1 - Artscape: Ike Schwartz Mystery 1 (14 page)

“Don’t look so smug, Schwartz, I had no idea, and by damn I will not allow it.”

“Right.”

“Oh God, what can happen next? I have to tell you, I have been in contact with Mr. Dillon Senior, or more accurately, he has been in contact with me.”

“And?”

“He’s mobilizing. Called his friends in Washington, the FBI, everybody. They will be all over the place by tomorrow or the next day. I know what you said before. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I was about to call the Bureau anyway. He saved me the trouble. We may have a kidnapping to go with the robbery. That makes it an automatic call to them.”

“Kidnapping? Is that why your people called to ask if anyone was missing? You think one of our women is missing?”

“It’s possible. We think the car parked in the lane, the one you can see in the television picture, got there before the robbery and the people in it were taken. That or.…” He let the words hang in the air.

“Or they are dead like Captain Parker. What next?”

“Well, we wait for Dillon to respond to the letter. We keep digging around hoping to find a lead. We go on about our business.”

They sat across from each other. Ike’s earlier happy state of mind had been replaced hour by hour by a sense of gloom. He felt tired and depressed.

“Well, at least now we know what the robbery was all about in the first place,” he said as much to himself as to her. “I mean, up until now, the whole thing made no sense. Paintings worth millions, a king’s ransom, but not sellable. I guess that is progress. And who knows, maybe Deputy Sam will turn up something. Didn’t you say something about dinner?”

“Hamburgers and beer, my place. Now.”

Chapter Twenty-one

The call came just as Tom headed to bed. He’d stayed up to watch the late news and catch part of
Saturday Night Live
. His wife had been asleep for an hour. He scowled. Only business would prompt a call this late. A glance at the caller ID confirmed it. He took the call and cursed his luck that he’d pulled duty officer. Seven and a half hours later and someone else would be on the spot. He went upstairs, put on his jacket, kissed his wife, and told her he would be back soon. She searched his face for the signs that would tell her if he was in danger and seeing none fell back to sleep with a mumbled, “G’night, babe.”

Tom unlocked the drawer in the highboy, retrieved his badge and gun, pocketed the first, holstered the second, and let himself out the door into a chilly May night. He shivered a little, climbed into his car, and headed downtown.

In all his years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Tom Phillips had visited the director’s office only once, when the late Mr. Hoover, too old by then for the job, had received him and five other elementary school students, finalists in a national essay contest. Different days, different ways.

He drove downtown, parked in his spot, and rode the elevator to the lobby. The guard at the desk, a man who had been at that post as long as Tom could remember, checked his ID as if he were a stranger and logged him in. Tom took the second bank of elevators to the director’s office, knocked and let himself in. The director waved him into an overstuffed chair. He waited while the director finished talking to someone on the phone.

This was the new FBI and the man across from him no J. Edgar Hoover. Just as well, he thought, although, as bad as the press and the liberal establishment wanted to paint him, Hoover had his moments and no other man could have built the Bureau the way he did. Just stayed too long at the dance.

“Phillips, what do you know about the robbery in Picketsville, Virginia?”

“Only what I read in the papers and what came in on the dailies. We haven’t been called in yet, have we?”

“We have now, and that could be a problem.”

“Sir?”

“It’s big, Phillips.”

The director had a habit of enlarging operations. “It’s big” was one of his favorite expressions. Next, Tom guessed he would say, “I can’t stress this enough.”

“I can’t stress this enough. I got a call from the White House. Some big shot friend of the President is on the warpath, got the President’s attention. I said we’d go when the locals call or the jurisdiction changes, but going into Senator Rutledge’s territory uninvited and unannounced could create problems. He could kill us in the committee hearings if I did.”

“Well, sir?” Tom peeked at his watch. One o’clock in the morning and he still did not know why he had been called and what he was supposed to do. “I guess we could put a group on standby.”

The director leaned back in the black leather chair and gazed at the ceiling. Tom stared at the ceiling too.

“No. I called you in here to put operatives in the field. But we have to be mighty careful on this one.”

“Because of the President?”

“No, not for him, for us.”

“Sir?”

“We are in this mess up to our eyeballs, Phillips. One of our guys did the job.”

“Sir?”

“Call me Chet.”

“Yes, sir. You said one of ours?”

“Did you know an agent named Grafton?”

“Yes, sir, slightly. We never worked a case together. He was in the covert section. I always worked the field.” The director returned his gaze to eye level. Tom noticed for the first time that he suffered from a mild case of amblyopia. His left eye was fractionally off center.

“Yes, yes, I know. Look, he was a screw-up and a drunk and we dumped him. He gave us some sad song and dance about a sick wife and whatnot, but with the budget cuts and all, we cleaned house. No big deal. But this Grafton guy turns up working with whoever pulled that heist in Virginia.”

“Sir, are we sure it was him? I mean, it’s a pretty big jump from out-of-work FBI agent to crook.”

“Is it? You’ve got some learning to do, son.”

“Yes, sir, but I don’t see the problem. If we fired him, the publicity will be bad, but shouldn’t come back on us too much.”

“You’re kidding, right? They told me you were on the ball.” The director’s eye apparently bothered him enough that now he squinted at Tom, an expression that made him look like a full-figured Popeye. “I told you, this is big. How do you think it is going to look when the press finds out that someone with Grafton’s assets and knowledge of Bureau operations ended up with some Mafia types in the biggest robbery in the century? We are in deep shit here, Phillips.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Deep. And it gets deeper.”

How much worse could it get? And did it qualify as all that bad? He guessed it must or he wouldn’t be here in the middle of the night.

“You put a team together to help with the investigation and at the same time extract Grafton before anyone gets near him. Do you understand what I mean?”

“Yes, sir, I believe I do. But if we are to work with the locals, that may be tough. You said it was worse than just Grafton. Something else?”

“I want the team in the open. They will have two jobs. They are to do everything they can to slow the investigation down. Then find and cancel Grafton.”

“Cancel?”

“You know what I mean, Phillips. Grafton gets whisked out of there before anybody can say hot damn—that’s best case. Worst case, he comes out smelling like dead fish, whatever. Clear?”

Tom stared at the man across the desk. Had he heard him right? Tom felt his shirt getting damp. He did not like the direction this conversation was headed. The director disappeared into the relative shadows beyond the pool of light from his desk lamp.

“Look, we have a double whammy here. Grafton is only problem number one. You’re right, bad publicity we can ride out, but there’s the other.”

“And that is?”

“The locals are Agency. The sheriff down there is CIA.”

“What? How can that be? They’re not domestic. They can’t be.”

“They can and they are. My guess is that they pulled the robbery—one of their games to draw attention from something else. They’re hip deep in the Middle East and are still trying to save their cookies from all the aid and comfort they gave Bin Laden in the old days. Remember the arms deal to the Arabs a couple of years ago? This is part of that or I am the Little Mermaid. And I told the President so.”

Tom did not reply. The director was off on a rhetorical odyssey and Tom must wait until he finished. Meanwhile, he studied his boss, the man who held his future in his hands. After Hoover, a variety of men had held the job. Some of them were good, some were not so good, and one or two were disasters. “Call me Chet’s” appointment had come as a surprise. After Ruby Ridge and Waco, the embarrassment of misreading the intelligence in the Phoenix memo and hundreds of Al Qaida operatives and sympathizers in the country before September eleven, the post looked like a political graveyard. The President brought this man in because he thought a nonpolitical type might be able to bring a fresh look to the Agency.

Fresh indeed. His years as the CEO of a couple of Fortune 500 corporations meant he intended to run the Agency like a business. He created lines of accountability, reorganized departments, subunits, all the way to the library, and dozens, no hundreds of employees, some with decades of service, were let go, the biggest housecleaning in the Agency’s history. Tom had to admit the place did run better, and for those, like him, who had survived the storm, it was a good thing. For the likes of Harry Grafton, it was awful. Most of the personnel had been offered early retirement. Tom had nearly jumped at that. He had the years, and the bonus out would have cleared his debts and allowed him the chance to move to the Outer Banks at last. The offer was still on the table and looking better all the time. The director wound down.

“Phillips, I want him out of the way. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“No buts, Phillips. Look. I want you to get him one way or the other. Nobody touches him and we bring him in. However, if the CIA.…Do you have any idea what those guys would do to us in the Oval Office if they get him first?”

So much for closer working ties between the nation’s intelligence communities. “Sir, I don’t think—”

“Even the spinmeisters downstairs couldn’t get us right. No, if it looks like the CIA will get him.…” The words hung in the air like day-old fish.

“What?”

“Friendly fire, Phillips. It happens all the time. Collateral damage, that sort of thing. You know the drill.”

A lack of previous law enforcement experience may have left some gaps in his grasp of the finer points of the Bureau, but this new guy was either on a steep learning curve or corporate America operated as ruthlessly as the rest of the system. Tom swallowed hard. There were times, he knew, when an agent had to be brought in. If he compromised an operation, or jeopardized the lives of others, certainly, but eliminate someone to avoid a public relations fiasco? Tom didn’t think so.

“About the CIA, sir,” he said, hoping to redirect the conversation. Tom knew, orders or no orders, he would not set in motion any operation that could end in the death of an agent, ex or otherwise. Early retirement started to look better and better.

“Don’t ask me how or why, but the sheriff down there is one of theirs. They must have been setting this up for years. Look, the guys in intelligence link this robbery to the mess in New York three months ago.”

“Terrorists? Grafton is working with terrorists?”

“Yes and no. Our information sources say this job was contracted out to the New Jersey Mafia. He might or might not know who is behind it. Either way it doesn’t matter. He has to go. Put your best people on it. Okay, that’s all.”

***

Sooner or later, the scuttlebutt went, the director’s chickens were going to come home to roost. Business acumen and efficiency notwithstanding, this man had become a loose cannon, and Tom was sure he heard chickens flapping nearby. He thought about his options. For the moment, he had no choice but to put together a team and send it to Picketsville. As soon as he finished, he would fill out retirement forms and send them through. There would be no problem in the first instance because he intended to assemble the most inept team possible. That would guarantee no one would be caught, much less killed.

Chickens at twelve o’clock, he thought.

Back at his desk, Tom opened a drawer and removed the pint of rye hidden under some folders. Strictly against Agency rules but often a necessity. He emptied some cold coffee out of a Styrofoam cup and poured himself a double, logged in on the computer, and began to search for agents with little or no possible competence. He knew they were there, assigned to library or document work, their field evaluations so weak they were never considered for that work again.

He found them. Next, pick a leader. He studied his roster. “Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Moe, who’s the dumbest one to go?” His finger stopped on Dennis Kenny. Perfect. Kenny was a likable thirty-something who did not fit anyone’s idea of an agent. He was on the bubble and he knew it. He would jump at the chance to shine. Perfect. He clicked on the phone number and picked up while it rang. Six rings and a sleepy Dennis Kenny answered.

“Sorry to wake you, Agent Kenny,” Tom said in his most official voice. “Director’s orders. You will assemble a small team of men and take charge of our operations in Picketsville.”

“Who is this?”

“Phillips, Central Operations, Director’s Office. Hang up and call me back. But go wash your face and wake up first. Are you always this slow?”

“Yes, sir, I mean no, sir. I mean…I’ll call you right away.” The line went dead. Tom waited. Two minutes later Kenny called.

“You awake now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Right. I’m going to read you a list of names and phone numbers and I will fax you the pertinent files on the men and the case. You will contact them and then get down to Picketsville pronto.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Agent Kenny? This is big. The President has a special interest in this one, so don’t screw it up.” Tom could almost hear him swallow. He hoped Kenny had good bladder control when he discovered his assignment included the removal of someone who could take him barehanded and drunk.

“Oh well, all in a day’s work,” Tom said to the now silent phone. “The chickens have landed.” He thought it would make a great title for his memoirs if he ever wrote them.

He sent an e-mail to the director’s office outlining the operation, logged off, turned out the lights and left.

“Buck, Buck, Buckah,” he clucked to the puzzled guard at the lobby desk.

***

“I can’t keep this up, Ike. Between the press, TV, board members, alumnae calls, and trying to run the college, I am dying. Too many nights out past midnight with you.…You are killing me, do you know that?”

Ike winced.

“Sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.”

They sat in silence contemplating the empty plates in front of them. They’d eaten and talked through their burgers and salad, had a couple of beers and let the day wind down. Ike sighed.

“No harm done. I’m the one with the problem, with the history, not you.”

They moved to the veranda and watched moonlight paint the lawns and buildings its silver blue, wisteria black against gray foliage. Nothing stirred.

“We had a deal, Ike.”

He looked at her. Why this woman? Why now? Telling Charlie had been painful. Did he really want to go through that again? He toyed with the idea of brushing her off. When he’d returned to Picketsville he’d invented his go-away story—guaranteed to satisfy those who couldn’t resist asking. His narrative to Charlie had been technical, accurate, but now he felt he needed to tell the whole of it—the real story. Why not this woman?

They sat side by side and, as the moon inscribed its course across the night sky, they slowly disappeared into deepening shadows.

“You’re right, we had a deal.”