by James Tarr
Wilson gave him a dirty look, but complied. Hartman had to admit that the man had picked a good spot—it’d be impossible to do surveillance on the two of them, or record what was being said in the car. Four lanes of traffic whipping by them on the right, a four-foot tall concrete wall to their left, and not an entrance or an exit ramp to the freeway in either direction within a mile and a half. He idly wondered whose car they were in—it had definitely seen better days, and smelled dusty.
When Hartman was convinced that Wilson wasn’t recording anything either, he sat back. “Okay, you remember who I am?”
“I saw you when I was getting processed,” Wilson said.
“I am the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Detroit office of the FBI. The ASAC.” He pronounced it A-sack. “I am the number two guy in the entire Detroit office. So I am the guy who makes things happen,” he told the cop. “And let me tell you what I know. You are well and truly fucked. You’re not buried yet, but you could be, very shortly.”
Wilson just stared, and let the fed talk. “I’ll tell you what we’ve got for evidence so far. First, the shell casing from the AK-47 that I believe Eddie Mitchell fired inside Coconuts, our lab guys have already matched it to the rifle we pulled out of his basement. Couldn’t match the slug, that was too damaged, no fingerprint on the case, but we can put that rifle inside that club at the time of the robbery. Your partner Gabriel, he made the mistake of keeping his cell phone on him during three of the robberies. We went back and checked the GPS records, and they can place that phone within a couple hundred yards of those three clubs at the same approximate time of the robberies. Circumstantial, I admit, but it adds up.
“Motive is always something to look for, and with you I think it’s pretty clear. You’ve got two daughters in private school, two new cars, and a wife who likes to shop. We ran the numbers, and it appears that you’re spending several hundred dollars a month more that what you’re actually pulling in from working.”
“Lots o’folk livin’ beyond their means.”
“Sure. And we didn’t find any cash hidden in your house, or in anybody’s house for that matter. Haven’t found any storage units filled with bills either. Everybody has been pretty smart about not spending their cash. Well, almost everybody.”
“What do you mean?”
Hartman smiled. “I thought Mitchell would be the weak link in you four. He’s twitchy, and he actually fought during the arrest. He hurt one of my guys, and Mitchell got pretty banged around. Had to take him down to St. John’s and get him stitched up. Well, you know, they took a blood sample while he was down there, and that blood sample tested positive for both cocaine and marijuana.”
Wilson stared at him, blinked, and then sighed. “Shit.” He shook his head.
Hartman studied him for a second. “You didn’t know?”
“He’s been off for a while, not himself, but I just thought….well, not coke. I didn’t think he’d be that stupid. He know better than that.”
“Apparently not. And like I said, I thought he’d be the weak link of you four, especially since the case comes back to the rifle we found at his house, but he hasn’t given us shit. Your buddy Gabriel, on the other hand…are you wondering why he didn’t make bail? Why he’s still in?”
Wilson shrugged. “I guess he didn’t have the collateral. It was a lot of money.”
“It was a lot of money. It’s even more when you owe thirty-two thousand dollars to two casinos.”
“What?”
“Yeah. For a quiet guy, he really likes to wager, Blackjack mostly, but apparently he’s not very good at it. Or he’s unlucky. I’m pretty sure he’s got a marker at the Windsor Casino too, but that’s Canada; they won’t tell us shit. Motor City Casino, MGM Grand, they like your buddy Gabe. He’s a high-roller. What do they call him? A whale. And he’s been a little iffy during the interviews already. Showing cracks, maybe. So he’s in debt, bad, and it’s his phone that puts him near three of the robberies. He’s the one who’s going to flip on the rest of you, make a deal. Bet on it.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” Wilson said to the man.
“I just wanted to make sure you knew where we stood. Right now what we’ve got is all circumstantial, but if we find any of that cash, or if one of your guys flips, you’re done.”
“You giving me all the goods, what put you on to us in the first place?” Wilson asked. He’d always been curious about that, ever since the FBI showed up at his door. There was always a chance they’d get caught, he knew that, but he always thought it would be during the robbery itself.
“When Mitchell fired that round into the ceiling? One of you guys, my money’s on you, called him ‘Roo’. And apparently the detective handling the case had heard that nickname before.”
“Fuck,” Wilson said, sagging in the seat. Of all the dumb luck. One word. And Ringo, one of the few detectives in the department who actually knew Mitchell’s nickname, happened to be working the case. He knew Ringo just hadn’t been wandering by that day he came by the house. Fucking Lady Luck was a cast-iron bitch. He looked at the FBI agent. “Okay, so what do you want? Why are we talking?”
“You could have a tape of the conversation we’d just had, and are about to have, and take it to my boss and you’d still end up with serious jail time for the robberies,” Hartman told him. “We’d be in prison together. What I’m offering is a way to get all of you out of jail, charges dropped. Probably even back on the department.”
“Now how the fuck you going to do that? And why?”
“The why is because you need to do something for us. But let’s get to the how, first. The how is that I can make that shell casing disappear. Right now that case is the only thing that directly ties any of you to a robbery. There’s no blood evidence, no fingerprints, all we’ve got is a fired case found at one scene that came out of a rifle we pulled out of Mitchell’s basement. Without that case, the rifle is worthless. The cell phone GPS records? They can only put him within a couple hundred yards of the robberies. The cell phone records are completely circumstantial, and not nearly enough if that’s all we’ve got. If you get Gabe out of jail, bail him out and convince him everything is going to be fine, I can make that shell casing disappear. It’s small, and I could toss it into my pocket easily, I’m in and out of the evidence vault all the time. As long as we don’t find piles of that stolen cash laying around somewhere, there’s no way we’ll be able to prove shit unless one of you confesses. You guys have actually done a very good job covering your tracks. I can’t imagine an AUSA even willing to press forward with what we’d have left. You might even be able to get that blood test on Mitchell quashed, because they didn’t ask for his permission before taking it.”
Wilson knew they’d never find his share of the cash, and was pretty sure the other guys had been smart with theirs as well. Hell, Gabe might not even have any left, the way this fed was talking, but without that shell case from Roo’s AK….the man was right. They wouldn’t have enough for a conviction. Not even close, not unless one of them rolled on the others.
“And why would you make that shell case disappear?” Wilson asked him. “What would I have to do?”
Hartman looked at the burly SWAT cop. “You’d have to kill someone.”
Wilson blinked. “‘Scuse me?”
“You heard me.” Hartman made a face, then repeated, “We need you to kill someone.”
“The fuck are you talking about? And who’s ‘we’?”
“’We’ is the FBI, unofficially. I’m not here on my own, I’m not nuts, or a psycho, this is something that’s come down from….well, all the way from the top, pretty much.” As weird as it was for him to say it, it was pretty much true. The things we do for the Bureau, Hartman thought. Actually, he realized, it wasn’t just for the Bureau, it was for every law enforcement agency in the country. If the kid didn’t die…it would be bad for the whole country. Bad on an epic scale. Hartman gave a little smile. “You understand now why we had to meet in s
ecret.”
“Are you—what……who the fuck you want me to kill? What he do?” Wilson was stunned. Of course he’d had no idea why the FBI agent had wanted to meet with him in secret, and suspected that no good would come of it, but he’d had few options. His wife had put it very succinctly the night before when they’d been out walking around the block, talking under their breath.
“Don’t go,” she told him. “You don’t know what that motherfucker wants. It can’t be good.”
“It can’t be any worse,” he told her. “I’ve been telling you not to worry, but that ain’t cuz there’s nothing to worry about.”
Paul Wilson had shot three people in his twelve years on the job, two of whom had died, so killing a man was something that wasn’t unknown to him. But just flat out murdering someone…. “Who is he? What’d he do?” he asked the FBI agent.
Hartman shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”
“Bullshit.”
“I can’t. You’re better off not knowing, anyway. But I’m telling you the truth, killing him….it’s actually the right thing to do. In….so many ways. He has to die.”
Wilson sat there and thought for a long time. “Who is he?” he asked finally. “A drug dealer, a cop, the President?”
“He’s nobody, really. He’s a twenty-five year old kid. Lives in the area. Working as a private investigator right now.”
“He such a nobody, why you need him dead?” Wilson growled. He huffed. “I suppose you need it to look like an accident or some spy bullshit like that too, am I right?” Candid Camera, that was the show, right? He kept expecting somebody to pop up with a camera, yelling “Gotcha!”
“No,” Hartman said. “We don’t care how it happens, we don’t care what it looks like, he just needs to be dead. Although, making it look like a botched robbery or some other crime will be better for everyone. Less attention.”
“Private investigator? You sure this kid wasn’t snooping and saw you putting the wood to his wife, or your boss? Sure this isn’t personal?”
Hartman laughed. “We had a female agent, a real piece of work, she had a bad break up with her boyfriend. He traveled overseas a lot, worked for a medium size company. She went to his boss. Told the boss hey, my boyfriend, your employee, he isn’t who you think he is, he’s actually a CIA NOC, an honest-to-goodness fucking spy.”
“Yeah, so, she’s nuts.”
Hartman shook his head. “No, the dude actually was a CIA NOC. Hell hath no fury and all that shit. She blew his freaking cover to his boss…..lucky for her, the guy’s boss already knew about his cover, and called our office. And you know what? She didn’t get fired, she’s still there. Still doing the job. The Bureau protects its own. So trust me, Channel 7 could get video of me banging a poodle in the Mayor’s limo, and as long as I was wearing a condom all that would happen is I’d get assigned to desk duty in Kansas for six months. This….this is way beyond that. Way beyond.”
Wilson sat silently and thought. The why of it bothered him. He knew he wouldn’t be having this conversation with Hartman if they were just talking about some ordinary twenty-five year old kid working as a P.I. The FBI wanted him dead for a reason. Not knowing that reason, when you were the person they were asking to do it, really bothered him. Hell, maybe it wasn’t even the FBI that wanted him dead, maybe they were the ones just delivering the instructions. Maybe the word was coming from above them, or from some other agency. Maybe Hartman’s story about the CIA was a hint. Could this dude they wanted him to kill be a spy? Or maybe a terrorist? Shit. What the hell had he gotten himself into?
“Why you don’t do it yourselves?”
Hartman shrugged. “In case something goes wrong. If you fuck it up, it’s on you, not us.”
“Yeah. Even if I agreed to do this, what guarantee would I have that you’d make that shell casing disappear?”
“I can’t give you one. But why wouldn’t I? It’d be so easy. It’s just one case, in a plastic evidence bag. We misplace stuff all the time, and something that small….nobody would even miss it until they went to look for it. Stealing that case will be a lot easier and simpler than not doing it, with me then wondering how you’re going to react, what you’re going to say to who about what we’ve talked about today. Not that you’d have any evidence we ever talked, but you could make my life uncomfortable for a while.”
Wilson shook his head. “Fuck. This….fuck…this kid got a name, an address?” He still hadn’t decided he’d do it, or at least that’s what he kept telling himself.
“I’ve got everything you need on a flash drive back at my truck,” Hartman told him. “If my truck’s still there.”
Wilson sat in his car in the McDonald’s parking lot for ten minutes, long after the FBI agent had driven off, staring at the flash drive in his palm. Finally, shaking his head, he stuck the flash drive in his pocket, then reached underneath the dash of the big car. The digital recorder was right where he’d left it.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The more time he spent on the road, the more convinced Dave was that the majority of people who had driver’s licenses….shouldn’t. Either they didn’t have the mental capacity to process traffic patterns, the reflexes to avoid trouble, or the innate intelligence to know texting in rush hour traffic was bad.
The driving style of most Michigan drivers seemed to resemble children on a playground. Fierce surges in speed, abrupt changes of direction, and a complete randomness in decision-making that couldn’t be anticipated or defended against. No sense of impending collision. When he was first driving Dave didn’t really understand road rage. After three years of trying to follow people in thick traffic, he understood it all too well. He pulled into a parking lot and called his boss.
“Yeah, what’s up?” There was no background noise on John’s end of the phone, and Dave assumed he was at home or the office.
“He took off about eleven thirty, got gas at the corner, then ran the red light at Greenfield. I couldn’t because I was blocked by cars. He was almost out of sight by the time I cleared the light and the idiots blocking the road, and when I got to Southfield I had no idea if he kept going west on 7 Mile or jumped on the freeway. I picked Southfield northbound and tried that, then circled back and searched the lots around Northland Mall. Nothing. You want me to head back to his house, see if he shows up?”
John thought for a bit. “What time did you start, six? Go ahead and break it off, we’re about up against the budget on this one. He look like he was going anywhere in particular?”
Dave shook his head in the car. “Dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, wasn’t carrying anything.”
“Yeah, forget it, you’re done for the day. Head on home and work out, maybe do something with Gina. Uh, I mean…” He hadn’t meant it the way it sounded, but Dave just laughed. John couldn’t believe Dave was dating a stripper and hadn’t told anyone. Shit, if he was dating a stripper, especially one who looked like her, he’d be telling everyone. And showing pictures. “When are you working for me again?”
“You’ve got Brad and me doing that two-man surveillance on Leticia Matson Thursday.”
“That’s right, the Indy Car racer.” She owned a little Honda and drove like she was trying to qualify for the World Rally Cup. They’d tried working her twice with just one guy, and she’d lost the investigator both times. John didn’t even think she was aware she was being followed, she was just crazy. Maybe they’d have better luck with two cars on her. “Okay, talk to you then.”
Dave was back home and pulling into the garage before 1 p.m. Short days were nice, as long as they didn’t happen too often. Even though he didn’t have many bills, thanks to the inheritance, he still had some, and getting home early cut into the bottom line when you were getting paid by the hour.
The house had nearly been paid off when his parents had been killed; in fact, the Mustang had taken a larger chunk out of his bank account than paying off the house had. However, even though he didn’t have a house or car payment,
he had property taxes, utilities, grocery bills, insurance payments—the regular expenses everyone had living their life—and he didn’t want to have to dip into the remainder of his inheritance to pay for those. So he always tried to work forty hours a week, if not more. Sometimes the claimants didn’t cooperate.
Once he got on with the FBI, he knew he’d be making a lot more money, but he wasn’t there yet. They were taking forever to process his application. Until he got on the government dole himself, he had to watch the money coming in and going out, and earning interest on the leftover inheritance was a smart move. He had a chunk of the money invested in CDs, and some more in municipal bonds, because by the time he was old enough to retire he knew Social Security will have collapsed under its own Ponzi Scheme weight. He was no genius, but he could do basic math—too many retirees living too long, and too many young people already on government aid, balanced against an ever-shrinking workforce, equaled disaster. It couldn’t continue.
The house echoed with the sound of the interior garage door banging against the side of the refrigerator, as it had his whole life. His parents had bought the house two years before he was born, and he’d grown up in it. Unlike those kids whose parents moved every few years, it was the only home he’d ever known. He’d thought about selling it when his parents died, but there were no bad memories for him at the house. Maybe if they’d died there he might feel differently, but they’d died twenty miles away, while he was away at school. Coming home after the funeral, the house hadn’t filled him with sadness, it had just seemed….empty. Quiet. If it had continued to bother him he believed he would have been able to sell the house, but he’d grown used to living alone in a house big enough for a teeming family.
The keys to the Jeep clanked as he tossed them onto the kitchen counter. He cracked the refrigerator out of habit, but as he stared at the nearly bare interior he realized he wasn’t hungry or thirsty. Hmm. He looked around, and saw the latest book he was reading on the table in the breakfast nook. It was a hugely long thriller by Neal Stephenson about computer gamers and Russian mobsters, but he was having a hard time getting into it.