Twisted Prey (Lucas Davenport #28)(18)
“Okay.” She had made him smile.
“I’ve been thinking about that particular person, reading up on her,” Carter said. “She hates Porter like rat poison, of course, because Porter won’t keep his mouth shut about what happened in that election. If he keeps talking, he could queer her presidential ambitions. You could consider that a motive.”
“Yes.”
“About means. She’s on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and she has an aide who does nothing but committee work for her. He worked for the CIA for five or six years before he moved over to the Hill; he was in the Army before that; and he has contacts all over the intelligence community, both public and private. He is a pit viper of the first degree. A fixer, a sneak, maybe crazy. He would know people who’d take the job. Our particular person has all the money in the world to pay for it.”
“Motive, means, and, of course, with Porter out wandering around the backwoods with his friend from Minnesota, plenty of opportunity,” Lucas said. “I’ll need this guy’s name.”
“I’ll get you a whole file on him tomorrow,” Carter said.
Lucas said, “Don’t get killed before then.”
“I’ll try not to. But it’s Porter they want, not a humble farm girl from Tifton, Georgia.”
* * *
—
NEITHER OF THEM wanted a second drink, and Lucas walked Carter back to her apartment building. She lit up a thin, dark cigarillo with a stainless-steel Zippo, leaving a scent trail of cigar smoke and lighter fluid behind them.
As they walked, she said, “About that whole motive/means thing. What worries me is, the motive is there, but does it seem strong enough? To me, it doesn’t. She’s been quite good at fending off Porter. She’s had people talking about Porter being a little unbalanced, maybe senile. That has an effect, too, enough that I told Porter he ought to back off. He hasn’t, yet, but he will. I mean, he’s back in the Senate, so what’s the point?”
“Hate?”
“The thing about senators is, they learn when to cut their losses,” she said. “Porter knows that better than most. He’ll figure out that a knife in the back is better than hitting her with a ball-peen hammer. I mean, maybe she’s twisted enough to murder him or have somebody else do it, but I’m not happy about the motive. I’ll grant you the means, but the motive seems weak.”
“I’ll make a note,” Lucas said. “Need more motive.”
“Do that.” At the door to her building, she said, “I hope you’re as smart and mean as you obviously think you are—this is a different league here.”
Lucas smiled his wolverine smile, and said, “Another thing we’ll have to disagree about. I know people from Washington think that, but from the outside D.C. looks like a pile of shysters and hucksters and general-purpose hustlers. If you were warning me about New York, or L.A., I’d say okay. But Washington? Washington I can handle.”
“I hope you don’t learn otherwise,” Carter said, and went through the door.
Lucas walked back to the hotel, quietly whistling the opening riffs of J.J. Cale’s “Fancy Dancer.”
Washington, D.C.
He was going to kick ass and take names.
* * *
—
HE WOKE UP the next morning feeling less confident, having slept on what Carter had said. If Smalls and Whitehead had been attacked by professionals—and it certainly seemed that way—then there was a real danger. The killers were unlikely to go after a marshal because that would attract too much notice. They could go after Smalls, though, and if they gave up on subtlety . . .
It wasn’t that hard to shoot somebody in the back, he thought, as he shaved. Gangbangers did it all the time and walked away. Former SEALs, Delta, Rangers: all were thoroughly trained and inured to killing. America had somehow gotten itself in the position of creating thousands of efficient professional killers and, at the same time, had provided them with easy access to the weapons needed for the job: you could get a perfectly adequate Savage .30-06 at your local Walmart for less than four hundred dollars. His neighbor at the lake cabin had done that, and the rifle could make a minute-of-angle shot all day and all night.
* * *
—
HE’D GOTTEN OUT of the shower and was trying to decide between a pair of bright red Jockey shorts and a more subdued pair with horizontal green stripes when his phone rang. He picked it up, looked at the screen, clicked on, and said, “Hey, Rae.”
“Lucas, what are you doing?”
“I’m on a highly secret mission in Washington,” Lucas said. “If you were here, I’d tell you all about it. How’s Bob?”
Rae Givens laughed. “You know what the Stump is doing? Wind sprints. Honest to God, it’s like watching a tractor-trailer trying to drag race. But he’s good. Good to go.”
Rae and Bob Matees were marshals assigned to the Special Operations Group located in Louisiana. They’d been with Lucas as they chased a hard-core holdup man and multiple murderer across the face of Texas. Lucas had killed him in the town of Marfa, but not before Bob had been shot through both legs by an accomplice.
Lucas asked, “Good to go, but where’s he going?”