Scorse went with me into the impressive, very cushy conference room. All the walls and most of the furnishings were dark blue, very sober and severe. The room reminded me of the cockpit of a foreign car. Yellow pads and pencils were laid out for us.
It was clearly Weithas's meeting from the start. “What we'd like to accomplish is twofold, Detective Cross.” Weithas spoke and acted like a very successful, very cool Capitol Hill lawyer. In a manner of speaking, that's what he was. He wore a brilliant white shirt with a Herrn6s tie. He slipped off his wire-rimmed reading glasses when I entered the room. He appeared to be in a dark mood.
“I'd like to show you all the information we have on agents Devine and Chakely. In return, we must ask for your full cooperation in keeping this matter absolutely confidential. What I'm telling you now... is that we've known about them for a while, Detective. We were running a parallel investigation to your own.”
“You have my cooperation,” I said, trying not to show my surprise at his news. “But I'm going to have to file a report back at the department.”
“I've already spoken to your commanding officer about the matter.” Weithas brushed that little detail aside. He'd already broken my confidence; he absolutely expected me to keep his. “You've been ahead of us a couple of times during the investigation. This time, maybe we're a little ahead of you. Half a step.”
“You have a little bigger staff,” I reminded him.
Scorse took over for Weithas at that point. He hadn't lost his touch for condescension. “We started our investigation of agents Devine and Chakely at the time of the kidnapping,” he said. “They were obvious suspects, though not ones we took seriously. During the course of the investigation a great deal of pressure was placed on both men. Since the Secret Service reports directly to the secretary of the treasury, you can imagine what they were subjected to.”
“I watched most of it firsthand,” I reminded both FBI men.
Scorse nodded, then went on. "On the fourth of January, Agent Charles Chakely resigned from the Service. He stated that he'd been thinking about the move long before the kidnapping, anyway. He said he couldn't handle the innuendos, all the media attention. His resignation was accepted immediately. At about the same time, a small error in the daily logs kept by the agents was discovered by us. A date had been inadvertently reversed. It was nothing major, except that we were checking everything about the case at the time.
“We eventually got nine hundred of our agents directly or indirectly involved,” the deputy director added. I had no idea what his point was yet.
“Other inconsistencies in the agents' logs were eventually discovered,” Scorse continued. “Our technical experts concluded that two of the individual reports had been doctored, that is, rewritten. We ultimately came to believe that what was taken out were references to the teacher Gary Soneji.”
“They had spotted him checking out the Goldberg house in Potomac,” I said. "If Soneji can be believed.
“On this point, I think he can. What you've recently had confirmed corresponds to our findings. We believe that the two agents observed Soneji watching Michael Goldberg and Maggie Rose Dunne. We think one of the agents followed Soneji, and discovered the hiding place in Crisfield, Maryland.”
“You've been watching the two agents ever since?” I asked Gerry Scorse.
He nodded once, just as efficient as ever. “For a couple of months, anyway. We also have good reason to believe they know we're watching. Two weeks after Chakely resigned, Devine also resigned from the Service. He said he and his family couldn't take the pressure associated with what had happened, either. Actually, Devine and his wife are separated.” “I assume Chakely and Devine haven't tried to spend any of the money,” I said.
“To our knowledge, no. As I said before, they know we're suspicious. They aren't dumb. Not at all.”
“It's come down to a rather delicate and intricate waiting game,” Weithas said. “We can't prove anything yet, but we can disrupt their lives. We can sure as hell keep them from spending any of the ransom money ”What about the pilot in Florida? There was no way I could run an investigation down there. Did you ever find out who he was?"
Scorse nodded. The FBI had been withholding a lot from me. From everybody. I wasn't surprised. "He turned out to be a drug runner named Joseph Denyeau. He was known to some of our people in Florida. It's conceivable that Devine knew Denyeau and hired him.
“What happened to this Joseph Denyeau?”
“In case we had any doubts about whether Devine and Chakely play for keeps-they do. Denyeau was murdered in Costa Rica. His throat was cut.. He wasn't supposed to be found.”
“You're not going to bring Devine and Chakely in at this point?” “We don't have any proof, Alex. None. Nothing that will hold up. What you got from Soneji cements it, but won't help in court.”
“What happened to the little girl? What happened to Maggie Rose Dunne?” I asked Weithas.
Weithas didn't say anything. He blew out air over his upper lip. I got the feeling he was having a long day. In a long year.
“We don't know,” Scorse answered. “There's still nothing on Maggie Rose. That's the amazing thing in all this.” “There's another complication,” Weithas said to me. was seated with Scorse on a dark leather sofa. Both I men were leaning over a glass coffee table. An IBM computer and printer sat off to one side.
“I'm sure there are a lot of complications,” I said to the deputy director. Leave it to the FBI to keep most of them to themselves. They could have helped me along the way. Maybe we would have found Maggie Rose if we'd worked together.
Weithas glanced at Agent Scorse, then he looked back at me. “Jezzie Flanagan is the complication,” Weithas said.
I was stunned. I felt as if I'd been punched hard in the stomach. For the last few minutes, I knew something else was coming from them. I just sat there, feeling cold and empty inside, well on my way to feeling nothing.
“We believe she's deeply involved in this with the two men. Has been from the start. Jezzie Flanagan and Mike Devine have been lovers for years.”
Along Came A Spider
CHAPTER 76
T EIRHT-THIRTY that night, Sampson and I walked along New York Avenue. It is in the tenderloin of AD.C.'s ghettos. It's where Sampson and I hang out most nights. It's home.
He had just asked me how I was holding up. “Not too good, thanks. Yourself?” I said.
He knew about Jezzie Flanagan. I'd told him everything I knew. The plot thickened and thickened. I couldn't have felt any worse than I did that night. Scorse and Weithas had laid out a thorough case involving Jezzie. She'd done it. There was no room for doubt. One lie had led to another. She'd told me a hundred if she'd told me one. Never flinched once. She was better at it than Soneji/Murphy. Real smooth and confident.
“You want me to keep my mouth shut? Or talk at you?” Sampson asked me. “I'll do it either way.”
His face was expressionless, as it usually is. Maybe it's the sunglasses that create that impression, but I doubt it. Sampson was like that when he was ten years old.
“I want to talk,” I told John. “I could use a cocktail. d to talk about psychopathic liars.”
“I'll buy us a few drinks,” Sampson said.
We headed toward Faces. It's a bar we've been going to since we first joined the police force. The regulars in Faces don't mind that we're tough-as-nails D.C. detectives. A few of them even admit that we do more good than harrn in the neighborhood. The crowd in Faces is mostly black, but white people come by for the jazz. And to learn how to dance, and dress.
“Jezzie was the one who assigned Devine and Chakely in the first place?” Sampson reviewed the facts as we waited for the stoplight at 5th Street.
A couple of local punks eyed us from their lookout in front of Popeye's Fried Chicken. In times past, the same kind of street trash would have been on the same corner, only without so much money, or guns, in their pockets. “Yo, brothers. ” Sampson winked at the thugs. H
e fucks with everybody's head. Nobody fucks back.
“Right, that's how it all started. Devine and Chakely were one of the teams assigned to Secretary Goldberg and his family. They worked under Jezzie.”
“And nobody ever suspected them?” he asked me.
“Not at first. The FBI checked them out. They checked everybody out. Chakely's and Devine's daily logs were off. That's when they became suspicious. Some watchdog analyst at the Bureau figured out that the logs had been doctored. They had twenty people for every one we had. Besides that, the FBI removed the doctored logs so none of us could find them.”
“Devine and Chakely spotted Soneji checking out one of the kids. That's how the whole circus began? The double take.” Sampson had the general rhythm of the thing now.
“They followed Soneji and his van out to the farm in Maryland. They realized they were stalking a potential kidnapper. Somebody got the idea to kidnap. the kids after the actual kidnapping.”
“Ten-million-dollar idea.” Sampson glowered. “Was Ms. Jezzie Flanagan in on it from the beginning?”
“I don't know. I think so. I'll have to ask her about that sometime. ” “Uh huh. ” Sampson nodded with the flow of our conversation. “Your head above, or below, the water line right now?”
“I don't know that, either. You meet somebody who can lie to you the way she did, it changes your perspective on things. This is very tough to handle, man. You ever lie to me?”
Sampson showed some of his teeth. It was halfway between a smile and a growl. “Sounds like your head's a little below water to me.”
“Sounds like it to me, too,” I admitted. “I've had better days. But I've had worse. Let's have that beer.”
Sampson gave the gunner's salute to the punks on the corner. They laughed and gave us the high sign. Cops and robbers in the 'hood. We crossed the street to Faces. A little oblivion was in order.
The bar was crowded, and would be that way until closing. People who knew Sampson and me said hello. A woman I'd gone out with was at the bar. A real pretty, real nice social worker who had worked with Maria.
1 wondered why nothing had come of it. Because of some deep-down character flaw I have? No. Couldn't be that.
“You see Asahe over there?” Sampson gestured.
“I'm a detective. I see everything, right. Don't miss a trick,” I said to him.
“You soundin' a little sorry for yourself. Little ironic, I'd say. Two beers. Nah, make it four,” he told the bartender.
“I'll get over it,” I said to Sampson. “You just watch. I just had never put her on our suspect list. My mistake. ” “You're tough, man. Got your nasty old grandma's genes. We gonna fix you up,” he said to me. “Fix her ass, too. Ms. Jezzie's.”
"Did you like her, John? Before any of this came up.
“Oh yeah. Nothing not to like. She lies real good, Alex. She's got talent. Best I've seen since that movie Body Heat,” said Sampson. “And no, I never lie to you, my brother. Not even when. I should.”
The hard part came after Sampson and I left Faces that night. I'd had a few beers, but I was mostly coherent, and nearly dulled to the worst of the pain. And yet it was such a shock that Jezzie had been part of it all this time. I remembered how she'd led me away from Devine and Chakely as suspects. She'd pumped me for anything new the D.C. police had picked up. She'd been the ultimate insider. So confident and cool. Perfect in her part.
Nana was still up when I got back to the house. So far I hadn't told her about Jezzie. Now was about as awful a time as any. The beers helped some. Our history together helped even more. I told Nana the truth straight out. She listened without interrupting, which was an indication of how she was taking the news.
After I had finished, the two of us sat there in the living room, just looking at each other. I was on the hassock, with my long legs spread out in her general direction. Screaming silence was everywhere around us.
Nana was bunched under an old oatmeal-colored blanket in her easy chair. She was still nodding gently, biting her upper lip, thinking over what I'd told her.
“I have to start someplace, ” she finally said, “so let me start here. I will not say, 'I told you so,' because I had no idea it would be this bad. I was afraid for you, that's all. But not about anything like this. I could never have imagined this terrible thing. Now please give me a hug before I go up and say my prayers. I will pray for Jezzie Flanagan tonight. I really will. I'll pray for us all, Alex.”
“You know what to say.” I told her the bottom-line truth. She knew when to slap you down and when to give a needed pat on the rear end.
I gave Nana a hug, and then she trudged upstairs. I stayed downstairs and thought about what Sampson had said earlier-we were going to fix Jezzie's ass. Not because of anything that had happened between the two of us, though. Because of Michael Goldberg and Maggie Rose Dunne. Because of Vivian Kim, who didn't have to die. Because of Mustaf Sanders.
We were going to get Jezzie, somehow.
Along Came A Spider
CHAPTER 77
OBERT FISHENAUER was a supervisor at Fallston Prison. Today, he thought, that was a very good thing. Fishenauer believed that he just might know where the ten million dollars in kidnap money was bidden. At least a large part of the ransom. He was going to take a little peekaboo right now.
He also had a pretty good idea that Gary Soneji/ Murphy was still messing with everybody's bead. Big time. And nonstop.
As Fishenauer drove his Pontiac Firebird down Route 50 in Maryland, a host of questions was circulating through his head. Was Soneji/Murphy the kidnapper? Did he really know where the ransom money was? Or was Gary Soneji/Murphy full of shit? Just one more tutti-frutti nut case out at Fallston.
Fishenauer figured he would know everything pretty soon. Another few miles of state road, and he'd know more than anybody, except for Soneji/Murphy himself.
The turnoff was the seldom-used back way into the old farm. The road was almost completely gone now. Fishenauer saw this as he made the right turn off the main highway.
Cattails and sunflowers grew the length of what had obviously once been a road. There weren't even wheel ruts in the crusted-over dirt.
The vegetation was knocked down. Someone had come crashing through here in the past few months. Was it the FBI and local police? They had probably searched the farmhouse grounds a dozen times.
But had they searched the grounds of the deserted farm well enough? Robert Fishenauer wondered to himself. That was the ten-million-dollar question now, wasn't it?
Around five-thirty in the afternoon, Fishenauer pulled his dusty red Firebird up alongside a dilapidated garage just to the left of the main farmhouse. The adrenaline was really pumping now. Nothing like a treasure hunt to get the juices flowing.
Gary had raved about how Bruno Hauptmann had hidden part of the Lindbergh ransom in his garage in New York City. Hauptmann had been trained as a carpenter, and he'd built a secret compartment for the money into a wall in his garage.
Gary said he'd done something like that out at the old farm in Maryland. He'd sworn it was the truth, and that the FBI would never find it.
Fishenauer switched off the Firebird's rumbling engine. The sudden quiet was eerie. The old house sure looked deserted, and very creepy. It reminded him of a movie called.The Night of the Living Dead. Except that he was staffing in this creepy-crawler. i Weeds were growing everywhere, even springing out of the roof of the garage. Water stains ran down the sides of the garage. “Well, Gary-boy, let's see if you're completely full of shit. I hope to hell you're not.” Robert Fishenauer took a deep breath and climbed out of his low-slung car He'd already figured out what he would say if he got nailed here. He'd just say that Gary had told him where he'd buried Maggie Rose Dunne. But Fishenauer had figured it was only some of his crazy talk. Still, it had gnawed at him. i So now here he was in Creepsville, Maryland, checking it out. Actually, he felt dumb. He also felt kind of bad, guilty, but he had to check this one for himself. Had to, man. Th
is was his personal ten-million-dollar i lottery. He had his ticket. Maybe he was about to find out where little Maggie Rose Dunne was buried. Jesus, he hoped not. Or maybe it was the buried treasure that Gary had promised him. He and Gary-boy had talked a lot, for hours at a time, back at the hole. Gary loved to talk about his exploits. His baby, as he called the kidnapping caper. His “perfect” crime. Right! So “perfect” he was serving life plus in a niax-security prison for the criminally insane. And here Robert Fishenauer was, right at the moldy front door into Creepsville. The scene of the crime, as they say.
There was a badly rusted metal latch on the door. Fishenauer slipped on a pair of winter golf gloveshard to explain those if he got caught snooping out here. He flipped up the door latch. He had to pull the door hard toward him through the thick overgrowth. Flashlight time. He took out his lamp and turned it on full blast. Gary said he'd find the money on the right side of the garage, the far right corner, to be exact.
A lot of old, broken-down farm machines lay all around the garage. Cobwebs stuck against his face and neck as he walked forward. The strong smell of decay was on everything.
Halfway into the garage, Fishenauer stopped and turned around. He stared out the open door, and listened for what must have been a full ninety seconds.
He heard a jet plane somewhere off in the distance. There was no other sound. He sure hoped there was no one else around.
How long could the FBI afford to watch a deserted farm? Not almost two years after the kidnapping!
Natisfied that he was alone, Fishenauer continued to the back of the garage. Once he was there, he started to work. He pulled a sturdy old workbench over-Gary had said the bench would be there. He'd seen by now that Gary had described the place in pretty amazing and accurate detail. Gary'd said where every broken piece of machinery lay. He'd told Fishenauer the exact location of just about every slat of wood in the rotting garage walls. Standing on the old workbench, Fishenauer began to
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