Under Siege (2 page)

Milk finally opened up. “At least one shot, maybe more, from the right side of the vehicle. One of them hit the driver smack in the right side of the head. Killed instantly. Can’t give you his ID yet. Get it downtown.”

“Any witnesses?”

“You kidding?”

“Dope or guns in the car?”

“Not so far.”

Jack Yocke, the reporter, was twenty-eight years old, two inches over six feet tall, and he still had a flat stomach. He silently watched the ambulance crew carry the corpse to their ambulance, then pile in and roar away with lights and sirens going.

The Post photographer, a dark man clad in jeans and tirt and wearing a ponytail, stood atop the median barrier and aimed his camera down into the front seat of the Chrysler. From where Yocke stood he could see that the left side of the vehicle’s interior was covered with blood and tissue. Sights like this used to repulse him, but not now. He thought of them as surefire front-page play in an era when those boring policy stories out of State and the White House and overseas usually had top priority on “the Front.”

In the cars creeping past, faces stared blankly at the smashed car, the police, the photographer. Slowly but perceptibly, the speed of the passing vehicles began to increase. The body was gone.

Yocke looked around carefully, at the traffic, at the huge noise fences on the edge of the right of way, and at the tops of the trees beyond. To the west he could just see the spire of the Mormon cathedral.

“An assassinations, “How would I know?” the cop grunted.

“Rifle or pistol?”

“Rifle. You saw what’s left of the driver’s head.”

“Color of the car that impacted the victim’s car?”

“You know I can’t tell you that. Check downtown.”

“What do we know about the victim?”

“He’s dead.”

“Gimme a break, Eddie. It’s all got to come out anyway and I’m close to a deadline.”

The cop regarded Yocke sourly. “All right,” he grunted. “Victim’s driver’s license says he was a male Caucasian, fifty-nine years old, Maryland resident.”

“How about his name and address, for Christ’s sake! I won’t print it until you guys release it. I won’t bother the family.”

“Don’t know you.” That was true.

And Yocke didn’t know the cop, but the reporter had seen him twice and learned his name and had made the effort to associate the name and face.

“Jack Yocke.” He stuck out his hand to shake, but the cop ignored it and curled a lip.

“You kids are ignorant liars. You’d screw me in less than a heartbeat. No.”

Jack Yocke shrugged and walked past Harrington’s car, looking around the technicians into the bloody interior. The photographer had finished shooting pictures and radioed in to the Post’s photo desk. Now he was standing beside the Post’s car.

Yocke walked west, back along the way the victim had come. He could see where the car had impacted the concrete barrier, scarring it and leaving streaks of paint and chrome. Fragments of headlight and the colored glass of blinkers lay on the pavement amid the dirt and gravel and occasional squashed pop can. He kept his head down and his eyes moving.

He walked on up the road another hundred yards, still looking, past the cars and trucks, breathing the fumes.

The motorists regarded him curiously. Several of them surreptitiously eased their door locks down. One guy in the cab of a truck wanted to question him but he moved on without speaking.

Facing eastward, Yocke could just see the crash site. He looked to the right, the south. Nothing was visible but treetops. Where was the rifleman when he pulled the trigger? He walked back toward the curve, carefully inspecting tilde the naked, gray up-thrust branches of the trees.

This was crazy. The guy wasn’t up in a tree! Only military snipers did that kind of thing.

Yocke slipped through the standing vehicles to the south side of the road and walked along scanning the terrain which sloped steeply downward to the noise fence. The rifleman could have stood here on the edge of the road, of course, and fired through a gap in traffic. Or-Yocke stopped and looked at the cars-or he could have fired from another vehicle.

Somewhere in this area, then, the Chrysler impacted the median barrier in that curve.

Yocke took a last look around, then trudged back toward the officials around the wreck.

Milk glanced at him. Yocke thanked him, was ignored, motioned to the photographer, then vaulted the barrier.

The photographer got behind the wheel. Looking back over his shoulder, he put the car in motion as Yocke pulled his door closed.

Yocke extracted a small address book from a hip pocket, looked up a number, then dialed the cellular phone. “Department of Motor Vehicles.”

“Bob Lassiter, please.”

“Just a moment.”

In a few moments the reporter had his man. “Hey Bob. Jack Yocke. Howzit going?”

“Just gimme the number, Jack.”

“Bob, I really appreciate your help. It’s Maryland, GY37097.”

Silence. Yocke knew Lassiter was working the computer terminal on his desk. Yocke got his pen ready. in about fifteen seconds Lassiter said, “Okay, plate’s on a 1987 Chrysler New Yorker registered to a Walter P. Harrington of 686 Bo Peep Drive, Laurel.”

“Bo Peep?”

“Yeah. Cutesy shit like that, probably some cheap subdivision full of fat women addicted to soap operas.”

“Spell Harrington.”

Lassiter did so.

“Thanks, Bob.”

“This is the third time this month, Jack. You promised me the Giants game.”

“I know, Bob. I’m working on it.”

“Yeah. And try to get better seats than last time. We were down so low all we could see was the asses of the Redskins standing in front of the bench.”

“Sure.” Yocke broke the connection. Lassiter wouldn’t get tickets to the Redskins-Giants game: Yocke had already promised those to a source in the mayor’s office.

The reporter made another call. He knew the number. It was The Washington Post library where researchers had access to back issues of the paper on microfilm. The indexes were computerized.

“Susan Holley.”

“Susan, Jack Yocke. Helluva accident on the beltway. Guy shot in the head. Can you see if we have anything on a Walter P. Harrington of 686 Bo Peep Drive, Laurel, Maryland.”

“Bo Peep?”

“Yep. Harrington with two rather’s. Also, remember that epidemic of freeway shootings out in California a couple years ago? Can you find out if we ever had any of that around Washington?”

“Freeway snipers, you mean?”

,well, yes, anything we have on motorists blazing away at each other on the freeway.”

“I’ll call you.”

“Thanks.”

Yocke hung up. He had a gut feeling Harrington had not been a sniper victim since the terrain offered no obvious vantage point for sniping. Sitting a long distance away and potting some driver was the whole kick for the sniping freaks, Yocke suspected. Yet the freeway shootouts, didn’t those people usually use pistols? He tried to imagine someone using a high-powered rifle on another driver while he kept his own vehicle going straight down the road. That didn’t seem too likely, either.

So what was left? The rifleman in another vehicle with a second person driving. An assassination? Just who the hell was the dead man, anyway?

The story for tomorrow morning’s paper would be long on drama but short on facts. Getting your head shot off on the beltway was big news. But the following stories would be the tough ones. The who and the why. He was going to have to try to get hold of Mrs. Harrington, if there was a Mrs., find out where the dead guy had worked, try to sniff out a possible reason someone might have wanted him dead.

“Drugs, you think?” the photographer asked.

“I don’t know,” Jack Yocke replied. “Never heard of a killing like this one. It had to be a rifle, but there’s no vantage point for a rifleman. If it was close range, why didn’t he use a pistol or submachine gun?”

“Those heavy drug hitters like the Uzis and Mac-105,” the photographer commented. “If it had been one of those the car would look like Swiss cheese.” Yocke sighed. “It’s weird. I’ve seen quite a few corpses over the last three years. Who did it and why has never been a mystery. Now this.”

The photographer had the car southbound on Connecticut Avenue. Yocke was idly watching the storefronts. “In there,” he demanded, pointing. “Turn in there.” The photographer, whose name was Harold Dorgan, complied. “Over there, by that bookstore. I’ll be in and out like a rabbit.”

“Not again,” Dorgan groaned.

“Hey, this won’t take a minute.” When the car stopped, Yocke stepped out and strode for the door.

It was a small, neighborhood bookstore, maybe twelve hundred square feet, and just now empty of customers. The clerk behind the register was in her mid-to-late twenties, tallish, with a nice figure. She watched Yocke’s approach through a pair of large glasses that hung a half inch too far down her nose.

The reporter gave her his nicest smile. “Hi. You the manager?”

“Manager, owner, and stock clerk. May I help you?” She had a rich, clear voice.

“Jack Yocke, Washington Post. was He held out his hand and she shook it. “I was wondering if you had any copies of my book, Politics of Poverty? If you do, I’d be delighted to autograph them.”

“Oh yes. I’ve seen your byline, Mr. Yocke.” She came out from behind the counter. She was wearing flats, so she was even taller than Jack had first thought, only two or three inches shorter than he was. “Over here. I think I have three copies.”

“Only two,” she said picking them up and handing them to him. “One must have sold.”

“Hallelujah.” Jack grinned. He used his pen to write, “Best Wishes, Jack Yocke,” on the flyleaf of each book.

“Thanks, Ms….

“Tish Samuels.”

He handed her the books and watched her put them back on the shelf. No wedding ring.

“How long have you lived in Washington, Mr. Yocke?”

“Little under three years. Came here from a paper in Louisville, Kentucky.”

“Like the city?”

“It’s interesting,” he told her. Actually he loved the city. His usual explanation, which he didn’t want to get into just now, was that the city resembles a research hospital containing tilde one or more-usually a lot more-specimens of every disease that affects the body politic: avarice, ambition, selfishness and self-interest, incompetence, stupidity, duplicity, mendacity, lust, poverty, wealth-you name it, Washington has it, and has it in spades. It’s all here in its purest form, on public display for anyone with the slightest spark of interest in the human condition to muse upon or study. Washington is El Dorado for the sly and the bold, for every identifiable species of pencil thief and con artist, some in office, some out, all preying on their fellow man.

“Say, Tish,” Jack Yocke said, “I’ve got a party invitation for tomorrow night. How about going with me? I could pick you up after work, or — -.”

She walked back behind the register and gave him an amused half smile. “Thanks anyway, Mr. Yocke. I think not.”

Jack lounged against a display case and looked straight into her eyes. “I’ve been taking a class at Georgetown University and the instructor is throwing an end-off-semester class party. The people in the class hardly know each other, so it’s sort of a get-acquainted thing for everyone. Low key. I really would enjoy the pleasure of your company. Please.”

“What’s the class?”

“Spanish.” Tish Samuels” grin widened. “I close the store at five on

Saturday.”

“See you then. We’ll get a bite somewhere and go party.”

Yocke actually was taking Spanish. He had hopes of breaking out of the cop beat and getting sent to Latin America by the foreign desk. This, he hoped, would be a way to leapfrog over endless, boring years on the metro staff where there were too many reporters covering too few stories-few of them worth the front page. Out in the car Dorgan asked him, “How many books did you sign, anyway? A couple dozen?”

“Naw. She only had two.”

“If it takes that long to sign just two, you better never write a bestseller.”

By eight p.m. Jack Yocke had learned several things. The Post had never before mentioned the late Walter P. Harrington in any of its articles, and the police had brought in the victim’s wife to make an identification. She had recognized his wallet and wedding ring, so the victim’s name and address were officially released to the press.

Ruing the impulse that had made him tap his Maryland DMV source and renew the man’s claim on a pair of Redskins’ tickets, Yocke wrote as much as he knew, which wasn’t much, and padded the story with all the color he could remember. After he had pushed the right keys to send it on its electronic way to the metro editor, he spent a moment calculating just how many tickets he was in debt. Two pairs for every home game should just about cover it, he concluded. He had a source for tickets, a widow whose husband had bought season tickets years ago when the Redskins weren’t so popular. She kept renewing them to maintain the connection with her husband but almost never went to the games herself.

He was getting his assignments at the metro editor’s desk when one of the national reporters rushed in with a printout of wire service copy he had read on his computer terminal. “Listen to this, you guys. The Colombians just captured Chano Aldana, the big banana of the Medellin cartel. They’re going to extradite him tonight.” Yocke whistled softly. “Where are they going to hold him?” the editor asked.

“An “undisclosed” place. The Air Force has a plane on the way down to Bogotd now. Going to bring them back to Miami and turn them over to U.s. marshals. After that, they’re all mum.”

“I guess the lid’s off, now,” Yocke said to no one in particular as the national reporter hurried away. “It’ll blow off,” he added, scanning the big room for Ottmar Mergenthaler, the political columnist-with whom he had been having a running argument about the drug issue. Mergenthaler was nowhere in sight.

Just as well, Yocke concluded. The columnist believed, and had written ad nauseam, that traditional law enforcement methods adequately funded and vigorously applied would be sufficient to handle the illegal drug epidemic. Yocke had argued that police and courts didn’t have even a sporting chance against the drug syndicates, which he compared to a bloated, gargantuan leech sucking the blood from a dying victim.