Cold Frame

by P. T. Deutermann

  * * *

  Av took a long drink of water and let out a prolonged sigh. Well, hotshot, he thought, you know how to break a deal, don’t you. Then Colonel Lawson came in, with two of the guards. He looked down at Av, then started shaking his head. It reminded Av of the day in the office with the big coffee spill. Then the colonel picked up the chair Mandeville had upset and sat down in it. He indicated for the two guards to also sit down.

  “Sergeant,” he said. “Meet Captain Phillips, Marines, and Captain Walston, Army JAG.”

  “Officers?” Av asked.

  “We’re all officers here, Sergeant,” the colonel explained. “This is a DOD training facility as well as a federal detention facility. We’ve got both Army and Marines. We rotate officers through here so they can be deployed later into situations requiring that we hold prisoners who are more than just enemy soldiers. One of the outtakes from the Abu Ghraib affair.”

  Av was bewildered. Every time he thought he knew who he was dealing with, they surprised him. The colonel didn’t stop there.

  “I listened to that guy’s rant about something called the DMX. Do you really know what that is?”

  “Unfortunately, I think I do,” Av said. “And that probably is why I’m here. I thought he said he wanted no recordings?”

  “I must have missed that, Sergeant Smith,” the colonel said. “That often happens. I didn’t like the discussion about murdering people. He seemed to think it was okay.”

  Av sat back in his chair. “Like I told the Grand Dragon,” he said. “I’m just an ordinary homicide detective. Lately I got assigned to something Metro PD calls the Interagency Liaison Bureau.” He went on to describe the Briar Patch and what its mission was. The colonel nodded.

  “We have something similar at Marine Corps Headquarters,” he said. “There’s the Corps, and then there’s the counterterrorism circus. I fully understand the concept of a tarbaby.”

  “Well, this all started with a tarbaby. We shopped it to the Bureau, and then went on about our business. Or so we thought. Spooks began to drop out of trees. Everybody lying about who he was or what he did or who he worked for. Then I get grabbed up by the Bureau, I think, and sent here. And, apparently, this is all legal?”

  “This is all authorized,” the colonel said. “Personally, I suspect that none of it’s legal, but then, consider the outfit that’s running the show these days. Legal doesn’t figure big in this administration, as you may have noticed. But: the threat is real, the bad guys are coming, and that seems to mean that anything goes.”

  “I didn’t actually believe that some big kahuna at the National Security Council was dabbling in homicide,” Av said. “Now that I’ve met him, I do.”

  “And you want to do something about that?”

  “Hell, yes. And about this secret gestapo-style detention bullshit, too. I’ll bet this place is another one of the DHS’s bright ideas.”

  “This program is way above my pay grade, Sergeant Smith.”

  Av shook his head. “Nice try, Colonel,” he said, “but you, a commissioned officer, are participating in a program that is arresting and imprisoning American citizens without even a hearing, much less a trial, access to counsel, and a conviction. There will be a day of reckoning over what’s been going on here, if not a full-scale revolution, and either way, you and everyone else who’s just been ‘following orders’ is going to face some real consequences. I’m thinking Nuremberg trials, here, Colonel. Remember those?”

  The colonel stared at him for almost thirty seconds. Then he excused the two captains. Av sensed that they seemed to be really glad to get out of that room.

  When the door closed, the colonel took a small remote out of his pocket and clicked the camera above the door back on. “In light of what you have disclosed to me, Detective Sergeant Kenneth Smith of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department,” he announced to the otherwise empty room, “I am of the opinion that you have been wrongly detained in this facility. I am not permitted to just let you go, but I can turn you over to any law enforcement agency, federal or local, who can be held accountable for your whereabouts once you leave this facility. So: Sergeant Smith. Do you want to make a phone call?”

  NINETEEN

  The who-you-gonna-call decision had been a no-brainer, and Wong Daddy had ridden to Av’s rescue in grand style. Somehow he’d managed to appropriate a large, black Expedition, with tinted windows and bristling with all the LE trimmings. He’d also brought along three huge black men, all outfitted in MPD SWAT gear. Even the marines were impressed when they saw the four guys who’d come to pick up the shaved-head police sergeant. Wong had signed Av out, listing his title as the principal deputy assistant manager, Interagency Liaison Bureau, Metropolitan Police Department. No one in the admin office had so much as blinked an eye.

  Once out on I-95 they headed north to an interchange featuring a Holiday Inn Express, where they pulled off and let the three other guys, all members of Wong’s sumo gambling club and not police at all, get out to pick up their own ride, a retired UPS truck decked out as an urban camper. Wong took the federal license plate off the Expedition and replaced it with a civilian plate. After promises of beers owed and profuse thanks from Av, the three linebackers disappeared up the interstate.

  “Hungry?” Wong asked. Av knew that that was Wong-speak for: I’m hungry.

  “Sure,” he said. “A beer would be good, too.”

  Wong reached behind him and fished a Yuengling lager out of a slush-filled cooler parked behind the right front seat. He casually thumbed off the cap and passed the bottle to Av. Thankful for the tinted windows, Av took an appreciative pull. Wong continued north on I-95, matching his speedometer to the interstate number, along with at least a third of the cars out there.

  “So WTF,” Wong said. “How’d you end up in a federal pen?”

  “Did anybody miss me?” Av asked.

  “Precious said you were ‘on assignment,’ on some kinda ‘special project,’ at an ‘undisclosed location.’”

  “She actually say that shit?”

  “Nah,” Wong replied with a grin. “Said she had no idea where you were and to get our lazy asses back to work while she worked on that problem.”

  “Mau-Mau and Miz Brown get their papers in?”

  Wong grinned again. “Didn’t happen,” he said. “Chief Happy got wind of it, called ’em both in and told them he was still waiting for an opportunity to fire their asses, so their requests were denied. So: the Petersburg pen?”

  Av told him the story of getting snatched up by a bunch of feds, threatened by some high pooh-bah at the Hoover building, and then being taken to the quiet room, as Mandeville had called it. He described how the place worked, and finally, his interview with the big man himself. He concluded with the observation that he thought that Mandeville was certifiable.

  Wong nodded in agreement, and then looked in his rearview mirror. There was a set of headlights pretty close in. Wong was doing ninety. This guy wanted to pass? He said something to Av, who looked in the right side mirror. The guy was practically drafting on them. Wong muttered something and turned off the cruise control. The big SUV began to slow.

  Av had a sudden funny feeling about this.

  “You got a gun handy?” he asked.

  Wong, concentrating on the headlights behind him, did a cross-draw and handed Av his .45. Av looked again in his right side mirror. The headlights of their pursuer were so bright he almost couldn’t see. He let his window down, took off his seat belt and turned sideways. He rested the muzzle of the .45 on the windowsill, holding it with both hands against the sudden blast of wind.

  The car behind them finally jerked to the right and then came up alongside them on Av’s side. At first Av thought he was going to roar past, but he didn’t. Wong reengaged the cruise and the big SUV accelerated. The car on the right kept pace, and then Av saw the driver’s side window coming down.

  There he was: the man who’d sent them scrambling down the bank
s in Rock Creek Park. He was looking over at Av with absolutely no expression on his face. Then he saw Av’s gun, at just about the same time as Av fired three shots in quick succession. A cloud of windshield glass blossomed in the slipstream between the two cars before the other man fell back. Av looked in the mirror and saw what looked like a lot of smoke and road dust as cars in the right lane hit the brakes and tried to avoid the rapidly decelerating vehicle in front of them. Finally, their pursuer drifted off the road onto the berm and then was lost from view as they went around a broad curve on the interstate.

  “Get the fucker?” Wong asked calmly, back to maintaining ninety in the speed lane. There were no cars behind them, for the moment.

  “Warning shot,” Av said. “That was the guy who tuned us up with a twelve-gauge down in Rock Creek Park the other evening,” he said. “He must have been staking out the Petersburg facility.”

  “Working for?”

  “I’m guessing this is Mandeville’s guy,” Av said. “The big kahuna must really not have liked my tone of voice.”

  “Fuck him if he can’t take a joke,” Wong said. “Let’s eat.”

  He took the next exit and headed down a typical Virginia interstate exit complex of hamburger joints, gas stations, motels, strip malls, nail salons, and a collection of other buildings whose dominant architectural feature was quivering neon.

  “Where we going?” Av asked.

  “Relative of mine runs a Korean barbecue joint right next door to the VHP station. Cop place. Good chow, cold beer. No civilians.”

  As advertised, the place was right next door to the Virginia Highway Patrol station. Wong pulled the Expedition into the VHP lot and parked. They then went next door to a place whose sign read: ROK GARDEN. If anybody in the station saw the SUV with the tinted windows and all those antennae, they paid it no attention. Wong asked what Av liked and he went for the BBQ chicken, minus any kimchi. Wong did the ordering, which for Wong included beer, rice, and several small bowls of things that Av was pretty sure were trying to make eye contact with him. It was a half hour after shift change at the VHP and there were several staties in the place. The lady running the place had greeted Wong like a long-lost child. Av asked how the place kept civilians out. Wong explained that if unwanted civilians came in, they were seated politely and then the waiter brought out a bottle of Vietnamese nuoc mam, or fermented fish sauce, and uncorked it at the table. That inevitably led to an immediate evacuation, sometimes in the physiological sense.

  Once Wong had put away several dishes of food, he let out an extraordinary belch that made all the cops in the room jump and someone in the kitchen cheer. Wong patted his large stomach and then picked up on the discussion in the car.

  “So they picked you up, did some razzle-dazzle at the Hoover building, then sent you to Petersburg, told you not to talk for a whole weekend, then some White House big dog showed his teeth at you, and then the jungle bunnies let you go? Just like that? Don’t figure, partner. Need to check your shoes for a tracker button or something.”

  “Don’t need to,” Av said. “There was a microdrone hovering over your Expedition when we got out. Twenty, thirty feet up? Looked like a little red-eyed bat?”

  Wong was alarmed. “No shit?”

  “Yeah, shit,” Av said. “Look, one thing I’ve learned? The federal beehive wants to see you, they can see you. Just too damned many of them for anyone to run and hide like they do in the movies. That’s what I can’t figure out. I feel like a fugitive, but I haven’t been on the run and I haven’t done anything. I need to talk to Ellen Whiting again.”

  “The one you took to a gay bar? She still speakin’ to you after that shit?”

  “I don’t know,” Av said. “Except she was the one who came to me for help, if you can believe that.”

  “What you think that heavy dude is gonna do, once he finds out the jarboons turned you loose?”

  “He’ll put me on the Kill List, probably,” Av said.

  “You need to crash somewhere? I’ve got ladies all over town who can—”

  “No, thanks,” Av said, cringing at the thought of crashing at the dragon lady’s crib. “I’m gonna go home.”

  TWENTY

  It was close to midnight by the time Wong dropped him off at his building. The streets were just about empty and it looked like all the bars and restaurants had closed some time ago in honor of a low-volume Monday evening. His first problem was how to get into his own pad—they had carted him off without wallet or keys. Then he remembered the slinky blonde coming up the fire escape.

  Once on the roof he unearthed the spare key he’d buried in a flowerpot after one too many beers one night had led to a lockout. His loft apartment showed no signs of the search warrant, which surprised him. He’d seen places tossed by Metro PD detectives that looked like a war zone. His gun stash was untouched, and his wallet and keys were in their usual bowl in the kitchen. He checked his telephone to see if it had been altered, and then realized he didn’t have the faintest idea of what a bug might look like. They probably had positioned a satellite out in space directly over his house that could tell them every time he broke wind. He dug out Ellen’s phone number from his wallet and picked up the phone.

  “You guys still there?” he asked the dial tone. It didn’t seem to understand. He dialed the number. No one answered and there was no voice mail—the phone just rang. He knew his own phone would be transmitting his caller ID, so maybe that would show up on her phone. Or maybe not. Hell with it, he thought. I’m going to bed.

  He checked that the front door was locked, which it was. He started to set his brand-new chain but then thought better of it. The last time she’d come through that lock in the middle of the night with disturbing ease. He left the chain off but then set up one more precautionary measure. He went into the kitchen and got his change bottle out. He emptied two handfuls of coins into a metal pitcher and then poised the pitcher right on the edge of a living room table. He tied some string to the pitcher and connected it to the door handle. Anyone opening the front door would bring that pitcher crashing down onto the wood floor, and that should give him time to pick up his weapon and be ready for a little home defense. He rousted a .45 out of his gun safe, loaded, chambered, decocked it, and then went to bed.

  * * *

  The pitcher did its job almost too well about an hour before dawn, crashing down onto the floor and apparently scaring the shit out of whoever had just come through the door. It did sound like a woman’s voice, so Av turned on his bedside table light and slipped the automatic just under the covers. A moment later Ellen Whiting appeared in his bedroom doorway.

  “That was dirty pool,” she announced. “I think I wet my pants.”

  “More than I needed to know,” he said with a grin. She was wearing running clothes, of all things, with an FBI ball cap and a bulging little fanny pack. “Welcome to my high-tech world.”

  All the chairs in his bedroom had clothes or other stuff piled on them, so she came over and sat down on the corner of his bed.

  “I just heard,” she said. “Late yesterday afternoon, in fact. I got a call from Mister Miller to come down for a little chat. He told me that the CT division had picked you up and that you were now being held in a ‘secure location.’”

  “What’d he want from you?”

  “I don’t actually know,” she said. “He asked me what I thought of that, and since I couldn’t think of anything clever to say, I asked him why and for how long. That’s up to your division, he said. Claimed to just be the messenger; said he was surprised I didn’t know about it, seeing as you and I had been keeping company.

  “How’d you get out?”

  He described his having milk and cookies with Carl Mandeville, and then the Marine colonel’s decision to let him leave.

  “Why’d he do that?” she asked.

  He told her about the colonel eavesdropping on the conversation with Mandeville and getting what looked a lot like cold feet. He also described what
he’d said to encourage said cold feet.

  “And Mandeville offered you your freedom in return for—what? Helping him save the DMX?”

  “That’s about it, Ellen,” Av said. “I told him to fuck off, in so many words, and I also told him that if he was murdering people he’d get caught. I don’t know if he knows that I’ve been sprung, but we picked up a tail on the way up—that guy from Rock Creek Park?—so I guess he does. Assuming he works for Mandeville, tomorrow, well, I guess today, I’m gonna go up my chain in MPD and lay this whole fucking thing out to the chief, herself, including the two homicides, the one pending homicide, and who’s behind them and why.”

  “God,” she said. “That ought to do it.”

  “Should have done it as soon as you told me the story,” he said. “I know we don’t have much of a case, but I suspect the light of day will be as dangerous for Mandeville as anything I could do to him.”

  She pressed her lips together and stared out the window, where the dawn’s early light was trying its best to gleam.

  “He has—assets,” she said, slowly. “People from the serious-business division of the Agency, and anything he wants from the Special Operations Command, I’m guessing. He’s obviously gone through that Chinese wall and now has some action executives on his side. But: that means it wasn’t Mandeville out there, personally killing McGavin and Logan.”

  “Sure about that?” Av asked. He really wanted some coffee, but also wanted to make damned sure she hadn’t come around to tie off a suddenly dangerous loose end. Anyone who could get through locked doors like that had a skill set that fairly cried out previous clandestine ops service. “He was the one at dinner with Logan,” he said. “And you were the one at lunch with McGavin. You’re both on the DMX. You say Mandeville’s gone rogue. But what if the two of you have gone rogue?”

  She looked back at him, her face suddenly grave. “That why you have a gun under the covers there, Detective?”