Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sid was furious. Seven thousand. That’s what the body shop guy offered as his “best guess” to repair the Town Car, although he added, “I can’t give you a solid estimate until we go over it.” Sid took that to mean the real cost would be double the seven grand. Goddam it! The guy also said it would never “drive the same”, meaning his beloved car was now junk. He felt stupid. He had never allowed anyone to drive it and he had never had an accident. The one time he gave the keys to Dave turned the luxury behemoth into a pile of dents and twisted metal. He would sell it the minute he got it back from the body shop.
His rage had been tempered by healthy doses of bourbon in his coffee and he had a warm, buzzing feeling as the anger slipped into something else a little more accommodating. O’Neil’s deal had his mood improving. O’Neil was showing a weak hand and Sid had gone along with it. What was the old joke? You can’t un-blow the horn. Dave had already blown the horn about the farm but O’Neil and the people he was speaking for wanted him to un-blow it and say it was all just a misunderstanding. What a laugh! Sid took another drink from his cup. Dave knew what he had been told and what he had seen and, in fact, O’Neil had confirmed it days ago. So that meant that whoever was trying to manage this mess was hoping to make it go away by shutting Dave up. Well, Sid thought, it might work, given the short attention span of the news business and the news-consuming public.
He had taken the deal with his fingers crossed. O’Neil had offered a trade. The details of the monitoring station at the farm would come out in due time. The lead right now was Father Darius and O’Neil had put a steak upon the news table, so to speak. The larger story as Sid saw it was the capture of Father Darius and the solid link to the Warriors of Mary, whoever they were. O’Neil hadn’t asked him to back away from that. Curious. And the deal had included the exclusive news that Father Darius was at St. Elizabeth’s for “evaluation”, meaning he would not be seen or heard from for months or even years. A mass murderer caught. End of story. By the time Father Darius’s status as a mental patient was determined the public would have forgotten about the story and reporters and editors will be shouting about something else.
Dave was effectively muzzled by his status as a material witness and Elena was a basket case. Sid called a friend, a literary agent who handled the famous journalists based in Washington.
“Have you been watching the news?” he asked with a playful tone in his voice.
“No, anything happening?” The agent went along with the gag.
“Do you think you can sell Dave’s story?”
“I can get him a hundred thousand today, “she replied. “Is he there?”
“Not yet. He’s on ice. The government has him in custody as a witness. I’ll have him call you. He’ll need to take a leave from this place until everything blows over so he’ll have time to crank out a book.”
“I’ll make some calls. I’ll see if I can get a bidding war going. Good talking to you, Sid.”
She owes me, he thought, hanging up. There was a wrap on his door and he looked up to see Gabriel standing at the window. He motioned him to come in. “What’s up?”
“Dave’s on the line and he wants to talk to you.”
Sid took a healthy gulp of his coffee and picked up the phone. “How and where are you?”
“I’m in the lockup in Greenbelt at the federal courthouse. Have you talked to O’Neil?”
“Yeah, he gave us a good story. Father Darius is at St. E’s.”
“They want me to shut up about some things, Sid.”
“They have a right to limit what you can say about what happened, Dave. I checked with our legal people. You’re a witness.”
“What about the equipment in the silo? Don’t you want to chase that angle?”
“You didn’t actually see anything but some computer screens. You didn’t listen and you didn’t hear anything. I’m not saying I don’t believe you but I’m not sure I believe this Frank guy. He sounds like a nutcase to me. Let it go, Dave. There’s a hell of a story here without that and we have all we can handle just reporting about you and Elena and now Father Darius. Chicago and San Francisco are chasing some solid leads there about this Warriors of Mary group. Take a breath, settle down, and get some rest.”
“They won’t let me see Elena. I don’t know where she is.”
“Captain O’Neil says she’s fine and in good hands. When are they going to let you go?”
“Undetermined, if you can believe that. They want me to agree to their deal and we can talk about me going home after that.”
“Here’s something to brighten your day. Do you know Karen Henderson? She’s a book agent in Alexandria for the Huffman Group. She wants to talk to you. She thinks she can get six figures for a book about your experience. You’ll need to take a leave from here anyway, so it will give you something to do. Life is good, Dave.”
“Screw you, Sid.” Dave was laughing. The money would be nice. Maybe he could buy a car? “Do you think I’ll need to clear what I write with O’Neil or Ossening?”
“Talk it over with your publisher. Oh, by the way, don’t spend it all. You owe me for the car.” Sid paused and he could hear Dave breathing on the other end. “Don’t sign anything until we can get it past our legal people. Tell them anything they want to hear and mean it. Come to see me as soon as you can. We have a lot to talk about.”
Special Agent Ossening and Assistant U.S. Attorney Stanford listened and nodded. Ossening looked at her. “Let him go with the usual warning about statements and testimony. It’s not like we won’t know what he’s up to.”
Stanford was tired of the game with Dave and wondered what Ossening’s real motives were. She was not comfortable with the marching orders she had been given and her instincts told her that things were not what they appeared to be. She was a note-taker with an excellent memory and if anything were amiss she would have no trouble producing a detailed account of what had transpired around her. “I’ll advise him to get his legal people with us as soon as possible. I assume this Sid character has already put that in motion.”
“Downtown is putting out a press release and there’ll be a media pony show to spin this our way. We’ll call Dave some kind of hero, credit the D.C. cops, and push ahead with our case. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“What are you going to do about O’Neil and the guys at the farm?”
“O’Neil? Right now, nothing. The guys who were out at the farm, especially Byrne, are singing like canaries. They thought the Warriors of Mary and the Posse Maria thing was some kind of social club with guns. The problem is, they don’t know very much.”
“And Frank?”
“Frank’s a tougher nut but he’s cutting himself a nice little deal. O’Neil’s the key right now. He’s the one we need to track. He’s got some interesting numbers on his phone. One of them is DOJ.” DOJ is shorthand for Department of Justice.
Stanford stared at the agent. “I assume I’ll be briefed at the appropriate moment.”
“That you will.”
“First things first. Let’s get Haggard out of here.”
Dave was sitting on the metal table when a U.S. Marshal opened the door to the small room. The marshal motioned for Dave to follow him and led Dave to the processing area, where Stanford was waiting.
“Just a couple of things and you’re out of here,” she said. “We’ll forget the other stuff for now and schedule a meeting with your attorney to go over your status. Right now you’ll need to acknowledge that you are a material witness and agree to withhold public comments that may be relevant to your testimony before the grand jury and other proceedings. We’re not trying to harass you here, we’re protecting our case. I’m sure you would agree that this is the most important priority at the moment.” She was in her schoolmarm character, looking at him over her glasses with her mouth pressed into a tight line.
“How is Elena?”
“She’s been taken to George Washington Hospital where
a good plastic surgeon is repairing her face. That’s my understanding. She’s also being given a thorough physical and psychological examination. I have been told that she will be there for a day or two and will not be receiving visitors until she’s evaluated. I’m sure she will be happy to see you when she’s able.” Stanford handed Dave some papers. “These are pro forma. They’ll get you out of here. Don’t be surprised if D.C. police, maybe your friend O’Neil, come by your place for a little talk later today. I’d get with your legal people as soon as possible if I were you.”
Dave signed the papers and handed them to Stanford. “I need a ride home.”
Two hours later Dave walked into his apartment and collapsed on his bed. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to drift into a state of lethargy and heaving the random thoughts that precede sleep when his phone rang. He considered ignoring it but he considered the possibility that it was Elena, so he answered it. It was Sid.
“We need to chat,” Sid said by way of introduction.
“I’m passing into unconsciousness at the moment,” Dave replied. “Have you heard from Elena?”
“She’s okay. We sent Megan to be with her. She doesn’t want to see you right now. They’re fixing up her face.”
“Yeah, I heard. We need to set something up with the Now News lawyers. The U.S. Attorney’s office wants to go over my status, whatever that means.”
“We’re on it. We’ve got a meeting with them tomorrow morning. Don’t say anything to anyone until then. We’ve got our angle covered here and we’re saying you’re not making any statements at the moment. Our Chicago station is digging up some good stuff. We can talk about it. When can we meet?”
“I need some sleep. How about dinner?”
“I’ll pick you up. Get some rest.”
Five minutes later the phone rang again and this time it was O’Neil. “I’m on my way over.”
“Not now. I’ll call you later. I’m passing out.” Dave ended the call and sank into a deep and dreamless sleep.
He was still groggy over dinner with Sid at a sandwich place on Connecticut Avenue and stared at his meal while Sid stared at him. “I have to hand it to you. This may be the greatest story I’ve ever been a part of. This one has it all.”
“Yeah? Like what?” Dave moved a French fry though a puddle of ketchup and shoved it into his mouth.
“Murder, intrigue, religion, insanity, a car chase, even if it was my car that got wacked. It will make a hell of a book.”
“So, what’s next for me at New News?”
“You’re on leave to write a book. That’s your status. We can’t have you working the street stories as famous as you are and we’ve got this witness stuff to worry about. I wanted to get with you in person and away from the phones because we have to assume that all the phones are bugged. This business of trying to shut you up about the monitoring station at the farm is so much crap. I went along with it to get O’Neil off my back and I’m surprised he thinks it worked. Potentially, this is the biggest angle of the whole mess. These guys are running what amount to wiretaps from some farm in Virginia. If this was legitimate they wouldn’t be set up in a silo. What’s going on here? You need to get that into your book. Who are these people? What’s O’Neil’s angle? Is the F.B.I. a part of this?”
“I can’t think right now, Sid, so I don’t have any answers. O’Neil is coming by later to have a little chat. Again. We’ve got the legal meeting in the morning when the government will try to shut me up. There’s too much to process right now.”
“I understand. Just do me one favor. Don’t say anything about the book to anyone. Don’t have sensitive conversations on the phone. Let’s agree to meet for lunch every day until further notice so we can have private chats. Agreed?”
“Sure. Thanks for your support, Sid.”
O’Neil was waiting when Dave arrived back at the Philadelphia House. He had pulled his unmarked car into the circle in front of the door, where it blocked access to everyone else who wanted to drop off or pick up a resident of the building. He left a police notice on his dashboard and jumped out to greet Dave.
“I thought I had missed you.” O’Neil seemed nervous and was not his usual arrogant self.
“I’m pretty shot, Captain. How long will this take?”
“I need some of your time, that’s all.” The cop was very subdued. Dave thought O’Neil was being too nice.
The two men sat at Dave’s table and sipped espresso. O’Neil was quiet and it took him a few minutes to gather his thoughts. “I’m in trouble, Dave. I need you to agree to something for me.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Can you give me a guarantee that this goes no further?”
“Are we making a confidentiality deal between reporter and source?”
“Something like that. I need to tell you something and it can’t go further.”
Dave thought it over. He had an idea that this was not about a story but rather was about O’Neil, so it fell outside the bounds of a normal journalism agreement. “Okay, sure.”
“If this gets out I’ll know where to look.” O’Neil was displaying his cop face.
“Maybe you should keep it to yourself, Captain. I don’t want to be under any kind of threat right now. I’ve got other things going on, as you know.”
O’Neil seemed to think it over. “What the hell.” He reached into his shirt pocket and took out a flash drive, which he turned in his fingers like it was an object to be studied. He looked over at Dave and pushed it across the table. “That’s everything there is to know about the Warriors of Mary and even the Posse Maria.”
Dave looked at the flash drive and picked it up. “What’s your involvement?”
“Look, the whole thing started out years ago when some cops up in New York got together for a Rosary group and thought it sounded like a good name. It spread from there to other places. One thing led to another and it kind of became a vigilante group, but things got out of hand so we formed the Posse Maria to handle the vigilantes. When it got to that point we had to protect ourselves and we became a secret organization dedicated to preserving our secrets. You know how these things go.”
“No, actually, I don’t. What happened with the priests killings?”
“This guy, this priest named Darius Welsh, got into a group in Connecticut as a kind of chaplain, the guy who led the Rosary. He was pretty strange but he seemed harmless. He was out there and found a few other guys who were strange and they went crazy.”
“What do you mean by strange?”
“They believed that certain people needed to die, to go to Heaven, for one reason or another. If another priest called them out for being too radical he would disappear. If somebody found out about it, that person would disappear. Meantime, the members moved up wherever they were and now some are in pretty high positions.”
“Like you…” Dave let it hang in the air.
“I’m nobody compared to some of these guys.”
“Are they here?” Dave held up the flash drive.
“Yup.”
“Why are you talking to me?
“They’re coming for me. Ossening and the F.B.I. have been snooping around on this. There’s an Assistant Attorney General at Justice who put him up to it, but Ossening doesn’t know the guy is our Grand Vizier, the national enforcer. He’s the one who put the hit out on Father Darius. Only the guy who was supposed to do the hit was as strange as the priest. This guy, whose name was Malone, did some priest killing of his own. I may be on the list myself, that’s why I want you to have the flash drive. Use what’s on it only if I disappear.”
“Why did you try to get me to go along with the deal that the government wants me to sign?”
“What choice did I have?”
“Who’s being monitored at the farm?”
O’Neil smiled. “Who isn’t?”
There was a pounding on the door. O’Neil looked at Dave and his face sank. “I believe that’s for me. Hide the flash d
rive.”
Dave opened the door and Ossening and four agents pushed their way past him and grabbed O’Neil. “We have a warrant for your arrest.”
O’Neil leaned his face close to Ossening. “You have no idea what’s going on.”
“We have you. That’s a start.”
The agents handcuffed O’Neil and took him out of the apartment. Ossening remained behind.
“If you have any information that would be important to this investigation I strongly suggest that you come forth with it. What did he tell you?”
“He told me you were coming for him. How did you know he was here?”
“We’re the F.B.I. We’re already at his house in Maryland. What else did he say?”
“He said he may never be seen again.”
Ossening looked down at the floor. “We’re cleaning up a mess here. I would stay out of it if I were you.”
“I’m already in it.”
“Watch yourself. We’ve got your girl.” He smiled. “Oh, by the way, good luck with the book. I can’t wait to read it.”
******
Coming soon from author Larry Matthews and A-Argus Better Book Publishers:
Brass Knuckles
The next Dave Haggard thriller
Butterfly Knife Page 38
