His eldest boy had a way of conversing with innocent vulgarities, John knew. He’d never gotten that out of him. But the suggestion behind the four-letter word did hold some appeal. Some day, when all that was to come had run its course, there would be much time to relax, to recreate. It might be a good time to practice for that day.
“What do you say?”
John nodded, realizing he should accept the calm before the storm. “All right, son.”
NINETEEN
Arrangements
Frankie held the three-year-old police mug shot up to the freeze-frame image on the conference room’s thirty-inch television monitor. “That’s him.”
“Roland Kirk,” Art said, referring to the enhanced image of the Oldsmobile’s right front passenger. “AKA Ronald Christopher. AKA Mustafa Ali.” He flipped back to the man’s arrest and conviction record. “Hmmm.”
“What?”
“The two most recent hits—B and E, and a simple assault—go under the Ali name. He must have changed it legally.”
“Converted to Islam,” Frankie observed.
“This is a hell of a way to exemplify the religion.” Art set the three suspect profiles side by side on the dark brown table. “Darian Brown, Roger Sanders, Mustafa Ali, and a mystery rider.”
“I remember Sanders from his playing days,” Frankie said. “He blew his knee out, I think.”
“He also liked punching folks out,” Art told his partner. “Two counts of aggravated assault, served a year at Chino.”
Frankie spun Brown’s profile around to face the seat she took across from Art. “Fearless leader here has one aggravated, two petty thefts, one GTA, one burglary. He beat a murder one. He’s spent a total of three years inside, a combination of county and state time.”
“And for every time they were caught...” Art, like all law enforcement officers, knew that an arrest or conviction on a person’s record represented just a fraction of the crimes actually committed. The sad fact was that men like Brown, Ali, and Sanders put their hands in the cookie jar without getting caught more than anyone would ever know.
Art looked to the screen and rewound it to a point before the enlargements of each individual. “Sanders driving.” They knew now that he had purchased the Oldsmobile in a plainly illegal transaction in Los Angeles before the attack. A glance at Sanders’s picture and a threat to bother the man with “accessory” charges had refreshed his memory quite fast. “Ali in right front. Brown, right rear.” His eyes locked on the small head in a darkened profile. “The lab wasn’t able to do much with him, were they?”
“The light was coming in at the back of his head,” Frankie said.
“Looks young,” Art observed, though there was little else he could discern. The profile as the head turned showed sharp lines, tight skin, smooth even. Short, neat hair. Familiar, almost, but then a kid in silhouette was likely to look like any other.
The tape raced back, then slid forward from the time that the left rear window exploded. Trooper Fitzroy rocking side to side as the bullets stitched across his torso, sound on the tape ending as a round cut the trooper’s body mic, falling, crawling with only his legs driving him, Brown coming out, following—no, stalking Fitzroy, his mouth moving as something was said, and two shots.
Art froze the tape there. “The bullets that killed the trooper and the World Center’s plant manager, Harback, came from the same gun. That ties the two events.”
“And the prints,” Frankie added. Dan Jacobs’s team had pulled fingerprints from both Brown and Sanders from the cylinder found in the ventilation system. Doing so had been a trick in itself, as decontaminating the small tank with high-pressure steam and chemical neutralizes would have destroyed any prints. The solution was to take a video feed of the prints as illuminated by a helium laser and analyze those after the feed was digitized and stored as computer data. Jacobs seemed more magician than special agent at times.
Art stayed focused on the screen, rewinding then moving slowly forward as the boxy weapon in Brown’s hand bucked twice. “Harback and Fitzroy with forty-fives. Mankowitz with a forty-five. Mankowitz was hit with automatic fire.” Art froze the image again. “Not too many automatic forty-fives out there other than a MAC-11.”
“All firing hundred-and-eighty-five-grain jacketed hollow-points,” Frankie added. “But the lab couldn’t batch all three.” Expended bullets could be matched to a particular weapon based on the rifling characteristics of the barrel, and could also be closely matched to each other based upon their lead composition. This information was accurate enough to place bullets to specific production runs at ammunition manufacturers. But distribution and inventory anomalies at retailers made the system less than consistent in the real world. A weapon like the Ingram could spit out more than a box of .45 rounds in a second, meaning it could chew through a shelf full of boxes in no time. And that shelf could hold boxes from production runs completed six months earlier, or from the week before.
“The guns,” Art said, adding no more for a moment. “Forty-fives across the board here, and three-eighties for Royce and Kostin. Freddy had a three-eighty on him.”
Frankie sensed her partner’s line of thought. “You think Barrish was behind all these guns?”
“He’s proven proficient at it before,” Art responded. The two Uzis that had been used in the Saint Anthony’s massacre and found dumped at a construction site were purchased by John Barrish while at a festival of hate in Idaho. The law said differently, but they were dealing with reality right now. “Plus Allen had the three-eighty that was used with the other guns at Saint Anthony’s. Danbrook said that Barrish told him, specifically, that he could get guns whenever he wanted.”
“They’re different guns, partner,” Frankie said.
“But they’re guns. Full-auto Uzis and Ingrams. Those have to come from somewhere.”
“Just because Barrish said he could get guns, that still doesn’t say he got those Ingrams that the NALF used.” Frankie’s rebuttal ended on a thought of absurdity, and her head shook at it. “Why would Barrish have given guns to the New Africa Liberation Front?”
“Why would the NALF have the VZ?” Art fired back.
The door to the conference room swung inward, ending the agents’ discussion. Lou Hidalgo was behind it. “Get copies of all the information you have on the World Center, Kostin, and the NALF to Washington...pronto.”
Art turned to face the A-SAC. “What’s up?”
“The police in Maryland pulled a floater from a river. Several weeks old, they figure. A male. Right upstream was a van with a wooden trailer attached; one of those boxy jobs for moving stuff. It looks like the body was in the trailer, which came apart after a while in the river. The Maryland cops ran the plate and got a hit back to a young kid from out here. He left L.A. for Colorado the morning of the World Center attack. He had family there, apparently. He never showed. The last trace he left anywhere was a call to his parents’ answering machine. He said he was in Orem. The phone company computers put the call at a phone booth a mile from where the NALF torched their car. The kid made it just ten minutes after Brown shot Fitzroy.”
“Checking stolens was a waste, then,” Art commented. “They just took the owner with them.”
“Denver PD just had an overdue and missing traveler,” Hidalgo said. “So get the info to Washington. They’re taking over the search for our black militant friends. We’ll keep filling in background on them—anything that helps. Got it?”
“Sure.”
“Do it fast, Art. The van in the river was ten miles from D.C. as the crow flies. The ‘nervous factor’ just went through the roof.”
Art nodded. “On the double.”
* * *
An afternoon Conrail freight train rumbled in the background as Mustafa and Roger entered their comrades’ apartment just north of Greenmount Cemetery. “Got it.”
Darian took the paper from Roger and pulled the thin classified section free.
“Gimme
sports,” Moises said from his place on the worn carpet. His hair was longer than it had ever been. Unkempt, he thought when looking in the mirror, something he did less frequently with each passing day. And he had a scraggly wannabe beard that tried to sprout fully, but itched more than concealed. Still, he had changed enough that few would recognize him. And more than mere physical alteration. He was Moises Griggs a little less each day, and Brother Moises a little more. Soon there would be only one.
Mustafa sat on the bed as his leader scanned the classifieds, and as their newest member reclined on the floor with the sports section. His perpetually flat expression changed at the second scene. “You know what you’re doing, Brother Moises?”
“Huh?” Moises looked up from the football scores of the day before.
“With that,” Mustafa said. In a chair by the door Roger sat, a pouting smile on his face.
“The paper?”
“The s-s-s-ports section.” Mustafa spit lightly into the wastebasket next to the bed.
“What are you talking about?” Moises lowered the paper completely and propped up on his elbows.
“Hey, who’s the best players, Brother?” Mustafa inquired.
“Players?”
“Brothers or crackers?”
That was easy enough, Moises knew. “Brothers.”
“Which sport?”
“All of them,” Moises answered. “Except maybe hockey. But who watches that, anyway?”
“Football, baseball, basketball.” Mustafa made a free-throw motion toward Moises. “Brothers be good at those games. Oh, yeah. They be good at them. What happens next?”
“Next?”
“After they ain’t so good no more?”
Moises didn’t have an answer.
“Do them commercials?” Mustafa approximated a laugh. “Yeah, how many spotes brothers you ever see on TV when they ain’t runnin’, or jumpin’, or throwin’ a little ball? Hmm? Maybe a couple. Oooh, boy, but you can see cracker after cracker sellin’ any kinda shit they can think of on the tube, or on them ugly-ass billboards, or anywhere else old cracker folks are gonna see ‘em.” He was letting his speech degenerate further into the old South nigger talk his father had beat out of him long before. It was for a point. “Oooh, yeah. Cracker get old, or bust a leg, or throw out a arm, well, then cracker can show his pretty white face on TV doin’ somethin’ else. Brother?” Lips pouted far out, head shaking. “No, brother be too dumb and ugly to do shit like that. Brother can run, an’ jump, an’ throw, an’ put on a good show. That’s what brother’s good fo’. Brother puts on a good show. Good show. But brother ain’t good fo’ mo’ than that. No, sir, massa sir. No, sir.”
The paper felt heavy in Moises’ hands. His face burned with understanding. And with embarrassment.
“He doesn’t lie, Brother Moises,” Roger said, slapping the knee that would not stand up to the rigors of college basketball. “When this went out they didn’t say ‘hang around and we’ll give you an education.’ Unh unh. It was good-bye, Roger.”
Darian folded the classifieds open to the third page and looked down at Moises from the bed. “That’s propaganda, Brother. White man’s propaganda. The front page are whatever lies they can think of. Lies. They call it news.”
Moises closed the sports section and let it slide to the floor. There was so much to learn. So many habits from his old life that needed to be exorcised. It would take time, but he would do it.
Mustafa looked to his leader. “Did you find it?”
“Right where they said it would be,” Darian answered, tapping the small five-line ad. “A week from tomorrow is the meet.”
“This is a lot of waiting,” Roger commented.
“Good things are worth it,” Darian said. It had been damn good so far, and if their cracker partners were true to their intentions it was only going to get better.
* * *
Darren Griggs jumped whenever the doorbell rang. It was no different this Monday evening.
“Darren, hello,” Anne Preston said through the barred screen as the front door opened.
“Dr. Preston.” Darren’s expression added a question mark to his words. Not necessarily because of his therapist’s presence, but because of the vaguely familiar man at her side.
“I hope we’re not intruding. You remember Rabbi Levin? He was the sponsor of the seminar where we met.”
“Right.” Darren smiled and unlocked the screen. “Come in.”
Felicia came through the dining area, dishtowel in her hand, as the front door closed. “Honey, who was th— Dr. Preston!”
Anne saw that the surprised smile was genuine, and warm. She liked Felicia Griggs. “Anne, Felicia.”
“Anne.” The smile was now tinged with mild embarrassment.
Darren gestured to their other visitor. “Honey, this is Rabbi Levin.”
“Seymour Levin.”
Felicia took the large hand offered her. “I’m going to have to call you Rabbi. I hope you understand. It’s my mother’s doing.”
“Of course,” Levin said, understanding perfectly. There was a formality to his position, one shared by all men of the cloth.
“This is my wife Felicia, Rabbi,” Darren said, completing the introductions. What followed was the inevitable awkward silence. “Would you like something to drink? Some coffee?”
“I have a pot on,” Felicia added.
Both Anne and Rabbi Levin politely shook off the offer, exchanged a glance, and smiled at Darren.
Darren returned the expression, adding a nervous chuckle. “What?”
“Darren, Felicia...” Anne paused, trying to find the best words. Hell, she was still having a hard time fathoming the news Rabbi Levin had brought to her less than an hour earlier. “We’ve been invited somewhere.”
“We?” Darren looked to Levin.
“Not me,” Levin said. “I haven’t the honor.”
“The honor?” Darren parroted. “What’s going on?”
“Darren,” Anne began, “you, and Felicia, and I have been invited to come to Washington.” She stopped, letting that sink in for a moment. What came next would take longer to absorb. “By the president, to be his guests at the State of the Union address next month.”
Darren felt Felicia clutch his elbow, and knew without looking that her jaw was closer to the floor than it had been a second before. His was.
“I have dealings with the president’s party,” Levin explained, filling the shock-inspired silence. “He is very much saddened by what you have been through. By the reasons it happened. This would be good for all to see. That... hate does not prevail.”
“Darren?” Anne saw that he hadn’t moved. Neither had Felicia. “Are you in there?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.” The President!?
“Honey.” Felicia looked to her husband. “Do we... Should...”
“Well?” Anne prodded.
Darren let a deep breath drain from his lungs. “Well, I guess you don’t say no to an invitation like that.”
“Wonderful!” Levin exclaimed, joyously clapping his large hands once.
“It looks like we’re going to Washington,” Anne said, hugging Felicia.
“I guess it’ll be an adventure,” Darren observed.
“An adventure,” Levin agreed. “That it will.”
TWENTY
Consultation
Mark Reister looked to the flashing arrow next to line one and wondered when the slowdown of the congressional recess would apply to chief aides as well as their bosses. Well, someone had to oil the machinery that kept the Hill running when the big boys were away. Away. That didn’t do justice to the slopes of Vail. But then his big boy didn’t either. Old Limp Dick did as good on skis as one could with only one real hoof. Perpetually on the beginner’s slope. It was a waste of snow, Reister thought.
Buzz-
The flashing arrow wasn’t going away. Neither was the caller on the other end. Six days ‘til Christmas, he reminded himself, and picked up li
ne one. “Congressman Vorhees’s office.”
“Yes. This is Jeff Krishak from CRI in Boston. Is the congressman in?”
“Uh, no. CRI? I’m not familiar with that.”
“Children’s Rescue International. We arrange relief for refugee children, mostly in sub-Saharan countries.”
“I see,” Reister said. “I’m the congressman’s chief aide. Is there something I can help you with?”
“Possibly. We’re undertaking a pretty ambitious project. Something new for us. Our usual thing is to send aid, but early next year we’re going to bring several children to the States to receive medical treatment. All have lost limbs because of mines and unexploded shells. And, like I said, it’s a new thing for us, and we’re a relatively small operation. We have the donations to handle any treatment, but we need some expertise. Someone to tell us who the doctors are we should be contacting.
“That’s where we hope the congressman can help. Or, rather, his doctor. One of our board members said the congressman’s doctor has to have expertise in this area, considering, and since he represents our district...”
Reister sniffed and smiled at the phone. Someone wasn’t asking for a favor from his boss. Mark this date down, he thought. “So you just want to talk to Dr. Conrad?”
“To get his recommendations on who would be the appropriate professionals to contact.”
Hell, Reister thought. Altruism... What was D.C. coming to? “I’m sure Dr. Conrad would be happy to give you some guidance.” He cycled through the cards on his flip-file—important ones were white, virtually meaningless were blue (Dr. John Conrad was somewhere in between)—and found the correct address and phone number. He passed the information on, accepted the caller’s obviously genuine thanks, and laid the phone back in its cradle.
Seventy-five miles away, Stanley Barrish hung up at the same time.
* * *
It wasn’t a long drive from their apartment, but, as Darian maneuvered through the shoppers’ traffic on Fayette Street, Moises Griggs was suddenly aware just how far he’d come in a very short time. And from where.
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