Day 11, Word Count: c. 13,110

Read on faithful friends:

Chapter Fourteen

By the time Robin got into the apartment, showered, dressed, and headed back down to the lobby, it was already quarter past six. She was supposed to have been downstairs forty-five minutes earlier. She knew that even though tonight’s dinner was supposed to be about her, it would soon become another night of her being chastised by her date.

This date, however, was someone she could tolerate a chastising from. He was rich, powerful, handsome, and he gave her pretty much whatever she wanted. Not that she ever asked fro much. She wasn’t playing this out to get things. She’d earn that on her own. This was more than that.

She supposed that there was a part of her that loved him. Maybe. What this really was, though – what he really was to her – was a key. He opened doors for her that she could never walk through on her own. Not while she was a nighttime word processor at a medium-sized midtown firm. Hell, if she had gotten the job with Zero, she might be having a totally different kind of evening and wouldn’t all be celebratory.

But she hadn’t quite succeeded on that front, had she? That had been one door (one of many if she allowed herself a little credit) that she had unlocked on her own. Through sheer force of will, she had kicked that motherfucking door in.

Getting in, however, wasn’t the end all, be all. She’d learn that lesson this morning at about 11:30 am. And now, here she was. Riding down the elevator in an apartment building where her lover had rented a two-bedroom under an assumed name, just so he could have an “illicit affair” with an office girl.

Robin knew she was more than just an office girl. She knew that “Roger” knew that as well (he’d picked the name from the phone book one night after they had had fantastic sex in the Plaza’s second best suite; the name had stuck as their personal pet name for each other.) Robin knew, in fact, that Roger was much more interested in her mind than her body. Most of the time. And, that was the power she held over him. She wasn’t some cheap gold-digging whore. They were both getting something out of this relationship and Roger knew it just as well as she did.

They’d once had a conversation about that very thing. Robin had told Roger that she was dating him and putting up with the goddamn secrecy because she expected him to give her what she wanted. At first he’d looked at her with such fear that she almost laughed, but she knew that if she did that the whole thing would be over. So she’d barreled on without giving him a chance to respond.

Robin told him that what she wanted wasn’t Cartier, Prada, or cold hard cash. What she wanted was everything that a simple girl from Long Island couldn’t get without the right connections. He’d taken a sip of his very expensive cabernet and then looked around the dark back room of the restaurant they were in. After nearly a minute, and just as Robin was about to get up and leave, thinking that she’d blown it, he turned to her and smiled.

“You’ve never been simple,” he said. And that had been the night that everything changed for the two of them.

They talked until the sun came up and by the end of that long night Robin knew things about Roger that she never could have imagined. Things that she knew he’d told only to her. And right there, right then, she knew that she was either very lucky to be where she was, or in the most dangerous position a woman her age could be in.

Now, walking through the lobby of their hideaway in the middle of the city, wearing a new dress and seven hundred dollar shoes, Robin knew she’d been smart to stick. Sticking was the thing she did best. Because when you bail, her dad (a great surfer and philosopher in his own right) told her, you missed the ride.

And oh what a ride Roger had been.

Chapter Fifteen

McGruder and Garcia were sitting in the middle of her West Side apartment. Two floor-to-ceiling windows opened the apartment to a grand view of the Hudson River below them. McGruder was finishing off his third cup of coffee since going to the diner just off campus from Columbia. Professor Garcia was sitting across from him on the wide couch, her face buried in her hands. Her chestnut brown hair fell in curls and ribbons around her shoulders and forearms.

“Well, you got me back to my apartment, Terry,” she said as she raised her head. “Now spill. Tell me everything you know about this family and their connection to the scholarship scandal. And to my husband.”

McGruder was a little surprised at how much it stung that she said husband and not ex-husband. All he said, though, was “It’s Family. Capital f.”

“Fine, Family,” Jenny said dramatically. “Who are they?”

“Well, that’s probably the first of many questions about them that I can’t answer,” McGruder responded. “There are a lot of them first of all, and some of the higher ups are actually out in the open about some of the activities that the sponsor and fund. Like a townhouse in D.C. that a few conservative Heartland congressmen and senators use as a home whenever they are in the Capital for congressional business.”

“Okay, I think I have heard something about, actually,” she said. She was leaning forward now, more involved in the conversation. McGruder was trying not to let himself feel how he wanted to. This was how it had been at the beginning of their relationship when he was still just questioning Jenny as any other expert. But he repressed that, because he knew that things now were definitely not going to progress as they had three years ago. “I’ve still never heard this Family name, but I definitely read an article in Vanity Fair or something about Christian Right congressmen sharing a home in D.C. to keep themselves together and share common values or some shit.”

“Right, that’s exactly the idea that they putout to the media and their constituents. That they’re there just to stay out of trouble, be true to their wives and kids, and all that other moral value gobblydegook they spew,” McGruder continued. He paused to finish his coffee and set the empty mug on the coffee table.

“Jesus, still a fucking slob, McGruder,” Jenny said, with the beginning of a smile creasing one corner of her mouth. “Ever hear of a coaster?”

“Ever hear of washing your mouth out with soap,” he responded. “You talk like a sailor who just got dropped back into the world from a long tour of duty.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not allowed to swear in class anymore, because one of my students complained to the student council about it. So whenever I’m out of class I tend to make up for it. In spades.”

“You serious?” McGruder asked.

“Absolutely. PC world, Terry, where the fuck’ve you been,” she snarled.

“At the goddamn New York Union-Dispatch. End of the journalism world.”

“Really,” she said, all the humor had left her voice. “You’re writing for the Dispatch?”

“Don’t sound so enthused for me, Jen,” he said, trying to bite back the venom in his voice and failing miserably. “It’s better than the fucking weeklies.”

“Not much,” she said, but so soft McGruder wasn’t sure she actually said it. “Refill on that coffee?”

Grateful for the change of subject, he answered “Maybe something stronger?”

“I think I still have a bottle of Maker’s Mark in the cabinet somewhere. Let me check.”

And with that Jenny left the room and McGruder. He sighed deep, pissed that he’d let the misery show through. Things had been going better than he could have hoped for with Jen. He’d never let himself believe that she would even talk to him, but he shouldn’t have given her so little credit. Jen was a good person. About a thousand times better than him, so he should have known that predicting how she was going to act by comparing to what he would have done in the same situation was an unworthy analysis. He was just glad she was still listening.

Jenny returned with two juice glasses filled with ice and layered with the golden brown bourbon.

“Nostrovya,” she said and knocked back half of her glass’s contents.

“Polish toasts from a Black Mexican?” McGruder said after he took his own healthy drag from the glass. Jenny had brought the bottle with her and he helped himself to it, in order to top off his glass.

“Still a fucking racsist,” Jenny said. But the biggest smile of the night crossed her face and McGruder was glad for it. “So go on, the Family. They have a public face, sounds creepy, but far from sinister. I assume you’re gonna tell me they have a dark side?”

“Right, about as dark as Vader’s Empire.”

“Star Wars reference?” she asked with a scowl. “Still a geek too, I see. . .”

“Yeah, well, times change, I don’t.”

“So what diabolical schemes does this Family Empire have in mind?” she asked.

“First of all, the public head of the Family – who are rarely heard from anyway – are nothing more than figureheads. From what I’ve learned, there is a council of ten men that run the whole operation,” McGruder went on. “And when I say operation, I mean in the criminal organization sense. These guys are like the Holy Roller version of the Syndicate. They have their hands in every pie from narcotics to weapons to immigrant slave labor. And, of course, politics.

“These guys started out like the mob and unions. They were organizing all of these political action groups out in the Midwest and directing their actions to help shutdown politicos they didn’t like. Things that weren’t as big as Operation Rescue’s Summer of Mercy, but just as scary. They’d send two or three hundred people into a school on a Monday morning and demand that the 10th grade science teacher cease and desist on that week’s lesson of evolution.

“When they saw how successful they were on the protest side – actually using the same tactics that the hippies were using in the 60s – they saw that they could apply the same principles to getting their people elected. Obviously, they knew they couldn’t openly front these guys, because they would never get the moderates’ votes, and they needed those votes to win. So they scaled back their presence, but increased their influence.

“And as they started winning seats and had more and more state government officials and elected officials in their back pocket, they saw the power they had to wheel. The favors were called in and the wheels, having already been greased with the keys to senate seats, started to turn. The Family had everyone they needed in place to move whatever they wanted to without any eyes looking their way.”

“You’re talking about the perfect criminal organization,” Jenny said. “One that has no worries about cops, since they run the people who run the cops.”

“Exactly.”

“But if these dudes are such Bible freaks, so dedicated to the glory of the Lord, what are they doing crimes for?” she asked.

“They it was told to me?” McGruder said. “These guys see it like Malcolm X. By any means necessary, they are going to put in place the things that will make this country, and eventually the world, right with God. Their God. And so, selling drugs to a bunch of liberal intellectuals and gun-toting ghetto kids means they’ll have that many fewer opponents when their bought and paid for senators and congressmen start messing with civil liberties and the laws of the land.”

“Jesus.”

“Exactly.”

McGruder paused for a minute. He could see that Jenny was twisting all he’d said through her head. He had a lot more to say, but for now, he had to let her get this processed. He finished off the drink and poured himself another. Gotta stop with this one, or I’ll end up on the couch for the night. Then he thought, Wouldn’t that be horrible?

“All right, so the Family is much closer to Cosa Nostra than you let on, but in a whole different way. Kinda-sorta. . . whatever. How’s this tie-in to Councilman Sanders and Webster,” she asked. Before McGruder could even start his answer, she went on. “If they were backing the Sunshine scholarships, why would they also have their people embezzle them? Why not just keep the money and screw the whole lot of the inner city kids who got the awards?”

“I didn’t get it at first either,” McGruder said. “Especially since all the people involved in taking the money illegally were either loyal directly to the Family or to some group controlled by the Family. But this is where that little plan was brilliant. The money they were using to dump into the scholarships was money they were making from other illegal operations they had going – drugs, guns, whatever. So putting the money in the scholarships worked as phase one of the laundering operation. Think of it as the washing part.”

“Okay, go on.”

“Right. So phase two of the laundering was drying the money and this is where the plan is brilliant. Whoever this council is have gotten a lot of minorities and otherwise moderate Republicans to take up their cause. The political consequences of doing otherwise would be devastating. But the reason they had some of these people on board, was just to discredit them.”

“What do you mean? Why let them into the organization and see the men behind the curtain, if they were just going to screw them later. Wouldn’t that have left the Family members wide open to exposure?”

“Well, yes and no. Here’s the thing: men like Councilman Sanders were in deep. They knew about the drugs and everything else. They were upper echelon. But all along, the Family moved Sanders like a chess piece. They knew his proclivities for young girls, they knew he was a greedy bastard. So they put him into play, saying they need this money to be cleaned up – do it through scholarships sponsored by one of our conservative shell companies and give the money to inner-city minorities so the world sees a bunch of evangelical Christians from the Midwest giving money out for those ‘poor black chil’un.’

“It’s good PR and we put our money through the washing machine. But knowing Sanders, they know that they have a liability on their hands, so when push comes to shove and some interfering reporter starts poking his nose in the wrong mugs, they put phase two into operation. Let Sanders and the rest of the mid-level bureaucrats – most of them minorities, by the way – take the rap. We get the money back anyway in restitution and the media goes nuts over this parasites taking money from not only hard-working kids, but the hard-working Midwestern conservatives who are only trying to make a better world.”

McGruder took a sip of his drink to let Jenny digest that last part of it. He knew what she was going to ask next, but he had to let it come from her. Let her get to the question, so that when he gave her the answer, it wouldn’t be as hard to swallow.
“But . . .” she started and paused.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“If the Family was planning on letting Sanders and the others take the fall, weren’t they worried that one of them would rat them out?” She asked in a rush. Seeing the very thing that McGruder has seen the day before and struggled over. Struggled hard over, until his call from Moynihan. “Why the hell would Sanders off himself?”

“Good girl,” McGruder said. “You’ve still got a cop’s instinct, but with double the brains.”

“Thanks. Now tell me what you’ve left out.”

“The others – all the bureaucrats, the finance officers – they got involved through Sanders and therefore didn’t know about the Family’s involvement. Sanders was the only one connected directly to the family that would have been prosecuted. So the rest of them weren’t a concern.

“But you’re right about the Councilman. Why kill yourself when you can plead out and offer up a much bigger fish. I’m sure he didn’t know everything that the Family was into, but he knew enough to take a walk.”

“Okay, so where’s the connect?” she asked, getting a little frustrated now. Not seeing it. McGruder knew the feeling.

“Remember Jimmy Congers?” he asked her.

“The fucking prick cop who talked to the media?” she spat out. “How could I forget after what . . . well you know.”

It had been Congers who had told her ex about the affair with McGruder. “Right. Well, Congers was the first one through the door the night of the raid. The night Sanders took one to the head.”

“And you’re friend died,” she said. She reached out and wrapped her hand around McGruder’s. He was surprised, but ever so thankful.

“Right, Harry. He was a good man,” McGruder finished his third drink and thought about a fourth, but decided it would be better to wait until this was finished for that one. “I got a call from another cop last night. It was late, a guy named Moynihan who’d been in the Two-Three with Harry back in the bad old days of the 70s. He’d come up with Harry and said he owed it to him to talk to me. I known Moynihan from my time at the Daily News, I’d rode along with him and we’d both talked about Harry.

“Anyway, Moynihan calls me in the middle of the night and says he’d taken down some skell was running girls down in the Meat Packing District. Real scum he’d had his eye on for a while. So, finally an undercover had gotten close to the guy and they took him down. He had two guns on him, a huge butcher’s knife, a pair of handcuffs, and a human ear in a cigar box.”

“Christ, Terry!” she said.

“Yeah. Well, Moynihan tells me they had suspected him of being involved in some missing person cases they had from the area, so the ear was a good indication they were right. He walked the guns through ballistics himself.

“Guess what he found?” he asked her. Fuck it, he thought and poured himself another glass before she could answer.

“I’ve got no fucking clue, McGruder, but what does this hav--” she started.

McGruder held his hand up in a stopping motion. He took a long pull from the glass. Coughed. “Did you know that the gun Sanders shot himself was standard police issue?”

“No.”

“Well, it was,” he said. “I bet you also don’t remember that that gun went missing a few days after the shooting. It didn’t really matter since he offed himself, they already confirmed the ballistics on it being the gun that killed him, and there was a decorated cop who swore a statement to those very facts.”

“Terry, I don--”

“Let me finish it,” he cut her off again. “One of guns that my friend Moynihan took off the pimp was the gun that killed Councilman Sanders.

“And when Moynihan pressed this scumbag for how he obtained such a notorious weapong, the piece of shit was more than happy to tell my cop friend. He said he bought it from a crooked cop he used to pay off in order to run his girls without interference.

“A cop named James Francis Congers,” McGruder said. He swallowed the rest of his drink and sighed deeply. It was good to get it out; to have said it all to someone who could understand it like he did. He was still knotted inside though. Nothing was going to change that. Rohmer was still dead and it was still his fault.

“Terry, I . . . I don’t,” the professor started.

“I don’t either,” McGruder finished.

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