K Street, Chapter 10

Jeff finds himself in Washington DC on business trying to close a big deal for his company where he meets up with Nancy again, the FBI agent he had fallen in love with in Atlanta nearly two years ago. Jeff is separated from his wife because of Nancy’s letter. Jeff continues to attract women without trying, some of them with deadly intentions. Jeff and Nancy soon find themselves in the center of intrigue with Israelis and Iranians feeling threatened by the impending deal, determined to kill the deal at any cost―even at the cost of Jeff’s life! The surprising twists will make the reader gasp, the love scenes will make the reader sigh.

Chapter 10 of K Street... They try to murder Jeff!

Saturday, 4:21 PM: Dangerous Touring

Ted takes Jeff for lunch and a little touring. They go to a backroom at the Smithsonian, then to the Smithsonian Castle where Ted sees a friend. Jeff goes to the men's room by himself where he notices two men who he thought was following him earlier come into the men's room. Suddenly terrified, Jeff ducks into a stall as bullets start flying!

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- Chris Lamela

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Author contact: Chris Lamela, chris@chrislamela.com, 707-566-8790 PST

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               K Street, Chapter 10

Saturday, 4:21 PM: Dangerous Touring

 

     Almost on queue everyone in the room stood up except for Jeff who looked anxiously around to faces still hoping for more information. They pushed through the curtain into the little ops room, the curtain swayed closed again.

     Jeff wanted more information.

     Something.

     Anything.

     From anyone!

     Instead everyone left the room but Nancy who sat back down turning her chair to face Jeff.

     “This is different than Atlanta. There you were…you were…you just happened to come by looking like the twin brother of a crooked congressman. Here you are part of it. Really part of it, not just the accidental tourist like in Atlanta.” Jeff shook his head, “Yes, you are part of it. Even if you were still back in Seattle and you didn’t know any of this you would still be part of this. But this way you have a chance to change the outcome.”

     “Change what outcome? What could I possibly change here?”

     “You remember in Atlanta how at first we didn’t know who the bad guys were but had all sorts of clues until we could finally put it all together?” He nodded slowly. “There it was all a group of people that we could fit into one room. Granted, they all murdered each other.” Jeff felt a tide of memories rise in his head remembering the bar, the big room that he managed to creep out of, escaping before the huge roar of gunfire erupted. “This is more complicated,” she continued. “We have crooked congressmen we believe, but they may actually be conducting legitimate covert operations, we don’t know. We can only assume that the Arabs are even affiliated with the government, in the cloak-and-dagger world we can’t even be sure of that. We can only assume the Israelis are who they say they are. Now we have strong reason to believe that the Iranians are out to kill this deal.”

     “They can do whatever they want as long as they don’t kill me.”

     She smiled reaching her hand out laying it on his knee, he felt that same cattle-prod shock that he felt back in Atlanta when she touched him.

     “All I know is that you’re probably not a target of anything,” Jeff feeling just slightly reassured, “we assume that they have some way to kill this deal through some other means. The congressmen involved in this are probably bigger targets than our little circle.”

     “So what do we do today?”

     “You are going to go have some lunch, then Ted’s going to be your guide to take to do some touring.”

     She started to stand, he reached up pulling her back down.

     “What about us? What about tomorrow night?”

     She leaned forward, kissed him with a light peck on the lips, “Nothing is going to stop me from coming knocking tomorrow night. I have a busy day today, that party tonight, then we are meeting again tomorrow afternoon. You are invited to the meeting. We hope to have more information to make a plan.” She stood up, pulling him to his feet, “Then tomorrow night you can expect a knock.” She leaned over looking into his face, could see his dreamy smile. “Will that work?”

     He pulled her to him, they kissed deeply with quickened breaths, she pulled back with her hands on his arms shaking her head, “God, Jeffery, if it was up to me I’d throw your ass on that table this minute!”

     He glanced down at the table with a flash of fantasy thinking that would definitely be a nice thing to do right now, but she turned pushing open the drape, tying it to the side. She looked into the room signaling to Ted who walked over, “I think it’s time for you guys to go get some lunch and do a little touring.”

     Ted stepped forward shaking Jeff’s hand lightly, “Anything you want to see in particular?”

     Jeff looked to Nancy, “How much time do we have?”

     She shrugged, “The whole day, you don’t need to be back here until tomorrow at two.”

     Nancy’s phone rang, she reached into her purse pulling it out pushing a button. “Nancy here…hi, babe!...yes…yes…yeah, he’s going to be doing some touring,” she put her hand to the phone, “you guys are heading to where, the capitol mall?” Jeff shrugged with a probably, “yeah around the mall somewhere, Smithsonian maybe?” Jeff shrugged a maybe. She turned to her phone, “Smithsonian he thinks…yes, what time?...fine, okay, I can be there. I love you too, bye.” She pushed a button on the phone putting it back into her purse.

     “Okay guys, go have fun,” she turned walking away.

     “Well, then,” Ted smiled, “I guess we can go.”

     They walked out together, he pointed to a black Chevrolet Caprice Classic, the other favorite cop car. Jeff went around to the passenger side climbing in, Ted got in starting the car.

     “I heard that Chevy is going to quit making this car, that the cops will all have to buy Crown Victorias from now on,” Jeff remembered reading.

     “Yeah, I heard. Too bad. I’m a Chevy man myself, but I guess it doesn’t really matter, huh?”

     They drove back toward downtown in silence for a while.

     Ted glanced at Jeff, “You know, I can get you into a couple special places if you want. Kind of the back scenes stuff.”

     Jeff looked at Ted with curiosity, “Yeah? Like where?”

     “Just about anywhere. The basement of the Capitol Building, back rooms of the Smithsonian, I don’t know. What interests you?”

     “Back rooms of the Smithsonian? Yeah, that sounds like something I can tell people about when I get back home!”

     “Good, well let’s go eat first. I will take you to my favorite place. You eat anything, right?”

     “Yeah, and I’m hungry, too.”

     “Then I know just the place.”

     A few minutes later they were pulling into a parking lot with a gate with no signs. Ted rolled down the window, waved his badge at a panel on a curved post, the gate swung open. He parked, they walked around the building. The National Mall came into view. Jeff looked around admiring the majesty of this place with the lawns stretching from the Capitol Building to the Lincoln Memorial, tall pillared buildings along each side, the Washington Monument, the white house barely visible in the distance.

     They chatted about things around them, Ted’s long stride making Jeff pay attention to keeping up.

     Soon they walked up to a hot dog stand, the man at the stand smiling, “Ted! My favorite customer!” they shook hands. “What can I get you, your usual?”

     “Yeah, sure,” nodding toward Jeff, “and one for my friend here, too.”

     “Certainly, any friend of yours is a friend of mine,” he reached his hand out to shake Jeff’s without saying his name, “good to meet you.”

     In a minute Jeff was holding a massive bratwurst in an enormous bun already loaded with onions, relish and brown mustard, balancing that to take a small bag of chips and a can of soda. The two men chatted a couple minutes, Ted thanked the hot dog man, pointing to a bench on the other side of the street facing the National Mall park. They gingerly made their way across the street sitting down. Jeff admired the view with the Washington Monument maybe three hundred feet away, the long view to the left looking down toward the Lincoln Memorial, the massive Capitol Building maybe three hundred yards to his right. He always loved being on the Capital Mall, the eloquent combination of stately beauty and power.

     Neither of them spoke chomping away with both hands needed to manage their meal. Finally Ted stood up, took Jeff’s napkin and wrapper, walking to toss them into a can. Jeff stood up with his drink, they walked slowly in silence enjoying the taste of the bratwurst on their tongues, both scarcely sipping at their drinks for fear that it would remove the pleasant taste in their mouths.

   They walked along coming to a vendor stand where he pointed to a nice boy-size T-shirt with Bill Clinton’s face and another shirt with the White House with bold lettering Washington DC. He was handed tiny little cloth tubes maybe two-inches across, four inches long, the vendor laughed at Jeff’s expression saying he needed to pull the cover off, that the shirt would unfold. Jeff smiled putting them into his right inside coat pocket. He looked down smiling that they were so small he could barely see a bulge in the coat.

    They walked along the Mall, crossed the street walking away from the Mall about four blocks among imposing buildings coming to the entrance of a non-descript building with no markers outside. Ted walked up to the door, opened it, signaling Jeff to wait outside. A minute later he opened the door waving Jeff to come in.

     Jeff walked into an enormous room, much bigger than it might look on the outside. An older man sitting in a chair was reading a book, looked up at them, eyes back to book. The room was the size of an enormous warehouse with what looked like thousands of objects of every description. There were sarcophagus lined along one wall, there were rows of old cars, fire engines, all sorts of Americana neatly organized in rows. Objects lined up stretching to the distant wall.

     “So is it a perq that FBI people get secret entry into these kinds of places?”

     Ted smiled, “Yeah, I wish. No, my aunt works for the museum, an archivist.”

     “Archivist?”

     “She is with the team that does the cataloging of new donations and purchases. None of these have been put on display yet so you are getting to see them before the public.”

     “Cool…” Jeff’s voice faded in wonder looking around, they began a long slow trek looking at the huge collection in the room.

     There were no labels on anything except a bar-code tag. They spent nearly three hours until they both agreed they had seen enough.

     “Actually, I could use a bathroom,” Jeff stated matter-of-fact.

     “They are way in the back, if you can hold it we can go into one of the main museums.” Ted motioned toward the door they came in.

     Soon they were back in the sunlight heading back toward the Mall, taking a right, walking along until they came to the Smithsonian Castle building. Ted walked up, showed his ID, the ticket-taker waved them through.

     Ted turned to Jeff, “This is definitely a perq, government employees get in free.”

     “Nice.”

     Making their way through the atrium Jeff happened to glance over his shoulder noticing two men walking some distance behind them that he had seen when they came to the Mall. They were dark-skinned, one wearing a bulky coat that was out of place for such a warm day, when he looked back they weren’t there, he shook his head, they continued walking.

     “Ted!” a voice came, Ted looked around, his expression turning to recognition.

     “Hey, that’s a friend of mine, do you mind?”

     “I’ve really got to use the men’s room, can I meet you back here?”

     “Sure,” Ted turned toward the man calling out his name signaling that he was coming, “meet me back here in five minutes?”

     Jeff nodded heading toward the men’s room sign fifty feet away. He walked into the men’s room, looked around noticing that there was nobody in there. It didn’t seem that strange, but given all the people in the museum he would expect some little boy with his father lording over him to make sure he didn’t pee on his little shoes too much.

     He walked up to the urinal, unzipped his pants, glanced over his left shoulder seeing a man walk in but instead of walking up to a urinal he stood in front of the mirror taking out a comb starting to comb his hair. Jeff didn’t pay attention. Suddenly the man with the bulky coat walked in stepping over in front of the mirror next to the first man. The first man gave Jeff a glance that suddenly sent a chill down Jeff’s spine―he recognized his expression, the exact same expression that Yusef, the Israeli with the huge scar on his face had given him when they walked into the bar last night.

     Jeff was a target!

     Not even zipping up his pants Jeff turned pushing into the first of three stalls behind him closing latching the door panic racing through him without thinking he kneeled down bending way way down on his knees sliding under the partition between the stalls into the second stall under the next partition into the last stall against the wall stood hearing his heartbeat in his ears. Holding his breath.

     Words were exchanged between the men in foreign tongue. He heard footsteps walking up to the stall door that he first went into.

     Suddenly TATATATATATATA! burst out, bullets flying through the door of the stall, pieces of tile and mortar flying under the partition followed by a BANG! as the man kicked in the door.

     Pause.

     More steps.

     TATATATATATATA! more bullets flying through the second door, more tile and mortar spraying under the stall divider followed by BANG! the second door crushed open with a stern kick.

     Jeff’s heart racing BANG! the door to his stall flew open, there stood the man with the bulky coat holding an Uzi submachine gun pointing at Jeff.

     “HOLY SHIT!” Jeff whispered closed eyes waiting for bullets to rip him apart PAP! PAP! PAP! PAP! PAP! Jeff barely opened his eyes to see the first man drop like a rock PAP! PAP! PAP! bullets ripped into the second man’s big black jacket Jeff dove left beside the toilet onto the ground hands over head looking back at the gun barrel facing him PAP! PAP! PAP! the black-jacketed man spinning in a swirling rain dance arms flailing Uzi in hand TATATATATATATA! bullets spattered across the tile where Jeff had just been standing tile and mortar raining onto him the man spinning around falling face-first onto the floor gun skidding across the room against the wall under the urinals.

     W-E-E-E-E-E! was all Jeff heard from the loud shots barely hearing Ted’s voice.

     “JEFF? JEFF? JEFF!”

     “I’m in here! I’m okay!”

     Ted strutted toward the stall, Jeff stood up patting dust and mortar from his pants and shirt. Ted barely looked around the partition at Jeff, nodded, then leaned over with fingers to the neck of the black-jacketed form at his feet, shook his head, then turned to do the same to the second man. Shaking his head with disappointed frown, “We won't be getting any information out of these guys!”

     Ted leaned over again rifling through the first man’s pockets pulling out many items that he quickly stashed into his own pockets, rolling the second man over doing the same. Finally he looked up at Jeff who was still standing in the stall horrified.

     “Sorry you had to see this man, I had no business leaving you alone. It was my job to protect you. I blew it.”

     Jeff stood silent, jaw dropped aghast at what he had just witnessed.

     Ted stood up, “Hate to do this to you man, but we gotta go.” He reached into his pocket pulling out a cell phone, suddenly he looked over at the door running out of Jeff’s sight. Jeff could hear a man’s voice, “We heard a loud banging, is everything all right in here?”

     “Sorry folks, there’s been a plumbing problem in here, it’s a mess, I need to ask you to go to use the restroom on the other side of the lobby, you can’t come in here.” Jeff could hear some voices, the voice of a small boy, soon they were gone. Jeff stepped out of the stall, stepping over the first man’s body laying at the stall’s opening. He saw Ted turned away talking into his phone when suddenly the bathroom door burst open, a cop bolting in with his gun raised at Ted.

     “FREEZE!”

     Ted turned to him with his left hand pressing a phone to his ear, his gun in his right hand.

     “I SAID FREEZE! PUT THE GUN DOWN! NOW!”

     Ted seemed unfazed, he spoke into the phone, “Look, I’ve got to deal with an excited capitol cop, let me call you back.” He clicked a button on the phone leaning over setting it and his gun on the floor.

     Standing back up with his hands raised he addressed the cop just as another came in behind the first cop with his gun pointed at Ted, “FREEZE!”

     Ted spoke calmly, “I am FBI, this is a matter of national security.” He pointed to his coat with his right hand. “Look, I am going to reach in to pull out my ID, so please don’t shoot me.” The cops watched Ted anxiously as he used his left hand to open his coat wide open, his right hand reaching into his inside coat pocket with exaggerated dainty fingers, sliding a leather wallet out, tossing it to the second cop who let it fall on the floor in front of him.

     The cop reached down, picked it up. Ted continued, “There has been a shooting here, other FBI are on their way, they will be here in a minute. But like I said, this is a matter of national security, you cannot write a police report.” The cop finished looking at Ted’s identification looking more relaxed, lowering his gun, handing Ted’s wallet to the first cop.

     The first cop looked it over, lowered his gun, stepping forward to hand the wallet back to Ted. “What should we do here?”

     “You should guard the door. More FBI will be here in a few minutes, you are to ask for their ID, then let them in. You are to wait for further instructions from me, in the meantime assure the tourists that everything is fine. Absolutely do not let anyone but FBI in here.” The men nodded looking around Ted at the bodies laying next to the stalls, astonished, “Good job, and thanks for your quick response, I am sure we all feel better knowing you guys are on the job.” The first cop half-smiled motioning to the second to follow him out whispering to the other, “Did you see what was in there?” the other muttering a response.

     Ted leaned over to pick up his gun and phone, pressing buttons again he turned away from Jeff to talk.

     Not thirty seconds later he could hear the sounds of two other voices talking low and firm, their voices growing louder, they walked into the room, walking up to the bodies.

     “Holy shit, Theodore, what a mess you made!” said a voice. He turned to Jeff smiling at the dust in his hair. Jeff looked up with a grin, though he could not see his hair he mussed it with both hands, a cloud of dust encircling his head, sneezing.

     “Bless you man, you okay?” Jeff nodded, could hear the other man turned away talking into a phone giving some kind of instructions.

     Finally Ted turned to Jeff. “You going to stand there all day?”

     Jeff had been standing with a stunned expression watching all this, barely breathing.

     “Come on man, we have to go,” Ted motioned for Jeff to follow him.

     Jeff tried to remember if he even peed, realizing that he probably couldn’t right now anyway even if he tried, he looked down, grinned, pulled his zipper up.

     Walking back out the door Ted turned to the two cops, said a few words Jeff couldn’t hear, the ringing was subsiding but his hearing was not all there yet.

     Soon they were back in the lobby, a minute later standing outside. Ted looked down at his watch, back to Jeff. “You look like a guy who could really use a drink.”

     Jeff nodded, they turned back toward Ted’s car, soon sitting in the black Caprice together crossing the National Mall again.

     “I know a nice quiet place that’s up near Cookes Park. I’ve called an emergency meeting at seven, that gives us almost two hours before the meeting. This place has pretty decent food so we can eat before the meeting, will that work?”

     “God, I’m not even sure if I’m hungry.”

     Soon they pulled up in front of what looked like a funky old Irish Pub, looked out of place from the high-end stores next to it. “I know it looks junky, but O’Malley’s has been here for a hundred years, back when this whole area was old tenement housing and warehouses.

     In a minute they were both sitting at the bar. Ted pointed toward Jeff, “This man could use a very tall Guinness.”

     Jeff smiled thinking that he couldn’t have chosen better, “Good choice there Ted, but it would be a better choice if you ordered me two.”

     Suddenly Jeff felt the signal from his bladder, “You know, I never did get to pee back there. Oh, yeah, right, I was too busy dodging bullets.” His wry smile made Ted laugh. “Give me a minute.” He turned toward the men’s room back a minute later.

     “That’s better,” Jeff sat on the bar stool with a relieved smile.

     The bartender was just setting the tall glasses down in front of them. Ted leaned forward, “My friend here is having a pretty rough day, how about another round.”

     “It’s agin our policy.”

     “Don’t worry,” Jeff said, taking a long drink from the glass, “these will be gone before you can draw the next round, I promise you,” they clinked their glasses.

     Sure enough, there were two empty glasses sitting in front of them when the next round appeared, they both started to drink the second in silence.

     “What happened back there?” Jeff asked.

     “We shouldn’t talk about it here, save it for the meeting.”

     Jeff took another swill of his ale, “I noticed you guys never talk about cases while you’re eating or drinking. Is it true that you don’t?”

     “We are a superstitious bunch. It’s bad luck.”

     “Bad luck?”

     “Yes, because it’s too easy for people when they are off in situations like we have here to get funny ideas about things. There’s lots of lore at the agency about things that have gone wrong after people talked about cases while they’re away, so we consider it bad luck.”

     Ted picked up a menu card, motioned to the bartender, turned to Jeff, “They have the best corned beef in the city, will that work?” Jeff nodded taking another long drink of his beer. Ted ordered two plates of corned beef.

     They sat in silence.

     Soon the food arrived.

     They ate in silence.

     Finished eating, they pushed plates away, two new Guinness appearing in front of them.

     Jeff took a long pensive drink, turned to Ted, “I know it’s bad luck and all to talk about a case, but what the hell happened back there?”

     “I don’t know, but all I can tell you is that this happens every so often when a bunch of whacko foreigners go running around the city shooting at people.”

     Jeff’s eyes bulged at the notion of people running around the city spraying bullets all over, “This has happened before?”

     “Yeah,” Ted shook his head slowly, “but, soon the agencies get a handle on it and we manage to get it back under control.”

     “Agencies? Not just the FBI?”

    “Hey, whatever it takes, come on, let’s go.” They both finished their ales, stood up heading outside, soon back in Ted’s car, a few minutes later back at the ops house.

     Ted turned the key, the car engine stopped, he turned to Jeff, “There have been a couple times when it got really ugly, with this case there are too many key players involved so we will be working together with the CIA, NSA, maybe others to squash this pronto.”

     Ted opened the car door, signaled to Jeff to get out, a moment later they were walking together back into the big house, through the door into the ops room that was now so crowded that they had to turn sideways to push through to the conference room.

     When they managed to get into the dining room turned conference room, every chair had a body sitting in it, there were two more standing against the back wall. Ted turned back through the door returning with a chair for Jeff, people stood to open up a place to put it. Ted motioned to Jeff to sit down, walked back to the double-wide door pulling the black drape across the opening, walking around the table to stand along the back wall.

     Jeff looked around the table seeing Nancy bent over a yellow legal pad writing some notes.

     Arnie stood up pointing to Nancy, “Nancy is the lead on this case, but let me start with a recap of what happened today.”

     All eyes turned to Arnie. He did a recap of the events of last night and the meeting this morning at the ODS office, then what happened at the Smithsonian.

     Nancy looked to Jeff with a soft smile shaking her head slowly, “So you just can’t help yourself, huh? Like you didn’t get enough of being shot at while you were in Atlanta, now you’ve got to go getting yourself shot at here, too?”

     Jeff was expecting chuckles from around the table but the room was pin-drop silent. He shook his head with a morose aura trying to find a response, the room hung on his breath waiting for words to emerge.

     “I sure as hell wish I had that damned little Colt so I could shoot through that door. Those bastards were going to kill me. If it hadn’t been for this guy,” nodding toward Ted, “I’d be sleeping on a slab right now.” He shook his head in wonder, “So this means that the stakes have definitely gotten raised, like Ted said, but who the hell were those guys?”

     Ted stepped forward pulling out a large plastic ziplock bag pouring the contents onto the table.

     Nancy reached over, the pile was pushed across the table to her.

     “Oh, Jesus Christ,” she scowled, flipping through the contents of the pile.

     “What?” Jeff leaned toward her.

     She glanced around the table, looked to Jeff. “You think what happened today was bad?”

     “Hell yes, it was bad!” Jeff responded angrily.

     “Well, then hold onto your hat, there Jeffery.”

     “Why?”

     “It’s going to get a whole lot worse.”

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K STREET!

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