Blueblood (12 page)

As a kid, I read comics about Superman and his home, the Fortress of Solitude. I can’t recall how the artists portrayed Superman’s Arctic home, but I’d always envisioned him sitting on a chaise longue made of ice or steel—Superman doesn’t experience discomfort—doing the
New York Times
crossword puzzle or whatever it was superheroes did to unwind after defeating the Lex Luthors of the world.

The point being that even Superman needs a break.

I’d been working on Bloch’s cop-killer for a week solid and felt run down. There was a time when I could’ve done that week on no more than a few hours of sleep. Cancer and age made that kind of stamina a memory of the distant past, but the tradeoff had been wisdom. The kind of wisdom that tells you that sometimes you’re more effective when you take a rest, that running yourself into the ground doesn’t always solve the case. In fact, might even make a solution more elusive.

So, I tucked all my feelings of guilt and fear into a back corner of my head—not easy to do, when I expected to get a call from Bloch any minute—and called my old partner Dods to invite him to a cookout.

“A cookout?” he said. “What the hell, Marty?”

“What’s wrong? You have a problem coming over?”

“No,” he said. “It’s just…you’ve never had a cookout before. Do you know how?”

“Of course I know how,” I said.

“Really? You have a grill?”

“No.”

“How are you going to have a cookout, then?”

“I’ll do what everyone else does. I’ll buy a case of beer, order take-out from Rocklands, and heat everything in the microwave.”

“I think you’re missing the point,” he said. “But we’ll be there. Margie’s gonna be ecstatic. Who else is coming?”

“I’ll ask Amanda, see if she wants to bring any friends,” I said. “It’ll be small.”

. . .

Everyone congregated in my backyard, sitting at an old picnic table, moving carefully to keep from getting splinters. Amanda had brought Zenny and Jay, her grad friends from GW, who listened in rapture as Dods regaled them with stories about life as a career homicide cop. The guy could find humor in just about any situation, which was a useful trait for staying alive and sane in our line of work. Even better, he loved to play the ham. My sense of humor tended towards the internal and sarcastic, which Dods was good at as well, but he was even better when he had an audience to play to. His broad, Slavic face was lit up like a lightbulb and his hands were held wide in a “it was this big” gesture.

I watched from the kitchen window as I cleaned up, one of those people who can’t sit for very long. Or maybe it was just experience. Dods would inevitably get around to roasting me and it was always smart to excuse yourself before the guns swung in your direction. Or, maybe it was because I’d hoped the cookout would act as a pick-me-up, but what had really happened was my feelings of loneliness had been brought into stark relief. I wondered what it would look like with Julie sitting there, pushing a strand of hair out of her face as she listened. Or Kransky and Dods together, two ex-partners, swapping stories about me. It hurt to think about. When I let myself open that door, sitting at a picnic table chuckling at one of Dods’s jokes didn’t seem to fit. I’d originally hoped the get-together would pull me out of the dumps, but it seemed to be having the opposite effect.

I was scraping the last of the baked beans back into its take-out container, Pierre skulking around my legs looking for scraps, when I saw Amanda glance around, looking for me. She stood while the others were still laughing at something Dods had said and came towards the house. She poked her head into the kitchen, holding a hand out to keep the screen door from banging.

“What are you doing in here, Marty?” 

“Just trying to get a jump on cleaning up,” I said. “I’ll be out in a sec.”

“You should be enjoying yourself.”

“I am. I enjoy cleaning.”

She made a face. “Seriously, come out and join us. Relax. Laugh a little. That was the whole point, right?”

I shrugged. “True. And who knows when we’ll get the chance again.”

She came all the way inside, a concerned look on her face. “What’s that mean?”

I tried to wave it off, but I’d let my mouth run ahead of my brain again. “Nothing.”

Amanda folded her arms and leaned against the door frame. “Hey, give me some credit. Did the doctor call? Has something happened?”

“No, it’s not that. I…” I gritted my teeth.

“What, then?”

I put the container in the fridge and rinsed my hands, dried them on a dish towel. It gave me a good excuse to not look at her. “Look, I’m happy that you’re graduating, that you’re moving on. Very, very happy. If anyone deserves some good news in life, it’s you.”

“But?”

Okay, now I had to look. “I’m trying to get used to the idea that in a few weeks you could be leaving. Maybe for good. Maybe more importantly, I’m trying to adjust to the idea that you leaving should bother me so much. I’ve gotten through fifty-odd years with about four important relationships in my life. At some stage, all of them involved the person leaving, changing, progressing, doing something different than I was.”

She was quiet, her face expectant.

“I’m saying that you leaving bothers me. A lot. We’ve helped each other in the last six months, but I feel like I’ve gotten the better end of the deal.”

“That’s up for debate.”

I brushed that aside. “Long story short, I don’t want you to leave, even though you’ve got every right to. I’m trying to work around that right now, but what can I say? It’s depressing.”

She walked over and put her arms around me. Her grip was strong. She stepped back and looked me in the eye. “First, I may not leave. They haven’t exactly been beating down my door with job offers. Second, even if I end up leaving, we’ll cope. You’ll miss me, but you’ll find a way to deal with it, the same way I’ll have to, wherever I end up. Third, you’re part of my life and nothing will change that, especially not something as meaningless as distance and time. Like it or not, you’re my family, Marty. Which means, wherever I go—if I go—we’re connected.”

She hugged me again and I hugged back, hard. After a moment, though, my stomach broke into a long and protracted gurgle that felt like a lawnmower had started somewhere south of the border. Amanda, her head tucked into my chest, started to laugh, her body shaking in my arms. I laughed, too, and it felt good.

“So much for our Hallmark moment,” I said, letting her go.

“We’re too cynical for it anyway,” she said, smiling. She squeezed my arm. “Come on, Marty. Leave this stuff for later. Come out and sit with your friends.”

“Go on out. I’ll be there in a sec,” I said. “I’m going to grab some more beer for Dods before he guts me.”

“Don’t be long,” she said and went outside. “I don’t want to have to send him in after you.”

I reached into the fridge for another six-pack, but paused at the sink again, watching as Amanda re-joined the group. The tableau was perfectly framed by the window. Dods had her laughing before she was done taking her seat and I smiled. It was a snapshot of joy and friendship and I wanted to tuck it away.

She was right. And she was wrong. We all cope. We’re all connected. And we hope the love we share with others will get us through bad times. But it doesn’t always erase the pain, the loneliness. It isn’t always enough.

I put a smile on my face and went outside with the beer.

Chapter Fifteen

It seemed like a good time to get a hold of Bob Caldwell, the DEA agent who had collaborated with Danny Garcia in the past. The number Bloch had given me rang fifteen unanswered times. I hung up and thought about it. I could try calling later or I could get my ass in gear and actually chase down a lead. So I got in the car, pointed it towards 7th street, and in fifteen minutes I was cruising DC’s somewhat underwhelming waterfront—about a block wide and ten blocks long—looking for a parking space. I squeezed my car next to a parking meter by the Harbor Patrol building, then headed up the boardwalk that fronted the marina.

Bloch had told me “the waterfront” and not much else, so I had to settle for walking up to folks who seemed like they might own a boat and asking if they knew a Bob Caldwell. I got a lot of blank stares until I remembered the name of the boat—
The Loophole
—and then I had his slip number in a matter of seconds. Trust people in DC to not know a person, but instantly recognize the name of a dog, house, or boat.

I took my time walking down the cement slab boardwalk, admiring what I saw, from dart-shaped pleasure craft to worn-out houseboats. Bumpers and lines squeaked and creaked with the Potomac’s gentle tide and the smells of the crab shacks and fish stalls on Water Street a few blocks away set my stomach rumbling in a good way. If I closed my eyes and ignored the joggers, security helicopters, and the jets taking off from National airport, I could be in a small fishing village on the Chesapeake.

The person who’d recognized Caldwell’s boat told me he was moored at the Gangplank marina, about a third of the way down the waterfront. The pier was fenced off with a security gate, but someone had propped open the chain-link door with a cooler to make it easier to bring stuff down from their car. A static security camera was trained on the entrance. I pulled out my cell phone and tried Caldwell’s number again. Ten, eleven, twelve more rings and no answer.

No sense wasting the trip. I clomped down the ramp and through the gate, trying to look like I belonged. There were scads of boats, though, and I wasn’t sure how to find Caldwell’s. To keep up the illusion for anyone watching, I didn’t want to stoop and stare at the slip numbers. Then I remembered Bloch has said
The Loophole
was a sailboat. Most of the craft in the slips were pleasure craft or barges, so I headed for the only group of masts I could see.

The first four or five weren’t what I was looking for, though I did appreciate the names:
Sea Pub
,
Roman Holiday
,
Play Date
.
The Loophole
was the last one I checked, a long, slim sailing yacht, maybe thirty-five or forty feet long. A little ragged around the edges, but at least it appeared used, unlike some of the yachts that still had their white winter shrink-wrap clinging to their hulls like bandages.

There was no one on deck, so I shouted Bob Caldwell’s name at the boat a few times. When there wasn’t any answer, I walked down the graying wooden pier and leaned across the short stretch of water so I could put my hands on the side of the boat. I hunched a bit and peeked inside a porthole, but between the glare on the glass and the fact that the window was tinted, I didn’t see a damn thing.

When I straightened up, there was plenty to see, since there was a gun in my face.

Holding it was a plump white guy with graying hair who had damn near magically appeared on deck. He was in a kneeling position, leaning over so he could cover me. A neat, salt-and-pepper beard ran along the edge of his jaw, or where his jaw would be if he’d been thinner. The perfect line of the beard and his clean-shaven cheeks emphasized the chipmunk-roundness of his face. He wore a Hawaiian shirt with a pineapple and orange-slice pattern on it, khaki shorts, and deck shoes. He could’ve been an insurance salesman on his day off. But I paid less attention to what he looked like and more to the chunky black handgun pointed at my face. The analytical, professional side of my brain tried to ID it—maybe a .45 ACP or an old Browning Hi-Power. It didn’t really matter. The more emotional side of my brain recognized that, at this range, a cap gun could take my head off.

“Who the hell are you?” the guy asked. His voice was hoarse, all gravel and sand, like he’d spent his life as a rock-n-roll roadie instead of a DEA agent.

Keeping very still, with my hands held against the gunwale of the boat, I said, “Marty Singer. I guess Sam Bloch didn’t tell you I might drop by?”

“Who the fuck is Sam Bloch?”

I said, slowly, pacing my words, “MPDC lieutenant with HIDTA. One of the cops on his team, Danny Garcia, was killed a few months ago. He asked me to look into it and said a guy named Bob Caldwell knew Danny from working with him back in the day. He thought Caldwell might be able to give me a handle on what Garcia was looking into before he was taken out.”

The guy seemed to think it over, or that’s what I’m assuming he was doing, since he didn’t blink or even look away for what seemed like a whole minute. My arms started to cramp from holding my weight against the boat. It was like holding halfway through a push-up. I needed to stand or let myself slide into the water between the pier and the hull.

“Is that good enough or do you need something else?” I asked. “A note from my teacher, maybe?”

“You with MPDC?”

“Was.”

“Department?”

“Homicide. Retired.”

“Got any ID?”

I shrugged, no mean feat in my position. “I do, but it won’t mean anything to you. I’m not official anymore. No badge.”

He seemed to think that over with the same fish-eye stare as before.

“Can I at least stand up?” I asked. “My arms are about to fall off.”

“Let’s see that ID,” he said. “Right hand only, slow.”

I reached back, pulled my wallet out, and opened it so he could see my Virginia driver’s license through the little plastic window. I squeezed the wallet, hoping the whole thing didn’t drop into the Potomac with a slip of the fingers. He glanced at it, nodded with a quick jab of his head, then he stood and the gun disappeared under the Hawaiian shirt, though not before his eyes did a quick scan of the dock. All while keeping me in line-of-sight.

“You
are
Bob Caldwell, right?” I asked, straightening up.

“That’s me,” he said. He stooped to retrieve an aluminum cane that I hadn’t seen while I was busy looking at his gun. He took three gimpy steps towards me, then leaned over and gave me a hand up to the deck. A blurry blue tattoo decorated the inside of his forearm. “Sorry for the rough welcome.”