Tailspin

  Stefanos said, “You look magnificent, like a cabaret singer from the thirties, Agent Sherlock.”

  “Thank you,” Sherlock said.

  Savich agreed with Stefanos. Sherlock was wearing a long black skirt, a black top that bared her shoulders, and her hair was loose, a sunset of curls around her head, pulled back from her face with two black clips. She looked good, that was Savich’s remark when he saw her, and she’d known he wanted to haul her back upstairs. Even Sean, standing at his father’s side, had stared at her. “I wouldn’t know it was you if it wasn’t for your hair, Mama.”

  She’d laughed and kissed him soundly. But Savich bet she had no plans to kiss Stefanos Kostas.

  Stefanos said, “You’re really an FBI agent? You?”

  “You were thinking I was perhaps a runway model?”

  “Maybe that’s not too much of a stretch.”

  Rachael said, “Agent Savich and Agent Sherlock are married. They have a little boy.”

  “What?” Stefanos asked. “You’re actually married to him? But, I—”

  Laurel rolled over her husband. “Married? I’ve never heard of FBI agents being married to each other before, but I suppose our government allows just about anything.”

  “Not really,” Sherlock said.

  “I have two boys,” Laurel continued. “The elder is nearly grown up now. He met a girl in New York City and is convinced he’s going to marry her.”

  “How old is he?” Jack asked, though he knew very well.

  “Damian is sixteen.”

  Quincy said, “Stefanos isn’t happy about this, even though it’s only a young boy’s crush, isn’t that right?”

  Stefanos shrugged. “He can have his fun. I only hope he doesn’t contract some disease from her.”

  Quincy said, “You’re an expatriate xenophobe, Stefanos—you want both your sons to marry into old Greek families.”

  Stefanos smiled at his brother-in-law, sipped at his whiskey like an elegant sloth.

  Jack asked Laurel, “What did you think of the FBI press conference?”

  Her heavy face froze. “I already told Agent Savich it was ridiculous. To me it smacked of conspiracy theories, which are generally nonsense. It is like saying the Warren Commission lied. How can you disprove a negative? I suppose the FBI will continue prodding and poking about, annoying us until we have our lawyers cut you off at the knees.”

  Savich said pleasantly, “I certainly agree with you about conspiracy theories. However, do you really believe, Mrs. Kostas, that your brother took up drinking again, that he got into a car after not driving for eighteen months?”

  “Perhaps the senator considered cutting back on his drinking, even spent some time not driving, but in the end, he seems to have been doing both. There seems no doubt about that. Stefanos, Quincy, do you agree?”

  Stefanos looked bored. Quincy, in a very discreet one-finger move, adjusted his toupee.

  Laurel said, “No matter what the senator said, he would not have called a press conference and made a grand announcement of his guilt. He knew if he spoke up, he would lose everything—the prestige and power of being a senator, all the privileges of being wealthy and sought after, of being endlessly feted and admired.”

  Jack said, “And last but not least, he would probably have gone to jail for vehicular homicide.”

  “That is not possible. The senator had excellent lawyers,” Stefanos said. “He would never have spent a day in jail.”

  That might be the truth, Sherlock thought.

  “No matter,” Laurel said. “The senator lived for those things. He did not like to lose. What happened the night he died was an accident. All these theories—and that’s all they are—they sound like those ridiculous conspiracy theory blogs.”

  “Jimmy told me he was going to do it,” Rachael said. “There was no reason for him to tell you if he hadn’t made up his mind.” Was that the truth? To say it, flat-out, it sounded so simple and straightforward. She said, “Besides the three of you, he also told Greg Nichols. Yet you still doubt it, even after Jimmy told you the misery he’d been living with for eighteen months?”

  Quincy said, his voice dismissive, “I will say this one more time: it was a phase, nothing more. The senator was self-indulgent. He liked to analyze things to death—business, politics, a specific piece of legislation, how he was going to get back at another senator or congressman or staffer who got on the wrong side of him.

  “Look, I’m sure he felt very sorry about what happened to the little girl, he had a conscience, after all.”

  There was a malignant look on Laurel’s face, a look filled with cold rage, and it was aimed at Rachael. “If you have convinced these three FBI agents that we murdered our own brother, you have done the senator and our entire family, Jacqueline and her daughters included—not to mention the entire country—a grave disservice. You are contemptible, Miss Janes. And no, I will not call you an Abbott; you will never be an Abbott to us.”

  Laurel turned on her low-heeled pumps and walked away, Quincy and Stefanos, after one last caressing look at Sherlock, following in her wake.

  “I hadn’t expected them to speak so freely,” Savich said thoughtfully, watching them begin to work the room, the tall well-built man whose ego was bigger than his brain, and the dowdy woman covered in diamonds, with her powerful, vicious eyes. And Quincy, looking like a beautifully dressed royal adjunct.

  Sherlock said, “Do you know, the three of them have one thing in common. They all radiate clout. Look, there’s the senator from New Hampshire going over to them.”

  “They’re a big deal,” Rachael said. “They’re American royalty, rich—oozing confidence, used to getting what they want.”

  Savich said to his wife as he touched his fingertips to her ear, “I really like the jet-black earrings.”

  “You should, you bought them for me.”

  He could feel the tightly coiled energy rolling off her. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I did.”

  Sherlock said to Rachael, “You look perfect. You’ve struck the right note—classic outfit with a hint of pizzazz.”

  She did indeed, Jack thought. Rachael was wearing a long black gown, as were many woman in the room. Unlike them, Rachael wasn’t showing very much skin, but what showed was potent. She looked beautiful and pale and dignified. Jack imagined she was wound tighter than his grandfather’s watch, a ritual Jack had watched countless times when he was a little kid.

  Champagne flowed along with the stronger stuff. He saw Laurel and Stefanos speaking with the vice president. As each of them spoke, the vice president nodded solemnly. Several times, he leaned in to say something.

  Savich spotted Greg Nichols entering the room, three women and two men with him, former Abbott staffers all. He was wearing a tux, and should have looked buff and competent, but he didn’t. Something was wrong, something was off with him. He was moving slowly and awkwardly. Nichols looked up and met Savich’s eyes across the room. He caught Jack’s eye and nodded slowly. Then, strangely, he rubbed his belly. What was going on?

  Greg Nichols felt sick to his stomach. He thumbed another Tums from the bottle and discreetly slipped it into his mouth. How many was that so far? Six? Seven? He hoped it was nerves. Nerves he could deal with, he’d had a lot of practice. No, he was going to have to face it, this was for real, probably the cioppino he’d had for a late lunch—a mistake, his secretary Lindsay had told him, what with the hullabaloo happening tonight with the movers and shakers, and he with his nervous stomach. All right, so the cioppino had been off, he’d known it after a few bites and stopped eating it. Curse Lindsay, she was right.

  He’d already had massive diarrhea and vomited twice. He thought there’d been a bit of blood, prayed he was mistaken, because that was scary.

  But maybe he was feeling a little better now. No, he felt like crap. For a moment, he watched the FBI agent Dillon Savich, the one who’d led the FBI press conference, and chewed faster on the Tums. And that damned agent Jack Cro
wne, who was sticking to Rachael like glue. Nichols knew he’d been checking on him, and if he didn’t know everything about him already, he would soon enough. He’d know everything about all of them. It wasn’t fair, just wasn’t.

  He looked around at the sea of powerful people, spouses hanging onto senators’ arms, staking claim to power. So much power concentrated in this one room—it was a terrorist’s wet dream. He easily spotted Secret Service agents from long practice. They were everywhere. There had to be FBI there, as well; they were better at fading into the woodwork.

  He realized he no longer cared if Rachael spoke out or not. He was a lawyer, he knew how things worked. He’d roll over on Senator Abbott, no problem with that, since he was dead. Then he’d take the bar exam, and set up his practice in Boise.

  He didn’t need this aggravation that was going to escalate into a shit storm. It was time to cut his losses. It was time to get out of Dodge.

  He saw Laurel Kostas speaking to the ancient senator from Kansas, and at her elbow, nodding occasionally at something his sister said, stood Quincy, that good-for-nothing whiner the senator had tolerated only because he’d felt sorry for him.

  His stomach was roiling, but the cramps had lessened a bit. He nabbed a glass of carbonated water from a waiter’s tray and sipped it. Maybe it would help settle his stomach, that’s what his mother had always preached. He saw his boss, Senator Jankel, all earnest, bending to eye another congressman’s wife, the old fool.

  Dammit, he couldn’t think, his belly was on fire.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Savich saw a man out of the corner of his eye, a small man, dressed in a waiter’s uniform, duck behind a grouping of black-gowned women and tuxedoed men.

  Savich moved quickly and, he hoped, discreetly. But he wasn’t as fast as Jack, who already had the man’s arm and was pulling him toward the kitchen.

  Good. Jack would get it sorted out.

  The evening rolled on. A distinguished man Savich recognized but couldn’t place, wearing a black bespoke tux that disguised his paunch, stepped onto the dais to stand behind the podium. He adjusted the microphone and greeted the guests, and announced dinner. Everyone migrated to their tables, and for three minutes Savich couldn’t see anyone clearly in the crowd. Ah, there was Director Mueller. He had Rachael’s arm and was leading her to a table at the front of the room where he sat on her right. Jack was to be seated on her left, only he wasn’t there.

  What was happening in the kitchen?

  Savich was at the point of heading back there when Jack came through the swinging dark-paneled doors, straightening his tux as he made his way to his table. He spoke briefly to Director Mueller and eased in beside Rachael.

  Savich and Sherlock stood for a moment by the doors to the large, dark-paneled nineteenth-century gentlemen’s club, which turned coed in the late fifties. Interesting how it still retained the original smell of countless cigars puffed inside its walls over the decades, sort of sweet and old, like lace in an antique trunk.

  Savich sat at one of the front tables with Laurel, Quincy, and Stefanos, four couples separating them, Sherlock at one of the back tables with Greg Nichols. Jimmy Maitland, to cover all the bases, sat with Brady Cullifer.

  Savich listened to the rock-hard political conversations going on around him and wondered when the rubber chicken would make its appearance. He wondered how they would rubberize his vegetarian dish.

  To his surprise, he was served spinach lasagna, a tossed salad, and green beans dotted with pearl onions, all delicious. For the predators, they brought out what looked like a Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings.

  A gentleman at the microphone announced that Thanksgiving was Senator Abbott’s favorite meal of the year. There was appreciative laughter. And more laughter when he announced there would be gelato for dessert, because pear tart-lets prepared for more than two hundred people never made it to the table tasting quite like fruit.

  Forty-five minutes later, the vice president walked to the podium and adjusted the microphone upward. He spoke of his long friendship with John James Abbott, of his major legislation and his ability to work with both sides of the aisle, no matter the party in power. There was a low buzz of conversation about that statement until the vice president managed to get off a couple of old golf jokes, then turned it over to a senator from Missouri. It went on from there, each speaker with an amusing or touching anecdote about Senator Abbott.

  When the crowd was feeling no pain at all, what with the waitstaff serving the hard stuff as well as rivers of wine, the vice president said, “I would like to introduce all of you to Jimmy’s daughter. As you know, he didn’t know she existed until she knocked on his door. In the last six weeks of his life, his happiness shone like a beacon. He once said to me she was the daughter of his heart. Many of you have had the opportunity to speak to Rachael this evening, to experience her kindness, her sense of humor, and her charm, doubtless inherited from her father. I give you Ms. Rachael Abbott.” He stepped forward to hug her when she gained the dais.

  I’m still alive. The turkey was good, the cranberry sauce homemade and delicious, better yet, no one has tried to get near me with a knife. No one has tried to lure me to the men’s room.

  She looked out over the room at the men and women who ruled the world. She knew her mascara had smudged a bit because she’d cried at some of the stories told by her father’s colleagues.

  She looked at older faces, lived-in faces, faces that held both knowledge and secrets, and at that moment held a good deal of benevolence. And she saw clearly their sense of self-satisfaction; it was tangible, seemed to fill the air.

  The lights were dim, the scents of discreet perfume mixed with the rich smells of the Thanksgiving dinner.

  She caught Greg Nichols’s eye, cocked her head at him, gave him a tentative smile. Strange, he looked frozen, and more than that—he didn’t look right.

  She said into the microphone, “I only knew my father for six weeks before he was killed. As you know, his death was originally ruled an accident. Now there are very real questions about that. However, tonight we are here to talk about the senator’s life.” There was a faint stirring in the group until she continued.

  Greg Nichols took another sip of sparkling water, eyed the nearly empty bottle of Tums. All his staffers were looking at him like he was going to explode. Agent Sherlock had spoken to him during the long dinner, asked him repeatedly if he was all right. Upset stomach, he’d told her, nothing more, just an upset stomach from something he ate. And he’d give her a weak smile, say he was feeling better.

  It had to get better, didn’t it? Food poisoning lasted just a few hours, didn’t it? He remembered the potato salad he’d eaten once as a teenager that had left him moaning on the bathroom floor, puking up his guts for eight hours. Then it was over. Would this be over soon? Dammit, he hadn’t eaten that much of the damned cioppino. A violent cramp slashed through him again, doubled him up. He gasped with the force of it. It kept getting worse until he thought he was going to die. There was no hiding anything now. He heard voices but didn’t recognize any words, he was too deep in the pain. He wasn’t about to puke in front of United States senators. He lurched to his feet, groaning, holding himself, and ran toward the door.

  “Mr. Nichols, wait!”

  It was Agent Sherlock, but he didn’t acknowledge her, he couldn’t, everything in him was focused on the god-awful pain ripping and tearing through his belly.

  He heard Rachael say in a loud voice, sounding strangely far away and deep, like from the bottom of a well, “Senator Robertson spoke about his ability to nudge opposing sides into compromise, his ability to persuade without backroom bloodshed . . .”

  People were coming at him, men in dark suits, FBI, Secret Service, his friends, but it didn’t matter. He was going to vomit, he was going to—

  The lights seemed to go out around him, turning the huge room black as a pit.

  He stumbled and went down.

  He knew me
n were leaning over him, touching him, speaking to him, but he was caught in the agony and couldn’t say anything, could only groan, tears running down his face, and he knew there was blood flowing out of his body, and it was dark, so very dark. Was the dark on the inside or the outside? Why was someone yelling?

  He lurched up as blood gushed out of his twisting mouth, the tears streaming from his eyes tinted red, two snakes of blood running out of his nose.

  Sherlock yelled, “Dillon! Come here!”

  Savich saw Secret Service agents surround the vice president and chivy him back against a wall. Four FBI agents converged on Rachael at the podium. There were more agents and a dozen other people knotted together. Something was very wrong.

  He shoved his way through and looked down to see Greg Nichols lying on his side on the floor, blood trickling from his open mouth. There was blood everywhere. He was soaked with it. Sherlock was on her knees beside him.

  “The EMTs should be here soon. He’s very bad, Dillon. All this blood. I knew something was wrong with him, I knew it.”

  “We thought he was up to no good,” a Secret Service agent said, straightening over Nichols. “But no, this guy’s very sick.”

  “I’m guessing poison,” Savich said. “He’s drenched in blood. What else would it be?”

  A Secret Service agent said, “Yeah, you’re right, sounds like coumarin, rat poison.”

  “Yeah, probably,” Savich said, and felt for Nichols’s pulse.

  Sherlock rose to look at Lindsay Culley, Nichols’s secretary. She was wringing her hands, her face as white as Savich’s shirt. “I told him not to eat the cioppino, because there’d be a big meal tonight, but he did, only a few bites. It must have been bad. Really, he didn’t eat all that much. I thought he was better, he kept saying he was fine.”