Dumbarton Drive

By Bob Rager

It was only one chance in thousands that they had found each other, or was it?

Washington DC is the setting for Bob Rager's story of two men caught in a trap of time and feeling. Will they escape?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bob Rager
• Release date: Dec 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301125357

Book preview

He flinched at the sudden blast of a police siren. ‘It was too soon,’ he thought, ‘had to be.’ And would the clerk in the Gorgeous Gourmet have already noticed the missing sandwich, or care enough to call the police to report a missing wedge of brie?

Eyes straight ahead, he walked along the sidewalk under its massive cathedral canopy of dappled boughs and leaves. He was proud of his restraint. As hungry as he was, he could wait until he crossed another block where the trees were even thicker and the shadows even in the after noon were deep enough to hide a man from idle glances.

And what had he done anyway? But to liberate a sandwich from the uncaring Man. He smiled at the student rhetoric of another time. Another Big Idea of many he had had, but the Big Ideas stayed in his head, all in his head, and he was hungry. And he had just stolen a sandwich, and this was theft.

At least the old man wasn’t around to know his son was stealing food out of a deli or that his son was behind on his rent. It wasn’t really theft if you believed you had absent-mindedly left the store forgetting to pay.

But if you truly believed you were lost in thought about the true value of China’s gross domestic product then this wasn’t deception, at worst, confusion, misdirection.

The dotted branches of tangled leaves muffled the traffic roar just blocks away. The silence was almost complete for an odd grating of metal on metal of a metal gate swinging in the shadows of a blowzy hedgerow. He watched the gap close and open and close and open again and he stepped through onto what was an apron of cut stone pavers that fanned out in a pattern of fish scales.

There he stood and stared, a puzzled cross on his forehead, turned back to look at the gate and with a hmm, turned to again face a sprawling house of some kind of style, so hard to tell with all the trees and shrubbery gone wild and growing over the pavement up on the walls.

‘It couldn’t be abandoned,’ he thought, ‘not in this part of town, why the Kennedy House was just a couple blocks away.’

And there was a little path that someone had made by sweeping aside the weeds and yard cuttings.

The façade was locally referred to as Georgian, an in-town colonial style with shutters but relieved of columns. In Georgetown columns were dismissed as belonging in tracts of split-levels over at Mt. Vernon way out past the beltway, where all those commuters parked their cars beneath their bedrooms.

He faced a cliff of pale weathered brick – almost gold in the glow of early dusk; the drive flowed in a fat curve past a carved stone archway, where, set within was a huge door, its grain showing through the peeling paint. Weeds and clumps of crabgrass grew in cracks in the paving. And off to a corner was something very interesting.

Another fieldstone building reprised the main house. Set back and to the side the structure was what the real estate agents called a dependency; a mouthful that could mean a garage, a guest house, a pool house but in certain regions south of the Potomac might also mean slaves’ quarters.

Chapter 2

The next instant, the hedges exploded in front of him, the boughs clawing at him in the air. He jumped back as the hedge split apart and a deer kicked its way out in a tangle of legs and broken angles.

The animal’s huge black eyes darted wildly about as the deer staggered to its feet to right itself, its hooves clattering against the stones. Then the animal tried to run but could only wobble side to side. One leg was terribly bent of shape.

He winced seeing it; but the creature must be in agony, he thought.

Then they both turned to look in the same direction.

A tall man with broad shoulders and a square face stood facing them. His face was partly hidden by the rifle held high, the trigger between his cheek and nose.

‘Jesus,’ he thought `it’s illegal to own a handgun in the district’

Don’t move, someone commanded.

‘Christ,’ he thought. ‘It had come at last; he would die here, in violence. It would be quick. Death would come before the bullet exited his back.’

A cracking sound pounded through the air. And he felt nothing; he heard instead a new odd sound, a long slow breath.

When he opened his eyes the deer was sinking in slow motion to its knees. The sound had stopped now and the animal was sprawled flat, his tongue falling against a cold slab.

The deerstalker put down the shotgun, casually opening the chamber, the barrels and stock hanging in the crook of his right arm.

He wore a jacket of richly autumn tweeds, a red vest, a necktie carelessly knotted on lightly pressed blue cotton shirt. He was dressed for hunting on a moor in Scotland. He was a big man, well over six feet and counting; his face was large with a strong jaw and a mustache of russet and silver whiskers surrounding an even mouth of surprising full, almost girlish, lips.

His hair was cut to military style; bare sides and a cropped top. And of course he wore khakis faded the color of milky coffee. Put altogether he looked formidable instead of overdressed.

You were supposed to be here minutes ago, said the hunter. He scratched his jaw and stared. Well never mind, you’re here now; help me clean this up.

He wasn’t sure who the man spoke to because silently a third person had come from the direction of the house.

In contrast to the brawny gentleman hunter, this man was small and narrow, and dressed in a dark military tunic, black trousers, and black calf-high boots, something like a uniform; his head was small with finely sculpted brows and cheeks, a little boy’s mouth and clean shaven jaw sharp enough to scratch glass, a coiled spring straining at release.

Well we can’t stand here all day. The hunter looked up at the sky already deepening from blue to deeper gray and studied what no one else could see. Or the night.

You there, grab the legs. Go ahead and grab the legs; he’s dead, I made sure of that.

He’s not going to hurt you now, he said, and then with a sneer he added Dear

`Ey, do ‘as ‘e says, the smaller man said; he spit out the words one by one.

Right, he answered flatly and with a deep breath felt for the animal’s legs, thinking that these sad twigs, barely thick as a tennis racket's grip, were the fawn’s ankles, if deer had ankles.

The commander or whatever he was barked this and that but did not actually move to touch or to take part as he pulled and slid the carcass, a dark stain trailing in its wake, down the drive and to the out building behind the main house.

Now what? he asked.

Over there, hissed the imp. He flicked glances now and then but his eyes always returned in awe to his master.

Over there was an arbor with thick posts holding up beams draped with vines. He didn’t particularly like going closer, to the tangled brush and shadows and farther from the gate and the street.

As if reading his mind, the hunter pointed his shotgun at a spot on the grass.

Here, this will do.

The imp handed over a shovel. A name was embroidered across a pocket of his tunic but he moved so briskly the name was a blur.

Make it deep. I don’t want foxes digging it up.

He turned around looking for something.

Well, where are they?

He felt two pairs of eyes at him.

I don’t know what you’re talking about.

"Good God! The world is full of idiots. I don’t know what kind of scheme you and your outfits are up to me but you can’t do that bait and switch scheme with me. No siree!

"Your office said you would bring traps and guaranteed to keep the deer out of my property. And now I suppose you will try to sell me some fancy electronic system. Don’t think you can overcharge me just because my house is