The afternoon was getting on, but Lucas was in front of the first wave of the outgoing rush hour and made it into Centreville in a half hour, following the Evoque’s GPS. The license tag had gone to a Gerald and Marie Blake, who lived in a town house complex off I-66. The complex didn’t have a parking lot, as such, but instead nose-in parking right off the street.
Lucas cruised the Blakes’ address. The truck was parked out front—blue Ford F-250—but the plates no longer showed the number that Armstrong had given him. There was no sign that the truck had ever been involved in an accident.
Lucas considered for a bit, then pulled in, popped the restraining strap on his pistol, walked up to the front door, and pushed the doorbell. A minute later, the door opened, and a teenage girl looked out at him.
Lucas: “Are your parents home?”
Girl: “Who wants to know?”
Lucas took out his ID case with the badge. “U.S. Marshal Lucas Davenport . . . I need to talk to Gerald or Marie Blake, or both of them.”
Girl, turning: “Mommm . . .”
* * *
—
MARIE BLAKE came to the door a minute later, peering at him near-sightedly through computer glasses. She took them off as the girl said, “He says he’s a U.S. Marshal. He has a badge.”
“What’s going on?” the woman asked.
Lucas explained what he was doing, and she said, “We’ve never been to West Virginia, even passing through. We moved here from Delaware . . .” Her husband, she said, was at work; he was a bureaucrat with the Bureau of Land Management.
Lucas asked, “Do you know what your license plate number is?”
“No . . . There’s an insurance card in the cab; that should have the license number on it.”
Lucas knew what would happen, but they went out and looked anyway. The number on the truck didn’t match the number on the insurance card because the tags had been stolen off the Blakes’ truck and replaced.
He got back on the phone to Armstrong. “Do you have access to a database of stolen license plates in Virginia?”
“Sure. Take me a minute.”
Lucas gave him the tag number, and a minute later Armstrong came back and said, “Those plates were taken off a blue F-250 probably at the Fair Oaks Mall a week ago. They weren’t replaced with anything else; they were simply gone. The owner saw they were missing as soon as he came out of the mall, so he called the cops and reported it.”
“The day before the accident,” Lucas said.
“Yes.”
“They didn’t want the Blakes to notice that their tags were gone so they replaced them with another stolen set. That way, it’d take two steps to catch them—a cop would have to stop the Blakes and report the Blakes’ tags as missing, then spot the bad guy’s truck. Which nobody did.”
“Looks like it,” Armstrong said.
They were stuck. Lucas rang off, told Blake she had a problem with the license plates, that hers had been stolen and probably dumped somewhere after a crime had been committed. She needed to get new ones. He gave her a card and told her that if anyone at the Virginia DMV gave her a hard time to have them call him.
* * *
—
HE STILL HAD two more people to talk to from Carter’s list. Since he wasn’t far from where they lived, he decided to drop in. At his first stop, he saw somebody working inside James T. Knapp’s house, so he leaned on the doorbell until a heavyset woman came to the door. “What?”
Lucas identified himself, and said, “I’m looking for Mr. Knapp?”
“I’m the housekeeper. What’d he do?”
“Nothing, as far as I know. I’m checking up on somebody Mr. Knapp knows.”
“Huh.” The woman scowled at him, as though judging his genuineness, and finally admitted, “He’s gone off to California on some sort of mission.”
“He’s in the military?”
“No, he’s a preacher. He’s gone off on a preacher mission. Supposed to be back next week, but he paid me in advance for the week after that, too.”
* * *
—
AT THE NEXT HOUSE, a stand-alone ranch-style painted blue and gray in a quiet neighborhood of similar houses and trees and small lawns, he was walking away from the front door when a black five-liter Mustang pulled into the driveway. A thin, rangy, heavily tanned man in a blue Army uniform got out. He had lieutenant colonel’s silver leaves on his shoulders. “Hello?” he called out.
Lucas walked over and identified himself, and the colonel said, “Horace Stout. What can I do for you?”
“I need to talk to you about Jack Parrish.”
Stout grimaced, and said, “Better come inside.”
Stout was single but kept a neat place that included a studio grand piano, a Model M Steinway, in a corner of the living room with a pile of piano music on its closed lid. Lucas said that his wife had a similar model, and Stout said, “That’s what I got out of eleven years of marriage. That and a sick dog, which died last year.”
“Sorry about that,” Lucas muttered.
“Can I get you an orange juice or a vitamin water?” Stout asked. “I don’t keep any alcohol.”
“Juice would be fine,” Lucas said.
They sat at Stout’s kitchen table, and Lucas assured him that anything he said about Parrish would be kept confidential. “I’m not taking testimony, I’m trying to get a grip on the guy. Who he is, what he’s like, what he does.”
“Right now, he works for Senator Taryn Grant,” Stout said, “but you know that.”
“I do.”
“My experience with him was in Iraq—our tours overlapped. He did two, I did five, working basically with logistics out of Kuwait into Baghdad.”
“He has a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star,” Lucas said. “I assumed he had a combat role.”
Stout sighed, and finally said, “I . . . You know, Marshal Davenport, it’s not right to speak poorly of an absent officer.”
“It could be important,” Lucas said. “I assume you could speak poorly if you wished?”
After a short silence, Stout looked away, and said, “Some people . . . get medals. Guys get minor but real wounds, and a local medic bandages them and gives them a couple of pills, and they never see a Purple Heart. Other guys get what you might call owies and they get the Purple Heart. Same with Bronze Stars. Nobody in the military will talk about it, but there’s sometimes a political component to the award.”
“You’re saying that Parrish—”
“I’m not saying anything specific,” Stout said. “I’m saying it happens with some people.”
Lucas said, “The reason I’m talking to you is, I heard you didn’t care for Parrish. When we’re doing investigations, we try to talk with people who—”
“I know, I know . . . I know what you’re doing,” Stout said. “I don’t care for Parrish. Not at all. You know when you’re working in logistics, in a war zone, stuff has to be done in a hurry, and sometimes material goes . . . astray.”
“Parrish stole stuff?”
Stout ticked a finger at him. “I’m not saying he stole stuff, I’m just saying . . . an inordinate amount of material went astray after it passed through his unit. He had an E-8 working for him . . .”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know military ranks.”
“E-8, master sergeant. It’s no big secret that the Army has some crooked NCOs, but I believe that man was one of the crookedest I’ve ever encountered. He retired to a rather lush lifestyle down on the Gulf Coast, as I hear it. But even that . . .”
He paused, thinking it over, and Lucas pressed him: “What? Nobody else is listening.”
“There were a lot of private military contractors roaming around Iraq. Our security guards were contracted out of Africa, for instance. Uganda, mostly, although they usually worked for stateside-based
companies,” Stout said. “I’ll tell you, marshal, Parrish was way too close to these guys, the stateside managers. Most straight-up officers stayed well away from those assholes. Not Jack. Jack seemed to think they were romantic warriors. He liked hanging with them. I suspect, but I can’t prove, that some of the missing material went out to these guys.”
Lucas said, “That’s interesting. Is he still close with them? These companies?”
“That’s the word. He went to the CIA after he left the Army, and the CIA uses a lot of the same contractor organizations. After the CIA, Parrish worked for one of them for a while. I don’t like him, and he doesn’t like me, thinks I’m a prig.” He glanced at Lucas, as if trying to figure out whether Lucas knew what a “prig” was, then continued. “What I don’t like is, he wasn’t . . . a professional officer. He’s a hustler. He was a hustler in the Army, a hustler in the CIA. People are talking about Senator Grant running for the presidency. So now he’s hustling that.”
“That word gets used a lot when people are talking about Parrish,” Lucas said. “When he was with the Senate Intelligence Committee, there was a stink about the bombing of a marketplace in Syria . . .”
“I know about that,” Stout said. “If the place is full of poison gas, he’s a hero. If it turns out there’s nothing but a bunch of dead towelheads, who cares? A typical Parrish operation, in my opinion.”
“Was there any particular military contractor he was especially tight with?”
Stout nodded. “There’s the one I mentioned where he worked for a while . . . Heracles Personnel,” he said. “Don’t tell anyone that I told you that. They’re big in the military contractor world. They’ve got a private army, along with the usual support staff.”
They talked for a bit longer, and when Lucas said good-bye, Stout shook his hand, and said, “Listen, marshal, give me a call when you’re done with this. I’d like to know what happened.”
“If I can,” Lucas said.
* * *
—
HE WAS ON HIS WAY back to the hotel when Armstrong called again, from West Virginia.
“I don’t mean to bother you,” Armstrong said.
“You’re not bothering me, Carl,” Lucas said. “What’s up?”
“I’ve been thinking. That F-250 is a common truck, but more out in the rural areas than in urban places. Whoever switched those plates found the two trucks close to each other, which maybe means they scouted them out in advance. Which might mean that they actually live or work in that general area.”
“Yeah, possibly.”
“So I got to wondering, how many F-250s are there in that zip code? The Virginia DMV can sort vehicles by zip code—I checked,” Armstrong said. “If you could get a list and compare that list with driver’s license photos and then run those guys through the Internet, you might come up with something. Not that I’m saying there’s anything to come up with . . .”
“Carl . . . you’re a smart guy.”
* * *
—
LUCAS HAD SEVERAL THINGS WORKING: somebody may have tried to break into his hotel suite and may actually have succeeded; he had a name, Heracles Personnel; and now he had an idea of how to find the F-250.
His nominal boss worked out of the Marshals Service headquarters no more than a few miles from where he was, but telephones were faster. As he drove back toward Washington, against rush hour traffic, he got hold of Russell Forte, who was about to leave for home.
Lucas asked him to get whatever information he could on Heracles Personnel and to see if the Virginia DMV could produce a list of black F-250s around the area where the plates had been stolen and driver’s license photos of the registered owners.
“Well, hell, I didn’t want to go home and talk to my wife and kids and go to all the trouble of cranking up the barbecue and cooking up those ribs my wife bought this afternoon . . .”
“Go home, Russell,” Lucas said. “Tomorrow’s fine. I’ve got a couple of places I want to visit in Washington anyway. I’ll check with you in the morning. Not too early.”
“Thank you,” Forte said.
* * *
—
WHEN LUCAS GOT BACK to the hotel, he ate dinner, went to his room, took a quick shower, then dressed carefully in a medium blue summer-weight suit, with a checked dress shirt, a slender Hermès necktie, and black John Lobb shoes.
He thought about taking the Walther, but the gun messed with the drape of his jacket. He finally locked it in the room’s safe, although he happened to know how to open any hotel room safe in approximately eight seconds. When he was ready, he called down to the front desk to get a cab, and ten minutes later was on his way up New Hampshire Avenue to Figueroa & Prince, a men’s tailor shop that he’d read about, done research on, and finally called before he left St. Paul.
The shop was on N Street, on the bottom floor of what looked like a New York brownstone even though it was constructed of red brick, a three-story building with only a small silver sign next to the door designating it as a commercial establishment. When Lucas tried the door, it was locked, although he’d been told they were open until nine o’clock.
He took a step back, spotted another small sign, this one saying “Please Ring for Entry.” He pushed the doorbell button, an apple-cheeked young man looked out the window at him, and a buzzer sounded to let Lucas in.
The young man did a quick eye check on Lucas’s suit, smiled, and asked, “Can we help you?”
“I’m looking for autumn and winter suits . . . I was told to ask for Ted.”
* * *
—
TED WAS A THIN MAN, older and balding, with a shy smile and a soft voice. Lucas introduced himself, and Ted said, “Oh, yes, the gentleman from Minnesota.”
After that, it was forty-five minutes of looking at fabrics and talking about colors, not only of the materials but of Lucas’s eyes, hair, and complexion. There was also a subtle interview about where Lucas had bought other suits, accessories, and shoes. Next came forty minutes of measurements, after which Ted said, “This should be good enough for the preliminary work; you will have to come in again for the next fitting . . . probably in two or three weeks?”
“That’ll be fine,” Lucas said. “I’d like to get them before it gets cold back home.”
“We should have them finished by mid-September.”
Lucas spent an absurd sum on the suits, put it all on his American Express card. When it had cleared, Ted called a taxi, and Lucas shook his hand and said, “This was a nice experience.”
“Happy to be of help,” Ted said, as he walked Lucas to the door. “There aren’t that many men who take your interest. Mostly, they want something dark that won’t wrinkle too badly and they want it quick.”
Lucas smiled, went out the door, heard the lock click behind him, and walked down the stoop to the street, where the pleasant evening came to an end.
* * *
—
THREE MEN. At a casual glance, they might have been street people—funky dress, too heavy for the heat, with weird headgear. But the funky dress was too clean and too uniformly funky, as though it had been manufactured that way. None of them had beards. And they didn’t move with the halting gait of longtime street people, they moved like well-fed athletes. They were coming in hard. And they weren’t carrying anything in their hands.
In addition, there were a few more salient aspects to the approach: (1) The jackets looked heavy, as though they might be covering armored vests, which would be good protection in a fistfight. (2) They were all wearing hats pulled low on their heads—one wore a ball cap, and the other two wore tennis hats. Tennis hats on bums? Don’t think so. (3) Lucas could feel them focus on him. One was hurrying in from his left, one was crossing the street straight toward him, one was coming in from his right.
No gun. Couldn’t get back inside, the door had locked behind him. In
the two seconds that it took him to scan the three of them and discern their intention, he made a snap decision.
Run.
The guy on the right was the bulkiest, and maybe the slowest, and Lucas ran right for him, then swerved to the right, and when the guy moved to block him, Lucas cut left, the guy swung at him, Lucas blocked his fist and with the heel of the same hand hit the man in the face, under the nose, jamming it up into the ridge of his brow, sending him staggering and down on his back.
As Lucas hit him, he realized he couldn’t see the man’s mouth: he was wearing a tan knit face mask. The impact turned Lucas enough that he could see the other two were almost on top of him. He pivoted and went left, which meant that the farthest one would be behind the closer one, and Lucas’d only have to fend off one man.
The closer one pulled a flashlight from his pocket as he came in, a Maglite, as good as a billy club. Lucas dodged him but then was open to both of them again, and he turned away and the man with the flashlight swung it at him, hit him in the back below his left shoulder, above his shoulder blade, and he stumbled and half turned and nearly stumbled over the first man, who was back on his hands and knees.
Lucas cleared him and the flashlight man came in again and Lucas dodged the light and grabbed the man’s face mask and wrenched it sideways, enough to see the man’s face, for an instant, from the eyes down. The man wrenched free, and the mask slipped up over his eyes and blinded him; he collided with the third man, and they reeled away. Lucas took advantage of the break to jump over the man on the ground, digging a heel into his back in the process, and Lucas was off and running.
Lucas had a step on them, probably not enough . . .
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