Stephen Hunter - I, Sniper

“I will,” she promised.

Bill Fedders hit the putt, watched it ride the undulations of the green and break right just where he thought it would. But he hadn’t quite hit it hard enough, and it quit short six inches.

“Great putt,” said the congressman. “I wish I could read a green like that.”

“My one true talent,” said Fedders with a glowing smile, and the smile was really his one true talent. He went to the ball, insouciantly leaned over it, and knocked it casually into the cup with one hand. Par, another par, and the congressman’s handicap kept him close so he wouldn’t go home embittered.

Bill could par any course in Washington. He was a superb gin, bridge, and poker player. He could drink ten Navy boatswains under the table. He had an aristocrat’s thick silver hair (you had to have had a relative at the original Round Table to get hair like that, he often joked), a keen, original wit, and a gift for strategy. His suits were Italian but subdued; he had an excellent collection of Aldens, in both wing tips and, for casual wear, the tasseled loafers. He had a good racquet sense, excelling at both squash and tennis. He could ride a horse or a motorcycle or pilot a sailboat or speedboat. He was a licensed flier. He was a Yale grad, from a grand old family. Skull and Bones, University of Virginia Law, Navy JAG during Vietnam, then a partner with Occam Dobalt Hunsucker until he established his own practice. He made three million a year and had put four kids through Ivy League schools and law school. He was on wife number three and mistress number twenty-five. He lived in a really big house in Potomac. He went to all the right parties, knew all the right people. He hated his life.

The cell rang.

“Oh, I know who that is,” said the congressman. “His master’s voice.”

Bill rolled his eyes and turned to wander to the edge of the green, while caddy and foursome gave him privacy, as all knew he was Tom Constable’s number one guy in Washington, and even here, on the fabled thirteenth green at Burning Tree, under soaring poplars wearing their fall russets and golds, when Tom Constable called, Tom Constable expected an answer.

“Yes, Tom. Did you see it?”

“I saw it,” said Tom Constable, from wherever he happened to be, in Wyoming or Atlanta or China, for Christ’s sake, Tom was always on the go; he might have even been on the twelfth or the fourteenth here at Burning Tree.

“Was it what you expected?”

“I liked the information. The tone was more sympathetic than I imagined.”

“Evidently Banjax got to know Memphis and liked him quite a bit. It seems everybody likes Memphis. I like Memphis.”

“I’m sure I’d like him too,” said Constable. “That’s not the point. The point is, he’s in the way, he has to be removed. That’s the point, the only point. Tell me what I want to hear. He’s gone as of now. Some obedient number two guy is about to release the report. I don’t see how they can keep him aboard with all this shit in the air.”

“No changes have been announced, but it’s still early. There’ll be a period when clarity isn’t available,” said Fedders. “It’ll be murky. Nothing will seem to be happening. What’s going on is that everybody is figuring out how the game has changed and how the situation now sits, where the power is, who’s got the momentum. That’ll take a bit of time. Then on to the next move.”

“I know, I know. If I ran a goddamn business like that, I’d be in the goddamn poorhouse by now.”

“That’s why I’ve always told you to stay out of Washington, Tom. You don’t have the temperament, and all you’d do is give yourself an ulcer. You pay me to have your ulcer for you.”

“Pay you goddamn well, Bill, as I recollect. So, the story ran, the Bureau is locked up behind closed doors, media pressure is building, there’s a lot of scrutiny. Has the White House said anything?”

“No, but Jack Ridings has gotten the Leader to threaten to hold hearings. The FBI does not want to go to the Hill and discuss dirty laundry, believe me. They want all this to go away.”

“Don’t they see? Dump Memphis, issue the report, watch the case-closed signs go up, and everything is fine. No more books on poor Joan, no more Internet shit about me. Have you seen the latest? Joan had pictures of me in a feather boa dancing with J. Edgar. We look like Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein. I had her murdered to get the negatives.”

“Tom, there are lots of people who hate you. You know that. It’s not worth acknowledging their existence. They would love nothing better than to be sued by you.”

“Okay, okay. Don’t let this slide, Bill. Stay on Jack, stay on the Bureau, keep me informed. I want to be in the loop. I want this goddamn thing closed.”

“Yes, Tom.”

“By the way,” said Tom, “you shouldn’t have hit the seven on the approach.”

Give it to Chicago homicide. In the four hours between the discovery of the Strong and Reilly bodies and the arrival of the FBI on the scene, not as advisers but as lead agency on the determination that a murderer-for-hire had crossed state lines (even though it seemed not to have gone that way) and the formation of Task Force Sniper, the usual processes had already begun to proceed. Given that Strong and Reilly were well-known and that their deaths were unusual enough to merit consideration as major cases, two teams of detectives were dispatched and spent the day interviewing witnesses and acquaintances under the commonplace theory that the vics’ death was rooted in their own behavior, not their membership in some larger, national pattern.

Thus detectives interviewed neighbors, colleagues, some journalists (Jack was a favorite of theirs, always good for a radical quote to get readers’ blood boiling), and so forth. That campaign was formally halted around 3 p.m. and the detectives then reported to the FBI, which was not interested in their findings and reassigned them to crime scene inventory and other of the bureaucratic jobs important at a major investigative site. The feds already had their man, even if only a theoretical man, and local investigations were unnecessary.

But no cop ever throws out a notebook. So a few weeks later, casually and informally, Sgt. Denny Washington, under his own initiative, canvassed the dicks involved and recovered five of the six notebooks, with promises to return them. He turned them over to Bob, who alone had the patience, the time, the interest, and possibly the context to examine them carefully.

Bob was alone in his hotel room, sitting at a desk under a cheap HoJo lamp. It was near midnight, and today felt like a lost day, as he’d slept late, been disappointed to learn of Nick’s troubles and the way the case was now bollixed up in some sort of political situation. He’d watched the national news, where Nick’s face was prominently displayed, and anchor haircuts, without saying a word, communicated by eyebrow and turn of face their disappointment that the Bureau had chosen such a compromised candidate to head up this important investigation, and that the investigation, which had begun so promisingly, had seemed now to come off the tracks and was evidently barking up wrong trees or chasing wild geese hither and yon. What was wrong with the FBI? You’d think a case this big, they’d make sure not to screw up, huh?

Some reporter named Banjax was all over cable, documenting his disclosures, trying desperately to separate himself from the implication of his words. He of course had no opinion on the appropriateness of Nick to head the investigation, no investment, emotional or professional; his job was to report the facts and let others draw the conclusions. He just felt the public had a right to know that the FBI’s chief sleuth had been himself involved as a participant in issues similar to the ones here-tragically so, sadly so-and the question of why was a logical one to ask.