Cold Snap

by J. Clayton Rogers

  "No time!" Lawson banged him with his elbow. "Listen! We've got all of copland falling down on us!"

  The sirens in the distance confirmed this assessment. Ari took out his gun and pressed it to Mohammed's head.

  "They'll trace it!" Lawson warned.

  "No they won't."

  "Don't take the chance."

  Pocketing his Glock, Ari raised the Uzi. But the gunfire at the end of the building had stopped and a door began opening at the end of the hall. They had no idea who would be coming through.

  Ari kicked Mohammed one last time and picked up the laptop.

  They reached the front door. Ari took note of Rhee's bullet-blasted desktop and the shattered monitors above the doors. Then he turned the lock and they were out. They had half a block to go to reach the Scion. The sirens were perilously close.

  "Lose the Uzi," said Lawson as he slid his gun into his coat pocket. Amazingly, he had held onto his cane. Now that his hand was free, he used it to pick up speed.

  "What a lunatic you are!" Ari protested. "A Micro Uzi is worth $2,500 on the street."

  "A fucking arms dealer," Lawson complained. "The cops see that in your hand they'll light you up."

  "My junk is imperturbable."

  "So I see. Jesus, they're close. We're not going to make it."

  Two cruisers roared around the corner at the end of the street. They were coming right at the two men.

  "Goddammit, ditch the Uzi!"

  "It's hidden behind the laptop."

  "Ditch them both!"

  The high whine of an engine rose behind them. They were in the middle of the road. When Ari turned, he saw the blue van headed straight for them. He grabbed Lawson.

  "Not again—!"

  Lawson's protest was cut short as Ari slammed him to the road between parked cars. Lawson shouted in pain and anger. The van roared passed and Ari jumped up, ready to try a shot. But the van driver had seen the racing cruisers and had begun fishtailing.

  "Don't fucking shoot!" Lawson shouted.

  It would have been a longshot. Besides, the van was charging ahead. There were no side streets between the van and the oncoming cruisers. It was the purest form of chicken.

  Another cruiser suddenly swerved in front of A-Zed and came up next to them. Ari just managed to hide his gun as the driver jumped out. He stared at Ari, his hand hovering at his holster.

  "They almost killed us!" Lawson cried loudly from the ground. Ari noticed that he had pulled up his pants leg, exposing his prosthesis. Hell, Ari thought, the blasted face was enough to send the cop into convulsions of sympathy. Lawson did a bit of hammy wallowing, like a turtle on its back. "Did I give my all in Iraq to come back to this?"

  Horns and squealing tires drew the cop's attention away from them. The van was about to go head-on into a pair of cruisers.

  "I'll call for an ambulance!" he shouted to Lawson before jumping back into his car and speeding off.

  Staccato shots echoed up the street. A passenger in the van had opened fire on the cruisers, which swerved to either side the instant before the van clipped both their rear fenders. The van turned off at the next intersection. The noise level increased. The police were arriving en masse, some going for the A-Zed building, others taking out after the van.

  "Help me up!" Lawson demanded. When Ari stooped over him, he gruffly commanded, "The real arm, you idiot! I don't want you tearing off my fake."

  "Where's my Uzi?"

  "Your Uzi? Underneath me, and it's uncomfortable as hell."

  They made it back to the Scion. To Ari's annoyance, he could not fit both the laptop and the Uzi together under his seat. Lawson laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh. Ari calmly tossed the machine pistol onto the floor behind his seat.

  "Take the alleys," said Lawson. "They won't be cordoned off, yet."

  Ari did as he was told. Soon, they were out on Broad Street, passing the monolithic Seaboard Building.

  "Pull into that gas station," Lawson told Ari. "I have to piss. I'm lucky I didn't do it in my pants back there."

  "You were frightened?"

  "I was preoccupied." Lawson shifted sideways, easing the pressure on his bladder. "It had better be handicap accessible, or they'll rue the day. I'll piss on their Twinkies."

  "Twinkies are very popular in America."

  "All the better to piss on." Lawson turned to face Ari. "What was that business about me being a thief."

  "It's obvious," said Ari, pulling into the station.

  "And what's the business about them being Italian? You mean Arab-Italians?"

  "That's not so obvious."

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The laptop's battery was almost completely drained. Ari panicked, as he often did when confronted by obtuse machines.

  "Don't worry," Lawson reassured him. "Ms. Perch is a master of arcane retrievals."

  "I don't think it matters much," Lawson continued once he had informed his secretary over the intercom of their need for a laptop power cord. "As soon as it booted up you could see it was password protected. Ethan could have broken in, I guess..." Lawson trained his eye on Ari. "I guess that has something to do with you calling me a thief."

  "Not a born thief," Ari said placidly, scowling at the laptop battery indicator as it sank lower and lower. "I believe you saw an opportunity and stumbled ahead."

  "Go on," said Lawson, suddenly sounding tired. He had called to tell his secretary he was not feeling well and intended to take the rest of the day off, but after she relayed a message to him from one of his field operatives he decided to go back in.

  "Couldn't your agent call you directly?" Ari asked.

  "I don't give my private numbers out to any of them. They'd be calling me day and night. I gave my number to you, and look what happened."

  Ari blanched theatrically.

  "Olson, the guy who called, is investigating..." Lawson tapped his desk several times. "It's a good one. "Her wife was having an affair. She goes off one day with her boyfriend, letting him drive her car. The husband sees them on the road and gives chase. He forces the wife's car off the road, and when the boyfriend makes a run for it the husband shoots him in the leg."

  "He should have shot his wife," said Ari blandly.

  "Spoken like a true Sicilian, not that I believe that story anymore—or ever did. So get this: no charges were pressed against the husband, so he's already out of jail. Both cars were insured with this company, as well as the couple's home. So the husband files a claim for damages to his car, the wife files a claim for damages to her car, and the lover files a claim on the couple's homeowner's policy for bodily injury. They stand to make a fortune."

  "Will they succeed?"

  "That's what I'm working against. Now Olson has found out that the husband and his wife's lover were the best of buddies. Nothing unusual in that. Friends are always screwing each other's wives. It's a tradition around here. But now Olson thinks he can get the woman to spill her guts on the scheme."

  "How has he managed that?" Ari asked.

  "He's sleeping with her."

  "What? Olson?"

  "Mmm-hmmm."

  "Is he good friends with the husband, too?"

  "The husband doesn't know about it, and the wife wants to keep it that way."

  Ari mused this over. "You approve of Olson's methods?"

  "He's a lady-killer. Why not use that to our advantage?"

  "He plans to kill the woman?"

  Lawson stared at Ari. "Uh...not to my knowledge."

  "It is well, then," said Ari.

  "'Well' what?"

  "If you are willing to use Olson's talent—is that a talent?—to subvert the embezzlers, you might just as well use Ethan's expertise with computers to access the data from A-Zed. All impeccably illegal, I'm sure."

  Ms. Perch came in with the power cord.

  "You're the perfect scavenger," said Lawson.

  "That's how I ended up with you," she responded before leaving.

  Ari plugged in the l
aptop. The battery icon showed a lightning bolt. "Is that good?"

  "It means it's charging." Lawson gave him a skeptical look. "You're so handy with these things…maybe I should turn the laptop over to our IT guys here."

  "And then your company would find out about your methods. Would they approve?"

  "They've got a couple of auditors here with scruples," Lawson shook his head sadly. "Complete idiots."

  "A scandal," Ari agreed. "Was Ethan what one might call a 'phisherman'?"

  "I don't know his methods, but he seems pretty sharp."

  "And if he was able to con the Kkangpae Puppets, would he not also be able to con you?"

  "I don't doubt it...but why?"

  "I mentioned ISAF before."

  "Don't get my hackles up, again."

  "If you were investigating something that involved ISAF—"

  "But why would they be interested in a penny-ante like...oh, right...immigration."

  "Precisely."

  "ISAF is smuggling illegals into the States?" Lawson said incredulously.

  "Or someone associated with them."

  "Who might that be?"

  "I have no idea," Ari admitted. "But if Sayed Technical Solutions is subcontracted to them, they might plant a spy in your organization. He would investigate Central Virginia Group...and control whatever information came your way."

  After his interview with Bruce Turner, Ari no longer thought this entirely true. But he wanted to pluck Lawson's paranoia nerve.

  "Shit."

  "The con has been conned," Ari said, pleased with the conjunction.

  "I don't like the way you say that." He paused. "I also don't like thinking about those security cameras at A-Zed. I know the boys we had a shootout with would want to get rid of any surveillance tapes, too, but we were all sort of rushed at the end."

  "I doubt Rhee taped anything during the day," Ari conjectured. "He would not have wanted there to be a record of his visitors. Or of what his strapping young brutes might do to some of those visitors. Incidentally, the original owners of this laptop won't be the only ones looking for it."

  "Oh, swell," said Lawson. "So the Puppets will be gunning for us. Or the jokers who were shooting at us might drop in. You seemed to know them."

  "The picture I showed you."

  "They were wearing ski masks," Lawson protested.

  "Mohammed removed his to wipe his wound."

  "His face was covered with blood."

  "He responded when I called out his name."

  "I'm sure he's not the only Mohammed in the Sandbox…oops, I mean Sicily. Or Richmond, for that matter."

  "I got a good look at Hasan. He's standing in the middle of that printout I showed you."

  "Yeah..."

  The more important question was if Ari had been recognized, but he didn't bring it up.

  "So what are we going to do about this?" Lawson asked, nodding at the laptop on the side of his desk, where Ari had scooted up. "You know any IT guys who can crack it open? Do we even need to crack it open? What are you hoping to get, a list of illegals? That won't help me."

  "But it might help Ethan," Ari answered. "We haven't forgotten about him, have we?"

  "What's Italian for 'snotty'?"

  "'Moccioso'. Do you have a runny nose?"

  "These days...all the time. So? You have some third-grade geek who can get into the laptop without his mommy minding he might get his head blown off for what he finds?"

  "I have someone," Ari said. "Not third grade. And does he mind? I don't care if he does."

  Lawson made a sound far removed from complete satisfaction.

  "Wish I could scare you the way I do the kids on the street," he told Ari.

  Ari closed the laptop, picked it up, and left. He was feeling too impatient to make another run to the library. Besides, Lynn's mild indiscretion in the library parking lot made him wary. Though his stock of disposable cell phones was depleting fast, he used one now to call Abu Jasim.

  "And pick up your idiot nephew on the way."

  "I think he's in the middle of classes right now. He's a college kid, remember?"

  "I'll send a note to his teacher," Ari said threateningly.

  "Just leave it to me," said Abu Jasim. He sounded pleased to be getting away from Canada and the men who might or might not be hunting for him.

  After he rang off, Ari broke the phone in two.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Ari heard about the death of Paul Trinity on the car radio. He did not know the man, had never heard of him. It drew his attention because he died in Richmond, was an Iraqi immigrant—and was blown up in spectacular fashion.

  Two others had been killed and thirteen injured in the office complex next to the Downtown Expressway. The reporter made a great deal over the fact that Trinity was a Christian whose brother (also a Christian) had been shot dead for refusing to pay the jizya, a traditional tax imposed in some Muslim countries on non-Muslims. Trinity had worked as an assistant to the Director at the Department of Financial Control in Kirkuk. The Church World Service sponsored his immigration to the United States, where his accounting expertise was put to good use at a church-sponsored orphanage. Authorities believed the explosion was not the result of a gas leak or some other accident. An unnamed source claimed it was a bomb, although he or she did not know if Trinity or the orphanage itself was the intended target.

  The reporter did not mention (Ari thought with grim cheer, as he did with all horrors religious) that under Saddam Christians had been relatively secure—meaning that they were no more unsafe than anyone else.

  Ari glanced at his watch. Abu Jasim had reached Chicago the day before. Unless there was undue delay in dragging Ahmad out of whatever hole he was hiding in (a real possibility), Abu Jasim should finish his 12-hour trip in a few hours.

  Ari had intended to visit Elmore Lawson to apprise him of his plans, but the news of the bombing caused him to change course.

  Patterson Avenue was blocked off beyond the Expressway. Ari parked and walked as far as he could before he was stopped by the police cordon. He could not see the orphanage, hidden behind a block-long line of row-houses. There was possibly a faint trace of burning in the air, but that might have been exhaust from the host of fire trucks and oversized police investigation vans choking the road.

  "Were there any children injured?" Ari asked a bystander.

  "No kids there. It's an administrative center."

  "It is well, then."

  "If you can call anyone getting blown to smithereens 'well'."

  'Smithereens'. Ari dwelled on the word as he pressed further down the sidewalk. Really, English was such a wonderful, descriptive language, full of onomatopoeic virtuosity.

  Seeing a pair of familiar faces, Ari sauntered over.

  "What brings you out here?" Officer Mangioni asked cheerfully on seeing him.

  His partner, Officer Jackson, merely grunted.

  "Don't mind him. I was just telling him what a swell meal I had at your place the other night."

  "And on and on," Jackson groused, then slid a cagey look Ari's way. "Interesting guests, too, from what I hear. With interesting results."

  "You enjoy escargot à la francaise, Officer Jackson?"

  "Fucking snails?"

  "It is just as well that you did not attend."

  "Treat Jackson gingerly, Ari," Mangioni advised. "I had to pull him off a perp who insulted him."

  "Alas, police are always being accused of being unnecessarily brutal."

  "Not quite. This guy called him a 'Barney Fife'."

  "I believe I've heard that name," Ari mused.

  "He was a cop on the Andy Griffith Show. Kind of clueless, if you get my drift."

  "This Barney was violent?" Ari turned to Jackson. "He accused you of this while you were...addressing his issues?"

  "Naw, Barney Fife was a lamb. That's why Jackson jumped on him. Calling a cop that is sort of a put-down, y'see."

  "The ultimate," Jackson commented
balefully.

  "So he was somewhat like Frank Drebin...?"

  "Kinda-sorta."

  Ari nodded up the block. "A true catastrophe."

  "You ate fucking snails?" said Jackson, shooting his partner a wary glance.

  "They weren't fucking at the time," said Mangioni, who then turned to Ari. "Yeah, it's a real mess."

  "I understand one of the victims was an Iraqi?"

  "They announce that on the news, already?" Jackson said sharply. "Shit, don't we have any quality control in the PR department?"

  "Is that like a censorship bureau?" Ari asked, then continued: "I understand he was a Christian refugee."

  "They announce that, too?"

  "And that it was a bomb, not a gas leak."

  "Shit, somebody needs to come down on them, hard."

  "The killer?" Ari asked.

  "No, Public Affairs."

  "Jackson thinks if no one knows, there was never any crime," Mangioni observed.

  "Well?" said Jackson, shorthanding the obvious.

  "When the reporter gave the nationality of one of the victims, I thought I would come to observe," said Ari.

  "Out of respect?"

  "My ancestors came out of the Middle East to settle in Sicily." Ari paused. "I suppose that's apparent."

  "A little," said Jackson.

  "You must admit the Arab community has been hard-pressed lately. First the beheading of Mustafa Zewail, then the bombing in Chesterfield...are you aware of any similarities between these bombings?"

  "Give us a break," Jackson complained. "We just got here."

  "And we're not with the bomb squad," Mangioni reasoned.

  "I understand," Ari nodded, acknowledging his foolishness with a grimace. "But it's my understanding that in Chesterfield, the bomb was delivered in a package—"

  "Not by U.S. Mail," Mangioni said. In response to a scowl from Jackson, he shrugged. "What can it hurt? Ari's the man with connections. He'll find out soon enough. Besides, we owe him ten times over, after that Carrington business."