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My phone rang. On the screen was a number I vaguely recognized, but no name. I answered.

  “Singer?” The voice was lightly accented.

  “Rhee?”

  “Yeah. I need to talk to you.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “There’s a pull-off on 66 West, just after Ballston. Mile marker 25. I’ll have a flat tire there that I’m going to need help with. You capice?”

  “I capice. When?”

  “Soon as you can get there.”

  “On my way,” I said and hung up.

  I hurried to my car and headed out. Rhee didn’t seem to be the cloak and dagger type, but neither was he a prima donna. If he wanted to play it safe, then there was a reason. The thought made me jumpy. I checked my mirror for a tail and made a handful of unnecessary switchbacks and detours before grabbing the ramp to 66. After that point, my caution became moot, since two dozen cars could’ve qualified as a tail, including the guy camped out on my bumper for ten minutes while he talked on his cell phone.

  Alertness was a good thing, though. At mile marker 20 I caught sight of Rhee’s silver Acura. He was pulled off to the side of the road with his hazards on and the jack out by the passenger’s side of the car. I was in the center lane when I saw him and had to do a near-suicidal swerve to the right. There was a shower of gravel as I whipped off onto the shoulder and several drivers laid on their horns to let me know what they thought of my driving. I, in turn, let them know they were Number One in my book and put the car in reverse. I’d overshot Rhee’s car by about a quarter mile and it took several minutes of cautious backing-up before I was close.

  I got out. Rhee was squatting by the back wheel and appeared to be fiddling with the lug nuts but it was obvious the tire was fine.

  “I thought you said marker 25,” I said as I walked up to him.

  “Can’t be too careful,” he said, having to yell over the traffic. He gestured for me to join him down by the tire. I took a knee. It was a slower process than I would’ve liked.

  “Please tell me this is worth it,” I said. “It’s going to take me an hour to get back up.”

  Rhee turned his head to me, his eyes obscured by his wrap-around shades. “You wearing a wire, Singer?”

  “Am I what?” I looked at him like he was crazy. “No, I’m not wearing a wire.”

  He went back to the lug nuts. “Care to prove it?”

  I shook my head in disbelief and unbuttoned my shirt. He gave a quick glance and then raised his head, searching my face. After a second, he nodded. “Okay.”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “Some weird shit is going down and I’m not going to be played, that’s what.”

  “I’m not here to play you, Rhee,” I said. “You want to tell me what’s got your panties in a twist?”

  He picked up a rag and wiped the hubcap down. “Two days ago, I did a ride around over in Culmore. Like you and I did the other day so I could talk to Las Chacas. And I get the same treatment from the little shit up in Culmore that runs things that I did from Rico.”

  “Won’t talk to you,” I said.

  “Right. I joke, I threaten, I lecture. Nothing. They won’t talk. But they seem scared, not pissed. So, I drop the name Chillo. Just to see what happens.”

  “Throw something at a wall, see what sticks.”

  He nodded. “Well, this wannabe gangbanger, Hervé, it’s like I snapped him in two. He starts crying and talking fast. My Español is good, but even I couldn’t keep up. He was, like, hyperventilating. I tell him to shut up and slow down.”

  I winced as a semi went blaring past, the chatter of its air brakes shaking the ground around us. Rhee took a second to gather his thoughts.

  “Hervé talks. Gives me more than I bargained for. Long story short, Chillo is a hired gun, on loan from another mara in Texas. Some chavala up here asked for him.”

  “I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that doesn’t happen all the time.”

  “No. They send members back and forth a lot. Ship them out if they’re in trouble with the local cops, that kind of thing. But this is different. Chillo is here on request.”

  “Did Hervé tell you for what?”

  “With a little encouragement,” Rhee said.

  “And?”

  “He said he was up here to kill people. To kill cops.”

  . . .

  I let the roar of traffic blot out my thoughts for a half minute. It probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but it did. Cops get killed in the line of duty. It happens and it always will. But the killings are unintentional. Sure, there’s intent to pull the trigger, but it’s after we bust down a door or get caught in the crossfire. Cops are not supposed to be targets, singled out and hunted down.

  I pushed my anger away. “I appreciate you telling me, Rhee, but why are you telling me? Why aren’t you comparing notes with Arlington Homicide? Why are we talking about this on the side of the road?”

  Rhee was quiet for a second. “It gets better.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Gangs is short-staffed because of what happened to Brady. So, we have to divvy up his territory until they bring someone else on. The ride-along you did with me was in his territory. I knew some of Las Chacas from before so naturally it became mine.”

  “Okay.”

  “Day before I find out about Chillo, I head out to check in with a little gang cell in Arlandria, smaller and dumber even than the ding-dongs in Las Chacas. They were all Brady’s people. I don’t know them from a hole in the ground. So I play it cool, try not to spook them.”

  “Right.”

  “So, I go up to their leader, fat guy named Rudolfo, outside a restaurant. I don’t get two words out before he hands me an envelope, then scoots inside like I’m going to shoot him.”

  My stomach felt cold and hollow. “How much?”

  “Two thousand.”

  Cars passed. A plane flew overhead. “How often would Brady have checked in with these guys?”

  “Every two, three weeks.”

  “Anyone else try to push an envelope on you?”

  “Two more.”

  “Shit,” I said. “Shit.”

  Rhee nodded. “I figure Brady was only squeezing the littlest guys.”

  “Too scared to say no to a cop and too scared to tell their boss.”

  “Yep.”

  “Then he gets greedy or someone blabs and the head honcho realizes he’s being bled by a cop,” I said. “He needs to set an example so his people don’t think he’s soft. Or start cooperating on a bust.”

  “But you don’t do that lightly,” Rhee said. “Don’t want to use your own people.”

  “So he goes up the food chain, gets the green light to ace Torres, and asks for someone who can do the job.”

  “They send Chillo, who takes Brady out. And does such a good job that el jefe says, ‘Hey, you wanna do a couple more for me, amigo?’ And there goes your undercover dude.”

  I stared at the ground. It all made unfortunate sense about Torres. But Danny Garcia, on the take? Possible, but I wanted to think it was unlikely. Terrence Witherspoon? Not in a million years. Still, it was a lead. “That’s why you didn’t go to Homicide?”

  Rhee gave me a look. “I told you what everyone thinks of Gangs. Half the departments want to bring us up on charges. I’m supposed to tell Homicide I’ve got the cop-killer sitting in Motel 8 but, by the way, the reason he’s here is because our boy Brady was taking in sixty grand a year in squeeze money from local dealers? You mind keeping that part our little secret?”

  “Rhee, you’ll have to tell someone sometime.”

  He grinned, but there wasn’t any humor in it. “I am, Singer.”

  I lifted my head. “Ah. You want me to pee in the punch bowl.”

  “You’re investigating it anyway. If you figure out Chillo is behind the other thing, then you take him down for it. Justice is served.”

  “Means and ends?”

  “In this case, yeah,”
he said, then lifted his hands. “Look, it may not even matter. Arlington Homicide is on Brady’s killing like white on rice, so the whole thing may come out tomorrow.”

  “In which case, Gangs gets implicated anyway.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, but I won’t have been the one to say it.”

  “You could pre-empt them. Be the hero. The one who’s big enough to admit that, yeah, we’ve got dirty cops, too.”

  “I think when you say ‘hero’ what you really mean to say is ‘fall guy,’” Rhee said. “Singer, no one’s going to give me a medal for lifting the lid on Brady. Gangs would disown me, the other departments wouldn’t want me, and the DA would use me to prove a point then spit me out.”

  I said nothing. He was probably right.

  “What really needs to happen is that whoever thinks they can kill cops, dirty or not, needs to go down. And you’re in a position to make that happen.”

  I was quiet, thinking. Something occurred to me. “That stuff about the wire,” I said. “You were afraid I was with IAD.”

  Rhee shrugged. “If you knew about Torres being dirty before he was killed, I would’ve been the perfect patsy to try to break the case open. I told you, I’m not going to be played. If you were wearing a wire, then I’d say thanks for the help with the flat and drive off.”

  I nodded, watched as the cars zoomed past. “Can I tap you for some help on this if I need it? I’m off the books as it is and this thing just got bigger.”

  “As long as we’re not talking grand jury kind of help. I’m looking to stay behind the curtain, like I said.”

  I nodded. “Thanks for the intel, Rhee,” I said. “I know it wasn’t easy.”

  He tilted his head, a whatever gesture. “Someone’s got to know.”

  I nodded again. “We all done?”

  “I hope so,” he said. “My knees are fucking killing me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  At my request, Bloch came out to my house in Arlington to talk about where we were with the case. I was tired of driving to every God-forsaken corner of Washington, DC. It was about ten o’clock, early enough to be called morning, late enough to miss the worst of the traffic. Though it was only mid-May, the DC region was true to its meteorological form, with both the temperature and the humidity in the mid-80s and the promise of a brutal summer to come. When there was a breeze—almost never—the air moved reluctantly, with an attitude.

  I didn’t do heat well. I was five degrees away from turning the AC on, although it seemed like a violation of some unspoken rule to even think about doing it before July. It was still Spring, technically. You were supposed to enjoy the seasons in all their aspects. Take the good with the bad, the hot with the…hotter. The AC wasn’t supposed to go on until all the grass turned to straw and the sidewalks were hot enough to melt sand into glass. Anything else was Wimp City.

  So I was on my porch toughing it out, with dark crescents of sweat under my arms and a coffee cup in hand when Bloch arrived in his blue Elantra. He got out and walked over to my porch, smoking. I hadn’t noticed before that he had bad posture, a slouching, crumpled kind of walk. Maybe the heat got to him, too. He flicked the butt into the street and blew a lungful of smoke into the atmosphere as he walk up to my porch.

  He stopped at the foot of the steps. “Singer.”

  “Bloch,” I said. “Get you some coffee?”

  “Absolutely,” he said. I led the way through the living and dining rooms and into the kitchen. I saw him jump as he passed through the kitchen archway.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. “What was that?”

  I turned around from the coffee maker, pot in hand. “What was what?”

  “The thing that ran past me.”

  “Oh,” I said. I poured him a full mug, handed it over. “My cat, Pierre.”

  “What do you feed him? Gunpowder?”

  I topped off my cup and put the pot back with a clatter. “That cat has genes that start in Africa. He’s my backup when I run out of bullets.”

  Bloch took a sip, then gestured at my kitchen table. “You mind if we stay inside? It’s already in the eighties out there.”

  “Wimp city,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” I said with a little smile. Bloch took a seat while I put milk and sugar on the table. My case notes were already spread out on the surface and I had to shuffle some things around to make room. I grabbed my cup and sat down across from him, then flipped to the first page of my notebook. “Ready? You’re going to have to hold on with both hands.”

  I gave him everything, starting with my the interviews with the Garcias, my run-ins with Chuck Rhee—who I didn’t name—and the latest news that I stumbled on mostly by accident, that Isaac Okonjo had almost certainly been killed by mistake, and that the real target had been Clay Johnson. I relayed how Witherspoon had probably stuck his nose out too far. I told him about Jake Valenti, my gangs expert, and his theory about the “stacking.” Bloch listened intently, taking sips from his coffee a few times, but otherwise letting me finish the whole thing without interruption. When I got to the end, he closed his eyes, soaking it in.

  “Torres was dirty,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He opened his eyes. “How do you know?”

  “A source,” I said.

  “You won’t name him?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “He isn’t exactly taken with the idea of being a whistle-blower. Wouldn’t do much for his advancement opportunities if word got out he was the one to finger Torres for us.”

  Bloch fiddled with his coffee cup. “If Torres was on the take…”

  I shook my head. “This guy is clean. He’s got no reason to help me or you except to give us a hand catching whoever’s knocking off cops. If it becomes really important, like if whoever it is doing this might walk, then he’ll step up.”

  “I could find out,” he said.

  “Then you lose me,” I said. “I told this guy I wasn’t going to hang him out to dry.”

  Bloch nodded, accepting it. “Who was paying Torres?”

  “A Salvadoran gang called Mara Loco Asesinos.”

  “MLA,” he said, sounding surprised.

  “Brady was squeezing the little guys at the end of the food chain. Someone in the MLA found out and called in an out-of-town hitter. I’m guessing that there’re only a few chavalas around here with the clout to do that—”

  “Just one.”

  “—and that you probably know the identity of that individual.”

  “If it’s really the MLA, then it’s Felix Rodriguez.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Where do the other killings fit in?”

  I shrugged. “Witherspoon nosed around, making life uncomfortable for an enterprising young Hispanic drug dealer looking to open up a new distribution point in Barry Farm. Danny Garcia gets whacked while working undercover or moonlighting. Rodriguez probably had more than a little to do with both those things. I think you’ll have grounds for suspicion.”

  “What real cops call ‘clues,’” Bloch said.

  “Exactly.”

  “We know Danny was moonlighting,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “We don’t know that he was looking at the MLA when he was killed.”

  “We don’t know that he wasn’t,” I said. “And, judging by what Bob Caldwell told me, Danny had a special hatred for Hispanic gangs. Gave them special attention.”

  “A Salvadoran mara would fit the bill,” Bloch said.

  “It would.”

  “And Danny had his finger on the pulse. He knew who was making a move and when. So he might’ve known about the mara trying to expand and was looking to get more intel or screw up the process or something.”

  “It fits Danny’s M.O.,” I said. “Maybe he thought he could take them out himself at some point. If not—if it looks too big for him and his vigilantes—he hands it over to you and says, ‘Hey, boss. L
ook what I found.’”

  Bloch scrubbed his face with his hands. “Moving on. Okonjo was a mistake, almost pure coincidence.”

  “Yep. Well, not a total coincidence. Someone was out to kill a big, black cop that night. It was Okonjo’s rotten luck to like the same bar Johnson did.”

  “If you’re right, then his murder and Clay Johnson’s are essentially the same.”

  “Right.”

  “And Johnson was the real target. Why?”

  I shrugged. “Not sure about that yet. I’ve still got some legwork to do, things I want to check out.”

  “Think he was in it with Torres?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know. I haven’t seen a connection on Torres’s end, but we’re operating in the dark. Anything I said would be a guess.”

  We were quiet for a long time. The coffee maker made small hissing noises as condensation hit the hotplate. Bloch stared into the middle distance, drinking his coffee and thinking. After another minute, he put his cup down and leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers together behind his head.

  “There’s no serial killer,” he said.

  “Well, there’s a serial killer,” I said. “Just not the Hollywood-style maniac with a hockey mask and a thing for cops.”

  “It’s all just gang shit,” he said, a note of amazement creeping into his voice. “Some punk wants territory or money or dope and he’s mad that we’re in his way, so he just starts shooting cops to get what he wants.”

  “That’s how they do it,” I said.

  “Not here it’s not. It’s time to run this motherfucker into the ground.”

  “What’s your next move?”

  “Well, the irony is we were already watching Rodriguez and his little band of merry men. There was enough to move on him before, but I wanted something bigger and badder.”

  “Guess you found it,” I said.

  “No kidding.” He sighed. “It’ll take a little bit of time to get the warrants, contact all the agencies and departments that want their finger in the pie, put a team together to take this guy out. I’ll have to go official now, no more under-the-covers investigating. But we can’t take too long or they’ll ship this guy Chillo out in the middle of the night, try to put him out of reach.”