by Matthew Iden
Just in time to see Fincher, or someone fitting his description, come out of the house I’d been watching. I swore and hurried my steps without trying to look conspicuous, then hopped in the car and grabbed the SLR. But it was too late to do anything except take pictures of the back of his head. I started the car and whipped into the street, raced down the alley next to Popeyes, and circled the block as fast as I could, barely stopping for signs, cars, and pedestrians.
I found a space two blocks down North Carolina where I could point the car at the direction I’d seen Fincher walking. Sure enough, less than a minute after I’d pulled away from the curb, I saw him walking jauntily down the sidewalk towards me. As inconspicuously as I could, I picked up the SLR and took about thirty shots. It was my lucky day: he’d traded the sweatshirt for a zip-up sweater, but he was still wearing the baseball cap he’d had on in the security video.
As Fincher neared the car, I lowered the camera and pulled out my phone, acting engrossed. He passed by, oblivious, and turned the corner on the next block. I put the phone down and thought about my next move. Sure, I had pretty good evidence that he was on the scene, had trespassed, and littered. But I had to be honest with myself, I really didn’t have enough to do much more than make him mildly nervous. I wasn’t a credible threat. And if he knew anything about the law, he’d laugh in my face. Even with the photos, I just didn’t have the leverage to scare him.
You don’t know enough about him, I thought. Operating in a vacuum wouldn’t work. You can’t find leverage if you don’t know who you’re dealing with. Dealing with. Yeah, he didn’t know who he was dealing with…
I woke with a start. I’d fallen asleep in the car with the motor running. At least it was in PARK. A little girl on the sidewalk, sitting astride a pink bike with training wheels, was watching me. I scrubbed my face until the skin tingled, waved at the little girl, then put the car in gear and headed home. Justice would have to wait until I could keep my eyes open.
“Yes, that’s him,” Amanda said. I’d returned to FirstStep after a few hours of sleep, feeling like hell, but wanting to keep my momentum. She shuffled through prints of the best pictures I’d taken of Fincher, then handed them back to me. “So you didn’t punch him in the face while saying, ‘this is for FirstStep’?”
“I thought about burning his building down,” I said, “but that seemed a little callous.”
“What now?”
“Well, we’ve proven he lives in this building and that he buys his hats at the same place as the guy on your security tape. That’s it. If I’m going to apply pressure, I need more info on him.”
“You want to speak to Karla?”
I nodded.
Amanda sighed. “I hate to even remind her of him, let alone talk directly about him. And we’d be asking her to essentially betray him. At least, that would be her outlook.”
“I understand. But if anyone’s got the story on Danny Fincher, it’s going to be her. And it doesn’t have to be something that’s going to ruin him. We’re just looking for a setback, something to convince him to take up a hobby or look for a job in another state. Maybe he’s violating parole or his mother would disown him or he’s got a fear of the color blue. If there’s something we can use to give him pause, she’s going to know it.”
“Hold on.” Amanda picked up the phone and dialed three numbers, an interoffice call. She waited a minute, then said, “Hi, Karla. Can I come talk to you for a minute? No, nothing serious. No, nothing’s happened. Well, something has, but I want to chat with you about it. Okay, I’ll be right there.”
Amanda hung up the phone and stood. “Karla’s doing some secretarial work for us right now, just down the hall. Let me talk to her about this and see if she wants to do it.”
“I’ll wait here.”
“Yes, please. And, Marty, she’s been scared and pissed off since she got here. No jokes, okay?”
“Sure.”
“And try to look…I don’t know…smaller or something.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“I don’t know. Sit down, for starters. Slouch a little.” She left the office.
Grumbling, I sat in the corner chair and slouched, but it made me feel like I’d been called to the principal’s office. I tried sitting straight and drooping my shoulders, but then my hands hung lower than the seat of the chair, like a gorilla with a fashion problem. I settled for crossing my legs and acting normal.
Heels clacked in the hall and I composed myself, trying my best to look like the nicest, friendliest guy in town. The door opened and Amanda showed a young woman into the room. She was twentysomething with frizzy black hair. Dark eyes in a thin, sallow face made her look perpetually skittish. Or maybe she really was skittish after having the shit beaten out of her by a guy who called himself her boyfriend.
“Karla, this is Marty,” Amanda said.
“Hi, Karla,” I said, then realized a little too late that the acrobatics in the chair had been for naught, since I had to stand anyway in order to shake Karla’s hand if I didn’t want to look like a jerk. She was easily a foot shorter than I was and I sat as quickly as I could after shaking her hand.
Amanda shut the door and took her seat behind the desk. “Karla, like I said, Marty is looking into some things for us here at FirstStep. He used to work for the DC police and I’m not kidding when I say that, not long ago, he saved my life from someone who wanted to hurt me.”
We were both looking at Amanda while she spoke, but Karla snuck a glance at me. I wasn’t expecting the accolades and I think I blushed.
“One of the things he’s helping with,” Amanda said, “is Danny Fincher, unfortunately.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Karla said. Her voice was high-pitched, but strong and certain. “Not for me.”
“I know. And we were hoping that the episode when Danny attacked me was an isolated incident, but last night we caught Danny leaving us some…unsavory gifts by the back door. Nothing serious, but the bomb squad had to be called to clear the area.”
“Oh,” Karla said.
“We can’t afford to have this escalate into something worse, something destructive or dangerous. So Marty is trying to find a way to convince Danny to leave FirstStep—and by extension, you—alone.”
“Oh,” Karla said again and her voice, no longer strong and certain, wavered. “Maybe…maybe I should leave—”
“No,” Amanda and I said at the same time. We glanced at each other and she nodded at me. “Karla, that’s not what we’re saying. And, frankly, it wouldn’t help. FirstStep should be a place of safety for you and all the women here. Even if you left, I’d still want to follow up on this, because the shelter can’t afford to be bullied by anyone who gets it in their head that they don’t like what’s being done here. As long as I’m doing that, you might as well stay.”
Karla bit her lip and looked at her hands for a minute. “What can I tell you? I mean, Danny never did anything illegal or crazy.”
Except beat the living—I thought, then caught Amanda’s warning glance. I cleared my throat. “It doesn’t have to be something that puts him in jail, necessarily. And I don’t want to threaten him if I don’t have to. Threats don’t last. I’m looking for something that will change his mind for good, something that will convince him that it just doesn’t make sense to harass you or FirstStep anymore.”
“Like what?” Karla asked.
“Let’s start with the simple stuff,” I said. “We don’t know anything about him. Where is he from? What does he do? Is there a family member or friend he respects who we could talk to? Is he in trouble with the law, even for something minor?”
“He gets a lot of speeding tickets,” Karla said, doubtfully. “He’s from Kentucky and was always complaining that they’d never stop him back home for doing sixty in a twenty-five.”
“Okay,” I said. “Where does he work? He’s got a pretty nice place for, no offense, someone so you
ng.”
“He’s a consultant.”
“With a firm?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “He’s got his own company.”
“Really?” I said. “What kind of consulting?”
“Political stuff. Something to do with elections.”
“Like managing campaigns? Raising money?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Who’d he consult for last?”
She snorted. “He’s only ever worked for his father. He always complained about how shitty the job is, but he never did anything to find another gig. Never would, either.”
“His father?” Amanda asked. “His father works in town?”
“Well, yeah,” Karla said, looking confused. “Of course.”
“Fincher?” I asked and something that had been tickling my brain since I’d heard Danny’s last name now marched to the front lobe and began banging on the door to be let out.
The same thought occurred to Amanda. “Karla, is Danny’s father…Gordon Fincher? The congressman?”
Karla cocked her head quizzically. “Yeah. I thought you knew.”
The office chair popped and squeaked as I sat back. It was all I could do not to put my hands behind my head and prop my feet on Amanda’s desk.
Karla looked from Amanda to me and back. “Does that help?”
A huge smile split Amanda’s face, matching my own.
“Oh, just a little,” I said.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Mr. Singer,” the voice whispered, so low and strained it sounded like the person was being strangled.
“Caitlin?” I asked. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m in the bathroom,” she said. “At work, I mean. It’s the only place I can talk.”
“You can’t go outside to call?”
“No. Billy’s been following me around, hanging all over me. And one of the partners might hear me in the office.”
“Let’s make it quick, then,” I said.
“I was snooping around Ms. Gerson’s office, looking for that day planner I told you about. A paper one from, like, the seventies.”
“Okay,” I said, thinking about how I still kept my notes on a desk blotter. “You said she kept most of it on a laptop, though, right? Why the day planner?”
“She had a computer crash last year that wiped everything out, so she kept a duplicate in case her hard drive got hosed or she lost her phone.”
“Did you find it?”
“No, they cleared her office out a few days after she was killed,” Caitlin said. “But Becky talked to that boy she knows who interned with Mr. Montero and he told her it was in his desk.”
“Montero’s desk?”
“Yes.”
Okay, made sense. Montero wanted Gerson’s notes about anything and everything she’d ever done, so when her office had been cleaned out, he got all the goods. “They haven’t cleaned Montero’s office yet?”
“No. The firm is freaking out. They’ll get around to it soon, but right now everyone’s looking over their shoulder.”
“Do you think anyone else knows about the day planner? Like, someone who might come looking for it?”
“I doubt it,” Caitlin said. “I was the only who saw her use it and I think Mr. Montero only knew about it because everything from her office was brought to him.”
“Dynamite,” I said, feeling my pulse quicken. “So you have it now. Anything interesting?”
“She had a name written down several times,” she said.
I waited for more, but my ear was suddenly filled by hurried muffling and scratching sounds, like she was dragging the phone across a pants leg. I gripped the phone tighter, resisting the urge to yell to Caitlin. The logical conclusion was that someone had come in the bathroom and she’d shoved the phone in her pocket. It wasn’t like she was hiding, of course, but yelling at the top of my voice wouldn’t help her stay inconspicuous in a workplace that was no doubt jumpy after the murder of two of its staff.
The muffled clothing sounds were replaced by a soft click that told me the line had been dropped. I sat there for a minute wondering if it was time to either run down to Tartikoff and Brentwood myself or call the MPDC to do it. As I glared at the call panel, a text message appeared. It was from Caitlin’s number. Hold on. I breathed out and stared at the panel for the world’s longest two minutes until she called back.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Just a lady from Accounts. She took long enough. I was afraid she was going to knock on my stall.”
“They’re going to think you’ve got a real problem if we don’t wrap this up soon.”
She giggled, then stifled it. “The guy’s name is Pat Zimmerman. He shows up next to five different entries for the Quarters project.”
“Doing what?”
“It doesn’t say,” she said, sounding unhappy. “She put her real notes in her phone and only jotted a phrase or two in the day planner.”
“No worries,” I said, trying to reassure her. “No phone number listed for him, then? Email? Mailing address?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, Caitlin. Don’t sweat it. This is great information. How are things at work? Have you had any more warnings from the partners at T and B?”
“No, but I have a friend in Operations that said they were given instructions to log my emails and web surfing. It’s kind of freaking me out. I think I’d like to stop for a while.”
“I understand,” I said. “Take a break and definitely don’t email me. Call me if you feel like they’re threatening you and we’ll come up with a plan to get you out of there.”
“Okay,” she said, not completely convinced. We said goodbye and hung up.
I looked at my notepad, where I’d scribbled the name Pat Zimmerman and underlined it twice. As generic names go, it wasn’t the worst in the world, but it was damn close. I rubbed the back of my neck, thinking. How many Pat Zimmermans could there be in the world? A million? No way, not even a quarter million. Say, a hundred thousand. Sure. So, split amongst the fifty states and scoop a little off the top for the District, I was only looking at maybe…what? Four hundred in the Metro area? No problem. If I started calling each one, I could be done by dinnertime—next year.
I sighed. The days of scanning the phone book under Z were long gone. I looked at my smartphone with distaste, my recent Internet failures fresh in my mind. The web was a strange place, though, my conscience told me. What if a search on Zimmerman’s name came back with a map and an arrow? A big, red, blinking HERE HE IS! beside a picture of the guy? I punched in Zimmerman, Patrick Washington DC.
No luck. Or, to be more accurate, too much luck. I didn’t get the four hundred names, but might as well have. After scrolling through eight pages of meaningless results, I closed the window. With apologies to Pierre, there was more than one way to skin this cat.
An hour later, calls to Paul Gerson, his parents, Dods, and Channing Faraday were all strikes. No one had heard of anyone named Pat Zimmerman in connection to Wendy Gerson or otherwise. I sat and thought. Then, on a hunch, I called them all back and asked if they knew a Patricia Zimmerman. All answers—slightly annoyed this time—were negative.
Okay, last gasp. I went into the bedroom and rifled through my jeans from the previous few days until I found the business card for People Over Power. I dialed the number as I went back to my office and sat down, waiting for the pickup. I asked for Michael Denton, got a bit of a runaround, then Denton was on the line.
“Mr. Singer,” he said in his perfect voice. “I was just going to call you.”
“Really? Did I pass the test?”
“Somewhat. There are enough people who vouch for you officially, that’s for sure. Some cops I know nearly gushed about you. But I had to stop my background check early.”
“I understand,” I said. “My fans can get a little out of control. It gets embarrass
ing, to tell you the truth.”
I thought the serious young activist I’d met in the office would disapprove, but I could hear the smile in his voice. “Actually, Atlantic Union has a new development going in at Columbia Heights. We’ve organized the community protest. I thought you might like to see the effects of their work firsthand. And what we try to do to stop them.”
“Is this my field test?”
“Maybe. I’ve got to be there in any case. Interested?”
I reached for my keys. “Where can I meet you?”
Denton gave me an address about six blocks from the Columbia Heights Metro. The neighborhood had always been a safe and homey mix of black and Hispanic families, if somewhat alien to the whites in the city. As a young cop, I’d responded to plenty of calls in the area—domestic disputes, rowdy drunks, a break-in here or there—but when I graduated to Homicide, I almost never saw the place.
Rather than drive right to where Denton had told me, I parked on 11th Street and took my time walking the two or three city blocks to his location. I wanted to see a slice of the neighborhood before someone else told me what they thought.
It was mostly as I remembered. Two-story, brown-brick, single-family homes with modest front porches and space between them that wouldn’t be tolerated in most modern urban landscapes were the norm here. The front yards ran the spectrum of attention, from carefully tended flower beds—with like beans and tomatoes tucked in between—to weedy, overgrown plots. While none of the homes would make it into House Beautiful, very few were in need of work. Even the stuff that usually got neglected, like the paint under the gutters and the upkeep around the window trim, was sound on nearly every house. The day was a crisp fifty degrees, but bright and sunny, and people sat on the steps of their porches, elbows propped on knees, watching the world and me go by.