Well, your basic good news, bad news,” Jose said outside on Pennsylvania Avenue.
“Good news?”
“The Bureau gets to handle the pussies at State.”
“And…?”
“We had to get the Bureau to-”
“-handle the pussies at State,” Frank finished. Jose was right. It did rankle, Randolph Emerson passing the buck to Atkins and the Bureau. Emerson making Jose and him come down, hat in hand, asking the big boys for help. It was a bush-league play.
“At least Atkins didn’t rub it in,” Jose said. “Now we can concentrate on finding Elvis.”
TWENTY-FIVE
I could ride to town on your lower lip,” Frank said.
Leon Janowitz threw his hands up. “Well, shit,” he said, “there goes my piece of the action.”
Jose fired the remote at the stereo. Dexter Gordon’s cut of “Don’t Explain” came on, all soft sax and cabaret piano.
“Atkins is just doing battle with the suits at State. You keep tracking Gentry on the Hill.” Frank tilted back in his chair and inspected Janowitz with a narrow-lidded look. “I thought a weekend at the Plaza’d mellow you out.”
“It did,” Janowitz said, pulling on his jacket and picking up his briefcase. “City’s gotten its act together.”
“Didn’t just happen,” Jose said.
Janowitz stood at the door, turning that over. “A message there, Hoser?”
“Just that it took work.”
“And some balls,” Janowitz snapped. He took the edge off with a smile. “I got a meeting with the subcommittee’s finance clerk,” he said, opening the door. “Thought about some leads over the weekend.”
Frank raised an eyebrow.
Janowitz caught the question, and his smile turned roguish. “You got to think sometime, even with Mrs. Janowitz in the Plaza.”
And like the Cheshire Cat, Janowitz left, leaving his smile hanging in the air.
Frank and Jose regarded the closed door.
Jose broke the silence. “Kid wants to kick some ass.”
“Most cops do, starting out. Then they lose it.”
Frank was still thinking about Janowitz’s goofy smile when he realized his phone was ringing.
“This is Detective Kearney.”
For a moment, silence, and Frank started to hang up. Then the woman’s voice came, unsteady, uncertain.
“I want to talk to Detective Kearney or Detective Phelps.”
Frank repeated softly, “Miss, this is Detective Kearney.”
Another silence followed. Frank heard vague office noise in the background, muted voices, canned music, doors opening and closing.
Then a sharp intake of breath and, “I heard you want to know about Tobias Crawfurd.”
“Yes.” Frank played the call gently. “Yes, we do.”
Yet more silence. The office sounds disappeared as though a hand had closed over the mouthpiece.
Oh, shit, she’s going to hang up!
He forced himself to speak slowly, softly. “Miss… if you want to talk, we can meet you anywhere. Anytime. You name it.”
Glass-and-stainless-steel buildings surrounded a pocket square that had been turned into a park. A handful of small trees broke up the concrete sameness, and repro nineteenth-century park benches offered islands where office workers ate lunches of deli sandwiches or salads brought from home in Tupperware and brown bags. It was midafternoon, the park empty except for a man on a cell phone, and farther off, two women sitting together, smoking and talking.
“Sure this the place?” Jose asked, eyeing the unfamiliar buildings.
“Beautiful downtown Rosslyn, Virginia,” Frank said, pointing to a corner bench from which they could cover the approaches into the park.
European settlers in the late seventeenth century built the first houses in Rosslyn, just across the Potomac from the tobacco port that was Georgetown. But Rosslyn’s notorious growth came later, when the District of Columbia outlawed usury and handguns. Pawnshop owners and gun dealers crossed the river and set up shop in Rosslyn where enterprising criminals could rearm and fence their loot on the same block.
In 1899, the District of Columbia again spurred growth in Rosslyn, this time by passing the Heights of Building Act, which prohibited private structures in the District higher than the Capitol “or other significant government edifices.”
Fortune 500 companies that wanted to do business with the government also wanted imposing offices, and in Rosslyn they could reach skyward with glass and stainless steel. The resulting skyline was a pimple compared with New York, but it towered over the low-lying District buildings across the river. And thus the banks and defense contractors drove out the pawnshops and gun dealers.
“Bet that’s her.” Jose watched a young black woman cross the street. She stopped at a curbside vendor’s.
Frank noticed her survey the park as she paid for a bottle of water. She wore a modest dark brown skirt and a flowered blouse.
“More women ought to dress that way,” Frank said.
The woman entered the park and walked straight to Frank and Jose. Both men stood.
“You’re Detective Phelps,” she said to Jose, then, turning to Frank, “and you’re Detective Kearney.”
Jose reached for his badge case.
“I know who you are.” The woman’s voice matched the voice on the phone, but was now confident, as though, decision made, she wasn’t going back.
“And you’re…?” Jose asked.
Water bottle in her left hand, she brushed her right hand over her bottom, smoothing her skirt, and sat down on the L-shaped bench.
“Does it matter?” she asked, looking up at the two detectives.
Frank and Jose sat.
Jose nodded. “It’s comforting to know who you’re talking to. You do. We don’t.”
The woman considered this while twisting the bottle cap.
“Alta Rae,” she said, unscrewing the cap.
“Alta Rae what?” Jose asked.
She frowned. “Walsh.”
Frank anted first. “Pencil Crawfurd.”
Walsh frowned again. “Tobias,” she corrected. “What do you want to know?”
“Where he is.”
“You been by his place.”
“He hadn’t been there since he left the hospital. You got any ideas?”
“Don’t know,” Walsh said. “Don’t care.”
“Well,” Frank said, “I guess what we want to know is what you want to tell us.”
“We were… we lived together for seven years.” The telephone uncertainty crept back into Walsh’s voice.
“Tell us about it,” Jose said gently. “We’re not in a hurry.”
Walsh glanced at her watch.
“Met him,” she began, “I’d just graduated… 1992. I knew he’d been in jail. Knew he and Skeeter were into dealing. But he treated me respectful. Mama warned me, but…” Walsh shrugged.
“Him and Skeeter,” Jose said, “how’d that work?”
“They were close. Almost like brothers. I asked Tobias once, how it was Skeeter, being younger, Tobias went along. Tobias said Skeeter did the thinking, he did the doing.”
“What kind of doing?” Jose asked.
Walsh sipped at her water. “He called it persuadin’.”
Jose exchanged a glance with Frank. Frank eyed a no, so Jose followed up.
“But it wasn’t persuading, was it?” Jose said.
“No.” Walsh’s voice came in low and slow.
“Tobias killed people.”
Walsh looked around the park with a trapped expression, and Frank was certain she was going to bug out.
“He did, didn’t he?” Jose asked, quietly but firmly. “Kill people?”
Walsh nodded. She didn’t say anything for a while. Then, “Skeeter did too,” she whispered defiantly.
Very carefully, Frank probed. “He… Tobias… ever talk about it…? Details?”
“I didn’t want to know,”
she said. She hugged herself, bending forward as though in pain. The words came out in a rush. “I was goin’ to have his baby, we needed money, and I didn’t ask.”
Jose waited a moment, then took over. “The dealing… Tobias talk about that? What he was doing and all?”
“Some.” Walsh ran her hand over her hair, captured a strand and twisted it nervously with her fingertips. “He’d come in all excited. Tell me how he and Skeeter took over somebody’s territory… how many street dealers he had workin’ for him… his travelin’.”
“Travel? Where to?”
“South America. Skeeter and him.”
“You know where in South America?”
Walsh shook her head. “I told you, I didn’t want to know. He’d come back, tell me how he was gonna take me with him down there.” She paused. Her lips pulled into a thin disapproving line. “Never did, though. Shuckin’ and jivin’. Just shuckin’ and jivin’.”
Jose backtracked. “You said you didn’t want to know about Tobias killing anybody.”
“Yes.”
“How’d you know that was going on?”
“He’d brag on it. Like the travelin’. I’d tell him I didn’t want to hear. He’d brag anyway. Like it got him a rush.”
Jose’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Tobias say any names?”
Walsh closed her eyes so tightly that her mouth pursed. Her face put Frank in mind of a child squenching up its face to shut out something scary.
“Zelmer Austin?” Jose tried.
“I don’t remember,” she said without hesitation, and Frank knew she was lying.
“You don’t remember if Tobias said any names?” Jose persisted. “Or you don’t remember the names?”
Eyes still closed, Walsh shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said in a rising tone, “and I don’t want to talk any more about it.”
The three sat without speaking.
Walsh opened her eyes. “He left me and Samuel. He left his boy. Just… walked out.” She said it to no one else, just to herself.
Frank had to strain to hear, and he realized that what she’d come to tell was a story about a woman and a man and love and betrayal.
He led her on. “When was that?”
“Two years ago.”
“He helping out?” Jose asked.
Walsh lost her wistfulness. “I don’t need his money,” she said sharply to Jose. “I used to think money was important. Don’t want it. Not what Samuel needs… he needs a father. Boy growing up needs a man around. Money…” She curled her lip in contempt.
“Did you ever worry about him going back to jail?” Frank asked.
“All the time. ’Specially after I had Samuel. First time I said something, he laughed at me. Told me not to worry. I couldn’t help but worry. Tobias and Skeeter… all the money. I knew they had to be dealin’ bigger. I kept worryin’. We’d fight about my worryin’.”
“He ever tell you why not to worry?” Jose asked.
Walsh nodded. “He said he and Skeeter had insurance. That nobody’d come down on them.”
“He tell you why?”
Frank listened as Jose asked the question. He was holding his breath as Walsh took it in and thought about it.
“He said he saw a meeting Skeeter had.”
Jose hesitated, then asked, “A meeting?”
“Unh-hunh.”
“What’d he say about the meeting?”
“He said one day Skeeter told him he had a meeting. A big deal. He wanted Tobias to make sure he wasn’t bein’ set up.”
“How’d Tobias do that?”
“He said he went out before… to watch the meetin’ place. He watched to make sure it wasn’t a setup… you know, a trap or something. Then he call Skeeter on his cell. Tell him it was clear.”
“Where was the meeting place?” Jose asked.
“Golf course.”
Jose did a slow take. “Golf… course?”
“That one down at Hains Point.”
“Skeeter played golf?”
For the first time, she smiled. “No. The man Skeeter was to meet parked in the lot and waited. When Skeeter came, the man got in Skeeter’s car.”
Jose did the eye-exchange again with Frank. This time Frank gave him a nod. Jose sat back as Frank leaned forward ever so slightly.
“When was this, Alta Rae?” Frank said.
“The same time he and I… Tobias and I… same time we met.”
“That’d be June 1992?”
“Yes.”
“He say who it was, Skeeter met?”
Walsh shook her head.
Frank looked at Jose and gave it back over.
“Last question,” Jose said.
“Yes?”
“Why’d you call us?”
Walsh eyed the two detectives.
“You thinkin’ it’s because I’m angry at him.”
“You certainly got grounds,” Jose said.
Walsh shook her head.
“Because a my boy.” Her jaw tightened and lines hardened around her mouth. “I’m gonna shut the door on all that shit his daddy got into and didn’t know how to get out of. That shit’s gonna kill his daddy. It’s not gonna kill Samuel.”
She checked her watch. “I gotta be back.”
“Where’s that?” Jose asked.
She pointed to the tall, silvery airfoil-shaped building that was the home of USA Today.
“I’m the senior receptionist,” she said proudly. “I got benefits and they’re payin’ for school.”
“School?”
“American University,” she said, the tilt of pride still in her voice. “Finish up in June. Gonna be a paralegal.”
Frank and Jose watched her walk away.
“Good luck, lady,” Jose breathed. “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
I n high heels and carrying two-year-old Samuel, Alta Rae Walsh managed to stay on the treadmill until the man in the suit threw a massive switch and the treadmill picked up speed and Alta Rae stumbled once, then twice, and holding her son with one hand reached out for support and came up with empty air and the treadmill sped on…
“No!”
Frank bolted upright.
The telephone was ringing and Monty was looking up from the pillow beside him and the clock was saying two-seventeen a.m.
TWENTY-SIX
I came up here to smoke,” the slender nut-brown man named Alem said.
“Up here” was the rooftop of McKinney’s Auto Storage, a grim four-story garage of time-stained raw concrete on Half Street, just down from the DMV inspection station.
“You see, the manager will not let us smoke in the office.” Alem said it almost apologetically. “So I came up here to smoke, and then I notice…” The man paused delicately, as though worried he might offend. “I notice,” he repeated, “the odor.”
A dust-covered Trans Am squatted in the headlights of a squad car. Off to the side, a Forensics van and a meat wagon from the M.E.’s Office. The slightest wisp of breeze carried a pungent rotten sweetness to Frank and he noticed that the techs and the uniformed officers were standing upwind from the car.
“I then call nine-one-one.” Alem looked at Frank and Jose anxiously. “I hope I do the right thing.”
Jose took a breath and exhaled loudly. “You did, Mr. Alem. How long’s the car been here?”
“It will be on the ticket… under the windshield wiper. I smell that”-he pointed to the Trans Am-“I do not touch the car. I do not touch it anywhere.” His anxious look returned. “I do right? Yes?”
“Yes,” Jose said. “Nobody notice it before? Anybody say anything? About the smell?”
Alem shook his head. “Up here is long-term storage. There is no elevator, so…”
“Thank you, Mr. Alem,” Jose said.
“Blessingame answered the nine-one-one,” Frank explained to Jose as the two walked toward the Trans Am, “ran the tag through DMV.”
Two f
orensic techs were going over a checklist on a clipboard placed on the hood of the Trans Am. The older of the two looked up as Frank and Jose approached.
“We’ve done the outside,” the tech said. “Considerable latents. Picked up soil samples out of the fenders, off the tires. Tread casts made.”
“You satisfied?” Frank asked, knowing what was next and not really wanting to know.
“I said we’re done,” the tech answered crossly.
“Okay,” Frank told Blessingame, “open it up.”
With screeching sideways motions, Blessingame worked the edge of the pry bar deep under the trunk lid. He paused to gather strength, then with a massive effort heaved downward on the pry bar.
With a metallic protest, the trunk popped open.
The death smell rolled across the rooftop-thick and putrid, violating the night air, instantaneously filling the lungs with dread.
A collective gasp from the techs and the cops. Mixed curses… “Jesus Christ” along with “motherfucker.”
It was the smell of just beyond. Of that which waited around the corner. You came on it, you knew it. Even the first time, you knew it for what it was. The inevitable. The end.
The Trans Am’s alarm warbled, then climbed into a satanic screeching.
“Mornin’, Pencil,” Frank heard Jose saying.
Crawfurd lay faceup, legs drawn up, knees to chest. His throat had been cut ear to ear. His tongue had been pulled through the opening, and it hung obscenely down his chest.
The digital clock in the autopsy suite said four forty-seven a.m. when Tony Upton snapped off his latex gloves and tossed them into the waste receptacle. Pencil Crawfurd lay on a stainless-steel table. The noisy overhead hood was working hard, but it failed to pull the odor away. Frank found himself wishing he hadn’t given up cigarettes.
“Time of death?” Upton surveyed the corpse before him. “Preliminary estimate based on putrefaction, blowfly larvae, staphylinidae… I’d say about three days. Looks like somebody worked him over before. Be able to give you a better fix after the examination. You staying?”
Frank exchanged glances with Jose. He turned back to Upton. “No. Hoser and I are going to check out his place.”
“I could send out for ribs after,” Upton offered, a damper of disappointment in his voice.
A Murder of Justice Page 16
