at this,” he pointed vaguely at the front page. “The world’s gone mad.” He walked around the table. “I’ll be right back.” He closed the door, coughing to mask the noise, and pushed Al down the stairs to the basement.
Masada skimmed the front page of the
Since watching the short video clip, Masada had wondered: Why would a shrewd politician take a bribe from an unknown Jewish organization? Why had he ignored the risk of a setup, especially after the recent lobbying scandals in Washington? Unfortunately, the clip had been filmed from an angle that only showed Mahoney, and without sound.
She pushed the paper aside. Silver’s kitchen was neat, especially for an elderly man living alone, but the air was smoky. When Silver reappeared, she shook a finger at him. “Naughty boy.”
He paled. “What do you mean?”
“I can tell Marlboro from hash.”
The professor laughed and pinched her cheek. “When you grow up, I’ll let you try.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Masada said, playing along. “Tell me, when that Judah’s Fist guy called you, what exactly did he say?”
The black-rimmed glasses slipped to the tip of his nose. Silver pushed them up. “He was traveling for a Jewish charity and needed a place to stay.”
“July eleventh, correct?”
“I think. Yes. The eleventh.” Silver seemed unsure. “He mentioned my friends in Toronto.”
“Which friends?”
“The Solomons. Bernie and Sally. No, Sarah. We attended services together at Temple Young Israel years ago. Lovely people. So I invited him to stay. Why not? How could I know this person was going to bribe a senator?”
“And he told you his name.”
“Fred Sheen. Came on a blue SuperShuttle van.”
“Bags?”
“We’ve been through all this,” Silver protested.
“Indulge me.”
He sighed, looking up, tilting his head. “A gym bag and a hard suitcase with wheels.”
“Any stickers on the suitcase? Airline tags?”
“I saw the red leaf inside a circle, and we spoke about Canada.”
“Describe him, physically. Tall, short, young, old?”
Silver sighed. “Is this necessary?”
“Do you want a snake in
“That wouldn’t happen.” He chuckled. “Let’s see. He was tall and thin. Gray hair. Brown suit. In the morning, he borrowed my Cadillac for about two hours, took the black gym bag but returned without it. Then the SuperShuttle van came for him, and that’s it.”
“And you found the memory stick.”
“Between the seats. I was looking for my eyedrops.” Silver tugged at his goatee. “Should have thrown it in the trash, but I was curious, so I stuck it in my computer and the video popped up, the senator counting money out of that gym bag. They put me in an awful position-an accomplice to bribery!”
Masada pitied him, a retired history professor, ill-equipped to deal with the real world. “Found anything else in the car? Cigarettes? Papers?”
Silver shook his head.
“Let’s search your car again. Maybe you missed something.” Masada headed down the hallway to the garage.
“Wait!” Silver chased her. “It’s not the same car! The accident, remember?”
“Oh, I forgot.” To the right she saw a dining room, furnished in plain oak pieces. On the left was a small living room with red sofas, green drapes, and a black rug. There were no family photos. A poster of the Temple Mount hung on the wall. She opened the front door and felt the day’s heat, already rising. “Thanks for indulging my questions, Levy. I’ll check with SuperShuttle and Air Canada, just in case, but I’m sure he used a false identity.”
“The depravity humans are capable of!” He clicked his tongue and pecked her on the cheek. “Keep safe, meidaleh.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Don’t worry.”
Rabbi Josh Frank scraped the bowl of oatmeal and held up a heaped spoon, but Raul turned his head away. “My friend Adam said that only babies cry.” He had woken up crying, and was embarrassed about it.
“You cried because you’re brave enough to show your feelings.”
“That I feel sad about Shanty?”
“Exactly.” The rabbi put away the food and embraced his son, kissing him with loud, sucking noises until the little body was trembling with laughter and broke free.
“Want to play?” Raul ran to the living room, where a train set occupied most of the floor. “Come, Dad!”
At the Channel 6 office in downtown Phoenix, Tara was waiting in a conference room. Masada wasted no time. “I’d like to work together on the Mahoney affair. I’ll do print, you do TV. We’ll air simultaneously when we agree the story is solid.”
They shook hands.
Masada locked the door and pulled up her pant sleeve, exposing the brace. She fumbled with the tiny toggle under the brass knee cover. It was made of two pieces, molded to fit over her kneecap, with a small storage compartment in-between. She handed the memory stick to Tara.
In a windowless lab in the rear of the building, Tara introduced Masada to Priest, a wiry youth in black coveralls. His grin exposed a steel-capped front tooth. He spun around on his swivel stool and inserted the memory stick into the USB port on his computer.
Senator Mahoney appeared on the screen, facing the camera, his lips moving. He paused for a moment, listened, and shook his head, lips moving again. A black bag landed in his lap. Mahoney pulled out a thick bundle and browsed the bills. He dropped it back and put both hands on the bag in a gesture of ownership. He said something, listened, nodded, mouthed another short sentence, and extended his hand, shaking again. He laughed, made a mock salute, and got out of the car.
Tara whistled. “This is explosive.”
“My source is nervous as hell.” Masada turned to Priest. “I want to know everything you can glean from this clip-car model, time of day, what he had for breakfast, and so on.”
Priest hit a bunch of keys rapidly and handed her the stick. A second later, he was already dividing the screen into small windows, each with a frozen frame from the video.
Back in the conference room, Masada stashed the memory stick back in the brace. She gave Tara the date Fred Sheen had arrived on Air Canada and the approximate times he was on the SuperShuttle van.
Tara was writing furiously. “What’s the address in Scottsdale?”
“Can’t tell you. It’s my source’s home. Get me a record of all their Scottsdale drop-off and pick-up addresses that day. It’s a small chance, but there’s something amateurish about this Sheen character. Maybe he was stupid enough to use his real name.”
