Cold Frame

NINETEEN

The who-you-gonna-call decision had been a no-brainer, and Wong Daddy had ridden to Av’s rescue in grand style. Somehow he’d managed to appropriate a large, black Expedition, with tinted windows and bristling with all the LE trimmings. He’d also brought along three huge black men, all outfitted in MPD SWAT gear. Even the marines were impressed when they saw the four guys who’d come to pick up the shaved-head police sergeant. Wong had signed Av out, listing his title as the principal deputy assistant manager, Interagency Liaison Bureau, Metropolitan Police Department. No one in the admin office had so much as blinked an eye.

Once out on I-95 they headed north to an interchange featuring a Holiday Inn Express, where they pulled off and let the three other guys, all members of Wong’s sumo gambling club and not police at all, get out to pick up their own ride, a retired UPS truck decked out as an urban camper. Wong took the federal license plate off the Expedition and replaced it with a civilian plate. After promises of beers owed and profuse thanks from Av, the three linebackers disappeared up the interstate.

“Hungry?” Wong asked. Av knew that that was Wong-speak for: I’m hungry.

“Sure,” he said. “A beer would be good, too.”

Wong reached behind him and fished a Yuengling lager out of a slush-filled cooler parked behind the right front seat. He casually thumbed off the cap and passed the bottle to Av. Thankful for the tinted windows, Av took an appreciative pull. Wong continued north on I-95, matching his speedometer to the interstate number, along with at least a third of the cars out there.

“So WTF,” Wong said. “How’d you end up in a federal pen?”

“Did anybody miss me?” Av asked.

“Precious said you were ‘on assignment,’ on some kinda ‘special project,’ at an ‘undisclosed location.’”

“She actually say that shit?”

“Nah,” Wong replied with a grin. “Said she had no idea where you were and to get our lazy asses back to work while she worked on that problem.”

“Mau-Mau and Miz Brown get their papers in?”

Wong grinned again. “Didn’t happen,” he said. “Chief Happy got wind of it, called ’em both in and told them he was still waiting for an opportunity to fire their asses, so their requests were denied. So: the Petersburg pen?”

Av told him the story of getting snatched up by a bunch of feds, threatened by some high pooh-bah at the Hoover building, and then being taken to the quiet room, as Mandeville had called it. He described how the place worked, and finally, his interview with the big man himself. He concluded with the observation that he thought that Mandeville was certifiable.

Wong nodded in agreement, and then looked in his rearview mirror. There was a set of headlights pretty close in. Wong was doing ninety. This guy wanted to pass? He said something to Av, who looked in the right side mirror. The guy was practically drafting on them. Wong muttered something and turned off the cruise control. The big SUV began to slow.

Av had a sudden funny feeling about this.

“You got a gun handy?” he asked.

Wong, concentrating on the headlights behind him, did a cross-draw and handed Av his .45. Av looked again in his right side mirror. The headlights of their pursuer were so bright he almost couldn’t see. He let his window down, took off his seat belt and turned sideways. He rested the muzzle of the .45 on the windowsill, holding it with both hands against the sudden blast of wind.

The car behind them finally jerked to the right and then came up alongside them on Av’s side. At first Av thought he was going to roar past, but he didn’t. Wong reengaged the cruise and the big SUV accelerated. The car on the right kept pace, and then Av saw the driver’s side window coming down.

There he was: the man who’d sent them scrambling down the banks in Rock Creek Park. He was looking over at Av with absolutely no expression on his face. Then he saw Av’s gun, at just about the same time as Av fired three shots in quick succession. A cloud of windshield glass blossomed in the slipstream between the two cars before the other man fell back. Av looked in the mirror and saw what looked like a lot of smoke and road dust as cars in the right lane hit the brakes and tried to avoid the rapidly decelerating vehicle in front of them. Finally, their pursuer drifted off the road onto the berm and then was lost from view as they went around a broad curve on the interstate.

“Get the fucker?” Wong asked calmly, back to maintaining ninety in the speed lane. There were no cars behind them, for the moment.

“Warning shot,” Av said. “That was the guy who tuned us up with a twelve-gauge down in Rock Creek Park the other evening,” he said. “He must have been staking out the Petersburg facility.”

“Working for?”

“I’m guessing this is Mandeville’s guy,” Av said. “The big kahuna must really not have liked my tone of voice.”

“Fuck him if he can’t take a joke,” Wong said. “Let’s eat.”

He took the next exit and headed down a typical Virginia interstate exit complex of hamburger joints, gas stations, motels, strip malls, nail salons, and a collection of other buildings whose dominant architectural feature was quivering neon.

“Where we going?” Av asked.

“Relative of mine runs a Korean barbecue joint right next door to the VHP station. Cop place. Good chow, cold beer. No civilians.”

As advertised, the place was right next door to the Virginia Highway Patrol station. Wong pulled the Expedition into the VHP lot and parked. They then went next door to a place whose sign read: ROK GARDEN. If anybody in the station saw the SUV with the tinted windows and all those antennae, they paid it no attention. Wong asked what Av liked and he went for the BBQ chicken, minus any kimchi. Wong did the ordering, which for Wong included beer, rice, and several small bowls of things that Av was pretty sure were trying to make eye contact with him. It was a half hour after shift change at the VHP and there were several staties in the place. The lady running the place had greeted Wong like a long-lost child. Av asked how the place kept civilians out. Wong explained that if unwanted civilians came in, they were seated politely and then the waiter brought out a bottle of Vietnamese nuoc mam, or fermented fish sauce, and uncorked it at the table. That inevitably led to an immediate evacuation, sometimes in the physiological sense.

Once Wong had put away several dishes of food, he let out an extraordinary belch that made all the cops in the room jump and someone in the kitchen cheer. Wong patted his large stomach and then picked up on the discussion in the car.

“So they picked you up, did some razzle-dazzle at the Hoover building, then sent you to Petersburg, told you not to talk for a whole weekend, then some White House big dog showed his teeth at you, and then the jungle bunnies let you go? Just like that? Don’t figure, partner. Need to check your shoes for a tracker button or something.”

“Don’t need to,” Av said. “There was a microdrone hovering over your Expedition when we got out. Twenty, thirty feet up? Looked like a little red-eyed bat?”

Wong was alarmed. “No shit?”

“Yeah, shit,” Av said. “Look, one thing I’ve learned? The federal beehive wants to see you, they can see you. Just too damned many of them for anyone to run and hide like they do in the movies. That’s what I can’t figure out. I feel like a fugitive, but I haven’t been on the run and I haven’t done anything. I need to talk to Ellen Whiting again.”

“The one you took to a gay bar? She still speakin’ to you after that shit?”

“I don’t know,” Av said. “Except she was the one who came to me for help, if you can believe that.”

“What you think that heavy dude is gonna do, once he finds out the jarboons turned you loose?”

“He’ll put me on the Kill List, probably,” Av said.

“You need to crash somewhere? I’ve got ladies all over town who can—”

“No, thanks,” Av said, cringing at the thought of crashing at the dragon lady’s crib. “I’m gonna go home.”

TWENTY

It was close to midnight by the time Wong dropped him off at his building. The streets were just about empty and it looked like all the bars and restaurants had closed some time ago in honor of a low-volume Monday evening. His first problem was how to get into his own pad — they had carted him off without wallet or keys. Then he remembered the slinky blonde coming up the fire escape.

Once on the roof he unearthed the spare key he’d buried in a flowerpot after one too many beers one night had led to a lockout. His loft apartment showed no signs of the search warrant, which surprised him. He’d seen places tossed by Metro PD detectives that looked like a war zone. His gun stash was untouched, and his wallet and keys were in their usual bowl in the kitchen. He checked his telephone to see if it had been altered, and then realized he didn’t have the faintest idea of what a bug might look like. They probably had positioned a satellite out in space directly over his house that could tell them every time he broke wind. He dug out Ellen’s phone number from his wallet and picked up the phone.

“You guys still there?” he asked the dial tone. It didn’t seem to understand. He dialed the number. No one answered and there was no voice mail — the phone just rang. He knew his own phone would be transmitting his caller ID, so maybe that would show up on her phone. Or maybe not. Hell with it, he thought. I’m going to bed.

He checked that the front door was locked, which it was. He started to set his brand-new chain but then thought better of it. The last time she’d come through that lock in the middle of the night with disturbing ease. He left the chain off but then set up one more precautionary measure. He went into the kitchen and got his change bottle out. He emptied two handfuls of coins into a metal pitcher and then poised the pitcher right on the edge of a living room table. He tied some string to the pitcher and connected it to the door handle. Anyone opening the front door would bring that pitcher crashing down onto the wood floor, and that should give him time to pick up his weapon and be ready for a little home defense. He rousted a .45 out of his gun safe, loaded, chambered, decocked it, and then went to bed.

The pitcher did its job almost too well about an hour before dawn, crashing down onto the floor and apparently scaring the shit out of whoever had just come through the door. It did sound like a woman’s voice, so Av turned on his bedside table light and slipped the automatic just under the covers. A moment later Ellen Whiting appeared in his bedroom doorway.

“That was dirty pool,” she announced. “I think I wet my pants.”

“More than I needed to know,” he said with a grin. She was wearing running clothes, of all things, with an FBI ball cap and a bulging little fanny pack. “Welcome to my high-tech world.”

All the chairs in his bedroom had clothes or other stuff piled on them, so she came over and sat down on the corner of his bed.

“I just heard,” she said. “Late yesterday afternoon, in fact. I got a call from Mister Miller to come down for a little chat. He told me that the CT division had picked you up and that you were now being held in a ‘secure location.’”

“What’d he want from you?”

“I don’t actually know,” she said. “He asked me what I thought of that, and since I couldn’t think of anything clever to say, I asked him why and for how long. That’s up to your division, he said. Claimed to just be the messenger; said he was surprised I didn’t know about it, seeing as you and I had been keeping company.

“How’d you get out?”

He described his having milk and cookies with Carl Mandeville, and then the Marine colonel’s decision to let him leave.

“Why’d he do that?” she asked.

He told her about the colonel eavesdropping on the conversation with Mandeville and getting what looked a lot like cold feet. He also described what he’d said to encourage said cold feet.

“And Mandeville offered you your freedom in return for — what? Helping him save the DMX?”

“That’s about it, Ellen,” Av said. “I told him to fuck off, in so many words, and I also told him that if he was murdering people he’d get caught. I don’t know if he knows that I’ve been sprung, but we picked up a tail on the way up — that guy from Rock Creek Park? — so I guess he does. Assuming he works for Mandeville, tomorrow, well, I guess today, I’m gonna go up my chain in MPD and lay this whole fucking thing out to the chief, herself, including the two homicides, the one pending homicide, and who’s behind them and why.”

“God,” she said. “That ought to do it.”

“Should have done it as soon as you told me the story,” he said. “I know we don’t have much of a case, but I suspect the light of day will be as dangerous for Mandeville as anything I could do to him.”

She pressed her lips together and stared out the window, where the dawn’s early light was trying its best to gleam.

“He has — assets,” she said, slowly. “People from the serious-business division of the Agency, and anything he wants from the Special Operations Command, I’m guessing. He’s obviously gone through that Chinese wall and now has some action executives on his side. But: that means it wasn’t Mandeville out there, personally killing McGavin and Logan.”

“Sure about that?” Av asked. He really wanted some coffee, but also wanted to make damned sure she hadn’t come around to tie off a suddenly dangerous loose end. Anyone who could get through locked doors like that had a skill set that fairly cried out previous clandestine ops service. “He was the one at dinner with Logan,” he said. “And you were the one at lunch with McGavin. You’re both on the DMX. You say Mandeville’s gone rogue. But what if the two of you have gone rogue?”

She looked back at him, her face suddenly grave. “That why you have a gun under the covers there, Detective?”

“Damn straight. Until I know who you are and, more importantly, what you are, I’m all done taking chances. Next spook who materializes out of a storm drain is gonna take a couple for the team.”

She nodded. “I think,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “that you need to meet somebody, preferably before you go turning over the Mandeville anthill at MPD. His name is Hiram Walker, and he has had a role to play in these murders.”

“Just give me his full name and I’ll include it in the bucket list for the chief,” Av said.

“No, Sergeant, that would be a mistake. Look: he’s willing to help, and he has some extraordinary assets that he can make available. I spent some time with him this weekend and you have to see this to believe it.”

“He a Mafia don or something?” Av asked. “What kind of assets?”

“Plants that can kill people?” she said softly. “He calls them his smart weeds.”

“Now that’s some creepy shit,” Av said, trying to imagine what a smart weed looked like.

She looked at her watch. “Let’s you and me have some breakfast, then I’ll call him and we’ll go out there to Great Falls. If after that you still think I’m out to get you, then, by all means, go climb the mountain. But I think it’s very important that you meet Hiram Walker before Mandeville acts on the fact that you’re out of his clutches.”

“Breakfast sounds fine,” Av said. “Coffee in particular. But first, take that fanny pack off and toss it over here, if you don’t mind.”

She smiled, reached for the snaps, and pitched the pack onto a pillow. It landed with a thump that told Av there was indeed a weapon in the pack. Then she stood up and stretched.

“Anything else you want me to take off, Detective?” she inquired, innocently. “It’s still early. I do need some exercise, but it doesn’t have to be outside.”

“Oh, c’mon,” he said. “We’re supposed to, what: fall in l-u-u-v now?”

“You still seem to think I’m dangerous,” she said, smoothing the flimsy fabric of her running shorts across her thighs. “Hell, I might have a stiletto strapped to my thigh for all you know.”

“Not in those shorts,” he said, then realized he’d just admitted to checking her out. She smiled again, then folded her arms across her stomach. In one smooth and obviously practiced move, she removed her T-shirt, halter bra, shorts, and then her underpants. She put her hands on her hips in a clear, what-do-you-think-about-this posture.

Av swallowed and then nodded in wide-eyed appreciation. “That’s unfair,” he said, trying to keep his voice from squeaking. “But I’m glad to see there’s no stiletto down there.”

“According to your rules, there is something infinitely more dangerous than a stiletto, though,” she said, glancing down. “Right, Detective?”

This time he did squeak. Dammit.

The next moment she was right next to him on top of the covers, like a fast-moving snake. He felt a moment of panic — her fanny pack was now back in reach. Then he heard it hit the floor on the opposite side of the bed. “That’s not the gun I want right now, Detective,” she whispered. “It’s this one.”

He was doomed. No other word for it.

She giggled like a girl. “Why don’t you let me take charge for a little while,” she said. “What is it they say in the U.K.? Lie back, think of England, and do your damn duty.”

Then she pulled the covers down, pushed his gun out of the bed, and draped herself on top of him, pressing her lips to the hollow of his neck while the rest of her body melted into every square inch of his. For some reason he recalled Mau-Mau’s worried refrain: we’re all going down. Apparently he muttered those exact words, because she broke contact for just a second, looked deep into his eyes, and said in a thickening voice: “Well, I sure as hell hope so. Got some serious horns to deal with here.”

Sometime later she pushed the hair out of her eyes, looked down at him, and said: “Gotcha, scaredy-cat.”

He opened his eyes, saw that there was real sunlight outside now. He tried to remember his name. Damn. Yup, that was it. Damn! He thought he could feel every blood vessel tingling in his body. “Amen to that,” he said. “I have been well and truly got. Get enough exercise?”

She leaned forward, pulled his face into her breasts so he could listen to her heartbeat. Definitely cardio range, he thought. Had to admit, he thought — that beat the hell out of jogging. Then she slid out of the bed and headed for the bathroom. “You said something about coffee,” she said over her shoulder. “And breakfast?”

“Um,” he said. “Coffee for sure. Breakfast, we may have to go out.”

“Typical bachelor,” she said. “Beer, charcoal, coffee, ammo, but food? Never.”

“What’s in your pad?”

“Same,” she said, turning on the shower now. “Assuming you can walk, get in here. I’m going to need my back done.”

“Never assume,” he mumbled as he got out of bed.

Fortunately he had a Keurig and a basketful of fully aged K-Cups. He’d been right about the food problem, but she’d fired up her phone, found a Georgetown bakery that would deliver from seven to ten in the morning, smart businessmen that they were. They ended up on the roof with warm croissants and high-test coffee. Below them the morning traffic was already up and running. It was almost eight o’clock, and Av wondered if he was going in to work today, or if he should wait for Precious to call. The Petersburg interlude now seemed to be some kind of bad dream. The sun felt good, though, and there was a tentative fall breeze hunting loose leaves through the big oaks out back.

“Who’s this someone you want me to meet, again?” he asked.

“Older dude, named Hiram Walker,” she said, attacking her third croissant. She’d borrowed one of his football shirts, put her panties back on, brushed her hair, and declared victory. The croissant collapsed and she ended up with a chin full of crumbs. That made her giggle, and, suddenly, Av felt a dangerous emotional twinge, upon which he instantly stomped.

“That’s a whiskey,” he said. “Canadian whiskey?”

“His father named him that for a reason, apparently,” she said, pinching and then flopping the T-shirt to get all those crumbs off her bobbling breasts. “The original Hiram Walker was apparently some kind of genius,” she said. “Famous for never giving up until he’d succeeded at whatever he was trying to do.”

“That can be a dangerous philosophy,” Av said. “Turns people into fanatics. Sometimes it’s better to step back, look at what you’re doing, and maybe regroup.”

She eyed him across her coffee mug. “Fanatics,” she said. “That’s a loaded word. Like crusaders.” The sound of a jet descending the Potomac gorge into Reagan airport floated across the breeze, its engines whining lazily at low power.

“I was face-to-face with one in Petersburg,” he said. “Scary dude, Ellen, as you must know. I think you’ve been right all along — Mandeville’s removing obstacles, all in the name of the new God called national security. Besides that, I failed to show appropriate respect.”

She blew out a long breath and finished her coffee. Then she frowned.

“What?” he asked.

“Listen,” she said.

Then he heard it: the faint but unmistakable sound of a helicopter, the sound of its rotors thumping almost subliminally over the traffic sounds below.

“Channel nine traffic copter,” he said. “Down by the Lincoln.”

“No,” she said. “Closer. Much closer. And suppressed. That’s a SpecOps Black Hawk, I’m sure of it.”

He had no idea what she was talking about, but then he thought he heard the door down in his apartment bang open. He jumped out of his chair and looked down the rooftop’s stairway, only to see Rue Waltham, dressed in a bathrobe and holding a cell phone in one hand, standing at the bottom.

“Run!” she said urgently. “NOW!” Then she turned and ran, herself.

A moment later Ellen was pushing past him and scrambling down the stairs. “That helo’s coming here,” she shouted over her shoulder. “Get dressed, get your cop stuff, and then get out of here. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Ellen, wait — what the—”

But by then both Ellen and Rue had disappeared, so he followed her down. She was already streaking down the stairs to the loft. He followed her inside. She was in the bedroom, pulling on her clothes; Rue was nowhere to be seen. Still grappling with the sudden appearance of his tenant, he went to the dresser, grabbed underwear, clean jeans, and his Redskins football T-shirt. By the time he was dressed Ellen was already headed out the front door, snapping her fanny pack back onto her waist and then checking the weapon inside. He retrieved his smartphone, wallet, badge, and .45 and followed her down the main stairs. At the side vestibule he told her to hold up.

“I’ve got a garage,” he said. “How did you—”

“I took a cab from my apartment to the Watergate,” she said, cocking an ear for that helicopter. “Then I jogged over.”

“C’mon, then,” he said. He led her through the service door into the garage area and locked it behind him. When she saw the Harley, she asked if it still ran.

“Should,” he said. “I had it out three weeks ago. But my truck—”

“No,” she said. “Not the truck. They’ll have you in two minutes. You take that mountain bike over there, and I’ll take the Harley. Got riding gear?”

He found the big black motorcycle helmet on a shelf while she checked out the motorcycle. He gave her his leather riding jacket and a set of chaps to cover her bare legs. She put everything on and then wheeled the bike out toward the door, the clothes billowing around her slim frame. He got the Harley’s keys out of a bottle and then fired up the opener to raise the metal warehouse door. As daylight streamed in from the bottom, the sound of the approaching helicopter was unmistakable, not overhead, but definitely coming, the clatter of its rotor blades echoing against all the brickwork in the neighborhood. He handed her the keys.

“Listen carefully,” she said. “I’ll take off into traffic and head east, toward the center of town. You wait three minutes, then walk the bike around to the towpath and start riding west. When you get to Chain Bridge, get up on the bridge and walk it across. Then ditch the bike, call a cab, and ask him to take you to Tysons Corner mall. Once you’re in the cab, tell the driver you’ve changed your mind, and that you really want to go to 6500 Deepstep Creek Road. That’s out in Great Falls. Tell him you want him to take the Georgetown Pike. This is important: leave your phone in the cab when you get there, and leave it switched on. Get out and approach the gates and tell them I sent you.”

“This that Hiram Walker guy?”

“Yes, it is,” she said. Then before he could ask any more questions, she dropped the helmet visor and kicked the Harley into life. Then she accelerated out of the garage right into all the traffic on Thirty-third Street, to the accompaniment of many horns and screeching brakes. Almost immediately, a siren started up about a block away, then a second. He watched for a moment from the shadow of the garage entrance, then punched the door control to lower it. He heard the motorcycle’s engine throttle down for a moment and then accelerate, probably turning onto M Street.

He went to the mountain bike and unchained it from its rack, checked the tires, and then looked at his watch. The towpath was pretty narrow right here in the Georgetown precincts, but it widened out upriver of Georgetown U. The traffic crossing the river on Chain Bridge would be heavy at this time of day, so walking the bike across would make sense. He found his bicycle helmet and put it on, which obscured his shaved head. The big football shirt would hide his holster and badge rig, and his phone and wallet could go in the bag behind the seat. He’d forgotten to bring sunglasses, but his helmet had an abbreviated sun visor, which would conceal at least the top of his face.

He rolled the bike toward the service door. Even through the three courses of old brick between him and the outside world, he thought he could still hear that helicopter, which sounded as if it was hovering right over the building now. Suppressed or not, its rotors punched a menacing staccato of pure military power down into the canal. Then the pitch changed and the noise began to diminish. The sirens became louder, and there was a lot of horn blaring out on the street, as if maybe the cop cars were trying to push through traffic and traffic was pushing back.

He waited a few more minutes for the sirens to go away, then rolled the bike through the service door, making sure it locked behind him, and, with a final deep breath, rolled it out of the building. He almost expected gunfire once out in the morning light, but there was only the usual traffic in the street. No helicopters or cop cars or Expeditions loitering in the shadows. They’d gone after the decoy, apparently. When he thought about it, he realized those vehicles had to have been there before the helo showed up. Had they seen her go into his building, and then made a move to get them both?

Them, again. They. Them. He shivered in the morning sunlight as he realized just how many of “them” were in this town these days.

As he pedaled up the towpath, being passed by the occasional runner and then having to stop, get off, and portage the bike up and over a street crossing and back down to the path again, he thought about the mysterious but damned exciting Ellen Whiting. Their bedroom encounter had been swift and urgent, at least the first time. Round two had been gentler but no less demanding on her part. Only afterward, when she’d rolled off into a warm ball alongside him, had he begun to wonder what the hell he’d gotten himself into. Was it as simple as what she’d said? Got some serious horns here? She probably thought he’d been gaming her a little — playing hard to get and thus arousing her interest. It had been months since he’d taken a woman to bed, and, in a way, he still hadn’t — she had clearly taken him to bed, and she had been in control just about every time they’d met up.

A bell rang behind him and he pulled to the right just in time to let a speed bike whiz past on his left, about one foot away. He wondered what Ellen Whiting was doing right about now as she led an enraged federal posse into the red zone around the Mall, the White House, Ellipse, and all those tourist buses massing at the reflecting pool. Probably having the time of her life, he thought with a grin. He remembered what his father had called women like that: sport models. Then his grin faded as he remembered the old traffic cop refrain: you can outrun me, but you can not outrun my radio …