The Double Read online

  She let him into a suite, identically furnished as the one before, and closed the door behind him. She had already lit candles and extinguished the lights. Music was playing from her phone, which was connected to a portable speaker she had brought with her. It was the Lee “Scratch” Perry compilation Arkology, which she had downloaded especially for him. Lucas liked that she had remembered.

  Charlotte was dressed in a black tank top and black jeans, with brown T-strap boots, as she had been at Boundary Road, though tonight beneath the shirt she was free. He embraced her and ran his hands down her bare arms.

  “We should talk,” said Lucas.

  “We will,” she said.

  She put her mouth to his and held the back of his neck as they kissed. Her hair smelled of rainwater and her lips were butter. They kissed in the entranceway and against the wall, and soon found themselves lying on the thickly carpeted floor. An hour passed quickly, just like that, the two of them making out, sweating as if they had completed the act, though they’d not yet removed their clothes. They stopped so Lucas could uncork the bottle of Barolo that stood on the dresser. He poured it into two short glasses and they drank some, then put the glasses down and began to kiss some more. They made it to the bed and faced each other. She unbuttoned his jeans, released him, and stroked him lavishly.

  “God,” said Lucas.

  “What do you like?” she said.

  “This.”

  “Let me take my boots off.”

  “Let me,” said Lucas.

  He led her to the black velvet settee and sat her there. He put one of her boots up on his thigh and removed it, then the other. He lifted her tank top over her head, and she pushed her hips forward as he took off her jeans and peeled away her thong. Heat came off her.

  “Lay down,” he said, and he stretched her out on the settee and got on his knees. He kissed her mouth and shoulders, licked and bit at her nipples, and raised them. He moved his face to between her legs and pushed aside her hood and found her spot engorged with blood, and flicked his tongue there. Her breath grew short. He rubbed his forefinger down the strip, buried his thumb inside her, and kissed her pearl, then sucked on it. She said, “Spero,” and grabbed his hair and came with abandon.

  Afterward, she moved to put him in her mouth. But he shook his head, picked her up, and carried her to the bed, where he laid her down on her back atop the drawn sheets.

  “Like this tonight,” said Lucas. Her legs opened like a flower and he went to her in the flickering light.

  “How’d you know I was married?” said Charlotte.

  “A man knows,” said Lucas. “That movie with the twist at the end, where Clooney finds out his girlfriend is married and it’s supposed to be a shocker? That was bullshit. Good movie and all that. But bullshit.”

  They were finishing the wine in bed. Charlotte had a sip and said, “How do you feel about it? That I’m married.”

  “I came back,” said Lucas. He knew what she was asking, but he was evading the question.

  “I’m glad you did.”

  “Am I a first for you?” He nearly winced when he said it. He sounded like a boy.

  “I came close once before. Made a date at the bar downstairs, in the same way that I asked to meet you the other night. Five minutes in, I knew he wasn’t for me. He bragged about money. I had one drink and went home.” She kissed him. “Let’s not talk about that. Point is, I’m here with you.”

  “But why did you reach out to me? Why’d you reach out to that other guy?”

  “That’s pretty simple. There’s something missing in my marriage.”

  “What?”

  “This.” She drew him close to her and kissed him softly.

  “Thanks for bringing that reggae,” said Lucas.

  “It’s good music to make love to.”

  “Yes.” He looked into her eyes. “You’re fucking amazing.”

  “Thank you, Spero.”

  “So how do you feel about it?” said Lucas. “Us, together like this.”

  “It’s been incredible.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Am I torn up about the fact that I’m having an affair? No.” Charlotte turned and put her empty glass on the nightstand. She lay back down on her side and faced him, ran her hand along his forearm. “I’ve been married for ten years. My husband is a good guy, very successful, a hard worker. Focused. We don’t fight, and he’s not abusive in any way. He’s not even temperamental, really. But the passion isn’t there. We make love a couple of times a month, and it’s fine, but it’s by the numbers, you know? I guess it’s natural for it to be like that for two people after so many years. But it’s not enough for me. I’m still young. If I was older, I suppose I could live with it, but I’m not willing to live with it yet. That’s why I’m here.”

  “At your service,” said Lucas. He didn’t smile.

  “Don’t do that. You have no reason to be insecure. I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind since the first time I saw you. It’s not just the physical part of this that moves me.”

  “I feel the same way,” said Lucas, and it was true.

  “I brought another bottle of that Italian,” said Charlotte. “Why don’t you open it?”

  Lucas left the bed naked, returned with the open bottle, poured some for her, poured more for himself. They had some more to drink, lying beside each other, kissed and whispered, and let the time pass that way.

  “Spero?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When you were in Iraq…”

  He knew what was coming. The question was always the same.

  “Yes?”

  “Did you kill anyone?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  What was it like?

  “What was it like?” she said.

  “The first time?” said Lucas. “I hesitated, I guess, but only for a few seconds. It wasn’t a very tough decision to make. He would have killed me or my friends if he had the chance. That’s really what the war was about for me. I was protecting my brothers. I was there to take out the enemy. I killed people who were trying to kill me. Morality and philosophy didn’t enter into my thought process.”

  Lucas was surprised that he had said so much. He turned onto his back and stared at a ceiling lit by candle flames.

  “Are you all right?” said Charlotte.

  “Getting sleepy, I guess.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I’m fine. Look, are we going to spend the night together this time?”

  “I can’t,” said Charlotte. “I need to get home. My husband thinks I’m working a late dinner with Pakistani diplomats.”

  “Okay, then,” said Lucas. He was annoyed, though he knew he had no right to be. “I gotta use the head.”

  He picked up his glass of wine from the nightstand, took it with him to the bathroom, and swigged the rest of it down as he flicked on the bathroom light. He turned his head to say something to Charlotte and tripped on the floor molding that separated the carpeting from the marbled bathroom floor. He dropped the glass and watched it shatter on the marble, watched it as he was going down, put his left hand out to break his fall, watched in slow motion as he landed in the glass, his hand coming down on a large piece that was resting edge up, feeling the sting of pain. He sat back against the vanity cabinet. He said, “Stupid,” and he pulled the piece of glass out of his palm. A great flap of skin lay open below his thumb and it was white and quickly red with his blood.

  “Oh, my God!” said Charlotte, who had come to the doorway and was staring with horror at his hand.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  He rinsed it off in the sink, but the blood would not stop coming. It was a deep cut in the shape of a crescent and he knew he’d need stitches. Charlotte gave him a washcloth. He wrapped his hand tightly, and the washcloth soon reddened.

  “Get me my clothes, please,” said Lucas. “I don’t want to bleed all over this suite. At least they can mop it up in here.”
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  He dressed and gathered up the rest of the bathroom’s washcloths.

  “You going to drive yourself?” said Charlotte.

  “No sweat,” said Lucas.

  “I’ll text you and see how you’re doing.”

  “Yeah, okay. Hit me up.”

  He kissed her deeply and left the suite, got his Jeep without too many questions from the doorman and the valet guy, and drove out to Holy Cross in Silver Spring using only his right hand. His left hand bled all over his jeans and the fabric of his seat.

  He was in the waiting room of the ER for an hour or so, and he went through three more washcloths before they ushered him to a small room just inside the swinging doors, where an orderly took his vitals and applied a pressure bandage. He waited another hour, and finally a Dr. Eric Hernandez entered the room. The youngish bespectacled doctor had a look at his hand, and said, “Oh yeah, you did it,” and he had Lucas take X-rays in another room. Later still, the doctor returned and said, “I can’t guarantee that there’s not more glass in there, but I’m gonna go ahead and stitch you up.”

  Lucas watched him prepare a needle of Novocain, or whatever they were using these days.

  “I’m going to have to stick you in the center of your palm,” said Dr. Hernandez.

  “Just put the head in, okay, Doc? And be gentle with me. It’s my first time.”

  “I’ll wipe your tears away.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Now look, I’m not going to lie to you, this is going to hurt. If you jump, I’ll have to stick you again.”

  Lucas turned his head and looked away.

  It hurt like a motherfucker. But Lucas didn’t jump.

  Driving back to his apartment in the middle of the night, his hand stitched, throbbing, and covered in an antibiotic ointment and a sterile pad, Lucas checked his phone. Charlotte had texted him and asked if he was okay. Also, Abraham Woldu, the real estate broker on North Capitol, had left him a long text about the men who frequently occupied the office he had leased to Serge Nikolai. There was Nikolai, of course, and the young man who he was still barely able to describe, and a blond-haired, deeply tanned man with a strong build.

  Woldu had described Billy Hunter. Hunter and Nikolai were together. The two of them had targeted Grace Kinkaid. Hunter, Nikolai, and one more.

  There were three.

  ELEVEN

  Three men sat in a white police-package Crown Victoria purchased at auction in Manassas, Virginia. They were in the lot of a Maryland rest area between Washington and Baltimore off Interstate 95. A middle-aged man approaching elderly had gotten out of a late-model Honda Accord and from its rear seat had retrieved a brown attaché case and a gym bag with padded handles. Now the man was walking, somewhat stoop-shouldered, toward the men’s room. The men in the Ford were watching him.

  “He is taking the goods inside with him,” said Serge Bacalov from the backseat. He was dressed in tight jeans, a fitted T-shirt sporting a winged logo, and running shoes. His hair was curly and dark. He had thick lips, a simian-like muzzle, crooked teeth, and eyebrows that met above his nose.

  In the passenger seat, Billy King made no comment. Bacalov tended to state the obvious and talked too much in general.

  Billy was in his midthirties and wore khaki pants, leather boat shoes without socks, and a sky-blue polo shirt stretched tight across his heavily muscled shoulders and chest. His thinning blond hair was combed to the side and some of it fell across his flat, tan forehead. His eyes were pale blue and lacked warmth. He was the type seen in beach towns and marinas in November, frayed shorts and brown Reef sandals, his sunglasses hanging on a leash, sitting at the bar next to an older divorcée, preparing to move in to her settlement-house for the winter.

  Beside him, behind the wheel, was a younger man named Louis Smalls. He was tall, reedy, and quiet. His eyes were deep brown and could move quickly from needy to cool. He typically dressed in jeans, faded T-shirts, and Vans, wore his hair shaggy, and had a full beard in the manner of a singer-writer circa 1970 or a sensitive, hungry young poet. Of the three men, he was the only one carrying a criminal conviction. He had done time in Hagerstown for a series of convenience store robberies, which he’d committed using a ski mask and a snub-nosed .38. He had served out his full stretch deliberately, so as to avoid supervision. Despite his innocent looks, he was capable in complicated situations, ice when things got heated, and deft in the handling of cars.

  King, Smalls, and Bacalov used different last names whenever the situation demanded it. They mostly used their real Christian names. Otherwise, a man could forget who he was and not respond when being spoken to. They all possessed multiple IDs. The IDs would not be passable to the eyes of trained law enforcement professionals, but for laymen they were fine. In the city, these were easy to obtain.

  “I’ll do it,” said Bacalov, eagerly, reaching under the front seat and slipping something short and substantial under his shirt.

  “Go with him, Louis,” said King. “Abort if anything looks wrong.”

  Smalls nodded. He and Bacalov got out of the car and went where the old man had gone. King could not see much, as a row of hedges blocked his view of the facility, but he trusted Louis to make the right call. King sat calmly and waited.

  Five minutes later, Bacalov and Smalls returned and took their spots in the car. Both were empty-handed.

  “What happened?” said King.

  “Fucking people,” said Bacalov. The numerous tourists, truckers, and I-95 commuters milled around the facilities, some heading in and out of the bathrooms, others there for the Travel Information Center, or simply standing, smoking, walking their dogs by the picnic tables, or stretching in the lot.

  “Too many,” said Smalls. “And there’s a camera mounted over the door to the men’s room.”

  Smalls was particularly sensitive to the placement of surveillance cameras. He had been convicted based on the video obtained from a 7-Eleven he’d done in Burtonsville, Maryland. He had been wearing a mask, but his distinctive forearm tattoo, a skull cleaved by a dagger, had been visible in the shot. He’d rolled his sleeves up before he’d gone in, because he’d been hot. A mistake of youth, one he would not make again.

  “He’s in the bathroom?” said King.

  “Serge followed him in,” said Smalls.

  “He is leaving shit,” said Bacalov.

  Taking a shit, you dumbass, thought King. But he made no comment.

  Soon Rubin emerged from around the bank of hedges, goods in hand, and went to his Honda. He started the Accord, drove out of the lot onto the long exit road, and merged back on to 95 South. Smalls kept the Ford back and followed.

  “He lives in Rockville,” said King. “That’s another half hour away. Old fuckers have weak bladders. Maybe he’ll have to stop again.”

  “You hope,” said Bacalov.

  King grew doubtful as Rubin moved down the highway. They passed the exits for Route 216, then 198. They blew by an omnibus sign advertising lodging and fast food. Rubin hit his right turn signal at the next exit, Route 200, heading toward Calverton. Smalls let a Pathfinder get ahead of him, and as its driver put his car between the Crown Vic and the Accord, he too exited. On Powder Mill Road the Accord slowed down and turned into a lot of a McDonald’s, and Smalls did the same, swinging into a spot far from where Rubin had parked. Rubin again got the attaché and gym bag out of his car and entered a side door of McDonald’s.

  “He saw the Golden Arches on the sign,” said Bacalov. “Americans cannot resist.”

  “Why the side door if he’s going to order food?” said Smalls.

  “He’s gonna wash his hands first,” said King. “This could be our last chance. The next stop for Rubin is his house. I don’t want to do an invasion. There’s no need for that.”

  Ira Rubin was a coin dealer who had a retail storefront in the Wheaton Triangle. He was returning from a convention in Trenton, New Jersey, with many items he had bought in meetings held in private suites. While there he
had successfully negotiated the purchase of a collection of uncirculated 1908-S twenty-dollar St. Gaudens gold pieces housed in thick plastic cases. Each could be resold for about nine thousand dollars, though Rubin had negotiated a far lower price. The collection, when sold together, was worth close to a hundred thousand dollars on the open market, and would soon be even more valuable, thanks to the recession and the attendant investment flight to gold. He had also purchased a rare, uncirculated 1926-D that was worth twelve thousand dollars.

  King did not have knowledge of these transactions or details. But he knew that Ira Rubin was a large regional player in the coin world because he had read about him on several specialty Internet sites. He had also visited Rubin’s shop. From message boards on those same sites, he had learned that Rubin would be attending the convention in Trenton and that he was “coming to buy.” A story in the Washington Post about a coin dealer who was robbed in his own driveway in Arlington, Virginia, had further piqued King’s interest. This was a job that could be easy and relatively safe.

  King, Smalls, and Bacalov had once taken off a check-cashing store in a poor neighborhood of the District, but the monetary rewards had been paltry. With the cameras and the potential for armed employees, that type of thing carried too much risk. Only Bacalov seemed to enjoy the experience. In comparison to a retail job, hitting an old coin dealer seemed like a walk. Plus, gold was up to almost two thousand dollars an ounce. And, as always, Bacalov was game and had experience. He and his Russian friends had been involved in this kind of thing before. As for Smalls, he didn’t object, which was like saying yes, for him. King thought, Why not?

  It had cost them some seed money. They had tailed Rubin from his house to New Jersey, had to spring for a couple of rooms at a Motel 6, fill their tanks many times with gas, buy meals and liquor. There had been no good opportunity for the takeoff up north.

  Now they would see if the expense and time had been worthwhile. But it had to be now.