Sweat

by Mark Gilleo

  After wandering the neighborhood’s less aesthetic side and checking for Johnny Law, Chow Ying approached the black sedan from the opposite direction, slipped behind the wheel as elegantly as someone the size of an NFL linebacker can do, and reached under the seat. ***

  “Pull around the block,” Wallace said to Nguyen. “We’ll wait on the other end of the one-way street for him to come out.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then we follow him.”

  “We have been waiting to get our hands on this guy for over a week, and now you want to follow him?”

  “Something’s fishy…and I’m not talking about the kind with scales in the market down the street. This guy has been lying low and now he has a car delivered to his doorstep? Something is wrong with this picture.”

  Chow Ying familiarized himself with the car as he rode around the block and then took a slow drive up the narrow alley behind the hotel. He looked over at the back door he had used a dozen times, and slammed on his brakes to avoid a scrawny calico cat that darted from a row of trash cans.

  “Where do you think he’s going?” Nguyen asked.

  “I don’t know, but he’s being careful. Don’t spook him. Go around the block again and we’ll pick him up on the other side.”

  The unmarked police cruiser lurked five cars back in light morning traffic. Most of the commuters pouring into the city came from the north or south, with a few million additional cars trying to squeeze down Connecticut Avenue. Chinatown was not a major route and the detectives were thankful for the quick pace on the road. Slow traffic was the perfect way to blow a trail. The slower the traffic, the more time the suspect had to observe his environment. At five mph, drivers tend to look around, check out their neighbors, take a peek in their mirrors. Nguyen checked the speedometer. Thirty mph.

  The black sedan headed in the direction of the Mall and Nguyen voiced the only thought he had, “I’d pay money to know where this guy is going.”

  “You and me both, partner. And I would love to know how in the hell this guy is behind the wheel of a for-hire sedan.”

  “Maybe he is a legitimate driver.”

  “My ass.”

  “It’s possible. Maybe this guy has nothing to do with that woman who fell down the escalator.”

  “Why did he cut his hair?”

  “It’s hot as hell here in the summer. He was probably sweating his ass off.”

  “You know how long it takes to grow hair that long? Years, man, years. You don’t cut that off unless you have a really good reason.”

  “Well, Wallace, there is one way to put an end to all this speculation. We are just a flick of the siren away from the answers to all of our questions.”

  “Not yet. Keep following him while I radio in.”

  Wallace reached for the radio as Nguyen hit a pothole large enough to engulf half of the front right wheel. Both officers nearly hit the roof as the suspension succumbed to the laws of physics, the decompression of the springs sending the car bouncing upward.

  “Potholes in July,” Wallace said, pressing the call button on the radio. He gave the information on the black for-hire sedan to the dispatcher who ran the plates while Wallace waited, eyes straight ahead.

  Chow Ying jockeyed for position, changing lanes twice. He kept one eye on the road and one eye on his rearview mirror.

  “It is registered to Capitol Chauffeurs, Sergeant,” the radio chirped.

  “Do you have a phone number?”

  “Just a minute.”

  Wallace wrote the number in the notebook on his lap, the other hand holding the radio. He looked at the number he had just written and repeated it back to verify that he could read his own chicken scratch.

  “That’s it, detective. Anything else I can help you with?”

  “No, that’s all. Thanks.”

  “Have a good shift.”

  Wallace punched the phone number into his cell phone and followed the black sedan with his eyes.

  In the middle of the third ring, an elderly woman answered the phone for Capitol Chauffeurs, proudly announcing the name of the company, followed by her own, Regina.

  “How are you this morning, Regina?”

  “Just fine,” she answered with the slightest hint of a southern twang.

  “My name is Detective Wallace of the D.C. Metropolitan Police.”

  “Yes, detective. How can I help you?”

  “I need information on one of your vehicles.”

  “Yes, detective. Our rates vary by the size of the car, but prices range from thirty to three hundred dollars an hour, with a three hour minimum.”

  “No, Regina, no. I’m not interested in renting a car. I’m interested in one of the cars owned by your company.”

  “I don’t understand, detective,” Regina said with more hints of her Alabama upbringing.

  “Let me paint a picture for you. My partner and I are driving down Seventh Street right now, following a car that is registered to your company. I need you to tell me who is driving.”

  “Is he speeding?”

  “No, Regina. The car is not speeding. If I give you the license plate can you tell me who’s behind the wheel?”

  “Is this some kind of prank?”

  Regina was hard work. Her charming southern accent grew stronger, as did her natural propensity to avoid the question without trying.

  “Regina. Let me give you my badge number and you can call the D.C. police to verify that I am, indeed, a detective.”

  Regina took a sip of her morning glass of sweet tea without ice.

  “Hmmmmm…” she said, drawing the sound out for a few seconds.

  Wallace turned toward Nguyen and covered the small holes on his mobile phone. “This woman is killing me.”

  “That’s fine, detective. I won’t need to call your station.”

  “Let me give you the license plate number,” Wallace said, reading the tag number quickly.

  “Could you hold a minute? I need to check the paperwork.”

  “Hurry.”

  Chow Ying pulled further ahead and Nguyen switched lanes trying to close the gap. He reached over and hit Wallace’s shoulder as the black sedan drove through the intersection with the green light thirty yards ahead.

  “You lose him and you’re fired,” Wallace barked.

  The police cruiser reached the intersection just as a marked car, sirens blaring, blocked both lanes of traffic. Nguyen hit the brakes and the horn simultaneously. A uniformed officer hurried out of his car and held out his arm in the universal traffic cop hand gesture for stop.

  “What the hell?” Wallace said, pulling at the handle of the passenger door, phone pressed to his ear. Walking toward the officer, Wallace reached for his badge and held it straight out as more wailing sirens approached. The detective with more than two decades on the streets of D.C. looked up at the oncoming entourage and cursed.

  The stretch limousine was sandwiched between four dark SUVs, blue lights flashing from the dash behind the thick bulletproof glass. Six additional patrol cars buzzed around the limo. On the front corners of the limousine stood two small flags—blue, white, and red in three vertical stripes of equal size. The car drove by quickly, the flags rippling in the air with a crisp snap, snap, snap. Wallace shook his head at the uniformed officer and got back in the car, phone still in his hand.

  On the far side of the intersection, Chow Ying heard the sirens. He didn’t wait to see if he was their target. He used the turn lane to pass three vehicles, and stomped on the accelerator at the next signal as it turned yellow. By the time he focused his vision in the rearview mirror, the flashing lights from the security entourage were almost out of sight.

  Wallace jumped back in the cruiser. “That better be someone important.”

  “French Ambassador.”

  “France?”

  “The flags were French.”

  “Goddamn French. If it weren’t for the U.S. of A, they would be speaking German and eating bratwur
st in Paris right now.”

  “You hate everyone Wallace.”

  “Not everyone. But I make a special exception for the French.”

  Wallace yelled into the phone waiting for Regina to get back on the line. Time stood still. “The second they are out of the way, get this car moving.”

  With the French entourage tearing down the street, the police cruiser on intersection duty pulled away as quickly as it had appeared. Traffic moved forward toward the now red light and Nguyen tried to pass on the right.

  “Do we hit the sirens?” Nguyen asked, adrenaline pumping.

  Before Wallace could answer, Regina was back on the phone.

  “Detective Wallace?”

  “Yes, Regina.”

  “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  “Talk to me, Regina,” he said, his voice rising.

  “The car with the license plate you gave me is not scheduled to be on the road today. It should be in the maintenance lot in Rockville, Maryland. Time for the car’s sixty thousand mile servicing.”

  “Can you call someone at the service lot and confirm the car is where it is supposed to be?”

  “I did. No one is answering the phone.”

  “I’m going to give you my number. Let me know when you reach them.”

  Chow Ying hit a string of green lights and by the time Wallace hung up the phone with Regina, the trailing unmarked car was a mile away. As the for-hire approached the Capitol Building and the government offices that surrounded the jewel of D.C., the black sedan was as inconspicuous as a yellow cab in Manhattan.

  “What do we do?” Nguyen asked, panicking. “I think we lost him.”

  Wallace looked around like his head was on a swivel. There were three black for-hire sedans within a hundred yards, two of them heading in the opposite direction and another pulled over to the curb, a short Hispanic driver unloading his passenger.

  “Goddamnit,” he said, picking up the radio. “This is Detective Wallace. I need to issue a BOLO on a black for-hire sedan, last seen in District one, heading south.”

  Wallace panted his way through the car’s tag number and the dispatcher echoed the letters and numbers. “Charlie, Papa, Four…”

  Wallace finished his command to police dispatch. “Do not approach or stop this vehicle. I need the location reported back to me ASAP.”

  Wallace threw the radio handset at the dash, cursed a string of vulgarities that would make a Hell’s Angel member proud, and then reached over with his hand to hit the siren. The short blast of chirps and screams from the car was enough to clear a path through the intersection.

  “Now let’s find this fucking guy.”

  Chapter 45

  A block from the Capitol and three hundred yards from Union Station and the train tracks that marked the beginning of the neglected northeast side of the city, the Russell Senate Building was the smallest legislation-making structure on The Hill. Erected in 1909, the Russell building had witnessed its share of historical moments—from the investigation into the sinking of the Titanic, to the Watergate hearing, to the Teapot Dome investigation that resulted in the country’s first senator-turned-convict.

  The Senate Special Committee on Overseas Labor met on the first floor of the Russell Senate Building. As a special committee, and thus temporary in nature, Overseas Labor didn’t have its own chamber. Senator Day and the rest of the Overseas Labor Specialists were forced to share use of the Foreign Relations Committee’s vestibule—a picturesque legislative room adorned with grand traditional ornamentation that was duplicated in fifty similar chambers around Capitol Hill. A wood-paneled wall climbed three stories to the ceiling above, creating an impressive backdrop for the committee chairman and his cronies to flex their legislative muscles.

  The conclusion of a committee hearing was showtime for the senators involved. Final comments ranged from passionate to downright emotional. Every senator thrived on knowing they would have a chance to speak and, God willing, influence the law. At the very least, they would show their specialization of the topic at hand, self-defined brilliance gleaned from reading a few excerpts of investigations and research done by others. The glamorous lunches prepared for the final day of committee testimony did as much as anything to pack the house. After months of investigation and testimony, the committee’s recommendation to the Senate was the final word before the feast and backslapping.

  At eight-thirty, the chamber doors opened. The fruit plates brimmed in a colorful display of berries and melons, next to large trays of muffins mixed with a variety of pastries. Coffee, regular and decaf, served in real china, held its position on a smaller table next to the cream and sugar. Food for the kings while the commoners, who paid for it all, lined up at Starbucks.

  The press filed in first, a half-dozen reporters representing an equal number of papers that included The Post and the Reverend Moon-owned Washington Times. The reporters were young, still-hungry new-hires who were blown off bigger stories and took whatever assignment came down the pike. They prepared their position in the unofficial press section, the first row on the right-hand side of the committee chamber. Notebooks were already pulled, pens in hand. Hand-held recorders were checked and double-checked. A three-person camera crew from C-SPAN set up their tripod and microphone on the opposite side of the room. It was standard operating procedure. Every committee meeting was filmed, every word transcribed, every opinion saved as a small piece of history. A warehouse in Silver Spring now held thousands of videos and boxes of verbatim transcripts and, with senators showing no signs of embracing brevity, they would be looking for a larger storage facility before the next presidential election.

  At five before nine, the twelve senators on the Overseas Labor Committee strolled in, shaking hands, waving, winking. Lobbyists and lawyers, wearing suits from the same shelves of the same stores in Georgetown, filled half of the one hundred seats in the chamber. Those who were on the final list to testify had seating preference at the long table directly in front of the committee. Behind them, the first row was shoulder-to-shoulder with CEOs, human rights activists, PhDs from think tanks and universities that dotted the city. It was a who’s who on International Labor, a list developed and edited ten times over, depending on who was taking what legal bribe.

  Senator Day found his throne in the middle of the raised row of chairs. From their perch five feet in the air, the committee members had an indisputable psychological advantage. Physically looking down on witnesses as they testified gave the committee power. It didn’t matter if those testifying had PhDs from Harvard or Yale. Everyone who wasn’t a senator on the committee was a pissant. Their speeches would be heard, their testimony noted. And then the senators would mold legislation as they saw fit. Senator Day looked over at Senators Wooten, Thomas, and Grumman. In turn, all three senators returned the chairman’s glance and silently acknowledged their prescribed agreement.

  At precisely nine o’clock Senator Day reached to his right, raised his hand, and lowered the gavel with an authoritative bang. ***

  Minutes after the siren parade in his rearview mirror, Chow Ying took two laps around the four-lane circle in front of Union Station to be sure he wasn’t followed. On his third pass, Chow Ying slowed his car and pulled over in the pick-up lane among a mixture of taxis and similar black sedans. He reached for the envelope from beneath the seat and dumped it upside down on the passenger seat next to him. With his right hand he spread out the contents of the envelope, picking up the chauffeur license with his own picture and a phony name. The DMV-authorized license was beyond legal reproach, complete with the requisite holographic security image and magnetic strip. He read the forged company paperwork for the car he was driving, fondled a Senate-issued VIP parking permit, and glanced at the bonded-paper sign with “Senator Day” printed on it with a quality laser printer. He put the chauffeur license in his shirt pocket and picked up the lone remaining gift from C.F Chang, a piece of white office paper. He read the detailed instructions, an elaboration of the on
es he had received on the phone. The instructions were neatly typed, without a single spelling error. Trust wasn’t C.F Chang’s strong suit.

  Senate Special Committee Hearing on Overseas Labor. Thursday July 18th. The Russell Senate Building. Peter Winthrop is scheduled to testify. Senator Day will also be present. Avoid being seen. Peter Winthrop has a reservation with his chauffeur company, a car will be waiting for him in the parking lot. A Senate parking permit and valid chauffeur license is needed to enter the lot. The Capitol Police may sweep the car for explosives. A body search is typically not done at this time. You will be searched if you enter the building.

  Chow Ying started the car and headed east. He did one lap around Stanton Park, came down Constitution and turned the for-hire sedan right on Second Street. With the appropriate trepidation, he slowed the car to a crawl as he approached the Capitol Police barricade. His gun was wedged as far under the seat as it would go, ten grand and a passport in his breast pocket. If anything went wrong, he would make the afternoon news.

  Chow Ying smiled and rolled down the window. “I am here to pick up Senator Day at the conclusion of the Senate Special Committee on Overseas Labor.” He handed the officer his chauffeur license and Senate parking permit. The overweight black Capitol police officer looked at the license and the Senate-issued parking pass. The officer peered at Chow Ying over his stretched waistline, checked the face on the identification a second time, and then handed the license back to its owner. Chow Ying held his breath.

  “You can park anywhere in the back lot next to Union Station Plaza. Do not keep your car running, and there is no loitering outside the vehicle. Make sure the parking permit is on display and visible on the rearview mirror.”