Jake Caldwell Thrillers

by Weaver, James

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Foster shook him, and Jake pawed in the air at the beating blackbird wings that thrashed at his face. He blinked rapidly and pulled focus on a wide-eyed Foster who assumed a defensive pose like a fighter waiting for the opening bell to ring.

  “Jesus,” she said, “you always wake up like that?”

  “Like what?” Jake asked, shaking his head hard to clear the cobwebs.

  “Swinging and cussing like you’re about to get gang raped in prison.”

  He drew in a deep breath and stood, the last remnants of the blackbird diminishing away to nothing. “Sorry, bad dream. What time is it?”

  Foster’s body posture relaxed. “A little after seven. Snell’s out of surgery. Procedure went well. She’ll be out for a while, but we can expect a full recovery. She’ll be in ICU for the rest of the day, but we might be able to check in on her tonight.”

  “Thank God. You find anything about the people in the pictures?”

  “Got a call from a guy at the office. Wants me to come and talk. Anything from Keats?”

  “Let’s talk on the way to the car. I want to hear what your guy has to say.”

  Jake filled her in on his conversation with both Keats and Bear. Foster had no intelligence on Sokolov, or anything referring to the Blackbird, but knew where they could find some.

  “I’ll bet Sam Stone knows,” she said, “especially if this Sokolov guy is ex-KGB.”

  “You think the CIA will talk to us?”

  Foster’s eyes twinkled. “He might not talk to you, but I’ll bet he’ll talk to me.”

  “Why you and not me?”

  “If you have to ask, you’re dumber than you look, Caldwell.”

  Twenty minutes later, as the sun peeked above the eastern horizon, Jake pulled in behind Foster’s sedan in front of the FBI building southwest of downtown. Outside a set of spike-topped iron gates, a guard manned the blue-topped, windowed shack. Both meant to provide protection for the people inside the non-descript two-story concrete building. The guard ambled to Foster’s side of the car and laughed at something she said before peering back at Jake. A minute later, he reached inside the shack and the gate opened. Jake parked in a narrow space next to Foster, and they walked into the building.

  It had been months since Jake graced the inside of the FBI building, but the musty, old library smell hadn’t changed. They padded up the stairs, past Snell’s darkened office to an undersized closet at the end of the hall. Foster flipped on her office light and clicked away on her computer.

  “Who are we meeting?” Jake asked, rolling his head to relieve the dull ache in his neck from sleeping in the hospital chair.

  “Agent Dale Lumsden. Good guy. Came from our Atlanta field office. Plays a lot of poker at the casinos, so you two should get along fine.”

  She made a quick phone call before leading the way to the opposite end of the building. Office light spilled into the darkened hallway. Jake followed Foster inside. A middle-aged man with spiked, thinning hair and gangly limbs hunched at a desk with three computer monitors. His hazel eyes jumped at Jake through coke-bottle glasses. He was glad Foster made the poker reference because it helped Jake place the guy.

  “Agent Lumsden.” Jake reached forward and shook a clammy hand. “Thanks for meeting with us.”

  Lumsden held Jake’s grip. “We’ve met before.”

  “Kind of,” Jake said.

  Lumsden released Jake’s hand and plopped back in his chair, smoothing his wrinkled blue tie with absentminded strokes. “Hollywood Casino a year and a half ago. I remember it was a scorcher when I walked outside with an empty wallet because of you.”

  Jake nodded. “I hit a set of sixes and cracked your aces for a thousand-dollar pot. I remember.”

  “A thirteen-hundred-dollar pot, and my wife was a thin poker chip away from divorcing me when I arrived home. It was her birthday money. I had to settle for buying her a sad bouquet of flowers.”

  “Sorry, man. You help us out here, and maybe I’ll give you another crack at it.”

  “Deal,” Lumsden said. “Foster says you’re helping her figure out who took out Snell and McKernan.”

  “Without Murphy finding out Jake’s helping us,” Foster added.

  Lumsden pounded out strokes on his keyboard. “I won’t tell him anything if you won’t. But if Murphy sees the visitor log, you’re screwed and he probably will. The old man doesn’t miss much.”

  Foster said, “Better make it worth our while, then.”

  A few clicks on his mouse and Lumsden turned a large monitor in their direction. The picture of the bald, black man in the dark suit and red tie occupied the screen. “Foster sent me the photos from her phone. This is Andre Fisher, a black-market arms dealer from Quebec. He’s like the Amazon of gunrunning in North America, mostly in the United States and Canada, but has been dabbling with the Mexican cartels.”

  Keats referred to guns and Sokolov during their meeting. Could this be where Keats was trying to lead him? Was the Blackbird some kind of gun? “What kind of guns does he deal?”

  “Hell, all of them. He has a chain of gun stores across the US through heavily clouded limited liability corporations, which are a super pain in the ass to trace. He’s been on and off our radar for a decade but popped up hard and heavy when he brought in Russian-made Kalashnikov RPK-16s and MAs.”

  “What are those?”

  “The RPK is a light machine gun, and the MA is a new micro assault rifle used by the military as well as security firms with high-value targets and mercenaries. I’ve shot one myself and it is a sweet-ass piece of firepower.”

  “Where can we find him?” Foster asked.

  “That might be difficult.” Lumsden removed his glasses and wiped the thick lenses with his tie. “There’s a rumor in the arms community Fisher got a little sticky fingered on a shipment of the MAs. Mother Russia doesn’t like being bent over the barrel.”

  Jake said, “He dealt arms with the Russian government?”

  Lumsden snorted. “Nothing happens in that country without the approval of the Russian government. President’s an ex-KGB agent himself. Cross him and you’re writing your own death warrant. But the last time anybody laid eyes on Fisher was here in Kansas City a couple of months ago.”

  Jake settled in the chair opposite Lumsden’s desk and clasped his hands behind his head, gaze locked on a dark water stain gracing the white popcorn ceiling. Fisher was an arms dealer last seen in Kansas City. Nobody ran guns through Kansas City without Jason Keats having a hand in it. Jake would bet the money he won off Agent Lumsden that Keats lied about saying he didn’t recognize Fisher. And if the deceased FBI Agent Jackson Blake was, indeed, investigating the Russian mob, Keats might very well have known him too. Maybe Jake wasn’t as good at reading faces as he thought.

  Maybe Cat could assist with tracking Andre Fisher. Cat was a genius, but it would cost an arm and a leg to enlist his services. But a little persuasion never hurt. Maybe Bear could threaten to beat his ass if he didn’t help.

  They thanked Lumsden and headed back to Foster’s office. The picture cleared a little as they’d identified four of the five people in the photos from Connelly’s basement stash. But they still didn’t know why Connelly had the pictures and what his role might be in the grand scheme of things.

  Foster’s phone dinged and she checked the message. “Sam said he’d meet for breakfast. First Watch in Westport. You hungry?”

  The thought of their French toast made Jake’s salivary glands kick into overtime. “Definitely. I’ll drive.”

  Back in the parking lot, Jake opened his truck door for Foster. As she hauled herself into the cab, she mumbled about the size of his vehicle compensating for something else. Jake ignored her and walked to the other side.

  He cranked the engine as the information from the last twelve hours settled in his jumbled head. “I think we have a problem. At least two of the five people in our photo spread are six feet under—Marta and your FBI
Agent Blake. Sounds like Fisher is missing and could be dead, which would make three. With only two people left, I wonder if we’re wasting our time tracking ghosts.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  First Watch was a mid-sized restaurant with an upscale farm-to-table décor, focusing solely on breakfast and lunch fare. The fresh smells of coffee, omelets, and bacon hit Jake as he and Foster waded through the crowd at the front door. His stomach grumbled so loud he had to fight the urge to grab a random plate from a passing waitress.

  “When we show him the photos, don’t tell him the ones we know,” Jake said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t know this guy. I tend to not trust people until they prove otherwise.”

  “That’s a pretty cynical way to go through life.”

  He let a waitress balancing a half-dozen plates on her arms pass. “Yeah, but you get burned a hell of a lot less.”

  “I know this guy. If you can’t trust him, trust me.”

  Jake followed Foster to the back where an auburn-haired, broad-shouldered man waited with his hands wrapped around a coffee mug. He locked eyes with Foster and his teeth shone bright, faltering when he focused on Jake trailing behind her like he was another rooster entering the hen house.

  “Hey, Sam.” Foster embraced the man.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” Sam Stone said, releasing her and turning to Jake. The CIA agent fell a couple inches shy of Jake with an athletic build beneath a white oxford shirt and a flashy gold Rolex on his left wrist. His eyes were bullish and his grip powerful as he shook Jake’s hand. “Sam Stone. Nice to meet you.”

  “Jake Caldwell. Same here. Nice time piece.”

  Stone waggled his wrist, a sheepish look creeping on his face. “A gift from a rich relative. No way I’d spend that much of my own money on a freaking watch.”

  “Well, I appreciate you meeting us on short notice.”

  They dropped to the booth, Stone on one side, and Foster and Jake on the other. A pixie waitress swept over and took their order. Just coffee for Stone and Foster; French toast and a side of bacon for Jake. He guessed the Feds subsisted solely on caffeine.

  “How’s Snell?” Stone asked.

  “Out of surgery,” Foster said. “Prognosis is good for a full recovery.

  “Thank God. That woman is tough. She’ll be fine.”

  “You’re with the CIA? Doing what?” Jake asked.

  “A number of things I can’t discuss, but my main focus was Russia. Spent three years undercover in Moscow as a lackey to the assistant to the Prime Minister. Things got a little hairy, and I had to get out.”

  “Hairy?” Jake asked.

  “Some dickless bureaucrat at our State Department blew my cover when he made the wrong inquiries through the wrong channel. I’m lucky to still be on this side of life, and I could write a movie on the escape. Snell and I met a couple of years later on a racketeering case involving the Russian mob. My fluency with the language and knowledge of how they work was highly desired by both the FBI and the CIA.”

  “And now you’re here in Kansas City,” Foster said.

  The two held each other’s gaze long enough to make Jake feel like a third wheel on a date. “They say it’s temporary, but you never know. Depends on how bright I make things here.”

  “The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long,” Foster said, “and you have burned so very, very bright, Roy.”

  Stone laid his elbows on the table. “Ooh, I love a woman who quotes Blade Runner.”

  Jake studied the two of them. “You guys want me to leave?”

  A pink hue crept along the length of Foster’s neck. “Oh, sorry. We watched the movie together a long time ago.”

  Stone lowered his voice. “What’s going on with your case?”

  Jake stated the timeline from the call from Angela to her death in the cabin to the raid on Connelly’s house. Stone remained stoic, listening to the detail. Jake spun a tale of a meeting with one of his informants, leaving out Keats’s name which earned him a quizzical stare from Foster, but to her credit, she said nothing. He also left out the identities of the people in the pictures they already knew.

  “Any leads on the kid?” Stone asked.

  “Nothing. We’re guessing he’s with Connelly. I just hope to God he wouldn’t hurt him.”

  Stone’s cobalt eyes grew distant for a moment. “I’ll say a prayer for him. You have some pictures to show me.”

  Jake handed him the envelope with the pictures, and Stone scanned through them. “We’re hoping you can help us figure out who these people are. Since Connelly kept them hidden, they might be important.”

  Stone spent a couple seconds looking at each one, barely flinching when he rolled over the torture pictures. “These were with the surveillance photos?”

  “In the same space in the basement but segregated in a bag. You seen anything like it?”

  He nodded. “Not all that different from some of the nasty shit the Armenian mob does. Still sick, though. And you don’t know who any of the people in non-bloodied pictures are?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Jake said. “Don’t want to taint the information pool.”

  With a wry turn of Stone’s mouth, he turned to Foster. “I like this guy. Okay, the first picture is Jackson Blake, FBI agent killed in Iowa, but if you didn’t know this one, the incompetence in the FBI has exceeded even that of the CIA, which would be no small feat.”

  “What can you tell us about him?” Jake asked.

  “I never met Jackson Blake personally but heard good things. He worked on a task force investigating gun and drug smuggling activities by the Russian mob in the United States. He’d put together a nice portfolio of Russian associates, their bosses, and the buyers in the US. His superiors said he was ready to tie it all together with a nice bow and ribbon when they found him with his throat slit in an alley.” Stone passed back the pictures of the guy Keats pointed out as Sokolov and Marta. “This lovely couple is Borya Sokolov and Marta Niroff. He’s a gun runner, and she’s a handler in the Russian chain. She’d been in the US for a decade working Russian agents. Actually, met her once in Moscow, though she went by a phony name to travel back and forth. Rumor has it she and Sokolov were doing the horizontal bop.”

  “Know where she is now?” Jake asked.

  Stone flashed a “bitch, please” look at Jake. “I know as much as you do. Found strangled behind a bar in Westport. Killer unknown. This is Andre Fisher.” Stone lay the photo of the bald, black guy on the table. “Arms dealer with heavy ties to Mother Russia. He’s like a frog, bounces from one place to another and never in one spot too long. Paranoid as shit. Last I heard he was down in Texas.”

  “We heard he might be dead,” Foster said. “Sticky fingers with a shipment.”

  Stone clucked his tongue off the roof of his mouth. “A possibility with Andre, but he’s been reported dead more times than I can count, and he always pops back on the radar.”

  “What about the last pic?” Jake asked.

  Stone studied it for a beat. “A bad toupee and a cheesy porn moustache. You’d think someone would recognize him, but I don’t. Do you know?”

  “Nope,” Foster said.

  “I can run it past my team if you want. Maybe someone will recognize him.”

  “You hear about anything called the Blackbird? My informant said it was something Sokolov was working on. Something he was gathering IT resources for.”

  Stone drummed a couple of beats on the tabletop with his fingertips. “Just rumors. Whispers, really.”

  “And what do those whispers say?”

  “Sorry, I can’t tell you. If it becomes pertinent, we’ll get with the appropriate agency personnel at the FBI.”

  Jake grit his teeth. Fucking red tape. “Not even a hint?”

  Stone grinned. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

  Stone wasn’t going to tell him shit, but there was definitely something there. Jake pulled up the
photos of the red journal on his phone. “I managed to snap a couple of pics of Connelly’s journal before he snagged it back during the shootout. You have any idea what it says?”

  He handed the phone to Stone who squinted at the microscopic print before manipulating the screen to blow them up. Jake and Foster gave him a minute to read through them. While he read, the waitress brought Jake’s food which he wolfed down.

  “Is this all you got from the journal?” Stone asked.

  “Yeah, unfortunately.”

  “The first page appears to be coded transactions—met X at coffee shop, get Red emails from B. They’re generic enough to be useless unless you know who these people are. Now, the bottom of the second page is interesting. It lists a couple of names and companies. The first one is ‘Androv-J.Hart-Trajor.’ The second one is ‘Polovich-S.Mack-MedFire.’ You sure you don’t have any more?”

  “No, sorry.” Jake finished the last piece of bacon and wished he’d ordered double of everything. “We had the journal until Connelly started blasting away. Can you do anything with it?”

  Stone chewed on his upper lip as he thumbed through the screen shots again. “Maybe. Let Foster and I work on this. We’ll run the names through some databases and see what we find. Since Trajor and MedFire are both local companies, should be easy enough to hook up with their Human Resources departments and check for matches on these names.”

  The third wheel sensation settled on Jake like a wet blanket. He got the distinct impression of being pushed to the side. “What do you want me to do?”

  Stone shot a questioning look to Foster. She shrugged. “Not much you can do at this point, Jake. Why don’t you do…whatever it is you do, and I’ll have Foster call you.”

  Jake ground his teeth together for a moment. It made sense Stone squeezed him out. He was an ex-mafia enforcer turned private eye, and they were with the FBI and CIA, but it didn’t make him feel any better. “You mind if I borrow Foster for a minute?”