Authors: Stephen Coonts
“You go home and stay with Amy. I’ll be home in an hour
or 90.”
“They had Mrs. Cohen on television tonight, coming out of the hospital after seeing her husband. And Mrs. Bush. And Mrs. Quayle. This whole mess, it’s so evil!” ‘Ummm,” Jake said, still watching the occasional passing
wondering vaguely who was driving and where they going at this hour of the night. The problem, he knew, that the Colombian narco-terrorists knew exactly what they were fighting forand they wanted it very badly. They wanted a place in the sun.
“What I can’t figure out is why Dan Quayle called out the National Guard instead of bringing in Army troops.”
“Who knows?” her husband replied. “Maybe he got tired of all the flak he caught in “88 about joining the Guard to avoid service in Vietnam. Maybe he’s going to show everybody what a fine fighting outfit the Guard is.”
“Doesn’t that bother you, his avoiding Vietnam?”
Jake Grafton snorted. “I seem to recall that back then most of the guys my age were trying to avoid going to Vietnam. In some quarters the quest took on religious status.”
“You went,” she said. “Hell, Callie, half the country is still discriminating against Vietnam veterans. The U.s. government says Agent Oranp never hurt anybody.”
“You went,” she repeated.
Jake Grafton thought about that for a moment. Finally he said, “I was always a slow child.”
His wife reached out and squeezed his hand. He squeezed hers in return.
Harrison Ronald Ford didn’t hesitate. He wrestled the dead weight that had been Vinnie Pioche into the backseat of the green sedan. He tossed the shotgun into the front seat, then got behind the wheel. The keys were still in the ignition. He started the car. Three quarters of a tank of gas.
How had two New York hoods gotten by the Marine sentries at the gate?
Leaving the car idling, he got out and walked around to look at the front bumper. Residing there was a nice blue Department of Defense officer’s sticker. Clean and new.
Harrison got back behind the wheel. He closed the door and sat looking at the door that Fat Tony had gone through on his way upstairs to kill him as he waited for his heart to
slow down and his breathing to get back to normal. His hands were still shaking from the adrenal aftershock
These two worked for the Costello-Shapiro family in New York, the Big Bad Apple. Well, tonight they had been attending to a little chore for Freeman Mcationally.
Harrison had no proof of course, but he didn’t need any. He knew Freeman Mcationally. Freeman had succeeded at an extremely risky enterprise by killing anyone in whom he had the slightest doubt. Why Anselmo and Pioche had agreed to do this little job for Freeman was an interesting question, but one that would probably never be answered. A favor for a new business associate? Good ol’ Freeman. A friend indeed.
Ford got out of the car again and closed the door. He looked for the spent shell of the last round he had fired into friend Vinnie. It had been flipped fifteen feet to the right of where he stood. He pocketed it and went back through the lot to find the others. The search took three minutes, but he found them.
Back behind the wheel of the car, he picked up the automatic and popped the clip from the handle. Still held six rounds. He slipped the clip back in place and put the safety on. Other men would come after him, of course. If Freeman could reach him here in the FBI barracks ateaQuantico he could reach him anywhere-in a police car in Evansville, a barracks on Okinawa, a hut on a beach in Tasmaniaanywhere.
It took Harrison Ronald about ten seconds to decide. Not really. It took him ten seconds before he was ready to announce the decision to himself
It’s the only choice I’ve got, he told himself. He had actually made the decision before he stuffed Vinnie in the backseat and picked up the shells, but now it was official.
Harrison Ronald put the car in gear and fed gas. He coasted through the parking lot, avoiding the little driveway that went up by the office, and headed for the main gate and the interstate to Washington.
It was funny, when you thought about it. He had been silly for ten months, day and night and in between, now he wasn’t. He should have been, but he wasn’t. As he drove along he even whistled.
Jake Grafton parked the car three blocks from what was left of Willie Teal’s place and walked. Fire trucks and hoses were everywhere. Cops accosted him.
He showed them his military ID. Since he was still in uniform, he was allowed to pass.
Standing across the street from Willie Teal’s, Jake Grafton marveled. The entire row from here to the corner was a smoking ruin. Six firemen played water on the wreckage by the light of three big portable floodlights. Behind a yellow police-line tape, several hundred black people stood watching, occasionally pointing.
Jake turned to the nearest policeman and said to him, “I’m looking for a reporter named Jack Yocke. Seen him around?”
“Young? Late twenties? Yeah. Saw him a while ago. Look over there, why don’cha?”
Yocke was interviewing a woman. He scribbled furiously in his notebook and occasionally tossed in a question. At one point he looked up and saw Grafton. He thanked the woman, spoke to her in a low, inaudible tone, then walked toward the naval officer.
“Somebody said the fireman had used enough water to float a battleship, but we certainly didn’t expect to see the Navy show up to take advantage of that fact.”
“Who did this?”
Yocke’s eyebrows went up. “The police are right over there. They’re working their side of the street and I’m working mine. My version will be in tomorrow’s paper.”
“Gimme a straight answer.”
Yocke grinned. “Prevailing opinion is that Freeman Mcationally just put a competitor out of business. Off the record, with a guarantee of anonymity, witnesses tell me four cars, eight men. They used grenade launchers. Just sat in the cars cool as ice cubes in January and fired grenades
through the windows. The firemen and police are still carting bodies out of Teal’s place. Ain’t pretty.”
“You about finished here?”
Yocke shrugged. “I want to have a little talk. Off the record, of course.”
“Is there any other way?”
Yocke led the way toward his car. Walking toward it he asked, “You hungry?”
“Yei6.”
They went to an all-night restaurant, a Denny’s, and got a seat well back from the door. The place was almost empty. After they had ordered, Jake said, “Tell me about this town. Tell me about Washington.”
“You didn’t come out here in the middle of the night to get a civics lecture.”…v
“I want to know how Washington works.”
“If you find out, you’ll be the only one who knows.”
“Okay, Jack Yocke, The Washington Post’s star cynic, let’s hear it.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
layep.”
Yocke took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, then settled himself comfortably behind his podium. “Metropolitan Washington is basically three cities. The first, and largest, is composed of federal government employees who live ift the suburbs and commute. This is the richest, most stable community in the country. They are well paid, well educated, and never face layoffs or mergers or takeovers or competition or shrinking profit margins. It’s a socialist UW-PIA. These people and the suburbanites who provide and services to them are Democrats: big government their wages and they believe in it with all the fervor of clinging to the cross. “The second group, the smallest, is made up of the bwvers and shakers, the elected and appointed officials who policy. This is official Washington, the Georgetown comParty Power elite. These people are the actors on national stage: their audience is out therebeyond the They’re in the city but never a part of it.
“The last group are the inner-city residents, who are percent black. This group only works in federal buildings at night, when they clean them. The city of Washington is the biggest employer, forty-six thousand jobs for a population of about 586,000 people in the District.” Jake whistled. “Isn’t that high?”
“One in every thirteen I*p works for the city. Highest average in the nation. But major industry dried up in Washington years ago, leaving only service jobs-waiters, maids, bus drivers, and so on. So the politicians create jobs, just like in Russia. The inner-city residents, like the suburbanites and the residents of every major inner city in the country, are also Democrats. They cling to big government like calves to the tit.”
“So what the hell is wrong?” Jake Grafton asked.
“Depends on who you ask. The black militants and the political preachers-that’s all the preachers, by the wayclaim it’s racism. The liberals-you have to be rich and white to have enough guilt to fit into this category-claim it’s all the fault of a parsimonious government, a government that doesn’t do enough. I’ve never met a liberal yet who thought we had enough government. This even though the district has one of the highest tax rates in the country and the federal government kicks in a thousand bucks a head for every man, woman, and child every year.”
Jack Yocke shrugged grandly. “To continue my tale, the schools in the suburbs are as good as any in the country. The schools in the inner city are right down there with the worst-fifty percent dropout rate, crime, drugs, abysmal test scores, poisonous race relations-by every measure abominable. The average inner-city resident is ignorant as a post, poor as a church mouse, paranoid about racial matters, and fives in a decaying slum. He collects a government check and complains about potholes that are never filled and garbage that is never hauled away while the local politicians orate and posture and play racial politics for all they’re worth and steal everything that isn’t nailed down. He’ll vote for Marion Barry for mayor even though he
knows the man is probably a drug addict and a perjurer because Barry uses the white establishment as a scapegoat for all his troubles.
“Speaking frankly, the District of Columbia is a Third World shithole. The local leaders are quacks, demagogues, and outright thieves. Public schools and hospitals are appallingly bad, tens of millions of dollars of public funds have been stolen or squandered, charges of racism are endemic. The Washington Monthly magazine said the District has ‘the worst government in America,” which is probably true. A U.s. senator called it the most corrupt and most incompetent urban government in America. With me so far?”
Their food came. The waitress asked if they needed anything else and they both shook their heads. When she was gone, Yocke continued:
“Except for tourism and government, the District has no other economic base, nothing to create middleclass jobs. Its people don’t believe in self-help or education. They blame all their woes on the U.s. government. If this place were in Central America or Africa, Barry would have proclaimed himself “maximum leader” or “president for life.” Since they have the misfortune to be surrounded by the United States, however, they want this sixty-four-square-mile banana republic to become the fifty-first state.”
“tWhy?”
.”…”…ity not?”
With his mouth full of a bite of BIT, Jake said, “Being a state won’t help.”
“Of course not. But Marion Barry can be governor and Jesse Jackson can be a senator. The Democrats will get a bigger majority in the House and Senate and three automatic electoral votes. What more do you want, for Christ’s sake?”
“You really are a cynic, aren’t yout” “Oh, come off it, you overpaid nincompoop in a sailor suit. I’ve been a reporter in this town for three years. I go out every night and look at the bodies. I spend evenings at the
emergency room of D.c. General with the abused kids, the wives beat half to death, the overdoses, the gunshot victims who won’t tell who shot them, the rape victims. I stand in the courthouse halls and watch the attorneys plea-bargain, selling their clients’ constitutional rights for a reduced sentence or probation. I go to the jails and look at the same old faces again and again and again. I talk to the victims of muggings, robbery, burglary, auto theft. Human carnage is the name of my game, mister. Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Three years,” Jake Grafton sighed. “It’s too long, yet it’s not long enough.”
The reporter suddenly looked tired. No doubt his day had been as long as Jake’s. He said, “You’d probably feel better if I had said ten years. Let’s change it. Ten years’ experience it is. , “You’re floating down a sewer in a bottom boat, Yocke. Sooner or later you have to get in and swim.”
“You think I’m to blame for some of this?”
“I read the paper. I haven’t seen any of this with your byline.”
“You ought to read the paper more carefully,” Yocke said. He rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “There’s a whole bunch of very talented people who think their mission in life is to write all of it-the good, the bad, and every subtle nuance in between. They put all of it in the paper. The hell of it is nobody pays any attention. It’s like tossing pebbles into the Atlantic Ocean. Doesn’t even disturb the fish.”
Jake took a sip of coffee, then helped himself to another bite of BIT. After he’d chewed and swallowed, he said, “You’ve heard about the National Guard deal. How will that go, in this city you describe?”
Yocke took his time. He drank some coffee and slathered the remainder of his sandwich with more mustard. “I don’t know. If the troops are just going to stand around public buildings looking spiffy and the shooters stay home, everything will go swimmingly. Absent a charge of child molestatioti, Quayle will be our next president.”
and@y9d YOU say if”…ss
“You’d be home in bed, Captain, if that was all there was to it. Neither of us rode in yesterday on a hay wagon.”
Grafton caught the waitress’ eye and held his cup aloft. She brought the pot and gave him a refill.
After swallowing his last bite of sandwich, Yocke continued: “A lot of people in this town are fed up to here with these dopers and politicians. They’ve been demanding action and getting politics as usual. Something is going to give.”
“What’re you sayinle There’s going to be a revolution?”
“Packed emergency rooms, innocent people slaughtered, children starving and neglected and abused, jails packed full as sardine cans, cops fighting for their lives. Now I’ll tell you, a lot of little people are sick and tired of going to funerals. They’ve had it. And You know what? I don’t think the political cretins have a clue. They’re dancing between the raindrops blaming the big bad Colombians and the white establishment and the National Rifle Association.”