Cold Frame

SIX

Two days later, not one, Av was able to get the court order and have it sent to OCME by messenger. He called them later that morning and was told by the Forensic Toxicology Lab that it might be sometime next week before the actual autopsy would take place. Av asked why so long. The secretary asked if Av’s case was an active and urgent homicide investigation. Av said not yet, but that of course would depend on the results of the autopsy, wouldn’t it? She told him to go get a book called Catch-22 and then invited him to get in line.

Av went to Precious to bitch and moan. She promptly showed him the door. This is the Briar Patch. Move the tarbaby, Detective.

He went to complain to Howie Wallace, who offered slightly more sympathy and said, since he didn’t have anything special to do, why didn’t they go out to that French restaurant and do some interviews. Av couldn’t really see the point of that, the EMS reports being fairly complete. Howie said he wanted something different for lunch. Av hadn’t told Howie about the four runners or the little memento he’d found on his front-yard fence. He still thought he might be imagining the whole episode, or at least the notion that someone was trying to threaten or scare him. But if so, over what?

They checked out an unmarked and went up Connecticut Avenue through the usual lunchtime traffic. Av wondered aloud about the wisdom of eating at a restaurant after they’d questioned the staff about an unexplained death.

When they arrived at the bistro, however, they got a surprise.

“Closed?” Howie said. Av double-parked, got out, and went up to read the sign.

“This is a health department sign,” Av pointed out. “Food Safety. City shut ’em down.”

“Just because some guy croaked? Way I read it, he hadn’t eaten anything.”

A taxi, pinned behind their slick-back by traffic, started laying on the horn. Av badged him and told him to shut up. The Lebanese driver threw up his hands in disgust and darted back into traffic, provoking even more horn blowing. Av got back into their Crown Vic.

“Let’s go around back,” he said. “I thought I saw a light on in there.”

“We can do that,” Howie said. “But it ain’t gonna get me any snails.”

“Tragedy,” Av muttered. As far as he was concerned, snails were something he dug out of his running-shoe treads after a run on the towpath.

He steered the car around the corner and found what he was looking for, a service alley behind the row of buildings that included the bistro. When they got to the back of the restaurant, they found a door open. Two men dressed in kitchen white utilities were sitting on trash cans, having a cup of coffee and a cigarette. The open door revealed a brightly lighted kitchen. They got out and approached the two men. Av identified himself as Metro police.

“Now what?” one of the men said, belligerently. He was the younger of the two. Superskinny, an international orange blaze in his spiky hair, earrings in both ears. The older guy was giving Howie’s outfit the once-over. Howie was sporting what he called his official middle-aged Mau-Mau look: an untucked white shirt shaped like a sixties dashiki, mirrored shades, the dreads, of course, all worn over jeans and sandals. Av thought he looked like any well-dressed bank robber.

“‘Now what?’” he said. “Not sure I understand your question.”

“You people have already shut us down for no good reason. So, like, yeah, now what: you back to rub it in or something?”

“You’ve got us confused with someone else,” Howie said. “We’re detectives. We’re investigating an unexplained death in this restaurant a few days ago. We’re the police, brother, not the health department.”

“You’re the District government,” the older sniffed. “What’s the difference? Place is shut down and we’re out of work.”

“We’d like to speak to the proprietor of the Bistro Nord,” Av said. “Is he here?”

“Jacques? Hell, no. You people took him away.”

Av and Howie looked at each other. “Sorry, man,” Howie said. “We don’t know what you’re goin’ on about. Sign out front says Food Safety shut you down for some kinda violation. They don’t take anybody anywhere.”

The younger man pitched the remains of his coffee into the alley. “Tell that to Jacques,” he said. “These four guys come in, buncha suits wearing, like, Matrix sunglasses? Took Jacques out front to a black SUV and then slapped that fuckin’ sign on the door. Told us to shut it down and go on vacation for a while.”

“When was this?” Av asked.

“Day after it happened,” the man said. “Came in here like the fuckin’ gestapo, man. Front and back, like it was some kinda roust. This is a respectable restaurant here. Been in business for, like, eight years, no problems with nobody, and sure as hell no health department violations. Never had a score under ninety-eight.”

Av knew that eight years was a lifetime in the restaurant business. He was completely baffled. “Either of you guys here the day the dude croaked?” he asked.

The younger guy nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “We catch that scene on a regular basis — middle-aged paper pusher chasin’ some hottie. We all figured her for bein’ something special on the side, older dude like that. She was new, but he was a regular. Nice people, you know? He was a good tipper, knew his French cuisine, too.”

“But he hadn’t eaten anything yet, right?” Av asked. “He sat down, said he was cold, and then, boom, he’s on the deck?”

“Yeah, dude, that’s exactly what happened,” the younger man said. “So, like, why the fuck we bein’ shut down?”

“Guys in suits?” Howie asked. “They show ID? Badges?”

“No, they did not,” the older man said. “Nor have you, for that matter.”

Av and Howie fished out their badges, and Av let the older guy look at his credentials. He asked him if they could go into the dining room.

“You want to search the place?”

“No, no, we just want to see where it happened, that’s all.”

“So, like, what did kill that dude?” the younger man asked.

“We don’t know, yet,” Av responded. “That’s why we’re looking into the incident. Did the guy usually pay with a credit card?”

“Yeah,” the younger man said. “Amex.”

Av nodded. That matched what the proprietor had said.

“Where you guys keeping Jacques, anyway?” the older man asked.

“We’re not keeping Jacques anywhere,” Av said. “You got a phone number for him? Home, cell, anything?”

The older guy recited two phone numbers. “Hope you have better luck than we did,” he said. “You find him, ask him what we should do now, would you?”

Av promised them he would. The older man, who turned out to be the chef, then took them into the dining room and to the table where it had all gone down. Everything had long since been cleaned up. The place looked like every other small French restaurant Av had ever been in. Av automatically looked for the chalked figure on the floor, but then remembered that he wasn’t homicide anymore, and that this might not even be a homicide.

They thanked the employees and went back to their unmarked. “Like, this fucker’s turning into a stone-cold, like, mystery,” Howie said. “Hate that ‘like’ shit. But: we gotta move this bitch down the road.”

Av agreed. “Four guys show up, escort the owner to a black SUV, and close the place down?”

“That ain’t no Food Safety shit right there,” Howie said. “Let’s go get that notice off the door, run it by their office, see if it’s legit.”

“Just what I was thinking,” Av said. “You wanna try those numbers?”

They settled for Burger King on the way to the public health department. Howie innocently asked the drive-through box if they had snails today, producing an indignant squawk. Jacques’s cell number had come up with a helpful voice-mail announcement that the mailbox was full; the other number just rang.

At the health department a Food Safety clerk told them that the closure notice was a legitimate form, but, after a quick search, that there was no record of any of their people writing the citation and closing the Bistro Nord. He checked the restaurant’s file and found no problems, leaving another dead end and even more mystery. They went back to ILB. As they were approaching the office Av heard a rhythmic thumping sound coming from the squad room down the hall.

“Uh-oh,” Howie said, staring at the closed squad room door.

“What?”

“Wong Daddy’s back,” Howie said. “We don’t wanna go in there right now.”

Sergeant Wong Daddy Bento was the larger half of the other pair of detectives in ILB. Av had been introduced when he was first assigned to ILB and he still remembered shaking hands with Wong’s viselike paws. Wong Daddy was maybe five-six if he stood up really straight, and that measurement seemed to apply to height, width, and thickness in about equal proportions. He was of mixed Asian race, predominantly Korean, with a bullet-shaped head, a wide and rather threatening face that reminded Av of some of the samurai caricatures he’d seen at the Freer Gallery, and the overall physique of a sumo wrestler minus the pendulous belly rolls. Howie had explained that when something upset Wong, he’d begin stomping one foot and then the other on the floor, much like a sumo, and growling epithets in some unknown Asian dialect. Everyone had learned to just leave the squad room whenever Wong Daddy started cranking up. Av saw Precious looking out from the doorway to her office before quickly closing her door.

“How long does this go on?” Av asked as they backed down the hall. The stomping was getting louder and so were the epithets.

“Till somebody finds Miz Brown,” Howie said. “He can usually get Wong to quit with all that shit.”

“‘He’?”

“You haven’t met him yet; been on some kinda special tasking up on the fifth floor. He’s Wong’s partner. Real name’s Willy, but everyone calls him Miz Brown. Black dude, real tall, skinny, and fussy, like an old schoolteacher. Everything’s gotta be just so, or he’ll start nagging and shit. Can’t stop talking once he starts. Drives people crazy, but amazing during an interrogation.”

“And they keep him, why?”

“For two reasons, but mostly because he flat moves those tarbabies. He gets it into that pointy little head to push a tarbaby your way, you might as well give up and take it on. He will wheedle and whine and bug your ass to death. Ask anyone in federal LE — they all know him. Plus: between him and Wong Daddy, they a force of nature when it comes to making perps sing. They are absolutely the very best interview team in the MPD. One of the districts gets a sphinx? They send for those two. You ever get the chance, you need to go watch that shit.”

Av remembered now that he had heard something about this team. The wild man in the squad room had begun yelling out kiyais and slamming something on the desks. Howie said that was probably his hand. They had backed their way into the break room where, by now, the ILB secretaries were already cowering. Howie pushed the door shut with his foot.

“Anybody findin’ Miz Brown?” Howie asked.

One of the ladies nodded. “He comin’.”

“What set him off?”

“Bill collector, probably,” one of the other girls said. Howie explained that Wong Daddy was known for his expensive womanizing and was often the target of collection agencies. Av was rapidly concluding that he’d been assigned to the department’s loony bin. Wong was audibly kicking a trash can around the squad room now. Then a tall shadow flitted by in the hallway headed in the direction of the squad room.

“That him?” Av asked.

“Yeah. Everything be cool in a minute or so.”

The stomping and the crashing stopped. It was replaced by a loud tirade in that same unknown dialect that went on for thirty seconds before stopping abruptly.

“Miz Brown’s talkin’ him down,” Howie said. “And he will talk and talk and talk until Wong puts his hands over his ears and then that’s the end of it. Then Brown will talk some more.”

“We need to go see Precious,” Av said. “Tell her what we found out up on Connecticut Avenue.”

“Not quite yet, pardner,” Howie said, helping himself to some coffee from the machine. “We got way too many loose ends. That lady has a hate-on for loose ends.”

“This whole thing is a loose end,” Av pointed out. It was still quiet in the squad room. The secretaries were tiptoeing back to the admin office.

“Exactly,” Howie said. “Ain’t no point in going in there and bothering Precious when we can’t answer a single one of all the questions you know she’s gonna ask. We gotta do some more detecting and shit.”

They went down to the squad room. Detective Brown was sitting on the corner of Wong Daddy’s desk, talking urgently in a low voice. Wong Daddy was in his chair, staring at nothing but still making low growling sounds in his throat. A badly dented metal trash can lay against one wall and Wong Daddy’s in-basket was flattened into a metal pancake. Av wondered again what he’d gotten himself into.

“This has federal LE all over it, you know,” Av said the next morning. “Black SUVs, the Bistro’s owner going for a ride…”

“If any of that’s true,” Howie pointed out.

“There is that,” Av said, having been lied to by witnesses only about a million times.

He went to see if he could push OCME on the autopsy while Howie tried the two phone numbers again. He then ran a reverse directory to see where the home number was located. A secretary came in and announced that Precious wanted to see them. He gave Howie the high sign and they went to her office. Av told her what they had so far, which didn’t take very long. He finished up by beginning to lay out what he proposed to do next, but Precious interrupted him.

“You keep talking about this incident like it’s a case that needs solving,” she said. “That’s not what we do here, Detective. You’re forgetting the mission of ILB.”

Av frowned. “But—”

“No buts, Detective,” she said. “You’re not homicide police anymore, remember? Our mission is to move a hairball like this somewhere else. You and Mau-Mau go figure out the logical destination, and then we’ll go from there. Now, out.”

Outside her office, Howie and Av tried to figure out what to do next. Av was getting tired of being told to not do his job.

“If we can find out who took brother Jacques and where,” Howie said, “then I’d say that’s where this case needs to go. Maybe there’s some connection between black SUVs and what happened to that civil serpent.”

“We still don’t know what, if anything, killed that guy,” Av pointed out. “If he just up and died, then there’s no ‘case’ to begin with.”

“Who takes it from there, then?” Howie asked.

“Who’s got the remains?” Av said.

“OCME.”

“Sounds like OCME’s problem, then,” Av said.

Howie grinned. “Now you talkin’ like an old hand at the Briar Patch,” he said, proudly.

“Hell with this goat-rope,” Av said. “I’m going to the gym, burn off that greaseburger I ate yesterday.”

When Av got back from his workout there was a call-me from OCME. He called. Apparently they had gone ahead with the autopsy after all.

“On your John Doe,” the pathologist said. “We got nothing specific for a cause of death. Heart stopped, lungs stopped, brain stopped. If he’d had a big burn mark anywhere I’d postulate that he’d been electrocuted. He was overweight, had Lucky Strike lungs, a fatty heart, and a lumpy liver, but: there are no indications that any of those organs precipitated death. Did he eat anything at the scene?”

“According to the restaurant people, he sat down, had one little sip of wine, said he felt cold, then went down. And it wasn’t the wine because apparently his lady friend had a glass with no ill effects.”

“Oka-a-y,” the doctor said. “We’ve sent a bunch of blood and other bodily fluids off for further analysis. Now: we don’t have a cause of death, but for manner of death, I want to keep this one open. This may not have been death by natural causes.”

“Whoa — really?”

“I asked for one test right away once I examined all the major organs. It’s a test for sodium levels in the brain cells. Came back abnormally high. If the brain-blood barrier is letting sodium through at those levels, it’s symptomatic of poisoning. We’ll know more in a week or three. Now, back to disposition of remains?”

“Don’t you have to wait for all your tests?”

“Nope. We have all the tissue we need, and this is D.C.: we’re short for space. The court order said John Doe, and I get that, but I seem to remember a name?”

“I was gonna ask you about that, Doc,” Av said. “How—”

“Detective?” the pathologist said. “I won’t ask you why the court order said John Doe and you won’t ask me why the name went astray, okay? Trust me, it’ll be better for everybody that way. Now: any family?”

“There is, and they’ve been notified,” Av said. “But that’s kind of our problem — that’s as far as we can take it.” He gave the doc a short description of ILB and its function within MPD. As in, this isn’t our problem anymore. He waited. It was worth a try.

“Lovely,” the doc said, patiently. “But I still need disposition orders.”

“Well, he was DHS — maybe dump the remains on their doorstep?”

“There are days I’d like to do just that,” the doc laughed. “But, look, you’re the guys who got the court order; help us out here.”

“Lemme see if I can get the Second District homicide people into it,” Av said, with a lot more confidence than he felt. He hung up and told Howie what was going on. Howie pointed out that they were supposed to move cases out of Metro PD, not sideways. On the other hand, he admitted, if they had a possible homicide in the Second’s patch, then maybe they had no choice here.

“We’d better clear that with Precious,” Howie said.

Av’s desk intercom buzzed. “Lieutenant on one for you, Detective,” the secretary said.

Av mouthed the word “Precious” to Howie and poised his finger over the line one button. Howie did the same on his desk and they punched in and picked up together.

“Yes, ma’am?” Av said.

“Where are we on that Connecticut Avenue mystery?”

Av relayed what the OCME pathologist had had to say, and that he was about to contact the homicide desk in Second District. He explained why.

“They’re gonna push back on that noise, Detective, especially when they hear the victim was DHS. That would imply Bureau responsibility.”

There’s an echo in here, Av thought: that’s what I wanted to do in the first place. “Sounds good to me, Lieutenant. Guy’s a federal SES in the homeland security business. The Feebs just about have to take it.”

“The Bureau is the G, Detective. The G doesn’t have to do anything, less it wants to. But, yeah, I guess it’s about time I try again with the Hooverites. If they agree, I’ll send you two over there for some face time with the first team.”

Both detectives rolled their eyes.

“Mau-Mau, you eavesdropping?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Howie said, with a grin.

“You get a proper suit on before you go consorting with Bureau people,” she ordered. “They get one look at you, they’ll be calling up their reaction force.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Howie said.

“I’ll get back to you,” Precious said.

When they’d hung up, Av noted that Precious didn’t miss much. Howie laughed.

“You don’t know the half of it,” he said. “She stops in the secretaries’ office coupla times a day and reads through all the message forms. She already knew we’d had a call-me from OCME.”

“You gonna ditch the wig?” Av asked. “Look funny with a suit.”

“Hell, no,” Howie said.

Precious called them back into her office ten minutes later. “Bureau Metro Liaison desk says they don’t know what we’re talking about, refused to confirm that Ellen Whiting is a special agent or even a Bureau employee, whose black SUVs went where, or why they should care about yet another dead John Doe in the District.”

“You told them John Doe?” Av asked. “But we know his name. And we know where he worked.”

“First call,” Precious said. “You never give everything away on the first call, Detective. Now: the ME says it’s possibly poisoning?”

“Inconclusive, awaiting further tests,” Av said. “But: gut feel? It’s hinky and that doc knew McGavin’s name, but would not tell me why he’d been posted as a John Doe. So: what the hell’s going on here, please, ma’am?”

“One of those vast right-wing conspiracies is what this is,” Precious said. “Okay: we’re gonna do what any good bureaucrat does in this situation: we’re gonna sit on this one for now. I think I need to talk to somebody upstairs.”

“Sit on it?”

“Best thing is for us to go into a holding pattern here until the ME pronounces, one way or another. He says natural causes, we’re done. Release the remains to the wife. He says homicide…”

“Yeah?”

“Shit, I don’t know,” she said. “In the meantime, you guys leave it alone.” Her phone rang. She pointed them to the door. They went back to the squad room.

“This is so bogus,” Av muttered.

“No, it isn’t,” Howie said. “This is ILB. We in the tarbaby biz. This is what they look like.”

“Yeah, okay,” Av said. “But some other agency has to be mixed up in this.” Then he remembered the four guys he’d encountered on his morning run. He told Howie about that.

Howie stopped short in the hallway. “And this happened, when? Partner?” he said.

“Yeah, yeah, I should have said something. But: it was so out-there, you know? Like my imagination kinda thing.”

“’Cept for those sunglasses,” Howie pointed out. “You keep ’em, by any chance?”

Av went to his desk and pulled out the glasses.

“Piece’a shit Chinese knockoffs,” Howie said, eyeing the offending glasses. “Low-end Walmart, at best. Nobody in federal LE would actually wear this shit.”

“Exactly,” Av said. “So why should I take this seriously?”

“Who spikes a pair of sunglasses on somebody’s fence, huh? Tell me that, my man.”

“Somebody who found them on the path. My fence was the closest place to put ’em,” Av said.

“Except,” Howie said.

“Yeah, well, they are kinda bent in half.”

“Uh-huh,” Howie said. “How’d you feel, those guys blowin’ past you close enough for you to smell ’em?”

“Well,” Av said.

“There you go,” Howie said. “Your Spidey sense ticklin’ the back of your neck when those dudes were closing in on you?”

Av nodded.

“Okay, then,” Howie said. “Crew gotta do something about this. You runnin’ again tomorrow morning?”

“Well, yeah.” Av knew very well what Howie thought about running for exercise, or, for that matter, any other form of exercise. The only exercise Howie was into involved getting lunch. “You wanna come along?” he asked, innocently.

“Hell no,” Howie said. “But I got me a plan. Those dudes like four on one, we’ll let ’em see what that feels like. Get Wong into it. He loves this kinda shit.”

Gee, Av thought, remembering the scene this morning. What could possibly go wrong with that idea?

The next morning, Av warmed up outside the building just before sunrise. It was another cool, clear morning, Washington at its very best in the early fall. There was already a grunch of devoted runners headed up the narrow towpath toward the next up-and-over.

“Knock, knock,” a female voice chirped. He looked around. It was Rue Waltham, the lovely rooftop visitor from the other day. She was decked out in running gear, practical and yet just the least bit sexy. It was those filmy white running shorts, he decided. Looked more like panties. She had a small fanny pack Velcro’ed to the small of her back. She grinned when she caught him checking her out.

“Hey, there,” he said. “Ready to try out for the C & O relays?”

She gave him a brilliant smile, and, for just a moment, his rule about getting close to the ladies wobbled a bit. “Try’s the operative word,” she said. “If I hold you back, let me know and get on down the road.”

“It’s not a race,” he said. “Let’s just enjoy the morning. You warm up already?”

“No, but it won’t take a minute,” she said. She then proceeded to stretch and bend, and then bend and twist some more. Av continued through his own warm-up motions while trying not to stare. Had to admit: the young lady had developed a lovely procedure. He grinned when a passing runner bounced into a hedge as he trotted by, gawking. Yeah, dude, he thought. She is pretty, isn’t she.

“Okay,” she said a few minutes later. “Ready if you are.”

They headed up the towpath at a leisurely jog. She ran alongside to his left and appeared to be going at an enjoyable pace. She was fit, he decided after five minutes, with no visible breathing problems. He relaxed. He’d been afraid she might be trying for something she couldn’t really do, but it was evident that she actually was a runner. The morning was glorious, the air clear and smog-free, the towpath traffic light as they jogged in place while waiting to cross the streets. While they were waiting at the second bridge, he heard Rue squeak in surprise. He looked over, saw her staring at something in front of them, and then he saw it, too. “It” was a man’s face looking back at them through the driver’s-side window of a black Mercedes that was stuck in traffic across from them. He was wearing a red ball cap, and there was something really wrong with his face, and with his left eye in particular, which made it impossible to tell how old he was, but that left eye reminded Av of a snake’s eyes. Rue looked away, aware that she was being rude, and then the traffic edged forward, creating a gap through which they quickly crossed the street and then went back down to the towpath.

“Jeez,” he heard her say, and he grunted something in reply. Some weirdo wearing a Halloween mask, right there in broad daylight. They finally jogged out of the urban part of Georgetown and into the park. It was shaping up to be a glorious day; even the canal water still looked better than usual, with no visible floating bodies. He’d decided not to talk: he could maintain this pace for miles and hold a conversation, but he wasn’t yet sure about her.

Once they cleared the downtown area he asked if she was ready to kick it up a bit. She nodded, and they went to work. For the next three miles he concentrated on his own pace and breathing while not paying much attention to her. She’d told him to keep on going if she faltered, but she didn’t. At four miles, near Chain Bridge, he slacked off. He looked over at Rue. She was breathing much harder now, and her face and skin were flushed. She looked back at him and nodded, but obviously had no breath for conversation. He slowed to the jog pace for the next half-mile, watching her out of the corner of his eye as her color faded and she regained her breath. He looked at his watch.

“Turnaround time,” he announced. “Slow jog back, okay?”

She nodded. As they turned around he caught her scent: a touch of perfume, some serious sweat, and a bare frisson of something else. Female exertion, he decided, or some of those lethal female pheromones. Shields up!

As they headed back he became aware of two runners closing in behind them. He wanted to look back but held himself in check. There were lots of runners out by then. Two more behind him meant nothing. Except: they were gaining, running harder than he and Rue were, their feet pounding harder on the towpath than seemed necessary. A moment later they passed him.

Military again. Those same sunglasses, cropped hair, extreme fitness, and passing a little closer than necessary. He’d felt Rue move in closer to him when they’d gone by. Then he realized the runners were slowing their pace a bit now that they were in front. Extra-long black tees, red shorts today, military-style ball caps. Familiar, he thought. Coincidence? Not fucking likely.

Footsteps behind them again. This time he really did want to look over his shoulder, but his cop sense told him everything he needed to know. It was another box. He touched his right hand to his gun pouch, and then remembered he wasn’t alone this time. He glanced at Rue: she was oblivious, head down, putting one foot in front of the other. He had no idea what these guys intended, if anything, but he wished she wasn’t in the mix just now.

He saw the bridge he’d stopped at with the fake cramp coming up ahead. There was a thick stand of scraggly trees on the river side of the towpath. Now there was no one else around, and that in itself was strange — ten minutes ago there’d been all sorts of foot traffic. All of a sudden it was just the six of them, running almost in formation, at a jog pace. He had the clear sense that both pairs of runners were subtly shortening the box. He casually draped his right hand over the groin pouch, ready to draw. And then from up ahead, at the bridge itself, came a loud: Kiyai!

“Walking now,” he murmured to Rue. “Stay close to me.”

“Wha-at?” she said, looking around.

As they dropped down into a walk, Av took her by the arm and veered to the left, walking over to the side of the towpath closest to the canal. The two guys behind, surprised by his sudden turn, trotted by and then slowed down, while the two up ahead had stopped. Then all four turned to stare at the apparition rising on the towpath.

Wong Daddy stood there just on the other side of the bridge like an ambulatory oak tree, beginning his foot-stomping routine and carrying on in the unknown Asian dialect. He was wearing a size fifty-something judo gi pants, a tent-sized Metro PD sweatshirt, and a black band around his forehead. His fists were clenched and he was amping up the volume while staring wild-eyed at the four runners. Each time he raised his arms to balance the next stomp, his gold shield and holstered gun became visible. The four runners backed up a few steps as they realized Wong Daddy was approaching them with each stomp. He had coarsened his voice and was now sounding like the senior samurai in a Kurosawa movie.

“What is that?” Rue asked, pointing at Wong while sticking to Av like glue. “And who are those guys?”

“’Bout to find out, I think,” Av said, pulling up his T-shirt to expose his own gold shield, and drawing his snub-nose. “Go sit on that bench over there, and if there’s shooting, get into the water.”

“Shooting? What?!”

The four runners were in a close group now, and two of them had their hands under the right side of their own extra-long tees. Then, from behind the approaching madman, came the growl of a siren as a Metro black-and-white came crunching slowly up the towpath, blue lights strobing. When it reached the approaches to the arched bridge, the engine shut down and Miz Brown unlimbered his lanky frame from inside the Crown Vic. He was dressed in a suit and tie, with his gold shield pinned to his left breast pocket.

There was nowhere for the four runners to go except back the way they’d come, and by now Av was standing on the towpath in their way. Miz Brown gave Wong Daddy a tender little pat on his bald pate as he walked by, opening his credentials and asking the four men to identify themselves. Wong Daddy stopped his performance and then joined Miz Brown. When he got to within six feet of the four nervous-looking individuals, he growled something, hunched forward, and then began to sidestep around the group of four, his fingers opening and closing as if they were independently seeking something to squeeze the life out of. Miz Brown stepped into the magic circle, and displayed his credentials more prominently.

“Metro PD, gentlemen,” he said. “ID, please? Preferably before I lose control of my troll here?”

Av could see that the four were considering a bolt, either by rushing Brown, four on one, and taking their chances with Av’s .38, or even executing a scrambling detour down the heavily wooded hillside toward the banks of the Potomac. He heard a noise behind him and turned to find Howie, also in a suit and minus the dreads wig, standing with his coat back and his right hand on his hip-holstered weapon. Traffic up on Canal Street was slowing as people caught sight of the weird tableau down on the towpath. The four guys looked positively worried now, and then two more black-and-whites hove into view behind Miz Brown’s car. Four uniforms got out and spread themselves along the towpath.

That seemed to do it for the four unsubs. The oldest-looking one of them reached down and lifted the hem of his tee, revealing his own gold badge pinned to his waistband. The other three followed suit. Their tees were plenty big enough to accommodate holstered weapons, but no one appeared to be reaching.

“We’re FPS,” the man said. “Our creds are in the office.”

“FPS?” Miz Brown asked, looking puzzled. “What you doin’ out here in a national park, harassing a Metro police detective?”

“We’re exercising,” the man said. “We’re not harassing anyone.”

Av put away his weapon. “You lose these the other day, FPS?” he called, and pitched the cheap wraparounds at the man’s feet.

The man looked down, then shrugged. Miz Brown took a deep breath and launched into what Howie called one of his waterfall monologues. Howie had eased up on his shooting stance and was now lighting up a cigarette while watching Brown envelop the four guys in a perfect cloud of bullshit. He winked at Av.

Av, realizing Miz Brown was in full cry, backed away and walked over to where Rue Waltham was huddled on a park bench. To his surprise, she was looking more interested in the little drama than scared.

“Relax,” he told her, quietly. “They’re federal cops, not muggers; some kind of misunderstanding here, apparently. We can go now.”

He took her arm gently and they walked by the four runners, bookended now by Wong Daddy, who was deep-breathing while still muttering and staring fixedly at the smallest of the runners, and Miz Brown, who was lecturing the four men on the rules of interagency procedure within the District of Columbia. Once they cleared the scene on the other side of the bridge, Av suggested they jog back from here. Rue seemed only too willing. The uniforms stared curiously at the two of them as they trotted by.

“Who were all those people?” she asked.

“The four guys say they’re Federal Protective Service. You know, the uniforms you see on federal properties, working front-gate security and the X-ray machines inside the lobby?”

“And they were interested in you?”

“Seemed to be,” Av said. “Saw them days ago. Same deal; they boxed me in while I was running. Didn’t do or say anything, just let me know they were there, and that they could have done something if they’d wanted to.”

“Did you do something to a federal building?”

“Not that I know of, but, trust me, those four guys will soon be just dying to tell Detective Sergeant Brown what they were out there for.”