The agent at the wheel of the gypsy cab was a twenty-year man named Karl Wyzcsinsky—pronounced whizz-jinsky—inevitably nicknamed Whizzer, who had just come off a VIP/Senate protection tour that had lasted almost four years. Whizzer was used to air-conditioned limousines, first-class air travel, five-star hotels. Crystal glasses, compliant concierges, veal medallions in a piccata sauce, expensive call girls with names like Brooke, Beth, and Katherine.
Whizzer was not used to a five-hour stint sitting at the wheel of a rusted-out 1978 Ford Fairlane that smelled like a bucket of dead dogs, dripping with sweat, suffering from prickly heat and underwear migration, putting up with the fact that the only air-conditioning available on this stakeout was the occasional cross-breeze that blew a wave of hot wet air across the dashboard, in a part of D.C. that looked like an earthquake’s practice zone.
Bad enough, but the main thing he was finding difficult about this assignment was the dawning realization that Special Agent Bolton Canaday, who was sitting in the passenger seat beside him looking as untroubled by the heat as a corpse, had very few desirable qualities as a stakeout companion. He liked to put on a perky Irish brogue that grated like sand in your shorts and otherwise had the sparkling conversational gifts of industrial felt, but the very worst thing about him was that he had perfected what was possibly the single most irritating personal habit a human can develop; he sucked his teeth.
How Special Agent Bolton Canaday managed to do this was a mystery for Whizzer, since as far as he had been able to determine, Canaday didn’t have any teeth worth sucking. But—there he goes again—but he achieved the effect somehow, a low-level but nearly continuous liquid, swishing, sucking puckering that always built slowly, inexorably, toward a kind of popping wet smack as the internal suction behind his tightly sealed lips reached a critical point and then—pop—his lips would break the seal, Canaday would jump, lick his lips, and look out at the passing street scene with a vaguely startled expression, as if the entire wide-screen panorama of tumbledown storefronts, crumbling dirty brick apartments, potholed streets, and near-zombified drug addicts had somehow popped into existence when his lip-seal reached the breaking point.
Speaking of breaking points, Whizzer had pretty much reached his a few minutes back and was entertaining himself right now with a careful consideration of precisely the right, the perfect, the—the condign method of execution he would shortly employ upon the person of Special Agent Bolton Canaday—cramming a plumber’s helper down his throat was Whizzer’s leading choice at the moment—when Whizzer’s portable radio buzzed into life.
“Unit 23, this is Central.”
“That’s Endicott,” said Canaday as Whizzer plucked up the handset.
“Come back, Central?”
“Twenty-three, one of our people here is telling me that we’ve just got a patch through from a DMV-NCIC link out of Southern District in New York. Is Bolton there?”
Whizzer handed the radio across to Canaday.
“This is Canaday. Go ahead.”
“Bolton, this is Reed. I’m reading a DMV hit here—an NYPD traffic unit has a man stopped on Gun Hill Road, the driver has no ID but he’s answering the description on our BOLO. What the hell does this mean?”
Whizzer watched Canaday’s face. It had run through a couple of intriguing tints before it settled on the current one, a kind of pale puce with mottled bits of purple under the eyes. Further, Canaday was not, at this time, showing any inclination to suck his teeth. What he was showing was, in Whizzer’s professional opinion, the classic symptoms of Total Testicular Retraction caused by a sudden onset of Operational Spin-Out.
Canaday’s voice was tight as he answered, “Ah, say again, Central?”
“I think you copied that, Bolton.”
“And he fits our target ID?”
“Close enough.”
“Ahhh … may I suggest you contact the NYPD and ask them to detain this person? Immediately?”
“This has been done. Now what? What would you propose?
Canaday hesitated, sent Whizzer a desperate red-eyed look. Whizzer smiled happily back at him and made winging-away motions with his hands. Canaday nodded, and got back on the radio, out of which a kind of invisible but white-hot noxious cloud of Extreme Disapproval—Reed Endicott version—was curling and rising in portentous silence.
“Ahhh … Reed, I’d say we terminate this station ASAP.”
“Terminate? That’s your decision, is it? We can log it as that?”
“Well—Reed—of course, this is a joint task force. I bow to your … you have the final call in this. As I understand our chain of command.”
“Wait one, Bolton.… Wait one.”
There was a span of dead air.
“Okay … okay, Bolton, we’ll do that. Terminate. Roll them up.”
“Ten-four, Reed. I’m behind you all the way in this. Out.” Canaday hooked the radio back into the slot and sighed. “That’s it, boyo. Roll them up, Whizzer.”
“We’re through?” said Whizzer, keeping his face straight.
Canaday groaned a little and sucked his teeth. Whizzer was able to control his facial muscles, although his hands twitched slightly and tightened around the steering wheel.
“Reed got an RTA bullet from New York State. Some traffic bull has a guy stopped back there, guy’s ID fits our BOLO.”
Whizzer couldn’t help looking across the street toward the laundry.
“So, Reed thinks our guy skipped? The guy we’re waiting for?”
Canaday rubbed his grizzled cheeks with dry palms, making a sandpaper sound. “That’s what Reed’s getting out of it. They’re running the guy in, and somebody from the New York office will go see him.”
“Why not just get a positive ID from the NYPD traffic bull on the scene?”
Canaday gave him a bleary red-eyed look.
“Operational security, Karl. Reed Endicott would rather have his nostril hairs set on fire than let out a particle of data to a city force. Well, actually, he’d rather have your nose-hairs set on fire. But you get my drift, hah?”
“So we’re through here? You and me?”
“Yeah,” said Canaday, shaking his head. “We’re through.”
“Damn,” said Whizzer.