Toni threw an elbow at an imaginary opponent Too bad she couldn’t control her love life as easily as she could a physical attack.
Life would be much easier. Get into a fight with a would-be partner and throw him, then he’d be yours forever.
Too bad it wasn’t that easy.
Monday, December 20th, 2:05 P.m.
Bladensburg, Maryland Alone, Hughes drove to one of his safe houses for the meeting with Platt.
There was always business that couldn’t be handled long distance, just as in Guinea-Bissau, and one needed places to conduct such business away from curious eyes.
This hideaway was a basic third-floor single-bedroom apartment deep in the bowels of one of the new monster apartment complexes just over the District line, in Maryland. The complex was part of the extended bedroom community that had come to surround the nation’s capital, accreting slowly over the years at first, then suddenly metastasizing like some architectural cancer, expanding in huge pressed-wood, ticky tacky lumps and clots in all directions. Such places were the modern equivalent of tar-paper shacks–although probably not as sturdy.
Here was one of these cheap constructions, the River View Province. Three stories high, a thousand units strong, less than six months old, it was a perfect place to hold clandestine meetings.
Nobody knew their neighbors, and it was so large nobody noticed who came and went. It was between Colmar Manor and Bladensburg, just off SR 450, and if you were on the third floor in the unit Platt had rented, and if you stood in the kitchen sink and leaned out the window, you could indeed see the north fork of the Anacostia River–for what that was worth.
Hughes drove a rental car, a small, plain gray Dodge some thing or the other that looked just like a million other cars on the road. He might as well have been wearing a cloak of invisibility for all he was likely to be noticed. He wasn’t likely to run into anybody he knew out here, and he wasn’t going to be recognized by anybody except a political junkie, none of whom would see him and Platt together in any event.
He wended his way through the vast parking lot, got lost when he took a wrong turn at one of the stupidly named and numbered lanes–Catbird 17 –then finally arrived at the assigned parking slot for his apartment.
He pulled the car into the space and shut the motor off. He looked around. Cold, clear, nobody around except some big guy walking a pair of brown and black German Shepherds on long wind-up leashes.
The dogs snuffled the air, looking back and forth, keenly alert and searching for wolves to bark at. How could you live with two dogs that big in one of these little places? The poor guy must spend half his day walking those monsters; otherwise they’d eat all his furniture and wear holes in the carpet.
Hughes liked dogs, and though he didn’t have time for one now, maybe he’d get a whole pack when he got set up. He’d have the room, and the time to fool with them.
He took the elevator to the third level, headed down the hall to the unit, opened the door with a plastic keycard, and stepped quickly inside.
Plat was already there. He stood in the kitchenette, and he had what looked like a plastic bag full of ice cubes pressed against the right side of his head. The big man had scratches and a brush burn on one cheek, and the knuckles on both hands were torn and crusted with flecks of dried blood.
“What the hell happened to you?” Platt grinned, and moved the bag of ice away from his head.
“I had me a little ar-gu-ment with one of our underprivileged black brothers. He clipped me a good one on the side of the head. You want to ice some thing like that down pretty quick, otherwise you wind up with a cauliflower ear.
I’m too pretty to let myself get to lookin’ like some punch drunk ole boxer.” Hughes stared.
“You were supposed to keep a low profile.
You weren’t supposed to draw attention to yourself.” “Didn’t get no notice to speak of. Boy lost a couple teeth, maybe got a broke rib or two, he’ll be just fine in a week or three. Probably didn’t even go to the hospital.
Shoot, any wog dentist comcd put them teeth back in. I left before the police showed up, if they ever did. It was just a little ole dance, nothin’ much. He moved pretty good, we had us a fine time.” A man who got into fights for fun. Platt was surely crazy.
“You got somethin’ for me?” Platt said.
Hughes removed a thick manila envelope from his briefcase and tossed it at Platt, who caught it one-handed.
“There’s twenty thousand in there, all in used hundreds.” “That ought to keep pork chops on the table for a couple weeks,” Platt said.
“Just be sure and get that list from the NSA satellite clerk.” “Yeah, I’m looking forward to those codes.
I’mon be able to get HBO for free.” Hughes shook his head.
“You see “em runnin” around like chickens with their heads cut off over at Langley? Bet we get ourselves a new CIA Director real damn quick.” Platt laughed.
“The spy list did create quite a stir,” Hughes allowed.
“But we’ve got to keep the pressure up.” “No problem. Japanese Stock Exchange codes go out in the mornin’, and the flight information for the Hijos del Sol cartel’s cocaine shipments gets fed to their main rivals, Hermanos Morte, tomorrow afternoon. It’ll be knee-deep in blood and snow ing the Devil’s Dandruff all over Colombia before it gets good and dark. DEA is gonna be having kittens down there trying to figure out what’s what.” “What about the banks?” “I got some stuff coming out on Wednesday.
Nothin’ big, just a couple of thousand East Coast ATM’S going wonky, givin’ out beaucoup cash to anybody who uses a smart card.
Be real inter esting to see how much of it gets turned back in.” “All right. Anything else I need to know?” “Nope. I got me an appointment with a masseuse this afternoon.
She’s gonna relieve my tensions allll over.” Hughes shook his head again. Platt didn’t know it, but he’d been under surveillance for six weeks, by a very discreet-and very expensive–investigative firm hired to keep tabs on him. Since Hughes trusted the big man about as far as he could throw him one-handed, he thought it wise to make sure Platt wasn’t playing any games he shouldn’t be playing.
No doubt Hughes would hear from his hired operatives about the street fight later. As he would hear about the “masseuse” who came to minister to Platt’s needs.
The woman would be black, of course. They always were.
Platt had availed himself of out call massage services fourteen times in the last six weeks; had sampled the wares of half-a-dozen prostitutes in Guinea-Bissau during his stay there, along with a streetwalker working the airport during his long stopover in Cairo. All had been black women, more than twenty of them. He did not mistreat any of the trulls, as far as Hughes’s investigators could determine, nor was he interested in anything other than heterosexual-style relations, no whips or chains or funny clothes.
Platt’s racism was apparently not wide enough to encompass females of African heritage. A wonderful dichotomy, Platt. He would beat up a black man in the morning then fornicate with a black woman in the afternoon. Hypocrisy was such a wonderful thing. The world wouldn’t be able to run without it.
“All right,” Hughes said, “I’ll call when I have some thing else for you.” “I hear you,” Platt said.
“See you later, alligator.” 8 Tuesday, December 21/, 8:25 a.m.
Washington, D.c.
The Senate meeting room was too warm by at least five degrees, which certainly didn’t help Alex Michaels feel any less sweaty. He sat on the hot seat at the table reserved for victims of the inquisition–more euphemistically known as “witnesses called to give testimony”–facing the panel of senators, whose dais was raised high enough so there was no doubt who was in charge. That had to be, in a society that equated height with superiority.
Next to Michaels sat Glenn Black, one of the FBI’S top legal eagles. The two of them, backed by a gallery of other witnesses and interested watchers, faced the eight senators of Robert White’s Governmental Finance Oversight Subcommittee. be Net Force’s budget was the only item on today’s docket, and after a pretense at politeness, the charge, led by White, was in full attack.
It was going to be a long day.
Michaels hated this part of his job, sitting in front of committees whose members might–and usually did–range from idiotic to brilliant, but who almost never knew what was really going on about much of anything. No matter how smart, the senators were at the mercy of their staff people who supplied them with information. While some of those on various staff were pretty sharp, they were usually limited in what they could find out. A lot of agencies were reluctant to be totally forth coming when called for information that might whittle away at their budget for the next fiscal year. What the senators got from their people was generally on a par with reporting on the six o’clock news.