Gate 76

by Andrew Diamond

  A fat cop pushes the door open. Lester Briggs. I know the guy. He’s got his club in his hand, and when his eyes meet mine, he shakes his head and says, “You know you can’t be up in here. Come on, let’s take it outside.”

  “Hey, Les.”

  “Close it up,” he says firmly, as he pushes the lid of the laptop down, “and take it outside.”

  I stand up, and he pushes the computer toward me with the tip of his club. On the way out, Hahn says, “You want something, bring a warrant.”

  When we get onto the street, Briggs says, “What’re you looking for, Ferguson?”

  “Information about a girl who used to work for her.”

  He shakes his head. “Ain’t gonna happen, my friend. She don’t talk to nobody. Which girl you asking about?”

  “Crystal.”

  “Hmm. She probably get a new Crystal about twice a year. What’s she look like?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He laughs. “Come on, man, you looking for someone and you don’t know her real name or what she look like?”

  “She died about three weeks ago.”

  “Here? In DC?”

  “I don’t think so. I checked the death records. Nothing matched.” Three young women died in DC around the time of Crystal’s death. An accident victim and a drug-resistant staph infection, but they both had steady jobs. The third had been an invalid for several years. There may be more. Sometimes the records take a while to appear.

  “You check Maryland? Virginia?”

  “We’re still working on that.”

  “Stay away from Hahn,” says Briggs, giving me a couple of hard taps on the chest with the handle of his club to show he means it. “You talk to her girls, keep it low-key. Don’t get nobody alarmed, else my job start getting harder.”

  I catch a cab back to the office, and a new idea hits me. There were four names on that Chicago flight that I couldn’t match to anyone. What if Anna Brook was traveling under the name of her dead friend? That would be pretty easy, wouldn’t it? Julia said Crystal died about three weeks ago.

  Time to check the death records for those last four passengers. The only problem is, they could have died anywhere.

  Heading back to the office, I open my laptop in the back of the cab to get a look at the image that set Kim Hahn off. The screen flicks on for a second, then goes right back off. I try again, and the same thing happens. The battery is too low.

  In a few minutes, I’m back at the office. As soon as I walk in, I say, “Leon, we need to look up some deaths.”

  Bethany glances up from her monitor for a second and makes eye contact. “Hey Freddy.”

  “You got a name?” Leon asks.

  “Melissa Edwards,” I say. “Buffalo, New York.” The first of those four Chicago passengers.

  I put my laptop on my desk and attach the power cable while Leon types.

  “Where’ve you been?” Bethany asks.

  “Georgetown. I miss anything?”

  “No,” she says. “Just the news.”

  “What news?”

  “The Feds are trying to track down that guy in Idaho. He’s got a compound somewhere in the mountains, but they don’t know where.”

  “Melissa Edwards,” Leon says. “Died two years ago in Buffalo. Seventy-eight years old.”

  “That’s not her,” I say. “I’m looking for someone who died about three weeks ago. How about Betsey Renfro, Rocky Mount, North Carolina?”

  Leon types in the name and shakes his head. “If she’s dead, there ain’t no record of it.”

  “All right,” I say. “Tanya DuPree, Oakland, California.”

  “Who are these people?” Bethany asks.

  “Passengers.”

  “Not from the Hawaii flight,” she says.

  “No,” I say. She waits for me to go on, but I leave it at that.

  Leon says, “Last Tanya DuPree to die was in New Orleans, eight months ago.”

  “All right. Katie Green, Dallas, Texas.”

  He types in the name and after half a minute, he says, “Katie Green passed away unexpectedly on September 9th in Dallas. Memorial services will be held… Nevermind. You missed it by a couple weeks.”

  “Let me see that.” I look over his shoulder at the monitor. The photo shows a beautiful young woman with brown hair, brown eyes, and a big white smile. She’s got a little too much blush on her cheeks, and her eyes show a lack of confidence. They don’t quite live up to the smile. I wonder if Katie Green could be our Crystal. Maybe Kim Hahn really was giving me answers, in her coded way. This girl does look a little fragile. She looks like the kind who could be nudged into taking a wrong turn in life. And the date of her death matches up exactly.

  OK. So Anna Brook buys a ticket under her dead friend’s name. Her friend from Dallas. She goes through Chicago and then on to Austin. But why Austin?

  The death notice lists the address of the church where the funeral was held, and the names of the parents and the two brothers who survived her. Her parents live near Dallas, in a place called Heath.

  Bethany is looking at me. “What does that mean, Freddy?”

  “It means I’m taking a trip to Dallas.”

  When a case involves the death of a child, it’s best to talk to the parents in person.

  “Are you going to let us in on this?” she asks.

  “I’ll let you know if anything comes of it.”

  Bethany’s not satisfied with that answer. I can tell by the way she’s watching me, this makes her uneasy. Finally, she says, “OK, I don’t know what you’re following here, but if you think you’re on to something, turn it over to the FBI, OK? Those were Ed’s instructions, and that’s what the airline is paying us to do. We’re not equipped to dig deep on a case as big as this one. We’re just looking for leads, and that’s it.”

  “Yeah, well… I think this is a different matter.”

  “Hey Freddy,” Leon says. He’s got his back to us, staring at his monitor. “Name Charles Johnston ring a bell?”

  “No,” I say. “Who’s he?”

  “A woman from the airline called a while ago. Said you asked who paid for a ticket on that Hawaii flight.” He picks up a slip of paper and says, “Charles Johnston from Schaumberg, Illinois, with a Visa card ending in two three eight one. Paid for seat thirty-two B. Anna Brook.” Leon turns and looks at me. “What’s that about?”

  “Look up Charles Johnston, will you?”

  I go back to my desk to find a flight to Dallas. As soon as I’m in my chair, Leon says, “Charles Johnston of Schaumberg, Illinois. Independent financial consultant.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “I don’t know,” Leon says. “No photo. But there’s a phone number.”

  “Give him a call,” I say.

  As I reach to open the laptop, I see Bethany standing in front of me. She puts her hand lightly on top of the computer, so I can’t open it, and she says, “Let this go, Freddy. You don’t need to go to Dallas or anywhere else. Whatever info you have, pass it to the Feds, OK?”

  She stares at me for a second with those lashless eyes. Why doesn’t she wear mascara?

  “Come on, Freddy,” she says. “Two more days and we’ll be through everyone on the list. Then we go back to our normal jobs, where we can actually make a difference.”

  I sit back in my chair and think it through. What’s my interest here? I mean, honestly. It’s not the airline, or even the victims. There’s nothing we can do for them. It’s me wanting to make sure that woman is OK. I don’t know what kind of trouble she’s in, but Bethany’s right. Federal law enforcement has the resources to help her out. And for all I know, she may have had something to do with that plane going down. Why did she get off at the last minute? And why did she look so scared when she saw I was watching her? Was she guilty?

  No. I can’t see it. She was a call girl. She had no motive to blow up a plane, and from the looks of her
, she wasn’t in any state to carry out a bombing. She also didn’t check a bag. The bomb was in the cargo hold with the checked luggage. Someone else put it there.

  But she’s in trouble, and the Feds will certainly be interested to know that one person from the passenger list never got on the plane. That’s enough right there to get them to talk to her. Why am I holding on to this like it’s my own? Bethany’s right. She needs the best help she can get.

  I look up to see her eyes are still on me.

  “All right,” I say. “You’re right.”

  She smiles as she walks away. A rare victory over the notoriously stubborn Freddy Ferguson. I think I just made her day.

  I take Lomax’s card from my pocket and dial his number.

  Leon says, “Hey Freddy—no answer for Charles Johnston. No voicemail either.”

  “Pull his credit reports,” I say.

  I open my laptop, and now that it’s plugged in, the screen comes to life.

  On the fourth ring, as I’m typing my password into the computer, Lomax picks up and says, “Errol Lomax.” He sniffles like he has a cold.

  And then I see the image on the computer monitor—the one that made Kim Hahn’s pupils flicker with fear and hatred. It’s a photo I took just yesterday at the funeral in Staunton, zoomed and cropped to show a single face. Errol Lomax, with his charming, I-know-how-great-I-am smile and his clear blue eyes, looking downward, tiger-like, at the cowed young woman who’s been cropped out of the frame. The laser focus of his eyes shows a flavor of delight I don’t like to think about.

  “Hello,” says Lomax. “Hello?”

  I hang up.

  13

  October 4

  I booked a flight to Dallas as soon as I ended that call yesterday. And then I did a little digging into Errol Lomax’s background.

  He grew up in a good neighborhood in San Diego where he went through the public school system. He played football and baseball in high school. In college he played baseball and majored in criminal justice.

  He lives in a condo off East West Highway, in Silver Spring, Maryland. That’s eight Metro stops from Gallery Place. From there, he can walk three and a half blocks to the FBI building. At least, that’s what I’m gambling on, on this sunny, cool October morning. My plane from National takes off at ten-thirty, so I’m willing to burn an hour of my morning trying to get another look at the man who set me off at the funeral the other day. I’m sitting in the back of a cab, in front a place called the ChopHouse on 7th Street Northwest. Around eight-fifteen, he comes strolling down the sidewalk from the Metro station toward the Hoover Building.

  He wears a suit, but he doesn’t wear it like the other FBI guys. They look professional. He looks like he’s going to pick up his date. A cop usually has his suit cut to leave room for his gun. Lomax wears a tapered athletic cut. You can see the bulge of the holster above his left hip.

  The guy looks like a Ken doll with muscles: broad in the shoulders and narrow at the waist, with the kind of square jaw and thick neck you learn to look out for in boxing. That usually tells you the guy can take a punch.

  He’s a half block away, coming right toward me, and I’m trying to see if I can spot again whatever it was that set me off the first time. I thought maybe he just hit a sensitive spot, triggered something that’s easy to trigger in me. But he triggered something in Kim Hahn too, and she’s not an easy one to move. And what the hell was he doing at Anna Brook’s funeral in the first place? The FBI isn’t usually in the business of offering condolences.

  A car behind us lays on the horn, and the cabbie turns and says over the seat, “I can’t sit here. This is a bus lane.”

  “One more minute,” I say. “Then we head to the airport.”

  Lomax has a kind of jittery air about him, like he’s over-caffeinated. He gives every young woman on the street a full up and down look. If he catches their eye, they get the smile. That million-dollar movie-star smile that he can turn on and off at will.

  The guy is thirty-two years old and unmarried, so I cut him some slack about the women. Of course he’s looking. He could be a little more discreet about it, but maybe he doesn’t have to be. Maybe he acts like an arrogant jerk on purpose, trying to spot the woman who isn’t immediately turned off by it. That’s the one he can jerk around. The doormat he can wipe his feet on.

  As he approaches, he’s got his eyes on something coming the other way. I turn to look. A young woman, twenty-five or so, in a skirt suit. I watch her eyes, focused straight ahead. They lock on to something for a second. She smiles, then looks away with some effort. I look back at Lomax just as he’s turning off his smile. That must be what she reacted to. He stops beside the cab, three feet away, and wipes his nose as he watches her pass. He gives her a quick scan up and down, taking in her whole backside. He’s got a stain on his lapel, and one on the cuff of his jacket. When he turns again to continue on his way, I catch a glimpse of his eyes. They’re darker than I remember. His pupils are huge black holes rimmed with a thin ring of baby blue. The dark rings below them suggest he didn’t get much sleep.

  Then it hits me. It’s not coffee that’s got him wired.

  Another horn blares behind us. This time, it’s a bus.

  “I gotta move,” the cabbie says.

  “All right,” I say. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Before I get on the plane, I put in a call to Ed.

  “How’s it going out there?” I ask.

  “It’s a madhouse,” he says. “No one’s sleeping. The airline’s lawyers want to debrief me every hour, but it takes all day to pry information out of my contacts.”

  “How are they doing on Obasanjo?”

  “They’re still grilling him, but if they’re getting anything, I’m not hearing about it.”

  “They got him hooked in with any accomplices?”

  “Like I said, I’m not hearing anything. What about your end? Anyone on the passenger list look interesting?”

  “Maybe,” I say. “I’m taking a trip down to Texas.”

  “What for?”

  “Oh, you know. Just trying to keep the B team busy. Hey, what did you say this guy Lomax was working on?”

  “Passenger backgrounds. Same as you.”

  “No, before that.”

  “Oh. A corruption case with Mitch Rollins.”

  “You said you didn’t know Lomax when you were at the Bureau?”

  “No,” says Ed. “But I think the Bureau’s got him on their shit list.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “When an agent gets pulled from the field and planted at his desk running background checks, he’s on the shit list.”

  “Rollins can’t stick up for him?”

  “Rollins is an old-timer. He was burnt out even when I was there. They’re trying to ease him out.”

  “How do you know?” I ask.

  “When you don’t take the hint that it’s time to retire, the Bureau puts you on a nowhere case with some junior guy who no one else wants to work with.”

  “You mean like digging into a passenger list in DC when the real investigation is in California and Idaho?”

  “Like that, yeah. Or listening to cops rat on cops down in Texas. Rollins is just passing time and collecting a check. He’d be happy chasing overdue library books, as long as he didn’t have to get off his ass too much.”

  My flight is boarding.

  “Hey, Ed, I gotta go but… You said the Bureau looked into Anna Brook and wrote her off.”

  “Who?”

  “Anna Brook. A passenger on the Hawaii flight. Remember the blonde? I sent you her photo.”

  Ed lets out a little sigh and says, “The blonde? Oh, yeah. Sorry, Freddy. With all the chaos out here, it’s hard to keep track. Yeah, the blonde isn’t a suspect. She didn’t even check a bag.”

  “Any idea who wrote her off?”

  “The Bureau.”

  “No, I m
ean who? Who in the Bureau cleared her?”

  “No idea,” he says.

  14

  The flight to Dallas was smooth and quiet. When I walk into the terminal at DFW, CNN is running a story about Delmont Suggs.

  “Suggs drove passenger Owen Briscoe from Northern Idaho to the airport in Spokane. Security footage from the drop-off area outside the terminal shows Briscoe carrying a red suitcase, which was pulled nearly intact from Monterey Bay late last night.

  “TSA officials say baggage scans from Spokane show that nothing resembling a bomb or an ammunition box came through the airport on the day Briscoe boarded. That doesn’t mean Suggs is off the hook though. He’s now wanted for killing a federal law enforcement agent. ATF agents believe he’s holed up in a compound thirty miles southwest of Kellogg, Idaho.”

  The reporter goes on for a while about Suggs’s radical political views and his military training, and when he wraps up, the anchorwoman says the network will be running an in-depth report called “Who is Delmont Suggs” later in the day. This is like the old days of network television, where a bit character in a successful show got his own spin-off series. If Suggs is in the clear on the bombing though, that means the spotlight is back on Obasanjo. And the airline can’t be too happy about that.

  I walk past the newsstands and restaurants, following the signs toward ground transportation. As I near the exits, I pass another monitor. CNN has turned its attention back to the political races. The news anchor, a heavily made-up woman with light brown hair, says the recent airline bombing and all the talk of terrorism have tilted the balance toward the Republicans in a number of states. “The Texas race, however, is still too close to call.”

  The gigantic Republican incumbent, Jefferson “Jumbo” Throckmorton, former Chief of the Texas Highway Patrol and Director of the Department of Public Safety, is running on a law-and-order platform. CNN shows him pounding the podium beneath the glaring sun in front of a crowd here in Dallas. A few seconds later, his opponent, Patty Rice, with her short, light-brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses, looks more calm and even-tempered in front of an indoor Houston audience. According to the subtitles, she’s promising benefits and better wages to the same people Throckmorton is threatening to lock up or deport. The fact that a Democrat even has a chance in Texas tells me something’s wrong with the economy down here.