“Well, when we do finally bag him, I wish somebody would figure out a way to keep ’im in jail long enough for us to finish the paperwork before he’s back on the street again.”
Suddenly, Charlie’s eyes flashed and he studied Barnett for a moment. “Wait a minute. I got it, now! All this pissin’ and moanin’ ain’t about Billy-Ray, the car, or you being tired, is it? It’s about Louise. Oh, yeah,” he grinned and pointed his finger at the younger agent. “She threw you out again, didn’t she?”
“Just because Louise and I decided to elevate our relationship to a higher plain of mutual understanding and affection…”
“What? You popped the question and she turned you down again? Like that ain’t happened before.”
“Not exactly.” Barnett took a deep, reluctant breath. “This time it was kinda the other way around.”
“She asked you? And you said no? Oh, that was a really bad idea, Eddie!”
“I think I know that now,” Eddie said as he touched the Band-Aid on his forehead.
“With Louise that could be a near death experience. What did she throw this time?”
“An ashtray.”
“An ashtray?” Charlie started coughing, turning red in the face as he tried not to laugh. “Huh! I thought she quit smoking… then again, I guess she could have quit bowling, or horseshoes.”
“Or darts.”
CHAPTER TWO
Northeast DC, Friday, September 20, 10:50 p.m.
Billy-Ray Perkins was a quintessential redneck from Pickshin, West Virginia. It's at the ass end of nowhere, back in the hills, where guns, drugs, and moonshine trump law and order and a big night out was making the long drive to Beckley for dinner at Hardy’s. Billy-Ray and his three cousins — Larry, Mo, and Curly as the Feds called them — were wanted on at least a half-dozen open Federal warrants for bank robbery, interstate flight to escape prosecution, running guns up I-95 from South Carolina to the gang bangers in New York City, assaulting federal officers, and the importation of whatever kind of illicit drugs Billy-Ray could get his hands on. Barnett could never figure out whether Billy-Ray was a user who liked to sell the leftovers, or a dealer who was into serious product sampling, but he usually washed it down with Jack Daniels straight from the bottle. In the end, it didn’t matter. Whether it was the drugs, the booze, or too much Kanawha River water, he was not the brightest bulb in the pack, but he was as determined and persistent as athlete’s foot. Barnett and Wisniewski had already caught him and arrested him twice, for all the good that did, and these reruns were getting tiresome.
“Let’s face it,” Eddie concluded, “he pays more for his lawyers than we do, and probably more for the judges, too.”
That night’s farce began when the local cops got a tip, probably from a neighborhood competitor, that Billy-Ray was back in town and hiding in a small, run-down house on the city’s northeast side. Eddie figured it was a waste of time, but Charlie decided they had to find out. “Why not,” he said. “You got something else to do?”
That was why the two FBI agents were in that dilapidated undercover car that night, slouched down in the front seat watching the house where Billy-Ray was thought to be hiding. It was a small white clapboard bungalow with a low-peaked roof, maybe four or five rooms inside, and a broad, covered front porch held up by four sagging white columns. ‘Back in the day,’ the porch would have been screened, and the family would sleep out there to escape the District’s oppressive summer heat. That was before the gang bangers took over the neighborhood streets, and drive-bys drove people inside behind deadbolts, chain-link fences, and pit bulls.
Fortunately, Billy-Ray was too dumb to be original. This house looked exactly like the last one he hid out in, which in turn looked like every other house he had hid out in over the years. Barnett figured the weeds, the bare dirt ‘front yard,’ the dead bushes along the porch, and the scattered beer cans reminded Billy-Ray of Mama’s house back in Pickshin. There was a rusting car sitting on cinder blocks in the driveway and a sagging, threadbare couch lying dead on the front porch. The front steps and front door were centered on the porch, with a double window on each side. There were more windows along the left and right sides of the house. Unfortunately, there were yellowed, roll-down shades on all of them, which someone inside had been intelligent enough to pull down. Behind the shades, several windows were open, allowing heavy metal music to pound its way across the street. Hide in plain sight? Whatever. Billy-Ray was a dumb redneck, but if he ever shifted his base to the suburbs and cleaned up his act, they would never find him.
Three hours later, Eddie had scrunched down in the corner of the front seat, eyes half closed, wrapped in his FBI windbreaker, with his brass badge and credentials wallet hanging on a chain around his neck. It was unlikely that a local police car would come nosing around wondering what they were doing here, but the last thing they needed was a ruckus with city uniforms. Charlie, on the other hand, was talking on his I-phone, looking at the old dilapidated house and doing a slow burn. “Where’s the goddamned warrant, Harry?” he demanded to know. “We're ready to rock-and-roll here, and we still got no paper… Yeah, well, not to put a fine point on it, but we need a warrant; otherwise, it’s a freakin’ home invasion!”
Barnett could hear the loud and equally frustrated reply from the lawyer at the other end of the line. “The Judge won't even see me until his dinner party's over. What can I do? When he signs it, you’ll be the first to know.”
Charlie tried to end the call, but only ended up pushing buttons he did not understand. “I hate this goddamned thing! Smart phone? What’s that make me?” he asked as he finally got it turned off. “My kids got it for me and Norma Jean said I had to learn how to use it,” he said as he dropped the cell phone on the seat. “I’m losin’ it… I got six months left, and I’m losin’ it.”
“You can’t lose what you ain’t got anymore. You gotta learn how to chill, Charlie, or you’ll pop a pipe.”
“Chill? Chill! Billy-Ray and those three skinhead cousins of his have hit six banks, and here you and I sit waiting for some goddamn judge to finish his apple pie. It’s a bunch ’a crap, Eddie. That’s what it is, a bunch ’a crap!”
“Nah, it’s all that red meat and coffee you been pounding down. We are what we eat, Charlie; we are what we eat… and those ‘police specials’ at The Hog don’t help, either.”
“Cute, real cute! You want Billy-Ray and his dirt-ball cousins to skate out on us and disappear again?”
“I don’t know what I want,” Barnett said as he sat up and stretched, stiff and sore. He had had enough. “Nah, I take that back. I want a clean car, a new front seat, and I want something to do, something useful and real for a change. That’s what I want.”
“Real? Those four clowns in that house, they’re all the real I want tonight.”
“Billy-Ray is a dumb cracker who can’t even spell ‘inter-state flight.’ ”
“Hey! You’re tired? You’re bored? At least you got that Egyptian to fall back on.”
“Who? Mouse?” he asked, referring to Moustapha Khalidi, the head of security at the Egyptian Embassy, who for some perverse reason had chosen FBI Agent Eddie Barnett as his conduit to pass on security information gleaned on Middle East terrorist groups.
“How come you’re bringing this stuff to me?” Barnett once asked the fastidious little Egyptian.
“Because I like you, Barnett,” Mouse smiled. “Are you complaining?”
“No, but why don’t you take this stuff through channels to State or the CIA? You know they get their noses all out of joint every time you do this?”
“Perhaps they’ll learn better manners. A number of our people have their noses out of joint over the way they treated some of their old friends during our recent ‘Arab Spring’ in Cairo. So, they may ‘pound sand,’ as you say, for all I care. Initially, it was my intention to pass things to an old school chum at ATF — alcohol, tobacco, and firearms — and give it all to him. The new Mullahs and ‘Though
t Police’ in Cairo hate the CIA. They would have had no problem with the ‘firearms’ part of ATF, but they would take a dim view of all that ‘alcohol and tobacco.’ So, you are ‘it,’ my friend. Besides, as I hear it, being my ‘conduit’ is probably the only thing keeping you here and not exiled to Boise or Altoona, isn’t it?”
Barnett smiled. Mouse had that right. And knowing how difficult the other American Federal agencies were to work with, he guessed he could understand the Egyptian’s problem.
“I can’t explain it, Charlie. The guy likes to talk to me.”
“Well, you’ve got Egyptian Intelligence whispering international secrets in your ear, and what have I got? Norma Jean, her mother’s cat, lawyers, and you.”
“I’m not sure what I’ve got, Charlie, but I’m tired of sitting here waiting for it,” Barnett said as he looked into the rear view mirror and saw a car with a bright red pizza delivery sign on the roof coming up the street toward them. “If we can’t find a judge, I think it’s time we dig up a little probable cause. What do you think?” Barnett opened the car door, took off his credential pack, his badge, and the FBI windbreaker, and tossed them on the car seat. Underneath, he wore his favorite Sting “Broken Music Tour ‘05” T-shirt, faded blue jeans, and a Redskins hat pulled low on his head.
That was when Charlie suddenly sat up and looked very worried. “Wait a minute. Where the hell are you going?”
“To do something, Charlie, to do something.”
“Jeez, you go get your ass shot-up again, the Director’ll have me for lunch; and that's nothing compared to what Louise’ll do.”
“Time to start thinking outside the box,” he said as he stepped into the street and waved down the pizza driver.
“Outside the box? Outside the box? Christ, I’m calling for back-up.”
Five minutes later Eddie Barnett stood on the front porch of the dilapidated clapboard house wearing the pizza delivery guy’s silly paper hat, a beaded ‘Indian’ necktie, and a tomato-stained apron over his T-shirt. Under the roof overhang, the porch was in dark shadows. There was a small light fixture in the ceiling, but the protective glass globe was missing and it did not look as if they had replaced the bare dead bulb since the Nixon Administration. There was a screen door, but the screen was missing and the front door itself looked nicked, dinged, and painted a washed-out, dark green. Even in the dark, the color was something you could only achieve by slopping on cheap house paint with a large brush. Lousy paint job or not, the door was metal and it sported three shiny new deadbolt locks running down the doorjamb from top to bottom. Obviously, Billy-Ray didn’t want any visits from the Welcome Wagon. On each side of the door stood a double-hung double window. The lights were on inside the house, but there were dirty, water-stained shades covering both windows. A thin sliver of light bled out around the edges. He tried peeking through the crack, but he couldn’t see a thing inside.
He had a large pizza box balanced on the upraised palm of his left hand as he reached out and pushed the button on the doorbell. Nothing happened. He pushed it a couple more times, but still nothing. Figures! Nothing was going to go down easy tonight, so he rapped his knuckles hard on the door. “Pizza!” he called out, trying to make himself heard over the rock music blaring inside. Finally, he heard the front door rattle. The deadbolt locks clicked one after another and the door swung open to reveal a huge Skinhead standing in the doorway, glaring out at him with hard, angry eyes. The guy stood at least six foot six inches tall and two hundred eighty pounds, with a shaved head, barrel chest, and muscle definition you only get from heavy weights and way too many ‘roids. He had Chinese characters and prison gang tats running up and down both arms, and a coiled snake tattooed around his neck and up the side of his face with its head on his right cheek, mouth open and fangs out. Cute, Barnett thought. Bet his mother just loves it, and it’s always nice to see prison was not a total waste of time. That was when Barnett began to think Charlie might have been right; maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
The Skinhead stuck his head out and glanced quickly up and down the street before he turned his malevolent eyes on Barnett and grunted, “What the hell you want?”
“Hey, man, I’m at the end of my run and I’ve got an extra pie,” Barnett shouted over the loud music as he opened the box and showed him the pizza.
“What?” the Skinhead squinted as he turned his head and looked back to the living room. “Bubba! Turn that goddamned thing down. Now who the hell are…?”
“Look, the dorks next door ordered it, but they never answered; so you guys want it? Ten Bucks and it’s all yours.”
The redneck craned his neck to look into the box, but it was too dark to see much. “Didn’t order no goddamned pizza.”
“Here, let me show you, before it gets cold,” Barnett said as he stepped forward, trying to get far enough inside to see around him into the living room.
“Hey, man,” the Skinhead edged sideways and blocked his way.
Barnett only had a second to look, but inside the room, he saw two more Skinheads sitting on a couch watching The Roadrunner on the Cartoon Channel, as slack-jawed and mesmerized as Barnett’s four-year-old nephew on a Saturday morning. Unlike his nephew, however, those two had two semi-automatic pistols and a sawed-off shotgun lying on the couch between them. The heavy metal music continued to blast away from the boom box sitting on a chair in the corner, although no one appeared to be listening. Beyond the couch, he saw barbells, a bench, and weight plates scattered across the floor, along with an open crate with at least a dozen 9-millimeter pistols inside. On the floor near the couch lay three torn canvas moneybags with Annandale Bank and Trust printed on their sides in colorful green letters.
“Ah, come on, man,” Barnett got all whiny as he gave the big Skinhead his biggest pizza delivery-guy smile. “A Giant Supreme is twenty bucks. You’re getting it for half price. Even a dumb grit like you can do that math.”
The Skinhead frowned as his pea brain absorbed what Barnett had just said. “Whadjou call me? A dumb grit? Come ’ere you little shit!” he growled as he reached through the door’s non-existent screen, wrapped a big paw around Barnett’s throat, and yanked him inside the house with one hand.
“Hey, Billy-Ray,” he looked back over his shoulder as Barnett dangled in the air in front of him. “Lookie what I got — pizza, with extra asshole!”
Barnett could hardly breathe as he turned his head and looked inside the living room. Voice rasping, he managed to say, “Federal Officer, Curly. Thanks for inviting me inside, and wouldja look at that: evidence of a criminal nature, lying right out in plain sight. Well, guess what? You’re busted!” He still had the pizza box in his left hand and mashed the pie into the Skinhead's face. “You got the right to eat pepperoni,” Barnett told him as he reached behind his back, pulled his .38 from its holster, and cracked the Skinhead on the side of his head with the butt end. “You got the right to a headache,” he continued, as the Skinhead let go of Barnett’s throat and wobbled backward. Still, the big bastard didn’t go down, so Barnett smacked him again, even harder. The big redneck blinked and his eyes glazed over, but somehow, he was still standing! Finally, Barnett popped him a third time, flush on the temple. The Skinhead’s eyes rolled up in his head and he toppled over backward like a felled tree. Barnett finally looked down at him and smiled. “You also got the right to stay on the floor… and you got the right to bleed.”
By then, Barnett figured the two Skinheads on the couch would have pried themselves away from the Cartoon Channel long enough to grab the shotgun and a pistol or two; so he dived inside the room, rolled across the floor, came up kneeling with the .38 leveled at them, and smiled. He had seen Bruce Willis do that once in a movie, and he had always wanted to try it. Besides, under the circumstances, being a moving target might not be a bad idea. Fortunately, he need not have worried. They may not have put a warning label on it yet, but prolonged exposure to good cartoons and bad dope clearly had a negative effect on the brain, e
specially ones that were congenitally stupid to begin with. The two Skinheads remained mesmerized by the cartoons. The one on the left finally frowned and looked over at the FBI agent, irritated that he had suddenly popped up out of nowhere and interrupted something really important. As it all began to register, he gave a furtive glance at the shotgun lying next to his hand.
“Don’t even think about it, ‘Mo,’ ” Barnett extended the .38 toward him.
The other Skinhead hadn’t even gotten that far. He was too busy being confused.
“That’s okay, ‘Larry,’ ” Barnett told him. “You just sit there.”
That was when he saw something move in the dark hallway behind them. It was Billy-Ray Perkins coming back from the kitchen with a couple of beers. He saw Barnett, stopped, and began edging his way backward. He was a tall, thin biker with a long, graying Fu Manchu moustache, countless scars and tattoos, and a greasy ponytail. Dressed in his formal evening attire of dirty blue jeans, a ripped T-shirt, and an Outlaws Motorcycle Gang leather jacket, he had his meaty right arm draped lovingly around the neck of a fat hooker. When he saw Barnett, he dropped the beers, and a box cutter suddenly appeared in his other hand. He took a fist-full of the woman’s hair, pressed the blade against her throat, and ducked behind her.
“Billy-Ray?” Eddie asked. “Is that you hidin’ behind that fat hooker? I can hardly see your skinny white ass back there. And wastin’ all that good beer? Shame on you, boy!”
“Not you again, Barnett,” Billy-Ray growled. “Back off or I'll cut the bitch, man, I swear.”
That was when Mo’s left hand moved an inch or two toward the shotgun. Using his off-hand, Barnett grabbed a lamp off the table next to him and flung it at Mo’s head. Instinctively, the Skinhead forgot about the shotgun and raised both hands to catch the lamp. As he did, Barnett pointed the .38 at the bridge of the Skinhead’s nose. “I could have shot you, Mo, and if you drop that lamp, I surely will.” This time, the guy froze, his eyes riveted on the pistol. Barnett turned the revolver back on Billy-Ray, and began walking toward him, one eye on Billy-Ray and the other on the two clowns on the couch, as they all heard the sirens of police cars converging on the scene. It wouldn’t be long now. One way or the other, Billy-Ray would do something before that happened, and they all knew it.
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