by Matthew Iden
“Yeah,” I said, hanging the towel on its rack. “A couple of times.”
“What do you want?”
“I guess I wanted to talk.”
“Obviously,” she said.
“Do you have a minute?”
“That’s why I called,” she said.
I sighed and sat down on the toilet. It seemed like an appropriate place to talk about our relationship. “Look, seeing you at FirstStep made me think. About a lot of things. Time’s given me some perspective.”
“That’s nice,” she said, her voice thick with sarcasm.
I scowled at the tone in her voice. “Some of the decisions you made won’t ever sit right with me, but I’m not exactly proud of some of the decisions I’ve made in my life, either. I’m trying to say I said some stupid things and made some mistakes. If you don’t want to hear it, that’s fine, but you should at least know I regret the way I acted towards you. I ruined what we had going instead of talking it out with you.”
There was a deep silence on the other end of the phone. I waited a beat, then said the hardest part. “I’m trying to say I’m sorry.”
Silence. I waited some more. This wasn’t the time to press. Finally, I heard her take a shaky breath and say, “Thank you.”
I was squeezing the phone and I forced myself to relax—I hadn’t realized how much her answer had meant to me. “Thanks for hearing me out.”
“You’re welcome.”
More silence. I swallowed. “Okay. I should let you go—”
“Do you want to get coffee?” she interrupted. “Sometime?”
My heart thumped offbeat and a rush of warm blood raced up my neck. “I…yes. I really would.”
“Is sometime this week all right?”
I swallowed. “Sure.”
“I’ll call you,” she said.
“That’d be great,” I said, ready to say more, but she’d already hung up, leaving me sitting on the commode, wondering what had just happened.
Chapter Seventeen
“That was quick,” Faraday said, shoulders hunched into his coat collar. “Change your mind about getting into politics?”
I’d waylaid him coming out of the Wilson Building—DC’s City Hall—as he plied his trade with the city’s elected officials and appointed bureaucrats. A gray wind picked up just as I shook his hand, however, and he gestured for us to take the measly shelter provided by a divot in the building’s architecture. Unlike any other edifice in the capital, the Wilson Building didn’t have one damn pillar to hide behind in bad weather. It was within sight of the White House, though, which did have pillars, so that was worth something.
“I would rather re-enroll at the Academy,” I said.
“What’s on your mind, then?”
“If I had the name and location of a particular plot of land that was being considered for development and knew that it had probably been the focus of an LDA application, how hard would it be to get the name of the developer?”
“Is that all?”
“So far, yep.”
“Piece of cake,” he said. “Office of Public Records.”
I searched my memory. “Naylor Court?”
“Yeah,” he said. “But don’t go there. Do the search online.”
“Okay.”
He gave me a look. “It really is easier than going there.”
“Sure.”
Faraday must’ve heard something in my voice. “It can be hairy for someone not used to their system. Want me to do it?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll see if I can muddle through.”
“Okay,” he said, his voice doubtful. “If you can’t figure it out, though, give me a call. I’m happy to do it, if it means helping find whoever killed Wendy.”
I promised I’d give him a shout if I ran into trouble, we shook, then parted ways. A DC power meeting, quick and dirty. I shoved my hands in my pockets and walked back to my parking space. In the shelter of my car, I turned my phone into a computer and searched for the DC Office of Public Records on a screen just slightly larger than a pack of gum. The experience was, as an MPDC captain had once said about my attitude towards superior officers, “suboptimal.” The end of my thumb, about the size of a large olive, was a particularly poor tool for “clicking” on links and the two-point font wasn’t doing my middle-aged eyes any favors—although, after spending several minutes trying to navigate the site, I had the distinct impression that I would’ve had trouble finding what I wanted at any font size.
I gave it my best shot. I really did. Imagining Amanda standing, looking over my shoulder and shaking her head, I poked and squeezed and prodded my phone, trying to fill out an online General Request for Information form. I pecked at BACK buttons, FORWARD buttons, shook the phone, waved it in arcane patterns in the air…nothing. Twenty minutes, down the drain. Wasn’t the Internet supposed to save time? Finally, when the website reloaded for no apparent reason on the third page, losing many long minutes of agonized typing, I yelled a two-word, four-syllable expression that my mother would not have approved of and tried to put my foot through the floor of my car.
I was wasting time. Ignoring all the links, I scrolled down to the bottom of the page and found the address, memorized it, then started the car and wheeled into traffic. To hell with computers. I was going to rely on that old standby of detecting—waiting in line.
The nice ladies at the Office of Public Records seemed genuinely puzzled that I hadn’t tried to submit my request using the online form on their website. I refrained from telling them what I really thought about their system, and explained that I was too old for that kind of thing. They were about my age and laughed, then we spent the next ten minutes reminiscing, reminding each other of the shows we used to watch as kids and how cheap gas used to be, how you could see a movie for under a buck and how big the first microwave was.
“What was it you wanted?” one of the ladies asked after we had exhausted our war stories. She had a pageboy cut that was blond going gray. Her figure was thin and she sported a beige skirt-and-blazer combination that, combined with her hair, made it seem as if she were fading into the background.
“I’m looking into an LDA application for a particular property in the District called the Quarters,” I told her. “I can’t find the developer that was awarded the bid for the property nor whether they got approved for the LDA.”
“All right,” she said. “May I ask who you are and why you want the information?”
I gave them the supercharged version of the case I was working on and my illustrious three-decade career as a DC Homicide detective. I wouldn’t say they were cooing and pawing at the buttons of my shirt, but I definitely had them on my side by the end of it.
“Things have been slow today,” the woman said, deflating me a little. “We might as well give you a hand.”
I gave her the meager pieces of information I had and watched as she turned to her keyboard and tip-tapped her way through the city records. Like a lot of people who have either worked for or lived in the city, I didn’t expect any miracles. In fact, I was bracing myself for complete and utter failure. If even half of the horror stories coming out of the DC Department of Motor Vehicles applied here, I’d be leaving with exactly the same amount of information I came in with.
Which is why I was startled when, before I could say Jack Sprat, the helpful lady brightened then, with a few keystrokes, handed me a sheaf of printed pages.
“That’s it?” I asked, impressed.
She smiled. “Charlotte and I”—she nodded towards the other woman—“have been organizing these records for more than twenty years.”
“And no one from City Hall has come down and stopped you for being so efficient?” I asked, then looked at the form. “Uh, which one is…”
She plucked the papers out of my hands, rifled through them, then showed me a box on the third page. It said Atlantic Union, Inc. and their offices were in Reston, Virginia,
west of the city.
“Oh,” she said when she saw the name. “I know that company. They’re redoing the condos across the street from me, over in the West End. And I think they did the revitalization plan near Logan Circle. Charlotte?”
The other woman looked up from her desk. “Hmm?”
“You live near Logan Circle. Didn’t Atlantic Union do the redevelopment there? The new mall and that pretty courtyard with the fountain?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Mary,” Charlotte said, thinking about it. “Who pays attention to who the developer is? They did a beautiful job, whoever they were. Shops and a redbrick promenade and all these new townhouses. They painted them bright colors, like in the Caribbean.”
“What was there before?” Mary asked.
Charlotte chewed her lip. “You know, I can’t remember. Parking lots?”
“About these papers,” I said, glancing through the printouts. “It looks like just the preliminary paperwork. Is there anything more substantial we could find? Loan applications, tax deferment requests, approval notices, that kind of thing?”
Charlotte glanced at her watch. “We usually take a short break around now…”
I smiled. “Milk and cookies, on me. What’ll you take?”
Even with one of those little cardboard trays to carry everything, my fingers were nearly singed when I got back to the little office from picking up Earl Greys and double lattes from a nearby coffee shop. Both ladies were looking, heads bent at right angles, at a set of printouts. “Yow,” I said, almost dropping the drink tray on the counter.
Charlotte took a crocheted coffee cup sleeve shaped like a miniature winter coat and wrapped it around her drink. Mary was made of sterner stuff: she grabbed hers and took a long swallow.
“Any luck?” I asked.
“I…think so,” Charlotte said. “Here’s the bid proposal for the development. It was submitted about a year ago. It includes the rough outline of the plan and who will be affected.”
“Did they get a tax incentive for it?”
“No way to tell,” she said. “That’s a different search.”
I didn’t press it. “And what does this tell us?”
Charlotte bit her lip again. “It looks like there were about six or seven hundred residents living in public housing and fifty or so private residences.”
“There’s a community center they’re supposed to tear down and replace, too,” Mary said, pointing at a paragraph with a skinny finger.
So no parking lots, I thought. Just a thousand people living there, told to scram and make way for a row of townhouses. “Are there any low-income apartments or houses now?”
She shook her head. “This search wouldn’t tell us, I’m afraid.”
“Does the proposal say anything else?”
Charlotte scanned the printout. “Hmm, a portion of the labor was going to be drawn from DC and it looks like most of the homes and public housing were supposed to be replaced.”
“Doesn’t sound like that happened,” I said. “When was the bid approved?”
“About four months later.”
“Fast,” I said.
“Very,” Mary said. “Someone on the city council must’ve wanted this to get started badly.”
I felt like I’d found something to work on, so I thanked the ladies and left them with their Earl Grey. Before I made it through the door, Charlotte called after me, “Did we help you find what you were looking for?”
I smiled. “More than you know.”
I walked back to my car slowly, chewing on what I’d just learned. The last time I had a whiff of a lead, it had led to Tartikoff and Brentwood. And when I’d chased that lead headfirst, I’d not only learned very little, it appeared as though I’d precipitated a second murder.
Lesson learned. Now that I might’ve pinched the tip of another tiger’s tail, something told me to proceed with caution. Atlantic Union was a large, nine-figure-a-year corporate developer that seemed to have some swing with the DC city council and might be at least peripherally involved in two homicides. If that wasn’t enough bad mojo to tell me to tread carefully, I needed to find another line of business.
But while it was all very interesting and my gut told me I truly had a hold of something, it didn’t make much made sense in terms of finding Wendy’s killer. Sure, it was tempting to think the big, bad corporate giant was involved in something dastardly and needed to shut some people up, but both Gerson and Montero had been playing on the same side as the developers. Unless they were both about to blow the whistle on some kind of shady deal on the scale of a federal indictment or RICO charge, it seemed unlikely they would be targets. For sure, nothing about Montero had said whistleblower to me. If anything, the guy seemed like a full-time cheerleader for Corporate America—and any dirty tricks they might pull in chasing the dream would be just all right with him.
I was still sitting in the driver’s seat, the engine off, when my phone rang. I took it out, checked the number, and my whole lower half turned wobbly. It was Julie. I answered.
“Singer,” she said with no preamble. “Where are you?”
“Downtown,” I said. “Near Naylor Court.”
“Do you want to get that coffee?”
“Sure,” I said. That was quick. “You have someplace in mind?”
“Politics and Prose bookstore,” she said. “You know the basement coffee shop there?”
“I can find it.”
“Meet me in half an hour,” she said, then hung up.
“Do I bring the drugs or the money?” I said into the silent phone. Our exchange had had all the charm of a dead drop, but it was something.
The popular DC bookstore was on the other side of town on a wide, tree-lined section of Connecticut Avenue, and I made my rendezvous with about a minute to spare. It was too far from my house in Arlington to become a favored hangout, but I knew some Washingtonians who would’ve committed hara-kiri if they had to do without the place. I pulled around back and counted it as a sign of good luck that I found an empty space in the tiny parking lot. I got out of my car, took a deep breath, and went inside.
Julie was sitting at a corner table with her back to the door, looking at her phone and sipping from a small porcelain cup. I watched her for a second. She looked great in a cable-knit sweater and jeans. Her long black hair was pulled back and tied at the base of her neck. She’d crossed her legs and the upper foot was bobbing in time to the soft music playing over the coffeehouse’s speakers. Seeing her like this—relaxed, unself-conscious—made me feel funny and I was happy I’d had a chance to adjust without being seen…then the detective in me kicked in and I realized she’d taken her seat to give me just this kind of inspection. I walked over.
“Is this seat taken?” I asked.
She raised her head and I got instant dry mouth. Her look was neither friendly nor dismissive, but she gestured with a hand for me to sit. I did. We looked at each other.
She asked, “No coffee?”
“Let’s see how long this lasts,” I said. “You might tell me to go screw myself, in which case I’ll go to Starbucks. I like their coffee better.”
A smile flitted across her mouth, disappeared, then she looked down into her cup. She was quiet. I was quiet. We sat like that for a minute, then—unable to take it anymore—I said, “What’s new?” at the same time she said, “What are you doing now?”
It was a classic awkward moment and one which, in the movies, led to embarrassed laughter and a breaking of the ice. In real life or, at least in this case, it was just uncomfortable. We each coughed, then I motioned to her. “You first.”
“You saw me at FirstStep,” she said. “It started out as just volunteer work, something to make up for the years of defending scum down at the courthouse. But it’s turned into something more important in the last few months.”
“How so?”
A shrug. She looked in her cup. “Helping anybody but myself was ne
w territory. It felt good. It still feels good. Most of these women don’t have a clue what their legal rights are, how they can protect themselves. Once their husband or their boyfriend dumps them, they feel lost. Abandoned.”
She cut herself off abruptly and I looked down at the table. After a moment, I took a deep breath and said, “I think I’ll get that coffee. Want anything?”
Steam rose in plumes from behind the bar as the barista took her time pouring my coffee. I rocked back and forth on my heels, listening to the convivial chatter of the people around me. The place had exactly the right kind of bohemian feel for a coffeehouse in the basement of a bookstore, with the dim lighting just so and a closeted smell of paper and ink and coffee and human closeness that was oddly comforting. The glow of laptops and the lopsided drone of cell phone conversations took some of the romance away, but it still beat a downtown office building or the quiet desperation of a bar.
I walked back and sat down, wrapping my hands around my cup. “Look, I meant what I said on the phone—”
“So, what are you working on now?” she interrupted, staring at me, her eyes a tad too bright.
I paused. “Is that really what you want to talk about?”
“No,” she said. “But I need a neutral topic. Something mundane. Or I’ll get up and walk out.”
I leaned back in my chair. “Wow. Great.”
She shook her head. “Not out of spite. You’re extending yourself, making an effort. I understand that, even appreciate it. But I don’t want to reciprocate.”
“Just bury everything and move on?”
“For now. If we get past this, maybe we’ll dig deeper. But if you want to talk, we’re going to have to keep things on the surface. I can’t handle anything else. If that doesn’t interest you, we should stop now.”
I swallowed. “It interests me.”
“Okay,” she said, then let out a pent-up breath. I realized she’d feared I might take the stand-and-walk-out option. “So, what are you working on?”
It was tough, but I put blinders on what I was feeling and instead focused on the Wendy Gerson case, giving her the details from the moment of the horrific scene that took the girl’s life to what I’d been doing the minute before she’d called me to arrange our coffee date. Just as she had when we’d been on better terms, Julie listened intently, without interrupting, soaking in the details. She’d been both a defense attorney and a prosecutor and had been privy to her share of horrible crime scenes and situations. She looked thoughtful when I ended with what I’d found out from Charlotte and Mary at the records office.
