The Good Guy with a Gun (Jim McGill series Book 6) Page 16

  Chapter 11

  Bounce City, Wisconsin Avenue NW — Washington, DC

  Sweetie and Roger Michaelson sat next to each other in the parents’ viewing area of the indoor amusement center for children. As the name made plain, Bounce City was a series of adjacent spaces where kids could fling, jump and hurl themselves onto inflated surfaces made to represent iconic areas of major American cities and bounce until even young stomachs could tolerate no more. Then they could get their fill of overpriced salty and sweet snacks and soda, and go back to bouncing their way across the country.

  At the moment, Maxi and a group of friends who’d come down from Baltimore for the day were laughing and shrieking as they cavorted in a room filled with cartoon replicas of Washington’s most famous monuments. The fun at Bounce City for Maxi and all her friends was provided courtesy of Margaret and Putnam Shady. They’d pick up the tab for a late lunch at a proper restaurant, too, before Maxi said goodbye to her friends and everyone went home.

  The other moms had given Sweetie and Michaelson their space.

  Like Sweetie, though, they kept an eye on their kids by glancing at the closed circuit monitors Bounce City provided for parental peace of mind.

  College kids, working for the amusement center, provided polite hands-on restraint in case the younger ones got too rambunctious — and four clean-cut, brawny athletic types made sure no suspicious single adults got inside and walked off with someone else’s kid.

  For all the good-time fun and security measures, Sweetie still felt on edge.

  “Something wrong?” Michaelson asked.

  He’d offered no objection when informed where he and Sweetie would have their follow-up discussion of his case. Sweetie held that to be a mark in the man’s favor. The fact that he seemed to enjoy seeing children having fun was another.

  She’d have to be careful or she might end up liking the guy.

  “Did you notice the sign on the entrance door?” Sweetie asked.

  Michaelson thought for a moment. “There were at least half-a-dozen.”

  “The one with the circle around and the slash through a semi-auto handgun.”

  “Yeah, I saw that. Seems like a good idea to me.”

  “I left my weapon in a gun-safe in the trunk of my car,” Sweetie told him.

  “And, what, you feel your little girl and her friends are more at risk? You’d feel better if all the mothers here were packing heat?”

  Sweetie turned to look at Michaelson. “You put it that way, no. I’d feel better if I were armed.” She went back to scanning the monitors.

  Michaelson said, “There were times, not that long ago, when legal rights were for the chosen few. That started a lot of large protest marches, as I recall.”

  Sweetie’s worry about getting too fond of Michaelson receded.

  “You like guns?” she asked.

  “Me, no. The only thing I like to shoot is a basketball. I’ve turned down lots of invitations to get up early and go kill Bambi. Not that I object to people who hunt. They help keep wildlife off our highways.”

  Sweetie nodded. “It was just a couple years ago some Chicago cops had to kill a mountain lion that wandered into my old neighborhood on the North Side. I had to be a lot of things when I was with the CPD, but a big-game hunter wasn’t one of them.”

  Michaelson took the discussion beyond proliferating wildlife. “You’re really worried somebody might come in here and start shooting people willy-nilly?”

  “That was another thing I didn’t have to worry about in the old days. Now, if you think about it, what public space isn’t vulnerable to a loon with a military-grade weapon?”

  “That’s easy,” Michaelson said. “Congress and the Supreme Court don’t allow guns in their public galleries. You also have to go through metal-detectors to take a tour of the White House. ”

  A chill smile crossed Sweetie’s face. “Yeah, all those birdbrains who cheer on an unbridled concept of the Second Amendment would poop their pants without that bit of hypocrisy.”

  “Does that include Patti Grant?” Michaelson asked.

  Sweetie turned his way and shook her head, emphatically.

  Michaelson said, “You know something?”

  “How to keep a secret,” Sweetie said. “Let’s get back to the fix you’re in. Tell me what the FBI and Secret Service asked you about. They both interviewed you, right?”

  “I didn’t think of it as an interview,” Michaelson said. “The situation reminded me of my days as a prosecutor with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. Back then we called it an interrogation.”

  “But you hadn’t been arrested. That’s what you told me.”

  “No, I wasn’t arrested. I was a suspect. Still am.”

  “Why did you talk to the feds at all?”

  “To tell them I’m innocent, to get that declaration on the record. I did insist that both agencies question me at the same time.”

  “How’d you get them to agree to that?”

  “I played them off each other. I said if they didn’t do it my way, I’d speak to only one of them and they could decide who it would be.”

  Sweetie smiled. She liked that. But it also told her how smart and manipulative her new client could be. She’d have to keep that in mind.

  She looked up and saw all was still well with Maxi and her friends.

  Turning back to Michaelson, she asked, “Did you refuse to answer any questions?”

  “No, not that I wouldn’t have if I thought they were trying to sucker me into a trap.”

  “But they played it straight?”

  “They did then. Who knows what they might be thinking now? They asked me if I had any contacts with diplomats or business people from Islamic countries. The answer on the business side was a flat no. Regarding diplomats, I’ve been introduced to a few at social functions, but only people from countries that are supposed to be our allies.”

  “You think they’re continuing to investigate those avenues anyway?”

  Michaelson said, “I hope so. They’ll see I told them the truth. They also asked me if I knew Andy Grant.”

  That caught Sweetie by surprise, the idea that Michaelson might have known the president’s late, first husband.

  “Did you?” Sweetie asked.

  “I met him at a candidates’ dinner when I ran against Patti Grant for the House seat that she beat me out of. He was a likable guy. Shook my hand and told me it was fine to play hard but keep it clean.”

  “Did you take that as a threat?”

  “More like fair warning. If I had won that seat, though, and Andy Grant hadn’t liked the way I did it, I got the feeling he might try to cause some problems for me. I respected him for that.”

  “But he didn’t scare you?”

  “No, Galia Mindel did that. The reason I couldn’t play dirty against the president was that she would play even dirtier against me. Looking back at things now, I realize my battles were with Galia not Patti Grant.”

  “What did the feds ask you about Joan Renshaw? She was the one who made the accusation against you, saying she’d told you about the president’s planned visit to Inspiration Hall.”

  Michaelson said, “They wanted to know if I’d ever had a personal relationship with Ms. Renshaw.”

  “A sexual relationship?”

  “They didn’t come right out and say so, but that was my inference. I told them there wasn’t anything like that. So they showed me a photo of Ms. Renshaw speaking to me at a fundraising party. She was saying something. I was smiling. She had a drink in one hand and her other hand was resting on my dinner jacket. Looked pretty chummy, I must admit, but I’d had no memory of it until I saw it.”

  “Then the memory came back?” Sweetie asked.

  “Yes, Ms. Renshaw and I are fellow alumni of Northwestern. She’d been reminiscing about a Big Ten basketball game. She’d seen me hit the winning basket. She’d had a bet with a friend who went to the University of Illinois. Thanks to me, her frie
nd had to wash Ms. Renshaw’s car once a week for the following summer vacation.”

  The story made Sweetie smile, too.

  Nonetheless, she asked for the name of the U of I student. “Joan shared that with you, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah, she did. The feds asked for it, too. The name Ms. Renshaw gave me was Lisa Stone.”

  “You don’t mind that I asked for the name, do you?”

  “I’d have thought less of you, if you hadn’t.”

  “Do you recall meeting Joan Renshaw at any other time?”

  “No.”

  Sweetie nodded and thought a moment. “Do you know where she’s being held?”

  “You mean where she’s incarcerated? No.”

  Sweetie said, “That’s all right. I’m sure I can find out.”

  Michaelson seemed unfazed by the prospect of her talking to Joan. Sweetie thanked him for his time. She said she’d be in touch if she had any further questions or information for him. They both stood up and shook hands.

  Michaelson glanced up at a monitor.

  Saw Maxi having a high time with all her friends.

  He told Sweetie, “Maxi looks like a great kid. You’re very lucky.”

  Sweetie started to warm to the man again.

  Metro Police Headquarters — Washington, DC

  Auric Ludwig, as was his wont, got his grump back on, having been forcibly seated by Meeker and Beemer in front of Captain Rockelle Bullard’s desk.

  He told Rockelle, “You’ll arrest me now with good reason or I’ll sue you, your men and the whole police department for false imprisonment.”

  Rockelle didn’t bat an eye. She told Meeker and Beemer. “Accommodate the man. Place him under arrest. Fingerprint him. Get his mug shots. Don’t mind if he doesn’t smile for the camera. I’ve seen his smile on TV, and it ain’t pretty.”

  The two detectives hauled Ludwig to his feet.

  He was not smiling; his grimace wasn’t attractive either.

  “I said with good reason,” Ludwig protested. “You’ve given me no reason at all.”

  “Sit him back down a minute,” Rockelle said.

  The detectives made him bounce on the chair, a sturdy piece of scarred oak.

  “You want to know what you did wrong?” Rockelle asked, her voice hard. “Okay, I’ll tell you. You interfered with a homicide investigation my detectives are working. You know what that’s called. Don’t bother trying to think of the answer. It’s called obstruction of justice. That’s the legal term for messing with a police investigation, sticking your nose where it definitely does not belong.”

  Ludwig felt a chill run down his spine, but he did his best not to show any fear.

  Being brazen, he’d found long ago, was the best way to go — as long as none of these people smacked him on the back of his head with a phone book or something. He repressed that unbidden image and said, “I’ve done nothing wrong and when my lawyer —”

  He stopped cold when he saw Rockelle shake her head.

  “We’ve got you cold, Mr. Ludwig. You held a press conference yesterday and announced that an unknown person, someone you characterized as ‘a good guy with a gun’ was responsible for shooting and killing Abel Mays. You made your announcement before any news was released by law enforcement that Mr. Mays had been found dead and who, if anyone other than himself, was responsible for his death. To put it in a way you might appreciate, you jumped the gun.”

  Try as he might, Ludwig couldn’t maintain a façade of bravado.

  His face fell and his usual flush of high color went gray.

  “You may well have alerted your ‘good guy’ with your announcement. You might have made it much harder for the police to arrest that person and bring him to trial. By doing that, you have delayed — obstructed — the course of justice.”

  Ludwig said in a small voice, “This morning, I offered him a hundred thousand dollars to come forward.”

  Rockelle chuckled and shook her head. “I was watching WWN. What you did was ask a killer to surrender himself to you, not to the police. I’m not a prosecutor, but it sounded to me like you’d just dug yourself a deeper hole.”

  “What can I do?” Ludwig asked.

  Rockelle sat back and crossed her arms over her chest, looked at Ludwig like he was some sort of bug that had scuttled into her office.

  “We know that you had to get your information from a cop at the crime scene. You tell us who it was, and how many other cops in town might be leaking confidential information to you and —”

  Meeker leaned in and whispered into the captain’s ear. She nodded, liking what she’d heard.

  “Detective Meeker makes a good point,” she told Ludwig. “We’ll need to know how many cops you have working for you in DC and around the country as a whole. You give us all their names, the court might take that into consideration.”

  Ludwig’s face hardened visibly. Lose all his informers? Be seen as a traitor to a critically important part of his constituency, gun-happy cops? That was a non-starter.

  He shook his head.

  Rockelle leaned forward, placed her hands on her desk.

  “You know what the punishment for obstruction is in the District of Columbia, Mr. Ludwig? Three to thirty years in prison. Given that your crime involves the corruption of police officers, my money says you’ll get the high end of the sentencing range.”

  Sweat appeared on Ludwig’s brow but he remained silent.

  Rockelle gave him a silent three-count and then nodded to Meeker and Beemer.

  “Arrest Mr. Ludwig, process him, give him his phone call and put him in a cell.”

  The detectives hoisted Ludwig again, looks of satisfaction on their faces.

  They all but had him out of the captain’s office, when she said, “Just a minute, Mr. Ludwig. Here’s one more thing for you to think about. There was a limited number of police officers who might have called you with the information about Abel Mays’ death. We have all their names. It’s just a matter of time before we find out who called you. You change your mind about helping us, but you do it too late? That won’t help you at all.”

  As her detectives led the man away, Rockelle could see him shake.

  Good, she thought.

  J.Edgar Hoover Building — Washington, DC

  Special Agent Abra Benjamin sat in front of Deputy Director Byron DeWitt’s desk at FBI headquarters and said, “I had a hard time keeping it under control with Mr. McGill.”

  “No, you didn’t,” DeWitt told her, not looking up from the piece of paper he was reading.

  FBI Director Jeremiah Haskins had just delegated yet another task to DeWitt.

  The president had issued an order that a lobbyist named Putnam Shady was not to become the subject of renewed surveillance by the Bureau. DeWitt was to see to it that the special agents who had engaged in those duties previously followed the president’s order.

  The Bureau, as a whole, wasn’t given to individual initiative. Special agents didn’t work rogue operations the way some local cops misguidedly did. The director simply wanted DeWitt to reinforce discipline. No one was to go off the reservation regarding Mr. Shady.

  DeWitt made it part of his job to know who was who in the Washington. Everybody knew James J. McGill, aka the president’s henchman, was the president’s husband. (That was why Benjamin never would have gotten in his face.) Many people knew Margaret “Sweetie” Sweeney was McGill’s longtime friend and business partner. Far fewer people knew that Putnam Shady was Ms. Sweeney’s husband.

  But DeWitt did. He’d even gone to the trouble of doing a background check on Shady. The man’s family name alone practically demanded it. He’d learned about Shady’s fugitive parents and how Shady had been watched for years by the Bureau to see if he’d had any contact with Mom and Dad.

  More recently, Shady had popped up on DeWitt’s radar for his position with Darren Drucker and the role Shady had played in the creation of Inspiration Hall.

  Just then, DeWitt felt a mo
ment of inspiration himself.

  He made a note to call Margaret Sweeney on Monday morning.

  “Byron? Hey, Mr. Deputy Director.”

  DeWitt looked up, realizing Benjamin must have been talking to him while he was lost in thought. “Sorry. What is it?”

  She said, “What do you mean I almost didn’t lose it with McGill?”

  “You’re a dedicated careerist, Abra. You’ve told me so; you’ve proved it beyond any doubt. You’d never try to muscle the president’s husband. You know it would be a career-ender.”

  The special agent frowned, an unusual emotional display in front of a superior.

  But then the two of them had been lovers. Benjamin had even given birth to their child, and then promptly put the baby boy up for adoption by Chief of Police Ron Ketchum and his new wife, Keely Powell, in Goldstrike, California. Benjamin hadn’t asked DeWitt if he’d like to raise the child as a bachelor father.

  DeWitt, briefly, had been tempted to do just that, had thought to sue for custody of his son. He didn’t care if a legal battle would end both his career and Benjamin’s. But that kind of legal slugfest wouldn’t be resolved quickly. That raised the question: Who would care for the child while the suit was grinding through the judicial system?

  Benjamin had made it painfully clear motherhood wasn’t for her.

  DeWitt’s workload was crushing. He could always quit his job, but that would mean walking away from the investigations of a presidential assassination attempt, the murder of a U.S. senator, the murder of a foreign diplomat and the manhunt for a fugitive billionaire involved in the assassination conspiracy.

  Tallying up his burdens, DeWitt thought he should have quit his job.

  Only his sense of responsibility wouldn’t allow that.

  So maybe his karmic punishment for a misbegotten fatherhood was that his workload would multiply until it crushed him. Looking outside his own feelings, he came to the conclusion that his son would be better off being raised by loving, adoptive parents. He also liked the idea of the California Sierra as a place to raise a child. He’d decided not to object to the adoption.