Man Down

by John Douglas

  My mother grudgingly agreed to smoke only on the back deck. Eric pronounced the computer adequate for his games, but just barely: “It’s only got one hundred twenty-eight megs of RAM, but it’ll be okay.”

  “Can I call Raoul?” Ali wanted to know.

  “You can, but you can’t tell him where you are. And don’t use the cell phone or the phone here. Go down to the convenience store and use their pay phone.”

  “What?”

  “Just in case. Just for a few days.”

  Ali didn’t argue. “I think I’ll take a nap.” She walked upstairs taking each step as if she were carrying a great weight.

  “Watch her, Mom.”

  “I will.”

  I kissed my mother’s forehead and let her hug me again. She hung on until I said, “I’ve got to go, Mom.”

  “I know.”

  “Make up a list of groceries you’ll need.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll even get your cigarettes, although everyone would be happier if you quit.”

  My mother stared at me as if I were mentally lacking, a look I’ve seen a lot in my life. She said, “Like smoking is the most dangerous part of my day.”

  22

  I drove to Crystal City, watching to see if I was being followed. I circled the block a few times and once pulled to the curb to let traffic pass me by. When I felt comfortable, I pulled into the parking garage and backed into a slot. I passed up the elevator, an old habit from my field days when I worked the projects in Detroit. Gangs like to ambush elevators, especially elevators containing cops, as an initiation into the family. Far too many rookies had the doors slide open on a nine-millimeter welcome.

  I was alone in the stairwell and in the hallway. I quickly let myself into my apartment, my home with its grand view across the river. I opened the drapes and looked out. The plane wreckage had been cleared but a dark spot of scorched earth still marred the Mall.

  I turned from the window and saw the blink of the answering machine. I hit the play button and listened. There were many requests for interviews, most from the day after the congressman’s plane went down. I had a couple of crank calls, as usual, from fans anxious to know if I’d kept souvenirs of any of my interviews with serial killers.

  While I was thinking about how strange people were, and how that weirdness had actually made my career, I missed the first part of his message and had to replay it.

  “Mr. Donovan. This is Mr. Kurz calling to confirm our appointment for twelve. I’ll meet you at the coffee place across the street. If you’re held up, I’ll wait as long as I can.”

  A man named Kurz with a Carolina accent. I checked my watch. The call had come in at eight-thirty. It was a little after one o’clock.

  I jogged across the street and down the long flight of steps into the underground. The buildings of Crystal City are connected forty feet beneath the surface by walkways lined with shops and restaurants, an underground mall for the commuters who travel the Metro every day.

  Coffee. Come across the street for coffee. This wasn’t helpful. There were a good half dozen coffee bars, from Starbucks to a start-up called The Buzz. Add to these the coffee stations at deli counters, doughnut shops, burger joints, and the newsstand, and Callahan could be almost anywhere.

  Which, I guessed, was his point.

  I jogged from coffee shop to coffee shop, searching for a man I knew from pictures and stats—six-five, brown hair, blue eyes, two-forty. The lunch crowd had thinned, but plenty were still stretching out their lunch hour.

  Callahan would be tanned. He would probably not be wearing a suit, but casual clothes, even work clothes. He would be by himself with that quick look left and right that betrayed a man afraid to be seen. There would be a tension about him, not only from the risk of being caught, but also from an hour’s worth of coffee. That is, if he was still waiting.

  I tried to think like Callahan. I needed a spot that gave me a view in as many directions as possible, for as far as I could see. I needed a place with enough exits. For Callahan, only one place fit.

  A coffee bar was at the top of the steps that came up from the Crystal City Metro stop. It was darker there, with a constantly moving crowd. The coffee bar was the only place to sit, aside from the shoeshine stand, and any surveillance would stand out by standing still. From this bar, a man could run into a hotel lobby on the right and from there to the street. Or he could run left and into the long mall with numerous places to get lost or get away. Straight ahead was the long climb to the street, and behind was the descent to the Metro platform. Once you made the train, you could be anywhere in Washington in under a half hour, including the airport or Union Station.

  Eight stools were at the bar. Three of them were filled. A young woman hit on a double espresso. Next to her was a man in a suit reading theWashington Times and sipping a latte. The third drinker was a young guy, dressed like a student and hunched over a thick hardback and a double tall cappuccino. I sat between theTimes and the hardback and ordered a cup of coffee, black.

  The girl got up and walked up the steps, into the sunlight. The three of us watched her go.

  “Man,” said theTimes. “She is so fine. I’d do her in a minute.”

  “Yeah,” said the hardback. “That’s about all it would take. A minute.”

  TheTimes glared. “Speak for yourself, freak.”

  The three of us returned to our coffee. The man with theTimes got up, tucked the paper under his arm, and walked away, in no hurry.

  “Hey,” the hardback said. “You’re Jake Donovan.”

  I turned to the kid. He was tall, with baggy pants and a T-shirt that saidANARCHY RULES .

  “I like your shirt.”

  “It’s an oxymoron,” the kid said.

  “Yes, it is.”

  The kid held up the hardback. It was a copy of my first book. My picture was on the back of the dust jacket. “You wrote this.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “You actually met all those killers, dude?”

  I nodded and returned to watching the crowd, afraid I’d missed my opportunity.

  “The guy said you’d be here.”

  That snapped me back. “What guy?”

  “The guy who gave me this book. He gave me twenty dollars to sit here and wait for you.”

  “Where? Where is he?” I stood up and put a five on the counter. “How long ago.”

  “Dude, man, take it easy. I was at school, in Georgetown. He stopped me and asked if I’d deliver this.” He held up the hardback.

  I took the book. “Did he say anything else?”

  “Why?” A light went on in the kid’s face. “Oh, man, he was a killer, right? Oh, dude, like this is so cool.”

  “Tell me exactly what he said.”

  “He said to come over here, sit and drink coffee, and when you showed up, to give you the book.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yeah. That’s all.”

  I gave the kid my card. “If you see him again, call me.”

  “Sure.”

  I walked away, looking through the hardback. I didn’t know what I was looking for. A note, a card, something scribbled into the margins. I walked up the stairs toward the street, flipping through the pages, quickly at first, then more slowly when I didn’t find anything on the first pass.

  On the sidewalk, I looked away from the book long enough to cross against the light and into my apartment building. I took the steps again, out of habit more than caution. Inside, I threw what I needed for a few days into a spare duffel, shouldered it, and locked up. I still had the book in my hand, riffling the pages with my thumb. The elevator doors opened; I got in and punched the button for the parking garage.

  The book was my first, a biography of sorts, concentrating on my investigations into multiple homicides and serial killers. It gave my mother nightmares. Ali hadn’t read it, although I suspected Eric had. There isn’t a copy of the book in my ex-wife’s house, although the book is what paid for
the place.

  The elevator doors slid open and there he was, Bower, the man in the red shirt. Now he was dressed in a sports jacket and an open-collared, black polo. He was holding a Browning Buckmark .22, its barrel made even longer by the silencer screwed onto the muzzle. “I missed you, Jake.” He fired. I struck out with the only weapon I had in hand: the hardback.

  The little gun made a noise no louder than a cough, three times, and the elevator car filled with the stink of gunsmoke. The book jumped in my hands and paper rained down like snow. Something pushed into my shoulder, turning me. I spun the duffel from my shoulder and hit Bower’s arm, knocking his aim to the side. The little gun fired twice and cracked the paneling behind my head.

  The elevator doors closed on Bower and bounced off. He pulled the trigger three more times, and a flame shot up the side of my neck. I shouldered into Bower’s arms, knocking the gun aside, and then I hit him with the book, three times in the face, and the smacks of the hardcover against his forehead echoed through the parking garage. The force of the blows knocked him back a step to the curb, where he lost his balance and fell to the concrete. The gun slid beneath a parked Chevy Suburban and Bower rolled after it. He had his hand on the grip before I could get my Airweight free of the ankle holster. I held the duffel up to my head and ran for the cover of the parked cars. One bullet buried itself in my folded clothing, another must have snicked my can of shaving cream. I could hear the hiss of foam filling all the empty spaces inside my duffel.

  Bower dropped the empty magazine and shoved another ten rounds into the pistol grip.

  I had my revolver out and shouted from behind a panel truck, “Come on, Bower, give it up. You’re explosives. You can’t handle a gun.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Come on, you missed with ten shots.”

  “Fuck I missed. You’re bleeding, Donovan. I got you.”

  I put my hand to my neck, and when I did, the pain in my shoulder made me grunt. My hand came away bloody.

  “Starting to feel it, Donovan?”

  “The cops will be here any minute.” My shoulder began to throb and my head buzzed.

  Bower laughed. “Nobody heard those shots. Nobody’s coming. Now come out and I’ll make this real quick—pop, pop, pop. No pain.”

  I stayed below the windows and duckwalked around to the rear of the truck. Bower was about twenty feet away, crouching behind the Suburban. He saw me and fired twice. The soft-nosed .22s chipped the concrete and powdered my hair. I fired two times with my .38 and the garage filled with giant claps.

  “Someone heard that,” I hollered. “It’s only a matter of time, Bower.”

  He didn’t answer. I eased around the back end of the truck and saw him, ass in the air, aiming under the cars for my legs.

  His gun coughed and the truck tire next to me flattened with a sudden sigh.

  I shot twice and heard a high-pitched yelp under the thunder.

  I waited, listening. I could hear him swearing. “Did I hit you in the ass, Bower? Did I?” He called me a name that told me all I needed to know. I laughed and that made him swear louder.

  He stood up and fired off the rest of the magazine.

  I kept my head down until the bullets stopped, then fired back. It was my fifth bullet, and the last in the cylinder. I ducked behind the truck, pushed the brass free, and reloaded. When I looked again, Bower was gone. Blood made a dark, shining trail from the Suburban, around the corner, through the gates, and out into the street. I followed it until it stopped by the curb.

  Bower had disappeared.

  I went back into the garage and picked up the book. It was shredded near the spine where a bullet had turned my prose into so much confetti. I went to the Land Rover and shoved the book under the front seat.

  Yes, I was disturbing the crime scene. Yes, I was concealing evidence. Yes, I might have even been obstructing justice. But Callahan wanted me to have this book for some reason, and I needed to know what that reason was. And I’d never know if it was locked inside the evidence locker of the local police station.

  23

  The police took my story eight different times in eight different places, beginning at the parking garage as the EMT stopped the bleeding, then again at the emergency room as the doc sewed me up, and finally at the police station. Each time it came out the same. There was no happy ending.

  They kept my pistol. If I’d been without a Virginia carry permit, they would have kept me. But a phone call to Larry Berman, my attorney, got things rolling and I was on my way home five hours later. The docs wanted to give me some Percocet but I told them I had to drive.

  In the parking lot, I checked my voice mail. There was a call from Toni. Two calls. Three. Finally, on the fifth message, she was frantic. “Where are you? Where are the children? Goddammit, Jake, I’ve been calling for hours.”

  I dialed her number.

  “Jake? Where are you?”

  “I had a little problem. First, the kids are safe. Everyone’s okay. Where are you?”

  “I’m home. I called your mother’s and there was no answer. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “It’s okay. Look, maybe you should go into town and stay in public until I get there. Go to Lubrano’s, have a nice dinner.”

  “You can’t tell me where the children are?”

  “Not on the phone. I’ll take you to them.”

  “Okay.”

  “But leave the house now. Okay?”

  “I will.”

  The traffic was the regular glut that clogs the capital’s arteries every day of the week. By the time I hit the Fredericksburg exit it was nearly eight. I called Toni at the restaurant and asked her to meet me at the house. Amazingly, she didn’t sound angry.

  I figured I’d beat her to the house by ten minutes depending on how quickly her waiter brought the check. I parked the Land Rover near the entrance to the driveway and approached the house from the river side. The sun was still up and would be for another hour, but the trees gave me cover. I checked the windows and saw nothing out of place. I looked at each door and there were no signs of tampering. There were no new scratches on the brass locks, but a good lock picker wouldn’t leave scratches. Slowly, hearing everything magnified a thousand times, I unlocked the side door and went into the kitchen. From there I could see the dining room, the living room, and into the hall.

  At the end of the hall was the office, and inside the desk, where I’d left it, was my father’s .45. I gripped the slide, and pulled it back. The sound of the round chambering filled the house. Safety off, muzzle pointed at wherever I looked, I cleared the rest of the house, room by room, closet by closet. By the time Toni drove up, I was sitting on the sofa with a glass of juice.

  “I left my bags in the car. I just need a few more things,” she said, walking through the kitchen. “Why did you park by the road?” Then she saw me and stopped. “Jake, what happened to you?”

  I touched the bandage on my neck. “You mean here?”

  “And your shoulder. What happened?”

  I fingered the shredded fabric of my sports jacket, the frayed ends stiff with blood. “Now you see why the kids are in a safe house.”

  Toni’s eyes went wide. “This happened here?” She meant the house.

  “No, this happened today in Crystal City. But someone planted a bomb in my car this morning, at my mother’s place.”

  “That explains the stares I got in the restaurant.” Toni looked at me, the lines around her eyes deeper than I’d seen them before. “How long? How long do we have to stay away from the house?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Before you catch whoever did this to us?”

  I could hear the anger returning to her voice. It was small, but growing. “Until I believe you’re not in danger any longer.”

  “And how long is that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She looked straight ahead, her face a mask. She turned and paced to the windows and then back. “I’ll get
my things.” She started for the steps, then stopped. “It is safe to go upstairs?”

  “Yes, I checked.”

  “What? You checked? You mean you weren’t sure until you swept each of our bedrooms? Each of the children’s closets? You weren’t sure?”

  “Toni, calm down.”

  “Did you have your gun out, Jake? Were you prepared to kill a man in Eric’s room? In Ali’s? Were you ready to turn our home,this home, into a crime scene?”

  “Toni, this will all be over soon.”

  She shouted, “No! It will never be over! Look at you! Before, Jake, it was always in your head, all the killers, all the crime scenes, and all the victims you carried home to our bed. But now, you’ve brought them here, to my home. I will not allow that.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to leave, Jake. And tomorrow I’m getting a court order to keep you away from this house.” Toni let that settle around the room, then she turned and went up the steps, quickly.

  I sat listening to her open and close drawers, slam doors, move from room to room, angry all the way to her footsteps. In all of our years together, even through the divorce, I’d never heard her yell. She’d never lost control, not once. Her voice was always calm, which was much worse than hollering. But this, this was more fear than anger, although there was plenty of that, too, shook loose by a glass or two of Lubrano’s Chianti.

  She came down with a single overnight bag. She had changed into a pair of jeans and a loose, short-sleeved shirt. Her hair was pulled back and held in place with a silver clip I’d brought back with me from Argentina.

  “Tell me where the children are.”

  I gave her directions and said I’d stop by in the morning to make sure everyone was all right.

  “Don’t bother. I’m taking the kids with me for a while.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  We stood, awkward with the ghosts of my work between us.

  “Bye, Jake.”