He checked the hallway through the window in the door. Empty.
Wedging the door open, he tugged the body through and pulled it down the hallway, which, mercifully, was polished linoleum. He opened the door to his room and dragged the body inside, then raced back for the weapon on the stairs.
In his room, with the faint light from the parking lot coming through the window, he examined the man carefully. Even with his forehead smashed in, he was recognizable. Fat Tony Anselmo. There was a weapon in his coat pocket, a 9-mm automatic with a silencer as big as a sausage. The long weapon was a shotgun, a Remington pump with the barrel amputated just in front of the forearm. It was loaded.
Ford laid the shotgun on the bed and went through the man’s pockets. A wallet containing cash, no credit cards. A lot of cash, mainly twenties. Ford put the wallet back in Anselmo’s pocket. He quickly went through the other pockets. Cigarettes, lighter, a motel room key, some change, a small pocket knife, two wadded-up handkerchiefs. No car keys.
How had Anselmo gotten here?
Someone was outside waiting.
Ford checked the 9 mm. Loaded, with the safety on.
How long had Anselmo been in here? Five minutes? Four?
He stuffed the automatic in his belt. He was already wearing a jacket over a sweatshirt and sweater. The stairwell was unheated.
He opened the door slowly, checked the hallway, then slipped out. He headed for the stairs that led down to the lobby.
There was a man at the lobby desk, seated on a stool with his head down. Harrison Ford waited behind the fire door, watching him through the small window. The man was reading something on the desk in front of him. He turned a page. A newspaper.
A minute passed. Then another.
Come on! Don’t just sit there all night, you knothead!
The desk man picked up his coffee cup and put it to his lips. He frowned, looked into the cup.
He rose from his stool and walked to his right, Ford’s left.
The pot was in that little office across the hall. Quickly now!
Ford eased open the door, checked that the desk man was not in sight, then popped through and pushed the door shut behind him. He strode across the carpeted lobby and went through the outside door, closing it behind him.
He dropped behind the first bush he came to and looked around. Beyond this little driveway was the parking lot with the mercury-vapor lights shining down upon it.
Using the trees and shrubs for cover, he circled it as fast as he could trot, pausing and crouching several times behind large bushes for a careful scan.
He reached the vantage point he wanted, with all the cars between him and the entrance to the stairwell that Tony Anselmo had used. Crouching, staying low, he moved carefully parallel to the last row of cars with the 9-mm automatic in his hand.
Up there, on the second row. Wasn’t that a head in that dark green car? Hard to tell. Perhaps a seat-back headrest. He moved slowly alongside a car, keeping it between him and the green sedan.
It took fifteen seconds to get to a place where he could look again.
Yes. A man. Apparently white.
He moved slowly now, going behind a line of cars, working closer.
He also checked the other cars. There might be someone else out here.
The door to the green sedan opened. Ford realized it when the interior courtesy light came on.
Then it went off. The man was standing beside the car.
On his hands and knees, Ford crept across the back of the last car in this row, the third one, and looked forward. The green sedan was in the second row, and the man was standing beside the driver’s door, about forty feet from where Ford was hunkered. He was doing something. A weapon. He was stuffing shells into a shotgun.
Ford heard the distinctive metallic snick as the man worked the action, chambering a round. He turned his back to Ford and started toward the stairwell door.
Harrison Ronald Ford rose into a crouch, braced his hand against the side of the car, and steadied the automatic. The damn thing had no sights.
He quickly aligned the silencer and squeezed off a round.
The man staggered, tried to turn. Ford squeezed again. Another pop. And another.
The man went down. The shotgun clattered as he hit the asphalt.
Ford ran to his right, all hunched over, down about five cars, then charged across the driving lane into the second row. Alongside a car he threw himself on his face and looked under the parked vehicles. He could see a dark shape on the asphalt, obviously not a tire.
Harrison Ronald Ford leveled the automatic with both hands, trying in the gloom to sight along the rounded top of the silencer.
Shit! This is crazy! He could not see well enough to really aim, even if he had had sights.
He lay there breathing rapidly, staring across the top of the weapon at the dark shape five cars over. The seconds ticked by.
He was going to have to do something.
If he went back to the spot that he had fired from, the man would have a clean shot between the cars at him. If he went along the first row, the same thing would eventually occur.
If the guy were still alive and conscious, that is.
Harrison Ronald wiped the sweat from his face with a sleeve.
Fuck!
He was sure as hell going to have to do something.
He got to his feet and rounded the front of the car he had been lying beside. The green sedan was plainly visible. Moving carefully, silently—he was wearing rubber-soled running shoes—he went toward it with the pistol grasped tightly with both hands, the safety off.
Kneeling on the asphalt, Ford tried again to see the fallen man between the tires. He saw a piece of him the second time, apparently still in the same place and position.
He rounded the front of the green car with the pistol ready and fired the instant it covered the man sprawled there on his side beside the front tire.
He needn’t have bothered. Vinnie Pioche was already dead.
When Jake Grafton left the Pentagon, Callie was waiting out front in the car. The buses and subways didn’t run at these hours of the night. Jake climbed in and sighed. “I called home. Amy said you were here. How long have you been waiting?”
“Two hours.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, Jake,” Callie said as they hugged each other. “I was so worried about you today. Amy called me at school. She was distraught, almost hysterical. They’ve run film clips on TV, over and over, all evening. The attorney general getting shot, the Secret Service agents ready to blast the first person who twitched, and you’re standing up and looking around like a damned fool.”
“Story of my life,” he muttered.
“Hug me again, Jacob Lee.”
“With pleasure,” he said and gave her another squeeze and a kiss. She drew away finally and looked at him with her arms around his neck. “Your mother called.”
He nodded. There was nothing to say.
“Oh, Jake!”
Finally she released him and put the car in motion.
The radio was on. Something about a huge fire in northeast Washington.
“What’s that all about?” he asked.
“Haven’t you heard? Somebody attacked a row house. Set half the block on fire.”
“When?”
“About ten tonight. Have you been working on this National Guard thing all evening?”
Jake nodded and turned up the radio volume.
“What’s happening, Jake? Assassinations, battles … it’s almost like a war.”
“It is a war.” After listening a minute, he snapped the radio off. “This is just the first battle. The have-nots versus the haves.”
“Have you eaten?”
“No, but I’m going to drop you at the apartment building. I need the car for a while. There’s somebody I need to go see.”
“Oh, Jake! Not tonight! You need some sleep. Why, the sun will be up in a few hours.”
Jak
e Grafton grunted and sat watching the empty streets.
“Let me come with you.”
“You go home and stay with Amy. I’ll be home in an hour or so.”
“They had Mrs. Cohen on television tonight, coming out of the hospital after seeing her husband. And Mrs. Bush. And Mrs. Quayle. This whole mess, it’s so evil!”
“Ummm,” Jake said, still watching the occasional passing car, wondering vaguely who was driving and where they were going at this hour of the night. The problem, he knew, was that the Colombian narco-terrorists knew exactly what they were fighting for and they wanted it very badly. They wanted a place in the sun.
“What I can’t figure out is why Dan Quayle called out the National Guard instead of bringing in Army troops.”
“Who knows?” her husband replied. “Maybe he got tired of all the flak he caught in ’88 about joining the Guard to avoid service in Vietnam. Maybe he’s going to show everybody what a fine fighting outfit the Guard is.”
“Doesn’t that bother you, his avoiding Vietnam?”
Jake Grafton snorted. “I seem to recall that back then most of the guys my age were trying to avoid going to Vietnam. In some quarters the quest took on religious status.”
“You went,” she said.
“Hell, Callie, half the country is still discriminating against Vietnam veterans. The U.S. government says Agent Orange never hurt anybody.”
“You went,” she repeated.
Jake Grafton thought about that for a moment. Finally he said, “I was always a slow child.”
His wife reached out and squeezed his hand. He squeezed hers in return.
Harrison Ronald Ford didn’t hesitate. He wrestled the dead weight that had been Vinnie Pioche into the backseat of the green sedan. He tossed the shotgun into the front seat, then got behind the wheel. The keys were still in the ignition.
He started the car. Three quarters of a tank of gas.
How had two New York hoods gotten by the Marine sentries at the gate?
Leaving the car idling, he got out and walked around to look at the front bumper. Residing there was a nice blue Department of Defense officer’s sticker. Clean and new.
Harrison got back behind the wheel. He closed the door and sat looking at the door that Fat Tony had gone through on his way upstairs to kill him as he waited for his heart to slow down and his breathing to get back to normal. His hands were still shaking from the adrenal aftershock.
These two worked for the Costello-Shapiro family in New York, the Big Bad Apple. Well, tonight they had been attending to a little chore for Freeman McNally.
Harrison had no proof of course, but he didn’t need any. He knew Freeman McNally. Freeman had succeeded at an extremely risky enterprise by killing anyone in whom he had the slightest doubt. Why Anselmo and Pioche had agreed to do this little job for Freeman was an interesting question, but one that would probably never be answered. A favor for a new business associate? Good ol’ Freeman. A friend indeed.
Ford got out of the car again and closed the door. He looked for the spent shell of the last round he had fired into friend Vinnie. It had been flipped fifteen feet to the right of where he stood. He pocketed it and went back through the lot to find the others. The search took three minutes, but he found them.
Back behind the wheel of the car, he picked up the automatic and popped the clip from the handle. Still held six rounds. He slipped the clip back in place and put the safety on.
Other men would come after him, of course. If Freeman could reach him here in the FBI barracks at Quantico he could reach him anywhere—in a police car in Evansville, a barracks on Okinawa, a hut on a beach in Tasmania—anywhere.
It took Harrison Ronald about ten seconds to decide. Not really. It took him ten seconds before he was ready to announce the decision to himself.
It’s the only choice I’ve got, he told himself.
He had actually made the decision before he stuffed Vinnie in the backseat and picked up the shells, but now it was official.
Harrison Ronald put the car in gear and fed gas. He coasted through the parking lot, avoiding the little driveway that went up by the office, and headed for the main gate and the interstate to Washington.
It was funny, when you thought about it. He had been scared silly for ten months, day and night and in between, and now he wasn’t. He should have been, but he wasn’t. As he drove along he even whistled.
Jake Grafton parked the car three blocks from what was left of Willie Teal’s place and walked. Fire trucks and hoses were everywhere. Cops accosted him.
He showed them his military ID. Since he was still in uniform, he was allowed to pass.
Standing across the street from Willie Teal’s, Jake Grafton marveled. The entire row from here to the corner was a smoking ruin. Six firemen played water on the wreckage by the light of three big portable floodlights. Behind a yellow police-line tape, several hundred black people stood watching, occasionally pointing.
Jake turned to the nearest policeman and said to him, “I’m looking for a reporter named Jack Yocke. Seen him around?”
“Young? Late twenties? Yeah. Saw him a while ago. Look over there, why don’cha?”
Yocke was interviewing a woman. He scribbled furiously in his notebook and occasionally tossed in a question. At one point he looked up and saw Grafton. He thanked the woman, spoke to her in a low, inaudible tone, then walked toward the naval officer.
“Somebody said the fireman had used enough water to float a battleship, but we certainly didn’t expect to see the Navy show up to take advantage of that fact.”
“Who did this?”
Yocke’s eyebrows went up. “The police are right over there. They’re working their side of the street and I’m working mine. My version will be in tomorrow’s paper.”
“Gimme a straight answer.”
Yocke grinned. “Prevailing opinion is that Freeman McNally just put a competitor out of business. Off the record, with a guarantee of anonymity, witnesses tell me four cars, eight men. They used grenade launchers. Just sat in the cars cool as ice cubes in January and fired grenades through the windows. The firemen and police are still carting bodies out of Teal’s place. Ain’t pretty.”
“You about finished here?”
Yocke shrugged.
“I want to have a little talk. Off the record, of course.”
“Is there any other way?”
Yocke led the way toward his car. Walking toward it he asked, “You hungry?”
“Yeah.”
They went to an all-night restaurant, a Denny’s, and got a seat well back from the door. The place was almost empty. After they had ordered, Jake said, “Tell me about this town. Tell me about Washington.”
“You didn’t come out here in the middle of the night to get a civics lecture.”
“I want to know how Washington works.”
“If you find out, you’ll be the only one who knows.”
“Okay, Jack Yocke, The Washington Post’s star cynic, let’s hear it.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Yep.”
Yocke took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, then settled himself comfortably behind his podium. “Metropolitan Washington is basically three cities. The first, and largest, is composed of federal government employees who live in the suburbs and commute. This is the richest, most stable community in the country. They are well paid, well educated, and never face layoffs or mergers or takeovers or competition or shrinking profit margins. It’s a socialist Utopia. These people and the suburbanites who provide goods and services to them are Democrats: big government pays their wages and they believe in it with all the fervor of Jesus clinging to the cross.
“The second group, the smallest, is made up of the movers and shakers, the elected and appointed officials who make policy. This is official Washington, the Georgetown cocktail-party power elite. These people are the actors on the national stage: their audience is out there beyond the beltway. They’re
in the city but never a part of it.
“The last group are the inner-city residents, who are seventy percent black. This group only works in federal office buildings at night, when they clean them. The city of Washington is the biggest employer; forty-six thousand jobs for a population of about 586,000 people in the district.”
Jake whistled. “Isn’t that high?”
“One in every thirteen people works for the city. Highest average in the nation. But major industry dried up in Washington years ago, leaving only service jobs—waiters, maids, bus drivers, and so on. So the politicians create jobs, just like in Russia. The inner-city residents, like the suburbanites and the residents of every major inner city in the country, are also Democrats. They cling to big government like calves to the tit.”
“So what the hell is wrong?” Jake Grafton asked.
“Depends on who you ask. The black militants and the political preachers—that’s all the preachers, by the way—claim it’s racism. The liberals—you have to be rich and white to have enough guilt to fit into this category—claim it’s all the fault of a parsimonious government, a government that doesn’t do enough. I’ve never met a liberal yet who thought we had enough government. This even though the district has one of the highest tax rates in the country and the federal government kicks in a thousand bucks a head for every man, woman, and child every year.”
Jack Yocke shrugged grandly. “To continue my tale, the schools in the suburbs are as good as any in the country. The schools in the inner city are right down there with the worst—fifty percent dropout rate, crime, drugs, abysmal test scores, poisonous race relations—by every measure abominable. The average inner-city resident is ignorant as a post, poor as a church mouse, paranoid about racial matters, and lives in a decaying slum. He collects a government check and complains about potholes that are never filled and garbage that is never hauled away while the local politicians orate and posture and play racial politics for all they’re worth and steal everything that isn’t nailed down. He’ll vote for Marion Barry for mayor even though he knows the man is probably a drug addict and a perjurer because Barry uses the white establishment as a scapegoat for all his troubles.
05.Under Siege v5 Page 39