Tompkins?”
Frank decided that Jose was working way ahead of him.
“Think so, Hoser,” he said. Then, assurance building, “Definitely.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Just after nine, Frank found a parking place on Virginia Avenue opposite the Watergate complex. Jose got out and stood on the sidewalk, looking up at the tall yellow stucco building that was now a George Washington University dormitory.
“Lost a real piece of American history there,” he said.
Frank followed Jose’s gaze. The dorm once was a Howard Johnson’s. And not just any HoJo. This was the Howard Johnson’s where Nixon’s dirty-tricks team planned their break-in of the Democratic Party’s campaign headquarters in 1972.
“I always wondered about those guys,” Frank said as he opened the car trunk. “I mean, two of those guys… E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy.” He lifted out the small tape deck. “I don’t think we would have made the cut: J. Adams Phelps and F. Delano Kearney don’t have quite the same ring.”
Brian Atkins opened the door. He wore faded khakis, a chambray work shirt, and Top-Siders. Over his shoulder, Frank took in a large, softly lit living room. Two dove-gray sofas faced each other, framing a powerfully colored red and blue Persian carpet and a low, intricately carved Chinese bamboo-and-elm table. Against a wall, a very good seascape oil hung over a black lacquer sideboard.
“Gentlemen, come in.” Atkins smiled. He momentarily eyed the tape deck Frank had slung over his shoulder, then turned to lead them to an enclosed balcony. Four teak chairs looked out on the Potomac, black and glistening in the night, and in the distance, headlights raced across Key Bridge between Rosslyn and Georgetown. In the background, jazz played on an unseen sound system.
Frank noticed a highball glass on the coffee table between the chairs.
“I’m having a little medicinal scotch,” Atkins said. “You guys?”
“Beer?” Jose semi-asked.
“Pilsner Urquell? Tecate?” Atkins offered. “I’ve somehow accumulated a regular United Nations in the fridge.”
“Anything cold,” Jose said.
Frank nodded. “Same here.”
Atkins disappeared, and Frank stepped closer to the glass wall of the balcony. Five stories directly below, Rock Creek Parkway. To his right and at a greater distance, Georgetown Foundry and the waterfront, and, somewhere in the darkness, the bench where he wished he and Kate were sitting now.
“Music too loud?”
Frank turned. Atkins was setting two Tecates and frosted mugs on the coffee table.
“Monk’s never too loud,” Jose said.
“This’s early Thelonious,” Atkins said as the three settled into their chairs.
“Riverside label,” Jose furnished. “With Gerry Mulligan?”
Atkins silently saluted Jose with his scotch. He watched as the two men filled their mugs. Then he was all business. “You guys didn’t come here for beer and jazz.”
Frank sipped his beer. It had a bitter metallic taste. “No, we didn’t.”
“You said there’s something new.”
“Some background first?” Frank asked. Getting a nod from Atkins, he put the beer down on the coffee table. “In the files we’re going to be turning over to the Bureau, there’re interviews in which two people told us that shortly before his death, Kevin Gentry was investigating Skeeter Hodges’s operation.”
Atkins’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “Investigating?”
“In preparation for congressional hearings,” Jose said.
“That’s… interesting.”
“You didn’t know?” Frank asked. “Neither Gentry nor Rhinelander said anything to you?”
Atkins smiled. “Hell, they may have and I just forgot or didn’t pay attention at the time. Some committee on the Hill is always talking about investigating something or somebody.”
“And then we go back to the weapon that killed Skeeter,” Jose picked up. “Two years before the shooting on Bayless Place, the same weapon was used to kill Gentry…”
“And the shell casings that you found on Bayless had Pencil’s fingerprints,” Atkins finished. Then, as if making a mental note to himself, “That pistol… if we only knew where it went… where it is now.”
“We may never know,” Frank said. “But there are some things we do know.”
“Oh?”
“We know that Gentry recruited somebody inside Skeeter’s organization.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Gentry told two people, who then told us… a guy he’d worked with at the Agency and the director of a think tank.”
“The insider has a name?”
“Martin Osmond,” Frank said
Atkins got a reflective look. “The name’s familiar…”
“He’s dead,” Jose said. “Died of a heroin overdose the same night Gentry was shot.”
“So, two men, both dead for over two years.” Atkins sipped at his scotch, then shook his head. “We’re seeing a replay of the old adage that dead men tell no tales.”
“But they leave things behind.” Frank pulled the safe-deposit key from his pocket and laid it beside his beer on the coffee table. “This is to a safe-deposit box Kevin Gentry maintained at Riggs Bank,” he explained. “Leon Janowitz found it in Gentry’s files in the Library of Congress archives.”
Atkins leaned forward, picked up the key, examined it, then put it back on the table. “And in the box?” he asked.
“A number of things,” Frank said. “A hundred and twenty thousand in cash. And Martin Osmond’s will.”
“A… will?”
“Osmond knew the game he was playing,” Jose said. “He left the money to his grandmother.”
“And in a box controlled by Gentry,” Atkins said.
“Gentry kept receipts,” Jose said. “Payouts began in June ’ninety-eight. They came out of a subcommittee account.”
Atkins held up a hand. “Let me guess… The payments totaled a hundred twenty K. So it’s obvious… Gentry slipped up somehow. Or maybe Osmond. Anyway, Skeeter and Pencil decide to take them out.”
Frank nodded. “That’s part of it. Some loose ends… like who killed Skeeter and, later, Pencil and his lady friend?”
“And who nearly killed you and Leon Janowitz?” Atkins added. “We’ll be nailing all that down.”
“Maybe we can help you,” Jose said.
Atkins pointed to the key. “That certainly did.”
“That box was full of surprises.”
Something in Frank’s voice brought Atkins’s eyes up. “Oh?”
Frank pulled an audiocassette from an inner coat pocket. “This isn’t the original,” he explained. “It’s a copy of one Osmond made from the original… a cassette that Skeeter and Pencil recorded.” He put the cassette on the coffee table, next to the safe-deposit key. Then he reached down and brought up the portable tape deck, flicked it on, and inserted the cassette.
“This’ll be interesting,” he said, as he pressed the Play button.
A hammering rap blasted from the small tape player.
Atkins winced.
Frank turned the volume down. “A recorder in Skeeter’s car was picking this up. This was in June ’ninety- two.”
