The Pseudo-Chronicles of Mark Huntley

The Lions' Den - 11/06/04

Saturday, November 6, 2004

There were five of us, in all. Anton Zalt, two of his associates from the firm, and Naomi and me. 

Zalt and his boys wore their usual intimidating finery. I wore a suit owned by his buddy Stew, who is roughly my build, and Naomi had on a fetching cream-colored pantsuit that made concentrating on the mission painful. I was also wearing a crude disguise, blond hair dye and a fake mustache, which ultimately didn't help much. And then, of course, there was the gun in my jacket pocket.

We entered the ground floor lobby of Freiholt & Wagner yesterday morning at around quarter to ten, fifteen minutes early for the appointment that Zalt had made with his business associates up on the eighth floor.

A place like D.C. is a real spider's web, or cat's cradle, if you prefer, of lawyerly connections. With so many firms and practices clogging the city’s office space, of course they’ll have multiple cross-overs and business dealings with each other. 

The real genius moment for me was remembering a casual comment Gwen had made during one of our few, retroactively valued conversations. It was in the middle of my shameful spewing out of the whole Lucy debacle, that night in Friendship Heights. I happened to mention the firm that Anton Zalt owned, and Gwen recognized the name. Her own firm dealt with that firm on occasion.

So, working backwards, I saw a way for me to get into Gwendolyn's workplace. I needed to look around her office and computer to see if she had left any clues behind.

According to Rafael, the police (including silvers planted within) had already gone through Gwen's apartment and come up with no real clues about her death. They had done a cursory inspection of her area at work, too, but I suspected that the purples infesting Freiholt & Wagner had removed anything incriminatory from her office. So, they figured, just another random street murder. Someone poor and desperate, needing money for a fix.

What made me think, you may ask, that I could find on my own what the police hadn't been able to find? Like I mentioned Thursday, I wasn't in a logical state of mind. I was going by my gut, and my gut said that I would succeed.

After checking in at the first-floor reception area and receiving our visitors' badges, we took the elevator up to the eighth floor. Zalt glanced at me as we ascended. "You won't say a word to Derane. Are we still clear on that?"

"I've got that part down, Anton," I said.

He scowled. Then forced his face to reassume the professional mask of courtesy. The one that says Hey, I'm a nice guy, so don't make me sue you. Anton Zalt is a good-looking guy for his age, so the pleasant-businessman expression fits right into his face. I looked closely at him. I couldn't see a sign of the cancer growing inside him, though that didn't mean it wasn't there. 

"Then, you and your friend here will be on your own," said Zalt.

"Right."

"And if you get arrested or gutshot," he went on, "I had no idea of what you were doing while I was meeting with Derane."

"Absolute ignorance," I said. I wearied of Zalt's lawyerly tendency to triple-check and quadruple-check the details.

"Not that it'd help me much, denial," Zalt muttered. The elevator dinged and we stepped out. I watched Zalt's back, saw him straighten up a bit, shrug each shoulder in turn. Assuming the role he’d mastered over lo these many years: Mr. King Shit. 

He was putting his firm's reputation on the line for a guy he hated.

Did I convince Lucy even halfway about the truth of the stories I told her Wednesday? I doubt it. She really didn't know what to think of the whole thing— but she could see that something untoward is happening to me. She'd witnessed my bad eye episode, after all, and knew that my apartment had burned down. And the train crash just clinched it.