parking lot, making for his car.
The tail man turned, walking south, moving briskly but not running. When he was about halfway to the Crown Vic, Steve Ireland stepped out of the alley and headed north, quick-time, toward where his car was parked facing south.
He entered by the passenger-side front door, climbing over the transmission hump and into the driver’s seat. He fired up the engine, its muffled but powerful rumblings sending a shudder through the car, a shudder that died down to a shiver. He rolled down the front windows to let in some air and get a feel of the night, but kept the headlights dark.
Not far from the street’s southeast corner, a pair of headlights flashed on: the Crown Vic’s.
A couple of minutes later, Quentin’s Cadillac rolled out of the parking lot, its right rear wheel going over the curb, thumping the undercarriage against the asphalt road surface. The machine moved northbound, picking up speed. It passed Steve; inside, he could see the outlines of two silhouette heads, Quentin’s and Ginger’s.
The Crown Vic pulled away from the curb and into the lane, following. When it passed, its driver’s head was facing front toward the road ahead, not so much as glancing in Steve’s direction.
Steve looked left, right, left again, not seeing anything that looked like a police car, at least not a marked one. A couple of cars, one of them an SUV, came rushing along northbound. When they flashed past Steve’s sedan, he gunned the engine, whipping the steering wheel around hard left.
The sedan made a screeching U-turn across the white line and headed north. Getting into the lane behind the SUV, using its bulk to cover him from being seen in the Crown Vic’s rearview mirror, he switched on his headlights.
Traffic lights were green for a long way along the straightaway. Rows of street lamps lit the thoroughfare like a stage set. Jockeying past the SUV, Steve pushed the sedan along at a quick clip until he caught sight of the Crown Vic. It was sticking pretty close to the Cadillac, which was about a half-dozen car lengths ahead.
Steve switched lanes, slowing to allow the SUV to pass him on the left. The SUV’s driver must have taken being passed earlier as some kind of personal affront, because he punched the accelerator to zoom past the sedan. Moving up fast, it caused the Crown Vic to glide right into the next lane to allow it to pass.
Good; that would momentarily distract the tail man from the vehicles behind him. Thanks, Speedy, Steve thought, grinning without mirth. The SUV bulleted onward, crossing lanes to pass the Cadillac on the right, then flashing ahead, its taillights rapidly dwindling out of sight.
Steve nestled in with a knot of three or four vehicles, using them for cover while keeping the Crown Vic and Cadillac steadily in sight.
A quarter mile further on, red and blue flashing lights came into view, slowing traffic on both sides of the roadway. The SUV was pulled over at the side of the road, a police car standing behind it. A uniformed cop stood beside the driver’s side of the SUV.
Steve grinned again, this time meaning it. Tight grin. An instant’s passing amusement, and then he was once more all business. He, the tail man, and Quentin and Ginger all vectored north toward a final destination unknown, imminent, and inexorable. And for some, perhaps all—terminal.
THREE
Not more than ten minutes drive north of The Booby Hatch, Quentin’s Cadillac quit the avenue, turning right on to a street running east-west. It was far enough removed from the main flow that the traffic lights at the intersections flashed only amber caution lights.
Steve Ireland had to lay back even more to avoid tipping the tail man in the Crown Vic that he was being tailed. Out on the avenue he’d just left, there was a lot of traffic to provide cover; here, not so much.
That was a funny thing about roaming late at night in the city. Especially in a city like Washington, D.C., basically a company town whose main industry was government. At quitting time, the office buildings emptied out, their occupants making a mass exodus to their homes outside the city. Of course, there were plenty of eager beavers to be found toiling, putting in extra hours, but usually by ten P.M., even the diehards had packed it up and called it a night.
One might assume that after midnight the streets, except for the main thoroughfares, would be more or less deserted, but that wasn’t the case. There was always a lively hum of activity from folks abroad in the wee hours—not just the obvious ones like party people, police, firefighters, EMTs, hospital caregivers, night shift workers in general, and road crews doing repairs that would have tied up traffic during the daylight hours. There were plenty of citizens to be found out and about, going to or coming from whatever mysterious assignations and rendezvous had called them out when most folks were at home tucked safely in their beds.
It was a phenomenon that had served Steve well in the past, not only in Washington, but other cities as well. It was good to have other fish swimming around in the pool to provide the cover of relative anonymity.
Now, out here off the main drag, his caution would have to be doubled. This was a quieter part of town, the quiet of abandonment and neglect. One thing he had working for him was the stink-o state of the economy. Like everybody else, the city was hurting for money. That meant fewer police cars to be deployed, with more of them being assigned to the obvious trouble spots and fewer for routine patrol along the routes less traveled.
This street was quiet but not dead; a scattering of vehicles traversed it in both directions. Steve hung back a good distance from the Crown Vic, so far back that sometimes he couldn’t get as good a look at the Cadillac as he’d like. That was okay. The tail man would keep it in sight, and he’d do the same for the Crown Vic.
He still couldn’t figure where the tail man came into this. The guy wasn’t federal, that was for sure. He could have been an undercover cop or a crook; going strictly on appearances, it was sometimes hard to tell the two apart. The Crown Victoria was a car model in use by a lot of police departments, both as marked and unmarked vehicles; on the other hand, its automotive muscle recommended it as a good getaway car, too…
As he went eastbound, the north side of Claghorn Park came into sight on the right. The left side of the street was fronted by several blocks of long-abandoned brick factory buildings. The city didn’t want to spend the money to tear them down, so they’d been boarded up, padlocked, and forgotten. Somehow, they’d survived the best efforts of the local vandals and arsonists.
Named after a skirt-chasing, bourbon-swilling Southern senator of yore, the park was a lop-sized oval the size of several football fields lumped together; its long axis ran north-south. Its west side was parallel to the avenue where the strip club was located. On the east, it was bordered by a narrow street that ran alongside a highway, beyond which lay the river.
It was quartered by two roads, one running through its long axis, the other crossing it at right angles at its midpoint; shortcuts for those not wanting to detour the long way around the park. Access and service roads also wormed through it, eating up more land.
The grounds featured a broad open flat dotted by several paved courts, some outbuildings, and a duck pond, all ringed and streaked by lumpy patches of scrub brush and skinny, sickly-looking trees. It was the kind of park that savvy parents warned their kids to steer clear of even in broad daylight.
The Cadillac slowed to a speed of a few miles an hour, causing the Crown Vic and Steve’s car to do the same. The lead car poked along as if it was looking for something. Farther back, the Crown Vic pulled in to the curb, halting at the corner of a street that bordered the park’s west side.
