“Yes, please, Nana,” Ali said. “And less Brussels sprouts at dinner?”
“Don’t push your luck,” my grandmother said, fetching the pie from beneath a fine-mesh cage. “Brussels sprouts are a superfood.”
“Kind of bitter,” Ali said.
Nana Mama squinted hard at him.
“Just saying,” Ali said.
My grandmother sighed, cut a thick slice of blueberry pie, plopped a scoop of French vanilla ice cream beside it, then set the plate in front of Ali.
“Any boy who can charm the pants off the admissions board of a fine school deserves this,” Nana Mama said, and then she handed him a spoon.
It was true. The principal and the math, science, and English teachers at Washington Latin had been waiting when we walked in. The principal introduced herself and the teachers and then asked Ali what he had been up to outside of school, on his own time. That set him off on a description of his epic quest to talk to Neil deGrasse Tyson.
“I could tell they were going to admit him about two minutes after he opened his mouth,” Nana Mama said. “I think they were most impressed at how many drafts of that letter he’s already written.”
“Though at some point he needs to just send it,” I said.
“Soon,” Ali said, his mouth full of blueberry pie and ice cream.
“You do me a favor, sugar?” my grandmother said to me. “Take a twenty from my purse and go on down to Chung’s and play my numbers?”
“The next drawing’s not for two days,” I said.
“Those jackpots are getting big,” she said. “I’d rather get in on the action before the stampede.”
“Get in on the action?” I said, smiling.
“Just laying my bets early, that’s all. Now, are you going to help an old lady out or not, Alex Cross?”
“You knew the answer the second you asked,” I said, and I got the money from her purse.
I went outside, feeling pretty good. The two-hour nap had helped. And it was only early September, but a front had come in and cooled things off. It felt nice to walk, and I did my best to focus on nothing but putting one foot in front of the other.
In my line of work, where I’m often bombarded by details and exposed to the worst of life, I have to clear my mind completely at least once a day. Otherwise, it all gets to be stressful chatter upstairs, an endless series of questions, theories, arguments, painful memories, and regrets. It can get overwhelming.
I was feeling even better by the time I reached the grocery and went inside. Chung’s was frigid, like always.
“Alex Cross, where you been, my man?” cried a woman behind the counter. “I was waiting on you or Nana Mama all day yesterday.”
Chung Sun Chung, a Korean American in her late thirties, sat framed in an arched hole in a plate of bulletproof glass. Sun, as she liked to be called, wore a puffy coat and fingerless mittens. She managed to keep an electronic cigarette in the corner of her mouth while smiling broadly at me.
I walked over to her. “We’ve both been busy.”
“How’s Damon like college?”
“Loves it.”
“I saw your Jannie on the YouTube.”
“Crazy, right?”
“She’s gonna be famous, that one. How many chances will Nana Mama be taking at an unlimited future today?”
“That’s your line?”
“Good one, huh?” She beamed and drew on her e-cigarette.
“Give her ten chances each on Powerball and Mega Millions,” I said, laying down the cash.
My grandmother played only the big-money lotteries. If you’re going to dream, you might as well dream big, she liked to say.
“Same number?” Sun asked.
“Sure. Wait! You know what? Let’s change it up. Five each on her numbers and for the rest, add a one to the last number.”
Sun glanced at me. “Nana Mama’s not going to like that.”
“She won’t even look,” I said.
“You like taking your life in your hands?”
We both laughed. We were still laughing as I left.
On my way home to dinner with my family, I decided there were still good people in the world, very good people, like Chung Sun Chung. I guess I’d needed reminding of that after the past couple of weeks I’d had.
The cumulative violence and bloodshed inflicted by the vigilantes was sobering when I thought about it. Climbing the steps to my front porch and smelling a pie Nana Mama had baked, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the violence wasn’t over, that Hobbes and Fender and the other vigilantes were somehow just getting started.
80
JOHN BROWN SAT forward in a chair, his eyes glued to the big-screen TV, where an NBC news reporter was standing in front of Antonin Guryev’s compound.
“This is the fourth such massacre in less than a month,” she was saying. “Up to now, the killers have left little evidence behind. But FBI special agent in charge Ned Mahoney says that has changed. Mistakes were made.”
Low voices rumbled through the room behind Brown. Many of his followers were looking at one another.
“Mistakes?” Hobbes said, putting down his beer. “No way.”
“Why don’t you shut up and listen,” Cass said, pacing and watching the screen. The scene jumped to Mahoney standing before a bank of microphones.
“We are confirming seventeen dead,” Mahoney said gravely. “We are also confirming that we have a witness, a survivor who saw many of the killings on security cameras in a secret panic room in the basement of the house. This witness got solid looks at two of the killers when they took off their hoods.”
“Secret panic room!” Fender said. “And who the hell took off their hoods?”
“I did,” Hobbes said. “It was frickin’ hot and I had the security hard drive.”
“Who else broke protocol?” Brown roared.
Cass, looking stricken, said, “I did. It was hot and I… I thought we were good. And my hair was different. And my eyes that night.”
On the screen, reporters were yelling questions at Mahoney. Who was the witness? Could the witness identify the killers?
“We’re not identifying the witness for the time being,” Mahoney said. “We believe the witness can identify the killers. We’ll have more for you tomorrow.”
The screen cut back to the standup reporter, who said, “The FBI seems confident that this is the break they needed to at last bring the vigilantes to justice.”
Fender stared at Hobbes. Brown stared at Cass, who looked devastated.
“This is bullshit,” Hobbes said, grabbing the remote and punching off the TV. “What are they going to get from the witness? At best, an artist’s sketch.”
Brown was about to explode, but then his burn phone began to buzz.
He answered, said, “You saw it?”
“Of course, I fucking saw it,” the man on the other end of the line snapped. “The witness is Guryev’s wife.”
“That’s not good,” Brown said.
“No, it goddamned isn’t. Our ship has a hole. You need to plug it.”
Brown flushed with anger. “How the hell am I supposed to do that?”
“I have her location and a way inside.”
“Attack an FBI safe house?” Brown said. “I don’t know if that’s such a-”
“You want to take this to the next level or not?”
The next level. Brown felt all doubt leave him then, and said, “You know it’s the only long-term solution. If we don’t, nothing we’ve done will really matter.”
“Exactly. So steel yourself and get rid of Elena Guryev.”
81
AT EIGHT THIRTY the morning after the massacre, Ned Mahoney and I sprinted down Monroe Street in Columbia Heights. Patrol cars and an ambulance blocked the street, their lights flashing.
We showed our badges. The patrol officer pointed at the open door of a town house. The call had come into 911 only twenty minutes before. I’d been on my way to work and came straight over. Mahoney had been heading to FBI headquarters, heard about the call, and came straight over as well.