Cold Frame [retail] Read online

  It was a great place to live and one more reason for Av to never let a woman encumber his life. They could visit, but they could not stay for more than one night. His main attraction for the opposite sex was entirely physical. That suited him just fine. He was content to live alone and enjoyed being able to do whatever he felt like doing when he felt like doing it without having to consider anyone else’s feelings or needs. Whenever he felt a little bit lonely in the evening he only had to walk four blocks to find a dozen bars and nightclubs packed to capacity with good-looking women, many of whom were totally in synch with his own feelings about long-term relationships or marriage. He’d kept himself fit and healthy, had zero debt, and had an interesting line of work—well, maybe not anymore. Even so, he still had one of the most interesting cities in the whole world right there at his feet. Maybe he’d just take a year off, see the sights, something that people who lived in Washington often failed to do, and then see what was what.

  Sundown found Av on the roof, enjoying the first bottle of red. He was pleasantly blitzed, thinking hard about opening the second bottle, well satisfied with the way the steak had turned out, and wondering what he was going to do with the rest of his life. He could play out the suspension beef, the inevitable hearings, and then get a union lawyer to fight the termination action, but if the MPD really wanted someone gone, he or she would get gone, one way or another. If the bosses lost through the PBA process, they’d assign him as an assistant clerk in the evidence locker and simply wait for him to get bored to death and just leave.

  Or: he could just up and leave now, and save everybody the headaches. Quit instead of getting fired. Money wasn’t a problem, nor was a place to live. He had no sad-eyed dependents wringing their hands and wondering aloud where the next mortgage payment was coming from. He was thirty-five years old, in excellent health, debt-free, with over ten years’ worth of savings, half of them in precrash 8 percent Treasuries. His suspension wasn’t the result of anything criminal, such as lying on an expense report, sexual harassment in the office, or excessive violence toward suspects in custody. He and the MPD were no longer getting along, and he wasn’t ever going to win that one.

  And then what? A federal LE job? A county job in nearby Virginia or Maryland? He didn’t have a college degree and still didn’t think he needed one. Careers required degrees, and his idea of work was that it was just that, no more, no less. Do your day job, get paid. Go home. Do what you like. Be happy.

  He’d tried one semester at UMD and found the whole thing ridiculous. “Classes” of up to three hundred freshmen sitting in a smelly auditorium, listening to some foreigner, posing as a professor, read from his dissertation in English, his third language. Or, better yet, watching some of his fellow freshmen dress up like Marxist revolutionaries so that they could protest about lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgender oppression. The bullshit of academia had convinced him to go home to talk to his parents about not wasting any more of their money. His mother had urged him to stick with it, ignore the silliness, and do what it took to just get the piece of paper. Show up, she said. Pretend you respect the professors. You’ll stand out, and you will graduate. His father, ever Mr. Practical, told him to go talk to the military recruiters down at the local shopping center.

  Of the four, the Marine recruiter had promised him travel to exotic places, the best physical-fitness training on the planet, and the prospect of shooting people and blowing up their shit. It had been no contest, and, of course, most of it hadn’t been true, either. He’d done three years in the Pacific Fleet Marine Force, stationed variously at Marine garrisons in Guam or Okinawa, with the rest of the time floating around in a big old gator-freighter, helping his fellow marines to drive the ship’s-company sailors nuts.

  The physical-fitness part had been true—with nothing much to do aboard ship, the marines spent literally hours on the ship’s weather decks, doing every imaginable PT regimen. He’d then rotated back to a stateside Marine base, where, older and just a wee bit wiser, he took enough local and online courses to qualify for an associate’s degree in criminal justice. That, plus his veteran’s preference, had made a slot at the police academy his for the asking.

  He heard his cell phone chirping from where he’d left it next to the grill. Reluctantly he retrieved it and stared at the screen, which had become a bit fuzzy. Red wine, he thought. He was much more of a beer guy than a wino. He looked at the caller ID: Howie?

  “Dee-tective Sergeant,” Av said. “What’s shakin’, Mau-Mau?”

  “Need to talk,” Howie said. “Can we come up?”

  “Come up?” Av said. This was a first. And who was “we”? “As in you’re here, at my pad?”

  “At the door,” Howie said. “Getting some heavy looks from some Eye-ranian mope in the store. Wong Daddy’s fixin’ to start, dude don’t quit with the stink-eye.”

  “That’s Mister Kardashian,” Av said, heading down the stairs. “Don’t hurt him—he’s cool. Buzzing you in now. Come up two floors.”

  He went down to the door and let them in. Off-duty Howie was in full scary regalia, dreads, hoodie, sweatpants, and Air Jordans. Wong was wearing an all-black shiny suit, complete with tie and bowler, what he called his Odd Job look. Howie accepted a beer, as did Wong.

  “Slick digs, partner,” Howie said, looking around at the loft.

  “Generous uncle,” Av said. He explained how he’d acquired the building. He had the beginnings of a headache; damned red wine.

  “I’ll say,” Howie said. “All this, no rent, no mortgage, and paying tenants?”

  “No wife, either,” Wong said, admiringly. “Smart mofo standing right here in front of God and everybody.”

  Howie shook his head. He’d been married and had tried suburban life with four fractious children and a nagging wife. He now lived in Southwest D.C. in a one-bedroom apartment, where he could look out the windows at night and see Washington’s rich gang life in full color. The homies all thought he was a harmless nut because he’d told them he was an undercover cop and also a secret agent when he moved in. They laughed that off and since then he’d been left alone.

  “Listen,” he said. “Two reasons we here. One, OCME called over, after you left? Said McGavin’s body had been claimed.”

  “Oh, yeah? By whom?”

  “The family lawyer,” Howie said.

  “Gee whiz,” Av said. “Am I starting to sense some closure here, please, God?”

  Howie grinned. “OCME apparently didn’t resist. Shyster shows up with ID, a Georgetown accent, tweeds and brogues, and positively identifies the remains as McGavin, via televideo. He then provides a funeral home contact, signs the appropriate papers, goes back behind the Ivory Curtain. Funeral-home ghouls show up an hour later to remove the remains. For cremation.”

  “And they just let him go?”

  “No one in MPD ever put a hold on the body as evidence, so, yeah, they let him go. Probably blowing in the wind as we speak.”

  Av’s headache began to assert itself. They should have filed a request to the district attorney to keep the body once the ME had declared cause and manner undetermined. “Shit,” he muttered. Then he remembered: they didn’t work cases in ILB.

  Howie shrugged. “C’mon,” he said. “We didn’t really have any grounds. The doc we spoke to personally asked the lawyer if the grieving widow wanted to know more about what had happened. Shyster said no, she did not, overcome with grief as she was and her cruise-planning. And that was that.”

  Av realized that OCME was fully within its rights. The District’s lively drug trade and gang rivalries kept the ME’s chop shop amply busy. An unexplained death with no such criminal attributes and no complainant, say, like one of the Metro District’s homicide squads, was sufficient justification to move a body into the capable hands of a crematorium, especially when a family rep showed up and requested just that.

  “Okay,” Av said. “I guess that is that. Besides, what do I care, huh? Wait, you said two reasons?”


  “Yeah. Tell him, Wong.”

  “I had to go see Precious for my monthly behavioral sciences lecture,” Wong said.

  Howie saw Av’s blank look. “Once a month,” he said. “Wong, here, gets to go see the lieutenant to be reminded not to conduct himself in the manner of a uniformed monster. No yelling at suspects in unknown Asian dialects, stomping episodes restricted to concrete floors, and a little more effort on paying his bills out in town.”

  “Once a month?”

  Wong shrugged. The gesture made his black suit coat look like there were small animals running back and forth across his shoulders under the fabric. “Counseling sessions,” he said. “It’s possible that I’m on some kinda probation, time to time.”

  “But that’s not the interesting bit,” Howie prompted. Wong frowned, but then nodded.

  “Yeah, well, I had to wait outside. She was on the phone. Had her door cracked. Sounded like she was talking to her rabbi. She was pissed off, and I mean not in her normal I’m-so-fierce way. This was different. Said somebody had told her that if she didn’t play ball in getting rid of you, by name, they were gonna fire her.”

  “Who was gonna fire her?”

  “Them,” Wong said, impatiently, as if that explained everything. “She was asking about how to deal with that shit, what’d she call it, undue command influence. Said she was gonna go to the EEOC, file a complaint, blah-blah-blah, then she got interrupted. Said no several times, then said, ‘I see. All right. I will. Thank you.’ That was it.”

  “Who’s her rabbi?” Av asked.

  “No one knows, least not in the Briar Patch,” Howie said. “Miz Brown thinks it’s one of the lady lawyers in the general counsel’s office. Thing is, that’s a lotta heat for what happened out there on the towpath, don’t you think?”

  “Well, yes, I do, but—so what? I mean, who cares what I think now? I’ve just about decided to fold my tents and walk away. I mean, I appreciate the insight, guys, but whatever this is all about, I’m not sure I care anymore.”

  Howie gave him a look. “I was afraid of that,” he said. “How mucha that red shit you had tonight?”

  “Too much,” Av admitted. “Seemed like a good idea at the time. But: back to my point: since I’m history, why should you guys care?”

  The two of them stared at him until he got it. His temples were really pounding now. Then the light came on. “Oh,” he said. “If it can happen to me…”

  They nodded, almost in unison.

  “And what do you want me to do?”

  “Fight it, dude,” Wong said.

  “Yeah, homes,” Howie said. “Get your rep to raise some hell. Insist on a hearing. Ask a buncha embarrassing questions, drag the McGavin tarbaby into it, see if that’s what’s driving the train. Don’t just walk out. They see it’s that easy, we’re all out on our asses, and the rest of us don’t have something like this to fall back on, know what I’m sayin’?”

  Av nodded. His head told him not to do that again. “Okay, my fellow inmates. I’m cool with that. But you realize: if I succeed, we may lose Precious as a boss.”

  “She’s a big lieutenant now,” Wong said. “Going to law school and all. She’ll bite ’em all in the ass, and I’ll hold ’em down. And then I’ll stomp their asses. Believe it.”

  They got up to leave, but then Howie stopped. “What kinda neighborhood is this?” he asked.

  “Busy during the day,” Av said. “It’s Georgetown, so we’ve got shops, restaurants, the canal. But at night? M Street is a happening place, but here? Sleepy Hollow. Why?”

  “Saw a really strange dude out on the street,” Howie said. “Sitting in some rice-burning POS out on Thirty-third Street. Like he was on a stakeout.”

  “Strange how?” Av asked.

  “His face,” Howie said. “Something really wrong with his face. Looked like a mask.”

  Av looked over at Wong, who nodded his agreement with Howie’s observation.

  “Got one eye that looks at you like a snake?” he asked.

  “Yeah, he did.”

  Av thought about it. “I’ve seen him once before, out on my morning run. He scared my blondie running partner. Just a guy in traffic, except—”

  “Except what?”

  “He was definitely looking at me. Not like some kinda surveillance dick. He made sure I saw him, seeing me.”

  “Want us to roust his ass?” Howie said. “I can sic Wong here on him, maybe turn his car over, then have a little chat?”

  Av blew out a long breath. “I will bet you,” he said, “that that dude is long gone when you get out there.”

  “Let’s go see,” Wong said, suddenly interested in the prospect of flipping a car on its back.

  They called back two minutes later. “Gone,” Howie said. “Keep some heat handy, bro.”

  “Count on it,” Av said, worried now. What the hell had he done to invite this kind of shit?

  * * *

  At two-thirty in the morning, Av awoke. He sat up in bed, tasted his cotton-dry mouth, and groaned. The headache had subsided, but his body was not yet in any sort of forgiving mood.

  He got up, went to the fridge, got himself three good glugs of OJ from the bottle, and then cracked a soda for some carbonated relief. He looked out the windows. There were no more passenger jets sliding down the Potomac River gorge at this hour. Upriver he could just barely see the lights on Chain Bridge now that the leaves had begun to fall. He shivered. He slept with the windows open, pretty much year round, as his sleeping costume consisted of a pair of tartan flannel boxer shorts and a T-shirt. At the height of summer, the heat broke by midnight. Now that it was September, the outside air was in the low sixties. Wonderful.

  He turned to go back to bed, which is when he saw someone sitting in the big recliner in his living room area. He stopped in his tracks.

  “Good evening, Detective Sergeant Smith,” a woman’s voice said. “Please forgive the intrusion, but we need to talk.”

  “I’ve got a gun,” he said.

  “No you don’t,” she said. “You had to hand it over today, along with your badge and creds. Please. I’m here to apologize for all that and to explain a few things. It’s late, and I’ve got a long day tomorrow. Today, I guess. Please. Come over here, sit down, and give me ten minutes of your time.”

  She was right—he didn’t have a gun. In his tango with the red wine, he’d forgotten to extract a replacement weapon. He walked over to the living room area and stood facing her.

  “Good grief,” she said. “You’re huge. What do you press?” He just looked down at her. She was older than he was, maybe even forty, which made her almost ancient. Dark hair, Italian or Greek face, dark eyed, aquiline nose, prominent cheekbones, slightly parted lips, strong chin. She was wearing one of those Washington power pantsuits that revealed absolutely nothing about her figure, and yet, she was certainly of the female persuasion.

  Dangerous, he thought. Definitely dangerous. He sat down without answering her.

  “Okay,” she said. “Again, I apologize for breaking and entering.”

  “Who are you,” he asked.

  “Call me Ellen Whiting.”

  “Really?” he said. “The Ellen Whiting? Francis X. McGavin’s lunch partner right up to the moment he did the big jump at the Bistro? That Ellen Whiting? You’re right—I don’t have a gun. On me. But I can get to one pretty quick.”

  “Relax, Detective Sergeant. I’m no threat to you. If I were, you’d never have made it out of that bed back there. It’s not like you knew I was here.”

  “Shit.” He sighed, acknowledging her point. “I gotta get me a dog.”

  “Not a bad idea,” she said. “First, let me explain something. I’m from the wonderful world of federal counterterrorism, which we all know and love as CT.”

  “And you’re here to help, right?” he said. “Like all government agencies.”

  She smiled. “Of course,” she said. “We’re always here to help and local LE is always glad
to see us. But, actually, I am here to help—you. This suspension bullshit? That’s gonna go away. That was initiated by a mistake on our part, amplified by some cowboying on the part of four support personnel. Contractors, actually.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “What was up with all that? Those guys scared one of my tenants.”

  “The skinny blond number? She’ll survive. Those guys were supposed to provoke you, get you to do something so they could apprehend you. Then we could have had our little talk in private. They failed to anticipate you’d involve the inmates of the Briar Patch.”

  “You in one of those cars stopped up on Canal Street?” Av asked, wondering how she knew about the Briar Patch.

  “It’s possible,” she said.

  “And those runners were not FPS, were they.”

  “Like I said, contractors.”

  “Whose contractors?”

  “Contractors,” she said. “Town’s full of ’em, as you certainly must know. Anyway, there’s no suspension paper, you haven’t called your rep, IA hasn’t been called, so I believe you can go back to work this morning as if nothing happened, because, officially, nothing did happen.”

  “Just like that,” he said.

  “Yep, just like that.”

  “And you know this—how?”

  “Because my boss called Happy’s boss, the chief, herself, and shared his thinking with her. Cooled the whole deal.”

  He thought about that for a moment. Was she DHS? Bureau? Spooking around like this, she might even be someone in Agency clandestine ops. In this town, you never knew. “The McGavin deal,” he asked. “What’s the story on that?”

  “Who’s McGavin?”

  “Oh, c’mon.” He snorted. “All my problems started with the McGavin deal.”

  She leaned forward. “Look,” she said. “McGavin’s death doesn’t involve you, or MPD, for that matter. That’s the whole point of my visit, actually. McGavin’s demise was something that slipped out from under the federal invisibility cloak momentarily, and, trust me, that will not happen again.”

  “You know he didn’t just die of natural causes in that restaurant, right?”