The Hanged Man's Song

they were looking for him. He used information from the laptop— listen to me —to do all of the political hits of the past week, all the so-called Bobby stuff. The daughter of the senator from Illinois, the military execution, the Norwalk virus, the Bole-blackface story . . . there are at least thirty more stories ready to go. We think a lot of the stuff was taken out of your DDC group.”
    “What?”
    Now I had his attention. I repeated myself, and added, “What in God’s name ever possessed you to run total background security probes on other members of Congress? Do you think there’sany chance your career will survive? What do you think your chances are of not going to prison?”
    “I think you’re . . .” He looked at the gun. “Sir, I’m not sure that you are fully, uh, aware . . .”
    “I’m not nuts,” I said. I looked past him. “Is there anybody else home?”
    He hesitated, then said, “Not at the moment. My wife . . . should be home momentarily.”
    “I don’t want to frighten your wife. But if there’s a telephone close by, you could make a call to someone who would tell you that I’m a reliable, mmm, source. There’s a Rosalind Welsh at the NSA.”
    “I don’t know her.” He backed away a couple of steps, and I followed him inside.
    “Maybe you can introduce yourself,” I said. “I’m going to let you make the call, but if you have a panic code, or something, I’ll probably figure it out, and I’ll be gone. I’ll be gone from here before anyone can get here, anyway, so there’s no point in trying to yell for help—and if you do, you might not find out the rest of what I’m going to tell you.”
    “You said Jimmy Carp killed this boy. . . this, uh, man in Jackson.”
    “Murdered him. According to your FBI investigation, he beat in his head with an oxygen tank. Bobby was crippled and in a wheelchair and couldn’t defend himself.”
    “I saw the story. You’re sure it was Carp?”
    “Yes. Not only that, he probably would have killed a little girl if we hadn’t stopped him, and he definitely killed your two men. Set them up and shot them down outside his apartment.”
    “Sonofabitch.” Now he was worried.
    “The whole thing started when he was doing research for your committee on Bobby. Now he’s got Bobby’s laptop and he’s decoding stuff from it. He’s got something with your name on it.”
    His eyes narrowed, and his head tipped skeptically. “My name? Like what? I’ve never done anything.”
    “Other people might not see it that way,” I said. “Now the woman at the NSA, she’s one of their top security people.”
    I followed him down a hallway, past a coat closet, past a living room entrance, and finally to a big kitchen with a phone on the wall. The kitchen smelled like bread and peanut butter. I didn’t give him Welsh’s number and he didn’t ask for it. Instead, he dialed a number out of his head and when the phone was answered at the other end, he said, “This is me. There’s a woman at the NSA named Rosalind Welsh. She’s in their security branch. I need her home phone number right now. Instantly. Call me back.”
    He hung up and said, “There wasn’t any panic code. What’s Carp got on me?”
    “I don’t know everything he may have—or may not have—but he knows all about your bank loans from Hedgecoe Bank. What he actually has is scanned documents with your signature on them. I’m not a banker, but it seems like you got extraordinarily good terms, without collateral except for the stock you were buying. In fact, from the paper on the computer, it looks like the loans made you rich. You borrow big chunks of cash during the nineties, drop it into the stock market, Amazon, AOL, that whole crowd . . . you got to be a multimillionaire, right?”
    “Nothing wrong with it,” he snapped. “Nothing wrong. Just good business. I paid all the money back, with interest.”
    “Yeah, but how many ordinary guys could get a two-percent loan in 1990, with no collateral, and use it to speculate?” I looked at him, and answered the question: “None. You pulled a million bucks out of thin air, used it to make, what? Five million? Ten?”
    “It was just . . .”
    “You know where the money came from?”
    “I knew some people on the board of directors,” he said hoarsely. “They know me and my reputation.”
    “From the Saudis. From the Saudi Arabians.”
    “What?”
    “The Saudis are the money behind the bank, and