Roaches Run Read online

  Also by John Adam Wasowicz

  Daingerfield Island

  Jones Point

  Slaters Lane

  ROACHES RUN

  John Adam Wasowicz

  ROACHES RUN

  Copyright © John Adam Wasowicz, 2021 All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher and author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Address inquiries to the publisher or author.

  Publisher: Clarinda Harriss

  Editor: Charles Rammelkamp

  Graphic design: Ace Kieffer

  Cover art: Alex Herron Wasowicz

  Roaches Run is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  BrickHouse Books, Inc. 2021

  306 Suffolk Road

  Baltimore, MD 21218

  Distributor: Itasca Books, Inc.

  ISBN: 978-1-938144-83-7

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-938144-84-4

  Printed in the United States of America

  To my nephews

  Michael, Matthew, and Douglas

  “To live outside the law you must be honest.”

  –Absolutely Sweet Marie by Bob Dylan

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PART I - Saturday, May 29

  Chapter One: The Rhythmic Cycle of Life

  Chapter Two: Morning

  Chapter Three: Afternoon

  Chapter Four: Evening

  PART II - Sunday, May 30

  Chapter Five: The Rhythmic Cycle of Life

  Chapter Six: Night

  Chapter Seven: Morning

  Chapter Eight: Afternoon

  Chapter Nine: Evening

  PART III - Monday, May 31

  Chapter Ten: The Rhythmic Cycle of Life

  Chapter Eleven: Morning

  Chapter Twelve: Afternoon

  Chapter Thirteen: Evening

  Chapter Fourteen: After Midnight

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  PART I

  Saturday, May 29

  Chapter One: The Rhythmic Cycle of Life

  The Rhythmic Cycle of Life

  by

  Henry David McLuhan

  to R.H.

  “The past resembles the future more than one drop of water resembles another.”

  –Ibn Khaldun

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I’m delighted you have purchased a copy of The Rhythmic Cycle of Life. I hope this book provides a new prism through which you can look at yourself and study the rhythm of your life. I am optimistic that it will change your life and enable you to avoid dangerous shoals, find safe harbor, and catch the winds that will propel you to new horizons.

  I’ll check back with you in twelve years, at the end of the next cycle. Either you’ll be cursing me as a fraud or you’ll be acclaiming me as a New Age guru. I certainly hope it’s not the former!

  Begin today by making a chart for yourself, like the one displayed in the early chapters of this book. It’s a great time to learn from your mistakes and start effecting change.

  By the time we meet again, another cycle of our lives will have passed. If you’re making the same mistakes you made when you were first introduced to this book, then either you didn’t follow the instructions or I failed you. But if you’re in a better place — if you actually solved a recurring nightmare that afflicted you personally or professionally — then we both succeeded.

  I will be taking my own medicine. I’m committed to redirecting myself as I approach benchmarks in my current cycle. I’m not entirely sure of what lies ahead, but I am confident that I possess the tools to identify calamities before they occur, effect change, and get to a better place.

  Ready? Set? Go! Let’s take a spin and see where we end up! With hope and promise for a better and improved tomorrow, I am, affectionately yours,

  Henry David McLuhan, Ile Saint-Louis, Paris

  June 1, 2009

  The Rhythm and The Circle

  Your life has a rhythm. It is unmistakable and unavoidable. Uniquely your own. No one else on the planet has it. It is the rhythmic cycle of your life.

  Sometimes that rhythm is ascendant. Other times it spirals downward. When your life is moving in an upward progression, you cannot fail at succeeding. But when your life is heading in the opposite direction, you are helpless to reverse course. Seemingly.

  You actually can change the rhythm of your life by choosing to understand it. To take the time to write it down. Examine it. Study and analyze and evaluate it. As a result, you will be able to navigate your way through life. Not a perfect navigation. But a smarter one. One that enables you to guide yourself further than you ever imagined possible.

  Your life runs in twelve-year cycles. To take advantage of the lessons in this book, you have to have lived long enough to complete close to two cycles. The older you are, the better.

  After you chart your twelve-year cycle, you will be able to affect your life as never before. You will be able to intervene on your own behalf. In advance. You will be able to avoid disaster. Enhance your riches. Avoid disasters. Expand your horizons. In sum, you will be able to control the cycle. By controlling the cycle, you will control your life.

  The circle is the universal symbol of totality. Astrology, astronomy, mysticism, and mathematics all use the circle. There is a reason for that. The circle is all-encompassing. It is continuity. We see it everywhere. The clock. The compass. We can put things inside of it. We draw pies to explain our accumulation of investments or the distribution of assets. Tires. Plates. Buttons. Coins. The sun.

  Assume you were born in the year 1976. The rhythmic cycle of your life would look like this:

  Using this circle, write in the year of your birth and three-year cyclical dates. Now, let’s color it in!

  The First Cycle

  Begin with your birth year. You have no memory of that year, so you have to rely upon records and the recollections of others.

  How did the birth go? Maybe a planned vaginal delivery turned into a C-section because the fetal monitor detected distress. Maybe an exceptionally easy delivery. Did your mother’s water break in a taxi on Broadway? Were you the first baby born after midnight on New Year’s Day? Was your father present? What about brothers and sisters and family members? Were you born at home or in a hospital?

  What happened that night? That year? Who else was born? Who died?

  Now complete the entire twelve-year cycle. Pay particular attention to the beginning of each new quarter: the third, sixth, and ninth years. Of those three, focus most on six, the year opposite your birth year in the twelve-year cycle. This is a balancing year. The middle of the cycle. The year that best compliments the first/last year of each cycle.

  In “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,” William Wordsworth coined the oft-quoted expression: “The child is father of the man.” The first cycle establishes the foundation of your entire existence, including the ground rules that will govern the remainder of your life. Set them down scrupulously and honestly.

  Be brutally frank about yourself with yourself. This could be a painful exercise. But also fun. Take your time.

  Did you get seriously sick? Were you hospitalized? Where did you go to elementary school? Or were you home schooled? Who were your best friends? What colors do you remember? Smells? Did you have a pet? Were you involved in school-related activities? Outside activities? Where did you go on vacation? What were your favorite songs and clothes? What were you most proud about? What embarrassed you?

 
; What happened to your family during this twelve-year period? Were brothers and sisters born during this cycle? Did anyone die? What about your grandparents? Did your family move? Where were you most comfortable? What was your family’s socioeconomic position? Did your family become more prosperous? Did the family’s fortunes ebb?

  But don’t start looking at ways to improve things yet. We need a little more information about the rhythm of your life. So let’s get started on the second cycle.

  Chapter Two: Morning

  ELMO KATZ slid the e-book reader onto the patio table. Closing his eyes, he leaned back in a chair in the postage stamp-sized backyard of his townhome on Harvard Street and listened to the sounds of Old Town awakening.

  A delivery truck rumbled by tiny retail stores sandwiched together along the city’s main thoroughfare. A Metro train sped into the nearby King Street station. Around the corner, a city bus labored down Diagonal Drive toward Gardens Park.

  As the COVID-19 pandemic receded, the sounds of the city had returned. Restaurants and retail businesses were springing back to life. People were still cautious and wary, but more pedestrians, joggers, and cyclists now filled the streets and sidewalks.

  Memories of 2020 were fixed in Katz’s mind. George Floyd’s death; the political protests; the holidays spent in isolation to slow the spread of COVID-19. The breach of the U.S. Capitol in January seemed like a continuation of that tumultuous year.

  Katz opened his eyes and looked up. A slice of moon hung in a sky sprinkled with vanishing stars. With each passing second, the night’s illumination was erased by dawn’s light as the milky gray of morning emerged.

  Katz wasn’t sure what to make of The Rhythmic Cycle of Life. He didn’t trust self-help books. He believed people naturally and intuitively knew the answers to most of their problems. He certainly didn’t need gurus or shamans to find them.

  Ironically, however, that was the very premise of Rhythmic Cycle, which left him conflicted and wondering whether he might actually agree with it.

  His eyes swept down and focused on the phone resting beside the tablet.

  When it first rang two hours ago, Curtis Santana, his chief investigator in the U.S. Attorney’s office, was on the line. A man’s body had been found beneath Richmond Highway along Four Mile Run, Santana said. The victim had been shot at point-blank range. Half his brains were splattered against the bridge abutment; the other half were spilled on the bike path that connected Four Mile Run to the Mount Vernon trail.

  Katz and Santana suspected the vic’s identity, but they needed confirmation. While Santana gathered more information, Katz pulled himself out of bed, went downstairs, and brewed a pot of strong coffee: eight ounces of water and five scoops of Misha’s Arabian Mocha Java beans, coarsely ground. He drank his first cup, refilled it, and, clutching the cup in one hand and his phone and e-book in the other, went outside to the patio.

  A few minutes later, the phone rang again.

  “It’s Morley,” Santana confirmed.

  Katz rubbed his bare toes over the moist moss that grew between the bricks on the patio. The kitchen lights suddenly turned on. Through the glass door, Katz saw Abby Snowe, his girlfriend, standing at the counter beside the coffeemaker.

  “I think Spates figured out Morley was an informant,” Santana said. “If he has any sense, he’s probably hightailed it to points unknown.”

  Katz doubted the shooting was deliberate. The fact that the gun had been fired at point-blank range suggested a scuffle. Rodney Brown, the chief medical examiner, would confirm it for them.

  “That’s the key point,” Katz said.

  “What is?” asked Santana.

  The patio door slid open. Snowe, lithe and blonde, appeared in jeans, a long-sleeve cotton shirt, and rubber boots.

  “Hold on a minute,” he said into the phone as he stood and stretched.

  “Hey,” Katz said, addressing Snowe. “Sorry if I woke you.”

  “You didn’t,” she said matter-of-factly, holding a cup of coffee in her hand.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I told you last night about Maggie Moriarty’s relapse,” she said. “If that woman doesn’t straighten up, she’s going to lose her little girl, which would be tragic for both of them.” She stared at the steaming hot coffee. “Maybe Katie should be placed with Child Protective Services. I don’t know.” She looked up. “Anyway, I have to go. Maggie’s living in a tent village somewhere down in the Eisenhower Valley.”

  Katz pictured shrubs and bushes along the shallow riverbed hiding a camp of homeless people. “It’s no place to raise a little girl,” he said.

  “You think?” Snowe asked sarcastically. “She should be in preschool, even if it’s only online. Maggie just carts Katie around from one hellhole to another, exposing her to things that no child should see, especially a four-year-old, to say nothing of COVID-19 and other shit that’s out there.”

  Katz felt bad. He had obtained a financial settlement for Moriarty following the tragic death of Katie’s father, Tony Fortune, along the Georgetown towpath in 2017. Regrettably, Moriarty used the proceeds to finance a downward spiral fueled by drugs and alcohol.

  Snowe caught Katz’s guilty look.

  “You’re not responsible,” Snowe said. “That decision is on her. You tried to give her and Katie a better life. She’s the one who messed it up.” She pointed toward the phone, eager to change the subject.

  “What’s going on?”

  “They found a body at Four Mile Run.”

  “One of your cases?”

  “It belongs to the antiterrorism task force,” he replied. “Stone’s in charge.” He referred to Alexandria Detective Sherry Stone, with whom he’d collaborated last year on the Slaters Lane case. She was chair of a metropolitan area interagency task force that pulled together law enforcement resources in case of a terrorist threat or attack.

  Given his job as U.S. Attorney and hers as a senior probation officer in Alexandria, their conversations routinely touched on murder and mayhem. Their communications were stunted and superficial to avoid sharing confidential information, particularly if it involved a criminal case.

  Katz was one of the few U.S. Attorneys who had been asked to remain in the new administration. No one was surprised. The decision to nominate him had been the brainchild of Senator Abraham Lowenstein based on his adept handling of the Daingerfield Island espionage caper. His confirmation in 2018 was based on ability, not politics.

  “All right,” Snowe said. “I’ll see you later.”

  Like Katz, Snowe had gotten her COVID-19 vaccinations in March. She felt more confident about returning to her routine work. At the rate things were going, life would be back to normal by the summer.

  As the sliding glass door closed, Katz caught his reflection on the glass panel: tall, lanky, kinky steel-wool hair graying at the temples, olive skin, an inscrutable face, and dark, piercing eyes. He ran an open palm over the stubble on his cheek. He raised the phone in his other hand and said, “Hey.”

  “I was about to hang up.” Santana replied. “I call with details about a murder and you put me on hold. What the fuck, Mo?”

  “Sorry.”

  The door slid open. “And don’t forget Constitution Hall tonight,” Snowe said. “They’re only allowing a limited number of people into the event.”

  Katz pointed triumphantly to the e-reader lying on the table.

  “Yeah, right,” she said. “I know what you think about self-help books.” The door closed again.

  Katz smiled to himself. Even if he was uncertain how he felt about the book’s premise, any writer who used a nom de plume as pretentious as Henry David McLuhan had to be a fraud. Just another hipster running a hustle, he thought.

  “Don’t forget your mask!” he hollered toward the house. “You may have gotten your shot, but you’re not invincible.”

  From behind the glass Snowe waved a blue mask at him before she disappeared.

  He spoke into the phone. �
�If Spates has any sense.”

  “What?” Santana asked.

  “That’s the point, Curtis. You said Spates is probably already hightailing it to points unknown if he has any sense. The point is Spates doesn’t have any sense. From what I’ve been told, he’s a fool. He’s going to stay right where he is.”

  Santana pondered the response and said, “So you were listening.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I always listen.”

  **

  PHIL LANDRY was in his national security office a short distance from the U.S. Capitol. He dropped his Personal Identity Verification card into the card reader on his desktop computer. Once the computer program opened, he checked the time and location of this morning’s briefing and the list of attendees.

  The lead briefer was Alexandria Detective Sherry Stone. All of the usual suspects would be attending, including Mo Katz, the cocky U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; Curtis Santana, his lead investigator; and Mai Lin, a research assistant who, since helping solve the Slaters Lane murders, acted as though she was the managing partner of a law firm.

  Landry had expected the U.S. Attorney’s office to fall apart last spring following the loss of the lead attorneys for both the civil and criminal divisions. Much to his surprise, the opposite occurred. The unprecedented events of April 2020 created a stronger esprit de corps than had previously existed. Landry was bitter that Katz’s star ascended while his fortunes plunged. Two years ago, he was close to being selected for the top position at the Department of Homeland Security. Then the long knives came out. Articles about his past imbroglios appeared in The Washington Chronicle. Despite much of it being nothing more than conjecture and innuendo, there was a scintilla of truth that roiled his supporters. When Abe Lowenstein, chairman of the Senate Select Committee for Intelligence, withdrew his endorsement, Landry’s supporters tripped over one another to find the exit. Although he maintained the title of director of security operations, he was relegated to a crummy office and wielded little influence.