by Randy Alcorn
The three men entered the elevator and quietly rode to the seventh floor, where they turned to the right and snaked down a hallway to a room marked FBI. Sutter stuck in another coded card, a light turned green, and the door unlatched. The three walked in, past an office that said “Special Agent Sutter,” and into a small conference room with a fancy tape recorder set up on the center table.
“Sit down, Mr. Woods.” The chairs seemed new, virtually unused, and surprisingly comfortable for government issue.
“Coffee?” Sutter asked.
“Okay,” Jake shrugged. Little did he know when he got up that morning he’d be served his third round of coffee by the FBI.
Agent Mayhew got the three coffees while Sutter sat down and took out a large notebook, which seemed to be a procedure manual of some sort.
Jake watched Sutter take a sip of coffee, coal black, from his transparent mug. Jake tried his own, which wasn’t hot enough. Viennese. Been in the pot too long.
He studied Sutter’s every move, trying to gain any advantage he could in a situation where the advantage was clearly not his. Trying to look more at home than he felt, this time he took a gulp of coffee. Way too long.
One deep draught of his own and Sutter moved the coffee aside like a man who wouldn’t be coming back to it. He turned on the tape recorder second naturedly, like he’d gone through this routine before, then opened the clasps on a large bulky manila envelope. Without looking at the contents, he flipped them across the table to Jake.
“These may interest you, Mr. Woods.”
He looked at the photographs. A five-by-seven of Jake entering the front door of his apartment. Another five-by-seven of him standing by the Mustang, plugging a meter on Morrison. An eight-by-ten of him jogging in the park. Another buying milk at the convenience store. Having lunch with Ollie at the deli. Standing by Doc’s Suburban hoisted up at Ed’s Garage. Jake felt his ears turn red. These were professional close-up photos any Trib photographer would be proud of.
“So much for the right of privacy. I suppose my phone’s tapped too?”
“Nope. Could have, but I didn’t think it was necessary.” Sutter turned toward the microphone extending from the tape recorder. “Let the record indicate we are discussing the surveillance photos of Mr. Woods.”
“Didn’t think it was necessary? That’s considerate of you to give some nominal recognition of constitutional rights.”
Both sides knew this was more than a citizen who felt violated—it was the classic adversarial relationship between government authorities and the press.
“Don’t you think you’re overreacting a bit, Mr. Woods? It’s perfectly legal to drive around the city and take photographs of people without their knowledge or permission. In fact, your newspaper does it all the time. You call it journalism, I believe. Have I heard you say something about the first amendment?”
“It is different and you know it. But why do I have the feeling it wouldn’t make much difference to you whether it was legal or not?”
“We’re a legal agency, Mr. Woods. We’re here to uphold the law, not to break it, no matter what you’ve read about us. Or wrote about us, for that matter. Okay, I know it’s unnerving to find out you’ve been followed. But I didn’t have to tell you about this. I’ve laid the cards on the table. I’m being honest with you, in the hopes you’ll be honest with me.”
There was still one picture he hadn’t shown Jake yet. It was face up but mostly covered by the envelope. Jake sensed Sutter was debating whether he should show it to him. Jake reached across the table, under the envelope, and pulled out the photo. Sutter didn’t object. Jake saw a line of people in front of a coffin. Of course.
“You were at Doc’s funeral, both of you. I saw you there.”
“That’s right.”
“You don’t respect much of anything, do you?”
“Just doing our job, Mr. Woods, like you do yours, even when people don’t understand or like it. One of our associates took dozens of pictures at the funeral—it was a disguised camera with a silent shutter, so it didn’t bother anyone. It’s not uncommon for a murder to be committed by an acquaintance who makes a point of being at the funeral, either out of propriety or some twisted sense of curiosity or smugness. Like he wants to take one last look to be sure he did his job, or to congratulate himself. We studied the pictures to identify who was there, who should have been but wasn’t, who shouldn’t have been but was.”
“What did you discover?”
“I’m not free to discuss with you, at least not now.”
“You can’t talk to me, but you want me to talk to you?”
“Look, Mr. Woods…Jake. We’re on your team. Whether or not you believe it, that’s the truth. We’ve been watching you partly for your own protection.”
“Really?” Jake didn’t hide his skepticism.
“Obviously you can guess some of the reason. We know you’ve been talking with Detective Chandler. We know everything he knows, and more. We also think you’re in greater danger than you imagine.”
“Danger? From whom?”
“That’s where this gets a little tricky, Jake.”
“How?”
“We can’t divulge more information to you without some assurances of full confidentiality and cooperation.”
“Forget it. I’m not going to agree to anything until I know exactly what’s going on.”
Agent Mayhew, leaning against the wall, crossed his arms.
“You don’t agree and you might have to live with letting the boys who wasted your friends get away.”
“Boys? As in more than one?”
“You get nothing else without agreeing to some conditions.”
“Tell me what you want me to agree to. Maybe I’ll think about it.”
“Okay. Most of it’s standard. It includes a commitment that you put nothing about this in print without our prior approval.”
“Oh, is that all? Well, this is going to be easy, then. I won’t agree to that. You can’t tell me what I can write and what I can’t.”
“Spoken like a true reporter. But you have to play by the same rules everybody else does in this situation. You don’t agree, then you head on home. We’ll leave you alone, and you’ll never figure it out. If we withdraw completely, you may not live to write again. We’re under no obligation to tell you anything. It’s a question of how much you want whoever killed your buddies. We’re taking a big risk by talking to you. Signing the document is nonnegotiable.”
Jake stared blankly. Inside he was starting to give a little, but wasn’t about to show it.
“Look, Jake, on the confidentiality thing, I’m just talking about information you receive from us, or as a direct result of what we give you. If it’s something you know without us, we have no control. You can do what you want with it. But if it’s something we tell you, we’re taking you on as a major security risk. You were in the army. You know how it works.”
Jake had to admit it made sense. They were in the driver’s seat. Without their information he might waste weeks going down blind alleys.
“Here’s the paperwork. Sign it and we’ll give you some info that should prove very helpful. We’ll also ask you for some information and hope for your cooperation. You don’t have to agree, but for your friends’ sake we hope you do. Don’t sign it and we can’t do business. It’s up to you.”
He took a deep breath, as if putting his last card on the table. “Now here’s the thing that’s going to bug you the most. We’ve got a very important reason for it. You can’t say anything about us to anyone, including the local police. That includes Detective Chandler.”
“Ollie? Why not? I’d trust him with my life. Which is more than I can say for you guys.”
Mayhew didn’t seem to appreciate the comment, but Sutter handled it in stride.
“As far as we know, Detective Chandler himself is no problem. But he has superiors he’s obligated to report to. And if they became aware of some of this information it
could compromise our investigation, maybe result in more people being killed. And the lowlifes who killed your friends could just disappear, and I don’t mean with their throats cut, which wouldn’t make any of us shed a tear. I mean disappear to some Caribbean island for the rest of their lives, sipping margaritas, or whatever they drink down there.”
“You’re saying you don’t trust the police?”
“I’m saying there’s good cops and there’s bad cops. Most of them, maybe 98 percent of them are good cops, but it only takes one bad one to ruin this whole operation. If it was just Chandler we’d probably bring him in. He seems straight enough. But he’s obligated to talk to his superiors. For everything Chandler learns there’s a few sergeants and lieutenants and deputy chiefs and all kinds of people in the chain of command that are going to know, and probably a few assistants and secretaries, maybe even a custodian who looks over what’s on the desks. There are leaks over there, Woods. We know that the hard way. Leaks that relate directly to our situation here.”
“Look, I’m working with Ollie. He trusts me, and I trust him. If I can’t talk to him about this, forget it. What’s going to keep me from walking right now and telling him the whole thing?”
Agent Mayhew squirmed.
“Nothing, Woods. You can do that very thing. In fact, we know it’s a chance we’re taking. But if you do, the only thing you’ll know is the FBI is on this. You won’t know what we know. All you’ll know is because you refused to cooperate, the chances will be much better that your friends’ killers will live to be a ripe old age while all that’s left of your buddies is food for the night crawlers.”
Sutter’s insensitivity rubbed Jake the wrong way, yet had its desired effect. What did he have to lose? Better to have info he couldn’t directly give Ollie than have no info at all.
“Okay, Sutter. Let’s see what your document says.”
Agent Sutter passed over a single paragraph, typewriter style Courier, about thirteen point. It was stuffy but surprisingly jargon-free, as if written by a reporter rather than a lawyer. Still, any editor would have pared it down, shortened the sentences and cleared away some of the fog:
Special Agent Colin G. Sutter of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation has been authorized to reveal classified information to Jake Harvey Woods. It is understood that Mr. Woods’ revealing of this information to any person or persons could severely compromise an ongoing criminal investigation. After being given this information Mr. Woods is free to choose not to cooperate in the investigation, but he is not free at any time to divulge, in print or in conversation or in any other way, any information released to him by federal agents pertaining to said investigation. In signing this document Mr. Woods agrees that if he does divulge any such information to anyone for any reason—including officers of any other legal agency—he would be interfering with a criminal investigation and violating section 793 of Title Eighteen of the National Security Act. In the event of such a violation he understands he will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Jake leaned back. “I take it this means you don’t want me to talk?”
Sutter smiled. Mayhew didn’t.
I may not be free to divulge this information, but nothing tells me I’m not free to act on it. And if at some point Ollie sees me act on it, well, that’s not the same thing as telling him, is it?
“I don’t suppose you’d let me consult my attorney before I sign this?” Actually, Jake didn’t have an attorney. The truth was, he’d started despising lawyers twenty years before it became popular to despise them.
“I am not authorized to divulge any information to your attorney, Mr. Woods. Chances are you don’t trust your attorney. Why should we? It’s the ‘need to know.’ As a former army officer you understand that, don’t you?”
The need to know. The cornerstone of military intelligence and security. But why did these guys need Jake to know any of this? What was their angle? There was always an angle.
“All right.” Jake picked up Sutter’s pen and signed the paper on the line above his typed name, Jake Harvey Woods. “But I’m adding a little note.”
Jake scribbled out a final sentence at the bottom: “Agent Sutter and I have agreed this contract does not apply to any information which has already come to my attention, or which comes to my attention independently of that given to me by the FBI.” He handed it to Sutter.
Agent Sutter read it, smiled and mumbled, “Very good.” He initialed his approval, then set the document aside.
“I don’t suppose I get a copy of anything?” Jake pointed at the document and the tape recorder, still rolling.
Sutter looked at him to see if he was joking. “I’m sure you can understand we don’t make triplicates and run these things up flagpoles? If you had any documentation of today’s meeting it could compromise all of us.”
“Right, sure. I don’t suppose Agent Mayhew is a notary public?”
Mayhew made a point of not smiling.
“All right, Jake. Here’s our situation. We’re going to tell you certain things and ask you certain things. We’ll lay our cards on the table first. I hope our show of good faith will convince you full cooperation is in all our best interests.”
Jake gave his best you’ll-have-to-convince-me look.
“For fifteen years, my specialty with the FBI has been organized crime. The last two years Agent Mayhew has been my partner.”
Your silent partner, Jake mused.
“For eight months we’ve been investigating a new strategy of organized crime in this city. It parallels similar movements in at least eight other cities, probably as many as fifteen. We have every reason to believe these movements will continue to grow. The more entrenched they become, the more difficult it will be to deal with them.”
Jake’s casual front vanished. He made no pretense of disinterest as Sutter continued.
“One of our divisions maintains constant surveillance at major airports. Simply by tracing arrivals and departures of known figures in organized crime, we can tell when and where something new is brewing. These guys don’t trust communication over the telephone. We’ve often got them tapped and they know it. Obviously, they can’t use letters or faxes or telegrams, because those are easily intercepted and copied. Besides, these are hands-on guys, not just figure heads. They maintain a legal distance from everything, which is why they’re not behind bars, but to keep in control they have to see their people working on site. That sends them the message they’re not in the dark, and they can herd them into line if necessary, remind them who’s boss. Anyway, eight months ago something new started brewing in this city. We didn’t know what, but departures and arrivals told us it was big. So big I’ve gotten a few calls from the director himself.”
The director of the FBI?
“We don’t know everything, obviously, or we wouldn’t be talking to you. But we do know it involves pharmaceuticals and medical facilities, including certain physicians. It appears to involve your friend, Dr. Lowell.”
Jake flashed a disgusted look at Sutter. “Doc? Organized crime? Come on, Sutter. What kind of fool do you take me for? Doc working for the Mafia? Give me a break!”
Sutter studied Jake’s reaction with some interest. He sat back as if preparing to give a lecture he’d had to give before.
“Mr. Woods, I thought with your background as an investigative journalist, you’d have a better understanding of organized crime. Perhaps I need to give you a thumbnail sketch to show you what we’re dealing with here.”
“Please do.” Jake’s voice carried more than a hint of sarcasm.
“The most common misperception of organized crime is the image of Al Capone or the Godfather. Guys who look like Marlon Brando, with raspy voices and Italian accents, surrounded by muscle men named Vito, carrying submachine guns and planting horse heads in people’s beds.”
Mayhew snorted, in apparent disdain for ignoramuses like Jake. Sutter sent Mayhew a stiff look intended to remind him they need
ed to show respect for their “guest.”
“What you have to understand about organized crime is that gangsters and racketeers of that sort are dinosaurs. They really existed, but now they’re nearly extinct. So people think organized crime is extinct too. Well, it isn’t. Organized crime isn’t a function of one place or segment or era in society, it’s a simple function of human nature. It goes where the profits are. And it does it in the most effective way, which today is quiet, low profile, infiltrating and expanding, never identifying itself as what it is. It never looks like Chicago in the twenties. If it did, it would be recognized and derailed.”
Sutter stopped, as if wanting Jake to show he was interested.
“Go on. I’m listening.”
“What it looks like today is just another money-making opportunity some entrepreneur came up with on his own, with no ties to anyone or anything else. It presents itself as a lucky chance to make some money on the side without really hurting anybody. It thrives on the guy in the opportunity seat thinking he’s been given the shaft by the system, that he deserves this break, that he’d be a moron to pass it up. Besides, he tells himself he’s really doing it for the wife and kids and grandkids, so he can give them what they want and retire earlier and spend more quality time with them.
“The point is, organized crime has diversified, and it doesn’t have one single kingpin nationally or even regionally. It has competing segments. And there’s all kinds of entrepreneurs that don’t have a long history in organized crime, maybe no history at all. They just see a money-making opportunity and organize what amounts to their own little syndicate with them in charge. So organized crime is really just an umbrella term for every attempt to generate and control profit in the context of legitimate enterprises, by moving out into fringe areas, gray areas, illegal or borderline legal involvements. The grayer the better.”
“So what does that have to do with—”
“I’m getting to your friend, Dr. Lowell. Bear with me. You need to hear this.”
“Okay.” Jake sounded skeptical, but not as skeptical as he was trying to sound.
