Troubleshooter Read online

  Hannibal had always been a loner during his Secret Service days, so even after eight years in this city he was quite used to spending his time alone. He pushed his mattress to the front of the room, just below the big windows. Attaching a spring clamp to the front windowsill and hooking his flashlight into it, he created a second lamp. He pulled off his jacket, folding it into a pillow shape. He pulled off his shoes and placed them together at the foot of his bed. Otherwise fully dressed, he got comfortable in his sleeping bag and turned to the first page of one of Walter Mosley’s novels about Easy Rawlins. Black detectives, he reflected, were almost as rare in fiction as they were in real life.

  Not just the music, but the very beat of the city seeped into his tiny corner of the house. The neighborhood throbbed and pulsed with life, but Hannibal was not in sync with it. His ears were tuned to any sign of an attempted break-in. He gathered scant cold comfort from the gun pressed against his ribs. Watching occasional movements on the walls outside his cone of light, he wondered if Monty and Mother Washington were asleep. It was a warm night, the air still, the moon bright.

  As he faded into a watchful state between sleep and full awareness, he imagined a crawling mass of drug users, homeless winos and petty thieves, flowing over the house, flowing over him like roaches gathering at the edge of the light. His exhausted mind became confused about whether he was in, or in fact was the narrow light they tentatively approached.

  -19-

  SATURDAY

  By the time Hannibal knew he was awake, he was sitting up with his pistol in his fist. His eyes opened wide, gathering every scrap of light in the room. In the darkness he tried to feel any vibration coming through the floor that might signal a footstep. A quick glance at the luminous hands of his watch told him it was three-thirty.

  Certainly the sound of breaking glass had triggered his internal alarm, but now he received nothing but silence. The sound had been distant, memory now revealed. Could the noise that awoke him have been a window breaking next door, or across the street? No. He had more faith in his instincts than that.

  Just standing made Hannibal feel more confident. After slipping his feet into his shoes he went to the front door, all his senses turned up to maximum. A slight vibration in the floor tied ideas together into a picture. He mentally cursed himself, remembering a hole in his defenses that he had not thought to jam a stopper into.

  With his weapon thrust in front of him, Hannibal moved down the hall. At the back of the building and beneath the stairway stood a door he had never opened. He turned its knob now and very slowly pulled it toward himself. The blackness of the cellar seemed to stretch right down to the center of the earth. He heard the scurrying of tiny clawed feet, and maybe the rustling of a bigger animal.

  Hannibal opened his mouth to quiet his accelerating breath. He stood still for a moment, forcing himself into calmness. He withdrew his aura and narrowed his eyes to narrow slits. When he had reached the state of relaxed alertness he was looking for he lowered one foot with painful slowness onto the first wooden step inside the door. Gradually he shifted his weight onto that step until he was certain it would hold him without creaking.

  Settling his other foot two steps further down took even longer, but now that he was more fully below the level of the first floor, he was certain he had company. He figured that someone had slithered through one of the narrow basement windows. His mind spun into random calculations, wondering if any of the previous residents would be so ambitious, or if Sal had already heard about earlier events and sent a team to recover his crack house.

  While his mind handled administrative details like who and why, Hannibal’s senses focused on where. He had a pen light in his pocket, but that would pin down his location faster than theirs. The basement was as dark and close and damp as a cave. Water dripped from pipes clinging to the ceiling like horizontal stalactites. Hannibal stepped farther into this dank, mildew clogged environment, ignoring a wide cobweb his arm thrust through. Breathing became more difficult. Fear, so comfortable living in the dark, tried to crawl into his ears, carried by the sound of rats patrolling their territory.

  Something scraped against a cement wall, causing a tiny dribble of crumbling dust. Hannibal thrust his gun in that direction and thumbed back its spur hammer. Then he deepened his voice and, with all the confidence he could gather, did his best Clint Eastwood imitation with a hint of James Earl Jones for resonance.

  “Step over here to the base of the stairs before I get mad and blow your fucking face off.”

  He heard more rustling, and a sound like sneakers padding across a wet sidewalk. Hannibal pivoted, tracking the sound like a radar screen until the movement stopped almost in front of him. He pulled the pen light out and turned its light on the man in front of him.

  The man was a boy, barely sixteen, Hannibal guessed. He held his hands up beside his face. His eyes were round despite the light, twin white circles with black dots in their centers glaring from a round black face.

  “This is my building,” Hannibal said through clenched teeth. “What are you doing here?”

  “The pipes,” the boy muttered, voice shaking, eyes riveted on the gun pointed at his chest.

  “Pipes?” Hannibal asked. “What, like crack pipes? You a druggie?”

  “No, man, these pipes,” the boy stammered, pointing at the ceiling. “The copper, man. We can sell the copper.”

  Tension drained out of Hannibal, leaving a relief almost like going to the bathroom. This was no deadly enemy, just a frightened thief. “Well, you picked the wrong place,” he said. “You alone?”

  “Yeah,” the boy said, but his eyes cut to the right, into the darkness. Hannibal heard a subtle movement and realized he had dropped his guard too soon. He turned the light off and dove forward. His chest slammed into the boy at the bottom of the stairs as he heard a bullet crack the wall behind him. Sliding across the floor with the boy pinned beneath him, Hannibal swung his left arm up toward the flash he had seen and squeezed the trigger twice.

  The gun’s concussions slammed Hannibal’s ears, as if someone had boxed them. Through the echo he heard a cry of pain, then the words “Oh shit!” in a stunned voice. Two seconds later, a metallic clank told Hannibal the gun had flown quite a distance.

  The boy beneath him was frozen with terror, panting so hard Hannibal thought he might hyperventilate. He pulled the boy up, dragging him a few feet away from the stairs.

  “Let’s see how tough your partner is,” Hannibal whispered. Pressing his gun against the boy’s chest, he turned toward the darkness.

  “Can you walk?” Hannibal called. No response, but he could hear ragged breathing from the darkness. “Can you stand?” Still nothing. One more chance. “Want me to shoot the boy?” Hannibal could not have asked for a better gasp of fear than he got when he pressed the gun into the boy’s throat.

  “No,” a voice called from the darkness.

  “All right then. Come over here and slide past me up the stairs.”

  After a five second silent pause, more scuffing and grating sounds came from the dark. Hannibal pulled out his pen light, turned it on and aimed it at the stairs. A tall, gaunt figure shuffled toward them. As the man reached the base of the steps he looked back into the light and simply said “my boy?”

  Hannibal could smell the poverty on the man. He wore no armor, even lacked the basic defense of a thin layer of fat under his skin. He was no predator, but rather a scavenger. Breaking in here may have been an act of desperation, and Hannibal felt small watching blood dribbling down his leg.

  “Go help him,” he told the boy. “You two get up the stairs. Head for the front door.”

  The man put an arm over the boy’s shoulders and mounted the stairs without a word. Hannibal walked in the trail of blood, following the pair to the door. He kept the gun on the younger intruder while he kicked the wedges away and turned the lock.

  “Let the boy go.” The man pressed his hand futilely against his mid thigh. His eyes bore
d into Hannibal’s. Did he expect Hannibal to take them to the police? Maybe he expected to be gunned down in the street for trespassing. Whatever his thoughts, he seemed ready to take his punishment, but not ready to share it.

  “Oh, hell.” Hannibal reached into his hip pocket. Fumbling with his wallet one handed, he dropped it in the process of pulling out a bill. Enough moonlight dripped through the glass on either side of the front door to make the twenty dollar bill in Hannibal’s right hand visible.

  “Here’s the deal,” Hannibal rasped, still working at sounding tough. “No cops. Take this. Get to a hospital. Don’t come back. And put this in the street. This building don’t get no uninvited visitors.”

  The man’s hand did not move, but the boy reached for the money. Then Hannibal opened the door, letting the city’s rhythm flood the hall, and waved them out with his pistol.

  This time he left only two wedges jamming the front door closed. The third he used to brace the basement door, just in case. Back in his own room, he opened his sleeping bag and shook it out before sitting on it again. He turned to stare out the window and slowly slid his pistol back into its holster, wishing for company, wishing for a shower, wishing not so much for an end of this case, but for an end to the forces that had caused it.

  -20-

  A sharp, angry sun shoved Hannibal into full wakefulness. In the first light hours, he noticed the view from his front window could pass for any city street scene anywhere on earth. Who would guess he was sleeping in a war zone? But then, that was just as true when he was much younger, waking up every morning in Berlin.

  His first order of business was coffee. The multi-legged animals were not nearly as active in daylight hours, but he still heated water and washed everything before using it. While his brew was brewing, he pulled off his holster and clothes. The kitchen tiles were cold against his feet. Standing naked and feeling just a little vulnerable, he quickly took what his father used to call a “whore’s bath,” using a cloth and a bar of Ivory soap to wash only the essential body parts: face, underarms, crotch and pelvic area. Later he would scrub the bathtub upstairs and enjoy the real thing, but this would do for now.

  Clean and essentially dry, he pulled out an apple and crunched into it. After a couple of pieces of fruit for breakfast he planned to explore his building more thoroughly, listing necessary renovations. He might start work on this one apartment today, but as soon as he was sure the danger was past he intended to hire a team to clean and renovate the entire building.

  All night, Hannibal had been prepared for angry intruders trying the doors and windows. Now, a knock on the door took him completely by surprise. Pulling on trousers, his shoulder rig, and his windbreaker to cover it, he went to the front, opening his window to see who had knocked at the door. Monty stood there, looking quite impatient. Grinning, Hannibal hurried to the door and pulled it open.

  “Morning, Monty. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  “Grandma wants you to come to breakfast,” Monty said without preamble.

  Monty’s face revealed no emotion whatever, but Hannibal suspected this might be important. Important relationships so often hung on such small things, and cultural mores were never Hannibal’s strong suit. He licked his lips and assembled his answer carefully.

  “Monty, I would love to have a real breakfast this morning, and of course I’d be honored to join you and your grandmother. But I’m afraid if I left this building for more than a minute, I’d find it infested again when I got back, if you know what I mean.”

  “A lot of them won’t come back,” Monty said, still deadpan. “Everybody knows you put Mister Lincoln in D.C. General this morning. Now me, if I get shot, I’ll make them take me to Suburban, over in Bethesda. Too many brothers don’t come back from D.C. General.” After sharing this important advice, Monty turned and bounced down the steps to the street.

  With Monty gone, Hannibal picked up a note pad and began his inspection. His own apartment, as he began to think of it, could do with a coat of paint and new flooring. In the second room someone had broken through the plaster, exposing the wooden slats beneath, like bare ribs under a grazing gunshot wound.

  All the light fixtures were gone, and the refrigerator was just an empty metal box. The oven was beyond cleaning, so he would need a new stove. The bathroom sink, like the one in the kitchen, would need hours of scrubbing, after the plumbing got extensive repair. He could only wonder if the wiring was intact, or if the furnace and water heater downstairs worked.

  Worst of all, in Hannibal’s mind, was the general filth these people had lived in. He wished he could hose out the entire place.

  Another knock on the door pulled his thoughts back into focus. After again checking at the window, he opened the door for Monty. He stood at the threshold wearing the same bored expression, but holding a foil-covered plate like an offering. Hannibal raised his eyebrows in silent questioning.

  “Grandma say you need breakfast anyway.” Monty walked in without waiting for an invitation.

  Hannibal and Monty sat in a shaft of sunlight, sharing the sleeping bag seating. The plate balanced on Hannibal’s lap was overflowing with bacon, fried eggs, grits, and corn bread already buttered. Hannibal ate as if he had not tasted food in weeks. While he did, he noticed two starlings arguing noisily in a big tree out front. He thought the tree was mostly dead. Friendly conversation floated in the window on a breeze that led Hannibal to believe that the whole block smelled like the breakfast that Mother Washington had made him. He reflected how, with this one building’s previous occupants gone, it was not a bad neighborhood at all.

  When Hannibal finished his food Monty took the plate and asked, “What you doing today?”

  “Today, when my gear gets here, I’m cleaning this place up some.”

  “Need some help?” Monty asked.

  “Yeah, if you want. Come back around noon, and I’ll have plenty of brooms and mops.”

  “Alright,” Monty said without pronouncing the letters “l” or “r.”

  “I’ll be back but what’s the point of all this cleaning?”

  “It shows intent,” Hannibal said, walking Monty to the door. “By Monday, I figure even the thickest junkie will understand I’m here to stay. Then the owner can start fixing the place up for real and get some of these apartments rented out.”

  “Here to stay?” Monty asked, one hand on the doorknob.

  “Well, not me personally, but some honest people, you know?”

  Monty nodded and left. He seemed vaguely disappointed, but Hannibal could not be sure why. He watched from his window as Monty headed up the street. His view of he boy was interrupted by a blue patrol car rolling past. Hannibal checked his watch. Kendall had been as good as his word. Their patrols had shrunk to just over an hour apart. They never stopped or talked with anyone, but Hannibal figured the increased presence gave the bad guys a case of the crawlies and maybe, gave the good folks a little more security.

  Hannibal returned his focus to cataloging the ills of his new home. It seemed that the more he looked the more he found, and he lost all track of time during his inspection. He also began to gather any useful items he found and tote them into his own apartment, including a functional card table that, until the day before, had been covered with electronic equipment on the third floor. It was hot and smelly work, and he was glad he could leave some windows open on the upper floors for ventilation.

  When he finally checked his watch he was startled to see that noon was seconds away. He hastened to clean up his area and roll his sleeping bag. He was just deflating his air mattress when the familiar sound of his own car’s horn put a smile on his face.

  His smile dropped as soon as he opened the front door. As expected, Ray was on his way up the stairs with a suitcase in one hand and a pail full of sponges and cleaning supplies in the other. Behind him, and not part of Hannibal’s plan, Cindy carried brooms, mops and more cleaning gear. Even with a cloth tied over her head, she just did not look like a cle
aning lady. Hannibal turned a stern expression on his driver.

  “Ray, what’s she doing here?”

  “Hey, it’s good to see you too,” Cindy said.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” Hannibal said as they came in. “But considering the hours you work, you’ve got to have better things to do with your Saturday afternoons. Besides, I just don’t think this is a good place for a girl to be today.”

  “Really?” Cindy unloaded her arms on the card table Hannibal had brought down from the third floor. “Well that’s one hell of a sexist attitude. It’s no more dangerous for me than it is for you. Besides, I don’t think there’s a man alive who knows squat about cleaning.”

  “Speaking of sexist attitudes,” Hannibal said, pulling off his shoulder holster and hanging it on the back of a chair.

  “Come on, Hannibal, this place stinks. You know you could use an extra pair of hands here.”

  When she turned toward him, his resolve weakened. Her shorts really were, revealing her nearly perfect legs. Her Star Trek tee shirt barely fit her, and her body was badly distorting the Enterprise’s shape. Then she flashed that smile at him and he forgot whatever else he wanted to say.

  “Your little friend is downstairs,” Ray said, as if nothing whatever was going on. “He says for five bucks he’ll watch the car all day. Where you want to start?”

  Hannibal sat back on the windowsill, wishing those damned starlings would shut up.

  After Hannibal changed into shorts and a tee shirt they started cleaning in the kitchen. His plan was to work forward and get this one flat livable. If nobody started any real trouble the next day, he would then be comfortable bringing in a cleaning team. They could start across the hall and work their way to the top. Once he had a decent place to stay, there would be no rush for cleaners, plumbers and the like to get their jobs done. But even with every window open, that one place was rough going. When Hannibal moved the refrigerator away from the wall they all gagged, but somehow enough hot water and disinfectant soon had an effect.