Walt Rich, Rico Groza, and Slick Stevens were already at Paddy Riley’s bar on M Street when Doc and Luke came in through the door. Rich and Stevens were sitting in their usual cubbyhole hideout by the back door of the long, dimly lit, and slightly smoky room, playing a game of Liar’s Dice and drinking beer. Rico was standing at the battered wooden bar, presiding over the construction of a mojito according to his own. extremely—not to say maniacally—precise instructions, a ceremony that the bartender, whose name was Janet, had been subjected to many times since her appearance behind the bar in January of that year. It was Luke’s impression that Janet was studying philosophy at the University of Georgetown and subsidizing her income here at Paddy Riley’s. Almost six feet tall, tanned and lean, with jet-black hair, luminous gray eyes, and a wry sideways sense of humor, she was a magnet for male attention but was rumored to be in a long-term relationship with another woman. That was Walt Rich’s story, anyway. At the moment, she was telling Rico a joke about the Royal Marines—perhaps to distract him—and crushing mint leaves with a little marble mortar-and-pestle set that Rico had bought for that purpose a year ago.
Paddy Riley’s was one of the older bars on M Street, placed just a few streets down from the oldest building in Georgetown, the Old Stone House, which had been built in the late 1670s. Over the years most of the eighteenth-century Federal-style buildings along M Street had been replaced with grocery stores and clothing shops that catered to the mixed crowds of tourists, college kids, and drifters who mingled and collided along M Street or Wisconsin Avenue, but Paddy Riley’s still retained some of that old colonial feeling. Some of the Marshals who used to eat regularly at a pricey Georgetown restaurant over on Wisconsin had started to drop by Paddy Riley’s instead, and now it was a regular bar for the men of Luke’s takedown unit. Doc and Luke sat down at the chipped wooden table with Walt and Slick Stevens and ordered a couple of Beck’s. Slick was holding an inverted tin cup in his paws and staring down at it as if he could see through the sides if he thought hard enough. Walt Rich was leaning back in a creaky wooden rail-chair and puffing on a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth, watching Slick struggle with his decision.
Doc nodded at Slick and said, “What’s he got?”
Walt Rich grinned around his cigarette and puffed out a blue cloud.
“What does he have or what does he think he has?”
“Either,” said Luke.
Slick growled at them without lifting his head.
“The little leprechaun over there thinks that I think that he thinks that I have bought the idea that he’s got two pairs to the queen, but, in actual fact, I only want him to think that, because—”
“We get the point,” said Luke.
The game of Liar’s Dice consisted of five dice, each die marked with six playing cards from the nine to the ace. All the nines were in one suit, the tens in another, the jacks in another, the queens in another, and so on up to the five aces of spades. The idea was to put the dice under a cup, shake the cup, lift it up carefully, and look underneath, keeping the results hidden from any other player. Then you set the cup back down, pushed it across the table at the next player, looked him right in the eye, and told him with all the sincerity and guile that you could muster either the simple truth—a pair of nines—or an outrageous lie—four queens to the ace—and then you leaned back, pulled at your beer, and watched the guy try to figure out if you were lying or telling the truth.
If he believed you, he slid the cup closer and took a peek. The trick was, if you said you had four queens to the ace but all you really had was a pair of nines, the guy had to beat your lie, not what was actually under the cup. And so it went, back and forth, sometimes going all the way around the table until an even more outrageous lie came back to you. It was a good bar game for the Marshals because it was kind of a metaphor for their basic business, which was to listen to snitches tell them stories and then try to decide whether to believe them or to pick the snitch up and turn him upside down and say bullshit, which was how you called your opponent’s bluff in the game of Liar’s Dice, not to mention most real-life confrontations. An added attraction was that the loser had to buy the next round. Slick finally looked up from his telepathic interrogation of the tin cup. His large red face was blank, his eyes narrowed.
“Okay, I buy it.”
“I told him I had a full house,” said Walt, keeping his face straight. Slick raised the cup, lowered his massive bald head so he could see under the rim, and then he slammed it down again.
“Shit,” was all he said.
Walt chortled quietly to himself.
Slick looked across at Doc and Luke.
“How’d it go with Canaday?”
“You’re just trying to change the subject,” said Walt. “Pay or play, you scumball.” Slick ignored him, but he did pull out two queens—Walt had rolled a pair of queens—and set them aside, taking the last three dice and shaking them in the cup while he waited for Luke’s answer.
“He gave me this,” said Luke, dropping Canaday’s brown manila envelope onto the table. Walt picked it up and spilled the contents out across the table as Slick hammered the cup down and then peeked underneath it.
“Jeez,” was all Walt said.
Slick kept his hands on the cup and looked at the papers in front of them. The sheets were a typewritten intake report with the logo of D.C. Municipal Hospital on it. It was the ER surgeon’s report on John Doe K4776/05/22/94. It described the DOA arrival of an Hispanic male, apparently in his late thirties or early forties, who had “presented” with a couple of penetration wounds in his upper body and skull, the most obviously fatal of which had penetrated the thoracic radius and appeared to be the result of a large-caliber bullet that had been fired from a distance of more than ten feet—no residual powder burns, no speckling, no star-shaped entrance wound—said bullet having traveled through the upper thorax and the right lung until it struck the number seven vertebra, at which time it seemed to have tumbled and rebounded into the aortic chamber of the heart, where it produced what the surgeon described as “severe trauma and concomitant hydrostatic shock” to the heart and the upper aorta, causing “catastrophic loss of blood and tissue damage.” It was his opinion that the wound had been fatal within a few minutes.
Slick read it along with the others, then pushed the cup over to Walt Rich.
“Aces and tens to the king,” he said, still reading the sheet.
“Who signed this?” asked Walt, taking the cup.
Luke studied the signature.
“Hard to say. It’s the usual scrawl.”
“Was there a city bull who signed?” asked Slick. “There usually is, if the takedown happens in their jurisdiction.”
Luke squinted, trying to make sense out of the press of various hands and the poor quality of the copy.
“Maybe.… What’s this look like?”
Walt peered at it for a while.
“Collins, maybe? A D.C. sergeant, it looks like.”
“No idea, Luke.”
Walt looked under the cup, said, “Damn,” picked it up, and began to shake it as Rico Groza came back to the table with his mojito.
Some music started to play. Quite loud. Something with an insistent beat. It was the theme music to the Fox TV show Cops, a song called “Bad Boy,” by Inner Circle. Janet turned the volume up and waved her fingertips at them as they turned around to stare at her. Rico looked at the papers, frowned, and then took a short experimental sip of the mojito. Satisfied, he reached out and tapped the pages.
“That’s him, isn’t it? The physical description?”
The question was open, but Luke answered it.
“That’s their story, anyway.”
“Why no full-face shot?” Slick wanted to know.
“Presumably they wanted to spare us the shock,” said Doc. “According to this report, the guy would have looked like somebody’d started a fire in his face and put it out with a rubber mallet.”
“Oh yeah. Delicacy. That’d be it,” said Walt, his tone heavy with sarcasm.
“What’d Fiertag say?” Slick wanted to know.
“He said that the entire shooting was a matter for Treasury, that until the shooting board cleared Agent Wolokoff, the identity of the dead person was part of the evidentiary packet, and they could not afford to have that identity compromised by unintentional circulation to the media.”
Walt barked out a bitter laugh.
“Unintentional circulation? What? Fiertag thinks if they give you the head shot, you’re gonna sell it to People? EXCLUSIVE! Our People photog caught up with Cadaver-About-Town Paolo Rona today, seen here with his cortex splattered all over Mia Farrow’s simply cunning little Donna Karan bustier at D.C.’s famous Ford Theater. Is that a Lincoln impression, Mr. Rona, or did your ego just blow up in the heat?”
They all stared at Walt Rich for a while.
“Okay, Walt …” said Slick, rolling his eyes. “Doc, you were saying?”
“All he said was, Treasury wasn’t ready to release a face shot yet because they didn’t want to”—Luke searched for the exact phrase—“ ‘to alert other persons with whom Rona may have been involved.’ ”
“Releasing it to the press isn’t the same as letting someone else in Justice see a shot of the guy’s face. Last time I checked, the Marshals were still part of Justice,” Slick said. “Didn’t you go to the ER, see the stiff?”
“No” said Doc. “Fiertag warned us off, said we had duties to attend to ourselves, that the case was Treasury’s anyway, wanted us to go back to work Monday morning on Target Acquisition analysis—”
“Reading fink information sheets, collating and analyzing motor vehicle registrations, voters’ lists, welfare rolls, booking reports, fingerprint verifications, VICAP bulletins, and then calling up parole officers, court clerks, county sheriffs, and prison guards all over the eastern seaboard,” said Slick. “Welcome to Washington, Luke.”
“Wolokoff?” said Walt, who had apparently been trying to figure out Fiertag’s position in all of this. “Did you just say Wolokoff?”
“That’s what they said. Sherry Wolokoff.”
“I know her,” said Walt. “We used to play on the same softball team. Big-boned redhead. A while back, I offered to bear her children. Silly girl turned me down too.”
“I can see that,” put in Doc. “Two fish-belly-white redheads. Your kids would be the single biggest melanin shortfall in law enforcement.”
“At least you could see them, Doc. Unlike our sepia-hued brother here, hah, Luke? You ever notice how, when you get into a dark bar like this, put him up against the oak paneling like that, Doc just kind of fades? Here, Slick, gimme the camera. I’ll prove it.”
Doc groaned as Slick rummaged around in his equipment bag, finally retrieving a Polaroid Spectra. All the takedown teams carried one, just in case things went haywire and somebody needed a photographic record of the scene. Walt took the camera and aimed it at Doc. Doc struck a pose, and Walt pressed the button. The film buzzed out, and Walt laid it down on the tabletop to develop.
“Walt … Sherry Wolokoff?” prompted Luke.
“Sherry baby. Yeah, I know Sherry. She’s a hell of a shortstop too. I have her number around here somewhere. I’m gonna give her a call.”
Walt found his notebook and stood up, fishing for a quarter.
“Oh yeah, before I forget, Slick?”
“Yeah?”
“Three aces to the king.”
Slick took the cup as Walt got up to make a phone call. Rico was still looking at the ER intake report in his hands.
“So, either the entire Treasury Department—wait a minute, what time is it? It’s seven-fifteen.”
Slick raised his paw. “Seven-fifteen on a Sunday, Rico.”
“Right,” said Rico. “Too early for the paper.”
Janet brought over a round of drinks, leaning close to Slick as she set them down on the table. Slick inhaled theatrically. On her way back to the bar, Janet blew him a kiss over her shoulder, putting some deliberate feminine physics into the passage.
“What a waste,” said Slick, watching her go.
Janet heard him, turned around, and did a credible Lauren Bacall sashay back to the table. She draped herself around Slick’s beefy shoulders and pinched his cheek.
“You’d need a crash cart and ten cc’s of epinephrine just to watch me blow-dry my hair, Mr. Stevens. You do remember hair, don’t you?”
“Sounds like a good deal to me,” said Slick. “Tuesday? Your place? I’ll bring the oxygen.”
Janet laughed, rubbed the top of his bald head.
“I’ll bet your wife keeps this shiny just so she can see the TV in the other room while you’re making love. You ever wonder why she never lets you know when she’s had an orgasm?”
“I’ll bite,” said Slick, his huge right arm tucked around her waist.
“Because you’re never in the room.”
Doc bellowed at that one. Janet slipped over and sat down on his lap, sliding her arm around his neck. “Now you, that’s another story.”
Doc leered at her, pulling her in close. “Thank you, my child. Like all truly sensual women, you sense my power.”
Janet laughed, patted his cheek.
“Mr. Hollenbeck, how can a woman tell if her husband is dead?”
“No idea.”
“The sex is the same, but the garbage tends to pile up.”
“Janet,” said Slick. “You know what was long and hard on Doc?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll bet it was third grade.”
She got up off Doc’s lap and rubbed Slick’s bald head again as she strolled back toward the bar. Halfway across the creaky wooden floor, she stopped and looked back at Slick, knowing he’d be watching her.
In a low throaty baritone drawl, she said, “Mr. Stevens, what’s twelve inches and white?”
Slick stared at her for a second, reddening.
“I don’t know, Janet. What is twelve inches and white?”
“Nothing,” she drawled, walking away toward the bar, her voice carrying back through the smoky air and the muted jazz. “Absolutely nothing.”
Slick, still chuckling, picked up the Polaroid shot. It had developed into a flat black screen, totally dark. He used the tip of a ball-point pen to pierce two small holes in the picture. He held the picture up to the overhead light so that two tiny glowing sparks showed in the black.
“See what I mean, guys? Walt’s right! Doc just fades. All you can see are his eyes.”
Doc took the picture out of his hands. “Next time, use the flash, smartass.” He handed the camera to Luke. “Here, take a picture of Slick and me. We’ll see who’s the ugliest.”
“Okay,” said Luke, taking a series of pictures around the table, the glare of the flash vivid and blue-white, black shadows leaping up on the walls behind them. After five shots the camera shut down.
“Broken,” he said, and shrugged.
“Figures,” said Doc.
They were still laughing when Rico, who had been staring out the front window for a while, raised his voice to get their attention.
“So the working theory here is that either Treasury is trying to sell a couple of no-account deputy marshals like yourselves a bill of goods for reasons that have so far escaped us but that will no doubt turn out to be vital issues affecting national security—”
“Man, I hate that phrase,” said Luke.
“Or—no, listen to me—or your guy Rona simply walked into something that was long overdue for the little son of a bitch, and now we can all sleep safe in our beds again. My advice, drop it here, walk away. Stop sticking your finger up somebody else’s nose.”
“Nice image,” said Luke.
“It’ll do,” said Rico, his smile slipping a little. “You go on like this, the next sound you hear will be the CO shoveling gravel on your unmarked grave. My honest and heartfelt advice, Luke, is keep off, in big red letters.”
“There be monsters?” said Luke. “Is that it?”
“That’s it,” said Rico.
Doc Hollenbeck was nodding.
“He’s right, Luke. So far, no coverage. No television yet. Maybe tomorrow, there’ll be a small story somewhere. My guess, Treasury slammed a lid on things,” said Doc, leaning back and looking at Luke.
“I guess that wraps it up, hah? I mean, for you guys?”
Rico picked up his mojito. “It would seem to. What about it, Luke?”
Luke was quiet for a while.
Slick Stevens watched him mull it over for a few seconds, and then he said, “Bullshit.”
“Bullshit?” said Rico. “The game or the story?”
“Both,” said Slick, knocking the cup over, revealing the dice underneath it, just as Walt Rich came back to the table. In the bright yellow downlight from the metal shade above the table, they could all see Walt’s last roll. There were no aces showing at all. Two nines, a ten, a jack, a king.
“You lied,” said Slick.
“No,” said Walt, sitting down. “You wound me! Well, if I did, it’s contagious.”
“What do you mean?” said Doc.
“I called Sherry Wolokoff at Treasury.”
“Yeah?”
“She wasn’t happy about talking. She says she got out of the shooting board a half-hour ago, says there was some weasel from Justice there named Reed Endicott, was a real shit to her—”
“That’s no lie,” said Doc.
“Yeah. Actually, I know Endicott from way back, when I was in Bronx Vice. Reed Pryor Endicott, outta Rutgers, I think. He used to be with Southern District, used to steal our finks all the time, liked to cite ‘overriding national interests,’ had a laugh like an adenoidal goat. Thinks he looks like Richard Gere. Anyway, Sherry said she’d been told not to talk about the shooting, that if I had to know anything, I should go through channels, talk to Fiertag or Canaday. She was damn nervous, for a tough broad like her.”
“Well, she’s just been through a killing, Walt. What’d you expect?” said Slick. “And while you’re talking, this round’s on you.”
“I know that,” said Walt. “That’s not what I was talking about.”
“Jeez, Walt,” groaned Doc. “Get to the point!”
“Whoa.… A little PMS there, Doctor? What I was going to say was, if I recall it right, Luke, your guy stuck a big Glock up your left nostril last night? Am I right?”
“Yeah.”
Luke could still see it, see the index finger inside that rubber glove, see the trigger tightening under it, the black hole of the muzzle an inch from his right eye.
“Okay. So Endicott was going after her about the shooting—”
“He was actually part of the board?”
“No, but he kept sticking his oar in. Sherry says Canaday finally told him to fuck off. But Endicott was bugging her, how’d she know the guy was really armed? Was she sure she was in mortal danger? Did she have a clear look at the weapon?”
“You gotta love him,” said Rico. “A guy like that, the only incoming round he’s ever gonna have to face is a forehand smash.”
“Thank you for that irrelevant but, I’m sure, intriguing observation, Rico. You’re deflecting my narrative. Where was I?”
“You were at a straight to the queen,” said Slick, pushing the tin cup across to him.
“Sherry was defending her defense,” said Doc.
“Yes, had she seen a piece? Sherry said, yeah, she did, she could see it in his hand, at first she thought it was a knife because she could see the sun shining on the steel, but then she saw it was a piece, and she told the guy to drop it, but he—she said he panicked or something—but he wouldn’t drop it—so she covered the visible mass and gave him four in the chest and face.”
They were all silent for a moment, picturing it, remembering their own first shootings. Walt looked at them for a minute, as if he were waiting for something to occur to them.
“Okay,” said Doc. “And your point would be …?”
“Jeez,” said Walt, shaking his head in disappointment. “And you guys call yourselves cops. Last I looked, your basic Glock came in—”
Luke slammed the table, making the tin cup jump, bouncing the dice all over the table.
“Matte black or gray!”
Walt beamed at Luke. “And the one you had shoved up your nose last night was …?”
“So … therefore?”
Rico cut in at that point. “He could have had more than one piece on him.”
Walt looked disappointed.
Luke shook his head. “I almost had him at the Zanzibar. When I came through the door, he set fire to the table and went out the window in a flat dive, Rico. All he took with him was a couple of pieces of ID and that Glock.”
“And when he came out through the window, all I saw in his hand was a Glock,” put in Doc. “I don’t think he had time to get another piece before this afternoon.”
“And why would he?” asked Walt. “A Glock’s as good a piece as you’re gonna find on the street.”
“And—and Canaday said the guy waved a Glock at him,” said Luke. “A ‘bloody great Glock,’ is what he said.”
“So?” Walt raised his hands, palms out, eyes wide and innocent.
“So … bullshit,” said Luke.
“Exactly,” said Walt, taking the cup away from Slick and shaking it up, the dice rattling around inside like a shaman’s rune-stones.
“So now what?” asked Rico Groza.
Walt slapped the cup down, raised the edge carefully. Then he set it down again and pushed it across the tabletop toward Luke.
“Low straight,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Doc. “Now what?”
“Now?” said Luke. “Now we do … nothing.”
“That would be the sensible course,” Rico said, studying Luke’s face carefully. “You have no idea what’s going on. You’ve been officially warned off. Go any further and get caught at it, and you’ll be doing court security in Ultima Thule. Fiertag will see to it. Reed Endicott will rip your heart out with a claw hammer and feed it to Janet Reno. On the face of it, you have every reason to believe that Paolo Rona is either extremely dead, that Sherry Wolokoff just got the weapons confused—”
“Bullshit. You’ve been in shootings, Rico. You know damn well that in a firefight the gun pointed at you is the absolute center of your universe. You could count the hairs on the back of his hand. You could read the serial numbers on the trigger frame from fifty feet away.”
“Perhaps, Luke. My basic point is, and I don’t want you to take this wrong, okay?”
“I’ll try.” Luke had a good idea what was coming. Hell, the guy was right too.
“Your hook in this mess is Aurora Powys. I can see that. We all feel that way about it, and you know her. Worked with her. But what real good can you do by poking around in this thing? Either he’s dead, and nada más, thank you Jesus, or he’s not, and Treasury’s got him into a project, and they’ll strangle kittens to keep him covered. Tell her he’s dead, give her …”
“Closure,” said Doc. “I’ve been hearing that word a lot lately.”
“Yeah,” nodded Rico. “Closure.”
“Even though I don’t know he’s dead?”
“It’s possible he is. It makes more sense than believing that this Rona guy is …”
“Is what?”
“A fink for Treasury, would be my guess,” said Slick Stevens.
“He’s an escaped convict, for chrissake!” said Luke. “He goddamn raped a U.S. Marshal! I cannot believe that … even those assholes … would recruit a slime like that. He’s wanted.”
Slick nodded, waved it away.
“Maybe he’s got access to something nobody else can get. Treasury’s like any other agency. Budgets are being slashed, Luke. The pie is shrinking. Either you show good stats, make the spectacular busts, get mentioned in the Post and the Congressional Record, or next year Congress has reallocated half your op costs, and most of your people are looking for work at Wackenhut or Wal-Mart.”
Slick’s feelings on the issue were a tad raw. He’d almost been cut last year because of a back injury he’d received playing football. The argument ran that he wasn’t “cost-effective” anymore. He had to file a grievance to get the bosses to change their minds. That was the loyalty they were showing to a man who had risked his life hundreds of times for less money than they paid out to finks in one week of operations.
“Yeah,” said Walt. “And now the service is a threat to all the other agencies. We’ve got brand-new offices. We’re not HQ’d in some rat’s-ass strip-mall. We’ve snagged all the DEA’s Fugitive cases, it looks like they may clear us for a big hiring program to cover the abortion clinics, and if one more federal building gets bombed, they’ll vote us into the biggest agency in D.C. They’ll make an army out of the Marshals Service, because one of the reasons we exist is to protect federal property or to enforce federal laws when the states won’t cooperate. Those rag-heads bombed the World Trade Center, the Branch Davidians were hoarding military weapons, the ranchers have been setting fire to BLM facilities in Wyoming and Montana—”
“BLM?” said Luke.
“Bureau of Land Management. They control grazing rights on state parks, you know, like Yellowstone? Out in the far west, the BLM guys have been harassed and threatened, had pipe bombs mailed to their wives, park rangers have been shot at. Stuff like that, that’s a clear Marshals Service mandate. And how about these militia guys, all those camo-wearing numb-nuts leaping around in the deep woods in places like Idaho and Michigan and western Montana? What’s the next bullshit stunt they’ve got planned? Somebody’s gonna have to take those guys on. Who else but us?”
“And maybe the Feebs,” said Luke.
Slick grunted at that. The FBI was generally hated around D.C., and particularly hated by other law enforcement agencies, because of its unbearable arrogance, its mammoth budget, and its chronic habits of glory-hogging, snitch-stealing, and information-hoarding. Of all the Justice agencies, the FBI was the least cooperative. There wasn’t a man at the table who hadn’t tried to get a little help from the FBI, only to be told “go through the proper channels” or “talk to Public Affairs” or “Are you sure you’re cleared for that level, son?” or “I’ll have to check that out with the Special Agent in Charge, so let me get back to you.” Right. In thirty years.
Slick drained his beer and tossed the bottle across the room into a trash can. “Walt’s right, Rico. And all of that stuff scares Treasury, scares the ATF. Sure as hell scares Freeh and the FBI. You know the game, Luke. If Treasury had to barbecue a busload of toddlers—”
“Didn’t they already do that?” asked Doc.
“No, that was the ATF, and the bus was in the basement bunker at Waco, but the point’s the same. If that’s what they had to do to make a high-profile bust, even if it meant using a piece of slime like Paolo Rona, they’d do it in a heartbeat. This is D.C., Luke. This is ground zero here. Power is the only product. The FBI wants the DEA gone. The DIA is worried about the CIA. The NSC is dogging the CIA. The CIA chief is trying to force the Pentagon to put Army Intelligence and the NSA under his agency’s control. Hell, even the GAO guys are carrying guns now. And it looks like the Republicans are gonna get in big come the fall, and if they do, mark my words, boys, they’ll shake this town like a pit bull shakes a poodle, they’ll shut down the FDA, the EPA, maybe the DEA and the ATF—half the Republicans owe their jobs to the NRA, and the NRA hates the ATF. God knows what else is on the block, my friends. Heads are gonna roll, sides are being taken, asses are being covered. Justice barracudas like Reed Endicott would recruit Vlad the Impaler if they thought it would get them a jump on a high-profile case. Rona’s a forger. Forgery’s a Treasury thing. They could have scooped him when he was in Sing-Sing.”
“What? And arranged his escape?” Luke was trying to take all this in—these men had all been in Washington a lot longer than he had. “Why not just transfer him quietly, and then put him back outside. Keep him on a leash. That’s the drill. That’s how it’s always done.”
“No way they arranged for it. I agree—not even those guys.… Okay, maybe he contacted them after he busted out? He had to know that we were gonna come after him in a big way,” said Slick, after some thought. “I mean, he assaulted a Marshal. If any one of us had a shot at the guy, he’d be a grease spot in fifteen seconds. Whoa. Sorry, Doc. No offense.”
“None taken,” said Doc. “I missed. Nobody feels lousier about that than I do.” Luke put a hand on Doc’s shoulder and gave him a gentle shove. Slick paused for a second, and then went on.
“Yeah, so, they’d have to pick him up with a blotter. He’s a career criminal. He knows how the game is played. He’s a walking corpse. He knows his only hope would be to get himself under the skirts of another agency as soon as possible.”
“But then why the hell was he on our hit list?” said Rico. “Doc pulled him off it for Luke last week.”
Doc shook his head. “He wasn’t on it. I searched Rona on my own. One of my finks lucked onto him, and I ran it straight through to Luke on Saturday. So if there was an RTA on him, I wouldn’t have seen it anyway.”
An RTA notation was a coded numerical addendum to a criminal’s computer file that told any inquiring officer that contact with this criminal was a matter of interest to another agency or investigator. RTAs did not always show up on the screen, either. Sometimes they were hidden or accessible only to a senior staffer with the clearance code. But they were there, even if you didn’t know it, and hitting one, even unintentionally, meant that the National Crime Information Computer, or NCIC, itself would log your inquiry and automatically notify the agency that had put the original RTA on the file. Since your inquiry was linked to your own personal access code—you couldn’t get into the system without logging on and using your password—then the other agency would know the precise who, when, and where of your inquiry.
Over at Justice, there was a whole department, with a bank of mainframe computers, that did nothing but tag, correlate, and compile every law enforcement request logged onto NCIC, looking for hits that related to, or affected in any way, a government investigation. The mainframe was programmed to pick up key words or phrases—such as an undercover officer’s false ID or a fink’s street name—and alert the on-duty ops officer, who had a protocol book filled with hit requests relayed by various agencies. If the unit detected one of those trigger words, the ops officer got the beep and relayed the originating inquiry to whatever agency had filed the hit request. The NCIC was a nationwide database shared by all law enforcement agencies. It was a wonderful tool for investigating officers, but it worked very well as a clandestine monitoring device as well. It was like a pool of data. As soon as you dipped into it, you sent ripples all through the system. Sometimes you woke up things that were better left sleeping. There was no way around that.
Doc raised a hand.
“So we don’t know if there was an RTA on Rona or not, because so far I don’t think any of us have queried the system.”
“Not everybody logs a fink with an RTA anyway,” said Walt. “Hell, anybody in any precinct house can get that stuff.”
Logging a fink’s name was crazy enough, but tagging it with an RTA notice was extremely risky. True, there were access levels to the NCIC database, with the most sensitive information being routinely restricted to senior brass and intelligence guys, but those cutoffs were notoriously unreliable. Any cop with a little nerve—or a lot to hide—could find a way into the deepest recesses of the NCIC data bank. It was an indication of the throwaway status of finks that most agencies logged them anyway. After all, what was a fink but a crook who got caught? As Doc liked to say, finks are Kleenex—they pop up, you blow them and burn them. There’s always another fink in the box.
It was a tar-pit world. Get close to it, and it stuck to your skin. Fight it, and you sank without a trace. Stirring around in the Treasury tar pit looking for a fink named Paolo Rona would take a very long stick. But somehow during the long evening the unit had closed up ranks around Luke and his suspicions. Blood was blood. If Luke wanted to push it, they seemed ready to help him. Within reason.
Reaching that consensus had been the subtext of everything they’d been talking about that evening. Since the decision might ruin them all, everybody had to be in on it. There was a long resonating silence. The bar was starting to fill up with Sunday night regulars now, and Janet had some Tony Bennett on the stereo. In the yellow glare of the overhead lamp, the faces of the men around the table were drawn, shadowed, and solemn. Slick’s hands rested in the circle of light, holding the tin cup with the liar’s dice. Luke watched their faces for a time, thinking that in many ways someone in law enforcement was never alone, that you always had a family of a kind. It was a warming sensation, but it was also a goad, since there was another member of the circle, not present today, who had the same claim on him and, through him, on the rest of them, and the real truth was the only honorable thing he had left to offer her.
“Look,” he said. “Let’s do this right. Roll me a set, Slick. If I call it, we do it, if I don’t, we don’t.”
Doc gave him a look. “Why that way?”
“It’s the only fair thing. If it’s no, we walk away with our—”
“Pride?” said Walt.
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” said Slick, shaking the cup. The tinny rattle drew looks from the building crowd in the front room. Janet was watching them, sensing a shift in the mood. Slick slammed the cup down, looked underneath it, his eyes black shadows, the amber light glowing on his shiny pink skull. Walt puffed some cigarette smoke into the circle, where it curled and drifted and rose in the heat from the light. The rest of the bar seemed to fade into a formless black space. There was only the breathing of the men and the creaking of their wooden chairs and the drifting woodwind-and-whiskey sound of Tony Bennett singing “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” Slick raised his head, pushed the cup across the table toward Luke. Luke reached out and pulled it in, looking at Slick, waiting for his call.
“This is silly,” said Doc.
“No,” said Walt. “It spreads it around.”
“Queens to the ace,” said Slick.
“How many?”
“Three.”
Luke stared down at the cup.
“Okay,” he said. “I buy it.” He lifted the cup off the dice. An ace, a jack, two queens, and a nine.
“You lied.”
Slick sat back in his chair and gave him a wolfish grin. Luke pulled the two queens out to the side, gathered up the three remaining dice, and shook them in the cup. Then he set it down with a rattle and, without looking at the results, pushed the cup across to Slick.
“Four queens.”
Slick raised his eyebrows, gave Luke a look.
“To what?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Slick considered the cup. Luke was giving them all an honorable exit from the problem. Slick looked at the two queens lying on the scarred wooden surface of the table, then back at the tin cup. The two queens showing made Luke’s call of four queens a little more reasonable, but still, it was a big gamble on Luke’s part.
“If you lose, we’re not gonna do this? You’re not gonna do this, either? We all just walk away. You tell the woman whatever, but we leave it at that? Right?”
“Right,” said Luke. “That’s the deal.”
Slick reached out, tensed, and lifted the cup into the air.
A nine. And a pair of queens.
“So. ,” said Slick.
Walt pulled in a lungful of smoke, held it, and then blew it out into the cone of light. “So—Doc says he developed Rona out of a private fink and didn’t go through NCIC or any other web. What about now?” he said. “I’ve got a mobile VDT in my van. Let’s check out Rona right now.”
“Okay,” said Luke. “Let’s.”
Walt’s charcoal-gray Windstar was parked a block down on M Street. He and Luke went down past the thinning crowds and the shuttered grocery stores. The night was still and hot, the air heavy with mist and ripe with the smell of rotting fruit, fried food, fumes from the traffic. Overhead the yellow glare of the streetlamps seemed to float inside a shimmering halo of beaded light. Four black teenagers in hip-hop clothes pushed their way in between Walt and Luke, their faces as solemn as pallbearers, their eyes hooded and unseeing, as if the two white men in front of them were apparitions, as insubstantial as the mist around the streetlights.
“Glockers,” said Luke, loud enough for them to hear him.
The group went on a few steps and then stopped. A kid about six feet tall, wearing a Bulls jacket and blue polka-dot do-rag, stepped out of the circle and stared at the two white men.
“Yo, peckerwood.”
Luke and Walt moved a little apart. Suddenly, massively, there was blue ruin in the thickening air.
“Yeah?” said Luke, walking a few feet back toward the kids.
“What’d you call us?”
“I called you Glockers. That do-rag pinching your brain, numb-nuts?”
The kid’s face went slack.
“You dissing me, asshole?”
Deep inside Luke a couple of stones grated across each other, and a low soundless growl worked its way up his carotid. Now the kids had spread out slightly as well. The whole thing was profoundly stupid all around the circuit, but that was the way these things went. Luke was conscious of Walt’s presence, knew precisely where he was and what he would do if it came to it. He also knew this was crazy, but dammit, all he had said was Glockers. Who owned this goddamn town anyway?
“Dissing you? Oh yes, I’d say so. Definitely.”
The kid stared at him, his hands open. Luke was aware of the way he was wearing his Bulls jacket, alive to the possibilities inside it. Walt was watching the other kids closely.
“You crazy, motherfucker.”
“Talk or walk, asshole,” said Luke, contempt in every syllable, pushing it, facing him down. The kid looked like he was about to burst into flames. Finally he reached some sort of decision, based on whatever finely calibrated street logarithms he had worked his way through in the last nine seconds.
“You the Man, ain’t you?”
“Dead right. Talk or walk, little fella. I got better things to do.”
The large kid held his place for a few seconds. A strolling couple had stopped a few yards behind them, suddenly aware of the menace. Luke moved slightly to the right to get them out of his line of fire. The gang kids saw that, realized that Luke and Walt were ready to take this all the way.
Something changed. Something was said in a low dry voice, they all laughed, and turned to walk away.
Walt and Luke watched them walk for a while. The strolling couple hurried past them, keeping their faces low, avoiding eye contact.
“Can we go now, Wyatt?” said Walt.
Luke laughed at that. They relaxed and went on toward the van.
“Why’d you do that?” asked Walt, professionally intrigued. “That’s an NYPD thing, face them down like that.”
“Somebody has to.”
They reached Walt’s van. He used his remote to close down the alarm and pop the locks. The VDT was mounted on a swing-arm bolted to the dashboard. Walt flicked it on. The screen glowed bright orange, faded to black, and an amber cursor began to blink in the lower right corner.
Walt punched in his access code. The screen flickered, and then a menu list appeared.
INQUIRY / SEARCH / RETRIEVE / LOCATE ENTER D-BASE CODE:
nysiis
holmes
ani-ali
catch
ncic
maglocen
cpic
internal
vicap
Walt hit a function button, and NCIC activated. “What were the numbers on Rona?”
“Rona, Paolo Coimbra. DOB one May 1961.”
“What’d the ER report say about the Hispanic male?”
Luke was silent for a moment.
“I think he said ‘late thirties or early forties.’ ”
“Sounds a little old. Rona was only thirty-three.”
“Yeah,” said Walt, typing. “I know I do. Here we go.”
The screen went blank, flickered. A few seconds passed, and then a string of amber letters and numbers threaded themselves out across the screen.
RONA … PAOLO COIMBRA FS#C229745/94
AKA QUARCO AKA Q
AKA RODERIGO GARDENA AKA MULTIPLES
FIVE FEET ELEVEN INCHES 170 POUNDS
Q-SHAPED CIRCULAR SCAR RIGHT THIGH
MULTIPLE NATIONWIDE WARRANTS
ALBANY WARRANTS FEDERAL WARRANTS
ESCAPE OSSINING WARRANT USMS
MULTIPLE SEXUAL ASSAULTS
ASSAULT FEDERAL OFFICER
SEE NOTATION B1221/5/22/94/
“Okay,” said Walt. “There’s no RTA showing, but that B1221 is an incident report filed by a local force. That’d be the D.C. cops.”
“That’s today’s date. That’s the Treasury takedown, right?”
“Right. But instead of pulling up the Treasury report, let’s see if we can just pull the D.C. version.”
Walt hit a couple of keys. The machine asked him for a search protocol and, again, for his access number. He entered that again, and then he hit a retrieve key on the pad. Thirty seconds passed, and then:
INCIDENT REPORT B1221
Units 355 and 376 respond to ten-95 at Constitution and 17th time marker 1433 052294 shots fired. On arrival Treasury agents at scene with one male multiple gunshot wounds. Agent Canaday and Agent Wolokoff provided warrants and informations.
Shooting self-defense crime scene detectives.
Referred to another agency. Units assigned to control crowds and to assist in shooting assessment team.
EMS transport to DCMH subject DOA cause of death gunshot wounds
charges resulting: none
further action: none
filing officer: DCPDSGT #448256
“Short and to the point,” said Walt.
“Yeah. Got a pen?” Walt gave him one, and Luke wrote down the badge number of the reporting officer.
“That’s a sergeant,” said Walt.
“Yeah, and a sergeant signed the surgeon’s death certificate. Collins or something like that.”
“Chances are it’s the same guy. Want to see what else we can get?”
“What’ll you query?”
“Holmes. That’s ours, not a general web.”
Holmes stood for Home Office Large Major Enquiry System, a Canadian database program that was gaining some popularity in D.C. circles.
“Go for it.” Walt hit a few keys and waited while the screen ran through some system alterations. Finally, the screen burst into a string of capital letters.
NAME OF DECEASED:
RONA PAOLO COIMBRA DOA DC MUNICIPAL
HOSPITAL 1500 HOURS 05/22/94 SEE TREASURY
CASE NUMBER 664-208711 FILE BACKDATE
SEQUENCE RESTRICT THIS INQUIRY HAS BEEN
LOGGED AND TAGGED THIS INQUIRY HAS BEEN
LOGGED AND TAGGED CONTACT SPECIAL
AGENT CANADAY ASAP ACCESS RESTRICTED
“Well,” said Luke. “That looks real final.”
“It is,” said Walt. “So there was an RTA on him, but it’s cloaked. I can try to get through to that, but this ‘access restricted’ means that if I ask again, I’ll get shut down. Canaday has, basically, put a bugger-off sign right out front so we can’t say we missed it. Fiertag must have given him access to Holmes, so that’s that. Right now we look innocent enough. The computer web will let Canaday and Fiertag know we asked. As long as we don’t do anything else, they probably won’t either. Unless you want me to reroute the protocol architecture through an off-system server, and then we could maybe try to hot-link the database codes with a double-blind cutoff server out of Helsinki, which would disguise our originating algorithm—”
“Ease up, Walt, you’re gonna make yourself sick.”
“You could tell I was making that up, hah?”
“I’m not as stupid as I look,” said Luke, staring at the screen. Walt turned his head to study Luke’s profile by the light of the VDT screen.
“You’re not, eh? Well, that’s a relief.”
“Now what?”
“Now?” said Walt, stretching. “Now, you know.”
“What do I know?”
“You know that you can’t use any of the service databases, or any of the national ones either. You know they mean business too. You know that if you poke around inside this thing anymore, you’re gonna lose a body part. Maybe one of your favorites too.”
“So let it go?”
Walt gave it some serious thought, his face saddening.
“I hate to say it, but that would be my advice, Luke. We had this kind of thing a lot in Bronx Vice. Wheels within wheels. Interagency war. We’re grunts, Luke. This kind of thing will blow your career up real fast. Blow us all up, maybe. I know we rolled dice on it, but … Doc’s the problem, really.”
“Doc? Why?”
“He’s close to a big promotion. Corner office. He’s getting on, Luke, and he’s overweight. He’s one of the best I ever saw, but he’s losing a step or two. That’s part of the reason they moved him out of Kansas City. The heat was getting to him. Five years back, he’d never have missed a shot like he did last night. You know those little pills he’s always popping?”
“No,” said Luke. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Maybe he’s not popping them in front of you. He takes Dilantin. It’s a vasodilator. He’s also taking aspirin. Next February is his annual checkup. If he hasn’t made a solid desk job before that, if his job description is still Street Operational, he could be out of the service on a medical.”
Christ.
“Why’d he go on that run with me last night?”
“You’re Luke Zitto, for chrissake. How could he not?”
Luke struggled to take this all in.
“Walt, it’s not just about me.”
“You mean Aurora Powys?”
“Yeah.”
“So make this good news for her, Luke. Do what Rico says. Tell her the guy’s dead. Tell her he got blown out of his socks by another female officer. That’ll help. Buy her a box of Black Talons, and send her out to the range. I always sleep better after a couple of hundred rounds.”
“What if it isn’t true?”
“True?” said Walt. “Truth is the thing with scales.”
Luke looked at him. “You’re quoting that New York broad at me?”
“Dorothy Parker?”
“Yeah. Her.”
“Hey, Luke, I’m not just a pretty face. And it’s Bronte, I think. Or somebody else. Anyway, not Parker.”
There was a prolonged silence while Luke seemed to shut down from the inside out. Walt recognized the process. Finally, Luke sighed and stepped out of the van, Walt following behind him. They locked it and headed back up the street toward Paddy Riley’s.
Halfway up, Luke said, “Feathers.”
“What?”
“Truth. She said, ‘Truth is the thing with feathers.’ Not scales.”
“Actually, Luke, the line goes, ‘Hope is the thing with feathers.’ ”
“So what’s ‘truth’ again?”
“The thing with scales.”
“I see. Why not hope?”
“Not in D.C., Luke.”