Jonathan Nasaw - Fear itself

Nor would it have, if the car had still been in California, or even a neighboring state. But on M Street in Georgetown, a Volvo with California plates might have been conspicuous enough to have been noticed even if hadn’t already accumulated two tickets and a tow warning since Tuesday evening.

Linda had left the office by the time the patrol car called it in. She was traveling north on the River Road and had just passed the sign for Piney Meetinghouse Road (she loved that name), which meant she was only a few miles from Tinsman’s Lock, when her cell phone started chirping.

“Abruzzi.”

“Joe Buchanan, Metro.” Washington Metropolitan on Fourth Street was the FBI field office with jurisdiction over the District of Columbia. “Thought you might want to know a patrol car spotted your Volvo in Georgetown.”

“Georgetown,” echoed Linda dully.

“Yeah. No sign of Childs yet. They pulled off it right away and set up a surveillance perimeter: if he so much as shows his-”

“Joe-what was the location of the car?”

“I don’t remember exactly. Somewhere on M, I think-I can get it for you if it matters.”

“Please,” said Linda so calmly it was hard to believe that her world, and what was left of her career, was crashing around her ears.

“Just a sec.”

It was more than a sec, it was an eon, an age, an eternity, during which Linda tried to tell herself that although M Street’s retail shops and restaurants were within walking distance, even her walking distance, of the Gees’ brownstone-it was a long street-this could be a coincidence. But deep down she knew better: even before Buchanan came back on the line to confirm her worst fears-the Volvo was parked only two blocks from Conroy Circle-her mind had already switched into cover-your-ass mode. You don’t have to tell them, she reminded herself; it still could be a coincidence. Or maybe it wasn’t Skairdykat at all, maybe he got the address some other way.

Yeah, sure. And maybe God didn’t make little green apples, and maybe Hoover and Tolson were just good friends. “Joe, I’ve got an address about two blocks north of there that needs to be checked out soonest. Seventeen Conroy Circle, that’s one seven C-O-N-R-O-Y. It’s a one-family brownstone. I stayed there for a few weeks when I first got to Washington. Should be two residents, James and Gloria Gee-that’s G-E-E.”

He told her he could have somebody there in five minutes-Metro agents were already converging on Georgetown. And although he did not ask her why the Gees were at risk, or what the connection was to Childs, she knew that before too long, the question would have to be asked.

Along with a few others. Such as what the fuck could you have been thinking, putting civilians in jeopardy like that?

No excuse, sir, she muttered to herself as she switched off the cell phone and slipped it back into the pocket of her black wool car-coat. A glance in the rearview mirror-all clear. She jammed on the brakes and wrenched the wheel to the left, throwing the poor Geo into a screaming, sliding, four-wheel-drift of a U-turn.

As she passed Piney Meetinghouse Road again, this time from the opposite direction, her phone went off in her pocket.

“Terry Marks, Hostage Rescue. We’re setting up a perimeter around Seventeen Conroy. There are no signs of movement inside, and nobody’s answering the phone, but there’s a broken pane of glass in the back door. We want to go in quick, while we still have the element of surprise, but I need to get some more information first. I understand you’re familiar with the house?”

“Yes.”

“There are two occupants?”

“Yes: Gloria Gee, Chinese-American female, age thirty-seven, height five-two, weight around one-five, one-ten. Jim Gee, Chinese-American male, late thirties, five-seven, around one-forty.”

“Short Chinese-that’s good; nobody’s likely to mistake either of the hostages for the suspect.”

“Not unless you have Stevie Wonder going in.”

“Any entrances or exits other than the front and back doors?”

“Not that I know of.”

“What’s the layout inside?”

Linda gave Marks a walk-through, first from the front door, then the back.

“Good job. One more thing, what do they drive?”

“Jim drives one of those new Mercedes SUVs, blue with gold trim. Gloria has a late-model Lexus, that champagne color-I don’t know the license numbers.”

“The Mercedes is here-we’ll get the Lexus plates from motor vehicles, thanks.”

Linda wished him luck, which was more than she dared hope for for herself. There were only two ways this could play out that wouldn’t mean the end of her career. The first was a complete false alarm, in which case, once the confusion had been cleared up, she might get off with a reprimand and a nasty note from OPR in her personnel file.

The second involved the HRT killing Childs on the way in, then finding two more dead bodies, in which case there would be no need to clear up the confusion. No one but herself would ever have to know that Childs had been drawn to the house by a decoy she had set up, a decoy that in the end had succeeded only in drawing the hunter to his prey.

The Gees would still be dead of course, but Linda would be in the clear. And that’s what counts, isn’t it? she asked herself bitterly.

10

The three of them shared the bed. Cappy and Rosie sat next to each other at the head, framed by the alcove in the wall that hid the old-fashioned, pull-down Murphy bed during the day. Rosie had a newly opened bottle of Select Choice propped between her legs. The hell with measuring it out, she had decided; the hell with the glass, the ice, and the tonic, for that matter.

Simon sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed. Oddly, he wasn’t as put out by Cappy’s intrusion as he might have been. Things hadn’t worked out the way he’d thought they would when he called directory information from the Gees’ kitchen and wangled Rosie’s address out of the operator with a sob story about how it was his mom’s birthday and he had to get some flowers delivered. It was almost too intense, being alone with his mother after all these years-a lifetime, really. But in addition to being mother and son, they were also virtually strangers to each other. The third party changed the equation-Simon found himself playing to the old man as if he were an audience of one.

“I was just telling my mother about a woman named Ida I met in Wisconsin,” he explained. “Ida asked me a question that’s been rattling around in my head for days now-I was hoping maybe Mom here could answer it for me.”

Simon’s eyes traveled from Cappy to Rosie. Despite the strain he’d been under, despite the Ecstasy, the sinsemilla, and the dearth of sleep, it seemed to Simon that his mind was clearer than it had been since this whole sorry business had begun. (Although the crosstops he’d been popping like Pez all afternoon might have had something to do with that.) “How about it, Mom? What’s the secret? How can a mother bring herself to walk away from a year-old baby girl with Down’s and a three-year-old who’s just lost his father?”

And at that moment, he realized that it no longer even mattered what her answer was-it was finally getting to ask the question that had made the difference, that had brought him to this place of clarity.

The media was already gathering outside Conroy Circle, which was, as the name suggests, a cul-de-sac. Sawhorses blocked the entrance; Linda flashed her shield, and the D.C. cops manning the barricades let her through.

I think we can probably rule out a false alarm, Linda told herself wryly, as the Geo rolled past the media circus to join the cop circus. Patrol cars, unmarked Bu-cars, ambulances, Hostage Rescue Team in full ninja gear straggling out of number seventeen, Evidence Response Team straggling in, paramedics stowing away their gurneys, coroner’s men unfolding theirs, D.C. cops standing around everywhere. Linda parked behind an Animal Control van. As she reached for her cane, an agent wearing a blue windbreaker with the letters FBI in yellow across the back approached her.