by Scott Blade
After they got their coffee, Widow followed Tunney out of the café. They walked to a silver BMW parked in front of a meter. The meter had no coins in it.
Tunney noticed that Widow saw the meter with no coins.
"The meters don't work here. They should take them out. It's all done by app now. On your phone. See that sign?"
Tunney pointed at a sign nearer to the parked car in front of his.
He said, "You just key the number from the sign into an app on your cell phone. They debit my card for the parking."
Widow nodded.
Tunney got into the car, and Widow followed suit and got in on the passenger side.
Tunney fired up the engine, revving it up like he had just gotten the car and wanted to hear it purr. Then he backed up and took off. Minutes later, they were on the freeway heading to North Bethesda.
Widow watched the street signs, as habit marking that they were going in the right direction.
After several minutes of nothing but road noise and low eighties rock music playing on the stereo, Tunney finally spoke.
"So, you knew Eggers?"
"Never met him."
"Really? How do you know where we can find his daughter?"
Widow didn't answer that. Instead, he told Tunney the whole story. He told him about getting off the bus, going to café for coffee, reading about Eggers in the paper, and going to his wake out of a sense of brotherhood. He mentioned his curiosity about the large value of the investments that Eggers left behind.
They drove along the freeway. Traffic was full but steady. DC drivers seemed to all be on the same page. They were all eager to get somewhere. Some drove fast. Some drove more slowly, but all seemed to be in rhythm. There weren't any weak links.
Tunney asked, "Are you sure you're not trying to find a way to get your hands on the money for yourself?"
"How the hell would I do that?"
"I don't know. Maybe you couldn't resist it. Maybe you heard fifty million dollars and decided to hang on to see if you could find a way to get it."
"No. I don't care about the money."
"Is that right?"
"Yeah. That's right."
"It's a lot of money."
Widow nodded but said nothing.
Tunney said, "Aker said you were a drifter."
"That's a word for it, I suppose."
"Imagine what a drifter could do with fifty million in the bank."
"The same exact things I do right now. I suppose. Maybe I'd be able to stay in nicer hotels. But other than that, it would make little difference in my life."
"You have no interest in being fifty million dollars rich?"
Tunney glanced over at Widow more than once to gauge his reaction.
Widow said, "I'm already wealthy."
This time, Tunney glanced at Widow with a sideways expression.
"How you figure that?"
"I have everything I need. Being rich is a state of being."
"Wealth can only be accumulated by the earnings of industry and the savings of frugality."
Widow thought for a moment. It showed on his face. He looked out the window, seeing the riders in the next car over. He turned back and looked over to Tunney.
"Who said that?"
"John Tyler. He was the ninth president. You know?"
"It doesn't matter about money; having it, not having it. Or having clothes, or not having them. You're still left alone with yourself in the end."
Tunney glanced over his left shoulder, clicked on the turn signal, and changed lanes. He faced forward.
"Who said that?"
"Billy Idol."
"The rocker? You into Billy Idol?"
Widow shrugged and said, "Not particularly, but it's relevant."
"How you figure?"
"He's playing on the radio."
Widow reached down and pointed at the stereo.
Tunney smiled.
"So, he is."
A long minute passed and Tunney switched lanes again, back to the lane they were in because he’d found himself behind a slow driver in the fast lane.
Widow said, "Tyler wasn't the ninth president."
"Who was?"
"Harrison."
"Didn't he die in office?"
"He barely made it a month after being sworn in."
"Wasn't it typhoid fever?"
"And pneumonia."
Tunney nodded along and asked, "You're able-bodied and smart. Why the whole drifter thing? Isn't that kind of played out? I mean, the veteran returned home who wanders the countryside like a nomad has been done before."
"Everything has been done before."
"I guess so."
"It suits me. In the Navy, all I did was go from place to place, not knowing anyone, always being a stranger in a strange land. I lived so many double lives throughout my career, being a nobody to no one is a part of who I am, I guess."
"What do you mean double lives?"
Great, Widow! Widow thought. He’d let part of the cat out of the bag. He saw no reason not to be honest with Tunney, as honest as he could be without saying he was a double agent, working for NCIS, but being an active SEAL in the Navy.
"I worked for NCIS. I did undercover work."
"You pretended to be someone you weren't to get the bad guys? That sort of thing?"
"You could say that."
"I did a little of that myself."
"Really?"
"Not exactly. I never went undercover myself. But I worked a couple of operations where we had undercover agents in place. Dangerous work."
"It can be. I always felt safe enough," Widow lied.
He’d never felt safe doing it. Not once. He traveled, worked with, and fought alongside SEALs. And even though ninety-nine percent of them were heroes and the best men he ever knew, there was still that one percent that he had to investigate, get close to, and take down. Going undercover among a bunch of misguided drug dealers wasn't the same as infiltrating the world's most highly trained military operators. Not one bit.
Tunney said, "It's nice to know you, Widow. I hope we can find this guy's daughter fast. Imagine the look on her face when she learns she inherited fifty million dollars."
Widow actually hadn't thought of that. Not till Tunney just said it. He glanced at the side mirror and saw his own eyes.
Again, he thought, fifty million dollars.
Widow glanced at the clock on the BMW's stereo. They had been on the road for thirty minutes, with thirty to go.
He asked, "Tell me about yourself, Tunney."
"What do you want to know?"
"Whatever you want to share."
Tunney stared through the windshield at the road. Widow saw his eyes behind his sunglasses.
Tunney said, "I'm from Virginia. Born and raised. My parents were the typical nineteen-fifties family type. Mom was a stay-at-home housewife. And my old man was a coal miner. We lived in a small town."
"You didn't want to be a coal miner?"
"No way! I got out of there as soon as I turned eighteen. Maybe even faster. I joined the Army for a number of years. Till I met my wife."
Widow did the math in his head.
He asked, "You fought in Vietnam?"
"I did. That's where I met my wife."
"Really?"
"Yeah. She was the love of my life."
"Was?"
"She's been passed on now for nine years. Cancer."
"Sorry to hear that."
"It's okay. She took it like a warrior. She didn't make much fuss in the thirty-six years we were married, and she didn't make any at the end. She was a great woman. They don't make 'em like that hardly anymore. You find one, Widow, you hold on to her."
Widow stayed quiet, but a couple of faces flashed across his mind. He had known more than one great woman in his day. Maybe he was lucky because he could sit and count many great women.
Tunney asked, "What about you? You got a woman? I'd imagine not, with the way you live."
The female faces that cycled through Widow's mind stopped on one, like cherries in a slot machine. The face that stopped was Kelly Li of the United States Secret Service. He figured it was only because he had just seen her several months ago, and it was there, in Washington, DC.
He remembered the last day he saw her. It went down about like they always went down. His life led down one road, and hers led down another. All of it was understandable. He didn't need to explain any more than she needed to.
Li had a full life and career ahead of her. Why should she give all that up for him? And why should he give his life up for her?
Widow stared out the window again. He stared at gray clouds to the east, rumbling in from the Atlantic Ocean, and he wondered: Would he have stayed if she asked him to? Would he have given up everything if only Li had asked?
Stay with me, she could've said.
Be with me, she could've asked.
What if one of the others he had known had asked?
He thought about it and asked himself if he would've stayed. He didn't know.
Tunney noticed that Widow had gone into a daydream. He continued to talk about himself.
"And then I worked with the Bureau for twenty-five years."
"You retired early then?"
"When Phuong, my first wife, got sick, I took a lot of leave. After she died, I took more time off. Eventually, I just didn't want to go back. So, I took an early retirement and got my licenses. Now, I do this."
“Are you remarried?”
Tunney said, “I am. She’s great! Too good for me!”
He paused a beat and, like he couldn’t help it, he added one more thing to that fact.
“We’re not talking right now though. Husband and wife stuff. You know?”
Widow didn’t respond to that.
He asked, "How do you like being a private investigator?"
"Hours are better. Usually. But the pay sucks."
They both laughed.
After several more minutes of driving, Tunney flipped the turn signal on again, only this time it was to exit the freeway.
Widow looked over and saw they were exiting for North Bethesda.
Off the exit ramp and onto a local street, Widow watched the buildings and suburbs around them go by.
"Looks like a nice area."
"You ever been to Bethesda before?"
"Can't say I have."
"If you think this area is nice, you should see Massachusetts Avenue Heights or Berkley."
"They're better than this?"
"Houses in those neighborhoods go for millions."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Cheapest ones probably don't crack below a mill."
"I guess the only thing that rich people are more afraid of than the poor is leaves."
Tunney glanced at Widow quickly.
"Leaves?"
"Yeah. Rich people are so afraid of leaves they're always hiring guys with leaf blowers to go around and blow them away. You never heard that joke before?"
"Nope."
Widow shrugged and said, "Maybe it's a Southern thing."
They drove the rest of the way in silence until Tunney turned into an office building's parking lot.
"This is it," Tunney said. He wound through a parking lot in the front looking for a space.
They circled the same lot twice before they found someone pulling out. Tunney waited and then took the space.
They both got out, and Tunney locked the car with a press of a button on his electronic key.
Tunney said, "That was lucky. I hate parking in the garage. It's tight. Come on. This way."
Widow followed behind Tunney. Because of the way the sun was angled, Tunney literally walked in Widow's shadow all the way to the office complex's entrance.
Inside, there was a security desk with one security guard sitting behind it and another patrolling one who had just walked up.
"What's with the security?" Widow asked.
"There's a big law firm on the top level, and one federal judge has an office on the third floor. This is DC. The security feature enables the owners to jack up the rent. Don't worry about it."
Tunney walked over to the guard behind the desk. He took out a building badge and showed it to the guard, who acknowledged it and waved them both through.
Widow followed Tunney past the guard desk and down a long hallway to the end, where they came to a set of elevators.
They got on one and rode it up to the third floor.
Widow asked, "Aker isn't a part of that big law firm you mentioned then?"
"Aker? No. He's on his own."
They got off on three and walked down to the end of the hall, past offices until they reached a single office door in the back corner of the building.
A sign posted on the door read Aker's full name with his credentials at the end. It was all pretty simplistic.
The first room Widow and Tunney stepped into was a waiting room, set out in front of a secretary's station, which was just a desk and two filing cabinets, plus a few bookshelves with law books and a few fiction books.
The law books looked boring to Widow, but his eyes did hone in on the fiction section, which consisted of nearly forty books. Widow recognized them all.
It was the complete John Grisham library.
Widow had read some of them. He liked them. As his eyes, traced them he noticed they were in order from year published, starting with A Time to Kill.
Widow thought about Eggers and someone setting him on fire, a man who served in the same uniform that Widow had served.
The thought ignited something in him and the title of the first book registered in his mind.
A time to kill, indeed, he thought.
Beyond the secretary's desk, there was an open door. Widow saw Michael Aker standing in the middle of the room. He was facing in the other direction. He slid a bag off his shoulders and slipped out of a suit jacket. He straightened out the jacket and hung it on a hanger and hung it up on a coat rack.
He turned and saw Widow and Tunney.
"Widow, you made it."
Tunney said, "Sorry, we're late."
"That's okay. I just walked in myself."
He beckoned the two men into his office. First Tunney entered and Widow followed.
Tunney took a spot next to another bookshelf and leaned against it. He took gum out of his coat pocket and slipped a piece into his mouth. Widow saw it was nicotine gum.
"I'm glad you changed your mind," Aker said to Widow. "Please have a seat."
Widow took a seat in front of the desk.
Aker walked over to a temperature control panel on the wall and fooled with buttons. The whole thing was digital. He flipped through the setting until he found what he was looking for, which must've been heat because Widow heard it kick on and felt hot air blast the top of his hair.
"What changed your mind?"
"I guess in a way I never did change it. I always knew I would help out. Soon as I read that Eggers retired at my rank and he was in a similar position in his platoon."
Aker nodded along like he understood, but Widow knew he didn't. He was the kind of guy who had skipped the Navy recruiter stations at the job fairs at whatever high school he went to. Aker was a born lawyer. Widow didn't know him well, but he knew how to read people, and Aker was always destined for a job that required years of book learning.
Nothing wrong with that. Every bee colony that has ever existed couldn't thrive without the worker bees, the same as it couldn't thrive without the soldier bee.
Tunney was different. He caught on to what Widow was inferring right at the start.
He asked, "You a frogman?"
Another slang for Navy SEAL. That was two in twenty-four hours for Widow.
Widow nodded.
"Frogman?" Aker asked.
"Widow was a SEAL."
"Oh. Like a Marine?"
Tunney shot Ake
r a sideways glance, same as he had Widow back in the car, only this one had a punch to it.
"No. Not like a Marine. SEAL is a special operator."
Widow said, "It stands for United States Sea, Land and Air Teams. It's a special operator fighting force."
Tunney said, "They're the best of the best. Best in the world."
Aker asked, "At what?"
Tunney said, "At everything."
"We do whatever's necessary to save lives, defend America, defeat or disrupt the enemy overseas."
Aker nodded and asked, "Like Green Berets?"
Tunney said, "They wish they were as good as the SEALs."
Widow stayed quiet.
Aker said, "So, you want to help us find Eggers' daughter out of a sense of duty? Is that how it is?"
"Not exactly."
The answer surprised Tunney, who had already probed Widow about his interest in the fifty million dollars in stocks.
Aker asked, "Then what exactly is your interest?"
"It is out of a sense of duty, but not in helping you find his next of kin."
Tunney asked, "What then?"
"It's out of a sense of justice."
Tunney asked, "Justice?"
Aker asked, "What kind?"
Widow turned in his chair and looked back over his shoulder.
He asked, "We're all alone here, right?"
Aker said, "Yes."
Widow said, "I believe Eggers didn't light himself up by accident."
"He did it on purpose?"
"No. I believe he was murdered.”
Thirteen
"Murdered?" Aker asked. His jaw dropped and his eyes hung open wide.
Tunney had a similar expression.
Widow said, "Yes. I believe I've found evidence."
"What kind of evidence?" Tunney asked.
Widow reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the cut zip tie, the label for Clyde Brothers’ Whiskey with the broken glass stuck to the back of it, and the pair of bloody teeth. He laid them all out on Aker's desk.
"What the hell is that?" Aker asked, pointing at the teeth.
Tunney answered.
"Looks like bloody teeth."
"They are," Widow said. "I found them in a crack in the walkway near the bench where Eggers burned alive."
"Are they his?" Aker asked. He fanned out the fingers of both hands on his desk and leaned in to take a closer look.
Widow said, "I don't know. Just found them."
