Cold Frame (7 page)

It had taken the mob two years to find him, and when they did, they set up an ambush in the little trailer park outside of Gainesville where Gino had gone to ground. He'd known from the get-go that it was a matter of when, not if, they found him, so he'd created a web of people who would alert him to strangers from New York. In the ensuing shootout, he'd killed all three of the hit squad but not without taking one in the neck. His girlfriend at the time, an exotic dancer at the local strip club, had found him a cocaine-dependent doc who made his living treating the flow of illegal immigrants, drug mules, the desperate individuals who were willing to undergo organ transplant for money, and anyone else who could never afford to surface into the regular medical system. He'd patched Gino up, but in the process had damaged some nerves that had reduced half of Gino's face to a frozen mask and left him with both a stiff-legged walk and the inability to speak. He was now rich but permanently damaged, and once again on the run, moving from trailer to trailer around town and always looking over his shoulder. He slowly got his speech back, but pretended he hadn't. He'd discovered that people were often very careless with important information around a man who couldn't speak.

Until one night outside of the strip club, where he was dozing in his van, waiting for his lady, when a big guy, seriously drunk and wearing military cammies, came out of the bar followed by two Latino hoods who were obviously planning to roll the drunk. For some strange reason, this offended Gino. Yeah, he was a mobster, but he was an American mobster, and these greasers rubbed him the wrong way, the drunk being a soldier and everything. He got out of the van just as the two guys whacked the drunk army guy on the shins with a tire iron, putting him on the ground gasping in pain with tears in his eyes. Gino produced his stainless-steel twelve-gauge coach gun, which he used as a bat to rearrange the muggers' faces on their way into unconsciousness, if not death. He loaded the wailing army guy into the van, waited for his lady, and then took him back to the trailer.

Turned out the army guy, who was seriously grateful, was connected with some kind of Special Forces outfit based in the panhandle of Florida. The next morning, one thing led to another after lots of talk over coffee, and Gino was invited to come to some place called Eglin, where there were military units without names who were looking for some stone killers. The rest, as they say, was history. Gino went out to the various Stans, still frozen-faced, but this time as a contractor. He appreciated the irony—contracts had been his stock-in-trade as a mobster, too. Mandeville now had him on a personal-services countersurveillance contract under the auspices of the DMX.
He
loved the irony of having an ex-mob hit man being paid with government funds within the overarching mission of counterterrorism.

Mandeville sat down on the bench next to the motionless Evangelino, who'd gone back to using his real name on the off chance that someone would crack a smile, thus allowing him to thrash people, something he enjoyed in his otherwise blistered existence. He laid a small envelope down on the bench between him and the motionless figure to his right.

“For now, this is a targeting task. Figure out routes, routines, daily schedule. After you've got all that down, let him see your pretty face once in a while, so he knows there's a watcher on him. I may or may not need him removed, but if I do, I'll speak his last name to the message board. Which is Smith, by the way, if you can imagine that.”

Evangelino hadn't moved a muscle since Mandeville had joined him. His left eye, closest to Mandeville, stared out and down just a little. Mandeville thought he had sight in it, but just couldn't move it. He had a round, pumpkin-shaped head with lots of dark hair, except for a gray streak running from his forehead all the way back to the nape of his neck. He wasn't tall, but he was thickset to the point where Mandeville could feel his menacing bulk right next to him.

He stood up, feeling uncomfortable being right next to this—beast. He looked down on the bench. The envelope was gone.

Okay, then, he thought, and walked away, up toward the Capitol building and the Smithsonian buildings. When he finally looked back, the bench was empty. He shivered. Evangelino, the man who never spoke.

 

FIVE

On Sunday evening Av slid into his rooftop rocker, pulled a patio chair under his feet, and leaned back to enjoy a cold beer after a session with his Exercycle. He hadn't put much effort into the workout, the day's-end beer being more on his mind than a cardio blast. It was a gorgeous fall evening in the capital. The city's atmosphere was beginning to thin out a little after the summer's endless heat, humidity, and the hordes of sweaty tourists. He was up on the roof of his three-story brick building in the southern precincts of Georgetown, supposedly Washington's toniest neighborhood. He was probably the only Washington Metro cop with a Georgetown address.

The building had begun life in the early 1840s as a warehouse, morphed into a general store, and then finally a tavern with rooms above. Av's uncle Warren, his father's brother, had bequeathed the building to him after succumbing to HIV. Uncle Warren had been ostracized by the entire Smith family after declaring one day that he was gay and that he was leaving his horrified wife. Av had been the lone exception, especially once into his teenage years. He'd refused to join in the familial shunning effort, having developed a better relationship with his uncle than with his own father. When he got back to D.C. after the Marines, he discovered that he was now the proud owner of a very valuable corner property overlooking the remaining vestiges of the C & O Canal and its narrow towpath in downtown Georgetown. His neighbors in the block included several law offices, restaurants, Cannon's fish market, and three embassies within walking distance. A stand of old oaks behind the building helped damp out the perpetual traffic roar of M Street, just two blocks north.

The bottom floor along Thirty-third Street was now occupied by an import-export company, run by a fussy little Iranian man named Bayamad Kardashian, who was quick to tell you that he was, regrettably, no relation to the young lady who was famous for being famous. Av was not exactly sure what Kardashian imported and exported, but it appeared to involve the usual Middle Eastern display of lamps, rugs, and lots of brass objects. More importantly, the Iranian paid his rent on time every month.

The second floor was a two-bedroom rental apartment unit, recently occupied by a young woman who had listed her occupation as an attorney. His rental manager had handled the details and he'd only seen her a couple of times, usually heading off to work, but she appeared to be quite attractive. The income from the lower two floors allowed him to pay the city's hefty taxes on the building and bank almost his entire monthly salary. Besides that, the neighborhood was a delightful place to live, with all the bars and fancy restaurants up on M Street offering every kind of company a choosy bachelor might want on any given boring night.

He reviewed Friday's events. The court order for his John Doe autopsy was “in process.” Even though he actually had a name, he'd left the paperwork as a John Doe, hoping that would add impetus for the duty hizzoner to order it up. Unlike in the cop shows on TV, getting a court order for an autopsy took at least a day, often longer, as did any other emergent requests placed respectfully before their honors of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Budget cuts had reduced the number of judges and magistrates to the point where almost nothing happened on a same-day or even second-day basis. Either way, Av had no intentions of attending the autopsy. He'd done enough of those as a homicide detective and now he'd be entirely satisfied by the report from the slicers and dicers.

He still couldn't figure out how the victim had lost his name in the process of being processed by the ER and then regained it when he showed up in the hospital's morgue. And where the hell had the girlfriend run off to? Scared off by all the commotion? Knew there'd be cops and EMS there? Had
she
possibly done something to McGavin? And then it hit him: Precious had said the Bureau was keeping its distance because of some as-yet-undefined federal involvement— Holy crap! Was Ellen Whiting working for the FBI? He let out a low whistle. The chief medical examiner would love that.

“Knock, knock.”

Av turned around to see the pretty blonde from the apartment clambering over the low parapet wall from the building's fire escape behind him.

“Hi, there,” he said, enjoying the view as she straightened up. She was wearing what looked like a one-piece bathing suit covered with a sleeveless tee and a pair of clingy nylon running shorts. When he'd seen her before she'd been in her go-to-work clothes. He liked this outfit better.

“I'm Rue Waltham,” she said, coming across the flat tar-and-sand roof while rubbing rust off her hands.

“Av Smith,” he said, getting up to shake hands.

“Mister Kardashian said you were a runner and that you had an exercise area on the roof, but I couldn't find a way up. So I—” She indicated the external fire stairs, then looked around. The roof had two metal sheds, one for utilities and another small storage hut where Av kept his workout gear. A third, outhouse-shaped protrusion contained the stairwell that came up from his loft apartment just below.

“Oops,” she said, when she saw the open stairwell door. “This isn't part of the apartment deal, is it.”

“'Fraid not,” he said. “I'm your landlord, actually. I have a loft on the third floor, right below, and that's how
I
get to the roof. I'd never thought about the fire stairs.”

“I'm
so
sorry,” she said, obviously embarrassed.

He shrugged. “Yeah, well.”

She hesitated. “I was really looking for a running partner,” she said. “I'm new to the city and I'm not sure where the safe areas are.”

“The towpath is a great place for recreational running,” he said. “It's a pain right along here—too narrow—but once it opens up, it's great. You just have to watch out for kamikaze cyclists. Rock Creek Park's another good venue but you'd need to drive there.” He eyed her slim frame. “What's your level?”

“Five to eight miles, three times a week,” she said. “I've done two half Ironmans.”

“Have fun?”

“Damned near died,” she confessed with a grin. “But I did finish the second one.”

“Well, good for you,” he said. “Finishing is everything. I do two easy miles or so for a warm-up, turn it on for three, then turn it back off for an easy jog home. Mornings before work, May until the first snow. Walk-jog in the real winter.”

“And you're a police officer?”

“Right.”

“Well, I'd love to give it a try if you're willing. I'd just feel more secure until I get to know the area.”

“Trick is to find and then stay with a crowd if you do decide to go on your own,” he said. “D.C.'s a nice town, but we have our share of predators who especially like to hunt Rock Creek Park. And you're pretty enough to attract attention.”

“Thank you, kind sir,” she said. “And there's no one who'd, um, object to your having me for a running partner?”

“You mean a girlfriend?”

“Or a wife?”

He smiled. “Not a problem. I've made it a life rule not to get into permanent relationships with women. You guys are uniformly dangerous.”

She gave him a look that said he had to be kidding. She was maybe five-seven in her tennies, with blue-gray eyes, an athletic figure, and superfine, platinum-blond hair.

“No, actually, I'm serious,” he said. “My last squad had eight detectives—six male, two female. Every damned one of them except me was either divorced or about to be divorced. When it came to women, they were universally miserable. Wait, let me rephrase: the
men
were universally miserable. The two women detectives were too busy plotting revenge to be miserable, but they were working on it.”

“So this is some kind of a cop thing?” she asked.

“All I know is that as long as I keep women at a professional arm's length, everything in my life seems to go smoother. I think the term of art is ‘confirmed bachelor.'”

“As opposed to, say, misogynist?” she said, skeptically.

“No,” he said. “I don't hate women. I simply value my freedom more than the so-called benefits of conventional boy-girl relationships.”

“Wow,” she said. “I really am intruding, aren't I.”

“You did ask,” he reminded her. “I'll be warming up on the towpath at seven. In the meantime…” He glanced toward the fire escape.

“In the meantime, I know my way down,” she said. “See you in the morning. I think.”

“I'll be there, either way,” he said, as pleasantly as possible.

He smiled to himself as he sat back down. The pretty ones were all alike, he thought: they assumed any man would want to be in their company just because they were beautiful. She'd been embarrassed about intruding, and really surprised when he hadn't asked her to sit down, have a beer, talk. Dude: you turning
me
down?

Yup. Nothing personal, darling.

*   *   *

She wasn't there the next morning as Av went out front and began his stretching exercises. It was a gorgeous morning, with bright sunshine spreading across the eastern horizon and temps in the sixties. Even the water pouring from the canal lock looked like actual water for once. The trees were beginning to turn and the air smelled of fresh-roasted coffee beans from the shop across Thirty-third Street. Several other runners trotted by as he warmed up in the parklike wide spot created by the lock. He closed his wrought-iron gate and fell into the flow along the narrow towpath. A cyclist came by, thoughtfully ringing a bell to warn runners ahead. He'd never understood why there were cyclists on this segment of the canal. They had to dismount and then hump their bikes up and over the streets crossing the canal just about every block until they got out of Georgetown.