“I have to be able to record that with attribution, see —my client is somebody that Hardin owed money to, and now he wants to confirm that the guy is no-shit dead. Won’t take five minutes, and since I know this can’t be done on the phone, I wanted to come down and talk to the investigating officer, somebody who could make that statement authoritatively, to my face and then I’m outta there.”
“Well, shit, if that’s all it is,” the agent said. “We had a woman on the Hardin case, but I heard in the hallway this morning that she got canned. But you could come in and talk to one of the policy people—they’ve been involved and can probably solve your problem for you pretty quick.”
“Got a name I should ask for?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Try Mr. Englehardt.”
Malachi went next door to the apartment, turned on the answering machine, and recorded a voice message for the Costas Detective Agency.
He then connected a caller ID box and activated the monitor feature so that it would record numbers coming into the answering machine.
Putting on a suit and tie, he took the Metro over to Arlington to get the Ford sedan.
He made sure the Virginia plates were still in place from his last trip into D. C., shuffled the registration and driver’s license so that everything matched, and fired it up. He went up two internal ramps and out onto Randolph Street, then headed for the Navy Yard over in town.
Twenty-five minutes later, he pulled up at the main gate and showed the guard his retired military ID card. The guard eyed the wheels.
“Workin’ for the county now, hunh, Cap?”
“You know how it is,” Malachi said. “That retired check don’t cover a whole lotta ground these days.”
“Tell me about it,” the guard said. “I’m a retired chief, and now lookit me—a freakin’ rent-a-cop. Where ya bound?”
“I gotta find some outfit called NIS. They’re supposed to be down here somewhere.”
“Yeah, they’re in the old Forge Building, down on the waterfront. You go down there and take your first left, then take your first right at the navy museum, and it’s the next building. There’s a buncha ship guns in a park in front of the building.” The guard waved him through the gates and went back to his paper.
Malachi patted the Ford’s dashboard as if it were an old dog as he pulled past the gatehouse. Amazing what assumptions people would make when they thought they were looking at a cop car. He had come over to the Navy yard a few times when he had been stationed at Fort Mcnair just before getting out of the Army. The Navy Yard was situated in the southeastern quadrant of Washington, which was still a sufficiently rough part of town to warrant the twenty-foot-high brick wall that surrounded the old industrial area. He remembered the oppressive one-mile shuttle-bus trip from Fort Mcnair to the Navy Yard, through the run-down and torn-down shambles of Southwest and Southeast D. C., with its burned-out buildings abandoned since the 1968 riots and the chain link-fortified liquor stores surrounded by clumps of glaring men. He remembered that Mcnair also had a very high brick wall around it.
He drove down the main-entrance avenue and tried to take a left on Parsons Avenue, but the Navy Yard’s diggers and fillers had the street torn up, which forced him to take a long detour through the looming, blackened brick facades of the old gun factory buildings. The buildings were big enough to block out the sunlight as he drove through the abandoned complex, bumping over old train tracks and even some thinly asphalted cobblestoned sections. He drove down along the waterfront, circled a couple of blocks, and then turned right, going by the only surviving remnant of the actual gun factory, the giant Turret Lathe building, where the battleship gun barrels had been bored and turned.
Almost by accident, his final turn brought him out on the waterfront, where five piers pointed slantwise downstream into the Anacostia River, including one at which an elderly destroyer was tied up for public visiting.
Across from the ship was the Forge Building. Sure enough, there were no available parking spaces, except for three vacant slots reserved for government vehicles right in front of the building. He pulled the old cop car into one of them, shut it down, and got out. A Federal Protective Service police truck came by, but the officer inside ignored the Ford. Malachi smiled to himself and went into the Forge Building.
Inside the 1850s brick shell was a modern office hallway, with glass doors proclaiming the offices of the Judge Advocate General Appeals Board on either side. He asked a lady lawyer in Navy whites where NIS was, and she pointed him up a set of stairs.
The NIS reception area was surprisingly small, a holdover from the Desert Storm security panic, when hordes of wild-eyed Iraqis had been expected to charge their way into American government buildings seeking Muhammadan heaven. There were two female FPS cops leaning on the counter, and a third security officer was reading a paper in a glassed-in enclosure behind them that was filled with TV monitors.
Malachi dragged out his PI license for the desk guards.
“I need to see a Mr. Englehardt in Investigations Policy.”
“You knowin’ his extension?” the larger of the two female cops asked.
“Nope.”
The woman wearily looked up Englehardt in the NIS phone roster, gave Malachi the extension, and pointed him to a wall phone at the end of the counter. Malachi dialed the number and got a secretary. He could see office hallways and people going back and forth beyond the glass doors.
“Investigations Policy. This is Brenda,” a voice said.
“This is Mr. Costas. I’m down at the front desk. I called in earlier this morning and was advised I needed to see a Mr. Englehardt. I need about two minutes of his time.”
“Do you have an appointment with Mr. Englehardt?”
“No, I don’t.” Using the PI cover, he explained what he was looking for, a certification from someone who could vouch personally for the fact that one Wesley Hardin was in fact deceased. He asked if he could speak to Miss. Snow.
“Miss. Snow? I thought you wanted to speak to Mr. Englehardt?” The woman was starting to sound suspicious.
“The people at the Philadelphia County Medical Examiner’s Office said the NIS agent of record was a Miss. Snow,” Malachi replied patiently, “and that she was from the Washington office. She viewed the remains, is all. I don’t really care—all I need is a live human being that I can cite as the source. You want to, you can give me Miss. Snow’s phone number. I’ll go see her direct if Englehardt is unavailable.”
“Just a minute, Mr …”
“Costas.”
“Just a minute,” she said again, then put him on hold. The desk cop looked over at him, and Malachi rolled his eyes. She went back to her newspaper. Then a new, male voice came on the line.
“Mr. Costas, I understand you have some questions about the Hardin case?
This is Douglas Englehardt.”
“No, not really, Mr. Englehardt. I’m a P. I.; I’m also a retired Army MP. You got a homicide investigation going, you don’t answer questions about it, not if you run it like we did in CID. All I really need is a face-to-face statement that Wesley Hardin is officially deceased— from somebody who actually saw the body. Then I can tell my client that I know for a fact that Wes Hardin is dead and that he’s probably not going to get his money.”
“What money is that, Mr. Costas?”
“My client came to me when the news stories broke.
Apparently, this Hardin guy owed him three thousand dollars, or so he says. He hired me to confirm that this is the same Hardin and that he is indeed dead.”
“Well, we don’t know anything about a money angle, but I can tell you that Lieutenant Hardin is very much deceased.”
“Did you view the body?”
“No, but—”
“Well, here’s the thing,” Malachi pressed. Another man had arrived and was waiting to use the desk phone, and the desk cops were starting to look annoyed. “My client insisted that I talk to someone official who has seen the body. I k
now it sounds weird, but there it is. I was told that a Miss. Snow—”
“Miss. Snow doesn’t work here anymore,” Englehardt interrupted. This momentarily threw Malachi for a loop. Then he remembered the other guy saying she got canned.
“She doesn’t? Well, can you give me a number I can—”
“No. That’s not possible, Mr. Costas. Listen, as a matter of policy, we don’t—”
“Wait,” Malachi before Englehardt could dig his heels in too deep. The desk cop was pointing at the phone and indicating his time was up. He ignored her.
“How’s about passing her a message, then, okay? All she has to do is call my office, confirm over the phone that she saw what she saw, and then I’m done. I mean, I’ve driven all the way down here and everything.
How about that—can you at least pass on a message to this Miss. Snow?
One lousy phone call solves my problem, okay? I don’t need to bother anyone here. It’s nothing that hasn’t already been in the papers—I just need it official like. Clients. You know how it is. Please?”
Englehardt hesitated but then agreed, although he sounded annoyed.
Malachi gave him the number for the safe house on Capitol Hill. Then he thanked him profusely, relinquished the desk phone, and left the building.
He knew that Englehardt might just throw the number away and get on with his Monday; he sounded like a prick. Except that Malachi had made it pretty clear that he could be persistent. We’ll see, he thought; it’s worth a shot. As he came outside, he noted with relief that his car was still there and not under tow to some federal impound lot. He looked at his watch. He had time to get over to Mcnair and visit the package store, refresh his supply of I.W. Harper and cigarettes, get some stuff at the commissary there. He really did not have to hurry home at all: The caller ID box would record the number if Snow called him, and with a phone number, any average asshole could get an address in this city. He backed out of the parking spot and headed for Fort Mcnair.
grace snow tried Captain Vann’s office after lunch, but the secretary said he was in a meeting. Grace asked for a callback and left her number. She thought about calling Dan, but he had said he would check in with her Tuesday evening, and this was just Monday. She called her bank to check her balances, then decided to go over to the branch office to arrange some periodic transfers from savings, now that she no longer had a paycheck coming in. The bank branch was only six blocks away on Wisconsin and N Street, and it appeared to be a pleasant April day, so she decided to walk over.
When she came back, the answering machine was flashing at her. Expecting Vann, she got Englehardt’s voice instead. He gave her a brief background of what someone called Costas needed, a phone number to call, and advised her that she could forget about it if she wanted to, Costas being some itinerant civilian PI. He also passed on the fact that he had relayed her message to the NIS front office, to Rennselaer himself. He made no comment on how Rennselaer had reacted. She replayed the message once to assess his tone of voice, but it all seemed pretty matter-of-fact. There was no message from Vann.
She decided to dispatch the Costas problem. She pulled the phone over and dialed the number. She got an answering machine that announced the offices of the Costas Detective Agency. As Englehardt had suggested, she left a brief message that she had been the NIS investigating officer in the Hardin case and had personally viewed the remains of It. Wesley Hardin, and that he was in fact deceased. She also said that she no longer worked for the NIS and therefore could provide no further information on the matter. She did not leave her number.
After hanging up, she sat at the desk, thinking about what to say to Vann. I’ve been fired from the NIS, they’re going to tube the investigation, and I want to press on with it on my own. She almost knew what he would say: You’re a civilian now, it’s a federal homicide, and there’s nothing we can do about the case as long as the feds are working it, however slowly. Not like it’s a fresh kill. She shuddered at the image that term conjured up. But Vann, being a cop, would tell her to do what she already knew: Stay out of it.
Maybe a different approach: I’ve resigned from the NIS because they are putting the Hardin case in a too hard box. I’m going to put my thinking cap on, see if I can come up with some possible ties between the death of Elizabeth Hardin and her brother’s murder. If I can, I’d like to be able to kick it around with you—informally, of course. Entirely offline.
Better, much better. He’s a bureaucrat. The second approach doesn’t ask him to do anything, and it doesn’t imply that I’m actually sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong. Just thinking about it. Much better. She waited for his call.
when malachi got back to the town house from Fort Mcnair on Monday afternoon, he found two messages waiting. One was on the answering machine programmed for Costas, along with Snow’s phone number registered in the caller ID window, which he promptly wrote down. The other was on his house machine and it surprised him: It was from the captain, asking for a callback. He called the captain’s number first and left the coded message. He then went to unload groceries and the case of Harper hundred, carrying everything in from the alley, where he had parked the Ford crosswise in front of the garage door, and through the garage. He chided himself for feeling so much better that another dozen hundred-proof soldiers were securely on watch in the cupboard. First things first, his old man had always said, except that his old man had never said any such thing. His old man had been too drunk to say much of anything. Like father, like son, hey? Well, it sounded good. The phone rang and he picked it up in the hallway.
He had left the back door open, so he could keep the Ford in sight through the open garage doors.
“Yes?” he said.
“Greetings. I just wanted to update you on the Har din thing.”
“Didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. But I’m all ears.”
“You’ll notice that it hasn’t been in the press anymore.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Well, we’ve put it back in its box, I think. The Opnav element has been withdrawn from the investigation, and the officer involved returned to his regular duties with appropriate instructions about keeping his mouth shut. The whole business is now back in the capable hands of the NIS.”
Malachi snorted. “Capable? Last time I saw the NIS in action was when I was still in the army; it was like six monkeys trying to screw a football.”
“Well, they’re part of government: They’re supposed to screw something or someone every day. The point is, whether NIS buries it or actually works it, I think we’re all reasonably safe.”
“Most criminals are when NIS is involved.”
“Well, NIS sometimes gets lots of high-level advice.
You think we’re criminals now, Malachi?”
“Unindicted co-conspirators is the term of art, Captain.
And that’s the way we want to keep it. Especially the unindicted part.
You can keep tabs on what NIS is doing with it, correct?”
“To a certain extent, yes.”
“I’ll keep an ear to the ground on the metropolitan police side,”
Malachi said. “I’ve got some contacts downtown. As long as the first Hardin case stays in its box, this other Hardin case ought to go nowhere.”
“Very well. Anything for me?”
Malachi hesitated. What did that mean? Were they aware that he had been exploring a little bit?
“No,” he replied. “Your principal is keeping his wick dry?”
The captain actually laughed. “My principal is mostly trying to keep his flag-rank billet intact, what with all the budget cuts. Relax, Malachi; as far as the Navy is concerned, this Hardin thing’s back in the weeds, where it belongs.”
“Nasty things sometimes come out of the weeds,” Malachi replied. “I suggest we both keep our eyes open.”
“Count on it, Malachi. I know that I said we would not be in touch for a while. This time, I think I mean it.”
“Except for emergencies, right?”
“Absolutely. Except for emergencies.”
The captain hung up, and Malachi did likewise. He sat on the steps, thinking about what the captain had said. The Opnav element was out, so Commander Col lins of Old Town and the Potomac Boat Club should now be out of the game. And Miss. Snow of somewhere in Georgetown no longer worked for NIS, which should take her out of the game. The captain had some serious pull: He or his influential friends had managed to get the investigation moved back into the exclusive hands of NIS and, apparently, handed off to entirely new people.
“Relax,” the man had said. For the third time, he’d told Malachi to relax, that everything was going to be just fine.
But then that quiet, insistent whisper in his mind: What was the only loose end the great man and company had remaining? Malachi Ward. Angelo was no math major, but he had to have pretty damn good street sense to survive in his line of work. Relax? No fucking way. He decided to finish putting away the stuff from the commissary and then to make a call to his little friend in the Billing Department at C&P Tele phone, the one who could turn a hundred bucks into an address if you had a phone number. Then he had to get the Ford back over to Arlington before some Capitol Hill cop car came prowling down the alley—and, more importantly, before the frigging rush hour started.
moses vann called grace back just before four o’clock on Monday. He sounded tired.
“Been a damn Monday all day,” he said. “I don’t recognize this number.”
“It’s my unlisted home number.”
“And why are we at home at four o’clock on a Monday?
Last week, you were stayin’ late and being’ a big time G-woman. Lemme guess. The Navy’s pulled the plug.”
“In a manner of speaking,” she said. She told him what had happened with the investigation, sticking more or less to the version that she had resigned over the handling of the Hardin case and was now wondering what to do, saying she didn’t want it to just languish in the too-hard basket.
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