A Saturday in August is a terrible time to be in Washington. The heat and humidity make any trip outdoors an endurance trek. The summer haze diffuses the sun- light, but doesn’t soften it. Perspiration oozes from every square inch of hide and clothes become sodden rags.
By eleven o’clock Saturday morning. Smoke Judy felt as if he had lived on the street for six months. He had managed only two hours’ sleep the night before, most of it in fifteen-minute spurts. The alley he now called home housed three other derelicts, all of whom were comatose drunk by 9 P.M. They had no trouble at all sleeping.
At 7 A.M., or (hereabouts — Judy had stowed his watch in his gym bag — his companions stirred themselves and collected their traps. He followed them as they staggered the five blocks to a mission. Two of them vomited along the way. The little neon sign over the door proclaimed: “Jesus Saves.”
Breakfast was scrambled eggs, toast and black coffee. Judy care- fully observed the men and four women, maybe five — he wasn’t sure about one — who ate listlessly or not at all. The alcoholics in the final stages of their disease drank coffee but didn’t touch the food. Almost everyone smoked cigarettes. A man across from him offered him an unfiltered Pall Mall, which Smoke Judy accepted. He hadn’t smoked a cigarette since he was twenty-four, but when in Rome…
“I see you been to the barber college,” his benefactor said as he blew out his match.
— Yeah.”
“Go there myself from time to time.”
Judy concentrated on smoking the cigarette until the man beside him lost interest in conversation. Behind the screen of rising smoke he studied the people around him. He was apparently the only one who showed any interest in his companions. Most of them sat with vacant eyes, or stared at their plates, or the wall, or the smoke rising from their cigarettes.
By eight o’clock he was back on the street. The humidity was bad and the heat was building. Already the concrete sidewalks had become griddles. His companions wandered off in twos and threes, looking for shady spots to snooze, spots near areas of heavy pedes- trian traffic that later in the day could be mined by panhandling for enough money to purchase the daily bottle.
Deciding the street was too dangerous for a man with only a day’s growth of beard, Judy ambled back toward the alley where he had spent the night. He concentrated on the derelict’s shuffle, the head-down, stoop-shouldered, eyes-averted gait that character- ized so many of the defeated wanderers-
His eye caught a headline in a newspaper rack. The photo — that was him! He walked along, wondering. Up ahead was a trash bin with a paper sticking out. He snagged it and took it back to the alley
Drugs. Cocaine trafficking. The photo of him in uniform was that service-record shot he had submitted last year. The picture of Harlan Albright was a candid street shot, almost as if he had been unaware of the camera. Still, it was a good likeness. With his back to the Dumpster, sitting on the asphalt, Smoke Judy read the sto- ries carefully. Vice Admiral Henry was dead, according to the Post, killed by a drug dealer resisting arrest. Well, was the Post ever wrong?
When he finished the story he threw the paper in the Dumpster.
Now he lay in the heat, his head on his blanket roll, watching an old dog search for edible garbage. A slight breeze wafted down the alley, but it wasn’t much. The place was a sauna. After the dog left, the only creatures vigorously stirring were the flies.
Jesus, who would have believed things could go so wrong so fast? The feds must have been monitoring access to that file, and the instant he opened it, jumped in the car to drive over and arrest him. From commander in the U.S. Navy to hunted fugitive killer all in one fifteen-minute period — that had to be a new record for the fastest fall in the history of the navy.
As he thought about it, Smoke Judy did not agonize over the split-second decisions he had made or torture himself with what- ifs. He had spent his adult life in a discipline composed of split- second decisions, and he had long ago learned to live with them. You made the best choice you could on the information you had and never wasted time later regretting the choice. He didn’t now.
Still, as he looked back, he couldn’t really pinpoint any specific decision that he could say had been the perfect choice to make when he made it. So here he was, lying in an alley ten blocks northeast of the White House. Hell must be like this, dirty and hot, all the sinners baking slowly, desperate for a beer. God, a cold beer would taste so good!
The money. After that phone call from Homer T- Wiggins, he had felt it unsafe to leave the money in his apartment when he wasn’t there, so he had put it in a duffel bag in the trunk of his car. His passport was in the bag too. The car was undoubtedly in the police impound lot by this time and the money and passport were in the evidence safe. He had been tempted yesterday to try to get it, but that temptation he had easily resisted. Smoke Judy, fighter pilot, knew all about what happened to guys who went back to a heavily defended target for one more run.
Man, the bumper sticker is right — shit happens. And it happens fast. The real crazy thing is it all happened to him. The great sewer in the sky dumped it all on him, Fuck! He said it aloud; “Fuck.”
“Fuck!” He shouted it, liking the sound of his voice booming the obscenity at the alley walls. The word seemed to gain weight and substance as it echoed toward the street. He filled his lungs with air and roared, “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!”
“Hey, you down there.” He looked up. Some guy was leaning out a window. “You stop that damn shouting or I’ll call a cop to run you out of there. You hear?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“Goddamn fucking drunk psychos,” the man said as he closed the window, probably to keep in the cool, conditioned air.
Okay, Judy told himself, going through the whole thing one more time. He was in the smelly stuff to his eyes. Okay. How was he going to get the hell out of this mess?
Well, this alley was as good a place as any to spend the weekend.
If he tried to check into a motel or hotel, or tried to buy clothes or steal a car, he might be recognized. The cops wouldn’t be looking for him in an alley, at least not for a few days. No doubt they were watching the airports, train station and bus depot. And looking for that car he drove away from Crystal City.
So sitting here in this shithole for a few days looked like a pretty good idea. Of course, selling the E-PROM data to Homer T. Wig- gins had looked good too, as did killing Harold Strong, copying the Athena file …
Ah me.
Well, he still had a card. One chance. $150,000. Boy, did he ever need that money now. Monday evening, Harlan Albright, that meat market in Georgetown. One way or the other, Albright was parting with the cash, he told himself grimly. There were still five live cartridges left in the pistol.
Jake Grafton sent his family to the beach Friday evening. Saturday he was back at the office-finishing his report on the testing of the prototypes. He had already circulated a draft to his superiors and now he was incorporating their comments.
The senior secretary had volunteered to work on Saturday, and she was making the changes on the computer when the telephone rang. “Jake, this is Admiral Dunedin. I have a couple FBI agents here with me. Could you come up to my office?”
“Yessir. Be right there.”
The agents turned out to be Camacho and Dreyfus. They shook his hand politely. Jake sat in a chair against the wall, facing the side of the admiral’s desk.
“Captain,” the admiral said to get the ball rolling, “these gentle- men said you had some concerns that you wished to discuss.”
Jake snorted and rearranged his fanny on the chair. “I suspect my concerns are minor and worlds away from the FBI’s, but they’re real enough. I’ve read the morning papers. Apparently the ATA program is some kind of cover for drug dealers who are supplying all the addicts in the Pentagon, and one of them went bug-fuck crazy yesterday and beat an admiral to death.”
“Now, Captain—” Camacho began-
“Let me finish. Presumably this boondoggle operation is run by some airhead who is unable to recognize the nefarious character of his subordinates, who have been engaged in subverting the national defense establishment from within. Moral rot and all that. And who is the airhead who commands this collection of criminals in uniform? Why, it’s the navy’s very own Jake Grafton, who next week is going to be testifying before various committees of
