Fire and Bones (Temperance Brennan #23)

Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18

I was trying to pull a corpse from a bag. It wouldn’t budge. The harder I tugged, the deeper the lifeless limbs entangled themselves in the burlap.

I awoke with my heart busting dance moves in my chest. Sensing the dream had been long and convoluted but recalling no details.

Great. The subcellar vic was now haunting my sleep.

I checked my voice mail. Nothing from Griesser.

My grandmother had a saying. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Or something like that. Gran’s adages were easily lost in the brogue.

But the old saw seemed apt.

I’d come this far with the subcellar vic. Why abandon her now?

I called Pierre LaManche, my boss at the LSJML in Montreal. He had nothing that needed my attention.

I called Nguyen, the chief ME in Charlotte. A teacher had found a human cranium in a storage closet at a high school in Cornelius and dropped it at the MCME. Nguyen was 90 percent certain the skull was an old biological supply house specimen and said there was no reason for me to rush home to see it.

I called my neighbor about Birdie. She was delighted with her feline visitor.

I owed Slidell an update on the Norbert case. Decided to hold off until I’d clarified the presence of female Asian hair in the poop.

To avoid one of Skinny’s blustery harangues?

Ryan still hadn’t texted, emailed, or phoned.

My hostess was still encouraging me to stay.

Stay and do what?

Easy one.

Do right by the tiny lady in the burlap bag.

Fine.

In for a pound.

I began with a review of what I knew for certain. Which wasn’t much.

The subcellar vic had sustained trauma to her face and head. The fractures showed no signs of healing, so she hadn’t survived the incident that caused them. A vehicular accident? A fall? An assault?

Unless her body was kept elsewhere and later placed in the sack, the woman’s death occurred after 1940, the earliest year in which her burlap shroud was produced.

Why do that? Why not give her a proper burial? Or dump her somewhere?

The woman’s corpse had been left in one of a warren of rooms below the basement of the first Foggy Bottom property that burned.

Had she lived there? Worked there? Died there?

Been murdered there?

In 1942, title to that property transferred from Unique Swallow to a holding company called W-C Commerce.

In their heyday, Leo, Charles, and Emmitt Warring were a trio of bootleggers and racketeers known as the Foggy Bottom Gang.

Emmitt Warring and his brother-in-law Bill Cady invested their substantial earnings in multiple properties throughout DC.

Bill Cady created a maze of tunnels and hidey-holes below at least one of his Foggy Bottom homes, presumably to hide his inventory.

A maze like the one in which the subcellar victim was found.

Might the initials in W-C Commerce stand for Warring-Cady? Might the Foggy Bottom home once have belonged to Emmitt or Bill?

I sat up and ran my hands over my face, trying to think. Massaged my temples with deep fingertip circles.

I’d taken what partial prints I could, but they’d yielded no hits.

I’d collected samples for potential DNA testing. Until I talked to Griesser that would have to wait.

My thoughts ranged to the satchel Doyle had mentioned. To its three hundred stories on the Foggy Bottom Gang.

In for a truckload of pounds, I thought.

After coffee and a homemade cinnamon bun, I went to the study, snatched the satchel by its straps, and headed for my room, curious as to the origin of the odd penny-pound expression.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, I sorted the photocopies by publication, placing them in piles around me. Most of the stories had appeared in the Washington Post . But not all. The Washington Herald was represented. The Washington Times . The Evening Star . The Washingtonian Magazine. The Chicago Tribune .

Next, I organized each stack chronologically.

The earliest article dated to 1921. Its headline was a grabber: POLICE RAIDERS FIND UNDERGROUND STORES OF ALLEGED BOOTLEGGER. A 1933 story screamed: NALLEY KILLING BLAMED ON WAR OVER GAMBLING . In 1936, it was: JURY CONVICTS WARRING MOB OF SHOOTING .

It was like binging episodes of The Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire .

I got sucked in early and hard. Lost all track of time. Sensation in both legs.

I learned that the Warring brothers weren’t the first to jump aboard the illegal gambling and booze train in our nation’s capital.

In fact, they had plenty of fellow peddlers.

Which made the Prohibition era in the DC-Maryland-Virginia area a very wild ride—the saddest aspect of that ride being the death of innocents.

Example. A series of 1934 reports covered the bungled murder attempt of Edward G. “Mickey” McDonald, a wannabe freelancer in the numbers racket. Assassins mistakenly shot Allen D. Wilson, a newspaper carrier from Silver Spring, Maryland. Allen, guilty of nothing but being in the wrong place at the wrong time, left behind three children: Patricia, age eight, Allen, age four, and Richard, age one.

Another heartbreaking incident involved Doris Gardner, the on-again-off-again girlfriend of Warring henchman Amon “Alarm” Clock. Gardner was present in 1944 when Clock got into a throw down with a rival bootlegger. Guns were drawn and Gardner was killed. She was thirty-two, the mother of two young girls.

I was moving forward in time when Jelly Roll sang from the bedside table.

Finally! Lizzie Griesser!

I unwound my ankles to stand but my feet, dead asleep, vetoed the move. I pinwheel-lurched across the room like a drunk stumbling from a bar.

Grabbing the phone, I flung myself onto the bed.

“Brennan.”

“Are you all right?” It was Doyle on the line.

“I’m good,” I said, hopefully hiding my disappointment.

“You sound like you just ran a marathon.” I could hear voices in the background, some human, some robotic. I figured she was phoning from her office at the TV station.

“If so, I’d be dead.”

“Ben just called and offered to take me to Nara-Ya for dinner. He wondered if you’d like to join us.”

“I don’t want to—”

“Will you stop it. I’ve been dying to go there. Meet us at seven. It’s in District Square. If you Uber, Ben says he’s happy to drive you home.”

“Okay.”

“What are you doing?”

“Taking a crash course in bootlegging.”

There was a moment of indistinct background chatter as she worked through that.

“I’m reading the articles you photocopied. On the Warring brothers.”

“Great minds.” She truncated the quote. “Keep at it. I think I’ve made a major discovery along those lines.”

“Yeah?”

“Not now. I’ll tell all at dinner.”

She disconnected.

I noticed the time. One-forty.

Unbelievably, I was hungry again.

Hoping to slip in and out unseen, I crept downstairs to the kitchen.

Not a chance.

Lan appeared and offered to make me a sandwich.

Knowing it was futile to refuse, I accepted.

Ten minutes later I was back on the floor of my room, a turkey and Havarti on rye artfully plated on a tray beside me. Green chips, probably something healthy like spinach. Fresh fruit salad. Napkin folded to look like a dove.

I munched as I continued working through the stacks.

Though the bulk of the Warring coverage ran from the thirties into the fifties, Doyle had photocopied several more recent articles. By the late eighties, DC concerns seemed to have shifted away from homegrown gangsters to organized crime.

A 1987 Post Sunday edition featured a spread headlined: OUR GANG—WITH THE MAFIA MUSCLING IN, WE SOON MAY LONG FOR THE GOOD OLD BAD DAYS . The tone was close to that of fond remembrance. A good chunk of the treatment was devoted to Emmitt.

The text traced the brothers’ rise to prominence during Prohibition, their entry into the numbers business, and their headline-making trials for murder and tax evasion. It referenced Emmitt Warring’s appearance before a Senate District Subcommittee, describing his testimony as largely taking the fifth.

Several of the pieces were accompanied by photos of the Warrings and their associates, men with flash and cash, all jaunty fedoras and cocky smiles. Men who’d made their fortunes in booze, numbers, bookie joints, craps tables, and dope. Men who’d partied till dawn at after-hours clubs, paid off cops, fought turf wars, scandalized Congress.

Men who’d killed people.

Had one of them beaten a small woman to death, stuffed her into a burlap sack, and hidden her in an underground chamber?

I’d learned something about the possible early owners of the Foggy Bottom house. Sadly, nothing about the life or death of the corpse in its subcellar.

I glanced at the stacks of unread articles.

At my watch.

Six-thirty.

No wonder a headache was knocking at my frontal bone. I’d been squinting at photocopies all day.

Crapballs!

I had to be elsewhere in half an hour.

An Uber arrived quickly. Still, I got to my destination twenty minutes late.

Nara-Ya was one of many eateries to have sprouted like mushrooms after a rain in the trendy Wharf District in Southwest Washington.

Ornately decorated glass doors opened onto a lobby leading into a tunnel covered on all sides with geometrically patterned and very sparkly foil paper. Backlit flowers hanging from the ceiling and neon-eyed faces lining the walls made for a dizzying effect.

The restaurant itself, a short elevator ride up, was all glass on one side, providing a spectacular view of the marina and Potomac River. The floor was gleaming red tile.

Doyle and Zanetti were seated at a window table. As the ma?tre-d’ brought me to them, Zanetti did that half-rising thing men do when women approach.

“I am so sorry—”

“Tempe.” Zanetti’s smile had enough wattage to attract moths. “I’m delighted you could join us.”

Zanetti indicated the chair held open for me. The one with the best view of the water and boats.

I sat. The waiter presented me with a menu the size of a spin-naker.

Nara-Ya described itself as innovative Japanese. Whoever named their cocktails certainly was. Exit the Dojo. Shogun and Unicorn. Origami on a First Date .

Doyle’s choice of beverage was very large and very pink. Zanetti had a Sapporo Premium. I went with Perrier and lime.

“She won’t be needing this.” Zanetti gestured to the waiter that he should reclaim my menu. “We’ve already made our selections.”

Normally, such presumption would irk me. This time it didn’t. As food started to appear, it seemed Zanetti had ordered every item listed. Sashimi. Nigiri. Rolls, some of which were called Ballers. And a generous portion of caviar.

As we dipped and devoured, I shared some of what I’d read about the Foggy Bottom Gang. Zanetti talked of a client who turned out to be a scam artist, visiting property after property with no intention of buying.

While eating my green tea ice cream—additional calories I seriously did not need—I felt a bit wistful at how well-suited my dinner partners seemed for each other. And guilty over my antisocial attitude of late. The pair really were good company.

Doyle bunched and set her napkin on the table. From which it was immediately whisked away.

“I hate to be a buzzkill,” she said. “But I think I’ve found intel that will blow the roof off the Foggy Bottom fire investigation.”

She wasn’t wrong.

However.

Within twenty-four hours another event would blow that roof even higher.