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  Stephenson looked up from his phone, on which he’d been checking his email. He shook his head, then looked at Mickey. “The traffic in this town, I swear.” He then went back to his phone.

  The Lincoln got on the Capitol Beltway heading northeast, and they circled around Washington D.C. to the south. The driver got off at an exit Mickey didn’t catch, although he had the vague sense that they were to the southeast of the center of D.C. Wasn’t Anacostia somewhere around here? There were some bad neighborhoods in D.C., and Anacostia was supposed to be the worst.

  As they got off the interstate Mickey looked around. Even in the growing dark he could see that they were driving through a depressed area, with a lot of the businesses on the road they were passing shuttered and dark. He hoped the doors of the Lincoln were locked. He glanced at his door, then across the back seat to the Director’s door, but it was too dark for him to see whether or not they were locked. He caught the Director looking at him. Stephenson forced a smile. “Shouldn’t be long now, I don’t think,” he said to Mickey, but the driver was the one who answered.

  “No sir.”

  Stephenson flashed a smile at him, then went back to his phone, which was lighting up his face in the growing darkness of the car. Mickey stared at him, then back out the windows. They’d gotten off the freeway on a major surface street, two lanes in each direction, but now they were on a narrower road, and, if possible, in a worse neighborhood. Then the driver made another turn, and Mickey saw they were heading into a decrepit industrial area. Vacant lots, old newspapers blown up against sagging chain link fences. No activity, and hardly any lights.

  “We’re not going to see the Director, are we?” Mickey said, staring at Stephenson. Then he grabbed at his door handle, tried to open it. Nothing happened.

  Instead of trying to stop Mickey, Stephenson reached behind himself, and came out with something dark in his hand. There was a flash, and a thunderclap, and Mickey felt something smash into his chest. He realized that the Director of the FBI Lab had just shot him.

  Forgetting about his door, Mickey lunged for the man, grabbing for his gun. Stephenson grunted in surprise and found his gun hand wedged between their two bodies. It was too dark in the car to see anything, and the young man fought blindly, grabbing at Stephenson’s shoulders. Stephenson elbowed him away far enough to get his gun pointed correctly, and pulled the trigger. The inside of the Lincoln pulsed like a disco at the gunshots. Two, three, four, five bullets to his midsection, and still the young man clung to him. Boone shoved him away, against the far door, and saw Mitchell weakly working at the door. Then somehow he got the locked door open, and was falling backward out of it even as the Lincoln was still moving.

  Surprised, Stephenson shoved his gun forward one handed and fired again, then Mitchell was gone, the open door empty. The car stopped with a jerk, and the open door bounced and almost closed. Stephenson pushed it back open and stuck his head out. Mitchell was crumpled facedown in the middle of the street, not moving.

  “What the fuck was that? I thought you wanted me to do it,” Boone heard the driver say angrily, from seemingly far away. Idly the Director of the FBI Lab wondered if he’d permanently damaged his hearing by firing so many times in such an enclosed space. He stared out at Mitchell. Still, not a twitch. He had to be dead. How many times had he shot him? Five, six? At point blank range, he’d practically had his gun in the kid’s belly. No way he could survive that. Boone felt something on his hand and looked down. There was a dark smear across his palm. Blood on the car door.

  “We’ve got to get out of here, the door was open for that last shot. Cops roll out on gunfire even in this neighborhood.” Boone looked at the man, trying to process the situation. He wasn’t a driver, per se, he was a man who had been recommended to him when he’d reached out for someone with….special skills. The Bureau was a big place, and Stephenson had been there a long time. He didn’t know any….what was the popular term? Operators, yes…but he knew people who knew people. And the Bureau was good at cleaning up its messes. Marsh, they’d called this man, even though he hadn’t introduced himself when he’d showed up in the Lincoln two hours before.

  Without waiting for a response, Marsh accelerated from the crime scene, and the open door swung shut. Stephenson stared out the back window at the body on the pavement. It was just a misshapen lump, melting into the asphalt as they drove away, fading into the background glare of the distant city lights until it was gone. Problem solved.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Banging on the steel security mesh hurt his knuckles, and hardly made any noise. Dave paused, then pounded on the door again with his palm. He looked up and down the street from the small porch, but nothing was moving. There was the distant sound of traffic, and birds tweeting.

  The house was old, and the wooden door on the other side of the steel mesh security door looked solid, but the morning was quiet. He heard a faint noise in the house before a woman abruptly asked him, “What you want?”

  “I work for a lawyer, I’m trying to track down a witness to a car accident. There a David Gregory who lives here?”

  The thick wooden door swung inward, but Dave could barely see the woman in the dark interior through the steel mesh. There were security grates over all the first floor windows as well, he felt like he was at some third world castle. “No,” the woman told him. “He move, he don’t live here no more.”

  “I don’t know if this one, living here, is the right David Gregory or not,” Dave said to her silhouette. “Accident was on 7 Mile last year. I’ve got a check, a witness fee from the law firm for him, but the address they had for him was bad. This one came up when I searched for him though.” Whenever there was money on the table, memories improved, phone calls were made, things happened.

  “He was rentin’ the house afore me,” the woman told him, taking half a step closer to the door. She sounded like she was in her twenties, but looked a lot older. “Don’t know where he moved off to.”

  “Do you have a phone number for your landlord?” Dave asked her. “Maybe he has a forwarding address or a phone number for Mr. Gregory.”

  “Landlord said he took off owing five hunnert fiddy dollar, didn’t leave no forwardin address, shit. But I’ll take the check,” she said, laughing. “How much is it?”

  “Not much,” Dave told her grudgingly. “But I guess some’s better than none, right? How long ago did he move out?”

  “I been staying here three weeks, so before dat,” she told Dave, taking another step forward. She was pretty short, but apparently she had confidence in her security door; either that, or Dave looked honest. She had nothing to fear from him, Dave didn’t think he would have been able to breach the door’s thick steel hinges with a shotgun.

  “All right, well thanks anyway,” Dave told her. He started to head off the porch.

  “You need a witness, I’ll say whatever you want, the check big enough,” she called to him.

  “I appreciate that,” Dave said with a wave, heading back to his Cherokee, parked on the far side of the street. He didn’t grab the walkie talkie until he’d driven out of sight. “Moved out three or four weeks ago,” he said after he keyed the radio.

  “Crap,” his boss replied over the air. He heard John sigh. “All right, follow me out of here to the parking lot, let’s figure out what we’re going to do.”

  They’d spent the entire morning on surveillance, waiting for Mr. Gregory to do something contrary to his work comp injury, but apparently they’d just been wasting their time. The Chrysler Intrepid registered to him was nowhere to be seen, but there had been a detached garage behind the house, door closed.

  “We ran him for driver’s license and vehicles, right?” Dave said to his boss when they were parked door to door in the parking lot of a vacant grocery store on 7 Mile Road.

  “Yeah, yesterday,” John said. “Both came back to this address. But you know how it is, half the people in this city don’t change their addresses until it’s time
to renew their license.”

  “If then. You want to call the adjuster, see if she’s got a more current address?”

  John frowned and shook his head. “I just got this case three days ago, if Michelle has a more current address that’s on her. I’m hungry, you want breakfast? I’m buying.”

  “Like I’d say no to free food?” Dave looked around, then back at John sitting in his big SUV. “We gonna eat around here?”

  “Follow me up to 8 Mile, there’s a McDonald’s about a mile down.”

  The two vehicles headed out, and four minutes later were pulling into the lot of a McDonald’s on 8 Mile Road, the border between Detroit and the northern suburbs. Behind it was a small strip mall. Above them was a huge billboard advertising a local lawyer who’d had so much work done she looked like an aged porn star. Big blonde hair and even bigger red lips.

  John pulled into a parking spot, and Dave pulled up behind his vehicle but didn’t get out, instead just rolling down the passenger window. “Hey, what about that?” he asked John, pointing. In the strip mall was a Comcast Cable bill payment center, in-between a check cashing place and a tae kwon do studio that looked out of business. “Maybe we can get lucky.”

  John looked over and saw the bill payment center. “They won’t tell you shit, you know how many times I’ve tried? Not them, Consumer’s Energy, Detroit Edison—hell, DTE is the worst, they want to see a subpoena before they’ll even tell you what time it is.”

  “You want to bet breakfast on it?” Dave asked him.

  “Well, I was going to treat anyway, but you’re on,” John said, and got back into his car. They drove into the adjoining parking lot and got out. John followed Dave inside, where there was only one customer standing in front of the armored glass. John hung back as his young employee approached a short woman sitting at a window.

  “Hi,” Dave said, with a big smile. “I’m trying to track down my buddy, who lives in the area. I know he had Comcast but he moved. I’m just wondering if you can tell me when he moved, or if he gave you a contact phone number, or forwarding address? His cell’s disconnected.” He kept the smile going, and turned up the wattage and charm as far as it would go. The young woman was maybe his age, with medium length brown hair short on one side and spiked long on the other.

  “I’m sorry, Sir, but we can’t give out any personal information on our customers.”

  “Is he a customer then?” he asked innocently. She hadn’t looked anything up on the computer, but maybe….

  “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t help you.”

  “Not even a phone number? Can you check, maybe he’s not even a customer any more? Then you wouldn’t be breaking the rules, right?” Smile, smile.

  She frowned, but she didn’t seem angry. “I’m sorry, sir, there’s no way I can—oh my God, is that a Hong Kong Cavaliers shirt?”

  Dave looked down at the t-shirt he had on under the open and untucked button-down shirt. He spread his covering shirt open enough for her to see the t-shirt, but not his gun. “Yep.”

  “Where did you get that?” she asked eagerly.

  “The internet. You can find just about everything you can think of.” He paused, and looked at her, at the makeup, the multiple earrings, at the faint streaks of color in her hair. “I’ve got a Weyland/Yutani ‘Building Better Worlds’ shirt at home as well. Do you know what…”

  “Of course I do, I’m a huge geek,” she gushed. “I go to all the cons. Went to San Diego last year.”

  “I’ve never made it out there. What’s your favorite show?”

  “There can be only one….” She said, then her mouth twisted into a sideways smile. “And that’s Malcolm Reynolds.”

  Dave nodded. “It’s a little warm for a coat,” he told her seriously. “But when I wear one it’s gorram brown.”

  She blinked, then squinted. “What are you doing, really? You’re not looking for a buddy.”

  Dave smiled, chagrinned. “Private investigator,” he told her.

  Her eyes went a little wide. “Really? Cool.” She looked left and right, then leaned forward slightly. “Hold on a second.”

  A minute later, Dave was walking out with the claimant’s new address where Comcast was providing service, and the girl behind the counter had one of his cards, and promised to call.

  John waited until they were in the parking lot heading for their cars before he said, “What the fuck just happened in there? I felt like I was having a stroke, I couldn’t understand a thing you were saying.”

  “You’re not a sci-fi fan?” Dave asked him.

  “Was that what you were talking about?”

  Dave smiled as he climbed into his Jeep and started it up. John made a face as he heard the music blasting out of the speakers.

  “What the hell are you listening to?”

  Dave checked his iPod display. “This is Bitch Slap Sister,” he said.

  “Is this the kind of music you listen to when you’re on surveillance?” John asked him, still making a face at the sounds coming out of the young man’s car.

  “Mostly. I like Tool, Alien Death Hammer, Taint, Flint Eastwood, Eminem, Asian Dawn, music like that.”

  “Asian Dawn? Well, I haven’t heard of any of them but Eminem, but after hearing that I’m not sure I’d call it music.”

  “Okay, Grampa, what are you listening to?”

  John opened up the door of his SUV and hit a button on the dash. A CD ejected into his hand. “Dire Straits, Brothers In Arms,” he said, reading the label.

  “CDs?” Dave said. “You’re still listening to CDs? You need to get an iPod. It’s the twenty-first century.”

  “I don’t want an iPod,” John told him. “All of my music and songs mashed together. I want my music….compartmentalized. I don’t want to listen to one song from this group and one song by someone else, I listen to albums all the way through. Like they were intended to be listened to. That’s how it was when I started listening to music on records, LPs and 45s. And don’t say how old I am, I’m not that old. Things just change. Look at Detroit in the last few years. You’re probably too young to even remember Boblo, or the downtown Hudson’s, or what real Vernor’s tasted like. Or the Heidelberg Project.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Depends who you ask. It was either art, or the graffiti of a nutjob, or the artistic graffiti of a nutjob. Polka dots,” he said finally, by way of explanation. “Lots and lots of polka dots.”

  Dave stared at him. “Sometimes I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

  Dave took the opportunity of the early day to get in a long workout. Full upper and lower body, he hit the weights heavy for two hours, until every muscle he had was shaking. He tried to lift five or six days a week, and run three or four times a week. Was he in world class physical condition? No, but he was in good shape. He wasn’t exactly sure how hard the FBI Academy was going to be, physically, but his plan was to not be the weak link in his Academy class. Once he actually got accepted to the Academy, actually had a start date, then he’d ramp up his workouts—longer runs, maybe some cross-training.

  Craving carbs after all that lifting he hit Burger King for early dinner, then headed up to the Forum to catch a late afternoon showing of the latest Iron Man movie. It wasn’t as good as the first one, but sequels rarely were.

  It was still before nine when he pulled the Mustang into his garage. He didn’t have to get up until five to head out on David Gregory’s new address (the adjuster had his current address in the file, she’d screwed up and given them his former residence….once again), so he set up his targets and practiced his draws, reloads, and shooting on the move.

  Even cold, he could draw and fire and hit a six inch target seven yards away in under a second, every time. A quick draw had never been his problem, but winning matches was about more than just fast shooting. For an hour, the only sound in the big empty house was his Glock going in and out of the holster, the click of the trigger, and the electronic beep of h
is timer.

  Jerome Beiers turned in off Passaic Avenue and found the parking lot was full. Dammit. He didn’t want to park on the street. Not just because he hated walking, hated any kind of exercise, but because the lot was well lit. Well, shit, it wasn’t like anyone was going to steal his car.

  He circled the block and finally found a parking spot at the very rear of the lot. He turned the key off. After a few seconds, the battered Chevy Beretta stopped rattling and the engine died with a wheeze. He hated the car, and direly missed his Lexus, but it was all he could afford when he got out of prison. It was a bullshit car, just like his conviction had been bullshit, but things were looking up. He was making some moves.

  He slammed the door hard, as it was starting to rust and needed some convincing, then sauntered across the lot towards the brightly lit façade of the diner. The Taps Diner was considered the best in the area, maybe the best diner in the world if the people of New Jersey and East Newark had anything to say about it. He couldn’t afford to eat there every night after work, but the nights he didn’t get the red velvet pancakes---which were to die for—he just got coffee. The coffee was good, the food was excellent, but they weren’t the only reasons he loved Taps.

  “Hey, your boyfriend’s back,” Nancy said to Lori as she grabbed an order.

  The young blonde turned around. “Who?” The veteran waitress nodded her head in the direction of Beiers, just sitting down at a table. Lori stuck out her tongue at Nancy and made a gagging sound.

  “He’s just like I like my creepers, short, sweaty, hairy, and fat,” she said. She saw him already looking around the restaurant for her—or rather, her tits. She took a deep breath, then headed over. Better to get it over with quick, like pulling a Band-Aid off a scab.

  “Hi, Jerome. If it’s Thursday, it must be just coffee, right?”

  He smiled greasily up at her…..well, most of the way up, and said, “No, you know what? Can I get some pancakes, the red velvet pancakes? I know it’s late and you close at one tonight.” Friday and Saturday they were open until four a.m., but every other night they were only open until one. Considering Jerome worked at the copy center until midnight—that is, if he could get out of the damn place on time—that often didn’t leave him enough time to get more than a cup of coffee.