“The supervisor know about the gun?”
She nodded. “Chorey evidently turned it in whenever he came off the street to spend the night.”
In the interrogation room, Chorey rocked in his chair. “C’mon. Please, Doc. I got the sickness, man. The creepy-crawly sickness.”
“He’s not your bomber,” I said.
“He could be a diversion,” Mahoney said. “Part of the conspiracy. Besides, he had a loaded weapon in a national park, which is a federal offense. The Park Police will want him for that.”
“The Park Police can get him for that once he’s dry. They’ll know exactly where he is, should they decide to press charges. Or you can send him to the federal holding facility in Alexandria, which is ill-equipped to handle someone with advanced delirium tremens, and you risk him dying before he can get clean.”
The FBI agent squinted one eye at me. “You should have been a lawyer, Alex.”
“Just my professional opinion on a vet who has had a tough go of things.”
Mahoney hesitated, but then said, “Take him to rehab.”
“Thanks, Ned,” I said, and shook his hand.
Mahoney shook Bree’s hand, too, saying, “Before I forget, Chief Stone, you impressed a lot of people this morning. Word’s gotten around how cool you were under pressure.”
She looked uncomfortable at the praise and gestured at me. “You live long enough with this man and his grandmother, you can handle anything thrown your way.”
He laughed. “I can see that. Especially with Nana Mama.”
Bree and I lingered in the hallway. She was returning to DC Metro headquarters to brief Chief Michaels, and to buy a second phone.
“I’m proud of you, too,” I said, and kissed her.
“Thanks. I just wish we’d been able to get the mats on that second bomb before…it will be interesting to see if it was a radio-controlled detonation.”
“I’m sure Quantico’s on it.”
“See you at dinner?” she said, as I went back to the interrogation room door. “Nana Mama said she’s creating a masterpiece.”
“How could I miss that?”
Bree blew me a kiss, turned, and walked away.
I watched her go for a moment, more in love than ever. Then I turned the door handle and went inside, where retired Marine Gunnery Officer Tim Chorey continued to suffer for his country.
Chapter 9
I got home around seven to find Bree sitting on the front porch, looking as frazzled as I felt.
“Welcome home,” she said, raising a mug. “Want a beer?”
I sat down beside her and said, “Half a glass.”
She set the mug down, reached down by her side and came up with a second mug and a growler from Blue Jacket, a new brewery in a formerly industrial area in southwest DC.
“Goldfinch,” Bree said. “A Belgian blond ale. It’s good. Nana bought it.”
She poured me half a mug and I sipped it, loving the cold, almost lemony flavor. “Hey, that is good.”
We sat in silence for several minutes, listening to the street, and to the rattle of kitchen utensils from inside.
“Tough day all around,” Bree said.
“Especially for you,” I said, and reached out my hand.
She took it and smiled. “This is enough.”
I smiled and said, “It is, isn’t it?”
“All I could want.”
I focused on that. Not on the memories of how sick poor Chorey had gotten before I could get him admitted into the detox unit. How he’d refused to wear the hearing device or read my words after a while, retreating from the world and what it had done to him in the surest way he knew how.
“Dinner!” Nana Mama called.
Bree squeezed my hand, and we went inside. My ninety-something grandmother was making magic at the stove when we entered the kitchen.
“Whatever it is, it smells great,” I said, thinking there was curry involved.
“It always smells great when Nana Mama’s manning the stove,” said Jannie, my sixteen-year-old daughter, as she carried covered dishes from the counter to the table.
“Smells weird to me,” said Ali, my almost nine-year-old, who was already sitting at the table, studying an iPad. “Is it tofu? I hate tofu.”
“As you’ve told me every day since the last time we had it,” my grandmother said.
“Is it?”
“Not even close,” she said, pushing her glasses up her nose on the way to the table. “No electronic devices at the dinner table, young man.”
Ali groaned. “It’s not a game, Nana. It’s homework.”
“And this is dinnertime,” I said.
He sighed, closed the cover, and put the tablet on a shelf behind him.
“Good,” Nana Mama said, smiling. “A little drumroll, please?”
Jannie started tapping her fingers against the tabletop. I joined in, and so did Bree and Ali.
“Top Chef judges,” my grandmother said. “I give you fresh Alaskan halibut in a sauce of sweet onions, elephant garlic, Belgian blond beer, and dashes of cumin, cilantro, and curry.”
She popped off the lid. Sumptuous odors steamed out and swept my mind off my day. As we scooped jasmine rice and ladled the halibut onto our plates, I could tell Bree had managed to put her day aside as well.
The halibut was delicious, and Nana Mama’s delicate sauce made it all the better. I had seconds. So did everyone else.
The fuller I got, however, the more my thoughts drifted back to Chorey. Those thoughts must have shown on my face. My grandmother said, “Something not right with your meal, Alex?”
“No, ma’am,” I said. “I’d order that dish in a fancy restaurant.”
“Then what? Your trial?”
I refused to give that a second thought. I said, “No, there was this veteran Bree and I dealt with today. He suffered a head injury and lost most of his hearing in an explosion in Afghanistan. He lives in shelters and on the streets now.”
Ali said, “Dad, why does America treat its combat veterans so poorly?”
“We do not,” Jannie said.
“Yes, we do,” Ali said. “I read it on the Internet.”
“Don’t take everything on the Internet as gospel truth,” Nana Mama said.
“No,” he insisted. “There’s like a really high suicide rate when they come home.”
“That’s true,” Bree said.
Ali said, “And a lot of them live through getting blown up but they’re never right again. And their families have to take care of them, and they don’t know how.”
“I’ve heard that, too,” my grandmother said.
“There’s help for them, but not enough, given what they’ve been through,” I said. “We brought the guy today to the VA hospital. Took a while, but they got him in detox to get clean. The problem is what’s going to happen when he’s discharged.”
“He’ll probably be homeless again,” Ali said.
“Unless I can figure out a way to help him.”
My grandmother made a tsk noise. “Don’t you have enough on your plate already? Helping your attorneys prepare your defense? Seeing patients? Being a husband and father?”
Her tone surprised me. “Nana, you always taught us to help others in need.”
“Long as you see to your own needs first. You can’t do real good in the world if you don’t take care of yourself.”
“She’s right,” Bree said later in our bathroom, after we’d cleaned the kitchen and seen the rest of the family to bed. “You can’t be everything to everyone, Alex.”
“I know that,” I said. “I just…”
“What?”
“There’s something about Chorey, how lost he is, how abandoned he’s been, hearing nothing, seeing little. It just got to me, makes me want to do something.”
“My hopeless idealist,” Bree said, hugging me. “I love you for it.”
I hugged her back, kissed her and said, “You’re everything to me, you know.”
r /> Chapter 10
At the mental health clinic of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in northeast DC, in an outpatient room drenched in morning sun, a shaggy and shabbily dressed man in his early forties chortled bitterly.
“Thank you,” he sneered, in a falsetto voice. “Thank you for your service.”
He shifted in his wheelchair and relaxed into a deeper, natural drawl that sounded like west Texas. “I freaking hate that more than anything, you know? Can you hear me folks? Can I get an aye?”
Around the circle, several of the other men and women, sitting in metal folding chairs, nodded, with a chorus of Aye.
The group facilitator adjusted his glasses. “Why would you hate someone showing you gratitude for your military service, Thomas?”
Thomas threw up his arms. His left hand and half the forearm were gone. Both of his legs were amputated above the knees.
“Gratitude for what, Jones?” Thomas said. “How do they know what I did before I lost two drumsticks and a wing? That’s the hypocrisy. Most of the ones who wanna run up and tell you how much they appreciate your service? They never served.”
“And that makes you angry?” Jones said.
“Hell, yeah, it does. Many countries in the freaking world have some kind of mandatory public service. People who don’t serve their country got no skin in the game far as I’m concerned. They don’t give a damn enough about our nation to defend it, or to improve it, or to lose limbs for it. They try to bury their guilt about their free ride in life by shaking my good hand, and thanking me for my service.”
He looked like he wanted to spit, but didn’t.
“Why did you enlist?” Jones asked. “Patriotism?”
Thomas threw back his head to laugh. “Oh, God. Hell, no.”
Some of the others in the group looked at him stonily. The rest smiled or laughed with him.
“So why?” Jones said.
Thomas hardened. He said, “I figured the Army was a way out of East Jesus. A chance to get training, get the GI Bill, go to college. Instead I get shipped to pissed-off towelhead town. I mean, would anyone volunteer to go to the Middle East with a gun if the government offered college to someone who worked in schools, sweeping floors instead of getting shot? I think not. No freaking way.”
“Damn straight,” said Griffith, a big black man with a prosthetic leg. “You’re willing to whack ’em and stack ’em, they’ll pay for a PhD. You wanna do good, they pay jack shit. You tell ’em, Thomas. Tell ’em like it is.”
“If you don’t, I will,” said Mickey, who sat between Griffith and Thomas.
Jones glanced at the clock on the wall and said, “Not today, Mickey. We’ve gone over our time already.”
Mickey shook his head angrily and said, “You know they tried to do that to Ronald Reagan, shut off his microphone so folks wouldn’t hear him before the election. Reagan wouldn’t let them, said he paid for the microphone. Well, I paid, Jones. We all paid. Every one of us has paid and paid, so you are not taking our microphone away.”
The psychologist cocked his head. “Afraid I have no choice, Mickey. There’s another group coming in ten minutes.”
Mickey might have pushed his luck, seen if he could get a rise out of the shrink, something he enjoyed doing. But he felt satisfied that day. He decided to give Jones a break.
Mickey waited until the psychologist left the room before rising from his chair, saying, “The powerful never want to hear the truth.”
“You got that right, son,” said Thomas, raising his remaining hand to high-five Mickey’s.
“Scares them,” said Keene, a scrawny guy in his twenties, paralyzed and riding in a computerized wheelchair. “Just like Jack Nicholson said to Tom Cruise: they can’t handle the truth.”
“I’m still gonna speak truth to power,” Mickey said. “Make them learn the lessons at gut level, know what I’m saying?”
“You know it,” said Thomas. “Get an ice cream before you go home, Mick?”
Mickey wouldn’t meet Thomas’s gaze. “Stuff to take care of, old man. Next time?”
Thomas studied him. “Sure, Mick. You good?”
“Top notch.”
They bumped fists. Mickey turned to leave.
“Give ’em hell out there, Mickey,” Keene called after him.
Mickey looked back at the men in the wheelchairs, and felt filled with purpose.
“Every day soldiers,” he said. “Every goddamned day.”
Chapter 11
Mickey left the VA through the north entrance and climbed aboard the D8 Metro bus bound for Union Station. Always sensitive to pity or suspicion, he was happy that not one rider looked his way as he showed his ride card to the driver, and walked to an empty seat diagonally across from the rear exit. His favorite spot.
Mickey could see virtually everyone on the bus from that position. As he’d been taught a long time ago, to stay alive you made sure you could watch your six as well as your nine, twelve, and three.
In his mind he heard a gruff voice say, “Understand your situation, soldier, and then deal with it as it is, not as you want it to be. If it’s not as you want it to be, then fix it, goddamnit. Identify the weakness, and be the change for the better.”
Damn straight, Hawkes, Mickey thought. Damn straight.
The doors sighed shut. The bus began to roll.
Mickey liked buses. No one really noticed you on a bus, especially this bus.
The inflicted and the wounded were a dime a dozen on the D8, the Hospital Center Line. Cancer patients. Alzheimer’s patients. Head injuries. Amputees. They all rode it. He was just a bit player in the traveling freak show.
Which is why Mickey left the bus at K and 8th, and walked over to Christopher’s Grooming Lounge on H.
A burly barber with a lumberjack beard turned from the cash register and gave his client change. He saw Mickey and grinned.
“Hey, Mick! Where you been, brother?”
“Out and about, Fatz. You clean me up?”
“Shit, what’s a Fatz for, right? You sit right here.”
When Mickey got out of the chair twenty minutes later, his wispy beard was gone and his cheeks were fresh and straight-razor smooth. His hair was six inches shorter, swept back, and sprayed in place.
“There,” Fatz said. “You look somewhere between a hipster and a preppie.”
“Right down the middle,” Mickey said, turning his head. “I like it.”
He gave Fatz a nice tip and promised to return sooner rather than later. The barber hugged him, said, “I got your back. I’ll always have your back.”
“Thanks, Fatz.”
“You’re a good dude, remember that.”
“I try,” Mickey said, gave him a high five, and left.
He walked the six blocks to the Capitol Self Storage facility at 3rd and N Streets, and went inside to a small unit, where he unlocked and rolled up the door. Stepping inside, he pulled the door down and switched on the light.
Six minutes later, Mickey emerged. Gone were the dirty denim jeans, the canvas coat, and the ragged Nikes, replaced by khakis, a lightly used blue windbreaker sporting the embroidered logo of a golf academy in Scottsdale, Arizona, and a pair of virtually new ASICS cross-trainers. It was remarkable what you could find in a Goodwill store these days.
Mickey put on a wide-brim white baseball cap and a pair of cheap sunglasses. Around his waist, he wore a black fanny pack with a water bottle in a holder. Around his neck hung an old Nikon film camera with no film inside.
There, he thought as he locked the unit, I could be any Joe Jackass come to town to see the sights.
Mickey left the storage facility and walked south, aware of the fanny pack, the water bottle, and the camera, and doing his best to contain his excitement. Be chill, brother. Stroll, man. What would Hawkes say? Be who you’re supposed to be. You’re Joe Jackass on vacay. All the time in the world.
Fifteen minutes later, Mickey boarded the DC Circulator bus at Union Station with a slew o
f tourists. He stood in the aisle near the rear exit, holding the strap as the bus rolled down Louisiana Avenue.
He got off at the third stop, 7th Street, walked around the block, noted the increased police presence on the Mall, and returned to wait for the next bus to arrive. He boarded it, found a spot as close as he could to the rear exit and rode it until the eighth stop, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial.
He got off. It was 11 a.m.
Seventeen minutes later, Mickey re-boarded the Circulator at the ninth stop, Lincoln Memorial. Taking his usual position by the rear exit, Mickey felt lighter, freed, as if he’d left things in his past, on the verge of a brighter future.
He waited to get off until the fourteenth stop, National Air and Space Museum. While tourists poured out the door after him, he dug in his pants pocket and came up with a burner phone. He walked away from the knot of people trying to get into the museum and thumbed speed dial.
“Yes?” the woman said.
“Chief Stone?” Mickey said, trying to make his voice soft and low. “It’s your worst nightmare again.”
Chapter 12
Bree slapped the bubble on the roof, hit the sirens, and said, “Hold on, Alex.”
I braced my feet on the passenger side. She glanced in her side view and stomped on the gas.
We squealed out of 5th Street, ran the red light at Pennsylvania, and headed toward the Mall with Chief Stone calling the shots over a handheld radio.
“He says it’s at the Korean War Memorial, but clear the MLK and Lincoln Memorials, too,” she said. “Close Ohio Drive and Independence Avenue Southwest. I want to know the second those five are clear. Am I clear?”
“Yes, Chief,” the dispatcher said.
“Call IT,” she said. “Find out if they got a trace on the call that just—”
Her cell phone started ringing. She glanced down, said, “Forget it, they’re calling me.”
Cradling the radio mike, she snatched up her cell, said, “Chief Stone. Did you get it?”
Bree listened and said, “How much damn time do they need?”