Cold Frame [retail]

by P. T. Deutermann

  “’Sup with de slope and dat board?” Gooey asked.

  Wong stopped his ministrations and fixed Gooey with a baleful glare. “Slope?” he asked, in full Kurosawa samurai voice. “Slope?”

  Gooey started waving his right hand as if trying to make Wong vanish. “Want my shap, man,” he demanded, speaking to Miz Brown. He looked sideways at Wong. “Dis fucker’s crazy, yo.”

  “‘Shap’?” Av asked.

  “As in Shapiro—O.J.’s lawyer,” Howie said. “Homeboy wants his lawyer in there.”

  Wong sat up straight and started to inflate his torso. Gooey tried to be brave but his enlarging eyes betrayed him. Wong slowly picked up the pine board, made some more of the keening noises, and then, using just his hands, twisted the board in half, lengthwise, and slammed the two pieces triumphantly down on the table with a sound like a gunshot. Gooey jumped. Everyone in the darkroom also jumped.

  Gooey was trying to back up in his chair, but it was bolted to the floor and his hands were still chained to that ring in the table.

  Wong began speaking in the unknown dialect, growling out the words with lots of facial emphasis.

  “Hey-hey-hey-hey-hey!” Gooey shouted. “Muh-fucah’s losing it here. Gimme me outa here.”

  Wong stopped his growling, took in a long breath, let it out, and then brought one of the pieces of the board up to his mouth like an ear of corn, opened his mouth wide to give Gooey a good look at all those teeth, and then took a huge, splintering bite. He started chewing it, staring at Gooey the whole time. The detective behind Av in the darkroom did lose it, covering his mouth as he bent double with laughter.

  Gooey, however, was not amused. Gooey was scared shitless.

  Wong spat out an entire mouthful of pine pulp, growled some more, and looked over at Miz Brown.

  “Yes, Detective?” Brown said, in a so-very-sincere voice.

  “Dry,” Wong said, spitting out some more splinters and wiping his mouth. “Needs blood.”

  “What?!” Gooey yelled. He started pulling on his cuffs, frantically trying to leave the scene. As best Av could tell, if he had to leave his hands behind, that was going to be okay with Gooey.

  Wong took another bite out of the board and chewed dramatically, growling and spitting at the same time, splinters and spittle flying everywhere, while never taking his eyes off Gooey, who was visibly about to piss his pants.

  “Blood?” Miz Brown said. “Really? Blood would help? How much blood?”

  The detective behind Av got up and left the darkroom, unable to contain himself any longer. Av heard him tell someone outside in the hall how much he loved this job.

  Wong Daddy sprayed an entire mouthful of pine pulp and splinters in Gooey’s direction, licked his lips, and then turned to Brown and pointed at Gooey. “Blood?” he asked. Then he clacked his huge teeth in Gooey’s direction. Av saw the little red lights come back on.

  The teeth-clacking apparently did it. Gooey started babbling: “Awright, aw-right! Yeah, I whacked de mothafucka, he be dissin’ my lady, yo? Had it comin’, nine ways, aw-right? God-damn! Y’all get dat crazy muh-fucka outa here, I’ll talk to y’all. God-damn! He gonna bite? Yeah—lookat dat mothafucka—he gonna bite!”

  Wong, moving just out of the camera’s view, began foaming at the mouth and making barking sounds. Miz Brown encouraged Wong to take a break, go get some water, forget about blood, it being salty and no help for a mouthful of splinters. Wong hesitated, got up, made some truly ghastly noises, faked one last move toward Gooey that made him squeak, and then left the room.

  Miz Brown removed his hand from his coat pocket and asked Gooey if they could start over. Gooey nodded enthusiastically as Wong slunk out of the room, still spitting splinters and making growling noises. Av saw money changing hands out in the hallway.

  Fucking beautiful.

  * * *

  Back at headquarters, Av asked Wong how he managed chewing a mouthful of pine splinters.

  “It’s not pine,” Wong explained, “it’s balsa, duded up to look like pine. Presplit, coated in a little olive oil, so I didn’t really need any blood.”

  Av grinned. “And the foaming at the mouth?”

  “Oh, that?” Wong said. “I can do that shit on demand.” He proceeded to demonstrate that ability just as a messenger came into the room with a priority intradepartment envelope. The messenger, a probationer, took one look at foaming Wong, dropped the envelope, and backed hurriedly out of the room in absolute horror.

  “Wong, for Chrissake,” Howie protested. He retrieved the envelope, looked at the addressee block, and gave it to Av. He opened it, looked at it, and then pronounced: “OCME speaks.”

  Av remembered the fairy godmother’s assurances that the medical examiner would not, in fact, speak—to them. He scanned the results, looking for the conclusions block. “Hoo-aah,” he said quietly. Second District’s got themselves a possible homicide.

  “Yeah?” Howie said.

  “Victim died from aconitine poisoning, based on preliminary analysis.”

  “What’s that shit?” Wong asked, wiping the foam off his mouth.

  “Prolly what you been eatin’,” Howie observed. “Foamin’ like that.”

  “According to this,” Av said, “it’s a toxin produced by a plant called the Aconitum, or monkshood, which makes aconitine by terpenoid biosynthesis from mevalonic acid that polymerizes subsequent to phosphorylation.”

  “Everyone knows that,” Wong said. “So then what happens?”

  Av read some more of the pharmacological report, hoping to encounter some recognizable English. “Here it is,” he said, finally. “It stops the big muscles of the body by attacking the neuron channels that make ’em expand and contract. We’re talking heart, lungs, skeletal muscle paralysis, here. Floods the brain with calcium and sodium, which is apparently not good, either. They’re sending some samples to the Bureau’s lab, because some of what happened didn’t quite make sense, such as, how fast it killed him.”

  “But he didn’t eat anything,” Howie reminded everyone.

  “Didn’t eat anything in the restaurant,” Av said. “But before he got there? Had himself a veggie fit, maybe? Munched on a monkshood plant by the sidewalk?”

  “Now what?” Wong said. “What do we do with that report?”

  “What report?” Precious asked from the doorway.

  “Dum-te-dum-dum, dum,” Howie intoned, to the tune of the old Dragnet show. Precious frowned. She gave really good frown.

  Av briefed her on what he had managed to glean from the report. Precious nodded and then announced that this was actually good news, inasmuch as they could now do what ILB was supposed to do and drop that tarbaby on the Second District’s homicide squad. “I want this thing gone. Outa here. Over and done with. Any questions?”

  “Doesn’t fit with the mission,” Av said.

  “Say what?”

  “Our mission here at ILB, as I’m constantly being reminded, is to shop the tarbabies all the way out of MPD. How’s about give me a day to see if I can get the Bureau to eat this one?”

  “How do you propose to manage that, Detective Sergeant?” Precious asked.

  “Same way as my suspension managed to disappear?” Av said.

  Precious gave him a look, shook her head, and then went back to her office.

  “Ooooh,” Howie said. “You got the Look.”

  “So?”

  “Means you better be right, partner,” he said. “Precious not keen on being shut down like that.”

  NINE

  That night Av picked up Chinese on the way home. He considered giving the remains of the second bottle of red a second chance and decided to go with beer instead. It was dropping into the lower fifties, so after a standup dinner at the kitchen counter, he lit up the woodstove with the remnants of last year’s wood, reminding himself to lay in a supply for the coming winter. He’d shifted into jeans and a real shirt in deference to the cooler weather. As he watched the sunset from the loft, he w
ondered about that OCME report. His night visitor had promised that there would be no report, and yet …

  Moreover, she’d known all about his suspension and the Briar Patch. And his aversion to getting deeply involved with women. How had she known that? He’d said it to—his curvy blond tenant, Rue Waltham. Was she a player? With that hair? No way. So maybe the Feebs had bugged his place?

  You’re getting paranoid, he told himself. But, then again, he reminded himself, even paranoids have enemies. Well: why not find out?

  “Hey,” he said, speaking to the ceiling in a louder than usual voice. “Fairy Godmother: I think we need to talk again. We did get a report from the medical examiner. He’s implying somebody poisoned McGavin with a plant. We’re thinking we have to call in the Bureau lab. That what you want?”

  He waited for the phone to ring. Nothing happened. He sat down and flipped on the TV.

  “Knock-knock,” a female voice called from the rooftop stairway. “Sergeant Smith?”

  He muted the wide-screen, got up and looked up the stairwell. Speak of the devil. Rue Waltham was tiptoeing down the stairs in her stocking feet, a pair of fancy party shoes in one hand. She looked as if she’d been out somewhere besides the office.

  “I’m so sorry to bother you again,” she said. “I’ve locked myself out. Can you get me into my apartment?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I have master keys somewhere. You do the fire escape again?”

  “’Fraid so,” she said, showing rust-colored palms. “I looked for an intercom or something…”

  “Yeah, I had one of those until the salesmen found it. Hang on a minute.”

  He went to his bedroom to the gun safe, opened it, and removed the master key collection, found the one for the apartment on the second floor, and came back out to the living room. Rue was standing there taking it all in.

  “This is lovely,” she said. “You kept the original walls exposed and everything.”

  “My uncle did all that before he left it to me,” Av said. “Here. This should do it. Drop it in my mailbox in the lobby when you go out tomorrow.”

  “Thanks so much,” she said, slipping her shoes back on while holding on to the telephone stand near the couch. “I found a running group by the way.”

  “No more adventures on the towpath, then?”

  She grinned. “That was something,” she said. “And that one guy—is he Samoan?”

  “Nobody knows,” Av said, walking her to his front door. “And nobody asks.”

  She thanked him again, and he locked the door behind her, leaving a faint hint of perfume in the air. She was pretty, he thought, even if she was a lawyer. He wondered where she worked. Then he switched on the wide-screen, cracked another beer, and started channel surfing. He turned in at eleven, half expecting another visitation from his fairy godmother. It didn’t happen. For some reason, he was mildly disappointed. He compared Rue to Ellen Whiting. No comparison, he thought. None whatsoever.

  * * *

  The next morning he did his usual warm-up out front. Rue Waltham was not in evidence. Still a little Wong-averse, probably. He took off on his usual route up the towpath, gearing up to some serious running sooner than he usually did, having screwed off for the past few days. He put some effort into it, and, golly gee, it hurt. He put some more effort into it and finally achieved that endorphin-saturated state where it hurt but it didn’t. The Marines always said that pain is the sign of weakness leaving the body. Sure it is, along with the ability to walk afterward. Then it did start to hurt, no shit, and he slowed, having covered, based on the surroundings, four clean, hot miles. He dropped down into a jog, and then reversed course back toward Georgetown.

  He’d gone half a mile when he heard what sounded like a whole squad of runners behind him, a lot of feet pounding flat-footed on the hard dirt of the towpath. Pretty much in unison.

  Aw, shit, he thought. They’re back.

  They were, but not in the way he imagined. Two guys passed him, two more fell in beside him, and then a familiar voice said from right behind him: “You wanted to talk?”

  He looked over his shoulder. Gone was the unisex business suit from the previous evening. Now she was wearing one of those iron-cupped halter tops that full-breasted female runners wore to keep from breaking their collarbones. A taut and well-muscled abdomen topped some tasteful white nylon running shorts and two exceptional legs.

  “Damn,” he said. “It’s a girl.”

  She rolled her eyes. She was matching his pace with ease, not even breaking a flush. Probably hadn’t just done four miles, though, he thought.

  “You look a little winded,” she said. “Why don’t we slow it to a fast walk and you can tell me what’s on your mind.”

  He said okay. They slowed, and the platoon of escorts backed away. He then told her that ILB was going to turn the OCME report over to the Second District homicide squad. He suggested that she run a little interference with the Bureau instead, and then he’d convince Precious to hand it over to them instead of opening a case within MPD.

  She looked sideways at him. “And you’re suggesting we do this why, exactly?”

  “I owe you one,” he said. “You are Bureau, right?”

  She looked away and then nodded.

  “Then I would think you’d want to keep this particular tarbaby in federal channels,” he pointed out.

  “What exactly did the ME come up with?” she asked.

  “Aconitine poisoning,” Av said. “Some evil mung that’s synthesized by the monkshood plant. Does a number on brain and large muscle cells; floods ’em with calcium and sodium. All natural substances, but apparently bad shit.”

  “Does the report say how he came to consume aconitine?”

  “Nope,” Av said. “But it did say they were sending some more tissue samples to the Big Lab in the sky, which might give you the opening you need to get the Bureau to take my tarbaby. Please.”

  She smiled. “I hardly need an opening to the Bureau, Detective,” she said. “But I’ll consider what you’re suggesting. Can you stall the report in-house for a day or so?”

  “I can, as long as there is a definite prospect of shopping it out of the house,” he said. “Means I may have to tell my boss about you and your squad of special agents here.”

  “We’ll survive,” she said.

  “And I’d appreciate the bugs coming out of my loft,” he said. “Seeing as this whole deal will soon be over, right?”

  “But then how will you summon your fairy godmother?” she asked, lightly.

  “Turn in place three times in my special slippers and clap my hands?”

  She laughed out loud at that, and then took off at a respectable pace, followed immediately by her posse of athletic specials. Yeah, he thought, watching her go. If the platinum blonde downstairs was streetable, this one was downright sexy. And dangerous, he reminded himself, sternly. Still, he appreciated the eye candy.

  * * *

  By the time he got to the office and grabbed his first cup of coffee, there were two men in severe-looking suits with visitors’ badges waiting in the conference room to speak to him. Beauroids, he thought immediately.

  Howie asked him what he’d done now. Av dug out the OCME report from the pile of papers on his desk and asked Howie if he could make a quick copy of it, and then bring the original into the conference room.

  “You shoppin’ this to the Bureau?” Howie asked.

  “If they’re willing to take it and the creeks don’t rise,” Av said. “Remember the mission.”

  “Those hoods are downright ugly,” Wong commented.

  “They get paid extra for that,” Howie said, as he unstapled the OCME report. Then he pointed his chin at Av. “Newbie’s playin’ with fire in there.”

  “I can stomp if it would help,” Wong offered. Av grinned and went to the conference room. The two special agents introduced themselves as being from the violent crime division of the Washington Field Office. “I’m Special Agent Jim Walker,
” the taller one said. “This is Special Agent Mike Freer.”

  Av asked if they needed coffee. Both demurred. Av sat down and asked how he could help them.

  “We’re investigating the death of one Francis X. McGavin of the DHS at a French restaurant up on Connecticut Avenue called Bistro Nord. We understand from Lieutenant Johnson that you did a preliminary investigation into the circumstances?”

  “You’re shitting me, right?” Av asked.

  The two agents appeared to be taken aback. “Why, um, no,” Walker said. “Why would you say that?”

  “Sorry,” Av said. “We handle a lot of cases that seem to straddle the MPD-federal LE divide here.” He recounted Precious’s initial efforts to move the case to the Bureau, and that they had rejected it due to some unspecified Bureau involvement. “I’ve probably confused this with something else. Why don’t you tell me what you got, and how I can help you?”

  The agents relaxed a bit. Special Agent Freer laid it out. “We got a call from the Patient Affairs office at MedStar,” he said. “Claiming they had a John Doe DOA who might be from the DHS. They said OCME had been in touch and had asked about notification. They were notifying us because the DOA might have worked for a federal agency. When we pulled the string at Pathology, they said the DOA had been moved to the District’s OCME. We followed up on that, where we discovered the John Doe’s identity was McGavin and that ILB was running the case.”

  Av followed the alphabet soup carefully. He told them that OCME had performed an autopsy and that McGavin’s family lawyer had claimed the body. He hesitated for a moment, and then said he had something odd to share with them, but he wasn’t sure what it meant. He described his interaction with the towpath cowboys, his midnight visitation from the fairy godmother, and their subsequent meeting this morning out on the towpath.

  “This woman says she’s Bureau CT?”

  “No, not exactly.”

  “What’s her name?” Freer asked.

  “Ellen Whiting?” Av said.

  “Aw, fuck.” Walker sighed.