Cross Fire

lights-out or who might be stealing your shit in the middle of the night.
    When some old Lynyrd Skynyrd came on the radio, Denny perked up his ears. It had been a long time; Mitch probably didn’t even know this one.
    “ ’Cause I’m as free as a bird, now…”
    “You hear that, Mitchie? Listen to the lyrics. That’s the shit right there.”
    “What is, Denny?”
    “Freedom, man. The difference between us and them crooks we been taking down.
    “You think people like that are free? Nohow, no way. They don’t wipe their damn noses without checking with some committee on dumbass details first. That ain’t freedom. That’s a fuckin’ anchor around their necks.”
    “And a target on their asses!” Mitch started giggling like a little kid. He was definitely feeling the weed. His eyes looked like a couple of pink marbles, and he’d downed the lion’s share of the Beam, too.
    “Here you go, man. Drink up,” Denny said, and handed over the bottle again. Then he lay back and just listened to Lynyrd Skynyrd for a while, counting cracks in the ceiling until Mitch started to snore.
    “Yo, Mitchie?” he said.
    There was no response. Denny got up and prodded him on the shoulder.
    “You out cold, buddy? Looks like it. Sounds like it.”
    Mitch just rolled halfway over and kept sawing wood, a little louder now.
    “All right, then. Denny’s got a little errand to run. You sleep tight, man.”
    He stepped into his black engineer boots and picked up the room key, and a second later he was gone.

Chapter 46

    DENNY HURRIEDLY WALKED DOWN Eleventh Street and over on M to Thomas Circle. It felt good to get out on his own, without Mitch on his back for a change. The kid could be a lot of fun, but he was a real piece of luggage, too.
    Just past the Washington Plaza Hotel, on the relative quiet of Vermont Avenue, a black Lincoln Town Car was parked under a flowering crab apple.
    Denny walked up the opposite side of the street and crossed over at N, then came back down. When he reached the car, he opened the back door and got in.
    “You’re late. Where have you been?”
    His contact was always the same guy, with the same stiff attitude. He went by Zachary, whatever his real name might have been. It didn’t matter. To Denny — whose name was
not
Denny — this asshole was nothing more than a well-paid mule in a Brioni suit.
    “These things don’t run on a fixed schedule,” Denny said. “You need to get that through your head.”
    Zachary ignored the tone. He was like Spock, this guy, the way he never showed emotion. “Any issues?” he asked. “Anything I need to know about?”
    “None,” Denny said. “I don’t see any reason not to proceed to the next phase.”
    “What about your shooter?”
    “Mitch? You tell me, partner. You’re the ones who vetted him.”
    “How is he in the
field,
Denny?” Zachary pressed.
    “Exactly the ringer I thought he’d be. As far as he’s concerned, this is the
Mitch and Denny Show,
nothing else. I’ve got him completely under control.”
    “Yes, well, all the same, we’d like to take some further precautions.”
    He gave Denny two folded sheets from his inside breast pocket. Each one had a simple map printed on it, with a handwritten name and address beneath, and a single color photograph paper-clipped to the front.
    “Hang on,” Denny said once he’d seen them. “We never discussed anything like this.”
    “We never set any parameters at all,” Zachary said. “Isn’t that the whole point? I hope you’re not going to start quibbling
now.
”
    “That’s not what I said,” Denny replied. “I just don’t like surprises, that’s all.”
    Zachary’s laugh was less than convincing. “Oh, come on,
‘Denny.’
You’re the king of surprises, aren’t you? You’ve got all of Washington on tenterhooks.”
    Zachary reached over the front seat and took a canvas pouch from the driver, then laid it on the padded armrest between them. This was a pay-as-you-go contract, and Denny’s price, as always, had been nonnegotiable.
    Inside the pouch were six unnumbered ten-ounce gold ingots, each with a minimum millesimal fineness of 999. Nothing was more portable, and the fact that the gold was hard to come by only helped Denny weed out the wrong kind of client.
    Denny took a few minutes to memorize the next assignment. Then he handed the sheets back to Zachary and picked up the pouch. Once he’d wrapped the goods in an old Safeway bag from his jacket pocket, he