Quantico Rules

by Gene Riehl

  “I’d say we have a problem,” I told her, but just saying the words made my pulse quicken, and the feeling made me wonder about my motives.

  As an FBI agent—a pro—I’m expected to examine such lies as Thompson’s with the objectivity of a technician in a white lab coat, not as a predator racing to the scent of fresh prey. I should be able to do that, but no one in our type of work does. Firemen’s hearts leap at the sound of an alarm bell, policemen rejoice in the sudden bark from the radio that sends them into harm’s way. Soldiers would rather jump out of helicopters into blizzards of bullets than go through another goddamned day of training, and FBI agents can’t wait to go after the kind of people who claim to be righteous.

  “So what now?” Lisa asked as she tugged her straight skirt toward the edge of her knees. “I’ve been through the file half a dozen times. Where do we start looking for the roommate?”

  “You finish dictating the report. Make sure it gets highest priority through the typing pool. I’ll take care of the roommate.”

  I started for my office at the rear of the bullpen, but took only two steps before I turned back to her. She looked at me, her dark eyebrows forming a quizzical arch.

  “Thanks,” I told her. “Thanks for covering for me with Finnerty.”

  She nodded and said something that sounded like Spanish, but real Spanish, the kind you learn before you learn English. I headed for my office, but made a mental note to take another look at her personnel file.

  At my desk, I turned to the daily paperwork I had to get done before I could even think about solving the intriguing mystery of Brenda Thompson, the routine paper shuffling nobody ever sees in the movies, the everyday tedium no screenwriter would be permitted to include in a script. FBI agents have some incredible adventures, no doubt about it, but for the most part the job consists of filling up reams of paper with reports no one ever reads, compiling massive files that sit around for years until they’re finally destroyed to make way for new and equally useless compilations. I’ve often thought the files could be used for a better purpose. Like making convicted felons wear them around their necks.

  My phone rang, a welcome interruption until I heard the voice on the other end. A voice I’d come to despise.

  “Mr. Monk, it’s Jack Quigley from Pinewood Manor.”

  My mouth formed an obscenity but I managed to keep it from turning into a word he could hear. “Yes,” I said in its place.

  “I’m calling about your father’s account again. I don’t like doing this any more than you like hearing it, but the unpaid balance is simply too large to overlook. Your father’s care isn’t free, you know, and his condition is getting worse. If you can’t do something about this immediately, you’re going to have to send him somewhere else.”

  Somewhere else, my ass. There was no place else, except to live with me.

  “You’re going to get paid,” I told him, “but you’ll just have to wait till escrow closes on my house.”

  His voice brightened. “You found a buyer?”

  “Looks that way,” I lied. “We just have to iron out a couple of contingencies.” Like actually finding a buyer, for one. I heard in his voice the sound of his hopes crashing.

  “Yeah … contingencies … right. Forgive my skepticism, but you’ve been telling me the same thing for months.”

  “I’m meeting with my realtor just as soon as I get off the phone.”

  “I’ll give you two more weeks,” the nursing-home administrator said. “Fourteen days, then you can come and get him.”

  He hung up before I could answer, which was a good thing, because I didn’t have anything more to say. Lies had stopped fooling Quigley six months ago. My father’s care was enormously expensive, his monthly keep a significant chunk of my monthly salary. I thought about Connecticut again and felt a surge of resentment toward the casino.

  There’d been a time last night—from one-thirty in the morning till almost three—when I could have paid Jack Quigley’s overdue balance and a hefty chunk toward Pastor Monk’s next month’s tab. Another hour on that kind of a run and I could have bought the demented old bastard his own wing. It had been that close, but it just didn’t happen, not last night anyway. That it would happen someday, someday soon, I took as an article of faith. There was no denying that the last twelve months had been a nightmare, but it would turn for me. Always had, always would. Not that Jonathon Monk knew, or cared. Not that the son of a bitch even knew where he was, or who was paying for it.

  Or wasn’t paying for it, I guess Jack Quigley would say.

  But regardless of what the administrator had said, his call had shattered my already puny resolve about catching up on my stack of files. Just the sound of Quigley’s harping made me think about all the years I’d wasted listening to Pastor Monk’s mindless rules, made me want to ignore the drudgery of my paperwork. Have some fun for a change. So I pushed the files aside and went to work on finding Brenda Thompson’s missing roommate.

  But first I left my office, took five minutes to use the bathroom, to splash cold water on my face and run a hand through my hair. The face in the mirror didn’t make me happy, the pouches under my eyes, the stubbly shadow of whiskers. I’d seen that face before, I had to admit. Usually in a casino, but attached to other people in the casino, to the losers, the “bad beat,” as gamblers say. Losing does that to you, beats you up bad, but the good news is that winning reverses the process, and that’s why I needed to find the roommate. Some very good FBI agents had tried already and come up losers. By whipping the system until it gave up Brenda Thompson’s roommate, I’d be a winner again. Walking around lucky, as they say. I took another look at my tired face. And I’d be beautiful again, as well.

  Back at my office door I hung up my Disturb and Die sign, closed and locked the door, grabbed my briefcase and opened my secret stash compartment. Christ, I thought, as I stared at the eight lonely hundred dollar bills that remained after last night’s setback. My stomach began to hurt. Eleven thousand dollars gone. The worst night I’d ever had, despite the great start. I’d been at least that far up when it turned on me, far enough ahead to convince myself I couldn’t possibly lose, although I no longer thought about gambling in such terms as winning and losing. The eleven large were still mine, I was just letting the Foxwoods Casino hold the money until I got back there to reclaim it. The philosophy is rife with error, of course. Nobody needs to tell me that, but I make it a point not to analyze it too closely. You start to believe the money’s gone forever, you can go crazy.

  Besides, it isn’t about money, not for me anyway. I play for the action, the thrill of fear, the in-your-face belligerence of battling odds I can’t possibly beat … except that somebody always does, and sometimes it’s me. And when it is, I win more than just money. When it’s me, I not only beat the odds but everything else my old man taught me to fear, along with a couple of things he made me dread.

  At least that’s what Dr. Annie Fisher tells me.

  I can’t tolerate boredom—my now and again lover insists—and that’s the whole problem with me. Even worse, I’ll do any goddamned thing to avoid it.

  Picture life as a spinning pie plate, Annie had told me more than once. Picture yourself riding that spinning plate. There’s a pole sticking up out of the exact center of that plate, and holding onto the pole is the only secure perch on the entire plate, the only sure way to keep from being thrown out to the edge, then off the plate altogether. It isn’t much fun clutching the pole, but at least you know you’ll make it to the end of the ride. Not like the risk-addicted bastards who let go of the pole, who creep toward the edge of the plate, their bodies quivering against the centrifugal monster trying to hurl them into the abyss, their mouths already forming the first faint moans of ecstacy. According to Annie, I’m only happy when I’m out on the edge, even happier when my grip is slipping, and far and away happiest when I’m clinging one-handed to the very lip of the plate, legs extended above the void, eyes wild and throat bulgi
ng as I holler for more.

  She says that my childhood harnessed to Pastor Jonathon Monk’s church of no-matter-what-you-do-you’re-fucking-doomed has ruined me for a normal life. That given the choice I’d rather die than be ordinary. I argued with her at first, but we both know she’s right.

  I shook the negativity from my mind as I prepared to slide a little closer to the edge of Annie’s plate.

  First I removed two of my remaining hundred-dollar bills—“dimes” in casino speak, the curious vocabulary I find irresistible—and put the rest back into the secret compartment of my briefcase. If I failed to find Thompson’s roommate before my five-thirty appointment with Dr. Chen, I’d go down to the street and give the two hundred to the first wide-eyed panhandler I could find. If I located the roommate, I’d win. Not money, of course, but in the only important sense of the word I’d win.

  Ready to go, I reached for my in-box and pulled out a sheaf of paperwork, spread it on my desk, and invoked the gods of bureaucracy to speed me along my way. I pulled my briefcase closer, opened it, and retrieved my pinky ring, slid the ring on my finger, then used the same hand to grab the telephone. Before I dialed I took a moment to admit what I was about to do, that I needed to change the rules of the game for the next few minutes. Official bureau rules had not been good enough to find Brenda Thompson’s college roommate. Now it was time for Quantico rules.

  Like most states, California law forbids its universities from releasing information about students without a signed waiver from the student herself. I had one from Brenda Thompson, but nothing from Dalia Hernandez. To review the woman’s file at Cal without her consent I had to break California state law, but I didn’t have to search hard for justification. I couldn’t possibly harm the roommate, and I’d be clearing up a problem that could delay Judge Thompson’s Senate confirmation.

  So I punched numbers, and three thousand miles away the switchboard at the Berkeley campus of the University of California answered, then directed my call to the student-records office. I told the woman who answered the phone who I was.

  “I’m calling from Washington, D.C.,” I said, “and I’m hoping you can help me.”

  FOUR

  “Of course, Agent Monk,” the woman at Cal-Berkeley told me. “I’ll be happy to help you, if I can.”

  You can’t, I should have told her in the interest of full disclosure. Not unless I can convince you there’s no other choice. That we’re both better off with Quantico rules.

  “I’m doing a routine background investigation,” I said, “and I need to verify the attendance of one of your former students. A woman who attended Cal back in the late sixties, graduated in 1972.”

  “Certainly.”

  I felt my eyes widen. It couldn’t possibly be this easy. Maybe the woman was too new to know better. I reached for my pen as she continued.

  “Just send an agent to my office with credentials and a release form. I’ll be happy to help.”

  “There’s a time problem, I’m afraid. Can we do it now, over the phone?”

  “Surely you know about the Privacy Act here in California. I can’t tell you anything about a current or former student without a signed release.”

  “But I do have a release, ma’am. In fact, I’m looking at one right now.”

  Which was the truth, albeit slightly modified. My in-box was filled with signed releases, all kinds of them from all kinds of people. The only one I didn’t have was the one she wanted.

  “Good,” the clerk told me. “Now all you have to do is bring it to me and we can do business.”

  “But I told you I’m up against a short deadline. There’s got to be a way to expedite the process. What if I mail it to you later? Will that do?”

  “I’m sorry, we just can’t do that.”

  “Would you mind checking with your supervisor?” It was important in a thing like this to complicate the process as much as possible.

  “I guess so … but I know what she’s gonna say.”

  “I’ll be glad to hold on while you double-check.”

  I listened to the dead sound of being on hold, thankful that colleges couldn’t afford elevator music. She was back in a few moments.

  “My boss says if I can verify who you are you can fax me the release.”

  I smiled to myself. This was more like it. I had my foot in the door, they’d play hell getting rid of me now.

  I repeated my name, spelled it carefully, then asked the woman to use directory assistance to get the number at WMFO and call me back. That way, I explained, she would be absolutely sure she was talking to the FBI.

  Her voice turned petulant. “Why don’t you just give me the number?”

  I shook my head at the predictability of her request, then did so. Three minutes later my phone rang.

  “Okay, Agent Monk, I’m ready for the fax, but you’ll have to be patient. Our machine is at the other end of the office. It’ll take me a while to get over there and back.”

  Of course it would. In a civil service office without concern for efficiency or profit, fax machines were always hard to get to.

  “Me, too,” I said with a sympathetic chuckle. “In fact, I have to go all the way upstairs to use mine. Give me five minutes. I’ll keep this line open.”

  I laid the phone on my desk with a clunk, rustled several sheets of blank paper near the mouthpiece, then clomped to the door, opened and shut it loudly enough that she couldn’t miss hearing. Then I returned to the desk, sat quietly for four and a half minutes, got up and repeated the door routine, went back to the phone and picked it up. “Hello,” I said. “You still there?”

  The line was silent for another minute before the woman rejoined me. She sounded a little winded.

  “Nothing happened on this end,” she said. “I didn’t get anything.”

  “Damn. The machine’s been acting up again. It breaks down a lot, so many different people use it.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I’ll send it through again.”

  I repeated the procedure—rustling paper, deliberate footsteps, noisy door—this time for six minutes. This time she was wheezing like an asthmatic racehorse when she got back.

  “Nothing,” she gasped.

  “Are you sure? It says ‘one page received’ in my message window. Problem’s got to be on your end. Let’s give it one more try. Hold the line.” I dropped the phone onto the desktop, bent to listen.

  “No! God almighty, no more!” the woman shouted. “I don’t have all morning to screw around with this. At least I know who you are. I’ll confirm whatever you already know, but I can’t give you anything else.”

  I glanced at the clutter of papers on my desk. Anything I already know. That’ll be a hell of a trick. I started with one of the only two things I did know.

  “Dalia Hernandez was a student at Cal, graduated in 1972, went from there to law school. Does the computer verify her graduation?”

  “I’ll pull it up.” I heard the sound of keystrokes. “Yes, here it is. 1972. June 14.”

  “What about requests for transcripts from law schools? See any of those?”

  “I told you I can’t give you that, Agent Monk. Not unless you already know it.”

  Jesus Christ, I thought, talk about Catch-22. You’d think the woman had given birth to the damned records.

  “I have the law school stuff right here on my desk,” I said. “Just give me a moment to find what I need.”

  I rustled papers close to the phone. “Sorry about this,” I mumbled, Colombo-like. “Don’t know what’s wrong with me today … should have been better prepared. It was Philadelphia, I think … Philadelphia someplace … Temple University, was it? … No, that wasn’t it …” I shook the papers again. “Where is that thing?”

  I paused to let her jump in, but she was a hard case. I had the sudden urge to shove the papers into the mouthpiece of the telephone, thought briefly about where I’d really like to shove them.

  “Ah, yes … yes, here
it is … just as I thought … It wasn’t Temple … It wasn’t Philadelphia at all. It waass … it waaasss …”

  “Harvard!” she barked. “For Christ’s sake, Har—!”

  “Harvard!” I shouted over the top of her. “Exactly right. Harvard Law School.”

  I leaned back, apologized twice more for the confusion, overthanked her, hung up, and ran a hand through my hair. Then I glanced at the money on my desk. Halfway there, I told the two Benjamins. More than halfway.

  I picked up the phone again. Harvard would be a hell of a lot easier to deal with. Their law school was more interested in promoting the success of their graduates than hiding them from the police. And it was easier, I discovered when I got connected with the graduate school records office in Cambridge. A man answered this time, a man happy to tell me that Dalia Hernandez had completed law school and received her J.D. in 1975.

  “Would you like to speak with the alumni office?” the man asked. “They probably have current information about her whereabouts, a phone number perhaps.”

  I told him I would, and he transferred my call. It was a woman this time, but her voice was strangely cold when I gave her the name I was looking for.

  “You’re not being very careful with my money, Agent Monk.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “An agent from your Boston office called me already. Asked me the same questions about Jabalah Abahd. Don’t you people talk to each other?”

  “Abahd? No, that’s not the name,” I said. “Woman I’m looking for is Dalia Hernandez.”

  “Like I told your agent Bennett, they’re one and the same. Dalia took a Muslim name about a year after she graduated from our law school. Jabalah Abahd does pro bono defense work out of her office in the District of Columbia.”