Dark Ambition (18 page)

 

 

 

Chapter 11

 

"What do I tell Jim Slater if he asks about the Winthrop investigation?" Al Hennessey asked Ben.

It was five minutes to five. Ben had just handed his summary of the evidence concerning Senator Young to Hennessey, who wanted to deliver it personally to Slater at the White House.

"Tell him that nothing's changed since Monday morning. The FBI's still looking for George Nesbitt."

"Any leads?"

"Fulton and Traynor are coming over in a few minutes to brief me. You want to stick around?"

"Sorry. Roz and I have a black-tie dinner party at David Kelso's house."

"Life's tough among the Georgetown elite," Ben remarked. "You need a strong liver just to survive the nightly onslaught of alcohol."

Hennessey didn't appreciate Ben's constant barbs. "Did I ever tell you that you're not very funny?"

Ben chuckled. "All the time."

When he returned to his office, he found Fulton and Traynor waiting for him, standing amid the piles of paper on his desk, both chairs, and even the sofa.

"You guys can sit down."

"There's no place to sit," Fulton said, looking around in disgust. "This office is a mess."

"Then move the papers onto the floor, hotshot."

He grunted as he moved a gigantic pile. "How can you get anything done in a pigsty like this?" he muttered.

Ben decided to laugh it off. "I know where everything is. That's the point. I'll bet your office is as clean as a whistle."

"You're damn right," the former marine said.

How did the saying go, about clean desks and empty minds? Ben turned to Traynor. "Where are we?"

"The interviews in Clyde Gillis's neighborhood didn't produce a thing," Bill replied. "Zippo."

Ben was disappointed. In an inner-city area like that, people were out on the street, looking out of windows, at all hours of the day. If the gun and money had been planted, someone should have seen it. He was beginning to doubt his instincts. Perhaps Gillis had killed Winthrop. "You're sure nobody saw or heard anything?"

"One of the neighbors thought she heard some noise around eleven o'clock Saturday evening. She looked out of the window. Couldn't see a thing."

Ben filed that away. "OK, what about the search for George Nesbitt?"

"We're down to six possibles," Traynor said. "But one's a very good lead."

"Tell me about him."

"VP for marketing for a San Jose semiconductor company that did one-point-two billion dollars in sales last year—mostly in the Far East and former Soviet empire."

Ben was buoyed by the news. This might be a lead. "So he'd have a reason to meet with Winthrop."

"Exactly," Traynor said. "And his wife thinks he was in Washington over the weekend."

That struck an odd note. "What do you mean, 'she thinks'?"

"He travels a lot on business. She can't keep track of him. From the driver's license photo ID on file in Sacramento, Hines says he could be the man."

"So where is mystery man now?"

"Nobody seems to know. We're working on it through his wife and his office. We've got wiretaps on both of his phones."

Ben snapped to attention. "Authorized?"

Traynor shook his head slightly. "You don't want to know. We're willing to lose the conversations. We just want to find him."

Mystified, Ben tried to add up what Traynor had said. "That's weird for a big company VP not to be tied to his phones."

"Unless, of course, he's killed the secretary of state, and he's in hiding." Traynor replied.

Ben didn't want to go down that road. "Remember, in the search for Nesbitt, we're looking for a witness, not a killer. We already have Gillis. We just need to confirm that Nesbitt met with Winthrop Saturday, and that our former secretary of state was alive and well when Nesbitt left." He turned to Fulton. "What do you think, hotshot?"

Fulton was doing a slow burn inside at Ben's reference to him as "hotshot," but he didn't want to give Ben the satisfaction of admitting it. "I think this George Nesbitt had his meeting with Winthrop, left the secretary of state alive and well, as you just put it, and is spending a few days shacked up with his mistress. He's still in Washington."

"Are we checking hotels here?"

"We've done every last one. Not a trace of our Mr. Nesbitt."

Ben looked at Traynor for confirmation, and he nodded. "The mistress could have an apartment."

Fulton jumped in, wanting to be the one reporting the news. "We've gotten a list of his credit cards. In about an hour we'll have all of his charges in the last week. Meantime, Jeb Hines is in California working with the FBI out there, running down the other five possible George Nesbitts."

The telephone rang. At first Ben ignored it, wanting his secretary to answer. Then he remembered she had gone for the day. He picked it up.

"Okay, Ben," Jennifer shouted so loudly that he pulled the phone away from his ear. "Tell me what you did to him."

"Did to whom?"

"To my client, Clyde Gillis."

From their time together, Ben knew that Jenny had degrees of anger. Right now she was in the "bright red zone."

"I didn't do anything. What are you talking about?"

"I went to the jail to talk to him this afternoon."

Ben couldn't resist the temptation to wisecrack, "That's generally a good idea when you're building a case." Yet he felt stupid for making the comment, and he immediately backtracked, trying to sound sympathetic. "So what happened?"

"Monday he was fine, protesting his innocence loud and clear, even after your little effort at intimidation. Today he won't even talk to me. Just sat there for thirty minutes staring down at the table. He's out to Mars. I figure that you or one of your thugs slipped some drugs into his food."

Ben was alarmed. Jenny wouldn't be imagining this. "You can't be serious."

"Oh, c'mon, Ben. The heat's turned up full blast on this case. Clyde Gillis is a scapegoat."

"If you know who the real killers are, let me know. Then I can release your client and go after them."

"Stick around for the trial," she said harshly, "and you'll find out."

"I can't believe that you would make such an outrageous charge against me," he said, being honest. "I play hard to win, but you know damn well that I'd never be a part of anything like that."

There was a long pause. "Yeah, I guess you're right," she said, her voice lower. "But somebody else could have drugged Clyde Gillis. Suppose they're hiding it from you?"

"You know what I think of conspiracy theories like that. This is starting to sound like a discussion you and I had one evening at Obelisk about Martha Mitchell, and whether the Nixon gang did her in."

"Yeah, well, everybody in Washington's not as honorable as you are."

"I guess that's a compliment."

She softened her tone. "Actually, it was meant to be. Uh, look, Ben, I want to see a copy of the FBI report on the Winthrop murder."

Ben had been expecting her to get to this issue. "Sorry, Jenny, I can't give you any gifts. The case is too high-profile. The FBI report hasn't been released to the public. We haven't charged your client yet. You'll get it when either of those happens."

More stiffly she said, "Then at least I want a copy of the tape you made of the interview with Gillis on Sunday."

"Same answer."

"C'mon, Ben. It's my client's statement. Either I get it, or I'll go to a judge in the morning."

Ben hesitated. He wanted to wait until four tomorrow afternoon, Slater's deadline, to delay filing charges in the hopes they could find Nesbitt. He didn't want to risk judicial interference earlier in the day. On the other hand, he'd had the tape transcribed this morning. He'd read the transcription. It didn't give anything away.

"I'll have a copy of the transcript delivered to your office by nine tomorrow morning," he said, being agreeable. "But let me tell you something. We found money, lots of money, in his truck, and the gun that FBI ballistics says killed Winthrop. I'm being real serious when I say that you might want to cut a deal in this case rather than take it to trial."

Her answer was immediate, as he should have known it would be. "No deal. I've got an innocent client."

"All defense counsel tell me that. Then right before trial they want to talk." He wasn't telling her anything she didn't know. "But you've got a special problem here. I'm afraid that once the ball starts rolling, with all the publicity, I may not be able to cut a deal for you. So if you want to avoid murder one and the electric chair, you'd better talk to me early, Jenny."

She knew that he was leveling with her, and she appreciated it. "Can you tell me when you're going to file charges, or are you taking this to a grand jury?"

The prosecutor's wall went back up. "We haven't decided."

"I'm not going to let you hold him indefinitely without being charged."

"I didn't think so."

"Thanks, Ben." Her end clicked off abruptly.

Ben put the phone down and looked at Fulton and Traynor.

"She's not going to make our life any easier."

What he didn't tell them was that on the phone, he had glibly brushed off Jennifer's charge that somebody had gotten to Clyde Gillis in jail. Deep down, however, he was worried about it. Somebody was playing hardball on this case, using him in the process. He wasn't sure who or why, but he didn't like being manipulated. He intended to find out what was going on.

* * *

It was almost eight o'clock when Ben got home. Amy was sitting next to Elana at the kitchen table, sipping hot chocolate.

As soon as she saw him, she ran across the room crying. He picked her up and hugged her.

"What happened?" he asked Elana.

"She's had a bad day. One of the girls at school said some things that upset her. She hasn't been able to sleep. So I got her up. I thought some hot chocolate would be good, and maybe you'd be home soon. I hope you don't mind."

"No, of course not."

He carried Amy upstairs and held her in the rocker in her room. Her arms went around his neck, squeezing him as tightly as she could. Rocking gently, he said, "You want to tell me what that mean girl said?"

"It was Didi," she blurted out. "She said Mommy ran away because I was a bad girl, and then she started singing real loud, 'I have a mommy and you don't.... I have a mommy and you don't.' " She burst into tears again, her little body convulsing.

Ben was furious. This was the third time it had happened. Tomorrow morning, after the kids went to school, he'd call that little shit Didi's mother. Hopefully, he could appeal to her as a human being to stop her daughter from doing this.

When Amy had calmed down, he said to her, "You believe me, don't you?"

"Uh-huh."

"And what did I tell you?"

"That Mommy got sick with a very bad disease, and she died."

"That's right. And that was nobody's fault. And Mommy loved you very much because you were always a good girl."

With eyes wide open, Amy looked at him beseechingly. "Where did Mommy go?"

"She passed into another world, honey. Where she's resting peacefully."

"Why didn't she want to be with me?"

He felt a great wave of sadness, and he blinked back tears. "She couldn't help it."

She clutched him tightly. "Daddy, will you die and leave me, too?"

God, this was harder than any judge's interrogation. "No," he said with all the confidence he could muster. "I won't die and leave you."

"Will I die and go into another world like Mommy?"

"Not for a very long time." He pushed forward in the chair and stood up. He carried her over to her bed. "Come on, you've got to get some sleep."

She wasn't willing to let go yet, though. "Will you play something for me, Daddy?"

"Of course, honey." Ben went to the study for his guitar. When he returned, he played an old Spanish love song for Amy—the same one he had played for Jenny the first night they made love in this same house. Before he was finished, Amy was asleep sucking her thumb.

Exhausted, Ben went back to his own bedroom and tried to sleep. It was hopeless again tonight. He tossed and turned in bed—the bed he had shared with Jenny for almost a year. Thinking about her, remembering her next to him, her smell, her taste. He could see her walking out of the bathroom with droplets of water from the shower glistening on her skin, with only a towel wrapped around her head, turban-style. She would sashay around the bedroom, tantalizing him as he lay in bed trying to read a brief. In a matter of seconds, he would toss the brief on the floor, and she would crawl into bed with him. All those nights came back vividly. Her favorite position was sitting on him, because she said that let him penetrate the deepest. He loved it that way too, loved watching her move up and down on him, her hands behind her on the bed, her breasts bouncing in the air. She would become so aroused sometimes that sweat would pour down the front of her body and onto his chest. And when she finally came, she screamed it out. He usually came right after, and they'd collapse together on the bed, with her head resting on his shoulder, the way she liked to do. God, he hadn't thought about her like this for years. Talking to her again on the Gillis case had unleashed the feelings that had never died.