Finally, Isaac pronounced the room clean, and recovered his mop from me. I shoved my hands in my pockets and strolled over to Grant, who sat at his table writing notes on a clipboard.
“How’s your gut?” I said.
He didn’t raise his head. “I’ll live.”
“You mad at me?”
“Do I look like mad at you?”
“Not right now, but you were. Whole time I was cleaning you had your eyes on my backside.”
“We’re supposed to watch each other’s backs, dummy.”
“Yeah, but you’re taking that literally.”
Now he looked up. “How are you supposed to take it, Cherry?”
I didn’t answer, and after a moment he returned to his notes. “You know,” he said, “if you want to make a good impression on your boss, not doing your job probably ain’t the way to do it.”
“Whaddya mean?”
“Means you probably should’ve stepped in to help us with that fight there.”
“What? You mad ‘cause I didn’t get dirty?”
He shook his head, grinning. “Naw, I could care less about your career.”
I snorted. “Less than I do?”
“See? That’s the thing. You need to look like you care. How do you think I got you this job? Huh? By being the best damn employee they ever had. They took you on my recommendation. These people love me, and that’s why they’ll never suspect what we’re here to do.”
“Right.”
“You, on the other hand, are acting like you’re trying to get fired before we ever get to our objective.”
“You think that’s what I’m doing?”
He laughed. “Sure as hell hope not. But you’re behaving like an utter rookie.”
“I am a rookie.”
“Show some imagination. Just try to pretend you know what you’re doing. Now you’d best get over to Joan and find out what she wants you to do next. Might be swabbing out the locker rooms. You’ll need to start now if you’re gonna finish on time.”
With that, he picked up his papers and walked them over to the desk.
***
Joan had me do rounds with her that evening, giving me a chance to apologize for not jumping in to help with the fight. “Mm-hmm,” was all she said when I mentioned it, and I decided to let the matter drop.
At ten we finished our shift. After changing clothes, we left to pick up Martin and Jerry.
As soon as I saw Martin’s face, I knew something was wrong. I couldn’t imagine how their day could’ve been any worse than ours, but I asked anyway.
“What’s wrong?”
“We’ve got a problem.”
Forty-One
“What sort of problem?” said Grant.
“You remember Corporal Goetz?”
Grant pursed his lips. “Scrawny little bugger? Face like a chicken?”
“That’s him.”
“What about him?”
Martin dropped his head, seething.
Jerry said, “He came to the museum today.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. I had no idea who Corporal Goetz was.
“He recognize you?”
“Oh yeah,” said Martin, not raising his head.
“Loud, too,” said Jerry. “Called him out right when you was talking to the supervisor.” Jerry raised his voice to mimic Goetz’, “‘Hey Martin! Martin Baird! Remember me? It’s Larry. Larry Goetz. We were stationed together in Basra. Remember?’”
Martin collapsed back against the seat. “Stationed together,” he muttered. “Little pissant typed reports and carried coffee to the commanders. In general, made a nuisance of himself. Marks once had him ferrying around a bunch of reporters outside the Green Zone. He said he did it in hopes they’d drive into an ambush. Get rid of them all in one tragic accident.”
Grant leaned back and swore, pounding the steering wheel with his palm. “Wish he had. How’d your boss take it?”
“Not well. Looked right at me and said, ‘Martin Baird’?”
“What you tell him?”
“Told him it was a long story. Made up some excuse. I wasn’t brilliant.”
Grant’s fingers flexed around the steering wheel. Finally, he caught Martin’s eye in the rearview mirror and sighed. “We’re gonna have to move the gun.”
“I know.”
“Where?” I said.
“I mean now. Tonight.”
“Yep.” He looked out the window. “Service entrance off C Street. I jerry-rigged the alarm and left it unlocked.”
“Well let’s go,” I said.
Grant looked irritated. “Not you, Cherry. You two are going back to the hotel and waiting. Fewer men on this op, the better. Besides, we gotta change, first.” He shifted the car into gear and pulled onto the road.
***
Despite my objections, Grant and Martin insisted on leaving us behind at the hotel room. They changed into dark clothes and slipped silenced handguns into their shoulder harnesses, and I was suddenly glad to be staying behind. Donning long trench coats and knitted woolen hats and gloves, slipping their Blue Tooth headsets onto their ears, they looked every bit the part of mafia hit men. I wondered if they wouldn’t get stopped if they were seen, just for looking suspicious. On the other hand, they might just as easily have passed for cops.
“Stay in the room,” Grant ordered, before closing the door.
I stared at it a moment, wanting nothing more than to tear it back open and tell him to go screw himself, but then thought better of it. The look they wore as they’d left was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. All humor had evaporated from their eyes, replaced not by anger, but by something cold and utterly ruthless —almost mechanical in nature. They looked soulless. Was this what war did to men? I swallowed hard and turned away.
Propped on the bed, Jerry thumbed the remote. The television flickered to life.
“Think we could order room service?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Kitchen’s closed.” He started flipping through the channels, the screen flashing black between each station. I dropped onto the other bed, and settled in, resigned to watching television with him.
An image flashed onto the screen, and was just as quickly gone.
“Wait! Go back.”
Jerry eyed me warily, but flipped the channels back again. A newscaster’s face filled the screen. “...are unsure of the significance, but Captain Baird has been identified as a person of interest in the recent spate of telephone calls to 9-1-1, warning of an assassination attempt. Police have issued an all points bulletin, and are asking residents to be on the look out.”
Jerry’s jaw dropped, mirroring my own.
“Is that Martin?” he gaped.
“Used to be. That’s his military photo.”
“How the hell did they find him so quickly?”
I shook my head. This wasn’t right. Couldn’t be right. How could they have possibly connected the 9-1-1 calls to Martin? Unless giving them Grant’s name led them to my brother, but even then...
“That little chicken-head blew this wide open,” Jerry muttered. “Knew Davis didn’t buy the story.”
“Davis?”
“Supervisor. He must’ve called somebody. Ran a background check or something.”
I swore. “We really are screwed.”
Jerry checked his watch. “How long ‘fore they get back ya think?”
“I have no idea. But if they’ve found one of us...”
“Aw crap. What are we gonna do?”
“I don’t know, but—“
“What are we gonna do?”
“—we can’t stay here.”
“What are we gonna do, Peter?”
“Shut up!” I pressed my palms against my ears, less to shut out Jerry’s whining than to keep the room from spinning. A new, sickening thought entered my mind. I was party to a conspiracy to assassinate the President. I’d been part of it for months now. What did the government care what my reasons w
ere? Could they really understand that I only wanted to save Martin? More to the point, would they even care? Or wouldn’t they rather just toss us all in a hole somewhere and leave us to rot in the darkness?
“We need to tell them,” I said. “Right now.”
“How?”
I stared at the T.V., no longer hearing the newscaster, willing away the image of my brother’s face. A moment later, it vanished into a Verizon commercial.
“That’s it!” I tumbled off the bed and tore open the nightstand, grabbing one of the two remaining headsets inside. Fitting it to my ear, I said, “Call Grant.”
The earphone chirped twice then Grant’s voice said, “What the hell, Jerry? You’re not supposed to use this number.”
“Grant, it’s Peter. We’ve got a problem.”
“Peter?”
“We just saw Martin’s face on the evening news.”
There was a momentary silence, then, “Say again?”
“I said we just saw Martin on the evening news.”
He swore.
“What do we do?” I paced, waiting for the answer.
“Get out. Both of you. Get out now. Don’t leave anything behind.”
I swore and hung up. Turning to Jerry, I said, “We gotta go. Now.”
***
It took us better than twenty minutes to pack everything up and drag it into the hallway. As an afterthought, I ran a rag over the bathroom fixtures and anything else we might have touched in the room. I couldn’t be sure I got it all, but I didn’t want to make it any easier all the same.
Jerry was outside with a luggage cart, throwing the bags on, when I left the room. He grabbed the handle and moved to the elevator when I stopped him.
“This way,” I said, leading him to the stairs. We each grabbed two bags, loading them onto our shoulders. I ran my cloth over the luggage cart and shoved it away with my foot then followed Jerry down the steps.
At the bottom we slammed against the crash bar, spilling into the parking lot through the very same door I’d used to escape to the phone just days before. Against the side of the hotel, a red glow flashed intermittently. The Capitol Police had arrived.
Jerry swore, turned, and started running.
Forty-Two
“Jerry, wait!” I grabbed his arm. “Don’t run.” I walked beside him, keeping an easy pace as we angled away from the police car.
“This way.” I led him into the parking garage, heading into a maze of parked cars. Above us, the ceiling girders hung low. Massive beams brooding over our passage there. Behind us, we heard a car approaching.
“Get down!”
We ducked behind a Dodge Ram as a searchlight panned through the rows of cars, reflecting brilliantly off the chrome and glass, dazzling my eyes.
“They’re looking for us!” Jerry hissed. I pressed my finger to my lips and tried to make myself as small as possible. I couldn’t imagine how Jerry would manage the same. The beam of light swept over us. It lingered forever above our heads, a greedy shaft gobbling up the shadows, stealing our escape, leaving us no place to hide. Any second now, I’d hear the shout, declaring our discovery.
And then it was gone. Jerry and I read each other’s eyes, both wondering if it was safe to raise our heads. A full minute passed, an endless grinding of the second hand around the watch on my wrist. I raised my head, peering through the windows of the truck. The police car waited several spaces down, an officer probing the bed of another pick-up with his flashlight. So that’s why the cops stayed so long at our hiding place, I thought. They were thoroughly checking the most obvious refuge. Had we climbed into the bed of the truck, I had no doubt we’d be sitting in the back seat of their car right now, each sporting a pair of handcuffs. I held my palm up to Jerry, telling him to wait a little longer.
The police car slunk off, still searching the reclusive spaces. When it finally turned the corner, I dropped my hand. Jerry rose to his feet, breathing out a curse.
“That was close.”
“We don’t actually know they’re looking for us.”
His shoulders heaved. “I ain’t taking any chances.”
“Me neither.”
“How the hell did they find us?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. They’re on to Martin. They must be on to Grant, too.”
“Yeah, but how? It’s not like they had Grant’s name.”
I kept my eyes assiduously forward. Jerry was right. Except for my phone call, they didn’t have Grant’s name. How did they link him to Martin? Then it hit me. They’d done no such thing. The investigations were independent. Martin they found out about through the incident at work. Grant they’d discovered through my phone call. That’s why the cops were coming to the hotel, to look for Grant and bring him in for questioning. And if Grant hadn’t warned us to get out of there, we’d be talking to the authorities right now.
So why did Grant warn us to get out when the only name the media had was Martin? An uneasy pit grew in my stomach, a void opening up that threatened to swallow me from the inside.
“They must’ve connected the dots through their service records,” I said. It was plausible enough, but was it what Grant believed? Or maybe through my info and tonight’s incident, they connected the dots all on their own, in which case they would take steps to apprehend us, and barring that, would act to prevent us from fulfilling this mission.
Which meant it was over. All I had to do now was convince the others of the same conclusion.
“Come on,” I said with a glance down the parking garage ramp, “let’s get out of here before they come back.” Picking up our bags, we stole through the rows of cars into the cool, night air.
***
We walked for hours, or at least it felt that way. The night sky above us was so black as to have no depth at all. It was utterly invisible, a void, nothing more. We kept our heads down and trudged forward beneath its velvet canopy, like two creatures in a flat universe, with no way to move upward and out. Our shoulders burned with the luggage, our calves aching with each step. We’d taken every turn offered us by the angled streets, zig-zagging further and further into the heart of the Capitol.
Finally, Jerry said, “Hang on a sec,” and dropped his bags on the sidewalk. I let mine down, too, feeling a warm hurt in the muscles of my neck and shoulders.
“I think we lost them,” I said.
“For now.” He put his hands on his knees, blowing out a long breath. “We got to get off the street, though. These bags...”
“I know. We look homeless.”
He chuckled. “We are homeless.”
“Right. But all that means is we attract attention.”
“There’s a bus stop ahead. You want to wait there?”
I looked down the street where he was pointing. It was an enclosed stop, the kind with benches inside. “All right.”
Stealing into the bus stop, we let the bags fall to the ground and collapsed onto the bench.
“We should probably call them,” Jerry yawned.
I nodded. “Yeah. Just gimme a minute.”
I still had Jerry’s Blue Tooth tucked in my ear. My own lay buried somewhere in the bags. I had no real idea where. We’d crammed everything into the suitcases, regardless of who it belonged to or even if it was clean. I wasn’t terribly keen on unpacking them, now or ever.
I sat back on the bench, my eyelids heavy. Around us, the street felt serene, peaceful.
***
I awoke to someone tapping my shoulder. Shaking off sleep, I focused on the face in front of me. Martin. I felt so relieved I almost cried. “Thank God,” I muttered.
“What the hell, Petey? We’ve been driving around hours looking for you guys, and here you are taking a snooze out in the open? What if the cops had seen you?”
I wiped my nose on the back of my hand and sat up. “We don’t know that they’re looking for us.”
“You wanna chance it?”
“Where is everyone?”
&nb
sp; “In the truck.” He jerked in the SUV’s direction with his thumb. “Let’s go.” He offered me his arm and pulled me to my feet. I followed him to the truck, climbing into the backseat next to Jerry, who’d already closed his eyes again, leaning against the doorframe.
“Morning, Cherry,” said Grant.
“What time is it?”
“Little past 0400 hours. I’m assuming you two got out okay?”
I nodded. “We had some cops at the hotel looking for us. They followed us into the parking garage, but we lost them.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. We’d be in cuffs, otherwise.”
“True that.” He turned around and pulled back onto the street.
Though it was still early, traffic had already picked up noticeably since we fled the hotel. Grant drove at a casual pace, letting other early risers speed past him toward their sundry destinations.
“First order of business is get ourselves a new place to crash,” he said, glancing in the rearview mirror.
“What you have in mind?” I said.
“Someplace quiet. Nondescript. Cheap enough they don’t need a credit card.”
We drove in the direction of Andrews Air Force Base, and soon had a fine selection of seedy motels to pick from. Grant said the Air Force Base provided the best cover, and the motels around it asked surprisingly few questions about why four guys might need to share a room together and pay cash only. I chose not to ask why he knew that.
It was getting light on the horizon by the time we unloaded the bags and drew the blinds, but we were too tired to notice or care. Without any further discussion, we collapsed into the beds and slept.
***
Five hours of sleep was hardly sufficient, but it was all we could afford. Surprisingly, I woke before the others, about ten minutes before our agreed upon time to get up. I slipped out of the room and retrieved coffee and breakfast for us from a Dunkin Donuts down the street. When I came back to the room, the others were awake, though still a little groggy.
I passed out the coffee and doughnuts, and we gathered around the two-person table for breakfast.
“All right gentlemen,” said Grant, “let’s call this meeting to order.”
I sat on the corner of one of the beds and sipped the coffee, wondering what he was up to now. Grant wore an expression somewhere between frustration and disappointment, in marked contrast to the wild feverishness of Martin’s eyes.
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