The Rewind Files Page 12

  “So she says sure, and he takes her to some real posh hotel bar, and he asks her, does she ever take jobs where she has to travel? So she says, you know, if the guy’s paying for the travel expenses on top of the regular rate, sure, she’d love the chance to get out of town for a few days.”

  ”Then she says, ’So where are you taking me?’ And he laughs and he says no, no, it’s not for him, but he ran into an old college friend at a party and they got to talking and the guy says he needs to hire a girl for a really sensitive client out-of-state and does the lawyer know any he likes and trusts. And the lawyer says for him to call—”

  She stopped herself just then and looked at me.

  “Let’s call her Jane,” I said, and she nodded gratefully.

  “Right. So the lawyer tells Jane to expect a phone call from this guy. And sure enough, he rings her up the next day and says, ‘My friend recommended you, are you free the second week in July for a three-day job?’ Well, Jane’s not stupid, she trusts her friend but she doesn’t know this guy at all, so she decides she needs a lot more information before she’s willing to commit to going off with him somewhere for three days.”

  “So she says she’ll check her schedule, and he asks how much, and she gives him the base rate, and he says ‘Does that include travel?’ And she says no, he has to cover that, airfare and everything, and he says not to worry about that, that she’d be going on the private plane.”

  “Well, that gets her attention, obviously. So he says it’s an easy gig, three days on a boat in Florida with some of his business associates, and he quotes her a price.”

  Kitty leaned forward. “And Spy Girl, when she told me, I about fell on the floor. I’m talking three months’ pay in three days, that’s how big. And he says it like it’s nothing. Jane was beside herself. So then he asks, does she know anybody in Miami. She says, sure, her abuelita lives there, and he laughs and says that’s not what he meant, he means does she know any girls in Miami.”

  “She says no, but she can find some, and then she asks what he can tell her about his business associates – you know, so to figure out what kind of girls they like – and then he says he’s never met the guys and can’t tell her anything, but as long as the girls are English-speaking, clean and extra discreet he’s sure it’s fine.”

  Kitty paused to take a drag and let out another long stream of smoke.

  “So Jane tells him, okay, but if he wants her to hire all the girls herself then the rate goes up. Really, all she was thinking about was a couple bucks’ extra for a finder’s fee – cover the cost of her time to make phone calls, things like that – but just as casual as you like, he says, ‘Fine, no problem, you find me five other girls and I’ll pay them the same I offered you, cash, and I’ll double your fee if you take care of the whole thing.’ And then Jane . . . now, you might think this sounds crazy, but as soon as he said that—”

  “She turned it down,” I said, realizing. “Because of the money.”

  “Exactly,” she said, relieved. “It was just way too much money. Jane’s smart – never been arrested, never gotten mixed up in something shady, never gotten in trouble. She’s just a nice white girl that rich politicians take on their arm to the opera. She’s never gotten involved with anything that wasn’t straightforward business.”

  She shook her head. “But this was fishy. It didn’t add up. See, rich people hate talking about money. They don’t ask how much anything costs. They just tell you what they want and then there’s a discreet little envelope waiting for you later and nobody ever mentions it out loud. But Jane said this guy didn’t talk like someone who had ever had money – real money, I mean. He’s throwing around cash like it grows on trees but he talks like a used-car salesman.”

  “So the question, then, is – whose private plane is it?” I asked.

  “Exactly,” she said.

  “What did Jane tell him?”

  “Well, she thanked him very politely and pretended to walk over and check her appointment book, flipped through the pages real loud so he could hear it through the phone, you know, to make it sound real, and then she told him she was so sorry but she was away the first two weeks of July and not back until the 18th. And then, get this, he offers double again if she could change her plans and get to Miami by the 10th. She said no, it was for a family trip, she couldn’t reschedule, and he fussed and fumed for a few minutes and then hung up. And she never heard from him again.”

  “You were right,” I said, “that is fishy.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” she says. “There’s more. Two weeks later Jane was having drinks with her friend Lacey, and get this – Lacey got the exact same job offer.”

  “From the same guy?”

  “No. That’s the weird part. From a totally different guy. Or the same guy using a different voice and a fake name, which is equally suspicious.”

  “What?”

  “I told you it was a crazy story,” she said. “The same thing that happened to Jane happened to Lacey. A regular client referred her to a friend (someone he didn’t know very well and hadn’t seen in years) – a law school buddy, I think that was the story Lacey got – and the friend called her and offered her the same deal. Private plane, all travel expenses covered, three days on a yacht in Miami, double fee bonus if she rounds up five other girls. Well, Lacey was dazzled by dollar signs, so she told him yes and asked for the exact dates, and he tells her, get this, it’s July 10th through the 13th.”

  It was clear that this meant something to Kitty, but nothing to me.

  “July 10-13 in Miami,” she said again, impatiently. “The Democratic National Convention.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, that solves that. These guys work for the DNC and they’re arranging entertainment for visiting fat cats. That all sounds pretty standard.”

  She shook her head.

  “Jane told me all the men’s names,” she said, “and every one of them is a Nixon Republican.”

  “What?”

  I stared at her in amazement, wheels turning in my head, and I could tell she was pleased to have gotten a reaction out of me.

  “So the question is,” she said, “why is there a group of Republicans offering an absolutely staggering sum of money to fill a yacht with hand-selected call girls in Miami during the Democratic convention?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “I do,” said Kitty, coolly exhaling a plume of smoke. “I’ve seen this kind of thing before. You know what that kind of money buys? Discretion. I think the girls were there to get the men to talk, and I think the boat would have been wired to the gills with listening devices.”

  “Would have been?”

  “Oh, right,” she said, “I forgot that part. A week later, Lacey’s guy calls her back and says the plan is off. Never explains why, just says something about how the money didn’t come through. She hasn’t heard from him since.”

  “Good Lord.”

  “Politics is a strange business,” she said. “There’s more going on in this town than the newspapers will ever tell you.”

  “I’m beginning to believe it,” I said.

  “Get her to talk about the White House,” said Calliope in my ear.

  I did.

  “What kinds of stories do you hear about the men who work for the President?” I said. “No names, I’m not going to get you in trouble. I just want a sense of what the place is like.”

  “It’s the worst fraternity you’ve ever seen,” she said frankly. “I met a guy once who told me that to get into the inner circle, you know, the new boys have hazing rituals. I mean actual hazing. You have to screw over an enemy of the Nixon White House and then you have to show how you did it. I know a guy who knows a guy who had a reporter’s office secretly wiretapped.”

  I stared. She nodded and went on, “Another guy did all this goofy stuff like, he would call and order a hundred pizzas to be sent to some Democratic Party event and then the truck shows up with all the pizzas an
d somebody there has to pay for it. Kid stuff like that, mostly, but sometimes really vile. That’s what made the boat thing stick in my mind, you know?”

  “How does the President put up with that?” I asked incredulously. “How have these assholes not lost their jobs?”

  “Where do you think they learned it from?” said Kitty, yawning. “He can go on television and talk about his working-man values and his sainted Quaker mama all he wants to, but behind closed doors, he’s a drunk with a nasty temper.” And with that, she stretched out on the bench and closed her eyes.

  “Wake me up if anything interesting happens,” she said.

  “You should get some sleep too,” said Calliope. “It’s going to be another couple of hours before I have anything more for you.”

  I obediently stretched out on my bench too, opposite from Kitty, and closed my eyes, but I couldn’t fall asleep. It was a relief to have someone else’s puzzle to solve, to take myself out of myself for a little while. The Chronomaly forgotten, I kept thinking back over Kitty’s story and hearing the same five words cycling through my brain over and over and over.

  The money didn’t come through.

  The money didn’t come through.

  The money didn’t come through.

  Jane’s gut instinct had been right. The guy who called her wasn’t wealthy. He was throwing around money he didn’t have. He was waiting on it, or had requested it, and hadn’t gotten it. Whose money was it? What had he claimed it was for? Was it really a second man who had called Lacey, or the same man under a different name? What was he really after?

  I lay there staring up at the dingy concrete ceiling for a long time – I didn’t know how long, hours, probably – before I finally heard the telltale click that signified that Calliope was back online.

  “Miss me?”

  “Please tell me you’ve figured out how to get me out of here.”

  “You’re so lucky I like you,” she said. “And that Detective Barlow’s commanding officer was still awake. There’s an extraction plan in place. I went with the story you just gave Kitty. You’re an undercover agent and you thought the Vice cop was your contact. Just roll with it and try not to ruin everything.”

  “Your faith in me is touching,” I murmured.

  “Oh, no no no,” said Calliope. “I will have no sarcasm from the agent who got locked up in a jail cell her very first day in the field. I am saving your ass so hard right now.”

  That was hard to argue with.

  Barlow came into view just then and said something quietly to Big Jim, who looked at him in surprise, but nodded and opened the door.

  “Calliope Burns?” he said, looking at me. The sound of his voice woke Kitty, who stirred sleepily and sat up.

  “Oh. Um. Yes,” I said. “That is – I guess you mean me.”

  “You’re free to go,” he said.

  “You mean, you’ve finally figured out what I told you from the very beginning, which was that this was a colossal mistake?”

  Kitty chuckled.

  “You shut up,” he snapped at her. She rolled her eyes, unfazed.

  “It was nice to meet you,” she said.

  “You too,” I said, meaning it. “You were very helpful. Take care of yourself.”

  “You too, Spy Girl.” She winked at me. So did Big Jim. I followed Barlow out the door and down the hall.

  “How was I supposed to know?” was the first thing he said once we were out of earshot.

  “That’s not a very promising start for an apology,” I said.

  “You were alone in the train station, you were staring at me, look at how much makeup you were wearing! What was I supposed to think?”

  “You’re basing this on how much makeup I was wearing?”

  “Well—”

  “First of all,” I said, irritated into defensiveness, “makeup diagrams are harder than they look.”

  “What?”

  “And second of all, I told you that you were making a mistake, and I told the other cops, and none of you listened.”

  “You should have told me you were FBI.”

  “You’re a Vice cop, Barlow,” I said coldly, and I could see that he was startled and uncomfortable that I knew his name. “You think I owe you classified intel?”

  “I wasn’t trying to interfere with a federal investigation.” I could not help but notice that he still had not actually said he was sorry, so I shot him one magnificently withering stare but said nothing, maintaining a grand air of lofty, patronizing silence as he pressed on.

  “In my defense, I didn’t even know that the FBI had lady agents. I’ve never heard of one before. You can hardly blame me for—” I turned to him just then and summoned my most Katie Bellows glower, and he shut right up. “It’s been scrubbed from the records,” he said uncomfortably. “Nobody here will talk.”

  “Good,” was all I said, and I filled it with as much frosty condescension as I could muster.

  “I’ll drive you home.”

  “The hell you will,” I said. “I’ll walk.”

  “Look,” he said. “Is there anything I can do to persuade you not to call Hanson tomorrow and have me fired?”

  “Use him,” said Calliope. “A police source might come in handy.” I pretended to think for a minute, then nodded.

  “Outside,” I said, and he followed me out of the station’s front door, down the steps and around the corner where I fervently hoped there were no security cameras.

  “All right,” I said. “Here’s how this is going to go. I need three things. Say yes to all of them, and Hanson (like I even know who that is) never has to know about this.”

  He nodded his agreement.

  “First of all,” I said, “apologize.”

  He looked at me, startled, then stared down at the ground and mumbled something.

  “I didn’t catch a word of that.”

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled a little louder.

  “Like you mean it.”

  “I’m sorry! I should have listened to you, I made a stupid mistake, I’m an idiot, I’m sorry.”

  “That will do,” I said benevolently. “Now, here’s the second thing. It may turn out that at some point during my investigation I need to get my hands on police information without anyone knowing that I’m asking for it. You understand what I’m saying here?”

  He swallowed hard.

  “So I’m going to need the direct line to your desk and I’m going to need your word of honor that you’ll help me out if I ask.”

  “Like what kind of information?” he said uncomfortably.

  How the hell should I know, I’m making this up as I go along!

  “You’ll know when I know,” I said, rather vaguely, but in a portentous, dramatic tone, and he nodded his agreement. “And, the last thing,” I continued. “Let Kitty out too.”

  “What?”

  “Kitty. The woman who was in the cell with me. Let her out, apologize to her, waive the fine, and have someone drive her anywhere she wants to go.”

  “I can’t do that, ma’am,” he said. “She’s a criminal.”

  “Oh, is she?”

  “Yes ma’am. She’s a prostitute. She broke the law.”

  “She broke the law tonight, specifically?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, shifting his weight uncomfortably.

  “Did you pick her up tonight?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “And what crime exactly did you catch her in the middle of committing?”

  “She was – I saw her loitering—”

  “Oh, loitering, well, that’s different, we can’t have that. What’s the fine for loitering?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Is it, by any chance, less than the fine for solicitation? Which I assume is what you charged her with?”

  “She’s a known prostitute,” he said defensively.

  “That’s not what I asked. I asked what she was picked up for tonight.” He was sullenly silent.

/>   “She knows who you are,” I said. “She’s not stupid enough to solicit an undercover vice cop. I think you saw her minding her own business in a public place and decided you could rack up another arrest and a fat little fine. A fine that’s very unlikely to make it out of your pockets and into the official police accounts, I suspect.” He turned white at that, and couldn’t look at me.

  “Well played,” said Calliope, and I beamed with pride.

  “And besides, Kitty works for me,” I said. He stared at me.

  “Too far,” Calliope sighed in my ear.

  “She . . . what?” stammered Barlow.

  “That’s right,” I said. “Kitty works for me. Doing . . . FBI stuff. Secret stuff.”

  “How come this is the first I’m hearing about it, then?” he said. “C.O. just told us to let you out. Didn’t mention anything about Kitty.”

  “Maybe because none of us ever know what’s going to happen when Reggie Bellows decides to ad lib,” snapped Calliope. “Tell him, I don’t know, tell him she’s a covert asset.”

  “Yes!” I exclaimed triumphantly. “She is a covert asset! That totally works! You’re a genius!”

  Calliope groaned, and Barlow looked at me oddly. “It’s . . . important to congratulate yourself on a job well done,” I fumbled by way of explanation.

  Clearly not satisfied with this, but unwilling to press me further, Barlow let it drop. “Well, I’m going to be on my way,” I said, desperate to be gone. He extended his hand to me. I almost took it, but stopped myself. Katie Bellows would not shake this man’s hand, I thought to myself, and I gave him my steeliest glare.

  “You screwed up, Barlow,” I said coldly. “I’m going to be watching you. If you don’t want to run into me again, I’d advise that you leave Kitty and her colleagues alone for the foreseeable future. Put your time to better use. Stick to crimes you actually see happening in front of you.”

  “I will,” he said. “I promise.”

  “Good. Now go away, I’m done with you.” I summoned all the regal grandeur I could muster and swept grandly down the steps and around the corner, until I was out of his line of sight and could walk normally again.

  “Well, that was . . . I’m not sure what that was, but it was something,” said the voice in my ear. “You’re welcome, by the way.”