Gate 76

by Andrew Diamond

  “He’s dead all right.” Ed lets out a little sigh. “We finally get a step ahead of everyone, and the guy dies in custody on an unrelated case.”

  “You’re not ahead of anyone,” I say. “And it’s not an unrelated case.”

  “It says here it was a drug bust in eastern Texas.”

  “You could call it that,” I say. “Or you could call it the Witness Elimination Program. Whoever’s running this show deserves a prize for thoroughness and efficiency. Whoever it is really knows how to get things done. I have a feeling he’d make a good governor. You know how you get away with a really big crime?”

  “What are you talking about, Freddy?”

  “You spread out the work so everyone’s doing one little piece. There’s a piece here in this part of the state, and another piece three hundred miles away, and a piece in California, and a piece in DC, and no one thinks to put it all together.”

  “Freddy?”

  “The only problem is, some of the jobs you need to do require someone who’s willing to take big risks, and a guy like that—maybe he’s a little unhinged. Maybe he’s not thinking straight anymore because maybe he can’t.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Listen, Ed, I’ve been holding out on you.”

  He doesn’t miss a beat. “This have anything to do with Lomax?”

  “It does,” I say.

  “Well I have some news for you,” Ed says.

  “What’s that?”

  “Lomax failed a drug test. The Bureau didn’t tell him. They just put him back on desk duty doing background checks on passengers from the Hawaii flight. The Bureau brought in a couple guys from the Chicago office to follow him. Guys he doesn’t know.”

  “Like a black guy and a white guy, driving a blue Dodge Dart?”

  “I don’t know,” Ed says. “But the fact they’re following him, instead of just sticking him in rehab means something’s off. He picked up a package at a house in Silver Spring the other day.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “A house that was for sale.”

  “You followed him?”

  “I did.”

  “That must have been what the Bureau was hot about. That’s why they told me to warn you off. Last night they sent Lomax down to Dallas to follow up on a case he was working down there.”

  “The corruption case? Highway Patrol and Department of Public Safety?”

  “That’s the one. Only there is no case.”

  “Oh, there is,” I say. “Trust me.”

  “No, there’s not. Lomax and his supervisor did a preliminary investigation and—”

  “And they wrote the whole thing off. I know.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “Why’d they send Lomax back to Dallas?”

  “So he’d think he was in the clear,” Ed says. “So they could search his apartment, his office, his computer, and his car. You know what they found? That package he picked up in Silver Spring?”

  “What?”

  “Sixty-two thousand dollars in cash. They found it in his freezer, stuffed into Lean Cuisine boxes.”

  “Lomax eats Lean Cuisine?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They know what the money was for?” I ask.

  “No. Why were you following him, Freddy? You don’t usually get off track unless you’re on to something.”

  “Well I’m on to something all right.”

  “Listen,” Ed says. “There’s nothing the agency hates more than when one of its own agents goes astray. They don’t know yet if it’s drug money or—”

  “It’s not drug money,” I say. “It’s payment for services rendered.”

  “What services?”

  “The Witness Elimination Program, Ed. Ever hear of it?”

  “No. What the hell are you talking about? Just say it!”

  “Lomax was investigating the Texas Department of Public Safety and the State Highway Patrol, looking into tips from a couple of cops.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, he found something.”

  “That’s not what the report says.”

  “I know that’s not what the report says. Lomax and Mitch Rollins wrote the report. Did you know Mitch Rollins took out a second mortgage and a line of credit on his house? He spent it all but he never did any renovation work. He was up to his ears in debt. Was. I have a feeling he paid that off recently. Lomax and Rollins found plenty to report about, but they were paid to keep it quiet.”

  “And when did you have time to dig all this up?” Ed asks. “You’re supposed to be working on the airline case, not corruption in Texas.”

  “It’s the same case, Ed. There were two cops on that plane, a patrolman named Manuel Martínez and a captain named Brandon Robertson. They both had evidence of wrongdoing. They both talked to Rollins. Somehow word went up the ladder that these two knew something. And then the governor himself put them on that plane as a reward for their good work.

  “There were two other guys on the plane, Sheldon Brown and Franklin Dorsett, a couple of high rollers who liked to party. They were laundering money and filtering it into the governor’s re-election campaign. Some of it was drug money that came in through Brown’s strip clubs. The State Patrol was turning a blind eye to it. Some of that money even came directly through the State Patrol. Cash seizures from drug runners. The two cops, Robertson and Martínez, had evidence. Maybe not enough to seal the case or even to get an indictment, but enough to get an honest cop nervous. Enough to make him want to investigate. That’s why they called in the FBI.”

  Ed’s quiet for a moment then says, “So how does this all connect?”

  “Brown was going off the deep end, using a little too much of the product he was moving through his clubs. Dorsett was egging him on, pushing him to gamble more and do more blow and then relieving him of his businesses when he needed quick cash. Dorsett milked him till he was just about broke. And I think maybe Brown started to snap. He was talking about blackmailing the governor, telling cops that shit was going to roll uphill, all the way to the top. Throckmorton twisted Brown’s arm to pump more money into his campaign. I think he may have crossed a line somewhere and pissed Brown off. Brown wanted some of his money back.

  “So with the two cops and Brown and Dorsett on that plane, you have all your incriminating witnesses in one place. At least, all the ones you know about. The only people outside that plane who had all the pieces, who could put together the whole story, were Rollins and Lomax. They had talked to all four of those guys. Lomax spent a lot of time with Brown and Dorsett. They didn’t know he was a cop. He was a guy who liked hookers and blow, just like them. Am I making sense to you, Ed?”

  He’s dead silent.

  “Lomax was in San Francisco the day of the crash. He had gone there with a woman and some drugs, to delay Brown and Dorsett. They were going to Hawaii on a flight two days earlier than the cops, Robertson and Martínez. Lomax’s job was to stall them for a couple days, to make sure they got on the same flight as the cops.

  “You know that ammo box that exploded in the cargo hold? We can trace that to Lomax, at least circumstantially, through the credit card. Charles Johnston, the cardholder, doesn’t exist. He’s a government-created identity, with a government-created credit history, custom-made for undercover work. Lomax was called Chuck down here in Sheldon Brown’s house. Chuck as in Charles, as in Johnston.

  “Ed, I’ve been on the airline case the whole time. Obasanjo had nothing to do with it. Delmont Suggs had nothing to do with it. Welcher probably did. He knew Lomax from high school. Lomax either sweet-talked him or twisted his arm to get that ammo box onto the plane. But Welcher’s dead, so we’ll never know. Convenient, right? And Ramón Ramírez, a Texas informant turned federal informant under Lomax’s supervision. He bought the ammo box. But he’s dead too.

  “You see the pattern here? This is a highly efficient, highly effective Witness Elimination P
rogram, and all the bloodhounds in all the federal agencies, and all the reporters in all the news organizations were put on the wrong trail with that Obasanjo bullshit. Because everyone is ready to believe a Muslim will blow up a plane for Allah, but no one’s ready to believe a governor will do it to hold on to power.”

  “I can’t believe what you’re telling me,” Ed says. “No one’s going to buy those allegations without a mountain of evidence. You’ve got to have evidence.”

  “That’s the same thing the girl said. I have the evidence. That cop named Dixon in Longview—the one who called you the other day—he has a file with part of the story. Another cop named Jiménez in Dallas has another part. Jiménez even has a couple of patrolmen willing to testify about Sheldon Brown’s protection detail, about money from some big busts never making it into the evidence lockers. And Dixon has an accountant in San Antonio who’s traced the money through Sheldon Brown’s businesses to Throckmorton’s campaign. The FBI has $62,000 in unexplained cash pulled from Lomax’s own freezer. Lomax, who failed a cocaine test! I got a girl in a bikini up in Duluth who can tell you where he picked up that habit. Why’d you ask me to back off of Lomax, Ed? It’s because those guys out in Silver Spring, the fake house painter and the two in the blue Dodge Dart were already following him, and they didn’t want me to blow their surveillance. They already knew their guy was crooked.

  “And I got another thing for you, Ed. The icing on the cake. I have a witness down here—”

  “Down where?”

  “Texas. I’m in Texas, remember? I have the lynchpin of the case down here, the person who can tie it all together—”

  “You mean that skinny blonde woman?” Ed says.

  “What?”

  “Anna Brook?”

  “How do you know about her?”

  “Haven’t you been watching the news?”

  “No.”

  “It broke twenty minutes ago,” he says. “Turn on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, anything. That’s all they’re showing. The whole Bureau’s in meltdown. I thought she was just crazy, but everything you’re telling me…”

  I flip to CNN and there she is. Anna Brook, holding up a copy of this morning’s New York Times, pointing to the headline and the date. The tagline at the bottom of the screen says, “Shocking development in crash case.”

  She looks shaky and worn, like she’s inches from her breaking point. She says she was supposed to be on that plane. She knows why it crashed. “Check the passenger list,” she says, and she holds her license up to the camera. “Anna Brook of Quarry Road, Washington, DC. That’s me.”

  It looks like she made the video with the Android phone I gave her. And all those newspapers that were spread all over the house with all her annotations—she’s been working on the case herself this whole time.

  “If you doubt I’m who I say I am…” She raises her left shirtsleeve and shows a red birthmark about the size and shape of a small bee. “Ask my friends. Ask my family. I was supposed to be on that plane, and I know why it went down. It wasn’t Rashad Obasanjo, and this isn’t a terrorism case. It was Errol Lomax, the FBI agent who was supposed to protect me. And this is a case of power, pure and simple. This is about a crooked man who wants to hold on to his power.”

  She moves the camera closer to her face and looks directly into the lens and says, “Sorry, Freddy. I won’t make it another day down here, or anywhere else. I had to let the world know, before they came and got me.”

  “You’re in Texas?” Ed says.

  “Ed, I have to go. I have to pick her up before she snaps.”

  “Looks like she already did. Freddy, listen. They had Lomax under surveillance down in Dallas. They were going to pick him up on his way out of the airport.”

  “What do you mean, they had him under surveillance?”

  “He slipped away. They don’t know where he is.”

  It takes a few seconds for that to sink in.

  “When did he arrive in Dallas?”

  “This morning,” Ed says.

  “When did they lose him?”

  “A few hours ago.”

  Dallas to Dime Box is a three-hour drive.

  I think about that decision I made, letting Julia call her sister. I let my emotions get the better of me that night. I knew I would regret it. Why the hell did she have to call from her own phone?

  “Ed?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can an agent get access to phone records if he has no warrant. If there’s no case. I mean, say he just wants to know who’s calling who, out of curiosity?”

  “If he has contacts inside the telecom, he might be able to get some info as a favor. Or he could get it unofficially from the NSA, if he has connections.”

  “Ed, I have to go. I have to pick her up before he does.”

  I turned off location services on that Android phone before I gave it to Anna. But the telecom still knows her general location because it knows which cell towers she’s connecting to. Depending on when he left Dallas, Lomax might be there already.

  How many houses are on that little country road west of Dime Box? Four or five in a three-mile stretch? He can go from house to house at his leisure. He’s a presentable guy when he wants to be, good looking and well dressed. I can see him walking right up to someone’s front door. A little knock, a pleasant hello, and that thousand-watt smile of his. He’ll go into some bullshit story just to get the person talking. Anna will be hiding, of course. But he’s a cop. If he walks into a house and something isn’t right, he’ll sniff it out.

  Would Travis tip him off? It’s hard to read a guy like Travis in the morning. The queasiness of a hangover can mask the normal signs of fear and nervousness, like a strong odor masks the scent the hounds are following. Maybe Travis can pull it off and get him to go away. Or maybe Lomax is all coked up. Maybe he’ll just shoot his way in and find her cowering in the corner and blow her brains out. Maybe he’ll spare her for half an hour, so he can have one last go with her, for old-time’s sake.

  How far is it from here in Elgin to that little road west of Dime Box? Thirty miles? I can make it in twenty-five minutes. Maybe twenty.

  That gun I took from Lomax is in my suitcase, along with some ammo I bought on the way to Dime Box after I talked to Chester Dixon. My hands are shaking as I load the magazine. Part of it is fear for Anna. Part of it is anger at myself for not finishing Lomax when I had the chance. And part of it is that old feeling welling up. The same feeling Chuck DiLeo once got on the wrong side of.

  39

  Heading east on highway 290, I’m doing eighty-five, ninety miles an hour. I’ve called Anna three times. She doesn’t answer. I leave messages, warning her that Lomax might be on his way. “Hide in the woods,” I say. “Or if Travis is there, have him take you to The Buckaroo. He won’t shoot you in front of a crowd.”

  That was the wrong thing to say. She’s scared enough as it is. I don’t need to put images of a shooting into her head.

  Now I have the phone to my ear, trying to get a hold of that cop Jiménez in Dallas. He’s not answering, so I put in a call to Chester Dixon over in Longview. He picks up on the third ring.

  “You know any cops between Austin and College Station?”

  “Freddy?”

  “You know any cops anywhere near a place called Dime Box? I mean cops who aren’t crooked.”

  “I know one in College Station,” he says.

  “You trust him? You know for sure he’s not wrapped up in all this shit we talked about?”

  “I trust him. What’s going on?”

  “I need someone in Dime Box, ASAP. Worst case is, I have a Fed here coming to kill someone.”

  “Coming to kill who?”

  “A witness. A star witness for our case. Turn on the TV if you have one nearby. You’ll see her. The guy coming after her is well trained,” I say. “He knows how to use his weapon. I don’t think I can take him out myself. How far is College Station?”<
br />
  “Almost an hour, if you go the speed limit. A lot less with a heavy foot and your flashers on.”

  “Send your guy with backup, and make sure they make it in less. This is it, Dixon. It all goes down now.”

  “I’ll send him,” Dixon says. “Hang tight.”

  I give him the address. The GPS says I’ll be there in sixteen minutes.

  I call Anna again. No answer. Shit! Does she still not trust me because of that mocking redneck cop up in Dallas? Is she too scared to answer? Is she hiding? Or is she dead?

  I call Julia Brook. She picks up on the fifth ring.

  “Julia, she knows your number. She’ll answer if she sees it’s you.”

  “Freddy?”

  “Hang up and call her right now. And then call me back. I want to know if she’s alive, and if so, where is she? Tell her to get out. Tell her the woods or The Buckaroo, and then call me back and let me know where I should meet her.”

  I just did it again. Said the wrong thing and alarmed her. “If she’s alive?” She says it like her heart is in her throat. “Freddy, what’s—”

  “Hang up and call her. The number’s still in your phone, right? Find out where she is, and call me back.”

  I hang up.

  Thirteen minutes to the house.

  Chester Dixon calls back. His friend is on the road with three more cars to follow. “They started out near Cooks Point, about ten miles closer than College Station. How far out are you?”

  “Twelve minutes,” I say. “How far are they?

  “Twenty-five,” he says. “But they might be able to make it in less.”

  “All right,” I say. “I gotta go.”

  After almost missing the turn up Highway 21, I gun it straight through the fields of Lincoln, across Highway 77, and through the flatlands. Now I have to slow down so I don’t miss that last turn onto Travis’s road.

  I switch on the radio while I wait for Julia to call back. The news station is saying CNN, Fox, the New York Times and a number of other outlets have already got hold of Anna’s friends in Staunton, and they’ve all confirmed it’s her in the video.