Point of Balance (20 page)

She yelled out of rage and impotence, because David was incommunicado and she couldn't find out what the hell was happening. They had agreed that he alone would get in touch. That any other option was too dangerous.

Hell's bells, what more can go wrong?

A huge truck went by and blocked out the sun for a few seconds. When it came back, the rays dazzled her and she had to shield her eyes with her hand.

And then she looked straight ahead and saw where Svetlana had gone.

23

The first thing any Washingtonian tells you when you move to the nation's capital is, “Never, never go to Anacostia.” They stress the second never. When I entered the address in my GPS navigator, the gadget dithered while it loaded the data. Perhaps it was giving me time to have second thoughts.

I crossed the river and drove into Barry Farm. The neighborhood was composed of little rows of houses, all in desperate need of a good coat of paint. As I looked at the house fronts, I guessed fear loomed over those people's lives. All the downstairs windows (and some upstairs ones) were covered in bars. Many were boarded up on the inside. The boldest residents had curtains for their sole protection upstairs.

I did not see a single open window.

The Lexus created a stir as it went along. Kids of ten or eleven began to chase me when I turned a corner. It was Thursday before noon.

You should all be in school
,
I thought.
Don't give up. Hang in there.

I felt like stopping to tell them I'd had it tough, too. That I'd had an awful childhood but had kept going, despite everything. That I'd made it. But I doubt they would have believed me, and I couldn't
hang around. After three blocks the kids got tired and faded from view in my mirror.

At last the navigator told me I'd reached my destination. I stopped the Lexus at the corner of a blind alley. Jamaal had told me to look out for a tall tree. Sure enough, a few yards up there was a leafy chestnut tree. I got out of the car and checked the urge to press the lock button on the remote. I felt such a move could smack of fear on my part.

I plodded up to the spreading chestnut tree. The branches cast a wide shadow under which a few folding chairs had been set up alongside a ghetto blaster that was booming out grungy shrieking noises. I love music but hate rap with a passion. If all the rappers in the world were to be struck down this minute by acute voice loss, yours truly would not shed too many tears.

I decided to keep my opinions to myself, because the guys chilling in the chairs seemed to really dig the song. Or at least until a couple of seconds before I came into view. Now they divided their looks of astonishment between the car and me.

“Christmas come early this year, brothers,” said one of them, who looked to be the leader. He sat in the middle, next to the boom box.

“Hey, man, yuh wanna score some weed?”

“What is you up to, white boy? This sure ain't your hood.”

I walked up to them real slow, with my hands very visible. They wore brash clothes; a lot of bling, some gold; and baseball caps. They also seemed completely devoid of hope. Those young men were teenagers, but in physical years only. Their doleful eyes showed not a hint of naivety or innocence.

“Good morning, gentlemen—”

“What kinda shit is that?” one of them cut in. I tried again.

“Howzit hangin', yoose all?”

“What you say?”

“Shut the fuck up, Shorty. I wanna hear what this dude's game is.”

“Jamaal Carter sent me,” I said.

“Who he?”

“We don't know no Jamaal Carter round here, dude.”

“That's right, beat it.”

“I'm a doctor at the hospital where he's been admitted.” They didn't stop scowling and muttering while I spoke, but I wasn't going to let that stop me. “I asked him a favor, and he gave me this address.”

“Doctor, huh? Got any prescriptions, man? You come to hustle Vicodin?”

“He don't look like no fiend, DeShaun.”

“More like a faggot.”

“He ain't no fiend. See the wheels he got?”

“Guys, please, will you listen up a minute . . . ,” I pleaded, holding up my hands.

“What kinda favor you after?” the chief said, and silence descended in an instant. Gone was the smokescreen his sidekicks' chattering had provided.

“I need a gun.”

I didn't try any more wisecracks in tough-guy speak. In that neighborhood, even in daylight, I felt I was on another planet, a very different one from mine. It was just a fifteen-minute drive from the sedate, high-society streets of Kalorama to that glorified war zone. Wisecracks didn't go down well in this neck of the woods.

“You got the dough for that, doc?”

The six faces in front of me gazed my way, devoid of expression, and I could see that the situation was getting out of hand. One of the gangbangers sat up slightly in his chair, while another laid the bag of chips he was eating on the ground.

I also realized that I hadn't had word from Kate for hours. The last text I got from her the night before told me she was home and pursuing an angle. I couldn't risk White's finding out I had another cell, so I had left it in my briefcase and sent no more messages. Nor had I told her the White House had canned me for the following day. I hadn't told her about the details of how I planned to get myself out of this dilemma. But right then, as the gangbangers edged out
of their seats and encircled me, I wished I had told her. It had been a big mistake. If anything happened to me . . .

“I want to see the gun first,” I said, forcing myself to look at the chief and trying to ignore his followers, who were hemming me in.

He shook his head in derision and leaned it to one side.

“That ain't what I'm askin' you. You cross the river to the brothers' turf, now you play by the brothers' rules. We wanna see some green.”

“I'm afraid the deal's off, then.”

“For you, mebbe, not for us.”

I couldn't help but look around and measure the distance between me and the car. The two gangsters behind me came closer. When I moved again, so did they. The chief dug his hand into his sweatshirt pocket and pulled out a switchblade. He quietly popped it open.

“Shove him this way. So he ain't be on camera.”

It was then I finally grasped why they were sitting in the shade on a cold day. A few yards up the street from the Lexus, on top of a telephone pole, there was a white box with a blue shield on it. Underneath it the unmistakable semicircular outline of a surveillance camera, watching over the street and those house fronts, day and night. It wasn't just the neighbors the closed curtains and ­boarded-up windows were meant to keep out.

That was why those kids hung out under the tree's branches, which they used as an improvised shelter from the PD's watchful eyes. How little the gang knew that the cops were the last people I wanted to deal with.

“Hey, cool it, guys, okay? We can work this out. Just name the price for what I came for.”

“Name a price my ass, white boy. You gonna give us everything you got, like the keys to that ride I'm jonesin' for.”

Somebody's hand pushed me forward, while another held me by the jacket. I elbowed back, trying to turn around, but it was no use. They closed in on me and jostled me under the shade of the tree, to
make sure they could do exactly as they pleased. More arms wrapped themselves around me, holding fast to my chest, wrists and clothes.

“Look at what we got here. Hold him good, homeboys.”

“We empty his pockets, DeShaun?”

DeShaun was the one with the switchblade. He gave me a disparaging look and licked his lips a couple of times.

“Hell no. He gonna do that all by himself.”

He lifted the steel edge up to my face. The blade glided over my cheek so the point came to rest right below my lower right eyelid. I stood very still. The slightest move and he would gouge my eye right out.

“You gonna play ball, right, whitey?”

I was desperate. There was no way out and all I wanted to do was make myself scarce as soon as I could, and think up a Plan B. I was on the point of saying yes when a voice made itself heard behind DeShaun.

“What the fuck goin' on here? What you all hassle the doc for?”

The tension around me eased a little. A kid sauntered out of the house in front of me, and I remembered him instantly. It was the guy who told me the day before that T-Bone had been stabbed. He was doing up the fly buttons on his jeans.

“Shit, can't a guy take a good dump without you all fucking up?”

The hands let me loose; the gangbangers stepped back. The geometry and balance of power in the group underwent a seismic shift with the newcomer on the scene. Every head turned to face him; a couple of them pulled their caps on or unwittingly fidgeted with their sweatshirt sleeves. Now this guy was the leader, not DeShaun. Nonetheless, the latter Alpha male did not change his stance.

“You know this mope, Marcus?”

Marcus didn't so much as look at DeShaun, and he took scant notice of the switchblade. I could see there and then a silent pissing match was under way between him and his lieutenant. No words, no gestures, no looks. No visible sign to be picked up by the underlings. The one on the throne couldn't take on the challenge without mak
ing something of it, and it was obvious Marcus wasn't in the mood. Instead, he came over to me and gave me a friendly slap on the back.

“Sure I know him. He the man, saved T-Bone yesterday. Wassup, doc?”

That friendly move did the trick. DeShaun didn't dare carry on the standoff, so he whisked the blade away from my face.

“You got lucky, white bread.”

But he was looking at his boss, not me. There was murder in his eyes, and I didn't doubt they'd end up killing each other one of these days. But that wasn't my problem.

“I want to talk to you, Marcus. Jamaal sent me.”

“Something wrong with him?”

I told him Jamaal was recovering nicely and what I had come for. For some reason, Marcus burst out laughing at the thought of me with a gun.

“You gonna rob a bank, doc? You short on dough?”

The rest laughed along with him, and the atmosphere relaxed. That is, everyone except DeShaun, who had sloped away and was leaning against a wall, smoking a cigarette.

“If I wanted money, I wouldn't rob a bank, I'd open one.”

“Right on. Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank and he can rob the world.”

I stared at him, surprised by the quote. There was much more to this kid than met the eye.

“Have you read William Black?”

“No way. I get that off of Tumblr.”

Or maybe there wasn't.

“Okay, you tell me how much you want for the gun.”

“Can't do that.”

Marcus slowly took the measure of me. He wore a thick, black hoodie and his long, tapered fingers fiddled with the heavy-duty drawstrings.

“So, what you say if they arrest you with it? Where you say you get it?”

“Nowhere, Your Honor. I just found it dumped in an alleyway.”

“That'll do, yessir. Wait here, doc.”

He went inside and closed the door. The rest of the gang sat down on the garden chairs, acting as if I weren't there but never taking their eyes off me. I stayed there in the middle of them, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, feeling stupid and watched.

Marcus took a long time getting back. When he did return, his hand was inside his hoodie.

“You got the paper, doc?”

“How much.”

“A G.”

“You've got to be kidding me. What kind of gun is it?”

“One that's available, no license, no questions asked. Take it or leave it.”

Actually, I didn't care. I merely haggled over the price so he wouldn't hike it at the last minute. I had precisely $1,200 on me, my daily ATM allowance.

I dug into my jacket pocket for my billfold. I could see the look of a frustrated predator on DeShaun, who had to accept that the hunk of meat he had hoped to feed on had landed at the feet of the leader of the pack. I shrugged my shoulders and smiled at him. His expression stayed the same.

“Here you are, Marcus, a thousand bucks,” I said, counting out ten bills. Then I peeled off another one and folded it around the others. “And here's a Franklin on me for a few beers and so you forget you saw my face.”

“Fuckin' A! We all blind round here. That right, homies?”

He turned around and made sure they all nodded. When he was satisfied, he pulled his left hand out from under his sweatshirt and handed me a grubby, crumpled brown paper bag. I stepped over to grab it and felt a heavy, hard shape inside. I was going to open the bag, but Marcus waved to stop me.

“You crazy? Wait till you in the car. And best when you a long ways away.”

I put the package under my arm.

“Is it loaded?”

“Eleven slugs. The clip take four more, but that down to you.”

“In the Walmart in Alexandria, they got a box of fifty for ­twenty-nine bucks,” one of the gangbangers said while he struggled to roll a sad-looking joint.

“Shut it, Shorty. The doc know he can't buy bullets in gun stores or joints with cameras. Go to a supermarket, and pay cash.”

“Thanks, Marcus.”

I turned around to go, but the gang leader's voice stopped me, and what he said weighed me down with even more to worry about.

“Hey, doc. I don't know what the fuck you gonna do with that piece, and I don't give a shit, man. But sure thing, that gun ain't clean. They find you with it, you might go down for more than you bargained for. You better watch your ass.”

Kate

There it had been all along, blotted out by the sun's slanting rays, on the sidewalk opposite. A hulking great sign with white letters on a blue and red background.

THE BALKAN GRILL

The best in Serbian cooking

Kate dashed across the street, so quickly a car almost ran her over. The horn's dwindling echoes startled her all the more. She shrugged it off, just as she dispelled all thought of what she ached to yell at Dave, for not telling her about the change of plan. She was completely cut off from the intel, but she couldn't afford to let up now.

Easy does it, Kate. Now's the time to stay cool and take stock of the situation. You have to go in there and talk to them. They're only witnesses, no more
, she thought. But she tucked her right hand inside her jacket and unfastened her gun, to make it easier to draw it from her shoulder holster.

The front entrance had a roll-up door that was locked down, so she couldn't see inside. It was covered by a morass of stickers and graffiti, but the lock was solid and well oiled. The place seemed to be in business, but it was way before opening hours. She knocked a few times on the door, which rattled like scrap iron, but there was no response.

There must be another way in
, she thought.

She went around to the back of the restaurant building. It was a small place, joined on the north side to the business next door, a closed-down Korean Laundromat. The south side, the one with
the main entrance, was at right angles to Twenty-Fifth Street. On the east side was a short, narrow alleyway, carpeted with cigarette butts. At the end of it, a rat scurried between the trash cans. A ­broken-down brown van blocked the opening to the alleyway.

I have to get into that alleyway and knock on the door
,
she thought. But it didn't seem to be the best option. Without a buddy for backup, going in alone was risky. If she could have called HQ and told them about her movements, she wouldn't have thought twice about it. But thanks to White, all outside help had been ruled out.

What the hell . . . Your niece could be in there. It's a no-brainer, you dork.

Cussing at herself had always done the trick, enabling her to get up the nerve to do something. Against all expectations, it had been Rachel who had found that out, the summer when they were respectively five and four. Kate had gotten herself stuck fifteen feet up in a tree and didn't dare come down. The branch she was leaning on for support was giving way with a hoarse and steady creaking noise. Her sister was worried it would snap through at any second and hollered all kinds of stuff until she got her to clamber down. Kate couldn't remember the rest of the insults, but the word
dork
stuck. That was the one that had made her overcome her fear of heights and poke about with her bare feet for a foothold lower down. As they hugged on the ground, still getting over their fright, the branch had fallen right next to them and brought down a few others in its wake. They had stood, their eyes like saucers, and sworn never to tell anybody what had happened. Since then,
dork
had become a talisman for Kate, her own code word, one she had never shared.

She went into the alley. She had to squeeze herself between the van and the wall, and scraped the back of her leather jacket against the concrete. Then she ducked under a ventilation pipe, which back in the day had been white, but had since been eaten away by rust. When she got through, her nose curled up at the thick, biting smell of the trash cans.

There was a steel door, ajar. It was dark inside, and Kate paused for a moment before stepping in.

“Hey, anybody in there?”

She groped her way around what appeared to be a back kitchen. Her hand guided her over greasy stovetops, and nooks and crannies which opened up into a passageway, then into the restaurant's main dining room. There were about twenty tables, also in darkness. Only the bar was lit up. Behind it an old man who would never see seventy again was drinking coffee and reading a newspaper with glasses perched on a hooked and veiny nose.

“Come in, officer. Sit down.”

Kate took a seat on one of the stools. It was too low for her, and she had to reach up to the bar to rest her elbows on it.

“How do you know I'm a cop?”

“Your eyes scoped the room when you came in and you walk like you've got three arms.”

She nodded. For now it suited her for the old man to think she was a cop. The less official she could make things, the better.

“Jackets are made to measure, but they can never hide the bump.”

“Not only that, officer. Or is it detective?”

“Officer's fine.”

The man also nodded, pursing his lips, to make it clear technicalities didn't float his boat, either. He took a cup out from behind the counter and set it down in front of Kate. He poured her a thick, black coffee and refilled his own cup while he was at it.

“The bump doesn't show, less so in low light and with my bum eyesight. No, it's the way you walk. I learned a thing or two when I was younger.”

“Where are you from, Mr. . . . ?”

The thick Balkan accent got thicker.

“My name is Ivo, and I was born in Loznica, although I have been living in this country for eighteen years. I came when the war ended. Looking for something I never found.”

“Peace?”

“No, money. The things you say, officer.”

The man laughed with a grating and humorless snicker. Kate squirmed uneasily on the bar stool.

“Is business that bad?”

“I'm about to turn eighty and I still have to work. But things could be worse. After I came here I busted my ass to open this restaurant. Now we try to stay afloat. Still, we've had our moments. Once that swimmer guy came here, the one with all the medals. Momir went crazy.”

“Momir?”

“I'm his son,” a voice said from the darkness to Kate's left. She leaped in her seat and cursed herself for her stupidity and weakness. She could distinguish the shape of a man sitting at one of the tables, but one whose age and face she couldn't make out. He lit a cigarette, and for a moment his gnarled and cruel features shone in the lighter flame.

“We'll pretend I haven't seen you light up in a restaurant.”

“We're closed.”

“Even so, it's against the law.”

“But I bet you won't do anything about it,” the shadow said.

She wondered how often Momir and his father had tried to put the frighteners on their visitors. They were more than just a restaurant owner and his son. There was something shifty and mean about both of them. If human souls were tuning forks, most would ring with the harmonious and predictable sound of mediocrity. But some souls in particular gave off a different sound, one that unsettled Kate and awoke in her the instinct of a hunter. And those two had that sound by the ton-load. She wished, not for the last time, she had fallback security to rely on.

“I don't care what you get up to, or not, in your business. I've come about one of your customers. Svetlana Nikolić.”

The old man traded a glance with his son, then shrugged his shoulders.

“Never heard of her.”

“She had lunch here with somebody nine days ago. A young woman from Belgrade, slim, attractive. She wore a cotton dress.”

Ivo pretended to cast his mind back. He looked up to the right, a sure sign he was lying.

“No, doesn't ring a bell, officer.”

Kate couldn't take it anymore. She moved up and grabbed hold of the old man's shirt. When he saw that, Momir rushed to his father's aid with his head down and his fists held high. That played into her hands. But he was stocky and broad shouldered. If he found a way to hit her, it would be no contest.

She couldn't let him get to her.

Using the old man's body as a counterweight, Kate put her insole against one of the heavy stools and sent it flying toward Momir. The metal edge hit him on the leg, making him stumble. He fell facedown at Kate's feet but was far from beaten. He grabbed her by the legs and tried to force her down, while the old man fumbled about for something under the counter.

A gun. Shit, he's got a gun.

She shook her leg free from Momir's clutches. Then she lifted her boot, stamped her heel on his back, and heard the air issue from his lungs with a stifled gasp.

“Let him go,
kurva
. Damned bitch.”

Kate turned her head and found the muzzle of a revolver jammed into her chin.

“Listen to me, Ivo. I don't give a holy crap about you or your son. But in case you didn't know, you get life for killing a federal agent.”

Ivo narrowed his eyes and stared at her in disbelief. They were so close his breathing mingled with hers. The old man's breath smelled of coffee and bitter onions.

“She's no federal agent, she's a bag man for Captain Zallman. He wants more than we've got. But this well's run dry.”

“Who the hell's Zallman?”

“What did you say?”

“I'm telling you I don't know this Zallman.”

On the floor, Momir writhed in anger.

“Take no notice, Father. She's lying.”

“Look, I'm going to reach into the back pocket of my pants for my ID,” Kate said, letting go of the old man's shirt. “Don't pull the trigger, okay?”

Ivo didn't answer and Kate took that to mean her brains weren't about to be turned into goulash. Very slowly and with just two fingers, she pulled out her ID and held it up in his face. When he saw it, Ivo looked disconcerted, pulled away his pistol and put it back under the counter.

“I . . . I'm sorry, ma'am. We thought—”

“Father—”

“Shut up, damn it!
U picku materinu
!
”
Ivo shouted, and unleashed a stream of invective in their language. “And don't move! Can you tell us why you didn't identify yourself as a federal agent, ma'am?”

“That's none of your business. I'm here on a matter of national security which must be handled with the utmost discretion.”

“I'm sorry to have pulled the gun. We've had some run-ins with the local cops, which are nobody's business, either. As we say in my country,
sto vise znas, vise patis
. ‘The more you know, the more you suffer.' ”

Kate nodded. She'd heard rumors that some rogue Baltimore cops had set up a protection racket, which basically consisted in shaking down lowlife criminals. Ivo and his son were surely dealing drugs or fencing stolen goods, for which the restaurant was a front. But she couldn't have cared less about that. As soon as she found out what she needed to know, she would leave the pair of them to sort things out as best they could.

“So why then would I come asking about Svetlana Nikolić?”

“I don't know. We thought it was a trick. There's been a lot of questions about that girl recently.”

Kate leaned forward, mouth open and heart pounding.

“Who's been asking?”

“People.”

“What kind of people?”

“The wrong kind. People who scare even us, ma'am. And you'd better believe my son and I have come across the biggest collection of sons of bitches to have walked this earth,
svartno
. Really.”

“When did they come and what did they want to know?”

“Yesterday evening. There were two of them, and one put his arm on the counter, right where you are. He rolled up his sleeve and showed me a tattoo of a black hand surrounded by barbed wire. He asked me if I knew what that meant, and I said yes.”

“What does it mean?”

“
Crna ruka
. Black Hand, the death squads that killed thousands in Kosovo. Bloodthirsty, crazy guys. I'm a tough old man, not a coward, but believe me, I was real scared to see that tattoo.”

Ivo turned back to the bar, grabbed a bottle of
rakia
with trembling hands and poured himself a stiff drink. Kate patiently waited for him to finish it before she carried on.

“What did they want?”

“They asked about Svetlana's boyfriend.”

“Was that who she ate with a few days back?”

“His name is Vlatko, he waits tables in a bar in Mount Vernon. I don't know what they want him for, but God help him.”

“The guy's a friend of yours?”

“No, but we spoke a little. He dropped by now and again for my
podvarak
. He said I make it just like his mother.”

“Did he come alone, or with the girl?”

“Sometimes alone, sometimes with the girl.”

“Did they meet here?”

“No, from what I heard they met before, in the old country. They'd been childhood friends, or some such. The last time they came, he was very angry. They spoke in whispers, their heads close to each other. She cried and ran out halfway through the second course. I never saw them again. That's it.”

“I see. And how can I reach Vlatko?”

“I don't know.”

Kate gave an exasperated sigh.

“Listen, Ivo. You're lying, and we both know it. I could threaten you with sending over a bunch of men in black, but I won't, because I don't think you're the kind to give in to threats, right?”

The old man didn't answer. He confined himself to pouring another shot.

“I think you like that boy and that's good. Because he's got very bad people on his trail, and I'm Vlatko's only chance to keep breathing.”

Ivo sighed in turn, but it was a sigh of resignation. He went to the till and opened it with a resounding
clin
g
,
and lifted up the front compartment. He ruffled a handful of papers until he found a corner torn off a page of the Baltimore
Sun
. He held it out to Kate.

“He gave me this number in case I ever needed a waiter. I don't even know if it works.”