Mitch pulled up outside Nick’s apartment and beeped the horn. Nick came to the front stairs and frowned. Mitch put the window down.
“My dates usually come to the door!” Nick joked.
Mitch laughed. “You’re an idiot. Get in the car.”
Nick locked the front door and ran down the stairs. He opened the car door.
“You brought the Audi?”
“I’ve only got the one car,” Mitch said.
“Funny. You’ll have a swastika carved into the bonnet when we return,” Nick said.
Mitch shrugged. “I was going to get a pool car but we’re going to a private address in the suburbs, not a party meeting. It just happens to be the home of the leader of the United Nazi Party. I figured it would probably be okay,” he said, turning the car out of Nick’s driveway. “Where’s Amy?” Mitch asked after Nick’s housemate who worked in the library at the FBI offices.
“In the shower, getting ready for work,” Nick said. “Hoping she’d come out and wave you off?”
“Yeah, I was actually,” Mitch said.
“Why don’t you ask her out again? She’s still keen even if you did blow her off for Charlotte the first time,” Nick said.
He shrugged. “I’m taking some time out.”
“Yeah I get that,” Nick said. “So who are we seeing?”
“Jonathan Charles Wickham, J.C., to his friends. He’s the head of the UNP which stands for the United Nazi Party, or the Commander as he calls himself,” Mitch explained.
“Good of Commander Wickham to deign to see us,” Nick said.
“He asked our nationality first—he might even try and recruit us. There’s two main Nazi-sympathizer groups in the district and this is one of them. Wickham’s got a rap sheet a mile long, most of them for public nuisance.”
The men drove for fifteen minutes, discussing aspects of the case.
“What do they stand for?” Nick asked.
Mitch exhaled. “They’ve got a doctrine—all the things you would expect, like America for whites only, non-citizens can live here as guests and subject to laws for aliens, no Jew or homosexual may reside in America … you get the idea. They are five thousand members strong.”
“Wow,” Nick said.
Eventually, Mitch turned off the highway and into a small, tree-lined street. The apartments were small and presentable. He scanned for number eighty-two.
Finding it, Mitch pulled up and the two men got out of the car. Mitch took his jacket off and threw it in the back seat next to Nick’s. He locked the car and followed Nick up the path to the small brick block of four apartments. He saw the curtain move on a bottom floor window. Before they knocked, a tall, wiry man with hair shaved close to his scalp opened the door.
“Are you the cop that called?” he asked.
“Not a cop, but yeah I called and this is—” Mitch said.
“Brought back-up hey?” the Commander cut him off and stood aside to let them in.
“We always travel in packs,” Mitch said. He observed the room. It was neat but old; worn brown carpet, a tired tweed couch and wall-to-wall photos of Wickham and fellow UNP members in Nazi uniforms, marching and protesting.
Wickham pointed to the couch and the two men sat while he yelled out to a woman who was out of sight. He came and sat opposite them.
Mitch took in Wickham’s black t-shirt displaying the organization’s logo, three stud piercings on his face and the parade of tattoos on his arm.
A large woman entered the room. Her long hair was tied back and a printed dress stretched across her body.
“I could do with a coffee, love,” Wickham told her. “You two?”
“Just had one, but thanks,” Mitch said, noting the wedding rings on their fingers.
Nick shook his head and gave her a smile.
“I wanted to know if you had any interest or any information on who might be disrupting Benjamin Hoefer’s book tour,” Mitch began.
“Yeah,” Wickham said, clasping his hands between his legs. “Benjamin Hoefer. Haven’t read the book, but it should be in the fiction section.”
“Would any of your members be keen to close his book tour down?” Mitch asked.
“Sure, yeah, but we don’t do that, it’s not our style. That’s not what we’re about.” He took the coffee from his wife and thanked her. “But the protest, it sort of works for us … raises awareness of what we’re all about. So great, we’ll ride on that.”
“Do you have an idea whose style it might be?” Nick asked.
Wickham shrugged. “Not really. You’ve got to pick your fights, you know what I mean? I don’t want to waste our members’ time protesting about another Holocaust story. Whatever. We’re looking at the big picture stuff … you know immigration, education, aliens. You guys should come to one of our meetings … you’ll agree with what we’re about. We stand for …”
“What did you think?” Nick asked on their drive back to the office.
“I think his I.Q. is less than the national average and that was a waste of time, but at least we can eliminate the UNP,” Mitch said.
“I got the feeling he couldn't organize a one-man parade,” Nick added. “This Benjamin Hoefer case seems too sophisticated for his lot.”
“I’m with you there. We cheesed him off though, not taking those membership papers; he’s militant about their beliefs.”
“Yeah, that was an ear bashing,” Nick agreed. “But there was no way I was taking those papers.”
“I thought he was going to burst a blood vessel,” Mitch agreed. “There’s another group I want to check out—The New Aryan Order. I’ve just got to get a contact.”
As they neared their office, Nick said, “I’ve got to get some cash, can you let me off on the corner? Want a coffee?”
Mitch pulled over. “Yeah, thanks.” He let Nick out and turned off into the FBI headquarters parking lot.
Mitch exited his car in the parking lot and locked it. As he put the keys in his coat pocket, he saw a shadow in his peripheral vision and whirled around. The punch was hard and unexpected, a hit straight to his eye. He reeled back only to be hit from the other side directly in the face. His assailants were two men, wearing dark masks. He felt blood pouring from his nose. The second punch knocked him down; he hit the concrete of the parking lot floor.
Reflexes kicked in. He shot up and delivered a quick, hard punch to the first assailant’s throat. He ducked a swing to his head and landed several sharp blows to the second man’s ribs, dropping him to the garage floor. They hurt his hand as much as the assailant, who doubled over in pain.
Mitch finished off the now wheezing first man with one sharp hit to the face. As both men lay crouched on the ground, Mitch saw the two security guards running towards him.
“Thanks guys,” he muttered as he straightened his jacket. As he turned to wipe a mark off the Audi, he saw the UNP symbol on one of the men’s pockets.
Yeah, he was angry; angry enough to send his storm troopers, Mitch thought. We should have just taken the registration papers and binned them later.
By the time Mitch spoke with the security officers, Nick had arrived back in the office with the two coffees. He looked up as Mitch walked past. Mitch’s nose was bleeding, dripping onto his collar and the front of his white shirt, his suit was covered in dirt from the parking lot floor.
“What the hell? I just left you five minutes ago and you get into trouble. How did that happen?” Nick asked.
John came out of his office, hearing Nick.
“Christ, Mitch, what happened?” He followed Mitch into his office. Nick joined them.
“It’s nothing, no big deal,” he said looking around for something to block his nose bleed. John gave him a clean handkerchief.
“I just got jumped in the parking lot. Why are you always carrying a clean handkerchief?” Mitch asked.
“Our parking lot? How does that happen? Where’s security?” John demanded.
“They came, eventually.”
“For crying out loud. Go and see the medic while I go and see security.”
“It’s okay.” Mitch dropped into his chair.
“Now, Mitch!” John said.
“Right.” Mitch got up again.
“Seriously, we’re getting mugged in our own parking lot now,” John continued to mutter as he left the office and headed to the stairwell. “What’s the point of security?”
Nick followed Mitch out of his office. “Look on the bright side, he hasn’t sent you for counseling yet.”
“Oh yeah, about that …”