The Inner Circle

around-to even let it get this far-Orson was letting it get too personal.

“Enjoy the breakfast, sir,” the Secret Service agent said as he pulled open the ballroom door. Underneath the brightly lit chandelier that was as long as a city bus, every neck was craned upward, all six hundred people watching the rosy-cheeked man who looked so comfortable up at the podium with the presidential seal on the front of it.

As always, the President glanced around the crowd, making eye contact with everyone. That is, until Laurent stepped into the room.

“… which is no different from the personal myths we tell ourselves every day,” the President said, his pale gray eyes turning toward the barber in the back of the bright room. “The myths we create about ourselves are solely there so our brains can survive.”

Across the red, gold, and blue carpet, the barber stood there a moment. He stood there waiting for the President. And when the two men finally locked eyes, when Laurent nodded just slightly and Orson nodded right back, the barber knew that the President had seen him.

That was it. Message sent.

Pivoting on his heel, the barber headed back out toward the welcome desk. The President cocked his head, flashing a smile and locking on yet another stranger in the crowd.

For the first time since this started, the Plumbers finally had something going their way.

62

'So you’ve never heard of this guy Griffin?” Tot asks, stealing a glance at me as the Mustang zips through Rock Creek Park and we make our way to Constitution Avenue.

“Why would I’ve heard of him?”

“And there’s no one you know who has an eight-ball tattoo?”

“Is this you testing me now?” I ask.

“Beecher, I’m seventy-one years old.”

“You’re actually seventy-two.”

He thinks on this a moment. “I’m seventy-two years old. I have plenty of patience. I just don’t like having my time wasted-and right now, since you’re treating me like the enemy, you seem to be wasting it,” he explains without any bitterness.

“I know you’re not the enemy, Tot.”

“Actually, you know nothing about me. For all you know, this is just another attempt to reel you in and grab you with the net. Do what you’re doing, Beecher-keep asking the tough questions. And as for the toughest one so far: Every neighborhood in the country has a guy like Griffin.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning according to the police report, Griffin’s first arrest came when he was in high school-selling fake marijuana to a bunch of ninth graders. Then he got smart and started selling the real thing. His dad was a pharmacist, so he quickly graduated to selling pills. During one arrest-and remember, this is still in high school- Griffin spit in a cop’s face, at which point he became the kid that even the tough high school kids knew you didn’t mess with.”

I see where he’s going. “So when Griffin was kidnapped-”

“Not kidnapped,” Tot corrects, approaching the end of Rock Creek Park. “They never use the word kidnapped. Or abducted. In the report, they don’t even call it a crime scene. But you’re painting the picture: When this guy Griffin finally disappeared, neighbors weren’t exactly tripping over themselves to form a search party.”

“It’s still a missing kid.”

“You sure? Griffin was twenty years old, no longer a minor. He got in a car-voluntarily-with two guys from his gang. And then he drives off into the sunset,” Tot says as we make a left on Constitution Avenue and momentum presses me against the passenger door. “A crime? Where do you see a crime?”

“Okay,” I say. “So where’s the crime?”

“That’s the point, Beecher. There isn’t one. Griffin’s dad goes to the newspaper. He begs the cops to find his son. But the cops see it as a young man exercising his independence. And they shut the case, I’m guessing secretly thrilled that Griffin and his eight-ball friends are someone else’s problem.”

“And now, all these years later, the case is back. So for the second time-where’s the crime?”

Tot points his beard at the famous landmark all the way up on our left: the breathtaking home of President Orson Wallace. The White House.

“Don’t tell me Wallace has an eight-ball tattoo,” I say.

“Nope. Near as I can tell, Wallace was nowhere near this one.”

“So what makes you think he’s involved?”

As we pass the White House and weave down Pennsylvania Avenue and toward our building, Tot’s smile finally pokes through his beard. “Now you’re seeing the real value of an archive. History isn’t written by the winners-it’s written by everyone-it’s a jigsaw of facts from contradictory sources. But every once in a while, you unearth that one original document that no one can argue with, like an old police report filed by two beat cops twenty-six years ago.”

“Tot…”

“He was the one who gave them the info-the one eyewitness who told the cops everything he saw.”

“The President was?”

“No. I told you, Wallace was nowhere near there.” As we make a sharp right onto 7th Street and pull toward the garage, Tot picks up his photocopied sheet of paper and tosses it in my lap. It’s the first time I notice the name he’s handwritten across the bottom. “Him! He was there!”

I read the name and read it again. “Stewart Palmiotti?”

“Wallace’s personal doctor,” Tot says, hitting the brakes at the yellow antiram barrier outside the garage, just as the security guard looks up at us. “That’s who we want: the President’s oldest friend.”

63

The cemetery reminded him of his mother.

Not of her death.

When she died, she was already in her eighties. Sure, she wanted a year or two more-but not much. She always said she never wanted to be one of those old people, so when it was her time to go, she went calmly, without much argument.

No, what the cemetery reminded Dr. Palmiotti of was his mother when she was younger… when he was younger… when his grandfather died and his mom was screaming-her face in a red rage, tears and snot running down her nose as two other family members fought to restrain her-about the fact that the funeral home had neglected to shave her father’s face before putting him in his coffin.

Palmiotti had never seen such a brutal intensity in his mother. He’d never see it again. It was reserved solely for those who wronged her family.

It was a lesson Palmiotti never forgot.

Yet as he leaned into the morning cold and followed the well-paved, hilly trail into the heart of Oak Hill Cemetery, he quickly realized that this was far more than just a cemetery.

All cities have old money. Washington, D.C., has old money. But it also has old power. And Oak Hill, which was tucked into one of the toniest areas of Georgetown and extended its sprawling twenty-two acres of rolling green hills and obelisk-dotted graves deep into Rock Creek Park, was well known, especially by those who cared to know, as the resting place for that power.

Founded in 1849, when W. W. Corcoran donated the land he had bought from a great-nephew of George