The Step Between Page 2

  “That’s one of the questions I want answered before we commit, though the man could just have been letting the police do their jobs.”

  Jake snorted. “Rich people never just let the police do their jobs.”

  “You understand how these cases work, Jake. The police would have done all the right things, wouldn’t they? By the book? Push all the right buttons, look under all the right rocks?”

  “Oh, hell, yeah!” he said, rubbing his face again, and she could see him feeling the intensity of such an investigation. “After all, this girl was—still is, I hope—the only daughter of the richest man in D.C. Never mind that he’s also the biggest asshole in town and everybody hates his guts. Every cop in D.C. and close-in Maryland and Virginia joined in the hunt. So did the Bureau, which treated it as a kidnapping for a while, until it became clear that nobody took her. This case stayed open and active until a month ago.”

  “Poor little rich girl, huh?” C.A. mused as she studied, one after another, the photographs, black-and-whites and color, of the missing girl. “These are all current, aren’t they? Which suggests that father and daughter were close. And if that’s the case, why would she just walk away?”

  Jake frowned, stood, ambled over to her desk, and stretched out his hand for the photos. He scrutinized them and frowned some more. “I see a pretty girl who doesn’t smile enough. How do you get ‘close to her father’ out of these?”

  “Elementary, my dear Graham. Parents who are close to their children take pictures of them. My mother did and still does, especially when she thinks I’m not looking.”

  Jake slid the photographs back across the desk toward her and returned to his position on the couch. “Good point.”

  Carole Ann gazed again at the photographs of Annabelle Islington. “She’s a beauty, that’s for sure. And if she wasn’t kidnapped, then she made a conscious decision to disappear, and I’d really like to know why.” She returned the photographs to the folder and closed it. “I met Richard Islington once—”

  “Then you know why! The man’s a bona-fide jerk. Girl was smart, you know. Cum laude graduate from one of those Seven Sisters schools, and she was—is—very pretty, as you can tell from the photos. Brains and looks? Who needs millions?”

  “Well,” C.A. drawled, stretching out the word as if it had half a dozen syllables, “you should know.”

  He made a studied point of totally ignoring the comment and busied himself with unrolling and then rerolling the cuffs of his crisply starched white shirt. He still wasn’t looking at her when he said, “This case at least will let us get our money’s worth out of Petrocelli for a change.” Then he looked up and met her gaze and accurately assessed the degree of self-control involved in keeping her face in check. “You ain’t funny, C.A.,” he said.

  “But you are, Jake,” C.A. replied, throwing her head back and laughing. “You’re absolutely hilarious. Now. Are you ready to deal with this last case?”

  He continued to meet her gaze but something shifted in him. “I don’t like the way you said that.”

  “I don’t like this case.”

  He uncrossed his legs, leaned forward so that he sat on the edge of the sofa, and folded his hands on his knees. “What’s not to like?”

  Carole Ann opened the bottom folder but didn’t look at any of its pages, maintaining eye contact with Jake instead. “It gives me a bad feeling, Jake. Nothing specific. No warning sirens and red flags. Just . . . a general unease. I read the spreadsheets and the business plan and the capitalization plan and the marketing plan and the distribution plan and the sales figures, actual and projected. And it all feels like it was lifted from a textbook or a seminar. It doesn’t feel real, Jake—”

  He interrupted her and didn’t show any signs of being apologetic about it. “Well, it is real, C.A. I saw the place, saw the operation. A plant and a warehouse on five and a half acres in St. Michael’s County. A fleet of trucks and three shifts of workers—”

  “Hold it, Jake! Of course you did. I know you did a site visit and inspection. I’m not saying that OnShore Manufacturing itself isn’t real. I’m saying . . . listen to me carefully, Jake, please. The place that is OnShore Manufacturing seems to have been created to fit the documentation—”

  He finally exploded. “Goddammit, C.A.! That’s the most farfetched, stupidest thing I think I ever heard! Who in the hell would do such a thing? And why, for Christ’s sake? Why would whoever would do such a dumb-fuck thing, do it for us?”

  Carole Ann stood up, came from behind the desk, and began to pace. She needed to pace to think. “I don’t know. . . .”

  “What do you know, C.A.? For certain?”

  She gave the question several seconds to hang between them, time during which each of them was able to determine how far they were willing to push the other. “I know that I trust my instincts and my intuition.”

  He nodded. “I trust ’em, too. And I also trust my own and I’m asking that you do the same for me. I met the CEO of OnShore, spent time with him. I know a crook when I smell one, C.A. A con man, a thief, a liar, a killer, any kind of lowlife, and Harry Childress is not any of those things. I know a phony setup when I see one, and OnShore Manufacturing is real.”

  “And I know cooked books when I see them, Jake, and the OnShore documentation is cooked. I can’t tell you how many sets of backup and phony books I’ve studied, all of them good enough to be the real thing.”

  Carole Ann stopped pacing and stood before the wall of east-facing windows that gave her a magnificent view of the winter storm that was brewing, the one that the weather forecasters had been growing more hysterical about every day for almost a week. The sky, even as she watched, was turning from pale blue to gray to, off to the northeast, ominously dark gray, and the clouds were swirling above as furiously as were the leaves below. Were it not for the fact that the glass was triple-hung, glazed, and fronted with a newly developed industrial plastic, the windows would have shivered and rattled and allowed the frigid air to roar in. Winter had just arrived in Washington, courtesy of a fast-moving Arctic air mass.

  “We need this job, C.A. It’s a really important one. It’ll put us on the map as experienced in the area of corporate takeovers, and that’s a credential we need in order to compete with the big boys.”

  She nodded. “I know that, Jake,” she said quietly.

  “And we have the first shot at it, and I want it, but we’ve got to move on it and move quickly.”

  A key component of their partnership was that both of them had to agree to accept or reject a case. A key component of their friendship was a degree of mutual respect so intense as to almost guarantee that neither one would refuse the other in any but the most extraordinary of circumstances.

  “Industrial espionage and sabotage and corporate takeovers will be the bread and butter for outfits like ours in the new century, C.A.,” Jake said, rising from the sofa and walking to stand next to her at the window. “Companies spying on each other, stealing ingredients and product secrets, sabotaging assembly lines. And companies eating each other to make bigger and badder and greedier companies. That’s the way of the world. OnShore Manufacturing knows this. They’re a relatively small outfit. And the only thing they want is the opportunity to be safely ‘absorbed’ by a bigger fish, instead of being gobbled. And they want us to investigate the big fish that’s looking to eat them—Seaboard Shipping and Containers, it’s called. That’s all, C.A. It’s simple. They want us to confirm for them that Big Fish Seaboard is capable of taking the big bite. So, maybe they did gussy up the books a little to make themselves look more appealing. What’s the harm in that?”

  “None, I suppose,” she said slowly, “as long as we’re not working for Big Fish.”

  He smiled slightly and looked out, with her, at the weather. “Looks like the prognosticators were right about Ole Man Winter. But I sure hope they’re wrong about the snow. I don’t mind the cold, but I’m not ready for snow the first week in December. Hell, this i
s D.C., after all, not Denver.”

  At that moment a mixture of snow and freezing rain bombarded the window with a fury for several seconds before abating. “Looks like you’d better get ready,” Carole Ann said. “And me too, for that matter. I need to finish getting dressed and comb my hair and add a little color to my cheeks. I wouldn’t want the subterraneans to think ill of me, you know.”

  He looked at his watch and nodded. Then he looked at her. “I think they might like it if you showed up looking like one of them for a change. You know. Dressed down, as they say.”

  Carole Ann snorted, then gave him a pat on the shoulder signaling a release of the tension between them. “I’d show up looking like one of them every day if it would prevent me from thinking that they are some of the strangest people I’ve ever met!”

  “Careful, Counselor. That could be construed to be a statement of bias against that segment of the population which just happens to prefer computers to people,” he said in a very lawyer-like tone.

  “So, sue me,” she said, in a very un-lawyer-like tone. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: they’re very weird people, those computer types.”

  “They’re not all weird, C.A. Patty’s not that weird.”

  “All things are relative, Jake,” she said, thinking as they walked toward the office door that Patty Baker, aka Patty Bake, the section chief, really wasn’t as weird as some of her charges, though she, too, was a bit of an oddball.

  “Some people think lawyers are weird. Can you imagine?” Jake laughed as she lowered her eyelids and shot him an evil eye from the remaining slits. “So. Are you OK with the OnShore case, C.A.?”

  “I’m fine with it, Jake,” she said and opened the door for him and closed it behind him when he left. Still barefoot and bare-legged, she crossed the office to the narrow closet adjacent to her desk. First, she quickly removed from its hanger and slipped her arms into the charcoal gray sweater that completed the knit ensemble she wore; and then, still standing, first on one foot and then on the other, she carefully, though quickly and with practiced perfection, donned opaque black stockings, which provided immediate warmth.

  She straightened and faced the mirror mounted on the inside of the closet door. Running her fingers through her hair usually constituted combing it, but today she actually whipped out and employed comb and brush. Quickly and with a practiced hand, she applied eyeliner and shadow and mascara and blush. She would apply fresh lipstick after she ate the yogurt in her gym bag. She stepped, finally, into the black suede flats that she loved. One of the many aspects of the practice of law that she didn’t miss was the de rigueur uniform of power suit and high heels. She studied herself in the mirror.

  “You do look a tad severe for a meeting with the subterraneans,” she muttered to herself. Herself frowned a hint of rebuff, so she reached inside the closet toward a hanger and grabbed a brightly colored, hand-painted silk scarf, which she draped across her shoulders. “A bit better,” she told herself with a wry grin, as she realized that the black and gray knit suit was the equivalent of jeans and T-shirt given her former work attire.

  Then she realized that she saw reflected in the mirror the face of the corporate lawyer she had been for so many years: the bland, blank visage, devoid of emotion, that most often was described as “pleasant.” And she knew that her disagreement with Jake over the OnShore Manufacturing case was the reason for the face. Out of habit and practice she had, unwittingly, assumed it so as not to telegraph to Jake her real, true response to GGI’s involvement with whomever or whatever OnShore was. She wished she could have been more definitive, more substantive in her reservations and objections. She knew Jake Graham well enough to know that had she presented solid evidence to support her position, he’d have backed away from his. But she hadn’t because she couldn’t. Not without a considerable amount of time and work, and she didn’t know whether it would be worth the time it would take to uncook—to defrost, as she liked to say—OnShore’s books. Though she was certain that, given the time, she could prove her point.

  But that would be going behind Jake’s back. It would be meddling in his turf: OnShore was his case, as was the Diamond Associates insurance fraud case and the AU law school security survey; just as the missing Islington girl and the electronics warehouse surveillance were her cases. They consulted with each other, constantly and routinely, but they did not meddle in each other’s affairs.

  She faced the mirror again. The lawyer still gazed back at her. She tried to adjust her face, to rid it of its careful nonexpression. She failed and closed the closet door and concentrated on adjusting her attitude instead. She hadn’t gotten very far when a knock on the door interrupted her effort and the door swung open to admit Grace Graham with an armload of picture frames.

  Carole Ann hurried toward her, accepting half the burden and a half-hug and a warm kiss. “What are you and Jake fighting about now? All he did was growl when I passed him in the hall.”

  Carole Ann laughed and felt herself relax. She knew that Grace had no expectation of an answer, that her question merely underscored how well she knew her husband, and how delighted she was that he’d found a partner—another partner—that he could trust well enough to display his true feelings. How delighted she was to be the wife of a man who ran his own business . . . a man whose business no longer was the business of murder.

  “Is it as cold as it looks out there?”

  Grace shivered. “I just heard on the radio that the temperature is dropping five degrees every hour. I’m going to get these pictures hung as fast as I can and get out of here! I wanted you to see them first, though.” And she spread out the collection of turn-of-the-century photographs that would create a gallery effect in the long front hallway of the GGI building.

  Grace took care of GGI, the physical entity. She didn’t meddle. She wasn’t a nuisance. She didn’t offend with an air of misplaced proprietary behavior, as did the spouses of some business owners. Grace merely was a warm and loving presence. She visited once a week, though nobody could say for certain on which day, and she brought fruit and flowers and left them in places all over the building, for everyone to enjoy; she sent cards for births and deaths and weddings; she spoke to each employee she encountered, calling him or her by name. She placed a television and a stereo system and a well-stocked bookshelf in the employee lounge, and every month or so, she replaced the books and magazines. There circulated a friendly rumor that GGI really meant “Grace Graham Is.”

  “These are beautiful, Grace.” Carole Ann felt herself transported as she studied the black-and-white and occasional sepia images of a Washington that now existed only in memory.

  “I’m going to hang this one in Jake’s office,” she said, proffering a gilt-framed portrait of a stern-faced man in what was obviously a policeman’s uniform. “The first Black policeman in D.C.,” she said, her voice full of emotion and pride.

  “Jake will love it,” Carole Ann said, and knew that he would. In the deepest places of his being, Jake Graham always would be a cop.

  “And this one is for you.”

  Carole Ann’s eyes widened in surprise, then filled in gratitude, as Grace offered her an oblong frame, approximately twenty inches in length and half that wide. Matted within were three photographs. “The Howard University women’s track team, tennis team, and swim club,” Grace said, almost reverently. “From the 1920s,” she added, as Carole Ann studied the serious young faces of women who now, if not dead, would be nearing a century old. Who would, for her, forever be young and strong and fit.

  “I . . . I’m . . . Grace, I don’t know what to say!”

  Grace smiled and hugged her. “I’m glad you like it. Now, I’ll get out of your hair—I know you have a meeting—and I’ll go hang these.”

  “I think for once the rumor mill got it right,” Carole Ann stage-whispered to Grace as she held open the door for her. “GGI really does mean ‘Grace Graham Is.’ What would we do without you?”

  “I
hope you don’t ever have to find out,” the older woman responded with a sly grin, then bustled down the hallway leaving behind a gentle whiff of Chanel No. 5 and enough warmth to alter the climate.

  2

  GIBSON, GRAHAM INTERNATIONAL WAS HOUSED in a renovated warehouse in an unfashionable section of northeast Washington, D.C., that had been, before the riots following the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968, a prosperous zone of light manufacturing, warehouses, and trucking concerns. The area’s main thoroughfare then and now was New York Avenue, which, before there were interstate highways, was the route to Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, New York, and other places of trade on the Eastern seaboard. Going in the opposite direction and following New York Avenue south through downtown D.C., one eventually would have found oneself in Richmond and headed toward the Carolinas.

  Washington’s short-lived tenure as a mini industrial center came about not because it was the U.S. capital, but because Northeastern concerns that desired a base of operations in the South considered Washington only marginally Southern; and Southeastern industry that required Northern connections thought of D.C. as barely North, being, as it was, next door to Virginia, the seat of the Confederacy. The 1968 riots decimated what was the commercial hub of northeast D.C.—H Street—leaving block after block of burned-out shells. The sight of flames and the scent of smoke wafted quickly toward the industrial hub—New York Avenue; it wasn’t long before the warehouses were as empty and hollow as if they, too, had been torched.

  Not all of northeast D.C. tucked tail and ran in the face of hard times. The Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and the Catholic University of America and Gallaudet University, the only full-fledged university for the hearing impaired in the world, and Providence Hospital have all lived and thrived for generations in northeast D.C. But with the factories and plants long closed, and the people who worked in them long gone, most of the area these days hobbles along, at best, a gentrified section near CU called Brook-land, adjacent to the subway stop, being the exception. Most of the neat, quiet row houses are inhabited by residents of long standing, neat and quiet and often hobbled themselves. They are predominately Black, the Irish and Italians and Greeks as long gone as the factories where they once worked.