They’ll be all over it, you know,” said Doc, leaning forward to turn the air-conditioning to high. “Canaday, the rest of them.”
Luke nodded, staring intently at the cars in front of him, trying, by a simple act of will, to make them all vaporize and reappear somewhere in downtown Beirut.
“Mebbe,” he said, finally.
“Mebbe? Did you just say ‘mebbe’?”
“I did,” said Luke. “Traffic jams cause me to speak like Walter Brennan. It’s a genetic defect.”
They were trying to make their way up North Capitol Street and the traffic was jammed up around a construction site between M and Pierce. A concrete truck the size of Bozeman, Montana, was sitting halfway out into the traffic, and the driver, a snake-skinny white boy with a ball cap on his anencephalic skull that said DAIN BRAMAGE was lounging back in the driver’s seat with a limp stogie hanging out of his twisted-up mouth, leering at all the young girls who were being forced to go around the truck by hobbling across the shaky wooden boards and the dirt piles and the broken pieces of concrete at the construction site gates.
Other than that, he appeared to be doing absolutely nothing and showed every sign of continuing to do that until quitting time or Judgment Day, whichever came first. Around this roadblock, cars and trucks and vans were jammed up and idling in a smoky rusted bad-tempered tangle that stretched for blocks in every direction. A sweating and increasingly cranky D.C. traffic cop was out in the middle of the street, trying to get a UPS van to back up so a Checker cab could move out of the way of a snow-white stretch limo that was trying to go around a stalled Toyota with steam billowing up from under its hood. A few of the drivers were out of their cars now, standing around in shirt-sleeves, wiping the sweat off their faces, cursing softly but continuously. Luke’s hidden radio squawked at them, and Doc picked up the handset.
“Bravo Sixteen.”
“Hey, Doc.”
“Slick. How do we look?”
“I’ve been on you all morning. You got no one.”
“Where are you now?”
“Where else. Stuck in this shit, a couple of blocks back. Look, I gotta peel off, okay?”
“Sure. All we wanted to know was, is Canaday tailing us.”
“Well, if he has guys on you, they are very, very good. I do this for a living, you know?”
Doc laughed. Luke had the Crown Victoria backed up now and was bulling it through a laneway between two buildings. The car bounced over a culvert. Luke wheeled it hard left and accelerated up a long garbage-strewn alley, butting the horn to clear a couple of drug dealers out of his way. One of them gave Luke a look at his middle finger as he passed.
“Look, Doc, he’s showing us his Mr. Digit hand puppet.”
Doc was still on the radio. “Why do you want to peel off?”
“The boss called. Target Acquisition wants to know where we are. One of us had better show up, or we’re all toast. He asked me what I was doing, I told him we were chasing a fink. Rico’s already there, and our absence has been duly noted, boys. You heard from Walt yet?”
“No. Okay, Slick. Tell the boss we’ll be in by sixteen hundred.”
“Well, turn on your cell phone. Walt’s been trying to get to you. Ten-four, Bravo Sixteen. Out.”
Doc put the handset down and slammed the glove compartment door closed. “Well, that’s not good news.”
“What’d you think, Doc?”
“Well, we better wrap this up, one way or another. I say we check out this laundry place, and then we do the rest of this on our own time. Fiertag’s one thing. But when the CO calls you in, you better go. That guy scares me more than you do.”
Luke nodded, hit the horn, and pulled the car out onto First Street, There was a huge Greyhound and Trailways bus terminal across the crowded intersection. Luke cut through the lot and out the far side, getting an ear-splitting air-horn blast from a Trailways bus trying to come in the gate. Luke tapped the cell phone on the seat between them.
“See if you can get Walt, ask him how it’s going.”
Doc hesitated. “What if they have a Blackbird on this thing?”
Luke chuckled as he reached a clear section and accelerated north on Eckington Place.
“A Blackbird trace? Sure, and an AWACS at five thousand feet. And you think I’m paranoid?”
A Blackbird trace was an NSA project developed in combination with Bell Systems and Motorola. Every individual cell phone, even identical models, had its own distinct radio-wave pattern, almost like a cell phone DNA. Since each phone that is actually turned on emits a locating burst on its own frequency every fifteen minutes, in order to identify itself to the broadcast system covering a certain area, the cellular system nationwide can be programmed to recognize that unique cell-phone wave pattern and signal the location of that phone to any interested party. Since cell system coverage areas can be as narrow as a few city blocks, a Blackbird trace can tell the searching agency almost precisely where that phone is at that moment, anywhere within the continental United States. Blackbird traces are extremely expensive and highly secret, but if the project Treasury was working on was vital enough, Doc’s paranoia might not be paranoia.
“Come on, Doc. Even if you’re right, we’re running out of time.”
Doc sighed and dialed Walt Rich’s cell-phone number. It beeped a couple of times, and then Walt Rich answered. Luke could only hear Doc’s end of the conversation. It was cryptic.
“Walt, it’s Doc.… Yeah, Slick said. Where are you? Okay okay … Where? Yeah … yeah … Was it Canaday? No, just get back. The boss is on a tear. We’ll be in … okay, kiss-kiss, bye-bye.”
“Where’s Walt?”
“Just south of Fredericksburg, coming home fast.”
“Well?” asked Luke.
Doc was grinning. “Damn, I’m good. Walt found the guy at work. He’s not a happy puppy.”
“Garcia?”
“Yeah. Lucio Garcia, of 1553 Jefferson Avenue, Richmond, Virginia. Guess who dropped in on him yesterday?”
“Treasury?”
“Yeah, a couple of guys from the Richmond office. Asked him about the loss of his American Express card. He flipped out, wanted to know why it was that somebody hooked his wallet, nothing happens for ten days, and now he’s got T-men sitting in his living room. Absolutely blew up when Walt tinned him with his star. Called him a federale. Guess what Garcia does for a living?”
“No idea.”
“He’s with the Salvadoran consulate.”
“Christ, what does that mean? And if Treasury’s running Rona, they already knew about the AmEx card. Why heat up the vic like that?”
“Rona’s pond scum. Treasury’s not blind to the guy’s character flaws. So they check out his story. See if it’s true that Garcia’s not involved somehow. And the Salvadoran connection, that would have freaked Canaday. Whatever, the main thing is, there’s a Virginia driver’s license out there somewhere—”
“Probably in Bolton Canaday’s pocket.”
“—and that means there’s a photo on that driver’s license.”
“Okay. Of who?”
“Whom, Luke. Of whom.”
“Whom.”
“Well,” said Doc. “Maybe it’s the dead guy. Jorge Ragundo?”
“No. Canaday said the ID didn’t match the face.”
“Maybe the yellow man Cullen saw?”
“Maybe.”
“You mean, ‘mebbe.’ Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. And it answers your original question too. They will be all over Quality Industrial Cleaners. And where they are, you can bet Rona will be around somewhere. He’s the Judas goat. He’ll be staked out in the open somewhere. Look, make another call for me?”
“Okay. Who?”
Luke flipped him a card. “Call that number.”
“That’s the service office in the Bronx.”
“Yeah. Ask for Grizzly Dalton.”