The Ways of the Dead Page 23

  Sully blinked. He had seen Noel’s checkbook, her credit card statements. She didn’t have that kind of money. Not anything like it. And Simmons, well, actually, didn’t seem like a four-thousand-dollar photographer. “Did she pay with a credit card? Do you remember?”

  “I certainly do remember, because it was very odd. She paid in cash.”

  “A college student paid you four thousand dollars in cash?”

  “All one-hundred-dollar bills. It was the most unusual thing about the session. I don’t do a lot of erotica, Mr. Carter, but I do some. Most of my studio’s work is advertising, things for shoes, women’s fashions. All of it local, if you count Baltimore as local. Now, I do have private clients—I mean to say, men—who like to have photographs of their wives or girlfriends or what have you, in erotica. It’s very private, and it’s very . . . tasteful, if you will. This isn’t Players magazine, and there are no crotch shots. The women are not professional models. They’re excited but uncomfortable, particularly at the beginning of the session. Noel was a little different. She was not a professional model, but she had all the makings of one.”

  “What about the other girl, who came the second day? Do you have her name?”

  “No. She just mentioned her as a friend.”

  “Didn’t you need her name? For a release, or whatever?”

  “There was no release to give. I didn’t own the copyright. Remember, I never possessed the film. She asked what type of film I needed and how much. I told her, she got it, came by, and dropped it off the day before the shoot. I shot the pictures and gave her the rolls of film at the end. Whatever she did with it was her business. She could have sold them for a million dollars and I wasn’t going to get anything else.”

  “I’m still stuck on the four grand. You mentioned a sliding scale. Why would you think she would have that kind of money?”

  “She said they were for her boyfriend, and that money was no object. That he wanted the best.”

  “Hunh.”

  “So I, in the business sense, shot high.”

  “Hunh.” Bullshit meter pegging out in the red now.

  “Look, let me clear something up, Mr. Carter. I do not shoot pornography or sexual acts. I was clear with her about that, particularly when she mentioned she wanted to pose with another woman. If you’ve seen the photographs, they are composed, they’re not peekaboo nudie snapshots. She could have sent half of them to lingerie or swimsuit campaigns, which she said she might do. The shots of the pair of them, the women are embracing, as I recall, or entwined, or perhaps kissing. But it was all posed. They did not come into my studio and have sex while I took photographs.”

  “Did she say, or even hint, who this boyfriend was? Did she mention anybody by the name of David, or just ‘D’?”

  Simmons spread his hands and gave him that same resigned smile. “I thought the police said she was shooting it for a portfolio, for men’s magazines. They didn’t mention a boyfriend.”

  “Ah. Just one more question, Mr. Simmons. You’ve been very generous with your time. Did a woman named Lana Escobar come in for some of the same type of photographs?”

  The man tensed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Lana Escobar. Hispanic, early twenties, would have been nearly two years ago. Did she come in for nudes, too?”

  “That’s the young woman in your story the other day.” The smile frozen, hard.

  “Yes, actually.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “It turns out she had a boyfriend who liked nude pictures, too. I happened to see those photographs. I’m just asking.”

  “You’re—you’re implying—I think this interview is over.”

  “Michelle Williams, by any chance?”

  Simmons stood.

  “We’re done here.”

  • • •

  Sully came outside on the sidewalk and turned back up the residential street. He could go after Simmons right now, the sleazoid. Yeah, he’d passed MPD inspection—so what? They weren’t even looking hard for Noel when they interviewed Simmons, and they certainly weren’t thinking of Lana and Noel as a connection, because they didn’t know Lana had posed nude. That the cops hadn’t been interested in Simmons probably didn’t mean anything other than that he had a clean record and no sex offenses. But Christ, hadn’t John told him the guy had been sweaty? Simmons knew he wasn’t goddamned innocent of everything. Okay, okay, then how did Noel come to be in Simmons’s studio, peeling down? Sully thinking now, mind racing. She or a friend would have known about him, that’s how. That’s how she would have gotten there. Certainly not from Reese. So, okay, Sully would have to get into Noel’s realm, dig into the modeling circuit, the party crowd. Fine. He could start that tonight at Halo.

  That left him time for a more urgent task. Leaning against the bike, he pulled out his cell and punched in the numbers for Reese’s chambers in District Court.

  “Hi, it’s Sully Carter, over at the paper,” he told the secretary when she picked up. “I need to speak with David this afternoon.”

  There was a pause, frost developing on the other end.

  “That’s not going to be possible,” she said.

  “Ah. Maybe he’s at that press conference. How about tomorrow?”

  “I’m afraid the judge has no media availability for the foreseeable future.”

  “I see. Well, look, could you do me a favor, ma’am? Could you ask the judge if he wanted to comment on a story about his extramarital affair with a college student named Noel Pittman, who is now dead? And that the last phone call she made was to him, eight hours after the rest of the world lost touch with her? And that D.C. police are going to find that very curious?”

  “I—”

  “Wait—wait. Ask him, also—ask him if he wants to comment on the documentation I have that he paid the—the—what is it—here, the Eric Simmons Studio to take sexually explicit photographs of Ms. Pittman and another woman, another dancer at a downtown strip club who worked under the name, I think it was, of ‘Bambi’?”

  Glacial quiet. Then, “Is that all?”

  “That seems to about cover it for today, yes.”

  “Just a moment, please.”

  He sat there, leaning against the bike, looking at the weak blue sky overhead. She came back to the phone a few minutes later.

  “The judge said he will see you at six p.m. in his chambers.”

  thirty-five

  The U.S. District Court building officially closed at five, but was always open, save for federal holidays, via the guarded entrance off John Marshall Park. Sully walked in at ten minutes till six, after stopping by his house for a shave and slacks, white shirt, and a black sport coat. He kept the coat in his backpack, not pulling it on until he parked the bike on C Street.

  The U.S. Marshals greeted him by name, but still made him go through the formality of the metal detector. He went down the hall, his hard-soled shoes quiet on the carpet. He went to the elevator, struck, as always, by the difference between this courthouse and D.C. Superior Court, catty-corner across C Street. This was federal court, a temple of Justice, with the uppercase J and the big-think ideas, red carpet covering the marble floors, massive oil portraits of past justices on the walls, muted lighting, the building symbolically situated between the Capitol and the White House, balancing the twin powers.

  Superior Court, next door, was the local bus station of justice, the dead end of urban life—loud, profane, noisy, crowded, ill behaved, umbrellas dripping rain on courtroom floors and switchblades confiscated at the front entrance.

  The elevator took him to the fourth floor of the other, more powerful courthouse, and he limped down the hallway and turned again to get to Reese’s chambers. The doors were locked, as always, and the receptionist buzzed him in. He said hello and smiled. She ignored him.

 
He sat down and pretended to look through his notebooks. The phone buzzed, she answered it and said, without looking at him, that he could go in.

  Pushing open the huge oak door—what was it with judges and big-ass doors? he’d always wanted to know that—he stepped into Reese’s office.

  The judge was seated behind his desk, glowering at him. Next to him, on his left, was his private counsel, Joseph V. Russell. Willow thin, a light gray suit, maybe fifty years old, balding, with the slightly gaunt expression of a man who ran marathons for relaxation. To his right was a legal stiff—good God, the man looked like he had to pay to breathe—in a brown suit and a personality to match.

  Sully sat down in the chair across from Reese’s desk, though no one asked him to, crossed his legs, and did not attempt to shake hands. Power play, he thought, the dual lawyers flanking Reese. He returned service by being rude. He rustled in his seat, getting comfortable, thinking that this was going to last less than ten minutes, and might be less than five.

  “Judge, thanks for meeting me this afternoon,” he boomed pleasantly. “I’m at work on a story—”

  “The judge has advised us as to the nature of your call,” Russell cut in. “You are aware of who I am, I believe, but for the record—we are recording this, Mr. Carter—I am Joseph Russell, of counsel to Judge Reese. Seated on the opposite side of the judge is Brian Cannan, of the Justice Department’s ethics division. He is here as an observer only, to ensure—”

  “That Judge Reese does not dictate a quotation to me, have me read it back to him, and then write my editors a note, on court letterhead, saying that he never said what he said and demanding that I be fired for making it up?” Sully said, nodding to Cannan, who did not blink. “Because that’s what happened the last time.”

  Russell gave him a patronizing smirk. “Mr. Cannan is here to provide an independent, benchmark observation of this meeting and to see if, at the end of it, he will recommend charges against you.”

  “For?”

  “Attempting to blackmail a federal judge.”

  “And what would I be receiving from this alleged blackmail?”

  Russell shrugged his shoulders. “We are not in your business, Mr. Carter, and thus we would have no idea. We are merely taking appropriate precautions.”

  Sully felt his temperature rise a notch. He hid this by reaching down to pull a recorder from his backpack and put it on the desk, facing Reese. “Well, that’s lovely. Thanks for your time, Brian. And, Joey, always a pleasure. Always like to help you run up billable hours. I have a recorder here, so I guess we can play dueling banjos. You’ll understand, from my experience with your client, that his word isn’t exactly his bond. Did your recorder pick that up?”

  Russell made no response. Sully punched the record button, then gave the date, the location, and the names of the people in the room, and set it on Reese’s desk, facing the judge, while he looked down at his notes.

  “Okay. Judge Reese. Noel Pittman. As I mentioned to your secretary, during the course of our reporting on Ms. Pittman’s death, we have come across her diary, which names you as her intimate acquaintance. It sets out the time and date of those liaisons, which was often Saturday mornings at ten fifteen. That corresponds with your daughter’s dance lessons at the Big Apple studios. Also, we have seen Ms. Pittman’s cellphone, which lists your private office number and your cell. She lists you, by name, on her personal contact list. Also, I have talked to two eyewitnesses who have seen you entering or leaving Ms. Pittman’s apartment. One of those sources saw you two embracing at the front entrance, with Ms. Pittman in what is described as bedroom attire. And, also, we are in possession of copies of erotic photographs of Ms. Pittman, taken by an art studio in town, and we have banking records that show you gave her four thousand dollars to pay for the session, plus several hundred more dollars for the film and developing.”

  For the first time, he looked up. Reese had the stunned look of a seal at a clubbing party. Russell was biting the inside of his gums but keeping a courtroom face. Cannan suddenly looked like he wanted to be somewhere else.

  “And what is the point of these allegations, these alleged sightings?” Russell said.

  “I believe the point would be that Ms. Pittman left her part-time job at a popular nightclub out on New York Avenue in the early-morning hours of April 25 of last year. She was never seen again. However, the last phone call made from her cellphone—of which police are not yet aware—was at 10:47 the following morning, to Judge Reese’s private cellphone. The call lasted seven minutes. They talked. Or maybe she talked to Mrs. Reese, which might have been an even more interesting conversation.

  “The point would also seem to be that your client spoke to Ms. Pittman eight hours after the rest of the world thought she’d gone missing. And her decomposed corpse was found a few days ago, in an abandoned house at the end of her block, just across the alley from where Sarah was killed. So the question I have is if your client has, at any point in time, informed the police of this information, either after her disappearance or after her body was found.”

  The two men did not confer.

  Russell said, “We have no comment on these outrageous and defamatory allegations. This is a sinister smear campaign, being unleashed at a time that can only be called grotesque. The judge and his family are grieving the loss of their only child. There was a monumental break in that case in the past few days, which was just announced publicly a few hours ago. The judge has political enemies who are attempting to leak this information in an attempt to stop his ascension to the Supreme Court, no matter his family’s suffering. Even in my long experience in Washington, I’ve never seen anything this base.”

  Sully wanted to ask if he’d read anything about Monica Lewinsky and a blue dress, but refrained.

  “That’s all interesting, Mr. Russell, but it wasn’t an answer to the question, although I appreciate you speaking so clearly into the microphone. Did Judge Reese meet Noel Pittman at 10:15 on the day she disappeared, as her schedule indicates they were to do, and has he informed the police of his last conversation with her?”

  “We are not dignifying it with a response. What are your intentions with this information?”

  “To print it.”

  “You must know you are on very thin legal ice if you do.”

  “Hunh. I’m researching a story about a federal judge and his ties to a college student who was killed and his lack of disclosure about that relationship. The ice seems pretty thick here. The nude photographs were shot just a few weeks before her disappearance. Did the judge and Ms. Pittman discuss those on that last phone call?”

  “What, other than your personal bias, makes you believe Ms. Pittman was murdered? There is no homicide investigation into her death,” Russell said. “That young woman’s body was examined, postmortem, and the coroner’s office did not state her cause of death was homicide. That is the sort of irresponsible speculation, Mr. Carter, that puts you and your paper on thin ice.”

  Sully felt a tingle in his fingers. He had just overstepped. He had gotten ahead of the facts on the table, and not just the bluffing he was doing about Reese’s paying for the pictures. That was right, and he had known it as soon as Simmons had said the amount. But this was on tape, and the tape showed him saying she was “killed,” which the coroner had not specified. He swore at himself silently.

  “Ms. Pittman’s corpse turned up a dozen houses down from her apartment in such a decomposed state that no cause of death has so far been determined, whether by means fair or foul. Homicide has not been ruled out. But the freight train is moving down the line, Mr. Russell. Try to address it. I can use smaller words if need be. Again, has Judge Reese disclosed his ties to Ms. Pittman to law enforcement? There is no murder investigation into the death of Ms. Pittman, but the case’s status with D.C. police is listed as open. Has the judge aided that investigation? Has he told them he spoke to her eigh
t hours after she was last seen or heard from? I can’t imagine he has, because if he had they wouldn’t keep telling me she was last seen at Halo. They wouldn’t keep telling me the nude photographs were shot for a men’s magazine, when in fact they were shot for him.”

  Reese’s head, he thought, was going to explode. The man’s face was red and his jaw was clenched. He was leaning forward against his desk. Cannan was keeping his head still but cutting his eyes back and forth between the two.

  And Joseph Russell, as he was handsomely paid to do, looked as if he were riding a gondola in a spring breeze.

  “These are lies, but we have heard your questions, Mr. Carter, and we are not going into your cesspool of innuendo. You may publish these—these things if you wish, but you are aware that we will pursue legal action if you do. This is your career on the line, Mr. Carter, not his. Don’t think it isn’t.”

  “‘Cesspool of innuendo.’ I like that, Mr. Russell. That’s a very fresh cliché. I’d say we’re done.” He reached forward and clicked the recorder off.

  He put his notebook in his backpack and the three men on the other side of the table leaned back and conferred in whispers. Sully stood to go, picked his recorder up from the table, and walked toward the door. He heard, before he saw, Reese get up from his chair and hustle around the table, rushing to get to him. Sully slowed, ever so slightly, to let the judge beat him to the door.

  “Carter,” he snapped, pressing the door handle closed to keep him from pulling it open. He leaned forward, using his bulk to press in close.

  “I can hear fine, Judge Reese. You don’t have to stand three inches from my face to talk to me.”

  Reese snatched the recorder from Sully’s hand and glared at it, making sure it was turned off. “You limp-legged little prick, you will be dead to the world when I’m finished with you,” he sneered. “Dead. I don’t care if you print this piece of shit or not. You think you can fuck with me? You think that what I did to you last time was bad? That was a fucking warning shot.” He ripped opened the door, slapping the recorder back in Sully’s palm. “Now get the fuck out of my sight.”