by Gene Riehl
“Don’t make ’em like that anymore, that Hoover.”
“They don’t, sir.” I shook his hand. “They surely don’t.” Our sudden rapport emboldened me. “Can you show me the box itself? What’s in it?”
He squinted at me. “Need a subpoena to see the mail.”
“Just the box then, without the mail.”
His head started to shake again, so I used my trump card. “One time,” I told him. “One more time for Mr. Hoover.”
He stared at me, then turned and walked away. Well, I’ll be damned, I thought, not even for dear old Jedgar. I turned and headed back toward the front door, but two steps later his voice stopped me.
“Where you going, Agent Monk? Didn’t you say you wanted to see it?”
I hustled after him. He led me around a corner to a long row of the open back ends of post office boxes, then along the row itself until he reached the one I wanted. He turned to me and bless his heart didn’t say a word. Didn’t point at it. Didn’t even glance at it. What he did do was walk away.
I struck like a reptile, my hand grabbing and coming back out with seven pieces of mail. I flipped through them. Bills, credit card solicitations, an offering to the box holder from Jiffy Lube to change his oil for next to nothing, finally a real-estate flyer. Each addressed to Southeast Fitters Warehouse, care of this very box. I examined the envelopes more closely, everything in the little windows, looking for another name. Attention somebody or other, something like that, but I saw nothing until I got to the last one.
The real-estate pitch was addressed, I saw, to the attention of Jerry Crown. I copied the name into my notebook, thanked the postmaster one more time before heading out the door.
Out in the Caprice, I called Henry Valenzuela, the computer analyst at WMFO to whom I’d given the telephone data from Telserve on Wednesday, the long list of telephone calls to and from the numbers assigned to Jabalah Abahd and Brenda Thompson. I told Henry what I was looking for, and he promised to call as soon as he had something for me.
Then I called Lisa at the hospital. She was as happy to hear from me as she was sick of staying in bed.
“I’m busting out of here,” she told me, and when I didn’t say anything, she hastened to add, “The doctors can’t find any reason to keep me, and they want the bed for someone who really needs it.”
“When? I’ll come get you. How soon can you be ready?”
“How soon can you get here?”
At the hospital, she was packed and eager to leave.
I looked around the room. “Where are all the flowers?”
“They were too nice to throw away, especially your roses, Puller, so I distributed them up and down the hall.”
She stood. I grabbed her suitcase. We started out the door, but a nurse stopped us.
“What do you think you’re doing, Lisa?” she scolded. “Nobody walks out of here on their own two feet.” She grinned. “Give me a second to call an orderly with a wheelchair.”
Lisa shook her head. “I’ve been walking up and down the hall for two hours. I don’t need a ride to get myself to the front door.” She nodded her head toward me. “And I’ve got this hunk to catch me if I fall.”
The nurse checked me out, then stepped closer. “Be quick, then,” she whispered, “and if my supervisor catches you, tell her you slugged me and took off on your own.”
Downstairs, I left Lisa long enough to get the car and bring it back. I got her safely belted in, then pulled away from the curb and jabbed the brakes to avoid a white-coated orderly pushing an empty wheelchair. I reached over and grabbed Lisa’s arm to keep her from jolting back and forth.
“I want to ask you something,” I said. “Just say no if you don’t want to.”
She looked at me, raised her eyebrows.
“Let me take you to my house,” I continued. “Let me take care of you for a couple of days.”
She shook her head. “You’re welcome to take care of me, but not at your house. Don’t ask me to explain, but I need to see my apartment again. A woman thing, most likely, but that’s what I want right now.”
I pulled up to the parking booth, gave the attendant my ticket and a dollar, then edged the Caprice into traffic and looked for Twenty-fifth Street. I could take it south to the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, hook up with the Arlington Bridge, and be at Lisa’s place in Alexandria in twenty minutes.
At her house I carried her suitcase into the bedroom, got her settled into bed.
“Hungry?” I asked her. “Shall I get you something to eat? Or fix something for you maybe?”
But her eyes were already beginning to droop. “Nothing, Puller. Thanks so much, but all I want to do is go to sleep.”
I left her to do just that, careful to make sure her front door had locked behind me before I went to my Caprice and headed home.
Henry Valenzuela called before I could get there.
“Benjamin Allard,” he said, “the first name you gave me? I get nothing by that name.”
“What about the other one? Crown. Jerry Crown.”
“One call. Six days ago.”
The hair on my arms began to vibrate. Before I could ask, Henry continued.
“One call from Crown to the second number you gave me for Brenda Thompson, her work phone, I presume, from the downtown area code. Ninety-seven seconds. Tuesday, the seventh of January.”
“Thirty minutes? That’s all you can give me?” My fingers tightened on the telephone back in the dome. “Jesus, Glen, I’ve got a cell phone number for you, but I can’t do anything with half an hour.”
Rogers snorted. “Count your blessings. There are three Iraqi intelligence officers clearing dead drops in Chicago, a Russian I.O. in Philadelphia, and another one in Los Angeles. I’m risking every last centimeter of my ass to give you even a single second.”
“Russians? We’re still working intelligence officers out of Moscow?”
“You know better than to ask me that.”
I hung up, then punched numbers for Brodsky. I told him what I’d come up with: the new name Jerry Crown and the cell phone number from Telserve.
“Gotta be our guy,” I said. “Or somebody awfully close to him.”
“Still have to find him. It’s not like we can call him up and ask him where he is.”
“Don’t have to ask him.” I told Brodsky about Glen Rogers’s satellite. “The second he answers we’ve got him.”
“Where do I meet you? Where’ll you be?”
“Head for D.C. as fast as you can. Call me when you get close.”
“I’m on my way.”
I’d barely set the phone down when Glen Rogers called me back. His voice was urgent. The counterterrorism squad in Chicago was screaming for the satellite.
“Got to do your thing right now, Puller, or forget about it for today.”
Shit, I thought. I should have stayed downtown, but it was too late for that. “Stand by, Glen. You should get a signal from Crown’s cell phone in a few seconds.”
I hung up, retrieved the phone number from my notebook, picked up the phone again and punched the keypad.
“This is Citibank,” I told the gruff male voice that answered. “I’m calling to make sure you don’t miss our one-time offer of zero percent for the first thirty days. If you act now I can guarantee quick approv—”
The line went dead without a word. Obviously Mr. Crown was already a customer. The phone rang.
“We have signal on your target,” Glen Rogers told me. “In the District … Fourteenth and K … west edge of Franklin Park. I can keep the bird on him for another twenty-seven minutes but you’re on your own after that.”
I tossed the phone back in the cradle, raced for my car. I’d never make it to Franklin Park in twenty-seven minutes, but maybe Crown had put down for the day. Maybe my luck with the video from the truck stop would hold long enough for me to get a fix on him.
TWENTY-TWO
“Package moving,” Glen Rogers told me before I was hal
fway to the D.C. line. “Heading northwest. Just came out of Scott Circle into Massachusetts Avenue.”
“How long can you stay on him?”
“How close are you?”
“Twenty minutes at least, probably more. I can’t do this without you.”
“Step on it then … I’ll do the best I can.”
I mashed the pedal, but the traffic got worse and worse.
“Target’s at Sheridan Circle, Puller. Still northwest on Mass Ave.”
Glen paused and I could hear another voice in the background before he came back on.
“Sorry, pal, but I’m outta here.”
“No!” I shouted. “One more min—”
But the line was dead.
I banged the steering wheel with the heel of my hand. Crown was too far ahead. Or Robert Bennett, or whatever else he was calling himself today.
I thought about chasing him anyway, checking out the Sheridan Circle area, and Mass Ave. Looking for the Ford van from Brodsky’s video. But I didn’t think about it long before I started laughing at the idea. Only in a very bad movie would I find it, and once I did the problem would only get worse. I’d still have to follow him by myself, and it would take the same lousy scriptwriter to make that work, too. On my own there’d be no way to stay with him without being made in the first ten minutes. Out here in the real world, it takes at least three vehicles to do the job right.
I picked up my cell phone and called Brodsky, told him what happened.
“I still have to come to town,” he told me. “I’ve got a murderer to catch.” He paused. “And I’ve got to tell the agents in Brookston.”
I stared through the windshield as raindrops began to fall.
“They’ll overreact, Sheriff. We’re too close to this guy to let a mob of FBI agents scare him off.”
“That’s not our call to make.”
“Let’s talk first, is all I’m saying. We’ll meet in the morning, figure out where we are. I want this guy even worse than you do. Trust me, I’m not going to do anything to hurt our chances.”
“Trust you? Where’ve I heard that before?”
“This isn’t Los Angeles. I need you too much to lie to you. Give me tomorrow morning. Just a few more hours.” I paused. “Besides, can you get any closer to him without me?”
I heard him take a breath and blow it out through his lips.
“We’re going to your office tomorrow, Monk. We can talk first, but we’re definitely going to your office.”
“Sorry,” Glen Rogers told me by phone after I got back to the dome. “I didn’t have any choice.”
“I knew that could happen. You told me going in.”
“But you were so close.”
“We’ll do better tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” His contrition evaporated. “Jesus Christ, there is no tomorrow! You told me yesterday this was just a—”
“All you have to say is no.”
“Damn it, you know I can’t do that. You’re really taking advantage here, Puller. A real friend wouldn’t even have asked in the first place.”
He had me there, but the only thing I could do was sweat him. I started by closing my mouth. After a while the silence loomed like a third person on the line.
“That’s it?” he said at last. “You’re not even going to try to bullshit me?”
“What you’re seeing is the turning over of a new leaf.”
He slammed the phone in my ear, but I knew he didn’t mean it.
“Just Brodsky,” the sheriff told me Tuesday morning over Denver omelettes at the Okay Eats, a chain of diners that despite the name continued to flourish around D.C. We’d chosen the one about a block off Massachusetts Avenue near Dupont Circle, and the food wasn’t bad.
“Monk will do for me, too. Brodsky and Monk.”
“Sounds like a men’s store.”
I looked at him. The man had actually made a joke.
“We’ll probably need a clothing shop,” I told him, “with just the two of us out here.”
He nodded. “I brought some gear. Hats and caps, three pairs of sunglasses, couple of jackets, and a reversible raincoat.” He sipped his coffee. “And some fake whiskers to hide my face.”
“Same here. A couple of mustaches and a goatee, from my days on the surveillance squad. Plus a woman’s wig, if it comes to that.”
“Keep the wig in your car, Monk, unless we’re trying to pass me off as a Bulgarian shot-putter.” He actually grinned. “We want to follow the man, not scare him to death.”
Another joke. Christ, the guy was almost human.
“He might like Bulgarian women,” I told him.
“That could be even worse.”
“They say if you’ve never tried it …”
He grunted, attacked his omelette with manly vigor, then took a sip of coffee, spoke with the cup in his big hand. “It was around here you lost him, isn’t that what you told me last night?”
“Almost exactly here.”
“And you first spotted him on K Street?”
“Franklin Park. I told you about the P.O. box in Southeast, so that gives us a third option.”
He frowned. “You can sit a long time waiting for a professional to check his mail drop.”
“Agreed, but how does that explain finding his name on the envelope in his box? A pro would never let that happen, either.”
“Computers. Half the mail is computer generated these days. You don’t have much control over the names in your mailbox anymore.”
I leaned toward him. “Look, Brodsky, about going into the office …”
“Forget it. I thought about that last night. Way I see it, I’m working my own case out here. You’re an FBI agent. I’ve told you. From here on it’s your problem.”
I nodded, but wasn’t about to say anything that might make him change his mind. We finished our omelettes before he spoke again.
“Where do you want to start this morning?”
I gave him the post office address on F Street, and directions for getting there. “The box was full yesterday, so he just might show up today to clear it. Why don’t you give it a shot while I cruise up and down Mass Avenue and wait for Glen Rogers to call.”
“Save it, Puller. You knew damned well I’d do it.”
Glen’s weary tone indicated our little spat wasn’t over yet, but I could mend that fence later. My grip on the cell phone loosened as I asked him to confirm what he’d just told me.
“Northwest,” he repeated, “that’s where we’ve got him right now. Not far from where you lost him last night.”
“How far north? I’m at Dupont Circle.”
“A few blocks. Short street called Riggs Place, heading east toward New Hampshire Avenue.”
“I’ll take New Hampshire out of the Circle. How far’s Riggs Place?”
“Four or five blocks, looks like. He’s getting close to the avenue.”
“Call his turn into New Hampshire.”
“Roger.” Then, half a minute later, “Left turn … heading north again.”
“Washington Heights. Stay by the phone, Glen. I’ll get right back to you.”
I punched the speed dialer for the number I’d entered an hour ago.
“Brodsky,” the sheriff said instantly.
“Package north. Get to Sixteenth Street, take it all the way up to where New Hampshire comes in. Call me when you get here.”
The line went dead. Good man, the sheriff. Professionals don’t waste time on pleasantries. Even a few words use up way too much of it. I speed-dialed Glen.
“New Hampshire,” he told me. “Crossing S Street.”
I hit the accelerator. I was closing, but Crown was still a couple minutes away.
“Left turn, Puller. Straight north on Seventeenth.”
I crossed S, swung north on Seventeenth, slowed down. Best not rear-end him. Until I had to.
“Approaching Florida,” Glen said. His voice quickened. “Check that … quick left into … into Seato
n Place, looks like. Small street. Heads up, it’s a dead end.”
I spurred the Caprice toward the intersection, stopped short, and pulled into the curb, grateful for Glen’s warning. More than one surveillance had been burned when seven bureau cars piled into a cul-de-sac together.
“Package stopped on Seaton Place,” Glen said. “And I’m gone.”
The line went dead. I called Brodsky to direct him to my location, then made a quick drive-by down Seaton Place.
The gray Ford E-150 with the same tag number from the video sat half a block down the street on the left side, in front of a small and very attractive apartment building. Used brick, brilliant white woodwork, bright red shutters outlining the leaded glass windows, a bronze eagle over the front doors.
Several things occurred to me as I stared at the building. If he lived here, our gorilla was doing it in style. If he didn’t, we just may have been lucky enough to find his keeper.
TWENTY-THREE
Brodsky showed up twenty minutes later, drove past the van, then came back to my car and agreed with me that we had a problem, that the problem was Seaton Place itself. The street wasn’t actually a cul-de-sac, as it turned out, but a very short street that was just as bad for our purposes. Crowded with upscale apartment buildings, each of them featuring dozens of windows looking directly down on the street, Seaton Place was a lousy place to work a surveillance.
There were too few other cars on the street, for starters, and far too many members of the dreaded Neighborhood Watch Program, scourge of surveillance teams from Oregon to Maine. Even if Jerry Crown himself wasn’t looking out his front window, one or another of his neighbors would be. Sitting in our parked cars like burglars casing their next job, Brodsky and I would be spotted immediately. Police would be summoned. Surrounded by MPD cruisers, we’d stand out like brown shoes at an opera.
“We’ve got to bookend him,” I told Brodsky.
“I’ll move to the other end of Seaton, where it runs into Florida. With you around the corner on Seventeenth, he won’t be able to get out without one of us seeing him.”
“Not until tonight anyway. After dark it won’t be so simple.”
“For him either. When it gets dark we can move in closer.”
