Cold Frame

NINE

That night Av picked up Chinese on the way home. He considered giving the remains of the second bottle of red a second chance and decided to go with beer instead. It was dropping into the lower fifties, so after a standup dinner at the kitchen counter, he lit up the woodstove with the remnants of last year’s wood, reminding himself to lay in a supply for the coming winter. He’d shifted into jeans and a real shirt in deference to the cooler weather. As he watched the sunset from the loft, he wondered about that OCME report. His night visitor had promised that there would be no report, and yet …

Moreover, she’d known all about his suspension and the Briar Patch. And his aversion to getting deeply involved with women. How had she known that? He’d said it to — his curvy blond tenant, Rue Waltham. Was she a player? With that hair? No way. So maybe the Feebs had bugged his place?

You’re getting paranoid, he told himself. But, then again, he reminded himself, even paranoids have enemies. Well: why not find out?

“Hey,” he said, speaking to the ceiling in a louder than usual voice. “Fairy Godmother: I think we need to talk again. We did get a report from the medical examiner. He’s implying somebody poisoned McGavin with a plant. We’re thinking we have to call in the Bureau lab. That what you want?”

He waited for the phone to ring. Nothing happened. He sat down and flipped on the TV.

“Knock-knock,” a female voice called from the rooftop stairway. “Sergeant Smith?”

He muted the wide-screen, got up and looked up the stairwell. Speak of the devil. Rue Waltham was tiptoeing down the stairs in her stocking feet, a pair of fancy party shoes in one hand. She looked as if she’d been out somewhere besides the office.

“I’m so sorry to bother you again,” she said. “I’ve locked myself out. Can you get me into my apartment?”

“Sure,” he said. “I have master keys somewhere. You do the fire escape again?”

“’Fraid so,” she said, showing rust-colored palms. “I looked for an intercom or something…”

“Yeah, I had one of those until the salesmen found it. Hang on a minute.”

He went to his bedroom to the gun safe, opened it, and removed the master key collection, found the one for the apartment on the second floor, and came back out to the living room. Rue was standing there taking it all in.

“This is lovely,” she said. “You kept the original walls exposed and everything.”

“My uncle did all that before he left it to me,” Av said. “Here. This should do it. Drop it in my mailbox in the lobby when you go out tomorrow.”

“Thanks so much,” she said, slipping her shoes back on while holding on to the telephone stand near the couch. “I found a running group by the way.”

“No more adventures on the towpath, then?”

She grinned. “That was something,” she said. “And that one guy — is he Samoan?”

“Nobody knows,” Av said, walking her to his front door. “And nobody asks.”

She thanked him again, and he locked the door behind her, leaving a faint hint of perfume in the air. She was pretty, he thought, even if she was a lawyer. He wondered where she worked. Then he switched on the wide-screen, cracked another beer, and started channel surfing. He turned in at eleven, half expecting another visitation from his fairy godmother. It didn’t happen. For some reason, he was mildly disappointed. He compared Rue to Ellen Whiting. No comparison, he thought. None whatsoever.

The next morning he did his usual warm-up out front. Rue Waltham was not in evidence. Still a little Wong-averse, probably. He took off on his usual route up the towpath, gearing up to some serious running sooner than he usually did, having screwed off for the past few days. He put some effort into it, and, golly gee, it hurt. He put some more effort into it and finally achieved that endorphin-saturated state where it hurt but it didn’t. The Marines always said that pain is the sign of weakness leaving the body. Sure it is, along with the ability to walk afterward. Then it did start to hurt, no shit, and he slowed, having covered, based on the surroundings, four clean, hot miles. He dropped down into a jog, and then reversed course back toward Georgetown.

He’d gone half a mile when he heard what sounded like a whole squad of runners behind him, a lot of feet pounding flat-footed on the hard dirt of the towpath. Pretty much in unison.

Aw, shit, he thought. They’re back.

They were, but not in the way he imagined. Two guys passed him, two more fell in beside him, and then a familiar voice said from right behind him: “You wanted to talk?”

He looked over his shoulder. Gone was the unisex business suit from the previous evening. Now she was wearing one of those iron-cupped halter tops that full-breasted female runners wore to keep from breaking their collarbones. A taut and well-muscled abdomen topped some tasteful white nylon running shorts and two exceptional legs.

“Damn,” he said. “It’s a girl.”

She rolled her eyes. She was matching his pace with ease, not even breaking a flush. Probably hadn’t just done four miles, though, he thought.

“You look a little winded,” she said. “Why don’t we slow it to a fast walk and you can tell me what’s on your mind.”

He said okay. They slowed, and the platoon of escorts backed away. He then told her that ILB was going to turn the OCME report over to the Second District homicide squad. He suggested that she run a little interference with the Bureau instead, and then he’d convince Precious to hand it over to them instead of opening a case within MPD.

She looked sideways at him. “And you’re suggesting we do this why, exactly?”

“I owe you one,” he said. “You are Bureau, right?”

She looked away and then nodded.

“Then I would think you’d want to keep this particular tarbaby in federal channels,” he pointed out.

“What exactly did the ME come up with?” she asked.

“Aconitine poisoning,” Av said. “Some evil mung that’s synthesized by the monkshood plant. Does a number on brain and large muscle cells; floods ’em with calcium and sodium. All natural substances, but apparently bad shit.”

“Does the report say how he came to consume aconitine?”

“Nope,” Av said. “But it did say they were sending some more tissue samples to the Big Lab in the sky, which might give you the opening you need to get the Bureau to take my tarbaby. Please.”

She smiled. “I hardly need an opening to the Bureau, Detective,” she said. “But I’ll consider what you’re suggesting. Can you stall the report in-house for a day or so?”

“I can, as long as there is a definite prospect of shopping it out of the house,” he said. “Means I may have to tell my boss about you and your squad of special agents here.”

“We’ll survive,” she said.

“And I’d appreciate the bugs coming out of my loft,” he said. “Seeing as this whole deal will soon be over, right?”

“But then how will you summon your fairy godmother?” she asked, lightly.

“Turn in place three times in my special slippers and clap my hands?”

She laughed out loud at that, and then took off at a respectable pace, followed immediately by her posse of athletic specials. Yeah, he thought, watching her go. If the platinum blonde downstairs was streetable, this one was downright sexy. And dangerous, he reminded himself, sternly. Still, he appreciated the eye candy.

By the time he got to the office and grabbed his first cup of coffee, there were two men in severe-looking suits with visitors’ badges waiting in the conference room to speak to him. Beauroids, he thought immediately.

Howie asked him what he’d done now. Av dug out the OCME report from the pile of papers on his desk and asked Howie if he could make a quick copy of it, and then bring the original into the conference room.

“You shoppin’ this to the Bureau?” Howie asked.

“If they’re willing to take it and the creeks don’t rise,” Av said. “Remember the mission.”

“Those hoods are downright ugly,” Wong commented.

“They get paid extra for that,” Howie said, as he unstapled the OCME report. Then he pointed his chin at Av. “Newbie’s playin’ with fire in there.”

“I can stomp if it would help,” Wong offered. Av grinned and went to the conference room. The two special agents introduced themselves as being from the violent crime division of the Washington Field Office. “I’m Special Agent Jim Walker,” the taller one said. “This is Special Agent Mike Freer.”

Av asked if they needed coffee. Both demurred. Av sat down and asked how he could help them.

“We’re investigating the death of one Francis X. McGavin of the DHS at a French restaurant up on Connecticut Avenue called Bistro Nord. We understand from Lieutenant Johnson that you did a preliminary investigation into the circumstances?”

“You’re shitting me, right?” Av asked.

The two agents appeared to be taken aback. “Why, um, no,” Walker said. “Why would you say that?”

“Sorry,” Av said. “We handle a lot of cases that seem to straddle the MPD-federal LE divide here.” He recounted Precious’s initial efforts to move the case to the Bureau, and that they had rejected it due to some unspecified Bureau involvement. “I’ve probably confused this with something else. Why don’t you tell me what you got, and how I can help you?”

The agents relaxed a bit. Special Agent Freer laid it out. “We got a call from the Patient Affairs office at MedStar,” he said. “Claiming they had a John Doe DOA who might be from the DHS. They said OCME had been in touch and had asked about notification. They were notifying us because the DOA might have worked for a federal agency. When we pulled the string at Pathology, they said the DOA had been moved to the District’s OCME. We followed up on that, where we discovered the John Doe’s identity was McGavin and that ILB was running the case.”

Av followed the alphabet soup carefully. He told them that OCME had performed an autopsy and that McGavin’s family lawyer had claimed the body. He hesitated for a moment, and then said he had something odd to share with them, but he wasn’t sure what it meant. He described his interaction with the towpath cowboys, his midnight visitation from the fairy godmother, and their subsequent meeting this morning out on the towpath.

“This woman says she’s Bureau CT?”

“No, not exactly.”

“What’s her name?” Freer asked.

“Ellen Whiting?” Av said.

“Aw, fuck.” Walker sighed.

Av had to laugh. “My sentiments exactly, Special Agents. Look: I’m just a lowly Metro homicide dick, recently demoted to what we fondly call the Briar Patch. I’m beginning to think I’ve stumbled into something way above my pay grade, and I would be most appreciative if my Bureau would take this tarbaby off my hands.” He paused, as if looking for the report. “To which purpose, I happen to have the OCME report on what it was that killed said Francis McGavin. That report constitutes just about the entirety of our case file, which, like I said, I would be more than happy to hand over to the loving arms of any interested federal LE organization, actually.”

“What did kill him?” Walker asked.

“Aconitine?” Av said.

The two agents looked at each other blankly.

“It’s a plant, or it comes from a plant. Bad shit, stops all the major organs that do their jobs by expanding and contracting, like the lungs or the heart.”

Freer and Walker looked at each other meaningfully. Then Howie showed up in the doorway to the conference room with folder in hand.

“Can I take that as a yes, Special Agents?” Av asked hopefully, indicating to Howie that he should hand over the folder.

“Is your lieutenant available, Detective?” Walker asked, finally.

Dammit, Av thought. They hadn’t said yes.

Howie and Wong Daddy treated Av to lunch at one of the local cop bars near the Indiana Avenue headquarters building. They were celebrating the new guy’s first successful tarbaby launch. Miz Brown hadn’t come along. Howie said Brown was getting into religion and no longer approved of going to bars. The two special agents had closeted with Precious, and then the three of them had gone to see the people in the MPD’s Criminal Investigations Division, OCME folder in hand.

“But is it really gone?” Av asked. “I mean, I now understand why you call them tarbabies — that mess just kept sticking to one part of me or another.”

The other two laughed. “Happens all the time, bro,” Howie said. “But you heard what Precious said: that matter has gone to its well-deserved reward — at the Bureau.”

“Her saying it’s over and done with didn’t have much effect the first coupla times,” Av pointed out.

“This time the Beauroids left paper,” Howie said. “An official mez-morandum, no less. I quote: ‘All materials relevant to the case of the John Doe slash McGavin death at Bistro Nord are to be turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation forthwith.’ No further action on our part is desired or required. Here endeth the lesson.”

“Interesting that they seemed to recognize my fairy godmother and her connection to counterterrorism,” Av said. “And yet, they didn’t seem to know anything about aconitine.”

“Did you?” Howie said. “Besides, who cares? We got three more tarbabies in this morning while you were pasting that one onto the Bureau.”

“Three?” Av said.

“Endless supply out there,” Wong said. “You gonna eat those fries?”

Av changed when he got home that afternoon, went up to the roof, and worked out with his home weight set for a while. He’d decided he was going to enjoy the Briar Patch, if only for the eccentric company. With any luck, unknown federal authorities were no longer bugging his loft and he wouldn’t have to consort with his fairy godmother anymore. Dragon lady was more like it, he thought. That said, she certainly did exude that certain something, especially when going in the away direction. But: what the fuck? Ellen Whiting. Nobody by that name works here, they’d said. No, wait — they’d simply ducked the question, hadn’t they? And yet, the two special agents had practically winced when they heard the name.

He went down to the loft after his workout and took a shower. He was thinking about what to do about dinner when the phone rang. His landline number was listed and he got an average number of telemarketer calls right about this time of the evening. He looked at the caller ID, which read: fairy godmother.

Oka-a-y, he thought; that’s pretty clever. He picked up the phone. “Do you know that the Federal Bureau of really serious Investigation calls you: oh, fuck?” he asked.

“In their dreams,” she said.

“Well, yeah, I get that,” he said.

“I feel like some serious red meat for dinner,” she said. “Interested in joining me?”

“That would be a yes,” he said. “Just as long as I’m not the red meat in question.”

“Poor baby,” she said. “Going through life like that. But, no, I was thinking a nice rare steak at Henninger’s up on M Street.”

“Hope you’re buying, Fairy Godmother.”

“I am and I’ll make it worth your while, too. The reservation is for seven. In your name. I’ll be there about seven-thirty, so I can make an entrance.”

“Can’t hardly wait,” he said.

“And let’s have done with the ‘fairy godmother’ bullshit. How about just plain CT?”

“‘Fairy godmother’ sounded less dangerous,” he said.

“Listen to you.”

She did indeed make an entrance. The restaurant was getting noisy as it filled with the typical mix of Washington young professionals, twice as many women as men, and absolutely everyone on the make in one way or another. Av had arrived as instructed and was working on one of the craft beers made right there on the premises. She’d scored a corner four-top that allowed him to take the gunfighter’s seat and observe the show. The young women were all trying to look bored and interested at the same time, while the men postured with each other, dropping acronyms and famous Capitol Hill names. There were a few White House staffers at the bar, identifiable by the tops of their security badges, which were adroitly positioned in suit coat pockets to just barely show the White House logo. All part of the game, he thought. A White House badge beat a Justice Department badge, hands down. Like that.

CT arrived at seven-thirty, decked out in a knee-length, shimmering white dress clingingly cut to flatter her athletic figure while not being starlet ridiculous. Her hair was done in a Grecian curl and she was now a blonde. She wore what looked like a single emerald pendant at her throat. She looked straight at him as she moved confidently past the crowd near the bar, which parted like the proverbial Red Sea, men losing their trains of thought and suspending conversation, the ladies shooting daggers at this beauty who cut through them like a hot knife through butter. The fact that she was probably twice their age probably made it hurt even more. Av stood up as she approached the table.

He, himself, had cleaned up a bit for the occasion, wearing a navy blue sport jacket over khakis and a white, long-sleeved shirt. The coat had been custom cut to make room for both his enlarged shoulders and the .40 caliber Glock model 27 holstered just above his left hip. He discovered that she actually had green, not blue eyes, matching that softly glowing stone at her throat. He smiled as she approached the table, letting his eyes roam freely, as she had undoubtedly intended.

“Entrance definitely achieved,” he said, as a waiter hurried over to pull back her chair.

“But still dangerous?” she asked teasingly as she sat down.

“Upgraded to lethal, I think,” he said. “Have I got the appropriate deer-in-the-headlights look?”

“Not yet,” she said, “but you will.” She turned to the waiter. “Stoli Elit, double, straight up, and ice-wrapped, please.”

Av was shaking his head. “If I tried one of those I’d be babbling on the floor about halfway through,” he said.

She shrugged delicately. “Comes with age,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “The tolerance for alcohol, that is. I don’t often drink, but when I do, I want to feel the hit.”

“I have at least one beer every night,” he said. “Probably just habit. Did a whole bottle of red the other night, which schooled me not to ever do that again.”

The waiter arrived with her cocktail, which was served in a double-walled martini glass that surrounded the liquor with an ice collar. He presented menus, but she waved them off. “Bring me a three-inch-thick, certified Angus rib eye,” she said. “Apache rare, with half a baked potato, fully loaded, and a small Caesar on the side.”

The waiter looked to Av. “What she said,” Av told him. He thanked them and hurried off. “I like my beef rare,” he said. “But what’s Apache rare?”

“They keep a small charcoal grill going back there,” she said. “They take a room-temperature steak, small but cut really thick, and slather it with herbed garlic oil and then pound rock salt onto both sides. They take a bellows to the coals, blow off all the ash, and then drop the steak directly onto the coals. Sear it for three minutes, take it off, bellows again, then flip it for three more minutes. Repeat — six minutes a side total. Comes out with a black, crunchy, salty, and garlicky crust and warm rare inside. Wonderful.”

“Reminds me of the Texas definition of rare,” he said. “Cut off its horns, wipe its ass, and bring it to the table.”

She failed to smile, which is when he realized she was busy doing the Washington room scan, sipping her vodka and looking around the crowded dining room to see if there was anyone truly important here.

Av exhaled. In a game of wits, he was probably way out of his league with this one. That didn’t bother him too much; the eye candy was compensation enough. He also knew this wasn’t really a social occasion. He had the sense to let her reveal the purpose of the evening in her own sweet time. He did wonder how old she was, but then thought, if she looks like that, what could it matter?

The steaks were indeed amazing. She attacked hers with gusto and there was no more conversation until they both were finished. He’d ordered a glass of red with his; she’d opted for another Elit. When the plates were cleared she sat back and gave him an appraising look.

“What do you think should be done with an American who goes over to the dark side and gives aid and comfort to Islamic terrorists?” she asked, out of nowhere.

“I’m a sworn police officer,” he said. “So, for the record and any pocket recorders: you find him, apprehend him along with a boatload of solid evidence, try him, and put him away for life.”

“That’s it?”

“Well,” he said, “there is always the death penalty, but I happen to think that an injection that makes you sleepy and another one that makes you dead is too easy. I prefer the notion of a slow death by incarceration. You know, living forever behind the razor wire among animals who walk upright, and knowing you will never, ever leave except in a prison body bag which you might have actually sewed together, bound for a grave in the weeds of a prison cemetery, and that, when you do leave, you will have experienced the serial joys of every conceivable sexual orientation, human, bestial, or otherwise.”

She nodded, acknowledging his point. “The problem with that is there is always the chance the bad guy might get off. Look at all those Al Qaeda homeboys still down in Gitmo, and it’s been, what, twelve, thirteen years? And they’re still enjoying their afternoons in the Caribbean sunshine, reading their holy comic book?”

“Sounds like you believe in the vengeance theory of crime and punishment,” he said.

“I lost my brand-new husband in the north tower,” she said. “That’s absolutely what I believe in.”

He wiped the faintly patronizing expression off his face and tried to think of something appropriate to say. He drew a complete blank — what could you say to that?

Then he thought he understood.

“You and your Ray-Ban posse wanted to talk to me about the McGavin case,” he said. “Because you wanted MPD to back out. Because — why? You’re running some kind of a federal vendetta hit squad?”

Her eyebrows rose. “Whatever are you talking about, Detective?” she said with a bright smile, but her eyes were approving. Call me CT, she’d said. But she’d also said her name was Ellen Whiting, which had drawn a sharp reaction from the Bureau agents who’d come to get the OCME report. Different offices? Or was Ellen Whiting a bogus name? He decided to try something.

“That’s why the Bureau guys recognized the name CT,” he said.

Her smile faded. “CT is an acronym, no more, no less,” she said. “Just one more in a town drowning in alphabet soup. CT: counterterrorism. OC: organized crime. C4ISAR: Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance. Now: what the hell is aconitine?”

“Trimethoxy-4-(methoxymethyl) aconitanyl-14-benzoate. It has the chemical formula C34H47NO11.”

She stared at him.

“You asked,” he said, with a grin. “It took me a half hour to memorize that shit, courtesy of Wikipedia. Basically, it’s one plant’s very special way of telling you: I’m not edible. Really, I’m not.”

The restaurant bar scene was going full blast now, and it was getting hard to hear. She’d totally ducked his implied question. “Want to get a coffee somewhere?” he asked.

“No, thanks,” she said. “My turn: you want to get lucky with me?”

His face must have shown his total surprise because she was laughing at him now. Once again he didn’t know what to say. From a physical point of view the answer was clear, but this lady was, well, he wasn’t quite sure what she was. After all, he had rules.

“I apologize for shocking you, Detective,” she said. “I just wanted to see if this all-women-are-dangerous business of yours was just a mildly sophisticated line. I know some women who would immediately make it a project to convince you otherwise, with you smiling all the way to the bedroom.”

“I think all women are dangerous,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because they all come with conditions and, usually, a lot of hidden costs. I’m talking about permanent or semipermanent relationships, Special Agent. Not just a hookup.”

“So marriage, family, children — not on your personal horizon?”

He hesitated. “Not sure, but I tend to think not. For one, I’m a cop. I like being a cop, but being a married cop means you eventually have to choose — being a cop, or being a devoted husband and father. You must know how that usually works out, right?”

“Never got the chance, I guess,” she said. “But, yeah, I’ve seen a fair number of Bureau marriages break up, but by no means all.”

“I figure, why take the chance? I enjoy the company of women, okay? But the cop in me is always wary. I guess I like to see the back of them as much as I like to see the front. That’s just me.”

She nodded her head and raised her glass in a salud. “Know thyself,” she said. “But you’re young and fit. Don’t you ever find yourself experiencing certain — needs?”

“Sure,” he said, and then waited.

“And?”

“I’m not a man who’s ruled by his needs,” he said.

“So let me get this straight,” she said. “If I pushed back my chair a little and discreetly removed all of the various impedimenta I have on underneath this dress, slipped my shoulder straps off, got up and came around the table to straddle you in your chair and pressed my boobs into your face, you’d, what? Call for the check?”

“One way to find out, I suppose,” he said, innocently. “But: they’ll never let us in this restaurant again, and that was a really good steak. Besides, as I remember, you’ve got check duty.”

She laughed out loud. It was a pretty sound, and he saw a couple of men looking his way with unmistakably jealous expressions. Best of all, he hadn’t really answered her question. On the other hand, neither had she. Who the hell was this lady?

They walked outside to the sidewalk on M Street, which was almost as crowded as the restaurant. She told him she’d enjoyed dinner. Then she looked around, almost as if she was checking for surveillance or eavesdroppers.

“Do me a favor?” she said. “In the event that there are any more, um, developments in the McGavin matter, would you give me a call?”

“Sure,” he said. “Except I don’t have your number.”

“Just pick up the phone, dial three ‘fours’ and then your own number. I’ll get back to you.”

“So my place is still bugged? Or at least my phone?”

“Everybody’s phone is bugged these days, Detective,” she said with a smile. “Don’t you read the papers?”

She then flagged down a cab. She got in with a flash of those gorgeous legs, waved good-bye, and then drove away. As the cab merged into traffic he wondered if he’d screwed that up, but then his better sense intervened. If nothing else, she was probably one of the wild ones, and those were precisely the ones to stay away from. The agents this afternoon had recognized her name, and not that CT bullshit, either. Ellen Whiting. Oh, fuck, they’d said. That had to mean something.

He started walking along M Street to get back to his building. Most people on the sidewalk were obviously out for a party night, so he was surprised when he saw two large men in suits get out of a parked black Crown Vic with tinted windows and fairly bristling with antennae to stand right in front of him. They both discreetly opened credentials cases where the letters FBI were clearly displayed. The taller man asked if he’d mind getting in the car.

“That depends,” Av said. “What’s the beef?”

“No beef, Detective Smith,” the agent said. “Man in back wants to have a short conversation.”

Av looked into the backseat, where an older-looking black man, also in a suit, was looking at him expectantly. When he saw Av hesitating, he made a come-on gesture. Av glanced behind him, where two more guys in suits were standing next to yet another government car that hadn’t been there a minute ago. The agent had called him Detective Smith, so, he figured, what the hell. He got into the backseat.

One of the agents outside closed the back door and got into the front. The other went around and got in on the driver’s side. The car pulled out into traffic and went exactly nowhere, evening traffic on Georgetown’s M Street being what it was.

The black man to his left turned in his seat and extended a hand. “I’m Supervisory Special Agent Tyree Miller of the FBI,” he said, pleasantly. “And I’m hoping you and I can have a brief conversation without our having to resort to some kind of, um, official proceedings.”

“I’m Detective Sergeant Ken Smith, Metro PD,” he said. “And if official proceedings are in the offing, we’re not going to have a conversation about anything at all.”

“I understand, Detective,” Tyree said. “Truth be told, we’re not all that interested in you. It’s the woman you just had dinner with who’s attracted our attention. Can you tell me her name?”

“CT,” Av said. Ellen Whiting had paid for a terrific steak. CT would do for now.

“CT?” Miller said. “CT what?”

“That’s it,” Av said. The car was moving now, but still only at about two miles per hour. “She paid me a visit in the middle of the night. I found her sitting in my living room when I got up to tend to a red wine hangover. We talked, well, actually, she talked about a case I was working on. Then she left.”

Miller blinked once, like a large frog. “What case was that, Detective?”

“The case of a Homeland Security civil serpent dying under mysterious circumstances in a French restaurant up on Connecticut Avenue. Name of Francis X. McGavin.”

Tyree sat back and looked out the window for a moment. He didn’t seem all that surprised. “And what was the outcome of your midnight discussion? Or was there a point?”

Av nodded. He told Tyree about the canal towpath incident, the supposed FPS connection, and how he’d been suspended for organizing that, even though one of the other Briar Patch detectives had done the real organizing. The following day all had apparently been forgiven.

“Then two of your people showed up, picked up our case files on the McGavin matter, told us they’d take it from there, and that was that.”

“And when you talked to those two agents, did the name Ellen Whiting come up?”

Aw, shit, Av thought. He nodded.

“Had you heard that name, Ellen Whiting, before, Detective?” Tyree asked.

“Yes,” Av said. “Supposedly she was the woman with McGavin at the restaurant when he died. When we initially tried to shop the case to the Bureau, they declined, saying there was a Bureau angle to the case. We naturally assumed this Ellen Whiting was Bureau.”

The car made a left turn across a lot of traffic, evoking some horns of protest. Neither of the agents up front so much as glanced at the other cars.

“But then this woman who identifies herself as, what was it — CT? — appears in your home in the middle of the night.”

“Right. She says she’s in the counterterrorism business, but did not mention the Bureau. Or the FPS, either.”

“So we’ve supposedly got the Bureau, the Federal Protective Service, and now some eponymous counterterrorism agency as her employer of record. Hence the CT?”

“I suppose,” Av said. “When she called earlier today, that’s what she wanted me to call her — CT. My partners and I’d been calling her my fairy godmother, because of the way all the top-floor heat suddenly evaporated.”

“May I ask what you two talked about tonight?” Tyree asked. “Over steaks, beer, and fancy vodka, very cold?”

So they’d had someone in the restaurant, Av thought. That meant a lot of agents were out tonight on this matter. “Nothing of great significance,” he replied. “She wanted to know my thoughts on what ought to happen to Americans who joined forces with terrorists. She also told me that her brand-new husband had died in the World Trade Center on nine-eleven.”

That seemed to pique Tyree’s interest, and Av thought the agent in the right front seat was writing something in a notebook. “Did you get the impression she was trying to recruit you for something, Detective?” Tyree asked.

Av, surprised, hesitated. Then he thought, what the hell, tell ’em the truth. “I don’t know what to think, Supervisory Special Agent,” he said. “That’s possible. In fact, I asked her if she was running some kind of government hit squad, but she blew that off.”

“So how did the dinner date end?”

“She gave me the impression that she was ready to go somewhere and put a fine finish on the evening,” Av said. “But I declined.”

“She cuts a pretty impressive figure,” Tyree said. “Why’d you decline?”

“She’s a little scary, maybe?” Av said. He wasn’t inclined to share his own personal rules of engagement with these guys just now. “What’s the Bureau’s interest in this woman, if I may ask?”

“If I told you, I’d have to quarantine you, Detective,” Tyree said, but then he smiled. “That was my feeble attempt at a joke.”

“A joke,” Av said. “Fancy that.”

One of the agents up front stifled a snort. Miller ignored it. “I think you can guess from the nature of my questions that we’re very interested in talking to this individual, for a variety of reasons, including her penchant for even hinting that she works for us.”

Av nodded. Impersonating a Bureau special agent was a major crime in the eyes of everyone at the Hoover building. “She never did actually claim that,” he pointed out. “So I guess she probably does not work for the Bureau?”

“We, on the other hand, are worried that she does. Not directly, perhaps, but in some capacity.”

Av was confused. They’d obviously had someone in the restaurant close enough to hear their dinner order. So why hadn’t they just grabbed her up? And this guy was implying that they could not identify this woman as one of their own employees? His BS detector started to hum. Those two agents had surely known that name.

“What directorate do you work for, Mr. Miller?” Av asked.

“Professional Standards.”

Ah, Av thought. That was the Bureau’s name for their internal affairs people. That would explain some of this ambiguity. Or did it?

“So, if she calls me again, you guys want, what, a heads-up?” he asked.

“We’ll probably know before you will, Detective,” Tyree said, pleasantly. “But we would surely appreciate a debrief of whatever happens after that. Here’s my card. Anyone who answers that number can take your report. I believe this is your residence?”

Av looked out the window and saw his building. He nodded. “It is and I will,” he said. “Always glad to help my Bureau.”

“That’s the spirit,” Tyree said as the rear door was opened. “The Bureau is a good friend to have.”

“And the converse is also true,” Av observed.

Tyree smiled again. “Just so, Detective Smith. Good night now.”

Av laughed quietly as the car drove away. Message received, he thought. In a way, he liked the FBI. They came right to the point most of the time. If they said it, fucking believe it. F.B.I.