Silenced by the Yams

CHAPTER Seven

The FBI and Secret Service descended upon the scene like locusts onto a ripe summer crop. No Air Force fighters showed up, but two mean-looking, armed helicopters circled closely overhead, blowing dirt and stray pieces of trash around.

We were instructed to stay put by an officious and curt man with a badge; no potential witness could leave until interviewed by an agent. When I asked if we could leave briefly to buy some bottled water, he said only if we wanted to be arrested on the spot. So there we sat, baking and steaming as the sun glared in a high, cloudless sky. If we’d been shrimp, we’d already be cooked and ready for cocktail sauce.

Constitution Avenue is six lanes wide, so between the distance and the sheer number of emergency vehicles on the scene, it was nearly impossible to see what was transpiring at the toasted hot dog stand. Guy Mertz may have smeared my name badly in his report, but I didn’t wish him dead. I hoped dearly that he wasn’t one of the bodies splayed on the sidewalk.

It was summer in Washington, DC, which meant there were easily two hundred tourists on or around Constitution Avenue at the time of the shooting. They all milled around now, waiting. Or rather, drooping.

Immediately after the shooting, people had bristled with a sort of excitement, actively sharing their experiences—“Did you see that car?” “It was black.” “No, it was dark green.” “There were two cars.” “There was a red car with three men and they all had guns and ski masks.” “It was a blue SUV and I think it was a female shooter with an assault rifle.” “Someone said they saw a man with a bomb strapped to his body and he was heading for the White House.” It was all a load of bull doo-doo. Colt was trained to make quick and accurate observations and he said the drive-by shooting was committed by two men, one caucasion, one Latino, driving a navy blue Lexus with Maryland plates. He couldn’t see the firearm, but from the sound, he suspected a 12 gauge semi-auto shotgun.

But ten minutes later, people were tired of talking or were too parched to open their mouths comfortably. Many started sitting and even laying down. When a nursing mother fainted, the FBI brought in a van full of water bottles which a PR crew distributed faster than a sexually twisted politician checking himself into “rehab.”

Colt and I were draining our bottles when an agent finally approached us. She was tall, slim, dressed in black pants and a white t-shirt and I knew her only too well. So did Colt.

“Well, if it isn’t Mrs. Marr.” She managed to crack half a wry smile while wiping sweat from her dripping brow. My head hurt just looking at how tightly she had her thin black hair pulled into that pony tail.

I acknowledged her in return. “Agent Smith.”

Agent Marjorie Smith and I had worked together reluctantly during the FBI Mafia sting operation that brought Frankie and I together as friends. She was all business then, and I didn’t expect her to be any different now.

She gave Colt a terse nod. “Colt Baron, right?”

“You have a good memory,” he said. “Any chance you can make this quick so we can get a move on?”

“We’ll take it as quickly or slowly as necessary to get the information required.”

Another agent stepped alongside Agent Smith. He was shorter than her and looked to be about Howard’s age. His eyes were concealed behind a pair of aviator shades and the line of his mouth was thin and tight.

“Leo, this is Marr’s wife,” Agent Smith told the new arrival.

His posture changed immediately and a smile appeared. “No kidding?” He took my hand and shook it firmly. “I’m Agent Leonard Price—nice to meet you. We’re really sorry to see him go. He’s been an incredible asset to the Bureau.”

My ears perked up and out of the corner of my eye I spotted Colt cringing.

“Where’s he going?” I asked.

“Oh, I just meant we’re sorry he’s retiring.” Poor Agent Price obviously didn’t know that he’d just dropped a secret bomb on me, but I could tell that Colt did.

“Oh, right,” I said, trying to keep calm and nodding as if I were the properly informed wife. “The retirement.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. At least not anything that was appropriate for public audiences. Howard had kept his job with the FBI secret from me for nearly twenty years, so why should I be surprised that I wasn’t informed when he decided to leave? I decided to change the subject. I asked them, as nonchalantly as I could, whether one of the shooting victims was the newscaster, Guy Mertz.

Agent Smith shook her head. “We can’t discuss that with you. We just need to know what you saw, if anything.”

“Nothing,” Colt said. “We didn’t see a thing.”

Even though I was shocked to hear him blurt out that lie, I tried to act cool, which wasn’t easy when the sidewalk under our feet could double as a diner grill.

Smith narrowed her eyes. “You’re awfully close to have seen nothing, Mr. Baron.”

“We were clear back there,” he pointed toward the Washington Memorial, “when we heard gunfire and ran closer, but we were too far away at the time of the incident for a visual.”

She wasn’t buying it. “You ran toward the gunfire?”

“I’m that kind of guy.”

She eyed me with equal suspicion. “Are you just that kind of woman, Mrs. Marr? Do you run toward gunfire?”

“Hey, I was just following him.”

“And those sunglasses,” she pointed to the pieces in my hand. “Did they break during the mad dash?”

Boy, they trained those agents well. She wasn’t missing a trick. Luckily for me, I have kids and have learned the fine art of fibbing on a dime. “Rogue Frisbee,” I said, adding a giggle for good measure. “On the mall—last time I’ll walk through the middle of an ultimate Frisbee match.” I brought a flat hand up to my nose to duplicate the fake event. “Hit me right between the eyes.”

Smith and Price traded looks that basically said, “these jerks are full of it,” but they backed down anyway. Probably because they knew where to find me. Which didn’t give me a warm and fuzzy.

“Fine,” Smith said. “You can go.”

“Thanks,” I sighed with relief.

Colt and I turned quickly on our heels to scoot our booties from the crime scene.

“Marr!” I heard Agent Smith shout before we’d gotten too far.

I stopped and turned.

“Remember,” she said. “We know where to find you.”

Yup. Just like I said.

*****

The vast expanse from the Washington Memorial to the Lincoln Memorial was crawling with federal agents and Park Police so I didn’t dare chide Colt for holding back his information. I have my paranoid tendencies, and as far as I knew, not only did the government possess the technology to pick up my conversation at a whisper, they could probably grab my thoughts from mid-air too.

“Where are you parked?” I asked him.

“I wouldn’t bring The Judge down here and risk her getting hurt. I took the Metro train.”

‘The Judge’ was Colt’s car. It was a red, lovingly restored GTO and evidently, everyone referred to these cars as The Judge. Me, I don’t name my cars. I’m too hard on them. If I named them, I’d feel guilty every time I hit a pot hole or went a year without an oil change.

Since I was parked near the Tidal Basin at the Jefferson Memorial, Colt agreed to head in that direction and hitch a ride home with me. He didn’t know I had one more stop on my agenda.

We climbed into my van. I turned the ignition and flipped the AC to ultra-freeze.

“Which way to the DC city jail?” I asked after we’d both buckled in.

Colt threw his hands in the air. “You have to be kidding me! Really? You haven’t had enough connection to murder and mayhem for one day? Now you want to go talk up a wiseguy?”

“Oh, give it a break. He’s not a wiseguy anymore. He’s a chef. Sometimes good people get caught up in bad situations and they deserve the chance to make things right and move forward.”

“Spending thirty plus years in the Mafia is hardly getting caught up in a bad situation, Barb.”

I gasped. “You did it again!”

Colt’s expression was blank. “What?”

“You called me Barb!”

He spoke slowly, as if I was missing a few marbles. “It’s your name.”

“Not to you it isn’t.” I’d put the van into drive but kept my foot on the brake. “Curly. You call me Curly. You’ve never called me Barb.”

“Never?”

“Never ever. Not until yesterday when you brought Meeeee-gan by.”

His lips curled into a devious smile. “I think you’re jealous.”

“I think you’re stupid.”

“Now you’re just being childish.”

“Childish is holding back information from the FBI. I’m pretty sure you just broke a few laws back there.”

“That’s not being childish. That’s being smart. To cover your ass, I might add. And you’re changing the subject.”

“Give me a break. How were you covering my . . . derriere?”

“Giving up swear words again?”

“I’m trying.”

“Good for you.” He adjusted the ac vents on my dash so they blew directly onto his face. “It occurred to me while we waited. Suppose that really was Guy Mertz they were rolling into one of those ambulances. And suppose we’d told Agent Smith that you were on your way to meet this victim, who just yesterday on his newscast linked you to a famous murder. Seems to me the police would be interested in more than just what you might or might not have seen. I was getting us out of there fast before they put two and two together and hauled you in. Capisce?”

I threw the gear shift back to park, took my foot off the brake and sat back in my seat feeling defeated. “So you think it’s a mistake to go talk to Frankie?”

“Big one.”

“But I know he didn’t kill Kurt Baugh. He brought those yams to the table for Randolph Rutter.”

“Well, it’s a bad name, but I doubt Frankie’d want to kill him for that. Didn’t you say that Randolph insulted his food?”

I shook my head. “No. He said his yams were cold, but Frankie didn’t seem mad about it. Certainly not mad enough to poison him.”

Cars whizzed past us on the road where I sat, parallel parked.

“I think someone else poisoned those yams either to frame Frankie for Randolph Rutter’s murder which then went awry. Either that, or they were meant for someone else altogether and Frankie just grabbed them and passed them on to Randolph. Kurt was just an innocent yam stealer. Either way, I’m positively certain Frankie’s not involved. I feel it in my gut, Colt.”

He thought quietly for a minute. “Do we know for a fact the yams were poisoned?”

“I don’t know anything except what Guy Mertz has reported. That’s why I want to talk to Frankie.” I added some sweetness to my smile. “And maybe my favorite private detective could help by talking to some of his friends in the DC police department . . .”

Colt answered my smile with a frown.

Suddenly, whizzing cars were swerving and honking. When I turned to see what was causing the commotion, I shrieked. A man was pulling my driver’s side van door open and before I knew what was happening, he was diving into my back seat. I continued to scream until Colt had managed, in one fell swoop, to secure the man by his collar, hanging him precariously like a kitten by the scruff of his neck.

The uninvited back seat visitor was Guy Mertz.

Alive and bullet-free.