Roaches Run

by John Wasowicz

  But the route itself has hardly changed.

  Your life is the same.

  You travel the same worn path. Over and over. Life, you see, is not an upward trajectory. Nor is it a downward spiral. It is a line bent into a circle. A cycle. Understand the cycle and you can anticipate, prepare and plan for what lies ahead. You cannot avoid your fate, of course, those unique occurrences that compose your “life,” but you can figure out what life is.

  And you can make the most of it.

  Let’s consider the highway analogy we used a moment ago. That major twelve-lane interstate highway still follows the dirt path used by carts and horses a couple hundred years ago. But, along the way, the bedrock has been fortified, some rough corners have been smoothed, some straightaways have been marked with caution signs and speed limits, bridges have been built to protect against streams, and rock formations have been blasted to shorten the route and make it more direct. The same path is still being used, but getting from Point A to Point B has gotten a lot more convenient and assured.

  The Second Cycle

  The second cycle is where your life takes flight. And crashes. By the time the second cycle has ended, you have finished most of your schooling. Or maybe you’re in graduate or professional school. You have had your first job. Maybe even your second or third job. And you have loved and been loved.

  During this twelve-year period, you attain adulthood. In the process, the experiences that were critical in your first cycle find expression. They become deeper and more personal.

  This is the second cycle, but it is the first time things are repeating themselves. Your life cycle is playing itself out. Again. Like tire tracks over the same spot of snow. Let’s examine the tracks. How close is the second rotation to the first one?

  Amazing things happen in the second cycle.

  Let’s fill in the second cycle of your life. Each year. 13, 14, 15. The end of the first quarter. Comparisons to the first time around? 16, 17 and 18. One and one-half times around the circle. Around the sun. Around earth. Around your whole life. Next 19, 20 and 21. And then on to the completion. Racing around the final turn, so to speak. Passing quickly: 22, 23 and 24.

  Ending up where you started. It’s all making sense, isn’t it? It’s all understandable. It’s all a little familiar. Hmm, yes. It’s all repeating itself.

  Before we go into the third cycle - ages 24 to 36 - let’s get one thing straight. These trends, similarities and repetitions are all going to happen again. And again and again. Are you content with that? If so, then maybe all you have to do is focus on how to make good times better. But, if not, then let’s consider in short order how to make the bad times go away.

  The Third Cycle

  The third cycle is likely to be the one where you find a partner and maybe start a family. Or you discover that you’re destined (at least for the time being) to blaze your trail alone. Either way, you are going to begin to create your own life now.

  You will put your education to work. You will use your life experiences to figure out new challenges. There are a lot of ways things may be turning out for you right now.

  By the time I reached 36, my life was off the rails. Not because of anything I did, but because of something that was done by an outsider to a member of my family. And I had to go back over my own life experiences to try to find my moral compass. Ironically, it was during that phase of my life that I discovered — that I created — the rhythmic cycle of life.

  By exploring my past, I was able to foresee my future. And I was able to deal with the present. I was able to grasp what had gone wrong in the previous cycle and how I could avoid it in the next cycle.

  And I also discovered how my actions in the here-and-now could actually change the past. Debts could be settled. Hurt could be healed. Losses could be avenged.

  Chapter Six: Night

  SNOWE SAT on the patio, her head craned upward and her eyes fixed on the stars in the night sky. The Moon was full last Wednesday. Now it was waning gibbous.

  The moon was that exact shape the night she returned from the counselor’s office. She’d gone for a stroll in the apple orchard near her family’s home in Massachusetts. She’d never felt as alone as she did that night. She remembered a translucent moon in a starless night and thinking that she would see that exact moon again someday and, when she did, something wonderful would happen in her life. She rubbed her fingers across her forehead. In the distance, a neighbor’s dog barked to be let back inside.

  Eighteen Years Earlier

  “ARE YOU SURE?”

  Snowe had shocked her parents, forsaken an athletic scholarship, and lost a year of college. But nothing compared to this decision.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  The affirmation — if that’s what one could call it — was met with silence. The woman who asked the question was not going to be easy on Snowe. She knew what it meant to forever sever a relationship with an infant and that Snowe might regret the decision sometime in the future.

  The woman, in her 60s, understood better than Snowe how long time was and what regret was like. She knew Snowe would never know the names of her daughter’s parents. In fact, she would never know the name of her own child. At the age of 16, Snowe was operating on blind faith. She had to trust that giving away the greatest love she ever felt was the right thing to do.

  “I’m good with it,” Snowe said to the woman. “I’m sure.”

  **

  TWO HOURS after the planned rendezvous with Maria Pena, Landry’s car pulled from the curb behind the GreyStone Hotel. A piece of moon hung in the sky. Street lights, encased in gray smog, emitted faint light. The headlamps of Landry’s car cut through the dark as it passed Farragut Square and headed in the direction of K Street.

  The car stopped. The interior lights went on. Then the car continued on its way. Traffic was light as the car headed across the Key Bridge to Rosslyn, Virginia. In a few hours, all of the months of planning, secret meetings, clandestine emails and phone calls would bear fruit.

  Landry’s car navigated through Rosslyn and slid onto the G.W. Parkway, eventually turning into Roaches Run. Two taxi drivers were standing beside their vehicles in the parking lot, smoking and swapping stories. Landry’s car pulled up beside the white van.

  Best to wait until those two leave before going to the van and making final preparations for tomorrow.

  Across the parkway, the lights from Reagan National shone in the dark sky. Further in the distance, on the opposite side of the Potomac, the dome of the U.S. Capitol appeared like a brightly lit lightbulb in the velvety night. One of the taxi drivers extinguished his cigarette and sauntered to his car. The other made a phone call before climbing into his vehicle. A few minutes later, both departed. The coast was clear to move to the van.

  **

  STONE RETURNED to the police station after reviewing the documents Wilson provided to her and Mann. She issued an APB for Phil Landry. She also sent out emails to several law enforcement agencies with jurisdiction in D.C. alerting them of Landry’s plan.

  **

  HUGH SPATES was still mad. All Morley had to do was listen. But no. Morley had to be large and in charge. He had to give orders instead of take them. Just shut up! Spates said. Just shut up and do what I tell you to do. Or else. Or else what? Or else you’re going to regret it. Spates wondered why Morley had to say that. Or else what? He should have just let it go. Done as he was told.

  Spates couldn’t sleep this night. He kept reliving the minutes leading up to yesterday morning’s shooting. He wished he could pull that bullet out of Morley’s skull, stuff it back in the barrel, and place it back inside the cylinder. He wished he could turn back time.

  It was the single most stupid, impulsive, and regrettable act of his life. Up until that moment, everything was going as planned. Then Morley had to go and spoil it. Or else what? The question left Spates no choice. He had to show Morley there were consequences for disobedience.

  When Spates pulled ou
t the gun, Morley started to laugh. Go ahead, big man. Shoot me. Morley was calling his bluff. Shoot me and who’s left to help you? Then Morley lunged for the gun. He tripped. Spates tried to pull back. Their legs twisted around one another and they fell to the ground. The gun discharged. Spates expected to feel blood rushing from an artery. But there was only the ringing sound in his ears from the loud blast that exploded an inch away and reverberated under the bridge.

  What happened? Had the bullet missed them? Had it ricocheted off the steel and cement undergirding the bridge?

  He felt Morley’s weight on top of him. Dead weight. He screamed. He squirmed to the side and tried to slide out from under the body. Blood from Morley’s mouth trickled down onto his neck. The dead man’s arm draped over his shoulder. With a horrified gasp, Spates finally wrenched himself out of the dead man’s embrace, rolled on the ground, crouched on all fours, and stared in disbelief at the hulk.

  “Morley?”

  The stiff just lay there.

  “Morley!”

  Now Spates sat in his living room with an empty bottle on the coffee table in front of him. He was breathing heavily. His heartbeat pulsated in his ears so intensely he half expected his eardrums to burst.

  He heard traffic. Trucks were racing down the interstate a few miles away, moving freight in the middle of the night along a deserted highway in advance of tomorrow’s gridlock. He ran his tongue over his front teeth and tasted the food he’d eaten hours earlier. He could still see Morley’s body as it lay in front of him. He could smell the blood oozing. He could see Morley’s open eyes staring up at him. Spates’ breathing grew more labored. He tried to compose his thoughts. He needed to decide whether to cancel today’s operation along the rail line or go ahead with it as planned.

  Neither of his other two accomplices, the train engineer and the laborer who agreed to plant the explosives on the train, knew Morley. They would not connect the murder to the operation. Sure, Morley was important, but he wasn’t critical, Spates told himself. Wallace was good enough. The engineer had already pulled out of Atlanta and was headed to D.C.

  Spates lifted his hand and looked at it. It was shaking. Okay, he said to himself, you can do this. He had to do it. He went to the garage, got in his car, and drove to the same place he’d been the night before when he’d dropped off the backpacks filled with cash. When he arrived, he removed another backpack from the trunk and placed it along the fence where the cash had been deposited. Inside the backpack were explosives that Spates had purchased on the dark web. He was guaranteed the explosives were potent enough to ignite one of those white cylindrical fuel cars with large red letters reading FLAMMABLE MATERIAL.

  He hurried back to the car. He knew he was out of his league. He didn’t know what he was doing. He was acting out of total desperation.

  Chapter Seven: Morning

  “I’M HEADED to Crystal City to wait on a train,” Stone said when Katz answered his phone.

  “Want to come along?”

  Katz was making coffee, his usual eight ounces of water and five scoops of Misha’s

  Arabian Mocha Java beans, coarsely ground. Snowe had already left to check on Katie. She had hardly slept and he was worried about her. She was consumed with Moriarty and her daughter.

  One of the cardinal “rules of the game” Katz had learned was not to care about the client. It didn’t matter whether you were an attorney, a cop, a judge, or a social worker. Caring clouded your judgment and it could hurt you in the end. He learned that from Sean Matthews, an attorney with whom he’d set up shop after leaving the Commonwealth Attorney’s office a decade ago. The partnership lasted six months. Matthews, it turned out, didn’t care about anyone or anything but himself, which was more than Katz could tolerate.

  Katz didn’t answer right away.

  “Hellooo? Anybody home?” Stone asked.

  “Sorry. I’m just a little spaced out. We were out late last night. We actually went to a cemetery looking for Maggie Moriarty.”

  “That’s wild. By the way, what’s the latest on the little girl?”

  “Someone found Katie in an alley behind Meggrolls. She’s in child protective custody. Abby went to check on her this morning.” He paused. “I think she’s way too invested in the case.”

  “Know why?” Stone didn’t wait for Katz to answer. “She wants to have a family.” Katz said nothing. “If you’re not going to accommodate her, you’re going to lose her, partner, just like you lost her back in the day.”

  “We can talk about this later.”

  “That’s called avoidance.”

  “I’m not avoiding anything, Stoner. I’m acutely aware of the fact that there’s a problem with our relationship. And I know it centers on the fact that she wants a family and I don’t.” This is weird, he thought. He was talking to Stone like she was his big sister. “Sometimes I’m very assertive, particularly with work,” he continued. “But when it comes to my personal life, I’m almost passive. I just let things take their course. If Abby and I are going to spend our lives together, it’s either going to happen or it’s not.”

  Stone sucked in her breath. “I don’t really buy that, Mo. You’re a nice guy and all, but I’ve always thought of you as very self-centered. Too much so. Not in a Machiavellian way. Just ambitious. Sometimes to a fault. I don’t think you’re laid-back at all. I think you’re just focused on you.”

  Although Katz didn’t seem to be in the mood to have this conversation, Stone persisted. “At some point, you’ve got to quit putting yourself at the front of the line. If you do, you’re going to end up at the tail end. And, in terms of your relationship with Abby, I’d say you’re pretty close to being there now.”

  He said nothing.

  She sensed he was tuning her out but added, “I’m not saying this to hurt you, but as a friend who cares about you. About both of you.”

  He was trying his best to tune her out, even though a part of him wished more people were as forceful as Stone. Last year, when he reestablished relations after many years with his parents, his mom — who had been hospitalized with COVID-19 — asked whether he and Snowe were still together. He figured she wanted the comfort of knowing her son was in a solid domestic relationship before she died. He said, “Yes, of course, why do you ask?” But the truth was more complicated. Snowe spoke to him, but he didn’t always listen, even if he heard what she was saying. His failure to listen was driving them further apart every day.

  “Yesterday, when I was leaving the briefing, I ran into Phil Landry,” Katz said.

  “What’s Landry got to do with this, Mo?”

  “He said something about my being a lot of parts that don’t add up to anything. It kind of hit home.”

  “Landry said that to you?” she asked, seeking context.

  “We ran into one another in the parking lot. I always seem to set him off. I think he has a lot of pent-up resentment.”

  “And hatred.”

  “That, too.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t normally give him any credit in the insight department, but he’s right in this instance. You’re sorta all over the place, everywhere and nowhere at the same time.”

  “I think it all must stem from my childhood,” he laughed.

  “Yeah, well, I think everything stems from childhood. I mean, look at me if you want to talk about issues.”

  Katz was finished with the psychobabble. “So, in response to your question, yes, I’d love to join you,” he said.

  Stone sighed, resigned to the fact that Katz had once again blown off the topic.

  “Good,” she said, and gave him the details.

  **

  ABBY SNOWE faced a Hobson’s choice. She could use inside information to get temporary custody of Katie or she could disregard it entirely and stand no chance of success. As a probation officer, she had access to Katie’s file as well as her mother’s. She knew the good, the bad, and the ugly. She could use it to her advantage in developing a case to gain custody if Mor
iarty needed to go into treatment and be separated from her daughter for a while.

  She tried to reconcile the potential conflict of interest by telling herself that she was uniquely qualified to care for Katie. But she wondered if she was being disingenuous and magnifying her own importance without bothering to look at other alternatives.

  She stopped at a red light. She had just left the foster care family that had taken in Katie last night on an emergency basis. She turned and glanced at the little girl lying asleep in the back seat. She looked at herself in the rearview mirror. Her eyes told her she was doing the right thing. If she could wrestle custody from Moriarty for just a short period of time, she could make sure both mother and daughter got on the right path to navigate through life.

  But what if she was put under a microscope? How would she look? In addition to raising eyebrows that she had used her position to gain an inside track on gaining short-term custody, what about her own personal lifestyle? She lived with a man to whom she was not married. She had no other children. She was a workaholic. She didn’t really have a home, not in the Norman Rockwell sense of the word.

  She and Mo passed like two ships in the night, speaking in code about their work to preserve confidences and only occasionally intimate to satisfy their needs, before going their separate ways again.

  God, she thought. What have I gotten myself into?

  She picked up the phone and called Stone, who would provide honest feedback, she knew.

  Stone, on her way to Crystal City, looked at the name that came up on her phone and disregarded the call. She could guess what it would be about. The last thing she wanted to do was become an unlicensed, unpaid shrink for Snowe and Katz.

  “Sherry, this is Abby,” Snowe said after the call went to voicemail. “I wonder if you could call me. I’ve got little Katie in the car with me, Tony Fortune’s daughter. She’s going to be with me for the holiday weekend, maybe longer. Her mother’s still missing. I want your opinion about how you think Mo will react to this. You know, bringing a child into our home?