“So he gave you directions, eh?”
“Yes it was a lonely spot, and I had to wait an hour for them because they were late. I even had to stop on the way up there to get them something to eat.”
“At the KFC drive-in,” Burrows said. It was beginning to look like Alfred has only being used and wasn’t actually connected with any of this.
“Carry on,” she waved him on.
“I was on this lonely road and the car pulled up. The driver got out, looked at me and my car, then had a look round the place. He handed me the money, and I didn’t even have to count it to know the bonus was in it. He asked me if I knew where New Orleans Street was in my town. I was a little surprised when he asked me that. He didn’t give an address, he just said to take them there and I dropped them off on a side alley off New Orleans Street.”
Campbell and Burrows jumped up, saying “New Orleans!” in unison. Alice was startled by their movement and she thought hard. She remembered the two suspects had told Mr. Woo they were going to New Orleans. Could there be a terrorist cell on New Orleans Street?
“Mr. Hassan, could you give us a minute, we’ve got some calls to make, can we use your office?” – Campbell was already ushering him out – “We’ll want to know more in a minute so please stay in the showroom.”
Alice sat there and watched Campbell punch numbers into his cell phone. Behind them, Burrows had gone out and picked up the phone at the desk. She didn’t know who they were calling but she wasn’t going to ask another “silly” question; this moment was very crucial. Alice just sat there guessing what was going on. Both agents were too busy and excited about this new lead to think about her and she felt as irrelevant as a fly on the wall.
Burrows came back in the office and sat down, flashing only a slight smile at Alice. Alice took to mean, Sit there and do nothing, so she did.
“Yes sir, we’ll do that straight away,” Campbell said finally and got off the phone.
He sat back down and spoke to Burrows. “Brubaker says the New Orleans address could be another ploy to throw us off their tracks but he’s going to get all CCTV from the area to see what our boys can find. A house-to-house of the area will soon be ordered to see what we’ll come up with.”
Burrows nodded. “I’ve asked our boys to trace the phone calls to see if we can trace Mr. X.”
“Great… but I won’t hold my breath on that one. I hope they have an idea where it came from. I’m hoping it’s New York.”
Campbell could see the confused look on Alice’s face, and he had to explain it to her.
“The commissioner of New York is a big believer in CCTV; they have state-of-the-art cameras. It’s called ‘Domain Awareness’ and it’s the most sophisticated camera system in the world. Now we’ve got good photos of our two suspects from their Algerian passports, and this computer’s got what they call Facial Recognition technology. Basically they show the computer the photo – it’s a little like fingerprints, only it picks out parts of your face instead – and then the computer can recognize that face on a busy street from a camera feed even if the person being looked for has got half of their face hidden. It’s that good! The computer can look through hundreds of tapes at the same time. It can find someone in minutes where it would take our boys days or even weeks to go over tape after tape.”
“Well let’s hope we can chase them to New York then,” Alice said with a smile as bright as Campbell’s.
“Shall we have Mr. Hassan back in now?” Burrows asked impatiently. “The sooner we finish this interview the sooner we can go and check out that street.” She didn’t wait for his approval; she turned, tapped the window and beckoned Alfred in.
They asked Alfred a few more questions and in the middle of it all, Campbell’s cell chirped away in his pocket. When he took it out and saw the caller ID, he thanked Alfred and walked out of the office to pick up the call, leaving Burrows to finish off. She did so in no time and put her note book away. She thanked Alfred again and she walked out with Alice, thanking the girl at the desk as they passed.
“Get in the car!” The words were flung at them, not spoken.
Burrows and Alice flew in the car and Campbell pulled away hastily.
“They’ve got good footage of the two suspects and their minder, on three cameras. It was just like our friend Alfred said it was, he dropped them off and they went down a side alley. There was a witness spotted on the tape, and he’s not being very helpful to the detectives, so Brubaker wants Joe to work his magic and get into the guy’s head to see what he knows”
There was a sudden panic in Alice. Joe had signed off and she didn’t think he’d be back by the time they got there. She’d have to talk to this witness and have Joe come to her in her dreams tonight, so Joe could get into the witness’ mind that way.
“Are you alright Alice?” Burrows asked.
“Yes, I’m just trying to keep up, that’s all.”
They were at the alley entrance in no time and two detectives were there waiting for them. Campbell marched up to them with Burrows and Alice trailing behind.
“Are you Campbell?” one of the detectives asked.
Campbell nodded and they shook hands. Without asking the detective his name, or introducing Burrows and Alice, Campbell asked, “What have we got here?”
“We got three cameras showing them getting out of the car.” He pointed at the cameras individually. “That one there shows them go a little way down the alley, and then we lose sight of them behind a big van that was there at the time. But there was a guy that came out of that premises there to dump garbage in a bin.” He pointed at the door. “He saw the suspects pass him and he watched them for a minute or two going down. When we asked him about it, he said he didn’t remember seeing anyone. We told him we got him on camera but he laughed and said he didn’t see anyone… I think he’s got a grudge against the police.”
“Right.” Campbell counted the back doors down the alley from where the detective pointed, and then looked back to the main road. “So, he’s four from the corner.”
“Yeah, it’s a barber shop.”
“Right, we better go pay him another visit.” Campbell marched off and it wasn’t until he had taken multiple steps that he slowed, down, turned to Alice and said, “I don’t think you’ll be able to shake hands with this guy, he doesn’t seem to like cops or any kind of law enforcement so you have to try that psychic thing.”
“Okay, I’ll try.”
The shop was empty and the owner was sitting down reading a paper as if he was a customer waiting his turn. He put the paper down, took one look at Campbell and said, “Christ, not more cops!”
“Mr. Bonnetti, I’m Special Agent Campbell, this is Special Agent Burrows and this is Alice Timberlake, an associate of ours. We are not cops.”
“I don’t care who you are, I didn’t see anything; so in asking me again, you’ll be wasting your breath… and my time.”
Alice doubted if he had anything to do with the Mafia but he had that tough guy image and attitude and didn’t seem intimidated by the FBI. Since she was pretty sure, shaking hands with him wasn’t going to happen, she tried a different approach.
“Mr. Bonnetti, I’m not with the police.” Alice pointed to Campbell and Burrows. “Special Agent Campbell is FBI and Special Agent Burrows is also FBI, a profiler. Me? I’m just a crime reporter. The commissioner has asked my firm to do an independent survey to research police intimidation when questioning people of different ethnic groups so I’m just following these officers around to study them.”
“What are you on about?” Bonnetti asked with a confused scowl.
“Mr. Bonnetti, I’m sure you’ve read about the police doing supposedly random checks on people. Mostly African-Americans and Arabs, but did you know that there are nearly as many complaints from Irish and Italian Americans about police handling?”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“Your name sounds like
that of an Italian gangster, if you don’t mind me saying so.” Alice noticed the change on his face go from a puzzled look to one of shock; she didn’t know if she had gone too far and offended him or not, Alice also noticed a slight smile come on Campbell’s face.
She stepped closer and lowered her voice, “These cops watch too many movies and are easily misled by stereotypes. If you’ve been intimidated in any way by the police in their inquiries, then feel free to tell me about it and I will put it in my report.” Alice grabbed his hand and shook it while he was still trying to work out what she was implying. “They just got a few questions to ask you.” Alice stepped back and took a deep breath.
“Have you finished, Mrs. Timberlake?” Campbell asked. The sarcasm was only detected by Alice and Burrows, of course. “Or would you like to make Mr. Bonnetti a cup of tea and have a cookie and longer chat, and perhaps ask him what he saw out the alley yesterday?”
Raising his voice, he continued, “Or you could stay back and observe while we get on with our job.”
Alice saw something in Campbell’s eyes; he was definitely playing along. “That’s the kind of intimidation that the Commissioner keeps complaining about,” she said. “You’re yelling and you don’t even know it.”
Campbell looked at Burrows. “At this rate it will take us the whole damn day to perform a door-to-door just to get half way down the block.” He turned back to Mr. Bonnetti and he asked, pitching his voice loud and clear. “Mr. Bonnetti we’ve got you on camera watching three guys pass you by, what can you tell us about them?”
Bonnetti equally raised his voice. “I didn’t see a thing!”
“Thank you Mr. Bonnetti, you’ve been a big help to us.” Campbell threw his hands up in the air and stormed out of the shop.
Alice and Burrows exchanged shocked glances, then followed him out.
Mr. Bonnetti yelled after them, “I think that profiling thing is a waste of tax payers’ money; she didn’t even ask me one question!”
They ignored him.
Alice was half expecting a telling off from Campbell, but he was smiling when he asked her. “You made contact, right?”
She nodded.
“And what was that all nonsense about the Commissioner?”
Alice shrugged. “Well he wasn’t intimidated by the FBI so I wasn’t sure the psychic move would have worked well. I just remembered you talking earlier about the Commissioner of New York and the idea just came to me out of the blue. He wouldn’t have shaken my hand otherwise.”
“Or been shocked enough to let you shake his,” Burrows said, accurately.
The three of them laughed.
“Well, ten out of ten for thinking on your feet,” Campbell said, “but I’d like it if you could tell us your plan next time, we didn’t have a clue what to expect next.”
“Mr. Bonnetti’s mad because I didn’t ask a question but he doesn’t know I didn’t want to spoil it. Besides, it was like amateur night at the theatre, where people forget their lines and walk off the stage.”
“Yeah, you did alright in there, Alice. I didn’t mind playing along,” Campbell gave a sigh. “The only thing is we’ve got to wait for Mr. Bonnetti to go to sleep for Joe to work his magic. Every time we seem to be gaining on these terrorists, we then have to sit on our butts waiting for Joe.”
“But we’re lucky we got Joe,” Burrows pointed out. “Or we wouldn’t have tracked them this far.”
“Yeah,” agreed Campbell. “Well, let’s go have a look at the tapes to see what happened yesterday, and get a look at the person the brothers are travelling with. With a bit of luck, we might spot something the others have missed.”
Alice was watching the video for the third time when Joe popped in her mind.
“What are you watching?”
Alice jumped a little, then recovered and filled him in telepathically while also listening to Burrows and Campbell analyze the video.
“There’s only one of two things that could be going on in this video.” Burrows pointed to the screen. “Either they’re going into one of those building to hide or they‘re changing cars again. And my money is on changing cars.”
“Yeah I agree,” Campbell said, “and I wish we could see behind that big van. But these folks aren’t even consistent. The last change they did was on a back road, where they dumped the car for a cab where no one could see them. Then they get out of the cab here in front of three CCTV cameras in broad daylight!”
“Well I’m off,” Joe said to Alice. “You have an early night tonight. I’ll visit Alfred first, visit you next and then see if I can get into Mr. Bonnetti’s dreams.”
Alice didn’t want Joe popping into her dreams but it was the only way so she had to agree, she realized he had other things to do and his times of contact couldn’t always be convenient.
Abel took no time at all that night to get into Alfred’s dreams. He found out that Alfred had been used for his taxi services but had no more information to give. Abel, in the character of Joe, then went to visit Alice.
The dream she was having was kind of jumbled up: her husband John was there in his prison officer’s uniform and Burrows and some other dude were there telling Alice she could write a better story. Joe didn’t have a clue what was going on in Alice’s dream and he didn’t bother finding out. He just asked, “Alice, can I have a word with you?” and by the time she turned and said “Hi Joe”, she was under his spell.
He told Alice to concentrate on Mr. Bonnetti and she did, recalling their encounter earlier in the day. Joe just kept the picture of Bonnetti in his mind as he called out to him until he got into Bonnetti’s dream.
Joe found him in a bar, arm-wrestling a guy with arms like tree trunks. Everyone was rooting for Bonnetti and with great effort, he won. Joe went up to him and said, “Mr. Bonnetti, I need a word with you.” Caught in Joe’s web, he relived the moment in the alley when he had seen the three suspects pass by, with Joe watching everything.
Joe read Bonnetti’s thoughts: he felt that the two younger men were nervous, illegal immigrants, going to work in one of the hotels for peanuts and the man with them was helping them. He noticed a young woman waiting for them just in the dark and she bowed to greet them. The boys’ minder then took the suitcase off one of them and gave it to her, saying something in Arabic. She nodded and hurried off with one of the boys. The minder opened the door of a white van nearby, pulled out a white overall and gave it to the other man. He took out one for himself and they put them on with white trilby hats. Bonnetti thought, Immigrants! They don’t waste much time to work.
Joe had Bonnetti take another look at the woman and the other boy going down the alley; it seemed as if she threw the suitcase into the back of a truck and then she and the boy disappeared out of view behind garbage bins. At this point, Bonnetti shrugged and went into his house, thinking it was no business of his.
Abel got out of Bonnetti’s dream a little confused. He was sure the two brothers had split up and that one of them was in a white van. He couldn’t make out the license plates so there was no number to give Alice.
And the other boy? Had they thrown the cases into a dumpster or a truck? He wasn’t sure and he knew had had to wake Alice up. Campbell would want to trace that white van, and the car or truck that left at about that time. He would also try to find out if they had thrown the cases away or not. It was only 1:05am but he reckoned the FBI didn’t sleep much so he woke Alice up so she could take the information and pass it on to them.
He told Alice what he found out and left it to her, telling he’d check in with her in the morning for an update. Abel felt pleased with his night’s work and as the night was still young, he thought he’d pay Jean the beauty queen a visit. Abel had missed their little adventure the previous night and he was sure Jean missed her dream lover, Joe.
*
Jean had fallen to sleep hoping Joe would come to her. The night he had skipped had got her thinking about him all day
. Did Joe really exist out there in some dream world or was he just a figment of her imagination, a dream lover that she had somehow created in her mind? Perhaps her daytime thoughts were taking over her dreams and playing out sexual fantasies her subconscious yearned deeply for? Like being a damsel in distress waiting for her knight in shining armor to come and save her or like her veiled desires to have freaky, kinky sex?
What if she couldn’t have any more dreams with Joe? She was desperate; she just wanted to be that young English Jean: a soldier’s wife that wanted so badly to get to York to be with her true lover, she was willing to be used and manipulated. Of course, Jean wanted to be screwed too.
Jean thought ahead; the dreams would more than likely end when she got back with Steve. She resigned herself to crossing that bridge when she got there. For now, she just wanted to be a vulnerable newlywed surrounded by horny men while she travelled the English countryside looking for her true lover Steve.
Jean walked unsteadily on a muddy path through rows of tents. It was raining hard and it was difficult to keep her feet firmly on the ground without sliding this way and that. To make matters worse, she was lost. She couldn’t locate their tent.
“Get in and wipe yourself child, or you’ll catch a cold.”
Jean turned around and nearly fell. She squinted through the blinding rain and asked, “Uncle Johnny, is that you?”
“Aye child, it’s only me.” Johnny caught hold of her arm and helped her into their tent. “You get out of those wet clothes and dry yourself. I’ll check the guide ropes, the wind is picking up and it looks as if this rain is in for the night.”
Jean’s husband was in the other camp and it was just her and Uncle Johnny now. She found a towel and started wiping her hair. Johnny came in, pulled the flaps shut then turned to her and asked. “Did Captain Sinclair have his way with you girl?”
Kill The President's Women (Joe The Magic Man Series Book 2) Page 19
