Pop Goes the Weasel (6 page)

“You’re not fooling anybody, Cross, least of all me. I’m fully fucking aware that you’re investigating homicides in Southeast
that you aren’t assigned to—the so-called Jane Does. You’re doing this against my explicit orders. Some of those cases have
been closed for over a year.
I won’t have it
—I won’t tolerate your insubordination, your condescending attitude. I know what you’re trying to pull. Embarrass the department,
specifically embarrass me, curry fucking favor with the mayor, making yourself some kind of folk hero in Southeast in the
process.”

I hated Pittman’s tone and what he was saying, but I learned one trick a long time ago, and it is probably the most important
thing to know about politics inside any organization. It’s so simple, but it’s the key to every petty kingdom, every fiefdom.
Knowledge truly is power, it’s everything; if you don’t have any, pretend you do.

So I told Chief Pittman nothing. I didn’t contradict him; I didn’t admit to a thing. I did nothing. Me and Mahatma Gandhi.

I let him think that maybe I was investigating old cases in Southeast—but I didn’t admit to it. I also let him think that
maybe I had some powerful connections with Mayor Monroe and God only knows who else in the City on the Hill. I let him think
that maybe I was after his job, or that I might have—God forbid—even loftier aspirations.

“I’m working the homicides assigned to me. Check with the captain. I’m doing my best to close as many cases as I can.”

Pittman nodded curtly—
one
nod. His face was still heart-attack red. “All right, I want you to close
this
case, and I want you to close it fast. A tourist was robbed and gunned down on M Street last night,” he said. “A well-respected
German doctor from Munich. It’s front fucking page in today’s
Post
. Not to mention the
International Herald Tribune
, and every newspaper in Germany, of course. I want you on
that
murder case, and I want it solved pronto.”

“This doctor, he’s a white man?” I asked, keeping my expression neutral.

“I told you, he’s German.”

“I already have a number of open cases in Southeast,” I said to Pittman. “A nurse was murdered over the weekend.”

He didn’t want to hear it. He shook his head—
one
shake. “And now you have an important case in Georgetown. Solve it, Cross. You’re to work on nothing else. That’s a direct
order… from The Jefe.”

AS SOON AS CROSS WALKED out of Chief Pittman’s inner office, a senior homicide detective named Patsy Hampton slipped in through
a side door that led to the attached conference room. Detective Hampton had been instructed by Pittman to listen in on everything,
to evaluate the situation from a street cop’s perspective, to advise and to counsel.

Hampton didn’t like the job, but those were her orders from Pittman. She didn’t like Pittman, either. He was wound so tight
that if you stuck coal up his ass, in a couple of weeks you’d have a diamond. He was mean and petty and vengeful.

“You see what I’m dealing with here? Cross knows how to push all my buttons. In the beginning he would lose his temper. Now
he just ignores what I say.”

“I heard everything,” Hampton said. “He’s slick, all right.” She was going to agree with Chief Pittman, no matter what he
said.

Patsy Hampton was an attractive woman, with sandy blond hair cut short, and the most piercing blue eyes this side of Stockholm.
She was thirty-one years old, and on a very fast track in the department. At twenty-six, she’d been the youngest homicide
detective in Washington. Now she had much loftier goals in mind.

“You’re selling yourself short, though. You got to him. I know you did.” She told Pittman what he wanted to hear. “He just
internalizes it pretty well.”

“You’re sure he’s meeting with those other detectives?” Pittman asked her.

“They’ve met three times that I know of, always at Cross’s house on Fifth Street. I suspect there have been other times. I
heard about it through a friend of Detective Thurman.”

“But they don’t meet while any of them is on duty?”

“No, not to my knowledge. They’re careful. They meet on their own time.”

Pittman scowled and shook his head. “That’s too goddamn bad. It makes it harder to prove anything really damaging.”

“From what I’ve heard, they believe the department is holding back resources that could clear a number of unsolved homicides
in Southeast and parts of Northeast. Most of the murders involve black and Hispanic women.”

Pittman tensed his jaw and looked away from Hampton. “The numbers that Cross uses are complete bullshit,” he said angrily.
“They’re dogshit. It’s all political with him. How much financial resource can we put against the murders of drug addicts
and prostitutes in Southeast? It’s criminals murdering other criminals. You know how it goes in those black neighborhoods.”

Hampton nodded again, still agreeing when she saw the chance. She was afraid she’d lost him, said the wrong thing by speaking
the truth. “They think that at least some of the victims were innocent women from their neighborhoods. That E.R. nurse who
was killed over the weekend, she was a friend of Cross and Detective John Sampson. Cross thinks a killer could be loose in
Southeast, preying on women.”

“A serial killer in the ghetto? Give me a break. We’ve never had one there. They’re rare in any inner city. Why now? Why here?
Because Cross wants to find one, that’s why.”

“Cross and the others would counter that by saying we’ve never seriously tried to catch this squirrel.”

Pittman’s small eyes suddenly burned into her skull. “Do you agree with that horseshit, Detective?”

“No, sir. I don’t necessarily agree or disagree. I know for a fact that the department doesn’t have enough resources anywhere
in the city, with the possible exception of Capitol Hill. Now
that’s
political, and it’s an outrage.”

Pittman smiled at her answer. The chief knew she was playing him a little, but he liked her anyway. He liked just being in
a room with Patsy Hampton. She was such a doll, such a cutie. “What do you know about Cross, Patsy?”

She sensed that the chief had vented enough. Now he wanted their talk to be more informal. She was certain that he liked her,
had a crush on her, but he was too uptight to ever act on his desires, thank God.

“I know Cross has been on the force for just over eight years. He’s currently the liaison between the department and the FBI,
works with the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. He’s a profiler with a good reputation, from what I hear. Has a Ph.D.
in psych from Johns Hopkins. Private practice for three years before he came to us. Widower, two kids, plays the blues on
the piano at his house. That enough background? What more do you want to know? I’ve done my homework. You know me,” Hampton
said, and finally smiled.

Pittman was smiling now, too. He had small teeth with spaces between them, and always made her think of Eastern European refugees,
or maybe Russian gangsters.

Detective Hampton smiled, though. She knew he liked it when she played along with him—as long as he thought she respected
him.

“Any other worthwhile observations at this point?” he asked.

You’re such a soft, flabby dick
, Patsy Hampton wanted to say, but she just shook her head. “He has some charm. He’s well connected in political circles.
I can see why you’re concerned about him.”

“You think Cross is charming?”

“I told you, he’s slick. He
is
. People say he looks like the young Muhammad Ali. I think he likes to play the part sometimes: dance like a butterfly, sting
like a bee.” She laughed again—and so did he.

“We’re going to nail Cross,” Pittman said. “We’ll send him flying back to private practice. Wait and see. You’re going to
help get it done. You get things done. Right, Detective Hampton? You see the bigger picture. That’s what I like about you.”

She smiled again. “That’s what I like about me, too.”

THE BRITISH EMBASSY is a plain, Federal-style building located at 3100 Massachusetts Avenue. Its immediate neighbors are the
vice president’s house and the Observatory. The ambassador’s residence is a stately Georgian building with tall, flowing white
columns; the Chancery is the actual office building.

Geoffrey Shafer sat behind his small mahogany desk at the embassy and stared out onto Massachusetts Avenue. The embassy staff
currently counted 415 people—soon to be cut to 414, he was thinking to himself. The staff included defense experts, foreign-policy
specialists, trade, public affairs, clerks, and secretaries.

Although the United States and Britain have an agreement not to spy on each other, Geoffrey Shafer was nonetheless a spy.
He was one of eleven men and women from the Security Service, formerly known as MI6, who worked at the embassy in Washington.
These eleven in turn ran agents attached to the consulates general in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New
York, and San Francisco.

He was feeling restless as hell today, getting up from his desk frequently, pacing back and forth across the carpet that covered
the creaking parquet floors. He made phone calls he didn’t need to make, tried to get some work done, thought about how much
he despised his job and the everyday details of life.

He was supposed to be working on a truly silly communiqué about the government’s absurd ongoing commitment to human rights.
The foreign secretary had rather bombastically proclaimed that Britain would support the international condemnation of regimes
that violate human rights; support international bodies involved in the cause; and denounce human-rights abuses,
blah, blah, blah
, ad nauseam.

He glanced through a few of the computer games he enjoyed when he was uptight like this—Riven, MechCommander, Unreal, TOCA,
Ultimate Soccer Manager. None of them appealed to him right now; nothing did.

He was starting to crash, and he knew the feeling.
I’m going down, and there is only one certain way to stop it: play the Four Horsemen
.

To make matters worse, it was raining and woefully grayskied outside. The city of Washington, and also the surrounding countryside,
looked forlorn and depressing. It sucked. Christ, he was in a bad mood, even for him.

He continued to stare east across Massachusetts Avenue, looking into the trees bordering a park dedicated to the pacifist
bullshit artist Kahlil Gibran. He tried to daydream, mostly about fucking various attractive women currently working at the
embassy.

He had called his psychiatrist, Boo Cassady, at her home-office, but she was about to start a session and couldn’t talk for
long. They agreed to meet after work: a nasty quickie at her place before he went home to face Lucy and the sniveling brood.

He didn’t dare play Horsemen again tonight. It was too soon after the nurse. But God Almighty, he
wanted
to play. He wished he could take somebody out in some very imaginative way, right there inside the embassy.

He did have one excellent thing to do today—saving it until now—three in the afternoon. He had used the dice already,
played a bit of Horsemen, just to help him make a personnel decision.

He had called Sarah Middleton just before lunch and told her they needed to have a chat and could she stop by his office,
say at three?

Sarah was obviously tense on the phone and told him she could do it earlier, anytime, at his convenience. “Not busy, then,
nothing much to do today?” Shafer asked. Three o’clock would be fine, she answered hastily.

His secretary, the bestial Betty formerly from Belgravia, buzzed him promptly at three. At least he’d finally gotten through
to her about punctuality.

Shafer let her buzz him several times, then picked up the phone abruptly, as if she’d interrupted him at something vital to
security.

“What is it, Ms. Thomas? I’m extremely busy with this communiqué for the secretary.”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Shafer, but Ms. Middleton is here. You have a three-o’clock appointment with her, I understand.”

“Hmmm
. Do I? Yes, you’re right. Can you ask Sarah to wait? I’ll need a few more minutes. I’ll buzz when I’m ready to see her.”

Shafer smiled contentedly and picked up a copy of
The Red Coat
, the embassy’s employee newsletter. He knew Betty hated it when he used Ms. Middleton’s Christian name: Sarah.

He fantasized about Sarah for the next few moments. He’d wanted to have a go at Mzzz Middleton from their first interview,
but he was too careful for that. God, he hated the bitch. This was going to be such fun.

Schafer watched the rain hammer down on the traffic crossing Massachusetts Avenue for another ten minutes. Finally he snatched
up the phone. He couldn’t wait a minute longer. “I’ll see her now. Send Sarah in.”

He fingered his twenty-sided dice. This could be fun, actually.
Terror at the office
.

THE LOVELY SARAH MIDDLETON entered his office and managed a cordial look, almost a smile. He felt like a boa constrictor eyeing
a mouse.

She had naturally curly red hair, a moderately pretty face, a superior figure. Today she wore a very short suit, a red V-necked
silk blouse, black stockings. It was obvious to Shafer that she was out to catch a husband in Washington.

Shafer’s pulse was beating hard. He was aroused by her, always had been. He thought about taking her, and very much liked
that phrase. She didn’t look as nervous and unsure of herself as she had recently, so that probably meant she was really scared
and trying not to show it. He tried his best to think like Sarah. That made it more fun, though he found it a real challenge
to be as squirrelly and insecure as she would surely be.

“We certainly needed the rain,” Sarah said, and then cringed before the sentence was even finished.

“Sarah, please sit down,” he said. He was trying to keep a straight business face. “Personally, I loathe the rain. It’s one
of the many reasons I’ve never been stationed in London.”