“No, I . . . I don’t. Nobody knows that but him. It’s long; I’ve seen him entering it on his computer, moving his lips when he’s doing it. It’s like he’s typing in whole words. And he’s not referring to anything—he’s got it memorized.”
“That’s bad,” Rae said. “Is everything in code?”
“Most everything,” Oakes said. “That’s why I don’t know anything . . . It all goes back and forth in code because it’s mostly classified. I know they ship armaments from one place to another, but all these details are in code. That’s not what I do.”
“You do his travel,” Lucas said. “Did you arrange his airplane flight to Omaha?”
She hesitated, then said, “I knew he was flying.”
“Do you know who was with him?”
The hesitation again. “No, but I got four box lunches. I have no idea who they were for, but one of them could have been Carol.”
Lucas, Bob, and Rae all glanced at one another. “Who’s Carol?” Lucas asked. “Is that a woman?”
She nodded. “Carol Ruiz. I don’t know that she went, but she was buzzing around that day, before George—Mr. Claxson—left. We don’t see her very often—she doesn’t work for us—so . . . I don’t know that much about her.”
“Are they intimate?” Bob asked. “George and Carol?”
Oakes frowned, repeated, “Intimate?”
“You know,” Rae said, “is George slipping her the pink piccolo? The ol’ skin flute?”
“Oh . . . no. No! Carol mostly talks to the guys. I think she’s an OGA.”
Lucas: “She’s a spook?”
“Careful where you go with that,” Rae said to Lucas, “I don’t like that spook shit.” She glared at Oakes, leaned into her. “You don’t never say ‘spook,’ do you?”
“I never . . .”
Lucas said, “Hmph, Carol Ruiz. We’ll take a look at her.”
“Don’t mention my name, please. She’s . . . scary.”
“We’ll try not to,” Lucas said. He took his notebook and a pen from his jacket pocket, flipped the notebook open, wrote “Carol Ruiz.” “Can you tell me what she looks like?”
Oakes said, “She’s shorter than I am and I’m five-six. She’s thin, like a marathon runner or something, that’s what she looks like. Black hair, dark eyes. Doesn’t laugh much. In my opinion, she’s . . . not quite right. She looks at you funny . . . Please don’t tell her I gave you her name.”
“If we have to use your name, we’ll make sure Ruiz knows you’re protected by the FBI,” Lucas said. “To get back to Claxson, I understand that his encryption code is a long one, but his phone code wouldn’t be. Either four or six numbers, right? You must know what that is.”
“I . . .” She began to cry.
Lucas let her go for fifteen seconds, then said, “Helen? Don’t lie to me. You can tell me that you refuse to answer, but you can’t lie to me. That’s a crime, and I’m not lying when I say that.”
“He does lie a lot, but not about this stuff,” Rae said.
“Please don’t tell him,” she said, and sobbed again.
“We’ll do the best we can to keep it private . . .”
“It’s 312415 . . .” Lucas wrote it in his notebook as she recited it.
“How’d you figure it out?” Rae asked.
“I sit beside him when we’re in a car. I’ve seen him do it a hundred times and I . . . just remember it. He didn’t try to hide it because . . . it’s like I’m not there . . . most of the time.”
Lucas stood up. “We’ll need you to wait here,” Lucas said. “Your escort will come pick you up.”
“Please don’t tell George I told that to you. I’m . . . afraid of him.”
“Like Carol Ruiz?” Bob said.
“Well, Carol’s different. Carol’s crazy. George is only mean. You can deal with mean. You can’t deal with crazy.”
* * *
—
LUCAS STEPPED OUT of the parlor and into the hallway, and Chase, who was standing there, listening, out of sight, said, “Mr. Claxson isn’t the only one who can be mean.”
Lucas said, “There are three people dead that we know of, and maybe four if Moore was killed. We weren’t even mean enough to give her bad dreams. Let’s go try the phones.”
The FBI tech had bagged the iPhone in transparent plastic. He left it in the bag when he turned it on. Chase read the number from Lucas’s notebook, the tech punched it in, and the phone opened up.
“We need printouts of everything,” she said to the tech. “Like, now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “What about the other phone?”
“Maybe he only has one code to remember,” Chase said.
The tech shrugged, got the bag with the second phone, and tried the code. The second phone opened up.
Chase said to Lucas, “It was still mean, but I forgive you.”
* * *
—
SHE WALKED AWAY to talk to somebody else, and Lucas said to Bob and Rae, “Carol Ruiz sounds a lot like Suzie, who shot up the hotel.”
“She does,” Bob said. “But is it Carol or Suzie?”
25
Grant was walking a California venture capitalist through the Senate Office Building when Parrish called her. The VC was wearing an antique Black Sabbath T-shirt, black jeans, and a black linen jacket, and, at the back of his scalp, a small but prescient pink spot; Grant expected that the next time she saw him, he’d have a shaved head. He had the rattlesnake charm of the typical VC, plus money and connections. The connections were the important thing—she was building her network, and if the presidential primaries came down to California, she needed them.
The call from Parrish was an irritant. She told the VC, “One second—I have to take this,” and stepped away from him. “What?” she snapped into the phone.
“We’ve got a problem with the subcommittee,” Parrish said. “We need to talk in a secure facility.”
Emergency code: the subcommittee was Heracles and Claxson and the operators.
“I can do it at noon,” she said. “Meet me at my hideaway.”
“Sooner would be better.”
“How long will the meeting be?” she asked.
“Fifteen minutes?”
“I can give you fifteen at ten-thirty,” she said. “I’m scheduled at eleven.”
“See you then,” Parrish said, and hung up.
Grant reached out and put her hand on the VC’s arm, turned him back toward her office, leaving her hand on his arm as they walked. She would fuck him, if necessary. “You know the problem with the Senate? It’s like being nibbled to death by ducks. There’s never a second during the whole darn day that somebody doesn’t want to talk to you—and, most of the time, doesn’t need to. People want to talk to you, so they can say, ‘I was talking to Senator Grant yesterday,’ and then they start lying.”
The VC nodded. “I get the same thing. Some guy running a two-bit start-up wants to say he talked to you so he can spread the word that there might be some interest in whatever he’s peddling. ‘Nibbled to death by ducks’—I’ll remember that.”
* * *
—
U.S. SENATORS are each assigned hideaways in the Capitol, unseen by the public or the press. Only the senator has a key to his or her retreat, which are routinely checked for electronic surveillance. Not as secure as Grant’s SCIF, but close.
Since Grant was a junior senator, her hideaway was in the Capitol basement, a windowless room barely large enough for a desk with a computer on it, an office chair, two wooden visitor’s chairs, a worktable, and a small office refrigerator. If she lasted for another term and got lucky with senatorial turnover, she might actually get a place with a window. Of course, if everything worked out right, she’d have a big oval-shaped office before that happened.
* * *
—
GRANT ASKED, “What happened?” as she dropped into her chair.
Parrish took one of the wooden chairs. “The FBI hit Heracles this morning.”
“Ah, shit.”