Robert Andrews - A Murder of Justice

“Frank…?”

Phone at his ear, Frank looked up.

“Those guys with our names… they said Kearney and Phelps?”

“That’s what Waverly said.”

Jose smiled. “Tell me, brother, how’d you get top billing?”

Commuters jammed the incoming lanes of the Fourteenth Street bridge. Jose eyed the bumper-to-bumper traffic as he drove past the Jefferson Memorial toward northern Virginia. He glanced at his watch.

Ten o’clock. Where the hell do all these people work, coming in this hour? Next life, I’m gonna get me a job like that-come in late, leave early, and nobody shoots at you.

Across the bridge, he swung off a ramp to his right, circled beneath the bridge, and headed south to Reagan National. Taking the left lane on the racetrack that routed cars by the terminals, he turned off into the hourly parking garage for US Airways. He drove slowly down one lane then the next until he’d covered the ground level, then took the ramp up and repeated the process on the second level.

As he came off the ramp onto the third level, he spotted the dark blue Ford Econoline van. He drove past the van and pulled into a slot two rows away. The early-morning flurry of passengers for the New York and Boston shuttles had subsided. The garage, filled with waiting automobiles, was still.

Jose got out and looked around over the tops of the cars. Terry Quinn had died in a garage like this. Shots and screeching tires had filled the semidarkness, and Terry’s brains had been splattered over the grease-stained floor. After the shooting, there’d been the cold silence, a weeping emptiness that came from an adrenaline hangover and the losing struggle to deny the in-your-bones knowledge of loss.

In the middle distance, the roar of engines on the runways.

His footsteps made hollow cupping sounds on the concrete as he approached the van. He reached inside his jacket and loosened his pistol in its holster. Coming up on the van from the right rear, he made out someone in the passenger seat, then circled around behind the vehicle. He walked to the driver’s side and tapped on the window.

The window lowered with a whine.

“Morning, Gideon.”

“Josephus.”

Weaver touched a button, and the cargo door slid open. Jose climbed into the van and settled in the backseat.

“This’s Cookie.” Weaver motioned to the passenger seat.

Cookie didn’t turn around. He had lowered his visor so that its mirror gave him a bank shot of Jose. All Jose saw in the mirror was a pair of wraparound Oakleys eyeballing him.

I paid that much for shades like that, I’d have Internal Affairs down on me in no damn time.

“Cookie? There a last name?”

“Cookie’s good enough.”

The voice was young and sullen, and Jose thought he sensed an undercurrent of fear.

“Cookie,” Weaver said gently, “tell your story.”

“I don’t answer no questions I don’t want to.”

“Your call, Cookie,” Jose said.

Cookie sat immobile and silent.

“Cookie.” This time Weaver had a warning note in his voice.

“Skeeter wanted Z-Bug dead because Z-Bug killed that whitey what brought down all the shit.” Cookie spewed it out and fell silent.

Z-Bug? Zelmer Austin?… Whitey? Gentry? Where’s this shit coming from?

As if he’d read Jose’s mind, Weaver said in a whisper, “Tell us where you got this, Cookie.”

“TV sayin’ Z-Bug didn’t kill that whitey, so why you give a shit?” Cookie asked.

“Just want to know where you heard it, Cookie.”

Cookie glanced out the side window, then started in a low, nearly inaudible voice. “Pencil tol’ me. Me ’n’ him was partyin’ one day and he got to braggin “bout how big his balls was.”

Jose nodded. “Pencil tell you why Z-bug did the whitey?”

“Said Z-Bug was feelin’ like poppin’ a cap on some whitebread mu’fucka.”

“Watch your mouth,” Gideon cut in. “God don’t like ugly.”

Cookie gave an almost imperceptible nod to show he’d heard. “He did the whitey.”

Jose detected excitement in Cookie’s voice.

Cookie hesitated, as though making certain his audience was still with him.

Once a snitch gets on about his story, he keeps on to the end.

“Yeah,” Jose urged, “go.”

“Z-Bug was partyin’ at his girlfriend’s house. They drank up all the Stoly. Z-Bug’s woman blasted him a couple times. Pencil said Z-Bug started yellin’… screamin’ how he wanted to kill him a white man.”

“Unh-hunh,” Jose whispered.

“Z-Bug went out. Did it.”

“Killed the white man?”

“Yeah!” Cookie said in a tight, excited voice. “Oh, yeah!”

“What night was this?”

“Long time ago.”

“When’d you hear this?”

Cookie thought. “Year, maybe more.”

“You tell this to any police?”

In the rearview, Jose got a long look from Cookie through the Oakleys.

“It could help,” Jose added.

Cookie said nothing, but bobbed his head trying to figure out how much the truth might cost, then, “Yeah. A plainclothes name Milton.”

Not wanting to seem eager, or let Cookie know it was important, Jose took a couple of breaths before asking, “Those real Oakleys, Cookie?”

Cookie almost turned around. “Course they real.”

“Thought so. Good-lookin’ shades.”

“That all you want?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Cookie shifted, ready to open the door.

“By the way,” Jose asked, “you tell this cop Milton you heard the story from Pencil? Or from Z-Bug’s woman?”

Cookie sat still, as though somebody had thrown a switch and turned him off. In a sudden motion, he opened his door and got out. He looked back into the van at Jose.

“I tol’ you how it was, an’ I tol’ you how I tol’ that cop,” he said, voice rising, “You start givin’ me that ‘this or that’ shit.” He slammed the door, and walked away toward the entrance to the Metro.

Jose knew not to ask Weaver for Cookie’s real name. Weaver wouldn’t tell him, but Weaver could find him again.

Weaver sighed. “Young ones… they want to fly like eagles, but then they wear their pants down around their buttocks.”

Frank bought a copy of the Post from a vending machine at the corner of Sixteenth and H, and walked into Lafayette Square. The Secret Service had closed off Pennsylvania Avenue after the Oklahoma City bombing, and you could see straight through the square to the White House without having traffic block your view. That part he liked. The other part, though, he didn’t. Adding more locks to your doors didn’t mean you were any safer. Only that you were more isolated. Bearing right, he found his favorite bench and sat down. For a moment, he gazed across Jackson Place at Stephen Decatur’s home.

Swashbuckling naval hero of the War of 1812. Conqueror of the Barbary pirates. Dead at forty-one, killed in a duel. Back in Decatur’s day, you could walk up to the White House, knock on the door, and ask to speak to the president.

Frank opened the Post.

The chemical industry was fighting the EPA over a report on dioxin. China had finally released the crew of the American EP-3 intelligence plane. A survey had counted 12,850 homeless in the Washington metro area. And forty-three people had died in a South African soccer stadium stampede.

“Good morning, Lieutenant. Any good news?”

Frank looked up. “I thought you’d know.”

Jessica Talbot was small-barely five feet-a delicately rounded face punctuated by dark eyes and framed by a halo of dark hair swept into a bun on the top of her head.

The first time Frank saw her, he figured Seven Sisters, Washington A-list, Kennedy Center patron, National Cathedral altar guild-quintessential bleeding-heart, little-pinky liberal.