Phillip Margolin: Executive Privilege

“No.” Zipay told her where to go.

“You’re kidding?”

It was two in the morning when Dana eased Jake Teeny’s Harley into a parking space in front of a twenty-four-hour pancake joint in suburban Maryland. She was wearing a black leather jacket, a black T-shirt, and tight jeans, an outfit that made her look tough. Even without the Harley and the outfit as props, people would back off instinctively in Dana’s presence. She was a hard twenty-nine, five ten, lean and muscular, and she always seemed on edge. The intensity in her emerald green eyes was intimidating.

Before entering the Pancake House, Dana removed her helmet and shook out her shoulder-length auburn hair. As soon as she stepped through the door, she spotted Dale Perry in the rear of the restaurant. She ignored the hostess and headed to his booth. The lawyer was in his late forties, short, overweight, balding, and working on his third divorce. His fat face reminded Dana of a bulldog, but she was certain that Perry didn’t see what others saw when he looked in the mirror, because he came on to every halfway attractive woman he met. Perry had made a pass at her the last time she’d done a job for him. She’d deflected it deftly and had even dropped hints that she was a lesbian to dissuade him, but that only seemed to create a challenge for the lascivious lawyer.

Dana rarely smiled, but her lips momentarily curled upward in amusement when she considered the spot that Dale Perry had selected for their meeting and the way he was dressed. Perry, a senior partner in a big D.C. firm, was a close friend of the president and very influential behind the scenes in national politics. He was the type who dressed in three-thousand-dollar power suits and conducted business in the bar at the Hay-Adams hotel, where Washington’s power brokers decided the fate of the world while sipping twenty-five-year-old, single malt scotch. Tonight, the lawyer was cradling a chipped mug filled with bad Pancake House coffee and wearing jeans, a Washington Redskins jacket, dark glasses, and a Washington Nationals baseball cap with the brim pulled low.

“Qué pasa?” Dana asked as she slipped into the booth across from Perry and deposited her motorcycle helmet on the cracked vinyl.

“It’s about time,” Perry growled. Dana didn’t react. She was used to Perry pulling rank. He was a macho pig who loved dumping on underlings. Dana didn’t consider herself an underling, but there was no profit in letting Perry know how she felt. She never let her ego get in the way of making a buck.

“So, Mr. Perry, what’s the problem?” Dana asked as she took off her jacket.

A waitress appeared and Dana ordered coffee. When the waitress was out of earshot, the lawyer resumed their conversation. Even though there were no other customers in their vicinity, he lowered his voice and leaned forward.

“Remember that job you did for me last year?”

“Tailing the guy who worked for the senator?”

Perry nodded.

“How’d that work out?” Dana asked.

Perry smiled. “Very nicely. I played him the tape. He threatened to sue, have me arrested, blah, blah, blah. But, in the end, he caved.”

“Glad to hear it worked out.”

“You do good work.”

Now it was Dana’s turn to nod. She did do excellent work. Private investigation suited her. She could stay in the shadows a good part of the time when she was working at jobs that Perry’s firm would never assign to their in-house investigators, and the pay for assignments that weren’t completely kosher was higher than most hourly wages. They were also tax free because she was always paid off the books and in cash.

The waitress returned with Dana’s coffee. When she left, Perry dug into a manila envelope that was lying on the seat next to him. He pushed a color photograph of a young woman across the table.

“Her name is Charlotte Walsh. She’s nineteen, a student at American University. I’ll give you her address and some other information before you leave.”

Dana studied the photograph. The girl was pretty. No, more than pretty. She had a sweet, fresh-faced look, like the good girl in movies about teens in high school, blue eyes, soft blond hair. Dana bet she’d been a cheerleader.

“My client wants her followed everywhere she goes.” Perry handed Dana a cell phone. “The client also wants a running account of everything Walsh does.” Perry slid a piece of notepaper with a phone number across the table. “Leave voice mail messages anytime she makes a move with details about what she’s doing. Pictures, too. You’ll give me everything you’ve got. Don’t keep any copies.”

Dana frowned. “This kid’s just a student?”

“Sophomore studying poli-sci.”

Dana’s brow furrowed. “Who’s the client, her parents, worried about their little girl?”

“You don’t need to know that. Just do your job.”

“Sure, Mr. Perry.”

The lawyer took a thick envelope stuffed with bills off the seat and handed it to Dana.

“Will that do?”

Dana lowered the envelope beneath the tabletop and counted the cash. When she was done, she nodded. Perry handed her the manila envelope from which he’d taken Walsh’s photograph.

“There’s more information about the subject in here. Get rid of everything after you’ve read it.”

“Do you want any reports?” she asked.

“No, just the photographs. I don’t want anything on paper. Keep me out of it unless there’s a problem.”

“Sure thing.” Dana stood up, leaving three-quarters of the coffee in her mug. She put on her jacket, stuffed the money in a pocket, and zipped the pocket shut. Perry didn’t say good-bye.

Dana reviewed the meeting on the ride back to Jake Teeny’s house. The job seemed easy enough, but she knew there was more to this assignment than figuring out how a cute coed spent her days. The money Perry had given her was more than a simple tail merited, and there was no way Perry would want to meet at two in the morning in a bad pancake restaurant in the suburbs if this was an ordinary assignment. If she needed more proof that something was up, Perry hadn’t hit on her. Still, the money was good, and tailing a college kid should be easy. Dana forgot about the job, goosed the Harley, and gave herself over to the ride.

Charlotte Walsh looked up from the economic report she had been pretending to read and glanced around the campaign headquarters of the Senator Gaylord for President Committee. It was five-thirty and most of the volunteers and employees were either at dinner or headed home, leaving only a skeleton staff. When she was certain that no one was near the office of Reggie Styles, Senator Maureen Gaylord’s campaign coordinator, Walsh took a deep breath and crossed the room. Styles was out of the office at a meeting and the desks near his office were deserted for the moment, but that could change in a heartbeat. The suite was usually filled with noisy volunteers.

The only reason Walsh had the economic report was because it was a thick stack of loose pages. She carried the report into Styles’s office. If she was caught, she would say she was leaving it for him. She felt light-headed and a little nauseated. She also felt guilty. She had never meant to be a spy when she volunteered for President Farrington’s reelection campaign, but Chuck Hawkins, the president’s top aide, had asked her to infiltrate Gaylord’s headquarters as a personal favor to the president. There had been a promise of a job at the White House as a reward. And then there had been the private meeting with President Farrington in Chicago.

Walsh swallowed hard as she remembered that midnight meeting in the president’s hotel suite. Then she forced herself to concentrate. She had seen Styles put the spreadsheets for the secret slush fund into the lower right drawer of his desk. Walsh looked over her shoulder. When she was certain no one was looking, she used the key she’d copied and took the five sheets out of the desk. When she’d slipped them randomly between the pages of the economic report she hurried to the copying machine and started feeding the sheaf of papers into it. When the copy was finished she would take it with her after returning the originals of the purloined material to Styles’s desk.