Joey Rag butted his cigar out on the dashboard, brushed the ashes onto the floor, and leaned back into the passenger seat to watch Crow work the binoculars. He was hungry and hot. He’d even gotten tired of watching the broads go by in their summer T-shirts. Frankly, what he really wanted right now was for Paolo-from-Denver to show up, for Crow to do whatever he had to do, and then for Crow to fuck off and never come back.
They were parked on the side of the service road that ran around the base of the Washington Monument, sitting in a dark green delivery van with QUALITY INDUSTRIAL CLEANERS in big gold letters painted on the side. The road was elevated, riding the top of the long grassy hillside that led down to 17th Street. The end of the reflecting pool was on the far side of 17th. From where they were, they could see almost two hundred degrees around. They’d been there since one-thirty. They’d already done a slow cruise around the base and made certain that this guy who called himself Paolo wasn’t there.
Paolo knew Crow and Joey Rag to see them, had met them last week in Chinatown, but he had never been out to the plant on North Capitol. He wouldn’t recognize the van. From the little that Crow had said, Joey figured the idea was to get this Paolo into the van and take off. Whatever happened from there was up to Crow. Joey Rag didn’t think it was going to be very nice to watch.
Nobody had told him anything about Crow’s business with the guy. He knew the photo thing with the driver’s license was just a ploy—Crow could get first-class ID from Barra’s people any day of the week—so Crow was playing Paolo for some deeper reason. Crow was the company security guy. Maybe Paolo was suspected of finking, but Barra didn’t know for sure yet, so they were letting him stay loose to see who he was meeting with.
Or maybe it was money.
One thing he knew, if Crow owed Paolo money, or Paolo was running a number on Crow, then Paolo was going to have to be real smart to get it done and then get back out alive.
If the guy ran true to his type, he’d show up any minute now, thinking to get in position and all set up before Crow and Joey got there. Crow had a set of Zeiss binoculars, a very fine set, and for the last forty-five minutes he’d been scanning the western end of the pool and the park lands all around, looking for Paolo.
Watching him sweep those lenses back and forth, the guy not saying anything, not feeling the need for small talk, for any courtesy, it made Joey Rag feel sorry for anybody this guy was looking for. He was like some kind of reptile, like he could sit under a rock for a year, looking like he was dead or something, and then snap, you were in his jaws and he was gulping you down whole.
Joey Rag was helping him out this week because the guy was somebody important to people who were in a position to tell Joey Rag what to do. Joey Rag was just a worker. A nondescript, balding and slightly overweight man in his mid-forties, he was born Miguel Jorge Ragundo in Honduras. Back there, he had been a tough street kid, had done some throat-cutting and some knee-breaking for Guillermo Barra’s people. Once he’d killed a whore by stuffing her mouth with bits of cloth. It was how he got his name. Why she had to die, nobody explained to him.
After that job Barra had taken a liking to him and had contracted him out to the United States end of things to do what he had been doing now for ten years. He ran the laundry—it was a legit business and had lately been making real decent money, some of which Joey had found a way to skim—and he also ran some of the local sidelines for Guillermo Barra’s friends in Atlanta.
They were a loose association of families from Central America, a kind of brotherhood-syndicate that was into a bunch of things; they loaned money to illegals for a huge vig, sometimes scamming the government for local initiative grants through front organizations like Hispanic churches, dealing some weapons from time to time, moving some coke if it was already in the country and just needed to go from one state to another, fencing, of course money movement and laundering—one of the uses of the legit business Joey ran for them—and now and then they helped out somebody from another outfit with a problem. They had a famous problem-solver who worked free-lance for them, a reliable man. He was the one who asked questions, who figured out who was lying and who was jacking the firm around. They’d loan him out from time to time.
As a favor. For a consideration.
He’d heard a lot about this problem-guy they had, heard he was a Miskito from Guyana, did time in Angola, used to be in the army. Heard he was very good and very scary. He imagined the guy would be something special, a role model. But he’d never seen him until a week ago, when Crow turned up at the plant and said he was going to stay upstairs. He’d been here a week, and Joey had counted every second of it like it was a teardrop of blood from the eyes of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
When Crow wrapped up this thing with Paolo-from-Denver, he was supposed to go away on a job, something about a guy who was going to rat some of their people out to the DEA. Joey could hardly wait. The guy had the personality of a scorpion. Never drank, didn’t go with boys—or girls. Never seemed to sleep. Never made small talk. If he found out the guy lived on flies, Joey would not be surprised.
Joey sat in the van and looked out the window at the tourist chicks and tried to stay awake in the damp heat of the afternoon. His shirt was sticking to his chest. His face was dripping. His eyes were closing …
Somebody slapped the wall of the van, banged it, making it ring. Joey jumped a yard, but Crow just put the glasses down and turned to look at the uniformed D.C. cop standing beside the driver’s door.
“Yes, officer?” said Crow.
“You waiting for something here, sir?”
The cop was black, hard-faced, with a huge curved mustache and a pair of mirrored aviators. His hat was set square on his head, and his shoulders were braced. His nameplate read CULLEN. His voice was cranky; he was tired of shifting tourists and gawkers out of restricted parking areas like this one. Crow’s voice was calm, almost friendly.
“Yes, officer. We’re supposed to meet my mother here. She’s walking up from the pool there, and we didn’t want to miss her.”
The cop’s face showed nothing. Joey Rag leaned forward and saw Crow’s reflection in the cop’s glasses, and his own distorted image upside down behind Crow.
“What’s this truck—” He leaned back to read the letters on the side. “You guys cleaners?”
Joey Rag leaned over Crow’s chest and gave the cop a business card. When the cop lowered his head to read it, Crow moved his own hand down between his legs.
Joey Rag’s heart surged with fear. Jesus Mary. Not a cop. He made a supreme effort to sound casual. “Quality Industrial, Officer—ah—Cullen. We’re sorry we put you out here. Ernest, let’s go, okay?”
Crow turned his head to look at Joey Rag. There was a short moment of silence, and then he smiled and turned back toward the cop.
“Yes, officer, we’ll get out of here. Sorry.”
The cop stepped back, keeping the card with him. Crow started the van up and pulled away from the curb. Joey Rag watched the cop in the side mirror. He was writing something down in a pad.
“Man, he made us,” said Joey Rag.
“No, Joey,” said Crow, in a dead calm voice. “You did that. You handed him a card. And you shit yourself. You embarrass me.”
“What was I gonna do?”
“What you’re supposed to do.”
Crow had the van up to speed and was running it down the long entrance road toward Constitution Avenue, which ran parallel to the Mall on the north side. As he came down off the monument hill, he glanced to his left out the window.
“There he is,” said Crow.
Joey Rag leaned forward to look in the direction Crow indicated.
“Where?”
“There. By the popcorn seller. At the corner.”
Joey Rag saw him. Paolo was standing close to a lamppost at the corner of Constitution and 15th. He was no more than a hundred yards away, a skinny Hispanic in a black shirt and jeans, an army fatigue jacket over his shoulder, carrying a black canvas bag. His hair was cut in a floppy razor style that Joey associated with snotty schoolboys and pimps who dealt coke in the cocktail bars of tourist hotels.
Crow bulled the van across the intersection and came to a stop at the curb on the far side of Constitution. A huge limestone building with a Greek roofline took up the entire block. The street was lined with oaks and chestnuts inside little wrought-iron fences. Crow twisted in his seat to watch Paolo at the intersection a block down.
“What do you want me to do?” asked Joey, now extremely nervous about having upset the man. He would make it up, he would be helpful. He was having some trouble with his breathing right now, and his throat felt tight. Looking back on it, he could not believe that he had given that cop his business card. He was losing it. He had run a legitimate business and let himself believe that he was really a straight guy now. Crow was right.
“Go get him,” said Crow.
“Get him?”
“Yes. Bring him to the van.”
“He won’t come.”
“See that he does,” said Crow, his stone face blank and his eyes fixed on Joey Rag’s face.
“How?”
Crow reached down between his legs, pulled out a small Llama .32 semiauto. It had once been blue but was now worn, and much of the steel showed. He handed it to Joey Rag. It was warm and sweaty from the man’s crotch, and Joey did not want to hold it.
“My thing—it’s not this. I do laundry. I do—”
“What you’re told. Now go.”
There was nothing more to say. Joey Rag was not a legit beez-neez guy, and now all of that had come back to haunt him. This was his real life, to do what men like Crow told him to do or to get killed for not doing it.
Joey opened his door and climbed down onto the sidewalk, stuffing the little gun into his jeans pocket. He walked up to the intersection of Constitution and 14th. Paolo was on his way east along Constitution Avenue, going in the direction of the Capitol dome, on the far side of the street next to the grassy slope of the monument. All of his attention was focused on the needle and the cars and people milling around the base. Joey watched him walking and tried to see if anyone was following him. Maybe this car over here, with two women in it? Maybe that man there, looking at a map? Or that guy, talking into a cell phone? He was truly afraid now and wished that he had never agreed to help with this thing. To kill a teenage puta in Old Town, that was one thing, and anyway he had been young and stupid. But now, this thing, he was not ready for this.
As if he had a choice.
He went forward now, timing his approach, stepping lightly in his expensive Brazilian loafers, closing in on Paolo as the man walked eastward on the far side, still looking up at the needle. All he could hope to do was to get close, get the little piece up against the man’s chest, tell him what to do.
And if he wouldn’t?
If he wouldn’t, then Joey was going to let him go, make some kind of excuse, because he had privately determined that he wasn’t going to shoot a man in plain sight on Constitution Avenue and end up in prison for the rest of his life. Crow could kill him if he wanted, but Joey had been in prison once, in Honduras, and he never wanted to go back. Even holding this gun was a prison thing. Firearms were illegal in D.C. No private person could own one. Everybody did, but that wasn’t the kind of excuse that would get you far with a D.C. cop—Say, boss, why pick on me? Everybody’s carrying!
He stepped more quickly now, taking a jaywalk angle across the wide avenue, dodging cars and taxis, setting a line that would bring him even with Paolo on the sidewalk but a little behind him. The heat was on his back, and he pushed his hand deep into the pocket of his jeans, wrapped his fingers around the Llama pistol.
Fifty feet. Forty.
Thirty.
Now he was on the sidewalk. Paolo was about ten feet ahead of him, moving at a slow jog, his attention fixed on the base of the needle. Joey Rag tried to step quietly. He pulled the Llama out of his pocket and let his right hand hang loosely at his side. He could see Paolo’s hands, see the black bag on his shoulder and the army coat over that. Now he was close enough to see the close-cropped hairs on the back of his neck and the shiny stuff he used on his hair to keep it slicked back.
In his heart Joey Rag wished very deeply that he had gone into another line of work. He looked around him. There was a man walking toward them, a short white-haired man in a brown suit, reading a paper as he walked. Cars rolled past in the wide street, their tires booming and hissing on the hot pavement like ocean waves on a beach. Joey looked back behind him. Nobody was close. Nobody looked out of place, or like they were paying attention to him and what he was doing. At the edge of the park a big red-haired woman was sitting on the grass, her dress gathered up around her knees, sunglasses on, her face tilted back to let the sun shine down on it. There was a little grove of trees and a bench coming up. When they got even with the bench, then Joey would do it. Almost on the man’s heels now, Joey Rag lifted his hand up, pushed the shiny little semiauto forward. Sunlight glittered along the worn-down metal of the barrel.
Ten feet … five feet.
Now.