Cross

again. We made out a little in the front seat, and I couldn’t help thinking about how much I loved her, about how lucky I was to have her. What made it even better: I knew that Maria felt the same way about me.
    “Gotta go,” she finally said, and wriggled out of the car.
    But then she leaned back inside. “I may not look it, but I’m happy. I’m so happy.”
    Then that little wink of hers again.
    I watched Maria walk all the way up the steep stone stairs of the apartment building where she worked. I hated to see her go, and it was the same thing just about every morning.
    I wondered if she’d turn and see if I’d left yet. Then she did—saw me still there, smiled and waved like a crazy person, or at least somebody crazy in love. Then she disappeared inside.
    We did the same thing almost every morning, but I couldn’t get enough of it. Especially that wink of Maria’s.
No one will ever love you the way I do.
    I didn’t doubt it for a minute.

Chapter 9
    I WAS A PRETTY HOT DETECTIVE in those days—on the run, on the move, in the know. So I was already starting to get more than my fair share of the tougher prestige cases. The latest wasn’t one of them, unfortunately.
    As far as the Washington PD could tell, the Italian Mafia had never operated in any major way inside DC, probably because of deals struck with certain agencies like the FBI and CIA. Recently, though, the five Families had met in New York and agreed to do business in Washington, Baltimore, and parts of Virginia. Not surprisingly, the local crime bosses hadn’t been too thrilled about this development, especially the Asians who controlled the cocaine and heroin trade.
    A Chinese drug overlord named Jiang An-Lo had executed two Italian mob emissaries a week before. Not a good move. And reportedly the New York mob had dispatched a top hit man, or possibly a hit team, to deal with Jiang.
    I’d learned that much during an hour-long morning briefing at police headquarters. Now John Sampson and I drove to Jiang An-Lo’s place of business, a duplex row house on the corner of Eighteenth and M Streets in Northeast. We were one of two teams of detectives assigned to the morning surveillance, which we dubbed “Operation Scumwatch.”
    We had parked between Nineteenth and Twentieth and begun our surveillance. Jiang An-Lo’s row house was faded, peeling yellow, and looked decrepit from the outside. The dirt yard was littered with trash that looked as if it had burst from a piñata. Most of the windows were covered with plywood or tin. Yet Jiang An-Lo was a big deal in the drug trade.
    The day was already turning warm, and a lot of neighborhood people were out walking or congregating on stoops.
    “Jiang’s crew is into what? Ecstasy, heroin?” Sampson asked.
    “Throw in some PCP. Distribution runs up and down the East Coast—DC, Philly, Atlanta, New York. It’s been a profitable operation, which is why the Italians want in. What do you think of Louis French’s appointment at the Bureau?”
    “Don’t know the man. He got
appointed
though, so he must be wrong for the job.”
    I laughed at the truth in Sampson’s humor; then we hunkered down and waited for a team of Mafia hitters to show up and try to take out Jiang An-Lo. That was if our information was accurate.
    “We know anything about the hit man?” Sampson asked.
    “Supposed to be an Irish guy,” I said, and looked over at John for a reaction.
    Sampson’s eyebrows arched; then he turned my way. “Working for the Mafia? How’d that happen?”
    “Guy is supposed to be good. And crazy too. They call him the Butcher.”
    Meanwhile, an old, bowed-down guy had begun to cross M Street with deliberate glances left and right. He was slowly dragging on a cigarette. He crossed paths with a skinny white guy who had an aluminum cane cuffed at the elbow. The two stragglers nodded solemn hellos in the middle of the street.
    “Couple of characters there,” Sampson said, and smiled. “That’ll be us someday.”
    “Maybe. If we’re lucky.”
    And then Jiang An-Lo chose to make his first appearance of the day.

Chapter 10
    JIANG WAS TALL and looked almost emaciated. He had a scraggly black goatee that hung a good six inches below his chinny-chin-chin.
    The drug lord had a reputation for being shrewd, competitive, and vicious, often unnecessarily so, as if this was all a big, dangerous game to him. He’d grown up on the streets of Shanghai, then moved to Hong Kong, then Baghdad, and finally