by David Wind
“There are ways….” I didn’t elaborate and Chris wasn’t going to ask. He was a good cop who did things by the book so all legalities would be observed. He knew whatever I was planning came out of a different book. Nor did I bother to tell him I hadn’t yet worked out any plan; we both knew I would.
He stood. “Let me know when you need me.”
“I will.”
“And be careful.” His eyes, not his voice, showed his concern.
When he left, I turned back to the window and thought on how I would get to Senator Brian Conklin.
<><><>
Lunch from the deli came and went as I made one plan after another and discarded each as soon as I saw a flaw. Just after two, Femalé called me into the conference room, where both she and Gina had been pouring over the paperwork.
“You were right,” Femalé said, “there are no intersecting points in the timelines between the missing girls and Conklin, in fact, for every disappearance, he was at least a hundred miles away.”
“It’s too perfect,” Gina said. “When the first girl was taken, Conklin had just left the Army, where he’d served two years in the Adjutant General Corps. He’d joined the army upon graduating law school and passing the New York Bar. And when he returned to civilian life, he’d joined the staff of a well-known New York State Senator and had been in Albany at the time of the first abduction, which had occurred in Buffalo, or so it appears.”
I followed along while scanning Gina’s printouts of the FBI files and Femalé’s printed web pages, and birthed a new thought. Could that be the connection?
“Gina, can you find out where Conklin was stationed?”
She didn’t ask me why; rather, she turned to the computer and started typing. A few minutes later, and with a question strong in her eyes, she said, “Germany first, then Bangkok.”
My smile grew wide enough to make me look stupid. “Where his taste for little girls really came out. It’s also where he met Rice.”
I had him! I knew how to get to him. “Can you find out if he’s in Washington?”
Gina picked up the phone. “Femalé, was there anything at all in the timeline?”
“Nothing.”
“Have you dug into his background? Family, friends—the whole nine yards…”
“We were just looking for the timeline.”
“Go deeper.”
Gina hung up the phone “He’s not in Washington.”
“Then he’ll be in Pennsylvania. I need to speak to him.”
Gina’s eyes shouted disbelief. “You don’t think he’ll take your call do you?”
“Maybe, maybe not, but he should take yours as an FBI agent.”
“With Heinlein—Rice gone, he’ll check me out first.”
She was right, but there had to be a way. I gave it some serious thought before realizing I already had the answer. “He’ll take my call because Rice would have told him what was happening. He knows my name. He might not want to talk to me, but he’ll be too afraid not to without Rice to bolster him.”
“How can you be so sure Rice won’t contact him?” Femalé asked.
I’d given it a lot of thought over the last few hours. Now it was time to share. “Too many people have gotten into the mix. In all the years Rice has been operating, he’s been in total control and no one has ever gotten as close as we have. But with Scotty’s death, his control began to slip. He’s been walking a tightrope for years, and he didn’t want to take the chance of killing me because of the heat it would generate coming on the heels of Scotty’s murder.
No, Rice realized things were falling apart around him. The FBI was involved, I was involved and then the NYPD was thrown into the mix. I’m positive he knew Homeland Security was closing in. There were just too many eyes looking into too many areas for him to take a chance. He’s a professional: He was a spy, and then a heroin distributor—still is according to Malcolm, and a white slaver in children. At first, he tried to warn me off, and then he tried to kill me. When neither worked he was ready to make a deal.”
I looked out the window. The afternoon sun bounced from the windows across the street. “But he didn’t have a deal for me, I’d learned too much. Our meeting was to discover the extent of my information. He gave me some crumbs, but in asking, I gave him the knowledge of what I hadn’t learned. His plans on my termination depended on what I knew. When he found out I didn’t have the information he thought I did, he was ready to accept the risk of killing me. And now, I’ll guarantee you he’s so far underground no one short of a gopher will find him. He’ll emerge in Thailand or Hong Kong.
But he left us Conklin. And when I call Conklin and tell him his choice is to meet with me or I give Homeland Security, the FBI and the NYPD all the information we have on the abducted children, he’ll see things my way.”
The room turned morgue silent. Four eyes stared at me until Gina exhaled. “Oh, that’s just perfect. You’re going to corner a United States Senator and accuse him of pedophilia and murder, and then expect him to fold and confess like a twelve-year-old caught shoplifting candy in a grocery store? Are you out of your mind? Don’t think he’ll be unprepared for this and have his security team waiting to blow your brains out and report it as an attempted assassination?”
That was another thing: Gina loved her metaphors. But in this case, it didn’t hold up. “No, I have enough real information to make him sit up and take notice. Combine that with what I’m sure Rice told him and it will make him eager for a meeting, if he believes I’m willing to deal.”
“Why would he?” Femalé cut in, her inflection sharp. “He’s read the papers. He knows you promised to find Scotty’s killer and have justice served!”
“People like Conklin think they’re above everyone else. He’s one of the most powerful men in this country—a U.S. Senator. And, he believes he can control this. Which is what will work to my advantage when he realizes he doesn’t have the ability to control me, and by then it will be too late for him.”
“Or for you,” Gina whispered.
Chapter 58
It was just shy of three p.m. when Gina came into my office to tell me she’d gotten a call from her boss, informing her she’d been reinstated and asking her to come to the office for a meeting. With a wink, she placed a piece of paper with two phone numbers onto my desk. “Conklin’s office and home.”
Then she gave me a kiss filled with warmth and promise and told me she wouldn’t be at the office late, and wanted to spend the evening with me. “Home plans, Gabe, I just want to stay in and be held.”
The vulnerability in her eyes showed through her died-in-the-wool FBI toughness. But she was my toughie and I told her, her wish was my command.
Once she was gone, I’d settled down to dig deep into Senator B.V. Conklin—Brian V. Conklin. But there wasn’t much more to the printed profiles than what we’d gone over in the conference room.
Conklin was in the last two years of his third term. He’d been thirty-nine when he became a senator, after serving two terms as a congressman. His congressional record was average: As a senator, he’d started slow, but during his second term, he’d pushed through several major pieces of legislation which had given him good weight in Washington and wide popularity with his constituents.
Prior to that, and after his release from the army, he’d worked as an aide to his father, who was a State Senator in New York. At twenty-nine, Conklin had moved back to Pennsylvania, where he’d had legal residence since starting college.
His meteoric rise within the ranks of his party in Pennsylvania was due, I’m sure, to his father’s influence. He joined a prestigious Harrisburg law firm, and a year later was made partner. The son of a well-known senator, even of another state, was good firm PR. Three years after making partner, he’d run for congress and won with ease. Everything that happened to young Conklin stunk of Rice’s involvement. Not even his father could have produced as much legitimate influence in Pennsylvanian politics.
Well, at
least I knew my man. Now it was time to end his career. I picked up the phone and dialed Malcolm’s cell number. He answered on the third ring.
“It’s Storm. Any luck?”
“We got Rice’s—Wilkes—picture out to every Federal agency in the country. If he tries to get on a plane or boat or cross a border we’ll have him”
“Don’t count on him having the same face.”
“We don’t, but there’s not much we can do there,” he admitted. “However, I have a couple of interesting leads.”
“Care to share them?”
He laughed. “Why not. I pulled all the background information on the Heinlein name Wilkes appropriated. Everything is perfect. Birth records, school records, overseas service–”
“Don’t tell me, let me guess, he was in the army in Thailand.”
“Close. He was a state department attaché in Hong Kong at the same time Wilkes was in Thailand.”
“And?” I asked, sensing something good coming by his tone.
“Around the time CIA operative Wilkes disappeared, Heinlein left the State Department. State Department and INS records show he returned to the U.S., resigned from the State Department and, several weeks later, left for Asia. He spent a month traveling the Orient. When he returned, he took a position as Vice President of National Security Consultants.”
I was so caught up in Malcolm’s revelation; I almost didn’t catch his next words.
“He stayed with them for five years before going to work for Congressman Brian Conklin.”
Slick, Rice was very slick and Fuhrman had lied to me. I made a mental note to call Mancuso. “I guess we both know Heinlein died in Asia.”
“For sure. This man is like the grim reaper. Where ever he shows up, people disappear or die.”
“There may be a way to find Rice and stop him.”
Malcolm was silent for a moment. “How?”
“Conklin. Rice may have been manipulating the puppet strings, but Conklin isn’t stupid either. He’ll know something.”
“Look, Storm, there’s a lot I can do in my position, but certain things can’t be done, not the way they need to be. I’ll need warrants. For that, I’d need some powerful proof to present to a federal judge. Before going there, I’ll need to go to the head of Homeland Security. Conklin’s a fucking U.S. Senator.”
“Yeah, I know. But if you’ll listen to me without telling me how it can’t be done, I’ll tell you how it can.”
“I’m listening.”
I explained it to him the same way I had to Femalé and Gina. When I finished, he remained silent for a long time, then he said, “There are an awful lot of holes in your master plan: proving he abducted those children and having him tell you so is doubtful—this isn’t a Law and Order TV show. And, getting him to agree with a private face to face with you will be next to impossible; having him admit he murdered Scotty Granger will be less so.”
He exhaled loud enough for me to hear it through the phone. “Tell me why he would meet with you?” he asked.
I let some time drift by before answering. “Fear - that’s the beauty of it. He’ll be too afraid not to meet with me because he’ll understand I know what he’s done. Since Rice was looking for what Scotty had discovered, Conklin will think I have enough evidence to crucify him.” At least that’s what I believed, unless Rice had gotten to Conklin after our meeting at the theatre and told him I didn’t have it. But Rice had gone to ground, and he was too much the pro to contact someone and have it traced back to him.
“I still don’t get it,” the Homeland Security agent said.
Malcolm suffered from the same disease most justice agency people did by thinking one dimensionally. “You need to expand your horizons, Malcolm, be creative. It’s simple. I call him and set up the meet. He has three choices: He agrees to my conditions; he tries to set his own; or, he tells me I’m crazy and he isn’t someone who’s a target for blackmail.
If he takes the third option, then I’m wrong, from a to z. But he won’t because he’s guilty of everything I’ve said and more—he’ll take option one.”
“Alright,” Malcolm said after a moment, “but I want my people to set you up with a wire.”
“Understand, I’m going after a murder charge on the Senator. I won’t let you or your people take that away by arresting him for a lesser charge.”
“If he murdered your friend, then he’s yours. I want whatever he has on Wilkes—Rice, that’s all. But if he didn’t kill him….”
“Then he’ll go down as a sexual predator and a kidnapper of children and all of you, Homeland Security, the FBI and the locals can each have whichever piece they can grab. What he won’t be, five minutes after I finish talking to him will be a U.S. Senator. But I’m right.”
“Then, again, he’s yours. Rice is the important one.”
I took him at his word, because there was no reason not to. I have a good take on the people I deal with, and my intuition told me he could be trusted. “I’ll let you know as soon as I set it up.”
“When?”
“Soon.” With that call over, I picked up the paper with the phone numbers and prepared myself to call a piece of filth masquerading as a U.S. Senator.
<><><>
Forty minutes later, I still hadn’t talked to him: I’d tried his office twice and had been greeted with, “Thank you for calling Senator Brian Conklin’s office, my name is Alicia and how may I assist you today?”
The first time I’d called, I’d been told the Senator was out of the office and was asked for my name and number. I’d told ‘Alicia’ I would call back. The second time I decided to leave my name, because that might get his attention. Now it was twenty minutes later and I was making the third call.
This time Alicia recognized my voice. “I’m sorry Mr. Storm; we just received word the Senator will not be returning to the office today. Perhaps you want to leave your number this time?”
I tendered a polite thanks and added, “I’ll call him at home later.”
The quick “oh” popping from her mouth served to soften her up. “He should be home by seven or eight. I didn’t realize you were a friend.”
“No problem. Thank you, Alicia.” I shoved off my frustration at being forced to wait.
I stood and stretched, not having realized how long I had been sitting. The movement felt good. Then Femalé dropped a stack of printouts on my desk.
“You want to see these,” she stated.
“And why do I?”
“Boss, I just made your day.”
“That would be a nice change. How have you made my day, Clint?”
“Dirty Harry to you…. Senator Brian V. Conklin is the son of Regina Conklin.”
Not for the first time did I wonder how Femalé’s mind works. “And this is going to make my day?”
“Be nice. It was her second marriage. Her first marriage ended with the death of her husband, Albert Vandegroten. When she married Conklin, he formally adopted Brian Vandegroten, who took the Conklin surname, but kept his father’s surname as his middle name, Brian Vandegroten Conklin.”
I stared at her as though she were an illusion. Her next words turned illusion into reality.
“Brian Vandegroten, as in the name of the account Arnie Steeplechase found in Jeremy Thornton’s bank records! And, Boss, that’s not all. Before marrying Albert Vandegroten, before giving birth to Brian, she was Regina Thornton, daughter of Reginald Thornton and sister of Jeremy Thornton, Lia Thornton’s husband. Brian Vandegroten is Thornton’s nephew.”
Her words struck like a swarm of bees on a trespassing honey bear. The mix of emotions exploded in my head and the random bits of information clicked into place. The money trails Arnie Steeplechase discovered flowing from Thornton’s accounts to the Vandegroten account meant Thornton had been covertly supporting his nephew. But the information held a deeper meaning: both Albright and Lia had lied to me.
I took a few leveling breaths. “Yeah, kid, you made my day. Now, go find
out where Albright is. Just find out, nothing more,” I warned.
She disappeared fast, reappearing ninety seconds later. “He’s in a meeting at his offices.”
“Perfect.”
“Boss?” Femalé asked as one eyebrow arched high.
“Yeah?”
“You want me to find out where Lia Thornton is too?”
“No.” The triumph in Femalé’s face drained. “I want you to call her and tell her to expect me at her apartment.”
I caught the leading edge of her smile as I strode passed her. Thomas Fucking Albright better have a damned good reason for not telling me about Brian Vandegroten Conklin!
Chapter 59
“May I help you sir?” asked the dark haired receptionist when I entered the thirty-second floor offices of Thomas Albright Ltd. The pretty receptionist, in a subtle blue suit, matched and complimented the décor, which left no doubts as to why she worked there.
“Thomas Albright.”
Her brow creased. “I’m sorry sir, did you have an appointment?”
“If I wanted an appointment I would have called. Get Albright. Tell him Gabriel Storm is here and he has thirty seconds to come out, or I go in.”
She blinked five times before saying, “I’m sorry, Mr. Storm but–”
I stared hard. “Twenty-five seconds are left. Are you going to waste them or get him?”
Wisely, she took the second choice. When she reached him, she told him word for word what I’d said. “He’s on his way.”
Albright made it with seven seconds to spare. At his appearance, the receptionist released her long held breath with a loud exhalation.
“Storm, what –”
I didn’t let him finish speaking. Grabbing his shoulder with one hand and catching the still open door with the other, I pushed him back inside, where a dozen people sitting at their desks, turned to stare. “We can talk here or privately, but we’re going to talk. Where?”
He pulled his shoulder out from beneath my hand. “This way.”
He led me to the end of the corridor and into an ego large corner office with views of Broadway on one side and the space where the World Trade Center used to be on the other. He closed the door and whirled, his face mottled red with anger. “Who the hell do you think you are, coming here like this?”
