We Know

I closed my eyes, breathing the sensation swirl of paranoia-the phantom smells of English Leather and too-strong coffee, Frank sunk in his chair, that grainy Zapruder footage playing across his impassive face. Had Frank damned himself with a thousand small decisions?

An overheard message pointing to Firebird. An agent showing up at my condo to urge me onto the phone with the president. Frank and Charlie calling each other late at night just before Frank's murder. The Voice in the Dark, spinning tales of extortion. The facts were colorful, and they fell into different patterns depending on which way I twisted the kaleidoscope. There were more variables than I could pin down. So, of course, I called Induma.

She picked up after a few rings, her voice rough from sleep. "Yuh?"

"Hi. Sorry. I..

"What? Nick?"

"I need your help."

"Okay. I'm here alone."

"Alejandro's not spending the night?" I regretted asking the minute it left my mouth. Between Kim Kendall's deception, braining Callie's husband, and my latest round of dirty hypotheses, I was irritable, out of sorts. I made a fist, pressed my knuckles to the wall.

But she answered evenly. "No. He's out clubbing. With club people. You know how I like club people. Now what's going on?"

I'd already called her, after I'd left Callie's, to give her Charlie's possible last names, but she'd been tied up and couldn't talk at length. So now I shorthanded everything that had happened since I'd seen her last and the theory I'd managed to work out about Charlie's extorting Caruthers to get money for his son. Then I asked if she'd dug anything up on Wydell and Sever.

"Just that they've both been in the L.A. office for years," she said. "Wydell for six, Sever for five."

"You couldn't find out which protection details they were on before that?"

"I'm an open-source-software geek with a few police connections through the crime lab, but I can't do everything. I've called in a handful of favors, but what you're asking for is too sensitive, Nick, for obvious reasons. It's not like they list this stuff online."

"Did you find out whether the Service was at the Culver City house with LAPD for the shoot-out?"

"I couldn't. That operation would've been run through LAPD's counterterrorism unit, which is as close to airtight as it gets." She sensed my frustration and said, "Look, I don't have to tell you, this is all mirrors and shadows. Given that you're risking your ass, it's probably worth asking: Are you willing to pursue this even if it proves that Frank was dirty?"

"Frank could've been killed for not going along," I said, a bit too quickly. She let the silence work on me. It made a more effective argument than I had. I thought of the Voice, coming at me out of the darkness, asking if I knew what it meant to owe someone after he was dead.

"That's not an answer," she said.

I pressed my teeth into my lower lip until I felt the sting. "I have to know what happened. Whichever way it goes. I have to know what got Frank killed."

"He's dead. It's not like he has a name to clear." Induma waited out the pause. "Maybe it's time to start taking care of people who are alive."

She didn't often get judgmental. I stood quietly, thinking of Callie and what this could do to her if it proved to be as ugly as I feared.

Induma asked, "If he was dirty, would that change who he was to you when you were a kid?"

"It's who he is to me now. That didn't die on the living-room floor. So maybe you're right. Maybe this isn't just about Frank. Maybe he made his own goddamned bed. But he wasn't the only one affected by his choices. And if all that went down for no good reason, or worse. .."

We were silent for a while, together. "Okay," she said softly. "I spent a good amount of time plowing through databases after you called earlier. I can't get clearance for a lot of them, obviously, but I'm strong on financials." An uncharacteristic hesitation. "I checked federal pension records, and I can't find a Charlie Jackson or Johnson in the Secret Service back then. In fact, there were only three Charlies and Charleses and Chucks even in the Service in a two-year span around Frank's death. Two were black guys, and the third was fifty-two years old then."

"What does that mean?"

"Look, this kind of search? Where I have access to a federal pension database? If I can't find him in there, the guy doesn't exist."

"I saw him."

"I'm sure he told you he was Charlie-"

"My mother met him. He had a tattoo. The mouth. Not a face you forget. He exists. I have a picture of him."

"Now you tell me you've got a picture?"

"That helps?"

"Of course. I can take a run with some facial-recognition software, see if it picks anything up on the other California and federal law-enforcement pension databases. It's not a lock, but it'll help the search criteria. I'll come pick it up."

"It's not safe for you to come here."