Robert Andrews - A Murder of Justice

“Beer?” Jose semi-asked.

“Pilsner Urquell? Tecate?” Atkins offered. “I’ve somehow accumulated a regular United Nations in the fridge.”

“Anything cold,” Jose said.

Frank nodded. “Same here.”

Atkins disappeared, and Frank stepped closer to the glass wall of the balcony. Five stories directly below, Rock Creek Parkway. To his right and at a greater distance, Georgetown Foundry and the waterfront, and, somewhere in the darkness, the bench where he wished he and Kate were sitting now.

“Music too loud?”

Frank turned. Atkins was setting two Tecates and frosted mugs on the coffee table.

“Monk’s never too loud,” Jose said.

“This’s early Thelonious,” Atkins said as the three settled into their chairs.

“Riverside label,” Jose furnished. “With Gerry Mulligan?”

Atkins silently saluted Jose with his scotch. He watched as the two men filled their mugs. Then he was all business. “You guys didn’t come here for beer and jazz.”

Frank sipped his beer. It had a bitter metallic taste. “No, we didn’t.”

“You said there’s something new.”

“Some background first?” Frank asked. Getting a nod from Atkins, he put the beer down on the coffee table. “In the files we’re going to be turning over to the Bureau, there’re interviews in which two people told us that shortly before his death, Kevin Gentry was investigating Skeeter Hodges’s operation.”

Atkins’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “Investigating?”

“In preparation for congressional hearings,” Jose said.

“That’s… interesting.”

“You didn’t know?” Frank asked. “Neither Gentry nor Rhinelander said anything to you?”

Atkins smiled. “Hell, they may have and I just forgot or didn’t pay attention at the time. Some committee on the Hill is always talking about investigating something or somebody.”

“And then we go back to the weapon that killed Skeeter,” Jose picked up. “Two years before the shooting on Bayless Place, the same weapon was used to kill Gentry…”

“And the shell casings that you found on Bayless had Pencil’s fingerprints,” Atkins finished. Then, as if making a mental note to himself, “That pistol… if we only knew where it went… where it is now.”

“We may never know,” Frank said. “But there are some things we do know.”

“Oh?”

“We know that Gentry recruited somebody inside Skeeter’s organization.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Gentry told two people, who then told us… a guy he’d worked with at the Agency and the director of a think tank.”

“The insider has a name?”

“Martin Osmond,” Frank said

Atkins got a reflective look. “The name’s familiar…”

“He’s dead,” Jose said. “Died of a heroin overdose the same night Gentry was shot.”

“So, two men, both dead for over two years.” Atkins sipped at his scotch, then shook his head. “We’re seeing a replay of the old adage that dead men tell no tales.”

“But they leave things behind.” Frank pulled the safe-deposit key from his pocket and laid it beside his beer on the coffee table. “This is to a safe-deposit box Kevin Gentry maintained at Riggs Bank,” he explained. “Leon Janowitz found it in Gentry’s files in the Library of Congress archives.”

Atkins leaned forward, picked up the key, examined it, then put it back on the table. “And in the box?” he asked.

“A number of things,” Frank said. “A hundred and twenty thousand in cash. And Martin Osmond’s will.”

“A… will?”

“Osmond knew the game he was playing,” Jose said. “He left the money to his grandmother.”

“And in a box controlled by Gentry,” Atkins said.

“Gentry kept receipts,” Jose said. “Payouts began in June ’ninety-eight. They came out of a subcommittee account.”

Atkins held up a hand. “Let me guess… The payments totaled a hundred twenty K. So it’s obvious… Gentry slipped up somehow. Or maybe Osmond. Anyway, Skeeter and Pencil decide to take them out.”

Frank nodded. “That’s part of it. Some loose ends… like who killed Skeeter and, later, Pencil and his lady friend?”

“And who nearly killed you and Leon Janowitz?” Atkins added. “We’ll be nailing all that down.”

“Maybe we can help you,” Jose said.

Atkins pointed to the key. “That certainly did.”

“That box was full of surprises.”

Something in Frank’s voice brought Atkins’s eyes up. “Oh?”

Frank pulled an audiocassette from an inner coat pocket. “This isn’t the original,” he explained. “It’s a copy of one Osmond made from the original… a cassette that Skeeter and Pencil recorded.” He put the cassette on the coffee table, next to the safe-deposit key. Then he reached down and brought up the portable tape deck, flicked it on, and inserted the cassette.

“This’ll be interesting,” he said, as he pressed the Play button.

A hammering rap blasted from the small tape player.

Atkins winced.

Frank turned the volume down. “A recorder in Skeeter’s car was picking this up. This was in June ’ninety-two.”

“I still don’t…” Atkins said, frowning.

The tape went silent. Then a burst of static. The sound of a car door opening. Frank pressed the Pause button.

“The first voice is Skeeter Hodges.”

It was a cruel, sly voice of arrogance and condescension.

Frank pressed the Pause button again.

Atkins stared at the tape deck, seemingly hypnotized.

Frank reached for the Play button, waited, and looked into Atkins’s eyes. “And the next voice is yours.”

“You called about a deal.”

“Yeah. You want Juan Brooks?”

“Yes.”

“You know who I am?”

“You’re James Hodges. You give me Brooks… what do you want?”

“I walk. Me, my friends Martin Osmond, Pencil Crawfurd.”

Frank punched the Stop button. Atkins had a thousand-yard stare-a man who’d seen a wished-away hell suddenly reappear, yawning open at his feet.

“You and Skeeter cut the deal,” Frank said, dispassionately, even sadly. “He’d turn in Juan Brooks. You’d get the publicity. And he’d inherit Brooks’s outfit.”

“And then Skeeter kept helping you.” Jose’s tone was less sympathetic, a tone borrowed from his father’s pulpit. “Skeeter would finger his competition. You’d shut them down. You’d put another notch in your badge, Skeeter’d add another piece of turf.”

Atkins sat emotionless, rocking ever so slightly in cadence, matching what he was hearing against some internal master record.

“You kept the heat off Skeeter,” Frank said in a hoarse whisper. “Warned him whenever the posse was saddling up.”

“Skeeter didn’t do the glitz that Juan Brooks did,” Jose said. “Even so, as he got bigger, it got harder for you to keep the heat off him.”

Frank leaned forward sympathetically. “Two years ago, Gentry and Osmond almost broke it open.”

Atkins nodded, a stricken, haunted look on his face.

“But you and Skeeter managed a last-minute save,” Frank continued almost soothingly.

Jose jumped in. “What happened then, Brian? Skeeter and Pencil get too ambitious? Too grabby?”

“You decide to take them out?” Frank followed closely.

“You screw up and don’t get Pencil,” Jose tacked on.

After the staccato buffeting, Frank and Jose sat silently for a second or two. Atkins brought his hand up and rubbed his eyes.

Jose picked up. “Pencil’s alive. You know you have to get him, and you know you have to get control of the case.”

“So the Colombian connection,” Frank continued. “Part was already there… Gentry’s time in Bogota, his Agency connection. You added the necktie and bomb touches.”