A Reason to Live (Marty Singer1) (28 page)

"Lawrence Ferrin," she said at one point, musing. "Son of Jim Ferrin, right?"

"The one and only," I said. "Hopefully."

"He slipped through some corruption charges, I remember. Pretty bad character."

"Pretty bad," I said, watching the road.

"Are we looking at a father-son thing here?" she asked. "Should we be worried?"

"More worried than we are now? I don't know. If the older Ferrin is involved, probably. He was a scary son-of-a-bitch when he was on the force. Had his own personal cadre of crooked cops in all the departments. Kind of a blue mafia. Though he never got pinned with anything."

"He retired a few years ago?"

"Yeah. Doesn't mean he's less connected, just not as official."

"What's our next step, then?"

"Kransky's going to run the same background checks and searches he did when we thought we were dealing with Wheeler."

She looked out the window into the black. "That didn't help very much."

"We didn't know Wheeler was dead at the time," I said. "Ferrin is almost certainly alive and kicking, so hopefully he's left a fresh trail we can follow. Then we put him away."

"And if his father's involved, too?"

"Then we do the world a favor and put him away, too."

"You make it sound easy."

Anything I would've said would've been a lie, so I didn't say anything. She took my silence for what it was worth and matched it with one of her own. Miles of farmland rolled by, lit occasionally by a lonesome golden rectangle of light coming from a home or the sterile glow of a white light over a barn. Fifteen minutes later, she asked me, "Why would the old man be involved?"

"If his kid and not Wheeler is the one responsible for everything--possibly even Brenda's murder--then it means he's been covering for him for more than a decade. Maybe all the way back to the trial. Though that's speculation. Maybe it's as simple as Lawrence went crazy in stir those ten years. The old man doesn't have to be involved at all."

She nodded, but didn't reply. Her gaze traveled out into the darkness, watching fence posts pass by. I had the sense she wanted to keep talking. But she curled up in the wedge between the seat and the door and fell asleep instead. She woke an hour later when I crossed over a set of train tracks that shook the car like we'd been run off the road. She took a deep breath, floating to consciousness. A moment later, she said, "Where are you going when we get back?"

I hadn't thought about it. Going back to my place--with its revolving door marked "Bad Guys"--didn't seem like the smartest option right now. "I don't know."

"Stay with me," she said.

I didn't say anything. Maybe I leered. A little.

She gave me a smoky look. "Until we get this thing fixed, Singer. Then you're on your own."

Two hours later, I pulled beside Julie's car at the Metro station parking lot, exhausted. The bones of my hands were somehow simultaneously numb and aching, and I could still feel the vibration of the car, as though I'd steered by holding onto the engine block instead of the wheel. She got into her car and I followed her to the Great American Extended Stay on Route 50, a place with nice long-term rates, if their billboard was telling the truth. I found a dark corner in the back corner of the hotel's parking lot to hide my car, then met Julie by the front entrance. She smiled when she saw me, though the corners of her mouth quivered and her expression looked brittle.

"Feeling weird?" I asked.

"A little," she said. "I haven't exactly batted a thousand with my relationships."

"I could sleep on the couch if it'll make you feel any better."

"That's just stupid," she said.

We went inside, toting our day bags that were going to turn into night bags. Instead of plodding down one of the anonymous corridors on the lower levels, however, when we got in the elevator, Julie punched the top floor. We exited into a foyer with four doors. The halls below us had ten or twenty doors for the same space. Julie fished her keys out and unlocked one marked "C." She bounced the door open with a hip and walked in. I followed her into an enormous suite, complete with kitchen, office, and separate bedroom. It smelled of glass cleaner and potpourri. The living room had a fireplace, a flat screen TV, and a wet bar. A sliding glass door led out to a balcony with a wide-angle view of the Potomac and the Washington Monument.

I turned to look at her, eyebrow raised. "I thought you said Wheeler ruined your career."

She smiled wanly. "I decided if my life was in danger, I'd be damned if I was going to stay in some flea bag motel out on the Beltway. Besides, I'm charging it. If we live through this, I'll worry about it next month."

I dropped my bag and went into the living room, pacing the perimeter, too jittery to sit down. I walked over to the sliding glass door. It whispered open on oiled tracks and I stepped out to look over the city. The Washington Monument gleamed ivory in the night, erupting out of the landscape like a ghostly tusk. The wedding cake outline of the Capitol building was visible to the right, its sculpted dome and fluted walls giving it more architectural heft. But the straight lines and honest corners of George's memorial appealed to me more than the Byzantine stretches of the Capitol.

The door slid open and Julie joined me, near enough that I could feel her body heat. We stood, sharing the silence. The air had a crystalline snap, that strange quality in winter that makes it seem as if ice is hanging in sheets around you and sounds from the far distance are delivered to you like they'd occurred within arm's reach. Julie broke the spell when she gave me an apologetic look and lit a cigarette. I shrugged. It had been a nerve-wracking twenty-four hours; she was allowed her vices.

I went back inside and rooted around the fireplace until I found three good pine logs. Some bark and a balled up Washington Post sports section under the andiron made a decent fire-starter. I lit the bundle with a long match from a box on the mantle and watched as the flames licked upwards into a bright orange cone. I sat, mesmerized by the fire until Julie came in, bringing a rush of cold air with her that fanned the flames two feet high. I clambered to my feet with a grunt and turned.

Julie stood in front of me, her eyes diving into mine. I looked back at her, then raised my hands to her shoulders and slid them up to her neck. I cupped her face. She said nothing. I leaned in and kissed her slowly. Her mouth parted. She tasted of smoke, which doesn't normally make my top five turn-ons, but the acrid sensation on my tongue had the opposite affect and my heart tripped into overdrive. We stripped the couch of all its pillows, leaving it shamefully bare, and in a minute so were we. I got up only to turn the lights off and then we made love in front of the fire and under the gaze of the city.

. . .

I wouldn't have won any awards.

I was tired, worried, sick with a potentially fatal disease. My awareness of those problems curled in on itself and threatened to derail what confidence and energy I had. But Julie was gentle and patient and I think that was where the real lovemaking took place, not in the thunder and lightning of the act, but her acceptance--without pity--of my situation and the way we worked around it. We slept on the floor afterwards until the fire had died down into embers both cherry-sized and colored and the chill crept up over our shoulders like a blanket. Julie nudged me and we got up and stumbled to the bed and under the covers, where people over thirty are supposed to sleep.

. . .

Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke. Eyes open, lucid, wide awake. Not panicked or alarmed, though I must've stirred or made a sound, because Julie's arm reached out in her sleep, slid down my arm, wrapped around my waist. Her warmth joined mine. We stayed that way for long minutes, until I began dropping off again. My thoughts--cohesive a moment ago--fragmented, separated, drifted apart on a sleepy current. I thought about my life, which had seemed a lot like death until recently, and how meeting Amanda had changed it for the better in one way and how meeting Julie again had made it worth living in another. I fought to linger on that thought, to anchor it down and savor it, but it split and flowed through and around my mind, evaporating into nothingness.

I slept.

. . .

A few hours later, the angry insect buzz of my phone woke me a third time. I eased out of bed and padded out to the living room where I'd left my pants, hoping to snag the call before it fell through. It was Kransky.

"Singer, where are you?"

"At Julie's," I said, hesitating. "We got back late."

There was a pause, then, "It's that way, huh?"

"It is," I said. "Any problems?"

"Would it matter if I did?"

"Not really."

"Then why ask?"

Something in his tone took my patience between finger and thumb, snapped it in half. "You call me with something important, Jim, or just to punch me in the nuts?"

"I need to drop Amanda off with you or find another place for her. I got a call this morning from IAD. They want me in at eight and I don't know how long I'll be."

"Internal?" I said, surprised. "What about?"

"They're reviewing a case where I potted a meth dealer on a bust two years ago." He let the statement hang in the air.

"Two years ago?"

"Uh, huh."

"Let me guess. The case was reviewed, you were cleared, and no one's mentioned it since then."

"Pretty much."

"Sounds like we poked the bear." I walked over to the window, looked out at a different, less romantic, view of Washington. It seemed scuzzy and brittle in the morning winter light. "Can you handle it?"

"This is the warning shot, not the thumb screws. Someone's going to be checking my computer searches, logging phone calls, maybe tailing me. If it looks like I've gone off the reservation, they'll have the excuse they need."

"Jim Ferrin has that much pull?"

"Maybe not with everyone, not all the time. But he has enough to make life miserable."

Decorative white molding framed the window. I traced one of its ridges with my thumbnail. "You know what I'm going to say next, right?"

"Yeah. And I'm still in. I told you, I'd do whatever had to be done to make things right. But maybe next time don't kick me in the teeth when I ask about you and your new lady while I'm getting fucked by IAD," he said, then hung up.

Julie had gone into the kitchen while I was talking and rummaged around until she found what she needed to make coffee and toast. I explained the situation to her while we ate and sipped coffee out of the anonymous white hotel mugs.

"Where does that leave us?" she asked. Her face was pensive. She made connections quickly. "You said last night we could use Kransky to run Lawrence down, maybe even start a real investigation. If Kransky gets taken away, what do we have left?"

"Jim Ferrin has influence, but he doesn't own the MPDC outright. If the worst he can do is ruin Kransky's day with a couple of meetings, then we'll be alright."

"What if he can do more than that?"

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "I don't know, Julie. Kransky's not the only guy in the MPDC I know. They can't all be on Jim Ferrin's bankroll. We'll have to play it by ear."

She was quiet, then said, "Is Amanda coming here?"

I winced. "I should've asked."

She shook her head. "Don't worry about it. We're running out of options. I'll set up the office for her."

I took a hot shower and dressed quickly, wanting to be downstairs to meet Kransky and escort Amanda into the building. The elevator whisked me to the first floor, where I walked the halls until I found the back door that led to the loading dock. Custodial staff glanced at me as I walked through the bay leading to the dock, but an air of authority and a frown go a long way sometimes. Once I hit the dock, I jogged down the steps to the alley in the back of the hotel. Dumpsters and delivery trucks were lined up in white-lined stalls. An eight-foot high cyclone fence topped with razor wire separated the hotel from the hillside behind it.

The corner of the building gave me enough cover to case the parking lot. The morning was sharp with cold and overcast like a sheet had been thrown over everything, giving off that kind of ambient, soapy-gray light that makes eight o'clock look the same as four. I flexed my hands and wiggled my fingers to keep the cold away, but my new sensitivity made my stakeout even more miserable than it had been as a beat cop.

Nothing jumped out at me. Traffic on 50 was vicious as usual, a thousand pissed-off people, one to a car, tailing each other into work. The parking lot was placid in comparison, with only two cars either pulling in or out the entire time. The second car was Kransky, this time in a blue station wagon. He took his time, circling the parking lot at a snail's pace, checking each car out as he passed. I stepped out from my hidey hole as they came near and let him see me. Kransky stopped, Amanda waved.

They conferred, then she got out and opened the back door to grab her bag. I glanced over the parking lot, then leaned through the passenger's side window. Kransky looked at me with his bladed face. The only evidence of stress he showed at either the guard duty he'd pulled or the impending IAD investigation were light blue smudges under each eye. He probably hadn't slept in the last two or three days.

"How are you going to play it at the hearing?" I asked.

"Cool, calm, and collected," he said. "I don't want to give them any excuses to label me a hard case."

"Call me when you're through. We need to huddle up on strategy."

"You got it."

"Thanks, Jim."

A flicker of a smile crossed his face, then left, as though the current had been turned on by accident, then shut off. "You're welcome, partner."

He took off and Amanda and I went inside. Her face wasn't closed, exactly, but she looked thoughtful on the ride up the elevator.

"What's up?" I asked.

She picked at the stitching on her jacket. "Jim told me what you found in Waynesboro."