Jose rattled the Times and groaned. “Shouldn’t do it.”
“Do what?” Frank asked.
“Kiss those Chinese asses.” Jose held up the paper. Front-page headline, the Chinese demanding an apology for the EP-3 spy-plane incident.
“Can’t just let them rot there.”
Jose shook his head. “Apologize,” he muttered with contempt. “Bush got himself off on the wrong foot. You the new guy on the block, somebody’s gonna test you.” He was searching for the sports section when the receptionist got up and walked to a closed door.
“He’s off the phone, now.” She opened the door.
Simultaneously Frank saw Lamar Sheffield and the Capitol building. Sheffield sat at a large desk, and behind him, the Capitol filled a picture window.
Tom Kearney, Frank’s father, had once remarked that Sheffield was a double for Nelson Mandela. Ever since, Frank thought Mandela when he saw Sheffield: a man with a starched backbone and silver hair, a man whose eyes said quietly that he had known fear and had mastered it. Both men had learned much about themselves while serving time in prison… Nelson Mandela for resisting apartheid, Lamar Sheffield for executing three of his criminal associates who had disobeyed his order to stay out of the drug business.
At first glance, the view of the Capitol seemed to demand a larger, grander office. But after you took in the Azerbaijan carpet, the well-aged club chairs upholstered in butter-soft leather, the walnut credenza with the silver- framed family photos and the Waterford crystal decanters, the room was not so much an office as the private hideaway of an old friend. A place where you could believe what you heard.
“I don’t suspect you’re here for refinancing,” Sheffield said, getting up to shake hands. He had a surprisingly round voice, something, Frank thought, like Nat Cole’s.
“Should we?” Frank asked.
“If you wait, rates may go up,” Sheffield said, “but on the other hand, they may go down.”
“And Capital Mortgage wins either way,” Jose said.
“Only if we’re smart,” Sheffield said dismissively, as he led them to the club chairs. He sat, carefully hitching up his trouser legs to protect the crease. “And that’s what you’re here for, isn’t it… to get smart? Skeeter Hodges?”
“Yeah, Skeeter. We’ll settle for a little less dumb,” Frank said.
Frank studied the man he and Jose had sent to Lorton twenty years before. Times had been changing around Sheffield. Prostitution, gambling, and loansharking had been sufficient to satisfy humanity’s basic sins-sins that history and longevity somehow legitimized. Drugs, however, were different in Lamar Sheffield’s view. They corrupted humanity in a way the old sins couldn’t. A man had to be a man. Stand for something, even in the face of the inevitable. And so Sheffield had killed Mookie, Travis, and Snake, knowing what it would mean. And Frank and Jose had taken him in, and Sheffield had done hard time in Lorton at an advanced age-something that would have killed most men. But he had come out leaving one life behind and started a new one. Yet the old ties remained: people talked to Lamar Sheffield-residual perks of a reputation earned by a lifetime on the street.
“No word out as to who might have done it,” Frank said.
Sheffield frowned. “There’s always talk. Sometimes before. Most always after.”
“You haven’t heard anything about Skeeter?”
Sheffield smiled mockingly. “You talking to the other mortgage brokers in town?”
“Other brokers don’t have such nice offices,” Jose said.
“Or such rap sheets,” Sheffield came back. “You thinking about a hit? Man gets shot in his car in that business, you know it was a hit.”
“A competitor?” Frank asked. “I thought he didn’t have any.”
“Never can tell. It could have been one of his own people,” Sheffield said sadly. “No loyalty these days. Too much on the table. Your best friends get greedy and you end up with a bullet in the back of your head.”
“I heard it happens that way, Lamar,” Frank said.
“Curious thing about Skeeter,” Sheffield mused. “How he managed to slip by you folks with the badges. Took over when Brooks got sent away, and just dropped out of sight.”
He paused to think about it. “A matter of style,” he finally said. “Skeeter didn’t wear the diamonds and fur coats, didn’t charter planes to the Vegas fights. He paid attention to business.”
“You think he may have had top cover?” Jose asked.
“Like I said, there was a lot on the table. Skeeter was in big business. Bound to have some investors.”
“But you don’t know if he did or didn’t have cover,” Frank said.
Sheffield leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together. “Look, Frank,” he said patiently, “when I got out, Skeeter was just another kid on the street with a couple of friends who’d do what he told them. Then he tied in with Juan Brooks. When the feds got Brooks, Skeeter came out top dog.
“Man was like one of them trapeze acts in the circus,” he said reflectively. “He’d do the damnedest things. I’d hear about him tying up with the boys from Medellin. I thought he was in over his head. Those were hard boys playin’ hard games. I’d say he was gonna fall. I’d know it. But he never did. Man does things like that… knows he’s got a net.”
Sheffield thought some more about it, then nodded. “Knows he’s got a net,” he repeated.
Frank and Jose stood.
“John doing okay?” Frank asked.
Sheffield’s eyes flicked to one of the larger photos on the credenza: Lamar Sheffield standing beside a tall young man on a basketball court. The young man wore his father’s smile and a Dartmouth jersey.
“Could be better. Killings aren’t good for the real estate business.”
“Helps if you’re buying,” Jose said.
Sheffield shook his head. “But the profit’s in the selling.”
For going straight, he stays in touch,” Frank said when they were in the hallway.
“I played football at Howard,” Jose said.
“Yeah. So?” Frank replied.
“I’m not on the team anymore… but I still know the lineup.”
SIX
Fresh?” Frank asked. He was already measuring grounds into the coffeemaker.
Jose nodded. He opened Skeeter Hodges’s file jacket and spread an assortment of documents across his desk. “Lot of reading.”
Frank switched the coffeemaker on. “Skeeter had a long run.”
For the next hour, the two men worked through the files, taking notes, reconstructing Hodges’s life as seen through the prism of his brushes with the law. Frank came across a photograph of him in cap and gown, smiling into the camera, and behind him, with the same smile, Sharon Lipton, then a handsome woman in a silk dress and dramatically sweeping brimmed hat.
“Boy and happy mother?” he guessed, holding the picture up for Jose to see.
Over the top of his half-round reading glasses, Jose gave the photograph an appraising look. “A real mama, all right.” He sifted through the papers on his desk until he found a rap sheet. Tilting back in his chair, he eyed the document.
“Sharon Stilton Lipton,” he read, “aka ‘Babba,’ 1979, possession of narcotics, intent to sell…”
Fourteen, Frank thought, kid would have been fourteen.
“… 1980, solicitation for prostitution.” Jose shook his head. “ ’Eighty-two was a busy year… two charges receiving stolen goods, one sale of narcotics.”
Frank looked at the graduation picture again: Hodges, grinning with a kick-ass confidence. Proud mama, a hand on her son’s shoulder.
Hand… A special kind of hand on a kid’s shoulder. The encouraging squeeze you gave before you sent them out… to the first day of school… away for the first camping trip… back into a game already lost… off to basic
