by April Smith
In a few hours, I would become a federal agent of the United States government, bound to carry the shield of core values upon which I, good soldier, was about to swear. Us and them. Black and white. Law and order. It was the defining moment. I was about to become Special Agent Ana Grey, for good. I wonder now, Would Darcy have let Steve Crawford go?
A tractor slowly rolled the hay. The fields fell off toward the north, toward the glittering haze of Washington, D.C., from whose alabaster domes I would receive my orders.
I heard the cicadas singing. Their musical clicks went up and down.
Far away, in the white house, Mrs. Henry was rocking.
This had been her property. It had been a farm.
Twenty-eight
Special Supervisory Agents Angelo Gomez and Mike Donnato are waiting at a rest stop on the I-5 when I pull up in Darcy DeGuzman’s Civic. My cover is an appointment with a local dentist at a phony number manned by an FBI agent in L.A.
“Guys? This was bad.”
“That’s why we’re here.”
Donnato indicates a picnic area behind the brick restrooms, not visible from the freeway.
“Let’s go around back.”
They have dressed down for Oregon—polo shirts and jeans—but I’ve been up here long enough to make them for out-of-staters, by their clean shoes and precision haircuts. We swing our legs over the seats as they set their supersize coffee cups on the weathered redwood table.
“Dick Stone just about buried the kid alive!” I am still incredulous. “And he sets it up, the bastard, so I almost run over the kid’s head.”
“Was Megan part of this?”
“No, she was in the car with us. Sara and I were just bringing her back from the airport. Mom leaves, and Stone runs amok. She was panicked. Even she couldn’t calm him down. I’m feeling completely degraded by this guy. No matter how much backup and surveillance you provide, I still have to live in that house and play by his rules, and he keeps changing them.”
Donnato: “No control.”
“Over what Dick Stone is going to do? You can’t predict his crazy shit.”
“Okay, hold it.” Angelo leans forward on the picnic table, Mr. Stability and Reason. “Remember the scenarios in undercover school, where they kept on changing the framework, so you didn’t know if it was day or night, or what was real and who was on your side?”
“Yes, the counterfeiters turned into drug dealers, shot a couple of their own—very convincingly—and held a gun to my head.”
“What’d you do?”
“I did the cocaine. Just like I smoked the weed when we were out having some fun with a Colt .45 at Herbert Laumann’s in-laws’ house.”
“You survived and Laumann survived,” Angelo says. “That was the lesson learned.”
“Living inside the criminal mind…” adds Donnato. “The best we can do is stay with it, and you did.”
I exhale deeply and fluff through my hair with both hands, trying to release the tension in my scalp.
“Right.”
“Try to put a finger on it. Why is this different from training?” Angelo asks.
I think about it. “Because this wasn’t me, a paid U.S. government agent, who was put in harm’s way. This was a seventeen-year-old boy, who’s already suffered unbelievable abuse in some awful state-run institution, and on the streets, and now he’s been traumatized to the point where he might never come back, because we screwed up.”
Angelo looks puzzled. “How did we screw up?”
“We should have had a covert team sweep the house for electronic surveillance devices before I even moved in.” I look at Donnato. “Am I right?”
“Peter Abbott vetoed the expense,” he says quietly.
“What is in his head?” I exclaim.
“That’s a management issue,” Angelo cautions.
“When I get off this case, I’m writing a complaint about—”
“You sound bitter.” Angelo’s observing me with that cockeyed look.
“I am bitter. Peter Abbott swoops in from headquarters like some kind of god, doesn’t know the first thing about life on the ground, in the real world, and, as far as I’m concerned, has already made some ill-informed decisions. You have to ask yourself what Abbott’s doing commanding this operation. He’s about to retire and become a political honcho.”
Angelo’s got his cop face on and fingers laced with deceptive calm on top of the table.
“Are your feelings about Peter Abbott making it difficult to continue in the undercover role?”
Donnato shoots a look toward Angelo. His eyes tell me: Warning.
I got that.
“I don’t have feelings for Peter Abbott, I just want the latitude to do my job. Look, Angelo, I want to nail Dick Stone. After what he did to Slammer, more than ever.”
“Because you’re sounding awfully bitter,” Angelo repeats.
I glance at Donnato. “Just blowing off steam.”
“Talk about it with the shrink,” he says.
“Do I have to?”
“You’ve been under almost three months.”
He is talking about a psychological evaluation with a therapist when you’ve been undercover a certain amount of time. It’s required. No way out. Just like critical-incident training. I’m looking forward to it about as much as a body scrub with a vegetable grater.
“I am committed to the operation, and I’m fine,” I say. “But I’ll tell you what I am worried about. The satellite phone. Stone is talking to someone inside the Bureau, and we have no way to trace it.”
The moment the words are out, the world begins to waver with vertigo and distrust. Have I said too much? What if the spook inside is Angelo? Or could it be Donnato? No, not possible. I wish I had said nothing about satellite phones, that I’d waited until I had more information. Or gone straight to Galloway. Can I trust him, either? How alone can you be?
“No way to trace it,” Angelo agrees, “unless we involve NSA, and that’s a whole other thing.”
He stands and tosses his coffee cup into the trash.
“We should at least put it on a three oh two to headquarters,” Donnato suggests.
But I object. “What if someone at headquarters is involved?”
“Okay, let’s not go further with this until we have something solid,” Angelo says. “Ana’s intel is noted.”
Is this a reasonable conversation, or are they covering up?
I focus on the reality of what I can actually see, at the rest stop, here and now. Nobody else is around except a couple of red squirrels, squawking on a swaying branch. The noonday forest radiates a lazy, sun-filled, pine-scented heat. Beyond the parking lot, the highway is a searing blur of semi-trailers and logging trucks rattling along at eighty.
They could shoot me in the rest room and be back in L.A. for dinner.
Donnato: “We haven’t addressed the problem. Ana has breeched Dick Stone’s security system. He has pinhole cameras hidden everywhere—in videocassettes, in pencil sharpeners, in the clocks. What if he’s made her, and he’s just waiting?”
“Nah,” counters Angelo. “If he suspected she was FBI, he’d have blown her to bits like Steve Crawford.”
“Always a comfort.” My partner sighs.
Angelo shrugs. “You want me to lie?”
Okay, stop. Collect your mind. These are your buddies.
My head clears. “Why don’t we arrest Stone now?”
“We don’t have the whole picture. Especially if he’s talking to someone else. We get much more if we wait.”
“It’s hard to read this guy,” Donnato agrees. “Stone’s been running his game so long, he’s lying when he says hello. We’d pull you out if we thought you were in danger. You do know that?”
“It’s not my personal safety. It’s about blowing the operation.”
It is a fear I have been carrying, not of physical danger, but worse—the fear of total humiliation. That you have ruined the operation—you, single-handedly
responsible for destroying everything everyone has worked for, like dropping the fly ball on the third out of the last game of the World Series.
Angelo pauses in his pacing, standing against a backdrop of pines. Sunlight pours on his slick wavy hair and tiny gnats pinwheel the shimmering air.
“There are contingencies. If Dick Stone gets too close to you.”
He sits back at the table and we follow.
“Does Stone still have that schmuck Herbert Laumann in his sights?”
“Yes, he does. To get Stone off the kid, I promised I would murder Mr. Laumann. I hope that’s okay.”
Donnato raises an eyebrow. Angelo frowns.
“What is his state of mind?”
“Laumann’s state of mind?” echoes Donnato, as if it were obvious. “Scared to death. Terrified for his family. He’s had enough of being a rock star. He wants out of the spotlight.”
Angelo: “Then let’s take him out.”
I am sitting on top of the picnic table, listening with admiration and relief as Angelo and Donnato plot Laumann’s murder. I scold myself for mistrustful thoughts. These two are pros.
“You’re saying we should take Herbert Laumann out of the picture?”
“If we don’t,” Angelo says, “Stone will have it done.”
“Headquarters will have to authorize the hit. Something this sophisticated would go to the director and the attorney general. It could take weeks.”
Angelo is dismissive. “Someone at headquarters will have to bite the bullet.”
“I know what they’ll say.” For some reason Donnato won’t let it go. “‘What is L.A. trying to pull off now? It’s another argument to stay in longer. What’s the Big One? What the hell does that mean? What are you creating just to keep the operation going?’ Peter Abbott will have to weigh in, and that’s a crapshoot.”
“I don’t give a good goddamn,” Angelo snaps. “What the hell do I care? This will prove her loyalty beyond a doubt. Ana? Are you with us?”
“No screwups,” I say. “No budgetary crap.”
Angelo waves a hand and the sapphire ring glints pink.
“Done it a million times. The Hollywood studios are good at this; they love to help us out. They can do it so it looks like the guy is dead and we fed him to the sharks. You walk up, shoot the victim at close range. He’s got squibs inside his clothing, it’s a big bloody mess, he dies an agonizing death, and we relocate him and his family in the witness protection program. No worries, and Dick Stone thinks you’re the greatest thing since sliced cheese.”
“Believe me,” says Donnato, warming to it, “Laumann will go—happily. But we have to put a fence around the family. They need to be protected twenty-four/seven.”
My mouth has become dry as the pine needles. The hot bleached sky seems to swirl.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Angelo asks, reading me perfectly. “I mean, we all know what you’ve been through.”
The shooting incident.
“I think I have a fairly good handle on reality, Angelo. This is acting. The bullet is a blank.”
But my thinking mind goes vacant as my senses seem to cut off one by one—except for the slight scent of burning brake lining, and a high-pitched chatter, like headphones at full volume pressed against my ears.
Angelo consults his watch. His voice sounds faint. “We can catch the three forty-five to L.A. if we leave right now.”
As they head back toward the car, Donnato says something about scheduling the psychological evaluation.
“You’re going to fake a killing, and I’m the one who needs to see a shrink?” I say, managing a grin through the deafening clamor of the two red squirrels, jumping branch to branch.
Twenty-nine
Cars are parked way up the road. It is the midsummer festival at Willamette Hazelnut Farm. Megan is sticking close to Stone, who presents himself tonight in a neatly pressed western shirt, the red suspenders, and a crisp straw farmer’s hat—your happy host to the alternative lifestyle, urging people to gather in the large bubble shed, where a borrowed sound system plays a cheerful band out of Austin, Texas. Stone told me they had poured the concrete floor just for dances, which sounded pretty goofy, but with the silver blow-up panels animated by moving shadows and the doors thrown open, warm yellow light tumbles across the gravel road, illuminating the American flag, and you can believe in country music.
It is an eclectic blowout—a mix of neighboring farmers, “kindreds” from the pagan community, straitlaced hazelnut distributors from Portland, and random tourists from the local B and Bs, all happily passing the traditional Asatrú libation, great huge horns of beer.
Slammer is standing on the roof of the farmhouse with the local boys, totally hammered on rum. That has pretty much been his MO since the burial attempt, despite empty threats to beat the crap out of Allfather, which came in a whispered confab with Sara. They were huddled like frightened children at the foot of the stairs as Slammer struggled out of his filth-encrusted clothes. Sara quickly balled them into her arms, as if to shrink an unthinkable humiliation down to the size of a load of laundry.
“You can’t let him do that to you.”
“That’s him, dog.”
“We should get out of here. We should call the cops.”
“Are you serious? You want to go home?”
“No, but…He scares me.” Sara flushed pink and began to hiccup with tears.
“Poor little princess.”
“Guys!” I stepped between them. “Don’t get on each other.”
Sara had dropped the clothes and was staring at me defiantly.
“Slammer, you have every right to call the police,” I said. “Is that what you want to do?”
Slammer’s eyes went vacant. “Actually,” he said, “I’m kind of hungry.”
After that, you could hear pickups burning rubber at two o’clock in the morning and raucous male shouting as Slammer came and went with the locals. Nothing changed on the farm. Maybe Stone had made his point. Maybe he was waiting to make another.
I see Sterling McCord has arrived and is talking to Sara, who doesn’t want to stand still and listen. He’s been on her case about Geronimo—how it would do her good to care, really care, for an animal, get up at dawn and muck the dung, not just mouth off about it—but she’s laughing, tossing it off, flirting instead. Incapable, is more like it. Meanwhile, McCord has the loosest pelvis on the planet. He’s standing tilted back on his heels, as if in the saddle at a trot. He’s wearing a silver conch belt and his usual washed-out jeans, a midnight blue shirt open at the chest.
I have noticed that you can’t go wrong on wardrobe if you’re a cowboy.
The sorting equipment and red tractor have been moved outside, so there is room for line dancing. The song is something about “old Amos.” I draw back from the doorway and the shining, eager faces go past the American flag and into the colder shadows. Sara and McCord are free to get it on—but me, I’m on the job. Undercover work—this is how it gets to you. The loneliness digs down like fast-growing roots and cracks your resolve. This is exactly when you are supposed to call your contact agent. Dose of reality. Remember who you are. It is 9:36 p.m. and Donnato is most likely home with his family.
Candles are still burning in jars on a half-cleared table near the orchard, illuminating a forest of smudgy fingerprints on abandoned wineglasses. An older couple is camped out at one end, picking at brownie crumbs in an aluminum pan. I move past, fishing out the last Heineken from the frigid waters of the cooler.
“Looks like Noah’s ark,” Sterling says from behind.
I turn toward the lighted shed and smile.
“They’ve got all the animals, right?”
“And they’re all gonna be saved. Any more beers?”
I give him the Heineken and pull out a Coors.
“I could use a set-down,” he suggests. “How about yourself?”
At the other end of the table, in the half dark, an enormous white man is ho
lding forth to a slight man of color—the first black face I’ve seen in Oregon. As we sit, I recognize the voice: like a sixteen-wheeler groaning uphill in second. That’s when I realize the fuzzy shape in the diffuse light is Mr. Terminate.
“John! It’s Darcy! From Omar’s bar.”
The other couple take a good look at John and decide to get out of there, leaving us with the dour biker, massive thighs dwarfing a folding chair, clutching a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He has left the black top hat at home, revealing long, thin tresses trailing off a half-bald dome.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Crashin’ the party.”
“Who’s your friend?”
“Toby Himes,” says the black man, extending his hand.
In the rural crowd, Toby Himes is a standout, neatly dressed in pressed slacks and a windbreaker. He keeps his hands inside his pockets while surveying the scene. He sports a tweed snap-brim cap and a white goatee, and takes his time, not intimidated. At first, I make him for another cop.
Because it takes a minute to dial it in. The biker and the black man, having a drink in the dark? This isn’t random. They know each other. And Mr. Terminate is not eating ashtrays, or washing his hands in someone’s pitcher of suds.
He is calm, like Vesuvius on a good day.
This is so inconsistent with John’s attitude toward the darker nation that the hair goes up on the back of my neck and I hook a leg over the bench, curious to find out why.
I introduce McCord as the wrangler who saved me from the wild horses, tell them the story of the arrests at the BLM corrals and try to draw them in.
“Should we all go out and save the wild horses?”
“I’ll tell you about horses,” wheezes Mr. Terminate, and begins a tale that has nothing to do with horses. “Up in Colorado, some of the fellas came into a load of computer stuff.”
“Just dropped from the sky, did it?” Toby Himes laughs and takes a sip of beer. “I know how that is.”
“You know bull crap. Excuse my French, but this is top secret shit, vital pieces of our national defense system.”