29
I dragged myself to work the next morning, though my body protested the entire time, because I had nothing else to do. I sat in my little booth, contemplating the swirling vortex of craziness making up my life at the moment, when my cell phone rang and a blocked number appeared on the screen.
Under normal circumstances, I never answer those, because there's never anything good on the other end of a blocked call. I answered it anyway. What the hell, I felt like living dangerously these days.
Before I could say anything, a woman's voice said, "Mr. Malone?"
"Yes?"
"It's Agent Davies."
"How d'you get my cell phone number?"
"I work for the government, Henry; this is what we do. I could also tell you the last 10 porn sites you jerked off to if I wanted to."
"I'd recommend against that."
"I was making a point. Are you working today?"
"I'm at work, though I'm not sure I'd call this 'working,' per se."
"What time do you leave your place of employment, then?"
"Four. Why?"
"Meet me at six." She gave me the name of a 24-hour laundromat in Bridgeport.
"Hell of a drive from Clarksburg to wash your delicate underthings."
"Can you do this or what?"
"What it 'this'?"
"'This' may be some of the answers you want."
"Then I suppose my next question is 'why are you doing this?'"
"Because sometimes your career is going too well, and you need to fuck it up a little. See you at six."
She hung up.
Laundromats are depressing. There are few things more disheartening than gathering in a communal area with strangers so you can wash and fold your T-shirts.
The faces are almost always the same. There are mothers who seem as if they're dancing on a razor's edge between leaving the snot-nosed kids on the floor as they scream they want a bag of Funyuns and bringing out a tranquilizer gun. There are old men who split their attention between the TVs mounted beneath the ceilings and the endless rainbow of clothes running circles in the dryers, and their expressions say they can't keep up with the plot of either. Over there will be a young couple, rail thin and happy, blissfully in love, playfully throwing her thongs and B-cup bras at one another, without a clue that adulthood and high-waisted full-cut panties are in their future.
The sign in the window of the Bridgeport laundromat advertised free Wi-Fi. Inside smelled of heat and laundry sheets. A group of young Mexicans huddled in a corner, talking in rapid-fire Spanish. An old lady with expertly coiffed white hair sat in a plastic chair, reading a women's magazine that offered 40 Fourth of July recipes guaranteed to make the family celebrate.
Davies was emptying a dryer into a basket when I walked in. She hoisted the basket over to one of the folding tables and motioned me over with a jerk of her chin. She wore a Coca-Cola T-shirt and black yoga pants.
"You invite me to the most interesting places, Agent Davies," I said.
"The heating element on my dryer is out, and I'm waiting for the part to come in so I can fix it." She folded and stacked her clothing so neatly, the kids at H&M would have been jealous.
"You fixing it yourself?"
"I'm sure as hell am not paying someone 65 bucks an hour to do it. YouTube exists for this reason."
"I'm impressed."
"Don't be impressed when a woman can fix stuff, Henry. It makes you sound like a jackass."
"I'm so glad I drove out here so you can insult me and I can watch you fold your underwear."
"You're a big boy. I'm sure you're familiar with women's underwear."
"I had a solid standing on the matter at one point, but of late it's been an academic study, lacking in the way of field research."
"Sorry to hear that. My fiancé is fond of my underwear."
"Awesome. Thrilled for him. Can we get to the brass tacks of why you asked me to come out here?"
She moved on to blue jeans. They were faded from the factory, with rhinestones and other sparkly shit all over the back pockets.
"Did you follow Agent Burwell and myself the other night?" she said.
"I did. A friend and I."
"Who's your friend?"
"You're the government, remember? You know what I had for breakfast this morning."
"Oatmeal and buttered toast."
"How the hell did you do that?"
"Lucky guess. Actually, we know you associate with someone named Woodrow Arbogast. I also know your friend Arbogast enlisted in the Marines after high school. Beyond that, there's not much about him. His records after enlistment and basic are classified multiple levels beyond my access. I have top secret clearance, Henry, which means your friend operated on things my boss's boss can't access. That's interesting, don't you think? It makes you sort of interesting by proxy."
"I'm fascinating regardless, Agent Davies. Lots of things in life are interesting, though, such as what the hell is going on that the FBI has Isaac McCoy in custody and you and your partner are chauffeuring around his marijuana-growing father to see him?"
"You're a 'cut to the chase' sort of guy, aren't you?"
"I'm an 'I'm tired of getting fucked with' sort of guy."
"Isaac McCoy is under FBI protection as part of an ongoing investigation into the use of digital currency to launder drug money."
Davies had emptied her basket and everything was folded and stacked on the table. She placed everything back into the basket and hoisted the basket into her arms. "Come on," she said. "I'll explain this at my place."
I followed her. After all, she had nice underwear.
30
Davies lived in a freshly painted blue split-level with flowers blooming in the beds that lined the walkway. She had me pull in beside her yellow VW Beetle in the garage, so my Aztek wouldn't be out on the street.
"Do you think someone would connect we're talking?" I said.
"No," she said. "Your car is ugly as fuck, and I don't want the neighbors complaining it's dragging down property value."
The kitchen was done in yellow—daisies and chickens—and had one of those racks dangling from the ceiling where you hung shiny copper-bottomed pans you never cook with. Davies told me to help myself to the Keurig while she took her clothes upstairs. The coffee selection was overwhelming, with ten or twelve different types of pods and names for them like Sumatran Blue and Vanilla Hazelnut Espresso, and all I wanted was something that said "coffee-flavored coffee." In the back of the cabinet I found an unopened box of Eight O'Clock pods. I dropped it in and waited the two minutes and took a drink of the finished product. Somewhere, Juan Valdez and his donkey spun in their graves.
Davies came back down and made herself a cup of something that smelled like cinnamon and almonds. She leaned against the counter, arms folded across her chest. She was toned and sinewy; occasionally the muscles throughout her upper arms involuntarily twitched. Even now, relaxed, she was all business.
"How long have you got?" she said as the Keurig gurgled and hissed behind her.
"About six months. I fell off the wagon in December."
Davies' coffee finished. She added honey and milk to it. "I've read files on you and your friend Arbogast."
"Just call him 'Woody.' Hearing him referred to as 'Arbogast' is weird as hell."
"His file is pages and pages of blackouts. So many secrets your friend must have."
"If you're so interested in Woody, go talk to him—once he wakes up, that is."
"Would he answer my questions?"
"I wouldn’t count on it. But you're a good-looking woman, so who knows."
Davies laughed. "Mr. Arbogast would be great if I had unresolved daddy issues, but I'm good there, thanks, and besides he's not my type. And besides, he's only related to this because you're related to this, and it seems you got dragged into this only because of your prior relationship with Pete Calhoun."
"Let's not bring the word 'relationship' into this. All I ever
did was work with Pete."
Davies arched an eyebrow. "Did Calhoun being gay bother you?"
"I didn't find out about Pete being gay until a day or so before someone killed him. Even then, I didn't give a shit. Pete loved Isaac. That's all I need to know. Speaking of Isaac, how is he anyway?"
"Mr. McCoy is doing well, considering circumstances. He broke down when we told him about Mr. Calhoun. He was—" She twisted her mouth, like she struggled to make the words fit. "Some of the higher-ups in the Bureau feared he might back out after he was informed of Mr. Calhoun's death, but I didn't feel this was information we could keep from him."
"Awfully kind of you, treating him like a human being. So what's his role in this money laundering thing? I'll presume this is about Cashbyte."
She nodded. "Ears went up at CJIS when word came out about Cashbyte and its security features. We've been on cryptocurrency watch for years now, since the onslaught of dark web sites and use of digital currencies to launder money from criminal activities. A lot of money goes through Mexico these days, sometimes the Middle East, and the cash lost along the way in the laundering process ends up in the hands of terrorist groups and drug lords. Guys like that, they're popping huge boners at the thought of something like Cashbyte."
"What's your interest in this, though?" I said. "I don't follow how cryptocurrency is in your wheelhouse."
"CJIS is what the title says: 'criminal justice information services.' Fingerprints, criminal backgrounds, historical data, you name it. But the Bureau knows cyber-based crime is everywhere, so almost any office has a unit tucked away that focuses regionally on those threats. Cashbyte would have been on FBI radar regardless, but because it was in the CJIS backyard, they assigned us to monitor it. These kids created a cryptocurrency almost handcrafted for money laundering. Someone decided there was one of two ways to handle it: squash it, which would have opened a shit-storm of controversy, or use it to our advantage."
She sipped at her coffee. "Washington told us to go talk to Isaac Martin, nee 'Isaac McCoy,' since it was clear he was the principle behind Cashbyte, and he was the asset who might be more cooperative with our efforts. We approached Mr. Martin, nee McCoy, and asked him to add lines into the code which would allow the government to track transactions, to allow us to monitor illegal activity."
"Which would make Cashbyte a de facto government currency."
"Correct. We wanted an 'Abscam' for the electronic age, to create a ground-floor long con to open the doors to bust organizations we couldn't get a foothold into. But the code couldn't just be good; it had to be perfect. It had to be written in such a way that someone who broke it down line by line wouldn't figure out we had reworked it. No one would trust something like this blindly. The cartels would hire people to strip the code bare and try to find backdoors, find the little extras we wanted Isaac to place in there."
I finished my coffee and set the cup down. Davies asked if I wanted another cup. I said no.
"Tell me how this is legal? The government tracking those sorts of private transactions. Because I wouldn't imagine it would only be the bad guys using Cashbyte."
"We're fighting a war on terror, Henry, and that fight sometimes involves tactics people don't like. Those tin-foil-hat conspiracy websites are more right about things than they imagine. But our focus isn’t on private citizens; it’s only on suspicious transactions connected to criminal activity. The concern isn’t on someone buying pot for their own use; it’s on the group trying to transfer millions of dollars in profits from heroin trafficking, or a sleeper cell looking to buy radioactive material to build a dirty bomb."
"And how did you get Isaac to sign up on this?"
"Our approach to Isaac appealed to his patriotism, his sense of right and wrong, his desire to help keep his country safe."
"Did your approach also involve Tennis McCoy?"
"We may have hinted Mr. McCoy's father was under surveillance by the DEA, and his cooperation could help some of the problem go away."
"You blackmailed him."
"Tennis McCoy is a criminal, Henry. Mr. Martin was more than happy to become part of this process."
"I'm sure he was. Everyone loves it when the government shows up knocking on the front door. But he's not a criminal, so why keep him under federal lock and key?"
"We received intel of a heightened criminal interested in Cashbyte. The probability was a criminal group or groups wanted to make it their own. The risk was too high Isaac's life was in danger."
"Would have been nice if you could have shared this information with his husband; his internal organs might not have been splattered all across a motel bathroom."
Davies looked into her coffee cup. "Mr. Calhoun's death was unfortunate—"
"'Agent Davies, your milk spoiling is 'unfortunate.' A flat tire is 'unfortunate.' Someone gutted Pete and left him dead in a bathtub, and if you and the rest of your stooges had one ounce of common decency among you, he might still be alive. So with all due offense, you can take your 'unfortunate' and stick it up your ass."
The front door opened, and a woman's voice called out.
"Honey, whose piece of shit is in the garage? Did you finally call the guy to fix the dryer?"
Tiny feet made a mad dash into the kitchen, and a little girl, about four, a head full of blonde curls, wearing a Disney princess T-shirt and blue jean shorts, threw herself around Davies' waist. She clutched a piece of paper that she shoved up toward Davies' face.
"I drew an elephant!" she said.
Davies lifted her up and kissed her on the cheek. The little girl wrapped her arms around Davies' neck and looked at me and furrowed her brow, then relaxed and smiled and held her picture out in my direction.
"I drew an elephant," she said again. "Wanna see?"
I took the paper she handed me. There was a gray circle, some black lines that were probably legs, another circle with a curl coming off of it, and everything was five or six different colors. It could have been an elephant, with some imagination. And then I realized I was critiquing a little kid's drawing, and what sort of a dick did that make me?
"It's beautiful," I said. "I bet it goes on the refrigerator."
"Thanks. Who are you?"
"This is a friend of mine," Davies said. "His name is Henry. Can you say 'hi' to Henry, Emmy?"
"Hi," she said, and reached her hand out toward me. I shook it.
"Wonderful to meet you, Emmy," I said.
A woman walked into the kitchen. She looked about 40, with lots of razor-straight blonde hair, a slight tan, dressed in jeans and sandals and a tank top that showed off a trim physique and toned arms she used to carry in groceries in reusable cloth bags. She paused in the doorway when she caught sight of me.
"Hi," she said. "Are you here to fix the dryer?"
"Not if you ever want it to work again," I said.
The woman walked up to Davies, and Davies tilted her head behind Emmy and kissed her.
"This is Henry Malone," Davies said. "Henry, this is Felicia Meadows, my fiancée. Henry is part of an investigation I'm working on."
Felicia's expression suggested I wasn't welcome. It further suggested she might bash me upside the head with one of those shiny copper-bottomed pots. She threw a glance over at Davies. Davies talked to Emmy about her picture. Felicia placed the grocery bags on the counter.
"This is one of those things you can't talk about, right?" she said as she emptied a bag, setting everything down with slow, deliberate movements. She all but slammed cans on the marble countertops.
The tension filled the room like carbon monoxide in a garage. I got the hint.
"I should be on my merry way," I said.
Davies put Emmy down. "Go play in your room, and Momma and I will get dinner made."
Emmy dashed out of the room. Davies watched her, then looked at Felicia. Felicia kept her back to us.
Davies said, "I'll walk you out."
Davies led me back into the garage. She hit the button at the ent
rance from the house, and the garage door slid open. A Subaru Outback blocked me in.
"Not a word about two lesbians and an Outback," she said.
"That was nowhere near what was going on in my head," I said. "Plus, that's the worst sitcom title ever."
I was almost in my car when she said, "You want to talk to Isaac?"
I looked across the garage at her. The FBI training, the training that teaches you to be a bad ass, that had gone, and Davies looked soft and a little sad, like her heart was breaking for a reason I didn't want to know.
"I want to know who killed Pete," I said. "If talking to Isaac does that, then yes. But what you're talking is a big no-no, I'd imagine."
"It's a massive no-no, but after breaking this many rules, why stop now?" She swiped a set of car keys from a hook next to the door. "I'll call you later to set up a time."
"Thank you." I glanced back toward the door, and inside the house. "I hope everything's good with you and your girl."
She didn't even look at me as she walked toward the Subaru. "It's what it is."
31
Dinner that night was one of those stir-fry kits where you added chicken into a sauce that was a color that didn't exist in nature. The mess was food in the legal sense, but I stopped being hungry once I had it on my plate, and I pushed everything around until it turned cold and gelatinous. I scraped what remained into Izzy's bowl. She had no complaints, licking the last molecules of sauce off of her face once she was done, and then stared up at me with eyes that asked why there wasn't more.
I debated on what stupid decision to make next, and called Maggie. She picked up on the third ring. I guessed she was home from from the sound of the TV in the background.
"Henry?" she said. "Everything all right? Is Billy okay?"
Complicated Shadows Page 13