Joseph Finder - Guilty Minds

“You screwed up, man,” I said.

“The hell you talking about?” His voice was high and choked.

“The way she gave you the slip. The boss isn’t going to like that.”

He squinted, and his face went through another series of reactions: bafflement, more suspicion, anger. Like: who the hell are you?

I said, “Yeah, you’re shadowing her, I’m shadowing you. Operations assessment, call it.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Call the boss and see. Go ahead. Call him right now, come on.”

The bald guy hesitated, frowned, then held up his cell phone. He looked at it and punched a couple of keys.

I shot my right arm out and grabbed at his phone, but his reflexes were quicker than his cognition, and he closed his left fist over the phone so I wasn’t able to wrench it out of his hand. In the next instant, he jabbed his right fist toward my abdomen, at center mass, aiming for my solar plexus. A boxer for sure. Good technique. I torqued my body to one side so that his fist missed, just grazing my midriff. He was clutching his phone in his left hand, which handicapped him, limiting him to his right hand.

Boxers are trained to punch as hard and fast as possible, and they follow gym rules. One of the rules is that you don’t kick your opponent in the balls. Which is exactly what I did, slamming the stiff leather toe of my brogue hard into his crotch, sinking in, connecting with a sickening crunch.

There are no rules in street fights.

For a moment he looked stunned. He made a low oof sound. His right fist loosened, then the phone dropped from his left fist, and he crabbed forward and collapsed into a heap. I could hear the breath expelled from his lungs. He was all folded into himself, and he clutched his sides, letting out a high-pitched, almost feminine squeal, as the freight train of agony came at him a hundred miles an hour and he was vaulted into a realm of unworldly pain, like nothing else a man will ever experience, a pain that would crescendo and then explode, reducing him to a pile of limp rags.

I snatched up his phone from the sidewalk where it had clattered a few seconds before, and I jammed a hand into his hip pocket and extracted his wallet. Then I raced away for a block or two before I slowed down to a walk and disappeared into the crowds.

Still a little light-headed from the surge of adrenaline that was only slowly dissipating, I ducked into a Panera and sat at a table and examined the phone, a cheap no-brand throwaway. It looked okay, a bit scuffed up but not damaged by dropping to the sidewalk. An iPhone may be more secure, but it also would have had a shattered screen. Not this thing. The advantages of a cheap phone.

The bald guy had punched in a speed-dial sequence of digits but hadn’t had a chance to hit Send. The saved number he was about to call was identified as Home Base. As in “base of operations.” He was checking in with his boss, his controller.

Which meant that I now had his boss’s phone number. Which was a potentially significant piece of intelligence. Whoever was watching her — either to check up on where she went, because she was unreliable, or to protect her — was a phone call away.

Now at least I understood why Kayla had seemed so scared: she was being followed, openly and obviously. In a way meant to menace.

I pocketed the phone to use later and examined the guy’s wallet. His name was Curtis Schmidt, and he was a Maryland resident with about a hundred dollars in twenties, a small sheaf of credit cards, a health-plan card, and a state of Maryland license to carry Class A large capacity firearms.

Then I found something extremely interesting.

It was an ID card issued by the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police with a red stripe on it. It said that Curtis Schmidt was a police sergeant, retired.

Kayla was being followed by an ex-cop.

I thought about Kayla some more. I’ve learned to trust my instincts at reading people. She was lying, that seemed a certainty. But what was especially intriguing was how smoothly she was lying. Her lies were plausible, well thought out and well studied and expertly memorized. Her lies were built to withstand media scrutiny. She had been well prepared.

Figuring that the bald guy was out of commission for a while, I stayed in Panera and made a few calls on my new iPhone.

I glanced at my watch. Twenty-two hours remained. Time was slipping away.

Unfortunately, I had a lot of questions and not much time to answer them.

Who was behind Slander Sheet? Who owned it? If I could find out who owned Slander Sheet, I’d be closer to finding out who was spearheading the effort to destroy Claflin.

I still had sources in Washington, including a senator I’d done work for previously, and confidentially, when I lived here. Senator James Patrick Brennan had become a friend. He was precisely the kind of guy who knew where the bodies were buried. He knew a lot about the internal workings of Washington. He was savvy and connected and he’d been around the Capitol for several decades. He might know about Slander Sheet. If he’d see me. He was a busy man.

I called Pat Brennan’s chief of staff, Kelly Packowski. Kelly had been new in Pat Brennan’s office when I lived in DC. Lovely and elegant and ferociously smart. She was still there, fortunately, and she picked right up. “Nick Heller!” she said. “How the hell are you?”

We chatted for a few seconds — she disliked small talk as much as I did, so it was pretty much pro forma — and then she said, “I have a feeling you’re calling for the senator.”

“I need to talk to him. In person would be best.” I thought, but didn’t say, that earlier in the day would be a lot better than later. Pat Brennan was a drinker — that was an open secret in Washington — and late in the day, after many bourbons, he became less than coherent. But it was already late afternoon. I’d see him when he could see me. If he could see me.

“It’s a tough day, Nick.”

“Isn’t it always?”

She sighed. “Today’s even worse than usual. Right now he’s in a meeting, but let me check in with him when he’s out and see what I can do.”

I gave her my cell phone number and hung up. Then I called Dorothy.

She answered without preface: “I think I got something on the call girl.”

“Yeah?”

“Right. Her sister’s had three meth arrests. One more time and she’s facing life without parole.”

“But does Kayla have a criminal record herself?”

“Not that I can find. Her father’s dead and her mother’s in a nursing home. She did two years at Cornelius College, which is a woman’s college in Virginia, but it looks like she dropped out. How was she in person? Did she clam up?”

“Well, she talked, but it was all memorized. Someone’s got her really scared. I feel bad for her. She doesn’t know what she’s in for.”

“The girl’s a prostitute, right? She’s chosen the life.”

“That’s kind of harsh, don’t you think?”

“I’m just saying.”

“Well, there’s something about her. I like her spirit. She’s tough.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Listen, I need you to run a phone number. And do some background on an ex-DC cop named Curtis Schmidt.”

“Who’s that?”

“That’s the guy who was following Kayla just now.”

“How’d you get his name?”

“I borrowed his wallet.”

“I won’t even ask.”

“Also, I need you to see what you can find about who owns Slander Sheet. I’m sure it’ll be some media corporation owned by a shell company or whatever, but see what you can pull up. How close you can get to who really owns it.”

“What about the hotel? Claflin allegedly stayed at the Monroe three times to meet with this call girl. The hotel must have a record of that — or not. My money’s on not.”