Love Thy Neighbor

by Mark Gilleo

  Clark turned the wheel to the right and then navigated a large swooping, looping left-hand turn. As he completed the turn his lights flashed against the front of several buildings.

  Lisa squinted through the windshield. “I think we found the address.”

  “Which one?”

  “The far right.”

  “It looks like a garage.”

  “And it doesn’t look like anyone is home.”

  “I can’t imagine why. The neighborhood is fabulous.”

  On cue, a dog went berserk somewhere in the darkness, followed by a slamming door and human screams. The incident ended with several canine yelps and another slamming door.

  “I’ll come back in the morning when it’s light.”

  “And you’ll come back without me.”

  “Oh, I don’t plan on coming back alone. I have two friends who are coming with me.”

  Chapter 56

  Clark pulled into the parking lot of the 7-11, past the group of Latino day-workers who swarmed a white van as it approached the edge of the convenience store’s property. Clark got out of his car, walked across the gum-spattered sidewalk, and reached for the phone. The dirty, blue and silver communications dinosaur was posted on a pole beneath a ‘no loitering’ sign written in both English and Spanish.

  “I need to speak with Detective Wallace,” Clark said to the police operator.

  “May I ask who’s calling?”

  “The same guy who called three times yesterday. I’m providing an anonymous tip on a case he is working on.”

  “Just a minute.”

  A full minute passed as Clark blew hot air into his cupped hands, the phone wedged between his ear and his shoulder.

  “Detective Wallace.”

  “Detective. This is Clark Hayden. I have been trying to reach you since yesterday afternoon.”

  Detective Wallace was standing next to his desk and he looked around the room as he spoke. “I was in Baltimore yesterday. Out of pocket. You didn’t leave a message.”

  “You told me not to.”

  “You calling from a pay phone?”

  “Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a pay phone these days? Much less one that is working?”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes.” Clark watched as six of the day-laborers climbed in the white van. “I have some information I would like to share with you.”

  “I was wondering if you were going to call. Half of me was hoping you would. The other half was really hoping you wouldn’t.”

  “Any progress on the guy pulled from the Potomac?”

  “We are still trying to locate next of kin. Cause of death was officially reported as drowning.”

  “Did anyone check this guy for ricin poisoning?”

  “Yeah. As I said, the official cause of death was drowning. I heard that a couple of suits paid a visit to the medical examiner. We may never get a straight answer on that one. How about you? How did your search go?”

  “Well, I think I found the woman I was looking for.”

  There was a long silence on the phone. “Then I guess that presents me with a dilemma.”

  “I figured it might. So here’s what I was thinking. What if you happen to stumble upon her while in the midst of solving another crime?”

  There was a long silence followed by, “Then that would be just dumb luck.”

  Clark laughed. “I’m not sure if you meant that intentionally or not, but it could be a little of both. A little dumb and a little luck.”

  “I guess it could.”

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  Clark called Detective Wallace back an hour later, this time from his cell phone.

  “As dumb luck would have it, I made a trip into D.C. and someone broke into my car. Smashed the window.”

  Detective Wallace sighed and smiled to himself. “What’s your location?”

  “9345 Georgia Ave, near Tenth and Aspen. Warehouse C, around the back. A left turn behind an old hardware store that looks like it is out of hammers and very soon out of business. It is a good place to get crack at night, though.”

  “I know the area. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Don’t go walking around the neighborhood.”

  Clark looked around his surroundings. “I wouldn’t dream of it.” Clark checked his watch, turned up the heat in the car, and made sure the doors were locked.

  Eighteen minutes later Clark got out of the car and scoured the lot between the warehouse and the junk car piles next door. Large swathes of blacktop were missing, leaving exposed ground, puddles, rocks. Clark walked to the edge of the lot, expecting a rabid dog to appear on the other side of the fence, ready to mark his territory with whatever piece of Clark’s body he could get through the chain links. Clark bent over and picked up a stone the size of a softball. He tossed it in his hand to check the weight and smiled. He took two steps towards his car, wound up, and threw the stone through his passenger side window. Just covering everyone’s ass, he said to himself.

  Five minutes later, Clark was sitting on the hood of his car when Detective Wallace pulled around the corner.

  The detective parked his car near Clark’s and pulled himself from the passenger seat by the doorframe. He was dressed in black slacks and a black sweater. His badge was hanging from his belt, a spot of gleaming gold in a black sea of an outfit. There was an obvious bulge on his right hip.

  Detective Wallace looked at the broken window on Clark’s car. “A smash and grab?”

  “I guess,” Clark said, sliding off the hood. His butt was slightly warm from the heat dissipating off the engine from the morning’s drive.

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “That’s my story.”

  “Did they take anything?”

  “An old Poison CD is missing. It’s a classic.”

  “Poison? You trying to be funny?”

  “Maybe.”

  Detective Wallace looked around. The junkyard was behind him, crushed cars stacked five high. A vacant lot was to the left, the fenced area littered with miscellaneous garbage ranging from tires to old refrigerators to hypodermic needles.

  Detective Wallace finished his 360-degree surveillance scan and his eyes stopped where they began, on the closest pile of crushed cars. “I think that’s a 72 Cadillac there on the bottom.”

  “You know your cars. Looks like a 72 accordion to me.”

  “I had one before I was married.”

  “A bachelor boat?”

  “The women liked it.”

  “Back in the day,” Clark added.

  Detective Wallace flashed the look he gave his grandchildren when they did something wrong, but hilarious. “So, what are we doing here?”

  Clark pointed to the far warehouse, over fifty yards away. “Warehouse C.”

  “What’s in warehouse C?”

  “My missing neighbor.”

  “How did you find her?”

  “I didn’t. An ice storm did. It’s a long story. My neighbor’s real name is Safia Hafeez. But I imagine she stopped calling herself that so long ago she wouldn’t even answer to it now. She stole the identity from another girl when they were both students in Boston. The other girl went missing and her body was never found.”

  Detective Wallace nodded. “Smart girl. You use a missing person, not a dead one. A lot of jurisdictions have started matching death certificates with other systems, like Social Security. But if the person were only missing, and the family never filed a death certificate…”

  “It didn’t look like the girl had much family.”

  “Probably chosen for that reason. What else did you find out?”

  “She’s an MIT graduate. A doctorate in bad news stuff like chemical engineering and propulsion systems. Fulbright scholar. Pakistani national. Wife and mother of one. Has diplomatic contacts at the Pakistan Embassy. She has been living in the U.S. for over the last ten years under the name Ariana Amin. She has also been using my father’s company to buy materia
l and equipment.”

  “For what?”

  “I have an idea but no evidence. I spent all yesterday afternoon and last night going through blueprints, invoices, orders.” Clark paused. “You ever heard of a hail cannon?”

  “No, what is it?”

  “These farmers, and now some car dealers, take this big, long vertically standing tube, called a hail cannon, and shoot pressure waves into the air.”

  “Pressure waves?”

  “Yeah, the cannon and its waves are supposed to disrupt the formation of hail in the atmosphere. Great for farmers with sensitive crops and car dealers who lose money on hail damage. Nissan opened a car plant in Mississippi and they even bought one. I guess if you think about it, all those cars have to sit outside until they get shipped to wherever they are going.”

  “Guess so. And…”

  “Anyhow, when I started poking around for info on my neighbor a few weeks ago, I talked to my mailman trying to get an inside scoop. He told me that my neighbor had received some large-scale farming equipment catalogs. It didn’t mean anything to me until I got the invoice from the company in Maryland for the machines shipped to this warehouse.”

  “And…”

  “Then I started asking around at different places. Made calls to a few farming equipment companies. Ariana, through Hayden Ltd., had requested info on the hail cannon.”

  “They told you this?”

  “I gave my name as Clark Hayden, and I had all the company information. I played dumb and said we were still interested in purchasing one.”

  “That would work.”

  “Except they cost over a million dollars. Anyway, how Ariana used this information, I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t use it at all. But there are a million companies out there selling a million different things that someone with her background could use. There was no way for me to contact all of them. One thing I do know for certain is that she isn’t a farmer.”

  Detective Wallace nodded his head and looked over at the warehouse. “How do you want to do this?”

  “You’re the police…”

  “Seeing that I’m responding to a smash and grab robbery of one classic Poison CD, I think we go with that.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Didn’t you say that you think you saw the person who broke into your car enter the far warehouse?”

  “I believe I did.”

  “Then let’s go have a look. See if there were any witnesses … But first, I need to send out a safety line.” Detective Wallace pulled his cell phone from his pocket. He called his part-time partner and left a cryptic voicemail on Detective Nguyen’s phone giving him the address and circumstances. Wallace finished with a not-so-cryptic, “So if you don’t hear from me in an hour, send in a rescue team, bio-hazard, the works.” When he hung up, he looked at Clark. “At least one person will know where to look for us.”

  “Make that one million. My girlfriend has a similar video message from me ready to be posted on YouTube. It will also be sent to the local media and the Institute for Justice, a non-profit law firm in D.C. that specializes in constitutional rights. If something happens to me today there are going to be a shitload of people who know my name, your name, Agent Rosson. Everything.”

  “Pretty ballsy.”

  “Yeah, well. I kind of figured ‘fuck it.’”

  Detective Wallace lifted his sweater on the side and exposed his police issue Glock. “I hope I don’t have to shoot anyone today.”

  “Me, too.”

  “If things get dicey, you get the hell away from me.”

  “Don’t worry, if you start shooting, you’ll need to send out a search team to find me.”

  Detective Wallace pointed to the building on the far left. “We start on the left and work our way down from there. Walking across that open lot is not a safe approach.”

  Clark followed behind Detective Wallace, who walked nonchalantly as if he were making a business call. As they passed the middle warehouse and reached the edge of warehouse C, Clark tapped the detective on the arm. “Look at the ground. Fresh tracks.”

  “I see those, Kimo Sabe. More than one vehicle.”

  “And one was a truck.”

  “You sure about this address?”

  Clark nodded. “One hundred percent.”

  Wallace approached the solid metal door with his hand on his weapon.

  He pounded hard with his free hand and identified himself as a D.C. police officer. Clark was stooped over at the waist, prepared to run, though he had no idea in what direction or what would trigger his mad dash. Detective Wallace slammed the edge of his closed fist on the door again, waited, and repeated the procedure. After thirty seconds of banging, he turned to Clark. “Looks like Plan B.”

  Chapter 57

  Ariana pulled the white minivan up to the curb in a no-parking lane in front of the Starbucks, across from the Capital South Metro. Karim was sitting on the floor, the seats long since removed. He sat with his back to the side wall of the minivan, behind the driver’s seat, avoiding the exposed metal in the middle of the minivan floor. It was Syed’s turn in the front passenger seat, the last stop before martyrdom. As she had done for each departing passenger, Ariana said a prayer.

  Then she thrust her hand behind her and Karim placed a gun in it. Smiling, she pulled the handgun forward and passed it to Syed, handle first.

  Karim watched from the back of the vehicle as Syed’s face lit up with joy.

  “The safety is on and it’s loaded,” Karim said.

  Syed gave an instant assessment. “A Beretta Px4 Storm. Nine millimeter. Magazine capacity of seventeen. Nice gun.”

  “Now put it away,” Ariana said, checking the van’s mirrors.

  “What’s it for?”

  “It’s for the twins, Jameel and Omar.”

  “Why?”

  “If you get a sense they’re going to run, or back out, kill them. They are on the same platform as you. If they follow instructions and ride the second cars from the front and the back, then they will be less than thirty yards from your location. Can you hit them from that distance?”

  “With that piece of hardware, I can hit them from eighty. But I could just as easily use my hands.”

  “Whichever. The only reason they were brought in was to carry the bags. I couldn’t have one person carrying six bags and have them dispersed over the necessary area. So if you have to kill them, keep the location of their bags in mind. Do not let them out of your sight.”

  “They are boys, but they will not run.”

  “Just in case,” Ariana said, dipping her head in the direction of the gun.

  “Thank you.”

  “Have a safe journey, my brother,” Karim said from the floor of the backseat.

  “You have twenty-five minutes. Grab a coffee. Be on time,” Ariana added.

  Syed opened the passenger door and moved to the sliding side door. He pushed the door open just enough to grab his luggage as Karim pushed the heavy cases from his position inside the minivan. With the luggage on the street, the two men locked eyes through the closing side door.

  “Allah Akbar.”

  “Allah Akbar.”

  Chapter 58

  Detective Wallace opened the trunk and looked down at the black, three-foot battering ram riddled with scars and scrapes. The paint was chipped, the blunt end slightly rusted.

  “Christ, you carry that with you wherever you go?” Clark asked, looking at the thick metal cylinder. He was speaking quickly, almost in a whisper.

  “I don’t want to hear anything from a guy who carries a robot in his trunk,” Detective Wallace said, motioning towards the electronic contraption on the ground next to the car.

  “The robot is homework.”

  “Well, consider this my homework.”

  “What else do you have in there?”

  “Shotgun, vest. Extendable baton, though it’s not entirely police issue. Tear gas mask,” Wallace said. He pointed at this favorite toy in the trunk.
“But this baby right here is known as Betty.”

  “My aunt’s name is Betty.”

  Detective Wallace gave Clark his police-issue inter-rogation face.

  “Ol’ Betty, here,” Detective Wallace said, joining Clark in half-whisper mode, gesturing with his head towards the battering ram, “has opened more than a thousand doors in her life. She weighs only forty pounds but when swung properly generates forty thousand pounds of force. Unless we are dealing with a blast door or a bank vault, she always gets invited in.”

  “You need help with that?” Clark asked.

  Detective Wallace shook his head. “Stand back, young man. Let me show you what Betty is all about.”

  Detective Wallace’s large frame hunched over the open trunk and he stretched for the battering ram’s handles. One hand grip was near the rear end of the device and was used for generating most of the power. The second handle was on the top of the device, near the midway point, its strategic location providing both power and the mild ability to steer the force of the blow towards the intended target.

  “Looks heavier than forty pounds,” Clark added, ribbing Wallace.

  “Are you and your toy ready?”

  Clark turned on the remote control in his hand and pushed the paddle forward with his right thumb. The two-foot high robot lurched from its parked position. Clark put the headset to the radio remote control over his ears and nodded. “Let’s do this thing.”

  Detective Wallace approached the front door and tested the weight of the battering ram. He took one practice swing several feet in front of the door, and let out a grunt like a gladiator about to make an entrance into the Coliseum. With the conclusion of his warm-up, Detective Wallace set the battering ram in motion, the arc of the cylinder swinging back and upward.

  “Wait,” Clark yelled, his ears still covered with his headset.

  Detective Wallace tried to reign in the weight of the ram as it surged forward. He stepped back as the battering ram continued forward, scraping the metal door but leaving it intact. Wallace grimaced, his lower back unappreciative of the sudden change in inertia.