Fire and Bones (Temperance Brennan #23)

Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

Doyle returned as I was finishing my French toast with whipped cream and berries.

No kidding. If I kept gorging like this, I’d need new pants.

“I understand you’ll be staying with me a bit longer,” my host said brightly as she shifted a long-handled satchel from one shoulder to the other.

“You’ve talked to Katy?”

She nodded.

“I can probably find a hotel—”

“Don’t be silly. I’m happy you’re here.” A long moment passed. Then, “And I’m happy you know about the debacle in Sioux City.”

“We all make mistakes,” I said.

“It was an unbelievably stupid and unethical thing to do. Got me canned and sent my self-confidence into the toilet for years.”

“You were young,” I said. “I’m sure you learned a valuable lesson.”

“You can take that to the bank. Thanks for not judging me.”

“I’ve seen your broadcasts, Ivy. You’re a good reporter.”

“That means the world coming from you.” An introspective moment, maybe thinking about the world, then her face lit up with a sudden idea. “Want to help me with Chuck?”

“Chuck?”

“I’ve agreed to take care of a friend’s chinchilla while she’s away visiting her father. He’s been diagnosed with the big C. The father, not the chinch.”

“Of course,” I said.

“Apparently, chinchillas need food, water, and a dust bath daily.”

“What’s a dust bath?”

“No idea.”

“How does one bathe a chinchilla?”

“No idea.”

“When does Chuck arrive?”

“Later today. I’m afraid the little guy will have to stay in his cage most of the time he’s here. Ben is allergic to every mammal that ever evolved.” Eyes rolling. “That’s why I have no pets.”

Lan topped off my coffee and looked a question at Doyle.

“Why not. I’ve only had six gallons.” Then, as Lan poured, “I’ve learned something you won’t believe.”

“Donuts are high in nutritional value.”

“I wish.”

Doyle and I—yep, you guessed it—relocated to the study. Not my preference. I wanted to return to my room and hop back onto the internet to verify my theory about Uncle Norbert Mirek. Her eagerness made refusal impossible.

Doyle and I had barely settled into our cushy Eames loungers when she yanked a yellow legal pad from the satchel and placed it on her knees, one of which was pistoning up and down.

I noted that the pad’s top page was filled with scribbling. That the satchel’s remaining contents looked quite hefty. Clearly, my hostess was now serious about fact-checking.

“W-C Commerce,” Doyle began without preamble.

“The owner of the illegal Airbnb that burned,” I said.

“Bingo!” Way too pumped.

“And possible meth lab.”

“Probably not.”

That surprised me. I let her continue.

“I’m still working to verify what the initials stand for. If anything.”

Doyle’s coffee arrived. I waited while she thanked Lan, then drank, thinking to myself that caffeine was the last thing she needed.

“Do you know the purpose of a holding company?” Doyle asked.

“Vaguely.”

“I’m not a lawyer, so I’ll summarize to the best of my understanding.” Quick skim of her copious notes. “A holding company is a financial entity that owns and controls other assets.”

“Things like real estate, stocks, firms,” I guessed.

“Yes. Typically, a holding company conducts no business operations of its own. It produces no goods or services, but has controlling interests in other companies, which are called subsidiaries.”

“I get it.”

My expression must have said otherwise. Doyle elaborated.

“A parent corporation can control the policies of its subsidiaries, maybe oversee management decisions, but it won’t run the day-to-day activities. The structure is used by businesses of all sizes and in all industries.”

“Why? I mean, what’s the advantage?” Not sure where the conversation was heading.

“The parent company is protected from losses accrued by its subsidiaries.”

“So, if a subsidiary goes bankrupt, creditors can’t go after the holding company.”

“Exactly,” Doyle said. “I think there can also be tax benefits.”

“Is there a disadvantage?”

“For investors and creditors, yes. It may be difficult for them to know the actual financial health of the holding company.”

“Let me guess. Unethical directors could hide losses by moving debt among the various entities.”

I dredged that from a barely absorbed conversation with Ryan about a client who’d suspected just such a scenario.

“Damn. You’re good at this.”

“Hardly.” Not false humility. Finance interests me about as much as the taxonomy of molds.

“Don’t sell yourself short, girl.”

Girl?

I thought a moment.

“Can a holding company also be a way to protect the identities of the subsidiary businesses?”

“Absolutely.”

“What does this have to do with the Foggy Bottom fire?”

“Right.” Doyle again checked her notes. “W-C Commerce dates to 1941, a year before Unique Swallow sold the Foggy Bottom house to it. W-C was established as a personal holding company wh—”

“A personal holding company?”

“Meaning that fifty percent of the ownership stake is controlled by five or fewer individuals…” squinting at the scribbles “… and that at least sixty percent of its income derives from passive sources.”

“Passive sources?”

I was beginning to sound like a parrot.

“Income from sources like financial investments, stocks, mutual funds—”

“Rental properties?”

“Yes.”

“How many entities make up W-C?”

“Three or four.”

“Not exactly Berkshire Hathaway.”

“No.”

“What does this have to do with the fire?” I asked with some giddy-up in my voice. I feared a brain bleed if this discussion continued much longer.

“Right. Have you ever heard of the Foggy Bottom Gang?”

Again, I shook my head no.

“This stays between us for now, right? I mean, the information is out there for anyone clever enough to find it. I did. But why wave a red flag?”

“Sure,” I agreed. For now.

“Emmitt, Charles, and Leo Warring. The Foggy Bottom Gang. I spent hours this morning digging into these guys, mostly in the Washington Post archives.” Doyle jabbed a thumb at the satchel by her chair. “Found close to three hundred articles mentioning them.”

“Why?”

“Back in the day, they ruled Washington’s booze and gambling world.”

I was lost.

“Bootlegging and the numbers racket.” If a human can be said to chirp, Doyle did it.

“And the Warrings are relevant because?”

“First, a bit of history.” Flapping a hand to indicate I should settle back.

I did. Reluctantly.

“DC wasn’t always the slick, cosmopolitan burg it is today,” Doyle began. “Until the sixties, it was pretty much a sleepy, southern town. No Kennedy Center, no Watergate, no metro system. That all changed with the expansion of the federal government in the late sixties and seventies.

“But let me backtrack a little. Before DC was established, Georgetown was a separate municipality. It remained so until incorporated by the district in 1871. Foggy Bottom, which borders Georgetown on the Potomac, was the district’s industrial center. Do you know how the area got its name?”

“River fog and industrial smoke.”

“Exactly. There was a large gasworks at 26th and G which, according to all accounts, put out a truly noxious stink. A lumber mill, two breweries, a glass factory. The area was totally blue collar.”

I’d learned some of this during my brief time with Hickey. Didn’t let on.

After running an agitated finger through her notes, cherry-picking facts, Doyle resumed her, what? Tutorial?

“Just after the turn of the century, a man named Bruce T. Warring opened a barrel business on the Georgetown waterfront at K Street. The bucks rolled in, so a few years later he moved his growing family to a large home in Foggy Bottom. Ten kids, an older sister named Esther, blah, blah, blah…” One finger slid down the page. “The last three were boys, Leo born in 1903, Emmitt in 1905, Charles in 1907. The youngest Warring brothers were in their teens when the Volstead Act became the law of the land.”

“Bye-bye, booze.”

“Yep. Prohibition began in 1917 in DC, a bit earlier than in the rest of the country.”

“God bless the WCTU.” A sarcastic reference to the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.

“Your namesake peeps.”

“Not at all.” Though I was sober of necessity, a genomic drunk as Katy often teased, I had no issue with others enjoying their martinis or Pinots.

The searching finger hopped down the page.

“Anyway, Bruce’s daughter, Esther, and her husband, Bill Cady, were quick to see the opportunities offered by a demand for illegal alcohol. Their residence, a row house at 2512 K Street, served as their base of operation.”

Doyle’s eyes rolled up to mine. “That’s just west of Washington Circle and the present-day George Washington University Hospital.”

“Got it.”

Lan, having quietly reentered the room, stood awaiting instruction, coffee pot at the ready.

“No, thanks,” I said, shielding my cup with one hand.

“I’m good,” Doyle said.

Dipping her head ever so slightly, Lan withdrew.

“The Warrings?” I prodded, hoping to get back on track. Whatever the track was.

“Right.”

Pause to pick more cherries.

“By the mid-1920s, Leo, Emmitt, and Charlie were in their twenties. For reasons not totally clear to me, around that time the trio began to take over Cady’s bootlegging businesses in Georgetown and Foggy Bottom.”

Doyle looked up again. “Interesting aside. Emmitt stood only five feet four and probably had scoliosis. Because he was so small the family called him Pudge. Still, he was unquestionably the brains of the outfit.”

“Never underestimate the little guy.”

“Here’s where the story gets good.” Gazing back on her notes, Doyle raised a “pay attention” finger. “With the help of family members, Cady modified his home by creating underground compartments for his illicit stash of inventory. One article in there”—the thumb again shot toward the satchel—“describes, and I quote, ‘a catacomb where more than five hundred one-gallon containers of alcohol were hidden.’ Other stories report secret passageways, panels, circuitous routes, blah, blah, blah.”

Doyle’s eyes again sought mine, burning with the fire of a hunter closing in on its prey.

“How did you think to look into the Warrings?” I asked.

“Those glass fragments you collected from the soil in the subcellar.”

I’d forgotten all about them.

“It took help from a geek buddy, but we figured out that Alk was probably part of Alky and the other phrase was probably Green Country . We did a Google search using those as key words along with ‘Foggy Bottom,’ ‘hidden passageways,’ and the address of the fire scene.”

“What were those shards?” I asked, reluctantly intrigued.

“Emmitt Warring was a huge player in the bootlegging world. At the height of his operation, he managed a distribution network out of ten warehouses in DC, selling over five thousand gallons of alcohol weekly. In bottles labeled Alky, Green Country , and High Noon .”

“I’m impressed.” I was.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

I thought about everything Doyle had said.

“The Cady home was on K Street, right?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s some distance from the house that burned down.”

“Good point. But stay with me.”

I resumed my listening face.

“Throughout the Warring brothers’ reign, from the twenties into the fifties, Foggy Bottom had several alley communities, basically courts with single entrance and exit points. A big chunk of their bootlegging operation took place in and around one called Snows Court, a close-knit community that dated back to the Civil War.”

“Where was it?”

“Snows Court was bounded by 24th and 25th Streets east and west, and K and I Streets north and south.”

I started to ask a question. Doyle cut me off.

“Is bounded, I should say. The court still exists, though today it’s one of the priciest areas in Foggy Bottom, all swanky town houses, boutiques, and coffee shops.”

I conjured a mental map of the district.

“That whole area is close to the fire scene.”

“It is. And listen to this. Emmitt Warring and Bill Cady invested their illegal earnings in dozens of properties.” The finger jumped a few lines. “Esther Cady owned a home at 39th and Mass Ave. Emmitt Warring owned one at 39th and Macomb.”

The ferocious eyes rose again, wide and excited.

“Are you ready for this?”

“Hit me,” I said.

Before Doyle could do that, my mobile rang.