Authors: Janice Weber
“Coal?” She tapped her keyboard. “Like the stuff you burn in the backyard?”
“No, like Nat King.” I still had to spell it for her.
“No Figs Cole here.”
“He came in almost a month ago. September fifth.”
More typing, more staring at screen. “Removed.”
Goddamn it! “What does that mean? He went home?”
“Out September sixth, nine fifty-eight
A.M.
That’s all I can tell you.”
Louis hadn’t even been here for one day?
“Look,” I said. “I’ve got to speak with him. Where’d he go?”
“That’s classified information.”
I reeled outside to a concrete bench and tried to remember the itineraries of criminals in the U.S. justice system. First
they were caught committing a crime. Next they were taken to the police station, there to await arraignment by a judge who
either set bail or let them go until the trial. Louis hadn’t made bail. He could have tapped any number of friends for the
cash, but no: looked as if he wanted to stay behind bars, invisible, for a while. If no one knew Louis was in jail, then who
had removed him?
A Department of Corrections van jerked to a stop in front of my bench. Two guards hopped out, unlocked the rear doors, and
hustled a sullen passenger into her new lodgings. Before the driver pulled away, I knocked on his window. Good-looking kid,
quick eyes, rich mouth, the type who could always use another gold necklace or a little spare cash on weekends. But maybe
not. A lot of these sharpies belonged to the Nation of Islam now. “I wonder if you could help me,” I smiled. “Do you transport
most of the prisoners around here?”
“Me and my buddies, yeah.” He looked me over. “My name’s Jason. What’s a nice lady like you doing in a place like this?”
Jason got one hundred bucks in his lap. “An inmate named Figgis Cole left here at ten in the morning on September sixth. I
need to know where he went. Do you think you could have a word with your dispatcher?”
“I don’t think that would be a problem.”
I wrote down the information. “How soon can you find out?”
“My shift ends at two. I’ll try then.” He read the name. “Figs? Is this your man?”
He was. I tucked another hundred behind Jason’s ear. “Don’t make me wait too long.”
A promenade in the Congressional Cemetery was slightly less depressing than an hour’s wait outside the jail, so I walked a
few blocks to the entry gates on E Street. One car was parked in the shade; by yon crabgrass, a few tourists gawked at J.
Edgar Hoover’s grave. Since my last visit the weeds around the chapel had grown another few inches. The garbage cans erupted
with trash. When the breeze shifted, I smelled urine and rotting meat.
Over to the Kiss plot. On Ethel’s grave lay a dozen white roses, very fresh, left within the hour. The grass had been trimmed,
the gravestones washed. Several plots away, two marines were sprucing up John Philip Sousa’s current address. “Was someone
just here?” I asked. “A big fellow?”
“He left about fifteen minutes ago,” one of them replied.
Fausto had clipped the grass very short, as if he wouldn’t be returning for a while. My eyes kept returning to the numbers
on the various headstones: yep, I had added right last time. Forty-eight was the average Kiss life span: not a lot of years
in which to accumulate wisdom, but they all had probably started early. Who would take care of the plot after Fausto? Too
bad he had never come to grips with marriage or reproduction. Both were tough calls for a philosopher.
On my way out, I saw the old gardener still trying to restore dignity to the bottom of the hill. “How’s it going?”
He stopped wrestling with either a root or a petrified anaconda. “I’m kind of surprised to see you back. One visit is all
most people can take.”
Necrophilia was my hobby. “Lots of interesting stuff here.”
He returned to the root, I to the jail, where my new friend Jason waited for me. He had changed into a white polo shirt and
two little gold earrings. “I was getting worried,” he said.
Sat beside him on the scorching hot concrete. “Any luck with your dispatcher?”
“A snap.” He read from a little rip of paper with block lettering. “September six, we picked up a single prisoner from here
at 10:02
A.M.
and moved him to Lorton.” That was a penitentiary ten miles southwest. Facilities for all ranges of miscreant plus a youth
center for ten-year-olds who set their grandmothers on fire. “He was delivered to the maximum security area.”
Just great. “Thanks, Jason.”
“Eh—we could take a ride down to Lorton right now. I know the way.”
“I don’t think my boyfriend would like that.”
“You got a boyfriend? Shee-it. What’s his name?”
Dropped another hundred into Jason’s lap. “Benjamin Franklin.” Jumped into a cab that had just discharged someone’s unlucky
mother at the entrance. “Take me to the Mall,” I said, blowing a kiss as we rolled away.
Risky calling Berlin from downtown, but I found a phone at the end of the Reflecting Pool. Tourists had bagged it for the
day, and bureaucrats were beginning to stray into the sweltering outdoors, walking as if they had diaper rash. “Did Osman
deliver?” Maxine asked.
“Perfectly. I’m back in Washington. Bailey was removed from the D.C. jail to Lorton less than a day after his arrival. What’s
the drill here.”
No use crying over spilled milk so the Queen said, “One, the warden either thinks Bailey is a danger to the other inmates,
or he thinks Bailey’s in danger himself and sends him to a more secure facility. Two, the warden receives an order from Justice
or Corrections or some heavy to move the prisoner. I’d say the latter since Bailey was trying to lie low. I don’t think he’d
cause much trouble.”
“How soon can you find out?”
“Half an hour.”
While Maxine was fishing, I walked to the Lincoln Memorial. Inside, teachers were trying to explain to the young what Honest
Abe had done to earn such a big statue. I called her back from a different phone. “Figgis Cole was transferred to Lorton due
to overcrowded conditions in D.C.,” she said.
“Transferring one prisoner to maximum security at Lorton relieved the crowding? Give me a break. Someone got to the warden.”
“He must have left a paper trail.” Signatures and seals proving he had just been following orders, he didn’t know anything,
it wasn’t his fault, please guys don’t take my pension away. “He just hired a new assistant named Betty-Lou Beasley. Divorced
with two kids. She’s ten grand into her credit cards.” Maxine gave me address, car license, description.
“This is a long shot, Maxine.”
“You getting into the warden’s office is an even longer one.”
I returned to jail. In the parking lot I found Betty-Lou’s dented red Honda, its back seat a sty of Tupperware, Wendy’s bags,
cheap toys. On the dashboard lay three parking tickets: things were looking up. Around five o’clock a white woman, thirtyish
and going downhill fast, headed toward the car. Her hair was dyed the color of a trombone. Blondes had more fun? Not this
one. “Betty-Lou Beasley?” I asked.
“Speak to my lawyer.” She jumped into her car then noticed the green bills tucked behind the windshield wipers. Down rolled
her window. “What do you want?”
“Two minutes of your time. I’m not from any lawyer. I have nothing to do with your divorce or your credit cards.” I peeled
the bills free. “I need your help.”
She stared at the possibility of nice birthday parties, new school clothes. “You’re not going to kill me or anything, are
you? I have two girls.”
“I don’t kill people.” Not on purpose.
“Okay. Get in.” Betty-Lou drove straight into a traffic jam on Independence Avenue. “I suppose you’re not going to tell me
your name.”
I gave her the money. “I work for a government agency. We’re interested in a prisoner who was transferred from D.C. to Lorton
on September sixth. All we need to know is who ordered the move. Your boss the warden certainly has the papers. We just want
a copy. He won’t get into any trouble.”
“Is this like a turf war between the CIA and the FBI?”
“The information is worth two thousand dollars to us. No one’s going to get hurt. Your boss was just following orders.”
“What about me? Can I get into trouble?”
“Not if you’re careful. Two thousand dollars is a lot of money. Tax-free. Three thousand if you get me the information by
tomorrow morning.”
“I’ve never done anything like this before,” Betty-Lou whined, almost rear-ending the car ahead of us. “I have to think about
it.”
“Think about it all you want. Just don’t think out loud. That could be dangerous.” In a few seconds Betty-Lou realized that
once she had let me into her car, she was in quicksand up to her three chins. “Drop me behind that bus. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Patted her arm. “Trust me.”
My head felt as if I had just stuck it down the barrel of a circus cannon. I just had to keep reminding myself of Betty-Lou’s
credit problem and hope she had watched enough television to persuade herself that a mother’s first responsibility was to
keep her daughters in designer jeans. Screw national security. Back at the hotel, I called Fausto again: still no answer.
Duncan was correct: I had been dropped like a hot potato.
That put me in a ruthless mood for Happy Hour with Bendix. I met him in a Dupont Circle bistro impressive less for its food
than its absurd prices. The only people stupid enough to pay them appeared to be lobbyists and Asian tourists. “Hot out there,”
I said, slithering into my seat.
Bendix looked fresh as a scoop of sherbet. “Thanks for seeing me. I was afraid you might have gone back to Berlin.”
“I’m having too much fun here.” Flagged a waiter and ordered alcohol in slush. “But all good things come to an end. I listened
to your cassette. It’s brilliant. Why’d you stop? You could have been on your ninth symphony by now.”
Bendix was speechless. He had probably planned to round the conversation to this intimate topic after five long cocktails.
“You liked it?”
“Loved it. So cleverly written for the piano. Such original thematic development. Fausto turned in a great performance, but
the piece stands on its own.” I stared him deep in the id. “How’d you get into composing?”
I finally got the hidden history of Bendix Kaar. One day misfit teenager, thinking he’s about to hear a Beatles album, drops
the needle on his mother’s beloved recording of
Romeo & Juliet.
The skies open and he resolves to become the next Tchaikovsky. Learns violin well enough to earn scholarship to B+ conservatory.
Transfers to the Royal College because he hates the humiliation of playing in an orchestra and no one in America wants to
perform his music. Lo and behold, he has as much difficulty getting a hearing in London as he did in Cincinnati. Life becomes
hell.
I swallowed half my drink. “Didn’t you tell me you wrote an opera? That got performed, didn’t it?”
The composer downshifted from fifth to neutral. “Yes. But not without help. Fausto paid for the whole thing.”
“Nothing wrong with a patron, is there? How’d it go?”
Neutral to reverse. “I was booed.”
“So what? So was Stravinsky.”
“Stravinsky must have had a stronger stomach. I didn’t leave my bed for two weeks.” Bendix blacked out on the review and his
catharsis on Golders Hill. “I decided to abandon music.”
“That must have been incredibly painful.”
“Amputation beats gangrene. I charted my ship on another course and never looked back—until I heard you and Fausto play my
sonata the other night. God, it was good! Stunning, really. I haven’t been able to sleep since.”
A Japanese woman approached the table. “May I have autograph, Miss Frost?”
I scribbled on her menu. “Composers don’t succeed until they’re dead. I think you took the right course. Look at all the good
you’ve done the world.”
“The world?” he croaked. “What about me?”
Ah, if only Fausto could see this. “You can always go back to composing.”
“But will I have anything to say?” Bendix took a long pull at his vodka tonic. “I may have exhausted all my creative juices
in Washington. I’m not a kid bursting with ideas and idealism anymore.”
Next he’d want his head in my lap. I was suddenly tired of playing confessor to men who felt lonely at the top. Barnard was
dead and one of these miserable wretches had killed her. “Why don’t you try writing an hour a day? If Fausto could throw together
a recital in a week, you could toss off a two-part invention.”
“I’ve got a lot more on my plate than Fausto.” Bendix ordered another round. “He’s become quite a good friend of yours, I
notice.”
“He’s an unusual man.” How smoothly Bendix had usurped the reins of conversation. Instead of cantering with him, I asked,
“How’s Jojo Bailey? He’s quite a friend of yours, I notice.”
“One of my oldest. Goes back to my London days. What’s happened to him is horrible beyond words. I wouldn’t wish a death like
that on my worst enemy.”
“Does he recognize you?”
“He’s in a coma. Aurilla and I can barely bring ourselves to visit him. I can’t stand the sight of blood.” Unless it was issuing
from a music critic’s eye sockets, of course. “Jojo was doing so much good work.”
“I don’t think the two of you will have to visit him much longer.”
Bendix looked sharply at me. “Who told you that? Fausto?”
“Everyone knows he’s fading fast. And everyone says Aurilla’s a shoo-in to replace him.”
“It ain’t over until the fat lady sings. Who knows what tricks Bobby and Paula might have up their sleeves.”
I patted his arm. “You’re just feeling a little stage fright.”
Bendix finished his drink. “Maybe. Aurilla and I have worked years to get where we are. Her career started rather unexpectedly,
do you know? Her husband died in a plane crash. She finished his term and never looked back.”
“Fate.”
“You make your own fate. He was a nothing. Aurilla was better off without him.” A strange glow, somewhere between an alcohol
buzz and a demented ecstasy, suffused Bendix’s face. “She’d be a fantastic president.” He caught himself. “Vice president.
Does Fausto think she’s going to make it?”