Sam and Steve walked up the black iron steps to the rowhouse with four other agents behind them. One agent would stay on the front steps to keep people out, and a final agent was posted in the alley around back, on the chance that anyone tried to run out the rear. Samantha rang the bronze door buzzer. If no one answered the door in thirty seconds, agents would knock it down with a steel ram.
Sam started counting. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand—
The curtain of a second-story window in a turret was pulled back, and a skeletal face peered down at them. The man’s sunken eyes took in the agents in their FBI jackets, then scanned the street full of government vehicles. Samantha held up her papers. “FBI. We have a search warrant. Please open the door.” The face disappeared behind the curtain, and Samantha kept counting. Six-one-thousand, seven-one-thousand . . .
At twenty-three, the thick black door swung open with a creak. The man who stood there was far younger than the skeleton who’d
peered at them from upstairs. White male, medium height, medium build, maybe forty years old. He was bug-eyed, with thinning brown hair and a large mole on the left side of his chin. He wore a blue button-down shirt with khakis.
“May I help you?” he asked.
“FBI.” Samantha held up her credentials and the court papers. “We have a warrant to search the premises.”
He stepped back and let them in. When the agents were in the foyer, he closed the heavy door. An agent stopped him before he could slide a dead bolt into place.
Inside it was dark, cool, and quiet, a stark change from the summer afternoon. As Sam’s eyes adjusted, she kept them on the man who’d let them in. He stood with his hands by his sides, posing no threat. She scanned the room for other people but saw none. This front hall felt like a scene from a different century. It was paneled in dark wood, and the floor was black marble inset with a six-pointed star of gray and white stone. A candlestick telephone sat on an antique chest.
“What’s your name, sir?” Samantha asked.
“Brian Stringer.”
So this was BigBoy89. What struck Samantha about him was how very
normal
he appeared. The only physically notable thing about him was how skinny he was—his belt seemed to be the only reason his khakis didn’t fall to the floor. SkinnyBoy was more like it. He didn’t seem like the type who would be a member of a secret gentlemen’s club.
“Do you have some identification?” Samantha asked.
“Sure.” He fumbled nervously with his wallet.
Agent Quisenberry gently took the wallet from Brian’s hands. “Let me help you with that,” he said. He began flipping through the wallet.
“I’m Samantha Randazzo. I’m a Special Agent with the FBI. Are there any weapons or sharp objects on your person?”
Brian shook his head.
“We’ll have to check to be sure. Please put your hands on the wall and spread your legs.”
Brian complied. Samantha nodded for Steve to do the frisk—if she did it, the guy might get off on it. Samantha took the wallet from
Steve and flipped through the cards while Steve ran his hands over Brian’s body. One card caught Sam’s eye. She pocketed it.
“He’s clean,” Steve said.
Sam handed Brian a copy of the search warrant. “Who else is in the building?” she asked.
“A few members are having drinks upstairs.” Brian’s voice was trembling as much as the mole on his chin.
“How many members?”
“Six.”
“Are there any weapons on the premises?”
“There’s a Samurai sword hanging over the fireplace in the card-room.”
“Good to know. Anything else?”
“No.”
“Okay, thanks. We’re going upstairs.”
“Only members are allowed up there,” Brian protested meekly.
Sam pointed to the warrant. “We’re allowed anywhere in this building that a computer could be.”
Half the agents fanned out through the first floor as the other half followed Samantha. She knew little about the Hunt Club, only what was available in public records and through law enforcement databases. The place was purchased in 1897 and had been under the same ownership—the Hunt Club, Incorporated, a standard 501(c)(7) nonprofit social club—for more than a hundred years. There had been no criminal activity or 911 calls logged from the building. The only police intervention was from sixteen years ago, when an MPD beat officer noticed a lot of men coming and going at a late hour. He’d investigated and found “a bunch of old men playing cards,” according to his police report.
They followed Brian past a large room that looked like a sixteenth-century tavern, with heavy beams on the ceiling and a gigantic stone fireplace. An immense table was set with pewter dishes and surrounded by Windsor chairs. Brian led them into a dark hallway, where a wall was covered in caricatures of distinguished-looking men. Sam assumed they were the club members. Most were white, although a few darker faces had made it into the more recent
drawings. Samantha recognized drawings of two past Presidents, a CIA director—and both City Councilman Dylan Youngblood and Congressman Emmett Lionel.
“Congressman Lionel is a member?” she asked.
“Yes,” Brian said.
“And Dylan Youngblood? Must make for some interesting dinners.”
“This primary election is nothing. You should see the campaigns for club president.”
Brian led them up the stairs and into a round cardroom located in a turret at the front of the house. Samantha didn’t believe in government conspiracies, but if conspiracies were going to be hatched, this was where the hatching would be done. The room was lined with leather-bound books and marble busts. Oil paintings covered the walls. Thick curtains blocked out sunlight, and the room was lit with antique sconces. There was the Samurai sword, mounted over a stone fireplace.
Six old men stood in a cluster around one of several card tables. They wore conservative suits and appalled expressions as the team of FBI agents strode in. Among the men, Samantha recognized Blakely Hamilton, the CEO of the Hamilton Group, a global asset management company. Hamilton had sought the Republican nomination for President two years ago. Though he eventually withdrew from the race, Samantha had voted for him in the primary.
“Hello, gentlemen,” Samantha said. “We’re from the FBI.” She considered, then dismissed, the idea of frisking them. These men might attack them with lawsuits or press releases, but they weren’t about to stab anyone. “I need to see some ID, so if you wouldn’t mind, please pull out your wallets slowly.”
She probably hadn’t needed the “slow” part. Their natural speeds seemed to range from careful to glacial. As she wrote down their information, she recognized a federal judge. When she handed back their drivers’ licenses, Hamilton stepped forward. At sixty-two, he was one of the younger men in the group.
“I’m the president of this club. What’s this all about?”
“We have probable cause to believe the computers in the building are being used to commit and facilitate crimes, sir. We have a
warrant to search the premises and take any and all computers on the grounds. We’d be happy to simply mirror their hard drives and let you keep the machines. But I’d ask you to please direct me to all of the computers in this building.”
His eyes narrowed. “What crimes?”
“Solicitation for a lewd and indecent purpose. Also known as prostitution,” Samantha said. One of the older men gasped and coughed. “You can look at the warrant. And you can all sit down.”
The old men posed no danger, she decided, except to themselves from a coronary. Brian handed Hamilton the warrant, and the CEO eyed the paperwork suspiciously. All the members sat except for the federal judge. He began to walk toward the door, muttering, “I can’t be here. I have to go.”
Sam put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, Your Honor. I have to ask you to stay here.”
“Am I under arrest?”
“No. But we’re executing a search warrant, and we need the scene to be secure. So you need to stay where we can see you. You’ll be free to go shortly.”
He looked like he wanted to make a run for it. Samantha wondered whether she would have to tackle a federal judge.
“If you want to avoid headlines, sir, you’re walking in the wrong direction.”
The judge sat down.
Hamilton looked up from the search warrant. “I want to call my lawyer about this.”
“That’s fine, sir, you’re free to do that. But we’re not going to wait for him to come here before we conduct our search. Now, you can tell us where the computers are, or you can force us to search every single part of the building where a computer could fit. And you know, computers have gotten so small these days.”
Hamilton held up one finger, sat down, and whispered with the judge. They seemed to come to an agreement.
“There are two computers,” Hamilton said, coming to his feet again. “One in the general manager’s office upstairs. One on the concierge’s desk off of the lobby.”
“Is the general manager here?”
“Not tonight. But you’ve met our concierge.” Hamilton nodded to Brian. So BigBoy89 was the concierge of the Hunt Club.
The computer examiner, Quisenberry, and a handful of agents went upstairs to secure the premises and mirror the manager’s hard drive. Other agents stayed with the men in the cardroom. While the search was being conducted, the agents would try to talk to each club member separately. But Samantha could see where this was going. They would all lawyer up. She wanted to get Brian out of the room before that rubbed off on him. She turned to the concierge. “Can you please show me the computer at your desk?”
He nodded meekly. As he led her down the stairs, Samantha called for Anna to come in.
Anna sat next
to Samantha in a small office adjoining the lobby of the Hunt Club. The room was windowless but nicely appointed, with an antique desk, dark-green-on-green-striped walls, and two studded leather chairs. Samantha and Anna sat in the two guest chairs, while Brian sat behind his desk. Anna thought the guy might feel more comfortable, and thus be more likely to talk, in the power position behind his desk. Brian’s laptop had been taken by the other FBI agents to mirror its hard drive, but otherwise, his office was intact.
“While we’re waiting for the computer examiner to finish up, do you mind if we ask you a few questions?” Samantha began.
“D-do I need a lawyer?”
“Why don’t you just listen to the questions,” Samantha said, “and then decide if you need a lawyer?”
Good answer. If Anna had been in this guy’s position—having hired hundreds of hookers and posted online reviews of them from a computer that the FBI was searching—she would run to a lawyer. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. But she didn’t have to tell him what she personally would do. Anna was happy to take any information the guy was willing to give them.
“Meanwhile, you’re free to leave at any time,” Samantha said.
That made the conversation “non-custodial.” He wasn’t under arrest, so they didn’t have to read him his rights. That alone might scare him into clamming up.
“So, how long have you worked here?” Samantha asked.
“Um.” He paused, nervous. “Six years.”
“You from D.C.?”
“I grew up in Wheaton.”
“Is that where you live now?”
“I live in Shaw.” He gave them the address.
“How old are you?”
“Forty-one.”
Anna knew the point of Sam’s questions was to put him at ease, get him talking, and lull him into a rhythm, so that when they got to the real questions, the momentum would keep him going. His hands had stopped shaking, and his voice grew a little stronger.
“How’d you land a job here?” Samantha asked.
“I was a caddy at the Chevy Chase Country Club. I caddied a lot for Judge Seiler, who’s a member here. When they had an opening, the judge told me about it.”
“How many members are there?” Samantha asked.
“One hundred exactly. The only time they take a new member is when someone dies.”
“Seems like a pretty distinguished crew.”
“Yeah. But the membership is secret. The only time you’ll hear that someone is a member is in an obituary.”
He spoke in a soft, nasal voice and looked at his hands, occasionally sneaking peeks at Anna’s and Sam’s faces. The members of the club might like him, but he was uncomfortable with women. Anna remembered the review he’d written about Caroline: full of ridiculous braggadocio and swagger, as if he were Smoove B from
The Onion
. The only sincere thing in his review was that Caroline had made him believe he was great in bed. Anna had a new appreciation for the skills of an escort who could make this weird little guy feel that way.
“What do the Hunt Club members do here?” Sam asked.
“Have drinks or dinner, play cards, talk. Run the world.”
“So what does your job entail?”
“I get the members what they want.”
“Like what?”
“Anything. Tickets to
The Lion King
when their grandkids are in town. Reservations at the restaurants you can’t get reservations to. I arrange for flowers on their wives’ birthdays. If someone wants to take an Alaskan cruise, I find the best deals, and I book the flights.”
“Do you also get them hookers?”
“L-listen, I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. Myself included.”
Sam showed him the card that she had taken from his wallet. It was all black, worn and tattered around the edges. Silver script read,
Discretion: For the gentleman who can afford anything but publicity.
There was a phone number on the back. Sam said, “We’ll subpoena the call records for this phone and see everyone who called this number.”
“You took that from my wallet! You can’t do that. I have rights.”
“You handed the wallet to us.”
He chewed his thumbnail. “Look, if a member wants companionship for the night, I might refer him to an escort service. Escort services are legal. Whatever they do is between consenting adults.”
Anna had heard this kind of justification before. As a legal matter, it was wrong. But now wasn’t the time for that debate. She spoke for the first time. “Sir. Do you remember a young woman named Sasha?”
His face softened, and his eyes took on a faraway look, like a man indulging in his favorite fantasy. “Ah . . .”