Unmanned

CHAPTER TWELVE

Taco Rojo was a tidy establishment with chrome tables and a scrubbed tile floor. It was on O’Donnell Square, a half-gentrified block of restaurants, cafés, and taverns along a village green that managed to look pleasant even under the streetlamp glow of a gloomy December evening. They parked around the corner on a cramped street of formstone row houses.

“It’s after the dinner rush, so it ought to be pretty quiet,” Steve said.

“How do we want to do this?”

“Why don’t I go in first? You can come in a few minutes later, maybe ask whoever’s working the counter whatever happened to that guy Mansur.”

“Isn’t that kind of obvious?”

“Completely. And I’m open to any better ideas. Got any?”

He didn’t.

So Steve went in while Cole made another circuit of the block. The square’s more rough-and-tumble past showed itself here and there, but some of the newer proprietors seemed determined to resist any backsliding. A sign in a pub doorway forbade entry to anyone wearing “urban wear, baggy clothing, large chains, skullies, wife beaters, doo-rags, long shorts, etc.”

Yeah, Cole thought, I get it.

By the time he entered Taco Rojo, Steve was seated at a table to the left, already eating a burrito. Barb’s spaghetti sauce was decent enough, but the noodles had been a pasty mess, glued together like the pages of a wet phone book, and both men were still pretty hungry. As the door closed behind him, Cole spotted the requisite security camera just as its red light came on, activated by a motion sensor. The counterman was a hulking fellow with a trimmed mustache. A clock in the back showed 8:09. Steve was the only other customer.

“Can I help you?”

Cole scanned the menu on the wall.

“Beef burrito with black beans and pico de gallo. And a large iced tea.”

“For here or to go?”

“I’ll eat here.”

“Eight forty-eight.”

He gave the man a ten as he pondered what to say next.

“Utensils are along the wall. It’ll be a few minutes.”

“Thanks. How long you guys been here now?”

The counterman impaled the order on a spike and shrugged, looking bored.

“Few years.”

“Whatever happened to that guy who worked here a while back? Mansur, I think it was. We used to talk when I came in.”

The counterman snapped to attention and narrowed his eyes. He tilted his head and gave Cole a long, quizzical stare.

“I doubt that. His English sucked, and he worked in the back. Who are you?”

“Hey, no big deal. It’s just he was a nice guy and I hadn’t seen him in a while.”

The man’s voice slammed down like a cleaver. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“Skip it, okay? Maybe I’ll take that burrito to go.”

But by then the counterman had snatched the wall phone from its cradle and was punching in a number, like one he’d memorized. Following orders? A prearranged alert? Cole glanced at Steve, who shrugged, chewing. He backed away from the counter toward the door. The red light on the camera was still shining as he turned the knob.

“Don’t forget your food, sir!” More demand than plea. “Only a minute more!”

Cole stepped outside into a gust of sleet, an icy blast that seemed determined to scour the block of all newcomers. He flipped up the collar on his jacket and set off toward the car, not daring to look back even as he heard Steve coming through the door in his wake. He had asked a very simple question, really. A small, tentative step. Yet it had set off some sort of alarm.

“Shit,” Steve said, trotting up beside him. “That was weird. What do you think it was all about?”

“No idea. When the Bureau came poking around earlier it must have freaked them out. Maybe now they think Mansur’s some kind of terrorist. Who do you think he called?”

“The Bureau?”

“Maybe. Jesus, what’s happened to the weather?”

Another blast of sleet raked them like birdshot. They crossed the square and walked around the corner to take shelter in Steve’s Honda. Cole was glad they hadn’t parked on the square, where some camera might have picked up their tags. Sleet bounced crazily off the windshield. The sidewalks were empty. People on the block had started turning on their Christmas lights — blue-clad plastic Madonnas face-to-face with faded Santas, flanked by three-foot candy canes on marble stoops.

“Maybe I should have taken it slower,” Cole said.

“It wasn’t you. It was him. Like he was expecting it. The minute he heard the name Mansur he was reaching for the phone. And he didn’t look happy about it. Shoulda seen his face when you were leaving. Pissed, but also scared, like he knew he’d fucked up.”

“What do we do now?”

“Not sure there is a next move. Not with that guy.”

“We could check their dumpster, look for old paperwork. It’s probably out back.”

“Like from your Infowar training? I guess. But isn’t that kind of risky?”

“How much worse can it get? We’re already on camera. And I doubt he’ll be looking for us out back.”

Steve thought about it.

“Why not? Won’t be the first time I’ve gone through somebody’s garbage.”

They got out of the car, checked their flanks, and doubled back to O’Donnell Square, giving the storefront a wide berth before heading up a side street to an alley running behind Taco Rojo. It was dimly lit and lined with small green dumpsters. Cole heard the skitter of rats, assembling for their own dinnertime rush. One panicked at their approach, nearly running over his feet.

Each dumpster was marked with the name of its owner. Steve had just thrown open the lid for Taco Rojo’s when Cole spotted a pair of blue recycling bins — one for glass, the other for paper — just down the way. These seemed to be shared by the whole block.

“Let’s try those first.” Steve, already recoiling from the stench of the dumpster, nodded and let the lid slam shut.

The paper bin was about a quarter full. Cole leaned inside until his feet left the ground and grabbed an empty cardboard box. He handed it to Steve, then pulled out a second.

“Hold these,” he said. “I’ll grab the loose papers and pile them in.”

It was mostly unopened junk mail, empty cups, old newspapers. But there were also torn envelopes and loose papers, some stacked, some crumpled. He took it all, eventually filling both boxes and then a third while Steve kept watch over the alley. No cops, thank goodness, although they’d both spotted a camera mounted at the end of the alley. Their only live audience was a young couple who passed up the side street, a man and woman in black leather who paused at the mouth of the alley just long enough to shake their heads in either pity or disgust.

They carried the boxes to Steve’s Honda.

“Back to the house?” Cole asked.

“Somewhere closer. Where we can ditch this stuff once we’re through with it. Some parking lot, where we won’t stand out as much.”

They drove northeast a few miles, crossing beneath the Beltway before pulling into the vast lot of a Walmart. Steve switched on the dome light and starting sorting through items from the first box. Cole climbed into the backseat and started in on the second one. They proceeded carefully, tossing loose newspapers aside to focus on mail and crumpled papers. Most of it was bills, receipts, or sales pitches from vendors of restaurant equipment. There was an unintentionally hilarious letter from a customer, complaining that a take-out meal had poisoned her pet hamster. Form letters from the block’s landlord warned three different tenants about overdue rent.

Twenty minutes into their search, Cole struck gold — a stack of printouts from Taco Rojo payroll records for September and October. Eleven employees were on the report for September, ten for October. The extra name in September was Mansur Amir Khan. His last day on the job was September 6, probably about the time the FBI came looking for him. The Social Security number was probably bogus, but Steve wrote it down. There was no phone number, but there was a Baltimore address on Gough Street, in care of a Consuelo Reyes.

“Whaddya think?” Steve asked. “Strike while the iron is hot?”

“Sure. But maybe this time we should try a different approach.”

“Keep that sheet handy, with his name and address. I’ve got an idea.”