Heat Lightning

like a shark, man.”
    “Down the hall to the left. . . .”
     
 
VIRGIL WENT BACK to the phone. “Okay, where were we? Listen, you not only suggest that the magazines were CIA fronts, you hint that Mead Sinclair and a couple of other guys were agents. Not dupes, but agents.”
    “I’m still of that opinion,” Lutz said. “I can’t get it printed, because Sinclair says that it will harm his reputation and that he’ll sue. That scares everybody off, because I can’t provide any documentary proof. But that’s my opinion.”
    “So how’d you get to that opinion?”
    “Mostly because of the . . . smoothness of his arrival. One day you never heard of him, the next day he’s all over the place, publishing articles, giving speeches. And it’s not only that, it’s also the quality of the response. Sinclair would say something, and somebody in the government would actually respond to it, they’d debate him instead of ignoring him. That put him right in the heat of the battle—this terrific-looking blond guy with big ideas, who was willing to risk going to North Vietnam, to Hanoi, in the middle of the war.
    “He gets arrested at demonstrations, but he’s always pretty quick to get out. Always the terrific PR photos. And if you look at it, and you’re cynical enough, you can see that it was certain congressmen and some people in the Johnson and Nixon administrations who actually made him into a lefty big shot. Because they gave him attention. And when you look at those people, you can see that every single one seems to have a tie to the intelligence community.”
    Virgil didn’t say anything for a moment, and then, finally: “Interesting.”
    Lutz said, “Yeah,” with a skeptical tone right there. “What are you going to do with it?”
    “I don’t know,” Virgil said. “I’m trying to solve some murders that seem to go back to Vietnam.”
    “If you solve them, and they do go back, I’d like to hear about it. I’d like to write about it,” Lutz said.
    “Keep an eye on the news. The whole story is out there right now, and it’s getting bigger. I’ll give you my number.”
    Virgil gave him his number, and Lutz said, “Virgil Flowers. That’s an operator’s name if I ever heard one. You’re really CIA, aren’t you? You’re gonna bug my house and my office and my car . . .”
    “We don’t have to,” Virgil said. “We already replaced your fillings with microphones.”
    Lutz laughed and said, “Maybe that’s why old ABBA songs keep running through my head.”
    “Jesus Christ, we’re not that cruel,” Virgil said.
     
 
ANDRENO WAS wearing tan slacks and a powder-blue golf shirt, a thick gold chain around his neck. He chewed gum. Virgil looked at him and thought, Perfect.
    “How ya doin’?” Andreno asked, shaking Virgil’s hand. His hand was still damp—from the water faucet in the restroom, Virgil hoped.
    “Let’s get the other guys.”
    They gathered in Virgil’s temporary office, Jenkins and Shrake and Andreno, and Virgil showed them the copies of the photographs.
    “That’s pretty crude of old Ralph,” Jenkins said. He held one of the photos close to his face, studying the rape photo. “That’s him, all right.”
    Shrake was looking at the other photos, took the rape photo from Jenkins. “But what if he just flat denies it—says he never went to Vietnam, that it’s not him. . . . It could be somebody else.”
    “Probably can’t get him for Vietnam,” Virgil said. “Too long ago, there’s only one witness still alive, and he probably wouldn’t testify anyway. We need to shake him up—Warren—freak him out. Get him to argue. We need to get him to give us something.”
    “That’s gonna be tough,” Andreno said. “If he’s smart, he’ll keep his mouth shut. Deny, deny, deny. Imply a deal, acknowledge a deal, wink and nod, but not put it in words.”
    “He’s a psycho,” Virgil said. “You gotta stick a sliver under his fingernails. You got to get him to cook off a couple of wild shots.”
    “I can get into my wise-guy mode, give him some shit about rapin’ dead women,” Andreno said. “But if this guy is really smart . . .”
    “What if he just doesn’t buy it?” Shrake asked. “This is pretty thin stuff.”
    “The photos aren’t thin,” Virgil said. “Knox sent him some xeroxes and didn’t hear anything back. So it’s him, and he knows it. And maybe they wouldn’t work in court, but if they got out there, started making the