James PATTERSON - Cross Fire

“What the hell are you doing here?” she said by way of hello.

“Hey, Alicia.” Mitch’s voice was husky with fear. He seemed a little flustered, and he held up the stuffed monkey. “I, uh… brought a present.”

Behind Alicia, a little waist-high girl was giving them wide eyes from under her braided and beaded bangs. She smiled when she saw the toy, but those lights went out as soon as her mother spoke again.

“Destiny, go to your room.”

“Who is that, Momma?”

“No questions, baby. Just do as I say. Right now. Go ahead.”

Once the girl had disappeared back into the duplex, Denny figured it was time to insert himself into the mix. “How you doing?” he said, all friendly-like. “I’m Mitch’s buddy and expert driver, but you can call me Denny.”

Her eyes flitted his way just long enough to throw a few poison darts. “Mister, I don’t have to call you shit,” she said, and then turned back to Mitch. “And I asked you what the hell you’re doing here. I don’t want you around here. Neither does Destiny.”

“Go ahead, man,” Denny said, and nudged him in the shoulder.

Mitch pulled a small envelope out of his pocket. “It ain’t much, but here.” Inside was a twenty, two fives, and fifty rumpled singles. He tried to hand it to her right through the broken screen, but she shoved it back at him.

“Oh, hell no! You think that little envelope gon’ make you a daddy?” Her voice dropped. “You’re just an old mistake, Mitch, that’s all. Far as Destiny’s concerned, her daddy is dead, and that’s how we gon’ keep it. Now, are you two getting off my property – or am I calling the police?”

Mitch’s round face looked about as long as it could get.

“At least take this,” he said.

He opened the screen door, and when she stepped back fast, he dropped the stuffed monkey on the floor at her feet. It was pathetic to watch. Besides, Denny had seen all he needed to.

“Alrighty, then,” he said, “we got a long drive back to Cleveland, so we’ll just be on our way to O-hi-o. Sorry to bother you, ma’am. I guess this little visit wasn’t such a good idea after all.”

“You think?” she said, and slammed the door in both their faces.

On the way down the walk, Mitch looked like he wanted to cry.

“It sucks, Denny. She’d be proud if she knew what we were doing. I wanted to tell her so bad–”

“But you didn’t.” Denny threw an arm around his shoulder and spoke close. “You stuck to the mission, Mitchie, and that’s what counts. Now come on – let’s hit ourselves a Taco Bell on the way out of town.”

While he walked around to the driver’s side of the car, Denny reached inside his jacket and flipped the safety on the Walther nine millimeter holstered there. As it turned out, Mitch was more of a hero than he’d ever get to know. He’d just saved his own daughter’s life.

Alicia may have been fairly cunty, but she was clueless; and there was no way in hell Denny was going to shoot a five-year-old girl who didn’t even know who Mitch was. The whole point of the assignment was threat assessment, and there was no threat here.

If the man back in DC didn’t like it, he could find himself another contractor.

ACTUALLY, IT HAD been kind of a fun day – relaxing and surprising, especially Mitch’s pretty ex-wife. It was just after dark when they reached Arlington that night. Mitch had spent most of the trip watching the side of the road, sighing and tossing around like someone who couldn’t sleep.

But now, as they came up on the Roosevelt Bridge, he sat bolt upright, looking straight ahead through the windshield.

“What the hell is that, Denny?”

Cars were backed up on the highway in either direction. There were cruisers with lights flashing on both sides, and uniformed officers out on the road. It wasn’t just a traffic jam, and it didn’t look like an accident either.

“Traffic checkpoint,” Denny said, realizing what it was.

The city had been instituting them for a few years now, but only in the really violent neighborhoods. He’d never seen anything like this before.

“Something big must have happened. Like, really big.”

“I don’t like this, Denny.” Mitch’s knee started bouncing. “Ain’t they been looking for a Suburban since we made that hit in Woodley Park?”

“Yeah, but a dark-blue or black one. Besides, they’re stopping everyone, see? Hell, I wish we had some papers to sell in this traffic,” Denny said, as upbeat as he could make it. “Might earn back some of that gas money we spent today.”

Mitch wasn’t buying it. He stayed all hunched down and tense as they crawled along toward the head of the line.

Then, out of the blue, Mitch said, “Where did we get the gas money, Denny? And that envelope for Alicia? I don’t get how we’re paying for this.”

Denny gritted his teeth. The one thing Mitch could usually be counted on for was a distinct lack of probing questions.

“You know what happened to that curious cat, don’t you, Mitchie? D-E-D, dead,” he said. “You just focus on the big stuff and let me handle the rest. Including this.”

They were coming up on the checkpoint now, and an NBA-size officer motioned them forward.

“License and registration, please.”

Denny reached into the glove compartment and handed them over without a blink. Here’s where it paid to work for the right people. “Denny Humboldt” had a record as clean as a show cat’s ass – even that parking ticket would be history by now.

“What’s going on, Officer?” he asked. “It looks big.”

The cop answered with a question, while his eyes played over the piles of junk in the backseat. “Where are you two coming from?”

“Johnsonburg, PA,” Denny said. “Nowhere you ever want to go, by the way. The place is a hole.”

“How long have you been gone?”

“Just since this morning. Day trip. So I guess you can’t tell me anything, huh?”

“That’s right.” The officer handed him back his items and motioned them on. “Move along, please.”

As they pulled away, Mitch pried his hands off his knee and heaved a big sigh. “That was too damn close,” he said. “That sonofabitch knew something.”

“Not at all, Mitchie,” Denny told him. “Not at all. He’s like everybody else – none of ’em have a clue, not a clue.”

It didn’t take them long to find some coverage on the radio. Word was coming in fast that the DC Patriot sniper had struck again. An unnamed police officer had been gunned down from a distance, right there on the DC side of the Potomac.

Sure enough, as they crossed the Roosevelt Bridge into the city, they could see a whole mass of law enforcement parked along Rock Creek Parkway off to the left. Denny hooted out loud. “Check out the piggy convention! Looks like Christmas came early this year.”

“What are you talking about, Denny?” Mitch still looked a little glazed from the checkpoint stop.

“The dead cop, man. Aren’t you listening?” Denny said. “It’s all going down exactly like we hoped. We just bagged ourselves a goddamn copycat!”

NELSON TAMBOUR HAD been shot just before dusk, on a grassy strip of no-man’s-land between Rock Creek Parkway and the river. The highway was already shut down by the time I got there, all the way from K Street to the Kennedy Center. I parked as close as I could and walked the rest of the way in.

Tambour had been a detective with NSID, the Narcotics and Special Investigations Division. I didn’t know him personally, but that didn’t make this incident any less of a nightmare. MPD had just lost one of its own, and horribly so. Detective Tambour had been found with his skull blown half open – a large-caliber bullet had passed right through his head.