“I told you, I’m not a cop any more. Haven’t been for a long time,” said Bob. “I’m sure you can hack into a few files and find a biography to go with each of those names. I need their backgrounds, their education, work, and family histories, where they’re living now, and if they’ve recently come into any money. I’ll be back in two days. You’ll do it, ‘Cat Man,’” he said, using Felix Collins’ old hacker handle, “or I’ll have a talk with your parole officer.”
“You know,” said Felix, “the Cat Man was really somebody else on the web selling bomb kits. I had nothing to do with that.”
”As I remember it,” said Bob, leaving as abruptly as he had entered, “we had enough evidence on the fake immigration documents and the credit card scams to send you to prison. We didn’t need to pursue the homemade bomb racket.”
“And good day to you, Mr. Mathers,” said Felix to Bob’s back as the former cop walked out the front door.
“Erin Mondragon and John Taylor of San Francisco, Colonel Michael Method of the US Army, Edward Harris of Wisconsin, Abraham Wilson of Washington State, Kenneth Greeley of Alabama, and Mr. and Mrs. William Thorpe, formerly of Seattle,” Felix read from the paper Bob had left him. He wwondered what they were wanted for as he took the lists of credit card numbers from underneath his furniture.
LXXIII
11/19/10 13:30 Arizona Standard Time
In the envelope the FedEx man brought to Rebecca Mathers’ door was $10,000
wrapped inside a note from her husband that read:
I am onto something and will not be home right away. This should hold you and Katie over till I get back.
Love, Bob
He did not tell her that the money was half of the $20,000 he had gotten when he sold Taylor’s stolen watches and cuff links.
Becky had wished to be a faithful Mormon wife since she was a young girl of twelve at summer Bible camp. She had sat among the other children at evening campfire and watched the older couples holding hands while an elder standing next to the firelight had spoken to them of the sanctified bonds between man and woman that lasted forever, and she had known on that golden night that this was what she wanted in her life. A quarter century later she was thinking the angry, even vulgar thoughts church teachings prohibited a pious wife to think. She put the money her husband had sent in a high kitchen cupboard her daughter could not reach and, in spite of her anger, she prayed that nothing happened to Bob, at least not until she could get her hands on him.
LXXIV
11/20/10 18:29 PST
“First things first: three of these names you won’t have to worry about,” said Felix Collins to Bob Mathers as the two of them settled in front of Felix’s computer monitor. “They’re dead.”
“Natural causes?” asked Bob.
“Yeah, it’s pretty natural to die when you’ve been shot in the head a couple times,” said Felix. “I found a story on them in the Seattle Times.” He typed in the newspaper’s site name and went to the archives section to bring up a front page story from May 6th of that year.
“Everett: Three people authorities identified as the owners of the Stone House Bed and Breakfast, were this morning found murdered inside the business they had created only seven months ago.”
“Jesus,” Bob said.
“It gets worse,” said Felix and scrolled the story down his screen. “They were killed in one spot, in a back room, sometime during the night. This follow-up story two days later identifies them as Mr. William Thorpe, 68; Mrs. Joyce Thorpe, 62; and Abraham Wilson, 70.”
“Each shot three times in the head,” said Bob.
“Now tell me right from the beginning, officer--I mean, Mr. Ex-officer--this investigation you’re doing doesn’t have anything to do with the mob.”
“This has nothing to do with the mob,” said Bob.
“In the joint, the really scary guys told me this was how they said a pro does a hit: three slugs in the head,” explained Felix.
“Their killer may have been a pro,” said Bob. “He’s not a wise guy pro. What’s this?” he asked and read some more.
“’An acquaintance who asked his name not be used claimed that Wilson, a retired machinist who founded the business with his two friends, often told paying guests wild stories about training soldiers in South America.’”
“That’s why they killed them.”
“Who’s they?” asked Felix. “What kind of strange shit are you getting me into?”
“Some very bad people did this,” said Bob. “I really can’t say much more about them, because I don’t know. What about the other names I gave you?”
“These two were easy,” said Felix, showing Bob some hard copies he had taken from the Internet. “Even you could have found these guys. Erin Domingo Mondragon and John Stasten Taylor Jr. were born rich. Mondragon’s people were the oldest of old money; they had farmland in the Central Valley going back to the Spaniards. He and Taylor were at Stanford together. Lived in the same dorm. Taylor’s great granddaddy and every Taylor boy since has been in the import-export business up in Frisco. Specialized in Asian luxury goods.
The only blot on Mondragon’s record is a conviction on tax fraud in 1998. He did a year and some change in Boron federal minimum security prison. Taylor’s got a couple DUIs on his record, nothing more. Both are divorced. The strange thing about them is they’ve both become not just rich, but really, really rich in the last two years. Their stocks made money hand over fist; big insurance claims went their way; they landed all kinds of sweetheart business deals. Here’s some of it,” he said and handed Bob another stack of hard copies he had taken from on-line magazines. “I can find you a ton more stuff on these two, if you want. Did I include their addresses in there?”
“I already know where they live,” said Bob.
“What do you need me for then?” asked Felix. “You wanted to give a couple grand to an old friend?”
“How about the other three?” asked Bob.
“Yeah...” said Felix and ran his tongue across his lower lip as he handed Bob another set of papers. “You know, Mr. Ex-officer, I usually don’t do cops favors. I’m going to make an exception here, because I like you so much, and I’ll give you some really useful advice you should listen to: Stay away from this next guy; he’s got spook written all over his record. Colonel Michael Method graduated University of Illinois in 1964, with honors; did the ROTC thing and became an officer and Special Forces right from near the beginning of the outfit in the Sixties. Knows seven languages. Taught at College of the Americas. Did something in Laos during the war there; no one knows what; that part is all blacked out, as you can see. Did two tours of duty in ‘Nam, has a shitload of decorations and was in something called Operation Phoenix.
“Then there’s nothing. I went through backdoors in every kind of file you can think of, and this guy’s record is gone. Nothing is listed until he becomes a full colonel in 1984. There’s nothing after that. This isn’t just a spook, my man, this is Casper the Fucking Ghost. He’s got at least thirty-three years of active duty between then and the time of his mandatory retirement at age fifty-five, and it’s buried so deep dynamite couldn’t uncover it.”
“Did he retire? I don’t see anything about that,” said Bob, examining the mere four pages in Method’s record. “He has to be in his sixties.”
“Guys like this don’t retire,” said Felix. “They either get killed or kicked out. Look at this,” he added, directing Bob to the last page. “No known address. Last residence was in northern Idaho. I checked it out; the little town doesn’t exist.”
“What about the other two?”
“We at least know where they live,” said Collins, who had a couple more pages for Bob. “Kenneth Abner Greeley is another interesting guy. He’s a sharecropper’s son, joins the Army in 1962, and learns how to fly copters. He’s another Vietnam vet. Unlike our friend the colonel, everything Greeley did there is on the record. He drops off the radar screen in the Seventies, when he had a
charter service back home in Alabama. In 1988 he turns up in a crashed Electra loaded with rifles somewhere down in Honduras. He does a deuce in a Honduran prison. I bet that was fun.”
“Could he be involved in drug smuggling?” asked Bob.
“Not a chance. He was an intelligence operative like Method. Get this: when he was in jail, everybody who’s anybody says they know nothing about him. The CIA, the NSA, the whozit and the whatsit say they’ve never heard of him, but the State Department negotiates to get him out. Then Greeley doesn’t do much of anything for over a decade. Two years ago he somehow has enough money to start another charter service back in Alabama.”
“His address?” asked Bob.
“Old Greeley lives in Alexander City, between Birmingham and Montgomery. His charter service appears completely legit, by the way. He only goes up a couple times a week, and that’s by appointment. He has two little planes and teaches locals how to fly. I can’t make any connection between him and the two rich guys in California or the three dead folks in Washington state, but I bet you dollars to doughnuts he and the colonel crossed paths someplace in Spookland.”
“Which brings us to the last name,” said Bob.
“Edward James Harris doesn’t look like he belongs on this list,” said Felix. “His dad did go to college with Mondragon and Taylor. He was Mondragon’s roommate no less.”
“I didn’t know,” whispered Bob.
“Ed Harris went to MIT, became an electrical and a mechanical engineer. Worked for McDonald-Douglas for three years, later worked at a little kit airplane company his father ran. In 1996 the old man killed himself, shot himself in the mouth. I don’t have any idea what the younger Harris did from 2004 to 2009, but now he’s up in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, building kit airplanes like his old man did. Cutting edge, high-tech stuff. He sold one of his first planes to Kenneth Greeley. He’s come into money, too, like the others, including the dead ones. You need more?”
“No, unless you can find some more on this colonel,” said Bob. “You did well, Felix.”
“You won’t be talking to any parole officer then?” said Collins.
“Not yet,” said Bob as he headed for the screen door that separated Felix’s residence from the Mojave Desert. “I’ll be in touch.”
LXXV
11/26/10 15:54 PST
On a Friday afternoon, when his employees were preparing to leave the office for the weekend, Mondragon’s secretary brought a cryptic message to her boss in his singularly vast office. The missive had appeared on her fax machine and read in its entirety: “Time to talk.”
“A friend of mine,” Mondragon had explained. “He enjoys these little jokes.”
After five o’clock he went downstairs to the parking garage and drove alone to a small bar across the bay in Richmond called the Orphans’ Eden. Inside an old fashioned phone booth in the parking lot he dialed a number with a 303 prefix.
“Hello?” said a female voice from somewhere in Colorado.
“Tell the panther I have harkened to his call,” said Mondragon.
The woman on the other end of the line understood at once and said no more. The next day at seven minutes before one in the afternoon, Mondragon’s security guards let Col. Method into a nearly empty office building. Erin was awaiting him behind his desk in the main office.
“What is it you wish to talk about, Colonel?” Mondragon asked.
“I thought we agreed you would address me as ‘Panther’ from now on,” said Method.
“Very well then, Panther,” sighed Mondragon. “This room is soundproof, I might mention. What is it, Panther, that do you want to tell me?”
“Have you heard what Greeley has done?”
Colonel Method was clearly excited, and while Mondragon mistrusted emotionalism in anyone, he hated it when it afflicted a man as dangerous as the colonel.
“Greeley is in Alabama flying airplanes,” said Mondragon. “What else should I know about him?”
“Log onto RATZTALE.com,” ordered the colonel. “You’ll understand then.”
Mondragon leaned back in his chair and counted to ten. Unlike some men, Method would not be intimidated by a flash of anger. Mondragon knew he had to control himself in order to control the conversation.
“I realize this is a Saturday,” said Erin. “I am nonetheless busy. Save me some time and simply tell me what RATZTALE.com is?”
“It’s a place on the web run by Phillip Mason.”
“Who is?” asked Mondragon, and he rolled his hands to indicate that Method should elaborate.
“He has a nationally syndicated talk show broadcast from a little town in Nevada,” explained Method, clearly astonished that Mondragon had never heard of the celebrated Mr. Mason. “He covers subjects like UFOs, conspiracy theories, and such.”
“Does he do Bigfoot?” asked Mondragon. “Bigfoot is my favorite crazy subject.”
“You have to let me finish,” insisted Method, unaware that Mondragon was attempting to be amusing. “Someone whose initials are J.G. called Mason and tells a story about training the Columbians in Venezuela. Then he sends Mason this information and Mason puts it on his website. The creep says two businessmen from California funded the whole operation. He names an engineer, Ed Harris, as the guy who built the torpedoes. He says a former Army colonel--the asshole actually uses the name Method--he says he trained the Colombians. Then on the following night, that was the Twentieth--I neglected to say this first phone call happened on the Nineteenth—”
“You tend to talk faster than you think when you get overwrought, old man,” observed Mondragon.
“So Mason gets a phone call, on the air, from a woman calling herself Lilly, and she said that J.G. was her boyfriend and he flew the Colombians into the country. You should know that Lilly is the name of the widow Greeley has been servicing.”
“Hmm. How do you know that last detail?” asked Mondragon.
“Intelligence,” said Method and didn’t elaborate.
“Are you watching him? How many of us are you keeping an eye on? This is the Thorpes and Abe Wilson all over again, isn’t it?”
“Wilson was shooting his mouth off to everybody that stayed at his bed and breakfast place,” said Method. “I did what was necessary. I would never watch you. I trust you. And young Harris. You claim Taylor is trustworthy.”
“John Taylor is strictly off limits to you, my friend,” asserted Mondragon, for once venturing to give the volatile Method a direct order. “When did you last speak directly to Greeley?”
“I saw him Wednesday,” said Method, clearly not pleased that Mondragon was bossing him about. “He denies everything. He says he doesn’t have a girlfriend named Lilly anymore. Says she breaks bread with other geezers down there in Alexander City. Women are like that. All whores and traitors. A bullet in the brain is the only thing that shuts them up.”
“You have an interesting philosophy,” said Erin, and rapped his chin as he thought out loud. “This is indeed a very dangerous situation. We don’t know Greeley is behind this. Why should he talk? He is in this as deep as we are. You have to take into account, Panther, that this a man with an intelligence background only a few degrees less impressive than yours. He was tortured in prison, and he refused to betray the men who had betrayed him. Now you say he's supposedly shooting his mouth off for no reason? No, it makes no sense. More likely, this is being done by somebody Abe Wilson talked to. He’s trying to set up a blackmail scheme or something of that sort. For the time being, touch base with Harris and Greeley. Tell them to watch themselves.”
“Shouldn’t we make an example of him?” asked Method., who had not shot anyone in months and was feeling out of practice.
“Greeley isn’t a talker,” said Mondragon. “Put a word in his ear if you must. You mustn’t over react, Meth--I mean, Panther. The serious minds in the government have long ago given up on finding any more conspirators. Politicians don’t speak of it any more. The farce is truly over. Should anyone pay attention to thi
s nonsense this nutcase talk show is reporting, those that count won’t think it’s real.”
“We’ll see,” responded Method, and left Mondragon alone in his six thousand square feet of personal office space.
Method had promised he would not harm Kenneth Greeley. He had not persuaded Mondragon he would behave. Method was constantly either outraged or in a state of cold determination, and Erin mistrusted both of the warrior’s moods. The colonel was deadly in any mental state. Mondragon had come to think of Method as being like a cobra. Sometimes he lashed out because he was provoked and sometimes because striking at others was in his nature. Controlling him was not an option.
Mondragon sat in his office thinking of what he should do were Method to use the same excessive force he had used in Washington state. He searched through a drawer at the bottom of his desk and found an old match tablet that had the name Carnie Rogers written inside the cover and an Oakland, California, address beside the name. The thought of Carnie made Mondragon frown; he dialed the home phone of one of his off-duty bodyguards anyway.
“Trey,” he said, “I want you to get in contact with someone. Come up to the office; this will be a little complicated.”
LXXVI
12/01/10 10:15 PST
“He’s done it again!” Method roared into the telephone. “He’s talked to his girlfriend and now she’s talked to that damned talk show host, this time for a whole hour. She named me, Taylor, and you, Mr. Mondragon. Everybody but Harris. They’re clearly in this together.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions again,” said Mondragon. “Didn’t you speak to him? And by the way, weren’t you the one who never wanted to talk on my phone?”
Erin had been talking to a construction contractor he had been thinking of engaging when the call came. He hated having his business proceedings interrupted and was further upset to hear Method’s new tone; this was something odd and unexpected in the Colonel. The man sounded as if he might actually be afraid.
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