Outside the Wire

by Richard Farnsworth

Morales nodded slowly at the special agent’s body which lay grey and tattered, half covered by a sheet on the stainless steel table.

  “Yeah, that’s Mamatez.” He reached to cover his nose at the wet, ruined-meat smell, but stopped to scratch his face self-consciously instead.

  The pathologist across the autopsy table gave a solemn nod and pulled the sheet back up over the body. The air-conditioning kicked in loudly, ensuring the room stayed mea-locker-cold.

  “Most of him anyway. Crabs do that to him after he got dumped? I heard about how that can happen,” Morales said.

  An uneven stencil, proclaiming the sheet property of the medical examiner, settled over what had been the agent's face. Like they wanted to make sure nobody walked off with a sheet from the morgue. Morales had had his fill of Morgues lately, morgues and courtrooms both.

  The body's smell subsided and the sharp disinfectant didn't seem that unpleasant after all.

  “No, I don’t think so. I’ve only done the prelim, but the wounds all appear to have been inflicted while he was alive. We called your office as soon as we ID'd him.”

  Light reflected off the pathologist’s round lenses and for an instant the eyes looked as if they were covered with silver coins. Morales thought of the ferryman's toll for the dead and the other's he'd known who'd paid that fare.

  “Those are some nasty tears. Dogs maybe?” That was a difficult thought. Mick was a good man. Had been a good man.

  “I’m not sure. I emailed the digital images and measurements to the FBI’s forensic lab. The technician I spoke to couldn’t say.”

  Morales stood quietly, running a hand through his dark air. He whole-body sighed, but didn't speak.

  After a brief, awkward pause the pathologist excused himself to leave Morales alone with the body. The agent didn’t get any time though.

  Before the stainless steel door stopped swinging, Supervisory Agent Daniels lumbered in. Another man, sharply contrasting with the older agent, followed closely. Close-cropped hair, crisply dressed with a rigid military bearing, the new guy carried a cheap briefcase and a whole lot of attitude.

  Daniels glanced unwillingly at the autopsy table and then to Morales saying, “Frank, real sorry about Mick.”

  Daniels had that ‘I’m going to tell you something you don’t want to hear’ look, fidgeting there with this other guy standing close.

  Morales waited.

  Daniels started to speak again as the other man pulled latex gloves from the box on the little rolling table. He snapped on a pair and reached for the sheet.

  Morales grabbed the man’s wrist and said, “The hell you think you're doing?”

  The new guy tensed but didn’t react immediately. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth and he snapped his wrist free.

  The confidence and the way this new guy was put together made Frank Morales pause for the first time in a long-time, unsure if he could take him. Taller than Morales’ five-eleven, and just a little broader in the chest, the guy was hard.

  Daniels stepped forward and between the two men, crowding Morales away. With his ruddy complexion a little redder, he smiled like a pal, but nervously shaking his bulbous gin-nose.

  “Special Agent Morales, Major Harden. He’s investigating the circumstances surrounding Mamatez’s death.” Daniels’ speech sounded too rehearsed.

  The Major reached out a hand to shake. “Call me John.”

  Morales looked down at the gloved, outstretched hand but didn’t take it. “Major John, hunh. What? State police?”

  “No.” The Major didn’t elaborate, but instead dropped his hand and turned his attention from Morales back to the body.

  Daniels took a few steps back, guiding Morales with him across the stained linoleum and said, “Frank, he’s from the DOD. Army-something, I don't know what. He’s investigating Mick's death in relation to an ongoing operation.”

  Morales frowned. He didn’t like this. No respect coming in there like that while he was attending to the remains of an agent killed on duty. One of his men. What could be so damn important?

  “Don¹t make trouble,” Daniels said quietly, hand on Morales. "I know things been hard for you since little Frank…"

  Morales flicked the comforting hand away and said between clenched teeth, "That's none of your damn business."

  Daniels held the hand up, patting the air, placating, not meeting Morales' intensity. Morales saw the hurt in his supervisor's eyes, knowing he had snapped too quickly. With a softer tone, a little sarcasm to appease the man, he asked,

  “This guy want to know what happened, or just come to ogle at the body?”

  Daniels barked a little laugh. Conspiratorially he said, “Didn’t say one way or the other. I got called into the field office at six o’clock in the frigging morning and he’s there waiting for me. On a Sunday for Christ-sake.”

  Harden covered the dead man's face with the sheet, cleared his throat and said. “Special Agent Morales, I’d like to have a word,”

  “Yeah, I got a word for you.”

  “Frank, no screwing around.” Daniels stabbed his hand at Morales and then waved it open-fingered.

  “Cooperate. Fully. You understand?”

  Harden stooped to pick up the case from where he'd left it on the floor and stepped over

  “What do you want? I just lost a good man,” Morales said.

  "I'm sorry. I know that can be hard."

  "Do you?" As soon as he asked it Morales could see in the man's eyes that he did.

  "I need to know the story. What he was involved with.” Harden had the kind of eyes you’d use words like piercing and gunmetal grey to describe. They stared, unblinking, at Morales from a weather-roughened face.

  Morales outlined the undercover operation they'd been working since he came back to the job. He explained how his team was infiltrating the organization of a Haitian cocaine dealer, gaining his confidence, and how his agent had posed as a dealer. He explained how his friend and colleague had disappeared two days ago, and been found late the night before, snagged on the lip of a culvert that emptied into the Baltimore harbor.

  “So, you believe his last known whereabouts were with this dealer?” Harden asked.

  “He was supposed to make a drop for Petite Louis, the Haitian. Mick reported he left, but never made it to his destination. His disappearance wasn’t enough to float a warrant to search and we worried about blowing the investigation. But now.”

  “Now?” Harden asked

  “With the body, I don’t think we’ll have a problem with a warrant,” Daniels interrupted.

  They both looked at the man as if they just realized he was still there.

  “Anything unusual about this Louis?” Harden asked.

  “Nope. Piece-of-trash drug dealer. A medium-big fish. We want the next level up.”

  “And this house, anything unusual there?”

  “A row-house on Rosemont. Like, maybe a hundred other crack houses in the city,” Morales said, shaking his head.

  “The people that live there, you ever see them yourself?”

  “Ask me what question you’re hinting at.” Morales didn’t like to beat around bushes.

  The corner of Roger's mouth pulled back in a half smile. He looked like the kind that would rather torch a bush than beat around it too.

  “Any children on the drug dealer's premises?”

  “Kids in and out all the time. Lots of these guys use children to deal. So, yeah. I guess.”

  Kids dealing had been background noise to Morales, before it had touched his own world so completely.

  Harden opened his military issue briefcase and pulled out a manila folder. He laid it open on the empty stainless steel table so that Morales could see the close-up photo of a preteen boy.

  “Ever see one that looked like this?”

  Morales studied it for an instant and said, “He looks like a kid. Maybe, what, ten? Twelve?”

  “Really? Look at his eyes.” Harden didn’t look at the pictu
re; he studied Morales.

  Morales examined the photo. “Yeah, he’s got eyes. Dark.”

  “How about the sclera?”

  The way Harden was spooling it out frustrated Morales a little, but he looked again.

  “What’s sclera?”

  “The whites. Can you see the whites of his eyes?”

  Morales couldn’t. The eyes were solid black, like the kid was wearing some kind of opaque contact lenses.

  “That’s freaky-looking.” He looked up to catch Harden’s half grin.

  “We call them BEKs.”

  “Becks like the beer?”

  “Like B-E-K. For Black-Eyed-Kids."

  It pissed Morales off when Harden wouldn’t explain more. It really pissed him off when Harden told him soldiers were going on the DEA raid to the crack house. And Daniels standing there in his cheap suit nodding, the guy that could intercede didn't say a thing.