Butterfly Knife

by Larry Matthews

Chapter Eight

 

  It was cold and dawn was hours away. The sky was clear and stars were visible above the city lights. Father Darius’s back was aching from the punishment he had imposed on it. He had parked the car in the public garage at Union Station and walked to the far corner where he had left it after he had disposed of the man he believed to have been a Mexican. The garage was only a few blocks from the park where the headless man had been discovered. He had placed the man’s head under row house porch on C Street, next to an old basket that had been left there. It would be months before it was discovered.

  He sat in the bucket seat, leaning forward to avoid the pain that was the result of his self-imposed penance. He pulled out the choke, pressed the gas pedal to the floor and pushed the start button. The engine came to life, sputtering and emitting a small cloud of smoke through the tailpipe. When the engine had settled down, he pushed the choke halfway back into the dashboard and waited until the machine had warmed itself to its full performance. He pushed the choke all the way in and backed out of the space and slowly drove down onto Massachusetts Avenue. He drove to Pennsylvania Avenue and then to Constitution, which he took past the Washington Monument and down to the Roosevelt Bridge and into Virginia, glancing at the Kennedy Center reflected in the water below.

  He took the George Washington Parkway north, with the Potomac on his right. He kept to the speed limit to avoid problems with the U.S. Park Police, who waited in hiding for drunks and speeders coming up from D.C. The MG had no windup windows and the side curtains he had inserted into the tops of the doors bowed away from the car at speed, so the cold night air rushed into the car, causing his hands to shake on the wheel.

  He was carrying a Washington state driver’s license identifying him as Walter Williams, a resident of a working class neighborhood of Seattle. The photo was of a nondescript man of middle age, no facial hair, thinning hair, blank, white face. An average person could not pick him out of a crowd of average middle aged white men. That was the point. The photo looked something like him but, in fact, it was not him. He had obtained the license through unofficial channels. He turned off at Route 123 and drove to an address in Mclean.

  Peter Malone bought a prepaid cell phone at a store on 14th Street. The owners were Koreans who crammed the small store with food, beer and wine, Korean kitch, tobacco products, rolling papers, condoms, phones, pre-paid phone cards and assorted backroom items such as brass knuckles and K-bar knives. The Koreans glared at each customer as though he or she had come into the store to murder the proprietors. It was assumed that there was a shotgun behind the counter. The neighborhood had gentrified in recent years and the threat of crime had dropped to a point where the likelihood of a robbery was about as great as it would have been had the store been located in prosperous Bethesda across the line in Maryland, but the owners remained vigilant. Malone noted the security cameras and was satisfied that his face could not be identified under his fedora.

  He liked the place. He wandered the cluttered aisles and appreciated the small Washington Monuments and “Nation’s Capital” tee-shirts next to garish hats bearing the flag of the Republic of Korea. It reminded him of the bodegas in his own city where he had worked the streets, first as a patrolman, later as a detective. He liked street life and the possibility of crime and its many fingers. He allowed himself a moment of nostalgia. He smiled at the Korean man behind the counter, who was eyeing him with suspicion. “How’s it goin’?”

  “You pay now!”

  He gave the man cash, keeping his face away from the cameras in the ceiling. He went to the car and cut the phone out of its plastic wrapping and went through the process of activating it. He had five-hundred minutes of time on it. That should be sufficient. If he needed more, he would destroy the phone and buy another one at different store. He pulled away from the curb and drove a zig-zag route for fifteen minutes, coming to a stop on P Street near Dupont Circle. He sat in the car watching the neighborhood, trying to get a feel for it and who might be sitting in a window unable to sleep and killing time by idly watching the street. A lesbian couple walked past the car, glared at him, and kissed passionately. They were hoping to shock him. He would not have been shocked if they performed a sex act with a goat. He was past shocking for almost any reason. Any reason aside from betrayal.

  The lesbians moved on, huddled together in the cold night air. Malone saw no one else on the street or peering from windows. He dialed a number. The man on the other end spoke for two minutes and ended the call. Malone drove to the Philadelphia House on Massachusetts Avenue, parked the car at a meter, and got out to take mental notes of the neighborhood. There were very few people on the street, not even barflies who had closed the joints on 17th Street. Malone was quick to note the security people who were watching the diplomatic addresses. They looked like security goons anywhere, trying to appear as normal as possible while remaining in a small area, armed and dangerous to anyone who had ideas of attack on the nations whose flags hung over the doors of Embassy Row. A few Uniformed Secret Service vehicles were conspicuous under street lights to offer a measure of reassurance that the United States was watching over the diplomats who were guests in this country.

  Malone thought the scene looked a bit tidy for his taste. He liked his streets scenes a bit rougher, with junkies, hustlers and whores in the doorways. Philadelphia House was like the other buildings in the neighborhood, gentile in an early twentieth century way. He had an odd thought about whether anyone actually got laid in a place like that or whether they all just sat around reading books that no one else understood.

  Inside, Dave was not reading, he was asleep. He had called O’Neil to arrange to meet him in the morning and hand over the Novena book but the cop didn’t answer, so he left a vague message and turned in for the night. The small noises outside were drowned out by the hum of the furnace fan. Only the whoop of a police car responding to a street crime interrupted his sleep, but he was soon dreaming again. Sirens were part of the sound of the city and very few people paid any attention to them.

  Malone was back in his car before the patrol car sped by. It was unfortunate that the young man had come upon him in the alley behind the Philadelphia House. The fellow seemed to be waiting for someone and was facing 17th Street when Malone was upon him. It was quick. The guy probably felt nothing but a moment of panic. Malone could not take a chance that he would be seen and recognized. What was he doing on the street at this hour, anyway? Malone wondered. No time for sentiments. Poor guy shit his pants. Happens. In these moments Malone felt his emotions draining away and he felt nothing at all for other human beings. It bothered him. It’s what drove him into the arms of The Virgin. He believed that she would heal him of this coldness and bring him into the Eternal Light. He sat in his car and allowed tears to flow down his cheeks. Maybe they would bring him some peace about himself. He reached into his jacket pocket and held the beads to his chest. He crossed himself and began. “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ…”

  He took his time, reciting The Apostle’s Creed and each Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be slowly, allowed each word in the prayers to roll over his tongue quietly as he lost himself in what believed was his cleansing. When he had finished the Rosary he said a short prayer for the young man he had strangled. Dawn was turning the city sky gray as he opened his eyes. Early walkers and joggers were out on the sidewalk and he could see the shops near Dupont Circle coming to life. He had an urge for coffee and a croissant but he dared not leave his spot. It was one of the few parking spaces on Massachusetts Avenue where he could park during rush hour.

  By seven o’clock the sidewalk had become crowded with men and women going to the jobs their high priced educations had given them. They would spend their day pouring over arcane facts and numbers about trade or policy. They would feel good about themselves and their contribution to the well-being of the world. They were unaware that darker forces were at play at
the edges.

  A police sedan pulled into the drive in front of the Philadelphia House. Malone recognized it immediately, even though it was unmarked. The man inside had cop written all over him from a block away. Malone assumed the man was Captain O’Neil, commander of Homicide. He had been briefed about O’Neil’s link to Dave Haggard and was not surprised when Dave walked through the door and climbed into O’Neil’s car. He watched as the two men talked, then drove away. He followed the car into the heavy morning traffic on Massachusetts, over to 14th Street, up to Military Road, and to 4D on Georgia. Malone knew he was following someone who would notice a tail, so he kept back and even ran on parallel streets for a few blocks. He was satisfied that O’Neil did not pick him up.

  He found a space near 4D and waited. It began to snow heavy, wet flakes that coated the streets and caused gridlock in the rush hour. He debated whether to turn on his wipers and risk being seen or to allow the snow to build up, blocking his view of the street. He couldn’t risk being seen. Watching a building full of detectives was risky enough without advertising himself, so he sat and watched the snow build up on his windshield. He was cold and he craved strong, hot coffee. He watched women coming and going from a hair salon and idly allowed himself a fantasy about them.

  Inside, O’Neil was staring at the Novena book, which Dave had given him wrapped in a paper napkin. “Tell me again where you got this?” Dave related his encounter with Peppers across the street from the headless man in the park. “I gotta tell you, nothing about you adds up right now. You’re there when Father Phil gets killed. Then somebody sends you his Rosary. Then this homeless guy Peppers happens to hand you this book, all bloody and sticky. Hey, Brice, this make any sense to you?” O’Neil nodded to a detective who was sitting at a nearby desk, watching O’Neil and Dave.

  “Hey, Captain, I’m just a worker ant here. Shit happens, you know. What can I say?”

  O’Neil let out a dramatic sigh. “That’s why I have you guys in the unit. Geniuses, one and all.”

  “Okay, like with the Rosary, did you get your fingerprints all over this?”

  “Some, just when he gave it to me.”

  “We’ll let the lab guys look it over. Okay, you showed me yours, now I’ll show you mine. Do you remember how I told you that what we discussed at the coffee shop was confidential and not for public consumption?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Well, either you broke our deal or somebody in Chicago has very good hearing because the cops angle in the Warriors of Mary is all over the news there. You know anything about that?”

  “How’d you hear that?” Dave knew he would have to deal with it sooner or later but he didn’t think it would be this soon.

  “It was on the fucking news. Cops in Chicago talked to other cops. Did you do this?”

  “Okay, here’s what happened…” Dave tried to explain how he had come to record his conversation with O’Neil and how he had played it back in the studio while the station in Chicago listened and recorded it. The more he spoke the stupider he sounded and the more implausible the story became. His face grew red as he attempted to justify what was a breach of the near-holy pact that reporters make with sources. He reached the point where even he felt as though he were listening to an idiot try to explain something that could not be justified. He felt like a five year old trying to explain why he had mud on his Sunday clothes. In the end, he gave up. “Stupid mistake,” he said, looking O’Neil in the eye.

  “No shit,” O’Neil said, allowing the moment to slip into silence. No one spoke for several minutes. Finally, Dave broke the quiet. “What can I do?”