Cold Frame

ELEVEN

At nine-thirty the next morning, Av called the Second District station and asked for the desk sergeant. He identified himself and then asked for whoever was handling the fatal pedestrian incident in Georgetown last night. A second sergeant picked up, listened to what Av had to say, and asked if he’d come to the district office. Apparently there was some federal interest in the victim, and Av being from ILB and all …

“Aw, shit,” Av announced to the squad room when he hung up. “I think I just grabbed a tarbaby.”

“Good work, my man,” Mau-Mau said, brightly. “That’s what hands’re for, right?”

Av checked out on the board for the Second District. He bummed a ride from street patrol and arrived fifteen minutes later. He went through security and then discovered that he was not the only visitor that morning. The reception area was sporting a contingent of federal agents, along with some suits that Av learned were from the Treasury Department, of all places. The feds were standing around looking annoyed. The two cops at the reception desk were looking worried. Av walked up, handed over his ID, and said he was here to give a witness statement on the pedestrian incident in Georgetown last night, which, according to the morning’s Washington Post, had been a fatality.

The room suddenly went silent. While one of the cops made a hushed call, Av turned around to find every one of the feds staring at him.

“What?” he said.

“You saw it?” one of the suits asked. He looked older than the rest and had an air of authority about him.

“I did,” Av said. “Who are you?”

“You first, Sergeant,” the man said with a demeaning tone of voice.

Av reacted. “I’ll give my statement to the MPD investigator who’s working the incident,” Av said. “You can talk to him when I’m done.”

The man began to get red in the face and Av wondered if maybe he’d been the least bit tactless. Again.

“You listen to me,” the man began, but he was interrupted when the station captain, a large and totally bald black man, came through the doors behind the desk and called for Detective Sergeant Smith.

“Right here,” Av said. The captain nodded and then indicated that Av was to come through the counter doors. He looked around the room at the assembled feds, sniffed, and led Av back into the inner offices.

Av had many questions, but the captain’s bearing indicated that he was probably not in a sharing mood, so he just followed. They went into a conference room, where some station cops, a sergeant in civvies, and a secretary were sitting around a table. There was a TV screen up on the wall, which displayed the reception area. The captain indicated where Av was to sit. He then went to the head of the table.

“I’m Captain Wright,” he said. “I understand you’re ILB?”

“Yes, sir, I am. But I’m not here in that capacity. I witnessed the accident last night.”

“Why didn’t you identify yourself to the officers on the scene?” the captain asked. The other cops were studying their yellow pads.

“They had their hands full with uncooperative traffic, then EMTs, and what looked like a pretty messy scene. I waited until this morning to call and give my statement.”

“Okay,” the captain said. “That’s hardly standard procedure. You should have identified yourself and given your statement right there and then.”

“Yes, sir,” Av said.

“Okay. So: what happened?”

Av described what he’d seen.

“You’re saying this guy got out of the cab and deliberately walked into oncoming traffic?”

Av hesitated. The captain caught it. “What?” he said.

“‘Deliberately’ might be the wrong word. He got out of the cab, which had stopped in the intersection. It took some effort. He was — really fat. He didn’t appear to be scared, just determined. He got out, straightened up, and then walked straight ahead, like — I’m sorry, but some kind of zombie.”

“Zombie.”

“Hands at his sides. Staring straight ahead. Walking like his joints were freezing up. Small steps, but determined. Right until that car hit him. So: what’s the crowd out front all about?”

The captain sat back in his chair. “Your ‘zombie’ was the assistant secretary of the treasury for international trade.”

My zombie, Av thought. Then a sneaky little thought crept up in the back of his mind — the Bistro case. The captain looked as if he was reading Av’s mind. “Isn’t Precious Johnson your boss?” he asked, finally.

Av nodded.

“Guess what?”

“This is going to the Briar Patch?”

The captain smiled, but it was not a warm smile. “You better fucking believe it, Detective Sergeant,” he said. “We don’t do zombies here in the Second.”

“Wow,” Av said. “Can’t wait. Especially with all those happy campers out front.”

The captain smiled again, but it was mostly teeth this time. “Your happy campers now, Sergeant,” he said. “I’m gonna call Precious. My people will show you out the back door. With any luck you can beat that pack of suits back to HQ.”

“I’ll need a ride, then,” Av said. “Sir.”

“You ever seen Al Pacino doing some directing?” Precious asked, looking at the Gang of Four seated in front of her. “You know, where he goes: Cut! Cut! Cut! What the fock was that? What the focking fock was that? You focking fock. How did this dumb fock get onto my set, will somebody focking tell me that?”

Mau-Mau nodded appreciatively. “Thass it — that’s his voice.”

Av was more apprehensive than appreciative. Precious had been looking right at him the whole time. She was still looking at him.

“Um,” he said. He had made it back before the federal posse showed up at HQ, but he had not, apparently, been able to outrun the telephone. Precious had been waiting for his return in the squad room, with the other three inmates already mustered uncomfortably at the conference table.

“Um?” she said, back to her normal voice. “You witnessed a fatal accident last night involving an assistant secretary of the focking treasury, and you went where? Home?”

“It was medium chaos cranking up out there, boss,” Av said. “Cars trying to get around the wreck, intersection traffic going every which way, street cops trying not to puke. They had their hands full. The vic didn’t have an assistant secretary sign on him, and patrol didn’t need a witness right then, they needed a coupla snow shovels for a serious wet cleanup.”

Precious glared at him. Wong Daddy chose that moment to intervene in Av’s defense. “No way Sergeant Smith here coulda known that the blood bag under the Merc was an assistant whatever,” he pointed out.

Mau-Mau lost it when he heard the word “blood bag.” Precious almost was able to control her face but then she snorted.

“Jesus, Wong,” Av said. “Blood bag?”

Wong shrugged. “Big Merc like that, coupla tons, then a Suburban? You’re gonna have hair, teeth, eyeballs, and—”

Precious slammed her hand on the table and yelled something in the unknown dialect. Wong winced and said he was sorry.

“Okay,” Precious said. “Needless to say we have a new and exciting tarbaby to handle. I got a call from Captain Wright in the Second and he said this one was tailor-made for ILB. Especially after he heard Sergeant Smith’s description of the incident. Tell me you didn’t say something about a zombie?”

Av went through it again, and then asked the question that had been bothering him all the way back to the office: this was the second senior government official to die in a bizarre manner in just a couple days. Related?

Precious started shaking her head. “No, not related. Definitely not related. I do not, I repeat, not, need any goddamned conspiracy theory raising its ugly head here in the Briar Patch.”

“But—” Av began.

“No,” Precious interrupted. “Trust me on this: that kinda shit turns tarbabies into tar pits, from which no one ever emerges alive, got it, gang?”

Four heads nodded in unison.

“Good. Now: we’ve got four federales on their way over here as we speak. Bureau, Homeland Security, Treasury, and, for some strange reason, someone from the State Department. Don’t ask — I don’t know. Now: they’ll want an update of whatever MPD can kludge together in one hour. And we, boys and germs, are eager for them to take over the investigation, right? So, get on to the Second, get what you can, and stand by.”

An hour later Av and Mau-Mau escorted the four feds to the visitors’ conference room, where Precious was already standing at the head of the table. Introductions were made all around and then everybody sat down. Precious led off with a quick overview of what ILB was all about, and then handed over to Av, whom she described as a senior detective and an eyewitness to the incident. Mau-Mau smothered a smile at that.

Av described what he’d seen and then added some details from the Second District’s preliminary report. The cabdriver had been questioned and his story pretty much bore out what Av had told them. His passenger suddenly yelled stop, opened the rear door, heaved himself out of the cab, and then proceeded to walk in front of a car.

“Did the driver describe the man’s state prior to the incident?” the Bureau rep asked.

“He did. He said the guy was half in the bag, but not so drunk that he couldn’t tell the driver where he wanted to go, which was to his town house in Foxhall Village, and to comment on what a lovely evening it was. Driver said the guy was no drunker than most of the people he picks up around there. When he yelled stop, the driver thought the guy needed to vomit, so stop he did.”

“Did the driver see any physical indications that he was experiencing some sort of vascular accident?” the Treasury rep asked. “Slurred words, tremors, unsteadiness? I ask because of your comment that he looked like a zombie before he took the final step into traffic?”

“Wish I’d never used that word,” Av said. “But: that’s what he looked like to me. And the driver didn’t mention anything like that.”

“You run into lots of zombies in your work, Sergeant?” the State Department rep asked. He was a large, obviously fit and muscular man in his late forties with a shaved head and a commanding presence about him that fairly shouted military special operations. Av figured him for either CIA or maybe even the Pentagon, but never State Department. And: he didn’t care for the guy’s attitude.

“No,” he said. “Not normally. Although, sometimes, after midnight, you—”

“Sergeant,” Precious barked.

“Right. It’s just possible I was speaking metaphorically?”

The big guy put up his hands in mock surrender.

“Look,” Av continued. “The guy became rigid once he hoisted himself out of the cab, which, by the way, took some effort. When he walked out into traffic it was like he was an automaton: one leg in front of the other, his upper body ramrod straight. He never looked to either side, almost as if he either expected the impact that was coming or had no peripheral vision. It was — horrific. Think small, fat dog rolling around under the back wheels of a bus.”

That image produced a moment of silence. The guy from State then apologized. “I take your point, Sergeant,” he said. “Sorry about the wisecrack. We’ve checked with the restaurant—1789. They confirm he was there with one other person.”

“Expensive place,” Av said.

“Indeed it is,” the State rep said. Av thought for a moment that the guy looked familiar. “The staff said he had dinner with someone called Carl Mandeville, according to the reservation list. They had two bottles of very expensive—$250 a pop — wine, and seemed to have been talking business. No arguments, no sort of scene. Logan asked the restaurant to call him a cab, and then they left together.”

“And who is this Mandeville?” Av asked.

“One of us,” the Homeland Security rep said. Av waited for further explanation, but apparently “us” was all he was going to get.

“We’ve told you what we know, which is pretty basic traffic accident stuff,” Precious said. “You guys gonna take it from here?”

“Absolutely, Lieutenant,” the Bureau rep said. “Consider this matter to be off your radar.”

“Terrific,” Precious said, beaming.

The meeting broke up. Precious closeted with the DHS and the Treasury reps. The State rep approached Av. “Where’s the freak show today?” he asked with just a trace of a smile. That’s when Av recognized him — one of the runners on the towpath.

“Sergeant Bento is in the basement, sharpening his dentures,” Av replied.

The man grinned. “On a grinding wheel, no doubt,” he said. “Appreciate the briefing.”

As he and Av shook hands Av felt a card being palmed into his hand. Once back in the squad room he looked at it. Colonel James Steele, U.S. Marine Corps. Joint Special Operations Command, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. On the back was a handwritten note, done in tiny but precise printing: “Seventy-five. Beer on me. Bring crew. 1730. Tonight if possible. If not, call.”

The Seventy-five was a Marine Corps hangout bar right across the street from the Marine Barracks at Eighth and I Streets in southeast D.C. Av led the way in because he looked most like a marine among the group. Mau-Mau was in his usual terrorist gear, Wong wore a Hawaiian shirt over judo gi and sandals. He had a 16d nail sticking out of the corner of his mouth like a cigarette. Miz Brown was dressed all in black like a funeral director, complete with a homburg and round granny glasses. He hadn’t wanted to come along; he’d claimed that marines made him nervous. Av had told him that that was their job.

Steele waved from the back of the room. They walked through the tables while being watched by every jungle bunny in the room. It felt like there were range finders swiveling around to track them, but when they sat down with Steele, the bar’s noise level resumed and nobody seemed to care anymore.

Steele chuckled when he saw the nail in Wong’s mouth. Wong eyed the colonel, reversed the nail in his mouth with his tongue and then spat it down in front of one of the chairs, where it stood, quivering in the wood.

“I sit here,” he announced, to a chorus of quietly approving animal noises from nearby marines.

“Absolutely,” Steele said, grinning.

Av introduced his team to the colonel, who had two pitchers of beer arriving in about one minute.

“Gentlemen,” he said after everyone had damaged the first glass. “I’m not from the State Department, although I do have an office there. I’m from the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, commonly known as Jay-SOC.”

“Snake-eater,” Wong said.

“I’ve never actually had that pleasure,” Steele said. “But I did put a spectacled cobra into the front seat of a cab once in Somalia. The driver was not taking me where I needed to go.”

“What happened?” Mau-Mau asked.

“He died, we crashed. I had to get out and walk. Two guys with AKs came running up to me and started raising hell about something, so I handed one of them the snake. He freaked, tried to shoot it, shot his buddy instead. Then the snake bit the shooter. Serendipity, you know? I walked away. Nobody bothered me.”

“With the snake?” Wong asked.

“Hell, yes,” the colonel said with a grin. “All the way back to camp.”

Wong nodded appreciatively. He would have kept the snake, too. For dinner.

“But enough about me,” the colonel continued. “I wanted to talk about Mister Hilary Logan, late of the U.S. Treasury Department. Sergeant Smith, you said he was acting like a zombie when he got out of that cab. I made a wiseass remark without first engaging my brain. I’m kinda famous for that. But here’s the thing: we know how he died. What we don’t know is what made him get out of a cab in the middle of a busy intersection, at night, and then step into oncoming traffic.”

“Sounds like maybe suicide,” Mau-Mau said. “Tough way to do it, but, still…?”

“I can’t imagine anyone committing suicide like that,” Steele said.

“I can,” said Miz Brown, speaking for the first time. “We see it all the time in Metro PD: people jumping down in front of an oncoming Metro train or stepping in front of a bus.”

Steele shook his head slowly. “I’ve asked the Bureau to call for an autopsy,” he announced. “They’d been drinking, two whole bottles of wine, in fact. But the driver’s description of his passenger doesn’t match the actions of a totally wasted drunk. They stagger, weave, throw up. They don’t put on a thousand-meter stare and start robot-walking.”

“I have to remind you, Colonel,” Av said. “That ILB is no longer involved in this. The Bureau guy made that clear today, and my boss said amen. In fact, that’s our job in ILB: move the cases that come to ILB out of ILB. You’ve got yourself a mystery, I admit, but we no longer care.”

“You should, Detective,” the colonel said. “Carl Mandeville, Logan’s dinner date? He’s the executive director of the DMX committee. Logan was the Treasury rep to the DMX committee. Francis X. McGavin of Bistro Nord fame was the DHS rep to the DMX committee. And the one thing that links those two guys, beside being dead and being members of the DMX committee? Is you guys.”

“Seriously?” Mau-Mau exclaimed. “You think we had something—”

The colonel raised a hand. “No, no, no. Of course not,” he said. “But once it gets out within the CT world that two members of the DMX have died within days of each other, inquiring minds are going to start asking questions — and doing pattern analysis. I understand you guys want nothing to do with this, but I wanted to warn you that ILB may get swept up if a shitstorm starts.”

“Ain’t nothin’ to that,” Mau-Mau said. “We’ll just do what we’re paid to do in dear ole ILB, and that’s bounce said shitstorm right back on the first federal agency comes makin’ trouble for us. Now, I got one for you — what’s a DMX?”

“Kick-ass black rapper,” Wong offered.

“Hardly,” the colonel said. “It’s just one of a hundred classified committees related to counterterrorism. What makes it different is that members are relatively senior officials.”

“What’s it do?” Av asked.

“It’s a Washington committee, Detective Sergeant,” the colonel said. “It doesn’t do anything but talk. I’ll bet you’ve got some committees in MPD just like it.”

Av wasn’t entirely satisfied with this answer. The way the colonel had uttered the word “DMX” earlier was now being papered over as if DMX was no big deal. Then he suddenly understood: the whole purpose of this little beer muster had been for the colonel to find out if they knew what they’d bumped up against. “We surely do,” Av said. “So: what would you want us to do if somebody does comes knocking?”

“Call me?” the colonel said. “I can get the heat off you mosh skosh. In return, I get a leg up on the pack of hounds that’s probably going to get into these two deaths.”

That’s two, Av thought. First the Professional Standards guy from the Bureau, now this colonel from Jay-something, wanting to be “kept informed.” Or was it three? His fairy godmother had said something along the same lines, hadn’t she?

“Sounds reasonable,” he said. “Right, guys?”

The other three nodded. Miz Brown hadn’t said anything else, which was good, because if he got going they’d be here all night. That did not mean he hadn’t been listening, though. Mau-Mau had told him that Brown had a tape recorder in his head, which was probably where he got all those words once one of his verbal waterfalls started. Right now, though, there was more important business: the colonel had just ordered a third pitcher of beer. Wong fielded a phone call, smiled, and then had some more beer.

“So how’s the War on Terror going these days?” Av asked, just to be sociable.

They sat there drinking beer and indulging in general-purpose BS for the next half hour, and then Wong’s current main squeeze made her entrance. She was Chinese, highly made-up, wearing a clingy, gold lamé dress with slits in all the appropriate places, shiny red heels, and a hairdo that looked to be made of black lacquer. Has to be a joke, Av thought — she looked like something out of a Charlie Chan movie. Wong beamed.

It being a Marine bar, the denizens didn’t embarrass themselves by making rude noises, as would have been the case in any army bar. Instead, a wave of appreciative silence moved with her as she approached their table and smiled down at Wong. He made a noise that sounded to Av suspiciously like a whimper, which made perfect sense to Av. There was a quick exchange in an unknown dialect, and then Wong rose, excused himself, bowed to the colonel, thanked him for the drinks, and then followed his dragon lady out of the bar, while two dozen grown marines tried not to cry.

Wong’s departure seemed to be the signal for the beer muster to close up. Miz Brown said he had to get ready for night school. Mau-Mau followed, saying he had a really hot date lined up.

“What’s her name?” Av asked.

Mau-Mau actually looked sheepish. “Her name is takeout,” he said. “Haven’t decided what kind yet, but the Knicks are on tonight, and, well … that’s gonna have to do.”

Av and the colonel laughed, saluted with their beer glasses, and watched him go.

The colonel poured out the last of the pitcher and then sat back in his chair. “So, Detective, whad’da you think about the situation in general?”

Av considered the question for a moment before answering.

“With all due respect, Colonel,” he said, finally, “I think you’ve been blowing a fair amount of smoke. That in turn makes me think that there is some kind of serious shit going on here in River City.”

The colonel’s face settled into a disturbingly stark stare. His mouth flattened into a straight line, and his eyes seemed to almost freeze over. Av recognized a game face when he saw one. He thought he heard a marine at a nearby table give out a low “whoa.”

“Great minds think alike, Detective Smith,” the colonel said, quietly. “Washington is full of people playing games, almost always for personal, financial, or professional advantage. You guys have bumped up against the DMX, which is the sharp end of the counterterrorism spear. Think black widow, okay? Multiple eyes and venom as powerful as a cobra. DMX produces the Kill List, which goes to the President. Once he approves it, the big gray drones leave the Midwest for faraway places and people incandesce in the night. Yes, it’s just a committee, but it’s unlike ninety-nine point nine percent of Washington committees. This one kills people.”

“You said a moment ago that it was just another committee, that they talk but don’t actually do anything.”

“You’re not cleared to know any of this, Detective,” the colonel said. “So appreciate it and then forget I ever said anything. You were right about being careful, though. Guys like Mandeville take no prisoners. You get the slightest indication that Mandeville or anyone on the DMX for that matter is taking an interest in you, personally, put your papers in and get the fuck outa Dodge.”

“Just like that?”

“No, Sergeant. Faster than that.”

An hour later Av was ensconced on the rooftop of his building, enjoying a beer and the beginnings of another lovely sunset. Their little séance with the colonel was much on his mind. He couldn’t decide if all these encounters — the runners on the towpath, the mysterious Ellen Whiting, the Bureau rat-squad supervisor, and now this cold-eyed colonel — represented nothing more than a bunch of self-serving federal officials trying to protect their respective turfs. Or: perhaps it was something more sinister?

He considered calling each of his brand-new best friends and telling them about the other two. Throw some shit in the game, and maybe that way they’d all get their cloaks and daggers out and go after each other. The Briar Patch solution — move the tarbaby. He decided to pitch that idea at the morning meeting; see what Precious thought of that. He grinned when he imagined her response: what the fock are you thinking, you focking fock?

The phone rang. The caller ID read “out front now.” When he picked up, there was only a dial tone. He went to a front window and looked down at the street. There he saw a white Harley Low Rider parked in front of his gate, and a woman, her helmet in her lap, looking up at him and beckoning. He recognized that face: Ellen Whiting. She was talking to Rue Waltham, of all people. He grabbed his wallet, creds, and his off-duty Glock and then headed downstairs.

Rue passed him on the stairs and gave him a nice smile. Once out front, Ellen complimented him on his choice of tenants and then handed him a white helmet. She waited while he fit it, put it on, and fixed the strap. She was wearing black leather pants, a white T-shirt under a sleeveless leather vest, and black gloves with steel antiroadrash buttons. The Harley’s engine was running at idle, encouraged by an occasional throttle bump to let everyone know what brand of bike was present for duty, and then he climbed onto the backseat. She slapped her visor down and he did the same. He looked for handles, thought briefly about her waist, and then found the two grips just in time. He was surprised to hear her voice in the helmet telling him to hang on tight as she U-turned and then goosed the bike up Thirty-third Street, and then right on M Street.

When they got to Wisconsin she turned left and they rumbled up through the residual evening traffic to the National Cathedral. They parked in the almost empty public lot out front since the parking garage was closed. She extracted two coffee smoothies from a saddlebag and handed one to Av. They then walked back into an area called the Bishop’s Garden, taking their helmets with them.

She looked different from the other night. No more glam makeup and seductive lips. In fact, she looked scared. And, this evening, no more mass of blond hair. She had close-cropped dark hair. She’d been a platinum blonde the other night. Hairpieces?

“I had a Harley when I was in the Marines,” he said. “Didn’t get to ride it much, so I finally sold it, for just about as much as I’d paid for it. Got another one a few years after I joined the force. Still have it. Gotta love that sound.”

“Foreign travel get in the way?” she asked.

“It was like the recruiters said: Join the Marines. See the world. Meet lots of interesting people. And kill them.”

She smiled and sipped her smoothie, but he noticed that her hands were clasped together and her knuckles were medium white. Lady was scared of something. He gave the gardens a quick scan, looking for guys in running gear and mirrored glasses.

“So what’s the occasion, godmother?” he asked. “Not that I’m complaining. But you look — worried?”

She didn’t reply for a moment. “You read about the guy who played bullfighter with the Mercedes over in Georgetown the other night?” she said, finally.

“Happened right in front of me,” he said. “Wish I’d been elsewhere.”

She stared at him. “You’re shitting me.”

“Not one pound,” he said. “What about him?”

She sighed. “His name was Hilary Logan. He was the assistant secretary of the treasury for international trade. He was also Treasury’s rep to the DMX. Do you know what that stands for?”

“In fact, I do,” Av said. “Got a tutorial just this afternoon from some guy calling himself Colonel Steele. You know him by any chance? Says he’s from Jay-shit or something like that. Fort Bragg, North Carolina.”

“Jay-SOC,” she said. “Joint Special Operations Command. Military. Operational headquarters for the snake-eaters. And no, I don’t know him, but I’ll bet I could describe him to you.”

Av smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “They do all look kinda alike, don’t they. Anyway, he invited all four of us for beer at a Marine dive down near Eighth and I. Then he warned me to watch our collective asses, because whatever’s going on involves this darkside committee called DMX. Is that for real, by the way? They order up assassinations and shit?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “We — they—”

“Whoa,” Av interrupted. “‘We’?”

She sighed. “Truth in lending time, I guess,” she said. “I am also a member of the DMX. I represent the Bureau.”

“Which Bureau?”

She gave him an impatient look. “The Bureau, smartass.”

“Okay, so not Bureau of Indian Affairs, then. Right. You know a guy named Tyree Miller by any chance?”

She stared at him again. “You do get around, don’t you,” she said. “Tyree Miller? Not willingly. A tap on the shoulder from Tyree Miller means your day is about to turn to shit. Why?”

“Well,” he said. “We had a chat after you took off in that cab.” He told her about his little séance in the Bureau car, emphasizing the fact that Miller had implied that she, Ellen Whiting, did not work for The Bureau.

She leaned back on the bench and stretched her legs straight out, as if trying to straighten out a cramp. “And you agreed to call him and tell him about any further contact you and I might have?”

“I did,” Av said. “What the hell, Ellen Whiting: who am I to tell some senior-looking dude in the Bureau’s Professional Standards Division to fuck off? And, oh-by-the-way, ever since our brave little band touched the McGavin tarbaby, I’ve had encounters with three people claiming to be federal high-poobahs, all either warning me to be careful or wanting to be filled in on any ‘developments,’ whatever that means.”

“Claiming.”

“Yeah, claiming — you and Colonel Steele. Miller at least showed me creds, as did the agents with him. Colonel Steele first claimed to be working for State. And you? I have no idea who you work for.”

She unzipped a pocket in her leather jacket and produced a credential folder, which she opened for him. Senior Supervisory Special Agent Ellen Whiting. Shitty picture, but the creds and badge looked real. He also was pretty sure he was seeing the bulge of a compact semiauto outlined in the other pocket of her biker jacket.

“Okay,” he said. “So why would Miller even imply that he didn’t know who you worked for? And why didn’t the guys he had watching us inside the restaurant that night just grab you up and take you to see Miller?”

“Because he was being careful, Detective Sergeant,” she said. “And, of course he knows who I am and where I stand in the headquarters hierarchy. But you’re right about the mystery: why didn’t he just call me in if he wanted to know something.”

“If they asked about what you’re doing at DMX, could you tell them?”

She shook her head. “My boss’s boss could,” she said. “Whether or not she would is another question altogether. Don’t get me wrong: Miller holds a powerful position at Bureau headquarters, but these days, because of the counterterrorism mission, the Bureau is getting more and more compartmented in terms of who knows what. Damn, this is getting complicated.”

“Complicated makes me thirsty,” he said. “Let’s go get a drink. Then you can tell me what’s going on, or not.”

“A public bar is not the place for what I need to tell you,” she said.

“This bar is,” he said.

Fifteen minutes later they were ensconced in a corner booth of the Ye Olde Fairy Queene, a fern bar on Connecticut Avenue, complete with real ferns and a truly sweet-mannered bartender named Eli. Av had a beer; Ellen Whiting had ordered a ginger ale. When he raised an eyebrow, she told him that Elit vodka and Harleys don’t play well together.

Ellen looked around. “This is a—”

“Yes, it is,” Av said with a mischievous grin. “It’s an old murder po-lice tactic. If you’re sensing a tail or some other complication, chances are he or she is going to stand out in a gay bar, right? And Eli over there knows a lot of the gay feds in town, so he’d give me a high sign if you just happen to be part of a tag-team program tonight. So, now — what the fock is going on here, please?”

“‘Fock’?”

“Inside joke. Stop stalling.”

She nodded. “Okay. I’m the Bureau’s rep on the DMX. I represent the assistant executive director of the Bureau for counterterrorism. The DMX is part of the National Security Council interagency system. Are you familiar with what people call the interagency?”

“Nope,” he said. “Sounds like a tarbaby factory, though.”

She smiled. “One way of looking at it,” she said. “But basically, since national security involves issues which cross many different agencies’ remit, the National Security interagency system is a series of groups which meet to sort out courses of action and jurisdictional issues.”

“Series?”

“Yeah. ‘Layers’ is maybe a better word, like in a parfait. It’s based on seniority. Say you get two agencies facing a common issue. First the worker bees try to solve it. If that doesn’t work, the issue rises through a series of meetings between more senior layers of the bureaucracy until it gets to a level, say deputy secretary, where they get tired of messing with it and make a decision.”

“Okay. And if they don’t?”

“Then the National Security Council itself meets, first without the President, and then, if necessary, with the President.”

“And all this takes how long?”

“An entire career can be made and spent working one issue through the NSC Interagency process.”

“And this is what you do at this DMX thing?”

“No. DMX starts at the principals level. Each agency represented on the DMX committee comes to the meeting with a single name, which that agency is proposing for something called the Kill List. Each rep makes the case for why their ‘candidate’ merits being elevated to the status of enemy combatant and killed without notice or even due process, say, like the case of an American who’s gone over to Al Qaeda.”

“Wow,” Av said. “And does this committee reach a decision?”

“Sort of. DMX is technically an advisory committee, not an executive committee. They can only nominate candidates for the Kill List to the President, usually one per meeting. The chairman is Carl Mandeville, whose title is special assistant to the President and senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council staff.”

“Damn,” Av said. “Can he say all that in one breath?”

“He makes the final decision on whether or not to put a name forward, based on what he hears at that meeting. If there’s any serious pushback on a name, then he’ll usually tell the agency that nominated that individual to go back and bolster their arguments for taking him out. If we all agree, yeah, that’s a true badass who needs to die, then that’s usually how it goes.”

Av remembered the name from his conversation with Colonel Steele. “So these meetings aren’t usually about turf issues?” he asked.

“Not visibly,” she said. “Deciding which agencies were going to get to play on the DMX took a year and a half. Now that was all about turf. No, this is serious shit, and turf wars aren’t allowed in the room, although sometimes it feels to me as if agencies are competing to see who can get a name onto the list. We’re all professional bureaucrats, so I guess we can’t help it even when we’re making decisions like this. But it’s Mandeville who makes the final call on putting someone in America’s crosshairs.”

“Colonel Steele said the DMX decides, the President signs, and then the big gray drones leave for faraway places. How do you feel about being part of something like this?”

“When you hear the briefings, say, like when the CIA rep comes in and describes how a certain Paki colonel enjoys capturing Western journalists and personally sawing their heads off with a dull hacksaw while they’re tied to a chair? It gets easier with time.”

“I can see that,” he said. “But the cop in me is so ingrained with defendant protection procedure, you know, Miranda stuff, that I’m not sure I could do that. So: why tell me?”

She nodded, then looked around the bar. There were more people there now, but no one seemed to be paying them the slightest bit of attention, not even Eli.

She sighed. “I probably shouldn’t have, but you remember I talked about Americans who go over to Al Qaeda or ISIS, guys like Anwar al-Awlaki?”

“Yeah?”

“Cases like that are one of the most sensitive aspects of DMX, because the guy we were looking at is an American. Our Constitution doesn’t allow our government to kill its own citizens, at least not without due process.”

“Your meetings sound like due process, of a sort, anyway.”

“And Awlaki was duly nominated, approved, found, and executed by a drone,” she said. “It wasn’t that hard a call, really: he looked like Bin Laden, lived in a cave very far from home, and helped the nine-eleven attackers. He fit the profile like a glove. But: lemme give you a what-if.”

“Okay.”

“What if an American citizen goes over to the enemy, and then comes back to the States clandestinely, for the purposes of conducting terrorist attacks here at home, say, starting forest fires, derailing oil trains, or causing explosions on a gas pipeline? Seen any news stories like that?”

“All of the above,” Av said. “But I haven’t heard that these were terrorist attacks, just — bad shit happening. What’s your real question?”

“If we knew where he was, using whatever assets which are available to the DMX agencies, and they are substantial, could we put his name on the list? And then have a sniper kill him in downtown Cleveland one day?”

“I’d say no. You’d get your Cleveland field office to snatch him up, read him his rights, appoint him a shyster, haul his ass into federal court, and then prosecute him in a death penalty case. You’re obviously in a gray area killing people overseas, but here? Talk about some seriously bad optics.”

She nodded. “I agree,” she said. Then she paused to sweep the barroom again. Av had the clear impression that there was another, even more interesting shoe about to drop.

“Frankly, Detective Sergeant,” she said. “I’m getting scared.” She took a big breath and blew it out. “There. I’ve said it. I’m scared.”

Av tried to make light of it for a moment. “You? A senior supervisory special agent at the FBI — scared?”

“Listen carefully, Detective Sergeant: I think McGavin and Logan were not random events. I believe they were murdered.”

Whoa, Av thought. Time the fuck out. Yes, McGavin’s death was possibly poison of some kind — the ME had implied as much. Logan? How could that be a homicide? Suicide, maybe, but — he’d witnessed it. Nobody pushed the dude in front of that car. He stepped out, all on his own.

He studied her face. She was staring down at her ginger ale, her lips tight and her hands even tighter on that glass. He reached out and touched the back of her left hand. She started and then relaxed her grip on the glass.

“Before you break that thing,” he said. “So: I’m listening. I assume you have a prime suspect?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Before you reveal that to me, understand that I’m duty bound to run with it. Sure that’s what you want?”

“I don’t know what I want,” she said. “Because I’m tangentially involved. I simply don’t know what to do, and I always know what to do.”

“Okay,” he said gently. “Start from the beginning. You’ve told me about the DMX, and I appreciate that that information is highly privileged and needs to be protected. You say you think McGavin and Logan were murdered. By whom?”

“Carl Mandeville, executive director of the DMX.”

Av was shocked. This was the guy Steele had warned Av about — leave town if you think he’s interested in you. “Holy shit” was all he could manage.

“Amen to that,” she said. “I believe that the people he’s killing have privately come to the conclusion that the whole concept of the DMX is legally wrong and morally repugnant. There are — were — three of them: McGavin, Logan, and Wheatley. Maybe others, I don’t know. Apparently at the behest of certain U.S. senators, they’d begun within their respective agencies to lobby secretly for an internal review of the entire process. Basically, they want to kill the DMX, and they’re confident that such a review would do that. Why? Because nobody would be willing to get out on point defending it.”

“Okay, and?”

“And, Carl Mandeville is determined to prevent that. Now two of those three persons are dead.”

Aw, shit, Av thought, again. Here it is: the mother of all tarbabies, sitting right across the table from him. Suddenly some of this recent hugger-mugger he’d been encountering was starting to make sense. That guy in the mask, for instance.

She sighed again. “And you want to know why I’m telling you all this, right?”

“I’m guessing it’s because you don’t have a rabbi in the Bureau?”

“Did,” she replied. “I replaced him on the DMX. He got out on early retirement.”

“From the Bureau?”

“Let’s just say he was encouraged to pack it in.”

“Ah,” Av said. “Didn’t care for the DMX, did he?”

“I wasn’t privy to all that. He had a séance with the director one day and the next day we were doing his hail and farewell. I was selected as his successor to the DMX, probably because wiser heads ran like hell when they were asked to do it. I was called in the next morning to the executive deputy director’s office, read into the program, and that’s all I know. In terms of rank, I’m the least senior rep at the table.”

“Are you qualified to be there?”

“I have some credentials in the CT world, Detective,” she said stiffly. “I’ve been around, okay? Mandeville says he actually asked for me, which is bullshit, I suspect. But, yeah, it was a surprise. And now, I just had to talk to somebody.”

“Jesus, Ellen,” Av said. “I’m not somebody, I’m a fucking nobody. I’m a has-been homicide dick. My previous lieutenant exiled me to the Briar Patch and since then he’s been trying to get me fired, as I think you will remember.”

She rubbed her left temple with her left hand, as if her head hurt. “I think I’m going crazy,” she said.

“Oh, gosh, I wonder why,” he said. “Given this alternative universe you work in, where eighty-five different government agencies compete to consign some crazed Muslim bastard to death-by-robot, for bragging rights? Let’s see, now: who the hell would you talk to?”

“Okay, okay,” she said. “Obviously I’ve strayed a little too far off my reservation. I’ll take you back to your man cave now.”

He smiled. “In your dreams, Supervisory Special Agent Ellen Whiting,” he said, leaning forward. “I’m speaking as the senior representative of the Briar Patch, now, and I must insist: tell me more.”

“Senior?”

“Okay, maybe as the only representative, present and accounted for? You need some help with a homicide? Maybe the four horsemen of the Briar Patch are just the guys to call.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Not at all,” Av said. “That’s the good news, Ellen Whiting: no one takes us seriously.”

“Clearly. And?”

“Who would see us coming.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. And congratulations: you’ve just achieved formal tarbaby status.”

“Ducky,” she said. “Why don’t you get brother Eli over there to fix me a real one.”

“No,” he said. “Remember your Harley. In the meantime, I’ll gather the Briar Patch posse together and we’ll kick this around. Putting all the supersecret spooky shit aside, it’s a possible homicide. We don’t need to know anything about your precious DMX. Give me a contact phone number, then take me back to my place. Then you go home. Then get that drink.”

She cocked her head. “I must be losing my touch,” she said. “Most guys would have said: take me back to my place, come on up, and I’ll get you whatever you need. In the way of booze.”

He grinned at her. “I’m not most guys,” he said. “And, besides, you’re still scary. Even scarier, now that I think about it. Jesus, Special Agent.”

“Jesus isn’t cleared for DMX,” she said.

Av rolled his eyes. They finished their drinks and went back outside, both of them looking around for watchers. Seeing nobody obvious, they climbed aboard the bike and headed back down Wisconsin. They’d gone two blocks when a black Mercedes S500 in front of them slowed down for no apparent reason. Ellen slipped the Harley into the next lane to pass, but then had to brake for a red light. The Merc slid alongside a moment later and stopped for the light. Av glanced casually to the right and saw the Halloween mask looking right back at him.

“Hey?” he said into his helmet mike. “Guy on the right is a tail.”

Ellen didn’t hesitate for a second. She gunned the Harley into the intersection and right across it so fast that Av nearly fell off. She then went down to the next intersection, turned left in front of oncoming traffic and a cacophony of blaring horns, and then sped into a residential area with narrow streets made even narrower by parked cars. She went around several blocks until suddenly they were slanting down a winding road toward the bottom of Rock Creek Park. She pulled into a creekside parking lot and shut the bike down.

“Okay?” she said as she took off her helmet.

“Chee-rist, what a ride,” he said, grinning.

“What’d you see?”

He told her about the Halloween mask and the times he’d seen this guy before.

She pursed her lips for a moment and then asked him to describe the man in as much detail as possible. Av did.

She shook her head. “Guy who looks like that?” she said. “Not likely to be a professional surveillance operator — the face is too distinctive.”

“I’m thinking that’s the point,” Av said.

“He wants you to know you’re being stalked?”

“Yeah.”

“Oka-a-a-y,” she said. “And who might want you to think that?”

“You tell me, Special Agent,” he said.

“Supervisory Special Agent,” she reminded him. “And, yes, I think I know who might be doing this.” She looked over her shoulder and then screamed: “Down!”

Av didn’t hesitate — he dropped and rolled as fast as he could down toward the creek as an autoloading shotgun opened up, blasting tree branches and leaves all over him. As soon as he dropped off the bank and into the edges of the creek he pulled his Glock and pointed it up the hill at — nothing. He thought he could hear a powerful V-8 gunning it back up the hill, but there was no sign of a shooter except for a haze of gun smoke drifting down toward the creek.

He looked around for Ellen Whiting. He couldn’t see her, but then he heard her cursing from around a sharp bend in the creek. He stood up, wet from the waist down but alive, and crawled up the bank. Ellen stood up some fifteen feet away, looking like a bedraggled wet hen. When the leather vest flopped open he was treated to a spectacular wet T-shirt. She saw him looking and gave him an annoyed look, but he noticed that she didn’t close up the vest.

“Friend of yours?” he asked, wiping off the leaves and other debris.

“Friend of yours,” she said. “God: what a face.”

“So how the fuck did he follow us down here?” Av asked.

“Give me your cell phone,” she said. He handed it over.

She punched more buttons than Av knew existed on the phone, then listened.

“Yup,” she said. “There’s a GPS tracker on your phone. Whither thou goest, he goeth, if he wants to.”

Av sat down on a flat boulder and watched the creek flowing by so peacefully it was almost hard to remember the feel of hot steel shot passing far too close to his head as he’d dived over the bank. Then he thought about it: that car had been no more than twenty feet away in the brief, very brief glance he’d had. The guy had had an autoloader, and yet hadn’t hit him? He looked over at Ellen, who was watching him work it out.

“That was a warning, I think,” he said. “I wouldn’t have missed at that distance.”

“Me, neither,” she said.

“Is this Mandeville?” he asked quietly.

“God, I hope not,” she said. “Either way, we’ve gotta get out of here before the cops show up.”

“I am the cops,” he said.

“Not for this you’re not.”