Free Paramour by Gerald Petievich

Service, he considered 90 percent of it totally unnecessary. Hell, years ago one good advance man would have done the work of today's entire advance team, with all their lap-top computers and endless teletypes. But in the old days, he told himself, a black man would never have been promoted to Agent-in-Charge of the White House Detail.
    Having spun the dial on the safe, he signed off on the supervisor's tog. He found Bob Tomsic, the on-duty shift leader, in the hallway briefing a new agent and told him he was leaving for the day. Heading toward the EOB exit, Landry stopped for a moment. Something had been at the back of his mind all day. Though because of work he hadn't spent much time with his wife and kids lately, he now took time to move to a phone on a small table a few feet away and dial a number.
    "Homicide."
    Landry asked to speak with Lyons. The phone clicked and Lyons gave his name.
    "Landry here. I thought I'd stop by and pick up a copy of the Stryker report."
    "I was just heading for the Grille. Feel like a drink?"
    "Sounds good," Landry said, though he seldom drank alcoholic beverages.
    "I'll run off a copy and bring it with me."
     
    The English Grille in Georgetown was like a lot of other cop bars. Located near the university on a busy street lined with restaurants and shops, it had a small parking lot in back where detectives drinking on duty could hide their official cars from the view of passing police supervisors. Over the front door was a vertical neon sign with a martini-glass logo and the word ENGLISH illuminated. The GRILLE part of the sign had never worked.
    Inside, the fifteen bar stools and six booths in the dimly lit bar were filled with men in suits-mostly white men but a few blacks-and a couple of women who looked like police secretaries. There was a crude oil painting of a reclining Victorian nude above the bar. The bartender, a blotchy, red-faced man with a black toupee and dyed mustache, was busily pouring drinks.
    Art Lyons waved at Landry from the end of the bar. He'd saved a stool. Landry joined him and Lyons introduced him to the bartender and some of the regulars.
    Landry shook hands a couple of times and ordered a light beer.
    Lyons reached inside his jacket and gave Landry a folded police report. "You'll need this," he said, also handing him a small flashlight. Landry said thanks. The bartender set down a beer.
    The homicide report, which listed Stryker's name and physical description, gave no address for the deceased. In the location box Lyons had written Location #I-see Chief of Police log of this date to hide the fact that the body was discovered in the White House. Landry read further. "It says there was evidence of tattooing."
    Lyons touched his temple. "Right inside the hairline near the wound. The pathologist noticed it during the autopsy. A little gunpowder embedded in the skin."
    "What do you make of this, my man?"
    Lyons twisted his wrist and demonstrated as if aiming a gun at himself. "It's possible to shoot yourself like this. Uncommon, but certainly possible. See, most suicides have a contact wound. You touch the barrel right to the skin. This way he fires while holding the piece a few inches away." He picked up his drink and took a sip. "It's possible that he was ready to do it, then just sort of halfway chickened out, pulling his hand away as he pulled the trigger. Only the Big Kahoona knows for sure."
    Landry completed reading the report. There was nothing else in it that differed from what he had learned when Lyons had conducted his investigation in the Special Projects office. He shoved the report in his inside coat pocket. "I'd like to ask you a hypothetical question."
    "Shoot."
    "Is it possible this could be a murder?"
    "Anything is possible. The astronauts went to the moon."
    "If this suicide was in fact a murder-and just pretend it was, for the time being-how could it have been done?"
    "Someone would have to take Stryker's gun, shoot Stryker in the temple from close