Cold Frame [retail]

by P. T. Deutermann

  “Let me ask you something,” Precious said. “You personally involved with this Ellen Whiting person?”

  “Not on your life,” he said. “She’s very attractive but more than a little scary for my tastes. How many senior FBI agents ride a damn Harley?”

  “Okay, but she seems to keep appearing in your life, doesn’t she.”

  “I know, but last night in the bar? She seemed genuinely scared. She doesn’t have a rabbi anymore—guy retired—and she wanted help.”

  “And you agreed?”

  “I told her I’d think about it. She’s gotta know I’d bring it to my boss. Maybe that’s what she really wanted. I don’t know. But if any of this is true, and we do have two dead guys now, this has to go uptown to the Bureau.”

  “Got that right,” she muttered. She looked out the window again. “What you gonna do, you see this Halloween guy again?”

  “Open fire?” he said.

  “Assuming you see him the next time,” she said.

  “Gonna be looking now, boss,” he said.

  “Okay. Keep this to yourself, and that includes the inmates out there. I’m gonna think, then I’m gonna make some calls. You may be right about how to approach this.”

  “Wonders never cease,” he said.

  “Don’t push it,” she said. “Now: out.”

  * * *

  Av caught up with the other inmates at the Dragon Palace twenty minutes later. The Dragon was a four-story brownstone in Washington’s diminutive Chinatown, decorated fantastically with all the requisite good-luck symbology. The first floor was a typical tourist-trap Chinese buffet, with identifiable foods swimming in aromatic if greasy steam pans. The second floor was for regulars, mostly cops and the working stiffs from the courthouses, with the occasional judge sometimes gracing the premises. The center of the second-floor room was the food service area, while private booths with ornate but discreet screens surrounded the room on three sides. A carpeted stairway led from the tourist buffet area to the second floor. A bright red door led to another stairway to the upper floors. The kitchens were down in the basement. Av had heard that the third and fourth floors offered even more privacy if the customers’ objectives went beyond lunch, although he had never verified that rumor with Wong, who would know.

  Miz Brown stuck his head out of one of the screened booths and waved him over.

  “My man,” declared Mau-Mau. “Give it up.”

  “Can I get some chow first?”

  “No,” Wong said.

  “Mercy, yo,” Av said. “At least a beer?”

  Mau-Mau stuck his hand out of the screen and waved an empty beer bottle. A cold one appeared in fifteen seconds. Av asked for some food. The young Chinese waiter smiled, bowed, and darted away. Av thought maybe he should have specified what kind of food he wanted.

  “Well,” he said. “Like I told brother Mau-Mau, here, this thing is a potential motherfucker. Even got Precious upset.”

  “You know what you are?” Mau-Mau asked. “You are a genu-wine shit-magnet. You been here, what, two weeks? And we all got this bad feeling that the big black bird of Upstairs is about to lift its tail feathers on our heads.”

  “That’s certainly possible,” Av said, deciding to ignore Precious’s orders. “I guess I need to fill you in.”

  Ten minutes later, there was a profound silence at the table. The waiter had returned with a plate of fragrant things for Av, who fell to with enthusiasm while the others digested his story. Finally Mau-Mau spoke.

  “The National fucking Security Council?” he began.

  “That a big deal?” Wong asked, spearing an entire egg roll.

  “Oh, yeah, brother Wong, that’s a big deal,” Mau-Mau said. “Talkin’ serious federal juice, okay? Miz Brown, how’s that retirement package shapin’ up? Is it hard? Can maybe I do it, too?”

  Miz Brown beamed and said it wasn’t hard at all. He offered to explain, but all three of them immediately put up their hands. At that moment, the screen was pulled aside by a different waiter. The inmates turned as one. A striking woman was standing there, displaying her Bureau credentials. “May I join this conversation?” she said. “Before you guys get any deeper into a certain minefield?”

  “Gentlemen,” Av said. “Let me introduce Supervisory Special Agent Ellen Whiting, of the First Team.”

  “You married?” Wong asked.

  Everybody grinned, including Ellen as she sat down. “Would it matter, Detective?” she said with a smile. “But no, I’m not. Thank you for asking.”

  “Are we in some kinda trouble?” Mau-Mau asked.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “Sergeant Smith, you said you had met Tyree Miller?”

  “Right,” Av said. “After you and I had our dinner date. He blew some serious smoke up my ass. Said he wasn’t sure you even worked for them. Did he lie?”

  “Oh, yes, he did,” Ellen said. “His office called me this morning. Said we needed to talk. Made an appointment for noon. Can you imagine why?”

  “Yes, I can,” Av said. “I went to my boss this morning. Told her what you told me. Mentioned Mister Miller by name. I’m guessing she took it up the line, and somebody Upstairs dropped a dime.” He paused for a moment. “But, wait—that just happened. Like twenty minutes ago.”

  “Which should mean that that’s not why they want to see me,” she said.

  Av looked pointedly at his watch. “Since you’re here and not there, I take it you blew them off?” he asked. They all looked at her approvingly.

  “I called Miller’s office at ten, told them something had come up and I needed to reschedule to two o’clock. They said fine. I asked what the meeting was about. The guy I talked to told me it concerned my clandestine meetings with a Metro PD cop in odd places, such as his pad in the middle of the night and then at a gay bar down the street from the National Cathedral.”

  Aw, shit, Av thought. They had both had tails on them. “And what’d you say to that?” he asked.

  “That we were in lu-u-v,” she said brightly. “What else?”

  “You went to a gay bar?” Wong asked, looking at Av. “With her?”

  “What’s this minefield you’re talkin’ about?” Mau-Mau asked. “Me and my pension want to know.”

  “One thing at a time, guys,” Ellen said. “Sergeant Smith, what do you think your boss will do with what you told her?”

  Av told her what he’d recommended.

  Ellen closed her eyes for a moment. “Okay,” she said. “Today’s Friday. How fast will your chief of investigative services react to this situation?”

  “Our chief of D’s?” Wong said. “Fast?”

  Av grinned. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think Lieutenant Johnson knows, either. Upstairs might just try to hush the thing up—wait to see what, if anything, happens. Or, more likely, he’ll go wailing to the chief, herself, and get her to call someone in the Bureau. How did you find us here?”

  “I called ILB, asked one of the secretaries. She said you guys usually came here on Fridays, so I gave it a try.”

  “Bring your watchers with you?” Av asked.

  Ellen sighed. “Probably,” she said. “But it’s not like they had to try very hard.”

  “Uh-oh.” Mau-Mau groaned.

  “Meaning, if we are interested in someone’s whereabouts, we have the means to track that someone right down to a gnat’s ass.” She turned to Av. “Remember to bring your phone today? Or, how’d you guys pay for lunch? Credit card, by any chance?”

  Three worried nods.

  Ellen shrugged. “There you go,” she said. “But, look: despite what happened yesterday, I think there’s a much bigger problem here in River City.”

  “And what is that?” Mau-Mau asked.

  “As I told Sergeant Smith, I believe that some officials who disagree with the whole concept of the DMX committee are being killed to shut them up.”

  The other three inmates looked at Av with expressions that said: so it was true, what he’d
been telling them.

  “You still believe that Mandeville is behind those two deaths?” Av asked.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “So the minefield you’re talking about is the fact that we now know what you know. And that could be some dangerous knowledge.”

  “Oh, Lord,” Howie said. “We’re all going down.”

  Nobody had an answer to that dire prediction. Finally, Ellen spoke up. “There’s someone I think can help us,” she said. “A civilian. I think I need to go see him.”

  At that moment two tiny hands pulled aside the privacy screen. An elderly Chinese lady stood there, her face a study in wrinkle-art. “Black Suburbans,” she announced to the four cops. “Suits. Matrix sunglasses. Looking for missy, here, I think.”

  “Oh, shit,” Ellen said. “I need to avoid this.”

  “Mary Soo,” Mau-Mau said. “This lady needs a way out. Third floor open?”

  “Red door, right over there,” she said. “Missy come with me.”

  Miz Brown and Mau-Mau stood up when Ellen did. “Want some company?” Mau-Mau asked. “He’s about to retire and I’m thinking hard on it.”

  “Yeah, you guys get gone,” Av said. “Wong, you should probably go, too. I think I can handle this by myself.”

  “Fuck that noise,” Wong said. “Not done with these egg rolls.”

  Mary Soo rattled off some lightning-fast Chinese to the waitstaff, and then led the three escapees through the red door. Av heard the lock click when it closed. Two waiters hurried over and cleared the two empty place settings from the table, and then drew the screens closed down to just a crack. A minute later, Av watched three large men come up the big stairway from the buffet room below. One of them conferred with the waitstaff and then they approached Av’s booth. A waiter ran over, bowed, and drew the screens open. Wong cocked his head to one side.

  “You guys like egg rolls?” he asked. “We got extra.”

  THIRTEEN

  Hiram Walker got up out of his “throne” chair when the young lady was shown into the library. He smiled inwardly at her efforts to control her expression: he was almost a foot and half taller than she was. He positively loomed over her as they shook hands. He hoped his joints weren’t creaking too loud.

  “Special Agent Whiting,” he said. “I’m Hiram Walker. Please, do sit down.”

  The call had come two hours ago. According to Thomas, a Special Agent Ellen Whiting had wanted to speak to Hiram Walker concerning an ongoing project in the Bureau laboratory regarding obscure botanical toxins. Thomas had asked for her number and said he would forward her request. Then he had spoken with Hiram’s friend in the Bureau’s lab, who’d checked the building directory and phone book, and confirmed that she was a supervisory special agent in the counterterrorism division. He had then called the lab and asked for her by name. They drew a blank. So she was an FBI agent, but evidently did not work in the laboratory division. Interesting.

  Thomas briefed Hiram, who now, armed with this knowledge, watched her arrive in front of the house on the library’s closed-circuit television. She was driving what looked like an official government car, complete with several antennae and the requisite tinted windows. Thomas had gone out to meet her and opened her door. As she went up the stairs, he’d nodded discreetly at the unobtrusive camera mounted near a downspout: the car’s interior also looked correct.

  She shook his hand firmly and then backed down into a chair. Hiram still hadn’t done anything about the furniture, so only her medium-high heels touched the rug. Hiram realized that he was probably never going to adjust the furniture. As long as people looked at him as if he was some kind of freak, then they could endure freak-sized furniture. After all, he told himself, he hadn’t called her. She had called him.

  “Mister Walker, I don’t actually work in the Bureau’s laboratory,” she said straightaway, presenting her FBI credentials. “I work in one of the Bureau’s counterterrorism offices. I reached out to someone I know in the lab to see if they had any properly cleared experts here in the Washington area who might be able to help us with a problem. Your name came up, along with something called the Phaedo Society?”

  “What kind of problem?” Hiram asked, casually studying her. She was wearing a conservative pantsuit, practical shoes, minimal makeup, and a businesslike hairdo, and, yet, she still managed to convey an aura of latent sexuality. She had gray-green-blue—he couldn’t quite tell—eyes, which she was hiding behind some birth-control glasses. His experience with women was sparse, but for some reason, this one excited him, even though, right now, anyway, she was all business.

  “Do you—” She stopped and took a breath. “Do you know anything about the program that the U.S. government uses to attrite the leadership of the major terrorist groups around the world?”

  He smiled. “You’re in luck, Special Agent. May I assume we’re talking about the DMX?”

  He’d surprised her; he was certain of it—her widening eyes gave it away. “Yes,” she said. “But—”

  He put up a hand. “Let’s just stipulate that I know enough about the DMX to guess that you’re not here to talk about a Bureau lab project. You’re here because of two recent and fairly puzzling deaths down in the city. From what I’ve read in the press, those two officials were senior enough to have been appointed to the DMX, especially since people in their respective agencies were rather vague about what Logan and McGavin did—or did not do—within their respective agencies. And, from further reading and perhaps a few discreet inquiries to some people I know in the government, how and why these two gentlemen died is perplexing some of the best forensic pathologists in town. How’m I doing, Special Agent?”

  “Holy crap,” she said. “Much too well.”

  The antique clock up on the fireplace mantel chimed five times. Hiram beamed.

  “Five o’clock,” he said. “I usually have a wee dram of single-malt at five o’clock. Not supposed to, of course, but I find it’s just plain necessary. May I offer you something, even if you are on duty?”

  “Yes, please,” she said. “I’m partial to the Macallan, straight up.”

  “I’m sure we can oblige,” Hiram said, as he pushed the call bell under the chair’s arm. A moment later Thomas appeared.

  “Two Macallans, please, Thomas. Straight up, as usual. And perhaps a footstool?”

  “Right away, sir,” Thomas said.

  He returned in three minutes with the drinks and a small, carpeted footstool for Ellen’s aching legs.

  “My friend at the lab said you had Marfan syndrome,” she said. “Didn’t they think Abraham Lincoln was afflicted with that, too?”

  “Not anymore,” Hiram said. “But yes, I’ve looked like this since about sixteen. It’s a genetically driven disease of the connective tissue—joints, principally, but it also compromises the aorta, leading to an aneurysm or a simple dissection. I’m fifty-five, which is a long life for Marfan. Hence my secluded lifestyle.”

  “And you’re from the Washington area?”

  “Heavens, no. Delaware. My father’s estate borders the old DuPont place. My mother had me somewhat late in life. They are both gone now. The Delaware estate is part of the conservancy now, because of the gardens.”

  “Did you go to public—no, I guess private schools, growing up?”

  “No, I’m afraid not,” he said. “The unusual height came on pretty early, along with difficulties in walking and general getting around. My father let me go out for Halloween just once. We drove to the nearest suburban neighborhood. Unfortunately my appearance cleared the streets of both children and adults.”

  She grinned at the thought. “Full monster gear? Stitches and everything?”

  “Dr. Frankenstein would have been so proud,” he said with a smile. “But the police came, and after that, I became something of a permanent recluse. Fortunately I was born into a rich family, so I could be ‘hidden away,’ as it were, in high style.”

  “This is a beautiful house,” she said, looking a
round at the library furnishings. Everything gleamed softly, indicating real walnut paneling, solid brass accouterments, and the kind of oriental rugs that belonged on the wall, not the floors. “But don’t you ever get, I don’t know, lonely?” She raised a hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry—that’s—”

  He waved it off and smiled at her. “Of course,” he said, quietly. “But ever since I entered my gold-plated cloister, I’ve had everything I wanted brought to me. If you have enough wealth behind you, that’s not very hard to accomplish, when you think about it.”

  He went on to tell her about his education at the hands of a small army of tutors over the years, from secondary school right through to what would have qualified him for a graduate degree had he chosen to pursue the piece of paper.

  “I’m a bit of a ghost,” he said. “I don’t drive, I don’t have a social security number, I don’t have a listed telephone number, and I don’t file tax returns, because I have no income. I’m the sole ward of an enormous trust fund whose only purpose is to provide for whatever I need. Or want. My father invented the compound that keeps automatic transmissions from frothing their oil at high speeds, you see, and licensed that patent for one dollar—for every automatic automobile transmission ever made, anywhere.”

  “Good God,” she said. “That would be huge. And yet you seem to know what’s going on downtown, as if you like to keep your hand in.”

  He nodded. “Washington is the most fascinating city in the world, in my opinion, so I watch. Given the resources I have at hand, I can really watch. I think I’ve discovered the underlying theory of a capital city.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That the people with power have a basic, unquenchable need to make it known that they, indeed, have power. So they talk. They boast. They posture. They whisper into unreliable ears at Georgetown dinner parties. Given today’s technology, none of that remains a secret for more than, oh, about two minutes.”