The Trojan Sea Page 20

  “We must play out this charade for those who are watching,” Rosalinda said. She kissed him full on the mouth, her tongue reaching for his. Her right hand caressed his crotch, waiting for his response. Nothing.

  “Please,” Marsten begged. “Don’t.”

  She slipped off his lap and knelt in front of him as she unzipped his fly. Her fingers caressed his flaccid penis, and she reached for his scrotum. Her eyes opened wide as she looked at him in surprise. Then she was back in his lap, her arms around his neck, hugging him. Her tears coursed down her cheek and onto his face. “Oh, my sweet, dear man. I’m so sorry. So sorry.” Their tears blended together, and slowly the horror of Eritrea slipped away, finally laid to rest by a young revolutionary.

  16

  Dallas

  It was after seven o’clock on Sunday evening when L.J. pulled up in front of the anonymous house in the midcity area. The front yard needed mowing, and the garage door was in need of paint. She double-checked the address before getting out. It was a world far away from her home in Highland Park, the house where she had grown up and still lived. This was a working-class community, a way of life totally beyond her experience. She had never existed from paycheck to paycheck and worried about making the next car payment or paying a hefty bill from an orthodontist for a child’s braces.

  She opened the back door of her big BMW and helped Duke out. The old dog licked her hand in gratitude, and she led him up the walk and rang the doorbell. Shugy Jenkins, Marsten’s prim secretary, answered almost immediately. “Miss Ellis,” she said, “whatever brings you here?” Nothing in her look or voice betrayed her true feelings.

  L.J. gave a little smile and motioned at Duke. “Lloyd is still gone, and the kennel called…” She took a deep breath. “He’s not doing well, and I remember you once saying your husband loved dogs.”

  The middle-aged woman threw open the screen door and knelt in front of the dog. She tenderly stroked his head. “You miss your master, don’t you? You’re a good old boy, aren’t you?” She glanced up at L.J. “Please come in. But you’ll have to forgive the mess; Billy hasn’t been well lately.” L.J. followed her inside and was assaulted by the smell of urine. A man lay in a La-Z-Boy recliner, his head back and his mouth open as drool dribbled down his jaw. “Billy had a stroke a year ago,” she explained. “Billy, look who’s here. It’s Duke, Mr. Marsten’s dog.”

  The man’s head turned, and L.J. saw the glint of recognition and happiness in his eyes. She took in the room. It was as clean and orderly as Shugy’s office outside Marsten’s corner suite. “Don’t you have a full-time caregiver?” L.J. asked.

  “Oh, Miss Ellis, I can’t afford that, and Billy isn’t eligible for Medicare. My neighbor comes in when I’m at work, and her husband helps when I have to bathe him. Billy hates being in bed, so I leave him here where he can watch TV.”

  “What about the company’s health insurance?” Shugy gave her a long look and didn’t answer. “Are you telling me our insurance doesn’t cover your husband?” A slight nod. L.J.’s mouth compressed into a tight line. “We’ll see about that.” She thought for a moment. “You stay home tomorrow and take care of your husband.” She turned to leave. “Come on, Duke.”

  “Miss Ellis, I can’t.” From the surprised look on L.J.’s face, Shugy felt an explanation was in order. “I can’t because…well, you see, I must be honest. I’ve never approved of you.”

  L.J.’s laughter filled the small room. “You think I’m a bitch?”

  Shugy looked embarrassed. “Well, sometimes you do things that are not”—her head came up, and she looked L.J. directly in the eyes—“well, they’re just not Christian. And I know your father taught you better.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. The truth was out, and she would pay the price. But her conscience was clear. She had done her Christian duty.

  L.J. reached out and held her hand. She was back in time with her spinster aunt, a woman she had loved for her honesty and kindness. And like her aunt, Shugy was a pillar of strength who accepted whatever fate handed her, never losing her faith or complaining. She deserved better. “You didn’t know my father like I did. But that’s the way I am, part Jekyll, part Hyde. I can’t help myself, and to tell the truth, I don’t want to change.”

  Shugy wouldn’t let it go. “I, we, can’t take your charity Miss Ellis. I’ll be at work the normal time tomorrow.”

  “And I’ll fire you if you are. You take care of your husband until we can make the proper arrangements. Then you come back to work.”

  “How can you say that, knowing how I feel about you?”

  “I also know you never let on or told anyone. Or let it get in the way of your work. Besides, you’re an excellent secretary, one of the best.” She looked at the dog. “Duke, come.”

  “Miss Ellis, please leave him. He likes being near Billy.” It was true. The old dog was curled up on the floor, and Billy’s hand had dropped, resting on his head.

  “You take care of them, hear?” L.J. said.

  The Pentagon

  Peggy Redman looked up, her eyes wide with surprise, when Stuart walked into his office at exactly eight o’clock Monday morning. “Colonel Priestly wants to see you immediately,” she said. Her voice carried all the warning he needed.

  Stuart tried to grin, but it just wasn’t there. “The beginning of a perfect day.” He did the mental equivalent of stiffening his backbone and knocked on Ramjet’s door.

  “Come,” Ramjet barked. Stuart marched in and started to salute, the routine way of reporting in. Before his hand reached his eyebrow or he could say “Reporting as ordered,” Ramjet snarled, “Don’t bother sitting down.” Stuart lowered his hand. Ramjet kicked back in his chair and fixed Stuart with the look he had practiced in front of a mirror for twenty minutes that morning. “I think it’s safe to say, Stuart, that your ass is grass in this man’s Air Force.”

  Stuart didn’t know how to respond. “It’s not what you think, sir.”

  “Bullshit. It’s exactly what I think. You’re facing a murder charge and have certainly disgraced the Air Force.” He threw a copy of the Washington Post across his desk. “You made the news, Stuart. Page six.”

  “And here I was hoping for page one,” Stuart quipped, immediately regretting it.

  Ramjet stood and paced his office, his hard heels clicking and echoing in the small space. The staff had always laughed about it, calling him an authoritarian goose-stepper. But now the humor was gone. “I’ve pulled your security clearance, and you’re outa here. Admin will keep you busy doing whatever, or they can put you on administrative leave until your case is resolved—their call. But make no mistake, I’m going to do everything in my power to see that you’re kicked out of the Air Force. The sooner the better.”

  “Sir, I’ve got fifteen months to go to retirement. I’m in the safe zone.”

  Ramjet glared at him. Once anyone in the Air Force was within two years of being eligible for retirement, they couldn’t be separated in place of retiring. “Not if you’re court-martialed,” Ramjet barked.

  Panic drove a spike into Stuart’s heart. He was forty-one years old and had spent his entire adult life in the Air Force. Without retirement pay to fall back on, he’d be broke and starting all over. And what chance would he have of landing a decent job with a court-martial on his record? “Court-martialed for what?” he asked, desperation behind every word. “I haven’t been found guilty of anything.”

  “I can think of a few things the state of Virginia will never consider. Like conduct unbecoming, bringing disgrace on the Air Force. Try those on for size. Clear your desk and get out of here. Dismissed.”

  “But, sir…”

  “Are you hard of hearing? I said ‘dismissed.’” Stuart spun around and opened the door to leave. “I’d suggest you render a proper salute before retiring,” Ramjet barked. Stuart turned back around and saluted. “Very good,” Ramjet said. “Military courtesy is not beyond you. Now you’re dismissed.” He waved his fighter-pilot salute at
Stuart.

  Outside, Stuart beat a hasty retreat to his cubicle, aware of the heavy silence and that all eyes were on him. Even with the door to Ramjet’s office closed, they had heard every word through the thin partition. He dropped into his chair and held his head in his hands. “Christ, what’s next?” he moaned. He went through the motions of emptying his desk, surprised that there were so few personal effects. There was an engraved pen set from a previous assignment, a framed photograph of Eric on Temptress, and an ornate desktop nameplate announcing his name and rank. Is this all? he thought. Eighteen friggin’ years in the Air Force, and this is all I have to show for it?

  Despair crashed down like a huge wave as he wallowed in a sea of confusion. He had never felt so alone, not even after his divorce. He gasped for air, fighting for survival, but no matter where he turned, there was only disaster. Twice someone had tried to kill him, first by shoving him under a street sweeper and then with a knife. When the direct approach didn’t work, they tampered with his Explorer’s brakes and managed to kill Jenny’s boyfriend. The irony of it all drove him even deeper into his despair. What they—whoever “they” were—couldn’t do, the police would. And Barbara Raye Wilson and her high-priced lawyers were like sharks lurking in the sea, always ready to go into a feeding frenzy at the smell of blood. Now Ramjet was going after his career, his last anchor in a raging storm.

  He swore to himself. They wouldn’t do it if I were a pilot! But an inner voice told him that wasn’t true. He shook his head to force the blackness away. For the first time in his life he understood why people chose suicide over living. Another voice that sounded suspiciously like Jane’s said, “That’s a permanent solution for a temporary problem.”

  “Colonel Stuart,” Peggy Redman said, bringing him back to the moment. “Colonel Priestly wants the files for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve committee. He’s going to take your place.”

  Stuart’s head snapped up. “Is this what it’s all about? Serving on some damn committee?”

  “Apparently so,” Peggy answered.

  He gestured at a filing cabinet. “Most of them are in there.” He scribbled the combination to his safe on a piece of paper and handed it to her. “The classified files are in the top three drawers of my safe. He’s welcome to them.”

  She glanced at the safe and the filing cabinet. “That much? Might as well leave it all here.” She fingered the piece of paper with the combination. “You know, nothing is going to get better until you stop feeling sorry for yourself.” She spun around and walked back to her desk.

  Stuart stared at his hands for a few moments before he snapped open his briefcase and scooped in what was left of his military career. He marched out of the office. Outside, he took a deep breath. Then he walked back in and stopped in front of Peggy’s desk. “Thanks for everything. I’ll miss you.”

  “And I’ll miss you, Mike.” It was the first time she had called him by his first name.

  Dallas

  The three men who handled risk assessment and insurance for RayTex Oil stood when L.J. entered their office first thing Monday morning. It was a short walk down one flight of stairs from her office to theirs, but the only time they saw her was when a major disaster had hit RayTex or its subsidiaries. Since nothing unusual had happened over the weekend, they assumed there was a screw-up somewhere, of monumental proportions. They had no idea of how right they were.

  “Who negotiated our employees’ health-benefit package?” she asked.

  “Actually,” the team chief answered, “it was a compromise we hammered out with the employees’ representatives and our office.”

  “What would it have cost us to provide catastrophic medical coverage for spouses, to include full-care nursing in case of a stroke?”

  The three men sat down and pounded on their computers. They had an answer in less than a minute. “Approximately sixty-one dollars more per employee per month,” the team chief said. “As we insure two thousand employees, give or take a few, that would equate to a hundred and twenty-two thousand dollars per month, or one million four hundred sixty-four thousand per year.”

  “And what would the tax offset do to our bottom line?”

  The team chief was sweating. “We can safely assume the company would have recouped thirty percent of that expenditure, or approximately four hundred thousand per year in tax credits.” His fingers flew over the keyboard. He paled when he saw the answer. He gulped. “We would have reduced our tax load by—” He ran the calculation again to be sure and gulped even harder. “We would’ve received a tax credit of almost a million and a half per year.”

  “Let me see if I understand this correctly,” she said, her voice dripping with honey. “We would have paid out a million four sixty-four and saved a million five in taxes, for a net gain of thirty-six thousand by properly insuring our employees.” She stared at them for a moment. “Negotiate a revised health-care package immediately and include Mrs. Jenkins’s husband, who had a stroke, in that coverage.”

  The team chief was sweating. “But that’s a preexisting condition! No carrier will do that.”

  “Then you had better negotiate the best possible deal you can to maximize the tax offset. Because that’s how we’re going to pay for his care. If y’all can’t squeeze out enough, you’ll make up the difference out of your salaries. And if you don’t like that, I’m sure other companies will be glad to hire you.”

  She tilted her head and smiled. “Get to it, fellas.” She turned and walked out, leaving a stunned silence in her wake. Halfway out, she stopped and came back in. “Forget the salary thing. I came down too hard on you. Part of this was my fault. I should have made sure you were talking to other players, like the comptroller.”

  The three men watched her leave, relief on their faces. “What do we do now?” the junior man asked.

  “It’s pretty obvious,” the team chief said. “Start talking to every other division in the company. I don’t think she’s gonna give us a second chance.”

  Washington, D.C.

  The plaque hanging on the wall of the lawyer’s office was not reassuring.

  Most of my clients are in jail or going there.

  —Samuel B. Broad

  “A grateful client made that in prison,” Samuel B. Broad said when he saw Stuart read it for the third or fourth time. The lawyer was a small, wiry African-American with bushy white hair. His suit hung on his skinny body, and his neck stuck out of his shirt’s oversize collar like an ostrich’s.

  “Grateful?” Stuart asked, convinced he was talking to the wrong lawyer. But all his neighbors said Broad was the best defense lawyer inside the Beltway.

  “Grateful he wasn’t on death row,” Broad said. He laughed at the crestfallen look on Stuart’s face. It was a high-pitched, giggling laughter that made Stuart think again of a bird.

  “I hope I’ll have more than that to be thankful for,” Stuart mumbled.

  Broad leaned across his cluttered desk and folded his hands. “These things do take time, so meanwhile, don’t worry.” The lawyer leaned back. “There are many defenses open to you. Besides, I know Ledbetter, he’s a good cop, and Smatter will self-destruct on the witness stand. So you just go home for now and enjoy your vacation. I’ll be in contact.”

  “We haven’t talked fee,” Stuart said.

  Broad adjusted his half-frame reading glasses and scanned the folder in front of him. “We’ll start with a fifty-thousand-dollar retainer. For a case like this, that should cover most of it. Of course, there could be complications. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “I just paid twenty-five thousand for bail. That wiped me out. I’ll have to sell my boat, but I only have maybe forty thousand dollars’ equity in it.”

  “Then you need to find another ten thousand,” Broad said. “Of course, I can carry a loan for you at, say, eighteen-percent interest for the balance.”

  “Of course,” Stuart muttered, wondering what he had gotten into. Still, the lawyer did
come with the highest recommendations from people who should know. That was one of the side benefits from living in his neighborhood.

  Broad tried to be reassuring. “I don’t think this case will ever go to trial.”

  “I wish I had your confidence,” Stuart said.

  “Not to panic,” Broad said.

  Easy for you to say, Stuart thought.

  Outside, Stuart sat in Jenny’s car and leaned his forehead against the steering wheel. What now? Without thinking, he started the car and headed for Annapolis. He drove on mental autopilot, and reality only kicked in when he turned off Highway 50 for the short drive into town. Will Jane understand? He hoped so. He ran some phrases through his mind, but they all sounded trite when he said them aloud.

  Since it was about the time Jane broke for lunch, he was surprised when he found Temptress locked. He looked around, half expecting to see Jane working on a nearby boat. But there was no sign of her. He walked the docks to the marina office, where the manager said she was working at O’Brien’s Oyster Bar at the foot of Main Street. “Tell her to get her pretty butt back here. We’ve got a shakedown.” Stuart said he would relay the message. He smiled as he walked. He had never thought of Jane as having a pretty backside. But when he considered it, she did.

  He pushed through the door to O’Brien’s and immediately saw her taking an order at a nearby table. He sat at the bar waiting for a chance to talk to her. “’Ey, sailor,” she finally said, putting on her best Cockney accent. “Got a light?”

  This was Jane, straightforward and down-to-earth, all that he wanted in a woman. Suddenly everything felt better. “I wish I did. Bad news. I’ve got to sell Temptress. Lawyer’s fees.”

  The bad news was like water off a duck’s back. “No problem, I’ll buy her. I’ve been saving, and now I’ve got two jobs. That should make any banker happy.”