Cold Frame [retail]

by P. T. Deutermann

  “I’m Detective Sergeant Ken Smith, Metro PD,” he said. “And if official proceedings are in the offing, we’re not going to have a conversation about anything at all.”

  “I understand, Detective,” Tyree said. “Truth be told, we’re not all that interested in you. It’s the woman you just had dinner with who’s attracted our attention. Can you tell me her name?”

  “CT,” Av said. Ellen Whiting had paid for a terrific steak. CT would do for now.

  “CT?” Miller said. “CT what?”

  “That’s it,” Av said. The car was moving now, but still only at about two miles per hour. “She paid me a visit in the middle of the night. I found her sitting in my living room when I got up to tend to a red wine hangover. We talked, well, actually, she talked about a case I was working on. Then she left.”

  Miller blinked once, like a large frog. “What case was that, Detective?”

  “The case of a Homeland Security civil serpent dying under mysterious circumstances in a French restaurant up on Connecticut Avenue. Name of Francis X. McGavin.”

  Tyree sat back and looked out the window for a moment. He didn’t seem all that surprised. “And what was the outcome of your midnight discussion? Or was there a point?”

  Av nodded. He told Tyree about the canal towpath incident, the supposed FPS connection, and how he’d been suspended for organizing that, even though one of the other Briar Patch detectives had done the real organizing. The following day all had apparently been forgiven.

  “Then two of your people showed up, picked up our case files on the McGavin matter, told us they’d take it from there, and that was that.”

  “And when you talked to those two agents, did the name Ellen Whiting come up?”

  Aw, shit, Av thought. He nodded.

  “Had you heard that name, Ellen Whiting, before, Detective?” Tyree asked.

  “Yes,” Av said. “Supposedly she was the woman with McGavin at the restaurant when he died. When we initially tried to shop the case to the Bureau, they declined, saying there was a Bureau angle to the case. We naturally assumed this Ellen Whiting was Bureau.”

  The car made a left turn across a lot of traffic, evoking some horns of protest. Neither of the agents up front so much as glanced at the other cars.

  “But then this woman who identifies herself as, what was it—CT?—appears in your home in the middle of the night.”

  “Right. She says she’s in the counterterrorism business, but did not mention the Bureau. Or the FPS, either.”

  “So we’ve supposedly got the Bureau, the Federal Protective Service, and now some eponymous counterterrorism agency as her employer of record. Hence the CT?”

  “I suppose,” Av said. “When she called earlier today, that’s what she wanted me to call her—CT. My partners and I’d been calling her my fairy godmother, because of the way all the top-floor heat suddenly evaporated.”

  “May I ask what you two talked about tonight?” Tyree asked. “Over steaks, beer, and fancy vodka, very cold?”

  So they’d had someone in the restaurant, Av thought. That meant a lot of agents were out tonight on this matter. “Nothing of great significance,” he replied. “She wanted to know my thoughts on what ought to happen to Americans who joined forces with terrorists. She also told me that her brand-new husband had died in the World Trade Center on nine-eleven.”

  That seemed to pique Tyree’s interest, and Av thought the agent in the right front seat was writing something in a notebook. “Did you get the impression she was trying to recruit you for something, Detective?” Tyree asked.

  Av, surprised, hesitated. Then he thought, what the hell, tell ’em the truth. “I don’t know what to think, Supervisory Special Agent,” he said. “That’s possible. In fact, I asked her if she was running some kind of government hit squad, but she blew that off.”

  “So how did the dinner date end?”

  “She gave me the impression that she was ready to go somewhere and put a fine finish on the evening,” Av said. “But I declined.”

  “She cuts a pretty impressive figure,” Tyree said. “Why’d you decline?”

  “She’s a little scary, maybe?” Av said. He wasn’t inclined to share his own personal rules of engagement with these guys just now. “What’s the Bureau’s interest in this woman, if I may ask?”

  “If I told you, I’d have to quarantine you, Detective,” Tyree said, but then he smiled. “That was my feeble attempt at a joke.”

  “A joke,” Av said. “Fancy that.”

  One of the agents up front stifled a snort. Miller ignored it. “I think you can guess from the nature of my questions that we’re very interested in talking to this individual, for a variety of reasons, including her penchant for even hinting that she works for us.”

  Av nodded. Impersonating a Bureau special agent was a major crime in the eyes of everyone at the Hoover building. “She never did actually claim that,” he pointed out. “So I guess she probably does not work for the Bureau?”

  “We, on the other hand, are worried that she does. Not directly, perhaps, but in some capacity.”

  Av was confused. They’d obviously had someone in the restaurant close enough to hear their dinner order. So why hadn’t they just grabbed her up? And this guy was implying that they could not identify this woman as one of their own employees? His BS detector started to hum. Those two agents had surely known that name.

  “What directorate do you work for, Mr. Miller?” Av asked.

  “Professional Standards.”

  Ah, Av thought. That was the Bureau’s name for their internal affairs people. That would explain some of this ambiguity. Or did it?

  “So, if she calls me again, you guys want, what, a heads-up?” he asked.

  “We’ll probably know before you will, Detective,” Tyree said, pleasantly. “But we would surely appreciate a debrief of whatever happens after that. Here’s my card. Anyone who answers that number can take your report. I believe this is your residence?”

  Av looked out the window and saw his building. He nodded. “It is and I will,” he said. “Always glad to help my Bureau.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Tyree said as the rear door was opened. “The Bureau is a good friend to have.”

  “And the converse is also true,” Av observed.

  Tyree smiled again. “Just so, Detective Smith. Good night now.”

  Av laughed quietly as the car drove away. Message received, he thought. In a way, he liked the FBI. They came right to the point most of the time. If they said it, fucking believe it. F.B.I.

  TEN

  Carl Mandeville pasted as pleasant a smile as he could manage onto his face as he listened to Assistant Secretary Hilary Logan bang on about his growing concerns over the Kill List and the need for a full review of the DMX committee’s whole operation. They were having dinner at a tony restaurant in residential Georgetown called 1789. They were seated in the Wickets Room, one of six dining areas in the restaurant.

  Hilary, one l, thank you, as he would say, not two like that Gorgon, considered himself to be a respected gourmand. He was one of those men who really did live to eat, and, not surprisingly, it showed. Three chins presided over an acre or so of worsted wool vest, and the high color in his face told Mandeville that Logan had maybe about three more years before his coronary arteries finally put him in the ground. The problem was that Mandeville didn’t have three years. Logan, a staunch advocate of killing off the DMX program, was a clear and present danger. Unfortunately he was also the scion of a wealthy Boston family with titanium-strong ties to the Massachusetts congressional delegation. His father owned a bank in Boston, and thus it was that Hilary was the Treasury Department’s rep to DMX.

  “My dear Mandeville,” Hilary puffed, between mouthfuls of a fourteen-ounce filet smothered in bordelaise sauce. “You simply must understand that this DMX business is becoming an increasingly dangerous liability to America’s foreign policy. Murder will out and all that, yes? And we are talkin
g murder. It’s simply un-American to send operatives out into the third world to murder these demented Muslims. Un-American.”

  “Those same demented Muslims of whom you are so fond feel that they are engaged in a war with the West, not just an energetic discussion,” Mandeville said. “They think it’s okay to fly hijacked airliners into buildings. To park dump trucks full of explosives in front of American embassies. To drive a motorboat full of explosives into the side of an American warship parked peacefully in a harbor. To mail envelopes full of anthrax to American government buildings. You think these things are, what, okay?”

  “Of course not,” Hilary said, pursuing the final roast potato around his plate with a fork. “But there are rules, Mandeville. Rules of civilized behavior. DMX is basically uncivilized. Some of us feel that we’d be much better off if we captured them, brought them to trial for the murderers that they are. Make them face the consequences of their actions in a court of law. Prove to them time and again that the civilized world does not condone their barbarous tactics. But we do not sink to their level and shoot them in the head while they’re parking their car in front of the mosque.”

  He reached for his wineglass, which was half full. “Oh, dear,” he said. “We seem to have expended this bottle—another one, perhaps?”

  “Yes, why not,” Mandeville said, signaling the hovering waiter. They had been indulging in a really good 1999 Châteaux Margaux and it suited his purposes to have another bottle presented, especially since Hilary, with one l, was buying.

  Mandeville’s left hand gently massaged the tiny, clear gel cap in his coat pocket. Just squeeze it, his contact at the army labs had told him. Pop it like a pimple. And the best part was that it would take about an hour before its effects came on. He waited for the waiter to bring a second bottle, open it, and then let it breathe on the table for a few minutes.

  “I understand your concerns, Hilary,” Mandeville continued. “But the American people will not abide it. Ordinary citizens know that our judicial system bends over backward to give lawbreakers in this country every protection, but when they see buildings falling down at the hands of foreigners bent on killing America, itself, people here at home want those bastards dead, not pulling off some kind of O.J. on them.”

  “Not everybody wants them dead, my dear fellow,” Hilary said. “In fact, I want them captured, tried very publicly so that the whole world knows what they did and why they did it, and then caged for life. As you know, I don’t approve of the death penalty.”

  “Funny, the terrorists have no such qualms about killing,” Mandeville said. “They even like to film it these days—like the journalist they captured and then beheaded on television a year ago.”

  “Hear me out, Mandeville. I believe it’s worse to be caged up for the rest of your life than put to sleep like a surgery patient. We get enough of them in cages, maybe that will make some of these turd world countries reconsider their visa policies, rather than allow these thugs to run free under their noses.”

  “They let them run free because they have been coerced into doing so, Hilary,” Mandeville replied. “Why? Because the thugs are better organized, armed, and funded than the local governments. No, this won’t do. DMX fulfills a pressing need: to reflect terror right back at these Islamist maniacs who hate us and all we stand for. If you expose the DMX to a political review in today’s supercharged political climate, we lose a very effective, if not the only effective weapon against the terrorists.”

  Logan just shook his head, started to say something but then a crumb caught in his throat and he reached for his water glass. His sleeve knocked his steak knife off the table. As Logan reached down to retrieve it, Mandeville saw his chance. In one swift motion he passed his left palm over Logan’s almost empty wineglass as if to steady it while the fat man was struggling to bend down. He glanced at his watch as Logan straightened up and reached for the breadbasket. Now all he had to do was get Logan back out onto the street in no more than about forty-five minutes, tops.

  “Let’s see if this bottle’s as good as the last,” Mandeville said, expansively, pouring a splash into his own glass. He pointed to Logan’s glass. “Finish that.” Logan gulped down the last of his wine and smacked his lips in obvious anticipation of another bottle. Mandeville signaled the waiter to bring fresh glasses, in honor of the excellent wine—and to make sure any residue ended up in the dishwasher.

  * * *

  Av had spent the early evening at Georgetown University attending a lecture on forensic toxicology, courtesy of the MPD’s continuing education program. Even though he was no longer assigned to a homicide bureau, he was determined to keep up with the science end of the city’s too many murders. He’d halfway expected Precious to nix his request, but since she, herself, was attending night school, she was all for it. He thought the little interlude with Happy might have influenced her thinking, as well. He thought she was still embarrassed about all that.

  He left the east campus and walked down Thirty-fifth Street toward the canal area, enjoying the gentle evening breezes coming off the river below and how the streetlights seemed to polish up the million-dollar town houses of the university neighborhood. Another block brought him to Canal Street, where the M Street bar and restaurant rush hour was building. As he waited for the light to cross Canal Street, he saw a yellow cab slow and then stop in the intersection, as if getting ready for a left turn—except there was no left turn possible there. Then he saw a rather large man open the left rear door of the cab, heave himself unsteadily out of the vehicle, and then walk straight into the heavy flow of traffic going the other way through the intersection toward the Georgetown nightlife. There wasn’t even time for horns—two vehicles hit the man, the first a Mercedes sedan that spun him off its left front bumper. The man bounced off the side of the yellow cab, back into the road, and then was struck by a SUV, which hit him head-on and smashed his body under the front end. The driver of the SUV slammed on the brakes, causing the following car to rear-end it, sending the SUV lurching forward another ten feet in a hail of glass.

  The man from the cab was no longer visible. Av knew he was probably pinned under that Suburban. He hoped he was dead because otherwise they’d be sewing on him for a year. The yellow cab was still stopped right where the man had gotten out. The driver, who looked to be Middle Eastern, was standing next to the driver’s-side door with both hands held to his face. The driver of the third car, a woman, was leaning against the remains of her steering wheel airbag. She appeared to be crying

  Amazingly, the traffic began to part around the three stopped vehicles and the cab, with only the two cars right behind the wreck coming to a stop. Av wanted to go out into the intersection but the westbound traffic coming out of Georgetown was barely slowing—if they hadn’t seen the man get hit, they’d assume it was just another fender-bender.

  The man in the Mercedes, however, knew better. He gingerly got out of the car and walked back toward the Suburban, his right hand held in front of his mouth as if he was about to be sick. At that moment a patrol car rolled up, its blue strobes flashing. They must have been in traffic, Av thought. He thought about going out into the intersection now that traffic was being forced to stop in both directions, but hesitated. The two cops had their hands full right now, and soon there’d be more cruisers and an ambulance on scene. He decided to check the incident board in the morning and then call the District people working the incident to give a witness statement. What in the world had prompted that guy to get out of the cab like that? He’d never looked—he just got out and walked like some kind of zombie right into the stream of traffic. He made a mental note to emphasize that point when he gave his statement. Then he resumed his walk home, thoughts of dinner somewhat muted now.

  * * *

  Carl Mandeville had the White House staff car drop him off at the Lincoln Monument after dinner. He told the driver he needed to walk off all that rich food, and asked him to pick him up in an hour at the reflecting pool behind the
Capitol building. As he started up the walkway toward the World War II Memorial, he reflected on his discussion with Logan at dinner. That idiot’s worldview was all too typical of the so-called progressive intelligentsia in Washington, insulated as they were by inherited money, an affluent lifestyle, and a certain group-think smugness that seemed to warp their approach to everything, from Georgetown dinner parties to public policy.

  Strang would be alarmed by what he’d done tonight, but he’d needed to show Strang not only who was in charge but also what could happen to anyone who crossed him. Normally he did not indulge in direct action, taking care always to have a layer or two between his masterminding and any actual wet work. He sensed, however, that Strang had been taking him a wee bit too much for granted lately, with all his let-me-take-care-of-it suggestions, as if he was the one driving the train. What would happen to Logan tonight, no, probably what had already happened, would snatch him up nicely.

  One of his former subordinates in the Agency, now a division chief, had told him about Strang and how it might be useful to Mandeville to have someone “sleeping” in the Bureau headquarters. Mandeville had jumped at the offer, if only to have eyes and ears at the Hoover building, and, if necessary, another hired hand. His first major tasking had been to talk the strange millionaire botanist out in Great Falls out of some of his rarer toxins, and he’d opened that door that handsomely. But: given how easily that Metro PD cop had been able to deflect Strang’s “subtle” efforts at intimidation, perhaps he’d overestimated the old spook’s abilities. One thing was for sure—Strang knew nothing about Evangelino, and he was determined to keep it that way.

  On the other hand, he’d have to be extra careful in dealing with the third one, Wheatley. He smiled in the glow of the faux gas lamps throughout the Mall area. It would be interesting to see how pompous Mr. Wheatley reacted to a second member of their little committee going to meet his maker. Hell, it’d be interesting to see if Wheatley even showed up for their next meeting once he heard the news. And Ellen? He had to be careful there, he thought: she was on ready alert, and Logan’s sudden demise might trigger her into doing something awkward.