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.”
“They detained Claxson. Claxson didn’t say anything, asked to speak privately to his lawyer. They said he could, from his SCIF. He did that, and he called me, all of it on our burners, but we ran his burner through a shredder, so we should be clear there,” Parrish said. “He could talk only for a couple of minutes, but what I get is, the feds found Ritter’s safe-deposit box and took out a bunch of documents about some . . . irregular weapons deliveries. Nothing to do with us, not directly. Since it was Ritter, I expect your friend Davenport is out there stirring up trouble.”
Grant pointed a finger at Parrish. “But . . . But what if it’s Davenport trying to turn Claxson on the Smalls thing?”
“That was the second thing that occurred to me.”
“The first thing was worse?”
“Well . . . I’ve been involved in some of Claxson’s sales. It was a while back, but I was either already working for you or about to start working for you.”
“Ahhh . . .”
“Wait, wait—I don’t know that any of the documents involve those transactions. They might, but that would be purely unlucky. Still, I thought you should know about it. And that Claxson’s been arrested. If Davenport’s trying to turn him . . .”
“Would McCoy or Moore be willing to solve that problem? The Claxson problem?”
Parrish was shaking his head. “I can’t find either of them. I asked Claxson, and he said Moore dropped out of sight yesterday or the day before. He may be on the run. McCoy is still around, or was yesterday afternoon, but nobody’s been in touch with him since then. I cruised by his town house, didn’t see anything unusual, but I didn’t see his car, either. He may have been picked up, or, like I said, he may be running.”
“Coming apart,” Grant said. “The whole deal’s coming apart. How much do Moore and McCoy know about me?”
“Nothing more than your name,” Parrish said. “Basically, they know I work for you, and that I’m friends with Claxson. And I don’t care what Davenport suspects. As long as Claxson keeps his mouth shut, they can’t get me. And if they can’t get me, you’re fine, too.”
“I’m not fine,” she said. “I’m in trouble here. I mean, if the FBI has Claxson on illegal weapons deals, it’s possible that they could even get him on murder charges, depending on where those guns went. If they went to Boko Haram, God help us. Especially if they can get some of his operators to testify against him. Claxson might desperately need someone to deal. That would be you and me. Actually, it’d be me. I’m the big fish.”
They stared at each other, and Parrish said, “So . . . ?”
“Your sources may decide you’re toxic. Before that happens, you have to find out what’s happening with Claxson. Specifically, what the feds have got on him, if he’s in jail or going to jail—all of that.”
Parrish said, “I already made some calls. I’m friendly with Claxson’s PA. I’ll catch her somewhere this afternoon and find out what she knows. And she usually knows everything that goes on in that company.”
“Careful,” Grant said. “She’s an obvious source for the FBI as well. You might be talking to her and find out she’s wearing a wire or something . . . maybe under surveillance.”
“I can handle it,” Parrish said.
Another ten seconds of silence, then Grant asked, “If Claxson has to go away, could you handle it?”
“I was afraid you’d ask that,” Parrish said. “I’ll do some research. I’ve been over to his place—it’s over in McLean—any number of times. There’s woods behind his house, and he likes to barbecue on his back porch. And he likes to sit out there and drink. If the worst happens . . .”
“Are you good enough for that?”
“The shooting wouldn’t be a problem, the getaway might be. Like I said, I’d have to do some research.”
“You’d better do the research,” Grant said. “Don’t move without signaling me. But do the research.”
WHEN PARRISH WAS GONE, Grant worked through it and realized that if Claxson was going down, Parrish probably would as well. Parrish had worked with Claxson on several deals involving Army procurement and major weapons deliveries. Like Claxson, Parrish would be looking for somebody to deal, and he only had one choice likely to clear him out of a prison term: Senator Taryn Grant.
She walked back through the Capitol to her official office, brooding about it. She had twenty staffers in Washington, twenty more in Minnesota, and one of her Minnesota people was in town to brief her about a series of polls taken in the past two weeks on rural issues. She wanted to think, but she didn’t want to break her schedule, either, didn’t want to appear in any way disturbed.
She took the meeting: numbers and more numbers, and all the numbers said that she was still strong in Minnesota despite Smalls’s efforts to screw her. They’d come to the question-and-answer segment when her chief of staff stepped into the room, leaned over her, and whispered, “Jack needs just a moment. He’s in your office.”
“Let’s take a break,” she told the polling group. “Five minutes.”
In Grant’s office, Parrish handed her a piece of notebook paper on which he’d written “Claxson will be held overnight but will ask for bail tomorrow, and he’s expected to get it.”
She nodded, and wrote a note back: “We need a way to get face-to-face at a secure site and work this out. Not my SCIF, I don’t want him near my house. Someplace the cops won’t have bugged.” When he’d read the note, she took both pieces of paper and pushed them into her shredder.