by Sean Parnell
When he ordered his third bourbon, Max brought it and said, “You trying to forget something, Eric?”
“Washington,” he said.
“I get it.” Max nodded and sighed. “I’m trying to forget Charlotte.”
“Ex-girlfriend?”
“Nope, the city.” Max snorted like a small piglet, which Steele thought was cute. “I’m boringly straight.”
“Same,” he said. “Emphasis on boring.”
She waved and went back to work again, without any overt flirtation, which relieved him. He wasn’t remotely interested in bedding some willing young woman tonight, and Max wasn’t giving off those signals anyway. Waiting on tables was tough on the body, and add to that her nursing studies, she was probably more exhausted than anything else. On any other night, in any other life, it might have been different, but he was content to chat with her during her “drive-bys,” drink until he was numb, and maybe imagine her in bed, six months down the road.
Sometime later, he looked at his watch and realized he’d been sitting there for more than two hours. He’d been cutting his steak and chewing the chunks like a robot as his thousand-yard stare blurred the room. Hundreds of memories came rushing at him, and he swatted each one away as if looking to snatch the one that really mattered. But none of them hit home. He was working on his fifth bourbon, and all he felt was a mild throb in his temple, which was probably from having his stitches removed.
What was the meaning of “service” anyway? He’d served his country honorably, taken lots of bad guys off the field, and watched his friends die doing the same. For all that he was getting a pink slip. His waitress was “serving” in a totally different way, but in the best case she’d wind up working a hospital night shift and spending her life on her feet. Were either of their services more valuable than the other? Nope. Lost Society.
Okay, that’s enough booze.
He caught Max’s eye over at the bar and signaled for the check. After another five minutes she came over with the leather bill holder.
“They’re letting me go,” she said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Permanently?”
“Nah, just for the night. I’ve been on since three.” Then she clutched the bill holder to her chest, as if it contained a secret message, and bit her lower lip. “Could you do me a favor, Eric?”
“What would that be?”
“Don’t tip me. Walk me home instead. It’s just a few blocks, but I like to cut through Meridian Hill Park, and after what happened to that girl up there in New York, you know, I’m a little skittish about it.” They both knew she was talking about the recent gruesome murder of a college student in Manhattan. “I promise that’s all it is. It’s not some weird come-on, I’m way too tired, and I’m not gonna roll you. Looks like you can hold your liquor and probably take me.” She cocked her head and her eyes pleaded, but there was no eyelash batting.
Something about her little monologue, and request, and the way she said it seemed sad. It was the last thing he felt like doing, but now he had no choice. If he begged off and God forbid anything happened to her, he’d be drinking a bottle of Knob Creek a day for the rest of his miserable life. He could call her an Uber, but that would be cold.
“Okay, but I’m tipping you anyway, Max. I made you work hard.” He held out his hand for the check.
“Awesome.” She grinned and took off her apron. “Thank you, kind suh.”
“A pleasure, ma’am.” He touched his imaginary cowboy hat.
They walked down the stairway together to the first floor, where Max retrieved a black umbrella from a brass holder by the front door, and they went out into the street.
Inside Lost Society, a pair of male waiters watched them leave from the bar, where they were picking up another round of drinks and appetizers for latecomers.
“Who’s that new chick?” one asked the other.
“She’s not new. She’s Brenda’s cousin, just a fill-in. Brenda called in sick today and said her cuz was a pro and could spot her.”
“No shit? And Frank went for that?”
“Guess he liked her ass.”
“Pig.”
They both laughed. . . .
Brenda, of course, had not called in sick voluntarily, but at the point of a stiletto.
And now she was dead in her bathtub.
Chapter 45
Washington, D.C.
They walked north in the rain on Fourteenth Street, past Busboys and Poets, a funky old bookstore-slash-café, and took a left on V Street NW. Steele was taller, so he took Max’s umbrella and sheltered them both. She’d taken her jacket from a cloakroom hook. It was an imitation Harley motorcycle jacket, which just made her look more cute than biker-dangerous.
Once they were out of the restaurant, Steele expected her to chatter, maybe about her southern upbringing, or the dreams that a young pretty woman—who didn’t really know she was pretty—had for this old cruel world. She didn’t touch him or take his hand for a couple of blocks, but when a cab zoomed by and nearly soaked them both from a deep street puddle, he jinked to the right and took her along with a quick hand around her waist, and she laughed, and after that slipped her wrist with the cast through his elbow.
They kept going west on V Street. The rain was coming down a little harder and Max pulled Steele a little bit closer. His left knee was feeling pretty good and he figured maybe it was the liquor. It was already late on a weeknight and there were hardly any other people around, and he had the thought that maybe that was due to tomorrow’s day of national mourning, and they were all home glued to their televisions. He let the girl guide him, because she knew where she needed to go, and they took a right on Fifteenth past the St. Augustine Catholic Church and School, and he tried to remember the last time he’d prayed, and had meant it. Maybe it was at Collins Austin’s funeral. No, on that day he’d only flipped God the mental bird. A block up ahead, he could see the high, dense, dripping trees of Meridian Hill Park.
“Have you ever seen Joan of Arc?” Max said, which seemed to be a non sequitur out of nowhere.
“Nope. I think she was burned at the stake during the fifteenth century.”
Max didn’t laugh. Her demeanor seemed to have darkened somewhat, maybe from fatigue or the weather.
“I mean the statue up here in the park.”
“Don’t think I have,” he said.
“I’ll show you. It’s on the way.”
They cut into the south end of the park and she gently tugged him onto a long concrete walkway. It was dark and the walkway was silver with puddles, and the looming shadows of the high trees looked like giant, undulating black amoebas. In the distance he could make out the statue, an iron warhorse atop a square stone pedestal, with one front leg cocked up high as it charged. Sitting atop the horse was Joan, the nineteen-year-old French heroine in full body armor. Her outstretched right hand gripped the hilt of a sword, but the blade itself was missing. It had been stolen by vandals and the city had yet to replace it.
They stopped at the base of the statue and looked up. Max slipped her casted wrist from Steele’s elbow and moved a step closer to the statue. Steele was still holding the umbrella in his right hand, and he stuck his left in his jeans pocket and just waited. Maybe Joan of Arc meant something special to her.
“She is missing her sword,” she said. “But I still have mine.”
And in that instant, she turned back into Lila Kalidi, like some demon witch from a fairy-tale nightmare. Her right hand crossed in front of her chest, her fingers touching her left shoulder, and then her entire body whipped to the right like an unwinding spring and she backhanded him with the cast in the bridge of his nose.
It happened so fast he had no time to duck or parry the blow. He saw a flash of white lightning and heard his own nose crunch and the shock went straight to his brain. Lila’s cast was actually a heavy steel cuff, smeared with just enough plaster for camouflage, and it felt like he’d been slammed with a hammer. An instant later, she�
��d leaped up onto the pedestal, grabbed the iron front leg of the horse, and back kicked him so hard in the sternum that he dropped the umbrella and smashed down onto his back on the concrete walkway.
Blood was gushing over his mouth. The back of his skull had bounced on the concrete. His vision was liquid and blurry, but he saw her above him, her hand reaching under her skirt like some pornographic gymnast, and then she was leaping up into the air and flying down at him with a gleaming black stiletto clutched in her right fist.
She yelled something like a banshee. It wasn’t English. He snap rolled to the left and the blade point sparked off the stone where his head had just been. He hadn’t packed his father’s .45 that night, but he had his backup Sig Sauer P365 micro-compact in a waistband holster. He was on his knees and he tried to go for it, but she kicked him hard in the left ribs—the ones still bruised from Russia—and the pistol went spinning off over the walkway onto a patch of soaked grass.
He was drunk.
She was fast.
And she was going to kill him.
“Not tonight, Lila,” he snarled as he willed his adrenaline to surge past his alcohol level, jumped to his feet, and both of his hands came up in a bladed Krav Maga stance, defending both sides of his bloody head. “I like my ears.”
Lila screamed, tore off her glasses with her left hand, and leaped at him like a fiend, plunging down with the stiletto in an overhand strike aimed at his neck. He blocked it with his left forearm and short-punched her straight in the gut, but it was like hitting a marble mannequin. She jumped back, stomped down on her left foot, and kicked him in the groin with her right shinbone. Inebriation had its benefits and he barely felt it.
He slapped her with his right palm and it whipped her head around. She grabbed the top of his hair with her left hand, straddled him in the air like a black widow spider, and sunk her teeth into his neck. He saw the stiletto coming down again and he jammed his thick left bicep under her armpit and the blade off-angled and plunged through the back of his leather jacket and into his left shoulder blade and jammed right there in the bone.
Steele grunted with the searing pain, but he got his right hand between her legs, grabbed a fistful of crotch, and hurled her off him and over his head. Her spinning body missed the edge of the concrete walkway by inches, and as she bounced on the grassy shoulder something flew out of her Harley jacket, but she ignored it and was instantly up on her feet again and facing him in a crouch like a feral cat.
A woman screamed, but it wasn’t Lila. It came from somewhere behind Steele’s back through the trees. He heard a wailing siren in the near distance. He reached over with his right hand and yanked her stiletto from his back.
“You want this?”
He started toward her, then stopped as she reached inside her jacket and came up with something that looked like a silver pen. She clicked the button and an eight-inch steel pike sprang from the pen tip and locked. It was a heart killer, and she grinned like the devil’s butcher.
“I don’t want my knife,” she said. “I want your life.”
“You two hold it right there!”
The voice came from behind Steele, and he heard car doors slamming and spinning police lights were flashing the trees. Shoes were pounding closer, nightsticks and handcuffs jangling.
Lila straightened up, hissed a curse in Arabic, spun, and took off through the park. She was so fast she was gone from sight in five seconds.
Steele didn’t turn toward the cops. His whole body was coursing with adrenaline, but he knew that was going to wear off soon and he’d be in a world of hurt. He staggered forward toward the grass as he slipped Lila’s bloody stiletto inside his jacket and reached down for the object she’d dropped.
It was her cell phone. He jammed that into his jacket too.
He headed a few more feet over to his fallen handgun. He knew if the cops found him with it, he’d spend the next eight hours in interrogation, so he turned, plunked his ass right down onto it in the grass, folded his legs, and put his face in his hands.
Two cops ran up to him and stopped. An ambulance was crawling through the park along the concrete walkway. Steele lifted his face and looked up at them.
“Holy shit, buddy,” one cop said. “What the hell happened to you?”
An EMT ran up to them, dropped to his knees beside Steele, and started fumbling in his duty bag for an ice pack.
“Don’t get up,” he ordered.
“Don’t intend to,” Steele said.
The second cop, older, and with his dripping cap pushed back on his head, pointed past Steele at the trees.
“Who’s that chick who just booked it?”
Steele smiled his best dumbass smile.
“Hooker, I think. I was just trying to get laid. She just wanted my wallet.”
The younger cop put his knuckles on his duty belt and grinned.
“Looks like she also wanted to kick your ass.”
Steele nodded.
“Yeah, that too.”
Chapter 46
Crestwood, Washington, D.C.
“Ralphy, open the goddamn door.”
Steele was on the top floor of Mrs. Jepson’s brownstone on Sixteenth Street, hammering his fist on the multilock door and rattling the hallway walls. He’d just arrived from Meridian Hill Park in an Uber and, getting no response from Ralphy’s buzzer, had jacked the entrance doorway with Lila’s stiletto and charged up the stairs.
His nose was crisscrossed with bright white surgical tape. He had teeth marks in his neck like a scarlet vampire hickey. The blood was running down his back from his shoulder wound.
“Hold on, hold on, hold on . . .”
Steele heard Ralphy’s voice from the other side and his bare feet slapping the floor. Then his peephole popped open, closed again, and he heard all four locks clicking and pinging and the door swung open.
Ralphy stood there in a ridiculous Mickey Mouse bathrobe, his hair all crazy. He was clutching a Glock 19 and his eyes were huge and bugged open behind his glasses.
“Holy Die Hard,” he gasped. “What the heck happened to you?”
Steele pushed his way inside and slammed the door behind him.
“Lila Kalidi,” Steele said. “And put that piece up before you shoot somebody.”
“Kalidi?” Ralphy backed up. “But I thought you said she was—”
Something started pounding against Ralphy’s floor from below. It sounded like the end of a broomstick.
“Ralphy Perrrrsssko!” It was Mrs. Jepson’s voice. “What’s all that racket up there?”
She had her head outside her street-front kitchen window below. Ralphy hissed “Shit,” dropped the Glock on his coffee table, ran over to one of his windows, cranked it open, and stuck his head out.
“Sorry, Mrs. Jepson! I ordered late food.”
“You’re not having a party, are you? It’s a school night.”
“Nope, nope, nope. Sorry!”
He closed the window and turned back to Steele. Then his bedroom door on the right side of the flat cranked open. Steele spun, drew his Sig P365 in a blur, and almost pulled the trigger.Frankie was standing there in nothing but Ralphy’s only dress shirt. She yelped, threw her small hands up, and covered her eyes. Steele put the pistol away.
“Any more surprises?” he said.
“Negative,” Ralphy croaked.
“Jesus, Seven.” Frankie stood there with her bare legs quaking, but she was staring through her fingers at Steele’s face. With the white X in the middle and his green eyes blazing, he looked like a Hells Angels gangbanger.
“Is Kalidi dead?” Ralphy asked.
“Not yet.” Steele pulled Lila’s cell phone from his jacket pocket and tossed it to Persko. “I got this off her, and I want whatever’s on it. Pull everything from the last twenty-four hours.”
Ralphy caught the cell and looked at it.
“I . . . I don’t know if I can do that, Steele,” he said.
“It’s passcode locked, fo
r sure,” Frankie said.
“Crack it,” Steele said. “She’s planning something, I don’t know what, but it’s not about me.”
“Okay, okay.” Ralphy took the phone and waddled over to his long worktable.
“You got some ice?” Steele asked.
“Um, we used all the ice,” Frankie said.
Steele looked down at the coffee table and saw two wineglasses and an empty bottle of cabernet.
“You kids put ice in red wine? Barbarians.”
“I got a bag of frozen peas in the fridge,” Ralphy said over his shoulder.
Frankie hurried into the kitchen while Steele took off his leather jacket and pulled his shirt over his head. She came back with the peas, blushed when she saw Steele’s naked chest, then covered her eyes again as he reached up, tore the bandages off his face, took the peas from her hand, and mashed them to his nose.
He turned and showed her the two-inch-deep, bloody gash in his scapula. She nearly gagged.
“Oh, God,” she whimpered.
“You gotta close this up for me,” Steele said. “Got a sewing kit?”
“Do I look like I passed home ec in high school?” she squeaked.
“I . . . I got one big sewing needle I use for popping SIM cards,” Ralphy said. He’d turned around from his computer and was gaping at Steele’s wound. “No thread, but maybe some real thin copper wire.”
“Get it, Frankie,” Steele said. “And some alcohol, but if he doesn’t have that, use vodka.”
“Oh, God,” Frankie said.
Steele pulled a stool away from Ralphy’s table and sat down. Frankie staggered away and then came back with a roll of paper towels and a bottle of Smirnoff.
“Clean it first,” Steele said.
“Oh, God,” she said again, but she did it.
Steele didn’t even flinch when she poured the vodka into his wound. Then, when her trembling fingers threaded the huge needle with a long strand of copper wire, and she pierced the first lip of his fish mouth–shaped wound, he didn’t even gasp, while she nearly passed out. She wondered if he was high on something.