The Hanged Man's Song

Brock’s account, handled through the same firm, were speculating with Brock’s money. And doing it brilliantly. Too brilliantly. They won virtually all of their speculative bets, and had run a few tens of thousands of dollars into nearly fifteen million, tax paid.
    The trustees won all their bets because, according to our xeroxed account returns, the commodities company was quietly picking up Brock’s losing bets and replacing them with winning bets of their own. Because it was all handled inside the same investment firm, all the scheme needed was a few adjustments in a computerized account. And Brock had all the paperwork and paid all the taxes.
    Nice. Invisible. Illegal.
    And fifteen million was such a large, juicy, fat, ridiculous, greedy amount, that when the word got out, Brock would be screwed.
    >>> I PUT the word out and gave Krause credit for developing the information. I thought about calling each official’s office separately. Instead, I re-sent the files I’d sent to the networks to each man’s executive assistant. I included the Krause note. Whether he let LuEllen go or not, Krause was in trouble with his peers and the party.
    As I worked the wi-fi connection, I’d been staring at the back of the Interior Department building, a wall of some kind of undistinguished gray stone. I thought later that if I had to describe it tosomeone, I would have said that it looks like the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984.
    But then, I may have been overwrought.
    >>> I CALLED Krause at three o’clock in the afternoon and he said—no calm reason this time, but with real fear on his side, choking down a scream—“Stop it! Stop it! We let her go, she’s just fine, we’re not following her, we’re not surveilling her. We let her go.”
    “I don’t think surveilling’s a word,” I said.
    “What? What? What do you mean—”
    “I mean if I don’t hear from her in six hours, I start again,” I said. “I’ve got three more ready to go and one of them might be you.”
    “I told you, we let her go, you asshole. We let her go.” Yes: real fear. Almost too much. Had something happened I didn’t know about? That I’d never know about?
    “Did you get your boy Carp?”
    “No. He had that bike. You shithead, you’ve done more damage than you can possibly understand.”
    “You better get Carp,” I said. “Whether or not you turned my friend loose, we’re gonna publicly put this killing on your guy, if you don’t do something about him pretty quick.”
    “We’ll get him—we’re going to the FBI.”
    “I’ll give you a couple of days. If you get him and you stay off our backs, you won’t be hearing from us again. If we hear from you again, we’ll drop the bomb.”
    I hung up, found a deli, bought thirty dollars’ worth of foodand drink, and headed back to the hotel. I spent the rest of the day and the evening lying on my bed, or sitting at the desk, poking at the computer I’d taken out of Carp’s car. I was afraid to leave the room. At six o’clock, the first stuff about Deering, Marsh, and Brock started to leak onto the news—CNN, and Fox at first, and then ABC. There were no details, only teasers about how “more powerful Washington legislators may be entangled in the growing Bobby scandal that has rocked Washington for a week.”
    Good enough; the TV boys were checking out the documents. I wondered if Bobby would be pleased. As far as I knew, he’d never used any of the blackmail stuff himself—but then I didn’t know where all the continuing Washington scandals came from, and I didn’t know what might have been done quietly, as pressure, rather than as a direct attack.
    >>> WAITING . Going from TV to computer and back. I finally got out the tarot deck and did a spread. I took a while to frame a question about LuEllen, and when I did, came up with the Two of Cups. That was interesting, but didn’t give me any hint of what might happen in the next few hours.
    And I thought, Jesus, Kidd, you’re doing a gypsy reading, as if you believe in this shit. That says something about my level of stress.
    Before I put the cards away—my little man, the leprechaun-like id-character that everyone carries in the back of his head—was laughing at me, but I did a reading on my own future. Just killing time. Came up with the King of Swords, which told me nothing I might not suspect even without the cards.
    Not entirely bad, but not entirely good, either. Butself-psychoanalysis is not what I