“Right.”
“I’ll be in the lot to make sure this is going as planned. From there you’re on your own. Last time we tailed him he went to a pole-dance club deep down on Georgia. Look for him to go there or some other stroke palace and then over to his spot in Edmonston.”
Waldron spit juice on the street. “Got it.”
“He starts heading back to his house, hit me up.” Lucas looked him over. “You got a long-sleeve shirt?”
“It’s too hot for that.”
“I know you’re proud of your guns, but you do stand out with all your ink.”
Waldron flexed, his stripes expanding. “Whaddaya think?”
“Tony the Tiger’s jealous.”
Waldron issued a lopsided grin. “I don’t have a long-sleeve shirt with me.”
“I’ll get you one.”
Lucas went back into his apartment and returned with a Johnson Motors long-sleeved T carrying a print of Bud Ekins riding his Triumph. Waldron examined it.
“Who’s this guy?”
“McQueen’s stunt double. He jumped the bike over the barbed wire in The Great Escape.”
“Cool.”
“My brother doesn’t think so,” said Lucas.
“He’s overeducated.”
They climbed into their vehicles and went to work.
Lucas was far back in the lot of the Safeway on Piney Branch Road, waiting, when Ricardo Holley, in his white Lincoln, pulled in and came to a stop. Bobby Waldron’s Lariat arrived shortly thereafter. His voice came into Lucas’s headset.
“I’m here,” said Waldron.
“I got you,” said Lucas.
Waldron parked in another far corner. Holley stepped out of the Mark V and crossed the lot. He wore a purple shirt tucked into triple-pleated black slacks and a black bolo tie. His hair was large, puffy, and somewhat bronze in the sunlight.
“Where do you get that haircut in this day and age?” said Waldron. “And those clothes. Where do you buy shit like that? Seriously.”
“Maybe he’s got a time machine in his basement.”
“Weird-lookin dude, bro.”
“You think so?”
Soon Holley emerged from the Safeway with a cup of Starbucks in hand. He started up the old Lincoln and cruised through the parking lot toward the Georgia Avenue exit. Waldron ignitioned his truck.
“I’m on it,” said Waldron.
“Switch over to your disposable.”
“I will.”
“He starts to head back to his house, you call me, hear?”
“Copy that.”
Lucas watched Waldron follow Holley, Waldron spitting a stream of tobacco juice out the window. PFC Bobby Waldron, 2nd Platoon, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, had been stationed at a firebase in the Korengal Valley and had participated in harrowing recon patrols throughout his deployment. Lucas was not worried about his friend. This was butter for him. He’d do fine.
Lucas started his Jeep and drove toward Holley’s residence.
As there is with nearly every house in D.C., there was an alley behind Holley’s house on 9th. Lucas drove through it, north to south, slowly. He noted the No Parking / Tow Away Zone sign, stopped his Jeep, and took several photos of the rear of Holley’s bungalow. It was bordered by a cheap post fence one grade up from chicken wire that could be easily vaulted. It had a couple of windows that were probably locked and definitely hard to access, and an iron set of steps with a handrail that led to the wooden back door. Lucas saw no water dish, paw-dug holes, mounds of feces, or any other evidence of a dog. If Holley had one, he would mistreat it, and the animal would be mean. Lucas would deal with that if he had to.
He looked to his right. There was a commercial building on the west side of the alley whose windows faced north; its occupants would have no sight lines on the Holley house. Past the building was the busy Georgia Avenue intersection beyond which Piney Branch would soon become 13th Street.
Lucas drove out of the alley, went around the block, and parked on Tuckerman facing Georgia.
He examined the photographs he had taken on his iPhone. He stowed that phone in the glove box and slipped his disposable into his pocket. On his belt he wore a holster for a Leatherman utility device, which, assuming there was no safe to crack, had all the tools he might need, including a knife long enough to blind someone if properly stuck. He picked up a knit watch cap off the shotgun seat and fitted it on his head.
Lucas got out of the Jeep, went around it, lifted the tailgate, and pulled back the blanket in the cargo area. He looked at the sledgehammer and knew that it was too conspicuous and heavy. Beside it was a Stinger all-steel battering ram used by police that Lucas had bought off a website for two hundred and seventy-five bucks. It was not the monster hydraulic ram he had seen used to great effect on houses overseas, but it was sufficient and weighed only thirty-five pounds. He took it out of the Jeep and proceeded to the alley.
Walking south, he tossed the Stinger into Holley’s yard without breaking stride. At the foot of the alley he turned and went to 9th, then turned north. Now he was going by the front yards of the houses there. The street was quiet. A woman with a belly hanging over the front of her elastic-waist jeans crossed the street carrying a laundry hamper and went toward her car. She glanced at him for only a moment and walked on. He was a young white guy in a uniform and cap, medium height, solid build, no facial hair, no features to distinguish him, completely unremarkable and unmemorable, going about his business, which appeared to be some kind of official or blue-collar task. He continued up the sidewalk of the Holley residence, hearing the turn of an ignition behind him, going by the security alarm sign that he assumed would be bullshit. Now he was on the porch, hearing the car with the Laundromat-bound woman inside it going up the street.
Lucas stood before the door and pushed a button beside it and did not hear a bell. He knocked on the door and got no response. By now a dog would have come, but apparently there was no dog inside. He looked in the thin vertical window beside the bell, saw the messy interior, saw a plastic box hanging by the wall inside the door that showed a keyboard but had neither a red nor a green light, and he knew that it was a false security monitor that Holley had attached in a half-assed way.
He turned and walked off the porch, retracing his steps. He went back to the alley, and at the rear of Holley’s house he vaulted the fence, picked up the Stinger off the ground, and headed for the back door. He looked to the right and left and saw no one and took the iron steps up to the door. With one hand gripping the rear handle of the ram and the other on the top handle, he swung the heavy steel bar with great force into the door a few inches from its lock, and he felt the door give. The sound did not seem alarmingly loud to him, and he swung the Stinger again, putting his hips into it, and the door splintered and moved, and Lucas kicked the heel of his right boot into the same spot with a grunt, and the door opened and he stepped inside. He closed the crippled door with his back.
Lucas was in a small kitchen with old appliances and a sink filled with dirty dishes. The room stank of unemptied garbage. He placed the Stinger ram on a cheap laminate countertop scarred by burn marks. He walked from the kitchen into the living room and did not stop to look around.
Lucas knew what every burglar knows: people, straight and criminal alike, keep their cash, jewelry, and valuables close to where they sleep.
There was no second floor, only a crawl space. He found the bedroom that looked to be Holley’s by virtue of the fact that it held the largest bed. It was the master; there was a bathroom inside accessed from the room. Lucas went into the bathroom, saw men’s toiletries, long black hair in the sink, a shower stall covered with mold. A tube of mascara and lipstick, no doubt left behind by one of Holley’s tricks.
Lucas went back into the bedroom and surveyed it. An unmade king with no headboard; a cheap particleboard dresser with three drawers, an open cigar box doubling as a jewelry box atop it; a large velvet wall painting of a full-figured woman, naked, on her knees; a poster of the zodiac signs showing men and women coupling in various positions; and a closet filled with shirts, slacks, sport jackets, and shoes.