Authors: Patricia Rice
Sean was pacing the floor and shouting jubilantly into his
phone when I arrived at the precinct. He hugged me. He actually hugged
me.
Usually, he just wanted to hit me.
I left him feeding his latest news scoop to his office and
walked up to the officer in charge. Sergeant Duvalle Jones was a burly,
unsmiling man who looked as if he’d been at the job for a while, if the size of
his belt and the wrinkles around his balding head were indicators.
“I’m here to press charges against Leonard Riley. He shot at
me.”
“Miss . . .” He glanced down at his papers.
“Miss Devlin?”
Well, I couldn’t lie to a police officer, especially after
Sean, the rat, had given my real name. I produced my passport. “Yes, sir. Mr.
Riley was stalking my sister, also.”
“That wouldn’t be Miss Patra Llewellyn, the lying, thieving
bitch, would it?” he asked with a heavy shade of irony.
“The very one,” I said brightly. “I see you’ve spoken with
Mr. Riley.”
“More like he’s shouted loud enough for the heavens to hear
him. Come along, Miss Devlin. This could be interesting.” He gestured to a
rookie standing nearby and we sauntered into the bowels of American authority.
Guess if I meant to stay in D.C., I’d better start
cultivating the natives.
I’d learned the sergeant’s name, marital status, and opinion
of the Washington Redskins by the time we reached the back rooms where they
were holding Leonard. I offered Jones a tip on how to get good discounted ’Skins
tickets — compliments of Nick and Tex — and in return I learned that
the police were holding DeLuca’s goons as well, since they had outstanding
warrants.
Despite every attempt I made to disguise the fact, I was
Magda’s daughter right down to my toenails. I left the sergeant smiling and sat
down at a battered metal desk while another officer wrote up the charges. Somewhere
in the back, Leonard screamed for his attorney.
“Does he actually have an attorney?” I asked with interest,
scanning the documents the printer spewed out before I signed them.
“DeLuca will send someone down here eventually,” Detective
Azzini said with a shrug. He was younger than the sergeant, with clipped tight
curls, mocha-colored skin, a cleft chin, and high cheekbones. D.C really was
starting to feel like the international homes I’d known.
“South African ancestry?” I asked politely as he typed on
his keyboard.
He glanced up with narrowed eyes. “Why?”
“We used to live there. I recognize the name and the
cheekbones.” My phone rang and I checked the caller ID: Patra. She’d sent a
link labeled “archieleaks.” I clicked on it and pages of indexed document files
appeared before my wondering eyes. I needed a tablet with a bigger screen. I
scrolled down, found a link labeled DeLuca, and smiled.
“I don’t think DeLuca will have time for bottom feeders
today,” I said with satisfaction, handing him the signed papers. “Are you
interested in DeLuca or would you prefer that he go to a bigger precinct?”
“Interested in DeLuca? What, you’re simply going to hand me
a criminal who’s eluded the law for decades? Who the hell do you think you
are?” he demanded, finally paying attention to little ol’ me.
“Anastasia Devlin, just as it says on my ID. I come from a
rather large, well-traveled family with connections. If you’ll check the local
news, you’ll see an article or two about Sir Archibald Broderick. That would be
my sister responsible for the possible end of his reign of terror. It seems
she’s downloaded a few of Archie’s files and DeLuca’s name is in them. Want to
see what they look like?”
“There’s a reason Riley shot at you, isn’t there?” he asked,
appraising me.
I smiled briefly at his recognition that I might be more
than the dowdy shrimp that I appeared. “There usually is. But shooting unarmed
people is never justified. Still, Riley has the answers to a lot of questions
more important than he is. I’d be ready to drop charges if he’d implicate the
men who set him after us. I think this file link in my hand might aid that
cause.”
We negotiated. It seemed the good detective was in line for
a promotion, and nailing DeLuca would almost certainly seal it. I gave him the
link to the DeLuca file. He gave me permission to wait around while they
interviewed Leonard. We both studied the files and came up with lots of
questions. Bigwigs were called in who added a few more queries based on years
of experience. We invited Sean to join in as a reward for his good deeds and
patience.
By the time we were done, we had a super interview prepared
for lovely Lennie. The cops thought I was nuts for sitting around while they
interrogated him. They obviously hadn’t searched him yet because the listening
device I’d planted on him still worked.
Sitting next to Sean in an empty office, we shared my set of
earbuds. Listening to Leonard squeal, I wanted a bucket of popcorn. Stereo
wasn’t necessary. As loud as Leonard was wailing, the wireless transmitter
probably wasn’t necessary.
Given all Riley’s D.C. criminal connections, stalking Patra
had fallen way down Detective Azzini’s list of inquiries, but I’d insisted on
having Leonard questioned about Patra’s father.
After Riley related his part in that long-ago story, I was
sick to my stomach. “They’d better keep Riley locked up until they have
Smedbetter behind bars,” I said as the little pig laid the blame for his
murderous overseas operations on the general, Broderick, and the victims
themselves. Nothing was ever Lennie’s fault.
“Broderick and pals had Llewellyn assassinated because he
knew too much about Archie’s involvement in promoting warfare for kickbacks?”
Sean asked in disbelief. “Megalomania, much?”
“Assassination is pretty easy over there,” I said
reluctantly. Even though I’d suspected this outcome, I was saddened that a good
man had been removed from the world by people with too much money. “Leonard
didn’t even have to get his hands bloody. All he had to do was give a kid a
euro or whatever was in his pocket. Whack, the deed would be done. When you
live in war zones, with killing all around, life becomes pretty meaningless.
People are just obstacles to be removed.”
I chewed my fingernail and pondered Riley’s answers. “I
think Patrick knew more than Leonard does.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sean was jotting notes for
his Pulitzer-prize winning article. Or to tell Patra, hard to say.
“Patrick started investigating General Smedbetter after the
military blew up a mosque in Iraq. I think Paul Rose’s battalion was involved.
I smell cover-up. Leonard wasn’t in Iraq at the height of the war. He was busy
being sent to jail for tapping a vice-president’s telephone. Years later, Smedbetter
might have told Leonard a story about Patrick holding info on Archie, but that
didn’t really justify assassination.”
I stopped and tried to put all my theories in order. “I
think Patra’s dad was sitting on evidence that the
general
wanted buried — like who ordered the bombing of Kirkuk
and why. Ernest Bloom was an embed in Smedbetter’s command at the time Patrick
was over there. Bloom may have talked with Patrick or overheard too much or
simply started acting too suspicious. He presumably died of a heart attack right
after Patrick, but I’m betting he got whacked. Heart attacks are simple to fake
when you have no medical facilities for examination.”
I pondered the problem while Sean jotted notes.
“Didn’t you say Bloom was present when Smedbetter,
Whitehead, and some possible Rose rep talked about buying media to foment
revolution?” Sean asked, following my thoughts pretty accurately. “Bloom could
easily have overheard worse.”
“Yep,” I agreed. “Chances are good, if Bloom was any kind of
reporter at all, that he’d learned about the cover-up of Rose’s fiasco five
years earlier. He sounded pretty cynical on that recording. If he started
rocking the boat —” I had no proof of anything.
Sean whistled and tuned in more intently to the interview
with Riley. The detective was more interested in a crime boss than in the
ancient foreign history I’d asked about, but they’d moved on to Smythe now.
“Smythe is a blackmailer!” Leonard shouted in the other
room. “He collects information and uses it to get what he wants.”
“What the Righteous and Proud wants,” I murmured. “That
makes sense. Smythe gave Bill Bloom a lot of recordings and had the voices identified
so he knew whose arm to twist. He didn’t need Bill’s audio files, but he wanted
to know who was interested in them. That’s why he let the files sit around and had
you and Patra followed.”
“But you said it was DeLuca’s men — not Smythe — who
set fire to the files in my office,” Sean said, tapping his pad with a pen. I
should buy him a digital tablet if I ever collected my millions. I should buy
myself one.
“Because
Archie
ordered the audio files burned,” I whispered. “Smythe was probably twisting his
arm with the contents of those files.”
“Why Archie?”
I hushed him as the detective apparently produced our
print-out from the DeLuca file. Leonard started muttering as he heard the
incriminating evidence Patra had sent.
“DeLuca was told to silence Smythe,” Leonard admitted
grudgingly. His voice was low enough that Sean and I had to press the ear buds
tighter. “And he needed to get rid of Brashton. Made sense to do both at once.”
I gripped Sean’s arm. Here it was, the answers I needed.
“So
DeLuca
actually
killed Brashton?” the detective asked, cluelessly.
Leonard snorted. “Smythe is just this little shit the big
guys were using. He ran errands like me, except he got paid better. The R&P
nuts actually tried to save DeLuca’s gang by offering them jobs and
insurance
. DeLuca thought that was hilarious,
but the guys kinda liked having the insurance .”
“That’s not answering the question, Riley. This document
shows you and DeLuca grew up in the same neighborhood. You were buddies. When
you went to jail, DeLuca took care of your family. You get out, and you run
errands for him. And he runs them for Archibald Broderick and Broderick Media.
Where does Smythe fit in?”
“I don’t know how they got to Smythe, okay? They just do
that. I gave Smythe a baggie from DeLuca and told him to take it to that lawyer
Brashton with the message that this was the last coke he’d supply, and after
that, Brashton was on his own. No one really searches ministers, so Smythe
played the church card.”
And so Reggie the Snake had died by innocent minister. I
sighed and released Sean’s arm. The picture was almost whole. I was still
furious, but there wasn’t much I could do about an organization that had
infiltrated every particle of society. Or drug addicts who took drugs in jail
from crime bosses. DeLuca had no reason to care if Reggie sang like a canary. I
had no doubt that the mysterious “they” Leonard kept referring to was Top Hat,
not DeLuca’s gang. Leonard probably didn’t even know Top Hat existed.
“Did you know that the baggie contained cyanide with the
drugs?” the detective asked, calmly ticking off another question.
“I did not,” Leonard said indignantly. “All I do is carry
out orders. I gave Smitty a bag. He took it to Brashton. Stupid schmo probably
thought he was doing the addict a good deed.”
“And how did DeLuca figure poisoning Brashton would
eliminate Smythe?”
Nice detective. I hadn’t known enough to ask that earlier,
but I listened now.
“He didn’t, for sure. DeLuca knew what was in the baggie, so
he just took out a little insurance. If Smythe tried to blackmail him or his
pals, DeLuca would just have to mention poison and who’d seen Brashton last. That
damned rich chick ruined everything by setting her lawyer loose. DeLuca didn’t
want to cut our connection with R&P. That health insurance is nice for guys
like us.”
Rich chick!
I
started to giggle. I covered my mouth but I was practically shaking with near
hysteria. Bribery by health insurance. Smythe was one damned smart man.
I almost didn’t mind that Smythe would probably walk if Leonard’s
rambling story was confirmed. Brashton was dead, our yacht was gone, and behind
it all was the mysterious organization called Top Hat that had ties to Paul
Rose — and apparently a gang boss. It all made sense in a convoluted sort
of way. Reggie Brashton the Snake had been a loose cannon who needed to be
eliminated. They’d probably feared he’d left evidence on the yacht. None of
this had anything to do with us, personally, except we got screwed out of half
a million dollars.
“We have witnesses that DeLuca arranged for the death of one
Bill Bloom,” the detective said a little while later.
That was a bit of a stretch. I’d stuck in that question. The
detective had looked up Bill’s file and learned Bill’s apartment was where
they’d caught Leonard’s goons. He was willing to put two and two together.
Leonard cursed. “Little creep worked with Smythe for a
while. DeLuca got paid to take him out. That’s when word came down to silence
Smythe. No idea what that was all about.”
That was all about learning Bill had Patra’s tapes and had
turned raging liberal, or at least anti-R&P. And then someone listening to
Bill’s audio files — my bet was on one of Archie’s menials like Smedbetter —
and realizing Smythe was a perennial blackmailer. Snake’s nest, just as I’d
said. So a five-year-old murder to cover up an even older scandal had blossomed
into today’s mass havoc. I wanted to believe in karma, but I wasn’t seeing
justice yet.
“Do you know if DeLuca spoke with anyone at Broderick Media
before or after Mr. Brashton’s demise?” the detective asked smoothly.
“DeLuca got his orders from Smedbetter, just the same as I
did. You’ll have to ask him,” Leonard snarled, confirming my suspicion. “Look,
I told you everything I know. I didn’t do nothing. When am I gonna get outta
here? You said I could walk.”