Claxson was a fast touch typist. He rattled through a paragraph of text while Lucas, Bob, and Rae were settling into their chairs. He checked the screen, touching it with the tip of an index finger, then hit two keys, and the text vanished. He turned, crossed his hands on his desk, and said, “Marshals, what can I do for you?”
Claxson resembled a character actor that Lucas had seen in any number of movies: thin, balding, with quarter-sized freckles spotting his shiny scalp, but with a soft face rather than one with athletic contours. He wore rimless glasses, a gray suit, white shirt, and a light blue tie with stars on it.
Lucas: “Did you fly your personal plane to Omaha two weeks ago, with James Ritter, John McCoy, and Kerry Moore on board?”
Claxson lifted his hands. “I might as well lay out the rules right now. I’m aware that you went after one of our employees,Jim Ritter, yesterday afternoon, some ridiculous accusation that he was involved in an attempted assassination of Senator Porter Smalls. I spoke to our company lawyer. We take care of our personnel, and he will be representing Jim if you have any more questions. Our attorney has also advised me simply not to answer any questions that might... feed your conspiracy theories. Yes, I flew to Omaha. I was there for a week of business, more or less. I fly my own plane, and there was nobody else on board. I won’t reveal the nature of the business because that’s a private matter that would possibly reveal classified military information. So, I don’t believe we have anything more to talk about.”
“We understand that John McCoy is not here in the building, but Kerry Moore may be. We need to talk to Mr. Moore,” Lucas said.
“He’s here, you can speak to him, but he’s taken advice from the same attorney that I have. He won’t have anything to say,” Claxson said. He looked out the door of his office, and said, “Here’s Kerry now.”
Kerry Moore, probably thirty-five years old, was a muscular man with short-cropped hair in what seemed to be a favored Washington paramilitary uniform: tan cargo pants, light-colored boots, and a light-colored long-sleeved pullover shirt. He nodded at Claxson, and said, “You rang?”
Claxson waved in the direction of the marshals. “These are the marshals Jim told us about.”
Moore nodded at them, and said, “Well, Rick Brown told me that talking about anything might bring trouble, so I guess I don’t want to talk with you. Unless there’s an attorney in the room.”
“Rick is our attorney,” Claxson said to Lucas.
Speaking to Moore, Rae began, “You don’t have anything to worry about—”
“Honey, you gotta know that’s bullshit,” Moore said. “You guys go on one of these snipe hunts and it winds up on CNN, where they’re pulling apart every word looking for every possible meaning. The next thing you know, you got a noose around your neck and cameras chasing you down the street. If you want me to talk, we’re gonna need a lawyer in the room.”
“So you’re not unwilling to talk,” Bob said.
Moore considered, and said, “Not entirely unwilling, but you gotta know Rick Brown. He’s going to say no as soon as you open your mouth.”
Lucas looked at the two of them, and said, “Okay. Dead end, then. But I’ll tell you guys, this isn’t the end of it. You tried to kill a U.S. senator, and you murdered two people—”
“No! No! Did not!” Claxson said, slapping his desk. “I absolutely reject any such notion. You say one word about it in public, we will sue everybody in sight. Our livelihood depends on our reputation, and if you begin slandering us with that... We did not have anything to do with any of that.”
Lucas said, “We’ll see. In the meantime, I’ll tell you that we haven’t made any ‘ridiculous accusations’ against Ritter—those were the words you used. I will tell you that we have substantial evidence that he was involved in the assassination attempt. We believe we know why; we believe we know the others involved. We have a bit of lab evidence we’re waiting to get back and then we’ll be here with an arrest warrant.”
“Fuck you,” Claxson said.
—
LUCAS, RAE, AND BOBstood up to go. Bob nodded at the pistols on the desk, and asked Claxson, “Are those weapons loaded?”
Claxson snarled at him: “Of course they are. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be weapons, they’d be paperweights.”
They took the elevator down, and Rae said to Lucas, “That was embarrassing. They did everything but kick us in the ass. But you don’t look all that unhappy.”
“I’m not. All we’ve got is evidence against Ritter and he’s not the guy we want,” Lucas said. “We want to go up from there, and now we’ve put a skunk in with the chickens. One way or another, they’ll react. Oh—we need to put a hold on their passports, in case one of them decides to run for it.”
“Your man Forte should be able to handle that,” Bob said.
“We wait for lab results? What do we do while we’re waiting?” Rae asked, as they got out of the elevator. “Play pinochle?”
Lucas said, “Bob’s a camera freak, and you like art, so Bob can go take pictures, and you can go over to the National Gallery and look at art. But keep your phone handy.”
“We did most of that while you were gone,” Rae said. “What are you going to do?”
“I’ve got a fitting with my tailor,” Lucas said.
Bob and Rae both stopped walking to peer at him, and Rae said, “You’re joking, right?”
“No, I’m not. We’ve got some downtime, so it seems like a reasonable thing to do,” Lucas said.
