Chapter 36

We spent most of the next two hours bouncing the basic idea back and forth between us. She still hated the risk to me, but she could see my point about having to bring this whole thing to some sort of conclusion. If it worked, one way or another I'd be off the hook for good. If it didn't ... well, I'd likely wind up dead, but I wouldn't be any deader than it looked like was in store for me anyway.

But she added a bunch of refinements that I hadn't thought of. The most important one was something that had never even entered my mind, but which she figured was critical: I needed to set the stage. I'd vaguely envisioned completing everything and then walking into a police station or FBI headquarters or someplace cold and proudly presenting them with my fait accompli; but from experience she knew that wasn't how it worked.

"Larry, have you forgot what I told you?" she asked impatiently. "I had chapter and verse, complete copies of Bobby's own records, and they still couldn't move. And I don't even want to talk about what they put me through, it went on and on for nearly a week in that damn safe house they took me to before they'd even start to believe me. You could walk in with videotape and signed affidavits and they'd just brush you off and send you packing."

"But honey—" I started to protest.

"Honey nothing!" she snapped. "You just don't get it. Senators have huge power in D.C. They have almost as much weight as the fucking President! They're the ones who control the pursestrings, who decide which agency gets what money. Get a major Senator down on you, it's like committing economic suicide; they'll strangle you to death. You just don't go against one, ever! Unless..."

Well, unless what? But she had the answer to that one, too, and it was a doozy. It involved taking a very long run indeed around the end of the Federal bureaucracy that ruled so much of political Washington, but she had a proposal to cut through the b.s. with almost surgical precision. The more we talked about it the more I liked it as she spelled it out to me.

It was working on one o'clock—4:00 p.m. on a Friday in D.C., she tartly pointed out—so I needed to get cracking if I was going to follow her advice. I still delayed long enough to go down and snatch up one of the last sandwiches remaining on the dining room sideboard for my lunch, partly because I figured I'd be pretty hungry by dinner and partly to give myself a couple of minutes to mull over the introduction she'd framed for me, but when I got back it was time to make the call.

Susan had the number; she apparently had an eidetic memory for phone numbers, at least in this incarnation. I dialed it on my cell and got a prompt answer of "Mr. McDonough's office" from the voice or some female who didn't trouble to identify herself. When I asked for him there was the usual inquiry about who was I. I didn't give my name, simply told her to tell him it was "about Ariel Shaughnessy." The name evidently rang a bell with her; she put me through.

"John McDonough, marshal," came a male voice. "Tell me you're calling to make my week and say she's awake."

That didn't take me long to process; the inquiry told me that (a) Susan's body was still alive and well and still expected to recover, and (b) she was still unconscious, which explained—well, sort of—her continued presence with me. Reassuring on both counts, to say the least.

But I had other fish to fry, and first I needed to get his attention. "Hiawatha," I said clearly. "I was told to say that to you first."

"It's a sort of password," Susan had told me. "I used it when I phoned him." Why Hiawatha? She laughed. "I always called him a real straight arrow because he was. Hiawatha kind of followed." Well, in a roundabout sort of way I suppose it did.

There was a short pause. "Who is this?" he asked slowly.

I took a deep breath. "I'm a friend of Ariel's," I said. "My name's Larry Costain. I don't know whether that means anything to you—"

"I know who you are," he interrupted.

Good; Susan said she'd never spoken to McDonough about me—"mostly I didn't even know you when I was talking to him," she said—but we'd both speculated that the marshals might have passed my name along. That'd save me some explanation.

"Why are you calling me, Mr. Costain?" he continued, his voice unyielding.

"Because Ariel told me you're the primary prosecutor in the Golden investigation," I told him flatly. "You are, right? I'm calling to offer you the smoking gun you're looking for."

That one caught him flat-footed. I'd intended for it to; Susan and I had both figured he'd think I was calling to ask about her whereabouts, plead for information on her condition, something like that, and he'd been, as she'd also predicted, prepared to fob me off. But I had his attention now.