The Rose Conspiracy Page 4

  “Just curious about something,” he said. “Why did your parents name you Vinnie? That’s an unusual name for a girl.”

  “Actually, it was my mother,” Vinnie said. “One of her heroes was a famous female artist from Oklahoma named Vinnie Ream. That’s who I was named after.”

  “I’m familiar with a lot of artists. But I haven’t heard of her.”

  “She lived in the 1800s. She sculpted Abraham Lincoln,” Vinnie said, trying to manage a smile.

  “Interesting,” Blackstone remarked.

  The time was right. He needed to go in deeper, toward the heart of the case.

  “What did you mean about the ‘Masonic thing’ when we spoke by telephone?”

  She paused. He could tell there was an internal struggle going on inside.

  “Just that the way things happened. The interest in the John Wilkes Booth diary and all. Lord Dee is a very high-ranking, thirty-third-degree Freemason himself. He and I talked about a lot of things over the years. In a way, he was a kind of spiritual mentor to me. He had always talked about the importance of finding it. The missing diary pages, I mean.”

  “Why did he want to find them?”

  “I was never really positive. Not specifically.”

  “Well, how about generally?”

  She paused and thought about it, then answered.

  “I think it had to do with a secret.”

  “What kind of secret?”

  “He never told me exactly. But he said he would someday.”

  Blackstone put down his pen and stopped taking notes, and leaned forward on the conference table, looking into the sad face of the dark-haired beauty.

  “I want to know,” he said firmly, “what kind of secret.”

  Vinnie shifted a little in the plastic chair. And then she said it.

  “He called it,” and then she took a breath. And exhaled. And finished the sentence.

  “The ultimate secret of the Freemasons.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Blackstone sensed that he was homing in on the “motive” piece to the puzzle. So he bore down hard.

  “What kind of ‘ultimate secret’?”

  “I’m just telling you what Lord Dee would say.”

  “What else did he say about it?”

  “That’s it, really.”

  “Vinnie, I don’t believe you.”

  “I am trying to tell you everything I know.”

  “So he starts talking about the ultimate secrets of the Freemasons and you never questioned it?”

  “Of course I questioned it. Like anyone else, I was curious. But he never told me exactly what that was. And it wasn’t the ultimate secrets—it was the ultimate secret.”

  “Singular. Not plural?”

  “Right.”

  Blackstone had done that deliberately. He knew that Vinnie was still holding back.

  “What would he tell you,” Blackstone continued, “when you asked him about that?”

  “Look, I’m really not sure. Mr. Blackstone, I didn’t take notes. Lord Dee has a magnificent mind and a very spiritual side to him. He would talk on and on about a great many things. About religion. The God-force, as he called it. Man’s destiny. The trouble with the world. Our capacity to shape the future. I’m sure that he would be more than happy to talk with you about it. But Mr. Blackstone, I’m just not sure how any of this is going to help me.”

  Blackstone eyed his client.

  “I’m not sure either,” he admitted, “yet.”

  Then he softened a little and said, “And you can drop the ‘Mr. Blackstone’ and call me J.D.”

  She smiled a little and nodded at that and let out a big sigh.

  Blackstone shifted gears.

  “Tomorrow we’ll appear in front of the federal magistrate. I am going to ask for your release on bail. On the other hand, the prosecutor will probably ask that you be detained without benefit of bail. I think I’m going to win that point. But we’ll see.”

  “Two things I am grateful for,” she said, trying a little to buoy herself. “First that you are my lawyer.”

  “The proof of that will be in the pudding,” Blackstone quipped. “What’s the other thing?”

  “Lord Dee says he has no doubts this whole thing will be dismissed. I hope he’s right.”

  “In addition to a magnificent mind and a great soul, does he also have a crystal ball that can see all the way to U.S. District Court in Washington?” Blackstone quipped.

  “I don’t think that’s very funny, J.D.,” Vinnie said. But Blackstone could tell that she was not really upset. Maybe she was playing with him a little, despite her horrible circumstances.

  By the time Blackstone left the detention center it was after seven at night.

  He called his voice mail, and there was a message from Frieda.

  “Hey, J.D., just wanted you to know that I had the depositions for tomorrow rescheduled in light of your bail hearing in the Vinnie Archmont case. Reverend Lamb called and said he was going to be at his office at the college until about eight tonight. Needed you to stop by.”

  Reverend John Lamb was Blackstone’s uncle on his mother’s side. A conservative Anglican and former parish priest, he taught in the religion department of Capital City College. Because they were both professors at the same school, Blackstone and his uncle would see each other from time to time at all-faculty meetings. Other times, Blackstone would stop by his office during the school term when he had a few minutes to spare, usually to stir up a debate with his uncle on the religious topic du jour that he had seen on TV or read in the papers.

  Blackstone found it all very humorous. He felt that he could usually shred “Uncle John” without much effort. But he enjoyed toying with him the way a bored boy might take a twig and poke at a beetle.

  He was tempted to simply head home, but he glanced at his watch. He had time to swing by the college. Why not humor my uncle, the poor deluded religionist? he thought to himself.

  When Blackstone strode up the steps to the second floor of the religion department building, he saw the light on in Reverend Lamb’s office and the door open.

  “Evening, Uncle!” Blackstone blurted out, startling Reverend Lamb who was at his desk but had his back turned, fishing for a book in his bookcase.

  “Oh, you gave me a start!” Lamb said with a smile. “Good to see you, J.D., have a seat.”

  Reverend John Lamb was sixty-eight, with fair features, a square, pleasant face, and a balding head. The white tufts of hair on both sides of his head were generally in need of a good combing. His eyesight was still remarkably good, but when he was reading he would pull out a pair of glasses that seemed slightly too large for his face.

  “I missed you at the faculty meeting.” he said.

  “That’s because I didn’t go,” Blackstone said. “I had a last-minute conflict.”

  “No matter,” Lamb said. “I would wager that the law school would never give you a problem with that kind of administrative nonsense. You are undoubtedly one of the school’s superstars and celebrities. I, on the other hand, am nearing the age where I feel they will want to get rid of me sooner rather than later.”

  “Come on,” Blackstone said, “you’re an institution here.”

  “In twenty-first century academia that is not necessarily a good thing.”

  “So, with you gone,” Blackstone said casually, “who would possibly teach comparative religion, or the history of ancient esoteric religious systems—that is what they call the class, right?”

  Lamb nodded. Then he added, “The question is this: Does this college feel that my area of expertise—the esoteric and mystery religions, and how they have influenced the history of heresy within the Christian church—does this school feel those subjects are still relevant?”

  “Well,” Blackstone smirked, “I’m the wrong person to ask. You know me. I think the study of all religion is no longer relevant. Nothing against you, Uncle.”

  Lamb was not fazed by that, but his face
showed he had remembered something.

  “Oh, before I forget. I have this for you,” Lamb said, and reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a thin book and passed it to Blackstone. Then he added, “Hot off the presses.”

  The lawyer looked at the title: Christianity, Ancient Gnostic Roots of Current Religious Heresy, and the Freemasons—by Reverend John H. Lamb.

  “You know I won’t read this,” Blackstone said with a smirk.

  “That’s not my fault,” Lamb said with a twinkle in his eye.

  “Well, at least I consider myself in a privileged class of people.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes,” Blackstone continued with another smirk. “If this one sells like the others, I will be in that select group of twenty or so people in the entire world who actually own one of your books.”

  “Funny thing about absolute truth,” Lamb quipped with a smile. “It defies quantitative analysis.”

  “That sounds suspiciously like an author who wants to explain away why his books don’t sell.”

  “My books don’t sell because not enough people care about the subject matter. Not because they are not true. You nearly have your PhD in psychology. You know something about human behavior. People want books to entertain them…excite them…astound them. Not to inform them.”

  “Oh, my,” Blackstone replied. “Now you’re talking like a Skinnerian behavioralist rather than a Christian. Where is your God in all this? Couldn’t he just mesmerize us all, like drones, into walking into bookstores and buying millions of copies of your books? If he is God he certainly could.”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Lamb said with a smile. “He wants just the right people to be led to open up this book. Those who are truly searching.”

  Then he added one more thing.

  “Which is why, J.D., I think you are going to end up reading it.”

  Blackstone laughed heartily at that, then got to his feet. They said their goodbyes, and when Blackstone had reached his Maserati parked outside, he opened the door and tossed the book onto the backseat. He would wait until he got home to throw it into the dumpster in the parking lot of the condo.

  As he turned on the ignition and heard the familiar, well-engineered rumble, he glanced into his rearview mirror. A block away there was a tan Ford Taurus parked on the curb, but with its parking lights on.

  “This is going to end,” he muttered at the car that was shadowing him again.

  And he knew just how he was going to end it.

  CHAPTER 9

  In the courtroom in Washington, U.S. District Court Magistrate William Boyer had been listening to the arguments of federal prosecutor Henry Hartz for about a quarter of an hour. Hartz was an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. In the legal practice, he was called an “AUSA” for short. The case against Vinnie Archmont was unorthodox, even sensational. But Hartz’s pitch for the magistrate to order her held in detention without release on bail, pending trial, was textbook.

  Blackstone was seated at the defense table next to Vinnie Archmont, who had to suffer the humiliation of watching the proceedings next to her attorney with her hands manacled. Blackstone still knew very little about his client. But everything in him said that this diminutive beauty of an artist was no threat to anyone.

  On the other hand, the more Blackstone studied human nature, the more he was willing to be surprised. Vinnie Archmont could just be the next big surprise.

  As Hartz stood at the courtroom lectern, steadying himself by gripping it with both hands, Blackstone was taking him in, not just as the prosecutor but as the man.

  He hadn’t come up against Hartz in any prior cases, but Blackstone knew a few things about him. Hartz needed a cane to walk, for some unexplained reason. When the prosecutor walked, his gait was out of joint. He wore glasses that had thicker than normal lenses.

  Hartz had a handsome face and a winning style of verbal delivery. He had gained a reputation among criminal defense attorneys as a fierce legal opponent. He rarely gave any quarter, never asked for any, and almost always won his cases. He had experienced a quick rise from prosecuting misdemeanor drug offenses in the local District of Columbia prosecutor’s office to handling the most complex terrorism and murder cases in the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He was now the second-highest-ranking AUSA in the criminal division of that office.

  His argument focused on two facts: First, that Vinnie Archmont had a history of extensive international travel, which posed a better-than-average risk of flight out of the territorial United States. And secondly, that the indictment alleged she was a member of a secret cult group, which meant that she had access to an underground network that could help her to flee from the country and then hide, rather than face trial and the possibility of a criminal sentence that could yield a death sentence.

  The magistrate seemed intensely engaged in the case, and took quite a few notes, but didn’t ask any questions of Hartz. The arguments were the usual stuff from an AUSA. The only thing that Blackstone found oddly missing was the intangible element, namely, the typical prosecutor’s passion. Henry Hartz was either so overconfident of winning the motion to detain Vinnie without bail that he was sleepwalking through the argument—or else, and Blackstone doubted this one, Hartz really didn’t care, down deep, whether Vinnie got released or not.

  When it was Blackstone’s turn at the podium, he was concise and to the point.

  “Regarding the prosecution’s argument,” Blackstone began, “about my client’s history of extensive international travel, and how that makes her a flight risk—well, there is a simple remedy for that. Your Honor, simply require her to produce her passport to the court clerk for safekeeping. That will ensure her remaining in the jurisdiction of the United States until trial.”

  Then Blackstone stepped away from the podium to drive home his second point. His arms were crossed over his chest, like a professor ready to lecture his class.

  “And as for the absurd allegations about my client’s membership is some secret society, I simply draw the Court’s attention to the fact that Mr. Hartz has failed to file any evidentiary proof to support that. None whatsoever. I think it was De Tocqueville who once said that, in contrast to Europe, ‘In America there are factions, but no conspiracies.’ Apparently Mr. Hartz, on behalf of the government, believes that if he cannot prove the conspiracy of a secret society, then he is perfectly free to simply invent them. Let Mr. Hartz try his hand at fiction writing if he wants to do that. But Your Honor, let’s save the courtroom for facts.”

  Magistrate Boyer had only one question. And it said it all.

  “Professor Blackstone, how quickly can your client produce her passport?”

  “If she is released today,” he replied with a smile, “we can have it filed with the clerk by tomorrow.”

  “So ordered,” the magistrate said. “Mr. Hartz, your motion for detainer of the defendant is denied. Mr. Blackstone, I will order the U.S. marshal to release your client upon the posting of a 10 percent bond on the bail amount of $1 million.”

  “It has already been posted,” Blackstone said with a smile.

  The magistrate nodded and gaveled the proceedings to a close.

  Vinnie was so happy she was nearly in tears. She hugged Blackstone clumsily, unable to fully embrace him because of her handcuffs.

  As Henry Hartz hobbled past Blackstone and Vinnie, leaning on his cane with one hand and holding his thick brown case folder with the other, the federal prosecutor was harboring a strange smile.

  “Enjoy this insignificant little victory today,” he said to Blackstone. “It won’t last long. There’s some bad news coming your way tomorrow.”

  “Oh?” Blackstone asked. “Like what? That you’re enrolling in my criminal law class next fall so you can learn how to be a prosecutor?”

  But Hartz’s smile was spreading slightly into a grin.

  “Tomorrow,” he said, “I will be filing my formal notice to the court that I will, in fact, be
seeking the death penalty against your client, Vinnie Archmont.”

  “The AUSAs I’ve dealt with from your office,” Blackstone shot back, “usually give defense counsel the courtesy of a conference before filing the death penalty notice.”

  “I’m all out of courtesy, Blackstone,” he retorted. And then he threw a stony glance at Vinnie, and continued walking to the courtroom door.

  Vinnie had heard it all.

  She grabbed onto Blackstone’s sleeve.

  Blackstone held on to her and looked into her face. He could see the look of terror in her eyes.

  CHAPTER 10

  Vinnie, who had just run the emotional gamut from joy to misery in a matter of minutes, was being led away by the two U.S. marshals.

  Blackstone’s last words to her in the courtroom were, “I’ll file your passport with the court clerk, and you’ll be out of here in twelve hours, tops.” Then he packed up his file, stuffed it in his brown-leather satchel, and turned to walk to the courtroom doors in the back.

  In the second-to-last row there was a man still seated in a courtroom bench, waiting for Blackstone.

  “Tully,” Blackstone said with a smile as he approached the man. “Great to see you. You got my message, I see?”

  “Yeah,” the man replied. “Looks like you’ve got a troublesome tail you now want me to tail.”

  “Tully” Tullinger had been J.D. Blackstone’s private investigator for several years, ever since his retirement from the federal government. Sixty-three years old with iron gray hair and a pencil moustache, Tully was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and was holding a white straw Panama hat in his lap, the kind with a big black band. He looked more like a bookie at a horse-racing track than a man who had previously worked at the National Security Agency.

  “This guy who’s been following me drives a tan Ford Taurus,” Blackstone said. “He’s not very suave. I picked up that he was tailing me right away.”

  “Any ideas about why he’s following you?”

  “I’ve got some guesses. But I would rather have you operate on a blank slate. Just track him long enough to find out who he is and who he is working for.”