The Firefly

by P. T. Deutermann

  He looked at his watch. Almost eleven o’clock. Forty-nine hours and they’d have a reason to go crazy. And every measure of security they were putting in place had already been penetrated.

  Swamp gave Mary a wink as he walked past her desk and into McNamara’s office. McNamara was sitting behind his desk, looking worried. Lucy was sitting in one of the two chairs parked in front of the boss’s desk. Swamp stood for a moment behind the other and looked down at her. She was poised and polished, as usual, and had her hands folded neatly in her lap. She nodded at him but did not say anything in greeting.

  “If this meeting has to do with my assignment here in OSI,” Swamp announced, “then I would appreciate it if Mr. Hallory’s pet snake here is not part of it.”

  McNamara flushed. “Uh, unfortunately—” he began, but Swamp cut him off.

  “Personnel matters are privileged and management personnel from other departments may not take part in meetings that have to do with personnel actions unless it is a formal hearing. Is this a formal hearing?”

  McNamara, no expert on personnel procedures, obviously didn’t know what to say. And Swamp was using the tone of voice he had used when wearing the mantle of the Senior Executive Service, a rank to which neither McNamara nor Lucy had risen. “Um, no, it is not, but—”

  “Then she goes. Or we’re done here.”

  “That’s the whole idea, Mr. Morgan,” Lucy said. “I’m assuming you’ve seen Mr. Hallory’s latest memo?”

  “I have,” Swamp said, working hard to keep his temper. He had wrapped both his hands around the top of the chair, and when he turned to address Lucy, the chair moved. Lucy saw it and sat up straighter, no longer affecting that supremely casual pose.

  “Well then, you know it was addressed to the undersecretary of this department. Surely you’re not expecting him”—she nodded her chin at McNamara—“to put up a fight on your behalf, are you?”

  Swamp looked at McNamara, who flushed and shook his head ever so slightly.

  “So why not make it easier on everybody, Mr. Morgan?” Lucy said. “Don’t get fired. Don’t put your pension for life at risk. Don’t drag everyone into a quagmire of civil service hearings and lawsuits.”

  Swamp glared at her, really wanting to pick up that chair and swat her right out the window. She swallowed but stood her ground. “Just go home, Mr. Morgan,” she said. “Come the first of the month, your direct-deposit check will go in right on time and you can go back to enjoying life out there in Harpers Ferry.”

  “Did you know that Connie Wall identified the ‘woman’ who attacked her as the man who’s been after her since the clinic fire?” Swamp asked.

  Lucy waved her hand. “We don’t care, Mr. Morgan. Okay? That’s a Washington police matter now. In forty-eight hours, we’ll have a change of government here in Washington. That’s the only thing we care about right now. The only thing. Can’t you understand that?” Her cheeks were getting red and those blue eyes were snapping in righteous anger. “You’re obsessed with this…this goddamned firefly. I think you’ve lost your professional perspective. So does the director. So before you get into real trouble, go home, Mr. Morgan. Just go home.”

  Swamp took a deep breath and tried to think of something clever to say. The wood in the top of the chair creaked audibly under the strain of his hands. McNamara stood up behind his desk and cleared his throat. “Ms. VanMetre, thanks for coming over today. Why don’t you let me take it from here, okay? Give my regards to Mr. Hallory, will you?”

  Lucy looked from Swamp to McNamara and back again to Swamp as she stood up. “Thank you, Mr. McNamara,” she said formally. She walked past Swamp to the door and then turned around.

  “Home means home, Mr. Morgan. Don’t even think about going solo on this phantom conspiracy of yours. If nothing else, keep in mind that your firefly is a month away. Play it straight and maybe—just maybe—we’ll come back to you. Once the inauguration’s over and you’ve had some time to regain your balance.”

  With that, she walked out the door and closed it behind her. Swamp sat down in the chair he’d been abusing, hunched his shoulders, and gave McNamara a look that used to make the center on the opposing team seriously consider tennis.

  “Don’t look at me that way, goddamnit,” McNamara said, fingering his collar. “You brought this on yourself when you invoked the fucking Secret Service in your phone calls all over the city. I told you to lay low. What were you thinking?”

  Swamp sat back in the chair and exhaled. “Force of habit, I guess,” he said. “What’s all this mean, practically speaking?”

  “It means just what La Mamba said. You get to go home. You don’t work here anymore. You turn in your creds and your building pass, you read out of all your clearances, and then you take the train back to Harpers Ferry and get on with your life.”

  “Upstairs has already decided this?”

  “The Under handed his copy of that memo to me this morning at the briefing and told me to ‘handle it’ by COB today. So, yeah, I think it’s decided.”

  “Can I work with the District cops? Help them catch this bastard who killed their lieutenant?”

  “In what capacity?”

  “I don’t know—consultant?”

  McNamara sighed. “We can’t prevent you from doing consulting work, but I wouldn’t advise it,” he said. “For starters, you’d have no inside access to federal LE., and for the city cops, that’s the only thing you bring to the table right now. Is that nurse gonna make it?”

  “Fifty-fifty,” Swamp said. “They moved her to GWU last night.”

  “Then she’s the one who can help them. She’s seen this guy a couple of times at least, up close and personal. What’s this about the woman hitter being a guy?”

  Swamp explained what Connie had told them. McNamara shook his head. “Plastic surgery and the ability to look like a woman? Good enough to fool a plastic surgeon’s nurse? No chance you’re going to find this guy.”

  “Like I’ve said before, there’s no chance if no one’s looking.”

  McNamara leaned forward. “Look, everything you’ve laid out with regard to some attack on the joint session is assumption. The cop getting killed is a fact, and they won’t let go of that, not ever. The nurse getting attacked is a fact. So when they get his ass for that shit, the rest of it, all those assumptions of yours, is taken care of, right? Like the lady said, Swamp, just go home. I think it’s time.”

  “You think this is all about what happened on my retirement day?”

  “No, no, no,” McNamara said emphatically. “I think Hallory threw that in because it would embarrass you and all the elephants up the chain of command. Nobody would want to pull that scab. Easier just to tell me to ‘handle it.’ Which is exactly what the Under said. Hell’s bells, Swamp, this is how it’s done. You know that.”

  Swamp threw up his hands. “Okay,” he said. “I give up. I’ll turn over my stuff to Gary and then go see the personnel people.” He fished out his credentials. “You want these?”

  McNamara shook his head. “Personnel and Security. They get everything. Come see me when you’re all checked out. I’ll be here all afternoon.”

  “Okay,” Swamp said, getting up.

  “And Swamp? I’m sorry about this. I really am.”

  “You know what, Tad? If they can do this to me, they can do it to you, too.”

  “So the Undersecretary pointed out this morning, Swamp.”

  Connie spent the better part of an hour chasing a block of hospital Jell-O around her plastic tray before finally stabbing it long enough to get half of it down her throat. Either the meds had numbed her taste buds or the hospital kitchen could screw up even Jell-O. Her stomach threatened retribution, so she gave up and lay back on her pillows. She could hear the hustle and bustle of daily routine out in the hallway. Her back hurt in a numb sort of way, which meant that she probably would be screaming in agony without the regular ministrations of her new best friend, the trusty pain pump. But the rest
of her was coming back. She had inquired about some physical therapy, much to the surprise of the attending nurses. They said they’d ask.

  She opened her eyes and discovered an hour had passed, and that Jake Cullen was standing in the doorway. “Hey there, Detective,” she said.

  “Shot at and missed, shit at and hit,” he said with a smile. He came into the room bearing a paper wedge of flowers in one hand and his coat in the other. He hooked a chair over with his foot and sat down.

  “That good, huh?” she said, wanting to brush a hank of limp hair off her forehead.

  “Better than you looked up in that county boneyard,” he said. “So how’s it coming—you feeling any stronger?”

  “Yeah, I am,” she said. “My lower back’s still riding the magic pump here, but the rest of me is getting bored.”

  “There’s a reason they call you a patient,” he said. “Care for some interrogation?”

  “Bring it on,” she said with a smile. “I’ll never crack.”

  “They sell flowers, but nothing to put the damn things in,” he complained, getting up to look for a container.

  “That Jell-O will hold them,” she said. “That Jell-O would hold up the Washington Monument.”

  He found an empty plastic urine container in the bathroom, filled it with water, and brought it out. She started to laugh, and then her lower back reminded her that laughing was out of bounds for now. He saw her grimace, and then he sat back down again.

  “Where’s my Shelby?” she asked.

  It was Jake’s turn to laugh. “All those deputies up there? They were getting ready to make it into some kind of Thunder Road shrine. So you’ll be pleased to know that I’ve had it towed back to your house. Guy’s gonna drop it on the street, then drive it up into your driveway. Said he’d put the keys in the exhaust pipe.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “West Virginia safe-deposit box,” Jake said with a grin. “And your little reptile atomizer’s in the trunk. You make sure you bend your elbows, you ever shoot that thing.”

  “That’s what the dealer said,” she replied. “The exhaust pipe? Which one?”

  “How the hell do I know? How many are there? I think you can manage it.”

  “Thanks,” she muttered. “I think.” She used her elbows to lever herself into a more upright position and then waited until her head stopped spinning. Have to do better than this if I’m ever going to blow this pop stand, she thought. Much better.

  “Don’t push it,” he said. “Just tell me what happened that night.”

  She nodded, pressed the button on her pump, and then told him the sequence of events that night. When she was done, he was nodding silently.

  “The other lady in the bathroom—what happened to her?” Connie asked.

  “He stabbed her three times in the upper stomach, got her aorta. Gone in sixty seconds, as the expression goes.”

  “Oh.”

  “Guy’s a badass, no doubt about it,” he said. “But you said she fooled you completely?”

  “She’d had work. No woman comes into the world with boobs like that. There was something off about the nose, but I couldn’t tell what it was. The top just sloped out of her forehead. Not natural. And I couldn’t just stare like I do in the OR. Hispanic, or maybe Mediterranean. Exotic. Lots of makeup, but skillfully done. Slim legs, and some serious stockings or panty hose. Oh, and no noticeable Adam’s apple.”

  “Say what?”

  “That’s how you can almost always tell a tranny—besides the husky voice, they’ll have a protuberant laryngeal prominence. That’s Adam’s apple in English. This thing didn’t, so I never suspected until I saw his eyes when he got his killer juices going. Those I remember. From the window and from the woods.”

  She subsided into the pillow, suddenly exhausted. He put his hand on her arm and rubbed gently with his fingertips from the back of her hand, where the IV had been, up to her elbow. His hand was cool from being outside, and it felt good. They sat that way for five minutes while she drifted, and then she came back.

  “This guy’s still out there, right?” she asked.

  “We’re working on it. Us and that big Secret Service guy with the pretty face.”

  “But there’s no cop on my door anymore.”

  “Well, they’re pulling everyone in the department into this inauguration flail. Double shifts on the big day, so they’re trying to give guys some time off right before.”

  She closed her eyes again, worked on her breathing. Talking still seemed to take all the oxygen right out of her. “Then I want out of here,” she said. “Anybody can come in here.”

  Jake frowned. “They’ve got security, just like everywhere else.”

  She shook her head, slowly this time. “Anybody can come in here. An old lady wandered in this morning before breakfast, looking for her daughter’s room. She had the wrong room, wrong floor.”

  “I don’t think you’re exactly ready for prime time,” Jake said. “Look at you—you can’t even talk and breathe at the same time.”

  “Then I won’t talk,” she said wearily. “But I don’t want to wake up and see that thing standing next to the bed in his Nancy Nurse uniform.”

  “There’s no way he could know you’re here,” Jake protested.

  “See that phone?” she asked. “I called the hospital at Garrison Gap, asked the operator where the nurse from the stabbing incident had gone. She said GWU Medical Center.”

  He blinked. “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah. So I want to go bye-bye.”

  Jake got up from the chair and started pacing the room. “Putting the medical aspects aside,” he said, “you can’t just go home to that empty house. You’d be even more vulnerable. How’re you paying for all this, by the way?”

  “I’m going to sue the police department for failing to protect me after I agreed to be bait,” she said.

  He turned to stare at her, and she maintained a straight face for about five more seconds. He shook his head. “Don’t even talk like that,” he said, although he knew she probably could sue.

  “I was the one who ditched her minder, remember?” she said. “Although our boy did have himself a time with those street cops, didn’t he?”

  Jake nodded reluctantly.

  “Which is why I want out of here. He wants my ass dead, and he’s nearly succeeded. A couple of times. Plus, there’s something important I need to remember about him and I can’t.”

  “You won’t be any safer out there,” Jake said.

  “I’ve worked in hospitals for a long time, Jake,” she said. “I’m not safe here, medically or securitywise. All hospitals are contaminated with staph, a host of infectious diseases, ERs with walking TB cases, toxic waste and biohazards in every trash can—you name it. That’s why doctors want you up and out as soon as possible. It’s not about money. They want to improve their own save stats.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “Look, I’ve got a condo apartment up in Bethesda. It’s actually pretty big. Two bedrooms, two baths. Plenty of privacy.”

  “Never been divorced, huh?” she asked.

  He laughed. “Or married. The only guy on the Homicide squad who hasn’t. But you could stay there. The building has a sitting service. I could get someone to come in, check on you three, four times a day. You know, to make sure you aren’t tearing the joint up, entertaining gentlemen callers…”

  She looked at him for a long moment. “That’s very nice,” she said. “But getting over all this may take awhile.”

  He sat back down and took her hand again. “I’ve got awhile,” he said, and then he suddenly seemed embarrassed. “Anyway, you think about it. And make sure you’re safe to make the trip. Talk to your docs. They may not let you out of here.”

  “The hospital will when I tell them I have no insurance,” she said brightly. “I’m unemployed, remember?”

  Gary was visibly embarrassed as he a
ccompanied Swamp down to the lobby of the OEOB. Without a building pass, he could no longer be in the building without an escort. Swamp had tried to say good-bye to McNamara, but he’d been called away to a meeting at State, so that was that. He carried the briefcase with the tactical gear underneath the raincoat he had folded over his left arm. He’d also made a copy of the realtor list on Gary’s desk, annotated as to which ones had called back. Not many more had.

  Swamp had asked Gary to continue taking calls from the realtors, but he’d told him not to make any more follow-up calls. “None of this is going to rebound on you,” he reassured the younger agent. “As long as you don’t do anything proactive. Taking phone calls is just doing your job.”

  “And if we get a hit?”

  “Pass it to Detective Cullen over at District headquarters. He’s the only one left on point right now.”

  They reached the lobby, and there was a brief discussion between Gary and the security guards. If Mr. Morgan here was now technically a visitor, why hadn’t Mr. Morgan signed the visitor’s log? Gary handled it and then walked with Swamp to the ornate doors at the corner of the building.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Gary said. “Except it was interesting while it lasted.”

  “Yeah, and you did fine. I’ll remind McNamara to make sure you get a decent performance evaluation.”

  Gary looked through a side window. “There are two guys out there in a government vehicle, watching this entrance.”

  Swamp smiled. He still had his minders, and they had been informed. “Great,” he said. “Let’s see what they think about a run back out to Harpers Ferry.”