Dead on Arrival

‘Now that’s the sixty-four thousand-dollar question,’ Hansen said. ‘It’s the gun that makes the Bureau think some bad guys — you know, al-Qaeda — may have gone to Youseff and convinced him to do what he did. This weapon was special. The Bureau’s lab thinks at least one part came from India, and it took pretty high-tech equipment to make the plastic parts. This weapon definitely wasn’t somethin’ you could pick up in your average gun shop.’

‘How ’bout from someone like Donny Cray?’ DeMarco said.

‘No way. Cray didn’t have the equipment or the know-how to make something like this,’ Hansen said, as he put on his coat. ‘And in case you’re wondering, the Bureau didn’t find Cray’s fingerprints in Khalid’s house or in his car or on the gun.’

‘But there’s no trail to any specific terrorist group,’ DeMarco said.

‘Not yet, but Jesus, DeMarco, this thing just happened two days ago. Look, I gotta get-’

‘Did the Bureau ever find Donny Cray?’ DeMarco said.

‘Yeah they found him. His body, anyway.’

Hansen wrapped a bright orange scarf around his neck and started toward the door, but DeMarco remained seated.

‘His body?’ DeMarco said.

‘Yeah. It was just like I told you. The guy hitched his trailer to his pickup, headed south, and drove off the road. And he left the same day the roads were icier than shit. Anyway, some hunter found the pickup and the trailer in a gulch. Cray’s neck had snapped and his girlfriend — her head went through the windshield. Neither of them was wearing seat belts, and his truck was so damn old it didn’t have air bags. Look, I gotta catch-’

‘So the FBI wasn’t able to confirm that Cray really sold Reza a gun.’

‘No, it’s hard to talk to a dead guy, but Cray selling him a gun still makes a hell of a lot more sense than Cray having been to Zarif’s house or him being some kind of Muslim convert al-Qaeda operative. Look, I’m outta here.’

DeMarco thanked Hansen and trailed behind him as he left the Homeland Security building. He didn’t even try to keep up; he bet that the fastest the guy moved all day was when he was leaving work.

As DeMarco watched Hansen fleeing, he was thinking that maybe now he could report back to Mahoney and tell him that he was through investigating Reza Zarif. He hadn’t uncovered any flaws in the FBI’s explanation for either event, and there didn’t appear to be any connection between Reza and Youseff Khalid.

But one thing did bother him, and the thing just wouldn’t go away. It was like a woodpecker rapping on the back of his head.

It bothered him that Donny Cray had died before the FBI could talk to him.

17

The bar was called Mr Days. Flat-screen television sets marched across the walls of the place, one hanging every five feet, and showing on all those screens was nothing but sporting events. The sound on the sets had been muted, and captions ran across the bottom of the pictures so one could read the all-too-familiar cliches of the broadcasters. Everything that could be said about sports had already been said a thousand times over, but apparently something had to be said about these events.

DeMarco was waiting for a man named Barry King who worked for the DEA. He wanted to talk to King about Donny Cray. DeMarco felt somewhat guilty about not having followed up on Cray earlier; he probably would have had he not been so anxious to escape D.C. and bask in the sun. But, he rationalized, he really didn’t have any reason to investigate Cray more thoroughly until Cray died. Until then, the FBI’s explanation that Cray had most likely sold Reza the gun had sounded plausible; now, the coincidence of his dying before the Bureau could confirm the sale was disturbing.

As he waited for King, DeMarco thought about the marvelous time he’d had in Key West with Ellie Myers. He genuinely liked the woman in every way, and had she lived nearby, it was possible the relationship might have developed into something more than five days of sex and pina coladas. But she lived in Iowa, for Christ’s sake, a thousand miles away.

DeMarco had promised, as they kissed goodbye at the airport, that if he ever went to Iowa — God only knows why anyone ever went to Iowa — he would call her. She in turn had promised that if she ever came to D.C., she would do the same. But they both knew that the wonderful week they’d spent together was almost certainly the last they’d see of each other.

DeMarco was convinced that in some prior life he had done something horrible to women. There had to be some cosmic explanation for his terrible luck with the opposite sex. He married a woman who had cheated on him with his own cousin. A few months ago he met an FBI agent — a pretty lady from his old neighborhood back in New York named Diane Carlucci — and right after he’d fallen in love with her the Bureau reassigned her to Los Angeles, which was even farther from Washington than Iowa. And now he meets a cute schoolteacher with a sense of humor, has a wonderful vacation fling just like he’d always wanted, only to find out he wanted more. God was either testing him or toying with him, one or the other.

Fortunately, before DeMarco could get more depressed, King strolled into the bar. He was a lanky, fidgety guy, one of those people blessed with a me tabolism that allowed him to eat like a hog and never gain weight. He and DeMarco played on a softball team composed of men over forty who made up for their lack of youth and skill by being absurdly competitive in games that didn’t matter.

King had agreed to pull the DEA’s file on Donny Cray, not because DeMarco worked for Congress but because he and King were friends. He knew they were friends because King had once called DeMarco to help him move a sofa into his house, and once DeMarco had called King when he had to get a new washing machine down into his basement. That, DeMarco figured, was a good definition of a friend: someone you called when you had something you couldn’t lift on your own.

After DeMarco had told King about Cray’s death and his connection to Reza Zarif, King said, ‘According to our records, Cray was just a nasty cracker who spent half his life in jail. He’d been caught for using dope, selling dope, making dope, and transporting dope. He was also into guns. He’d modify ’em — you know, turn rifles into machine guns, that sorta thing — then sell ’em. But if you want to know more about the gun stuff, you’ll have to talk to somebody at ATF.’

This was typical: To find out about one small-time criminal, DeMarco would have to talk to the DEA, the ATF, the FBI, and God knows how many state and city cop shops.

‘The funny thing about Cray was …’

At that moment, on the television directly above their heads, one welterweight African American boxer began to pummel the shit out of a Puerto Rican boxer, both men looking as if they weighed maybe eighty pounds. The poundee had been pinned into a corner, his head snapping back with every punch, and just when it looked like the ref was about to stop the fight — which would have really pissed off all the rich white guys who’d paid to see it — the bell rang. DeMarco and King watched as the Puerto Rican’s cut man slit the puffy bag of blood beneath the boxer’s left eye, so that in the next round he’d be able to see the fist that would turn his brain to mush.

‘Oh, yuck,’ King said, as blood squirted from the boxer’s face.

‘You were saying about Cray,’ DeMarco said.

‘Oh, yeah. The funny thing is that in the last two years this guy wasn’t arrested once. He’d been working for a guy named Jubal Pugh.’

‘Jubal?’

‘Yeah. Southerners, go figure. Anyway, Pugh, from what I’ve heard, is one of the biggest meth distributors in Virginia.’

‘From what you’ve heard?’

‘Yeah. He’s not in the area I cover.’

Great, more bureaucratic divisions.

‘This guy Pugh is supposed to be careful, and apparently Cray had been doing exactly what Pugh told him to do, which explains why he hadn’t been nabbed for anything lately. But it makes me wonder what he was doing selling a gun to Zarif.’