by Jeff Elkins
Mencken took a final drink of his beer and started packing up his laptop.
“Standard rate per piece?” Sam said with a smile.
“Sounds good,” Mencken replied. He stood and stretched.
Sam removed a checkbook from the inside of his coat. As he wrote out the check, he asked, “So how is your mom? Is she still taking shifts at Hopkins?”
“Yep,” Mencken replied, impatiently tapping his foot.
“That’s great. To raise someone as talented as you, she must be really special.” Sam tore out the check and handed it over.
“Thanks,” Mencken said, taking the check, reading it, and sticking it in his back pocket.
“Same time and place next week?” Sam asked with a smile.
“Sounds good,” Mencken said.
“Same bat time. Same bat channel,” Sam said to himself with a grin.
Mencken gave a half-hearted nod and headed for the door. On the way out he waved to Imani.
“See you tomorrow,” she called after him.
CHAPTER THREE
In the mist outside of Imani’s. Mencken allowed the wet breeze to wash his face. It had been an unusually warm September. The damp cold snapped at his throat, sending a spark down his spine, renewing his energy.
Mencken crossed the street, turned the corner, and unlocked the door on the side of a corner rowhome. He stepped inside the small entry hall and glanced at the thin, black mail box on the wall with his last name written in white chalk. It looked empty. He decided not to check. Instead, he climbed the stairs to the third floor and unlocked his door.
His apartment consisted of one room. To the far left of the front door was a white sink framed by brown wooden cabinets. The countertops were faded green and covered in knife scars from decades of tenants use. Past the kitchen was a bathroom with a standing shower. To the right, against the wall, was a single bed. There was no frame, just a box spring and a mattress. A folding chair and card table dominated the center of the room. The flimsy table was littered with art supplies. But a stranger visiting Mencken’s apartment for the first time would miss all of these things because everything in the apartment was overshadowed by the wall across from the front the door.
The white wall had a floor-to-ceiling map of Baltimore drawn on it. Mencken had painstakingly traced the map on the wall with various colored Sharpies, an old overhead projector, and transparencies printed from Google maps. Covering the map were multi-colored Post-It notes. In Mencken’s system, there were three different colors of notes, each with a specific meaning. Blue notes were events or crimes which Mencken felt bore no relation to his larger investigation. They were scattered all over the map. The Yellow post-it notes were for events or crimes Mencken suspected might be connected. These also were spread out all over the map.
The red notes were the important ones. These were the ones, Mencken believed without a shadow of a doubt, were directly connected to his investigation. These notes were concentrated in five areas: the south Baltimore peninsula, where the wealthy people lived; the northeast corner of the city, where suburbia and the city blurred; a strip down the middle of the city following North Avenue; a spattering on the northwest side of the city; and a large grouping by the waterfront on the southeast side of the city.
Mencken sat down in the chair, removed his notebook from his backpack, and began making new post-it notes. A high-school kid shooting at another on the west side was blue – a natural byproduct of generational poverty and teenage hormones.
The finalization of an elementary school closure in a northern neighborhood – again blue. At the Royal Farms store down the street from the school, Mencken had been told by the cashier that the school’s administration had been underperforming for over a decade.
The purchase of three rowhomes just north of Johns Hopkins Hospital by the Baltimore Development Corporation got a yellow post-it. Why those three houses? They’d been abandon for years Residents were fleeing that neighborhood, not seeking to move in. Was the purchase some kind of favor to a city council member? Was the Baltimore Development Corporation planning some kind of crazy new construction there? Or, as Mencken really suspected, were the houses purchased by the Cabal to ensure they would stay vacant, so the property values would not improve, putting pressure on the incumbent city council members so they could be challenged in the next election?
Mencken stood and secured the first three Post-It notes on the wall with thumbtacks. He had close to thirty more to finish before he would allow himself to sleep. After securing the notes, he turned to face the opposing wall. To the right of the door, three years ago, Mencken had used drywall glue and massive sheets of porcelain steel to create a large, floor-to-ceiling whiteboard.
Mencken had begun to suspect that factions in the city who shouldn’t work together were moving in orchestrated harmony to produce profitable outcomes. A street gang would increase drug sales in a neighborhood, causing an increase in crime. As housing prices plummeted, and the number of vacants skyrocketed, one of many legitimate development corporations would sweep in and start grabbing all the cheap real estate. At some point, a switch would flip and the police would increase their presence. Crime statistics in the neighborhood would drop as gangs moved on to another section of town. At the same time, the elementary school would be awarded a game-changing grant by a philanthropic organization. Then in unison newly renovated houses would hit the market for purchase or rent, and retail organizations would announce their intention to establish a renewed presence in the neighborhood. Then, often, there was a new contender for the city council member of that district, or a neighborhood meeting would be held at which people would demand millions of dollars in infrastructure improvements, or public transportation was rearranged to accommodate the growth and millions in contracts went to subcontractors to handle the increase in travel.
Mencken had tracked the cycle nine times in the past five years. The chess games took years to unfold and ran concurrently. Sometimes they encompassed a few blocks. Other times it led to major public works projects that spanned the city. Mencken was certain that was where the real money was – state-funded public works projects. It always seemed to be the end goal. Money would pour in, and while some of it would sprinkle over its target, much of it seemed to leak down unseen gutters.
The mystery that currently eluded Mencken was: who had the power to orchestrate all the needed moving pieces? Was there a single mastermind, or a committee of gang leaders, or was it just rich guys on their roof decks plotting world domination over cigars and brandy? Mencken had begun to sketch it out on the homemade whiteboard glued to the wall. He called the invisible hierarchy “the Cabal.” He knew that without proof of these power holders, there was no story, there was only speculation and explainable trends.
At the bottom left of the whiteboard were the names, and occasionally pictures, of gang leaders. Each was marked with the name of the gang they oversaw and the neighborhood where they were based. If Mencken didn’t have the leader, he had the name of the gang with a question mark over it. Next to the gangs were the crooked cops. The more senior the officer, the higher they were on the wall. Next to the cops were politicians and bureaucrats who were on the take. A few years ago, Mencken had been looking into the finances of lifelong City Hall workers – those middle managers that stayed when administrations changed. He found several with nicer houses and cars than they should have. Following campaign donations, Mencken had found that nine of the fifteen city council members were almost entirely funded by the three Baltimore-based development companies: Baltimore Development Incorporated, Rebuild Baltimore, and the Gilford Development Corporation. Mencken was increasingly becoming convinced that the mayor was paid as well, but he couldn’t prove it yet, so her name wasn’t on the wall.
Above these three groups were the names, occupations, and pictures of the people he believed were either sitting at the table of power or close to it. There was an old gangster who went by the title “Agamemnon.” He lived
in a nice suburban neighborhood west of the city and had managed to remain untouchable for over a decade. There were also the heads of the three major Baltimore-based development firms. These CEOs stood to earn more from the Cabal than anyone else. And a certain hotel owner who was also the primary investor in the new Harrah’s casino recently constructed on the southwest side of downtown. Mencken suspected he was a new player in the game.
Above these names, at the very top of the board, were two question marks. Mencken didn’t believe any of the names and faces on the board had the drive or patience to organize a system of power so massive and secret. They were all too public, too polished, too easy to find. He believed there had to be someone else. Someone with his or her feet in both the business and criminal worlds – a boss. The first question mark was for the boss.
The second question mark was new. Within the past year, two community organizers had disappeared, a city council member had been killed in a hit-and-run, and a lawyer who’d been chasing members of the Cabal for fraud had been gunned down in the Inner Harbor. These crimes were too perfect, too precise. Under the question mark, Mencken had written the word “Hitman?” He felt absurd every time he looked at it, but he couldn’t put the pieces together in his head without a professional killer in the mix. Gangs and thugs just couldn’t pull off the things the Cabal needed.
Mencken’s eyes ran over the board. There were lots of holes. He still didn’t understand how the whole system held together, how they communicated, or what their end goal was. There was so much he didn’t understand. Did they have meetings? Were they even aware of each other? Or were they all just minions of the question mark at the top? He just didn’t know - yet.
There were footsteps on the stairs. Mencken immediately knew who it was. His downstairs neighbor came up to try and distract him at least three nights a week. He considered turning the lights out and pretending he wasn’t home, but he knew it wouldn’t do any good. If she wanted to come in, she was coming in. Mencken turned his chair to face the door and sat down to wait.
The footsteps came to a stop in front of his door. He watched his door knob jiggle, then, the lock turned, and the door opened. Detective Rosario Jimenez stepped into the room. Her soft brown hair was pulled back in a pony-tail. She wore loose-fitting gray sweats, yellow flip flops, and a forest green t-shirt that made her emerald eyes glow. She smiled, and Mencken’s heart stopped, but his exterior remained stoic.
“You need to stop picking my lock. You do know it’s against the law, right?” Mencken said, his arms crossed in defensive disapproval. “I should call the cops and have you arrested.”
Rosie smiled. “Go ahead. Call 9-1-1. See how that works out for ya,” she said as she walked over to his sink, opened the cabinet on the left, and took out a dusty glass. She cleaned the inside of it with the bottom of her t-shirt. “Oh, when you call, ask for Robert and Owen. Owen owes me ten bucks. The dummy can’t help but bet on the Ravens, doesn’t matter how bad they look. Also, I bet he’d love to see the picture you have of him on the bottom of your wall-o-evil over there.” She motioned to the whiteboard with her head, and then inspected the inside of the glass. Satisfied, she filled the glass with water from the tap.
Mencken turned his chair around and started working on another post-it. “I’m busy. What do you need?” he said, his head buried in his journal. There was nothing more he wanted than to give into whatever whim had brought her over, but he couldn’t afford the distraction. He needed to finish this. The city needed him to finish it. The Cabal didn’t rest, so neither could he.
Rosie sat on the floor next to him, looking up at the map on the wall. “Did you get the robbery in Roland Park?” she said, reaching up and stealing a pen from the table.
Mencken sighed. “That was yesterday,” he said, not looking up from his journal.
“Give me a yellow,” she said.
He looked at her with a belittling stare.
“Please,” she said. “As if your little art project here is so hard to figure out.” She reached up and grabbed one of the yellow pads. After a few seconds of scribbling, she put the note in the left center, a few blocks west of a blue one. “There was a second break-in today. Broad daylight. A moving truck backed up to a lawyer’s front door. Clean the entire house out and drove off.”
“I don’t know,” Mencken said. “I get that there are two, but what’s so important about Roland Park? It should be blue. Blue is just regular crime.”
“I know what blue is,” she said raising an eyebrow at him.
In truth, although Mencken would never admit it, about a third of the notes on the wall were hers. She’d been doing this dance with him for almost a year now. He knew it frustrated her that he still treated her like an outsider. He wished he had the time a woman of her caliber deserved, but he didn’t. His mission came first.
“This one’s not about where, it’s about who,” she continued. “Both houses belong to lawyers at the firm of Dalton and Dalton.”
Mencken looked at the ceiling. The name was there, in his head, somewhere. He just couldn’t land it.
“Should I wait for you to get there on your own,” she said with a grin.
“Just tell me,” he replied, flipping through his notebook.
“Dalton and Dalton is the firm commissioned by the governor to look into the legal ramifications of adding to the subway system.”
“I knew I knew that name,” Mencken said.
Rosie looked at the wall again. “I bet the robberies weren’t about money. I bet they were looking for something on the subway system.”
Mencken nodded, seeing it now. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.”
Rosie shook her head and rubbed her forehead in exasperation. Then she turned to face him.
Mencken swallowed. Fighting back the urge to be overcome by her beauty.
“So what do you say you give this a thirty-minute break? I made tamales and rice. I’ve got a plate downstairs with your name on it.”
“I can’t,” he said, looking back into his book.
She sighed. “You know both my parents were Mexican, right? So when I say I made tamales, I’m not talking about some frozen, prepackaged shit. I’m saying I made tamales.”
Mencken’s heart screamed from inside his chest, demanding he follow the amazing woman, the perfect woman, his perfect woman downstairs to her apartment, but his mind silenced the cry. There was work to do. He refused to look up from his journal. “I can’t,” he said. “Sorry.”
“Fine,” she snapped back. “Fine.” She marched toward the door. Grabbing the handle, she turned and said, “I’ll just go find someone else to share my tamales with.” She slammed the door so hard, the post-its on the opposing wall shook.
Mencken listened to her storm down the stairs. He heard her door slam. He breathed deeply, calming the fire of regret raging in his stomach. He looked back at the wall, then down at his notebook. Closing his eyes, he breathed deeply a second time, and then he went back to work.
CHAPTER FOUR
“What has been accomplished here is a remarkable phenomenon,” Michelle Drake said with pride. The District Five City Councilwoman stood on a makeshift platform and spoke through a megaphone to a crowd of neighborhood residents and members of the press. The red, shiny megaphone was her trademark. It went with her to every public appearance, even if the appearance was indoors and the megaphone was unnecessary. It was a callback to her start in politics when she, a lowly Morgan State student, had led a protest at a school board hearing. When the board had moved into a closed-door session, she had taken up a bullhorn in the lobby. The elementary school on the chopping block was saved, and the political career of Michelle Drake had begun.
“These residents have taken a dilapidated representation of malfunction in our city, and made the dying domiciles a symbol of the vivaciousness of which we are capable,” Drake said. She wore a red Under Armour running suit that matched her megaphone.
“They have taken something uncultivata
ble, something uninhabitable, something unprofitable, a pestilence on our polis, and they have resuscitated it, revitalizing the temperament of our citizenry.”
Even though the neighborhood residents didn’t fully follow the speech, they clapped in appreciation when she paused.
The effort had been remarkable. Residents of the Pimlico neighborhood had taken it upon themselves to demolish two abandoned homes, dispose of the rubble, and turn the double-wide, empty lot into a free community garden. The work had taken four months. No city funds had come to their aid. No outspoken politicians had called for demolition. No one outside of the neighborhood had known the project was happening until it was done. But now that it was done, Michelle Drake wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to capitalize on the work.
“This paragon must be perpetuated,” Councilwoman Drake continued. “It is an illustration that must be drawn again and again. This is what happens when assiduous citizens come together to build a commendable society. It was not our ineffectual State Representatives in Annapolis who did this. It was not our lethargic governor who did this. It was not even our unindustrious mayor. No. This splendiferous farm isn’t the work of the legislature. It’s the work of our neighborhood, the work of our hands, and the city must diagnosticate their disease in contrast.”
The crowd clapped again.
“Now, I will be taking questions from members of the press,” Councilwoman Drake said. “So ask away.”
Hands shot up throughout the audience.
“Yes, you sir,” the councilwoman said, pointing.
“Hello ma’am,” a well-dressed reporter said. She had a large microphone in her hand, and a cameraman at her side. “I’m Cheryl Madden, WBAN-TV. What kind of crops will be grown on this farm? And who will be responsible for the upkeep?”
