“Then what are you going to give him?”
Chase hesitated, said, “Bunch is looking for immunity for any possible crimes deriving from involvement with employment with Heracles, Flamma, or Inter-Core Ballistics.”
“Well, Jesus, Jane, that could mean involvement in the attack on Senator Smalls and all the subsequent murders,” Lucas said.“You know how Smalls is going to take that? He’ll go on the Senate floor, and he’ll have a crucifix and nails with him, and you’ll be the one nailed to the cross.”
“Well, McCoy denies any involvement with the murders. Bunch says those can be attributed to Ritter and persons unknown. Frankly, Lucas, with what you’ve developed so far, no prosecutor I know would try McCoy for murder. Claxson won’t admit to knowing anything about the murders; Ritter’s dead; and Moore—we don’t know, he may be dead as well.”
“So McCoy walks?”
“He won’t walk. We’ve got him on the weapons stuff with or without any additional testimony. He’ll do time—we’re going to tell Bunch that we want between ten and fifteen years on the weapons charges. He won’t take that, but he’ll take five. McCoy’ll only get that if he hangs Claxson. Otherwise, we take him to trial and ask for fifteen.”
Lucas said, “Then you’ve got to go after Claxson hard. You’ve got to talk about a deal to implicate Parrish and Grant.”
“He won’t take a deal,” Chase said. “He’ll go to trial and hope to beat it. If he doesn’t, and can’t win on appeal, he’ll try to deal on the sentence. You’ve said it yourself—the only way he could implicate Grant would be to admit that he set up at least two murders, and maybe three. He won’t do that. It will be hard enough to get him on the weapons. He’ll try to drag in CIA and military operators for the defense, and they’ll resist on grounds of national security.”
“Ah, shit,” Lucas said. Chase waited him out, and Lucas finally asked, “What are you doing today? Other than arresting him.”
“The searches. You and your team are welcome to observe,” Chase said. “We’ll be at McCoy’s town house, and Heracles andClaxson’s office, grabbing files, and Claxson’s house. The warrants are in hand; we’ve got teams on the way. I’ll probably go to Claxson’s house to get a feel for what he’s like.”
“I’ll tell you what he’s like: he keeps two loaded automatic pistols on his office desk.”
“Doesn’t surprise me.”
“Remember what I said about Smalls and the crucifix.”
“It won’t be me that he goes after—it’s the attorney general who’ll be fronting this, and I doubt that Smalls would take her on.”
Lucas said, “Give me Claxson’s address.”
—
CLAXSON LIVEDoff the heavily wooded Kurtz Road in McLean, Virginia. The house was a stark, red-brick three-story structure that sat back on a large lot, ten or fifteen feet above street level. There was a two-door double-car garage at the end of the blacktopped driveway, and two stone pillars at the front door. Four SUVs crowded the driveway, and a man with the air of a junior FBI agent leaned against one of them, smoking a cigarette.
“‘Mistah Kurtz, he dead,’” Lucas quoted as he rolled by, looking for a place to park.
“I know that,” Rae said. “Heart of Darkness.I’m surprised you know it, being, you know, a hockey puck.”
“Actually, it’s from ‘The Hollow Men’ by T. S. Eliot,” Lucas said. “‘This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.’”
“Bullshit,” said Rae.“Heart of Darkness.”
“Nope, ‘Hollow Men.’”
“Jesus, now I got to look it up,” Bob said. He took his phone out and started typing with his thumbs. There wasn’t enough space to park in the driveway, so Lucas found a place a couple of hundred feet down the street where he could pull all four wheels off the pavement. As they got out of the truck, Bob said, “Ah, got it.”
“Who wins?” Rae asked.
“I do,” Lucas said. “I know the whole poem.”
“And I know the whole Joseph Conrad novel practically by heart,” Rae said.
Bob said, “You’re both right. Conrad wrote it, Eliot quoted it as the first line of his poem.”
“I was right first,” Rae said.
“Eliot’s poem is far better known,” Lucas said.
Bob said, “Shut the fuck up, both of you. We’re cops, not some literary, you know, fairies.”
