The Silent Widow

Kevin sat back down. ‘I’ll need another three hundred for the name.’

Williams turned to leave.

‘Two hundred!’ Kevin called after him. ‘She can help you, Mr Williams. I know she can help you.’

Extracting another two notes, Williams sat back down and placed them on the table. Kevin reached forward eagerly, but Williams covered the money with his hand.

‘I want the name. The address. And the cell phone number,’ he said slowly. ‘And this had better be worth my time, son.’

It turned out Kevin Voss hadn’t been entirely straight with him.

Adrienne Washington did not work at City Hall. She was fired six months ago from her junior secretarial job in the Mayor’s Office, and now worked as a part-time PA to a tech entrepreneur downtown.

‘Best thing that ever happened to me, losing that job,’ she told Williams, over lunch at an overpriced sushi place off of Figueroa. ‘I mean it was awful at the time. Awful. So humiliating. But if I hadn’t left the Mayor, I would never have found Michael, and he is like the nicest boss ever. Of all time. Plus the salary is like, double.’

A number of things struck Williams as he listened to Adrienne ramble enthusiastically on. The first was that she was blessed with beauty – long legs, a narrow waist and a mane of thick, red hair that gave her a look of Disney’s Little Mermaid – but not brains. It was pretty clear to Williams on what basis both the Mayor and the tech entrepreneur had hired her. The second was, encouragingly, she was also wildly indiscreet.

‘At first I thought Mayor Fuentes fired me because I wouldn’t sleep with him,’ she told Williams cheerfully, slurping down her sugary cocktail noisily through a straw. ‘I mean, the man was all hands, if you know what I’m saying, and he’s also, like, fifty years old, not to mention, like, married.’

Every third word was delivered with painful overemphasis, and ‘likes’ peppered her conversation like bullets. Williams would have fired her for that alone. It was like listening to a doll where you pull a string and she says something inane, only one day the string broke and the loop got stuck on repeat, endlessly.

‘But then later I realized that, like, maybe it was because of what I knew.’

‘And what was that, Adrienne?’

‘That the Mayor was taking money from the Russians,’ she said, in the same tone she might use to make a comment about the weather. ‘Bribes and whatnot. Like, I heard my boss, Mrs Drayton, talking on the phone about it? I think it was, like, to a reporter?’

‘Are you sure about this, sweetheart?’ Williams asked kindly. ‘That’s a big accusation to make. And I’ve never read anything about the Mayor being involved in corruption.’

‘Oh, I’m not accusing anyone!’ Adrienne said, apparently genuinely surprised. ‘I’m simply telling you what I heard. Just like I told Mayor Fuentes what I heard. And next thing I know, boom, I get fired. So that’s why I’m thinking it was, like, probably that? And not the sex thing? Also, they fired Mrs D, and I don’t mean to be catty or anything, but I’d be willing to make you a bet Mayor Fuentes wasn’t trying to get her into bed. Now, my new boss, Michael, when I told him, he was like …’

It took Williams twenty minutes to get out of there, once he’d established to his satisfaction that Adrienne Washington knew nothing more about these mysterious Russians supposedly in cahoots with the Mayor, and nothing at all about Lenka Gordievski.

It took him another four hours to track down Tina Drayton, Adrienne’s old boss at a run-down apartment in West Hollywood.

‘Yes?’

She opened the door to him less than an inch. Three strong steel chains locked into place across the opening, and Williams could only see a section of her face on the other side. It was enough to reveal an exhausted and frightened middle-aged woman, barricaded inside a home where she clearly no longer felt safe.

‘My name is Derek Williams, Mrs Drayton. I’m a private investigator. May I come in?’

After the briefest hesitation, Tina shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. It’s not a good time.’

She was about to shut the door when Williams interrupted her. ‘I got your name from Adrienne Washington. She was worried about you.’

‘Adrienne?’ Tina’s eyes widened. ‘That stupid girl! Will she never learn to keep her mouth shut? I’m actually very fond o

f her, but she doesn’t know what she’s saying half the time, Mr … I’m sorry, I forgot your name.’

‘Williams.’ Pulling out a card, he passed it to her between the chains. ‘But please call me Derek. I understand your hesitation, ma’am. And I agree with you about Adrienne. I think, unwittingly, she may be putting herself in danger. I’d really like to talk to you, Mrs Drayton. Only for a few minutes.’

Tina hesitated again. But this time she relented. ‘Hang on.’

The door closed, and Williams heard each of the chains being removed one by one, before it reopened.

‘You’d better come in,’ the Mayor’s ex-secretary sighed heavily. ‘And please call me Tina. I don’t have long to talk though I’m afraid. I’m moving again today. You say you’re a private investigator, Derek?’

‘That’s right.’