Cross Fire (2 page)

Over time, underground wires had frayed and smoldered, filling the space beneath the streets with flammable gas. Ultimately — and more frequently these days — the exposed wires created an electrical arc, lighting a fireball in the sewer and sending another three-hundred-pound iron disk flying up into the air.

This was the weird, scary stuff Denny and Mitch lived for. Every afternoon, they would gather up their papers to sell and hoof it over to the library to check the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) website for wherever rush-hour traffic was at its worst. Logjams were their meat.

Even on an ordinary day, the Key Bridge lived up to its
nickname, the Car Strangled Spanner, but today the M Street approach was somewhere between a parking lot and a circus. Denny worked his way up the middle of the traffic, and Mitch took the outside.

“
True Press,
only a dollar. Help the homeless.”

“Jesus loves you. Help the homeless?”

They were an odd pair, to look at them — Denny, a six-feet-something white guy with bad teeth and stubble that never quite hid his sunken chin, and then Mitch, a brother with a boyish, dark black face, a husky body that topped out at five six, and stubby little baby dreads on his head to match.

“This is a perfect metaphor right here, ain’t it?” Denny was saying. They talked to each other over the tops of the cars — or, rather, Denny talked and Mitch played a sort of straight man for the customers.

“You got pressure building, way down low where no one’s looking, ’cause it’s all just rats and shit down there, and who cares, right? But then one day —” Denny puffed out his cheeks and made a sound like a nuclear explosion. “Now you
gotta
pay attention, ’cause the rats and shit, they’re everywhere, and everyone wants to know why somebody
else
didn’t do something to stop it. I mean, if that ain’t Washington to a tee, I don’t know what the hell is.”

“To a tee, bro. To a P, Q, R, S,
tee,
” Mitch said, and laughed at his own dumb joke. His faded shirt read,
IRAQ: IF YOU WEREN’T THERE, SHUT UP!
His pants were baggy camos, like Denny’s, only cut off around the calf.

Denny kept his shirt up over his shoulders to show off a half-decent six-pack. It never hurt to put a little eye candy on the table, and his face wasn’t exactly his strong suit. “It’s the
American way,” he went on, loud enough for anyone with an open window to hear. “Keep doing what you always did, so you keep gettin’ what you always got. Am I right?” he asked a pretty business suit in a BMW. She actually smiled and bought a paper. “God bless you, miss. Now
that,
Ladies and Gentlemen, is how we do it!”

He continued to fleece the crowd, getting more and more drivers to reach out their windows with cash in hand.

“Yo, Denny.” Mitch chinned at a couple of street cops working their way over from Thirty-fourth. “I don’t think these two are feeling us too much.”

Denny shouted over before the cops could talk first. “Panhandling ain’t illegal, officers. Not outside federal parklands, and last I checked, M Street ain’t no park!”

One of them gestured around at the snarl of traffic, Pepco trucks, and fire department vehicles. “You’re kidding me, right? Let’s go. Clear out.”

“Come on, man, you gonna deny a couple of
homeless vets
the right to make an honest living?”

“You ever been in Iraq, man?” Mitch added. People were starting to stare.

“You heard the officer,” the second cop told him. “Move along.
Now.
”

“Hey, man, just ’cause you got an asshole don’t mean you gotta be one,” Denny said, to a few laughs. He could feel the captive audience coming over to his side.

Suddenly there was some pushing. Mitch didn’t much like to be touched, and the cop who tried went down on his ass between the cars. The other one got a hand on Denny’s shoulder and, like a lightning bolt, Denny knocked it away.

Time to go
.

He slid across the hood of a yellow cab and started toward Prospect with Mitch right behind.

“Stop right there!” one of the cops shouted after them.

Mitch kept running, but Denny turned around. There were several cars between Denny and the officers now. “What are you going to do, shoot a homeless vet in the middle of traffic?” Then he spread his arms wide. “Go ahead, man. Take me out. Save the government a few bucks.”

People were honking, and some of them yelled from their cars.

“Give the guy a break, man!”

“Support the troops!”

Denny smiled, gave the officer a crisp salute with his middle finger, and ran to catch up with Mitch. A second later, they were sprinting up Thirty-third Street and were soon out of sight.

THEY WERE STILL LAUGHING when they got back to Denny’s ancient Suburban, parked in Lot 9 by Lauinger Library on the Georgetown campus.

“That was awesome!” Mitch’s doughy face was shiny with sweat, but he wasn’t even out of breath. He was the type whose muscles looked a lot like fat.
“‘What are you going to do?’”
he parroted.
“‘Shoot a homeless vet in the middle of traffic?’”

“
True Press,
one dollar,” Denny said. “Lunch at Taco Bell, three dollars. The look on po-po’s face when he knows you got him? Priceless. Wish I had a picture.”

He plucked a bright-orange envelope from under his wiper blade and got in on the driver’s side. The car still smelled of chain-smoked cigarettes and burritos from the night before. Pillows and blankets were bunched up in a ball on one half of the backseat, next to a lawn-and-leaf bag full of returnable cans.

Behind that, under a stack of collapsed cardboard boxes, a few old carpet remnants, and a false plywood bottom, were two Walther PPS nine-millimeter pistols, a semiautomatic M21, and a military-grade M110 sniper rifle. Also a long-range thermal-optical site, a spotting scope, a cleaning kit for the rifles, and several boxes of ammunition, all wrapped up in a large plastic tarp and bundled with several bungee cords.

“You did good back there, Mitchie,” Denny told him. “Real good. Didn’t lose your cool for a second.”

“Nah,” Mitch said, emptying his pockets onto the plastic lunch tray between them. “I won’t lose my cool, Denny. I’m like one of them whatchamacallits. Cucumbers.”

Denny counted out the day’s take. Forty-five — not bad for a short shift. He gave Mitch ten singles and a handful of quarters.

“So what do you think, Denny? Am I ready or what? I think I’m ready.”

Denny sat back and lit one of the half-smoked butts in the ashtray. He handed it to Mitch and then lit another for himself. While he was at it, he lit the orange envelope with the parking ticket inside and dropped it, burning, onto the cement.

“Yeah, Mitch, I think maybe you are ready. The question is, are
they
ready for us?”

Mitch’s knees started to jackhammer up and down. “When do we start? Tonight? What about tonight? What about it, huh, Denny?”

Denny shrugged and leaned back. “Just enjoy the peace and quiet while you can, ’cause you’re going to be famous as shit soon enough.” He blew a smoke ring, then another, which passed right through the first. “You ready to be famous?”

Mitch was looking out the window at a couple of cute, short-skirted coeds crossing the parking lot. His knees were still bouncing. “I’m ready to start this thing, that’s what.”

“Good boy. And what’s the mission, Mitchie?”

“Clean up this mess in Washington, just like the politicians always say.”

“That’s right. They talk about it —”

“But we gonna
do
something about it. No doubt. No doubt.”

Denny extended his fist for a bump, then started up the car. He backed out the long way to get a good look at the ladies from behind.

“Speaking of tacos,” he said, and Mitch laughed. “Where you want to eat? We’ve got paper to burn today.”

“Taco Bell, man,” Mitch said without even having to think.

Denny pulled hard on the gearshift to get it into drive and took off. “Why am I not surprised?”

THE LEAD STORY in my life these days was Bree — Brianna Stone, known as the Rock at Metro Police. And, yes, she was all of that — solid, profound, lovely. She’d become a part of my life to the point where I couldn’t imagine it without her anymore. Things hadn’t been this sane and balanced for me in years.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that Homicide at Metro was so quiet lately. As a cop, you can’t help but wonder when that next ton of bricks is going to fall, but in the meantime, Bree and I had an unheard-of two-hour lunch that Thursday afternoon. Usually the only way we see each other during the day is if we’re working the same murder case.

We sat in the back at Ben’s Chili Bowl, under all the signed celeb photos. Ben’s isn’t exactly the world capital of romance, but it is an institution in Washington. The half-smokes alone are worth the trip.

“So you know what they’re calling us around the office these days?” Bree said, halfway through a coffee milk shake. “Breelex.”

“Breelex? Like Brad and Angelina? That’s
awful.
”

She laughed; she couldn’t even keep a straight face at that. “I’m telling you, cops have no imagination.”

“Hmm.” I put a hand lightly on her leg under the table. “With exceptions, of course.”

“Of course.”

Any more than that would have to wait, and not just because the bathrooms at Ben’s Chili Bowl were definitely not an option. We did in fact have somewhere important we had to be that day.

After lunch, we strolled hand in hand up U Street to Sharita Williams’s jewelry store. Sharita was an old friend from high school, and she also happened to do outstanding work on antique pieces.

A dozen tiny bells tinkled over our heads as we breezed in the door.

“Well, don’t you two look in love.” Sharita smiled from behind the counter.

“That’s ’cause we are, Sharita,” I said. “And I highly recommend it.”

“Just find me a good man, Alex. I’m in.”

She knew why we were there, and she removed a small black velvet box from under the case. “It came out beautifully,” she said. “I love this piece.”

The ring used to belong to my grandmother, Nana Mama, she of the impossibly small hands. We’d had it resized for Bree. It was a platinum deco setting with three diamonds
across, which struck me as perfect — one for each of the kids. Maybe it’s corny, but it was like that ring represented everything Bree and I were committing to. This was a package deal after all, and I felt like the luckiest man in the world.

“Comfortable?” Sharita asked when Bree slipped it on. Neither one could take her eyes off the ring, and I couldn’t take my eyes off Bree.

“Yeah, it’s comfortable,” she said, squeezing my hand. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

I PUT IN a late-afternoon appearance at the Daly Building. This was as good a time as any to catch up on the flood of paperwork that never seemed to stop flowing across my desk.

But when I got to the Major Case Squad room, Chief Perkins was just coming out into the hall with somebody I didn’t recognize.

“Alex,” he said. “Good. You’ll save me another trip. Walk with us?”

Something was obviously up, and it wasn’t good. When the chief wants a meeting, you go to him, not the other way around. I did a one-eighty, and we headed back over to the elevators.

“Alex, meet Jim Heekin. Jim’s the new AD at the Directorate of Intelligence over at the Bureau.”

We shook hands. Heekin said, “I’ve heard a lot about you, Detective Cross. The FBI’s loss was MPD’s gain when you came back over here.”

“Uh-oh,” I said. “Flattery’s never a good sign.”

We all laughed, but it was also true. A lot of new managers at the Bureau like to shake things up when they start, just to let people know they’re there. The question was, what did Heekin’s new job have to do with me?

Once we were settled in Perkins’s big office, Heekin got a lot more specific.

“Can I assume you’re familiar with our FIGs?” he asked me.

“Field Intelligence Groups,” I said. “I’ve never worked with them directly, but sure.” The FIGs had been created to develop and share intelligence “products” with the law enforcement communities in their respective jurisdictions. On paper, it seemed like a good idea, but some critics saw it as part of the Bureau’s general passing of the buck on domestic criminal investigation after 9/11.

Heekin went on, “As you probably know, the DC group interfaces with all police departments in our area, including MPD. Also NSA, ATF, Secret Service — you name it. We’ve got monthly conference calls and then face time on an as-needed basis, depending on where the action is.”

It was starting to seem like a sales pitch, and I already felt pretty sure I knew what he was selling.

“Generally, police chiefs represent their departments with the FIGs,” he continued with his steady, well-paced speech, “but we’d like you to take over that position for MPD.”

I looked at Perkins, and he shrugged. “What can I say, Alex? I’m just too damn busy.”