How much money has to be involved to distort your judgment that badly?”

Phillips scooted around on the satiny black leather to look directly at Michaelson.

“Money is just a way of keeping score,” he said. “Triple net, this deal may well end up as a loss. Losses are sometimes useful in my business, of course, and best case maybe there's even a five-figure profit. Nothing like enough to justify the huge financial risk of carrying the house, assuming I can find a way to buy it in the first place.”

“Then why?” Michaelson asked.

“They
owe
me,” Phillips said with uncharacteristic vehemence. “You're a grunt at Fort Dix, you get to shop at the Post Exchange. You're an officer who spends three years in Germany, you get to bring a BMW with you when you're rotated home. You do what I did, you get to take your opportunities where you find them—and if you find the right one, you get to play at the big table again. They owe
me
; they don't owe you.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Michaelson said joshingly. “You're letting sentiment interfere with logic.”

The huge vehicle pulled up outside Michaelson's Georgetown apartment building. Phillips smiled as he reached across Michaelson and opened the door on his side.

“You've got balls, Richard,” he said. “But you don't have any cards. Good night.”