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  “I took these pictures myself. Look at the pictures, Marianne. Now, you must never speak of tonight. Not to anyone, but especially not to the police. You understand?”

  She nodded without looking at him.

  “I need you to speak the words, little girl. I need you to look at me, painful as that might be.”

  “Understood,” she said. “I’ll never tell anybody.”

  “Look at me.”

  Her eyes met his, and the change in her was amazing. He saw fear and hatred, and it was something he enjoyed. It was a long story why, a growing-up-in-Brooklyn story, a father-and-son tale that he preferred to keep to himself.

  “Good girl. Strange to say—I like you. What I mean is, I have affection for you. Good-bye, Marianne, Marianne.”

  Before leaving the bathroom, he searched through her purse and took her wallet. “Insurance,” he said. “Don’t talk to anybody.”

  Then the Butcher opened the door and left. Marianne Riley let herself collapse to the bathroom floor, shaking all over. She would never forget what had just happened—especially those horrifying photographs.

  Chapter 7

  “WHO’S UP SO EARLY in the morning? Well, my goodness, look who it is. Do I see Damon Cross? Do I spy Janelle Cross?”

  Nana Mama arrived promptly at six thirty to look after the kids, as she did every weekday morning. When she burst through the kitchen door, I was spoon-feeding oatmeal to Damon, while Maria burped Jannie. Jannie was crying again, poor little sick girl.

  “Same children who were up in the middle of the night,” I told my grandmother as I aimed a brimming spoon of gruel in the general direction of Damon’s twisting mouth.

  “Damon can do that himself,” Nana said, huffing as she put down her bundle on the kitchen counter.

  It looked as if she had brought hot biscuits and—could it possibly be?—homemade peach jam. Plus her usual assortment of books for the day. Blueberries for Sal, The Gift of the Magi, Goodnight Moon.

  I said to Damon, “Nana says you can feed yourself, buddy. You holding out on me?”

  “Damon, take your spoon,” she said.

  And, of course, he did. Nobody goes up against Nana Mama.

  “Curse you,” I said to her, and took a biscuit. Praise the Lord, a hot biscuit! Then came a slow, delicious taste of heaven on this earth. “Bless you, old woman. Bless you.”

  Maria said, “Alex doesn’t listen too well these days, Nana. He’s too busy with his ongoing murder investigations. I told him that Damon is feeding himself. Most of the time anyway. When he’s not feeding the walls and ceiling.”

  Nana nodded. “Feeding himself all of the time. Unless the boy wants to go hungry. You want to go hungry, Damon? No, of course you don’t, baby.”

  Maria began to gather together her papers for the day. Last night she’d still been laboring in the kitchen after midnight. She was a social worker for the city, with a caseload from hell. She grabbed a violet scarf off the hook by the back door, along with her favorite hat, to go with the rest of her outfit, which was predominantly black and blue.

  “I love you, Damon Cross.” She flew over and kissed our boy. “I love you, Jannie Cross. Even after last night.” She kissed Jannie a couple of times on both cheeks.

  And then she grabbed hold of Nana and kissed her. “And I love you.”

  Nana beamed as if she’d just been introduced to Jesus himself, or maybe Mary. “I love you too, Maria. You’re a miracle.”

  “I’m not here,” I said from my listening post at the kitchen door.

  “Oh, we already know that,” said Nana.

  Before I could leave for work, I had to kiss and hug everybody too, and say “I love you’s.” Corny maybe, but good in its way, and a pox on anybody who thinks that busy, scarily harassed families can’t have fun and love. We certainly had plenty of that.

  “Bye, we love you, bye, we love you,” Maria and I chorused as we backed out the door together.

  Chapter 8

  JUST AS I DID EVERY MORNING, I drove Maria to her job in the Potomac Gardens housing project. It was only about fifteen or twenty minutes from Fourth Street anyway, and it gave us some alone time.

  We rode in the black Porsche, the last evidence of some money I’d made during three years of private practice as a psychologist, before I switched full-time into the DC police department. Maria had a white Toyota Corolla, which I didn’t much like, but she did.

  It seemed as though she was someplace else as we rode along G Street that morning.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She laughed and gave me that wink of hers.

  “Little tired. I’m feeling pretty good, considering. I was just thinking about a case I consulted on yesterday, favor to Maria Pugatch. It involves a college girl from GW University. She was raped in a men’s bathroom in a bar on M Street.”

  I frowned and shook my head. “Another college kid involved?”

  “She says no, but she won’t say much else.”

  My eyebrows arched. “So she probably knew the rapist? Maybe a professor?”

  “The girl definitely says no, Alex. She swears it’s no one she knows.”

  “You believe her?”

  “I think I do. Of course, I’m trusting and gullible anyway. She seems like such a sweet kid.”

  I didn’t want to stick my nose too far into Maria’s business. We didn’t do that to each other—at least we tried hard not to.

  “Anything you want me to do?” I asked.

  Maria shook her head. “You’re busy. I’m going to talk to the girl—Marianne—again today. Hopefully I can get her to open up a little.”

  A couple minutes later, I pulled up in front of the Potomac Gardens housing project on G, between Thirteenth and Penn. Maria had volunteered to come here, left a much cushier and secure job in Georgetown. I think she volunteered because she lived in the Gardens until she was eighteen, when she went off to Villanova.

  “Kiss,” Maria said. “I need a kiss. Good one. No pecks on the cheek. On the lips.”

  I leaned over and kissed her—and then I kissed her again. We made out a little in the front seat, and I couldn’t help thinking about how much I loved her, about how lucky I was to have her. What made it even better: I knew that Maria felt the same way about me.

  “Gotta go,” she finally said, and wriggled out of the car.

  But then she leaned back inside. “I may not look it, but I’m happy. I’m so happy.”

  Then that little wink of hers again.

  I watched Maria walk all the way up the steep stone stairs of the apartment building where she worked. I hated to see her go, and it was the same thing just about every morning.

  I wondered if she’d turn and see if I’d left yet. Then she did—saw me still there, smiled and waved like a crazy person, or at least somebody crazy in love. Then she disappeared inside.

  We did the same thing almost every morning, but I couldn’t get enough of it. Especially that wink of Maria’s. No one will ever love you the way I do.

  I didn’t doubt it for a minute.

  Chapter 9

  I WAS A PRETTY HOT DETECTIVE in those days—on the run, on the move, in the know. So I was already starting to get more than my fair share of the tougher prestige cases. The latest wasn’t one of them, unfortunately.

  As far as the Washington PD could tell, the Italian Mafia had never operated in any major way inside DC, probably because of deals struck with certain agencies like the FBI and CIA. Recently, though, the five Families had met in New York and agreed to do business in Washington, Baltimore, and parts of Virginia. Not surprisingly, the local crime bosses hadn’t been too thrilled about this development, especially the Asians who controlled the cocaine and heroin trade.

  A Chinese drug overlord named Jiang An-Lo had executed two Italian mob emissaries a week before. Not a good move. And reportedly the New York mob had dispatched a top hit man, or possibly a hit team, to deal with Jiang.

  I’d learned that much during a
n hour-long morning briefing at police headquarters. Now John Sampson and I drove to Jiang An-Lo’s place of business, a duplex row house on the corner of Eighteenth and M Streets in Northeast. We were one of two teams of detectives assigned to the morning surveillance, which we dubbed “Operation Scumwatch.”

  We had parked between Nineteenth and Twentieth and begun our surveillance. Jiang An-Lo’s row house was faded, peeling yellow, and looked decrepit from the outside. The dirt yard was littered with trash that looked as if it had burst from a piñata. Most of the windows were covered with plywood or tin. Yet Jiang An-Lo was a big deal in the drug trade.

  The day was already turning warm, and a lot of neighborhood people were out walking or congregating on stoops.

  “Jiang’s crew is into what? Ecstasy, heroin?” Sampson asked.

  “Throw in some PCP. Distribution runs up and down the East Coast—DC, Philly, Atlanta, New York. It’s been a profitable operation, which is why the Italians want in. What do you think of Louis Freeh’s appointment at the Bureau?”

  “Don’t know the man. He got appointed though, so he must be wrong for the job.”

  I laughed at the truth in Sampson’s humor; then we hunkered down and waited for a team of Mafia hitters to show up and try to take out Jiang An-Lo. That was if our information was accurate.

  “We know anything about the hit man?” Sampson asked.

  “Supposed to be an Irish guy,” I said, and looked over at John for a reaction.

  Sampson’s eyebrows arched; then he turned my way. “Working for the Mafia? How’d that happen?”

  “Guy is supposed to be good. And crazy too. They call him the Butcher.”

  Meanwhile, an old, bowed-down guy had begun to cross M Street with deliberate glances left and right. He was slowly dragging on a cigarette. He crossed paths with a skinny white guy who had an aluminum cane cuffed at the elbow. The two stragglers nodded solemn hellos in the middle of the street.

  “Couple of characters there,” Sampson said, and smiled. “That’ll be us someday.”

  “Maybe. If we’re lucky.”

  And then Jiang An-Lo chose to make his first appearance of the day.

  Chapter 10

  JIANG WAS TALL and looked almost emaciated. He had a scraggly black goatee that hung a good six inches below his chinny-chin-chin.

  The drug lord had a reputation for being shrewd, competitive, and vicious, often unnecessarily so, as if this was all a big, dangerous game to him. He’d grown up on the streets of Shanghai, then moved to Hong Kong, then Baghdad, and finally to Washington, where he ruled several neighborhoods like a new-world Chinese warlord.

  My eyes shifted around M Street, searching for signs of trouble. Jiang’s two bodyguards seemed on the alert, and I wondered if he’d been warned—and if so, by whom? Someone on his payroll in the police department? It was definitely possible.

  I was also wondering how good this Irish killer was.

  “Bodyguards spot us yet?” Sampson said.

  “I expect they have, John. We’re here as a deterrent more than anything else.”

  “Hit man spot us too?”

  “If he’s here. If he’s any good. If there is a hit man, he’s probably seen us too.”

  When Jiang An-Lo was about halfway to a shiny black Mercedes parked on the street, another car, a Buick LeSabre, turned on to M. It accelerated, the engine roaring, tires squealing as they burned against the pavement.

  Jiang’s bodyguards spun around toward the speeding car. They both had their guns out. Sampson and I shoved open the side doors of our car. “Deterrent my ass,” he grumbled.

  Jiang hesitated, but only for an instant. Then he took long, gangly strides, almost as if he was trying to run wearing a full-length skirt, heading back toward the row house he’d just come out of. He would have correctly figured he’d still be in danger if he kept going and reached the Mercedes.

  Everybody had it wrong though. Jiang, the bodyguards, Sampson and I.

  The shots came from behind the drug dealer, from the opposite direction on the street.

  Three loud cracks from a long gun.

  Jiang went down and stayed there on the sidewalk, not moving at all. Blood poured from the side of his head as if there were a spout there. I doubted he was alive.

  I spun around and looked toward the rooftop of a brownstone connected to more roofs lining the other side of M.

  I saw a blond man, and he did the strangest thing: He bowed in our direction. I couldn’t believe what he’d just done. Taken a bow?

  Then he ducked behind a brick parapet and completely disappeared from sight.

  Sampson and I sprinted across M and entered the building. We raced upstairs, four flights in a hurry. When we got to the roof, the shooter was gone. No one in sight anywhere.

  Had it been the Irish hitter? The Butcher? The mob hit man sent from New York?

  Who the hell else could it have been?

  I still couldn’t believe what I’d seen. Not just that he’d gotten Jiang An-Lo so easily. But that he’d taken a bow after his performance.

  Chapter 11

  THE BUTCHER FOUND IT EASY to blend in with the hot-shit college students on the campus of George Washington University. He was dressed in jeans and a gray, rumpled tee that said “Athletic Department,” and he carried around a beat-up Isaac Asimov novel. He spent the morning reading Foundation on various benches, checking out the coeds, but mostly tracking Marianne, Marianne. Okay, he was a little obsessive. Least of his problems.

  He did like the girl and had been watching her for twenty-four hours now, which was how she came to break his heart. She’d gone and shot her mouth off. He knew it for sure because he’d heard her talking to her best friend, Cindi, about a “counselor” she’d spoken to a few days before. Then she’d gone back for a second “counseling” session, against his explicit order and warning.

  Mistake, Marianne.

  After her noon class in hoity-toity eighteenth-century British literature, Marianne, Marianne left the campus, and he followed her in a group of at least twenty students. He could tell right away that she was headed to her apartment. Good deal.

  Maybe she was done for the day, or maybe she had a long break between classes. Didn’t matter either way. She’d broken the rules, and she had to be dealt with.

  Once he knew where she was going, he decided to beat her there. As a senior, she was allowed to live off campus, and she shared a small two-bedroom off of Thirty-ninth Street on Davis with young Cindi. The place was a fourth-floor walk-up, and he had no trouble getting inside. The front door had a key lock. What a joke that was.

  He decided to get comfortable while he waited, so he stripped down, took off his shoes and all his clothes. Truth was, he didn’t want to get blood on his duds.

  Then he waited for the girl, read some more of his book, hung out. As soon as Marianne walked inside her bedroom, the Butcher wrapped both arms around her and placed the scalpel under her chin.

  “Hello, Marianne, Marianne,” he whispered. “Didn’t I tell you not to talk?”

  “I didn’t tell anyone,” she said. “Please.”

  “You’re lying. I told you what was going to happen. Hell, I even showed you.”

  “I didn’t tell. I promise.”

  “I made a promise too, Marianne. Made it on my mother’s eyes.”

  Suddenly he sliced left to right across the college girl’s throat. Then he cut her again, going the other way.

  While she writhed on the floor, choking to death, he took some photos.

  Prizewinners, no doubt about it. He didn’t ever want to forget Marianne, Marianne.

  Chapter 12

  THE NEXT NIGHT the Butcher was still in DC. He knew exactly what Jimmy Hats was thinking, but Jimmy was too much of a coward and a survivor to ask, Do you have any idea what the hell you’re doing now? Or why we’re still in Washington?

  Well, as a matter of fact, he did. He was driving a stolen Chevy Caprice with tinted windows through the sect
ion of DC known as Southeast, searching out a particular house, getting ready to kill again, and it was all because of Marianne, Marianne and her big mouth.

  He had the address in his head and figured he was getting close now. He had one more hit to take care of, then he and Jimmy could finally blow out of Washington. Case closed.

  “Streets around here remind me of back home,” Jimmy Hats piped up from the passenger seat. He was trying to sound casual and unconcerned about their hanging around DC so long after the shooting of the Chinaman.

  “Why’s that?” asked the Butcher, his tongue planted firmly in his cheek. He knew what Jimmy was going to say. He almost always did. Truth be told, Jimmy Hats’s predictability was a comfort to him most of the time.

  “Everything’s fallin’ to shit, y’know, right before our eyes. Just like in Brooklyn. And there’s your reason why. See the shines hanging out on every other street corner? Who the hell else is gonna live here? Live like that?”

  Michael Sullivan smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. Hats could be moronic and irritating at times. “Politicians wanted to, they could fix this whole mess. Wouldn’t be so hard, Jimmy.”

  “Aw, Mikey, you’re such a bleedin’ heart. Maybe you should run for political office.” Jimmy Hats shook his head and turned to face the side window. He knew not to push it too far.

  “And you’re not wondering what the hell we’re doing here? You’re not thinking that I’m crazier than the last of the Coney Island shithouse rats? Maybe you want to jump out of the car. Head over to Union Station, hop a train back to New York, Jimmy my boy.”

  The Butcher was smiling when he said it, so Hats knew it was probably okay for him to laugh too. Probably. But in the past year he’d seen Sullivan kill two of their “friends,” one with a baseball bat, one with a plumber’s wrench. You had to be careful at all times.

  “So what are we doing here?” Hats asked. “Since we should be back in New York.”