Wolf's Revenge

by Lachlan Smith

  Then, for good measure, I added, “And I can name at least three more unsolved murders that he’s committed.”

  Braxton grimaced in a way calculated to show how small-time he thought me. “Federal cases? And by that I mean, were any of these murders committed in furtherance of a criminal racketeering organization?”

  I could see where this was going. “Not that I’m aware. My father and Dot are the only victims I know of who were killed for the sake of the Aryan Brotherhood.”

  I could, of course, have named Russell Bell, who’d been murdered because Bo wanted my father as part of his organization. But that would have given the government far too much power in an already lopsided negotiation. I needed to save it until we had the framework of a protective deal in place.

  “Then take it to a state cop. I’m not interested.”

  “You haven’t told me I’m wrong about Sims. So I gather you already know that he was the one who killed my father and Dot.”

  “I don’t know anything. All I can say is that what you’ve told me is consistent with, and reinforces, the Bureau’s conclusions in the matter.”

  “Has the FBI assumed control over the investigation?”

  “Obviously not. To do so would send the wrong signals.”

  “What’s obvious is that my father’s role as a government informant would be pertinent in any police investigation of his and Dot’s murders. Has the FBI even shared that with the police?”

  Braxton avoided answering my question. “We don’t currently have anything close to the kind of evidence we’d need to persuade a federal grand jury to indict.”

  “So why aren’t you helping the state police build a case against Sims? An agent’s supposed to protect his sources at all costs, right? When an informant’s taken out, the full weight of the government’s supposed to come down on the person who pulled the trigger, just the same as if one of your own had been killed. Instead, as far as I can tell, you and the rest of the FBI are sitting on your hands. And worse, you’re refusing to share information with the police.”

  “I’m afraid your view of our policies regarding cooperating witnesses is rather shortsighted.” Braxton, his face now a picture of patience, reached up to tilt the mirror so we could see each other in it. “Let’s assume for the sake of argument that we did have direct proof—even ironclad evidence. Are you actually telling me that you’d blow an investigation that has stretched for nearly two decades? For the sake of two murder victims whom I can no longer do anything to help?”

  His words—nearly two decades—reverberated in my mind, dramatically enlarging the scope of what was at stake between us.

  “Just answer me this,” I said. “Was my father an FBI informant?”

  Braxton seemed to draw back behind the wheel, his face reflexively closing down against my inquiry.

  “Or was that just a ploy you were using as an approach with Teddy, making him believe that Dad was working for you when, in reality, Lawrence had told you to go fuck yourself the one time you talked?”

  “Your father was a government informant,” Braxton finally said, his eyes holding mine briefly in the mirror. He now wore a different kind of look, the expression of a man with a doubtful hand who’s just thrust all his chips across the felt.

  I found, to my surprise, that I believed him. This revelation, though I’d already suspected it was true from what Teddy had told me, hit me hard—far harder than I’d have believed before he said it. It couldn’t help radically changing my view of my father, who he was, and what he’d stood for. In particular, it cast a dramatically different light on the choices my father had made, particularly those that had endangered his family and hastened the end of his life.

  “How long?” I asked, my voice catching in my throat.

  “Fifteen years.” In the mirror, Braxton’s eyes were suddenly clouded with emotion; his gaze was focused on the road ahead of us. “Nearly my entire career.”

  The silence between us lasted for nearly a mile. Finally I said, “Then you must have known him much better than I did.”

  “I knew him well, and I valued our relationship greatly.”

  I was first embarrassed by the emotion in his voice, then shamed by the true sentiment behind it. “Then why aren’t you moving against Sims?”

  “Because there’s much more at stake than a pair of murders, no matter how close any of us were to the victims. As I said, this investigation has lasted the better part of two decades. The information your father has provided us over the years will be enough to bring down the Aryan Brotherhood for good. Not just in California, but across the country, both behind bars and outside prison walls.”

  He spoke with the passion of a disciple spreading the word. I listened to him with the attentiveness of a pilgrim.

  Braxton went on. “It’s no exaggeration to say that your dad devoted his life to this investigation. It was what kept him going behind bars, and he never wavered in his determination to continue that work once he was free. He wasn’t just an informant—he was our eyes and ears at the heart of the most insidious criminal organization in America today. A source like this comes along maybe once a generation. And the quality of his info was second to none.”

  “Sounds as though he was your ticket to ride.”

  Braxton refused to be rattled. “Sure. But the information was so good, we couldn’t act on most of it, because we’d have blown the source. I watched other agents make the big hits while I kept on putting money in the bank, storing up intel for the big bust. And I put in my time—ten years undercover as a corrections officer, the last ten years of your father’s sentence, full-time at the prison and another twenty hours a week at the field office—processing the material your father gave us. You can’t imagine more brutal, demeaning work. We were in the thick of it, the two of us. All that time spent together behind enemy lines.”

  “Except you got to go home every night.”

  Again he wouldn’t take the bait. “And every night when my head touched the pillow I said a prayer that Lawrence would still be alive in the morning when I showed up for my shift. And every morning, waiting to clear security, I digested my stomach lining from the inside. So many close calls, so many near misses.”

  I hesitated to ask my next question. “Did you have anything to do with getting him out?” I hesitated before going on. “The evidence that my brother uncovered?”

  “No. We couldn’t lift a finger. Not that your father would ever have asked for that kind of help. He had too much pride to make a request that he didn’t know would be granted. What your brother did for him, he did on his own. As far as we know, the evidence he found was genuine and untainted.”

  I wanted to believe him, but wasn’t sure whether I should. Certainly, after fifteen years, the FBI had owed my father his freedom, and far more. With a surge of anger I said, “And you expect me to believe it was his choice to keep working for you, which meant working for Wilder, after he was released from prison?”

  “Bringing down the AB was his lifework,” Braxton said simply. “Can you really expect him to have just given that up, especially once he was in a position to feed us the kind of top-level information that one day would allow us to close the case once and for all?”

  I nodded, just beginning to understand the full tragedy of my father’s death—that he’d been killed for devoting his life to a case that would never be complete, and never, ever be closed, for the simple reason that the men who ran the AB were already behind bars and beyond the ability of the government to punish them further.

  “Did Dot know?”

  “She was an FBI agent,” Braxton said. “One of our own, to use your words. After a few years, it got too risky for Lawrence to pass me information directly. So we brought in an agent from the Ohio field office to play the role.”

  I was astonished. Then, quickly, overcome with sadness. Followed by confusion and uncertainty. “So their marriage was a sham?”

  “It was what it was. Only Dorothy could
answer that question, and unfortunately, to all of our sorrow, she’s gone.”

  “So what happens now?” I asked, my mind reeling. My headache was getting worse. “If revealing my father as your source is no longer an issue, then presumably it must mean it’s time to kick in the doors. Get revenge for what they did to my father and Dot.”

  “If that was going to happen, you’d be the last to know.” The barriers were up between us again. “I’ve worked this case too long to sink it that way. If there’s even a ten percent chance Bo’s turned you, it’s too much risk for me. And, even if you’re honest, we both know these animals can make anyone reveal anything under torture. It’s been done before.”

  I had no choice but to accept this. “So what went wrong?” I asked instead. “Why’d they suspect him? Did they trace Dot’s background?”

  “No. Not as far as we can see. We’ve combed through all the data, reviewed all the wiretaps, culled through all the Internet chatter. We haven’t found a single indication that either your father’s or her cover was blown. We’re confident they weren’t exposed.”

  “No indications other than the bullet holes in their bodies, you mean.”

  “Your father knew the risks. It goes without saying that Dorothy knew them as well. In a war, each side loses soldiers.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and I certainly couldn’t accept his apparent acquiescence in their squalid deaths as he calmly drove with both hands on the wheel. “You’re in some kind of crazy denial if you think their work for you had nothing to do with their deaths. They were exposed. They had to have been, to be executed like that.”

  “It’s going to be hard for you to hear this. But what you told me earlier puts the pieces together in my mind. As I said, we’re convinced your father’s cover wasn’t blown. But Sims is a dangerous man—a killer. From what you just told me, your father confronted him after Sims threatened your niece. God knows what was said, but knowing Lawrence, I imagine it was to the point. Sims didn’t appreciate being spoken to that way, especially from someone who wasn’t a bona fide AB member. He stewed over it for a while, then he took the only action he knows. He showed up at your father’s place in the night and executed the two of them in their sleep. With those same bullets, he fired a shot over Wilder’s bow. It’s possible that even without our help, the organization’s about to implode.”

  “I can give you Sims. Not for my father and Dot, but for previous murders. But it’s pretty clear you don’t want him.”

  “I already said, that’s state law stuff. I’m holding out for the RICO trial.”

  “Right,” I said, unable to control what I now was feeling. “You’re holding out for the perfect case, the perfect evidence. I’ve seen enough guys like you in my legal career to know that’s never going to come. There’s always going to be something else you need, some piece without which the puzzle just isn’t complete. And meanwhile, the years trickle by, and the bodies pile up.”

  “That’s not true,” he insisted. “I’ve staked my entire career, my entire life, on this case. I just don’t intend to lose it by acting on emotion. Your father should have known better than to confront Sims as he did. For that, I blame him. He screwed us royally. Now we’ve got to regroup, figure out how best to carry on the battle.”

  “How about Randolph Edwards’s murder? What if I could place Sims on the scene?” I hadn’t planned to offer this, especially not without my client’s approval. But the time had come, it seemed to me, to test Braxton’s capacity for making excuses to justify his refusal to act.

  Braxton’s face betrayed no interest, but his body seemed to tense, giving off an impression of increased stillness as he drove along the winding mountain road. “You represent the shooter. Wilder’s footing the bill.”

  “Never mind about that. Not even how you know where the money comes from. What I want to know is if I can connect Sims with his old roommate’s murder, will you bring down the hammer on him? And, as I said, we can likely tie in at least two old unsolved murders as well. The Plum Tree job.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Then you haven’t been doing your homework, Agent Braxton.”

  “You get your client to testify she was pulling the trigger on AB business, and I’ll present the indictment.”

  I knew, however, that this wasn’t the testimony Alice Ward was likely to give. I didn’t yet know why she’d shot Edwards, but my working theory was that it was a revenge killing, because she believed Edwards murdered her mother; Sims must have told her so. But such a murder presented no federal hook.

  “You want Sims as much as I do,” I said. “He killed an FBI agent, for Christ’s sake. Why does it matter whether it’s federal or state law he’s accused of breaking? Didn’t you guys bring down Al Capone on tax evasion?”

  “Which happens to be a federal crime,” Braxton reminded me. “The kind within the jurisdiction of the federal investigative powers. I want this asshole; it’s not good enough for me to hand him over to the state police. Besides, the state prisons are the AB’s home turf. Federal prison is a different matter.”

  I no longer feared that Braxton was inventing Lawrence’s cooperation in order to entice us to take the step our father hadn’t taken. The story he told was too outlandish not to be essentially true. For me, it only deepened the peril of the situation. I realized that, in his continued pursuit of the case that evidently had become his white whale, Braxton would be unlikely to prioritize protecting us.

  “You must have wanted something from Teddy, to have approached him,” I said. “Tell me what we can do.”

  Braxton didn’t reply immediately. He’d looped around and was headed back down toward Berkeley. “I need someone on the inside. Someone to take your dad’s place. Your brother’s the natural choice.”

  “What about me?”

  “Wilder doesn’t trust you. And with good reason. What kind of access do you have? You’re little more than a rubber stamp for guilty pleas of people who in the grand scheme of things really don’t matter.”

  I didn’t like this. But I said only, “And he trusts Teddy?”

  “Your brother’s impairments make him seem harmless. And his reputation from the old days doesn’t hurt.”

  “So your offer to him wasn’t the no-strings deal it seemed at first. He was going to have to sing for his supper.”

  Braxton didn’t say anything, but the uncomfortable silence made his position clear. I wasn’t going to let any other member of my family be put back in that untenable and potentially fatal situation, and I told Braxton so.

  “Well, you’ve got my card,” was his reply.

  We were coming back down from the hills into Berkeley, heading toward my brother’s neighborhood. “Where do you want me to drop you?”

  I told him an intersection six blocks from Teddy’s house. But he seemed unwilling now to let the conversation end. “Your brother has to make his own choices,” he said. “You’ve kept your hands mostly clean, but he hasn’t. This is the only chance he’s going to get to make amends.”

  “Never mind,” I told him. “Just let me out right here.”

  CHAPTER 13

  “Fifteen years.” Teddy shook his head in disbelief.

  We were in his backyard, braving a chilly wind with occasional spitting rain. Carly was down for her nap, Tamara in the house with her. I’d told her to stay, that she needed to hear this, too, but after the scare I’d put her through this morning, she wasn’t about to leave her daughter sleeping alone in the house.

  “You never had any inkling,” I said.

  He shook his head slowly. “Not until Braxton approached me that day at the park.”

  I’d told Teddy about Braxton wanting to use him as an informant in our father’s place. Though worried about his reaction, I didn’t think, in fairness, I could keep it from him. I knew that Braxton was always free to disregard my unilateral “condition” and contact Teddy directly, so it was important he be prepared.

 
; “We can’t count on the FBI or anyone else to protect us.”

  “Right. The AB killed Dad and the FBI didn’t stop them. But you said Braxton’s convinced he wasn’t compromised.”

  “Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Dad’s cover wasn’t blown, and that you’d be able to gain access to the kind of information the FBI’s looking for. What’s Braxton going to do then—pull you out after a few months, prosecute the AB’s outside organization, and then let you live happily ever after?”

  Teddy didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

  “He left Dad in place for fifteen years. Fifteen years, Teddy. Building evidence for a case that was never quite ready, never going to be good enough. Listening to him, I got the sense he was actually unhappy Dad had been released. At least, he told me the government didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “I know that’s true,” Teddy said. “It was all me. And, at the end, you.”

  “I also sensed it wasn’t an option for Lawrence to stop working for Braxton once he got out. Braxton denied it, said Dad was the one who wanted to keep working to bring the AB down, but what was he going to do—just walk away?”

  “Well, then we’re up shit creek. From what you’re telling me, there’s no way out except to do what Braxton says. Feed him information until Bo finds out, at which point my whole family ends up dead.”

  “Stay with me here. Assume Bo didn’t know Dad was working for the FBI, and the murders were just what Braxton claims—the result of Dad confronting Sims because he threatened Carly. Assume, also, that neither you nor I agree to work for the FBI.”

  “Then we get swept up in the indictments, and you and I both go to prison, where we’ll be dead men as soon as the evidence is unsealed and Bo realizes Dad was feeding the feds information all this time.”

  “You’re assuming there’ll be indictments,” I told him. “But imagine this scenario: What if, before Braxton actually finally manages to close the case he’s been chasing for almost two decades, a civil war erupts and his targets take each other out?”