The Crime Beat Boxed Set

by A. C. Fuller

  “You’ll call him?” Cole asked. “Put in a good word?”

  “Already did.” His eyes were on Warren as he spoke.

  Cole thought it best to get out of there before the situation deteriorated. “Thank you. Let’s go, Rob.”

  16

  The Uber driver took two hours to navigate the slippery roads thirty miles from the FBI headquarters in Quantico to Alexandria, a historic town where many of America’s founders had lived. They passed the modernized King Street shopping and restaurant scene and turned into an old neighborhood with original cobblestone streets and historic churches, stopping on a side street in front of an old apothecary that had been converted into a tiny museum.

  The snow crunched under her feet and the soft gray of twilight lit the flakes as they fluttered down past the restored stone townhouses painted in bright shades of red, blue, and green. Many bore black plaques designating them as “Historic Buildings,” some with dates indicating they’d been there nearly three hundred years.

  “I feel like I’m in an old movie,” she said as Warren tipped the driver.

  He gestured toward the large window of the apothecary. “Martha Washington used to buy her opium here.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “What now?”

  “Seriously, I read it. Opium was legal and used for pain, the flu, damn near everything. Our founding fathers, and mothers, were straight-up high.”

  “I guess the opioid crisis was built into the country from the beginning.” Cole double-checked the address on the card, which belonged to a blue brick townhouse crammed between two larger red ones. It was no more than ten feet wide and appeared somehow added to the scene, like it didn’t belong. “Is it just me, or is that house ridiculously narrow?”

  “It’s called an Alley House.” Warren brushed snowflakes from his jacket. “The two larger houses were built on either side of an alley. As time went on, they filled in the alleys with smaller houses.”

  “How do you know so much about this town?”

  “Took a walking tour through D.C. before my deployment. U.S. history buff. Actually thought I might be a historian when I got back from overseas. When we had Marina, I figured eight more years of schooling wasn’t in the cards.”

  Cole realized they were stalling. The townhouse was dark and though she wasn’t claustrophobic, just looking at it made her feel cramped. Something felt wrong, and neither wanted to knock on the door. “Why aren’t we knocking?”

  Warren took the notecard from Cole and studied it. “It’s the right address, but...I don’t know.”

  “Think your old friend might be setting us up?”

  “Possibly.”

  The buzzing of Cole’s phone interrupted them. A text from Marty Goldberg.

  Goldilocks: Got some info for you. Meet for a drink?

  She held up the message for Warren, then nodded toward the door. “Let’s try this first.”

  Warren cast a skeptical look at the townhouse, as though assessing for danger, then banged on the red wooden door. His heavy knock carried through the deserted streets, a deep bass echo above the high-pitched whistle of the wind through leafless trees.

  They waited.

  Warren knocked again. Nothing. Without looking back, he said, “Tell Goldilocks you’ll meet him at Tivera on King Street. Three blocks from here. I’ll stake out the house.”

  Cole tapped out the message. “You sure you got this? You know what we need?”

  “I can handle it.”

  By the time Cole found the Italian wine bar, Goldberg was halfway through his first glass of red. “What took you so long?” He stood and offered an awkward hug. He smelled of fresh cologne, something spicy and overdone.

  “Got lost. Never been to Alexandria.”

  “Where’s the cop?”

  Her face tightened. She’d told Goldberg Warren was an assistant, and though she’d known it would be easy to figure out he wasn’t, she hadn’t anticipated that he’d bother to check. Pondering this, she ordered a tequila and slid into the stool next to him. “You researched us?”

  “This is the most two-faced town in America, maybe the world.” He moved his wine glass in a small circle, following the pattern on the brushed-steel bar. “It’s my job to know the real reason people contact me.”

  “Okay, so what’s the real reason?”

  “You think there’s a connection between Ambani and Meyers.”

  “We’ve been over this,” she countered. “It’s my job to think there’s a connection between everything and everything else. Until I know there isn’t. Plus, I’m freelance now. I can follow my gut.”

  “You and Warren an item?” he asked, casually. Other than a single stray hair on his forehead, his appearance was perfect. Neat, powerful, in control. But it was all a facade, a con designed to hide the old Goldilocks. Under the dyed hair and the $3,000 suit, he was still the insecure Congressional staffer with an innocent crush on her.

  The bartender set down the tequila, which gave her the beat she needed to ignore the question. “You said you had some information regarding my husband?”

  “Nice dodge.”

  She smiled. “Thank you.”

  He let out a sigh. “Fine. I said I had information, but not about your husband.”

  “Meyers?”

  “That is what you came here to research, right?”

  A bell clanged and a shout came from the kitchen. “Order up, table six.”

  Cole’s shoulders tensed, rising toward her ears.

  “You gotta relax, Jane.”

  She reached for the tequila. “Tell me what you know.” She downed the drink and waved the empty glass at the bartender.

  “First, tell me what you know. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have suspicions, and my bet is those suspicions are based on something up in New York.”

  “You texted me,” she replied. “You go first.”

  “Fine. But really, you need to relax.” He eyed her over the top of his wine glass as he sipped. “I talked to a reporter at The Post, guy I leak stories to when I’m trying to get a deal through Congress or pressure an agency. I give big stuff to him exclusively, he gives me a heads up, not only on his big stories but anything the paper is going to run. Paper has a piece tonight questioning whether the dead guy on the roof was the shooter. I got it right before I texted you. It’ll post soon and run on the front page in the morning.”

  Cole’s head burned, like a flare had gone off, but she played it cool. “What’s the evidence?”

  “Source at the FBI. Ballistics expert, apparently. No idea why this hasn’t already come out, but the gun on top of the roof couldn’t possibly have made the shot across the Potomac. At least, that’s what The Post is writing. Don’t know if the dead guy on the roof was involved, or whether it was a random coincidence. But they’ve been looking at the wrong guy.”

  Cole stood suddenly. She wanted to get out of there, to get back to Warren, but he caught her arm. “Back in my office you asked why I told you the thing about the Watergate, Nixon and Bush.”

  “Why did you?”

  “Think of it as a cautionary tale. I like you, Jane. Reporters often forget to ask themselves an important question in their madness to get the scoop.”

  “What’s that?”

  “‘Why am I being leaked to? Who benefits from this story?’”

  “We ask ourselves that question all the time.” It came out more forceful than she’d intended, but she wasn’t keen on a journalism lecture from a D.C. lobbyist.

  “Hey, hey. Don’t get defensive. I’m just saying, half of the big stories that leak are misdirections from another, bigger story. If you look at the actual crimes Nixon got busted for, they weren’t in the top ten worst things he did. None would crack the top twenty list of the things the Bushes did. And I’m no Democrat. They’re just as bad. Oh, the stories I could tell.”

  He laced his hands behind his head and leaned back, elbows out, as he had in his office. In her study of body languag
e she’d learned this was called “Hooding.” It’s what king cobras did to intimidate other animals, and it’s what men often did when they felt comfortable and powerful. Goldberg had given her nothing. He’d steered the conversation from the moment she’d walked in, and now he was...what was he doing? “Marty, what are you driving at?”

  “You’re in D.C. now, Jane. I know, New York is New York, but the spin down here is some next level shit. New York is checkers. D.C. is chess. With social media alongside the papers and news networks, it’s now speed chess. Don’t get in over your head.”

  As the sky darkened from gray to black, Warren paced the street to stay warm, passing occasionally under the single streetlamp a few doors from the townhouse. Wind shook snow loose from the trees overhead, giving the scene the feel of a lonely forest more than a rich suburb. After five minutes, he banged on the door again, louder this time.

  No response.

  He leaned on a snow-covered car and, on his phone, opened Google Earth and entered the address. It showed the building in daytime, but no other useful information. Next he entered the address into Zillow, where he learned that it had last been purchased for $1.2 million in 2012 and was now valued at $2.1 million. Two more searches turned up interesting historical information, but not the owner’s name.

  A creaking sound came from behind him and he turned quickly. He didn’t see anything. Had it been a tree branch buckling under the weight of snow? A rooftop?

  The night was silent again. He stared up at the sky, and Sarah appeared in his mind, standing in front of Yankee Stadium in a yellow dress. Bakari Smith appeared in his mind next to her, and he shook them loose and turned to study the house again. The ground floor had no windows, just the red door in the center. The upper floor of the two-story house had one small window. As he stared at it, a light turned on. A figure appeared.

  Warren stood motionless, watching the fog of his breath in front of him.

  The window screeched open. A head emerged, backlit so Warren couldn’t make out a face. “You Cole?” It was a man’s voice. Some accent he couldn’t identify. Maybe European.

  “Yeah, I’m Cole.”

  “Thought you were supposed to be a woman?”

  Warren shrugged. “You have what we need?”

  “Smith didn’t say anything about a ‘we.’ What gives?”

  “Why didn’t you open when I knocked?”

  The man ignored the question, turning his head to peer up and down the block. His head disappeared back into the room. Warren contemplated. From the sound of the guy’s voice, he was older. Warren could bust through the wooden door if need be, but he’d promised himself he wouldn’t commit any crimes if he could help it.

  He didn’t need to make a decision. An arm emerged through the window, then the man’s head. “Catch.”

  A small black bag flew through the air, right to Warren, who caught it up against his chest. The window screeched shut. The room went dark.

  Warren opened the bag and pulled out a device. Three flat computer chips, each the size of a credit card, were stuck together with narrow screws that left about an inch of space between each layer. A six-inch wire ran from the chips to a single plastic card the size of a standard hotel keycard.

  Snow crunched behind him and he swiveled.

  It was Cole. “Smith leaked our meeting. Everyone is about to know what we know.”

  “I got the reader, I think.”

  “If we want to be first, we need to get there now, before anyone else finds out.”

  Cole opened the Uber app, but Warren stopped her before she entered an address. The gray SUV he’d seen earlier still hovered in the back of his mind. “Get them to take us to my car. It’s only a few minutes out of the way, and if Smith leaked the story, he could…”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. Earlier, when we were at the café, I saw a suspicious SUV. Had me thinking about Mazzalano’s guys. And now Smith. You know he can track us through the Uber app and, I don’t know…”

  Cole ordered a car to take them to K Street, where they’d left the Cougar that morning. “You can drive in this?”

  “Snow has almost stopped. I don’t know what happens next, but we need control over our movement.”

  17

  Warren struggled to keep the ’69 Cougar between barely-visible paint lines as he navigated the George Washington Memorial Parkway. After a few harrowing minutes, during which the car fishtailed twice, a plow pulled onto the road at an entrance a quarter mile ahead of them. He settled in about forty yards behind the plow, driving slowly but safely along the newly-cleared road.

  In the glow of her cell phone’s flashlight, Cole examined the keycard device. “Ever seen one of these?”

  “Never.”

  “Think it’ll work?”

  “No idea.”

  As they passed the Pentagon, Cole stared at the Potomac, a wide black patch flecked with silver moonlight. She plugged her phone into the charger sticking out from the cigarette lighter and opened the official Twitter account of The Washington Post. The article Goldilocks told her about had posted seven minutes earlier.

  “Smith leaked it.” She scanned the story. “He screwed us.”

  “Can’t exactly blame him. We walked into his place of business and threatened him.”

  “Technically I threatened him, but yeah.”

  Warren glanced over, trying to see the screen.

  “Keep your eyes on the road. I’ll read it out loud, but it’s probably just a summary of what we told Smith. The gun on the rooftop, as seen from the helicopter, can’t have made the shot. Probably—”

  She closed her eyes when she saw her own name. She opened them for an instant, then closed them again when she saw Warren’s.

  “Damnit!” She struck the glove compartment with her free hand.

  “What?”

  “Smith didn’t just give them the story. He gave them our story.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll read you the part.” She let out a long breath and read. “‘According to the source, the FBI was alerted to the discrepancy in the appearance of the rifle by Jane Cole, formerly a reporter with The New York Sun, and Robert Warren, an NYPD officer currently on paid administrative leave for striking a handcuffed suspect. Though the source declined to say whether he believed Cole and Warren to be involved in the murder, it’s unclear what involvement they have in the case, or how they initially came upon the information. “If you ask me,” the source said, “a disgraced cop and a fired reporter shouldn’t be down here getting in the way of the FBI and the local police as they investigate this appalling crime.”

  Warren shook his head. “He just made us suspects.”

  “It won’t work.”

  “Probably not, but you can bet the cops are reading that and are, at least, wondering about it.”

  “I’m glad we aren’t in an Uber right now. Reporter went with a single source because he wanted to be first.”

  “In all fairness, Smith is a damn good source. That’s why we went to him. But why leak it right after we left?”

  “Payback. Also, it’s a genuinely huge scoop. Reporter is gonna owe him big.”

  Cole returned to her phone and checked her go-to politics accounts. Five minutes ago, the official CNN account announced “MAJOR BREAKING NEWS” coming up. Probably a report on the story from The Post, likely featuring an interview with the reporter who’d broken the story.

  She pulled up the CNN live news feed. “There’s breaking news on CNN. Probably a recap.” She turned the volume up all the way and held the phone up so Warren could hear. The anchor was already halfway through a report.

  “…Unclear at this time what impact this will have on the investigation. But to repeat, stunning breaking news tonight.”

  The video and audio froze. Cole shook her phone, then held it up to the window.

  Warren chuckled. “You think shaking it will help?”

  “Shut up. I don’t know.�
��

  After a long silence, the video kicked in and the anchor’s voice filled the dark car.

  “According to sources, the coroner in charge of the body of the dead man from the roof said he could not have taken his own life. The angle of the gunshot indicates he was shot by someone else. This upends the version of events we’ve been hearing since Vice President Meyers was killed. Further, a new story from The Washington Post cites an FBI source who claims that an analysis of the helicopter footage shows that the rifle by his side could not have made the fatal shot. What does all this mean? Put simply, the real killer of former Vice President Meyers is still on the loose. Stay with us and, after the commercial break, we’ll bring in our panel of experts and commentators to discuss what is quickly becoming the biggest news story in years.”

  The video froze again. Cole shook her phone. Nothing.

  “Try rebooting it.”

  Cole powered down her phone and, while it powered up, Warren said, “I know how this works. Police will say they were looking into the possibility of multiple shooters all along, as well as the possibility that the dead guy on the roof wasn’t even involved.”

  “They’ll cover their asses.”

  “Sure, and chances are, at least some people were looking into other options. It’ll probably take police half an hour, maybe an hour, to put two and two together and get to the hotel, but not longer.”

  “Then let’s hurry.”

  Warren pulled around the snowplow, which had slowed to five miles per hour, and increased his speed.

  18

  Cole scanned the valet area in front of the Potomac View Hotel, then studied the cars parked up and down the block. “No police cars.”

  “At least none that are marked.”

  “You think there could be detectives here or—”

  Warren shrugged. “No way of knowing until we go in. If they put the news reports together with the video, they’ll show up with black-and-whites, SWAT. Hell, they might send in the National Guard.” He turned into an underground parking garage, took a ticket, and found a spot near the elevator. “Got the reader?”