Eric Lustbader - First Daughter

"I wouldn't be surprised if she was having a cup of tea back there," Jack said. "She looks the vindictive type."

"Jack, about Emma-I was just trying to help."

He looked away, said nothing.

She bit her lip. "You're a hard man."

She waited a moment. They were alone in the front of the post office, the entry doors having been locked.

She peered into his face. "Could we start over?"

Jack returned slowly from the black mood of last night. "Sure. Why not?"

She caught the tone of his voice. "You're not very trusting, are you?"

"Trust has nothing to do with it," he said, a wave of leftover anger washing over the wall of his normal reserve. "Life has taught me how not to love."

At that moment, shuffling footsteps forestalled further discussion. The postmistress had reappeared and was heading straight toward them. She was holding a handful of forms. Nina snatched them out of her hand just as she was saying, "There are six-well, I never!"

Nina was scrutinizing them, for which Jack was grateful. Considering the tense circumstances and the watchful eyes of the postmistress, he'd have had a difficult time focusing.

Nina went through the forms one by one, shook her head. "We're going to have to run all of these people down." Suddenly, her eyes lit up. "Wait a minute!" She flipped back to the fifth form. "Charles Whitman. Now that's odd. Charles Whitman was the name of the sniper who climbed the University of Texas tower in August of 1966 and in an hour and a half killed fourteen people and injured a whole lot more. Someone at the scene, I forget who, said, 'He was our initiation into a terrible time.'»

"I remember, that was a local shopowner. I saw him interviewed." Then Jack snapped his fingers. " That's why Ron Kray sounded familiar to me. Ronnie Kray and his twin brother, Reggie, were a pair of notorious psycho killers in the East End of London during the fifties and sixties."

"We've got him!" Nina said. "Our man's using both Kray and Whitman as aliases."

Jack took Kray/Whitman's change-of-address form from her. Concentrating hard, he began to read the new address. It was in Anacostia; that much he got right away. But the street and the number eluded him, swimming away on a sea of anxiety. Of course, the street name was simplicity itself, and part of his brain had recognized it at once. The problem was, it had shied away from recognition.

"He's at T Street SE," Nina said.

Then she read off the number, and Jack's hand began to shake. Their target, Ron Kray, Charles Whitman, whatever his real name was, the man who might very well have abducted Alli Carson, was living in the Marmoset's house.

FEW PEOPLE know where Gus and Jack live; even fewer come to visit. So when Detective Stanz shows up one evening at the Maryland end of Westmoreland Avenue, Jack has cause for a certain degree of alarm. For a time, Stanz and Gus stand out on the porch, jawing away. Stanz lights a Camel, and smoke comes out his nostrils. He looks like a bull in one of those Warner Bros. cartoons, except there's nothing funny about him. He seems to carry death around with him under his left armpit, where his service revolver is holstered.

Jack, lurking inside, hears the words "McMillan Reservoir," so he's reasonably certain that after the Marmoset's murder, whoever Gus put on the double murders hasn't come up with enough to satisfy Stanz. But apparently he's come up with something, because Jack hears Stanz say, "I say let's go now. There're questions I want to ask him."

Gus nods. He walks into the house, uses the phone out of Jack's hearing. He returns to tell Jack that he's going off with Stanz, that he'll be back in a couple of hours. As he watches the two men step off the porch, Jack hurries to the desk where Gus keeps an extra set of car keys. Slipping out of the house, he just has time enough to start the white Lincoln Continental, put it in gear as he's seen Gus do, roll out after Stanz's dark-colored Chevy. Jack deliberately keeps the headlights off until there's enough traffic so that neither man will pick up the Continental. He's only ever driven around the near-deserted streets of the house, with Gus beside him talking softly, correcting his errors or overcompensations. The sweat rolls into his eyes, pours from his armpits. His mouth is dry. If a cop stopped him right this moment, he wouldn't be able to say a word.

With a desperate effort, he finds his equilibrium. Thankfully, he only has to concentrate on the Chevy and the colors of the traffic lights. If he needed to read street signs, he'd be completely lost. He pushes a button on the dashboard, and James Brown starts shouting "It's a Man's Man's Man's World." Singing along, he thinks fleetingly of how far he's come since "California Dreamin' " sent ugly shivers up his spine.

He notices that the Chevy is heading more or less toward the reservoir area and wonders who it is that Gus recruited to take the Marmoset's place. It's an unenviable position, one that almost certainly requires a higher degree of compensation than Gus is used to paying. But then, that expense will no doubt be borne by Stanz and the Metro Police.

They are traveling north on Georgia Avenue NW, overshooting the reservoir. When Stanz's Chevy turns right on Rock Creek Church Road, Jack switches off his lights, feeling he knows where the rendezvous with Gus's snitch is going to take place. His hunch is confirmed when he follows the Chevy onto Marshall, and then Pershing Drive. They are now skirting the west side of the flat black expanse of the U.S. Soldiers' & Airmen's Golf Course. Bare trees loom up in groups that no doubt vexed the duffers making their slow rounds during daylight hours. Now, however, the trees have the course to themselves.

After flicking its headlights twice, the Chevy rolls to a stop on a section of road hemmed in on both sides by trees. Immediately, Jack sees Stanz and Gus emerge from the Chevy. Stanz has kept the headlights on, and the two men follow the twin beams that cut through eerie shadows, straight down the road. Pale moths flutter, spending themselves in the glare.

Cautiously, Jack emerges from the Continental, making sure the door swings shut noiselessly but doesn't latch. Keeping to the side of the road, he creeps from tree to tree, stepping from shadow to shadow to make sure he won't be seen.

He's close enough now to see that Stanz and Gus have been joined by a male figure. He stands just outside the beams of light, and Jack moves forward to try to get a look at his face. He still isn't sure why he felt compelled to follow Gus. He knows he's worried. Someone murdered the Marmoset because he got too close to whoever killed those two men at the McMillan Reservoir. Jack read the news story, was mildly surprised to find that there was no information about who the victims were. The article said that the identities were being withheld pending notification of the respective next of kin. But in the increasingly smaller follow-ups, no mention was ever made of the victims' names.

As he inches closer, Jack can see that the three men are in animated discussion. Stanz's hands are hewing the air like axes. His mouth is going a mile a minute.

"— you mean, you can't get a name? I need a goddamned name!"

"I haven't got one," Gus's snitch replies.

"Then I'll damn well find someone who-"

"I guarantee you'll never get the name of the murderer," the snitch says, "either from me or anyone else."

Jack starts as he sees Stanz pull his service revolver. If it isn't for Gus's intervention, Jack feels certain Stanz would have shot the snitch. As it is, Stanz leaps at him, gets in a roundhouse right before Gus grabs him around the waist, holds him bodily in check.

"Get outta here," Gus growls. "Go on now!"

"That's right," Stanz howls in fury, "run away with your tail between your legs, you good-for-nothing nigger!"