Owosso, Michigan, didn’t have any freeways, and even if it had McManus wouldn’t have driven them, living as he did immediately behind the gas station that he owned. But now, on the big annual vacation, the pilgrimage to the tourist traps of Washington, D.C., that his wife had insisted upon—“it will broaden the children, make them understand what America’s all about, make them appreciate their heritage”—out here on these goddamn racing strips they call beltways, these maniacs are murdering each other with guns. Why in hell can’t they do it downtown, around those marble monuments to dead politicians? And to think we took the kids out of school for two weeks for this!
“We’re going home,” Jerry McManus told his wife grimly.
She looked at him. He had his jaw set.
Behind them the teenagers resumed their interrupted argument. The youngsters had been bickering at each other for the entire week. When in Washington …
“We’re going home,” Jerry said again. “Today.”
“Okay,” Tony Anselmo said as he rolled up the rear window to staunch the flow of fifty-degree air into the vehicle. “Nobody’s following us.” He turned his attention to the rifle. “Let’s get off at the next exit.”
He flipped the box magazine from the weapon and jacked the bolt to clear it. Then he broke it into two pieces and placed it in a shopping bag that also lay on the floor. The magazine, the loose cartridge, and the spent brass all went into the bag.
Vinnie steered the Chevy down the off-ramp and turned right, toward the District. After two blocks he turned into a narrow side street and pulled to the curb in the middle of the block. No vehicles followed.
Tony got out of the car carrying the shopping bag and went around to the trunk. In fifteen seconds he had the license plate slid from its holder and another in place. The original plate, stolen, went into the shopping bag. From the trunk Tony took two cartons of eggs wrapped in plastic. After taking the plastic off, he dumped the eggs into the shopping bag, then threw the plastic wrap on top. Holding the bag shut, he broke the eggs. These were old, old eggs that had never been refrigerated. They would make the bag and its contents stink to high heaven.
Holding the bag firmly shut, he climbed back into the passenger seat, beside the driver.
A half mile from the beltway they saw the tops of a large apartment complex. Vinnie Pioche steered slowly through the parking lot. The dumpster was in back. No pedestrians were about.
Tony Anselmo hopped out, tossed the shopping bag into the dumpster, then got nimbly back into the car. The vehicle was stopped for only fourteen seconds.
Out on the beltway traffic had ground to a halt. A Maryland state trooper arrived within three minutes and blocked the eastbound fast lane with his cruiser. After a quick glance into the remains of the maroon Chrysler, he used his radio to call for an ambulance and the crime lab wagon. Soon another trooper stopped his car behind the first one and began directing traffic.
A curiosity slowdown developed in the westbound lanes, but traffic was still getting through until a third cruiser with lights flashing parked immediately beside the concrete barrier westbound. Traffic on the beltway around the northern edge of Washington, D.C., stopped dead.
Pioche and Anselmo took the Baltimore Parkway into the heart of Washington and found a spot in a parking garage. They had dinner at a small Italian restaurant where they were known. The headwaiter insisted they try a fine red wine from northern Italy, compliments of the house. After the uncorking ceremony, they sipped the cool, robust liquid and languidly studied the menu. They had plenty of time.
Outside on the streets the evening dusk became full darkness and the temperature began to drop. It would get down into the thirties tonight.
The reporter and photographer for The Washington Post entered the beltway jam-up from the east, westbound. The police scanner had warned them. After thirty minutes of stop-and-go creeping, the reporter, who was driving, eased the car to a stop in front of the police cruiser halted against the median barrier. The two men exited through the driver’s door and stood for a moment staring at the wreckage of the maroon Chrysler on the other side of the barrier. A television chopper was hovering overhead, just high enough so that its downwash created a gentle breeze and cut the fumes from the idling vehicles creeping by.
The reporter approached the plainclothes detective who was in charge, Detective Eddie Milk, who was standing to one side watching. Milk had a meaty face, a tired face, noted the reporter, who wasn’t feeling so chipper himself after a long day.
“Hi, Eddie. Some fucking mess, eh?”
Even though Milk knew and tolerated reporters like this young one from the Post, he had other things to do at the moment. Milk concentrated his attention on the ambulance attendants, who were placing the remains of Walter P. Harrington on a stretcher. They were in no hurry.
The reporter got a good look. The head was gone from the torso: all that remained was a bloody fragment of tissue on top of the neck. There was no face at all. The photographer had his equipment out and began snapping pictures. He even got a close-up of the corpse, though he knew the editors would never use it.
Milk finally opened up. “At least one shot, maybe more, from the right side of the vehicle. One of them hit the driver smack in the right side of the head. Killed instantly. Can’t give you his ID yet. Get it downtown.”
“Any witnesses?”
“You kidding?”
“Dope or guns in the car?”
“Not so far.”
Jack Yocke, the reporter, was twenty-eight years old, two inches over six feet tall, and he still had a flat stomach. He silently watched the ambulance crew carry the corpse to their ambulance, then pile in and roar away with lights and sirens going.
The Post photographer, a dark man clad in jeans and tee-shirt and wearing a ponytail, stood atop the median barrier and aimed his camera down into the front seat of the Chrysler. From where Yocke stood he could see that the left side of the vehicle’s interior was covered with blood and tissue. Sights like this used to repulse him, but not now. He thought of them as surefire front-page play in an era when those boring policy stories out of State and the White House and overseas usually had top priority on “the Front.”
In the cars creeping past, faces stared blankly at the smashed car, the police, the photographer. Slowly but perceptibly, the speed of the passing vehicles began to increase. The body was gone.
Yocke looked around carefully, at the traffic, at the huge noise fences on the edge of the right of way, and at the tops of the trees beyond. To the west he could just see the spire of the Mormon cathedral.
“An assassination?”
“How would I know?” the cop grunted.
“Rifle or pistol?”
“Rifle. You saw what’s left of the driver’s head.”
“Color of the car that impacted the victim’s car?”
“You know I can’t tell you that. Check downtown.”
“What do we know about the victim?”
“He’s dead.”
“Gimme a break, Eddie. It’s all got to come out anyway and I’m close to a deadline.”
The cop regarded Yocke sourly. “All right,” he grunted. “Victim’s driver’s license says he was a male Caucasian, fifty-nine years old, Maryland resident.”
“How about his name and address, for Christ’s sake! I won’t print it until you guys release it. I won’t bother the family.”
“Don’t know you.” That was true.
And Yocke didn’t know the cop, but the reporter had seen him twice and learned his name and had made the effort to associate the name and face.
“Jack Yocke.” He stuck out his hand to shake, but the cop ignored it and curled a lip.