The Moneybag

Tuesday, January 16 – 11:45 P.M.
Old Town Alexandria, Virginia

Denise James breezed out the double front doors of the restaurant having just had her way with the full menu and wine list on Treasure Chest Bank’s tab. Still inside were her division head and three die-hards, all certain to drink until told to leave. Everyone else in the Real Estate Finance Division had already gone home, and it was high time she did too. She didn’t envy the final four their certain hangovers for whatever pleasure remained in abusing the bank’s credit card into the wee hours.

Outside, the air was freezing. Her gloved hands drew her hat snug over her ears and pulled the strap of her coat tight as she turned up King Street, the eighteenth-century thoroughfare running west from the Potomac River. All the quaint shops were closed at this hour, the faux-candles of their colonial facades flickering a faint orange glow. Along the sidewalk, gas lamps cast a Victorian sheen to the street below.

There weren’t many people out, and after she turned onto Fairfax, she was alone. Here the street narrowed between clapboard townhouses, some dating back a hundred years. Trees in the sidewalk cast shadows through a canopy of leafless branches from the occasional street lamp overhead. She pressed homeward, watching the street and listening to the metal buckles of her shoes jingling like spurs. Thank God for pantsuits, she thought. Hate to be wearing a skirt on a night like this.

Sounds to the left made her turn her head.

A man was running through a service alley bisecting the middle of the block, a streetlight at the far end silhouetting his form.

She stopped.

The man stole a glance over his shoulder. Against the light she could see he gripped something across his body. When he turned back, he took a few more strides and lurched to one side, reeling out of control, and would have fallen had he not caught the corner of a building with his arm. A moment later he emerged from its shadow holding the object in one hand and reaching for his stomach with the other.

Two silhouettes rounded the far corner under the light.

"Freeze!" shouted one.

The man kept running.

"You! Freeze!"

The man stopped and whirled around.

A shot cracked out. She flinched. Twice more he fired as those in chase jumped to the sides of the alley.

The man turned toward her and ran. She could hear the labor of his breathing before she could see the exhaustion in his face. He was desperate, lungs gasping.

"Hey!" she called. "This way!"

He saw her for the first time, her arm pointing down Fairfax Street.

"This way!" she said. "Next block!"

He was going to pass to her right to make the turn. The bag was in his left hand, the gun in his right.

She turned her left hip to the apex of the man’s turn and leaned back on her right foot. A half step short of where she wanted him to be, she shifted forward and launched her right leg in a wide arc. Snapping her knee straight, she planted her instep into the center of his stomach, grunting on impact, right hand flailing the air above her knee, every ounce of strength focused.

The man’s torso halted as if he’d slammed into a fence rail. Extremities, gun, bag, and stomach contents flew. She withdrew her leg and he crumbled at her feet. Clutching his stomach, he rolled to one side and curled into a ball, eyes scrunched shut.

She leaned over from behind his head, the smell of gunpowder and vomit rising. He looked Hispanic, wore a scruffy goatee, and had a mouth full of crooked gray teeth.

The men from the alley trotted up.

"You got ’em!" panted one.

They were police officers, guns drawn.