Capitol murder

Chapter Forty-six

A driving rain pelted Ron Tolliver when he walked through the door of the detention center. He flipped up the hood of the sweatshirt and turned up the collar of the jacket Bobby Schatz had purchased for him. Then he checked the street for a tail. He couldn’t pick out anyone suspicious, but he was certain that someone was following him.

Tolliver thought about his next move. He had money, a gun, and false ID stashed at a pawnshop that was owned by a shell corporation controlled by Afridi. Tolliver took a bus across town, then walked a circuitous path to shake the people he was certain were tracking him. He had very little confidence that he would get to the pawnshop undetected, but he had no choice.

The shop was in a section of D.C. where a white man looked out of place, so Tolliver kept his hood up and his hands in his pockets. A bell rang when he entered the store. The owner, an elderly black man with salt-and-pepper hair, dressed in a flannel shirt, a threadbare sweater, and brown corduroy pants, looked up from a stack of paperwork.

“I need my stuff and a disposable cell phone,” Tolliver said.

“Are you crazy? You should have called. I’ll have every fed in D.C. in here as soon as you leave.”

“I need my stuff, now.”

The proprietor hesitated, then went into the back. When he came out, he was carrying a gym bag. He shoved it across the counter.

“Now get out,” he said.

Tolliver unzipped the bag and checked the contents. Then he left without another word and took evasive action until he arrived at a cheap hotel ten blocks from the pawnshop, where whores rented by the hour and winos occupied the lobby. On the way, he picked up two sandwiches, several bags of chips, and a few bottles of water at a convenience store.

Tolliver registered under a false name and paid in cash for two days. Then he paid the desk clerk $100 to forget he’d registered. When he opened the door to his room, the odors left behind by the previous occupant made him gag. Tolliver didn’t bother to unpack. He threw his gym bag on a bed with a stained sheet that covered a mattress with sagging springs that had conceded the fight with gravity a long time ago.

Tolliver pulled a chair over to the room’s only window and looked at the brick wall of the building across the way. The sun set. Tolliver ate one of the tasteless sandwiches. He felt completely lost for a while. Then his spirits rose. This was the way he’d felt in Afghanistan when his team had been wiped out. His head wound looked ghastly, and he’d faked death by lying perfectly still until night fell and the last of the Taliban fighters left the battlefield. When he was finally alone and had time to think, he’d been overwhelmed by depression. He’d doubted the possibility of surviving in this hostile wasteland without food or water. But he had survived. His situation was different now. He was surrounded by enemies, as he had been in the mountains of Afghanistan, but he had a way out. Tolliver took the cell phone out of the gym bag and called Imran Afridi.

I mran Afridi was planning to return to Pakistan as soon as Mustapha told him what he had learned from Senator Carson. He was telling the pilot of his private jet to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice when another cell phone rang. It was the phone with the number he had given Ronald Tolliver to call in an emergency, but Tolliver was in jail. How would he get a cell phone? Could this be a trap?

The phone rang twice more, and Afridi’s curiosity overcame his sense of caution.

“Yes?” he said.

“It’s me.” Afridi recognized the voice instantly. “The prosecutor screwed up so they had to release me. You have to get me out of the country.”

“You must have a wrong number,” Afridi said, certain now that he was being set up.

“I know you’re worried that someone is listening in, but I haven’t been turned, and I am out. Meet me in two hours at the last place we met, and I’ll explain.”

Tolliver cut the connection. Afridi sank onto a chair. His stomach was churning. Tolliver was not in jail. A man arrested for attempted mass murder was walking the streets, a free man. How did such a thing happen? The answer was simple: it didn’t. Prosecutors did not screw up in a situation like this unless the screwup was intentional, unless the prosecutor wanted an informant on the street as part of a setup. This was how the heads of drug cartels were brought low. A little fish was arrested and promised a deal that would lead to dismissal of his case. Then the little fish hooked a bigger fish, and so on.

A great weight fell from Afridi’s shoulders. He smiled. The mystery had been solved. Ron Tolliver was the traitor, and he would pay.

Afridi summoned his head of security and told him to take some men to the C and O Canal.