Detective Danny Cavanaugh 01 - The Brink

to the water closet after a night on the town. He didn’t make the obvious move to swivel his broad, arthritic body around in his chair for a second glance. Instead, he watched her reflection in the side of the chrome napkin dispenser on the edge of his table until she disappeared at the back of the café.
    Lars jammed his hand in his jacket and fished out a pack of cigarettes. He stuck one between his lips and set it ablaze. Lars had been coming to the New Piccadilly Café for over twenty years. In that time, he never knew if he sat in the smoking section or if the buffoons in Parliament even allowed smoking in restaurants anymore. Either way, Lars Karlsson could not give a damn.
    As he waited to get a second glimpse of the woman strolling out from the bathroom, Lars’s cell phone vibrated inside his jacket. He pulled it out and looked at the caller ID. It was an international area code. He pressed the “send” button, put the phone to his ear, and waited for the person on the other end to do the talking.
    “Hello? Are you there?”
    Lars recognized Stefan Taber’s voice but would not use his name on an open line. “Go ahead.”
    Stefan lobbed the fairly obvious coded message into Lars’s phone. “Have you seen anything good on TV lately?”
    “No, I haven’t.”
    The line went dead. Lars took one last drag before crumpling the cigarette in the middle of his empty plate. He jammed his phone back in his pocket and was about to get up when he heard the rhythmic clapping of heels on the floor behind him. Seconds later, Lars captured the sight of the Chanel-wrapped beauty as she exited the café. It was a defining moment if there ever was one. If he were thirty years younger, he would have chased after her. But at his ripe old age, Lars was wise enough to know that women like that were impossible to keep. It was better to admire them from afar and savor their image, for that’s all they were anyway.
    Lars threw down enough money to cover his tab as well as a generous tip and sauntered out into the night. He took a left and clipped up the street, walking straight into a brisk breeze. Lars’s imagination threw possibilities into his consciousness as Taber’s cold words echoed in his head.
    “Have you seen anything good on TV lately?”
    Lars wrestled with his thoughts as he gathered his suit jacket tighter around his body, fighting the stiffening wind. Things were not proceeding as planned. Now something else had gone wrong. Someone was peeing in their pond, and they damn well had better find out who it was and fast.
    Lars saw a group of people huddled in front of a storefront window, their eyes glued to the TV screens inside it. His steps grew quicker as his mind raced. Just what the hell had happened in Washington, D.C.?

Chapter 67
    While the Bull Run Pub was located on M Street near the heart of Washington, D.C., it wasn’t anything close to being in the best part of town. In fact, its closest neighbor was a strip joint called Baby Dolls. On top of that, Sydney was barefoot and wearing Danny’s soggy shirt over panties and a bra. Danny was now shirtless, with the backpack slung over his shoulder. He was shocked that a cab had even stopped to give them a ride from a lonely side street near the National Mall. But this was his only chance to see his solitary friend in Washington, D.C., and the word “friend” was a stretch. Danny could only hope that he could trust him, for they had nowhere else to turn.
    Danny eyed the scene through the bar’s bay window. It was mobbed with people, just like it had been when he visited it a decade ago during a trip to D.C. for a cybercrimes convention. He scoured the wall-to-wall faces and tangled body parts, hoping to recognize his friend sitting, hopefully still halfway sober, at the bar. He did see Big Gay Fred, who wasn’t really a homosexual but was six-four and over three hundred pounds. Just like before, Fred was tending more to the sports highlights that dangled on the TV above his head than to the bar that he manned. Rocco still worked there as well. The self-proclaimed Italian Stallion was in the same pose in which Danny remembered him: one foot up on a shelf, leaning across the bar into two girls who probably got in to the place on fake IDs.
    Three college guys swung past Danny and Sydney down the short flight of stairs and threw open the front door. As they did, Danny heard Joe Cocker’s “You Can Leave Your Hat On” start up with the DJ’s voice