Cold Frame (20 page)

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?