“Thanks, Izzy,” I said. “I appreciate that. You guys want coffee? I left my bag in the Smart Bean so my laptop wouldn’t get trashed.”
“You knew in advance you were going to take them on,” Izzy said. “You had time to put on your fancy kick-ass gloves. It was premeditated. Meshugga.”
Even I, an out-of-towner, knew the Yiddish word for crazy.
“I knew it was possible, sure, but I was pissed they were at Jane’s house,” I told them.
“Four to one. Why the hell would you risk that?” Phil asked. “They could have ruined your year. Why not just wait them out or call 911?”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
19
Jane was not happy to hear about my fight when I stopped by the Arthur Animal Hospital to explain. I told her it wasn’t my fault but she didn’t agree.
“You should have called the cops, not taken on some gang,” she said.
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Maybe?”
“I’m used to doing things differently,” I said lamely. “Hey, I’m fine.”
“Fine? Really? You started some kind of blood feud with mobsters on my doorstep and you think you’re fine?”
I had no magic gloves for this fight. We had been living day-to-day, not talking about where we were going, just letting it happen. She never asked me to move in with her. Neither did I but that’s what had happened.
“Jane, I’m sorry.”
“Shepherd, you know I lost… I don’t like drama.”
Jane had been badly burned by her marriage, a match she thought was perfect, until her lawyer husband Burt dropped dead. Four of his secret girlfriends appeared at his funeral—including his secretary and a neighbor. The grieving girlfriends felt compelled to confess to the freaked-out widow, so they could feel better. Once the girlfriends found out about each other, the after-funeral became a hate-the-deceased party. Jane was not interested in marriage again and was especially gun-shy after she found out Ginny Mac and I had a brief thing.
“I’m not causing the drama, Jane,” I protested. “Ginny Mac may be the one behind Jay-Jay’s interest in me.”
“She would send killers after you—over a newspaper story?”
“Maybe. But just to beat me up—not kill me,” I said, hoping it was true.
“She is insane,” Jane concluded.
“I agree.”
I didn’t mention the other possibility—that a mob queen columnist for my former newspaper and her thug son were seeking stronger revenge against me at the behest of my least favorite billionaire.
“So, what’s your excuse?” Jane demanded. “I know you’re not stupid, Shepherd. Please tell me you are not some weird adrenaline junkie who never saw a risk he didn’t dig?”
I couldn’t tell her that. But I tried, without actually lying. I reminded her I had sworn off guns, without admitting she had hit a bull’s eye.
“So, I’m supposed to be thankful you only get into fist fights now—not gun battles? Shepherd, I… I like you. I couldn’t take it, if… I don’t want you to die.”
“Again, I agree.”
I told her I might have to spend a few nights at my new boss’s place to bear down on the new case. I thought I detected a glimmer of doubt, as if Jane was wondering if I was fooling around with Amy. She didn’t say anything, but she seemed secretly relieved that I would be out of her house for a while. That made me sad. I had zero experience with long-term relationships. I was making this up as I went along.
I took Skippy—who had been hanging out at the animal hospital—back to Jane’s place with me and put a few things in a bag. On the way over to Amy Massi’s Skippy pulled me along at a brisk pace. I couldn’t get a cabbie to allow Skippy inside, so the two of us jogged downtown.
Amy’s townhouse, in Greenwich Village, was like an upscale sorority house the day before final exams. People were coming and going up the steps and through the cut glass and wooden doors. There was no sign that this was a private detective business. The place was decorated like a magazine home, with blue and red walls and theme rooms, micro spotlights highlighting paintings and sculptures. On the first floor, women and men were working on computers and phones in various rooms. Others were moving from room to room. There seemed to be one of every kind of person: all colors, ages and clothing styles.
I heard high-pitched barking approaching, with a skittering, claw-on-wood noise. The meeting between Skippy and Dr. Strangelove was like a buddy movie—they became instant pals. The genetically engineered, fuzzy mixed-breed scampered about playfully as the much larger Skippy joined in the fun, moving slower to cover the same ground. Amy appeared, looked down at Skippy, and patted his head. We left the dogs to romp and she led me to her office. It was an impressive antique wood study from the Victorian era, complete with ancient desk, dark leather chairs, couch and dark wooden walls of bookcases. Photos everywhere featured Amy with movie stars, TV stars, rock stars, presidents, alive and dead. She looked different in each photo, a chameleon’s vanity wall. This was the impress-the-client room, no doubt. I was impressed. There were also photos of people I didn’t recognize, but I knew they were all Amy. The superhero’s den, complete with shots of her secret identities.
“I hear you kicked the shit out of that natty Mafia kid and his goons,” Amy said. “That was a stupid thing to do. I need you in one piece.”
“How did you hear about that?” I asked her.
“You’re trending on Twitter and Google,” she told me, laughing. “Congratulations.”
“You’re kidding me?”
“Some undercover you are.”
She took her iPad from her desk and showed me the New York Mail website.
MOB WAR?
Exclusive! Bad Boy Reporter in Battle with Wiseguys.
By VIRGINIA McELHONE
EXCLUSIVE VIDEO!
Her story implied—without actually libeling me—that a reporter for a competing newspaper was some kind of crook, and that the whole thing might have been faked.
Wonderful. I grabbed my phone. There were long lists of missed calls, emails and voicemails from Mel, from Ginny Mac, and from Jane. Oops. Looks like the witness, George, sold his video to Ginny. Mel would not be happy. I opened an email from my boss. After a lot of threats and mock-cursing, he wrote that the Daily Press had also purchased the fight video. I was a hero on our website but he was not happy with me. My phone logs also showed calls from TV and radio reporters.
“Can we get to work or do you need to contact the World Wrestling Federation?” Amy asked.
“Only if they pay more than you do.”
20
My cellphone buzzed. I was receiving emails from Speaker Chesterfield’s aide, Tiffany Mauser. I told Amy and she set us up in a small room with a desktop computer, a phone, a printer, and TV and police scanners.
I opened the first email from Mauser, expecting top-secret information, and was surprised to see a compilation of emails, newspaper articles and video clips. They only rated a low RESTRICTED classification. Open source chicken feed. At the top was a memo from the Executive Protection Service, stating the nature, volume and sources of the threats against Chesterfield, seeking input. It went to the usual agencies: FBI, OHS, CIA, and the rest. The articles and video clips on the Usual Suspects included GOP-slanted TV talk shows, with guests like conservative cutie Miranda Dodge and her blogger buddy Clayton Littleton. There were also KKK Klansmen, Nazis, white supremacists, Neo-Confederate cowboys, secessionists, Tea Party protesters, armed militia members, and Libertarian loons. There were no threats from Democrats. Three suspects were Republican office-holders, who were also delegates to the convention, including Dodge, who was also running for president, even though Chesterfield had the nomination sewed up.
The next email had a higher security classification and featured more memos, web videos, video blogs, blog posts and even pay-per-view hate sessions for dial-your-enemy. Again, Miranda Dodge and Clayton Littleton were the superstars.
The third email had the meat and was classified as DELTA S.C.I. DO NOT OPEN. I couldn’t open it. When I tried, my computer threatened me with federal prison.
I emailed Miss Mauser, who sent me a link to a familiar secret Intranet web—the one the public never saw. It was a clone of America Online, but for spies and the military. About a million people with top-secret clearance logged on every day.
I clicked on the link. My specific file was embedded into the familiar US government website homepage. I took a quick look at what the secret world was up to today. The main website photo was of Special Forces troops in Saharan Africa, assisting local governments in their anti-terror campaign. ISIS insanity took up the usual amount of space. The other big story was a terror alert in Sudan and Mali. Pakistan was also expecting a big Taliban summer push in Waziristan.
I clicked on my enabled link and found a list of surveillance reports, transcripts, audio and video recordings. More than a hundred. I opened an audio file marked OPGUNSMOKE/audio.newyork.88.
I chuckled. The feds picked the perfect name for their investigation, Operation Gunsmoke. Chesterfield carried a gun and smoked like a chimney. I clicked play. A SIGINT logo and phone digits marked the file as a telephone intercept. I instantly recognized the snarky, sexy voice of Miranda Dodge. She was talking about Chesterfield to a man with a southern accent. I realized she was talking to Clayton Littleton, who was obviously dying to get into her pants suit.
“Someone should SAM that friggin’ asshole and make things easier for all of us,” Dodge said. “If he were out of the picture, we could make it this time around.”
Sam? Oh, I get it. Second Amendment Measures. Code for plugging someone. Cute. I’ll bet Dodge winked when she said it.
“Damn right, little lady. I talk about that every day. The thing of it is, he’s got a better ring around him than the Gorilla-in-Chief.”
They both laughed at the racist slur at the black president.
“You should be in the White House,” Littleton said.
“Then it will be the White House again,” Dodge sniggered. I paused the recording. The FBI was running Operation Gunsmoke and had a warrant to bug an ex-governor, who was also a FAX TV millionaire commentator—and her friend, a rich right-wing blogger who dressed in green camouflage in Manhattan. A federal judge had obviously signed off on the warrant. That meant the politician and the political entrepreneur were suspects in the plot or plots to kill Chesterfield. That fact, not to mention what was on the tape, was more than gunsmoke. It was bombsmoke, a hell of a story. But these guys were the obvious suspects. What were the chances these two creeps were actually plotting to bump off a congressman so one of them could get a shot at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?
Dr. Strangelove and his new pal skittered into the room and distracted me. Skippy had his leash in his mouth, asking for a walk. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.
21
Skippy pulled me around Washington Square Park for a while, past chess players and street musicians, as I filled Amy and Dr. Strangelove in on what I had learned. We grabbed hot dogs with mustard from a food cart, which made the animals crazy. I bought two more dogs and gave them to Skippy and DSL. When we returned, I went back to my work in my small room.
There were more recordings of ex-governor Dodge and her buddy Littleton on the phone and even a live link—the FBI apparently had up-and-running coverage. I clicked on that but I did not have the proper clearance. There were also dozens of other suspects, all either right-wing nuts, private armies, racist gun groups, and various militias who wanted to secede from the United States and set up religious-military utopias out in the desert. Three unnamed members of Congress were also mentioned as making apparently threatening statements toward Chesterfield. Too many suspects.
I went back to the Dodge-Littleton recordings and found an interesting one. Littleton was on the phone and told someone that he was coming to New York from his native Idaho for the GOP convention in New York.
“I’m gonna bring my Second Amendment Measures to Jew York but I will be flying in, so I need some ordnance on the ground when I arrive,” Littleton said. “Or else I’ll be naked.”
“Not a problem, brother,” a gruff male voice assured him. “Whatever you need. Long or short, semi or full—you got it.”
An FBI memo did not identify the mysterious second man but said his phone was a throwaway rental cellphone sold in Brooklyn.
Another FBI memo said an informant alerted them that a Brooklyn cell of the Aryan Purity Nation was preparing for some kind of operation in New York in the near future that involved weapons. The agents could not yet link Littleton’s guy to the APN group. If these various plots were linked, it would be bad. The armed-and-dangerous, don’t-tread-on-me guys wanted Chesterfield out of the picture for reopening the government and for not causing a national economic catastrophe. One very scary anonymous posting on a secessionist billboard called “New Minutemen” read: “We will follow the traitors to the den of sin—New York— to take Second Amendment Measures. We are the New Minutemen. The traitors to Liberty cannot hide from us. First we will strike at the treasonous deal-makers who do the bidding of the Tyrant. Then the Tyrant will fall…”
It was like a letter from John Wilkes Booth before he shot Lincoln. I had a bad feeling about it but I couldn’t hard-connect the dots. It seemed Speaker Chesterfield had recently voted for a weak, virtually meaningless gun control measure. That bill was introduced after yet another school massacre— domestic terrorism that Congress refused to do anything about. The legislation was really only window dressing because even the mass murder of children was not allowed to interfere with the business of selling guns and ammo.
One online threat by the New Minutemen said Chesterfield “had fired a shot at our sacred gun rights but Chesterfield and his underlings will discover that the New Minutemen, a well-regulated militia, will defend our birthright to the death.”
Why couldn’t these idiots just get drunk, murder some helpless deer, and leave the rest of us alone? I noticed that most of these brave warriors stayed safe at home, spent a lot of time at gun ranges and threatened to shoot unarmed people who disagreed with them.
I showed Amy what I had found. She whistled when she heard the recordings of Dodge and Littleton. She asked me for my opinion.
“If two or three of these components are connected, we have a very serious, credible threat. If not, it’s still hairy. I would recommend Chesterfield not show a hair in public until the FBI can nail these people down.”
“Wait for the FBI? You’ve got to be kidding? It’ll take them a year, minimum. Shepherd, we were not hired for an opinion. We were hired to find out who might be planning to harm Chesterfield—and put them out of business, ASAP. Clear?”
“Okay. The feds identified half of the speakers on FAX TV as possible suspects. I think it’s bullshit but we could start there. The problem is, if we question them openly, they’ll put it on the air before we can leave the building. It will be a public relations gift to them and to Dodge.”
“Yeah, I can hear it now,” Amy said. “The president declares war on patriotic Americans.”
I told Amy the feds didn’t know who the New Minutemen were but they had an informant inside another group, the Aryan Purity Nation cell, the APN.
“That tactical intelligence, about money and weapons, looked like the real deal to me.”
“How do we know that for sure?” she asked.
“Only one way to find out—kick in the door and see what you get. At least half of the intelligence I got in the field was bullshit—wrong, too old or disinformation. That APN tip sounded real to me. I need a name and an address in Brooklyn to check it out. I’ll start with Chesterfield’s people.”
“What should we tell Chesterfield?” Amy asked.
“No public appearances, a tightening of security and a roundup of bad guys.”
“Okay,” Amy agreed. “Tell them and see if you can get an address for that group. Meanwhile, I
’m going to meet a source of mine, face to face. He may have something.”
I made the call. Tiffany Mauser told me to come right over.
“The same conference room,” Mauser said. “Just the two of you.”
“Just me. Amy is meeting a source.”
“Oh. Okay, fine,” Mauser said, before hanging up.
“Okay,” Amy said to me. “You go. Do you have any sources in the FBI?”
“No,” I told her. “But I know someone in the US Attorney’s office, which might be even better. I’ll try.”
I made the call and left a message on Mary Catherine’s cellphone. I didn’t mention my name or what I wanted.
“Hi, it’s me. Call me.”
I told Amy that if my US Attorney friend couldn’t help, we might try doing a story in the paper to shake something loose.
“We’ll see,” Amy said. “What if it really is Dodge and her fan club?”
“Then it will be one hell of a story.”
22
The taxi’s TV screen, mounted on the barrier between the front and back seats, featured a public service announcement by the billionaire mayor—an appeal for everyone to stop chewing gum—because discarded gum was a nuisance that got under your shoes and made a mess of the sidewalks. The driver, sporting the floppy homespun headgear favored by Tajik tribesmen in northern Afghanistan, muttered to himself in his native tongue—wondering if the mayor’s father had perhaps urinated up the mayor’s mother’s birth canal. I laughed at his crude joke, which caused him to shoot me a look of surprise. I responded in his language that it was unlikely—because that would require an erection. We both laughed. When we arrived at the police barricades outside the Knickerbocker Convention Center, he parked the vehicle and turned to examine me.
“Ranger?” he asked, the leathery gray skin around his eyes tightening.
I shrugged.
“You will go back?”
Shoot Page 8
