by M. A. Lawson
“The Zimmermans live in 912,” Kay repeated.
Kay sat back down and said to Eloise, “Sorry about that. Now finish the story about Nancy Reagan. I can’t believe she did that.”
“But she did,” Eloise said. “Nobody pushed Nancy around.”
• • •
FINALLY, SHE WAS HOME, Jamal thought. But he needed to wait awhile. Hamilton might get suspicious about someone knocking on her door right after she got a wrong apartment buzz.
Twenty minutes later, Jamal saw a pizza guy coming down the street in his direction. The guy nodded to Jamal as he walked by him. He was probably going into the apartment building that Jamal was leaning against.
Jamal let him pass and then said, “Hey, pizza boy.”
The guy turned around and said, “What?”
Jamal didn’t take out his gun. He knew he didn’t need it. “Give me the pizza. And that stupid fuckin’ hat.”
The pizza guy just stood there—he was about Jamal’s height and outweighed him by about twenty pounds—but Jamal knew the guy was a sheep and the guy knew Jamal was a wolf.
“Look, I don’t want any trouble,” he said.
“Then give me the pizza and that stupid hat, and get the fuck out of here.” The guy took off his hat, handed it to Jamal, and handed him the pizza, insulated bag and all, then he took a breath and walked away. That is, he walked for about twenty feet, before he started running.
Jamal laughed. He put on the Domino’s hat and walked across the street to Hamilton’s building. He hit about a dozen doorbells, said “Delivery” when someone answered, and finally some trusting fool buzzed him in. He walked over to the elevator and hit the Up button. The smell of the pizza was driving him crazy.
He planned to knock on her door, and he figured that even though she hadn’t ordered a pizza, she’d still open the door. He’d go into the apartment, use a sofa cushion or a pillow or some fuckin’ thing to muffle the sound of the shot, and kill her. Then he’d eat the pizza.
The elevator stopped on the eighth floor and he got off—and that’s when he saw the old lady walking down the hall, holding a box in her hands. He hesitated for just a second, then kept going. The lady was older than dirt, probably couldn’t see for shit, and all she’d remember seeing was a guy with a red Domino’s hat, carrying a pizza box.
• • •
ELOISE WAS FEELING GOOD, a pleasant buzz from two martinis. She really liked Hamilton. She assumed Hamilton worked for one of the intelligence agencies. A couple of times during the course of her Secret Service career Eloise had thought about transferring to the CIA—when she was mad at her boss or bored with an assignment—but she never did. Although a job with one of the spy shops would have been fun. She heard the elevator ding and saw a man step into the hallway. Red hat, pizza box in his hand. Pizza sounded good. Hamilton made a great martini but she wasn’t much of a hostess and hadn’t offered Eloise anything to eat.
As she got closer to the pizza guy, she realized it was the same young man she’d seen standing across the street. She had no doubt it was the same guy. She smiled at him as they passed each other in the hall, then turned her head to look at him. She could see what she was sure was the outline of a pistol under his shirt; the way he was holding the pizza box pulled the material of his shirt tight around the weapon.
Eloise took the Beretta out of the box and placed the box on the floor. She’d already loaded a magazine into the Beretta when she’d been fiddling with it earlier. She jacked a bullet into the firing chamber, clicked off the safety, and turned around—and as she turned she put the Beretta behind her back.
The pizza guy—who she was certain wasn’t a pizza guy—had stopped and was about to knock on a door. Hamilton’s door.
• • •
JAMAL WAS ABOUT TO KNOCK, then noticed the old lady he’d just passed coming down the hall toward him. Son of a bitch. Why was she coming back? And if he didn’t knock on the door, she’d wonder what he was doing. Then he thought he’d pretend he’d just gotten a phone call, take out his phone, and talk on it until she passed.
When she was about twenty feet from him, she smiled at him and said, “I forgot my umbrella.”
Jamal thought: Your umbrella? It’s ninety fuckin’ degrees outside and there’s not a cloud in the sky.
When she was about ten feet from him, she pointed a gun at his face. “If you reach for your gun, I’m going to put a bullet through your head.”
For just a second, Jamal thought about rushing the woman and taking the weapon from her, but then he saw the look in her eyes. The old bitch wasn’t kidding. He could tell. Without a doubt, she’d kill him if he made a move.
• • •
ELOISE MADE JAMAL lie down on the hallway floor and, while holding the muzzle of the Beretta against the back of his head, removed the Glock he was carrying. She knocked on Hamilton’s door, and when Kay answered, Eloise said, “I think pizza boy here was planning to kill you.”
30
DAY 5—4 P.M.
Kay was furious. She didn’t know who had sent Jamal Howard to kill her and Jamal wasn’t talking. If he had actually taken a shot at her—or if he’d even drawn his gun—he could have been arrested for attempted murder and might have given up whoever had hired him in exchange for a reduced sentence. And she had no doubt he’d been hired; he hadn’t acted on his own. Unfortunately, the only crimes Jamal had committed were possessing an unregistered weapon and stealing a pizza.
After the cops hauled Jamal off, Kay called Eagleton and asked him—no, she told him—to keep her updated on Jamal’s case. She also told him to have someone check if the gun in Jamal’s possession had been used to kill Danzinger.
An hour later, Eagleton reported that Jamal’s gun was not the weapon used to kill Danzinger. He also said that Jamal would be arraigned the next day, and if he didn’t plead guilty, he’d be released on bail and his trial wouldn’t be for months.
But who had sent Jamal? There were only three possibilities Kay could think of.
One was Prescott. Prescott might want her dead because Kay knew—even if she couldn’t prove it—that Prescott was one of the people controlling the Callahan Group. But Kay seriously doubted that Prescott would have her killed, and if she had decided to, she wouldn’t have sent a twenty-something D.C. gangbanger. A woman in her position would certainly have access to a more qualified assassin.
Which left two logical suspects: Dylan Otis and Fang Zhou. Otis knew Kay’s name, and she figured that Otis had told Fang who she was. So she guessed that one of them had sent Jamal, but she didn’t know which one—but she knew someone who might be able to tell her.
Kay called Prescott again, but she was unavailable, so Kay told the NSA operator to tell Prescott to call her as soon as possible, that the matter was urgent. Ten minutes later, she received a text message from a blocked number, telling her to go immediately to a café in Greenbelt, Maryland. Greenbelt was the last Metro stop on the line going to Maryland. It was also the closest stop to Fort Meade.
• • •
THE FIRST THING Prescott said to her at the café was: “This has to stop. You have to quit calling me. Our business is finished.”
“Well, it might have been,” Kay said, “but somebody tried to kill me today.”
“What?” Prescott said. “Who?”
It appeared that even the see-everything, hear-everything NSA didn’t know about Jamal Howard’s arrest. Or maybe Prescott did know and was just pretending she didn’t. With Prescott, it was impossible to know when she was telling the truth.
Kay told Prescott how Howard had shown up on her doorstep, armed, and that if it hadn’t been for a neighbor, she could have been killed.
“How do you know he planned to kill you?” Prescott said.
“Why else would a kid armed with a Glock show up at my apartment pretending to be a pizza deliv
ery guy? And I’m guessing that Fang Zhou was the one who sent him.”
“Fang wouldn’t do that,” Prescott said.
“Why wouldn’t he? He must know that I know he was the one responsible for the attack on K Street. Maybe he thinks that by eliminating me, he’s protecting himself.”
When Prescott didn’t respond, Kay said, “If you think I’m going to sit around and be a target, you don’t know me at all.”
“All right,” Prescott said. “I’ll find out more about this man Howard. I can dig deeper into his background than the cops can, and I’ll see who he’s been talking to.”
“And if you find out he was working for Fang?” Kay said. “What will you do then?”
“I don’t know. In the meantime, I can offer you some protection. I’ll assign some of my people to watch over you.”
Kay didn’t like the sound of that. Kay didn’t want the NSA watching every move she made—but the NSA was probably already watching every move she made. She also realized that Prescott’s team could be used to shuttle her off to wherever the NSA put problematic people.
She was in way over her head.
“I don’t need protection,” Kay said. “I can protect myself. And I’ll give you a few hours to investigate Howard, but if—”
“Don’t try dictating terms to me,” Prescott said.
Kay stood up. “I’ll give you a few hours to get some answers,” she repeated, “but if you don’t find anything, I’ll deal with this on my own. And in my own way.”
She could feel Prescott’s eyes boring holes into her back like laser beams as she left the café.
31
DAY 5—7 P.M.
The long drive from North Carolina to Miami had practically killed Otis, his knee in agony the whole way.
He wanted to sleep and rest his leg, but he couldn’t. He needed to meet his connection tonight to get things moving, and there were a couple of things he needed to do first. He drove to a drugstore and found a knee brace. The brace didn’t allow his knee to bend, and provided enough support so that he could walk with only a cane. He hated the crutches; they made him appear helpless, and it wouldn’t be smart to let the man in Miami think he’d be an easy target. His next stop was a Kmart next door to the drugstore, where he bought some new clothes. He was still wearing the smelly overalls he’d borrowed from Younger and wanted to be shed of them. He changed clothes inside the Kmart, which was tricky with the brace. Lastly, he bought a gym bag, and when he returned to his truck, he transferred the cash from the old bag to the new bag, leaving only the gold in the old bag.
Now feeling more presentable, he drove to a pawnshop in South Miami. He knew it would still be open because the guy who owned it also lived there, and he didn’t close until he went to bed. Otis removed the heavy bag containing the gold from his truck and walked toward the door on his cane. It was a bitch trying to open the door balanced on the cane, holding the gym bag, but the Hispanic kid sitting behind the counter just watched him, making no attempt to help. Little shit.
The pawnshop was filled with the usual collection of crap—musical instruments, bicycles, jewelry, watches, knives—and most of the stuff was covered with a thick layer of dust. This particular pawnshop didn’t make its money by selling the items in the shop. The Hispanic kid had suspicious eyes, and one of his hands was out of sight, under the counter, probably gripping a sawed-off shotgun. One thing Otis didn’t see were surveillance cameras, which was expected considering Sol Goldman’s clientele.
“Is Sol here?” Otis asked the kid.
“Who are you?”
“Tell Sol it’s Otis.”
The kid hesitated for a second, then picked up a phone on the counter, punched a button, and said, “There’s a guy named Otis here.” He heard the kid describe him to Sol. He hung up the phone and said, “He’s in his office,” and pointed to an unmarked door. “Knock before you go in.”
Otis walked over to the door and knocked as instructed. A voice called out, “Come in.” He entered, and once Goldman saw it really was Otis, he placed the .45 he’d been holding on top of the desk and said, “Otis, it’s good to see you. What’s with the cane?”
“Motorcycle accident,” Otis said.
“Those damn bikes will kill you,” Goldman said. Otis could tell that Goldman didn’t believe his story, but who cared?
Goldman was in his seventies, tall and skinny. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and his thinning gray hair was tied in a ponytail, which Otis thought looked absurd. He had small blue eyes that glittered like the cheap costume jewelry in his shop.
Otis dropped the gym bag on Goldman’s desk.
“What have you got?” Goldman said.
“Gold. A million.”
Goldman nodded. A million was a lot to process, but he’d handled more in the past.
“How much can I get for it?” Otis asked.
Goldman shrugged. “After my cut, probably seventy cents on the dollar.”
Otis grimaced but he didn’t doubt Goldman. He’d used him before when he had jewelry, artwork, or bearer bonds to unload and he trusted him. Goldman’s business was turning stolen goods into spendable cash, and he wouldn’t have stayed in business for thirty years if he ripped people off.
“It’ll take a day or two,” Goldman said.
“Yeah, I figured that,” Otis said. “I also need two IDs. How much will that run me?”
“If you want good quality, about ten. If you want flawless, twenty-five.”
“I want flawless.”
“Okay, that’ll take a few days, maybe longer than it’ll take to deal with the gold.”
“Just do the best you can. I’m in a hurry.”
“A job go bad on you?”
“You could say that. But you don’t need to worry. Nobody knows I’m here.”
Before he left the pawnshop, the Hispanic kid took Otis’s picture with a digital camera for his new identity documents.
Thankful he could now get some sleep, Otis checked into one of the first motels he saw, a low-budget place called the Starlight. The Starlight was in a pink-painted building constructed out of cinder blocks and had two floors, maybe forty units total, and a pool at one end. He told the clerk he wanted a room on the first floor because he had a bad leg—which the clerk could clearly see when Otis limped into the lobby on his cane. He paid for the room for a week in cash.
• • •
EVA BECKMAN WAS WATCHING when Otis left the pawnshop, and she followed him to a motel. She had been following him ever since he left North Carolina, and had been texting Prescott periodically with updates. She texted Prescott now, reporting that Otis had visited a pawnshop in South Miami called Mercury Pawn and had just checked into a place called the Starlight Motel.
32
DAY 5—7 P.M.
Prescott returned to Fort Meade after her meeting with Hamilton and told Brookes to see if he could find a link between Jamal Howard and Fang Zhou or Dylan Otis. While still sitting at her desk, she closed her eyes. She’d nap until Brookes reported back. An hour later she was awakened when her cell phone vibrated with a text message from Beckman. Beckman said that Otis had visited a place called Mercury Pawn owned by a man named Solomon Goldman. She had no idea why Otis would be visiting a pawnshop; she doubted he was trying to turn his wristwatch into cash.
Prescott called a man she worked with frequently at the FBI and asked him to find out what he could about Goldman. The only criminal record Prescott had been able to find was for forging signatures on other people’s checks, and that arrest was decades old.
The FBI man asked, “Is this terrorism related?”
“What do you think?” Prescott replied. “And I need to hear back from you tonight. This can’t wait until tomorrow.”
Half an hour later, the FBI man called her back and said, “According to our field office in Miami, Goldma
n’s a fence. He’s the guy you go to when you have jewelry or art to unload. He also knows the right people if you need a new ID or a way out of the country.”
Now Prescott understood why Otis had visited Goldman.
At that moment, Brookes walked into her office—the man looked exhausted—and said, “An unregistered cell phone called Jamal Howard once. That phone is currently located in the Chinese embassy. I can’t find any link between Dylan Otis and Howard.”
“Very good, Brookes. Now try to get some sleep, but stick around in case I need you.”
So Fang had sent Howard. Who else in the Chinese embassy would have called him? But Prescott couldn’t allow Hamilton to go after Fang, which Hamilton would certainly do if she found out he had hired Howard to kill her. She could not, under any circumstances, for any reason, permit Hamilton to ruin the operation involving the Zytek spy.
She needed to end this—but she knew that Hamilton wasn’t going to stop. Hamilton was the type who would never stop.
She rose from her chair and walked over to a window and looked down at the massive parking lot seven floors below her. Even though it was after eight, it was mostly full. The NSA never slept. She touched the leaves of her terminally ill ficus plant as she thought about Hamilton. Finally, she decided there was only one thing to do. Hamilton wasn’t giving her a choice.
She called Brookes—she’d forgotten she’d told him to get some sleep—and told him to bring her another secure phone for Hamilton.
“Do you want me to monitor the phone?” Brookes said.
“Yes, but don’t start monitoring for two hours. Oh, and go see Ackerman. I’ll bet he has some pills that will help you stay awake.”
She texted Hamilton next, telling her to meet her at the same café in Greenbelt where they’d met earlier. The text said: I have the information you want.
• • •
PRESCOTT WAS ALREADY in the café when Kay arrived, sitting at a table, ignoring the cup of coffee in front of her. Kay sat across from her and said, “Well?”
