Cold Frame [retail] Read online

  Av had to laugh. “My sentiments exactly, Special Agents. Look: I’m just a lowly Metro homicide dick, recently demoted to what we fondly call the Briar Patch. I’m beginning to think I’ve stumbled into something way above my pay grade, and I would be most appreciative if my Bureau would take this tarbaby off my hands.” He paused, as if looking for the report. “To which purpose, I happen to have the OCME report on what it was that killed said Francis McGavin. That report constitutes just about the entirety of our case file, which, like I said, I would be more than happy to hand over to the loving arms of any interested federal LE organization, actually.”

  “What did kill him?” Walker asked.

  “Aconitine?” Av said.

  The two agents looked at each other blankly.

  “It’s a plant, or it comes from a plant. Bad shit, stops all the major organs that do their jobs by expanding and contracting, like the lungs or the heart.”

  Freer and Walker looked at each other meaningfully. Then Howie showed up in the doorway to the conference room with folder in hand.

  “Can I take that as a yes, Special Agents?” Av asked hopefully, indicating to Howie that he should hand over the folder.

  “Is your lieutenant available, Detective?” Walker asked, finally.

  Dammit, Av thought. They hadn’t said yes.

  * * *

  Howie and Wong Daddy treated Av to lunch at one of the local cop bars near the Indiana Avenue headquarters building. They were celebrating the new guy’s first successful tarbaby launch. Miz Brown hadn’t come along. Howie said Brown was getting into religion and no longer approved of going to bars. The two special agents had closeted with Precious, and then the three of them had gone to see the people in the MPD’s Criminal Investigations Division, OCME folder in hand.

  “But is it really gone?” Av asked. “I mean, I now understand why you call them tarbabies—that mess just kept sticking to one part of me or another.”

  The other two laughed. “Happens all the time, bro,” Howie said. “But you heard what Precious said: that matter has gone to its well-deserved reward—at the Bureau.”

  “Her saying it’s over and done with didn’t have much effect the first coupla times,” Av pointed out.

  “This time the Beauroids left paper,” Howie said. “An official mez-morandum, no less. I quote: ‘All materials relevant to the case of the John Doe slash McGavin death at Bistro Nord are to be turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation forthwith.’ No further action on our part is desired or required. Here endeth the lesson.”

  “Interesting that they seemed to recognize my fairy godmother and her connection to counterterrorism,” Av said. “And yet, they didn’t seem to know anything about aconitine.”

  “Did you?” Howie said. “Besides, who cares? We got three more tarbabies in this morning while you were pasting that one onto the Bureau.”

  “Three?” Av said.

  “Endless supply out there,” Wong said. “You gonna eat those fries?”

  * * *

  Av changed when he got home that afternoon, went up to the roof, and worked out with his home weight set for a while. He’d decided he was going to enjoy the Briar Patch, if only for the eccentric company. With any luck, unknown federal authorities were no longer bugging his loft and he wouldn’t have to consort with his fairy godmother anymore. Dragon lady was more like it, he thought. That said, she certainly did exude that certain something, especially when going in the away direction. But: what the fuck? Ellen Whiting. Nobody by that name works here, they’d said. No, wait—they’d simply ducked the question, hadn’t they? And yet, the two special agents had practically winced when they heard the name.

  He went down to the loft after his workout and took a shower. He was thinking about what to do about dinner when the phone rang. His landline number was listed and he got an average number of telemarketer calls right about this time of the evening. He looked at the caller ID, which read: fairy godmother.

  Oka-a-y, he thought; that’s pretty clever. He picked up the phone. “Do you know that the Federal Bureau of really serious Investigation calls you: oh, fuck?” he asked.

  “In their dreams,” she said.

  “Well, yeah, I get that,” he said.

  “I feel like some serious red meat for dinner,” she said. “Interested in joining me?”

  “That would be a yes,” he said. “Just as long as I’m not the red meat in question.”

  “Poor baby,” she said. “Going through life like that. But, no, I was thinking a nice rare steak at Henninger’s up on M Street.”

  “Hope you’re buying, Fairy Godmother.”

  “I am and I’ll make it worth your while, too. The reservation is for seven. In your name. I’ll be there about seven-thirty, so I can make an entrance.”

  “Can’t hardly wait,” he said.

  “And let’s have done with the ‘fairy godmother’ bullshit. How about just plain CT?”

  “‘Fairy godmother’ sounded less dangerous,” he said.

  “Listen to you.”

  * * *

  She did indeed make an entrance. The restaurant was getting noisy as it filled with the typical mix of Washington young professionals, twice as many women as men, and absolutely everyone on the make in one way or another. Av had arrived as instructed and was working on one of the craft beers made right there on the premises. She’d scored a corner four-top that allowed him to take the gunfighter’s seat and observe the show. The young women were all trying to look bored and interested at the same time, while the men postured with each other, dropping acronyms and famous Capitol Hill names. There were a few White House staffers at the bar, identifiable by the tops of their security badges, which were adroitly positioned in suit coat pockets to just barely show the White House logo. All part of the game, he thought. A White House badge beat a Justice Department badge, hands down. Like that.

  CT arrived at seven-thirty, decked out in a knee-length, shimmering white dress clingingly cut to flatter her athletic figure while not being starlet ridiculous. Her hair was done in a Grecian curl and she was now a blonde. She wore what looked like a single emerald pendant at her throat. She looked straight at him as she moved confidently past the crowd near the bar, which parted like the proverbial Red Sea, men losing their trains of thought and suspending conversation, the ladies shooting daggers at this beauty who cut through them like a hot knife through butter. The fact that she was probably twice their age probably made it hurt even more. Av stood up as she approached the table.

  He, himself, had cleaned up a bit for the occasion, wearing a navy blue sport jacket over khakis and a white, long-sleeved shirt. The coat had been custom cut to make room for both his enlarged shoulders and the .40 caliber Glock model 27 holstered just above his left hip. He discovered that she actually had green, not blue eyes, matching that softly glowing stone at her throat. He smiled as she approached the table, letting his eyes roam freely, as she had undoubtedly intended.

  “Entrance definitely achieved,” he said, as a waiter hurried over to pull back her chair.

  “But still dangerous?” she asked teasingly as she sat down.

  “Upgraded to lethal, I think,” he said. “Have I got the appropriate deer-in-the-headlights look?”

  “Not yet,” she said, “but you will.” She turned to the waiter. “Stoli Elit, double, straight up, and ice-wrapped, please.”

  Av was shaking his head. “If I tried one of those I’d be babbling on the floor about halfway through,” he said.

  She shrugged delicately. “Comes with age,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “The tolerance for alcohol, that is. I don’t often drink, but when I do, I want to feel the hit.”

  “I have at least one beer every night,” he said. “Probably just habit. Did a whole bottle of red the other night, which schooled me not to ever do that again.”

  The waiter arrived with her cocktail, which was served in a double-walled martini glass that surrounded the liquor with an ice co
llar. He presented menus, but she waved them off. “Bring me a three-inch-thick, certified Angus rib eye,” she said. “Apache rare, with half a baked potato, fully loaded, and a small Caesar on the side.”

  The waiter looked to Av. “What she said,” Av told him. He thanked them and hurried off. “I like my beef rare,” he said. “But what’s Apache rare?”

  “They keep a small charcoal grill going back there,” she said. “They take a room-temperature steak, small but cut really thick, and slather it with herbed garlic oil and then pound rock salt onto both sides. They take a bellows to the coals, blow off all the ash, and then drop the steak directly onto the coals. Sear it for three minutes, take it off, bellows again, then flip it for three more minutes. Repeat—six minutes a side total. Comes out with a black, crunchy, salty, and garlicky crust and warm rare inside. Wonderful.”

  “Reminds me of the Texas definition of rare,” he said. “Cut off its horns, wipe its ass, and bring it to the table.”

  She failed to smile, which is when he realized she was busy doing the Washington room scan, sipping her vodka and looking around the crowded dining room to see if there was anyone truly important here.

  Av exhaled. In a game of wits, he was probably way out of his league with this one. That didn’t bother him too much; the eye candy was compensation enough. He also knew this wasn’t really a social occasion. He had the sense to let her reveal the purpose of the evening in her own sweet time. He did wonder how old she was, but then thought, if she looks like that, what could it matter?

  The steaks were indeed amazing. She attacked hers with gusto and there was no more conversation until they both were finished. He’d ordered a glass of red with his; she’d opted for another Elit. When the plates were cleared she sat back and gave him an appraising look.

  “What do you think should be done with an American who goes over to the dark side and gives aid and comfort to Islamic terrorists?” she asked, out of nowhere.

  “I’m a sworn police officer,” he said. “So, for the record and any pocket recorders: you find him, apprehend him along with a boatload of solid evidence, try him, and put him away for life.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Well,” he said, “there is always the death penalty, but I happen to think that an injection that makes you sleepy and another one that makes you dead is too easy. I prefer the notion of a slow death by incarceration. You know, living forever behind the razor wire among animals who walk upright, and knowing you will never, ever leave except in a prison body bag which you might have actually sewed together, bound for a grave in the weeds of a prison cemetery, and that, when you do leave, you will have experienced the serial joys of every conceivable sexual orientation, human, bestial, or otherwise.”

  She nodded, acknowledging his point. “The problem with that is there is always the chance the bad guy might get off. Look at all those Al Qaeda homeboys still down in Gitmo, and it’s been, what, twelve, thirteen years? And they’re still enjoying their afternoons in the Caribbean sunshine, reading their holy comic book?”

  “Sounds like you believe in the vengeance theory of crime and punishment,” he said.

  “I lost my brand-new husband in the north tower,” she said. “That’s absolutely what I believe in.”

  He wiped the faintly patronizing expression off his face and tried to think of something appropriate to say. He drew a complete blank—what could you say to that?

  Then he thought he understood.

  “You and your Ray-Ban posse wanted to talk to me about the McGavin case,” he said. “Because you wanted MPD to back out. Because—why? You’re running some kind of a federal vendetta hit squad?”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Whatever are you talking about, Detective?” she said with a bright smile, but her eyes were approving. Call me CT, she’d said. But she’d also said her name was Ellen Whiting, which had drawn a sharp reaction from the Bureau agents who’d come to get the OCME report. Different offices? Or was Ellen Whiting a bogus name? He decided to try something.

  “That’s why the Bureau guys recognized the name CT,” he said.

  Her smile faded. “CT is an acronym, no more, no less,” she said. “Just one more in a town drowning in alphabet soup. CT: counterterrorism. OC: organized crime. C4ISAR: Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance. Now: what the hell is aconitine?”

  “Trimethoxy-4-(methoxymethyl) aconitanyl-14-benzoate. It has the chemical formula C34H47NO11.”

  She stared at him.

  “You asked,” he said, with a grin. “It took me a half hour to memorize that shit, courtesy of Wikipedia. Basically, it’s one plant’s very special way of telling you: I’m not edible. Really, I’m not.”

  The restaurant bar scene was going full blast now, and it was getting hard to hear. She’d totally ducked his implied question. “Want to get a coffee somewhere?” he asked.

  “No, thanks,” she said. “My turn: you want to get lucky with me?”

  His face must have shown his total surprise because she was laughing at him now. Once again he didn’t know what to say. From a physical point of view the answer was clear, but this lady was, well, he wasn’t quite sure what she was. After all, he had rules.

  “I apologize for shocking you, Detective,” she said. “I just wanted to see if this all-women-are-dangerous business of yours was just a mildly sophisticated line. I know some women who would immediately make it a project to convince you otherwise, with you smiling all the way to the bedroom.”

  “I think all women are dangerous,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because they all come with conditions and, usually, a lot of hidden costs. I’m talking about permanent or semipermanent relationships, Special Agent. Not just a hookup.”

  “So marriage, family, children—not on your personal horizon?”

  He hesitated. “Not sure, but I tend to think not. For one, I’m a cop. I like being a cop, but being a married cop means you eventually have to choose—being a cop, or being a devoted husband and father. You must know how that usually works out, right?”

  “Never got the chance, I guess,” she said. “But, yeah, I’ve seen a fair number of Bureau marriages break up, but by no means all.”

  “I figure, why take the chance? I enjoy the company of women, okay? But the cop in me is always wary. I guess I like to see the back of them as much as I like to see the front. That’s just me.”

  She nodded her head and raised her glass in a salud. “Know thyself,” she said. “But you’re young and fit. Don’t you ever find yourself experiencing certain—needs?”

  “Sure,” he said, and then waited.

  “And?”

  “I’m not a man who’s ruled by his needs,” he said.

  “So let me get this straight,” she said. “If I pushed back my chair a little and discreetly removed all of the various impedimenta I have on underneath this dress, slipped my shoulder straps off, got up and came around the table to straddle you in your chair and pressed my boobs into your face, you’d, what? Call for the check?”

  “One way to find out, I suppose,” he said, innocently. “But: they’ll never let us in this restaurant again, and that was a really good steak. Besides, as I remember, you’ve got check duty.”

  She laughed out loud. It was a pretty sound, and he saw a couple of men looking his way with unmistakably jealous expressions. Best of all, he hadn’t really answered her question. On the other hand, neither had she. Who the hell was this lady?

  * * *

  They walked outside to the sidewalk on M Street, which was almost as crowded as the restaurant. She told him she’d enjoyed dinner. Then she looked around, almost as if she was checking for surveillance or eavesdroppers.

  “Do me a favor?” she said. “In the event that there are any more, um, developments in the McGavin matter, would you give me a call?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Except I don’t have your number.”

  “Just pic
k up the phone, dial three ‘fours’ and then your own number. I’ll get back to you.”

  “So my place is still bugged? Or at least my phone?”

  “Everybody’s phone is bugged these days, Detective,” she said with a smile. “Don’t you read the papers?”

  She then flagged down a cab. She got in with a flash of those gorgeous legs, waved good-bye, and then drove away. As the cab merged into traffic he wondered if he’d screwed that up, but then his better sense intervened. If nothing else, she was probably one of the wild ones, and those were precisely the ones to stay away from. The agents this afternoon had recognized her name, and not that CT bullshit, either. Ellen Whiting. Oh, fuck, they’d said. That had to mean something.

  He started walking along M Street to get back to his building. Most people on the sidewalk were obviously out for a party night, so he was surprised when he saw two large men in suits get out of a parked black Crown Vic with tinted windows and fairly bristling with antennae to stand right in front of him. They both discreetly opened credentials cases where the letters FBI were clearly displayed. The taller man asked if he’d mind getting in the car.

  “That depends,” Av said. “What’s the beef?”

  “No beef, Detective Smith,” the agent said. “Man in back wants to have a short conversation.”

  Av looked into the backseat, where an older-looking black man, also in a suit, was looking at him expectantly. When he saw Av hesitating, he made a come-on gesture. Av glanced behind him, where two more guys in suits were standing next to yet another government car that hadn’t been there a minute ago. The agent had called him Detective Smith, so, he figured, what the hell. He got into the backseat.

  One of the agents outside closed the back door and got into the front. The other went around and got in on the driver’s side. The car pulled out into traffic and went exactly nowhere, evening traffic on Georgetown’s M Street being what it was.

  The black man to his left turned in his seat and extended a hand. “I’m Supervisory Special Agent Tyree Miller of the FBI,” he said, pleasantly. “And I’m hoping you and I can have a brief conversation without our having to resort to some kind of, um, official proceedings.”