The whole thing started small, the way the real ugly things always do, on a Saturday night eight months earlier, in Washington, D.C. Luke was in his apartment, listening to the sound of cars piling up along Wisconsin, and music coming from the bars and bistros, all the college kids and tourists out for a stroll in Georgetown, baggy-pants gangbangers rubbing attitudes with college kids and hippies and D.C. bagmen. Everyone was moving up and down the long brightly lit streets, in and out of the bars and the record stores and the restaurants. The cops cruised by with their faces blank and bored, and the local gang kids gathered in doorways to work out a plan, pick out a vic, make their names on this warm spring night in America.
Luke could see several of the major Washington landmarks from the leaded-glass bay window in his front room, see them even at night, see the red lights blinking on the white pyramid crest of the Washington Monument, the jets circling it as they floated down into National Airport, choppers drifting through the airspace with their running lights burning in the night sky around the monument like sparks flickering off a torch. There was the Lincoln Memorial at the end of the Arlington Bridge, and if he leaned way out and looked to the right, he could see the tip of the Capitol dome, the golden figure of Nike or Venus or some antique babe riding it like a bareback circus rider on a huge white horse, and through the masses of trees, he could see the shimmering surfaces of tide pools and river bends dusted with starlight and moonlight. It was dreamy, unreal, slightly hallucinatory, and impossibly beautiful, with white marble tombs and cool lawns and twisted oak trees six hundred years old, grim tangles of bronze and iron statuary, and past the Capitol dome literally hundreds of massed rectangular temples receding into a deepening twilight haze under an arc of bright cold stars. Looking at all that republican tranquillity, you could almost forget the gunfire and sirens coming from the permanent street war going on down in the Southeast, where the gangbangers and drug dealers were doing all they could to push the murder rate skyward again this year.
In the U.S. Marshals Service, D.C. was a destination town, the place where you tried to end up after putting in your years in Court Security, Prisoner Transport, Warrant Enforcement, or even Missile Escort. Luke Zitto had put in his time in various combined-agency fugitive pursuit operations for the Marshals Service, in between regular daily fugitive investigations in New York State, Michigan, and Indiana.
Before that, he had six years in Prisoner Transport and seven in Witness Protection. At forty-nine, his knees were shot and his eyes were going, and he’d killed seven men in the line of duty since he left Columbus, Ohio, twenty-two years ago.
Now he was assigned full time to the USMS Arlington HQ, a move he felt was related to his performance in the last big combined-force takedown operation, called Sunrise. In particular, he was being rewarded for his successful pursuit and takedown of Delbert Sutter. This was his final career shift.
Or so he hoped.
The time had come to back off, accept a desk pretty soon, maybe even find a woman who could stand him and try for a normal life. Buy a house in Adams Morgan like Doc Hollenbeck, get himself a Weber barbecue and a stupid chef hat, an apron with a snappy saying on it. Have all his friends over, as soon as he could find some.
That was the plan anyway.
On this particular Saturday evening, Luke was pacing in his front room with a fire glimmering in the background, wondering when Doc Hollenbeck was going to call. If Doc was going to call. Doc was in Fugitive Operations too, another aging chaser with the Marshals Service. Doc was supposed to have something for Luke that night, a lead on an old target from Brooklyn.
The room he was pacing in was a nice room, part of a three-room apartment with a wood-burning marble fireplace, and old oak paneling that glowed like a horse’s hide at sunset. Heavy beams ran across the low white stucco ceiling. The floor was oak-and-dowel boarding, maybe a hundred years old and put down by someone who knew what he was doing. It was worn and creaking, and someone had put Oriental carpets all over the place, complicated designs that looked Moorish, in tones of deep red, pale blue, and amber.
The bedroom was furnished in heavy wood pieces, possibly solid mahogany. The carpet was deep and pale green, also brand new. The bathroom was black and white marble, with an old lion’s-paw tub. The kitchen was small but bright, with a microwave and a new fridge and even a dishwasher, although Luke never cooked, so there wouldn’t be much to wash. Maybe a shot glass and an ashtray.
Compared to his last place, the apartment was a palace. In the civil service you could tell how you were doing by how well they set you up. By service standards, this was a prime apartment. It looked as if it might have belonged to a professor at Georgetown, although in D.C. you could never tell; every apartment had history. The last guy who lived here might have been anything from a Clinton staffer to a black ops mere waiting for a mission from the DIA. Luke was getting it subsidized by the service, until he could get a place of his own, get it furnished. He’d left most of his things back in his place on Court Street, stuff that could only be improved by an arsonist.
It was close to ten. He was leaning against the windowframe, and he tugged out a cigarette and lit it with a kitchen match. Exhaling, he saw motion in a window across the yard, half-hidden through the branches of an old oak. An overhead light came on, a fluorescent softened by a curtain made of gauze or lace. A young woman was brushing her hair, facing what was probably the mirror over the bathroom sink. She was wearing a flower-print dress. Her hair was shoulder length, blue-black and shining. The brush moved through her hair slowly, trailing a shimmer that looked like a lake seen through trees at night. Luke watched her for a while.
She was lovely, young, and completely out of his reach. She put down the brush and leaned forward to do something to her lips. Saturday night. A Saturday night date. Part of the normal world. Thirty years ago she might have been any one of the young girls in his life, classmates in Columbus, friends of the family, people in a life as remote and lost to him as this perfect young woman across the yard, half-hidden by the night, half-revealed by the chilly blue light over the bathroom mirror. In a different life she might have been dressing for him. She ran her hands down her dress, smoothing the fabric over her breasts. Luke turned away.
His pager started to thrum silently against his waist.
He plucked it off his belt and looked at the numbers on the LED panel. He walked across the room to the phone and dialed an Arlington number.
“Ops. Brewer.”
“Norm, is Doc there?”
“Yeah. Just a sec—”
Luke could hear voices, chairs moving. Some jazz from the radio on the counter by the coffee machine.
“Luke?”
“Yeah. I just got your page. I thought you were home tonight.”
“So did I. Where are you?”
“Georgetown.”
“What, at Paddy Riley’s?”
“No. Home. What’s up?”
“Okay, you put it around last week, you got a special interest?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“It’s not on the hit list, Luke. This is just between us.”
“Between you, me, and every cop in the Northeast. Has somebody got a line on him?”
“Maybe. You know a fink named—”
“Maybe we should talk about this in person. Meet me halfway.”
“Don’t be paranoid, Luke. This isn’t WITSEC. It’s just a fink. Anyway, this is a land line.”
“It’s a service line, isn’t it? You’re in Arlington, right?”
Doc’s slow laugh was more like a low growl. Every time Luke heard it, he thought of Muddy Waters.
“Luke, Luke, Luke … you lose one fink, you turn into Lamont Cranston. Wait till you’ve lost as many as I have. You get used to it. Finks are like Kleenex. They pop up, you blow ’em off and toss ’em.”
“You never had to use a claw hammer to get one of your finks off a bathroom wall. Gimme ten minutes, I’ll meet you at the Lincoln end of the pool.”
“Okay. I’ll be the guy with a red rose in his teeth.”
“Funny.”
“One thing. Wear a vest, okay?”
Luke was silent for a second, reacting.
“Yeah. Ten minutes.”
“Ten.” The line clicked dead.
Luke went into the bedroom and took off his plaid shirt. He opened the bottom drawer of the big dresser and lifted out a Kevlar vest. He strapped it on over a white T-shirt. As he did, he looked down at the ceramic trauma plate in the drawer. What was it, seventy degrees outside? The vest was heavy enough without the trauma plate. Margot always used to say he didn’t need a trauma plate anyway because he was hollow inside.
Margot. She had a tongue sharp as a dental pick. And she knew just where to stick you. That last year in Provo, she got so she could literally take his breath away with the meanness of some comment. Well, here’s to you, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are. If I get popped tonight, maybe you’ll hear about it, it’ll give you a smile.
He buttoned up the shirt, tucked it in, and unlocked the gun vault bolted to the floor beside the dresser, another indication of the usual profession of tenants in this apartment.
Delbert Sutter’s stainless-steel Taurus nine-mill was bolted to the frame, a boltlock fitted to the trigger, next to his service Colt. He had kept the Taurus, requisitioning it from Evidence after the shooting board was over. It was hard to say why. Maybe it had to do with winning the trophies of your enemy. Whatever, it was his now, and Delbert Sutter was flat on his back in a pine box, staring up forever at a perfect blackness. Bye-bye.
Next to the Taurus was a box of semiwadcutters and two spare mags. His Toshiba laptop. His cuffs in a black leather belt-case, two speedloaders for the Colt. His field radio on a charger. All his worldly possessions.
He unlocked the Taurus, slipped the Bianchi holster into his belt, pulled the slide on the Taurus, thumbed the lock, shoved in a full fifteen-round magazine. Then he flicked the lock, and the slide rammed home, scooping up a round. He set the thumb safety and shoved the weapon into his holster. He strapped the cuffs on in the small of his back, where he could reach them with either hand. Academy training.
His motions were silent and automatic, his face set and blank. He looked at himself in the mirror over the dresser, saw a tall lean man in jeans and a bulky plaid shirt, a seamed Italian face with a salt-and-pepper mustache, short black hair with gray at the temples.
Law. No mistaking him for anything else. He might as well wear a beanie with a sign that said PIG UNDERNEATH THIS HAT. He rifled through the clothes in the closet, found a pale tan windbreaker, and put it on. He looked around the bedroom, figured it was neat enough if anything terminal happened.
Then he walked out into the front room and looked at it as well, got his cigarettes and a pack of wooden matches from the ledge by the bay window. The window across the yard was dark. He stepped to the door, tugged it open, and walked out into the Georgetown evening.
There was a definite Saturday-night-in-the-spring hum in the air. Noise and lights and crowd chatter drifted up from Wisconsin, and he could see the crowds milling past under the bright lights. Above him shreds of cloud flew by on a jet stream. Past the clouds the twilight sky was turquoise and navy blue. Pinprick stars glittered like broken glass.
His service car was a dark blue 1989 Crown Victoria with heavily tinted windows. It carried Maryland plates registered to a leasing company in Chevy Chase. The leasing company was a service cutoff, although most law enforcement agencies in the region knew about it. It was designed to keep civilians from running up a database of government vehicles. So was Luke’s Georgetown residence. There were criminals in town who did nothing but sit in vans outside government buildings and videotape agents and sell the IDs to local gangs. Luke was a chaser and only went into the Arlington HQ on a limited basis. His face was still unknown to most of the local hardguys, and he wanted to keep it that way as long as he could. At least until he got a desk job and could afford to ease up, lose some of that street paranoia.
The car was parked under a low yellow streetlamp at the bottom of the walk. Party noises were coming from the apartment above him, voices and music from the open windows. A pair of professors from the university lived there, two guys in their late fifties. A lifelong couple, so the landlady told him. Luke had seen them around, shopping, said hello on the steps from time to time. Tough-looking guy in marathon condition, and a puffy character with hair like cotton candy and a bright red face. Amiable. Seemed like nice guys. They thought he was somebody federal. Hell, around here, who wasn’t?