Robert Andrews - A Murder of Justice

“Why?”

“The old-line Agency guys, the Ivy League Wasps, cut their teeth in the OSS in World War Two. They saw drugs as a law enforcement problem.”

“Beneath their dignity.”

Sims smiled ruefully. “That, and they were afraid of it too.”

“Why?”

“The money. Enough goddamn money to buy a country or two. The cartel bosses almost bought Colombia. You could lose your soul in the drug trade. You can’t find out about the cartels by going to embassy receptions. Young Sammy Straightlace from Harvard or Yale would have to get chummy with the producers, the distributors, the street men. It was safer dealing with the commies and their nuclear weapons than it was dealing with the Colombians. The commies had rules. Tough rules, but they were rules. It was… cleaner… more fastidious.”

“More honorable than law enforcement,” Frank said with a touch of sarcasm.

Sims gave him a long, regarding look. “I didn’t say that. My father was a cop here in the District. A good one.”

“Retired?”

“Dead,” Sims said, the hurt shadowing his voice. “Fought his way through Korea, then got killed here in the King riots… ’sixty-eight.” He motioned toward Arlington National and the Kennedy flame. “Buried over there.”

Letting out a deep breath that was almost a sigh, Sims picked up the Colombia thread again.

“When I first got to Bogota, we were targeting the KGB in Latin America, the Cuban connections, the contras in Nicaragua. Then, when the Soviet Union crashed, the Ivy League mafia at headquarters sat back on their butts.”

“Until the cartels caught somebody’s eye.”

Sims nodded. “The White House woke up one fine morning and found that the drug lords like Pablo Escobar had decided they wanted their own country and part of ours. Somebody had to do something to keep Colombia from becoming Cocaine Central. And so the president dragged the Agency into spying on the drug business.” He laughed cynically. “There were heel marks all the way from Langley to Sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“And Kevin Gentry?”

“Like I said, he was one of the best. Same talents he used against the Soviets and Fidel he turned against Escobar and his pals. He built up a stable of solid-gold sources high inside the Medellin and Cali cartels.”

“You guys finally got Escobar, didn’t you?”

Sims didn’t say anything, but a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.

“So, after he left the Agency, you kept in touch with Gentry?”

“He was a friend.”

“Officially?”

“The Agency can’t do that kind of thing in the States.”

“You’re not supposed to,” Frank said. “When’d you see him last?”

“Week before he was killed. We had dinner at a Tex-Mex place on the Hill.”

“He doing anything that could get him killed?”

“Easy to do these days, give somebody a reason to kill you,” Sims said. “Drive too slow, wear shoes somebody wants, be white, be black.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Sims looked at Frank as though trying to get behind his eyes.

“I know,” Sims said wearily. “I know.”

Silence stretched out until he took a deep breath. “Kevin had recruited somebody. A source.”

“For?” Frank asked, feeling the adrenaline kick in and his pulse pound in his throat.

“He didn’t say, exactly. I got the idea he was stoking up for some kind of investigation.”

“Source have a name?”

“Sure. But Kevin didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask.” Sims paused. “Look, it was a couple of buddies eating tacos and drinking Coronas. Most of the conversation was guy stuff… football, women, jobs. The part about his source took up less than a minute. It wasn’t anything you’d talk about in a bar.”

“Male?” Frank persisted. “Female?”

Sims shook his head. “No idea… none.”

“When do you think he recruited this source?”

Frank waited. Sims stared toward the river and the bridge with its lane of lights. Frank waited some more. Finally Sims looked at him.

“Summer ’ninety-eight.” He nodded, as if confirming that something inside had whispered the answer. “June, sometime.”

Kevin Gentry was standing out in sharper relief now, but Frank still had the sense of being surrounded by something he could not see.

“Do you think,” he began carefully, “there’s any chance Gentry got involved in something he shouldn’t?”

“Meaning?” Sims asked.

“Like you said, the money could buy a person’s soul.”

“No!” Sims cut off each word: “Absolutely… fucking… no!” Then, more softly, “There’s only a few people I’ve trusted with my life. Kevin was one.”

“I had to ask. Women friends?”

“Nobody serious. He was a refuge from a hatchet-fight divorce. Had a saying that second marriages-”

“Were a triumph of faith over experience,” Frank finished.

Sims gave him a sidelong grin. “You’ve been there too.”

“Anybody he was working with before he was killed?”

Sims thought, started to shake his head, then held it. “Woman, first name Elena. She ran one of those associations up on Dupont Circle.” Sims worked on it more. “Institute for… ah, yes! Institute for a Free Drug America.”

“You mean ‘drug-free’?”

Sims grinned. “Nope. Free drugs. As I recall, they want to give the stuff away.”

“Elena?”

“Yeah. Like I say, I don’t think I ever had the last name.”

Frank looked at his watch. “It’s been a day.”

The two men headed toward the front of the memorial. The floodlights had been turned off. The Park Service guide sat on one of the steps, filling in a report on a clipboard she held on her knees. Side by side, the two men went down the steps.

“By the way,” Frank said, “he ever say anything about his boss?”

“Not really. I got the impression the boss was a guy who bought his way through life with other people’s money. Kevin said once that Rhine… Rhine…?”

“Rhinelander.”

“Oh, yeah.” Sims laughed. It was a good laugh, one that reminded you of Friday afternoons at a bar with a buddy, and a beer in front of you that was probably one too many but wouldn’t matter until tomorrow morning.

“That Rhinelander’s idea of heaven,” Sims said, “was to be the best-dressed at a Hamptons wedding.”

Jose pulled over to the curb in the 2200 block of P Street. He pointed to a dingy gray stone building across the street.

“Twenty-two-oh-oh.”

A used-book shop took up the first two floors. Signs in the third- and fourth-floor windows advertised an orthodontist, a law office, and a holistic massage therapist. A sandwich sign on the sidewalk outside the bookshop promised Madame Jana’s palm readings upstairs, no appointments needed.

“Nothing about free drugs,” Frank said.

Jose switched off the engine and flicked open his seat belt. “Shit, Frank, they put up a sign for free drugs, we’d need an armored car and a Marine battalion to get us through the mob.”

On a door at the rear of the third-floor hallway, a plastic frame held a yellowed three-by-five-inch card: “Institute for a Free Drug America-Please Knock.”

Frank knocked. The paint-scrabbled door was surprisingly more substantial than he thought it would be. No sound from inside. Crystalline strains of a New Age score drifted from the direction of the holistic massage therapist’s suite. Idly, he let his eyes explore the hallway. He almost missed the lens set into a shadowed recess in the ornate crown molding behind him. He traced the molding. Several feet away, another lens. This one he figured provided a long shot down the hallway. He flipped open his credentials case, and held it up and smiled for the hidden cameras.