I closed my eyes, held my breath, and waited to be turned into pasta paste. You have to draw the line somewhere.
Eventually, she said, "Feisty, aren't you?"
"Just pissed."
"Uh-huh. Well, this one's no-shit nonnegotiable. Open the glove box." So I did. She said, "Take out the phone and throw yers out the window. We don't want no trackin' devices, do we?"
I reached into the glove box, withdrew the cell phone, and tossed mine out the window. The new cell phone rang. She said, "Don't even think of callin' the Feds again. I'll know, and it'll be your last call. Now drive to Rosslyn, through Georgetown, and I'll call you. Try anything stupid, they'll be scrapin' you off the sides of buildings." She punched off.
I put the car in gear, began to pull out-then slammed on the brakes. What the… how had she known I was in my underpants? I looked carefully at the cars around me and carefully at the pedestrians on the sidewalk. Though I saw no one looking back at me, there had to be a spotter.
Then it hit me. I began a visual inspection of the cab and the rear of the van. Well I'll be-clipped to the shade visor on the passenger side was a miniature camera, directed at me, broadcasting my every move. Somewhere else, I was sure, would be a microphone. Obviously, they had seen and probably heard everything.
I looked dead into the camera, lifted up my left hand, and stuck up my middle finger.
Fortunately, there was no big boom, however, the phone rang again. It was her, and she said, "That reminds me, Drummond. Git rid of that watch, too."
Shit.
But rush hour was getting into full swing, and without my helpful blue light it took me twenty minutes to get to Georgetown, and another ten to crawl down the length of heavily congested M Street and go left onto Key Bridge.
As I stared ahead at the glass towers of Rosslyn, it struck me, and I'm sure it also struck Jennie and Rita, that moving me out of the District was another shrewd move. Our whole two hours of preparation had been spent coordinating and rehearsing with the D.C. Police Department. An institution accustomed to being bossed around by the Feds. An institution that exerted monolithic control over everything inside the District's boundaries. The Virginia side of the river was bureaucratic chaos. The police departments were balkanized by county, and coordination between the Bureau and the corresponding local departments would be a hopeless mess.
As Rita Sanchez had said, I knew it to be true that most bad guys aren't particularly clever. In fact, most are annoyingly stupid. I had spent part of my career defending them, and I was frequently astounded, often appalled, and occasionally overwhelmed by the monumentally idiotic things they did. The plea bargain was contrived on the very premise that most criminals are just too mortally ignorant to even waste a trial over.
Regardless of what had shaped or perverted Jason Barnes's character, he was different. As far as we knew, he came to the arts of larceny and murder a stone-cold virgin. Yet he had come so far, so fast. His were crimes of passion, yet exhibited none of the telltale rashness, disorder, or carelessness that nearly always define that criminal breed. He had made none of the usual beginner's mistakes, or even a mistake one might expect from a hardened veteran. Up against the very best American law enforcement had to offer-the best coppers the world had to offer-he was running circles around them.
Unbelievable.
I wondered what Jason had up his sleeve for his next move. I couldn't even guess. But if-as Jennie was convinced-a man's past is the chronicle to his future, it was going to be something else.
I was about to find out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Halfway across Key Bridge, she called and said, "Go straight to Seven Corners."
"And you go straight to hell." Assuming she was observing me on Candid Camera, for good measure, I gave her another bird.
"Yeah? Well, who's the one drivin' 'round in his undershorts with a bomb under his ass?"
Good point. "Hey, I've got an idea, lady. Give yourself up. I'm a lawyer-maybe I'll keep your ass from frying in an electric chair."
"Shut up, or you'll get to hell first." She sounded really indignant, and hung up. Obviously, I needed to be careful here. The electric chair is sort of a hot-button topic with criminals. Also, women can be really touchy, and you never know when it's that time of the month.
With that sexist thought in mind, I smiled into the camera, hoping she'd see I was a good sport.
Anyway, I knew how to get to Seven Corners, was aware it was both a location and a shopping center, and I even knew how it got its name. It was in the county of Fairfax, a mile or so south of Falls Church, perched at the strategic junction of seven major arteries. It was a perfect example of what happens when urban planning boards are idiots-a congested maze of shopping malls, small roads, and substantial highways, surrounded by densely built-up suburbs with myriad side streets.
There were so many roads, large and small, leading into and out of Seven Corners it would take an entire field army to block them all off. In short, the perfect place for a shuffle, and somehow, I was sure, this was the decisive ground and the decisive moment.
So off I sped, straight through the steel-and-concrete corridors of Rosslyn, to the Route 50 exit, and then toward Seven Corners. I considered calling Jennie to forewarn her, and even more quickly concluded it would be both stupid and superfluous. With all the people watching, listening, and electronically tracking me, I felt like I was on one of those TV reality shows, this one called How to Save-or Not- Your Own Ass.
After another twenty minutes, I ended up at a stoplight, and to my right were two large strip malls, and ahead, off to my left, the lower parking lot for the Seven Corners Shopping Center, a two-level extravaganza, long and rectangular, half a million square feet of the best the capitalist world had to offer, where you could scratch virtually any materialistic itch and gratify any spending impulse. I love America.
In addition to all else, there had to be a tracking device in the van, because she called and said, "Now, straight to the intersection of Route 50 and Route 7, hang a left, and go to the upper parkin' lot of the shopping center. Keep the phone to yer ear.", I could hear the tension in her voice, and my heart began to race. The upper parking lot was around the other side of the shopping center, a mere few yards from the crossroads of four major highways running east, west, north, and south, the most options for egress. Clearly we had a major problem. Barnes had thought this through with frightening cleverness.
I hoped Jennie and Rita knew I was here, and I hoped they recognized what an ideal spot this was.
I wheeled into the north end of the upper parking lot, a long and narrow patch of black tarmac, approximately sixty yards in depth by about three hundred yards in length. She said, "Pull to the curb right next to the shoppin' center."
So I did.
"Now, keep going… little further… little more-now, stop."
It struck me that we had a big problem here. The parking spaces in the lot were filled with the usual mix of cars, SUVs, and minivans, and more cars were circling around and waiting for a space to open. Sated shoppers were coming out of the shopping center, toting bags of loot and dragging their kiddies, even as large numbers of hungry shoppers were crossing the lot and heading inside. Also, while the shopping center was as large as most malls, it wasn't enclosed-and thus wasn't labeled a mail-but instead had open walkways under overhangs where throngs of shoppers strolled and noodled.
If this thing went south, a lot of innocent people could get caught in the crossfire. If Jason's friend got nervous and ignited the little device wired to this van, we would have a major disaster, mostly moms and kiddies who would never know what hit them, not to mention moi.