“Set up a task force,” Emerson repeated, his voice suddenly brisk, energy returning with the prospect of bureaucratic ass-covering.
When in worry or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
“Not us,” Frank said.
“What?”
“He said, ‘Not us,’ ” Jose repeated. “You get a crowd running all over the place, crossing each other’s tracks. Contradicting each other in public. A real cluster-fuck.”
“But the media…”
“Media’s going to be on this any way you cut it,” Frank said. “You form a task force and you just give the media a bigger target to home in on.”
Clearly unhappy, Emerson shook his head and sat seeing nothing ahead but trouble.
Frank interrupted. “We got to look into the Gentry case.”
“Yes.”
“We could use some help… some manageable help.”
“Bodies?”
“One’ll do.”
“Who? You want Milton?”
Frank and Jose shook their heads in unison.
“Rather have a fresh look,” Jose said.
“Then who?”
“Janowitz isn’t real busy.”
A man thinking about the heat this’s going to bring,” Jose said outside Emerson’s office.
“And thinking,” Frank came back, “about how to pass the heat on down to us.”
Jose shrugged. “What’s new? How about call Bouchard? Give him a heads-up.”
Ugly, ugly, ugly.” Frank looked at the building.
FBI headquarters hulked over Pennsylvania Avenue, taking up the block between Ninth and Tenth Streets. Like dresser drawers left carelessly open, the top floors jutted out over the nine stories below. In a snit over the naming of the building after J. Edgar Hoover, Congress had refused to pay for the granite facing called for in the original design. And so, precise rows of anchor points punctuated the dirty yellow poured-concrete walls, looking like bullet holes from the machine gun of a drive-by shooter.
“You should have gone into architecture,” Jose said.
“Rather be in demolition.”
Robin Bouchard stood just inside the Tenth Street entrance, near the visitor sign-in desk. He was a stocky, muscular man, and his Mediterranean heritage was marked by an olive complexion and coal-black hair nicely silvering at the temples.
“Welcome to the Ministry of Truth, Justice, and the American Way.” Bouchard rolled it out in a baritone mellowed with traces of Cajun. He handed Frank and Jose visitor badges and escorted them past the sign-in desk toward an escalator bank.
“I feel like a priest or a proctologist. Only time you guys come through the door, you’re bringing trouble.”
Jose grunted. “Didn’t want to come empty-handed.”
The short escalator ride to the third floor gave them a look into the fishbowl that was the lab for DNA and materials. Bouchard led them down a long corridor decorated with movie posters from 1950s G-men films, charts and maps, and large iconic photographs of the FBI director, Louis Freeh, and the attorney general, John Ashcroft.
“You guys don’t mind… when you said it was the Gentry case, I passed it upstairs.” Bouchard said. “Brian Atkins wants to see you.”
“The Brian Atkins?” Jose asked. “We’re honored.”
“He want to offer us a job?” Frank asked. “We’ll take the Honolulu Field Office.”
“He didn’t tell me. I sent him an e-mail, said you’d be coming over for a fill-in on Hodges and Gentry. His secretary called down with a ‘Be there.’ I don’t ask questions.” Bouchard motioned to the elevators.
Brian Atkins’s corner office was only four floors above the DNA lab, but another world away. Large windows framed views of the Capitol, the old post office, and, in the distance, the Potomac and the control tower at Reagan National. The deep-pile blue carpeting, the mahogany desk and bookcases, the antique conference table with its chairs upholstered in silk brocade-all put the office near the top of the heap. A place where voices were always subdued and neckties carefully dimpled and pulled snug against starched white collars.
Atkins, a man in his late fifties, had the casual grace and slender build of a sailor. A bachelor, he frequently showed up in the style-section coverage of Washington’s black-tie galas. Silver hair, square jaw, and windburnt tan face.
He sat at the head of the conference table, Frank and Bouchard to his left, Jose to his right.
“Robin tells me Gentry’s open again.”
It came with a hint of Down East to it, a John Kennedy brogue-something to do with sea, sails, and salt air.
An assistant in a tailored dark blue suit brought in coffee. Atkins poured and passed around cups that Frank thought were Limoges or a pretty good imitation.
“How’d we get so lucky?” Atkins asked.
He sat silently, attentive, sipping coffee as Frank and Jose summarized Calkins’s findings. When they were finished he smiled a thank you.
“I wanted to hear this from you. I’ve got a personal interest in the Gentry case. Kevin Gentry was a great help to us when I was at WFO.” Atkins pronounced it “wif-oh”-Washington Field Office, the separate and subordinate FBI unit that did the Bureau’s work in the District of Columbia.
“Juan Brooks.” Jose filled in the silence.
Atkins got a tight, modest smile, the way a classy quarterback might smile when reminded of a winning touchdown pass in the last minutes of the Super Bowl.
“We busted Juan Brooks,” he said. “It was a team effort. While Malcolm Burridge was mayor, he did everything he could to keep the Bureau off Brooks’s back.”
“There were family connections,” Jose said. “Burridge’s daddy and Brooks’s daddy.”
Atkins’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t know that,” he said with a nod of appreciation. “Burridge was a problem. But then, Congressman Rhinelander and Kevin Gentry, who was his staff director at the time, came on the scene. Rhinelander had just taken over as subcommittee chairman and was looking for an issue.”
“Crime in the District,” Frank said.
Atkins smiled. “A rich social laboratory for any brave or foolish reformer, the District is. Anyway, Rhinelander and Gentry put the squeeze on Burridge. Burridge folded, and we finally bagged Brooks.”
Frank and Jose exchanged glances.
“Were you working with Mr. Gentry when he was killed?” Jose asked.
“No,” Atkins said regretfully. “By that time, they’d moved me up here”-he waved a hand to take in the office-“where I spend most of my time flying that desk. I’ve stayed in contact with Rhinelander. We talk occasionally. Kevin’s death hit him hard. I’d hoped that Frederick could put this behind him when the case was closed. Now…” Atkins let it trail off.
“And now Skeeter Hodges,” Frank said.
“Ah, yes,” Atkins said. “Same weapon, two years apart. Maybe the same shooter. Maybe not.” He looked at Jose and Frank. “You guys worked out a road map?”
Frank shook his head. “No maps yet. More like a compass direction.”
Atkins nodded. Something on his desk gave a chirping sound. He listened, and when the sound came again, he stood, signaling an end to the session. He offered his hand to Jose, then to Frank. “Keep me in the loop,” he told them, “anything we can do…” He smiled wistfully. “We all have our jobs to do in this, but I envy you two. Happiest years of my life were working the street.”
Never fails, does it?” Jose asked as he started the car.
“What?”
