Cross Fire

Leaves Two Dead.”
    She double-tapped the headline with one bony finger, as if I might miss it.
    “I’m not saying anyone, no matter how greedy, deserves to die,” she told me straight-out. “This is absolutely awful. But those two men were no angels, Alex. People are going to take a certain satisfaction from this, and
you’re
going to have to deal with that.”
    “And good morning to you, too.”
    I leaned down to kiss her cheek and instinctively put a hand on the mug of tea in front of her. A cold mug means she’s been up for a long time, and this one was cool to the touch. I don’t like to nag, but I do try to make sure she gets enough rest, particularly since her heart attack. Nana appears to be going strong, but she’s still ninety plus.
    I poured some coffee into a travel mug and sat down for a quick look at the paper. I always want to know what a killer might be reading about himself. The story was opinionated, and wrong in a few important places. I never pay attention when supposedly smart people write idiotic things — here was another example of news that needed to be ignored.
    “It’s just a big shell game anyway,” Nana went on, warming to her subject. “Someone gets caught with a hand in the cookie jar, and we all pretend as though the ones we hear about are the only ones doing anything wrong. You think that congressman was the first and last to ever take a bribe here in Washington?”
    I ruffled the paper open to the continuation on page twenty. “An optimistic mind is a terrible thing to waste, Nana.”
    “Don’t be fresh with me so early in the day,” she said. “Besides, I’m still an optimist, just one who happens to have her eyes wide open.”
    “And were they open all night, too?” I said a little ham-handedly. Asking about Nana’s health is like trying to slip vegetables into the kids’ mac and cheese. You have to be sneaky, or you don’t get anywhere, and usually you don’t get anywhere anyway.
    Sure enough, she raised her voice to make it clear that I’d been heard and would be ignored.
    “Here’s another nugget of wisdom for you. Why is it when we hear about people getting killed in this city, they’re always poor and black, or rich and white? Why is that, Alex?”
    “Unfortunately, that’s a longer conversation than I have time for this morning,” I said, and pushed my chair back.
    She trailed a hand after me. “Where are you going this early? Let me make you some eggs — and where are you taking that paper?”
    “I want to do some digging at the office before my first interview,” I told her. “And why don’t you stick to the entertainment section for a while?”
    “Oh, because there’s no racism in Hollywood — is that it? Open your eyes.”
    I laughed, kissed her good-bye, and stole one more chocolate chip cookie off the table all at the same time.
    “That’s my girl. Have a good day, Nana. Love you!”
    “Don’t be condescending, Alex. Love you, too.”

Chapter 10

    BY MIDMORNING, I was facing down Sid Dammler, one of two senior partners at the L Street lobbying firm of Dammler-Mickelson. Craig Pilkey had been one of their biggest rainmakers, as they’re called in the biz, pulling down eleven million in fees the previous year. One way or another, these people were going to miss him.
    So far, the firm’s official comment was that they “had no knowledge” of any wrongdoing among their staff. In the Washington playbook, that’s usually code for covering one’s behind without actually getting backed into a legal corner.
    Not that I was prejudiced against Dammler to begin with. That came after forty minutes of waiting in reception, and then another twenty of monosyllabic noncommittal answers from him, with an expression on his face like he’d rather be getting a root canal about now — or maybe like he
was
getting a root canal about now.
    This much, I’d already pulled together on my own: Before joining the staff at D-M, Craig Pilkey, originally from Topeka, Kansas, had spent three two-year terms in Congress, where he’d earned a reputation as the banking industry’s mouthpiece on the Hill. His unofficial nickname had been the “Re-Deregulator,” and he’d sponsored or cosponsored no fewer than fifteen separate bills aimed at extending the scope of lenders’ rights.
    According to D-M’s website, Pilkey’s specialty was helping financial service companies “navigate the federal government.” His biggest client by far at the