by Matthew Iden
Harmon sat down on my ottoman, looking physically uncomfortable with his bulk stuffed into his tailored suit, although it didn’t seem to faze him mentally. He made sure he wasn’t in line with Martinez, who had taken a spot by the door, holding the gun down at his side and eyeing Pierre—who had retreated to the steps to watch.
I looked at Harmon. He had a tiny gold teardrop earring I hadn’t noticed before. Boy, the things you notice. “Got a message for me?”
He nodded. “You probably know what we’re going to say, so it’s boring saying it. Probably boring to hear it. But we gotta do it.”
I waited.
“Okay, here goes.” He cleared his throat and chanted, “Stay the fuck away from the Quarters. Stay the fuck away from Mr. Rheinsfeld. Stay the fuck away from Denton. Stay the fuck away from anything to do with Wendy Gerson.” He looked at Martinez expectantly. “How was that, Marty?”
Martinez shrugged, looking bored. Then he sneezed and rubbed his nose with his gun hand.
“Great. I’ve been working on it,” Harmon said, then turned to me. “Say it back.”
I said it back.
“No sass? Nothing smart to say about gene pools or taking pictures? You’re a disappointment, Singer.”
“You have a fine voice,” I said. “Though I wouldn’t quit my day job, if I were you.”
“That’s better,” he said approvingly. “Showing some spunk. Now I won’t feel so bad when I have to beat the shit out of you.”
“Harm,” Martinez interrupted, his voice funny. “I gotta go.”
“I’m working here.”
“Harm.”
We looked over. Martinez’s eyes were streaming. He coughed, phlegmy and loud, like a ninety-year-old.
“Fuck’s your problem, Marty?” Harmon said to his partner.
“Cats, man. Can’t take ’em,” Martinez said. He started scratching his neck, but if he was allergic, the itch was on the inside. His eyes were streaming and seemed to swell while I watched. “Shit, I gotta go.”
I watched in amazement as Martinez opened my front door and stumbled outside, wheezing audibly. Harmon, just as flummoxed, was halfway to his feet when he remembered something and looked back at me. I was holding my Sig Sauer in my hand and had it pointed at his belly button. At this range, I didn’t need to aim for center mass, but why take a chance?
I smiled. “Sit down and put your hands on your knees. I don’t want to shoot you. Yet.”
Arlington PD found Martinez on my front steps, eyes swollen shut and with his head between his knees, trying to breathe. Harmon had been carrying an ugly Tec-9 in a shoulder rig, which told me he was more of a hands-on guy, since the gun was a piece of junk. The two of them were cuffed and carted, shooting me dirty looks this time—Harmon did, at least, since Martinez couldn’t see anything—as they were pushed into the backseat of a cruiser. A nice female officer named Griggs took my statement, recorded my wish to press charges, then asked to see my gun permit. Everything checked out on my end and my two assailants were whisked off for booking.
It wouldn’t stick and, even if it did, my hunch was that Rheinsfeld would post their bail by the end of the news hour. That was okay. It was enough to stick a finger in their collective eye and let them know I wasn’t going to roll over. It was an interesting development, I thought, as I dumped not one but two cans of food in Pierre’s bowl, then topped it with crunchy treats as a special thank-you. He yowled and grunted as he ate, fully recovered from the shock of seeing two strange guys burst into the house. My cat was nothing if not resilient.
“Who’s a good kitty?” I asked, then backed off as he raised his head from the bowl and glared at me. “Never mind.”
I watched as he finished off his food, then blasted out of the kitchen like he’d been shot from a cannon, probably to go take a dump in the litter box upstairs, thereby rendering the second floor of the house off-limits for at least an hour. It was a shame, I thought, that I couldn’t get him to crap on command or I wouldn’t have had to deal with this afternoon’s events. Martinez’s head would’ve popped off from the allergic reaction and Harmon would’ve passed out from the smell.
I was getting punchy. It was relief and a delayed adrenalin rush and some embarrassment to boot. The two jugheads had gotten the drop on me with very little effort and, while I didn’t think they had orders to stick me in the ground, Harmon seemed like the kind of guy who would’ve been okay with accidentally forgetting that. If things were getting this out of hand, I needed more backup than I’d had—which is to say, none—to this point. I called Dods.
“Who did what?” he shouted into the phone when I gave him the rundown of the afternoon’s events.
“Two of Rheinsfeld’s goons. They were supposed to give me a warning to lay off, but one of Atlantic Union’s finest turned out to have a severe allergy to cat dander.”
“Rheinsfeld is going to have them out in no time. In fact, they’ve probably been at home with a beer in their hand since before you called me.”
“I know,” I said. “But I don’t think it’s something to worry about unless Harmon gets it into his head that he wants some personal payback. Rheinsfeld’s got too much on his hands to add a dead ex-cop to the list. The warning really was just a warning.”
“You don’t think they’re serious?”
“They might get there, sure, but I can act like they did their job. Skulk some. Be more discreet. Tread lightly.”
“What’d you have in mind?”
“I was going to go to Rheinsfeld’s office and ask what he’s hiding.”
Dods swore. “You son of a bitch—you want me to go with you and cover your ass.”
“Well, duh,” I said, trying not to laugh. “How else can I make sure he doesn’t try to ace me when I’m not looking?”
“A senior homicide detective is just what the doctor ordered, huh?”
“Protect and serve, Dods. Protect and serve.”
He said something unsavory about my nighttime hobbies and this time I did laugh. “Come on, Davidovitch. It’ll be like old times. And you’ll be protecting an old buddy while possibly cracking open an outstanding double homicide.”
He sighed. “When do you want to do this?”
“Pick me up at nine tomorrow.”
“This man is not a proper police officer, Detective,” Rheinsfeld said pointedly from behind a desk of burled walnut and tiger maple, with inlays of who knows what other rare wood. It looked like it cost more than my house. The rest of the room followed suit. In the course of investigating Wendy Gerson’s murder, I’d been in some fairly swank offices, but none of them could hold a candle to Rheinsfeld’s sanctum sanctorum. By size alone, it took the cake. Most of the MPDC bullpen could’ve fit in the space the president and CEO of Atlantic Union claimed for himself.
“He wasn’t a proper police officer when he had a badge,” Dods said. “But former detective Singer isn’t why I’m here, really.”
“Why are you here, then?” Rheinsfeld said, then we all looked over as the door opened and Harmon stepped in. He looked at me with a dead, flat look and took a position beside Rheinsfeld. His boss nodded at him, then turned back to Dods. “Ah, Harmon. Glad you could join us. Detective, this is my chief of security, Cedric Harmon.”
“Cedric?” I asked.
Dods shot me a look. He was looking especially rumpled, which was saying something, since I’d never seen the man when he didn’t need a shave. The disparity was accentuated by Rheinsfeld’s impeccably tailored suit. Even Harmon, who looked like a Hell’s Angel forced to buy his gear at Pierre Cardin, outclassed the two of us put together.
“I’m glad Mr. Harmon could join us,” Dods said, “seeing as how he was released last night from prison pending an assault charge on Mr. Singer, here.”
“Oh, please let’s not talk about charges, Detective,” Rheinsfeld said with a pained look. “I don’t want to have to get my counsel in here. No one likes bringing lawye
rs into things if they don’t have to.”
Dods nodded. “I can live with that. Here’s the deal, Mr. Rheinsfeld. Mr. Singer is helping my department on the Wendy Gerson and Alex Montero murders. He’s doing so unofficially, but that don’t mean he’s a walking target. I hope we understand each other when I stress to you that I consider an attack on Mr. Singer an attack on my department and my investigation.”
Rheinsfeld nodded, though the gesture didn’t seem to indicate agreement. “And I hope you understand, Detective, that I can’t just allow Mr. Singer, here, to launch a personal vendetta against myself or my corporation without defending myself. Perhaps Mr. Singer could agree to stop making Atlantic Union the focus of his investigation.”
“Odd that you should say that, since you weren’t actually my focus before,” I said. “But now you’ve got my attention.”
Rheinsfeld raised his hands in the air. “Detective, how am I supposed to respond to that? Mr. Singer obviously has a single-track mind, obsessed with finding Atlantic Union guilty of something. This is unacceptable. It appears to me that Mr. Singer is perhaps transferring his guilt in not being able to stop the murder of Miss Gerson when he could have and turning it into a crusade against Atlantic Union. I believe he wishes he were still a police officer, with all of its attendant privileges.”
I smiled tightly. Dods put a hand on my arm. “If Mr. Singer behaves inappropriately or illegally in any way, you’ve got every right to file a complaint like any other citizen, Mr. Rheinsfeld. I just want to make sure that’s where it ends.”
“And, I repeat, I will take whatever steps I deem necessary to protect myself, my employees, and my company, Detective.”
The room went still. The conversation, circuitous and empty, had run its course. We either walked out now, satisfied with our thinly veiled insults and warnings…or we took it up a notch. Harmon shifted from foot to foot. Rheinsfeld seemed unperturbed, as though he were observing the start of a tennis match. I watched them both.
Dods leaned forward. “Maybe I’m not being clear. Let me clarify. I don’t consider this man a retired police officer. I think of him exactly the way I think of any of my brother police officers. Which means, you insufferable, humping asshole, that if I find your chief of security and his candy-ass hired gun, or any other thug your bottom-feeding company decides to hire, near Mr. Singer again, I will bury them. And your company. And you.”
Rheinsfeld listened to the entire tirade, nodded once, then smiled. “I appreciate your honesty, Detective. But consider who it is you’re talking to. I’m the man that writes the checks. Not the checks to your boss and not your boss’s boss—I pay the men that sit at the top of the food chain. They come begging to me, my friend. As for burying someone, well. City councilmen come cheap and I’ve got money. If you like working Homicide, Detective, and not checking parking meters downtown, maybe you should think about who you’re threatening. Have a good day.”
Five minutes later, Dods and I were on the sidewalk in the bright, cleansing morning sunlight. We’d met, threatened, and been threatened back before ten o’clock. Some office wonks hadn’t even sat down at their desks yet.
I clapped my hands together and rubbed them briskly. “That went well.”
Dods took out a pack of gum, folded a stick neatly in half, and popped it in his mouth. “Yeah, I thought so, too.”
“Think he’ll make a move?”
“On you?” Dods said, chewing the gum like a horse. “Nah. He was blowing smoke. You’re safe. Rheinsfeld’ll call a councilman and bitch, the councilman will make promises, and nothing will happen. Eventually, he’ll simmer down as long as we don’t pull him directly into the case.”
“That could happen,” I said. “In fact, it looks like that’s exactly where this is going.”
“So, we play it close until it’s almost wrapped up. I’ll smudge the reports until we’ve got everything the way we want it, act like the case is going nowhere until we’re ready to press charges. If Rheinsfeld is in the crosshairs, it’ll be too late to swing his weight with the council.”
“You want me to cool it?”
“Maybe don’t try to antagonize Rheinsfeld directly. But you’re going to have to keep pushing to figure out the Gerson thing and whatever you find helps my case, so…use your best judgment.”
“My best judgment hasn’t always worked out so good,” I said.
Dods shrugged. “Omelet, broken eggs. You know. Where you going from here?”
I ran a hand through my hair. “This crap with Rheinsfeld is a distraction. Everything I need to know is connected to that spike in the Quarters. I need to find out who really owns it.”
“And what Wendy Gerson and Atlantic Union were willing to do to get it.”
I wagged a finger. “You’re going to make assistant deputy chief one of these days, you know that?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
We walked a few strides, quiet. Then I looked at him. “Insufferable, humping asshole?”
We both cracked up.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“No, we haven’t seen him,” Amanda said, her eyes glued to her laptop screen. “It’s like an alien abduction. Fincher’s just disappeared.”
I was leaning on the door frame of her office at FirstStep, my arms crossed. “Great. That’s what we wanted.”
“Yeah,” she replied, drawing it out. “As long as it isn’t a sign that he’s about to do something worse.”
“I doubt it.”
That made her look up. “You sound really sure about that. Like, too sure.”
“Just experience talking. Punks and bullies wilt under pressure.”
“What kind of pressure?”
“Nothing I could do or say,” I said.
“Who? Wait, you actually went to his father?” Amanda asked, her eyes wide.
“Danny doesn’t know me, so there’s no fear or respect there,” I explained. “There’s no basis for changing his behavior. A single threat from me, even a violent one, wasn’t going to make him stop. I had to take it upstairs.”
“What did you say to Gordon Fincher?”
“I implied there were certain political niceties I was more than willing to violate if he didn’t have a talk with his idiot son.”
“You threatened a sitting congressman?”
“Threaten is such a distasteful word,” I said. “I prefer to call it a gentlemen’s agreement.”
“As in, Danny better be a gentleman or you’ll trash Gordon Fincher’s political career?”
“I see you’re familiar with the way things are done in our nation’s capital.”
“Wow,” she said. “It was the logical thing to do, I guess, but…just, wow. I thought you were going to tell me you’d caved and were considering the breaking kneecaps approach.”
“Not my style,” I said. “Though the option exists if we need it.”
“Unbelievable,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “You had to blackmail a U.S. congressman to stop his son from hitting his girlfriend. Why is it this hard to keep women from getting abused? What is going through Danny Fincher’s head?”
“He wants to push someone around. Got pushed around himself somewhere along the line. It doesn’t excuse it, I’m just saying that’s the end of the psychology. Once someone shows him that beating his girlfriend is no longer an option for him to exercise his ego, he’ll stop.”
“When someone bigger and badder pushes him around, you mean.”
“Unfortunately, yes. Guys like Danny Fincher aren’t going to respond to a pamphlet and some counseling. I wish we could do something more permanent to help the next girl he sets his sights on, but his father’s threats should be enough to protect Karla. And FirstStep.”
Amanda was about to reply, but I heard footsteps behind me, coming down the hall. Before I could straighten, Julie Atwater had walked past me, her perfume hanging in the air after she’d gone. Frozen to the door frame, all I could do was ga
pe.
I looked back at Amanda. She put her hand over her mouth and her shoulders started to shake.
“What?”
“You look like you swallowed that rat from the alley,” she said. “Ribbon and all.”
“I’m glad you find my discomfort amusing,” I said, peeved, and crossed my arms to prove it.
I looked at her that way until, after a minute, she asked, “What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?”
She jerked her head in the direction of the hall. “Go talk to her, dummy.”
I made a face. “She didn’t even say hello. Why would I go talk to her?”
Amanda closed her eyes and sighed. “Marty. Do you think she walked by my office by accident? You can see the entire length of the hall the minute you come through the foyer door. She saw you leaning in the doorway forty feet away and still made the choice to walk down here when she could’ve gone straight into the conference room. Get it?”
My mouth opened and closed like a fish’s.
“You were a detective, right?” Amanda asked.
“That’s what they told me.” I shook my head to clear it. “Okay, I’m going to do this.”
“Go get ’em,” Amanda said with a smirk I didn’t care for. “She’s using Diane’s office.”
The hall was longer than I remembered. I fiddled with the collar of my shirt, which was old and comfortable, which meant it probably looked pretty shabby. I could take the shirt off, I supposed, but it might send the wrong message. What was underneath the shirt was kind of shabby, too. I’d been working out lately, but it’s not like I was going to make the covers of any magazines. Going shirtless was doubtless poor etiquette in a women’s shelter. If you were a man. Or a woman, for that matter. Frankly, gender didn’t really enter into it. Let’s just say it was poor etiquette to go shirtless in public anywhere, anytime.
I was babbling in my own head. Then I froze, because it seems while I was having a running mental monologue, I’d reached Diane’s office and Julie was looking at me, one finger holding her place in the papers she’d been reading. She sat behind the desk with a pen in her hand and her hair falling down like a curtain. Stylish glasses with medium rims sat on her nose, giving her a sophisticated, sexy look. Her eyebrows arched in an unspoken question.
