Man in the Middle

by Ken Morris

  Dawson stared. “Neil? You look like a punk.”

  “It was this or dreadlocks.”

  “Cute. How’s life treating you, Neil?” The light tone of Dawson’s voice didn’t fool Peter. The man’s eyes radioed his intensity, loud and clear.

  “I’d just as soon hit the road,” Peter said. “You coming?”

  Dawson jogged to the front of the car and took shot-gun. “You do it?” he asked as Peter pulled away and drove east towards the freeway.

  “Do what?”

  “Kill that girl? You a love-crazed murderer?”

  “That’s not funny.” Peter slowed down, changed lanes, then accelerated onto the on-ramp to I-5. He merged with the 75 mile-per-hour traffic, content that nobody had turned onto the freeway behind him.

  “What’s the story with all this running around?” Dawson asked. “I’m sitting at Sammy’s Restaurant. Corner table, admiring the view, having a Diet Coke, waiting for you to show up, per our plan.”

  “Plans change.”

  “What a runaround. This bartender at Sammy’s, an a-hole with an attitude, asks if I’m Dawson. I figure, oh shit, they’ve made me. I’m worried about you, thinking I’m going to get you busted.”

  “Thanks for the concern,” Peter said, continuing to monitor the traffic from his car mirrors. He slowed to 50 and looked for anyone who slowed down with him. A few drivers gave him the “fuck-you-asshole” stare, and a couple others, upset over the little-old-lady routine, sharply cut in front of him in minor bouts of road rage. Satisfied that he had no tail, Peter re-accelerated to 70 and focused on what Dawson had to say.

  “The crumb-ball then says I must be Dawson ’cause I’m the only runt with a rat-face. You call me a runt?”

  “I didn’t use that word.”

  “Thanks. Anyway, he says you told him I’d give him a twenty for relaying a message. I give him the money and he tells me to go out the back and run down the railroad tracks to the sports bar. Nice touch, Neil. A little payback?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

  “He says a cab’ll be waiting for me. So I waltz down the tracks and find this cabby who takes me to that shit-hole bar. I go inside and another bartender says he has a message for me. It costs me another twenty. He says to go to this bus stop. Place smells like prehistoric urine. I’m freezing my ass off, waiting for a bus that doesn’t come. How come all the cloak and dagger?”

  “Trust,” Peter answered. “I had to make sure you weren’t setting me up.”

  Dawson reached around and removed several folded pages from his rear pocket. “I had someone make some discreet inquiries into this murder thing. The evidence? I shouldn’t tell you, but it’s extensive.”

  “So I’ve been led to believe.” Peter eyed the pages in Dawson’s lap, but the fold prevented him from seeing what was on them.

  “The DA’s people are plenty nervous,” Dawson continued. “Some big-time political pressure’s coming down on them. My guess: Stenman and her cronies are tightening the screws. They want you brought in or shot trying to avoid arrest.”

  “Tell me something, Dawson. Are you really unemployed or is that bullshit? Can you really help me?”

  “No more games?” Dawson asked.

  “No more games.”

  “Good.”

  “Yeah. Good,” Peter said.

  “In that case, I’m reporting to the Director of Enforcement. He’s coordinating with the Justice Department and the DEA, and he’s the only one—aside from the person relaying messages—who knows anything. This . . .” he began to unfold the papers, “is a grant of immunity for any illegal trading you engaged in while employed by Stenman.”

  “That’s not my biggest concern right now. You have any influence on this criminal investigation?”

  “You turn over your mother’s papers, and you get immunity for the white-collar stuff, but I’m not gonna lie to you. Nothing we can do about the murder rap. I warned you, these people are good.”

  “An attorney I know thinks I’ll be murdered no matter what I do. You think that’s possible?”

  “Yeah—more than possible.”

  “You are an honest guy, Dawson. Just when a well-timed lie might help you get what you want, you’re straight with me. I’ve underestimated you.”

  “You and the whole world. Get me those documents, and I go after these scum-suckers. Maybe that’ll distract them some.”

  “I’ve got something else in mind. You keep that letter of immunity warm. I’m going to need it later—if this works out.”

  “If what works out?” Dawson gave Peter a suspicious look.

  “I don’t want a new identity, and I’m not going to hand over my mother’s papers.”

  “Then we have nothing to negotiate—”

  “I didn’t say you’re not going to end up with what you want. I said I won’t be the delivery boy. We keep driving south and we’ll be at the Mexican border in twenty minutes. Let’s make it a round-trip. In the time it takes to get there and back, you listen to what I want from you. If you agree to follow my lead, I’ll see that you get your evidence against Stenman—if that’s what Mom had.”

  “You haven’t looked at any of the documents, have you?”

  “No, I haven’t. Mom sent everything by registered mail, thank goodness. You think you know what’s in those envelopes?”

  “Names attached to some overflowing accounts. Bank trails. Notes made during meetings between Leeman, Johnston, and Ayers lawyers and Stenman, Muller, Guzman, others. Copies of documents that no longer exist. In other words, dynamite.”

  “You willing to play ball for a chance to handle some of this dynamite?” Peter asked, already knowing the answer. Dawson was on a professional jihad, and only his SEC investigations made his professional life meaningful. Peter had to fight this fight, or perish. Dawson battled out of principle. And Peter admired him for it.

  Dawson peered out the window and ran a fingertip across his lip. Without turning, he said, “It doesn’t cost me anything to listen.” The feigned indifference didn’t work. Peter understood the man was hooked and ready to be reeled in.

  Halfway into the return trip home, Peter said, “That’s the deal. You in, Dawson?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Not if you want the evidence.”

  “Then I’m in.”

  “You can guarantee your boss—Ackerman—is gonna buy in?”

  “Yeah, but he ain’t gonna like it.”

  “Tough. I’ve still got a lot to figure out. Some things’ll change on the fly as conditions warrant. That okay with you?” Peter took the Balboa exit, south of La Jolla.

  “Where you taking me?” the agent asked.

  “I asked if changes were okay, if necessary.”

  “Yeah. Where am I?”

  “Pacific Beach. I’m dropping you off on Mission Bay.”

  “I’m parked at Sammy’s. Why—”

  “Just in case someone spotted your car. I’m paranoid, okay? Here. You can reach me at this number. I’m trusting you, Dawson. Nobody else knows where I’m staying.”

  Dawson took the slip of paper. “Where’s this?”

  “Ayers’ guest house. He’s putting in an answering machine for messages.”

  “Ayers? Stenman’s attorney?”

  “The same.”

  “You certain he can be trusted?”

  Peter shrugged. “He’s scared. And he thinks I’m going to end up dead, no matter what I do, but yes, I think I can trust him.”

  “It’s your funeral.”

  “Thanks, Sunshine.” Peter slowed the car and coasted into a parking lot on the east side of Mission Bay. “Here you go. This is where you get out. Make your call, grease the wheels.”

  The agent got out and leaned through his partially open door. “When do I hear the rest of this brilliant plan of yours?” he asked.

  “Maybe never. I’ll be in touch.”

  As Peter sped off, Dawson stepped back, slamming t
he door shut. In his rear view mirror, Peter saw Dawson step off the curb and stare, the agent’s head shaking in disbelief.

  A left turn later, Peter pressed his right foot down on the accelerator and felt his car surge.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “I WANT TO SPEAK TO THE DIRECTOR. Now.” Dawson enjoyed giving orders to Freeman Ranson. He hoped one day to order the slime-ball to eat shit and die. “You’re not even employed here any more, Dawson. You should be arrested for impersonating an agent.”

  This conversational direction and tone did not surprise Dawson. “You mean,” he said, “to tell me you refuse to pass on to Director Ackerman that I’m close to a deal? Or that I’ve got someone high up, on the inside, interested in negotiating?”

  “You have no authority to negotiate on behalf of the SEC . . . or anyone else for that matter,” Ranson said. Dawson didn’t think it sounded convincing. “Not that I believe you, but who is it you think wants to make a deal?” Ranson tried to make this last question seem like an afterthought, but Dawson didn’t bite. He knew the scumbag was apoplectic. And the realization gave him a warm tingle.

  “I promised not to say until the deal is signed,” Dawson said. “It involves immunity and turning a blind eye to certain future activities. But it’ll be well worth the sacrifice if it happens.”

  “You talking about Peter Neil? We’ve been down that dead end before.”

  “Not Neil. First off, I can’t find the guy. Secondly, he’s turned me down more than once. Finally, he’s got much bigger problems with this murder rap.” Dawson silently congratulated himself. The lies sounded convincing.

  “Not Neil? I repeat: who?”

  This time Dawson read a Grand Canyon of concern in Ranson’s voice. Perfect, he thought. He’s buying in. “I can’t say.”

  “Then I have to assume you’re full of it—”

  Show outrage, Dawson told himself. The agent took a deep breath, and spit into the mouthpiece of the outdoor payphone. “You, Ranson, are a piece of incompetent filth.” Then he hung up.

  “Okay, Mr. Peter Neil,” Dawson said in a low whisper. “That’s done. I sure wish I knew why you wanted to get Ranson’s bowels in such an uproar, but you surely have.”

  The agent made one more call. This one was to Angela Newman. “Tell Director Ackerman what happened. Tell him this is part of a plan I’ve devised.”

  “I thought you said this was Neil’s plan,” she said.

  “It is, but don’t tell the director that. If he thinks I’m being jerked around by a guy suspected of rape, torture, and murder, he might not go along.”

  “I wouldn’t blame him.”

  “Me either, Sweetheart. Gotta go. Love ya.”

  Dawson, like everyone else in Peter’s plan, could only wait.

  Sunday night made for a lousy night’s sleep. When Peter woke on Monday, the thoroughness of Saturday’s cover-up still frightened him. That Stenman controlled so many people boggled the mind. And what of Howard Muller? The man disgusted him, but Peter hadn’t wanted to physically hurt him. “On vacation in Mexico”? Maybe on vacation from life, Peter guessed.

  From a downtown Rancho Santa Fe gas station, Peter decided to call Stuart at work and get an update. He used Stuart’s private line.

  “Peter? What the hell’s going on?”

  “Got a few problems to iron out.”

  “Where in God’s name are you?”

  “I’d rather not say. I’ve been moving around.”

  “You a . . . what’s that word you used to describe Muller that one time? Misan . . .”

  “Misanthrope. No, not when it comes to you. I just don’t trust phones.”

  “Whatever, dude, but this is a secure line.”

  “I’m paranoid.”

  “Can’t blame you for that. And for what it’s worth, dude, I know you didn’t kill that chick.”

  “That makes two of us.” A car honked at a pedestrian next to the payphone. “You hear anything about Muller?”

  “Heard he’s gone . . . hold on. I got another call I gotta take. Don’t hang up, got some other info for you.”

  The phone went silent. Peter waited with his face tucked into his jacket.

  “Hey. I’m back,” Stuart said a minute later. “First off, I found out that damn conference room is bugged.”

  “Me too. Did you get in trouble?”

  “You mean for telling you about backtrading? Making fun of Muller?”

  “And your recreational chemicals.”

  “Nobody cared about the coke thing, but I did get a lecture on my always yapping pie-hole. But since Muller ordered me to teach you the ropes, I guess I caught a break. Fortunately, Muller’s war room wasn’t tapped.”

  “You’re still employed, so they must’ve forgiven you.”

  “They wouldn’t if they knew I was talking to you. You won’t tell anyone, will you? That’s a joke, by the way.”

  “I already guessed that.”

  “You wanted to know about Muller,” Stuart said.

  “Yeah. Did you hear anything?”

  “There was a fire in his office, but he was away on a sudden vacation . . . hold on, got to take another call. I heard something I want to tell you about . . . give me a sec.”

  Again, Peter waited. He guessed two minutes passed.

  “Stuart! Hello!”

  Shit.

  Peter slammed the phone into the aluminum cradle. He had parked his car fifteen feet away. In seconds, he jumped into the Taurus and listened to the ignition grind, then kick in. With an arm across the passenger’s front seat and his head turned back, he floored the accelerator and backed up to the sounds of screeching rubber. Shifting to the brake pedal, he slammed hard and fishtailed. He spun his torso back around, then slid the automatic into drive. The wheels slipped on a patch of light oil before catching enough traction to move forward.

  At the exit, a Cadillac cruised past, two blue-hairs talking, unaware that Peter had aimed his cocked auto in their direction. The Easter-green luxury car stopped and waited for a pickup truck to pull away from the curb. Peter went into reverse and spun the wheel hard right, stopped, then pointed his car in another direction.

  Self-service pumps were full of obstacles. One car, done getting gas, rolled into his new path.

  “Move, dammit,” he shouted. Nobody heard.

  Peter’s car felt like an oven, broiling his brain. He honked, but everybody froze at the sounds of a siren, closing in. Then a second siren, dead ahead. A third came from the rear. A block away, the flashing lights of a black-and-white turned a corner. The cop car sped through a stop sign, the driver knowing exactly where to head. Peter fumbled with, but managed to open, his car door. He flung himself out and hit a full sprint in a single stride. Down the opposite street, another officer spotted Peter, trained his car at him, and accelerated.

  Stuart? My friend?

  Peter tore down a sidewalk and cut into an alley behind a grocery store. He dodged cardboard boxes and a dumpster. He hurdled a vegetable crate and willed himself not to look back or slow down. More sirens. He mad-dashed to the corner just as two unmarked cars spun onto the walkway blocking his path. Peter did a 180. In mid-stride, he froze. Thirty feet away, using his vehicle as a shield, an officer pointed a shotgun directly at Peter’s heart. A voice shouted: “One more step and I fire.” The detective’s hand pumped the gun, reinforcing an already convincing argument. Peter fixated on the black hole. Would he be able to see a bullet leave the barrel? His spine locked.

  “Hands behind your head.”

  Peter laced them where asked.

  “Down on your knees.”

  Peter knelt.

  A hand clamped his right wrist with a bone-scraping cuff, then jammed that arm behind his back. The same vicious twisting motion wrenched the left hand, locking it to the right.

  “You have the right to remain silent . . .”

  Kate arrived at the County Jail on Front Street an hour after the arrest. She visited Peter, then r
equested a meeting with the DA. Told “no,” she met with a flunky instead.

  Assistant DA Francine D’Agostina was a heavy, sour-faced woman of fifty with deep creases webbing along the corners of her eyes and spreading across her face. She had the leathery skin and smell of a heavy smoker. Her office was stark, appointed with metal file cabinets, cheap library bookends, and cold, dirty windows. Even her desk had a metal frame. Frigid, Kate thought. A Woodstock photo, with a skinny Francine as a flower-child, soaking in mud, sat atop a side-table. It seemed ridiculous to Kate that the Assistant DA had ever been thin, or that she had attended a love-in at Yasgur’s farm in 1969. And the woman sounded nothing like laid-back when she said, “What the hell do you want?”

  “I want my client protected,” Kate answered. “I believe he’s in danger.”

  “You do, do you?” D’Agostina tilted back and folded her arms across fat breasts, stuffed inside a blue blazer that fit like a snakeskin in need of shedding. “Ask me if I care. Who do you think you are, promising to have your client turn himself in? The DA isn’t going to give you any special treatment after that.”

  “My client’s innocent. If something happens—”

  “Yeah, yeah. You’re a regular Clarence Darrow. If I were you, I’d go spend some time with my client. He’s fish chum.” An ugly simper crept across D’Agostina’s face. “Check his hands for stigmata. With what we’ve got, he’s already been nailed.”

  “What do you mean? I have a right to know.”

  “You have a right to know when I decide you have a right to know. But since I can’t wait to see your reaction, I’ll go ahead and share a tidbit. The DNA tests? On the semen?”

  “You have the PCR?”

  “A match.”

  “Bullshit. Peter wasn’t there.”

  “His little swimmers were.”

  “PCR isn’t definitive.”

  “It is to one in ten thousand. And we’ll get more. We’ve started RFLP. You know as well as I do that RFLP’s gonna create the same match. And the chance for error is only one in five-billion. OJ Simpson aside, I’d say reasonable doubt’s not going to be an issue.”