Back Blast: A Gray Man Novel Page 7

  He’d gotten less than halfway to the police tape when a patrolman standing at the perimeter shone a flashlight in his face. The light clicked off quickly, and Andy recognized the burly black officer.

  “How’s it going, Mike?”

  The cop held his hand up and said, “Not yet, Andy.”

  Andy stopped in the street. “What’s that?”

  “Can’t let you in just yet.”

  “Really?” They always let Andy in, or at least up to the porch to take a quick peek. “Why not?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Who’s the detective in charge? Is it Rauch? Tell him I’m here, he always lets me poke a head in. Won’t take but a minute.”

  “Rauch isn’t in there.”

  “Why are you breakin’ my balls tonight, Mike? I saw his Altima back there.”

  “Rauch is around, but not in the house. Hasn’t been inside yet. I think he’s on a canvass. Go talk to him.”

  “What’s he doing on a canvass if he hasn’t even looked at the scene yet?”

  The cop did not answer. He looked a bit uncomfortable, but he also looked resolute. Andy knew he could whine about it a little more, but he also knew he wasn’t getting in that house right now.

  He noticed a flashlight’s beam shining through a small opening in a boarded-up front window. There was definitely someone inside. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Mike turned away. “Man, go talk to Rauch.”

  —

  Andy found Detective Rauch five minutes later, a half block away, stepping down from the stoop of a duplex. From the look of him he hadn’t gotten any good information from anyone inside.

  “Hey, Bobby. How’s your night going?”

  Bobby Rauch was a wiry, thin, and balding fifty-year-old who always looked like he needed a sandwich more than he needed the cigarettes he constantly smoked. He kept walking as he said, “It’s goin’, Shoal.”

  “How come you’re not over there at the murder? Seen ten thousand, seen ’em all?”

  Rauch took the young reporter by the arm and turned him away from the duplex, and together they started walking up the sidewalk towards the house next door. He said, “Do me a favor and go back over the river. Come back in the morning.”

  Andy looked at his watch. In a tone that was much more good-natured than smart-ass, he said, “Twelve fifty-eight a.m. It’s morning. Here I am.”

  Rauch sighed. “Sorry, but I can’t let you get any closer to that scene.”

  “What’s the deal? You got a dead celeb in there or something?” Andy half chuckled as he said it, but he turned quickly serious when he saw Detective Rauch just give him an uncomfortable look.

  “Oh man.” Andy got excited quickly. The prospect of this being a real story made him salivate. “Like a congressman’s kid? Who is it?”

  Rauch shook his head. “Nah, nothing like that. Just some white trash dealers, from what they tell me.”

  “Then what the hell is going on?”

  Rauch stopped walking in the dark, and he leaned in closer, causing Andy to recoil at first. Quickly the Post reporter realized the detective wanted to whisper something. As weird as this was, Andy leaned in himself.

  Rauch said, “Spooks.”

  “Come again?”

  “There’s a bunch of spooks in there. They won’t let us in till they are finished looking around.”

  “What do you mean ‘spooks’? Like, CIA?”

  Rauch shrugged. “They didn’t say that. But I was army, and they aren’t military intel. I ran into a few CIA when I was working Vice. A couple of guys in trench coats show up, not spit-shined like Bureau types, more scotch breath and chewed fingernails. They flash some general-looking Homeland Security credos and push past the PD like they own the fucking place. Same deal tonight, except one of the guys is a serious-looking woman in a trench coat.” Rauch shrugged his narrow shoulders inside his raincoat. “They’re definitely spooks.”

  Rauch turned and looked back at the house, and Andy did the same, taking in the dilapidated property from a distance.

  “This isn’t exactly Embassy Row,” Andy said. “What are they doing here?”

  Rauch lit a cigarette, shielding the flame from the misty breeze. “In true spook fashion, they didn’t volunteer much information about their motives.”

  “What else do you know?”

  “Just what the responding officers and the EMTs said. Two DOA. One with his head blown half off from a rifle, the other skewered with some kinda ninja sword.”

  “Damn. And the injured?”

  “They transported four to Medstar Trauma. All Aryan Brotherhood. One dude took three AK rounds, another’s got a busted face, a third has a concussion and possible neck trauma, and some skank took two to the legs. I’ll go interview them as soon as I am allowed in to see my crime scene.” The annoyance was evident in Rauch’s voice.

  “On the scanner they said it was one guy who did all this.”

  “That’s what the injured woman told the responding officers.”

  Andy thought for a second. This story was starting to get interesting. “How ’bout I wait at the tape so I can talk to the CIA guys when they come out?”

  Rauch looked at Andy for an instant, then he shut down, like he just realized jawing with the reporter was the wrong call. “Look . . . I didn’t say CIA. You did. I said they were Homeland Security. Do me a favor and get out of here till they leave. Come back in the morning.”

  Rauch tossed his cigarette in the gutter and headed up to knock on the next door.

  Andy walked back to his car, then he stood there for a few minutes looking at the scene, awash in flashing red and blue lights. Finally one of the beat cops stepped up and asked him if he wouldn’t mind backing off a block or two. Normally Andy would have told the man to kiss his ass, but not this time. He climbed in his Ford, then drove around the corner, parked, and got back out with his camera. He walked between a pair of apartment buildings, squinted out the reflections of flashing lights, and made his way one block north of the crime scene.

  On the street in front of him were two black Chevy Suburbans that clearly didn’t belong. Drivers sat behind the wheels, and each vehicle had a passenger in the front. Andy stopped in his tracks before the men saw him, then he retraced his steps back to the apartment buildings. Under a stairwell he found a place in the dark where he could keep his eyes on the vehicles, and there he waited.

  Ten minutes later several figures in overcoats approached the Suburbans. One was a white-haired man in his early fifties, flanked by a pair of men Andy took immediately for bodyguards. Next to him was a woman in her thirties wearing eyeglasses, with her brown hair in a professional-looking bun. He snapped several pictures of both of them before they drove off, careful not to use his flash.

  Back in his Fiesta he looked at the images on the digital display of his camera. He hadn’t expected to recognize either of them, even on closer inspection, and he did not.

  But he knew someone who might. Sitting there in the shittiest part of the city, Andy looked up a number on his contact list and made a call.

  —

  A few miles west in Georgetown, a fifty-four-year-old woman slowly reached for the vibrating mobile phone on her nightstand. While doing so, she blinked the sleep from her eyes and checked the time on the phone’s screen.

  It was a quarter after one.

  She made no effort to perk up her sleepy voice. “This is Catherine King.”

  “Ms. King? Andy Shoal here. I apologize for calling so late.”

  “Who?”

  “Andy Shoal. Metro desk.”

  The woman sat up slowly, rubbing her eyes. “Metro? Sure,” she said, but she’d never heard of this guy. “What can I do for you, Andy?”

  “Again, sorry about the hour, but I’m doing a story on a double homicide in Wa
shington Highlands and I could use your professional opinion.”

  Catherine lay back down on her right side. “The butler did it. Can I go back to sleep?”

  Andy chuckled. “I can pretty much guarantee this dump didn’t have a butler. No, actually I’m calling because I was told the CIA was here, looking over the crime scene. I haven’t run into that before, so I thought I’d reach out to you.”

  Catherine King sat back up. “Hold on. Are you saying Agency personnel are investigating a homicide in the District?”

  “That’s the word I got. The dick who made the scene first—”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Sorry, the detective said he was told the men inside were Homeland Security. He didn’t outright say CIA, but that was his inference.”

  “What’s the connection to Langley?”

  “I don’t have a clue, and it doesn’t seem like the cops do, either. The crime scene is a suspected Aryan Brotherhood property, but I don’t know if that’s relevant or not. I do know you are the paper’s veteran National Security correspondent, so I thought maybe you could help, since nobody knows more about the intelligence community in this town than you do.”

  King picked up on the platitude, and it told her something about this Andy Shoal. Cops reporters were usually either grizzled old vets or else they were young and ambitious. Shoal, it was clear, was the latter, and he was sucking up to her a little. She absolutely hated to be called a veteran reporter; she found this almost as bad as when she was referred to as an institution, which also happened on occasion. But she was too intrigued by Andy’s information to be either flattered or annoyed. “I can’t think of a soul on that side of the Anacostia who would be of interest to CIA. I suppose if they are counterintel officers and they caught one of their people visiting a drug house then that would rouse Langley in the middle of the night, but that’s just a guess.”

  “It was one male, with bodyguards, and one female. I got pretty good pictures of both of them.”

  “You did, did you? You need to be careful doing that with Agency personnel. They are camera shy as a species. Did they see you take their picture?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “You want to send them to my phone?”

  “On the way.”

  Catherine reached for her eyeglasses, then turned on the light on her nightstand. While she waited she looked around her bedroom. She lived alone, and had no children, so the only disorder in the home was her own. An empty cereal bowl and a spoon on the nightstand, a pile of yoga tights and sweats on a settee in a far corner, a raincoat lying over a chair by the door to her closet.

  She’d returned from a trip to Cairo three days earlier, where she’d been meeting with a source in Egyptian intelligence, and she’d yet to unpack fully, so a large rolling North Face duffel sat on a table in the far corner of the room, open with dirty clothes spilling out onto the floor.

  Two images appeared on her mobile, and Catherine looked at them one at a time. She zoomed in on the first, a woman with light brown hair in a tight bun. She did not recognize her. She swiped down to the next image; this one was of a white-haired man in his early fifties. He seemed to have a two-man security detail shadowing him.

  Interesting. If he was CIA this would be beyond odd. Other than the director and some division heads, CIA execs didn’t ordinarily move with bodyguards in the USA.

  She blinked away more sleep, and quickly rubbed her eyes. She looked at the photo of the white-haired man again. After several seconds she said, “That makes no sense at all.”

  Though she was talking to herself, Shoal asked, “Do you recognize them?”

  “The gentleman with the white hair is Jordan Mayes. I haven’t seen him since Iraq. Six years ago. Back then he was a senior officer, but now he’s assistant director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service.”

  “Does that mean he’s a big deal?”

  “Big enough to where I can’t think of a single reason he would be wandering through a crime scene in the middle of the night in the worst part of the city. Why would anyone do that?” With a little hesitation she said, “Hope that doesn’t offend you, Andy.”

  “Not in the least. We can’t all get the good gigs like the national security beat.”

  The comment barely registered with Catherine. She was still looking at the picture of Jordan Mayes. She said, “Mayes’s purview is one hundred percent outside of the U.S. Denny Carmichael holds Mayes’s leash.”

  “Who?”

  “Carmichael runs the show at CIA.”

  “Director?”

  “Directors don’t run the show, Andy. Directors are political hires. Sent in to watch over, but to keep their hands clean. No, Denny Carmichael is head of the National Clandestine Service. He’s the top spook in spook land. He does all the dirty things around the world.”

  “He’s bad?”

  “Depends on your perspective. He’s done a lot of good I’m sure, but I’ve watched while Denny has grown his fiefdom to the point where he makes his own rules over at Langley. I’m not crazy about that.”

  “Are you going to ask Carmichael what his assistant was doing in Washington Highlands?”

  Catherine thought this over. “No. That’s not the right play here. I’d rather probe into Mayes a little. Figure out who this woman is with him at the crime scene. If I go to Carmichael as clueless as I am now, he’ll know he can sell me anything. Once I have some facts, just enough to scare him into thinking I know more than I really do, I’ll confront him.”

  Andy didn’t respond to this. Finally Catherine said, “Did I lose you?”

  There was obvious amazement in his voice. “That’s genius.”

  “I talk to men and women who lie for a living. You develop techniques to mitigate some of the BS along the way. Will you keep me posted on anything you learn about the Highlands incident?”

  “Of course I will. What would you say to the two of us sharing a byline?”

  Catherine smiled at the phone. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Andy. I don’t know there is a story there just yet. I get five ‘can’t miss’ earth-shattering leads a week that turn into nothing. For now, let’s just pull this thread from both ends and see what turns up. That sound good to you?”

  “Sounds great. I’ll let you know what I find.”

  Catherine King hung up the phone, pulled off her glasses, and lay back down on the bed. But after thirty seconds she rolled back up, climbed to her feet, and headed downstairs to her home office.

  Whatever was going on that involved spooks from the CIA, the Aryan Brotherhood, and a double homicide was much more important to her than a few hours’ sleep. She’d sit at her computer and dig around on Mayes, Carmichael, and the mystery woman, and see what she could find.

  9

  Arthur Mayberry was nearly seventy, and he looked it. Weatherworn black skin, a silver mane of hair, and Coke-bottle glasses. He had been 11-bravo, army infantry, back in Vietnam, and then he came home and drove a bus for Washington Metro Transit for forty-one years while his wife worked her way up to food services manager at a hospital in Falls Church. Arthur sired four kids along the way, which made him a man rich in many blessings, but not in much else. Now he and his wife were grandparents and empty nesters, retired and living frugally in a large but rickety two-story home in Columbia Heights.

  Prices in the District had skyrocketed in the past few years as the federal government became one of the few growth industries in America, and for this reason Mayberry’s property taxes had shot through the roof. Even though his street was one of the edgiest in Columbia Heights, which was one of the lower-end neighborhoods in the heart of the District, Arthur and his sixty-eight-year-old wife Bernice could barely afford their mortgage, so they’d taken to renting out a tiny and not exactly up-to-code basement bedroom for two hundred fifty a month. They’d recently lost
their last tenant when he was arrested on a possession charge, so when the knock came at their front door first thing after church on Sunday morning, Arthur found himself hoping it was someone who’d seen the For Rent sign stuck in the tiny front yard.

  This street was seventy percent African American, and twenty-two percent Hispanic. There were as many Asians as there were whites, and the vast majority of the whites who lived around here were elderly, so Arthur’s hopes that he’d get a new tenant today were effectively dashed when he looked through the peephole and saw a clean-shaven white man in a blazer standing alone on his stoop.

  Bernice came up beside him in the entryway. She was still wearing her hat from church. “Who is it?”

  “Some man.”

  “He’s here about the room,” she said confidently.

  “I doubt it.”

  “Why do you say—”

  Arthur opened the wooden door, but left the storm door and its iron grating alone.

  “Oh,” his wife said, seeing the youngish Caucasian face on the other side of the storm door.

  “Yeah?”

  The white man spoke through the bolted door. “Good morning.”

  “Yeah?” Arthur repeated, the suspicion obvious in his voice.

  “I saw your For Rent sign. Can I take a look at the room?”

  What the hell? Arthur had no intention of renting to a white man. It wasn’t that he was racist, but he was a realist, and no young white man in this area with a job would want to live in a tiny basement on this street.

  “Sir?” the man said after waiting ten seconds for a response.

  “You from around here?”

  “No, sir. Just in from Michigan. My uncle had a place in Petworth, but he passed away. I’m in town for a couple of months getting the house ready to sell.”

  Arthur softened just a little. “Sure sorry to hear about that.”

  “Thanks. What are you asking for the room?”

  A pause. “Three hundred.”

  “Really? I saw the notice you put on the board at the Giant up the street. It says two fifty.”