Hannibal Jones' Journal

O' Christmas Tree

2007-12-16T15:10:00.000-05:00

One thing I’ve learned in my business is that different people get impressed by different things. Tonight I was standing outside on the Ellipse, that grassy patch south of the White House, in sub-freezing temperatures, watching a few white flakes floating down on us. I was just standing there in the crisp winter night air, staring at something that impresses me. Something my German-born mother never got to see. Something that is low tech, natural, old fashioned and just too cool.

Yeah, I’m awed by our Christmas tree. I mean the one that’s all our Christmas tree. The National Christmas Tree.

For 82 years we’ve had a National Christmas Tree in the District. In 1954 they added a "Pathway of Peace." The pathway is 56 smaller decorated trees planted so they surround the National Christmas Tree. They represent all 50 states, the five territories and of course D.C. Every year, sponsors from each state provide the decorations. If you look close, you can see each one is encased in a plastic globe to protect it from the weather. The tree and the pathway are lit up from sundown to 11 p.m. every day until New Years. It’s a great sight, an inspiring sight for this boy who grew up in Europe, and I’m not out here alone. Aside from us gawkers, there’s some group out here in the cold playing music every night.

Looking at that benign beauty, that tall, green, colorfully decorated and garishly illuminated evergreen symbol of life, I had to wonder just how anybody could find a Christmas tree offensive. I mean, sure if you saw it as a pagan symbol or a false idol we were worshiping, then maybe. But otherwise, I don’t get it. I don’t get offended by five pointed stars or crescents and moons. And as I think about it, that’s not even relevant, because those are actual religious symbols. To most of us in this country, a Christmas tree is just a decoration.

In Boston, they called theirs a holiday tree until the public outcry got so loud that the Mayor and Parks Commissioner had to back down. Theirs IS symbolic in a way, an annual gift from Nova Scotia to thank the people of Boston for their generosity after a munitions ship blew up in Halifax harbor during World War I. When the donor heard that the tree wouldn’t be called a Christmas tree any more, he threatened to shove the whole thing in the chipper. That seemed to have the right effect.

Out on the West Coast, where Santa Claus wears shorts half the time, Encinitas, California had a holiday parade a few years ago, but this year it’s a Christmas parade again. It’s not in any way a religious parade. It’s all in fun. And people of all faiths are welcome to enjoy it, just like the forest giant I was staring up at tonight.

You see, the thing is, to most of the people I know Christmas isn’t a religious holiday anyway. It’s a holiday for kids, overloaded with American traditions borrowed from all the people who came here. Snowmen. Reindeer. Santa. Lights. All that stuff the Grinch stole, none of which involved a baby in a manger. Of course, you’re free to worship on that day and put up a manger too as long as you don’t piss somebody off by sitting it in front of a mosque or synagogue. You don’t want to be snotty and push your religion up in anybody’s face. But when my mama talked about the Christmas spirit she sure as hell didn’t mean the Holy Ghost. She just meant the simple phrase she taught me in Germany: Peace on earth, good will toward men. That’s the Christmas spirit. Lots of Jews have it. Lots of Moslems have it. I even know a couple of atheists who have it. And standing there in front of our national peace symbol in sight of the President’s house I realized that if you want to change a simple tradition like putting up a Christmas tree, well, you ain’t got it.

Monte’s Reading List

2007-12-01T09:40:00.000-05:00

I didn’t even look up when my pal Monte walked into my office. The private eye business requires a lot of specialized skills, but typing isn’t one of them. So I’m still a two-finger guy, although I can get going pretty fast that way.

“So H, what you call me over for?” Monte asked. I’m lucky to find myself mentoring a bright young fellow who lives right across the street from me. I sometimes wish he didn’t have to grow up here in SouthEast DC, but like a lot of barely-teenaged Black guys he’s a hardy plant that would grow wherever you planted him. And he generally responds when I call him, even if he thinks it’s to get him to do some work. He’s a good kid, even if his pants can’t seem to find his waist.

“Relax, kid. I’m just putting something together for you. Remember a couple weeks ago you mentioned that you kind of enjoyed the reading assignments I gave you over the summer?”

Monte looked down and huffed. I think maybe he was embarrassed to admit he liked the books I gave him. “Well, that was part of a bargain. You somehow managed to get me to spend a day with one of my rap idols down in Virginia Beach and that was the tradeoff.”

“Yeah, yeah, but you DID say you enjoyed the reading,” I said. I poked the right button and my printer lurched into action, slowly grinding out pieces of paper. “And you did say winter was kind of boring.”

Monte nodded, dropping into my visitor’s chair. “Uh huh. You right. I just don’t feel like poking around in the library like an idiot. How am I supposed to know what’s good?”

“Got you covered, little G,” I said, getting up and pulling the pages from the printer. “See I was thinking about you. I reached out to a couple friends who have kids around your age, and one who’s a librarian in Baltimore. They sent along a list of likely suspects. You can check through them to see what you might like to spend some time with.”

I handed Monte the list and he whistled. Then he tightened his ball cap on his head by the bill hanging over his left shoulder and looked more closely.

“H, there’s got to be fifty books here!”

“Actually, only about half that,” I said. “I wanted you to have some stuff to choose from. You probably won’t like them all.”

“Wait a minute,” he said, drawing the words out the way he did when he thought he was being hustled. “The Great Gatsby? A Raisin in the Sun? These are movies my grandma watches. The Raisin thing has Sydney Poitier.”

“When we talked about Huckleberry Finn before I thought it made sense to put a few classics on the list. Gatsby is a nice, short, simple book about a self-made millionaire and how he deals with suddenly having money. Sort of a jazz-age rapper, only he’s white. Raisin in the Sun, on the other hand, is all about a struggling African-American family and how they deal with poverty and racism while they’re trying to get to a better life. It’s people you can relate to, little bro.”

Monte was clearly interested now. “I heard of this one too, ’Fahrenheit 451. Isn’t that science fiction?”

I smiled, looking back on some nice childhood memories. “Well, yeah, Ray Bradbury’s a sci-fi writer, but this book isn’t about space ships or aliens. It’s a scary view of the future, where firemen don't put out fires--they start them to burn books.”

“That’s wack,” Monte said with a smile. “Might be a cool story, though. And this title - Giovanni's Room. Is that like Da Vinci’s code?”

“Oh, wow, that’s an interesting leap,” I said. “Actually, James Baldwin wrote about a guy who couldn’t decide if he was in love with his girl friend or another guy.” And this was in the 50s when people didn’t talk about stuff like that.”

“Sounds kind of heavy. And old.”

“Well, they’re not all set in the past,” I said quickly. “Look at Bronx Masquerade. In that one, a teacher is holding open mike night in his class and the kids doing poetry are sort of working through their own identity confusion with their rhymes.”

Monte kept scanning, and I watched his face shift from smile to frown and back as he hit titles that he recognized and some that were strange to him. Then his eyebrows went up.

“Your experts recommended these? A Series of Unfortunate Events? The Bionicle Chronicles?”

“Well, if you’re like me you might like getting caught up in a series. I’m told there are 13 of that first series, written by a dude with a weird name...”

“Yeah,” Monte tossed in. “Lemony Snickett!”
“Uh huh, and I hear they’re the thing for people who just can’t get enough of a bad thing. The Bionicle Chronicles look like they’re all action, about six warriors out to save the world from evil.”

I headed to the kitchen for a couple of root beers. When I got back with the bottles Monte was still smiling. I think I got his attention, and maybe he was happy that I took the time and trouble to make up the list instead of just telling him to go find a book to read. I got to tell you, getting a 13 year old to stick his head in a book is as rewarding as catching a murderer.

“You know, Grandma will be real proud if she sees me reading all the time,” Monte said. “And it IS too cold to be on the court all the time. But I don’t have any friends who are into books like this. I’d get into it more if I had somebody to talk about them with.”

With Monte, everything was about the negotiation. He had to feel like he was winning something. In this case, I was happy to play into it.

“Tell you what, little G. You tell me what you’re reading and I’ll read every one at the same time. Then you can talk them over with me. Deal?”

We smacked our fists together like he’d taught me and I grabbed my jacket. I needed to make a run to the library while the idea was still hot.

Here’s MONTE’S reading list:

The Classics
A Raisin in the Sun Lorraine Hansberry
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
Black Boy Richard Wright
Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury
Giovanni's Room James Baldwin

Might Make You Think
Bang Sharon Flake
Chocolate War Robert Cormier
Bronx Masquerade Nikki Grimes
First Part Last Angela Johnson
Forged by Fire Sharon Draper
Hoops Walter Dean Myers
Monster Walter Dean Myers
Scorpions Walter Dean Myers
Slam Walter Dean Myers
Outsider S.E. Hinson
Rite of Passage Richard Wright
Where Do I Go From Here? Valerie Wilson

Just for Fun
A Series of Unfortunate Events (series) Lemony Snickett
The Serpent's Spell Rae Bridgman
Freak the Mighty Rodman Philbrick

SPECIAL THANKS TO YOLANDA COLEMAN AND ROCHELLE CAMPBELL AND THEIR WELL-READ KIDS FOR THEIR INPUT TO THE LIST.

AND EXTRA SPECIAL THANKS TO SHIRLEY E. JOHNSON, LIBRARIAN EXTRAORDIAIRE, AT THE ENOCH PRATT FREE LIBRARY IN BALTIMORE.

Huck & Jim in the 21st Century

2007-11-18T08:31:00.000-05:00

When it starts to get cold out it’s not uncommon for me to get up on a Saturday morning, get in a good run and then sit in my front window and take in a good book. I love a good mystery, and that day I was hip deep into Dennis Lehane’s “Mystic River” when I saw Monte bouncing up my front steps. I got up to unlock the door so he could get into the apartment, sat a root beer on the kitchen table and went back to the living room to sit in the sun. Monte walked in, scooped up the soda as if there was always one sitting there waiting for him, and joined me in the front.

“I’ve heard of that one,” Monte said, dropping into the sofa cushions hard enough to bounce. How does a skinny kid like that make such an impact. “Is it any good? I’m looking for a book right now.”

“Really?” I lowered my book to make sure I’d heard him right. “Over the summer I had to blackmail you into reading.”

“Yeah, I know, and it was worth reading a book a week all summer to see you in that studio in Virginia Beach, rapping. But after all that, it turned out I really dug a lot of the stuff you gave me. And the whole reading thing kinda got to be a habit. So should I take that one off you?”

I had to think for a minute. “This probably ain’t the best for you for pleasure reading. It’s kind of heavy.”

Well, what else you got, H?” Monte asked. “Gimme something fun.”
After some thought, I said, “You know, when I was your age I really dug historical stuff like Treasure Island. Oh, hey, I know. Ever read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?”

Monte waved a derisive hand at me. “Please! Ain’t that the one about the Southern white boy floating on the river with a grown slave? Why would I want to read that crap?”

How much things had changed since I was growing up. I had to wonder if people had changed that much too. “I’ll admit that back in Berlin I was looking for stuff about America and nothing’s more American than Mark Twain. But the book’s not about sitting on a raft. Huck’s an outcast on the run, with no where to go. As a teenager I could relate. The book’s about family, and how this kid deals with murderers, thieves and con men. There’s a lot of action.” And, I thought to myself, there is a powerful message about honor that every young man ought to get.

“But, Hannibal, nobody wants to read that book no more.” Monte got back on his feet, and I wondered for the hundredth time what kept his pants from falling down. “It’s banned in a lot of schools because everybody knows it’s racist.”

“That’s a pile of crap,” I said, a little louder than I intended. “In the book, Jim is strong, brave, generous, and wise.”

“You mean Nigger Jim?” Monte asked.

“Not once,” I said, suddenly recognizing a conversation I’ve had before. “Twain does use the N word a lot in the book, but he never once uses the phrase "Nigger Jim". And the book, if you read it, is overwhelmingly against racism. It was critics, and Twain’s biographer, who started saying Nigger Jim, not Huck Finn, and not Mark Twain.”

“But the writer does say nigger a lot, right?”

I laughed in his face. “What, like you care? All that rap you listen to, those guys use the N word every ten seconds. So give me the whole “I’m offended” routine.”

“So, you’re saying all the teachers got it wrong?”

“I’m saying it’s a rough book, but not racist,” I told him. “Dig. All the people Huck and Jim run into on the Mississippi are drunks, killers, bullies, swindlers, thieves, liars, frauds, child abusers, hypocrites, loudmouths or just morons. Jim is the only man of honor in the whole damned book.”

I had Monte thinking, I could see that by the way his eyes went up and to the right while he was noodling through what I said. This was usually when he would hit me with a surprise. He emptied his soda can before he started again.

“Well, I guess I might want to read a book just because the schools and libraries don’t want me to. But if Jim’s so cool, how come the book ain’t about him?”

“Well, that was the time,” I said. “Still, Jim is one of the most controversial characters in American literature, and yeah, maybe that is a good reason to pick up the book. And after you read Huck Finn, you can pick up “My Jim” by Nancy Rawles. That book IS about him, only it’s told from the point of view of an ex-slave named Sadie. She’s remembering Jim, who she was in love with, and using the lessons she got from him to get ideas to help her granddaughter. “

“Oh, so there’s a sequel,” Monte said. “I do like reading a series.”

Maybe later I’ll tell him that “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is actually a sequel to “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” But Tom’s book isn’t nearly as socially conscious so there’s no good reason to always start a series at the beginning. Instead I made him a promise.

“I’ll tell you what, Monte. Give me a couple of weeks and I’ll have a whole reading list for you, just right for a bright young Black teenager.”

“I ain’t saying I’ll read everything you come up with,” Monte said, “but I’ll at least give it a try. When it’s too cold to be on the court outside, a really good book turns out to be a good way to pass some time.”

(Hannibal raps and Monte reads in the latest Hannibal Jones Mystery Damaged Goods)

Somebody's Eskimo

2007-10-28T15:13:00.000-05:00

One thing I try hard not to do is letting the bad guys get the drop on me. So I’m a little embarrassed to explain how I ended up in that alley at night with three gang-bangers waving switchblades at me. Sure, I knew I could get my gun out before I got cut, but I didn’t think these guys were smart enough to back off even at gunpoint. That would leave me in the ugly position of having to shoot some teenager. I was wishing for another option, but right then none was coming to mind.

“Y’all get away from him!”

That voice booming from the other end of the alley drew everyone’s attention. I knew the tall black man marching toward us instantly. Matt Lincoln was a neighbor I had history with. The thugs recognized the baseball bat he was waving. Backing him up was Monte, the middle school kid I’ve been mentoring.

“I done called the cops already,” Lincoln said. “And I’m about to beat your asses until they get here. You don’t want none of this.” He raised the bat and all the young punks turned to face him. That gave me the chance to back off a couple of paces and draw my automatic.

“You fellows are badly overmatched here,” I told them calmly. “This ends badly unless you drop the blades and move out now.”

That was enough. I heard three slivers of metal clatter on the street, followed by three pairs of feet racing down the alley. Lincoln raised the bat higher, as if threatening the boys from behind. As puzzled as I was relieved, I holstered my weapon.

“I ain’t complaining, Matt, but what the hell are you doing here?”

“Monte here saw you was heading into some trouble,” Lincoln said, leading us back toward the street. “He come looking for help.”

I slapped a hand on his shoulder. “There are no words to cover thank you, but I’ll admit I’m a little surprised that you’d stick your neck out for me. I mean, the day we met, I shot you.”

“Yup,” he said and sort of chuckled. “But that was cause I broke into your house. Hell I could have had a gun for all you knew, but you only hit my leg a bit. I had my boy with me and you didn’t hurt him none. And then, when you saw I was hurt, you gave me money to go to the hospital.” We were walking slowly together through the neighborhood and stopped at the door of a little coffee shot I’d never noticed before. “What you didn’t know is, I’m an alcoholic. I was down to stealing for booze.”

We walked inside and I moved quickly to the counter to order hot drinks for the three of us. I know I looked uncomfortable having that admission so casually dropped, but Monte, bless his heart, rushed right in. “Mr. Lincoln, you’re a drunk?”

“Not any more,” Lincoln said, looking right at me. “Hannibal, your act of kindness snatched me back to real life. I been sober since that night. You was my Eskimo.”

“A Eskimo?” Monte asked as we slid into a booth. “What does that mean?”

“You don’t know the Eskimo story?” Lincoln asked. The gray at his temple made him look wise, and he had that look on his face like the story was pushing to come out, so I smiled and lied that I didn’t know either. Lincoln sipped his coffee, then leaned forward on both elbows on the table.

“Well, it’s an old story that people who is in recovery like to tell. It starts with a guy sitting in a bar knocking back the drinks. After a while the bartender says, ‘Maybe you should take it easy, buddy.’

The guy says, "What's the use? The Lord has abandoned me."

“What makes you say that?” the bartender asks.

Well, the guy throws back another drink and says, “Just a couple of days ago I was on a business trip to Alaska. There was engine trouble and my flight went down just inside the Arctic Circle. I was the lone survivor,” he says. “I managed to crawl up on a ice floe. There I was, with no food or shelter. What could I do? Well, I prayed for God to help me. I thought maybe I had been saved for a purpose, and swore that if God would just help me get home, I'd change my ways and never drink again. But I learned my lesson. There's no point to life. God didn't come save me life, so there’s no point."

So after a minute, the bartender says, "Wait a minute. If God didn't save you, how the hell did you end up in my bar?"

The guy’s drunk by then and kind of slurring, and he says, “Pure coincidence. It just so happened that some poor Eskimo got lost out there and pulled up in a dog sled next to my ice floe. He offered me a lift, wrapped me in a blanket and gave me a piece of blubber to eat. Then he brought me to the nearest town, which was a hundred miles away."

Lincoln stopped to drink more coffee and allowed a few seconds for the lesson to sink in. Monte leaned back and whistled. I guess he got it. When Lincoln looked at me again he spoke softly. “You could have killed me that night, and you had the right, but you gave me one more chance. You was my Eskimo.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But tonight you were mine, and that’s for sure.” I looked at Monte, but I could see that his lecture meter was on full.

“Don’t worry, H, I get it. And I’ll be watching for my chance. It will be cool to get to be somebody’s Eskimo sometime.”

WHO WE ARE - WHAT I DO

2007-10-08T16:07:00.000-05:00

It occurred to me that since my girl Cindy got me into this blogging thing I’ve never taken any time to talk about what I do. A lot of people have a very romantic picture of private investigators so I figured I’d set the record straight a little bit.

First of all, books and TV would give you the idea that there are millions of us out there, in every city on every street. The fact is, there are only about 45,000 private detectives in the country. That might still sound like a lot, but you got to realize that only about a quarter of us are self-employed. About the same number work for some detective agency. Then you subtract out the 15 percent who are store detectives - the rest of us don’t count those guys anyhow. That leave about a third of the big number who are working for state or local government, law firms, employment services companies, insurance agencies, and banks and the like. None of them wants to help you with your problems.

So why only an average of less than 500 per state? Well, the hours suck. The work is dangerous. And people who are really qualified usually have better sense and stay in law enforcement, or insurance, or the military, or they get a job in government or doing intelligence work.

Most P.I.s come from those professions and the guys I respect are highly qualified. Not all of them have their B.S. degree in police science like I got, but some have lots more than my six years of police experience and the three years I spent in the Protective Service as a U.S. Marshal. But some have no qualifications at all so if you’re in the market, be careful.

Most states, like The District, require private detectives to get a license. The requirements are all different, though, and in Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, and South Dakota there’s no license required at all.

Some people say, why do we need private investigators? Isn’t that what we pay the police for? Well, there’s stuff we do that the cops can’t, and most of it’s legal. The biggest thing for me, is the surveillance. Sure, I can check a guy’s employment or income with a phone call, but to know what he’s really up to, nothing replaces laying eyes on a guy for hours or days at a time. Cops can’t afford the resources for that kind of thing. They can’t informally interview friends, neighbors and coworkers. Lawyers and businesses hire me to do that kind of stuff as much as individuals do. And the cops can’t just work one case until it’s done, like they do on TV. I can, and generally do.

As you know, I also do personal protection work, stop harassment, get the goods on people at the wrong end of law suits and child custody cases, and handle missing person cases if someone being missing puts somebody else in jeopardy. Any kind of trouble people get into, I can try to get them out of, except maybe computer fraud or identity theft, in which case I’ll refer you to another expert I know. I’m also not interested in premarital screening or verifying infidelity, but for some of my fellow private investigators, that’s their bread and butter.

My kind tends to specialize. There’s guys, and gals I better say, who focus on intellectual property theft. There’s legal investigators, corporate investigators, financial investigators, store and hotel detectives. And then there’s me. I’m the only professional troubleshooter that I know of, and I’m kind of glad of that. As far as private eyes, now you’ve got an idea of who we really are. And for me, I hope you got an idea of what I do.

Tall Tales in the Hood

2007-09-16T14:05:00.000-05:00

There were four cops, three police detectives and a couple of crime scene techs present but not one of them wanted to sit in the dead man’s seat.

Don’t get me wrong, I understood how they felt. After all these, guys had died messy. According to the forensics boys somebody had come up on the passenger side with a tech 9 and put three bullets in each of them, the passenger and the driver. Two in the chest and one in the head. Then the shooter had dragged them out of the car and shoved them under it, head first, with their legs sticking out. The crime scene techs were done with the inside of the car but they wanted to draw their traditional chalk lines. The car had to be moved.

So there we all stood, on a narrow side street in Southeast DC where the two passengers must have been talking in the car. I got called because the police chief knew I’d been hired to help a client deal with the gangsters trying to squeeze him for protection money. The two victims were leaders of smaller gangs that might have been involved in the protection racket. He figured a private eye like me might have some valuable intel to share, but instead of exchanging information we were standing around looking at the expensive Chux sticking out from under a black Mercedes.

“What a bunch of pussies,” I snarled, yanking the door open. They had thrown a sheet over the Benz’s blood spattered seat and the blood was dry from last night anyway. I plopped down, started her up with the key left in the ignition, pulled the seat forward so I could reach the pedals comfortably, lowered the window to let the stench of death out, and cranked the wheel hard right.

“Give me a ground guide, Sergeant Burke,” I hollered out the window. Burke was a thick guy with real dark skin, one of those dudes who wears a trench coat when he doesn’t need it. Maybe he wanted to be Columbo.

I put the car into reverse and backed slowly until he closed his fist, meaning I was about to roll over somebody’s skull. I wound the wheel all the way the other way and inched forward.

“So what were these two chatting about?” Burke asked, waving me forward with his fat fingers.

“How am I going to know until I see their faces? Did you crawl under the car and make an I.D.?”

Burke clenched his fist to stop me before I rolled over their legs. I turned the wheel again and started back, letting Burke guide me in straightening so the car’s wheels would be straddling the bodies.

“One of the uniforms did,” Burke said. “He says they both got crazy street names. The brother they call G-raffe and the one who calls himself Tego Suave.”

I kept backing up until I saw their faces emerge from under the front bumper. Yeah, that was G-raffe, so named because he was probably six foot five and a hell of a baller. He ran with the 12th Street Mob. Tego Suave was a little guy with huge arms, a powerful Latin banger, representing the Brown Union.

When I was completely clear of the bodies I shut off the car and got out. The sun was just climbing over the nearby buildings, illuminating the two faces, both twisted more in anger than pain. Two young men, leaders by nature, lying there in wife beaters and jeans. A couple of blocks away we could hear the traffic as the city got down to its business without them. Burke hustled over to me.

“Was either of these guys involved in the protection scam you’re working on?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “That’s a Jamaican thing.”

Burke nodded, poking at his teeth with a toothpick. “So maybe they were getting together to take over this new racket. Do these street gangs form unions?”

“Naw. What happens when they feel threatened is that one gang takes another over. They might have been talking about that. If that’s the case, the shooter would be a member of the gang that was about to be swallowed up who didn’t agree with the takeover.”

“Great!” Burke rolled his eyes. “So our suspect pool is every member of two rival street gangs. I ain’t got the manpower to question them all.”

I shook my head and walked over to stare down at the two corpses. “Not really, chief. I can cut your suspect pool in half just by looking at these guys. See, the guy who’s taking over is going to be driven around by the other dude, not the other way around.”

Burke stood beside me, as if he might catch a clue if he got close enough. “I don’t get it,” he finally said. “How the hell do you know which one was driving?”

I looked at him. “You’re kidding, right?” He kept staring at me. I figured I better put him out of his misery.

“Chief, didn’t you just see me pull the seat forward when I got in the car? If Tego had been driving, I’d have had to push it back. G-raffe’s a freakin’ giant.”

Burke nodded. “So you’re saying G-raffe was driving Tego around. Somebody didn’t want Tego taking over the 12th Street Mob so they blew him away, and then had to take out G-raffe too.”

“Right,” I said. “You find the boy who’s trying to move up into the top spot in the 12th Street Mob and I’m betting you’ve found your shooter. And now that I’ve done your driving, and your detecting, I’ve got my own case to get back to.”

Choosing Happiness

2007-08-19T13:13:00.000-05:00

I don’t talk about it much, but Tuesday night is still my night to work at the homeless shelter. The District seems to have more than its share of people who got nowhere to go, but I never forget that that don’t make them useless. I can’t. All my neighbors in my apartment building in Southeast, I met there. And while Southeast DC is kind of a run down neighborhood, we got a roof over our head and the furnace works in the wintertime.

Anyhow, this week I decided to bring Monte with me. I figure when a guy hits his teens it’s time to start thinking about other people too. Of course he figured he had better things to do, but his grandma, Mother Washington, kind of insisted he join me. So he helped me serve the evening meal. I expected some comments about how many of the people there are black like us, or about the smell some of them bring along, but as is so often the case, the boy surprised me.

“So, is this what Grandma means when she says we’re put on this earth to serve?” Monte asked as he handed a tray to an old, toothless man. “I wouldn’t want nobody serving me this crap.”

“You might if it was all you had,” the old man said, not offended, just defeated. The next couple people in line said hello to me by name. I’m down there a lot. A lot of times I don’t know their names, but when they give me a nod and a smile as they pass, I always return it.

“Why you so happy all the time?” Monte asked, as if nobody could hear him but me. “In fact, why are they so happy?”

A guy in a short, gray beard and a Vietnam era Army field jacket stopped in front of us. “The question, young fellow, is how come you’re so unhappy. I heard what you said before and yeah, your grandmother’s right. We are put on this earth to serve. Life’s about making somebody else’s life better.”

As the veteran passed, Monte muttered under his breath, “I live in a damned slum. Ain’t nobody making my life better.”

Before I could say anything, the veteran turned back from the far end of the line. “What’s that supposed to mean? Like somebody ain’t doing their job? Son, you go through life thinking happiness is all about getting what you want, you’ll always feel like you got cheated.”

The line of homeless men and the woman in front of me burst into laughter. Monte had the good sense to blush a bit.

I wrote the incident off as a good learning experience and maybe a lesson in humility for my little pal, but on the walk home, Monte was down right pensive. He was walking with his hands deep in his pockets, like a guy who was dealing with some serious issues. I’ve learned that if I leave him alone long enough, eventually he’ll say what’s on his mind.

Six blocks later, out of nowhere, Monte asked, “I don’t think I’m selfish just because I feel like I need more money, better clothes and a nicer place for Grandma to live. Don’t everybody want more than they got?”

At the corner I stopped to look around my neighborhood, which ain’t the best in the city by any means. I chose to live here because I felt like I was needed here, maybe like I could do some good. But Monte didn’t need a speech. Besides, it was a serious, fair question and I’ve learned when you talk to a kid that age, if you sound like you’re not taking them seriously they won’t hear a word.

“Monte, it ain’t wrong to want more. I think it’s natural, maybe just human nature to want more and better stuff.”

He looked at me. “Then how can them homeless guys that got nothing act so happy?”

That one was a little harder. I’d have to steal my answer from somewhere else. “I’m not sure you’ll understand this, man, but some of those guys are happy just because they decided to be happy. I know they teach you the Gettysburg Address in school, but I don’t think they tell you my favorite Abraham Lincoln quote. One of the coolest things he ever said was, "A person is generally about as happy as he’s willing to be.”

Two blocks later we were standing in front of Monte’s home. The house Monte’s grandparents bought before his mother was born, before his grandfather worked himself to death, before his father ran off and his mother disappeared, before his grandmother accepted the mission she said God gave her, to raise Monte.

Monte stood in front of the porch steps for a minute and said, “I don’t think it’s all she hoped for, and she deserves better, but she loves this piece of crap house.”

I was thinking the same general thing about loving a grandson she didn’t plan on raising. “Maybe that’s why Mother Washington is always smiling,” I said. “It ain’t getting what you want, kid. It’s wanting what you got.”

Potter Changes the World

2007-07-30T21:04:00.000-05:00

Standing near the door in a crowded bookstore at midnight I came to a startling revelation. I might need to break down and read this series of young adult British dark fantasy novels in order to communicate with my woman and the youngster I’m mentoring.

Watching people from six to 60 bum-rushing the counter I saw that this Harry Potter thing is not just a triumph of 21st Century marketing. It is a genuine social phenomenon.

Teen street hustler Monte and crusading business lawyer Cindy have bonded over these books and these characters in a way I never could with either of them. I haven’t read any of the books, and I haven’t paid much attention when I’ve taken them to see the movies. But you don’t have to get into the books to get the most important part. The stories aren’t so much adventures as they are morality tales. It’s about the ongoing battle between good and evil, halfway between the pure fantasy of the Lord of the Rings and the reality-based fantasy of James Bond. Like the fantasies I grew up on - Bond, Tarzan, Batman or my old role models Lew Archer and Travis McGee, people read this stuff for fun. They hardly seem to notice the moralizing, and that makes it all the more effective.

Naturally I love anything that gets Monte to sit down with a book, but the real shaker for me is that Cindy likes the books just as much. I hardly ever read fiction myself, except mysteries to test myself against the puzzle, but I’ve gotten dragged into the debates between Cindy and Monte about the plot twists.

The night after the “midnight party” we went to the IMAX and I actually watched the latest Harry Potter movie. At my place afterward I provided the popcorn and sodas and we talked... actually talked... until Monte nodded off on the sofa. Cindy leaned her head on my shoulder.

“We’re boring you to tears, aren’t we?” she asked.

“You kidding? Maybe you don’t get just how hard it is to have a meaningful discussion with a young teenager. And it’s good for him to hear stuff like the fact that this hot shit lawyer was crying when she finished a book. Listening him bitch about who died or who turned on their friends I really get to see the core of the boy. He gets the... um... I guess he gets the character of the characters. Do you get what I mean?”

Cindy said, “Reading can be a very solitary activity, but I guess we need to thank J.K. Rowling for giving us the one thing every good book ought to gives you - not just a good read, but a good reason for conversation.”

Charged with Murder

2007-07-16T17:00:00.000-05:00

It took me a while to find a place to park that Friday evening in Northwest DC. The streets are generous and wide out in the Spring Valley neighborhood, but too many official vehicles were crowding me out of the driveway and the rest of the cul-de-sac. When I finally hiked up to the house, my girl Cindy was standing out front with her client.

“Hannibal I’m so glad you’re here,” she said as I came within earshot. “Mr. Nolton here has had a terrible shock and I hoped you could help us straighten things out.”

The tall, well-dressed fellow beside her stuck his hand out. “You’re Hannibal Jones? The Troubleshooter and private eye I’ve heard so much about? Good. Maybe the cops will believe you, and I can start taking care of the ugly details.”

I returned the firm shake. “Glad to meet you, Mr. Nolton,” I said. “But sorry it has to be under these circumstances. Want to give me a quick rundown of what you know?”

His lips quivered a little and he ran a hand through his nicely styled red hair. “I know it’s my fault because she found out last week that I was having an affair. But she said we’d talk about it when I got back from my business trip. I get back after three days away and I find her in the garage. In the Lexis. She was so still. Her skin was...”

When Nolton broke down Cindy picked up the story. “She was dead behind the wheel, Hannibal, in the closed garage. Mr. Nolton wisely called his attorney immediately. None of the partners is in town right now so I rushed right over. The coroner’s in there now but his quick assessment is carbon monoxide poisoning and she looks to be about three days gone.”

Then she said a word or two to Nolton and took my arm to guide me toward the garage. Once he couldn’t hear us, she said, “He’d really like for you to reassure the police, as an outside consultant, that his wife’s death is an obvious suicide. It might shorten their investigation and speed up any settlement.”

I said, “Yeah, he’s a brand new widower but you’re my woman. What do YOU want?”

We stopped at the open garage door and Cindy said, “I knew Mrs. Nolton and I just can’t see her killing herself. Just see if you can get a feel for whether my client is a victim or a potential defendant.”

I nodded and stepped into the garage. The crime scene fellow recognized me and didn’t give me any grief. I tightened my gloves on my hands and just looked over his shoulder when he opened the driver’s door. They’d hauled the body away, but the stench of three-day-old corpse had stayed behind. He started dusting for prints, but we both knew that if he found them from both Noltons it wouldn’t mean anything. There was an empty CD case on the passenger seat. It wasn’t labeled, and curiosity prompted me to lean over the tech and poke the stereo’s power button with a gloved fingertip. Dolly Parton’s voice poured out, claiming in strained tones that she would always love me. I liked it better by Whitney Houston.

“Music to die by, eh?” the tech said, continuing his work. I shut it off and walked back out on the driveway where Cindy stood waiting.

“You couldn’t have seen anything that fast,” she said.

“Enough,” I said. I looked at Nolton over in front of the door. A plainclothes detective was taking a statement from him right then, so I waved a uniform over. “Don’t let Mr. Nolton wander off, kid,” I said. “And when your lead detective is done with him, you’ll be a hero if you remind him to check Mr. Nolton’s actual whereabouts every minute of the day and night since he left on his trip.”

“Okay,” Cindy said. “You think he came back here three days ago and killed her. So do I, but what makes you think so?”

“The CD,” I said.

“Yeah, a pretty depressing choice, but how is that a clue?”

I grinned. “Think it through, babe. A woman gets in a car, shuts the garage door, starts the car, starts the tear-jerking music, and sits there until she’s dead. Does she turn it off?”

Cindy shook her head. “Of course not. But it’s reasonable to assume the husband came home, found her in the garage and once he was sure she was dead, he turned off the stereo and I guess the car.”

“Not likely,” I said, watching Nolton in front of the house. “Not three days later. The car would have run out of gas. But the ignition would have still been on and the stereo too. So…”

She jumped in. “So the battery should be dead. But you just turned the stereo on and it played.”

“Uh huh. Somebody shut off the car not too long after the woman was dead. Maybe somebody who didn’t want CO2 seeping into the house the last couple of days. Now I’ve got no proof as to who that might have been, but I think we can pretty much rule out suicide, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Cindy said, “and if we don’t find a third person’s fingerprints inside the car, I’m afraid my client is going to be a defendant after all. Since the battery was still charged, I think he will be too.”

2007-06-30T07:36:00.000-05:00

[From time to time, I have invited other authors to present an alternative view of the Hannibal Jones universe. Bernie Thomas has taken up the challenge and come up with a nice twist I just had to share. Bernie was a prize winner in this year’s Maryland Writers’ Association novel contest, which should tell you that it’s worth your time to read this little nugget all the way to the end.
Austin]

Nightmare in Apt. 301-B

Thinkin’ back, I shouldn’t o’ answered. A ringing phone at 2 a.m. is always trouble. This was no exception. The sexy voice on the blower says she needs my help. I’m a shamus. That’s what I do. Besides, I ain’t never said no to a dame.

She tells me she’s got trouble. The kind o’ trouble that shouldn’t involve the cops. She says Orson Rissik gave her my number. Rissik’s a Virginia police detective and a friend o’ mine. He’s always givin’ my number to birds in a jam. I gotta talk to him ‘bout that. It don’t pay so well.

So I pulls on a pair of trousers and loops my suspenders over my undershirt. Slidin’ into my loafers, I grabs my jacket and jams my fedora on my head. I’m out the door in two shakes. Halfway downtown and realizes I forgot my Sig 40—another problem with middle-o-the-night calls.

I pulls my jalopy up to the address she gave me. It’s a private club. You know—one o’ them after hours speakeasies they hide in the back alleys. I knocks on the door and some big palooka opens it a crack.

“What you want?”

“I’m here to see Cindy.”

“She’s workin’. Ain’t got no time to be talkin’. Hit the road.”

I ain’t expectin’ this. And there ain’t no getting’ in with this bimbo blockin’ the door. I gotta get him out here with me.

“Listen, sap…”

That’s all it takes, see? Next thing I knows there’s a couple o’ paws liftin’ me off the asphalt. I figures I’m gonna take a couple before I gets my licks in, but then I hears this dame’s voice yellin’.

“NO! Rocco! Leave him alone!”

Next thing I know I’m pickin’ myself off the ground. I looks up. Rocco’s a baby grand—a whole lot bigger than he looked on the other side o’ that door, see? I probably shoulda been nicer.

“You Jones?” she says, helpin’ me up.

“Yeah, Doll. But my clients call me Hannibal.”

I dusts myself off and gets my first good look at Cindy. She’s the berries. A real looker. And from the outfit she’s wearin’, I figures she’s a dancer. Hoofers with gams like hers can make some real dough in a joint like this.

"You all right?”

“Everything’s Jake. So, what’s this trouble you’re in?”

“Let’s talk inside.”

We step past Rocco and he gives me the evil eye. Followin’ Cindy, I checks out the joint, see? The place is full of smoke and everybody’s bent. I spots a couple o’ high hat sugar daddies buyin’ bootleg for a couple o’ quiffs. I figure they’re steppin’ out on their ol’ ladies. I’m glad I’m not in the business o’ tailin’ cheatin’ husbands any more.

We goes past the band, through a door and into the back dressing room. There was only a couple o’ girls there, but they was half-naked. They gives me the once over and smile. Suddenly getting’ up in the middle o’ the night wasn’t so bad. Cindy pulls out a chair and motions I should sit down.

“Can I get you a drink?”

“I don’t drink, Doll. But I’ll take a cup of Joe if ya got it.”

“Yes, we have coffee. And I bet you take it black.”

“Is there any other way?”

When she comes back she tells me her trouble.

“I been seein’ this guy. He says he needs me to keep a package for him. Wants me to keep it at my place so he can get it when he needs it. When I get to work last night, I hear the cops found him face down in the Potomac. Turns out, he’s a dealer. Then, when I get home, my place is all torn up—like somebody was lookin’ for somethin’. I’m scared, Mister Jones.”

“What’s his name?”

“Falcone. Maltese Falcone.”

“Rissik told me about him. Locked him up about a week ago. I bet he wishes he was still there. Where’s the package?”

“It’s still in my car. I forgot to bring it in the other night.”

“You better give it to me. And you better find another flop for a while.”

She turned those big brown eyes on me. “Do you have a couch, Mister Jones?”

I gives Cindy my address and the key to the front door. I keep another one under the mat. A real dumb thing as it turns out. I takes the package and heads to national Airport. I put it in a locker, then mails the key to myself. Somebody bumped off that small-time hood boyfriend of hers, see? And now she’s holdin’ the bag. I figure I’ll use the package as leverage to get her off the hook.

When I walks into my place, I gets jumped by a couple o’ goons. One guy pins my arms from behind and the other slugs me. I falls onto the sofa, see? Then the second guy walks over, reaches into his pocket and pulls out a set of brass knuckles. He starts talkin’ as he slides ‘em on.

“Where’s the goods?”

“Goods? What goods? I don’t know from nothin’.”

He holds up his fist and gives me a real good gander at those knuckles.

“I asked real nice once. I ain’t askin’ again, Hannibal … Hannibal! … HANNIBAL! Wake up!”

I feels this shakin’ like I got the heebie-jeebies or somethin’. Then I hears another voice.

“Hannibal! Wake up, dude.”

“Wha? Where am I?”

“You’re in my apartment. You fell asleep on the couch and started flailing around and yelling.”

“Orson?”

“Yeah, buddy. It’s me. You okay?”

“Whew! Yeah. I was having a nightmare. Cindy was there and she was in trouble and a couple of guys were beating the crap out of me…”

“Really. … Well, I invited you over to watch these old Bogart movies because I thought you’d enjoy them. They’re classics, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. But I couldn’t keep my eyes open.”

"I could see that. You laid down on the couch and fell asleep in the middle of The Maltese Falcon. So, I left you sleep. If I’d have known it would give you nightmares, I’d have waken you.”

“It wasn’t the movie that caused the nightmare.”

“Oh? What was it then?”

“You should’ve heard the way I was talking.”

Who Needs Nuclear Bombs?

2007-06-15T18:36:00.000-05:00

My little pal Monte lives with his grandmother and Mother Washington seldom reads anything except her bible so lots of days he comes to me with his homework. This particular day I was laying out the ingredients for Cindy to make us Cuban Sandwiches for lunch while he went through is social studies.

“So what do you know about the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty?” Monte asked. He tried to hand me a photocopy of the treaty, but lucky for me my hands were full.

Usually current events is one of my strengths but this time I had to say, “Not much, buddy. What’s the question?”

“Well, the teacher’s talking about this ex-president Carter,” Monte said, moving his books to take up less than half my kitchen table. “Carter’s saying the U.S. doesn’t support this treaty because we’re not getting rid of our nuclear weapons. He’s like, we’re the reason Iran and North Korea don’t stop trying to get their own nukes. Then he says, “discuss.” I hate it when he does that.”

“Well, I don’t know about the treaty,” I said, buttering the bread, “but claiming that America is responsible for somebody else wanting nukes doesn’t make sense to me. Do you really think Iran, North Korea and other countries wouldn’t want nuclear weapons if we didn’t have them? That nut I can’t pronounce in Iran, Ahmad-whatever, says in public that he wants to dominate the Middle East and wipe Israel off the map. He can use nuclear weapons to do that and whether or not we have them is irrelevant.”

I kept talking while I pulled the dill pickles and roast pork out of the refrigerator. “And anybody who’s studied Kim Jong Il in North Korea knows he’s just plain power hungry. I think he’d be even more interested in having nuclear weapons if he thought he could be the only leader on earth to have them.”

Right about then Cindy came in, in her typical whirlwind fashion. She dropped her briefcase, gave me a quick kiss, slipped out of her suit jacket and draped it on the back of her chair. I dropped the ham and Swiss cheese on the table and handed her papers Monte had tried to give me.

“Before we get started with food, tell the kid here about the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.”

“I’m impressed you could even pronounce that,” she said, accepting the papers and starting to scan them. “What about the treaty, Monte?”
“I guess the real question is, is the USA setting a bad example by not obeying the treaty.” I could see Monte perk up. I guess he was happy to get a more educated opinion. I was only a little insulted. But I could see Cindy examine the treaty language more carefully and knew she was still in lawyer-mode. In this case, that was probably a good thing.

“Monte, I’m not going to tell you I agree with the way our country has handled this,” she said in her courtroom voice, “but the claim that we are in violation is legally false. Look here. When you talk to your teacher you can say that this is the pivotal provision, Article VI.”

I read it over her shoulder. It was short: Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.

“See, fellows, there’s no binding legal obligation to give up nuclear weapons. The only legal requirement is to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to nuclear disarmament. We’ve been negotiating on such matters for more thirty years. We’ve also signed and implemented several arms control agreements that have reduced our nuclear inventory quite a bit.

Monte’s brow wrinkled. He likes to debate. “But right after that, doesn’t Article VI say we need to have a treaty complete disarmament?”
Cindy dropped the papers and started building sandwiches. “That’s right. But keep reading. You’ll see that “elimination from national arsenals of nuclear weapons" would take place not prior to, but "pursuant to a Treaty on general and complete disarmament." That means we get rid of the rest after everyone agrees to a treaty.”

“Then why’d Carter make this remark?”

Cindy stopped to push up her blouse sleeves before putting the first sandwich in our little press. “That’s politics, Monte. Because the language of Article VI doesn’t actually say what the disarmament fans want it to say, they have worked for decades to reinterpret it. But you can tell your teacher that your lawyer friend says it’s not good legal strategy for one party to go beyond the letter of a legal agreement until all the parties agree to do so. Now clear off the table. I’ve been waiting all day for this sandwich.”

The Top Detective

2007-05-27T13:20:00.000-05:00

Monte ran past me like death itself was behind him, but as it turned out, he was racing toward it.

I fell back against my car to give him room. He shouted as he raced by.

“Dude was shot in his car.”

Well, news travels fast in my neighborhood, and murders in the southeast corner of the District aren’t exactly rare so I had to figure it was probably true. I was in no hurry to get into the apartment, and it was the first really warm day of spring, so I followed on foot. I’ve been mentoring Monte for a while now so I know he’s seen corpses before. Still, this kind of thing can affect you and I thought I should try to be on hand, just in case.

Two blocks later I saw I didn’t have to be so concerned. The police were already there, and the familiar yellow tape kept everybody, even inquisitive teenage boys, out of sight of the damage. But by the time I was standing beside Monte, I was already being made an exception.

“Jones,” Billy Johnson called to me as he approached the perimeter. Johnson was a local patrolman, real young and real tall. One of those fellows who made a police presence welcome rather than hated in the hood. It was kind of nice to have a brother on the streets.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“We got a little bit of a puzzle here,” he said. “Sure wish you’d come in and take a look.”

Never one to resist a crime scene I lifted the yellow tape and stepped under it. Monte tried to follow but I pushed him back. “I’ll report back,” I told him with a wink.

The scene of the crime turned out to be a brand new silver BMW 325i parked not far ahead. Two forensics guys were kneeling on either side of the car, leaning into the cramped back seat from opposite sides. It was pretty clear why. The dead man was still in the driver’s seat, at least most of him was. I leaned my forearms on the roof and looked in through the driver’s window. The hole in the back of the victim’s head was fairly small, but most of his thinking equipment and probably the top half of his face was smeared all over what remained of the windshield.

I was real glad I had made Monte stay behind.

“Looks like an execution,” I said. “This guy a gangsta? Hard to recognize what’s left.”

“You knew him,” Billy said. “Bumpy Walker. Drugs and numbers. Not a fan, myself, but nobody deserves to go like this.”

“Don’t sweat it,” I said, looking at the guys going over the back seat. “They’ll turn up all you need to find the shooter. Can’t do a thing like this without leaving trace.”

“Want to bet?” one of the techs said. Billy stood behind me like he didn’t want to get too close to Walker. I could have told him that death wasn’t catching.

“The lab boys haven’t found a thing,” he said. “It sure looks like somebody sat in the back seat and put a bullet in the back of Walker’s skull, don’t it? But there’s no evidence of anybody being in the back seat. And that ain’t all. There’s no GSR.”

I turned to face the young cop. “That can’t be right. There has to be some kind of gun shot residue. If not on the seats then at least on the body.”

“Not even on the body,” Billy said.

“Then he was shot from outside the car,” I said.

“I thought so at first, like a drive by, but that’d be a hard angle of impact to get, even with a window open. But when he was found all the windows were up and all the doors locked. And the key’s still in the ignition.”

“How the hell?” I asked no one in particular. I walked slowly around the car. All the glass was intact except for the hole in the windshield and that was clearly an exit hole. I leaned over one of the techs to check the back seat myself. I tried to imagine a shot from the trunk, but there was no hole in the upholstery. I was stumped.

“Thoughts?” Billy said. “Ideas? Theories?”

“Not a clue,” I said. “But if anything comes to mind I’ll let you know.”

When I got back on the other side of the police tape I shared everything I’d seen and heard with Monte. He seemed real excited to be in on a murder case. Me, I’d just as soon never see another murder. But Monte wanted more, and seemed disappointed when I stopped talking.

“Wish I had more for you, little guy, but I haven’t a clue how the shooter nailed old Walker without leaving gunpowder on the body or anyplace in the car.”

Monte looked around, and then came back with a question out of the blue.

“Was Walker driving his own car? The Beemer?”

“Brand new BMW 325i,” I said. “Silver, automatic, four-seater.”
“Oh,” Monte said. “Well, there you are, then.” When he saw the confusion on my face he smiled, then laughed, and finally pumped his fist.

“You don’t know, do you?” he asked, poking a finger at my face. “Do you? YES! I got it! I got it and you don’t know. I figured one out before you!”

I looked at him. “Okay, Einstein, just what do you have?”

“Nuh-uh. Not unless you let me see the crime scene.”

So a minute later, Monte was pacing around the vehicle, smiling in a way that worried me a little, while I hung back to talk to Billy.

“Monte says you’re in the wrong place looking for evidence in the back seat. He thinks the killer might have left prints on the controls up front.”

“Based on what?” Billy wanted to know. That’s when Monte walked up and took his dramatic moment.

“Based on the fact that you guys don’t know jack about cars. Walker’s new ride made him the man ‘cause it’s a drop top. That Beemer is one of the new hard top retractable convertibles. There’s no gun powder stuff in the car because the killer took the shot while the top was down. Then he or somebody in his posse just reached in and pushed the button that raised the top back into place. If they didn’t have gloves, that’s where you’ll find your evidence.”

Yeah, it was his dramatic moment. But hell, he earned it.

Mom's Day

2007-05-13T06:23:00.000-05:00

“How come she wrote it that way?” Monte asked. “"To my honey". Not what most moms would say to their kid.”

It was an odd moment for me. Monte was looking at my only remaining photo of my mother. Normally the little frame stood on the fake mantle in my bedroom. I had moved it to the living room because it was the eve of Mother’s Day and I wanted to see her all night and all the next day.

It was an odd moment because of the losses we shared. Monte’s mother died in childbirth and his father left him with his grandmother soon after. Cindy’s father Ray was with us. He watched Cindy’s mother die of tuberculosis soon after they came to this country from Cuba. I lost my father to the Vietnam War when I was pretty small and my mother within a year of my high school graduation. Mother’s Day was a bittersweet event for each of us.

“It’s because of my skin tone,” I told Monte. “She called me her honey boy because she thought my skin was the color of honey.”

“You miss her don’t you?” Monte asked, maybe a bit rougher than he meant to. “You’re lucky you got somebody to miss.”

“Mother Washington is more mother to you than most get,” Ray said, sipping at a beer. “You ought to appreciate that. In fact, she’s a mother to everybody on the block, and everybody in her church. Did you get her something nice?”

“Didn’t know what to get, so I got a box of candy.” To his credit, he didn’t sound proud of it. Monte’s not quite a teenager, but he already has a good sense of what’s right and what isn’t.

“Every mom wants to feel special on Mother’s Day,” I said, looking deep into my own mother’s celluloid eyes. “Is it the same with Father’s Day, Ray?”

Ray thought a minute, and I could see his eyes fading back to when Cindy was Monte’s age, before Ray’s hair deserted him and ambition left him behind. “You know, at one time Father’s Day was very important to me. I remember how bad I wanted my little girl to see how hard I worked at raising her. Not just the trips to the park, you know, but the skinned knees I tended, the slumber parties I put up with, the days I pretended not to know she did something wrong, the nights I chased the bad boys away. All of it.”

“She appreciates it,” I said.

“Maybe. But she sure didn’t when she was a kid.”

“You’ll always be her father,” I said, lightly punching his shoulder. “That’s where Cindy has it over me and Monte here.”

“Well, I did all I could, but I’m through,” Ray said, slowly crushing his beer can. “She don’t need a father no more, she’s on her own. And you know, I’m not her friend the way…” he swallowed, his mouth already dry. “The way my Juanita was.”

“I get that,” I said, pulling another beer out of its plastic loop and handing it to Ray. “I mean, my dad was a soldier’s soldier. Maybe that’s just the thing with dads. They can be friends or they can be trainers.”

“Yeah, us men, we ain’t got the goods to be both. That’s what makes mothers special.” Ray clinked his beer can against mine. “Guys, even the best of us, can only be in one place at a time.”

“Y’all saying Grandma can be in two places at once?” Monte asked, eyeing the beer.

“You bet,” Ray said. “She can lead you, stand beside you, and get behind you, all at the same time. That’s what a mother can do.”

“Pretty poetic for a cab driver,” I said. “You deserved a gift on both days for raising Cindy alone.”

Ray waved the notion away. “Guys don’t care about that stuff. All I ever wanted on Father's Day was for the kid to call or come by and say thanks for trying. The rest is just… well it’s like wrappings on a present, you know? Guys don’t care about that crap but you know it’ll spoil it for the kid if you show you don’t care so you keep it to yourself.”

It was my turn to drift away. I was counting back, one year at a time, through the Mother’s Day presents I had given Mama. I got back to second grade before the memory train ran out of track.

“Mom’s ain’t like that at all. They make every flower, every card, every little gift bought with your allowance seem like solid gold and just what she was praying for. They make you feel good, just by appreciating your effort and a little thought. I know some of that reaction was for my benefit, and some was probably just tradition, like the gift wrapping you mentioned. But I know that mostly she loved whatever I did for her just cause I did it, just like I know she loved me no matter what I did.”

“That’s what makes a mother,” Ray said. “They love you no matter what. And you only get so many chances to tell her she’s special. So you got to be sure to go to your mom or whoever’s been your mom on Sunday and say thank you. Thank you for trying and for caring.”

I know that last bit was aimed right at Monte. I looked at him, and then at Ray, and we all seemed to be in the same place. I was the first one to stand up.

“You were right, Ray. Mother Washington has been a mother to all of us on the block. Come on. Let’s the three of us go out and see if we can find her something really special for tomorrow.”

Virginia Tech - Still in mourning

2007-04-23T19:09:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know I don’t often give my opinion on this blog thing, but being ex-federal law enforcement and a private op now, I guess I ought to say something about the tragedy at Virginia Tech. I got to admit, as a resident of Southeast Washington DC, my first reaction when I heard about all the shooting was...WHERE? I mean, where I live I expect to hear guns go off in the middle of the night. But Blacksburg, Virginia is the opposite of the kind of environment where you expect violence. By most measures it’s one of the best places in the country to live, a peaceful, suburban college community where average income, education level and church attendance are all way above the national average. There is no way to understand why such a tragedy would happen there, and I think it’s the horror you can’t predict that’s the scariest.

Right after that is everybody searching for something to blame it on. I’ve already heard all the anti-gun screamers out there. And I’ll even admit it’s a reasonable point of debate. But, damn it, not NOW. It was only a week ago. People are hurting. It’s wrong for their expression of grief to get hijacked by any political agenda. You bet there’s people who think the guns are the reason for the violence. You can bet there’s also people thinking that if I was in the building, or if anybody else was there who was armed and properly trained, the body count would have been a lot lower.

But the truth is, we ought to leave the blame-casting and fault finding for later. Let's just take a few more days to stare in horror at the things human beings can do to one another, and mourn the innocents.

Dead Man's Hand - A Mini-Mystery

2007-03-31T09:53:00.000-05:00

The thumping on my door was too loud to be a potential client and too long and insistent to be the police. I dragged myself out of bed, grabbed my Sig Sauer and went to stand by the door.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Bumpy Miller,” he said from outside. “Let me in, man.”

Bumpy was lucky I was sleeping alone that night. If Cindy was there she’d have told me to shoot him. I’ll cop to being tempted myself.

“What the hell would make me want to open my door to a gambler and a hustler like you at two-thirty in the morning?”

“Let’s see,” he said. “A dead body, four guys who could go to jail where only one ought to, and five large if you can figure out who the one is.”

Well, Bumpy had the right answer. There are only three things I could think of that would get me pulling on my black suit at that hour: a corpse, a puzzle and a nice fee.

Inside of fifteen minutes Bumpy was knocking on another door with me standing beside him. Bumpy was a little guy with a bald head and a little scar over his right eye. Still he got respect because of the monster opening the door. Bruise got his nickname because he was so black he was almost blue. But when you’re five inches over my six feet and pushing 300 pounds, nobody laughs at you.

A poker table dominated the room, but there were no chips, just stacks of cash. I knew the two guys still sitting. Freddie was a West Indian fancy man with a bad attitude and, from what I could see from the table, bad luck at cards. Victor was a loose cannon the gangs called on from time to time to correct a member’s behavior. Victor was good at making people see things his way. He liked blades and he liked fire. I didn’t like him.

“What the hell?” Victor said, getting half out of his seat. Bumpy waved him back down.

“Gentleman, I called Hannibal Jones here because I trust him, and you both know he’s honest. You also know that if five-oh comes in here and looks in that bedroom we’re all going down, just because of our history. So I say, he goes in there and tries to figure out who the real trouble maker is. Then that guy goes with Hannibal to see The Man, and the rest of us go home.”

“This is bull,” Freddie started to say, but Bruise took a step in his direction and he shut right up.

“So who’s the fifth player?” I asked.

“It’s Gant,” Bumpy said, pushing the bedroom door open. “Or it WAS Gant.”

Gant was tall and lanky, and on that night wore a dark blue suit and alligator shoes. His kinky hair had hints of gray at the temples and when I’d seen him before he always had a ready smile, not the lethal leer most pimps wear. Slumped in that chair he didn’t look like he had smiled in weeks.

I pulled on my gloves and stepped closer. He had a rock the size of a cat’s eye marble on his left hand and a fountain pen clutched tight in his right. His Rolex was still on his wrists so nobody tried to rob him at least. A hastily-scrawled suicide note lay on the bed’s side table. Twenties and fifties were splayed across the bed and on the floor. I lifted his left hand and let if go. It fell limply. No rigor. In fact, he was the most relaxed dead man I ever saw.

“And you know it wasn’t suicide, because…?” I asked Bumpy, who never walked past the doorway.

“Cause why the hell would Gant kill himself?” Bumpy said. “He been winning all night. Winning, and grinning. Then he comes in here and never comes out. But now, if you think he might have really offed hisself, we’ll just head on home and you can be the one who found him. Same fee.”

I chuckled, and stared checking the area around the body. “Who really found him?”

“That was Freddie,” Bumpy said. “Little fool damn near pissed his pants.”

“And nobody came in here since?” I asked, fishing in the trash. Didn’t see much, but there was a little medicine bottle. I wondered what Gant might have been taking.

“Not a soul,” Bumpy said. “Bruise saw to that.”

The bottle might have held any number of possible drugs, since it had no label, but my nose told me it probably also held something more than Gant bargained for.

“If it was suicide, he did it right,” I said. “I got the bitter almond smell of cyanide here.”

“Naw, I seen Gant swallow pills out of that bottle before,” Bumpy said. “They was for his blood pressure he said. I nodded and looked again at Gant’s face, so relaxed in death. I dropped the bottle back in the little trash basket and brushed past Bumpy. I was tired and didn’t want to make this an all-night affair.

“So, Bumpy, did you collect from everybody else for my fee?”

“Damn right he did,” Victor said.

“Fine,” I said. “Pay me, Bumpy. Then you and the boys can go home. Except for Freddie here. He goes with me.”

“What?” Freddie said, jumping to his feet. “How can you do that? Victor here is a stone killer, every body knows that. And Bumpy, he’s so slick, and he sure hates losing all night at his own poker game.”

“Well, I sure ain’t mad at you,” Bumpy said, “but I am curious how you can be so sure Freddie did Gant in.”

“Then let me give you all a little forensics lesson,” I said. “Cyanide is such nasty stuff because it’s actually a nerve agent. If you swallow that stuff, death comes pretty damn fast but first you go into convulsions. After that, your body goes completely limp. All the muscles relax.”

“So what?” Freddie said. “When I saw Gant he looked pretty limp to me. Dead limp.”

“Yeah, probably so,” I said. “But you had to go and get dramatic and fake a suicide. You wrote a sloppy note, and that was okay. But then you had to get fancy and stick a pen in his hand.”

Freddie dropped back in his chair, white as a West Indian ghost, but I kept talking.

“Guess you didn’t know it, but after death by cyanide there’s no way in hell he could have held on to a pen through the convulsions and even if he did, when his body relaxes his hand would have dropped it. And since you found him and nobody else went in the room, you’re the only one who could have pushed that pen into his hand. Now Bumpy, how about making that anonymous call, and I’ll baby-sit Freddy here until the cops show up.”

Real gun control - Washington DC had the strictest gun ban in the country until a court recently overturned it.

2007-03-17T15:44:00.001-05:00

“So how does it feel to not be the only gun in town?” Cindy asked me the day after the ruling.

She was talking about the 30 year old District law that pretty much outlawed handguns or rifles except for police or security guards, until it was overturned a few days ago.

She was facing me over a chess board, with Monte looking on. We were supposed to be demonstrating, to help him sharpen his game. But I knew she really wanted to win, and had brought up what she figured was one of my hot buttons to distract me.

“Actually, I feel safer with more law abiding citizens getting armed.”

She pushed her king’s pawn forward another space. “So you figure it’s okay that a court decided that the District’s law limiting gun ownership to police and professionals like yourself was useless.”

“Actually, what I think the federal appeals court decided was that DC’s handgun ban was unconstitutional,” I said, putting my queen’s knight out. “It was a violation of our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Surely an officer of the court like yourself must respect the constitution.”

“We both know the founding fathers meant that right to apply only to militias,” Cindy said. She was pulling out her queen way too early.

“We do?” I castled and managed to get into the king’s Indian defense. Let her try to get in there without losing her queen. “The court specifically said that the activities protected by the Second Amendment are not limited to militia service.”

She actually stopped to think about her next move. That was the lesson I wanted Monte to learn. But she kept talking. “So, you don’t mind losing your edge as the only one out there not in uniform but packing a gun.”

“I don’t know,” I said, turning to Monte. “Tell me, do you know anybody else who carries a handgun?”

“You kidding?” Monte barely avoided laughing out loud. “Be easier to ask me who I know who ain’t strapped.”
“Here’s the thing,” I said, almost forgetting about the game. “Crooks don't obey the law, so they got guns. Always have, always will. The law only disarmed law-abiding citizens."

“Oh you know that’s not true.” Cindy was on her feet now. It seemed I had pushed her buttons instead of the other way around. “Just by keeping gun shops out of the city the law helped decrease gun violence here.”

Even Monte had to laugh at that. “This is your idea of a city with reduced gun violence? Sure don’t seem like that to me.”

“And even if that was true, that sounds like you’re saying the ends justify the means, and we can just brush the constitution aside. That’s no way for a lawyer to think.”

“Oh, so you think everybody should have a gun? I can see how that would play out on our streets.”

“Yeah,” Monte said, miming pulling an automatic’s slide back and pointing it sideways, the way movie gangsters do. “Then I’d get some respect.”

“Oh, baby, you know better,” I said, smiling my best conciliatory smile. “Does everyone have the right to own a car? There are reasonable restrictions we should all be able to agree on. I’m good with guns being registered, just like cars, so we know who has what. Like cars, guns should get safety inspections to make sure they’re safe to use. And I’d even support mandatory training, like we require driver’s ed before kids get their license. Of course, no guns for criminals or crazy people.”

That softened her attitude… a little. But it didn’t take her hands off her hips. “I know you’re trying to make this all sound reasonable, but those ideas don’t equal gun control.”

“Gun control?” I quipped. “I’m strongly in favor of gun control.”

“What?”

“True gun control,” I said. “Proper breathing, sight picture and trigger squeeze so the bullets hit their intended target. THAT’S gun control.”

It’s Gettin’ Hot in Here. So What?

2007-03-03T08:13:00.001-05:00

One opinion on global warming

After my girl Cindy and I had our quasi-scientific conversation about global warming, she thought I should let it all hang out here in the web log. Good place to vent, she says. Yeah, and maybe she’s right.

Well to start you ought to know that I’ve heard the scientific stuff and accepted it. 2,500 scientists got together and agreed that the earth IS getting hotter and they’re pretty sure we humans are the cause. The average temperature around the planet is going to go up at least 3 and maybe as much as 7 degrees by the turn of the next century, a short 93 years from now. And sea levels will rise by 23 inches. Or maybe, the same group says, only by seven inches. This they equate with the coming of Armageddon, or the end days in Revelations. I get it. And I suppose it’s probably real.

Of course, I have a detective’s natural skepticism of their evidence. We’ve got maybe a century worth of hard data. The planet, as I understand it, is six BILLION years old, and tends to work in very long cycles. And it seems like in the 60s and 70s the scientists were just as certain that the earth was cooling off.

Also, can we check our egos, people? Personally, I think it’s pretty damned arrogant for us to assume that we’re actually changing planetary conditions. And maybe it’s even MORE arrogant for us to think we can change it on purpose and fix this “problem.”

But here’s the thing. Suppose the scary scientists are right. I sure won’t live to see it. If I had kids, they probably wouldn’t either. But after I’m gone the ocean will rise up and bury us. Well, let’ see… 23 inches… 93 years… I think that’s like a quarter inch per year. And that’s the worst estimate. Are we really scared that we can’t adapt to this? Build all our stuff a little farther from shore, or build dikes a little higher? Or how about digging a couple channels and letting those extra inches of water flow in and irrigate some of our existing dessert land and making arable so more folks can eat? Why must everything be a calamity?

The truth is we got way too much ignorance, hatred, poverty, crime, and terrorism going on right now, not to mention pestilence, war, famine and death. Yep, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have already arrived and “warmth” ain’t one of them. So how about we focus on the crap we need to fix here and now, instead of sweating what might happen a couple of generations down the road?

Sea Stories

2007-02-18T09:49:00.001-05:00

Mother Washington is one of the finest ladies I’ve ever known. She’s more than a neighbor, she’s the matriarch of the whole neighborhood, a widow who has raised her grandson Monte into his teens without his ever getting in trouble with the law. Believe me, In Southeast D.C., that’s an accomplishment.

So, when I heard she was spending time with a fellow around her age, I was all smiles. She deserves love and happiness more than anybody I know. I was eager to meet this guy and all smiles when Mother Washington invited me to join them for dinner.

When I got there, Monte let me in.

“Wait’ll you meet Lloyd,” Monte said. “He’s a hero, just like you. He was in the Navy in Vietnam.”

Lloyd Benson had a firm handshake and a ready smile. He was taller than I am and very dark, like my dad was, with a short crop of kinky hair. His heavily wrinkled face bore the whisper of a beard that showed itself as ingrown hairs, like a lot of older brothers get stuck with.

After Mother Washington gave me a big hug and seated us all at the table, Monte said, “Lloyd! Tell Hannibal the story about how you got that medal.”

“Oh, he don’t want to hear some old sailor’s yarn,” Lloyd said.

“Of course I do,” I said. “My dad was in the Army in Vietnam. I never got to hear about his time there, but I’d love to hear about yours.”

“Well…” Lloyd nodded to Mother Washington as she set his plate in front of him, and I could see him floating into story teller mode, like so many older fellows do. When he started again, his voice had changed to a kind of far away narrator tone.

“Well, we was doing river patrol that night on the USS Harnett County. It was really a tank delivery ship and we was sailing up the Van Co Dong. I was kind of green back then, but now I been a sailor for 20 years and I’ll tell you, I’ve never seen nothing like it, before or since.

I was down below ‘cause there was a storm raging. In with the thunder, I thought I heard gun shots. The clatter of AK-47s. All I had was a .45, but I come out of my cabin and ran up top to see. When I made it out of the hatch I could see a couple of my mates already down. There was one guy standing, way up at the front end of the ship. I ran toward him but it turned out to be Charlie, waving a rifle around. Who knows how he got on board? When he turned and aimed at me I hit the deck, I’ll tell you. He got off a burst but it went over my head. I was scared as I ever been. Figured that was it for me, you know?

Then the lieutenant popped up on deck, but he was looking the wrong way. Charlie drew a bead on him. I couldn’t let the L.T. get blown away, so I pointed my pistol at Charlie. I had my hand braced on the deck ‘cause it was shaking so bad, but there was no time to think so I just took a shot. Guess I got lucky and hit him in the foot or the ankle ‘cause he went down. Laying there on the deck he was pointing his AK at me so I fired again. I hit him right in the face. Let me tell you, there’s no uglier sight than seeing a man’s face blowed off. I hightailed it the other way, ran all the way to the other end of the ship, right past the Marines that were on board for security. They went up and secured the deck.

When they came and got me I was afraid they’d hang me for a coward but they said I was the one who saved the L.T.’s life. So I guess they thought I was a hero, but I was just a scared sailor.”

I left right after dinner, giving Mother Washington a hug, banging fists with Monte the way he taught me. But I pulled Mother Washington’s friend aside as I opened the door. I lowered my voice in a way that made my smile a lie.

“Do you know who I am?” I asked him.

“No. Should I?”

“Find out,” I said. “And while you do that, I’ll be finding out who you are, Lloyd Benson. And if you hurt that lady your life will turn to crap. You understand me?”

Lloyd raised an eyebrow. “You the suspicious type, ain’t you.”

“Yeah, and you a bad liar.” I said. “Nobody who’s been a sailor for twenty years, or even half that time, would ever talk about somebody being at the ‘front end of the ship.’ Sailors talk about things being at the bow, and if they go the other way they go astern.”

Lloyd’s eyes flashed wide, and then he looked down at his shoes. “Okay, I’m busted. I guess I just wanted to impress the kid. I was Navy for one tour then I got out. Been a delivery man ever since. But I really do like Rosella Washington an awful lot. Are you gonna tell her…?”

“Ain’t gonna tell her nothing,” I said. “I’m telling you. Watch your ass. Make her happy as long as you can. And never forget that my eye’s on you.”

Don’t wait for perfection

2007-02-01T18:57:00.000-05:00

As it turned out, Monte had a beautiful left hook.

Cindy and I were walking into my place loaded down with all the fixings she’d need to make her patented paella crab fritters (yeah, with the fried lemon and peas) when I heard the scuffle down the block, in front of Monte’s house. Some kid was smarting off to him and Monte wasn’t having any of it. I could guess his grandmother, Mother Washington, was not around or she’d have shooed he boys away.

“Should we call to him?” Cindy asked.

“Don’t sweat it,” I said. “Teenagers are going to argue, that’s their nature, but it’s too cold out here to fight.”

Just as I said that, the other guy said something that made him laugh out loud and got Monte fuming. He waved an open hand at Monte’s face, teasing him. And that’s when I got to see Monte’s left hook. His gloved fist dug into the other kid’s belly, doubling him over. He was winding up for the follow-up right when I shouted his name, dropped the grocery bags and dashed up the street as fast as I could in the leather coat Cindy gave me for Christmas. A few seconds later I had Monte by the back of his collar and the other kid was sitting on Monte’s stoop, holding his stomach and panting.

If there’s one thing I hate to see when I’m outdoors it’s my breath, so I was already pissed off about still being out there, dragging cold air into my lungs from running most of a block.

I asked, “What’s the matter with you?” just like my dad used to ask me when I was a bit younger. “Whatever the beef is, you don’t need to solve it with your fists.

Usually, Monte will back off when he knows he’s wrong, but this time he stood up to me, poked his chin forward and stared me right in the eye.

“Yeah, like you never shut some sucker up with your fists. Ain’t that how you solve yours and everybody else’s problems?”

I fell silent then, and just watched the other kid run away as best he could. What could I say to Monte? I mean, I always try to make a punch in the nose the last resort, but sometimes I know I get too tempted to take that shortcut to resolution and I’m a pretty fair scrapper. I was feeling a little like a hypocrite right then. Who WAS I to teach him nonviolence?

While I was thinking, Cindy caught up to us. She looked at Monte, then at me, and shoved my shoulder with one hand while she shoved his with the other.

“What the hell’s the matter with you two?” From the first word I knew she wasn’t going to be speaking from her attorney mouth, but out of her snappy Rican girl mouth. The first blast was for Monte.

“Monte you know damned well you were wrong taking a poke at that boy! What, did he say something that hurt your feelings? That’s no excuse for hitting somebody and you know it!”

When he turned away, embarrassed, she switched her focus to me. “And you, mister big hero. What the hell you backing off for?”

“Hey, the kid had a point,” I said.

“Nonsense!” Cindy crossed her arms and made me feel for a minute like I was the little kid. But her eyes went back to Monte.

“You know, there’s nobody more qualified to teach you about being a man, Monte. He's not perfect, but that don’t mean he can’t teach you valuable stuff. When I was your age I was taking gymnastics lessons. My coach couldn’t do a back flip, but she taught me how to.”

She turned back to me. “And you. You don’t have to be a saint to teach young blood here how to behave right. You’re supposed to be mentoring this young man. The fact that you’re trying so hard to live up to your own super high standards just means you understands how hard it is.”

I took a deep breath. “Yeah, I guess I know you’re right. It’s just, well, I ought to do better. I want to be a good example.”

“Sure, and I want to be a size four, especially when I'm not hungry. I been dieting all my life, but I keep coming back to about here. Not because I don't know what I ought to do, but because I love black bean soup and crab fritters and a good pressed Cuban sandwich. Unfortunately for my waistline, resisting temptation most of the time just isn’t good enough. Same with you and fighting. And you can’t give up trying to get it right every time. But you also can’t wait until you’re perfect to teach Monte what you know is right.”

Then she squeezed my shoulder and smiled. “Now that I’ve vented, I’m going back inside. It’s cold out here.”

While I watched her coat sway on her way back to the apartment, I heard Monte say, “Hey, H, I’m sorry I smarted off at you before. I should have stayed cool.”

“No biggie, Monte. Long as you understand that you need to stay cool with your friends, and keep arguments on a verbal level.” Then I gave him a wink. “Why don’t you come on back to the office? I’ve got a heavy bag hanging in there and I can teach you how to throw that punch right. You could be a contender.”

Future Cops: New York's Real Time Crime Center

2007-01-27T19:19:00.000-05:00

As a private eye running a one-man agency, the tools I use to help people in trouble are usually limited to muscle, guts, observation and deduction. P.I. work usually calls for a lot of legwork, the kind the police can’t afford to do. They don’t’ have the time or the manpower. One thing I have in common with the cops is we both laugh at the stylized world of law enforcement you see on TV, where every crime can be solved in an hour.

You probably know that I used to be one of those cops, then a police detective in NYC and then with the Secret Service. That’s why I keep an eye on what’s going on in their business. And since my girl Cindy wants me to make entries into this blog thing, I figured somebody might want to hear about some of the stuff that might make that one-hour per crime thing a reality someday.

When I was a New York beat cop they didn’t have a Real Time Crime Center. It’s like a super detective help desk, the nerve center for technology to help the detectives out there on the streets with the kind of information that helps you develop leads and solve crimes.

You know how on TV the cops can just type stuff in and get instant info? That’s what they’re trying to do with the Real Time Crime Center. Information networking they call it, but to me it’s just good old crime analysis. COMPSTAT, for Computerized Statistics, is a weekly precinct-by-precinct analysis of crime trends and hot spots. In New York, they can reduce violent crimes by putting 1,500 cops into a targeted location. That’s how NYC got to be the safest large city in the USA.

The next step is to look at crime data and intel in real time and shoot it out to the cops so they can see crime patterns and trends. Not only could they use their resources better to fight crime, but they could support investigators better to ID and catch the bad guys faster.

When I chat with my old pals on the force I’m amazed at how they’ve made different sources electronically searchable and user friendly. I swear the department up there must have 50 huge databases, all crime data warehouse from IBM to put all that info into a common format. They hooked the last 10 years of complaints, arrests and detective case information into a real-time feed from the 911 system.

The Real Time Crime Center has access to more than 120 million New York City criminal and arrests complaints and 911 call records dating back to 1995, more than 5 million New York State criminal records, parole and probation files, 31 million national crime records and 35 billion public records. Detectives can search the data sources easily, almost like using Google. If you can search for, say, a white male, 5-foot-8-inches to 6-foot, doing robberies, in the Bronx, uses a silver gun, and targets old ladies," well, that can save a lot of the grunt work gathering your list of suspects.

The NYPD sends an incident response vehicle with every homicide squad in the five boroughs and one major case squad. These vans are on scene for all serious stabbings, shootings and homicides. With secure wireless access to the Real Time Crime Center, detectives can access and print out anything they need, out in the field.

Think about it. Before the detective starts to canvas the area, he’s got details about his location. incidents and arrests within a given distance of this crime, parolees, probationers and wanted felons in the area, open narcotics investigations, gang activity, the whole ball of wax. This is the stuff I’d love to know at a murder scene. Have there been a lot of drug arrests in the area? Is there a sexual predator nearby? Who the nosey neighbor that calls 911 all the time? The kind of stuff beat cops used to know.

And the Real Time Crime Center can put it all up on a screen. The detective gets a visual representation of the suspect or the location. He can see the relationships the suspect has with other criminals, other crimes, other cases, guns, and so on. We call it a link analysis, with one person or location at the center. Then, graphical links are shown to phone numbers, known addresses, relatives, criminal records, whatever.

Another new trick is called crime mapping. The Real Time Crime Center identifies crimes and trends that used to require days for analysts to dope out. The Geographic Information System lets you even show where all the complaints are that make up what you think is a pattern. You can see all the crimes near bus stations, for example or near schools. This kind of pattern analysis is great for robberies or sex crimes.

The Real Time Crime Center even helps the cops when crimes cross jurisdictions. New York has been able to hook up with other agencies in and out of New York State, like the New York/New Jersey High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Regional Intelligence Center. I’ll tell you about that some time.

New York is THE big city, but I think the concept of the Real Time Crime Center can work for any police force. It saves more man-hours than anybody can count. And it gets the technology down to the street. Right now about 700 of New York’s finest have direct access to the Real Time Crime Center, but when it’s complete, more like 5,000 detectives will, not to mention the narcotics investigators, terrorist investigators and organized crime units. If this keeps up, old fashioned private eyes like me might end up out of business.

I hope I didn’t bore you. I know that was just a lot of shop talk but like I said, I have a real interest in the latest good news in law enforcement. If you don’t care how cops are solving crimes these days, well, you ought to be reading somebody else’s blog.

Shading the truth

2007-01-16T19:19:00.000-05:00

I sat up straighter when John and Bobby come bursting into my office. They had that haunted look in their eyes, as if the devil himself was after them. And I suppose it was possible. I’ve known John and Bobby since I moved into my flat in Southeast D.C. My card says I’m a troubleshooter, but these two are generally more trouble than I want to deal with.

“Mr. Jones, you got to help us,” John said. He was on the small side, with mahogany skin, short kinky hair and wire rimmed glasses. “We need protection and I know you do that kind of thing.”

“You boys run with a pretty rough crowd,” I said, waving each of them to a chair. “Who would be after you?”

“That’s just it,” Bobby said. “Them same people who we’re always helping out are the same people that will cut us up for crossing them.” Bobby was taller and slimmer than John, and smelled like he had been sloppy while filling his car’s gas tank. His hair was up in a wild bush that made me hope the Afro would never come back into style.

“Well you’re going to have to tell me what you did,” I told them. “I’ll decide after that whether or not I’ll try to help you out.”

I was thinking that whatever was coming at them, they probably deserved, but I tried to reserve judgment. John and Bobby stared at each other for a minute, deciding who was going to do the talking. I sipped my coffee and stayed quiet. After what seemed like forever, John pushed his glasses up his nose and leaned forward to talk.

“Well, you know sometimes we help out Walker, who runs the numbers around here. We wasn’t hurting nobody, just talking some of his money from here to there, you know? We was heading up toward Silver Spring when this cop pulls us over.”

“And you boys ain’t in jail?” I asked. “Amazing. Who was this cop? Did you see his nametag?”

“Nametag?” John said, ashy hands spread wide. “Who looks at a nametag? I seen his uniform, I’ll tell you that. I seen his badge and them sunglasses. I seen his gun real good, 'cause when he got up to the window he shoved it in my face.”

That got my attention. “A District policeman pointed his gun at you?”

“Sure as hell,” John said. “Next thing I know, he’s demanding the money. We handed it over, and he just took off. I was shaking so bad I couldn’t drive for ten minutes.”

All this time Bobby had been shaking his head up and down, but I had to ask. “Is that really what happened?”

“Just like John told it,” Bobby said, slapping a hand on my desk. “I thought maybe this idiot was speeding, but when that cop pulled his gun I just about crapped in my drawers.”

I grabbed a notepad and said, “All right, what did this cop look like?”

“He looked like a cop,” John said. “My attention was kind of on that gun barrel.”

“Hell of a description. Bobby, did you get any better look at him?”

Bobby nodded. “He looked just like John said.” Then he closed his eyes as if calling up a picture in his mind. “He was about your height, so six feet tall? And bigger, maybe 200 pounds. Blonde hair. Brown eyes. And I think the gun was a .38 revolver.”

I sat back and thought about it for a minute. Yeah, this was going to be trouble, just as I suspected when they walked in the door. They both stared hard at me while I tried to decide what to do about their predicament. Walker was going to want blood in return for his missing money, and with what I had I didn’t think I was likely to find the man in uniform very quickly. I decided I needed to talk to the numbers man directly. I pointed at Bobby.

“Listen, you know where Walker hangs out? I want you to go get him. Tell him I’ve got John here and the four of us need to talk about his delivery today. He’ll listen to me.”

“Thanks, man,” Bobby said. He shook my hand and was out the door in a flash. John looked nervous and started to get up too.

“Sit down, John. You’re not going anywhere. And don’t worry, I’ll protect you. Not so sure about Bobby though.”

“What do you mean?” John asked. “Me and Bobby been real tight for years. If he’s going down, I’m going down with him.”

I had to smile at John’s loyalty. “That’s real noble, John. But Bobby doesn’t deserve it after dragging you into this with him. And you’re only in trouble because he needed a witness.”

“What are you talking about?” John asked me.

“Looks to me like Bobby decided to rip off Walker, and needed somebody else to testify that he got robbed. So he brought you along.”

“What are you saying?” John asked. “It was that cop. Wait a minute, you think Bobby knew that cop?”

“Honestly, I kind of doubt it was a cop. But whoever it was, I figure Bobby knew him.”

John stood up and came up close to the desk. “Wait a minute,” he said again. “You think it’s 'cause he gave such a good description. Hell, Bobby’s just more observant than me. I don’t remember that kind of stuff too good.”

“No, and he was counting on that,” I told him. “But you’re right about one thing. His description was a little too detailed. He saw the shield but not the number. He saw the uniform but not the name tag. And you both told me the cop was wearing sunglasses.”

“That’s right,” John said.
“Then just how did he know the cop with the gun had brown eyes?”

Thanksgiving at Mother Washington’s house

2006-11-20T19:56:00.000-05:00

What’s the difference between heaven and hell?

We would all be at Mother Washington’s house for Thanksgiving dinner even if she wasn’t the only one with a real dining room. She may be an African American woman in a white man’s world, a senior citizen in a nation that worships youth, short and round in a city that is fitness-crazed, and poorly educated in a land that reveres degrees. But she is also a spiritual leader in her church and the heart, soul and conscience of my neighborhood and maybe everybody who know her. She has taught me that wisdom is blind to color, age, appearance and education.

Anyhow, on Thanksgiving afternoon we were all gathered around her table: Cindy and her father Ray, my neighbors Sarge, Quaker, and Virgil, and me. Monte helped his grandmother carry platters of food to the table until there was barely room for our plates. The house was bursting with quiet but friendly conversation, and the warm aromas of turkey, gravy, and the sweet potato pies still in the oven.

When Mother Washington stood behind her chair, everyone stopped talking and bowed their heads. We all knew the drill. She would bless us and the table, maybe say a few extra words of inspiration, then ask me to carve the giant browned bird. We didn’t expect what came after we said amen.

“I want to tell you a little story this year,” she said, her round face covered with a smile of grace. “Y’all can wait a minute before you start eating.”

“I can’t,” Monte said under his breath, then jumped when Cindy kicked him under the table.

She went on as if she had not heard him. “A holy man was having a conversation with the Lord one day and he said, ‘Lord, I heard a lot about Heaven and Hell, and I’d like to know what they’s really like.’ So The Good Lord showed the man two doors. He opened one up, and the man thought it looked kind of like Thanksgiving in there. In the middle of the room was a big old table and in the middle of the table there was everything you could want. Turkey. Stuffing. Yams. Corn. Mashed potatoes. A real feast. It looked and smelled so good it made the holy man’s mouth water.

Now there was people sitting around the table, all moaning and groaning and looking like they was starving. Do you know why?”

“They couldn’t reach the food,” Monte said, trying to keep things moving along.

“Oh no,” Mother Washington said, waving a finger at him. “They could reach the food because they had these great long knives and forks attached to their arms. Sort of like these.” She picked up a knife and fork designed for use on a barbecue grill and sliced off a bit of the hot, juicy turkey breast. “They was even longer than this. They could reach everything.”

“Then why weren’t they eating?” Monte asked.

Mother Washington smiled and handed the fork to Monte, putting the end of the handle into his hand. “Well, the forks was so long that after they got some food on them, they couldn’t get them back to they mouths.”

Monte tried unsuccessfully to get the turkey into his mouth. Sarge chuckled. “I take it this was hell.”

“That was hell,” Mother Washington said, nodding her graying head solemnly. “So then the Lord took the man to the next room and opened the door. And do you know what he saw? Well, it was exactly the same. Same big old table covered with delicious food. It got the holy man’s mouth watering all over again. There was just as many people sitting around the table, just like you are, and they had the same forks and knives with the long handles. Except…”

Mother Washington has a gift for the dramatic pause. She knew she had us so she held us for a couple of seconds. When she spoke she shared the big, broad smile we’re all used to.

“Except these people was all fat and happy. They was well fed, all laughing and talking and having a good time. So the holy man asked, ‘Lord, what’s different about this room?’ And do you know what he said? Do you know why these folks was fed while the people in hell was starving?”

And she stopped right there. Everybody around the table was staring at each other, except Mother Washington who was staring at me. Well, I guess I am supposed to be the detective. She knew when it hit me because it made me grin. I checked the faces around the table to make sure no one else wanted to speak before I did.

“It’s not the room that was different,” I said. “It’s the people.” I took the fork from Monte and held the turkey slice to his mouth. “The folks in the second room figured out they would all be okay if they’d feed each other.”

“That’s right,” Mother Washington said, making me feel like the teacher’s pet. “The folks in hell were starving because the greedy think only of themselves."

Mother Washington sat down, and the gang started passing the bowls and platters around while when I stood up to carve the bird. And even though he was already chewing, I think even Monte got the lesson this year.

The Dash of Life

2006-11-10T17:44:00.001-05:00

My name, Hannibal Jones, is just about the only thing I have that my father gave me. That doesn’t stop me from missing him. My father died for his country, but he’s buried in his home town in Georgia so I don’t see him very often. Instead, I visit his name on a big black wall on Veteran’s Day, and then I cross the Memorial Bridge with my pal Sarge to visit a couple of his old friends in Arlington Cemetery. This year, we brought Monte with us. I try to show the boy what being a man is all about, and remembering those you’ve lost is a part of that.

It was sunny and warm this year, almost 70 degrees, with a slight breeze raising the sweet smell of fresh cut grass and waving the rows of flags. Every year soldiers volunteer to go out the night before and plant those flags on every grave. We stopped in front of a name I didn’t recognize and stood quietly, just staring at the modest stone. Sarge had told me the guy was in his unit back in the Nam but he didn’t say anything more. After a couple minutes of silence Monte started to fidget. Young teenagers aren’t known for their patience but Monte kept his voice respectful and his question real.

“Hey, Sarge, what you thinking about?”

Sarge smiled. “Just thinking about Kenny, and the dash of life.”

“What’s the dash?” Monte asked.

“There’s going to be a last day,” Sarge said. “When it gets here I’ll look back on my career in the Marine Corps and my years as a bouncer and my time helping Hannibal here and ask the hard questions. “What did I do to make a difference? Did I take on the servant attitude of giving something back?"

“I know you did,” I said, resting a hand on Sarge’s shoulder. “But what’s that got to do with a dash?”

Sarge stayed enigmatic. “This country’s first great military man was probably George Washington. If we were looking at his grave right now, we’d see when he was born. Know when his birthday is?”

“February twenty-something,” Monte offered. That got a smile from Sarge.

“See. Not many people can tell you what day he was born on, since it's not a holiday anymore. And fewer still can tell you when he died. When you look at a tombstone, you see "born" on a certain date, and "died" on another. And in between is a dash. That’s all that represents everything that goes between those dates. But it's what's in that ‘dash of life’ that people remember.”

We all went silent again, and Sarge’s words really got me thinking. I know Dad’s dates of birth and death by heart, of course, but I resolved to think more about all he did in his life, how he filled the dash. And if you find yourself staring at a gravestone on Veteran’s Day this year, look hard at what’s between the dates and remember how your soldier, sailor, airman or Marine filled his dash of life.

The reliable witness – a mini-mystery

2006-10-24T19:02:00.000-05:00

If Dave Knickmeyer didn’t live in my neighborhood, I’d never have been involved with his murder. The cops know where I am and often let me crash their little parties. They know that if a crime indicates there’s drugs or prostitution moving into my ‘hood I’ll take steps that they can’t, or won’t, to stop it.

Actually, Dave’s apartment was on the edge of what I think of as my jurisdiction, a few blocks north of me, closer to Capital Hill. He was a writer, a novelist I think, living the bohemian lifestyle in a low-rent flat. Well, as low rent as they get in The District anyway.

Of course, by the time I arrived he wasn’t living any kind of lifestyle at all. He was lying face down in a pool of dried blood, about two feet from a small automatic. A forensics team was swarming over the room, working around two other visitors. The man I knew. Detective Jim Cloud was a couple inches shorter than my six feet, a good deal darker than me, and nearly twice as wide. The pinstriped suit didn’t slim him so much as make him look like prohibition era gangster.

“Good to see you,” Jim said, “But this time I think you wasted a trip. This one’s looking like a simple crime of passion, and we’ve got a pretty good witness to the whole thing. In fact, she called it in. Hannibal Jones, meet Ellen Rutenberg.”

I shook the slender blonde’s hand. I think I intimidated her a little, because I had arrived up in my work gear, the black suit and gloves, and my Oakley sunglasses. She had a long, inquisitive face topped by bangs and shoulder-length hair that tried unsuccessfully to curl up at the ends. Her face was makeup-free, which was no surprise for a Saturday afternoon. We hadn’t met but her name rang a bell.

“Ellen Rutenberg? Don’t you write for the Times?”

A little color rose to her pale cheeks. “I’m flattered. You must read the paper very closely to have spotted my byline. But yes, I’ve gotten some stories in the last couple of months.”

“See?” Jim said. “A professional journalist. Trained observer. What better witness could there be?”

“Good point,” I said, easing the three of us into a corner so the dusters and collectors could do their work. “Just what did you see, Ms. Rutenberg?”

“Well, I didn’t actually see the thing that happened,” she said, eyes flashing toward the corpse every once in a while. Where the hell was that damn coroner? “But I live right across the hall, so I know who comes and goes. I know Donna Stringer was visiting him.”

“She’s another writer,” Jim said, as if that explained something.

“I was getting a little workout on the treadmill when I heard the…” she clenched her eyes tight and balled her fists. “I wasn’t sure at the time, but it was a shot. When I opened my door I saw Donna heading down the stairs.”

“You’re sure it was her?” I asked.

She gave me a sarcastic smile. “You couldn’t miss that perfect little behind of hers, or that bright red hair bouncing on the back of her neck. Oh, it was her all right.”

Something about that smile struck a chord for me. I’d seen it before on the faces of women talking about other women who just didn’t deserve what they got.

“Did you go after her?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” Ellen said. “I was concerned about Dave. His door was half open. Very unlike him. So, I knocked, and then I slipped in. I found poor Dave lying there, bleeding, and I saw that little gun. I wasn’t sure what else to do, so I picked up the phone on the desk and called the police.”

I looked past Jim at the busy CSI types. “Even the best eye-witness won’t get you a conviction, buddy. Any solid evidence?”

Jim looked at the oldest of the guys in latex gloves and booties over their shoes. The poor guy looked bored and tired, like he wished the city’s killers would restrict themselves to weekdays before 5 pm. He pushed his glasses up his nose and took a deep breath.

“We’ve dusted everything and found a ton of fingerprints. Lots are a man’s but there are plenty of smaller, female prints too. It won’t be hard to put the girl in the room, but I’m not too sure how much that helps you.”

“Well, it looks like the killer dropped the gun as soon as she fired,” Jim said. “Any prints there?”

The tech shook his head. “Not even smudges. She must have pulled gloves on before she killed him.”

I stole a glance at Ellen and watched her work to suppress a smile. I had a nasty suspicion with no good reason to be suspicious. I was starting to feel a little guilty about it when I looked down and noticed traces of white powder on my right glove. My gut had been trying to tell me something about this girl all along. Now I had an idea how to find out if it was right.

“What about the phone?” I asked. Then the tech cocked an eyebrow at me I said, “You told me you dusted everything. What about the phone?”

“Yeah the phone too,” he said, shoving his glasses back up into place gain.

“And?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Just a man’s prints, presumably the deceased.” Jim looked at me, then at the tech, and back at me.

“Well, what did you expect?” Ellen asked, sounding oddly impatient. “If she didn’t leave prints on the gun…” Of course, at this point her brain caught up to her mouth and she realized her mistake. A simple one for an amateur. Even a really smart one.

“That’s right,” I said, nodding. “If you called the police from here, your prints should be on the phone. But they’re not. Now why would that be?”

Ellen’s mouth worked up and down a few times, but nothing came out. It was just as well. I decided to help her out.

“I’m thinking you were wearing gloves when you came in,” I said. “That’s how you got the powder on your hands, and that’s how it got on my glove after we shook hands. But I can’t think of a reason you’d pull on a pair of latex gloves when you ran over here in the middle of your workout. Can you, Jim?”

“Only one,” Jim said, pulling out his handcuffs. “Only if it was to shoot poor Dave after his other girlfriend left.”

I nodded, and gave Ellen my own sarcastic smile. “You know, Donna’s fingerprints all over the apartment and your eye-witness testimony might have been enough to make the charge stick to her, if you had been smart enough to pull the gloves off before making that phone call.”

Mother Washington's Carry On

2006-09-27T05:23:00.000-05:00

Mother Washington is one of the most capable women I know. Her parents were from slave stock. They brought her up from the Deep South and she raised six boys and five girls. Her youngest daughter had a baby named Gabriel. Because he learned to hustle three-card monte when he was only 6, everybody started calling him Monte. When his father ran off so did his mother, so Mother Washington is raising him too. Before I picked her up at Reagan National Airport the other day I thought she could handle just about anything.

“They robbed me,” she said as I helped her into the car. “They robbed me coming and going.” She’s a big, round woman and needs a little help negotiating the Volvo’s seats.

“What happened, Mother Washington?” Cindy asked from the back seat.

“All I wanted to do was visit my Aunt Sadie before she’s gone,” Mother Washington said as I got into the driver’s seat. “Nothing else could get me into one of those airliners. And nothing ever will again.”

“Who robbed you ma’am,” I asked, sliding out onto the ramp to I395.

“Them foreigners at the terminal gate,” she said, smoothing her graying black hair back and sliding bobby pins into place. “They don’t hardly speak no English and they just goes thru your personals and takes whatever they likes.”

“Oh my.” That was Cindy behind me, stifling a giggle. “I know a lot of the security people at Reagan are African or Pakistani immigrants, Mother Washington, but did you try to take a pair of scissors on the plane with you?”

“Of course not child,” Mother Washington said, sounding a bit indignant. “I ain’t ignorant. But they took my hand cream. You know I can only use that one brand.”

“The new rules,” I told her. “No liquids on board.”

“It wasn’t liquid,” she said, her jaw set forward. “It was cream. And then they took that little bottle of perfume. Monte gave me that perfume.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am,” I said. “But it’s for your protection too.”

“Son, you think I was going to attack somebody with that hand cream?” Before I could answer, she went on. “And then, they took my lipstick in Atlanta on the way back. My lipstick! It ain’t no lethal weapon, son. And they didn’t bother with it in Washington. Now why was my lipstick more dangerous in Georgia than up here?” She crossed her arms for her final pronouncement. “Lord knows it’s just a stupid rule”

Traffic was light on the bridge and the sun hung near the horizon. It reminded me how, not that long ago, a pilot guided a wounded airliner into the Potomac nearby. Much more recently, an airliner had been flown into the nearby Pentagon on purpose.

“You know, ma’am, I haven’t been a big booster of the Department of Homeland Security since it gobbled up the Secret Service three years ago. I loved the Service when I was in and hated to see it move from Treasury. But I’ve got to admit that their response to the recent London terrorist threat was right on.”

“Now Hannibal, you saying some threat in London made them take my lipstick?” Mother Washington Asked.

“Actually, it did,” I said. “The Brits told about a plot to blow up airplanes using liquid explosives. Within hours, the Transportation Security Administration put the new restrictions on carry-on luggage. Security personnel had to show a certain amount of judgment, so I can see how one thought a lipstick was okay but another didn’t. Still, I think the poor schleps who screen the luggage enforced the confusing new rules with surprising effectiveness under pretty tough circumstances.”

“Well,” Mother Washington said softly, “at least they were polite the whole time.”

“See? And Homeland Security gave up as much information as they could, and didn’t panic everybody like they did the first couple times they raised the threat level.”

“You’re being nice,” Cindy said behind me, “But there are bigger questions. Wasn’t there a similar plot that involved unknown liquids ten or 11 years ago? Kind of slow to react, weren’t they?”

Some lawyers can’t resist playing devil’s advocate. “So what’s your point?” I asked.

“The point is, are they doing enough? Are they paying attention to new technologies that could help detect danger? Why are the security measures inconsistent from airport to airport? What other threats aren’t we ready for, like those shoulder-fired missiles? How come the Israelis seem to do the anti-terror thing so much better than we do?”

“Hold up there girl,” I said. “The U.S. is a hell of a lot bigger, and our whole culture’s different.”

“Yeah, well still, the airlines could do more by making passengers provide fuller information, like passport details,” Cindy said, warming to her subject.

“Sure, doll, but even some of the Sept. 11 hijackers could have passed that test.”

Before the debate could become an argument, Mother Washington raised both her hands and we both knew to shut up. The senior lady would have the final say.

“There ain’t no answer,” she said. “Ain’t no one thing going to keep us safe. We got to try everything, and we got to be ready to change when them poor, misguided people over there try something new. I guess these Homeland Security people are still figuring out how to do what they got to do, but at least I’m glad they’re trying to learn some new tricks. And I guess a jar of my favorite hand cream is a small price to pay while they’re learning.”

Hamlet Was a Moron

2006-09-03T07:55:00.000-05:00

It was an ugly case. The drugs had got hold of him and he was getting rough with his baby’s mama and the kids. He needed to get into rehab. She asked me to help. I had to help him make the right choice. He got rough. In order to help him, I had to get rougher. My knuckles still ached under my gloves.

And then, when I got home I found Monte on the stoop, having a heart-to-heart with Cindy. I’m pretty much the man in Monte’s life now. When he has questions, real questions his grandmother can’t answer, he comes to me. It looked like my girl stopped by at the same time he was looking for me, and decided to stand in.

Cuban girls.

When I was halfway up the stairs, Cindy said, “Glad you’re home, baby. We’ve got a tough one here.” I just raised my eyebrow in question, so she kept going. “It seems our young man here has met a girl. She might be THE girl. But he’s not really sure.”

The grin on her face told me that Cindy thought this was cute, or funny. Monte just looked embarrassed. He’s trying real hard to be a man, and no woman in the world understands how hard that is in the 21st century.

“I really like her,” he said. “But if I tell her, I mean, what if it turns out to be wrong? I mean, I’m not so sure I’m ready to have a steady girl.”

“But I told him if he doesn’t tell her, he might be letting an important opportunity pass him by,” Cindy threw in.

“So the question is?” I asked.

“Tell her or don’t,” Cindy said.

I was tired. And this was simple. And my patience needle was slipping toward E. I didn’t look at Cindy. I looked at Monte. Boys past ten years old deserve to be addressed directly.

“What are you, Hamlet?”

“Huh?”

I walked between them to the door and turned around. “Look, enough already with the psychoanalysis. On the one hand this, but on the other hand that. This whole damn country is as confused as Hamlet was. Do I tell or do I keep quiet? Should I stay or should I go? Stick with the war or pull out now? Is she the one? Do I tell her? Back and forth, back and forth, chewing over every decision like an old bone. Nobody’s ever sure about what to do.”

“We can’t all be like you,” Cindy snapped. “Good old Hannibal. Often wrong, but never in doubt.”

“And why the hell not?” I snapped back.

“Because, like Hamlet, some of us have more complex questions to deal with.”

I hate it when she pulls out that lawyer crap, and she knows it. I pointed right in her face.

“Well, you know what? Hamlet was a moron. The questions ain’t never as big as ‘To be or not to be.’ It’s ‘how do I get from here to there. How do I move forward?’ That’s all there is.”

“And you’ve got the magic answer,” Cindy said, tipping her head that way she does when she’s being sarcastic. Monte was staring at me like he really did want the answer. So I figured I’d just give it to him.

“The answer is, you start. Then you keep going. Quit waiting. To paraphrase Patton, a good plan now is better than a perfect plan later. Move forward. That’s always the right thing to do. Is it time to have a steady girlfriend? Who the hell knows? Get one and find out. Is she the one? Ask her and see. My dad had a saying…”

I turned my eyes to Cindy. She hates it when I quote my dad. I lost him when I was pretty young, but I swear I remember every word the man ever said to me.

“He used to say, ‘Left foot, right foot.’ That’s how you get to wherever it is you want to go. Cindy, how’d you learn to swim? Did you take fancy classes at the Y or something?”

I caught her off guard, but her father and I are pretty good friends so I was sure I knew the answer.

“No,” she said in a low tone. “My dear father picked me up and threw me in the deep end of the pool.”

“Uh huh. And what happened?”

She hesitated. Sometimes the truth can interfere with making your point, but she was a good enough lawyer to know that hiding the truth never works. There was even a tiny bit of a smile that she was reluctant to share. “Well, actually, I guess I did okay.”

That was all I needed. I opened the door but turned to Monte just before I went inside. “Jump on in, dude. You’ll be surprised how fast your swimming skills improve.”

Hannibal's First Case

2006-08-13T17:55:00.000-05:00

Monte got me watching this Veronica Mars television show, mostly because the star’s best friend reminded him of himself. I have to admit, the character reminded me of Monte too. He’s just a little older but he has the same looks, the same clothing style and the same smart mouth. Anyway, one night he came over so we could watch it together and like so often with TV, we got into a conversation about how close to reality it was. With his tennis shoes perched up on my coffee table Monte was doing most of the talking until he got to the question of age.

“The big problem with the show,” he said, dredging up a handful of popcorn out of the bowl, “is that nobody in high school goes around solving mysteries.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Now I think about it, I solved my first mystery in middle school.”

“What? I got to hear this.” Monte said. “Was it a murder?”

“Nothing so dramatic,” I told him, opening another root beer and taking a drink. “It was just a robbery. This was when I lived in Germany with my mom. We were in the stairwells in Berlin.”

“Wait. You lived on the stairs?” Monte sat up straighter and paused the TiVO.

“That’s just what they call it over there when you’re in an apartment building in quarters,” I explained. “You had to go up this narrow stairwell to get to your place. We were on the fourth floor. This one time I was coming downstairs and I saw Mrs. Whitmore crying on the stairs. She was this nice white lady who lived on the first floor. She still had her coat on, so I knew she had just come in.”

“A coat?” Monte asked. “Yeah, I guess it gets cold in Germany, huh?”

I had to smile at that. “Monte, living here all your life you don’t know what cold is. It was Christmas time, and you can bet it was well below zero outside. Anyhow, there she sat crying and her son was there too. Jimmy. He was in my class. We called him the toad.”

Monte started chuckling through a mouthful of popcorn. “The toad?”

“Well, he was an ugly kid,” I said. “Straight black hair in bangs in the front, kind of short and squat with these glasses thick as coke bottle bottoms and crooked teeth in front.”

“Yow. He must have took some crap in school.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “Anyhow, his mom was in tears so I asked her why. She said she had got robbed.”

“Wow, a real robbery?” Monte was turned to face me now, like I was the TV. “What did they get?”

“She said all her good jewelry was gone. The door was kicked in while she was at work at the Exchange and Jimmy the Toad was out playing. Everybody knew our dads were in the field and that’s when these things happened.”

“In the field? What, like a farm or something?”

I sometimes forget that Monte doesn’t know anybody in the Army. “Her husband was in the same artillery unit my dad was in before we lost him in Nam. When they went on a training exercise it was called being in the field. Anyway all the dads were always having to be gone at the same time.”

“So what did you do?” Monte asked. “There was no witnesses, right?”

“Well, that’s just it. Jimmy said he saw the thief leave the apartment. He said he was coming in from playing and saw this guy come out his door. So he was at the other end of the hall, too far away to chase the guy, who went out the back door of the building.”

“Did he get a good look at the guy?”

I had to grin at that, and took time to drink some more of my soda. “Jimmy described him pretty well. Tall guy, red hair, with a thin scar under his right eye.”

“Well that would make the guy easy to spot,” Monte said. “Sounds like Jimmy gets the collar for that one.”

“You think?” I asked. “Some detective you are. Anyway, that’s when my mom came downstairs and asked what was going on. Mrs. Whitmore went through the whole story again and when she was finished I added my little bit. I told her Jimmy was lying, and he probably took the jewelry himself.”

“What? That’s cold man. Why’d you say that?”

“That’s just what Jimmy asked. I told him he couldn’t possibly have seen that kind of detail across the hall without his glasses on. So he says, `I always have my glasses on. You know I’m blind as a bat without them,” in that whiney voice I used to hate.

“Did the grownups believe you?”

“Well his mother sure wasn’t going to,” I said. “So I told him to go back outside. I’d go to his door and hold up fingers for him and he could tell everybody how many. He went out. I went down the hall to his door. I waited a couple of minutes, and then hollered for him to come back in.”

“I don’t get it,” Monte said. “Could he see your fingers?”
“Don’t really know,” I admitted. “When he came back in and his mom saw how fogged up his glasses were, she knew he couldn’t have seen a thing. So she knew he was lying about having them on and seeing a thief. When he took them off he couldn’t see much at that distance, so either way, he couldn’t have seen a scar on a guy’s face.”

Communications Breakdown

2006-07-15T13:08:00.000-05:00

The conversation started, as so many do, with a communications breakdown between me and Monte, the young teenager I’ve been mentoring since I moved into my apartment in Southeast.

He came over to TV and popcorn with me and my girl Cindy. He had convinced me to try the new Blade series, and I agreed mostly because Blade and I wear the same Oakley sunglasses when we work. Cindy snuggled under my left arm. Instead of taking the recliner, Monte filled the far third of the sofa so he could reach the food. When the second commercial started, Monte hopped to his feet, yelled, “Fives,” and sprinted for the bathroom.

“Fives?” I ask.

Cindy smiled up at me. “He means his seat. He’s reserving it for five minutes while he’s gone.”

When Monte got back I commented, “When I was a kid I’d have called dibs on the seat.”

“Dib?” Monte asked. “The little guy in the Invader Zim ‘toon?”

Cindy was in hysterics. “You boys are so out of sync in the slang department. Hannibal you need to catch up or soon you won’t be able to talk to anyone on the street, or at least not anyone under twenty-one.”

“You up to date, huh Cindy?” Monte asked. I could hear the skepticism in his voice. “What would you do if I said your dad was zaback?”

“Slap the crap out of you,” she said. “Even if it is kind of true.” When I raised an eyebrow she told me, “He’s saying my pop is fat, old and bald. It’s the kind of thing a B-funk would say.”

“Yo!” That almost brought Monte to his feet.

“I’m going to guess that was insulting,” I said through a mouthful of popcorn, “but what the hell is a B-funk?”

Monte looked at Cindy, then at me. “Hard to say without... you know... you don’t like me to curse.”

Cindy sat up straighter, straightened her shoulders and pressed her lips together. Her eyes went up and to the left while she assembled her words. I had to pause the TIVO, not wanting to miss another vampire getting ashed.

“Without profanity,” she finally said, accepting the challenge, “A B-funk would be a nonsense-talking, sexually confused, douche-loving, Jimmy Page worshipping, cheap, gullible, lying sack of target property who thinks he is a trainspotter, claims he is a 'casual gamer,' and is very, very lonely. What do you think, Monte?”

“Whoa. I think you just about covered it, girl.” He raised his palm to accept her high five. “I never knew you were so up on the street talk.”

“I like to stay plugged in,” Cindy said, aiming an index finger at Monte. “That’s how come I was the only one who got it when we caught you and your buddy talking the other day about gaming shorty for some P9.”

“That was him, not me,” Monte said, but it was the first time I’d ever seen him blush and his eyes flashed to me to confirm that the code was intact.

“P9?” I looked only at Cindy, who kissed my cheek and sat back in her corner.

“You need to at least know a little of how the young folks talk today, handsome. I suggest you check out urbandictionary.com. But right now, can we get back to the vampire slaying?”

We did. But the next day I did check out www.urbandictionary.com because I think every adult needs to be able to communicate with teenagers. Of course, that led to another long conversation between me and Monte. As it turns out, a shorty is no longer a cigarette, and P9 isn’t always a handgun.

Independence Day STILL means freedom

2006-07-01T19:34:00.000-05:00

I’ve posted my feelings here before about the war on terrorism even though I’m not a counter-terrorism expert. I feel like I can spout off because my resume says patrolman and police detective and Secret Service special agent and I figure I know a little about law enforcement. And yeah, I figure this to be more a law enforcement issue than a military issue.

Reading about the FBI's capture in Florida of the would-be al Qaeda bombers of the Sears Tower a couple of weeks ago got me thinking about this whole controversy over civil liberty - versus - national security. Some of my neighbors are afraid that Bush and Cheney and the boys are crazy and they’re willing to do anything even put a tap on every phone in the country, to catch the bad guys. But trust me, the FBI is only maintaining surveillance on people when there’s what we call a "criminal predicate." For you non-law enforcement types, that means there’s information to establish sufficient facts to give an investigator reasonable suspicion that a particular individual is a serious threat. In other words, despite the patriot act, probable cause is still the gold standard for watching. That’s the way us law enforcement types are trained from jump street, and we can’t just blow it off. So, unless you’re doing something shady, nobody wants to know what you’re talking about.

Of course, it’s more of a challenge now. Plain old crooks start small and move up and eventually work their way into a police database. But the recruits to Islamic fanaticism, suicide bombers and such, are mostly first-timers. And the smart ones, the leaders, fly below the radar of probable cause, below the threshold for FBI curiosity. That’s why we have conspiracy laws. Because this is really organized crime we’re talking about.

Now, anybody who knows me knows I support the current national leadership. But from the beginning I’ve disagreed on one big point. We need to define the enemy. We need to stop fighting “terrorism” and declare open season on “terrorists.” We need to define the threat, and use all the stuff we already have that was designed to fight the Mafia, and to fight communists. Because we are a tolerant, freedom loving people, nobody wants to say out loud that our enemies are Islamic terrorist, but folks, that’s who’s threatening us. And if you don’t narrow it down like that, people are justified in thinking the surveillance powers are too broad. But we need to make it clear that we aren’t tapping everybody’s phones, and beyond that, that wiretaps on revolutionary Islamic fanatics is not the same as wiretaps on patriotic citizens, war protestors or civil rights workers - all mistakes that I know were made in the past.

One other thing: nobody is really LISTENING to these conversations anyway. It’s not like a couple of cops with headphones are sitting in a hotel listening to the people in the next room. Actually, we’re talking about computers applying transaction analytics to telephone traffic, looking for patterns that add up to probable terrorist activity. You don’t want to make that list? Quit calling your cousin in Syria asking him where you should send money.

When I was growing up in Berlin the Polizei never had a problem stopping a fight, because everybody believed they were crazy and would do whatever it took. I never saw it happen, but they maintained that image and it kept them from having to bust too many heads. Now, if the bad guys slow down and back off because they think Bush and Cheney and the boys are like the German polizei, well, maybe I don’t want to convince them otherwise.

Shoes don't grow on trees

2006-06-10T08:36:00.000-05:00

I had promised to let Monte embarrass me on the basketball court again after the workday. Teenagers need their opportunities to prove their superiority over their betters I suppose. Anyway I was hanging up my suit which, I guess, seemed an odd enough action that he wandered in to watch, all the time talking smack - and we hadn’t even left for the court yet.

It wasn’t until I put my shoes away that his mouth slowed down. He pulled out a pair I hadn’t worn that day and asked, “What in the world are these things?”

“Shoes?”

“No, dude. These wooden feet inside the shoes.”

“Oh.” I stopped a smart remark on its way out of my mouth because I realized he was serious. And I saw a teachable moment on the horizon and thought there might be a lesson here for the boy. “Those are shoe trees.”

“Nothing about this thing looks like a tree,” Monte said, pulling one out of my black oxford. “It looks like a wooden foot with no toes. What’s the point of putting something in your shoe?”

“I’m not sure why they’re called shoe trees,” I said. “Shoes sure don’t grow on them. But they’re made out of trees. These are cedar. They keep the leather the right shape, and they absorb the sweat inside the shoe so the moisture doesn’t degrade the leather.”

Monte rolled his eyes. “What’s the point? I mean it’s just a pair of shoes. It ain’t even your only pair.”

“The point isn’t the shoe,” I said, returning to the living room. “It’s about stewardship. The same reason your grandmother tries to get you to hang up your clothes when you take them off.”

“She’s just being a pain, making rules to be making rules,” he said, but I knew Monte knew better. In the time it took me to tie my sneakers he was able to mull it over and ask, “What’s stewardship?”

“It means, I don’t know, taking care of stuff I guess. Yeah. Taking care of stuff is one of the most important habits a man can get into. That’s what your grandmother is trying to teach you.”

He stood at the door, bouncing the ball. “She just don’t want to have to get new stuff.”

“There’s more to it than that, buddy,” I told him, leading him out into the sunshine. “Being a man means taking care of stuff. Not just your clothes, but everything. Look around you. Men, real men, learn about the value of things early. They learn to take care of their books. Then they learn to take care of their bikes. They learn to take care of their teeth. When they grow up they’re in the habit and they take care of their cars. They take care of their lawns. They take care of their kids.”

I stopped as we came within sight of the courts. I had taken my analogy too far. Monte was one of those kids whose father wasn’t man enough to take care of him. He ran off when Monte was just a baby. When they looked for a pickup game, half the boys on their teams would be in the same boat. I figured I had fumbled the ball.

But then Monte stopped at the fence surrounding the court. He held onto it with one hand, staring forward. I waited.

“So, you’re saying that the shoe tree is just a way of saying you give a fuck.”
I didn’t even care about the language. I just put a hand on his shoulder. “That’s right, Monte. A man gives a fuck about everything he’s in charge of. That’s what men do. Men care.”

A chilling death

2006-05-27T12:30:00.000-05:00

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Orson Rissik asked in a low tone.

I pushed my dark glasses up my nose. "Come on, Orson. You said I could bring the kid to a crime scene."

"Yeah," Rissik said, pacing across the garage, "but I didn't think you'd bring him to a grisly murder."

Rissik was a chief of detectives in Fairfax County, Virginia. As a private detective I had helped him with enough cases to have built up some capital. I was spending some of it on Monte, the neighborhood boy I was sort of mentoring. Monte lives with his grandmother but growing up in Southeast DC I just figure he needs a strong male influence in his life.

"Relax, man, he won't touch anything." I hopped up to sit on the chest freezer at the clean end. "And Saturday morning means no reporters for a while. Besides, maybe he can help. He watches all those forensic shows on TV."

I could see that Monte was as excited as any young teenager would be to be allowed behind the yellow tape. He was probably excited anyway to be out in Fairfax County where, unlike our neighborhood in the District, people live in houses that have attached garages. His eyes bounced around the flurry of quiet activity, and I tried to follow his focus. The classic two-seater Thunderbird with its hood raised. The dirty rag lying beside an oil can and the oil that had run from it onto the floor. The blood smear on the corner of the freezer opposite from where I was sitting. The dead man on the floor, face up, his head lying on a splotch of red. And the medical examiner kneeling beside the corpse, who smiled up at Monte as he prepared to stab the body with what looked like an overgrown meat thermometer.

I’m not a teenager, so I had no interest in seeing that operation. I turned my attention back to Rissik and the tall blonde man facing him. He wore a jogging suit and expensive running shoes which helped him to bounce from one foot to the other without making any noise. This guy was the only person in the garage, aside from Monte, who didn't look like a cop.

“Witness?”

“Found the body,” Rissik replied. “George Taylor, meet Hannibal Jones. He consults with the department from time to time.”

I tried for a comforting smile at Taylor. “So you had the bad luck to be the first person to see your friend dead, eh?”

“Quinn had asked me to come over and help him work on the car this morning,” Taylor said.

“Quinn Donnally,” Rissik added. “Otherwise known as the deceased.”

“That must have been an ugly surprise,” I said, casting my eyes back toward the body and trying to imagine the impact of walking in on the corpse of a man I knew.

“It was awful,” Taylor said, visibly shaken. He wiped his face with a big, athletic hand. I dropped back to my feet.

“Is that blood on your sleeve?”

Taylor looked at the red splotch on his arm, his eyes widening. “Oh God. When I came in I saw the blood over there on the freezer, but I thought maybe Quinn was just knocked out. So I checked him over but there was no pulse. I must have gotten the blood on my shirt when I was checking him out. How… how long was he lying there?”

We all turned around then and, like Monte, our attention went to the medical examiner. He whispered to Monte, who turned with pride to the assembled group.

“Liver temperature indicates a time of death twelve hours ago.”

Taylor’s eyes flashed left and right. “Twelve? That means he died last night while I was drinking and dancing like an idiot at Cheryl’s birthday party. She’ll be devastated. If only Quinn had accepted her invitation.”

I leaned back against the freezer, arms crossed. I kind of thought I knew what would happen next, and just wanted to see how Rissik handled it. He’s pretty good for a cop, but this time he surprised me.

“All right, Mr. Taylor,” Rissik said. “I can see you’re pretty distraught. You can go home now. We’ll take it from here.”

I spoke before I had time to think. “Orson, you’re kidding right? You’re cutting him loose?”

Rissik put on his stubborn bull face. “And why not? He’s a friend of the deceased. He’s upset. He’s got an easily verified alibi for the time of death. Why in hell should I hold him?”

I ignored Rissik for a second and turned to Monte. “What do you say, little buddy? What’s wrong with this story?” I was disappointed by the blank look on Monte’s face. Hadn’t I taught him anything? With a heavy sigh I took Taylor’s wrist and held up his arm, pointing at the bloodstain.

“Back off, Hannibal,” Rissik said. “He told you he got blood on his sleeve when he checked his poor dead friend.”

I stared hard at Monte again, watching the wheels turn behind his eyes, mentally prompting him to show the cops something. After a few seconds I saw it happen. The lightbulb moment.

“It’s not right,” Monte said tentatively. “Mr. Taylor said he found the body this morning, what, an hour ago?” Rissik nodded. I waved to Monte to continue.

“If Mr. Donnally was already dead for twelve hours, then all the blood would have been dry. Dried blood wouldn’t get on Mr. Taylor’s sleeve like that.”

It was worth it to see Rissik’s mouth drop open. He hated to be made a fool of. But he wasn’t sure yet.

“Well, I’ll admit that looks kind of suspicious but if Donnally died more recently, what about the examiner’s time of death?”

“Please,” I said with a grimace. I looked from Rissik to the body, to the chest freezer, and back to Rissik. Monte picked it up right away, and slapped the medical examiner's arm.

"You've got to check inside the freezer for forensic evidence. Bet you find hair and other stuff from the dead guy. That’s how the killer brought the body temp down so fast."

"Gee, that would make you wonder why the deceased would take a nap in there," I told Rissik. "Then you can ask Taylor here what his beef was with his friend here, and why he went to such lengths to fix up such a sloppy alibi."

Then I gave Monte a wink. He didn’t need words. It’s like that between us. He knew I was proud, and was thinking that maybe I’d make an investigator out of him someday.

"THE POKER GAME" GAME

2006-04-30T06:33:00.000-05:00

We were sitting in my living room playing TiVO catch-up when Monte came in. It’s true that Cindy and I watch way too much television. I enjoy all of the detective shows, mostly to pick them apart, and I’ve hooked her too. But on weeks when I have a hot case all our favorites end up on the TiVO to be digested marathon-style on Saturday. Monte often joins us, and he’s developing quite the brain for mysteries.

While he was watching a fresh bag of popcorn in the microwave, Cindy and I also started a new game we came up with. It grew out of our ideas about out favorite shows crossing over, and seems to have taken on a life of its own. “Abby and Cloe and Garcia, of course,” I said, “but who else?” “And Marshall,” Cindy said, warming to the topic. “But we’re still short a player.” “What are you guys talking about?” Monte asked, plopping onto the giant pillow Cindy bought me. It sits in front of the sofa and serves as extra seating. Monte never sat on the couch when we were both there. “It’s a poker game,” Cindy explained, pausing the recorded showing of Alias. “People only play poker with people they have something in common with, and we’re deciding who would be playing together.” “Cindy thinks that Abby Sciuto on NCIS would invite Cloe O’Brien from 24 to a game to get her to loosen up a bit. Cloe’s wound a little too tight. They’re both kind of geeks, but the action starts could never find the bad guys, let alone beat them, without Abby and Cloe. So I figure they’d also invite Garcia from Criminal Minds since she’s the same kind of character. And I added Marshall Flinkman from Alias who is the backup geek on that show. But then we were stuck for a fifth player who fit in with that crowd.” Cindy hit play, and we started to get back into the show. Less than a minute later, after he scooped out a big handful of popcorn and handed me the bowl, Monte said, “Cloe.” “We said Cloe,” I reminded him. “No, not bitchy Cloe. Cutie Cloe. Cloe Sullivan from Smallville.” Cindy let the show roll right through a commercial and I leaned over to give Monte a high-five. “You hit it buddy, she’s the perfect fit with that group.” “He’s good at this,” Cindy said, popping a kernel into her mouth. She always eats popcorn one piece at a time.

“Maybe he can complete the killer girls table.” “Who you got?” Monte asked, leaning back against the sofa. “Well, we figure Sydney Bristoe – Alias again, gets invited to the regular poker game hosted by Emma Peale from the old Avengers show. At this point, Mrs. Peale is kind of a mother figure to her and some others.” “I threw in that Sydney would drop her baby off at the same child care place as The Bride.” Monte was blank for a second, but then lit up. “Oh, yeah, the girl from the Kill Bill movies.” “Right,” Cindy said. “And they’d meet up with La Femme Nikita at the game. Now there would be a lot of shop talk around that table, all about how to kill people who get in your way.” “So the question is, who is qualified to sit in the fifth chair at that poker game?” Well, we watched the rest of that episode of Alias and several more shows without coming up with an answer we were all happy with. So, Cindy decided that I should post all this on my blog and let whoever is bored enough to read this stuff offer an answer. We figure somebody as addicted to TV as we are will come up with a good fifth player. Any takers?

Follow the Money

2006-04-15T09:07:00.000-05:00

One of my duties as Cindy’s man is to take her to brunch with a bunch of other lawyers every so often. They’re mostly women and they like this place called the Banana Cafe that has a piano playing and all-you-can-eat Cuban and Puerto Rican food. My purpose, naturally, is to demonstrate to the girls that Cindy has a steady guy, and I don’t mind her using me as a piece of jewelry because you can bet I wear her as an accessory when I’m out with the guys and sometimes when I meet with clients.

The thing is, I don’t generally have much to add to the conversation. Last week, though, Cindy mentioned my Secret Service experience and one of the gals asked my views on dealing with terrorism. Now I usually work on much smaller problems, but I told them that I did learn one important thing in government service that I apply to my work as a private detective. The Secret Service belongs to the Treasury Department so I learned that to catch the bad guys, you follow the money. I think maybe that applies to terrorists too. I think Washington ought to be working hard to make sure the global financial system is secured against terrorist financing.

Terrorism is driven by two engines: hate and money. Hatred drove those planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on September 11. But it couldn’t have happened without the financial network that Osama bin Laden had set up. I don’t think we can stop the hatred, but if we do it right maybe we can stop the cash flow.

I think the U.S. and her allies have been trying hard to collect and analyze all the data available to track and disrupt the activities of terrorists. But financial intelligence is as hard to gather as it is valuable.

I think financial officials around the world are starting to recognize how important their role is in fighting terrorism. We can’t let people who finance terrorism feel that their money is safe. We need to chase them as hard as we chase the guys making bombs and pointing guns.

Organizations like al Qaeda have to raise, move and store lots of money in order to recruit, train and pay their fighters, support their families, buy fake documents and carry out attacks. When terrorists move money through the banking systems, they expose themselves. There are valuable clues hidden in the huge number of financial transactions that move through our financial system every day that might mean the difference between a successful investigation and a dead end. Things like an address that might link two conspirators. Following the money to identify terrorists and sympathizers is pretty much invisible to the public, but it can be a powerful tool in the fight against terrorist groups.

Did you know my old pals over at Treasury have an Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence? It’s there to both protect the financial system and disrupt the networks that support terrorists and other national security threats. Even though the Secret Service was created to fight counterfeiting, Treasury has never had a fully functional intelligence office before, and this one’s staffed by expert analysts focused on the financial networks of terrorists and other threats to our national security.

The detectives at Treasury work with the financial sector to identify illicit activity and exclude it from the channels of legitimate business. They go through all available financial information, from suspicious activity reports and subpoenas and other filings institutions make under the Bank Secrecy Act, to track and disrupt terrorist money flow. That’s how they’ve been able to shut down corrupt charities and expose terrorist financiers. And that has a deterrent effect on future potential donors to terrorist causes.
They also help other law enforcement agencies and the intelligence community by sharing financial data that can help them "connect the dots."

What’s missing in all this is, they need to cooperate better with foreign governments. I know the Canadians and Australians are also financial data to map and disrupt terrorist financing networks just like we are. Finance ministries in lots of countries are working the national, security front. Getting together would multiply our effectiveness. If we can stay aggressive in following the money, I think we can cut the terrorists off at the knees.

A Lucky Man

2006-04-02T06:59:00.000-05:00

Hello. My name is Cindy Santiago and Hannibal has been my man long enough to allow me to make an occasional entry into his web log. He says he doesn’t care about this blog at all, but I know that he is possessive about it, as he is about everything that reflects on him. Still, we lawyers have a way of persuading people to allow us to do those things we truly want to do.

I wanted to make an entry about last Sunday’s dinner, an entry I know Hannibal never would. I had prepared a simple meal of paella and invited Mother Washington and her grandson Monte to join us. After the blessing Hannibal followed a ritual I have observed. He tasted his food, thoroughly chewed and swallowed that first bite, and then said, “This is delicious, baby. Thank you.”

“Why you always got to do that?” Monte asked him. I suppose it was a teenage thing to ask. Mother Washington was about to land on the boy like a ton of bricks but Hannibal just held up his palm to still her.

“Never forget to be grateful, Monte,” Hannibal said. “You can’t ever earn all that you get.”

“That’s why you're saying thank you all the time? Cause it’s more than you deserve?”

Hannibal smiled. “I don’t ever want to lose sight of the fact that I’m a lucky man.”

That's what he said: "I'm a lucky man." But that's my Hannibal. Gratitude is a big thing with him. He'd hate my using this term but the fact is that he is very self aware. By that I mean that he is so aware of his flaws and weaknesses that I swear he feels as if he's gotten away with something whenever he receives the smallest blessing.

Monte is growing up in a world full of presumption, of people feeling that they are entitled to something. But for Hannibal, I think humility blocks all that out. He once told me that one of his greatest heroes was Lou Gehrig who, when cursed with a fatal disease, stood publicly to declare how lucky he was to have had the life and career he had.

I know that, in secret, Hannibal has sent notes to teachers who helped Monte succeed in school. And I've heard him tell Monte that he needed to go with his Grandmother to church, not to hear a sermon, but to give thanks. I really hope that Monte understands the lesson Hannibal is trying to teach him. A good man is always thankful.

Hannibal once told me that his father was raised in the South. He died in Vietnam when Hannibal was quite young, but he has said that one of his strongest memories of his dad was of his saying, "I'm beholden to you," when someone did him a favor, or saying, "Much obliged." I think that's why Hannibal says "Thank you" all the time.

It's old fashioned. But it's part of what makes you feel that Hannibal Jones will help you if a disaster strikes in your life.

Falling For It - A mini mystery

2006-02-26T14:19:00.000-05:00

Hannibal Jones knew that John and Alana Graham intended to move into his neighborhood. He had met the young professional African American couple twice. The first time was when they first came to look at the rundown building two blocks from his own place. He spoke with them again three weeks later after they had bought the house and they were exploring their new acquisition. As he remembered it, they had found the place in worse condition than it appeared during their original exploration, and they were a bit disheartened by the amount of work it would take to make the place livable. They had talked about how an urban renovation property can look like more of a bargain than it really is.

With only those two meetings behind them, Hannibal was surprised to be the first person John called when tragedy struck on a sunny Saturday afternoon. But Hannibal was used to being called whenever trouble arose, so he grabbed Cindy’s hand and they jogged to the Graham house.

“This damned place absorbed every penny we had,” John said, sitting near the base of the stairs when they walked in, “and now it has taken her as well.”

“Where’s Alana?” Cindy asked. John pointed up the stairs.

Hannibal remembered the three rooms at the top of the stairs. Two were usable, but in the third the floor had been so rotted that it had fallen away completely from the door to half way across the room.

Hannibal trudged up the narrow stairs, with Cindy and John close behind. At the top he was greeted by a note pinned to the door of the floorless room. It appeared to be written in haste, and simply said, “I’m sorry, it’s all just too much for me.” He turned to John.

“How long has this been here?”

“I don’t know,” John said, his lower lip quivering. “Alana came out early this morning, supposedly to work on the house. I came later to join her. She didn’t answer my shouts so I started looking around. When I got up here I found that note hanging there. I opened the door, and looked down and…”

Grief seemed to have choked off John’s words, so Hannibal nodded and opened the door. The smell of wet, rotted wood burst forward. Staring down into the darkness he thought he saw a form two stories below in the cellar. Knowing there was no electricity in the house he had brought a flashlight. Directing the beam down into the cavernous space, he stared until a female form came into focus. Behind him Cindy whispered, “Madre de Dios.”

“I knew she was depressed,” John said. “We were on the verge of bankruptcy because of this house. But I can’t believe she would kill herself.”

“Nor can I,” Hannibal said. “But then, I can barely believe that you would kill her.”

“Hannibal!” Cindy said as John shrank back against the opposite wall.

Hannibal turned to face John. “Is this the story you intend to give to the police? You came up the stairs, read this note, opened the door and found your wife dead at the bottom of a fall into the basement?”

“It’s the truth,” John stammered. “Why won’t you believe me?”

Hannibal had met so many cold blooded men in his life that he thought they shouldn’t surprise him anymore, but they still did. Clenching his teeth, he gathered John’s shirt in both hands and spun him around so that his back was to the space two stories above his wife’s body. John’s breathing pushed toward hyperventilation as Hannibal leaned him back over the empty space and one of his feet dangled in the air.

“Hannibal, what are you doing?” Cindy asked. Her man kept his eyes on John’s, and John’s eyes were pleading.

“Please.” John’s words were frantic. “Please don’t drop me.”

“I’ll pull you back into the hall after you answer one question, stupid,” Hannibal said through his clenched teeth. “Just where was Alana standing when she turned around to close this door?”

Protecting our Nation - The Human Touch

2006-02-13T20:25:00.000-05:00

There’s been a lot of talk about protecting our infrastructure in this country from terrorist attack, and this is one subject I feel qualified to talk about. When I was a special agent for the U.S. Secret Service I had the privilege of being posted to the protective service division. My teammates and I protected the safety of senior government officials. We used the latest technology of course, but the primary way we kept those people safe was with well-trained, alert, dedicated human beings.

Now I support the massive effort the President has put into chasing terrorists all over the world, and despite the protests, a terrorist-surveillance program to catch the international communications of suspected al-Qaeda operatives is a great idea. Trust me, the guys doing wire taps don’t have time to listen to your petty private chatter. But we also need a plan for fighting them here, because here is where they want to hurt us. We need to take action right away, especially to protect our trains and ports.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, just anybody who knows about personal protection. Every day, millions of us go through train stations like our Metro here in the District. Not to mention the rail tankers full of chlorine gas that roll through neighborhoods, unguarded. Take one of those out in a city, and you could kill a hundred thousand people in one shot. It’s not hard to upgrade rail and transit security. You need more patrol cops, maybe some bomb-sniffing dogs, and the same things you do to make your home secure: good fences, better lighting and a few security cameras. We’ll need higher tech measures to protect other obvious targets of choice - chemical plants, the electricity grid and important computer networks. But any big company knows how to do that.

We could solve some other serious shortcomings with a little planning and focus. For example, local emergency personnel - fire departments, police and rescue units - still can’t communicate with each other or with federal organizations. First responders have to be able to talk to each other and to their higher headquarters if things suddenly get hot. Terrorist watch lists need to be consolidated. And while we check people getting on planes, nobody is checking their baggage for explosives. This is a case of overlooking the obvious.

And like I said about Secret Service work, the best protection is to have lots of well-trained and alert people in place. That means lots more police. Of course that will cost money, but the truth is, an armored care didn’t save the Vice President’s life when I was on duty, it was a careful man pushing him to the ground. By the same token, it won’t be security cameras or facial recognition software that stops the next terrorist attack; it will be some local cop who happens to be in the right place at the right time, paying attention. That’s the kind of protection we give the President. Doesn’t every citizen deserve the same level of safety?

Admiring the road you're on

2006-01-29T20:12:00.000-05:00

We were stuck in traffic when I said it. There I sat on the verge of crossing the Woodrow Wilson Bridge with cars lined up ahead and behind as far as I could see and one very pissed off Cuban princess in the bucket seat beside me. And when I said it, it only jacked her irritation to the next level.

All I said was, “It’s really something.”

“What is with you?” Cindy said, staring at me as if I had some disease she couldn’t pronounce. “We’re sitting still in a damned black metal box when we should be going sixty miles an hour toward the luncheon we’re already late for and you just sit there with that stupid half-ass grin on your face. What the hell could there be here that’s really something?”

My woman is beautiful, talented and pretty damn smart, but some days she just doesn’t get it. “I was checking out the new construction that’s about to open and I was just thinking it’s a hell of a thing.”

“What, construction?”

“No, babe. The whole interstate highway system. It’s really, kind of an engineering marvel. I mean, look around you. Could you work the architecture of a cloverleaf like that?”

If this was an old time movie, Cindy would have dragged her palm down across her face. “I don’t believe this. We’re stuck here wasting an hour of our lives to travel 2 feet and you’re admiring the frickin’ road.”

I don’t know where she picked up that word, or why she thinks that “fricking” somehow sounds better than the word it replaces. I shook my head and put a hand on her knee. “You know what, babe. These days, everybody whines too much. I ain’t got time for that crap. You have got to take the aerial view. Sure, sitting here is a drag, but it’ll pass.”

“So, what, you’re saying that the fact that crap like this happens don’t matter?” It was abrasive, as always, but her face told me she was trying to understand where I was coming from. And that lock of hair that hangs across her right eye is so cute.

“Let me tell you what being a detective prying into people’s problems has taught me. It’s taught me that people’s troubles are small. But the world is big. It’s big and interesting and, given enough time, it’s forgiving.”

That got her smiling and she nodded slowly. We were quiet for a while. She looked out the window at the guy in the next car who was gritting his teeth. Then she looked back at me.

“Too bad Monte isn’t here,” she said. “You know how he describes you? He says you’re grumpy all the time. But that’s just on the outside. Deep down you’re an optimist, aren’t you?”

“Got to be in my business, sugar. I’ll tell you what I tell Monte. I’m a man. So I don’t worry. Whatever happens, I’ll deal. Ever see Lawrence of Arabia?”

“Yeah.”

“They were at war, for God’s sake. But when Lawrence attacked the Germans, he could still admire how disciplined they were, how they took positions and fired in order, even in retreat. No whining, no hesitation but not rushed either.”

“So your message is, admire your enemy?”

I let out a sigh, but kept my cool. “The message is, admire what’s good. Admire quality. Like I can notice how smooth the Black Beauty idles even when we’ve been sitting here an hour.”

“You named the car,” Cindy said under her breath. I chose to ignore her.

“It could be the grain in a piece of wood, or the feel of a suit when it fits just right. Or how about when you’re in court. What if the other guy presents his case just right? For me, I can admire a perfect hook shot, even if it means I lose on the courts.”

“Yeah, I can get that. I mean admiring the opponent when he gets closer to perfect. It can be hard some days, but I can see it.”

“Well, remember when I told Monte one day that it’s the hard that makes it good?”

Cindy smiled at the memory. “Yeah, I think you were painting those damned shutters.”
“Right. Well, it applies to this too. The fact is, disrespect is easy. It’s a lot harder to give a good performance its props. Just like getting pissed off at traffic is easy. The hard road is to admire the road you’re on.”

Shadow - A mystery

2006-01-15T06:33:00.000-05:00

I’ve known Detective Orson Rissik since what the newspapers called the Blood and Bone case, so when he asked me what I was doing in the Fairfax Municipal Building that morning I just told him straight up. One of the kids from my neighborhood gets shot in the chest, a young black kid whose family I’ve known since I moved in there, I check it out.

“But it happened down here in my city,” Rissik said, focusing his dangerous blue eyes on me. “He came all the way to Fairfax to pull a B and E. One of my boys caught him just before dawn, he ran and the cop gave chase. He surprised the cop, who over-reacted. A tragedy but it was a righteous shoot.”

Rissik always looked stern, even when he was trying to be reasonable. But I was in no mood to let him shine me on. “Marty wasn’t but 18. His mother woke me up to tell me her only son was killed by a cop. I’m supposed to just blow her off?”

Rissik scratched at his head under that haircut that looked like he never left the Marines Corps. I knew he got it. We both had jobs to do. “Alright Jones, what do you need to do for her?”

“Let me talk to your man, hear the story first hand. That way I’ve got something to take back to the grieving family.”

* * *

In the break room Rissik introduced me to Paul Brown, a blonde, willowy, twenty-something patrolman whose new career in law enforcement had already crashed and burned. The bags under his eyes and slight coffee shake told me he hadn’t adjusted to the night shift yet. The building was an anthill of frantic activity outside this room, but there between the coffee maker and the food machine the three of us sat on plastic chairs in an island of calm, maybe more like the eye of a hurricane.

“I feel awful about this,” Brown said over the edge of a cup of coffee. “Most guys go years without every pulling their weapon. Please tell the family how very sorry I am.”

I remember being a rookie cop. Life can come at you fast. “I’m not here to pass judgment, officer,” I told him. “Just tell me what happened so I can at least offer some explanation to Marty’s mama.”

Brown looked at the wall as if he was staring at an ugly memory. Or he could have been just getting his story together. When he finally did speak, he addressed Rissik.

“I was on my way back to base, winding up my patrol out in the Greenway Hills area. I stopped at a light over by Daniels Run Park. I had the window down, trying to stay alert, you know? And I heard what sounded like glass breaking. I thought I saw movement outside a nearby house so I drove up into the driveway.”

“You were driving alone?” I asked.

“Budget cuts,” Rissik said.

“I shut off the car, but as I opened the door I saw this guy come charging around the garage. He saw me and kind of stopped for a minute. He had a small bag in one hand and what I thought could be a firearm in the other. He sure looked like he didn’t belong there. I ordered him to stop, but instead he took off. I chased him into their yard. And… at this point, I drew my service weapon.”

I was starting to get the picture. “Was still dark when you ran after him.”

“The sun was just coming up. That was bad, because it was a clear morning and he was running east. The yard backed to woods, and here I was, chasing a suspect and squinting into the sun.”

I got up for more coffee. Over my shoulder I said, “Marty was pretty fast. I’m surprised you didn’t lose him.”

“I did for a while,” Brown said. “But he kept charging east and I picked up his trail again and tracked him into another yard. This one had a high fence and I thought maybe I had him cornered. I used a storage shed for cover, peeking around the side with my weapon pointed forward, but with the sun in my eyes like that it was hard to see and I was getting real nervous. I called out for him to come out where I could see him.”

“And did he? I would have expected Marty to surrender without a fight.”

Brown looked at his shoes. He couldn’t even meet Rissik’s eyes now. “Sir, I was standing there with my weapon on line waiting for a response and it was just silence. No birds, no squirrel sounds, just silence, you know? I was jumpy and tired and trying to stay focused. So when I saw this shadow come up behind me I panicked. I was sure the thief had somehow gotten the drop on me. I turned and fired. The kid went down, but he turned out to be unarmed.”

I paced over to the door. My jaw was tight, but I didn’t know for sure if it would be a mistake to try to break this kid down. But I had history with Rissik and decided to trust my instincts about him. When I turned I was looking at Rissik standing beyond Brown, still looking sympathetic. He spoke first.

“It’s a hell of a thing,” he began, but I cut him off.

“That’s your story, Brown? That’s the story he gave you, Detective? It’s Bullshit, you know.”

Rissik was across the room at me. “You’ve been there Jones. I expected you to have more heart.”

I help up my hand. “Weren’t you listening? That story won’t hold together.”

“What are you implying?” Brown said, finally finding his righteous indignation, albeit a little too late.

Rissik isn’t a genius but he is a good cop. So I just stood still and watched him go over the morning again in his mind. When his eyes widened, I saw that he heard it at last. Instead of saying another word to me or even to Brown he walked past me to the door and leaned out.

“Hey, Sergeant. Come in here a minute. I need you to take a new statement from Brown here.” Then he turned to me. “Do you trust me?”

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“Then head on home. This is an internal matter. But you can tell your friends that justice will be done. I promise you that.”

Brown jumped up, starting to sweat. “What’s going on? Chief, you said it was a good shoot. And you, Jones, you said you used to be a cop. Maybe you were on the street too long ago to remember what it’s like.”
It wasn’t worth it. I grabbed the doorknob to leave, but I wanted him to know how bad a liar he was. “It was a few years ago, kid. But I’ve been out there long enough to know that shadows can’t come up behind you when you’re staring into the sun. If you’re facing the sun, all the shadows fall in the other direction.”

A little more peace on earth

2005-12-31T09:04:00.000-05:00

One of the good things left over form my Secret Service days is the unusual distribution lists I’m still on. I was sitting in my sofa with my feet up on the coffee table looking though some of the security and anti-terrorist newsletters when Cindy made her comment.

“The New Year always makes me think of peace on earth, and good will toward men, but I swear the world just seems like a more dangerous place every year.”

“Actually I think crime stats are down in The District this year.”

“I don’t just mean locally,” she said. When she got to her feet I knew she was actually climbing up on a soapbox. “I mean the whole world. I mean the slaughter in Darfur. Terrorists in Bali. Insurgents trying to overthrow the government in Thailand and a dozen other countries. I’m talking about Iraq getting ready to head into a civil war, thanks to us.”

That got my attention. “Thanks to US? You’re going to blame that tribal bullshit on US? Baby the U.S. is the cure over there, not the problem.”

“Didn’t mean to attack your hero, the great Dubya,” she said, dropping into my recliner. “But you have to admit, it gets worse every year.”

Well that got me thinking about the stuff I’d just been reading. “Actually, hon, despite what you see in the press, it’s not really true. The intel teams that track that kind of thing report that since the end of the Cold War, armed conflict and political violence have decreased. The world is really a more peaceful place than it was.”

She looked at me with that lawyer’s face she gets sometimes. “Well, if that’s true, why hasn’t this change gotten any attention?”

I took a long slow sip of my coffee then. I didn’t want to attack the press. Again. But there didn’t seem to be any way around it. “Baby, I hate to say it but the press just pays a lot more attention to wars that start than to those that end. And there’s no central source. I mean, no international agency collects global info on political violence. There are some good people trying though. Check this out.”

I tossed her a copy of the Human Security Report http://www.humansecurityreport.info/, an independent study funded by five countries that the Oxford University Press publishes. It’s a pretty good document because the authors collected a wide range of scholarly data that doesn’t get much publicity. They also check specially commissioned research. The result is a clear picture of global security that will surprise most people. It shows that after fifty years of growth, the number of armed conflicts started to fall in the early 1990s and has continued to do so. As she leafed through it I saw skepticism and hope fighting for dominance on her cute face.

“Wow. In 2003 there were 40 percent fewer conflicts than in 1992. Conflicts with 1,000 or more battle-deaths fell by 80 percent. Genocides dropped by 80 percent too. Of course, that’s the number of conflicts, not the number of people slaughtered, but still. Hannibal, honey, how do you account for this trend? I mean, it doesn’t make sense with what I see on the news.”

“You’re just more aware of the battles,” I told her. “I think the Cold War drove a lot of the conflicts after World War II. The U.S. and Russia did a lot of fighting by proxy. When they stopped, the U.N. finally stepped up and started doing something about global security. There are four times as many U.N. peacekeeping operations and missions today as there were before the Berlin Wall fell.”

“That’s interesting,” Cindy said, leaning back and crossing her arms. “So how do you explain the genocide in Rwanda, Srebrenica and the ongoing slaughter in Darfur? “

“Don’t misunderstand me, babe. There have been some horrible failures. But my point is that the successes don’t get the same publicity. What about the violence that was stopped in Namibia, El Salvador, Mozambique, Eastern Slovenia, East Timor, and probably a few more places I’ve forgotten?”

I had pulled those names from another Study I had lying there beside me. I tossed the study by the RAND Corporation http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG304/ to her. She just about caught it.

“That report says that diplomacy works. Half the peace agreements negotiated since World War II have been signed since the end of the Cold War. What do you think of that?”

“I think there’s going to be a war right in here if you throw another thing at me!” Cindy does this mad thing when she’s not. But then she stood up and walked over and gave me a kiss.

“Seriously lover, thank you.”

“What, for fighting with you on New Year’s Eve?”

“No,” she said. “Well, yes actually. I was on my way to being too bummed out to get my party on, but you made me realize that the world isn’t going to hell in as big a hand basket as I thought. And I guess, if you look around, there really is a lot more peace on earth than there was a few years ago.”

“Yeah,” I told her, “but there’s no doubt we could use a whole hell of a lot more.”

O' Christmas Tree

2005-12-19T06:11:00.000-05:00

One thing I’ve learned in my business is that different people get impressed by different things. Tonight I was standing outside on the Ellipse, that grassy patch south of the White House, in sub-freezing temperatures, watching a few white flakes floating down on us. I was just standing there in the crisp winter night air, staring at something that impresses me. Something my German-born mother never got to see. Something that is low tech, natural, old fashioned and just too cool.

Yeah, I’m awed by our Christmas tree. I mean the one that’s all our Christmas tree. The National Christmas Tree.

For 81 years we’ve had a National Christmas Tree in the District. In 1954 they added a "Pathway of Peace." The pathway is 56 smaller decorated trees planted so they surround the National Christmas Tree. They represent all 50 states, the five territories and of course D.C. Every year, sponsors from each state provide the decorations. If you look close, you can see each one is encased in a plastic globe to protect it from the weather. The tree and the pathway are lit up from sundown to 11 p.m. every day until New Years. It’s a great sight, an inspiring sight for this boy who grew up in Europe, and I’m not out here alone. Aside from us gawkers, there’s some group out here in the cold playing music every night.

Looking at that benign beauty, that tall, green, colorfully decorated and garishly illuminated evergreen symbol of life, I had to wonder just how anybody could find a Christmas tree offensive. I mean, sure if you saw it as a pagan symbol or a false idol we were worshiping, then maybe. But otherwise, I don’t get it. I don’t get offended by five pointed stars or crescents and moons. And as I think about it, that’s not even relevant, because those are actual religious symbols. To most of us in this country, a Christmas tree is just a decoration.

In Boston, they called theirs a holiday tree until the public outcry got so loud that the Mayor and Parks Commissioner had to back down. Theirs IS symbolic in a way, an annual gift from Nova Scotia to thank the people of Boston for their generosity after a munitions ship blew up in Halifax harbor during World War I. When the donor heard that the tree wouldn’t be called a Christmas tree any more, he threatened to shove the whole thing in the chipper. That seemed to have the right effect.

Out on the West Coast, where Santa Claus wears shorts half the time, Encinitas, California had a holiday parade last year, but this year it’s a Christmas parade again. It’s not in any way a religious parade. It’s all in fun. And people of all faiths are welcome to enjoy it, just like the forest giant I was staring up at tonight.

You see, the thing is, to most of the people I know Christmas isn’t a religious holiday anyway. It’s a holiday for kids, overloaded with American traditions borrowed from all the people who came here. Snowmen. Reindeer. Santa. Lights. All that stuff the Grinch stole, none of which involved a baby in a manger.
Of course, you’re free to worship on that day and put up a manger too as long as you don’t piss somebody off by sitting it in front of a mosque or synagogue. You don’t want to be snotty and push your religion up in anybody’s face. But when my mama talked about the Christmas spirit she sure as hell didn’t mean the Holy Ghost. She just meant the simple phrase she taught me in Germany: Peace on earth, good will toward men. That’s the Christmas spirit. Lots of Jews have it. Lots of Moslems have it. I even know a couple of atheists who have it. And standing there in front of our national peace symbol in sight of the President’s house I realized that if you want to change a simple tradition like putting up a Christmas tree, well, you ain’t got it.

Monte's First Date

2005-12-03T19:02:00.000-05:00

I pulled money out of the box in my bottom desk drawer and gave Monty a few extra dollars for the job he had done raking and bagging the leaves in front of the building. He did do a great job, but the reason for the extra money was, I knew this was how he was financing his first real date.

“It’s not a date,” Monte said, counting the bills again before shoving them into a pocket of his baggy jeans. “We’re just going to get some food and see a movie.”

Walking into my office behind Monte, hands thrust into the pockets of her car coat, Cindy asked, “Who’s paying?”

“I am, now.”

“Then it’s a date,” she said. “You know, you ought to get some tips from Hannibal about how to treat a lady. He’s not perfect, but he’s got the right idea.”

I was walking around the desk to head back outside. Cindy and I had our own lunch plans and I didn’t expect them to be delayed. But Monte surprised me.

“What about it, H?” he asked. “What do I need to know?”

I stopped, because this was a rare thing. Monte was a typical twelve-year-old African American youth. That means he generally thought he already knew it all, life was unfair, and nobody over 18 knew a damned thing. Actually, maybe that’s all twelve-year-olds. Anyhow, I try to school the boy on what he’ll need to know to be a good man. I think his grandmother appreciates the help in raising him. But for him to actually ASK for advice, well, this was a chance not to be passed up. Besides, I knew he was still young enough to be embarrassed by how much he didn’t know about women. Not that I know all about women now. I’m just old enough to not be embarrassed by my ignorance anymore. But I knew it was a big thing for Monte to ask what he did, especially in front of Cindy. I looked at her smirk, and thought a minute before just blurting out an answer.

“You know what, Monte? It’s not that hard to show a girl that you’re glad you have her for company, and to show her that you’re a right guy. In fact, I think there are only four things you need to do to get through a date right.”

“I can’t wait,” Cindy said. She knew she had thrown me a challenge, which is kind of what Puerto Rican girls do once in a while to keep their men on their toes. Just for that I decided she‘d be the demonstrator, and waved her toward me.

“Rule number one: help her with her coat.”

“Pull it off her?”

“No no, just… Cindy, turn around. Now, you’re behind her, like this, right. You just stick two fingers in here between her neck and the coat. Just hold it as she slides one arm out,” Cindy did so without any words from me, “and then hold it a little lower so she can get the other arm out.”

“You want to reverse it now?” Cindy asked.

“Sure. Two hands this time, nice and low so she can slip her hands into the arm holds. There.”

“Okay, I can do that. What else?”

“Rule number two: pull out her chair. Now don’t go crazy on this. You’re not the butler, for God’s sake. Keep it casual, no big deal.” I gripped the back of the chair with one hand and slid it back. Monte looked like he was about to protest but Cindy jumped in.

“Trust him,” Cindy said with a wise nod. “Girls take it as a sign of respect, not servitude. Okay, Hannibal, what would rule number three be?”

“When the girl goes to the bathroom… and she will… stand up when she gets back.”

“Not when she leaves?”

“That’s too much, Monte,” I said. “Just acknowledge her return. It’s like, ‘hey, I wasn’t sure you’d come back.’ You don’t even have to get up all the way, just get your butt off the seat, like a three-quarter rise.”

“You do that much, and the girl will think you’re the smoothest dude she’s ever seen,” Cindy said. Then she looked at me. “There’s more?”

“You tell me,” I said. “What does a guy have to do at the end of the date to make sure you see him again?”

Cindy seemed to turn her thoughts inward for a moment, but then I saw she had a light bulb moment. “You’re thinking of the tip.”

“Yep. Got to drop that extra twenty percent.”

“What does the girl care about that?” Monte asked. “I mean, I’m gonna pay the bill.”

“That’s expected,” Cindy said.

I looked hard at Monte to make sure I had his attention. “Take this as gospel, son. Every woman you take out starts out thinking you’re just treating her nice because you want something else.”

“Hannibal!” Cindy’s eyes were tossing daggers at me, but too bad.

“You know it’s true, girl. Monte, the woman will discount whatever you say to her or do for her if she doesn’t think it’s the real you. So you’ve got to be nice to others too. Any woman who’s been out there a while will tell you this: A guy who’s nice to her but mean to the waitress is really a mean guy.”

Monte and I looked at Cindy and, for once, she raised her hands and nodded. So I had two great surprises in the same day. Monte asked for advice. And Cindy admitted that I was right.

A Mini Mystery: The Final Clue

2005-11-27T16:04:00.000-05:00

“Hannibal, thank God you’re here,” Isaac said the second I stepped into the gym director’s office.

Isaac Ingersoll stood six foot four and weighed a good 325 pounds. It was weird to see a guy that size terrified. But when I walked in some of the terror left Isaac’s eyes. He looked like a man who had just been taken off death row. Looking down at the corpse on the floor, I hoped Isaac was right.
“Fascinating,” Police Detective Orson Rissik said. He was detaining everybody while they waited for the coroner. “The other three suspects called their lawyers, but Ingersoll called you, and you’re the first to arrive.”

“Maybe he figures he’s the one in trouble, detective.” I understood Isaac’s thinking. He was the biggest man in the room, although all four suspects were bigger than me. Their size was the reason that The Predators was such a great semi-professional football team, despite their recent slump. But size was no advantage to the players found in the building where a man was beaten and then stabbed to death.

The guy lying on his belly was the smallest man in the room. His face was turned toward the door. His right hand still held a death grip on the edge of the desk. His left hand was thrust under the back cover of a book apparently snatched from a collection of novels on the desk. I didn’t see a knife, but the wound on his side had surrounded him with a pool of blood.

I had worked with Rissik before so I knew I could push things a bit. “So, four football players in the gym but not together, right? Then somebody notices a trail of blood leading from the locker room to this office, to the guy laying over there with his hand on the last page of Patricia Cornwell’s latest bestseller.”

“That’s the basics,” Rissik said. “Looks to me like the vic was reaching for the phone, but couldn’t quite make it, so he grabbed a book instead.”

I squatted down for a closer look. The victim’s blank, empty eyes stared back at me from within dark circles. Blood from his nose and lips showed that somebody had worked him over good, but even mangled as it was, I recognized that face.

“You know this is Manny Simpson, right?”

“The gambler?” Rissik asked. “Last I heard, that weasel was fixing college basketball games. Considering who we got here today, I’m thinking he’s moved on to semi-pro football.”

Hannibal stood to face the short lineup against the wall. “So, who DO we have here?”

Rissik pointed his way down the line while his suspects stood silent. “You know the white fellow, Ingersoll. He’s fullback for the Predators. This next joker is Georgie Sparks. He’s a guard. The next man is Nick Davis, the tight end. Number four, Dan Cooper, is a wide receiver.”

I smirked at Rissik. “I get the sports connection, but there must have been other people in the gym. Why are you only holding the football players?”

Rissik smirked back. “You think the book’s a coincidence?”

I shrugged, pulled out my pen and got down on my knees. I didn’t figure Simpson for a literary type, so it made sense that he grabbed the book to leave some kind of clue. The title told me right away why Rissik was so sure of himself.

“Patricia Cornwell’s latest best seller, Predator. Yeah, I guess him grabbing this one from the half dozen books on the desk is a pretty clear pointer.”

“Yeah,” Rissik said. “I figured I had a dead lock until I turned up not one but four players.”

I slid my pencil under Simpson’s hand and lifted it. I wanted a good look at the book’s last page. “For a crooked gambler, I hear Simpson was pretty smart. Maybe there’s more to his dying clue.”

Rissik crossed his arms and walked toward me. “You know, we usually solve this kind of thing just like Scarpetta in Cornwell’s books. Forensic evidence will surface.”

“Really? I kind of like to try to noodle out the clues and solve the puzzle myself.” I knew I was pushing Rissik’s buttons. As expected, he rose to the bait.

“Okay, Jones. You figure you see something I missed? You think you know who it was?”

In fact, I did think I knew who killed Simpson. To test my theory, I’d have to push my man to a confession.

I walked right up to my suspect and looked him in the eye. “I saw your last couple of games. Kind of disappointing.”

Nick Davis leaned forward, maintaining eye contact with me. “Nobody plays their best game every single week. But I give this team all I got.”

“That’s bull,” I told him. “That fumble that cost the game last week? Pretty sloppy. And what about those two passes you just couldn’t get hold of three weeks ago?”

“Ain’t no law against having a bad day now and again,” Davis said, backing off just a bit.

It was time for me to get loud. “No, but there is a law against throwing games for a gambling syndicate. What was your beef with Simpson? Didn’t he pay you enough for shaving points?”

Ingersoll and the other two players stepped away from Davis, glaring at him. Their stares seemed to rattle him a lot more than I could.

“It ain’t like that. I met Simpson today to call it quits. I just couldn’t keep on betraying the team. But he wouldn’t let go. Said he’d tell the guys what I done. I couldn’t let him do that.”

“So you roughed him up in the locker room,” I said.

Rissik whipped out a pair of cuffs and slapped them on Davis. “Then, when he wouldn’t cut you loose you stabbed him. Well, I don’t think anybody will actually miss Simpson, but from the look of your teammates’ faces, you’ll be safer in custody.”

While Rissik read Davis his rights, Isaac jumped at me. I gritted my teeth against the slap on the back I knew was coming, and managed to not fall over when it landed.

“Thanks for coming down, Hannibal,” Isaac said. “I just know that would be me in the cuffs right now if not for you.”
Rissik shoved Davis into a chair, and I could see curiosity fighting grudging admiration on his face.
“Okay, spill it, Jones. What did you see on that page that tipped you that Davis was the killer?”

“You should have seen it yourself, Orson,” I said. “It was pretty clear that Simpson knew he was going to bleed out quick, so he snatched the book off the desk that he knew would implicate one of the players, and just had time to open it to the page he knew had words that would identify his killer.”

“You saying Simpson had read this novel?”

“No, Orson. I’m saying that Simpson knew the last page would tell us which player killed him. You know the words I mean now?”

Rissik cursed under his breath. “Of course. The two words that are on the last page of every book.

The End.”

Hannibal met and worked with Orson Rissik in Blood and Bone.
Hannibal met Isaac Ingersoll and learned about The Predators in Collateral Damage.

Driving the District with Rey Santiago

2005-11-19T07:10:00.000-05:00

My name is Reymundo Fernando Santiago, but you can call me Ray. I been driving a cab in this town for a lot of years and now, since I brought my baby girl here from Cuba. Thanks to some help from Hannibal I own my own cab company now. Hannibal is my friend, and he’s dating my only daughter, Cintia, so we’re pretty close. He asked me to help some new folks moving up here by telling them what they need to know about driving around here. Well nobody knows driving here better than me, so I said sure. And it sure ain’t nothing like back home in Cuba.

First off, you got to learn to call it by its right name. It is D.C. or "the District." Only tourists call it Washington. How do you tell the tourists? If you see somebody with their turn signal on, they are a tourist.

Maps are good to have, but if your road map of Montgomery County is more than a few weeks old, throw it out and buy a new one. It's obsolete. If you’re in Loudoun or Fairfax County and your map is one day old, it's already obsolete.

Now, there’s no such thing as a dangerous high-speed chase in D.C. It's just another chase, usually on the BW Parkway. That’s the Baltimore Washington Parkway, but you’ll never hear anybody say all that.

All directions around here start with The Beltway, which has no beginning and no end, just one continuous loop that locals believe is somehow clarified by an inner and outer loop designation. I know, that makes no sense to anybody outside the Beltway.

The morning rush hour is from 5 to 11 AM. The evening rush hour is from 1 to 8 PM. Friday's rush hour starts Thursday morning, especially during the summer on Route 50 eastbound.

Let’s see, what else. Well, if the Redskins are playing a home game, there’s no point in driving anywhere near PG County. Oh, never say PG County to anybody from Mitchellville, Upper Marlboro or Fort Washington. They'll blow a blood vessel.

Driving in The District proper, if you stop at a yellow light, you’ll get rear-ended. Or shot at. Now if you RUN a red light, be sure to smile for the hundred dollar picture you’ll get, courtesy of the DMV. On the other hand, if you don't hit the gas as soon as the light turns green, you’ll get cursed out about two hundred different languages, and none of them is English.

And you got to be ready for the construction. Construction on I-270 is a way of life. It’s funny – they call it an interstate, but it only runs from Bethesda to Frederick, so it ain’t, unless you consider Montgomery County another state, which I guess some people do. I-270 opened in the sixties, and it’s been torn up and under reconstruction ever since. And then it’s got a "Spur," whatever the hell that is.

What else. All unexplained sights are explained by this phrase: "Oh, we're in Takoma Park."

Car horns are really road rage indicators. Pay attention to the warning.

Unwritten law: Old ladies in Buicks have the right of way in the area of Leisure World.

A lot of roads around here just change their names when you cross an intersection. Don't ask why. Nobody knows.

If you need to ask directions in Arlington you got to know Spanish. Or in Langley Park for that matter. Or Wheaton, or Adams Morgan. In PG County, Eubonics will be your best bet. In Annandale, a Cambodian or Vietnamese dialect will come in handy. If you’re on DuPont Circle, Capital Hill or U Street, you just better be African American. And if you stop to ask directions in Hannibal’s neighborhood, in Southeast... well, don't.

Driving south out of DC on I-395 is the scariest thing you will ever do. At some points you’ll be in seven lanes of traffic cruising along at 85 miles an hour, bumper to bumper. The minimum acceptable speed on the Beltway is 85. Hannibal described it just right. He says the Beltway is kind of like a daily version of a NASCAR reality show. Strap in and collect points as you go.

The open lane for passing on all Maryland interstates is the far right lane because no self-respecting Marylander would ever be caught driving in the slow lane. Unofficially, both shoulders are fair game too. The far left lanes on all Maryland interstates are the official chat lanes, filled by drivers who want to talk on their cell phones. And mini-vans can use the far left at whatever speed the driver feels most comfortable at while she’s doing two or three other things.

You need to check the weather before driving here too. For instance, rain makes these people stupid. For real. It rains, it’s an instant fifty point drop in IQ in DC drivers. Snow? A hundred point drop in IQ, and a rush to the Safeway for toilet paper and milk. If it's 10 degrees out, it's got to be Orioles opening day. If it's 110 degrees, it's the Skins opening day.
One thing about DC does remind me of back home in Cuba. If the humidity and the temperature are both above 90, then it's May, June, July, August and sometimes September. And maybe, if you're really lucky, October.

Checking in with an old colleague: Detective Lucas Stonecoat

2005-11-12T08:18:00.000-05:00

Back in my Secret Service Days I met a detective named Lucas Stonecoat on a trip through Texas. Even though Lucas is Native American we seemed to have a lot in common. We don’t talk a lot, but we sometimes talk about things that matter.

Lucas’ biographer, Robert W. Walker www.robertwwalker.com published a series of mysteries about Lucas called The Edge series, but he’s writing historical fiction now, like his new book, City for Ransom.

Out of nowhere Walker wrote to me the other day to let me know what’s going on with my friend Lucas. Cindy tells me it’s common for people to have “guest writers” on their web logs, so I decided to share Lucas’ story, just the way it was sent to me, just the way I stuck it in my journal.

Shy One Pearl
An original Lucas Stonecoat story from the Edge Series by Robert W. Walker
Quarrelsome was the single word most people leveled at Detective Lucas Stonecoat, a full-blood Texas Cherokee Indian cop in Houston, and a man who proved that a Native American Indian could buck and kick the stereotype, get off the reservation, and make a living as a policeman in the white world, and still keep his identity. There was much to admire about the man besides his Jimmy Smits good looks, his 6’4 lean frame, and his mesmerizing eyes. Still, he was surly and contentious ever since Pearl Sanchez had disappeared.

He kicked out at his desk, the sound sending a shot through the old police station slated for demolition.

“You gonna bring the house down before the wrecking ball?” asked Dr. Meredyth Sanger, police shrink, to whom Lucas always went for profiling help. He’d asked her for any insights she might have about the kind of man who could abduct a fourteen-year-old girl and then send little bloody pieces of her home to the family, making it clear he was chopping Pearl up little by little.

Lucas had gone over everything ten, eleven, twelve times. Everyone who worked for the father, everyone the mother had ever known, completely turning their private lives inside out in search of anyone anywhere at any time that either of the two might have crossed. Whoever was behind this crime seemed to take great, abiding joy in the suffering of Pearl’s parents, Pearl being their only daughter. It stood to reason it’d be a disgruntled employee, after All Sanchez ran a business both high-powered and involving hundreds of employees. Countless employees had come and gone, many of them upset with Sanchez. None of these panned out. But each had to be checked. Meanwhile the clock ticked on for Pearl.

He’d turned then in earnest to the mother, and he found things in her past she pleaded he keep just between them, things that even Sanchez didn’t know. Again none of the leads here panned out. He went back to Sanchez, tossing out the idea it was work-related, digging into his background. Could it be someone he’d crossed as a child, as a teen, as a young man in college? Nothing.
So much time wasted and nothing. The strike force had no better luck. The clock ticked on. Time was not on Pearl’s side.

They finally had to cede to the notion the maniac who had Pearl was a total psycho with an agenda he alone could possibly understand. A mad agenda that had no connection to the real world. This meant no real world sensible means of looking for a motive, and without a motive—if he had simply stalked her and lifted her off the street for no reason other than to chop her up and send her piece by piece home….how could they possibly catch the fiend?
He’d remained faceless all this time.

He left no clue, as corporeal as fog, a phantom within the fog, a fog that had kept Lucas in the dark all this time. Too long…another digit arrived in a tidy box.

The parents recognized the knuckle and nail.

Who knew if the crazed fiend might simply next take her leg, an arm, her head, or Pearl’s spleen, her heart, her stomach?

In the middle of it all, Lucas’s Chief, Aaron Phillips, recently having taken over the stationhouse that’d soon be leveled, got in Lucas’s face and ordered him in no uncertain terms to see a shrink other than his chum, Meredyth.

“For kicking a desk?”

“Just do it before this case overwhelms you!”

“See a shrink when the case is ongoing!” Lucas demanded.

“That’s an order! No excuses!”

“But time’s of the essence, Chief! We need to keep on the case, else Pearl—”

“Case’ll be waiting, Lucas. This one’s going nowhere.”

“Nowhere?”

“Nowhere.”

It was too true. In every sense of the word, the Pearl Sanchez case was going nowhere.

As soon as Chief Phillips turned his back, Lucas felt an attack coming on, one of his blackouts from a lingering condition from years past that only Meredyth Sanger knew of. He’d learned to trust her for this reason, but now she’s handing me off to some shrink I don’t even know? And what gives with Chief Phillips, stopping me from doing my job in the middle of my investigation? That just isn’t done!

Then the blackout was over as quickly as it threatened to drop him to his knees, and he saw it…saw it clearly. Something had changed in Pearl’s life. Her routine disrupted. The new piano teacher. How many times had he seen it in the paperwork. How many times had he ignored it?

Pearl was locked away in her piano teacher’s basement or attic or crawl space. Little Pearl’d been taking lessons for three years, and she played at the school pageant, a regular prodigy. The pictures depicted a beautiful young Hispanic girl. But her piano teacher had died in a car accident, and she’d begun to go to a new piano teacher. It was a detail no one, including Lucas, had paid any attention to.

Lucas raced from the old stationhouse in Mid-town Houston. He drove across the city with his strobe light flashing, horn blaring. He called for backup as he did so. The last package sent to her parents had held Pearl’s bloody left ear. The maniac could tire of the ‘game’ at any time.
“Anatomy is destiny,” Sigmund Freud had said. This was a twisted truism here. At what point would the piano teacher-turned-killer decide to take a piece of Pearl that would be fatal?

He found the address that’d been in their files all along, the same address he’d subconsciously memorized. The piano teacher had been pleasant and had answered all the questions previous detectives working under Lucas had asked of her. Her alibi established, she’d claimed not to have seen Pearl for a week, not since her last session at the keys. Another dead end, so he’d thought.

So everyone had thought.

Now he stood pounding on the door. He had no warrant, so he must talk his way in, sift about the place, make small talk, find reason to open the door to the basement, try to get a rise out of the bitch.

He calmly did it all, and Mrs. Louise Bohnheim came at him with a knife as soon as he went for the door. As soon as she attacked, Lucas put her down with a right hook and tore the door open. He took the rickety stairwell two and three steps at a time, and sure enough here was Pearl, her eyes wide, her mouth moving below the gag, her bare body shivering and covered with small cuts where the mad woman had been at play.

Lucas tore away her bonds and gag, and he lifted her into his arms, and she said thank you repeatedly in a mantra of gratitude, and he told her to save her energy, and that he’d get her to a hospital, and that she’d soon be in the arms of mother and father. Safe.

“Is that the way you remember it, Detective Stonecoat?” asked Dr. Kari Martin, the police shrink he didn’t trust, despite kind things Meredyth had said about Martin.

“You can be sure she’s the best, Lucas. I would only find the best for you. I love you, remember?”

“Remember?” he looked up to see not Meredyth but Dr. Martin instead. “Hold on. Whataya mean, how I remember it. That’s how it was, just like I told you.”

“You spoke to Pearl when you found her?”

“Yes.”

“And she spoke back?”

“Yes.”

“Thanked you repeatedly, you say?”

“Repeatedly.”

“And when you got her to the hospital, she…her eyes were open and she was conscious?”

“Yes! How many g’damn times I gotta say it?”

“Until you get it right.”

“Right?”

“Meredyth said to keep at you until you get straight with this Pearl Sanchez business, detective.”

“Get straight?”

“Detective, the coroner has time of death for Pearl Sanchez at twenty-four hours before you reached her.”

He shook his head firmly….then more firmly. “That’s not how it happened.”

“No…not in your head, obviously.”

Lucas swallowed hard and stared at his griddle-sized hands; they seemed far away, as if his arms were turned to rubber and stretching away from him. Martin finally broke the silence. “Detective, how long since the Sanchez case was closed?”

“Active yesterday, closed today.”

“Try six months ago, Lucas.”

“Six months?” Lucas looked around the office and past the office to the green walls of the institution. “Six months?”

“That’s how long you’ve been with us here.”

Doctor and cop stared across at one another in a silence of infinite depth.

“You saying, I was committed?”

“Yes.”

“And Pearl Sanchez is dead?”

“Yes.”

“I carried her to the hospital in my arms. Gave her to the ER people.”

“Dead, sir. You carried her in dead.”

“I did?”

“I’m sorry, but at least for you, this is a good day.”

“A good day?”

“A breakthrough. You’re aware of your surroundings.”

“Pearl didn’t make it?”

“You had a break down, Lucas.”

“But she talked to me.”

“Perhaps on some level she did; perhaps you soothed her spirit, Lucas, but her body was gone when you arrived ahhh…too late.”

“Too late. But for six months now, playing it over and over in my mind…”

“You saved Pearl. You weren’t too late.”

“I let her down in the real world.”

“It’s a burden to be sure, detective, but one that we’re here to help you accept.”

“Accept?”

“The only way to free you.”

“Free me from this place?”

“No…from…from this version of events…”

“Gotta accept the truth.”

“Then we can talk about your going out the door.”

Lucas heard faint music playing somewhere the other side of the door. He stood, pushed his chair away, and went toward the door. “I could’ve sworn I’d gotten there in time.”

“I’m sorry. Everyone is.”

“I never suspected the piano teacher.”

“No one did.”

“No one did in time.”

Quarrelsome was the single word most people used for Detective Lucas Stonecoat, surly and contentious ever since the Pearl Sanchez case. Before that he’d been a likeable fellow and he’d had a chance with Dr. Sanger. Not anymore. That Sanchez girl…what was her name? Pearl, a shy one, yeah….he’d gotten there shy maybe twenty, twenty-four hours…had failed to break it in time.
Now shy Pearl haunted him.

Now his badge weighed heavy.

The original Hannibal

2005-11-07T20:07:00.000-05:00

This sheet of paper from my young friend Monte is in my journal because it’s dear to me. For the future, when my memory lapses, I should jot down the back-story.

One Saturday, while Monte was taking me to school with a little one-on-one on a nearby court, one of his classmates came by. Naturally, Monte introduced us. And as so often happens, I heard that hackneyed response.

“Hannibal? Eewww. You mean like that guy who eats people?”

Some days I explain who my parents named me after. I might mention that I was born before Thomas Harris wrote his novels featuring Hannibal Lector. Once in a while I talk about watching The A Team TV show with George Peppard playing a cigar smoking character who shared my first name. This time I just waved it off. Monte waited until his friend was gone before he said anything.

“Doesn’t that frost you? To know that everyone who meets you thinks of that creepy guy in a horror movie? Why would they give you such a weird name?”

I dribbled while I thought. “You know Monte, it just doesn’t matter what anybody thinks. I know who my folks were thinking of when they named me. Why’d they give me that name? You can figure that one out for yourself.”

Monte ran me around the court for another hour and I forgot all about that conversation. I thought he had too until about two weeks later when I walked into my office one afternoon and found this short essay on my desk.

Hannibal Barca

About 2,200 years ago, a General of Carthage named Hannibal Barca crossed the Alps with an army of elephants to fight the Romans. Carthage was in North Africa, near where Tunisia is today. It was an empire just like the Roman Empire. Both empires existed side by side for centuries. Then the Romans decided they didn’t want the trading competition and started the Punic Wars.

Hannibal fought the Second Punic War, after Carthage lost the first one. When the main general was assassinated, the troops elected Hannibal to lead them. He attacked Spain and crossed the Alps in 14 days to invade Italy, handing the Romans a series of defeats for 16 years. He kept his army in the field that whole time and they never mutinied against him or fought among themselves. That’s really cool because he had the first Army of diversity. It was made up of people from different countries-- Africans, Spaniards, Gauls, Carthaginians, Italians, and Greeks. They all had different customs and languages, but he got them all to recognize one authority.

He never lost a major battle in Italy but Rome invaded Carthage and he was called home to defend it. They beat him there, which ended the Second Punic War, but they didn’t catch him. Hannibal lived as a hunted man all over the Middle East but he never gave up. He hired out as a soldier against Rome's allies until they cornered him in Turkey. He was so unwilling to let the Romans catch him, he took poison.

Some might think we know more about the Roman leaders because they were European and the people of Carthage were Africans. I think it is just because Rome eventually destroyed Carthage and the winner of the war gets to write history. Hannibal was a military genius, very brave and a great leader. He never quit against a bigger army, and he got people of different cultures to work together. Anybody should be proud to be named after this man, and it’s a shame that his name is now attached to a fictional serial killer.

No, I’ll never tell Monte how touched I was that he cared enough to do the research and write this thing. But he probably noticed that I hung his essay to the front of my refrigerator for a couple of weeks and wrote the words “Nice Job” next to the big red “A” at the top of the page.

Who wants to know?

2005-10-30T17:20:00.000-05:00

Cindy was sitting up on the stoop demonstrating just how distracting a simple black tee shirt can be while I stood down on the sidewalk tossing a football back and forth with Monte. I figure you don’t have to even be a teenager yet to start understanding politics, so Cindy and I were chatting him up about the recent White House CIA leak. While I was waiting for his comment, and the ball to come flying back at me, a brother I never saw before walked up and started talking to me, while he was staring at the house. Or maybe he was staring at Cindy.

“You live here?”

“Yeah.” I caught the ball and turned to check him out more closely.

“What’s the rent like? What do these places go for?”

I looked him in the eye and lowered my voice. “Who wants to know?”

To his credit, the brother showed me his palms, smiled, and walked off. Cindy and I shared a smirk but Monte looked puzzled as he walked toward me.

“Well, that seemed kind of hostile,” he said when he got close enough. “What’s up with that, H?” Lately he’s taken to calling me that. I let him.

“Monte, I know that between Jerry Springer and Oprah, people are starting to think they need to share every detail of their lives, but the truth is, a man just doesn’t need to tell everybody his business, just cause they ask.”

I could see why Monte, raised by his grandmother, might not get it. I was still kind of surprised when he actually asked, “What’s the big deal. Why keep everything on the down low? You ashamed of something?”

Then I got another surprise: Cindy answered before I could, and she answered like the lawyer she is.

“Life is a game, kid,” she said. “And except for your family and closest friends, you’re playing against everybody out there. It’s like when you play your little three card monte game, hustler. If you lay your cards out on the table, the other guy knows how to bet. Being too free with what you know is a bad habit. That’s what happened to Karl Rove.”

“I hear you,” Monte said, “but I don’t think Hannibal thinks that deep. I think H here just ain’t big on sharing.”

I stopped for a second to gather my thoughts. He was right, of course, but beyond that it seemed important to make sure Monte learned the right lesson.

“Cindy’s got a point of course. In my business you soon learn that in today’s world, mystery is currency. When you know what others don’t, you can trade that knowledge for whatever you want. But there’s more to it than that. Your business, your troubles, your big wins, those things belong to you. If you hold them close, they can drive you, power your life. If you put them out on the wind they just become gossip that can bring you down.”

“I don’t know, man,” Monte said. His eyes were shining the way they do when he’s being a pain in the ass on purpose. Cindy would call it playing devil’s advocate. “If you want people to trust you, you’ve got to be open with them, right?”

“That’s for girls,” I said before I had time to think. Then I had to survive Cindy’s indignant stare. Too bad. I was committed now, so I just had to keep going.

“Brother, I don’t trust any man who tells me how much he makes, or what his house cost him or how his hernia operation went. Just like neither of you knows my father’s last words to me. That’s between me and the old man. But you trust me, don’t you?”

“Well, yeah, I do.”

“A lot of people do. If they didn’t I couldn’t stay in business. I know my attitude is kind of old school, but I also know I’m not alone on this. You see, people know that a man who keeps his own secrets will keep yours.”

A Mini-mystery: To serve and protect

2005-10-22T14:22:00.000-05:00

To serve and protect - A date delayed

There’s a good reason that nobody should be sitting in their office finishing some paperwork on a Friday evening. I should have been across the hall in my apartment, getting ready to take Cindy to a late supper. Then I wouldn’t have been behind the desk when Buster came rushing in. I know I looked irritated when I saw him, because he answered my question before I could ask it.

“Hannibal, I need your help. Somebody pried the store safe open and took off with the money. It’s the whole week’s receipts.”

I’ve known Buster since I moved into that little flat in Anacostia. He’s the bald, fiftyish black man who runs the little grocery store on the corner, barely making a living supplying his neighbors with the bare necessities. He used to let people move drugs through his place, but I put a stop to that. Since then it’s been tough for him to make a living, so maybe I did owe him a hand if he got robbed.

I gave Cindy a call, letting her know I’d be picking her up late, and followed Buster out into the crisp autumn air. He was still out of breath and I could see his chest heaving even in the dim twilight. When we got to the store, he took me into the back room to show me the damage. His safe was sitting under a desk in the back of the room. It was small, weak and light – more a place to store money than to protect it - and it was obvious that someone had ripped the door open with a crowbar. We went back through the door to the front of the store and while I looked around I asked him what happened.

“They were just waiting for their chance at me,” Buster said, shaking his head. “You know Suzanne quit the other day so I have to run the place all by myself. It ain’t easy, man.”

“I know, Buster,” I said, resting a hand on his shoulder. “Just tell me what happened.”

Buster looked at me for a second, and then pointed toward the cooler doors on the other side of the store. “Well, it was close to closing time and I was over in that corner there, stocking shelves when I heard this loud noise in the back room. I ran to the door but this kid rushed past me, almost knocking me over, and shot out the front door. I could see my blue deposit bag in his hand with the whole week’s receipts.”

I leaned back against the counter. “You hadn’t been to the bank all week?”

“I don’t like to go alone,” Buster said. “It ain’t safe. So every Friday night one of the cops come by on his patrol and walks me over there.”

“But he wasn’t here yet.”

“Nope, so I took off down the street after the thief, but he was too fast for me. I chased him for a few blocks, right past your office, but then he turned a corner and I lost him. I was whipped, and bummed out. But on the way back, I realized you might be able to help.”

I didn’t want to be cold, so I forced a smile. “I think I understand, man, but I don’t think I can…”

We both looked to the door as a patrolman walked in. The cop was younger, taller, darker, and more cheerful than either of us. I recognized his easy smile. It was the one I used to wear back when I was a rookie cop, before I found out that most citizens didn’t really want me around to protect and to serve them.

Buster said, “Billy am I glad to see you. I just got robbed. I already told Hannibal here all about it.”

“You’re Hannibal Jones?” the officer asked.

I lowered my voice and turned to my neighbor. “Don’t do this, Buster. Don’t pull me into this.”

“What do you mean, man?” Buster asked, his palms spread wide. “Hannibal, I need you. You can back me up with the timeline and stuff. The cops will believe you.”

“You’re THE Hannibal Jones?” the cop asked. “The guy I’ve heard about?”

“This is him,” Buster said. “Go ahead, Hannibal. Tell him what I told you.”

I turned back to the cop and turned up the charm. “Officer, can I talk to my friend here in the back for a minute?”

The cop shrugged. I gave him a wink, and then I took Buster’s arm and walked him into the back room. When we got to the middle of the floor I dropped the smile. I didn’t need it anymore. I just stood there with my hands on my hips, staring at the floor.

“I don’t understand,” Buster said. “Why won’t you back me up, man?”

“Do you want to go to jail for fraud?”

“What?”

“Buster, please.” I was trying to keep it soft, but my voice came out as a hoarse stage whisper. “You told me you saw the thief come out of the back room, right? You chased him, and when you lost him, you gave up and came to my place.”

“So?”

“So you never came into the back room until I came back with you. How did you know the thief pried the safe open?”

Buster hesitated, his eyes flashing side to side the way I’d seen so many times before. “He had my deposit bag.”

“I saw the safe, Buster. A thief could just as easily pick the lock, pop the hinges or just bust it open with a hammer. But you said pried, which you could not have known unless you did it yourself. Now go tell our young friend out there that it was a false alarm, that you found your money in here.”

“You ain’t going to turn me in?” Buster asked.

“Can’t hang around to talk to the police, Buster. I got a date.”

Of course I wasn’t going to turn him in. As much as I resented Buster trying to play me, he wasn’t a criminal, just desperate. More importantly, it was too soon for that boy out there to get disillusioned about the people he was sworn to protect.

Let him think we all appreciate and respect him, at least for a little while longer.

Respecting the military

2005-10-16T15:57:00.000-05:00

Every time I see the U.S. military in action I think of my dad.

We lost him in Vietnam, before I was old enough to appreciate what a great father God gave me to. I was lucky to have a mother who could make him real to me, even years after he was gone. She made me understand his dedication to duty as a soldier. And when I look at today’s force, I still see all that she told me. Whenever we need for something important to get done, and done right, we fall back on the guys in uniform, don’t we?

Since my dad’s day, I don’t think those guys get enough respect. Guys AND gals I should say. The one thing military service does is train you that getting the job done is all that matters. That’s what I know my father was all about. Get it done, or die trying. It was the same way when I was in the Secret Service. I hate to say it, but I don’t see that kind of feeling anywhere else in our government.

Look at what just happened with Hurricane Katrina. Look at the difference between the FEMA guy who got fired and the Coast Guard Admiral who took his place. Nobody should be surprised. A natural disaster just isn’t like dealing with politics here inside the beltway. It’s a lot more like fighting a war, really. Even if it’s nature, you’re still under attack by an enemy that wants to kill your citizens and destroy your way of life. It only makes sense that the military is best equipped to deal with it.

In law enforcement I learned about Posse Comitatus, and I don’t know if the average troop should be enforcing the law, but he can sure help in civilian disasters. Besides, does anybody today really understand the whole Posse Comitatus thing? Do people remember that the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 was pushed through by Southerners to keep the military from protecting my Black ancestors from the Ku Klux Klan after the Civil War? As far as I’m concerned, it was written to stop the military from defending one part of the country - the African American part.

Now, Bush has already admitted that he should have sent troops into New Orleans sooner, after Katrina hit. And any idiot can see how much better things went with Rita, with troops there at the outset. And we’re already talking about using the military to help against this bird-flu threat. I think that’s a lot of boogey-man stuff, but good on the President for saying he knows who the right team is to protect us, even from an epidemic.

Yeah, we’d all like to see the whole government work as well as the military does. Like that’ll happen. Face it, we aren’t all born understanding sacrifice to get the job done. Most people have to be trained to think that way. Most parents don’t give their kids that, and that’s why we need an Army, a Navy, a Marine Corps, a Coast Guard and even the Air Force I guess. Civilian government will never get there, because being a politician is the exact opposite of sacrifice and a dedication to getting a job done. So we ought to use the military whenever we need something important done.

And we really need to learn to appreciate them more. A lot more.

Painting the Shutters

2005-10-08T10:00:00.000-05:00

Cindy thought the house I live in, in Southeast Washington D.C., would look better with shutters. The owner, her boss, agreed. I didn’t have a vote. I don’t pay rent because I’m the building superintendent. The net result of all that was that one of the first things I did after moving into my new six-flat home was to spend a Saturday hanging shutters at the windows. The good thing about row houses is that you only have the front to beautify.

But time passes and, like anything else covered with paint and exposed to the outdoors, the shutters need maintenance or they cease to beautify. That’s why I spent so much of last weekend on a ladder with Monte holding it steady and Cindy standing beside it, supervising. Monte lives across the street with his grandmother, the lady we all call Mother Washington. She’s kind of the unofficial mayor of the neighborhood. Monte is kind of the official pre-teen wise-ass. But I’ve tried to take him under my wing, in a way, sort of mentor him.

So he was being a good troop, holding the ladder good and steady while I scraped a year’s worth of smog and pigeon droppings off the shutters. When I reached the ground at last, Cindy was still looking up.

“You nicked the paint on that one top left,” she said. “You can see it from here.”

“What’s the difference?” Monte asked. “Aren’t we done?”

“So we paint it,” I said, ignoring Monte as best I could.

“You know, I loved the red shutters when you originally hung them,” Cindy said, still staring up at the front of the building.

“You chose the color, as I recall.”

“Yes, I know, Hannibal,” she said. “It was my idea. But now I really think black would be better. Give the building a nice touch of elegance.”

“But then you’d have to paint them all,” Monte said.

I shrugged. “A little more paint. A little more time.”

Yes, Cindy is my woman and she always gets her way. But aside from that, the building deserved it. She’s a grand old lady who had been allowed to fall into disrepair and decay, and had been turned into a crack house for a while. That was the way I found her, a bit earlier in my Troubleshooter career, when the owner, Dan Balor, hired me to clear the bad element out. Balor’s a partner at the law firm where Cindy works. Anyway, once we chased the druggies out, some friends and I decided to move in. Balor fixed the building up, and the new tenants keep her up because she has been through enough and deserves to be treated with respect.

Monte took off for lunch while Cindy and I went to the paint store. But he was typical of boys his age in that money was a reliable lure so he was back for round two. Back, yes, but his heart wasn’t in it. As I was about to mount the ladder he muttered under his breath.

“Why don’t you just hire a painter?”

I just shook my head and started climbing. How could a kid who’s so smart have missed the point like that? It’s as if he just wasn’t paying attention. But as I climbed I wondered if maybe it was me. Maybe I just believe in doing things the hard way.

Conversation died as I started painting the first shutter. One coat was going to do it, but it was slow going because I was using a fairly small brush. You see, each shutter had a little tree-shaped cutout in the middle. I had to be able to get the brush inside the hole, to paint the inside edge.

“Hannibal, is that as hard as it looks?”

Maybe it was because his father ran off before he could walk that Monte had missed some important lessons. “Ever see A League of Their Own?” I called down, not losing focus on the movement of the brush.

“The old movie with girls playing baseball?”

“Yeah. There’s a scene where Tom Hanks, talking about baseball, tells the team that the hard is what makes it great. That’s not just in sports, buddy.”

“I know,” Monte yelled back up. “I work on my jump shot for hours. But this is different. Nobody can see that inside edge from down here. Why waste the time to paint in there?”

“Because when you got a job you do it right.”

“But you won’t get any credit for that, not even from Cindy or the landlord. I mean, you’re doing extra work but who’s going to know?”

I stopped painting. I’m embarrassed to say that I had to think a minute.

“I will.” Then I nodded, looking down at my young friend and said, more to myself, “You will.”

The bottom line, as I later explained to Monte, is that to be a success a man needs to resist the lure of three things: drugs, alcohol and shortcuts.

From the journal of Hannibal Jones

2005-10-01T10:25:00.000-05:00

Hannibal Jones is The Troubleshooter

I don’t generally like being in the spotlight. I guess the Secret Service taught me it’s better to keep a low profile.

But I’m not with them anymore, and this reporter Irma Andrews helped me unravel a series of murders that caused a lot of collateral damage among the families of the victims. So when Irma asked for an interview I didn’t see how I could say no. Despite my girl Cindy’s prompting I refused to do a TV piece. Appearing in print is bad enough. At least Irma didn’t misquote me, but I think she left out some stuff that makes the whole thing a little misleading. Anyway, here’s the way the piece ran:
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

I met with private investigator Hannibal Jones in his office in the Anacostia section of Washington. He offered me an excellent cup of coffee, which he said was made from Costa Rican beans, and sat at his desk with sunlight pouring in through large front windows. The office was small and Spartan, sparely furnished but warm and bright. Significantly, while I took notes during the interview, so did Mr. Jones.

Irma Andrews: Thank you for speaking with me today. You are listed as a private investigator but your card describes you as a troubleshooter. How would you describe what you do, and why is it different from what most P.I.’s do?

Hannibal Jones: Most private investigators do employment vetting, matrimonial and divorce work, insurance claims and that kind of stuff. My work is a lot more focused. My clientele is individuals, not corporations. I work with people who are in trouble and don’t know where to get help.

IA: But you do bodyguard work.

HJ: Sometimes.

IA: And solve mysteries like any detective.

HJ: On occasion.

IA: And if a person has been threatened?

HJ: Look, I do whatever’s necessary to help somebody who’s gotten themselves into a jam. I don’t think much about what that might be, going in.

IA: What qualifies you to do this sort of work? What is your professional background?

HJ: As soon as I was old enough I moved to the States and joined the New York City police force.

IA: You weren’t born in the United States?

HJ: No. I was raised in Germany. My dad was an MP in the army. My mom was a German national. We lost Dad in Vietnam. Anyway, I came to the U.S. to be a cop and I was going to bring Mama over as soon as I was settled but she passed.

IA: While you were away.

HJ: (pause.) Yes. While I was away.

IA: I’m sorry. So, you became a policeman…

HJ: Three years on the force to make detective J.G. Then three more as a detective. Then I passed the Secret Service entry exam. I spent seven years as a special agent for the Treasury Department, in the protective service.

IA: But after seven years, you resigned.

HJ: Yeah, well, stuff happened. I should have been one of the uniforms instead of going to the protective service. You see, in the protective service they expect you to not only protect your principal’s life, but his reputation too. I didn’t think my duty should included covering up a politician’s stupid actions. My boss disagreed.

IA: Any politician in particular?

HJ: Not going to go there.

IA: A national figure? Executive branch or…

HJ: I’m not going to go there.

IA: All right. So you had friction with your supervisor. For that you resigned?

HJ: Yeah. Well, after I knocked him on his ass the service was good enough to let me resign.

IA: Should I print that?

HJ: Why not. It’s what happened. They were actually pretty nice about it. Could have stopped me from getting the P.I license you know.

IA: So why this whole troubleshooter concept? How did you get into this business?

HJ: I guess in a way I did it for Mama. She always wanted me to follow my dad’s example. He was always there for people, always looking out for the little guy. Here in Washington, it seemed like there was an overabundance of little guys that needed looking out for.

IA: How do you get enough clients?

HJ: It was slow at first, but word of mouth is a powerful force in the hood. I did a couple of jobs pro bono - kept a couple of kids from being approached by drug dealers. After that people started to find me when they had problems.

IA: So your neighbors are your clients?

HJ: My clients are people with problems bigger than they are. Naturally that happens more often to people without big money.

IA: I know you’ve also had more affluent clients.

HJ: Well, I do get referrals from old Secret Service contacts. And I get business referred to me by the attorney I introduced you to, Cindy Santiago, my, um, friend.

IA: So you do have entrees into a higher financial stratum, but the well-to-do don’t come to Anacostia. Why have your office here?

HJ: That’s a bit of a story. This building used to be a crack house, believe it or not. I was hired to clear the bad element out of here for the owner. In the process I kind of bonded with the neighborhood. I felt at home here, and I knew if I stayed, the bad element wouldn’t be back. I guess the owner knew it too. He made me a very attractive offer to stay.

IA: Why not join a larger detective agency?

HJ: I like deciding who I’ll take as a client, and what kind of job I’ll do.

IA: What kind of job will you do?

HJ: All kinds. Well, no matrimonial stuff, or spying on people waiting for them to do wrong. But I do personal protection, missing persons, sometimes get hired to prove an accused person innocent. I’ll chase a bad element away like I did here, keep drug dealers away from kids or a pimp away from a hooker who wants to quit. Negotiate with loan sharks. Basically, if you have to deal with the bad guys and don’t want the police involved, I’ll usually handle it.

IA: You carry a pistol. What do you think of gun control laws?

HJ: Good gun control means being able to hit the target. Anybody who wants a gun can get one, so restrictive laws only keep people who obey the law unarmed and unable to defend themselves.

IA: But isn’t it too dangerous for everyone to be able to have a gun?

HJ: Based on statistics, it’s too dangerous for everyone to be able to have a car. Maybe guns should be more like cars. You get a license to carry at 18, after passing a mandatory training course.

IA: Interesting. How would you describe your relationship with the police?

HJ: I’d call it mutual grudging respect. I don’t mess with them. They don’t mess with me.

IA: How would you describe your personal relationship with Cindy Santiago?

HJ: I would describe it as personal.

IA: What have you learned doing this?

HJ: I’ve learned that most people are sheep. They’re not looking for trouble and they’ll do the right thing if you let them. A few people are wolves. They prey on the sheep, and they’re going to do wrong no matter what you do. They need to be shut out or put down hard.

IA: And you? Where do you fit in?

HJ: Me? I guess I’m the sheepdog.

Hannibal's Place