Conspiracy of Fire

by Tony Bulmer

  A short yellow cab ride later, Karyn checked into a smaller boutique hotel five blocks from the main tourist drag. The Hawaiian Gardens hotel was a discrete palm shaded oasis catering to business travelers. More like a motel than a traditional resort hotel. The Hawaiian Gardens was

  constructed around a central pool and garden and area that boasted a lush collection of sub-­‐tropical plants and trees. The place was discrete,

  anonymous—the kind of joint where all manner of comings and goings could pass without comment.

  The front desk of The Hawaiian Gardens was staffed by a rather austere but neatly attired looking older man in a maroon waistcoat, who introduced himself as Hector. Once the front desk formalities had been completed and Karyn presented him with one of her many fake ID’s. Hector graciously advised her that if there was anything she needed, anything at all, she should call down to reception. He made this offer with such a tight expression twisted across his face that the sub text of this generous offer was clearly quite opposite to the one stated. Karyn smiled. This was

  just the kind of service she liked—cold hearted and anonymous—with a side order of brusqueness, to freeze out all but the most determined of callers.

  Less than five minutes later, as Karyn squeezed a glance between the narrowly parted curtains of her comfortable but functional room on the third floor she knew her instincts were as good as her research. The layout of The Hawaiian Gardens was even better than the web cam walkthrough she had made on the Internet. The window had a solid drop on the entrance, the kind of advantage that would prove invaluable should any kind of situation develop. It was the first rule of combat—always have a fallback position before you make a strike. She turned, looked at her case laying open on the bed. No ordinary collection of clothes and toiletries—A CIA field officers strike kit—the kind of weapons and technology that would raise pulses at any normal airport check in. But for agents of the CIA’s Deep Five division, there was no such thing as a normal check in, just sleight of hand so seamless and natural that not even the most vigilant of TSA operatives would have noticed that the woman who had joined the flight without hand luggage had mysteriously picked some up when she left the plane. It was always nice to make a relaxing low-­‐key, getaway for the Islands thought Karyn. But one thing was certain, there was going to be trouble in paradise and for that she had come prepared. Her first stop would be the headquarters of the Honolulu Police Department. Karyn picked up her Sig 229 and weighed it experimentally in her hand. Word was the HPD Chief like to play things by the rules. Karyn jacked a live round into the breech. There was no time for rules in this

  game. Either big chief Aloha had the answers she was looking for, or if he didn’t there was going to be trouble. Big trouble.

  08

  Smelling clean and fresh after a shower, Karyn headed out of The Hawaiian Gardens and walked two blocks down hill towards the sea. Finally, in the late heat of the afternoon, she caught a cab to the headquarters of The Honolulu Police Department. The cabbie took a ride through the pleasant tree lined back streets, staying clear of the busier downtown traffic.

  At length, as they arrived at their

  destination, Karyn was rather surprised to find herself out front of a rather cramped looking four-­‐ story building that resembled a provincial high school, rather than a big city police department. Outside police headquarters a large contingent of eco-­‐protestors were congregating noisily, on the narrow sidewalk and front steps of the building. As they lolled and smoked and chatted, they looked like students, waiting for their next class.

  As she paid him, the cabbie gave her an uncertain look “You sure about this lady? It looks kind of dangerous out there today.”

  Karyn smiled. “Dangerous for whom?” she asked.

  The cabbie laughed and took off without further comment. As Karyn headed into the lair of the beast, anguished faces pressed in all around her, like they had never seen a woman in a business two-­‐piece before. Maybe they thought she worked for the government or something? So what do you do? Pull out a make way for the lawyer placard and hope for the best? Public defender coming through, called Karyn. The invocation worked its magic,

  parting the crowd quicker than a squirt from a water cannon. Judging from the anguished cries rising up around her, arrests had been made, and plenty of them. Karyn looked into the earnest faces of unblemished idealism. Perhaps once, many years ago, she too had thought she could change things— how long would it be before these same idealistic faces gave up the idea of protest? Realizing that shouting and screaming and running out onto the freeway to protest the inequity of bestial corporate interests didn’t do a damn bit of good—never would do, not in this world or any other. They would all come around, every one of them. They would settle back in the suburbs with their not so comfortable lives and barely adequate jobs, working for the same damn corporate interests they had been protesting all these years, except now they would put that idealism down to youthful naïveté. They would argue politics at Chardonnay fueled dinner parties while planning tax strategies with their accountants by day, and hoping that the rainy day money they were feeding into their 401Ks would be enough to sustain them in the long dark days of retirement, when their corporate masters had finally deserted them for cheaper more efficient labor in another part of the world. There would be the few who opted out of course, the so called clever ones, who thought they could never be tamed, but they would be marginalized, defeated utterly; living lives of such little moment, they might as well have not lived them at all.

  Karyn moved inside the police station. The giant glass doors swooshed together behind her with an institutional kind of finality that separated the world of decency and order from the roiling

  anarchy outside. The place smelled of triplicate forms and Rolodex filers. It was the kind of station house that had a brown tobacco aged hue on everything, despite the fact that smoking in Federal buildings of all descriptions had been outlined many decades ago. There was no kind of detergent that could bring that kind of time aged attitude out in the wash, no matter how many cycles you put it through. The building was chill too, big hotel cool, the kind of cool you get when you walk through a Vegas casino with a half pint of Ice cold tequila flowing through your veins. Karyn licked her lips she could taste the salt and lime and ice jangling her taste buds already, and it wasn’t even five PM.

  “Can I help you lady.” The desk sergeant was a short African American woman, who must have weighed close on 250 pounds on a good day. She was sitting high on her stool behind the booking desk, peering over her glasses with a strange disgruntled intensity.

  Karyn pulled her Department of Justice badge and said, “ Friendly visit Ma'am. The chief in?”

  The desk sergeant raised a wry eyebrow, “The chief is always in, less there’s some goddamn television cameras needing his opinion. You don’t happen to
have any television cameras with you do you?”

  “No Ma'am, not currently no.” The wry eyebrow rose northwards once again. “That I can see, Ms. So, here’s what you do, you go all along the corridor here and take the lift to the fourth floor—less stairs is your thing?” The sergeant paused, stared disapprovingly over the tops of her glasses before continuing. “ In which

  case, you can take either flight, left or right, out front of the lobby, don’t much matter which you choose, they all go the same place,” again a pause, followed this time by a smile, “ I take it the chief he knows you are coming?”

  “Thought I would surprise him. It’s more fun that way,” said Karyn.

  This time both eyebrows rose northwards, “The chief ain’t the kind of man who likes surprises, I can attest to that right now honey,” said the desk sergeant.

  Karyn smiled, “I was kind of hoping he wouldn’t be,” she said. “Lifts at the end of the corridor?”

  “Uhuhhhhh,” intoned the desk sergeant. “But I got to warn you, he’s got some big swinging cheese from the FBI in there with him right now and their ain’t no telling how long that meeting is going to take.” She was leaning out over the edge of the booking desk now talking to Karyn’s back.

  Karyn raised a hand, gave a casual wave of thanks, thinking, Good, two birds with one goddamn stone.

  09

  Upstairs in Honolulu Police Department, the offices were a marginal improvement on those downstairs. Here, the nicotine browns gave way to a more functional open-­‐plan office arrangement in neo-­‐ Stalinist gray. Not a single aloha garland or Tiki torch accessory anywhere. This was something of a disappointment. The disappointment continued as Karyn double-­‐timed across the office floor to the headman’s hangout. The whole place was drabber than a Chicago coroner’s office, on a go-­‐slow Tuesday. In fact the office was so dreary and impersonal, it could have been in just about any Federal building anywhere in the United States. Not even a potted plant or a personal photo anywhere.

  This didn’t bode well.

  As she passed through the open plan offices, Karyn sensed curious eyes following her progress—squad room detectives going about their business day to the click-­‐clack rhythm of the computer keyboard. She flipped a nod and the briefest of smiles where necessary—it was their turf after all. Almost at her destination now, she caught sight of a thin, haunted face looking her way. The face struck a chord, so familiar and yet—she made a double-­‐take glance, to filter further details, but the face had already turned away—almost too quickly, as though it had something to hide. Karyn looked harder now—and saw long boney fingers scratching at the back of a straggly mane of raven colored hair. Where had she seen that face before?

  Recognition avoidance was a trademark of the serial wrongdoer, thought Karyn. She filtered

  back the split second glance, running it repeatedly through her mind, hoping her memory would provide answers. The face was male, early thirties, peering at her over thick-­‐framed glasses. Perhaps she had been recognized? You could run into all kinds of ghosts in this business, some malevolent, others less so. But if she had been spotted, her cover was as good as blown, and that could not be allowed, not at this stage.

  Karyn flipped the face through her mind, again and again but came up blank. Maybe it was nothing, maybe not.

  She rapped on the glass to the chief’s office, but he had already seen her coming. He rose out of his chair like a grey ghost, a wiry slight man, of advancing years, the chief was wearing a neatly pressed uniform and large hat that gave him the air of an aging commissionaire at the sort of hotel where that kind of look still mattered. As he came around his desk to greet her, his steady walnut eyes regarded her unflinchingly.

  “This is quite an honor Ms. Kane, it is nice to know that our government thinks so highly of us out here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, that they would send a representatives from their most esteemed departments—we are honored indeed.”

  A chair in front of the chief’s neatly ordered desk spun a half turn and tilted back ever so slightly. The chair contained a squat muscular looking guy sporting a pudding-­‐cut head-­‐shave that bugled him out as ex-­‐military.

  The guy had an edge. Karyn could see that from the get go, as the homunculus little prick just leaned back in his chair and stared at her. She stared back at him, melted him out. He looked like

  the kind of knucklehead who could bench 220 for breakfast and wasn‘t afraid to tell everyone—like it was some kind of achievement or something. Not only that, he was wearing an eye popping Hawaiian shirt covered in parrots and psychedelic foliage.

  The chief shook Karyn’s hand. His grip was wet and limp, “This is Ted Congo from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  Congo remained in his seat, arms folded, his jungle gym arms pulsing with irritation. “I didn’t get no kind of message you were coming

  sweetheart, perhaps the big stink Department of Justice thinks it can just elbow its way onto my island and muscle my investigations?”

  “Nice shirt,” deadpanned Karyn.

  “Hey, this is style sweetheart, you better get yourself some and fast, because your fancy assed Capitol Hill power clothes ain’t going to win you no friends around here, let me tell you.”

  Karyn ignored him. She turned, sat on the edge of the chief’s desk and regarded the two men with the cold authority of career diplomat. “So, Tex Johnston shoots the Governor then takes a tumble out of his 48th floor apartment. Rather careless of him wouldn’t you say?”

  “Careless hell. That sonofabitch had it all planned out you ask me,” growled Congo.

  “Easy now Ted,” said the chief. “We don’t have a definitive answer on that one, not until all the tests are back.”

  “What are you talking about Donald? We got a million dollars in ready cash, found at the scene of the crime no less. Now, you ask me, that is proof positive that Tex Johnston was trying to dirty

  up the Governor, like as not the Governor said no, him being a man of honor and all.”

  Karyn said, “This is as far as you have gotten gentlemen?”

  Congo looked at the chief, then back at Karyn, his quick card-­‐cheat eyes assessing the situation, sizing it up and computing just exactly what kind of line he was going to spin next.

  The chief looked uncomfortable, an undercurrent of tension squeezing his face ever tighter. “We have got to handle this one by the book, utilize the services of Ms. Kane here. This is an election year for Christsake, we cannot afford to have any political snafus.”

  “Two days and this is all you got?” said Karyn, her voice quiet.

  “We got a murder suicide is what we got, and I will be damned if the Federal Bureau of Investigation needs its hand holding to figure out just why a deadbeat like Tex Johnston turned his whisky addled brain to murdering one of the most respected politicians our community has ever seen.”

  “There w
as the girl too of course,” said Karyn.

  “Girl, hell, she was a goddamn hooker, there ain’t no one going to cry tears over a dead hooker, specially when she’s a cozy little pal of that dirty Senator friend of yours—what was she—one of your Department of Justice insiders Agent Kane? Whoring herself out for the US Government, so she could feed you the inside dope on your senator friends dirty little business dealings?”

  Was this prick the guy? wondered Karyn. She looked in through his eyes and examined his

  soul. She didn’t like what she saw. Ted Congo was a good liar, bordering on excellent, but he was a liar nonetheless. The phony outrage and the tell all pantomime all tailing together, to prove just one thing—Special Agent Ted Congo, head honcho at FBI Honolulu was hiding something. But there was more than lies to this unpleasant little man—there was something else, something arrogant and deeply unpleasant. Karyn had met a lot of Federal Agents in the course of her career at the Agency, but she had never met one quite so relentlessly egomaniacal as Congo. What was it that Senegar had said? Use only the lightest of touches whilst dealing with local law enforcement—keep blue-collar casualties to an absolute minimum. Karyn sensed a grey area. Federal Agent Congo wasn’t strictly local law enforcement he was the station chief of a Federal Agency, a government man. Terminate with Extreme Prejudice. This was a Deep-­‐ Five operation, not a girl-­‐scout fact-­‐finding mission, if this little prick wanted to play rough he was about to find out what it was like to be a casualty of his own stupidity.