“Scared.”
“No, I mean after you killed him. How did you feel about it?”
“I didn’t feel anything,” I said. “No wait, that’s not true…” I refilled the wineglass, drank some, and passed it to Jill. “I felt a lot of things, some of them contradictory. I felt repulsed, sickened by…well, the guy fell a long distance and, you know, it wasn’t nice to look at. So there was that. And I felt angry as hell that the bastard attacked me, put me in that position. Kind of righteously indignant, if that makes any sense. And worried, you know, that the cops would find a way to hang a charge on me for it. Eventually I just felt empty.”
We sat in silence and I thought about the one feeling I’d left out.
I felt powerful.
Jill passed the wine and I drank some. I said, “And then I thought of you and how this might kill any chance for us, and I felt…despair.”
Jill said, “I’m not going to watch the news. I don’t need to see it.”
And then she kissed me.
Sometimes when you dream, you know things that aren’t apparent on-screen. In my dream, Jill and I were married, for example. And we had a ten-year-old daughter. The girl wasn’t in the dream; I just knew that she existed and knew her age. Maybe she was in her room sleeping, I don’t know.
Jill and I were in a bed. The bed had the same floral-print sheets as Joan Richmond’s bed, but it wasn’t Joan’s bed or Joan’s apartment. It was our bed, in our own place.
It was a sex dream. We were in the sixty-nine position, Jill on top.
My excitement woke me and for a few seconds I didn’t know what was happening, thought I was caught somewhere between the dream and reality. Then I realized that I was awake and Jill had my penis in her mouth.
Greatest wake-up call ever invented.
I shifted my position and made it mutual.
After it was over, we didn’t say anything. Just kissed and hugged and purred at each other for a while and fell asleep embracing.
The sky outside the bedroom window was still dark, but the light in my heart was that of a thousand suns.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
When I woke up in the morning, Jill was not beside me. I slipped into my boxers, trudged out to the living room. Her clothes and purse were gone. I looked at my watch: 8:15. She’d be at work by now.
A note lay on the kitchen counter.
Ray,
I watched the news this morning in the living room while you slept. I know that I told you I didn’t need to see it, but it turns out I did need to.
It was horrible.
I’m not saying that you were wrong and I understand that you had to protect yourself, but the way you pushed that man over the railing was just so vicious. On television, you looked like a completely different man than the one I know. A stranger.
The man I saw on the television scares me, and I’m not sure I want to be near him.
And yet I realize that he is you.
I do love you. But I don’t know if I can handle the violent life you’ve chosen. I don’t think I can.
Thank you for pretending with me. That part was beautiful.
Jill
Under the note was another piece of paper. It was a page torn out of the book of poetry Jill had been reading. On the page, a short poem titled “Onions,” by someone named Bryan Owen.
It read:
She said I’m like an onion–
I had so many hidden layers.
I told her that
if she stopped peeling
she wouldn’t cry so much.
Fuck.
There was an e-mail on my office computer from Delwood Crawley. The subject line was: Couldn’t resist.
The message said:
Made a call to check what congressional hearings are underway. Your item said “hawk” and “river” and “Aurora” so it was easy enough to decipher. And far too delicious to resist. I made it the lead item in this morning’s column. Sorry, old boy. Nothing personal.
—Delwood
This day was getting better by the minute.
I picked up the phone and called Vince on his cell. All was quiet on the Amy Zhang front. They were getting along fine and Amy was kicking his ass at Scrabble for the fourth straight game. I told him I’d check back in a few hours.
Then I dialed Special Agent Holborn at the FBI.
An hour later Holborn entered my office, sat in one of my client chairs, and gestured at the full bottle of beer on the desk in front of me. Or maybe he was gesturing at the empty one beside it. Then he took a long look at his watch, although I’m quite certain he already knew the time.
“Oh look,” he said, “it’s ten-thirty.” Another glance at the beer bottle. “In the morning.”
I decided not to tell him that breakfast had been a slug of cold vodka from Joan Richmond’s freezer. I lifted my beer in a toast. “Top o’ the mornin’ to ya.”
“Having a bad day?”
“With skills like that, you ought to be a detective,” I said.
“You don’t seem drunk,” he said.
“I’m not.” Which was true. “I’m just trying to keep my head from exploding.” I took a swig of beer. “How’s your head these days, Agent Holborn?”
“I don’t usually make house calls, Ray. What’s on your mind?”
“Influence, corruption, interagency clout. How far your head office would go to do favors for their friends in the intelligence community. Things like that.”
“In English, please.”
“Let’s say I brought you evidence that Hawk River had Joan Richmond killed to keep her from testifying to Congress. Circumstantial, but strongly suggestive evidence.”
“Let’s say.”
“And let’s say I brought you a witness who is being extorted into silence by Blake Sten.”
“Yes…”
“Number one—could you get said witness and a child into the Federal Witness Protection Program? Number two—would you actually follow through with the investigation, or would you get a call from National Headquarters telling you to spike it?”
Holborn made a face that suggested resentment of my implication. “I can’t answer number one. I’d have to meet with your witness and hear her story.”
“Her?”
“I’m not an idiot. Steven Zhang’s widow. That’s who we’re talking about, is it not?”
“Okay.”
“Okay, I’d have to meet with her, hear her story. But if I thought she was credible and if it was clear that Sten’s actions were on behalf of Hawk River, then yes, we could probably get her into the program.”
“And number two? Would you be allowed to follow through?”
“What makes you think I wouldn’t?”
“Recent history.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, when your superiors in Washington instructed you to pass that message to me, they were doing the bidding of our DHS thugs with the phony license plates. Only they’re not DHS.”
“What are they?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” I said. “Here’s what I know: They work for a federal agency that’s part of the intel community—”
“Hardly narrows it down.”
“An agency,” I continued, “that sometimes makes use of mercenaries, on a classified basis. An agency that has occasionally contracted out work to a retired military intelligence colonel, Isaac Richmond.”
“That’s all you’ve got?”
“Pretty much. They pointed their guns at me yesterday. I surfed around the Net this morning looking at guns and my best guess, they were Sig Sauer 228s. That narrow it down?”
“Current flavor of the month for CIA,” said Holborn. “But also popular with DIA, and a million other intel guys. So, not really.”
“Which agency would have the most influence at the Bureau?” I said.
“Wait, you’re barking up the wrong tree. The intelligence community is far bigger than you think. Beyond CIA and DIA, each
branch of the military has its own intel division, as does the Department of Energy. And Treasury. There’s the NSA, NRO, NGA, DEA, INR…”
“I get it.”
“Oh, I don’t think you do. I’m not even close to done—there’s ODNI, within which you’ll find the ISE, NCTC, NIC, NCIX, SSC. Of course, the Coast Guard, which is now part of DHS, has their own division. And we’ve got ours at FBI. And then—”
“Stop please, you’re giving me a headache.”
“You already have a headache.”
“Well, you’re making it worse.”
“I’m making a point,” said Holborn. “You’re not going to know who these guys are, and even if they tell you who they are, you’re still not going to know. Hell, you could see their paychecks and still not know. The intel community is not just huge, it’s interconnected. A multiheaded beast. Like Typhon.”
“Or King Ghidorah,” I said.
“Not enough heads,” said Holborn. “And unlike Ghidorah, Typhon would eat Godzilla’s lunch.”
“Okay,” I said, “Typhon the Multiheaded Beast. Tell me about Typhon.”
“When I first started with the Bureau, one of my trainers—old guy, had over twenty years in the intel division—told me a story. Back in the late ’60s, early ’70s, he was sent to work at HUD.”
“Housing and Urban Development?”
“The very same. See, the Bureau was tracking domestic terrorism in a big way. Remember, this was the time of the Weather Underground, Symbionese Liberation Army, and God knows how many other wing nuts blowing up mailboxes and robbing banks and shooting cops. He was assigned to the Black Panther Party, and the Panthers did a lot of recruiting and organizing in the housing projects. So this FBI agent became a caseworker at HUD, visiting poor folks in the projects, making sure they were getting their benefits and sending their kids to school, that kind of thing. He worked at HUD for six years and only his direct superior knew he was FBI. His paychecks came from HUD, his income tax forms said HUD, his coworkers thought he was just another one of them. But the whole time, his real job was to be the FBI’s eyes and ears in the projects.”
“Why so cloak-and-dagger?”
“Paranoia, mostly. Comes with the job. One of the reasons I don’t work intel. But in his case, it wasn’t unreasonable. If word leaked to the Panthers, he’d have been a dead man. Anyway, that’s just one example. When I was stationed at the Miami Division, I worked with a new guy. Junior field agent, right out of Quantico. Good guy. We worked together for three years, then he was reassigned to the intel division, sent overseas. Couple years later, he was killed in the line of duty somewhere in Eastern Europe. Only then did I learn that he was CIA, had been the whole time. Guy worked with me every day for three years, got the same paychecks I did. But he was never really FBI.”
“Christ.” I took a swig of beer.
“I’m telling you, in the world of intel, it’s Alphabet Soup. CIA, FBI, DEA, whatever. You never really know who you’re dealing with.”
“Well, whoever these guys are, they work for my client. Actually, my client works for their superiors. Basically I’ve been sucked into some kind of officially nonexistent containment op.”
“You ought to keep better company,” said Holborn.
“Thanks for the hindsight. They suspect Joseph Grant and Blake Sten are behind the murder, and they’re concerned that any airing of Hawk River’s dirty laundry might lead back to some classified paramilitary operation that they’d just as soon not have known to the public. And more importantly, they do not want the existence of their operation exposed. Not to the press, not to Congress, and not to the FBI. They were not ambiguous on the subject.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Agent Holborn, I’m risking my life by telling you this. I need you to understand that.”
Holborn sent me a smile that I think was supposed to be reassuring and said, “Go on.”
“They knew I’d been to see you and they don’t seem to mind if Sten gets nailed for the murder, but they would mind very much if the involvement of the government in a cover-up comes out. If you reveal what I’ve told you about that…”
“My focus is Hawk River,” said Holborn. “Period. I don’t give a crap about their containment operation.”
“Good. But if I bring you a case and then their boss swings some clout with your boss, and the case gets shut down…I’ll have Hawk River after me and no backup. Isaac Richmond and his Alphabet Soup guys won’t risk the secrecy of their mission to step in and pull my ass out of the fire. See my problem?”
“Ray, I’m a cop. A damn good cop, if I do say so myself. If Hawk River is interfering with the oversight work of Congress, that is a crime of the highest order. If you bring me evidence, I will pursue it. Doesn’t matter which agency these guys represent. They may have influence enough to pass messages through my superiors, but they don’t have the clout to scuttle an investigation of something that serious. Nobody does.”
“I’m sure you believe that, Agent Holborn. I’m just not sure you’re right.”
Holborn glanced at his watch and stood up. “You know you can’t handle this alone or you wouldn’t have called me here. Bring me the woman. Let me hear her story. We’ll take it from there.”
I nodded. “I’ll talk to her, call you later.”
Holborn nodded back. For two guys who didn’t agree on much, we were nodding at each other an awful lot these days. He stopped with his hand on the office door, turned and said, “By the way, a couple of tough guys are casing the lobby downstairs.”
“Shit. Alphabet Soup.”
He shook his head. “They don’t match the description you gave me.”
“Oh?”
“These guys are both well over six feet. Look like they lift heavy weights for fun. Very short haircuts. And they have dead eyes.”
“Soldier types?”
“Everything but the uniforms.”
“You could’ve told me this when you arrived,” I said.
Special Agent Holborn wrinkled his nose at me.
“I like to make a dramatic exit,” he said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
I called Terry and got his voice mail and left a message suggesting we meet later for a drink. I wanted to hear his version of how he “lost interest” in the story, as Isaac Richmond had promised.
With a fresh pot of coffee for fuel, I took stock of the situation.
No doubt, I’d oversold my position to Holborn. I had the witness, but I didn’t have the evidence and didn’t know how to get it. But I needed the FBI invested in this mess, fast. And it was a mess.
On one hand I was under pressure from the Alphabet Soup guys to find the evidence against Hawk River. Not so they could prosecute Grant and Sten, but so they could bury the evidence and cover their asses. And if I were able to find the evidence for them, that would leave Amy Zhang as the last loose end for Blake Sten to tie off.
On the other hand, if I didn’t find the evidence, the Alphabet Soup guys would go back to Washington empty-handed. And that might make me feel good but it would change nothing for Blake Sten.
Amy would still be a loose end worth tying off.
But…if I could find the evidence and get it to Holborn, and if Holborn could use it to bring down Hawk River, then Amy would get into Witness Protection. Holborn was willing to turn a blind eye to the Alphabet Soup guys’ involvement, and they would go home unhappy but unexposed.
It was not an ideal solution, but it was a solution that kept Amy breathing and allowed Theresa to grow up with the one parent she had left.
I sat in my office drinking coffee and thinking about the different ways it could play out and how long it would be until the guys in the lobby came up for a visit. I thought about what I would say when they arrived.
I thought about calling Jill’s apartment and leaving a message on her machine, and what a stupid idea that was. I thought about the bond we’d forged in bed the night before.
The sex had been prim
al, the connection between us transcendent.
How do you unring that bell?
I told myself to stop thinking about Jill and then I thought about her some more.
Two large figures appeared behind the frosted glass window of my office door. I unholstered my gun and put it on the desk blotter in front of me.
A knock on the door. Polite.
“Come in,”
They did. Holborn’s description was perfect; these guys lifted heavy things for fun. They stepped to either side of the door and back-stepped once, putting the wall behind them. They scanned the room. It wasn’t a particularly large room but they took their time with it.
The one who held his hand closer to his belt said, “That cop who was up here, he gone?” So Holborn had avoided the lobby on his way out, just to put these guys off balance. Nice of him. “Well?”
“No,” I said. “He’s hiding in the coat closet.”
The other one looked in the coat closet. Careful. Then he stepped back to his previous position.
The talker said, “Show me your hands.”
I lifted my hands, placed them on the desktop.
“With one finger, push your gun forward twelve inches, then lock your fingers together behind your head.”
I hit the foot switch under my desk. The video camera hidden in my bookshelf started recording.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “The gun stays where it is, my hands stay on the desktop. If I go for it, you’ll see. If you guys go for yours, I’ll see. Most likely, we’ll just have a conversation and everyone’s hands will stay where they are.”
We looked at each other for a while. The talker gave a sharp nod and his partner stepped out into the hallway.
Blake Sten and Joseph Grant entered the room. Sten carried what looked like a large black leather doctor’s bag. He put the bag down on the corner of my desk, with a heavy thud. He opened the bag, looked into it for a few seconds, closed the bag.
Joseph Grant stepped forward, said, “When my father started Hawk River, do you know what we did for the U.S. military?” Nothing in his tone suggested stress.
Trigger City Page 21
