Robert Andrews - A Murder of Justice

Monty eyed Frank as he slid the cooked omelet out of the pan onto a plate.

“Grandpa Tom didn’t make this, you know,” Frank warned the cat.

Monty’s gaze stayed fixed on the plate. Frank shrugged, sliced out a portion, and minced it into Monty’s bowl.

Ten minutes later, Frank had finished the omelet. Monty was sleeping by his bowl. Johnny Cash wasn’t liking it, but was guessing things happened that way. A swallow of Pinot Grigio gave off a hint of pears and seductively called for a refill.

The phone rang as Frank drank the rest of the wine in his glass.

Caller ID said it was a District number, caller name unknown. Monty had rolled over onto his back, all fours up, mouth slightly open, making sleep attractive as only cats know how.

The phone rang again.

Bad Frank: Ignore it, go for the second glass.

Good Frank: You’re a cop, you’re a cop, you’re a…

“Shit,” he muttered, and picked up the phone.

“I’m calling for Detective Frank Kearney.”

Bad Frank sneered as Frank cursed Good Frank.

“You got him.”

“Can we meet?”

Confident… no kid. Bass baritone. Maybe black, maybe not, but American English.

“Sure. My office is at-”

“It’s not good… coming to your office. Tonight somewhere? You call it.”

“This’s about?”

A heavy silence, then, “Kevin… about Kevin.” Steely with a subtext of anger.

I want to tell you about the Kevin I know. I want to tell you because I want the ratbastard who killed him to roast forever in the hottest corner of hell.

“How do I recognize you?” Frank asked.

Nineteen imposing feet of solid Georgia marble, Abraham Lincoln watched over the republic he’d saved. Every time Frank stood in the Memorial it struck him that someday Lincoln was going to speak, and it would be a voice of sadness, pride, and hope.

The memorial was empty but for a Park Service guide in her Smokey Bear hat and two Oriental couples standing in front of the Gettysburg Address chiseled in the south wall, on Lincoln’s right.

Frank checked his watch. He was several minutes early.

He walked over to the north wall. His eye traveled the familiar words of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. The first time he’d been here, it had been with his father. Tom Kearney had read the words to him. He had told him how thousands of people had stood in the mud beneath a gray and threatening sky in March 1865 to hear Lincoln. How it was that when Lincoln stood to speak, the sun broke through the leaden clouds to shine on the nation’s savior. And how it was that Lincoln then stood in the shadow of death, at the hands of John Wilkes Booth little more than a month later.

“ ‘Let us strive on to finish the work we are in… to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace.’ ”

The voice came from behind him and slightly to the right-the confident bass baritone.

Frank turned. The man stood like a pro running back, hands hanging loose but ready at his sides, body coiled slightly forward. Milk-chocolate skin, a thick black well-trimmed mustache. Scars above the eyes, and a larger, crescent-shaped ding on the point of his right cheekbone. The man held out a big square hand.

“I’m Bradford Sims.”

“I’m-”

“Franklin Delano Kearney.” Sims opened a credentials case. A holographic eagle seal floated across the photograph and a statement that Bradford Sims was an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency.

“Signed by Tenet himself,” Frank said. “I didn’t know you guys carried credentials.”

“Most of the time we don’t.” Sims replaced the case inside his jacket.

“What do you do at the agency?”

“You know the D.O.?”

“Directorate of Operations,” Frank translated. “The clandestine service.”

“Unh-hunh.”

“Nice night out.” Frank motioned toward the Washington Monument and, farther, the Capitol’s white dome.

Outside, the two men walked around to the back of the Memorial. Old-fashioned streetlamps along Memorial Bridge led across the Potomac to Arlington National Cemetery. There, just below the Custis-Lee Mansion, occasional glimpses of the flame at John Kennedy’s grave site.

“You’re running the investigation into Kevin Gentry’s death.”

“Yeah.”

“We hear there’re questions about Kevin and a Colombian connection.”

“We?”

Sims gave Frank a level look.

“I came to tell you,” Sims said, “the Agency’s not involved.”

Frank spotted a pair of runners coming across the bridge from Virginia. Two guys. Lean. Seven-minute pace. They’d probably angle off the bridge to his left, take the path down past the FDR Memorial. Then they’d have a choice: back into Virginia over the Fourteenth Street bridge or turn left by the Tidal Basin, pass the Jefferson Memorial. It would feel good, in the cool of the evening, hitting a stride where you felt you could run forever, your mind taken up with the running. He saw Sims watching the runners too, and he waited a moment.

Finally he asked, “Why do you think you have to tell me that?… That the Agency’s not involved?”

“Talk’s going that way,” Sims replied, eyes still on the runners.

“All by itself?”

Sims gave him an appraising look. Frank wondered where Sims had gotten the scar on his cheek.

“All by itself?” Frank repeated.

“It’s getting help.”

“From who?”

“Our cousins on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“Why’d they do that?”

“Why does any bureaucracy do anything? Feather its own nest, get the fingers pointed somewhere else.”

The runners had taken the path south. They were well out of sight now, probably passing the FDR Memorial.

“You knew Gentry well, didn’t you?”

Sims’s face lengthened. “I was his boss in Bogota station.”

“What’d he do?”

“My deputy. His real talent was as a case officer. One of the best I’ve seen.”

“Case officers do… what?”

“Recruit agents… spies.”

“Like recruiting informants?”

“Like… but not exactly like.”

“What’s the difference?”

“A case officer’s got to be selective. His first question is, What do I need to know? Next question is, Who can get access to what I need to know? Third question’s the toughest: How do I get this person to work with me?”

“Money helps,” Frank said.

Sims didn’t shake his head, but turned it slightly. “Sometimes. But not all the time.” He directed an inquisitive glance toward Frank. “You’ve got informants,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You put them on the payroll?”

“No payroll. I can’t afford it, and the city makes it hard to use their money.”

“You’d rather have somebody motivated by something other than money?”

“Sure.”

“Same with a good case officer. What’s ideal is somebody with a dream or a beef, or maybe both. They work out better than a mercenary. They may not be as smart. They may not have as good an access. But you can rely on them.”

“And Kevin Gentry could find those people?”

Sims smiled, and it seemed to Frank that the smile had behind it memories of other times and other places. “He was one of the best. Kevin had a nose for recruiting the true believers.”

“Why’d he leave the Agency?”

“I didn’t want him to. We talked… hell, we argued… about it for several weeks. He didn’t feel that the Agency was doing enough in the drug war.”

“Meaning?”

“Look,” Sims said slowly, perhaps picking his way through a minefield of secrets, “the druggies were a new target for the Agency. If it had been up to us, we never would have gotten involved.”