The photojournalist was tightly wedged in amidst the rushing wall of men and women trying to escape toward the airport exits. His was just another terrified face in the stormy human sea.
And, yes, he could look very terrified. He knew more than any of them what fear looked like. He had photographed uncontrolled fear on so many faces. He often saw those awful looks of terror, those silent screams, in his dreams.
He held back a tight, grim smile as he turned onto Corridor D and headed toward his own plane. He was going to Washington, D.C., that evening and hoped the delays caused by the murder wouldn’t be massively long.
The risk had been a necessary one, actually. This had been a rehearsal, the last rehearsal.
Now, on to far more important things. The photojournalist had a very big job in D.C. The code name was easy enough for him to remember.
Jack and Jill.
CHAPTER
35
“THE EIGHTEEN-ACRE ESTATE around the White House includes many diversions: a private movie theater, gym, wine cellar, tennis courts, bowling lanes, rooftop greenhouse, and a golf range on the South Lawn. The house and property are currently assessed at three hundred forty million by the District of Columbia.” I could almost do the spiel myself.
I showed my temporary pass, then carefully drove down into the parking garage under the White House. On the way in I had noticed some renovation to the main building and also extensive groundwork, but overall the White House looked just fine to me.
My head was not so fine. It was uneasy. Filled with chaotic thoughts. I had slept only a couple of hours the night before, and that was becoming a pattern. The morning’s Washington Post and New York Times lay folded on the car seat beside me.
The Post headline asked WHO’S NEXT FOR JACK AND JILL? It seemed like a question directed right at me, WHO’S NEXT?
I thought about a possible attempt on the life of President Thomas Byrnes, as I walked from the small parking garage to the elevator. A lot of people were extremely high on the President and his programs. Americans had clamored for change for a long time, and President Byrnes was delivering it in large doses. Of course, what most people want “change” to mean is more money in their pockets, instantly, without any sacrifice on their part.
So who might be angry and crazed enough at the President to want him murdered? I knew that was why I was at the White House. I was here to conduct a homicide investigation. In the White House. A search for a couple of killers who could be planning to murder the President.
I met Don Hamerman in the West Wing Entrance Hall. He was still acting extremely high-strung and anxious, but that seemed to be his persona. It also fit the times. The chief of staff and I talked for a few minutes in the hallway. He went out of his way to tell me that I had been handpicked for the investigation because of my expertise with high-profile killers, especially psychopaths.
He seemed to know an awful lot about me. As he talked, I imagined that he’d probably gotten the coveted brownnoser award in his senior year at Yale or Harvard, where he had also learned to talk with a whiny, upper-class drawl.
I had absolutely no idea what to expect that morning. Hamerman said he was going to line up some “interviews” for me. I sensed some of his frustration in trying to organize an investigation like this inside the White House. A murder investigation.
He left me alone inside the Map Room on the ground floor. I paced around the famous room, absently checking out the elaborately carved Chippendale furniture, an oil portrait of Ben Franklin, a landscape painting titled Tending Cows and Sheep. I already had a busy day ahead. I had appointments set up at the city morgue and with Benjamin Levitsky, the number two at the FBI’s intelligence unit.
I continued to be frustrated about the Truth School child murders. For the moment, that was Sampson’s concern. Sampson’s and our part-time posse of detectives’. But I couldn’t keep it off my mind.
Suddenly, someone entered the Map Room along with the national security advisor. I was taken by surprise. I was blown away, actually. No words could possibly describe the feeling.
Don Hamerman stiffly announced, “President Byrnes will see you now.”
CHAPTER
36
“GOOD MORNING. Is it Doctor or Detective Cross?” President Thomas Byrnes asked me.
I had a sneaking suspicion that Dr. Cross would serve me much better at the White House. Like Dr. Bunche, Dr. Kissinger, or even Doc Savage. “I guess that I prefer Alex,” I said to him.
The President’s face lit up in a broad smile, and it was the same charismatic one I had seen many times on television and on the front pages of newspapers.
“And I prefer Tom,” the President said. He extended his hand and the two of us shook off our surnames. His grip was firm and steady. He held eye contact with me for several seconds.
The President of the United States managed to sound both cordial and appropriately serious at the same time. He was about six feet tall, and he was trim and fit at fifty. His hair was light brown, trimmed with silver-gray. He looked a little like a fighter pilot. His eyes were very sensitive and warm. He was already known as our most personable president in many years, and also our most dynamic.
I had read and heard a lot about the man I was meeting for the first time. He had been the successful and much-admired head of the Ford Motor Company in Detroit before he decided to go for an even higher executive office. He had run for the presidency as an Independent, and true to the polls of the past few years, the people had voted for fresh, independent thinking—or maybe they were just voting against the Republican and Democratic Parties, as some pundits believed. So far, he had shown himself to be a contemporary thinker, but a bit contrarian, a genuine maverick in high office. As an independent mover and shaker, the President had made few friends in Washington, but lots of enemies.
“The director of the FBI highly recommended you,” he said. “I think Stephen Bowen’s a pretty good man. What do you think? Any opinion of him?”
“I agree with you. The Bureau has changed a lot in the past couple of years under Bowen. We work well with them now. That didn’t used to be the case.”
The President nodded. “Is this a real threat, Alex, or are we just taking wise precautions?” he asked me. It was a tough, blunt question. I also thought it was the right question to ask.
“I think the concern of the Secret Service is definitely a wise precaution,” I said. “The coincidence of the names Jack and Jill being the same as your code names with the Secret Service, that’s very disturbing. So is the killers’ pattern of going after famous people here in Washington.”
“I guess I fit that damn description. Sad but true,” President Byrnes said and frowned. I had read that he was an intensely private man and down-to-earth as well. He seemed that way to me. Midwestern in the best sense. I guess what surprised me the most was the warmth that came from the man.
“As you have admitted yourself, you’re ‘shaking up the toy box.’ You’ve already disturbed a lot of people.”
“Stay tuned, there are a lot more major disturbances to come. This government badly needs to be reengineered. It was designed for life in the eighteen hundreds. Alex, I’m going to cooperate in any way I can with the police investigation. I don’t want anyone else to be hurt, let alone die. I’ve certainly thought about it, but I’m not ready to die yet. I think Sally and I are decent people. I hope you’ll feel that way the more you’re around us. We’re far from perfect, but we are decent. We’re trying to do the right thing.”
I was already feeling that way about the President. He had quickly struck a good chord with me. At the same time, I wondered how much of what he’d said I could believe. He was, after all, a politician. The best in the land.
“Every year, several people try to break into the White House, Alex. One man succeeded by tagging onto the end of the marine marching band. Quite a few have tried to ram the front gates with cars. In ninety-four, Frank Eugene Corder flew a single-engine Cessna in he
re.”
“But so far, nothing like this,” I said.
The President asked the real question on his mind. “What’s your bottom line on Jack and Jill?”
“No bottom line yet. Maybe a morning line,” I told him. “I disagree with the FBI. I don’t see them as pattern killers. They’re highly organized, but the pattern seems artificial to me. I’ll bet they’re both attractive, white, with well above normal IQ. They have to be articulate and persuasive to get into the places that they did. They want to accomplish something even more spectacular. What they’ve done so far is only groundwork. They enjoy the power of manipulating both us and the media. That’s what I have so far. It’s what I’m prepared to talk about, anyway.”
The President nodded solemnly. “I have a good feeling about you, Alex,” he said. “I’m glad we met for a couple of minutes here. I was told that you have two children,” he said. He reached into his jacket and handed me a presidential tie clasp and a pin especially designed for kids. “Keepsakes are important, I think. You see, I believe in tradition as well as in change.”
President Byrnes shook my hand again, looked me directly in the eye for a moment, and then left the room.
I understood that I had just been welcomed to the team, and the sole purpose of the team was to protect the President’s life. I found that I was powerfully motivated to do just that. I looked down at the tie clasp and pin for Damon and Jannie and was strangely moved.
CHAPTER
37
“SO DID YOU get to meet the royal couple yet?” Nana Mama asked when I entered her kitchen about four that afternoon.
She was making something in a big gray stewpot that smelled like the proverbial ambrosia. It was white bean soup, one of my favorites. Rosie the cat was prowling around on the counters, purring contentedly. Rosie in the kitchen.
At the same time Nana cooked at the counter, she was doing the crossword puzzle in the Washington Post. A book of her word jumbles was also out in view. So was No Stone Unturned—The Life and Times of Maggie Kuhn. Complicated woman, my grandmother.
“Did I meet who?” I pretended not to understand her crystal-clear and very pointed question to me. I was playing the game that the two of us have had going for many years, and probably will until death do us part somehow, sometime, someway.
“Meet whom, Dr. Cross. The President and Mrs. President, of course. The well-to-do white folks who live in the White House, looking down on the rest of us. Tom and Sally up in Camelot for the nineties.”
I smiled at her usual high-spirited and occasionally bittersweet banter. I looked in the fridge. “I didn’t come home for the third and fourth degree, you know. I’m going to make a sandwich from this brisket. It looks moist and tender. Or are looks deceiving?”
“Of course they are, but this brisket is moist and you could cut it with a soup spoon. Seems as if they work very short hours over at the White House, considering all that they have to do. Somehow, I suspected as much. But I could never prove it until now. So who did you meet?”
I couldn’t resist. I had been going to tell her this much any way. “I met and talked with the President this morning.”
“You met Tom?”
Nana pretended to take a punch in the manner of the heavyweight boxer George Foreman. She did a stumbling stutter-step back from the counter. She even cracked a tiny smile. “Well, tell me all about Tom, for heaven’s sake. And Sally. Does Sally wear a black pillbox hat inside the White House in the daytime?”
“I think that was Jacqueline Kennedy. Actually, I liked President Byrnes,” I said as I commenced making a thick brisket sandwich on fresh rye with bib lettuce, tomatoes, and a dab of mayonnaise, lots of pepper, a whisk of salt.
“You would. You like everybody unless they kill somebody,” Nana said as she began to slice up some more tomatoes. “Now that you’ve met Mr. President, you can get back on the Sojourner Truth School case. That’s very important to the people in this house. The Gray House. No black people care very much about the President and his problems anymore. Nor should they.”
“Is that a fact, Mrs. Farrakhan?” I said as I bit into my sandwich. Delicious, as promised. Cut it with a soup spoon, melts in the mouth.
“Should be a fact, if it isn’t. It’s close to a fact, anyway. I’ll admit that it’s a sad state of affairs, but it’s the sad state we all live in. Don’t you agree? You must.”
“You ever hear of mellowing with age?” I asked her. “Your brisket is terrific, by the way.”
“You ever hear of getting better, not getting older? You ever hear of taking care of one’s own kind? You ever hear about teeny-tiny, darling black children being murdered in our neighborhood, Alex, and nobody doing enough to make it stop? Of course the brisket is excellent. You see, I am getting better.”
I reached into my trouser pocket and took out the clasp and pin that the President had given me. “The President knew I had two children. He gave me these keepsakes for them.” I handed them over to Nana. She took them, and for once in her life, she was speechless.
“Tell them that these are from Tom and that he’s a fine man trying to do the right thing.”
I finished half of my overstuffed sandwich and took the remaining half with me out of the kitchen. If you can’t stand the heat and all that. “Thanks for the delicious sandwich, and the advice. In that order.”
“Where are you going now?” Nana called after me. She was winding up again. “We were talking about an important matter. Genocide against black people right here in Washington, our nation’s capital. They don’t care what happens in these neighborhoods, Alex. They is them, and them is white, and you’re collaborating with the enemy.”
“Actually, I’m going out to put in a few hours on the Truth School murder case,” I called back as I continued toward the front door, and blessed escape from the tirade. I couldn’t see Nana Mama anymore, but I could hear her voice trailing behind me like a banshee cry, or maybe the caw of a field crow.
“Alex has finally found his senses!” she exclaimed in a loud, shrill voice. “There’s hope after all. There’s hope. Oh, thank you, Black Lord in Heaven.”
The old goat can still get my goat, and I love her for it. I just don’t want to listen to her annoying rap sometimes.
I beeped the car horn of my old Porsche on the way out of the driveway. It’s our signal that everything is all right between us. From inside the house, I heard Nana call out: “Beep back at you!”
CHAPTER
38
I WAS BACK on the mean streets of inner Washington, the underside of the capital. I was a homicide detective again. I loved it with a strange passion, but there were times when I hated it with all my heart.
We were doing all that could humanly be done on both cases. I had set up surveillance on the Truth School during the day and also had day and night surveillance on Shanelle Green’s gravesite. Often psycho killers showed up at victims’ graves. They were ghouls, after all.
The circus was definitely in town.
Two of them.
Two completely different kinds of murder pattern. I had never seen anything like it, nothing even close to this chaos.
I didn’t need Nana Mama to remind me that I wanted to be out on the street right now. As she had said, Someone is killing our children.
I was certain that the unspeakable monster was going to kill again. In contrast to Jack and Jill, there was rage and passion in his work. There was a raw, scary craziness, the kind I could almost taste. The killer’s probable amateur status wasn’t reassuring, either.
Think like the killer. Walk in the killer’s shoes, I reminded myself. That’s how it all starts, but it’s a lot tougher than it sounds. I was gathering as much information and data as I possibly could.
I spent part of the afternoon ambushing several of the local hangarounds who might have picked up something on the murders: convivial street people, swooning pipeheads, young runners for the rock and weed dealers, a few low-level rollers themselves,
store owners, snitches, Muslims selling newspapers. I gave some of them a tough time, but nobody had anything useful for me.
I kept at The Job anyway. That’s the way it goes most days. You just keep at it, keep your head down and screwed on straight. About quarter past five, I found myself talking to a seventeen-year-old homeless youth I knew from working the soup kitchen at St. Anthony’s. His name was Loy McCoy, and he was a low-level crack runner now. He had helped me once or twice in the past.
Loy had stopped coming by for free food once he had started moving nickel and dime bags of crack and speed around the neighborhood. It’s hard to blame kids like Loy, as much as I would like to some days. Their lives are unbelievably brutal and hopeless. Then one day someone comes along and offers them fifteen or twenty bucks an hour to do what’s going to happen anyway. The more powerful emotional hook is that their dope bosses believe in them, and in many cases nobody has believed in any of these lost kids before.
I called Loy over, away from the posse of fools he was hanging with on L Street. They all wore black, machine-knit wool caps pulled low over their eyes and ears. Gold toothcaps, hoop earrings, baggy trousers, the works. His gang was talking about the movie based on the old Flintstones cartoon, or maybe about the actual cartoons. Yabba dabbas was one of the catchphrases used to describe police patrolmen and detectives in the ’hood. Here comes the yabba dabba. Or, he’s a yabba dabba doo motherfucker. I had recently read a sad statistic that seventy percent of Americans got nearly one hundred percent of their information from television and the movies.
Loy smirked as he slow-shuffled up at me at the street corner. He was maybe six one, but about only a hundred and forty pounds. He had on baggy, layered winter clothes, artfully torn, and he was “grittin” me today, trying to stare me down, put me down.
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