Executive Privilege (15 page)

“There’s a call on two,” the receptionist told Keith Evans.

“Who is it?”

“He won’t give a name. He says he has information about the Charlotte Walsh case. He asked for you.”

That didn’t carry much weight with Evans, since he was on TV whenever the Bureau felt the need to hold a press conference about the case. He was tempted to shuffle the call to someone else but the investigation was stalled and you never knew.

“Evans here. To whom am I speaking?”

“I’m not going to give my name over the phone. All you need to know is that I’m a cop and I know something that may help you with the Walsh murder.”

“A cop? Look—”

“You look. I’m taking a chance here, so we do this my way. Walk over to the Mall. Go into it between the Indian museum and the Botanical Garden.”

Evans started to say something but the line was dead.

The Mall was mobbed with tourists and Evans never spotted his caller until a man wearing a lightweight jacket and tan slacks appeared at his side. He was medium height and stocky with the beginning of a beer belly. His face was flat and pockmarked and he’d compensated for his receding black hair by growing a bushy mustache.

“Officer…?” Evans started.

“Not until I get some assurances,” the man interrupted. “Then you get my name and what I know.”

“What kind of assurances?”

“That nothing happens to me if I tell you what I know.”

“Why do you need that kind of assurance?”

“It’s nothing really bad. I just bent the rules for someone and now I find out…Look, what I did was no big deal, but it could get me in trouble on the job so I want my ass protected.”

“I can’t make any promises if I don’t know what we’re talking about.”

“Okay. I’ll give you a hypothetical. Let’s say someone who wasn’t a cop called a cop and asked this cop to trace some license plates. How bad is that?”

“Not very.”

“So, what would you do for this hypothetical cop if he could give you information that might help you in a murder case?”

“I’d promise that the Bureau wouldn’t go to his boss and I’d list him as a confidential reliable informant in my reports so I wouldn’t have to use his name.”

“What if his boss found out what he’d done?”

“You understand I have no direct influence with the D.C. cops?”

The man nodded.

“The best I can promise is that I’d go to bat for him and I’d go as high up as I could in the Bureau for backing.”

“Okay, I can live with that.”

“Do you want to tell me your name?”

“It’s Victor Perez.”

“Thanks, Victor. So, tell me why we’re meeting.”

“There’s this ex-cop I know, Andy Zipay. He’s a PI now. We used to play poker once a month. One night, we were in a big pot and I did something stupid. I had this really good hand and I flipped an IOU into the pot I couldn’t cover. So I owed him the money but I didn’t have it.”

“What’s this got to do with Charlotte Walsh?”

“That’s what I’m about to tell you. This guy could have been a prick about the money, but he cut a deal with me instead. Every once in a while he needs information he can’t get, now that he’s private, so he calls me up and I work off the debt. The night Walsh was murdered I got a call from Zipay asking me to run some license plates. There were three of them.”

Perez handed a list with the numbers to Evans and waited while the agent scanned them.

“One is for a car registered to Charlotte Walsh,” the policeman said. “The next day it’s all over the news that Walsh was murdered by the Ripper. I wasn’t going to say anything at first. Then I started thinking, what if it’s important? So I called.”

“You did the right thing.”

Perez nodded.

“You said Zipay asked you to run three plates,” Evans said.

“Yeah, one car was registered to an electrical contracting company, but the other is used by the Secret Service.”

Evans frowned. “What does the Secret Service have to do with this?”

“That’s what I asked. Andy said he didn’t know, he was asking for someone else. He sounded surprised about the Secret Service. If I had to bet I’d say he didn’t know I was going to say the Secret Service used one of the cars. Then again I’m not that great a gambler.”

Andy Zipay’s office was on the third floor of an older office building that had seen better days but was still a respectable address. Keith Evans guessed that he was doing all right but hadn’t struck it rich yet. The small waiting area was manned by a plump, pleasant-looking woman in her midforties who was typing away at a word processor when Evans walked in. He flashed his ID and asked to talk to her boss.

Two minutes later, Evans was seated across the desk from Zipay, a slender man a shade over six feet, whose dark suit contrasted sharply with pale skin that looked like it rarely saw the sun. A narrow mustache separated a hooked nose from a pair of thin lips, and there was a touch of gray in his black hair. The austere suit and the mustache made Zipay look a little like the private dicks in black-and-white movies from the 1940s.

“How can I help you, Agent Evans?”

“I’m in charge of the D.C. Ripper case and you can help me by telling me why you’re interested in a car belonging to Charlotte Walsh—his latest victim—and another car that’s the property of the United States Secret Service.”

Zipay steepled his hands in front of his chin and studied the FBI agent for a moment before answering.

“If I were interested in that information it would probably be on behalf of a client. If that client was an attorney who was acting on behalf of a client I would be an agent of that attorney and prevented by the attorney-client privilege from discussing the matter.”

Evans smiled. “Andy, you may be an agent of an attorney but I checked with some friends on the D.C. police force before coming over, and they say you’re also an ex-cop on the take who was lucky to avoid some real unpleasantness. These people would be ready, willing, and able to bust your balls if they found out
how
you learned the Secret Service and Miss Walsh owned those cars. So don’t go all legal on me and I won’t go all legal on you.”

Zipay flushed but he held his temper. “I didn’t know it was standard procedure for FBI agents to insult people when they want their cooperation.”

“I wasn’t being insulting. I was stating facts. Now I have no interest in busting your balls. All I want is information. If I get it I’ll probably forget the source unless you turn out to be an essential witness in the Ripper murders.”

Zipay mulled over the agent’s proposition. Evans could see that the PI was upset, which surprised him. Finally, Zipay took a deep breath. He looked very uncomfortable.

“Okay, I’ll help, but I don’t know much and the person who does…I don’t want her hassled. It wouldn’t be right.”

“Why is that?’

“She was a cop and she’s gone through some really bad times. She was in a mental hospital for a year.”

“What happened?”

“Nobody I’ve talked to knows the whole story. I was off the force by then so I don’t have a lot of the details—and I’ve never asked her for them—but what I know is pretty awful. She was undercover and she got friendly with a meth cook. These were bikers. Very violent guys, but she worked her way in. They had a secret lab. No one could figure out where they were cooking. She was going to lead the cops to the lab when the bikers got on to her.” Zipay looked down. He shook his head. “They had her for three days before they found her.”

Zipay looked up and straight into Evans’s eyes. “You know I left the cops because I got into trouble. Almost everybody turned their back on me, but she didn’t. When I went private she fed me jobs, helped me out when she could. She has some kind of pension but it’s not much. Whenever I can I return the favor by hiring her to do odd jobs. This deal with the licenses was one of them.”

“Why did she want to know the registered owner?”

“She wouldn’t tell me. She said I should forget about the conversation. I will say that she sounded surprised about the Secret Service. I don’t think she was expecting me to say that one of the cars was registered to them.”

Maggie Sparks rapped her knuckles on the door to Dana Cutler’s apartment. When no one answered she knocked again, louder.

“Miss Cutler, this is the FBI. We’d like to talk to you.”

“What now?” Sparks asked Evans after they’d waited long enough for a response. He was about to answer when the door across the hall opened a crack.

“Are you really the FBI?” a woman asked in an accent that placed her origins somewhere in Eastern Europe.

“Yes, ma’am,” Evans replied.

“Show me some identification.”

Sparks and Evans held up their ID in the narrow space where a chain spread between the door and the jamb. A second later, the chain was detached and the agents found themselves face to face with an elderly woman in a pink house dress.

“She’s not in,” the woman said. “She hasn’t been there since the commotion.”

“What commotion?” Evans asked.

“It was a few nights ago. I called the police as soon as I heard the gunshot.”

“Why don’t you start from the beginning, Mrs….?”

“Miss, young man. Miss Alma Goetz.”

“Miss Goetz, please tell us what happened.”

“These walls are paper thin. When I heard the shot I opened my door a crack to see what was happening. There wasn’t anyone in the hall and the shot sounded close by. That’s when I called 911. Then I heard her slam the door across the hall open.”

“Her?” Evans asked.

“Dana Cutler, the woman from across the hall.”

“How do you know it was Miss Cutler?” Evans asked.

“I saw her running toward the stairs.”

“Did the police come?” Sparks asked.

“Yes, there were two of them, but they were very rude.”

“Oh?” Evans said.

“You’d think they would be polite, since I risked my life to make the call. I could have been shot, you know?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sparks said. “What you did was very brave.”

“I’m glad you think so because the police officer was very short with me. He told me to go inside and he didn’t even ask me any questions.”

“He didn’t take a report?” Evans asked, surprised.

“When I tried to talk to him he said that everything was under control and he ordered me to shut my door. He said this was police business and I could get arrested for obstruction of justice if I continued to ‘butt in.’ Those were his exact words, ‘butt in.’”

“So you didn’t see or hear anything else?” Evans asked.

“Oh, no, I heard plenty. Like I told you, these walls are very thin.”

“What did you hear?” Sparks asked.

“I heard screams before Miss Cutler ran out. That was after the shot.”

“Go ahead,” Evans urged.

“The police went into the apartment. They had their guns out. A man yelled out, ‘Don’t shoot, we’re federal agents.’ Then the policemen went inside and shut the door.”

“Did you see anything else?”

“I certainly did. About fifteen minutes after the policemen came, two men left the apartment. One of the men was supporting the other man. He looked like he was in pain. Ten minutes later, the police left. Fifteen minutes after that three other men went into the apartment.”

“Were they with the police?”

“I don’t know. They didn’t have uniforms.”

“How long were these men in the apartment?”

“An hour or so. When they left they were carrying black trash bags.”

“Did Miss Cutler ever come back to her apartment after the excitement died down?” Sparks asked.

“I never heard anyone go in or out, but I guess she could have come back while I was sleeping or out shopping.”

“Thank you very much, Miss Goetz. You’ve been a big help.” Evans handed her his card. “If you think of anything else, please call me.”

“I will. And you’re much nicer than those policemen.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“I guess they teach you manners in the FBI.”

“Can you tell me where the super lives? We’d like to get inside Miss Cutler’s apartment.”

Miss Goetz gave them the apartment number and Sparks talked with Cutler’s neighbor while Evans went downstairs. He returned ten minutes later with the key.

Cutler’s bedroom was so messy it was hard to tell if it had been searched or not, and the tiny living room had the same lived-in feel, but someone had scrubbed down every surface in the hall and the kitchen.

“What do you think?” Evans asked.

“If you believe Miss Goetz, Cutler shot someone who may be a federal agent.”

“There’s no evidence anyone was shot.”

“There’s plenty of evidence that someone cleaned up. Just compare the hall and kitchen to the bedroom and living room. And you said that your informant ran plates that belonged to the Secret Service. If we’re talking about people in this town with enough clout to shut down a police investigation they’d be near the top of my list.”

“We don’t know that the investigation was shut down. There may be a police report, 911 tapes, medical records. We should check. This could just be a domestic dispute. Maybe Cutler was dating someone who works for a federal agency and she went off.”

“You don’t believe that, do you?” Sparks asked

“Not really.”

“What do we know? We’ve got a PI who writes down some license numbers. Why would she do that?”

“She’s on a case; we’re talking about car licenses, so she’s tailing someone,” Evans answered.

“Charlotte Walsh?”

“That’s my guess. She asked my informant to run Walsh’s plate and she was surprised when he told her that another plate was registered to the Secret Service. She wouldn’t be surprised if she was tailing a Secret Service agent.”

“So, somewhere, Walsh crosses paths with the Secret Service,” Sparks said.

Evans walked to the door to the bedroom and looked it over again.

“They were searching the apartment. Cutler came back and caught them,” he said.

“She shoots a federal agent then runs,” Sparks said. “Either she shot him thinking she’d surprised an intruder or she shot in self-defense.”

“She’s an ex-cop. If she found a burglar she’d hold him for the police whether she shot him or not.”

“She shot a person she thought was a burglar, learned she’d shot a Fed, and ran because she was scared,” Sparks said.

“What if it was self-defense? What if they were searching for something they thought Cutler had? She comes home and they try to force her to tell where it is and somehow she gets the drop on them.”

“What were they looking for?”

“If the intruders were Secret Service, it has to be something that connects Walsh to…Jesus, Maggie, Walsh worked for Farrington’s campaign, and the Secret Service guards the president.”

“PIs take pictures of people they’re following,” Sparks said.

Evans was quiet for a moment. “If Cutler was hiding pictures in this place they’d have found them. It’s too small.”

“Unless Cutler interrupted the search before they got them.”

“Or Cutler has them someplace else.”

Evans’s cell phone rang and he snapped it open. While he was talking, Sparks looked around more carefully than she had the first time they’d gone through the apartment. She noticed that all of the trash baskets had been emptied and there were no scraps of paper with writing on them anywhere in sight. She pulled open the drawers of a desk in the living room and found them empty. And she didn’t see a computer. Whoever had gone through the apartment after the police left had been very thorough.

“I had someone run Cutler’s phone records for her cell and home phones,” Evans said when he finished the call. “Fredricks looked them over and came up with something interesting. Does the name Dale Perry ring a bell?”

Sparks thought for a moment before shaking her head.

“He’s an attorney with a lot of political contacts, including several in the White House.”

“There’s the Secret Service connection again,” Sparks said.

“Cutler’s called him a few times this year and twice the week before Walsh was murdered. Some of the calls were to Perry’s private line at his office or his cell phone.”

“Why would a small-time PI be calling a big shot lawyer with ties to the White House?”

“Let’s ask him.”

“One other interesting thing,” Evans said. “I asked Fredricks to get me Cutler’s file from the cops.”

“What’s it say?”

“That’s what I’d like to know; it’s classified.”

“I bet this place is bigger than my apartment,” Maggie Sparks said as she looked around the reception area of Kendall, Barrett and Van Kirk.

“I bet they pay more rent than you do, too,” Evans said.

“I bet I could retire on what they pay in rent for a year.”

Their ruminations on the reception area of Dale Perry’s law firm ended abruptly when a stunning blonde with a deep tan walked into reception dressed in a fire-engine red dress and sporting a lot of gold jewelry.

“Agents Sparks and Evans?” she asked, flashing a radiant smile that would have lit up the room in a blackout.

“I’m Keith Evans, and this is Margaret Sparks.”

“I’m Irene Miles, Mr. Perry’s personal secretary.”

I’ll bet you are, Maggie Sparks thought. Out loud she said, “Pleased to meet you, Ms. Miles. We’d like to speak with Mr. Perry.”

“He’s waiting for you,” Miles said. “Would you like some coffee or tea? I can also bring you a caffe latte or a cappuccino.”

The agents passed on the refreshments then followed Miles down a carpeted hallway where they found Dale Perry waiting in a large corner office decorated tastefully with antiques. Before leaving, Miles motioned the agents to a place on a couch under an exquisite oil painting of a French country village that looked a lot like a Cezanne Evans had seen in the National Gallery. The window behind Perry’s desk had a view of the White House. Evans wondered if Perry and the president flashed coded messages back and forth when the lawyer was lobbying for one of his clients.

“Thanks for taking the time to see us, Mr. Perry.”

The lawyer smiled. “When the receptionist told me who was in the waiting room I got curious. It’s not every day I get a visit from the FBI.”

Evans smiled back. “Let me put you at ease. We’re not here to arrest you. Your name popped up in an investigation, and we’re hoping you can help us.”

“I will if I’m able.”

“Thanks. Do you know a woman named Dana Cutler?” Evans asked.