Neely Tucker - Murder, D.C.

The Veep was already inside; the guys in suits talking into their fingers were flanking the cathedral, all entrances, eyes up. Sully counted four black SUVs, rear doors open, a discreet M16 barrel poking out of one. There was probably a Supreme Court justice inside, certainly an undersecretary of state. Traffic on Wisconsin was impossible, a parking lot in both directions, cops with whistles and pissed-off expressions, arms windmilling, c’mon c’mon, or flat palms out, whistles blaring.

The pearl-gray hearse was parked just in front of the steps leading to the cathedral entrance. Three black limousines were behind it, parked, while others circled through, dropping off mourners. A man in a suit was rolling a heavy LOT FULL sign out to the road, telling people to forget the garage beneath the cathedral. Faintly, borne on the breeze, there was the sound of the organ. Television trucks and reporters outside, the antennae on the trucks rising into the air.

Chris was over there in the bank of reporters covering it, looking like a stuffed sausage in his suit, waddling up the sidewalk, talking to a few mourners along the way, stepping onto the grass to take down their names and remembrances in his notebook.

Sully stood across the far side of Wisconsin.

Another taxi had dropped him two blocks up and he had walked back down, now loitering in front of the Charleston, an art deco-era apartment building, watching the procession across the street, keeping tabs on the event for reasons he could not precisely name.

The guilt that coursed through him had grown into a snake of monstrous proportions. Billy Ellison and his mother had, less than ten days ago, been rulers of social Washington, the elite of the elite. Then Billy had died and Sully had written one story and then another, and now they were both in the ground, the Ellison family line wiped off the planet.

He had a small pair of binoculars but did not pull them up lest he draw undue attention, which, after the scene downtown, he was in no mood to do. As he leaned against a car, trying to affect an air of boredom, his eyes jumped around the perimeter, picking out Stevens’s goons, standing separately, apart from the small knots of mourners. They were not the Secret Service guys, no, but they were keeping an eye out, looking for him, no doubt, looking to score points even after Delores was dead. Creating a scene would be a kill shot to his career. Stevens knew that as well as he did.

And suddenly there he was, Stevens, the man himself, emerging from behind one of the cathedral pillars, coming down the steps to the hearse, his feet shuffling along like he was wearing lead shoes. Sully tucked himself against the windshield of the car and pulled up the binoculars. Stevens had apparently asked the driver of the hearse for something. He was leaning against the rear of the vehicle, head down, hands on his knees.

Sully briefly panned the glasses down to the pavement to see if he had thrown up, but no, he hadn’t. The driver came back, stopped short, a set of papers in his hand, and Stevens looked up at him and reached out to take the papers and then went back to his head-down posture, the papers trapped against a knee.

His head shook and the hand with the papers fluttered. The driver walked back to the front of the car. Stevens stood upright, but still leaning his right shoulder against the hearse. Then Sully could see his face. It was the color of shale, a great misshapen thing that settled above his collar as if in a choke hold. The eyes appeared as hard as ball bearings, gray orbs you could pull out of his head and still not be able to crack with a hammer.

“Jesus,” Sully muttered.

Stevens stirred, coming back to himself, and Sully put the glasses back in the pocket of his sport coat and pushed himself up off the car, moving around a little bit, beneath the extended awning of one apartment building, and then back out into the sun.

He’d only been there a few moments when a thin young man in a suit stopped on the sidewalk dead in front of him. Sully pulled up short, nearly bumping into him. The face had said something. Christ, one of Stevens’s operatives, what-and then Sully realized that the face was familiar, he’d seen this guy. Where, what-

“Mr. Carter?” the face said, smiling, brown bangs over his forehead, the Adam’s apple bobbing. Reaching out to shake hands, his mind spinning furiously, it finally came to him.

“Elliot!” he said. “Elliot. Good god. Haven’t seen you since the cafeteria.”

“Yeah, hope I didn’t interrupt. You were talking.”

“What? Who? Who was I talking to?”

“Yourself.”

“I was?”

Billy’s onetime partner, a bow tie neatly knotted at his neck, moved back out of the middle of the sidewalk, standing beside Sully, so others could pass.

“Yeah,” he said. “You looked preoccupied.”

“Oh.”

“When I heard you had been suspended,” Elliot said, as if by way of explanation, “I was impressed. It told me that your story had really pissed Delores off, and that made you a friend of mine. I was hoping you might be at the funeral. So I came up. I saw a reporter over there and he said he was from the paper.”

Sully folded his arms and bit on his lower lip, wishing Elliot would go the fuck home. “Chris. That’s Chris. He told you I was over here?” If Chris could spot him, then, sweet Jesus-

“No, no. He caught me up on what was going on. I mean, I saw your story in the paper. Everybody did. Everybody was talking about it. Then it went around that Delores had committed suicide. That sounded bad.”

Sully wondered which part of it sounded bad, but it pretty much all was, so he let it go. “Well, yeah, I mean whatever, so, thank you. It is. But I should let you get over to the service. I think they’re starting soon.”

He nodded across the street. They were shutting the doors to the cathedral. Two of Stevens’s guys, in suits, stood tandem watch at the door, one on either side.

“Oh no,” Elliot said, again with the hair flip, “I didn’t come to go to the funeral. You’ll remember Delores had a very low opinion of me. I mean, I’m sorry she’s dead? But she made Billy miserable. I came because I thought I might find you. Your colleague said you weren’t here and I was leaving and wow, I walked right into you.”

“Me?” Sully felt his eyebrows arch, he couldn’t help it. There was a headache building behind his eyes and Elliot, in all his earnestness, wasn’t helping. Fucking kids, they got on his nerves, this lack of awareness of the rest of the world. “You put on a suit and tie and came to a funeral of a woman you can’t stand because you wanted to find me?”

“I don’t know that I would put it like that.”

“Okay. Whatever way you like. What’s on your mind?”

“Those morons his mom hired. Two of them are over there, guarding the doors.”

“The private investigators?”

“That’s dressing it up some, but yeah.”

“What about them?”

“They tore up Billy’s place.”

“His place, what are you talking about?” Sully said, moving under the awning, Elliot following.

“His apartment. Billy’s. They went through there and ransacked it.”

“They… I guess, what, they were looking for the drugs, get them out of there, keep it from getting in the news.”

Elliot’s eyebrows knit together. “Drugs? No, I don’t think that’s what they were looking for.”

“Why not?”

“Because they came to my house the next night, looking for the same thing.”

“They-”

“But it’s okay,” Elliot said, nodding again, that Adam’s apple. “I think I know what they were looking for. I’ve got it. You want to come see it?’