Cross Fire (21 page)

“Don’t worry about it. You aren’t any further along than I would have expected,” I told Cowen. “But I do have some ideas about how we might handle things from here.”

SEVERAL THINGS HAPPENED really fast in Brick Township, mostly because I needed them to.

I worked my contacts with the Field Intelligence Group in Washington to get hold of the FIG coordinator up in the Newark field office. Because it was a Sunday night, and because we had sufficient reason to believe Mitchell Talley had crossed, or would cross, jurisdictional lines, we were able to get an immediate Temporary Felony Want. Cowen would have forty-eight hours from there to secure an actual warrant, signed and issued. In the meantime, Newark could get word out to law enforcement up and down the eastern seaboard right away.

The idea for now was to leave off any mention of Steven Hennessey, or any accomplice at all. The Want specified only that Mitchell Talley was being sought for questioning in the deaths of Bernice and Robert Talley. Wherever our presumed
snipers were, I didn’t want them knowing we’d connected any of this to DC until I had more information.

Cowen agreed to give me some cover on that front. In the meantime, I got his people hooked up with Newark in the search for their suspect. Someone found a more recent snapshot in one of his mother’s photo albums, and they used a scan of it for the local and regional BOLO — Be On The Lookout.

Realistically speaking, no one expected Talley to be in the area. The larger effort was focused on looking at stolen-car reports, monitoring transportation hubs, and tracking down surveillance tapes at area airports and bus and train stations. With luck, someone would be able to turn up an eyewitness or maybe even a relevant piece of video somewhere.

The closest thing to a lead so far had come from an elderly neighbor of Mrs. Talley’s. She’d seen a sedan of some kind parked in front of the house a few nights ago but couldn’t say what kind it was, or what color, or even how long it had been there.

For whatever that was worth, I forwarded the information down to Jerome Thurman, who had been tracking vehicle-related leads on this case for me from the start.

By now, I was beginning to feel like I’d been away from DC for too long. Maybe Talley and Hennessey had no plans to return to Washington, if that’s where they’d even come from in the first place. But I had to assume otherwise. For all I knew, they were already back there and planning their next hit.

The minute I got things wrapped up with Detective Cowen, I was in the car and headed for home. And I was moving fast, using a siren all the way.

AT EIGHT THIRTY the next morning, Colleen Brophy turned off of E Street and into the churchyard, where I was waiting outside the
True Press
office. She had a bulging backpack on her shoulders, an armload of newspapers, and a nearly finished cigarette in the corner of her mouth.

“Oh God,” she said when she saw me. “You again. Now what do you want?”

“I wouldn’t come if it wasn’t important, Ms. Brophy. I’m well aware of how you feel about all this,” I said. Still, after my long Sunday on the road, I was in “no mood for ’tude,” as Sampson likes to say.

The
True Press
editor set down her load of papers and sat on the stone bench where I’d just stood up.

“How can I help you?” she asked, her sarcasm still intact. “As if I have a choice.”

I showed her the picture of Mitchell Talley. “Have you ever seen this man?”

“Oh, come on,” she said right away. “You think
this
is the guy who sent me those e-mails?”

“I’ll take that as a yes. Thank you. When was the last time you saw him?”

She took out a new cigarette and lit it off the last of the old one before she answered.

“Do you really need me to participate in this?” she said. “The trust I have with these people is so tenuous.”

“I’m not trying to bust a shoplifter, Ms. Brophy.”

“I understand, but it’s the shoplifters I’m worried about. A lot of the homeless people I work with
have
to break the law from time to time just to get by. If any of them see me talking to you —”

“This can stay a private conversation,” I told her. “Nobody has to know about it. That is, assuming we can get on with this. Do you know this man?”

After another long pause and a few more drags, she said, “I guess it was last week. They picked up their papers on Wednesday, like everyone else.”

“‘They’?” I asked.

“Yeah. Mitch and his friend Denny. They’re kind of like a —”

She stopped short then and turned slowly to look at me. It seemed maybe she’d just put two and two together about something. Or maybe I should say one and one.

“Oh God,” she said. “They’re kind of like a team. They’re the ones, aren’t they?”

I could feel that mental click, when something falls into place. Had I just found my Steven Hennessey?

“What’s Denny’s last name?” I asked her.

“I honestly don’t know,” she said. “He’s white, tall, and thin. He’s got lots of stubble, and kind of a —” She waved her hand under her jaw. “Like a sunken chin, I guess you could call it. He sort of leads Mitch around.”

“And you say they pick up papers on Wednesday?”

She nodded. “Sometimes they come back for more if they sell out, but I haven’t seen them lately. I swear. I know this is serious now.”

“I believe you,” I said. Everything about her demeanor had changed. Now she looked more sad than anything. “Any idea where I might look for the two of them?”

“All over. Denny has this old white Suburban he drives around, when he can get gas. I know they sleep in there sometimes.” The Suburban was a dead end now, but I didn’t say anything about it to Ms. Brophy.

“And you can try the shelters. There’s a list of them in the back of the paper.” She took a copy off the top of her stack and handed it to me. “God, you know, I hate myself for telling you all this.”

“Don’t,” I said, and paid her a dollar for the paper. “You’re doing the right thing.”

Finally.

AFTER A LONG DAY of canvassing homeless shelters and soup kitchens, I wasn’t any further along than I’d been that morning. For all I knew, Talley and Hennessey were still in New Jersey. Or gone to Canada. Or up in smoke.

But when I went back to the office for some files to bring home, Jerome Thurman caught me at the elevator with some news.

“Alex! You heading out?”

“I was,” I said.

“Maybe not anymore.”

He held up a page from some kind of printout. “I think maybe we’ve got something here. Could be good stuff.”

Normally, Jerome works out of First District, but I’d gotten him a space in the Auto Theft Unit down the hall, where he could monitor vehicle leads for me. And by “space,” I mean
a stack of crates in their Records Room where he could set up his laptop, but Jerome’s never been a complainer.

What he had was a list of hot license plate numbers from an NCIC database. One of the entries was circled in blue pen.

NJ — DCY 488.

“It’s a Lexus ES, reported stolen from an apartment complex in Colliers Mills, New Jersey,” he said. “That’s, like, two, three miles down the road from where your white Suburban went into the water.”

I risked a half smile. “Tell me there’s more, Jerome,” I said. “There’s more, right?”

“Best part, actually. An LPR camera picked up the same plate number coming into long-term parking out at National on Saturday morning at four forty-five.”

LPR stands for License Plate Reader. It uses optical scanning software to read the tag numbers on passing cars and then compares those numbers against lists of wanted and stolen vehicles. It’s an amazing bit of technology, even if all the kinks haven’t quite been worked out yet.

“Any reason we’re just finding out about this now?” I asked. “That’s well over forty-eight hours ago. What was the problem?”

“The system isn’t live at the airport,” Jerome said. “There’s a manual download once a day, Monday to Friday. I just got this a few minutes ago. But, bottom line, Alex? I’m guessing your little birdies came home to roost.”

“I’m guessing you’re right,” I said, and turned back toward the office.

Even before I got to my desk, though, my excitement started turning into something else. This was a double-edged
sword, at best. Considering the heat on Talley and Hennessey right now, I couldn’t imagine too many reasons why they’d come back to DC. Chances were, if we didn’t find at least one of them soon, some other fox in the henhouse was going to get a bullet in the brain.

Nothing like a little pressure to help you do your best work, right?

IT WAS JUST after midnight when Denny approached the black Lincoln Town Car parked on Vermont Avenue and got in. The man he knew only as Zachary was waiting for him. Zachary’s usual nameless driver/goon was sitting face front at the wheel.

“The clock’s winding down on this thing,” Denny said straight-out. “We need to put it to bed before it all blows up.”

“We agree,” Zachary said. Like it was his decision. Like the big man in the ivory tower, whoever he was, didn’t pull the strings, write the checks, and call the shots here.

Zachary took a plain manila folder out of the seat pocket and handed it to him. “This will be our last arrangement,” he said. “Go ahead. Take it.”

Arrangement
. The guy was too much.

Inside the folder were two dossiers, if that’s what you could call them — a couple of pictures, a few paragraphs, and
some Google maps slapped together on copy paper, like somebody’s shitty little school project. Wherever the boss man spent his billions, it sure as hell wasn’t on document prep.

But as for the names on those dossiers? Now
they
were impressive.

“Well, well,” Denny said. “Looks like your man wants to go out with a bang. That’s a pun, little joke. No extra charge.”

Zachary pushed his pretentious horn-rims a little higher on his nose. “Just… focus on the material,” he said.

It would have been nice to go upside this guy’s head one time. Nothing major, just enough to put some kind of expression on his face. Any expression at all would be a big improvement.

But this was no time to start coloring outside the lines. So Denny kept his mouth shut and took a couple of minutes to absorb the information. Then he slid the manila folder into the seat pocket and sat back again.

This part was all rote by now. Zachary reached over the seat, took the canvas pouch from Mr. Personality in the front, and put it on the armrest. Denny picked it up.

Right away, he could feel it was light.

“What the hell is this?” he said, and dropped it back on the armrest between them.

“That,” Zachary said, “is one-third. You’ll get the rest afterward. We’re doing things a little differently this time.”

“The hell we are!” he said, and just like that, the driver was up and over the seat with a fat .45 shoved halfway up Denny’s nose. He could even smell traces of gunpowder. The weapon had been used recently.

“Now listen to me,” Zachary said. More like purred.
“You’re going to be paid in full. The only change here is our terms of delivery.”

“This is bullshit!” Denny said. “You shouldn’t be messing around with me now.”

“Just listen,” Zachary told him. “Your incompetence up in New Jersey was not appreciated,
Steven
. Now that the authorities know who you are, this is just good business practice. So, are we going to have a smooth finish to this thing or not?”

It wasn’t a real question, and Denny didn’t answer. What he did was reach down and take back the canvas pouch. That spoke for itself. The .45 was dislodged from his face and the driver pulled back, although he didn’t turn around.

“Did you see the car parked behind us?” Zachary asked softly, as if they’d been sitting here having a friendly chat the whole time.

And, yes, Denny had seen it, an old blue Subaru wagon with Virginia plates. His spotter’s radar wasn’t something he turned on and off.

“What about it?” he said.

“You need to get out of the city. We’ve got too much exposure here. Take Mitch and go somewhere discreet — West Virginia, or whatever you think is best.”

“Just like that? What am I supposed to tell Mitch?” Denny said. “He’s already asking too many questions.”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something to handle him. And take this.” Zachary handed over a silver Nokia phone, presumably encrypted. “Keep it off, but check it at least every six hours. And be ready to go when we tell you.”

“Just out of curiosity,” Denny said, “what’s this ‘we’ shit anyway? Do
you
even know who you’re working for?”

Zachary reached across and opened the door to the sidewalk for him. They were done here.

“This one’s your big payout, Denny,” he said. “Don’t blow it. Don’t make any more mistakes either.”

FOR THE SECOND DAY of canvassing at homeless shelters, I did what I already should have and pulled in more of my team, including Sampson. I even called in that favor with Max Siegel, to see if he could spare any warm bodies.