Cross Fire (11 page)

Unless we got very, very lucky, someone else was going to die before this was over. And it was most likely somebody who many people wouldn’t mind seeing dead. That was the beauty of this terrifying game.

THE NEXT DAY was a benchmark for Nana and me. Things had been chilly between us since I’d brought in the security at the house, but when I came down and found her cooking breakfast for Rakeem and his guys, I knew we were at least partway over the hump.

“Oh, Alex, you’re here. Good. Take these plates outside,” she said as if breakfast delivery were something I did every day. “Scoot, while it’s hot!”

When I came back, my own plate was waiting for me — scrambled eggs with linguica, wheat toast, orange juice, and a steaming cup of Nana’s chicory coffee in my old favorite
#1 Dad
mug with the dent where Ali had thrown it against the wall.

Her own breakfasts were a lot more heart-healthy these days — grapefruit sections, toast with unsalted butter, tea, and then one half of one sausage link, because as Nana liked
to say, there was a fine line between eating smart to live longer and boring oneself to death.

“Alex, I want to call a truce,” she said, finally settling down across from me.

“Here’s to that,” I said, and raised my juice glass. “I accept your terms, whatever they are.”

“Because there’s something else I need to talk to you about.”

I had to laugh. “That was just about the shortest cease-fire I’ve ever seen. What is this, the Middle East?”

“Oh, relax. It’s about Bree.”

As far as I knew, Bree was right up there with sliced bread, Barack Obama, and handwritten letters in Nana’s book. How bad could this be?

“You know, after all this, you’d be a silly fool to let that girl slip through your fingers,” she started in.

“Absolutely,” I said, “and if I may, I’d like to draw the court’s attention to the very nice diamond ring on Ms. Stone’s left hand.”

Nana waved my logic away with her fork. “Rings come off just as easily as they go on. I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but you’ve got something of a track record with women, and not in a good way.”

Ouch.
Still, I couldn’t deny it. For whatever reasons, I’d never been able to find real stability in a relationship since my first wife, Maria, had been murdered so many years earlier.

At least, not until now with Bree.

“If it makes you feel any better,” I said, “I took Bree up to Immaculate Conception and asked her to marry me all over again, right there in front of God and creation.”

“And what did she say?” Nana deadpanned.

“She’s going to have to get back to me on that. But seriously, Nana, where is this coming from? Have I given you some reason to doubt us?”

She was up to her half sausage now, and she held up a finger for me to wait while she lovingly, almost reverently, devoured the cylinder. Then, as if she were starting a whole new conversation, she looked up again and said, “You know I’m going to be ninety this year?”

It came out with a smile — I
think
she was going to be around ninety-two — but the words stopped me cold anyway.

“Nana, is there something you’re not telling me?”

“No, no,” she said. “I’m right as rain. Couldn’t be better. Just thinking ahead, that’s all. No one lasts forever. At least, not that I know about.”

“Well, think a little
less
ahead, okay? And, by the way, you’re not car parts. You’re one hundred percent irreplaceable.”

“Of course I am!” She reached over to put her hand on top of mine. “And
you
are a strong, capable, and wonderful father. But you can’t do this alone, Alex. Not the way you run the other half of your life.”

“Maybe so, but it’s not why I’m marrying Bree,” I told her. “And it’s not a good enough reason to either.”

“Well, I can think of worse. Just don’t blow it, mister,” she said, and sat back again with a wink to let me know she was joking.

Half joking anyway.

I SHOWED UP at St. Anthony’s that morning feeling pretty good about the way the day had started. My conversation with Nana was a little hard, but productive, I thought. It felt as if we were on the same team again. Maybe it was a sign that things were looking up in general.

Then again — maybe not.

Bronson James’s social worker, Lorraine Solie, was waiting for me in the hall when I got there. As soon as I saw how red and puffy her eyes were, my stomach dropped.

“Lorraine? What’s happened?”

She started to explain, and then she just broke down in tears. Lorraine was tall and very thin, but I’d seen her hold her own with some very rough characters. This could mean only that the worst kind of thing had happened.

I ushered her into the office, and we sat down on the vinyl couch where Bronson usually perched for our sessions.

I finally had to ask, “Lorraine, is he dead?”

“No,” she said, wiping her eyes. “But he’s been shot, Alex. He’s in the hospital with a bullet in his head, and they don’t think he’s going to wake up.”

I was stunned. I shouldn’t have been, but I was. This was exactly the kind of thing I’d always tried
not
to think of as an inevitability for Bronson. It was also why I had tried my best not to care too much about the boy, and had failed.

“What happened?” I asked. “Tell me everything. Please.”

Slowly, Lorraine choked out the rest of the story. He had apparently made a robbery attempt on a liquor store in Congress Heights — a place called Cross Country Liquors, she said. The name — Cross — was enough of a coincidence that I noticed, but I didn’t make too much of it. My mind was on Bronson, and little else.

This was the boy’s first actual armed-robbery attempt, as far as either of us knew. He’d brought a handgun into the store, but the owner had one, too — no surprise. Congress Heights was one of MPD’s designated hot spots for violent crimes. Part of the problem was that the locals had gotten fed up and started fighting back — in the street, at home, and in their places of business.

There had been an argument. Bronson fired first and missed. The man returned fire and struck Bronson in the back of the head. Pop-Pop was lucky just to be alive, if that’s what you could call it.

“Where is he, Lorraine? I have to go see him.”

“He’s at Howard, but I don’t know where Medicaid’s going to land him. The whole foster system’s in a state of flux, as you know. It’s a mess.”

“What about the gun? Do we have any idea where he got it?”

“Take your pick,” she said bitterly. “Alex, he never even had a chance.”

It was true, in more ways than one. If I had to guess, I’d say this was a gang initiation, and whoever sent him in there knew exactly what his chances were. That’s how it worked. If he could pull it off, they’d want him in their crew, and if he couldn’t, then he was no use to them anyway.

Damn it, I hated this city sometimes. Or maybe I just loved Washington too much and couldn’t stand what it had become.

DENNY STOOD AT THE EDGE of Georgetown Waterfront Park, scoping the scene, while Mitch shifted from foot to foot, finishing off a Big Gulp Mountain Dew.

“What are we doing here, Denny? I mean, I like it fine and all.”

“All part of the big picture, bud. Keep an eye out for anyone surfing the Net.”

This whole stretch, from the Key Bridge down to Thompson Boat Center, was hopping with tourists, locals, and students, all taking advantage of the spring weather before the real humidity set in. Some inevitable number of them were bent over their laptop computers, and some number of those, no doubt, had satellite Internet connections.

Mitch and Denny would kill two birds while they were here: split up to sell their papers while they looked for a good mark.

After about half an hour, some goofball frat boys Denny had his eye on got up from their stuff to play a little Ultimate on the lawn. He sat down in the grass nearby and motioned to Mitch, who took up a position on the fence by the river.

Once the game had moved about as far from Denny as it was going to get, he gave Mitch the next signal — a scratch on the top of his head — and Mitch went into his crazy dance.

He screamed at the top of his lungs. He flapped his arms. He grabbed on to the fence and shook it back and forth like a crazy man in a cage. And for at least thirty seconds, every eye in the immediate area was on him.

Denny worked fast. He slipped one of the frat boys’ laptops — a sweet little MacBook Air — into his stack of papers, stood up, and hurried away. A second later, he was walking a straight line out of the park.

As he passed under the Whitehurst Freeway, he could still hear Mitch going at it, way longer than he needed to. No harm done there — they’d have a good laugh about it later, at least the big guy would. Jeez, he loved to laugh.

The Suburban was parked halfway up the hill, on a side street near the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Denny climbed in, fired up the computer, and got right to work.

Ten minutes later, he was back out of the car, with only one thing on his mind.

He walked around the block to a rickety wooden staircase that led down to the old canal, twenty-five feet below street level. The crushed-gravel towpath that ran alongside it was popular with joggers, but it didn’t take more than half a cigarette before he got a few moments’ privacy.

He leaned down and gently slipped the laptop into the
brackish water, where it quickly sank to the bottom, probably never to be seen again. It was almost too easy.

Mission accomplished,
Denny thought, and smiled to himself as he started back up the stairs to go find that wild man, Mitch.

THE
TRUE PRESS
OFFICE was hectic this afternoon, but no more than any other deadline day. Final copy was due to the printers by seven, nothing was proofed yet, and the clock was running down.

Colleen Brophy scrubbed at her eyes, trying to focus on her lead article. She’d been editor for two years now and still loved the job, but the pressure was constant. If they didn’t get the paper out on time, eighty homeless vendors would have nothing to sell, and that’s when people started choosing between things like breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

So when Brent Forster, one of the college interns, interrupted her train of thought for the umpteenth time that day, it was everything Colleen could do not to bite his head off and eat it whole.

“Hey, Coll? You want to take a look at this? It’s real interesting. Coll?”

“Unless something’s on fire, just deal with it,” she snapped at College Boy.

“Then let’s say something’s on fire,” he said.

She had to swivel only halfway around to take a look over his shoulder — one of the very few advantages of working in a teeny-tiny office.

An e-mail was up on his screen. The sender was a
[email protected]
, and the subject line was “Foxes in the Henhouse.”

“I don’t have time for spam, Brent. Not now, not ever. What is this?”

The young intern rolled his chair out of her way. “Just read it, Coll.”

Colleen pushed back fast from the computer. “‘A patriot’? Is this for real?”

“Funny you should ask,” College Boy said, and pulled up a second e-mail. “Well, not funny, really, but — check it out.”

Colleen swiveled back around to her own desk.

“Do you want me to call the police?” College Boy asked.

“No, I’ll do it. You call the printers. Tell them we’re going to be a day or two late, and I’m going to want to run twenty thousand copies this time, plus another thousand of last week’s issue to tide us over.”

“Twenty thousand?”