Roaches Run

by John Wasowicz

  The dispatcher asked for a description. It matched Katie’s. He asked for the woman’s location and the direction in which the little girl was headed. Then a message went out to the police that the little girl they were searching for had been found.

  The closest officers were on the upper end of King Street near the Masonic Temple. They drove down to the river and began searching on foot. Streets, stoops, alleys, and stores were inspected to no avail.

  Abby Snowe accompanied the police. At times, she seemed to lead the effort. She created an air of anticipation among the search team; it was only a matter of minutes before Katie would be found.

  Then a report came about a blonde-haired waif at the intersection of Cameron and Washington Streets. And another Katie sighting three blocks further up Henry Street. A third report placed the little girl on Prince Street. Katie had become a whirling dervish. “I don’t think we’re going to find that girl until she’s ready to be found,” said one officer, hitching his britches and catching his breath as he trotted behind Snowe.

  **

  LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, Stone resumed the briefing. She kept a watchful eye on Landry, who again arrived late and stood against the wall.

  “We have four teams assembled to monitor the situation along the rail line,” she said. “The first team will be in a high-rise along the railroad track.” She pointed to a building at the edge of Crystal City overlooking the railroad tracks north of Four Mile Run. “I’ll be there if we learn the operation has been activated. And the second team is going to be based at Roaches Run.”

  Landry rocked back on his heels. He clasped his hands behind his back, his palms pressed against the wall. Roaches Run! She had to be kidding. It was the one place he concluded that was hidden in plain view. It was the reason he had selected it as his mobile operation base.

  “Why there?” he piped up.

  “The rail line runs directly along the perimeter of the sanctuary,” Stone explained. “It’s a perfect location from which to observe the train at ground level.”

  “Don’t you leave the team exposed at that location?”

  Katz, seated at the table, lowered his head. Why the interest in Roaches Run? Such keen interest was odd and might mean Landry was involved, he concluded.

  “There’s a line of trees and bushes along the shoreline,” Stone said. “They’ll be able to conceal themselves from onlookers. Plus, by that time, it’ll be immaterial whether they’ve been detected. The explosives will already be on the train. And it’ll only be a few minutes before the train is stopped.”

  Katz looked closely at Stone to see whether she was surprised by Landry’s line of questioning. Something clearly was bothering Landry. She was expressionless. To Katz, that meant she shared his suspicion.

  “The third and fourth teams will be on either side of the Potomac,” she concluded. “One team will be on the Mount Vernon Trail directly beneath the 14th Street Bridge, and the other at Hains Point. From these locations, we’ll have eyes on the train at all times.”

  **

  TREY CARR watched Suleiman from the corner of his eye. Normally, Sully would be texting with friends and scrolling through his Twitter and Instagram feeds. But this afternoon he was nervous and distracted.

  “Are you okay?” Carr asked. Suleiman fidgeted and walked around aimlessly. “Don’t worry,” Carr said. “Everything is going to be okay.”

  Suleiman looked at his uncle with disdain.

  Look at you! You have been betrayed by this country and you don’t even know it. You are a convicted felon. They stripped you of your past, present, and future. I did bad things, but I was smart. I escaped unscathed. Yet, while I have no scars, I feel aggrieved. Perhaps my anger is for you.

  Carr knew his nephew thought he was a weak and broken man. After all, since being released from the penitentiary, he found that his job applications repeatedly ended up in someone’s wastepaper basket. What Suleiman didn’t know was that had escaped prosecution at Carr’s expense. Carr was not looking for gratitude; he just wished the young man would smarten up and quit acting like a martyr.

  **

  Twelve Years Earlier

  “WHAT DO you think my nephew’s chances are?” Carr asked Matthews. He wished he had a more competent counsel, but he had already shelled out $5,000 and had no more to spare on another attorney. “If I don’t go along with Landry’s offer, that is.”

  Matthews shook his head and replied, “It’s always a roll of the dice. You can never predict what a jury is going to do.”

  Carr wanted to laugh out loud. He knew Matthews never took a case to a jury, regardless of whether the client was guilty or innocent. Mathews pushed his clients to plead guilty and take their chances before the judge at sentencing.

  “What if he’s innocent?” Carr asked. “Or that the police offered to forget his case if I cleared out their backlog on unsolved cases?”

  Matthews shrugged impatiently. “You’re not seeing reality,” he said. “In a way, I understand. He’s your nephew. He’s ashamed to confide in you about his involvement in some nefarious dealings.

  “As to your allegations against Landry, let’s be serious. He’ll just deny it. No one is going to believe you. And your threats are not going to stop Landry from prosecuting Suleiman for every crime he can throw at him.”

  “They aren’t allegations,” Carr protested. “They’re facts. Hell, you were there. Landry is trying to squeeze me to admit to crimes I never committed. He’s a lazy, dishonest cop. That’s enough to stop any prosecution against Sully in its tracks. You were a witness!”

  Matthews said nothing.

  Realizing that his own attorney would not stand beside him if he bucked the system, that his options were limited because of a lack of money, and that his nephew’s future was in peril, Carr surrendered to the inevitable.

  **

  CARR ENTERED a plea in Alexandria Circuit Court to four residential robberies. Both the prosecutor and the judge were skeptical about Landry’s methods in closing the cases, but neither said anything. The rookie cop assigned to the case initially raised concerns about the investigation, but then that cop went radio silent.

  In preparing for the sentencing, Landry told the prosecutor a light sentence was appropriate. He acknowledged it might be hard to get a jury to convict Carr of the robberies. Despite feeling there was something wrong with Landry’s presentation and knowing there were rumors about both Landry’s tawdry tactics and Matthews’ inferior defense skills, the prosecutor did as Landry suggested.

  “How do you plead, sir?” asked the judge.

  “I plead guilty, your honor,” Carr replied, standing contritely in the courtroom, his attorney at his side. Landry sat in the back of the courtroom, his legs crossed and his arms draped around the adjoining empty chairs, looking like a spider that was waiting to capture its prey.

  “And you plead guilty because you are in fact guilty and not because anyone has coerced you?”

  “That’s correct, your honor.”

  “I realize the prosecution is arguing for a light sentence, about two or three years, but I cannot agree with such leniency. You have to pay for your crimes. You are hereby sentenced to twenty years in the Virginia penal system on each of the four counts, with ten years suspended on each count, and the four counts are to run concurrently. Is there anything else you would like to say to the court?”

  “No, your honor. Thank you, your honor.”

  **

  EVERYONE ASSUMED it would end there, Carr thought to himself. The rookie cop Sherry Stone was the only person who expressed reservations along the way. But Landry got to Stone, and I can only guess how he got her to shut up. Then, a year later, there was that research student, Ruth Hammond. She looked at my cases. She discovered discrepancies.

  I hadn’t fully accepted my fate. I was willing to speak the truth when she visited me in prison. And then that wonk from DOJ, Freddy Pena. He initiated an inquiry into the whole thing. He was making headway. But Landr
y stopped Pena’s inquiry in its tracks too. Not sure how he did it, but it might have had something to do with the bad press that Freddy got.

  Everyone assumed it would end there, but it didn’t. Not by a long shot. It was just the beginning.

  **

  THE BRIEFING ended at 5 p.m. Katz ran into Landry in the parking lot as he was leaving. Without any provocation or advance warning, a casual encounter turned into a nasty confrontation as Landry began a half-crazed rant.

  “I saw you seated at the table,” Landry said to Katz. “As a former criminal defense attorney, you must feel pretty good about yourself. Like you’ve arrived, you know. High-powered position, steady salary, lots of prestige, and even some future potential if you play your cards right.”

  “I play my role,” Katz said nonchalantly. “At the end of the day, the title doesn’t really mean anything. You are who you are.”

  Katz hoped that would defuse the situation. He considered Landry unstable and unpredictable and, based on Stone’s recent disclosure, potentially dangerous.

  “You certainly are who you are, Katz, and that’s no one!” Landry burst out venomously. Some members of the team who were walking through the parking lot stopped and eyed Landry cautiously. A couple of them moved forward, prepared to jump in if a fight broke out. “There’s nothing to you, man,” Landry continued in a loud voice. “No substance, no center. Just a lot of parts that don’t add up to anything, like in a junkyard. Part Black, part Jew, part prosecutor, part defense attorney. In reality, you’re no one. No one and nothing.”

  Landry’s words stung because there was some truth to them. At his core, Katz felt disconnected and incomplete. Katz knew he was a jigsaw puzzle but he also knew he didn’t need an evaluation from the likes of Landry. It was complicated, but he was working on it. “Dr. Freud, is it?” he asked, keeping his tone even.

  “You’re an asshole,” Landry hissed. He turned away abruptly and stalked to his car. The others in the parking looked at one another with expressions that asked: WTF? Landry wrenched open the car door, got in, and slammed it closed.

  He tried to regain his composure. He was angry with himself. He should have kept his cool. But he blamed Katz for setting him off. His phone vibrated. He pulled it out of his pocket. Maria Pena was texting him.

  Need you tonight. Room 901. Down the hall. Have a special treat. Not what you’re expecting. Will not disappoint.

  Chapter Four: Evening

  AROUND 6 P.M., Stone and Mann were sitting spaced apart on Vanessa Wilson’s patio, sifting through emails that Wilson had printed from Landry’s computer. “Can you make sense of it?” Wilson asked. Stone and Mann didn’t answer. They kept studying the messages.

  Slowly, a picture emerged like a hologram. Landry was planning a fake terrorist attack. He had persuaded three people to carry backpacks filled with explosives to Lafayette Square. The parties were identified as A, B, and C in the subfolders. Landry had used different techniques to entice each of them to participate in his scheme. For one, he encouraged revenge for misguided U.S. policies in the Middle East; for another, retribution for years of environmental neglect; and, for the third, anarchy for the sake of anarchy.

  Landry planned to have the three individuals arrested as they approached Lafayette Square and Black Lives Matter Plaza under the pretext that they were suicide bombers engaged in a terrorist plot.

  “What a self-aggrandizing asshole,” Mann said. “He should have been fired years ago.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Wilson.

  “I’m going to inform the people overseeing security that we’ve identified a potential terrorist attack,” Stone said. “Even though it appears Landry intends to have these people arrested before they can carry out any bombings, it’s impossible to know how this is going to turn out. People could get injured.

  “I’m also going to recommend that Landry be picked up on suspicion.” She looked at the documents again. “I want to try and figure out the identity of his three accomplices. They may be the ones in the most danger. If Landry carries out this plan, he might have them shot on sight to cover up his insane plan.”

  “Are you going to recommend that Memorial Day activities be cancelled in D.C.?” asked Wilson.

  “Not my call,” Stone replied. “Someone else is going to have to make a decision whether this threat can be contained or whether we need to cancel events. At the very least, I think they’ll take precautions to shut down this insane operation before it has a chance to be effectuated.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” Wilson said.

  In the back of her mind, Stone wondered if this might not be a terrorist plot at all, but something else, namely some form of payback, Landry-style.

  “Listen, Tommy,” she said, “I don’t want you printing anything about this now. I want to have Landry taken into custody without being tipped off in advance.”

  “I won’t write word, I promise,” he said.

  Stone continued to study the documents. Thirty minutes later, she discovered she was alone on the patio. Mann was in the kitchen sweet-talking Wilson.

  **

  LANDRY MADE one final trip to Roaches Run before heading to the GreyStone Hotel.

  He opened the back door to the van, climbed inside, turned on the computers, and checked messages from his three targets. Then he closed his eyes. By this time tomorrow, he would have created the illusion of having foiled a terrorist plot. The purpose of his ploy, others would conclude, was to reverse the downward trajectory of his career and return to his glory days.

  People were familiar with the way he operated in the past — always stirring the pot, advancing his career, stepping on or over others, and devising Machiavellian plots — and they would conclude this was business as usual.

  Nobody would suspect he had created a play within a play. No one would see that it was not about advancing himself this time. No one would realize this was just a cover to reap revenge against some of the people who sought to undermine his ambitions in the past.

  It wasn’t about Ahmed Suleiman, Maria Pena, or Ari Hammond at all. They were simply a means to an end.

  Landry jumped out of the van and secured the back door. He regretted he did not have a more secure lock, but replacing the standard lock with a more industrial one was not high on the list of things he had time to do now. The number one priority was to move the van before Stone’s agents arrived tomorrow. He would do that later tonight, after he returned from the GreyStone Hotel.

  Landry returned to his car. He drove south on the parkway, repeating the route he had already taken several times in the past days — turning into the airport, swooping around like a boomerang, passing the terminal, and exiting onto the northbound lanes.

  Now, driving by Gravelly Point, from the corner of his eye he thought he saw a man standing near the van. He turned and looked again. There was no one there. A shiver ran down his spine. What were the chances?

  His car crossed the 14th Street Bridge, drove by the U.S. Holocaust Museum, and headed toward the National Mall. Traffic remained heavy; people were flooding into the city for the weekend. The Washington Monument was to the left, the U.S. Capitol in the distance to the right. The traffic lights were green all the way to Farragut Square.

  **

  THE METRO CLUB was at the intersection of H and 17th Streets. It was open, subject to coronavirus protocols that included sanitizing high-touch areas, social distancing, and strict compliance with health and safety rules for preparing and serving food. Katz found a parking space a half block away. Within a few minutes, he and Snowe walked beneath the stone columned portico and entered the building. Dark paneled wood, sumptuous rugs, mirrors, gilded framing, and heavy furniture greeted them, as did a man in a uniform who ushered them to a table in a small private dining area.

  “I feel like we’re onboard the Titanic,” Snowe whispered. Katz agreed. The club’s interior certainly harkened back to the Gilded Age.

  “Abby Snowe?” The man app
roaching the table had long silver hair that cascaded over his shoulders. He had gold stud earrings and was attired in a white suit and white mask.

  “It’s so nice to meet you, Mr. McLuhan,” she gushed.

  “The pleasure is mine,” said the author.

  They bumped elbows.

  She introduced Katz. They eyed one another suspiciously, neither making an effort to touch one another.

  Six other people were already seated around the room at small tables spaced apart. They began to buzz excitedly at the sight of McLuhan. Dinners like this one were standard fare on McLuhan’s book tour. Before each lecture, he met with readers selected by book clubs to discuss Rhythmic Cycle and how the book had changed the readers’ lives. During the pandemic, McLuhan continued the practice, albeit as a slimmed-down affair. When Snowe told Katz about it, he concluded it was a smart way to drive sales and spur attendance.

  As excited as Snowe was to attend the dinner, her mind was elsewhere. The early morning interaction with Moriarty had unsettled her, as well as the hunt through Old Town for the little girl. Snowe prayed Katie would be found and cared for, particularly if Moriarty spiraled out of control.

  **

  “YOU’RE SKEPTICAL about the methodology of the twelve-year cycle in The Rhythmic Cycle of Life,” McLuhan said pointedly to Katz. There was no anger or disappointment in his voice. Katz sensed it was part of a setup. “Pick an event and let’s see if we can trace its origin by studying a twelve-year cycle,” McLuhan continued. “Let’s see if we can deduce a way that would have prevented it from occurring or at least allow it to play out in some other way.”

  Without thinking, Katz blurted out, “9/11.” The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon by Al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001, were something he would never forget, even though he was a teenager at the time. It had inspired him to public service as a prosecutor.