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  “Twenty thousand?”

  “That’s right. And if any of the vendors ask, tell them it’ll be worth the wait,” she said. For the first time that day, Colleen was smiling. “They’re all going to be eating a little better this week.”

  Chapter 42

  AS SOON AS we got word on the True Press e-mails, I called in an old contact at the Bureau’s Cyber Unit, Anjali Patel. She and I had worked together before on the DCAK case, and I knew she could hold her own under pressure.

  A short while later, Anjali and I showed up at the paper’s office, a single donated room at a church on E Street.

  “You can’t stop us from printing this!”

  That was the first thing Colleen Brophy said when we introduced ourselves. Ms. Brophy, the paper’s editor, just kept hammering away on her keyboard while we stood there, with three other staff members jammed into the tiny space between us.

  “Who was the first person to open those e-mails?” I asked the room.

  “That’d be me.” A scruffy college-aged kid raised his hand. His T-shirt said PEACE, JUSTICE, AND BEER. “I’m Brent Forster,” he added.

  “Brent, meet Agent Patel. She’s your new best friend,” I said. “She’s going to take a look at your computer. Right now.” I’d worked with Patel enough to know she could hold down this end on her own.

  “And, Ms. Brophy?” I said, holding the door open to the hall. “Could we talk outside, please?”

  She got up then, begrudgingly enough, and took a pack of smokes off her desk. I followed her down to the end of the hall, where she opened a window and lit up.

  “If we can make this quick, I’ve really got a full plate today,” she said.

  “No doubt,” I told her. “But now that you have your scoop, I’m going to need some cooperation on this. This is a murder case.”

  “Of course,” she said, as if she hadn’t made us feel about as welcome as an outbreak of herpes so far. A lot of homeless people — and by extension their advocates — tend to see the police as more obstacle than ally. I got that but thought, Tough.

  “There’s not much to tell,” she offered. “We got the e-mails a few hours ago. Assuming they’re not from this Wexler kid, I have no idea who sent them.”

  “Understood,” I said, “but whoever it was, they just did your paper a huge favor, wouldn’t you say? I wonder if there might be some connection you can help us with?”

  “They’ve also got a pretty good point to make, wouldn’t you say?”

  She reminded me of my FBI friend Ned Mahoney, with the rapid-fire speech and hyperactive hands. I’d never seen anyone smoke so fast either. Not Ned — Brophy.

  “I hope you’re not going to turn these guys into some kind of heroes,” I told her.

  “Give me a little credit,” she said. “I’ve got a master’s from Columbia Journalism. Besides, they don’t need us to turn them into anything. They’re already famous, and they’re already heroes — with anyone who has the guts to admit it.”

  My pulse took a step up. “I’m surprised to hear you talk this way. Four people are dead. These punks aren’t any heroes.”

  “Do you know how many people die of exposure on the streets every year?” she said. “Or because they can’t afford prescription meds, much less a trip to the doctor? These victims of yours could have made a lot of other people’s lives better instead of worse, Detective, but they didn’t. They looked out for themselves, period. I’m no fan of vigilante justice, but I do like poetry — and this is just a little bit poetic, don’t you think?”

  She may have been defensive, but she definitely wasn’t stupid. This case could easily turn into a PR nightmare, for exactly the reasons she was describing. Still, I wasn’t here to debate. I had my own agenda.

  “I’m going to need a list of all your vendors, advertisers, donors, and staff,” I told her.

  “That’s not going to happen,” she said right away.

  “I’m afraid so. We can wait for the U.S. attorney to process the affidavit, and then for the judge to sign off on a subpoena, and the officer to get it over here. Or I can be out of your hair in about five minutes. Didn’t you say something about having a full plate?”

  She gave me a glare as she twisted the last of her cigarette ash out the window and pocketed the butt. “It’s not like most of these people have regular addresses,” she said. “You’re never going to find them all.”

  I shrugged. “All the more reason I have to get started right away.”

  Chapter 43

  I STEPPED OUTSIDE of the churchyard about fifteen minutes later and saw a whole throng of press parked up and down the block.

  Then I saw Max Siegel. His back anyway.

  He was talking to a dozen or more reporters, blocking the sidewalk and running his mouth.

  “Our Cyber Unit’s tracking every possible channel,” he was saying as I came up closer, “but we’re inclined to believe what this appears to be, which is a case of a stolen laptop.”

  “Excuse me, Agent Siegel?” He and everyone else turned, until I had a face full of microphones and cameras. “Could I have a word, please?”

  Siegel grinned from ear to ear. “Of course,” he said. “Excuse me, everyone.”

  I walked back into the churchyard and waited for him to follow. It was at least a little more private.

  “What is it, Cross?” he said, coming over.

  I turned my back to the press and kept my voice down. “You need to be more careful about who you’re talking to.”

  “Meaning what, exactly?” he said. “I don’t follow.”

  “Meaning, I know Washington better than you do, and I know half of those people out on the curb. Stu Collins? He wants to be the next Woodward and Bernstein, and he’s got everything but the talent to do it. He will misquote you. And Shelly What’shername, with the big red mike? Slams the Bureau every chance she gets. We’ve had one leak we can’t afford already. I don’t want to run the risk of another, do you?”

  He looked at me as if I’d been speaking Swahili. And then I realized something else.

  “Oh Jesus. Please tell me you’re not the one who talked to the press about those vehicles in Woodley Park.” I stared at him. “Tell me I’m wrong, Siegel.”

  “You’re wrong,” he said right away. He took a step toward me then and lowered his voice. “Don’t accuse me of things you don’t know anything about, Detective. I’m warning you —”

  “Shut the hell up!” I shouted at him as much for the “warning” as the fact that he’d stepped up on me. I’d had enough of his crap for one day.

  Still, I was instantly sorry I’d yelled. The whole press corps was watching us from the sidewalk. I took a breath and tried again.

  “Listen, Max —”

  “Give me a little credit, Alex,” he said, and stepped back to put some room between us. “I’m not exactly wet behind the ears. Now, I’ll bear in mind what you said, but you’ve got to let me do my job, just like I let you do yours.”

  He even smiled and put his hand out, as if he were trying to diffuse the situation and not manipulate it. With everyone watching, I went ahead and shook, but my first impressions of Siegel hadn’t changed a bit. This was an agent with a giant ego for a blind spot, and unfortunately there was only so much I could do to rein him in.

  “Just be careful,” I said.

  “I’m always careful,” he said. “Careful’s my middle name.”

  Chapter 44

  “YOU SEE THAT GUY over there, Mitchie? The tall brother talking to the suit?”

  “Guy looks like Muhammad Ali?”

  “That’s the cop, Alex Cross. And I think the other one’s FBI. Just a couple of piggies from different farms.”

  “They don’t look too happy to me,” Mitch said.

  “That’s ’cause they’re looking for something they’re never going to find. We’re in the big top now, buddy. Just you and me. There’s nothing gonna touch us anymore.”

  Mitch cracked up, too excited to
contain himself.

  “When’s the next hit, Denny?”

  “You’re looking at it. We got to spread the good word, get folks on our side. And then — bam! We’ll surprise them again when the time’s right. That’s what this whole e-mail thing’s all about — getting the word out.”

  Mitch nodded like he understood, but he didn’t try to hide his disappointment either. That wasn’t the kind of mission he meant.

  “Don’t worry,” Denny told him. “We’ll have you back in the saddle before you know it. Meantime — come on. This is gonna be great, trust me.”

  The printers’ truck was just pulling up to the church’s side entrance. Word had gotten around that the new issue — the big issue — was going to take another few days, so they’d printed up some of last week’s paper to tide people over. Anyone who helped unload the truck got thirty extra copies to sell for free. That meant sixty bucks between the two of them, and sixty could go a hell of a long way if you wanted it to.

  As they headed over to the truck, a voice exploded out from the churchyard.

  “Shut the hell up!” It was Alex Cross.

  “Huh-oh,” Denny said. “Sounds like trouble in paradise.”

  “You mean piggy-dise?” Mitch said, and this time, Denny was the one cracking up.

  Chapter 45

  THEY SET UP shop at a construction zone near Logan Circle, and by nightfall, their pockets were bulging with singles and loose change, and their stack of newspapers was gone.

  The extra cash got them a couple of nice cheesesteaks, a fifth of Jim Beam, a pack of ciggies for each, a pair of loose joints from a guy they knew in Farragut Square, and, best of all, a flop for the night at a cheap motel on Rhode Island Avenue.

  Denny brought the old boom box up from the car. It didn’t have any batteries, but they could plug it in here and have some tuneage for their little celebration.

  It was sweet, just to lie back on a real mattress for a change, copping a buzz, with no worries about lights-out or who might be stealing your shit in the middle of the night.

  When some old Lynyrd Skynyrd came on the radio, Denny perked up his ears. It had been a long time; Mitch probably didn’t even know this one.

  “ ’Cause I’m as free as a bird, now…”

  “You hear that, Mitchie? Listen to the lyrics. That’s the shit right there.”

  “What is, Denny?”

  “Freedom, man. The difference between us and them crooks we been taking down.

  “You think people like that are free? Nohow, no way. They don’t wipe their damn noses without checking with some committee on dumbass details first. That ain’t freedom. That’s a fuckin’ anchor around their necks.”

  “And a target on their asses!” Mitch started giggling like a little kid. He was definitely feeling the weed. His eyes looked like a couple of pink marbles, and he’d downed the lion’s share of the Beam, too.

  “Here you go, man. Drink up,” Denny said, and handed over the bottle again. Then he lay back and just listened to Lynyrd Skynyrd for a while, counting cracks in the ceiling until Mitch started to snore.

  “Yo, Mitchie?” he said.

  There was no response. Denny got up and prodded him on the shoulder.

  “You out cold, buddy? Looks like it. Sounds like it.”

  Mitch just rolled halfway over and kept sawing wood, a little louder now.

  “All right, then. Denny’s got a little errand to run. You sleep tight, man.”

  He stepped into his black engineer boots and picked up the room key, and a second later he was gone.

  Chapter 46

  DENNY HURRIEDLY WALKED DOWN Eleventh Street and over on M to Thomas Circle. It felt good to get out on his own, without Mitch on his back for a change. The kid could be a lot of fun, but he was a real piece of luggage, too.

  Just past the Washington Plaza Hotel, on the relative quiet of Vermont Avenue, a black Lincoln Town Car was parked under a flowering crab apple.

  Denny walked up the opposite side of the street and crossed over at N, then came back down. When he reached the car, he opened the back door and got in.

  “You’re late. Where have you been?”

  His contact was always the same guy, with the same stiff attitude. He went by Zachary, whatever his real name might have been. It didn’t matter. To Denny — whose name was not Denny — this asshole was nothing more than a well-paid mule in a Brioni suit.

  “These things don’t run on a fixed schedule,” Denny said. “You need to get that through your head.”

  Zachary ignored the tone. He was like Spock, this guy, the way he never showed emotion. “Any issues?” he asked. “Anything I need to know about?”

  “None,” Denny said. “I don’t see any reason not to proceed to the next phase.”

  “What about your shooter?”

  “Mitch? You tell me, partner. You’re the ones who vetted him.”

  “How is he in the field, Denny?” Zachary pressed.

  “Exactly the ringer I thought he’d be. As far as he’s concerned, this is the Mitch and Denny Show, nothing else. I’ve got him completely under control.”

  “Yes, well, all the same, we’d like to take some further precautions.”

  He gave Denny two folded sheets from his inside breast pocket. Each one had a simple map printed on it, with a handwritten name and address beneath, and a single color photograph paper-clipped to the front.

  “Hang on,” Denny said once he’d seen them. “We never discussed anything like this.”

  “We never set any parameters at all,” Zachary said. “Isn’t that the whole point? I hope you’re not going to start quibbling now.”

  “That’s not what I said,” Denny replied. “I just don’t like surprises, that’s all.”

  Zachary’s laugh was less than convincing. “Oh, come on, ‘Denny.’ You’re the king of surprises, aren’t you? You’ve got all of Washington on tenterhooks.”

  Zachary reached over the front seat and took a canvas pouch from the driver, then laid it on the padded armrest between them. This was a pay-as-you-go contract, and Denny’s price, as always, had been nonnegotiable.

  Inside the pouch were six unnumbered ten-ounce gold ingots, each with a minimum millesimal fineness of 999. Nothing was more portable, and the fact that the gold was hard to come by only helped Denny weed out the wrong kind of client.

  Denny took a few minutes to memorize the next assignment. Then he handed the sheets back to Zachary and picked up the pouch. Once he’d wrapped the goods in an old Safeway bag from his jacket pocket, he opened the car door to go.

  “One other thing,” Zachary told him as he started to get out. “It’s a little close in here. You might think about a shower next time.”

  Denny closed the door behind him and walked away, back into the night.

  I clean up just fine, he said to himself, but you’ll always be a lackey asshole.

  Chapter 47

  THE DOORBELL RANG in the middle of our dinner the next day. Usually it was the phone, and was almost always one of Jannie’s girlfriends. And she wondered why I didn’t want to get her a cell phone.

  “I’ll get it!” she chirped, and jumped right up from the table.

  “Five dollars says it’s Terry Ann,” I said.

  Bree put her money down on the table. “I’m going with Alexis.”

  Whoever it was had obviously been cleared by Rakeem.

  But almost right away, Jannie was back. Her face looked totally blank, almost shell-shocked.

  And then Christine Johnson walked into my kitchen.

  “Mommy!” Ali knocked over his chair getting out of it. Then he ran over to be scooped up in his mother’s arms.

  “Look at you! Look at you!”

  Christine hugged him tight and smiled at the rest of us over his shoulder — that brilliant smile I remembered so well, the one that said all was right with the world, even when it wasn’t even close to that.

  “My God,” she said as her eyes went around t
he table. “You all look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

  In a way, that’s how I felt. A few years ago, at Christine’s request, we’d signed a stipulation reversing legal custody of Ali to me. She saw him at her home in Seattle for thirty days every summer and fifteen days during the school year. My only condition had been that we stick to the agreement, for everyone’s sake. So far, that’s what we’d done… until tonight anyway.

  “I can’t believe this boy!” She set Ali down and looked him over again. Her eyes were glassy with tears. “How did you get so much bigger since the last time I saw you?”

  “I don’t know!” Ali squealed, and looked over at us.

  I smiled for his sake. “Look who it is, bud! Can you believe it?” I stared at Christine. “What a surprise.”

  “Guilty,” she said, still smiling. “Hello, Regina.”

  “Christine.” Nana’s voice was tight and controlled. It sounded like a slow boil to me.

  “And you must be Bree. I’m so glad to finally meet you. I’m Christine.”

  Bree was fantastic, no surprise. She got right up, walked over to Christine, and gave her a hug. “You’ve got an amazing son,” she said. Typical Bree — she can always find a way to speak the truth in any situation, even one as uncomfortable as this.

  “Mommy, you want to see my room?” Ali was already tugging on her hand, leading her toward the hall and stairs.

  “I sure do,” she said, and looked back at me — for permission, I think. In fact, everyone was staring at me now.

  “How about we all three go?” I said, and got up to follow them out of the kitchen.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Christine stopped and turned to me. Ali ran up ahead of us.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said.

  “Do you?”

  “Honestly, it’s nothing more than it seems, Alex. Just a surprise visit. I’ve got a conference in DC this week — and I couldn’t stay away from Ali.”