I decided after meeting with this Clarence person, I would go visit Frankie at the DC jail. At the very least, he needed to see a friendly face and I had to do something to learn more before the police started paying attention to local media, and threw me in the slammer too.
Since my eyes were starting to feel heavy, I double checked all doors to ensure they were locked and was about to shut off the kitchen lights when the phone startled me. Hoping it was Howard saying he’d be home soon, I grabbed it quickly. “Hello?”
“Barb?” The voice was not Howard’s.
“Who is this?”
“Guy Mertz.”
“What? Benedict Arnold, you say?”
“You hate me.”
“Gee, you think?”
“We need to talk.”
This seemed to be a recurring theme in my life these days. “Talk about what? You want a one-on-one interview so you can rake my reputation over the coals some more?”
“It’s about Frankie Romano. I have proof that he’s innocent.”
Why, I wondered, were these crazies calling me instead of the police? Who did they think I was, Miss Marple?
Chapter Six
Guy’s explanation for not approaching the police was thin and convoluted. Something about “protection of the press” and not wanting to “cross a line.” It all sounded like ten tons of baloney to me, but he kept pressing, so just to shut him up, I agreed to a meeting.
Plagued with concern about Frankie and the two bizarre informant calls mixed with a longing desire to cuddle up against Howard’s warm body, I tossed and turned most of the night. I didn’t manage more than two hours of decent sleep and by morning, needed an IV infusion of caffeine to kick-start my body into action.
After promising Callie an extra dollar an hour for watching Bethany and Amber, I waved good-bye to Mama Marr as she drove away in my mother’s red Mini Cooper. Then I hit the road myself for a day of truth-seeking.
First on my to-do list was meeting Clarence at the reflecting pool near the Lincoln Memorial at noon. Next, I’d arranged to hear what Guy Mertz had to say—he said he would be at a hot dog stand on Constitution Avenue at one o’clock. This was good—I’d get an unhealthy lunch before heading to my final destination: the DC jail where they were holding Frankie. A quick check of the DC Government website had informed me that a person could only visit on certain days based on the inmate’s last name. Luckily, Tuesday was my day to visit Frankie. Otherwise, I would have to wait two days. Then, I had to wrap it all up in time to get back home and get dinner on the table before heading to my hand gun lesson with Colt at Straight Shooters Indoor Range. A few months earlier we’d been scheduled for a similar lesson, but that got interrupted by a trio of fugitive bank robbers with a different plan for my evening.
The day was typical for a DC summer—hot and swamp-muggy. The sun boiled the humid air to a thick haze. I’d pulled my hair into a pony tail, topped my head with a yellow visor, and covered my eyes with my favorite pair of Jackie O sunglasses. I was summer chic and reasonably guarded against the intense sun.
In the pocket of my shorts was a new friend: a can of mace. I’d been kidnapped two too many times and learned my lesson the hard way. These days I didn’t venture to the mailbox without my pepper spray.
By the time I reached the Memorial, my t-shirt was clinging to me like a wet rag and my throat was parched. I bought a bottle of water from a street vendor and sipped while I scanned the area near the reflecting pool for a man in a red baseball cap. The reflecting pool is a rectangular, man-made pond that stretches expansively between the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument. It's long and shallow, just like most political speeches. It’s lined on both sides by walking paths dotted with benches for weary tourists in need of rest and/or a possible hip replacement. Currently, a brown-haired woman reading a book occupied one bench and a young couple with a cranky toddler in a stroller sat at another, but there was no man in a red baseball cap. I looked across the pool at the benches closest to the Memorial. Not a baseball cap could be seen, red or otherwise. I checked my watch—five minutes after twelve, so I wasn’t especially late. Feeling as cranky as the screaming baby, I meandered to an empty bench and sat, wondering if the mysterious Clarence was watching me from hiding.
A male jogger passed by, dripping sweat and looking like he might keel over with his next step. Somehow, I couldn’t imagine that running in this kind of heat and humidity was going to help prolong anyone’s life. I felt certain that my own laid-back form of exercise (i.e. walking to the mailbox once a day) was far healthier in the long run—pun intended.
Another jogger appeared. He had longish blond hair and a small goatee. He wasn’t drenched in sweat and even more unusual, he wasn’t really dressed for jogging—he wore cargo shorts and a white t-shirt with a picture of Alfred Hitchcock on the front. As he ran past—far too slowly for a real jogger—he whistled some sort of sinister tune.
The couple with the cranky toddler got up and left. Hitchcock Jogger was giving me the heebie-jeebies, so I switched benches. A minute later he was back, running in the other direction and he was whistling the same tune, only louder now. As he approached, he slowed down until he was nearly jogging in place right in front of me.
I tried to ignore him by twisting around and watching a couple of ducks in the reflecting pool, but the harder I ignored, the louder his whistling grew. I was plotting a quick dash to the nearby Park Police kiosk when he stopped whistling and whispered, “Say it.”
I turned back around. Truthfully, besides the fact that he was behaving stranger than Anthony Perkins in Psycho, he actually looked fairly harmless. His face was soft and young and his eyes warm and familiar.
Against what would be considered better judgment, I responded. “Are you talking to me?”
“Say it,” he whispered again.
“Say what?”
“The code word.”
Light bulb.
“Are you Clarence?” I asked.
“Depends,” he whispered, still jogging in place, but looking around, as if he were being very clandestine. “Do you know the code word?”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” I sighed. “Casablanca. The code word is Casablanca. By the way, you’re not wearing a red baseball cap and what’s that ridiculous tune you’re whistling?”
He grabbed at his head in surprise. “Oh!” He reached into one of the pockets in his shorts, pulled out a red cap and waved it in front of me. “Sorry. Forgot the hat.” He plopped down on the bench next to me. “Man it’s hot out here. You could swim in this air.” He positioned the cap on his head, gave a suspicious Inspector Clouseau inspection survey of the area, then whispered, “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
Despite his over-the-top secretive behavior, there was something about this young guy I kind of liked. I suspected he needed a friend or two if he acted like this all of the time. “Well,” I said, “I’m not going to stick around if you continue to whisper and I am going to have to demand that you look at me while we talk. I’m pretty sure that by now, anyone following us knows that we’re having a conversation.”
He shot me a sly smile. “‘As Time Goes By.’”
“Is that another code word?”
“Come on, Miss Chick at the Flix dot com—‘As Time Goes By’—that’s the song I was whistling.”
Another light bulb.
I had to suppress a giggle. “From Casablanca, of course.” Poor Clarence was in sore need of whistling lessons. His “As Time Goes By” sounded more like a bad blues version of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”
“Casablanca—one of my favorite movies,” I said.
“I know.”
“You do?”
“Your website.”
Right. I kept forgetting how much people could learn about me from my website. An uncomfortable side effect of putting yourself out there on the internet. “Listen, you seem like a nice guy and all, but we need to get to the nitty-gritty here. I have to be somewhere at on
e o’clock.”
Clarence nodded. “I have something . . .” He started to stand and reach for his right cargo pocket at the same time when two hands landed on his shoulders, stopping him.
“Not so fast, buddy,” said a voice behind us.
I looked up, not surprised, but very happy to see who it was. “Colt! You came.”
“Colt?” Clarence shouted, jumping so hard that he broke free of Colt’s grip and fell onto the graveled path, nearly tripping another passing jogger. After a second, he righted himself and stood, panting heavily. He looked like a guilty child terrified that he might get a spanking for breaking his dad’s new Blu-ray player.
I rose carefully from the bench, trying not to startle him. “Clarence,” I said. “This is my friend, Colt. He’s okay. You can trust him.”
“Colt?” Clarence repeated, the fearful look on his face growing.
“Dude,” Colt added, spreading his hands out to show he didn’t have any weapons, “everything’s cool so long as you keep your hands out of your pockets.”
Poor Clarence just wasn’t calming down. He paced in tiny steps and mumbled incoherently causing passers-by to take notice and eye the three of us with suspicion.
“Listen,” I continued, talking in soothing tones like I do to my kitties when rounding them up for their monthly flea treatment. “I just want to help my friend, Frankie, and you said you had information—”
“Deal over!” Clarence shouted. The terror on his face was replaced with anger. “I thought I was ready, but I’m not!” He tore off across the grass and through the trees.
I slapped Colt about a hundred times. “Look what you did!”
“You’re the one who asked me to come!”
“He wanted to show me something. He was just pulling it from his pocket.”
“What if he wanted to show you a knife or a gun?”
“I thought you had a date with Meeeeeee-gan.” I exaggerated the ee. I couldn’t help myself. The name simply begged for exaggeration.
We argued like an old married couple for a few more minutes until I realized I was now running up against the clock for my meeting with Guy Mertz. I told Colt about it, and he insisted on coming along despite my argument that he’d already scared off one informant. He promised to be discreet, so we marched off down the path toward the White House.
Twice along the way, we caught a glimpse of Clarence tailing us. Evidently Colt hadn’t scared him as badly as we thought. His attempts to be covert were weak: each time we turned around, he ducked behind a tree. He wasn’t very stealthy, to say the least.
Twenty hot, soggy minutes later we stood exhausted on the corner of 17th and Constitution looking across the street at the hot dog stand where I had agreed to meet Guy. A man wearing Guy’s signature fedora and holding an umbrella stood nearby.
“Must . . . have . . . water . . .” Colt groaned. We’d long since drained the bottle I’d bought earlier.
“I’ll bring a couple of bottles back. I think that’s Guy over there now. You stay here.”
“Make it quick. I feel seconds away from total dehydration.”
The light at the intersection turned green and the pedestrian crossing signal told me to go. I started to step off the curb, but the sound of a car’s revving engine and squealing tires stopped me dead in my tracks. The next thing I knew, Colt was shouting, “Curly!” and tackling me to the ground. Gunfire sounded around us. Screams mingled with the deafening pops that seemed to go on and on and on while Colt held my head down, shielding me with his own body. Moments after the gunfire stopped, the shrill sound of a thousand sirens filled the air. We were one block from the White House—I nearly expected an Air Force fighter to swoop by.
When I was finally able to lift my head, I realized that my Jackie O sunglasses had been crushed, my face was covered in tears and I was trembling uncontrollably.
Certain that we had just witnessed a terrorist attack firsthand, I gasped when my eyes finally landed on the hot dog stand where I had been headed. The mobile van was full of holes. The vendor inside was sprawled facedown over the counter and two bodies lay lifeless on the sidewalk. One of them, I was pretty sure, was Guy Mertz.
And when I turned my head away because it was too awful to watch, I caught sight of Clarence again, running for real this time, fast from the scene.
Chapter Seven
The FBI and Secret Service descended upon the scene like locusts onto a ripe summer crop. No Air Force fighters showed up, but two mean-looking, armed helicopters circled closely overhead, blowing dirt and stray pieces of trash around.
We were instructed to stay put by an officious and curt man with a badge; no potential witness could leave until interviewed by an agent. When I asked if we could leave briefly to buy some bottled water, he said only if we wanted to be arrested on the spot. So there we sat, baking and steaming as the sun glared in a high, cloudless sky. If we’d been shrimp, we’d already be cooked and ready for cocktail sauce.
Constitution Avenue is six lanes wide, so between the distance and the sheer number of emergency vehicles on the scene, it was nearly impossible to see what was transpiring at the toasted hot dog stand. Guy Mertz may have smeared my name badly in his report, but I didn’t wish him dead. I hoped dearly that he wasn’t one of the bodies splayed on the sidewalk.
It was summer in Washington, DC, which meant there were easily two hundred tourists on or around Constitution Avenue at the time of the shooting. They all milled around now, waiting. Or rather, drooping.
Immediately after the shooting, people had bristled with a sort of excitement, actively sharing their experiences—“Did you see that car?” “It was black.” “No, it was dark green.” “There were two cars.” “There was a red car with three men and they all had guns and ski masks.” “It was a blue SUV and I think it was a female shooter with an assault rifle.” “Someone said they saw a man with a bomb strapped to his body and he was heading for the White House.” It was all a load of bull doo-doo. Colt was trained to make quick and accurate observations and he said the drive-by shooting was committed by two men, one caucasion, one Latino, driving a navy blue Lexus with Maryland plates. He couldn’t see the firearm, but from the sound, he suspected a 12 gauge semi-auto shotgun.
But ten minutes later, people were tired of talking or were too parched to open their mouths comfortably. Many started sitting and even laying down. When a nursing mother fainted, the FBI brought in a van full of water bottles which a PR crew distributed faster than a sexually twisted politician checking himself into “rehab.”
Colt and I were draining our bottles when an agent finally approached us. She was tall, slim, dressed in black pants and a white t-shirt and I knew her only too well. So did Colt.
“Well, if it isn’t Mrs. Marr.” She managed to crack half a wry smile while wiping sweat from her dripping brow. My head hurt just looking at how tightly she had her thin black hair pulled into that pony tail.
I acknowledged her in return. “Agent Smith.”
Agent Marjorie Smith and I had worked together reluctantly during the FBI Mafia sting operation that brought Frankie and I together as friends. She was all business then, and I didn’t expect her to be any different now.
She gave Colt a terse nod. “Colt Baron, right?”
“You have a good memory,” he said. “Any chance you can make this quick so we can get a move on?”
“We’ll take it as quickly or slowly as necessary to get the information required.”
Another agent stepped alongside Agent Smith. He was shorter than her and looked to be about Howard’s age. His eyes were concealed behind a pair of aviator shades and the line of his mouth was thin and tight.
“Leo, this is Marr’s wife,” Agent Smith told the new arrival.
His posture changed immediately and a smile appeared. “No kidding?” He took my hand and shook it firmly. “I’m Agent Leonard Price—nice to meet you. We’re really sorry to see him go. He’s been an incredible asset to the Bureau.
”
My ears perked up and out of the corner of my eye I spotted Colt cringing.
“Where’s he going?” I asked.
“Oh, I just meant we’re sorry he’s retiring.” Poor Agent Price obviously didn’t know that he’d just dropped a secret bomb on me, but I could tell that Colt did.
“Oh, right,” I said, trying to keep calm and nodding as if I were the properly informed wife. “The retirement.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. At least not anything that was appropriate for public audiences. Howard had kept his job with the FBI secret from me for nearly twenty years, so why should I be surprised that I wasn’t informed when he decided to leave? I decided to change the subject. I asked them, as nonchalantly as I could, whether one of the shooting victims was the newscaster, Guy Mertz.
Agent Smith shook her head. “We can’t discuss that with you. We just need to know what you saw, if anything.”
“Nothing,” Colt said. “We didn’t see a thing.”
Even though I was shocked to hear him blurt out that lie, I tried to act cool, which wasn’t easy when the sidewalk under our feet could double as a diner grill.
Smith narrowed her eyes. “You’re awfully close to have seen nothing, Mr. Baron.”
“We were clear back there,” he pointed toward the Washington Memorial, “when we heard gunfire and ran closer, but we were too far away at the time of the incident for a visual.”
She wasn’t buying it. “You ran toward the gunfire?”
“I’m that kind of guy.”
She eyed me with equal suspicion. “Are you just that kind of woman, Mrs. Marr? Do you run toward gunfire?”
“Hey, I was just following him.”
“And those sunglasses,” she pointed to the pieces in my hand. “Did they break during the mad dash?”
Boy, they trained those agents well. She wasn’t missing a trick. Luckily for me, I have kids and have learned the fine art of fibbing on a dime. “Rogue Frisbee,” I said, adding a giggle for good measure. “On the mall—last time I’ll walk through the middle of an ultimate Frisbee match.” I brought a flat hand up to my nose to duplicate the fake event. “Hit me right between the eyes.”
Silenced by the Yams (A Barbara Marr Murder Mystery #3) Page 5
