“If you don’t, I will,” said Mickey, who sat between Griffith and Thomas.
Jones glanced at the clock on the wall and said, “Not today, Mickey. We’ve gone over our time already.”
Mickey shook his head angrily and said, “You know they tried to do that to Ronald Reagan, shut off his microphone so folks wouldn’t hear him before the election. Reagan wouldn’t let them, said he paid for the microphone. Well, I paid, Jones. We all paid. Every one of us has paid and paid, so you are not taking our microphone away.”
The psychologist cocked his head. “Afraid I have no choice, Mickey. There’s another group coming in ten minutes.”
Mickey might have pushed his luck, seen if he could get a rise out of the shrink, something he enjoyed doing. But he felt satisfied that day. He decided to give Jones a break.
Mickey waited until the psychologist left the room before rising from his chair, saying, “The powerful never want to hear the truth.”
“You got that right, son,” said Thomas, raising his remaining hand to high-five Mickey’s.
“Scares them,” said Keene, a scrawny guy in his twenties, paralyzed and riding in a computerized wheelchair. “Just like Jack Nicholson said to Tom Cruise: they can’t handle the truth.”
“I’m still gonna speak truth to power,” Mickey said. “Make them learn the lessons at gut level, know what I’m saying?”
“You know it,” said Thomas. “Get an ice cream before you go home, Mick?”
Mickey wouldn’t meet Thomas’s gaze. “Stuff to take care of, old man. Next time?”
Thomas studied him. “Sure, Mick. You good?”
“Top notch.”
They bumped fists. Mickey turned to leave.
“Give ’em hell out there, Mickey,” Keene called after him.
Mickey looked back at the men in the wheelchairs, and felt filled with purpose.
“Every day soldiers,” he said. “Every goddamned day.”
Chapter 11
Mickey left the VA through the north entrance and climbed aboard the D8 Metro bus bound for Union Station. Always sensitive to pity or suspicion, he was happy that not one rider looked his way as he showed his ride card to the driver, and walked to an empty seat diagonally across from the rear exit. His favorite spot.
Mickey could see virtually everyone on the bus from that position. As he’d been taught a long time ago, to stay alive you made sure you could watch your six as well as your nine, twelve, and three.
In his mind he heard a gruff voice say, “Understand your situation, soldier, and then deal with it as it is, not as you want it to be. If it’s not as you want it to be, then fix it, goddamnit. Identify the weakness, and be the change for the better.”
Damn straight, Hawkes, Mickey thought. Damn straight.
The doors sighed shut. The bus began to roll.
Mickey liked buses. No one really noticed you on a bus, especially this bus.
The inflicted and the wounded were a dime a dozen on the D8, the Hospital Center Line. Cancer patients. Alzheimer’s patients. Head injuries. Amputees. They all rode it. He was just a bit player in the traveling freak show.
Which is why Mickey left the bus at K and 8th, and walked over to Christopher’s Grooming Lounge on H.
A burly barber with a lumberjack beard turned from the cash register and gave his client change. He saw Mickey and grinned.
“Hey, Mick! Where you been, brother?”
“Out and about, Fatz. You clean me up?”
“Shit, what’s a Fatz for, right? You sit right here.”
When Mickey got out of the chair twenty minutes later, his wispy beard was gone and his cheeks were fresh and straight-razor smooth. His hair was six inches shorter, swept back, and sprayed in place.
“There,” Fatz said. “You look somewhere between a hipster and a preppie.”
“Right down the middle,” Mickey said, turning his head. “I like it.”
He gave Fatz a nice tip and promised to return sooner rather than later. The barber hugged him, said, “I got your back. I’ll always have your back.”
“Thanks, Fatz.”
“You’re a good dude, remember that.”
“I try,” Mickey said, gave him a high five, and left.
He walked the six blocks to the Capitol Self Storage facility at 3rd and N Streets, and went inside to a small unit, where he unlocked and rolled up the door. Stepping inside, he pulled the door down and switched on the light.
Six minutes later, Mickey emerged. Gone were the dirty denim jeans, the canvas coat, and the ragged Nikes, replaced by khakis, a lightly used blue windbreaker sporting the embroidered logo of a golf academy in Scottsdale, Arizona, and a pair of virtually new ASICS cross-trainers. It was remarkable what you could find in a Goodwill store these days.
Mickey put on a wide-brim white baseball cap and a pair of cheap sunglasses. Around his waist, he wore a black fanny pack with a water bottle in a holder. Around his neck hung an old Nikon film camera with no film inside.
There, he thought as he locked the unit, I could be any Joe Jackass come to town to see the sights.
Mickey left the storage facility and walked south, aware of the fanny pack, the water bottle, and the camera, and doing his best to contain his excitement. Be chill, brother. Stroll, man. What would Hawkes say? Be who you’re supposed to be. You’re Joe Jackass on vacay. All the time in the world.
Fifteen minutes later, Mickey boarded the DC Circulator bus at Union Station with a slew of tourists. He stood in the aisle near the rear exit, holding the strap as the bus rolled down Louisiana Avenue.
He got off at the third stop, 7th Street, walked around the block, noted the increased police presence on the Mall, and returned to wait for the next bus to arrive. He boarded it, found a spot as close as he could to the rear exit and rode it until the eighth stop, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial.
He got off. It was 11 a.m.
Seventeen minutes later, Mickey re-boarded the Circulator at the ninth stop, Lincoln Memorial. Taking his usual position by the rear exit, Mickey felt lighter, freed, as if he’d left things in his past, on the verge of a brighter future.
He waited to get off until the fourteenth stop, National Air and Space Museum. While tourists poured out the door after him, he dug in his pants pocket and came up with a burner phone. He walked away from the knot of people trying to get into the museum and thumbed speed dial.
“Yes?” the woman said.
“Chief Stone?” Mickey said, trying to make his voice soft and low. “It’s your worst nightmare again.”
Chapter 12
Bree slapped the bubble on the roof, hit the sirens, and said, “Hold on, Alex.”
I braced my feet on the passenger side. She glanced in her side view and stomped on the gas.
We squealed out of 5th Street, ran the red light at Pennsylvania, and headed toward the Mall with Chief Stone calling the shots over a handheld radio.
“He says it’s at the Korean War Memorial, but clear the MLK and Lincoln Memorials, too,” she said. “Close Ohio Drive and Independence Avenue Southwest. I want to know the second those five are clear. Am I clear?”
“Yes, Chief,” the dispatcher said.