Authors: Dale Wiley
Perfect. Tabitha would become Patricia Mickelson, Literary
Agent, and lure Helper to our lair. I noticed Helper had listed both home and
office numbers on his letter, so it wouldn’t be weird for her to call him at
the office, and I gave Tabitha a crash course in what to say.
She waited patiently through a maze of switchboards and
secretaries before finally sighing, “My name is Patricia Mickelson. I am a
literary agent, and I’m interested in discussing a manuscript he sent my way.
I’m in DC, staying at the Watergate, and I would very much like to talk to him
before I leave.” She gave all of this information, plus the room number, to
that poor secretary in a tone only a lawyer could love. And five minutes later,
my archenemy rang my hotel room.
Tabitha answered with an extremely brusque “Hello,” and then
allowed her voice to sweeten as she realized it was Helper. She was in town,
she said, cutting a deal for a Senator’s autobiography, and she wanted to talk
to Helper before she left. She winked at me, as he was falling all over himself
on the other end of the phone, and finally made an appointment to meet Helper
at the Watergate bar at eleven.
Tabitha put the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, and she
and I made up the bed and straightened up so when Helper came everything would
look fairly normal. She also had an excellent idea and called the front desk
for a tape player. This would serve two purposes: First, we could try to
document Helper’s conversation one additional way. But if Helper was as smart
as I thought he was, he would imagine we were doing something to record
everything, so if we turned it off, we might just convince Helper he really was
speaking off the record. After that, I tried to read the
Post
, but
couldn’t do so without immediately getting mad. The article—written, of course,
by the now-captive Gerald Greer—butchered the press conference, bending and
twisting everything in order to make it look like I was even guiltier. I wanted
to go slap him but knew it wasn’t a good idea.
I now realized in the best-case scenario I would be the guy
who is accused and then publicly vindicated but still the subject of popular
suspicion. You see, the newspapers put your name in black ink when they believe
you’re guilty, but they never really erase anything. Most people go on and read
the articles that say you’re innocent and believe them with the same
whole-hearted ferocity with which they believed the ones that said you were
guilty, but they would probably think I did something to deserve my fate. And,
of course, in this case, I did, to some extent. But they didn’t need to know
this.
Still, that was a good deal better than the rest of the
alternatives, which included Riker’s Island and an amorous cellmate, or,
possibly even worse, death at the hands of some trigger-happy cop. After all, I
was armed and presumed to be dangerous. That meant most cops in America would
fire a bullet into my back without thinking twice, unless they thought they
were being filmed.
About ten, Tabitha changed into the secretary’s outfit
again. It would certainly pass muster for someone who wanted to believe he was
speaking to his future literary agent. At ten thirty, we took Greer into the
closet. I extracted a promise from him that he would at least listen and not make
any noise, and I think he was beginning to believe me enough that he really
meant it when he said he wouldn’t. Then I placed handcuffs in one of the bureau
drawers and the tape recorder right next to Gideon’s Bible. At 10:45, Tabitha
went downstairs, where she was supposed to meet Helper.
Twenty minutes later, she returned, practically arm-in-arm
with my nemesis.
Twenty-six
T
hey came bursting in the door talking
about
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
. “Not releasing it in
paperback was brilliant,” Helper said confidently. “Brilliant.”
“Have a seat,” Tabitha said, indicating the only leather
chair we had left. She moved to sit by the couch.
Our antics had seriously depleted our chair supply.
“Would you like a drink?”
Helper said he would, and Tabitha poured him a scotch and
soda out of the mini-bar. He grabbed it, thanked her, and sat back down.
He looked smooth and poised. He was wearing a dark brown
suit and a green tie, and he draped one leg across the other like the whole
world owed him a big favor. He smiled at Tabitha, measuring her to see if her
interest was only literary.
I waited to pick my spot. I wanted to wait until he took a
drink so he would be the most vulnerable. But he seemed to forget about
drinking out of the glass sitting in front of him. Instead, he absently ran his
finger around the rim and spoke in hyperbolic similes about his writing.
Few understood his work, he told Tabitha, who was somehow
managing to keep a straight face. But that was the way it often was—only much
later were visionaries understood. I wondered how many agents Helper had turned
off with this spiel and then realized this was probably his first encounter;
most were turned off enough by the stilted writing they received in the mail.
When he mentioned the word “paradigm,” I had had enough. I
eked out of the closet’s sliding door—careful not to reveal the other
occupant—and pointed the pistol straight at him. I glared at him and fixed one
of his eyebrows in the sights and thought for more than a second about
squeezing off a round just for fun. He sat motionless, his face flushed and
frantic, while I considered his fate.
“Trent,” Tabitha said softly.
I turned and saw she looked nearly as worried as Helper. I
shrugged and lowered the gun, and Tabitha looked considerably relieved as she
moved to handcuff him.
“You’re a lunatic,” Helper said. He ran his tongue across
his lips and frowned as Tabitha secured him to the chair.
I hoped Greer would notice he hadn’t seemed overly
surprised.
“You wish,” I said, now back in whatever control of the
situation that I could possibly be expected to have.
“They’ll know I’m here …”
“Bullshit. You fell for it.”
He glanced at his shoes and back at me. “I’m not going to
say anything. You’re probably taping this.”
“Why would I do that?”
He started to speak but stopped. “To get your ass out of
trouble.”
“Well, that’s your choice.” I winked at him. “But we’ve got
a long wait. I’m safe here. I can stay until Christmas.”
“You don’t need more crimes on your list. You already have
enough.”
“But I want to talk about your list, Mark. How many crimes
are on your list?”
He laughed. “You’re taping this.”
I didn’t want to seem too anxious to turn off the tape
recorder, afraid this would make him even more suspicious. So we continued our
pointless verbal sparring for several minutes more. But Helper wasn’t going to
budge.
He was still scared, still blinking like I was blinding him,
but he was in control enough to keep his mouth shut. So I walked over, opened
up the drawer, and pulled the tape recorder out. I turned it off, walked to the
bed, and let him see. “Good enough for you?”
“There’s probably another,” he said.
It was my turn to laugh. “I’m not that well-connected.”
“How did you wind up here?”
“I might tell you once you tell me your side.”
“I don’t have a side.”
I rolled my eyes. I was starting to get tired of Mark
Helper. “What do you have against me? Why have you set me up like this?”
“I didn’t have a damn thing against you.”
“But?”
He looked at Tabitha, as if to remind me that he wasn’t
going to let other ears hear his confession.
“She is just as involved in all of this as I am.”
Helper looked skeptical. “How?”
I waved the gun. “I get to ask the questions.”
“I don’t have to say anything,” Helper said. “You’re the one
who’s going to jail. You don’t have anything on me. You could’ve made up that
phone call.”
“But you know what I found when I broke into the McHolland
Foundation, don’t you?” I asked. He bit his lip and looked at the floor. I told
him I knew about Daedalus Travel. His complexion got whiter. I told him about
his trust. His head jerked up.
“So, Mark, I’m tempted to just call up the police and tell
them everything with you sitting here. Show them the documents. I’m guessing
they’ve heard at least some of this, because I’m betting the reason you killed
Timmons was because he somehow got wind of your little scam.”
“That’s the problem,” said Helper, who was looking at me
when he wasn’t blinking. “I had no intention in the world of having him killed.
There were a thousand other ways of getting the problem solved. I told them to
do something, to find some way to discredit him, to make up something that
would divert his attention, or maybe we could blackmail him. I never would’ve
killed him. But those two idiots I agreed to work with said this was the only
way.”
“That was dumb,” I said, “because I’m betting someone else
found out about all of this in the first place, not Timmons.”
“Exactly. He was a staffer. And they wanted to kill him
too.”
I saw my opening. “So actually,” I said, putting the gun
down and leaning against the desk, “I’m your best witness. I can tell the
police about the message I took, and we can show you didn’t get it.”
“But there’s still the other murder,” he said.
“You thought Roger was me, didn’t you?” I asked.
He looked me straight in the eyes and nodded. I stopped
breathing for what seemed like an hour. It was so menacing to hear it.
“You’ve got to tell me,” I said, “to let me help you.”
He rolled his tongue against his upper lip.
“Tell me,” I said, “and you can decide.”
It took several more minutes, perhaps just to let the
severity of his situation sink in. I was pretty sure with Helper in tow and
Greer on my side, I would be willing to turn myself in, but I had plenty of
reservations still. I wanted it to be on my terms. But Helper finally caved,
probably because he didn’t have anyone else to tell. He didn’t trust his allies
anymore.
Helper said he and two friends—from the other two
foundations—had formed Daedalus Travel in order to make money by defrauding
their employers. They set it up as a corporation, doctored the books, and
didn’t pay much in taxes, taking the chance that they wouldn’t get audited. It
wasn’t big money, but it was easy. They made five or six hundred dollars on
every flight, every time anyone went to a conference, or came to a panel, or
went on a site visit. Helper said he had been the one to engineer everything
necessary to get the government contracts. Since most everything was on
computer, it was all very simple.
“But what if someone caught on?” said Tabitha.
“Who was going to catch on? The three financial officers at
the companies were the ones defrauding them. If an auditor came along, it just
looked like we had been taken for a ride. Our names weren’t associated with
Daedalus Travel, and we even went so far as to pay a bum who we knew we’d never
see again to get the papers notarized and rent the mailbox. We had the money
routed through so many accounts that it would be practically impossible to
trace.”
“Then why did you panic?”
“I didn’t. My ‘friend’ at the Cheely Foundation—Benjamin—he
panicked. One of Timmons’s staffers called him and asked what he knew about
Daedalus Travel. It was because he was in charge of the budget, not because he
was a crook. I told him that. But he panicked anyway, and James at the
McHolland Foundation was nearly as bad.”
“And they were right, in that we didn’t want the cash cow to
be slaughtered, but they were wrong to panic. It doesn’t do any good. But they
came into this thinking exactly what I told them not to think—that they would
never, ever get caught. And when they realized they might, they went berserk.”
James and Benjamin talked about murder, but Helper wanted to
discredit Timmons or turn him around by blackmail. But his partners planned
behind his back and saw their opportunity when Timmons was a late addition to
the Right to Bear Arms rally. That way, it would look more like a political
killing, tied to ideals instead of money.
“And if not for us meddling kids?” I wondered if Helper had
even watched TV as a child.
Helper chuckled. “Yeah. You looked so perfect. When I came
back to the office about five o’clock and found out about the killings and saw
your message, I called James and told him about you. Then I saw your note. I
had been angry and horrified, but, when I saw that, I was honestly scared. I
got your name from Becky, my secretary, who called your boss and found out. I
wondered if you had talked to anyone already. James’ highly-skilled hit man
went to your apartment and found the message from your friend. He put the
bullets in the dumpster, got a cross directory, and found out where she lived.
I only had a vague description of you from Wanda, and the hit man thought he
got you when he killed the other guy.”
“His name was Roger,” I said.
Helper looked at his shoes.
I let that sink in. “Did you try to run over me that next
morning?”
“Yeah. James had paid off someone in the police department,
so the guy not only got assigned to the case but was funneling us information
from the first moment. We found out it wasn’t you around three in the morning,
and our intrepid guy was waiting for you.”
“There were still loose ends …”
He wanted to gesture, but his hands were bound. “But we
didn’t care anymore. We were just trying to get away.”
I could certainly understand that.
I strode to the closet, triumphant, and threw the mirrored
door open to reveal Greer. Tabitha and I pulled him out and took the ball out
of his mouth. Helper was three shades of green, turning his head so if he threw
up it wouldn’t be on himself.