The Brea File

by Louis Charbonneau

  Macimer spoke quietly to the boy. “How long have they been holding you and your sister?”

  “No talking!” Xavier shouted.

  “What harm can it do? You’re holding the gun.”

  “You are not giving no orders now. This is not the F-B-I headquarters.” He spaced out the letters with heavy sarcasm.

  Macimer spoke sharply. “What do you know about me and the FBI?”

  The young man was suddenly disconcerted. His face became blank, more Indian, a mask. “What do you mean? You tol’ us.”

  “I didn’t say anything about being with the FBI.”

  “You didn’t have to,” the stocky Cuban said from the doorway of the den. “We can look at pictures. There is a picture in this room in which you are being given the glad hand by Mr. J. Edgar Hoover himself. And… there is this.” He held up the black leather wallet Macimer had placed on the harvest table when he emptied his pockets. Casually the Cuban flipped the wallet open, displaying Macimer’s identity card and badge. “Special Agent for Uncle Moneybags,” he said mockingly. “Such a man must have more money than we have found, eh?” He threw the wallet onto the dining table and turned to Xavier. “I will have the gun. Go find our amiga and come back here. It seems we must reason with Señor Macimer. I think he will tell us where to find what we want. Soon…”

  It was going to get uglier, Macimer knew. He felt a spasm of self-disgust. He had been looking over his shoulder at phantoms tonight. Reality was not a phantom. Too often it was something as familiar as a reckless, hotheaded kid with a knife and a young lifetime’s worth of stored-up rage.

  Xavier returned with the girl in the red blouse. She carried a plastic bag stuffed with items she had taken from the bedrooms—and, held aloft like a trophy, Macimer’s .38 Smith & Wesson in its hip holster.

  Macimer had been waiting—hoping—for a moment’s carelessness on the part of the three intruders. So far they had not been careless—and now they were better armed, even more in command.

  The leader raised his voice. “You must have a place where you keep the real goodies. A box or maybe a safe, eh? Where is it? In the garage? The attic?”

  “I told you,” Macimer answered evenly. “There is no safe. We keep valuable papers and other things in a safe-deposit box.”

  “Mentiroso!” Xavier shouted. “You lie!”

  The stocky Cuban stared at Macimer. “You are making it hard on yourself… and not only yourself. Xavier, tie him up.” He used Xavier’s name himself this time, carelessly, perhaps deliberately. The suggestion that it no longer mattered was chilling.

  With a broad grin Xavier started toward Macimer. The FBI agent rose, scraping back his chair to give himself more room. They wouldn’t use the guns unless they had to, he told himself.

  “Espéra! Uno momento.” The leader of the gang studied Macimer with eyes like black marbles. “Señor Macimer does not believe that we will do what we say. I hope it will not be necessary to prove it.” At his sharp command in Spanish, the black-haired girl flipped quickly through the stack of records on the shelf beside the record changer. She selected one with a flourish. Seconds later hard rock music pounded through the room. The girl turned up the volume.

  At another swift command Xavier turned back toward the sofa. Linda shrank from his approach. Jan rose to her feet, blocking his way. The Latin girl, armed with Macimer’s gun, began to circle behind him. The stocky Cuban raised his voice above the pounding of the music. “You must choose, Macimer. We do not wish to harm anyone—you must take my word for this truth. But we cannot leave you with your hands free while we continue to search this house. You are the… professional, is it not so?” With a nod toward Xavier he said, “Xavier has a fondness for your pretty daughter, señor. Tell her that she can scream if she wishes. In such a place as this, on a Saturday night, who will notice, eh? Even if she could be heard above such music. Now you must tell la señora to step aside….”

  “No,” Jan said. “I won’t.”

  The stocky Cuban sighed with exaggerated emotion. “Ah, como son protectivas las mamás! Que sentimiento tan bonito.” Abruptly he dropped the mockery, turning angry. “Do you expect us to go away with a few dollars from your purse and some worthless trinkets? What is so important that you will not tell us where the safe is? Xavier—la muchacha. Agárrala!”

  The slim youth edged closer to Linda, grinning. Jan refused to be intimidated. Suddenly Xavier lunged forward. When Jan threw out an arm to ward him off, the young man grabbed her wrist and, with a neat twist, flipped her backward onto the sofa. The thin fabric of her blouse tore, a long rent from shoulder to waist. Xavier’s laughter froze. He stared at her. Jan wore no bra, and the dark nipple of one breast peered back at him.

  With a cry Kevin rushed forward. At his leader’s sharp warning Xavier turned. He sidestepped the boy’s blind charge and, laughing again, spun him to the floor.

  Two guns were pointing at Macimer. He could only stand rigid as Kevin’s accusing gaze found him.

  Xavier swung back toward Linda. “Please…” she whispered. The plea was drowned in the rocking rhythm of Elton John’s piano.

  Suddenly something in the husky Cuban leader’s dark eyes underwent a change. He barked a command. “Cállense!” Instantly his two followers were still. “Escuchen.”

  Macimer had heard nothing, but the stocky man glared at him suspiciously. “You are expecting someone else?” he demanded.

  “Yes. My oldest son—and a carload of his friends.”

  The Cuban scowled. He ordered the black-haired girl to see what was happening outside. She shot up the half flight of stairs and disappeared down the hall toward the front of the house. The stocky man moved with surprising agility across the family room to the stereo, keeping his eyes on Macimer. He switched off the record player.

  The sudden silence was heavy, thundering with unheard music as real to the senses as feeling in a missing limb.

  Then, clearly, came the sound of a racing car engine, voices, laughter. Macimer had told Chip to keep it down when he and his friends came to the house late at night, out of consideration for the neighbors. For once he was grateful for sophomore exuberance.

  The girl returned on tiptoe. “Three cars,” she said with a scowl. “There are eight, maybe nine men.” She sneered. “They are throwing a football on the grass.”

  The stocky leader hesitated for only an instant. “You are most fortunate, Señor Macimer,” he said. There was more rapid Spanish addressed to the two younger Latins. They started toward the glass doors that led to the rear yard. As the door slid open the leader said, “You will keep the college boys here, señor. If there is anyone chasing us…” He let the threat hang there, more vivid for being unspoken.

  There was a burst of noise as the front door of the house banged open. Voices tumbled over each other, hoots of laughter, heavy footsteps. The gang leader ran across the room, still pointing his weapon in Macimer’s direction, and fled with the others through the open doorway. They disappeared into the shadows of the yard as Chip appeared on the landing, grinning. He stopped, startled by the scene in the room below him. “Hey! What’s going on here?”

  * * * *

  Sheriff’s deputies arrived some ten minutes after Macimer’s call. The older of the two officers seemed tired and bored. Robberies were not novelties in the Meadows, and Macimer did not suggest that the trio who had invaded his home were anything but ordinary thieves. The younger deputy could not stop grinning. The idea of an FBI man and his family being held up by a trio of young Latinos would be a source of considerable merriment down at the sheriff’s station.

  Macimer promised to come down to the station in the morning to go through the local mug file. He agreed to make a list of anything found missing.

  When the deputies had gone Macimer went upstairs. He found Jan in their bedroom angrily remaking the bed, jerking fresh sheets taut as if she were taking her feelings out on them. The used sheets were crumpled in a pile on the floor.

&nb
sp; “Didn’t you just change those yesterday? What is it—?”

  “Yes! I changed them yesterday.” She marched over to the sheets she had thrown aside and picked up the top one. “Do you know what those two… those animals were doing up here while we were gone? Do you know what that is?”

  Macimer stared at a stain on the sheet. “I’m beginning to guess.”

  “It’s not funny! Paul, they… they used our bed!” She was still breathing hard but her anger was cooling as she talked. “Oh, my God—listen to me.”

  “Take it easy. I know how you feel.”

  “It had to have been those two youngsters… Xavier and his girlfriend. When I came up here and looked at those sheets, I just felt… violated.”

  “It’s a normal way to feel. Most people do when they know that strangers have been in their house, poking around in their private places.” He took her in his arms and held her gently. “That’s a very private place.”

  After a moment she tilted her head up and let herself be kissed. “I’m all right now,” she murmured.

  While Jan was undressing Macimer went downstairs to his den and inspected the damage. The room was a mess. It would require an hour’s straightening up before he could be sure if anything was missing. Fortunately, he didn’t keep anything important here.

  He mused over the different reactions people had to a crisis. Jan was angry. Chip’s friends had gone off bemoaning their late arrival and missing out on the “fun.” Linda looked as if she would have nightmares if she slept at all. Kevin had withdrawn into a morose silence—disappointed, Macimer guessed, in his father’s lack of heroics.

  As for Macimer himself, he was… curious.

  They were not ordinary hoodlums, he thought.

  It was not a rationalization for his carelessness in being so easily taken hostage, risking his family’s lives. There was just something not quite right about the whole operation. Smoothly professional in some ways, amateurish in others—like wasting too much time in the house when they had had only two youngsters to contend with, instead of striking fast, taking what they could find and getting out. And the insistence that there had to be a safe, when they had had time to assure themselves there was none.

  They had been role playing, Macimer thought. The swaggering and shouting had been in character, the threats, the leering stares at Linda’s maturing beauty or Jan’s exposed breast. But even the leering had been perfunctory. It was as if the invaders had been trying to frighten their victims, but that was all.

  So what were they really after?

  3

  At forty-two Paul Macimer was young to be the Special-Agent-in-Charge of over three hundred agents in one of the largest field offices in the Bureau. Less than two years ago he had been with the Criminal Investigative Division at FBI Headquarters, directing the Internal Security Branch, whose special responsibilities included sedition and sabotage, civil unrest and violence, and the actions of revolutionary groups against the United States. He had felt stifled in his job.

  On September 7, 1982, a bomb exploded in the office of Carey McWilliams, SAC of the Washington Field Office, which was then located on Half Street in the southwest part of the District. The office door was blown thirty feet across the outer offices. Glass shattered everywhere. The ceiling collapsed directly over McWilliams’ office, a picture window exploded, and a five-foot section of brick wall was blown onto the street below. The building itself was so severely stressed that it had to be abandoned. It seemed miraculous that the bomb had been so strategically planted that only McWilliams was killed in the blast.

  Macimer had headed up the special investigation of the bombing. A number of radical groups, including the Eagles of the Palestinian Revolution, had claimed credit for the incident, but six months of intensive investigation had produced no proof of responsibility. The case remained open. The FBI has a tradition that an unsolved case is never closed, and that was especially true of the McWilliams bombing, the first case in FBI history in which a Special-Agent-in-Charge was murdered.

  Macimer had worked on the bombing investigation out of improvised headquarters for the Washington Field Office found by the General Services Administration in a federal office building on C Street, not far from the FBI Identification Building and within a few blocks of the U.S. Capitol. Nearly two years later the WFO still occupied those “temporary” facilities.

  After six months Macimer was unexpectedly named Special-Agent-in-Charge of the office, succeeding McWilliams. The assignment elated him. Like most middle- and upper-level people at Headquarters, he was seldom in the field while with the Investigative Division. His job there was to approve or disapprove investigations initiated in the field, to order an investigation or action by a particular office in specific circumstances, to coordinate leads that came in from various offices, and to pass important questions on up the chain of command. It was a position with a great deal of responsibility, and Macimer had chafed in it. He had spent most of his career in the field. What he had at FBI Headquarters, in spite of its prestige, was a desk job.

  Then, by a twist of fate, he had got what he really wanted, the goal of any ambitious Special Agent of the FBI. He had become the SAC of one of the busiest and most sensitive field offices in the country.

  The case load of the WFO differed from those in most field offices. There was a heavier than normal concentration on security threats, terrorism and espionage. There were highly sensitive special inquiries for congressional committees and other government agencies, and for the White House, including background investigations of presidential appointees. There were investigations under the aegis of the White Collar Crime Task Force, with special attention to bribery and corruption in the federal government. For all that, the office was understaffed, a complaint heard at most field offices under the President’s stringent budget.

  And in its temporary quarters, WFO was cramped for space. Macimer’s own office was small by normal SAC standards. Jerry Russell, the Assistant Special-Agent-in-Charge, worked out of an even smaller office. There were the usual large squad rooms, supervisors’ cubicles, a large area for the staff of clerks and stenographers, the highly secure cable room, a separate room for the computer terminal linked up with the NCIC and other law enforcement networks, a “radio room” where wiretaps and bugs were monitored and a real radio communications room, and an interview room—the latter with a door opening off the outer corridor and close to the elevator so that anyone brought in for questioning did not see the rest of the offices. There was also a reception area with the usual bulletin board displaying various notices and posters, including the “10 Most Wanted” display with pictures. It was an active, overcrowded office with, Macimer liked to believe, good spirit and morale. He didn’t attribute that fact to his own leadership, as some did, but to the feeling in the Washington Field Office of participating in important matters, working close to the heart of the nation’s government, responsible for preventing threats that would affect the entire country and its people.

  On Monday morning Macimer was briefed as usual by the ASAC on important cases in progress. Heading the list was an airplane hijacking in Miami early that morning. “The plane’s on the ground now and Callahan’s down there.” Callahan was everyone’s idea of a genial Irish uncle. White-haired, dapper and sincere, he had a marvelous knack for listening and conveying sympathetic understanding. He could have a stranger spilling out his life story two minutes after meeting him. He was the head of the FBI’s national hostage unit, which included at least two trained hostage negotiators at each of the FBI’s sixty field offices. In between hijackings and major terrorist incidents, Callahan taught at the FBI Academy in Quantico.

  “Where’s the hijacker from?” It was the key question for WFO. If the hijacker came from the Washington area, Callahan might want immediate backgrounding here. That would mean a team of agents to interview friends, relatives and associates to put together a psychological profile that would help a negotiator.

  “H
e’s Cuban, been living in Miami. Says he wants to leave the country but he also wants money.”

  “Okay, have our hostage team on standby. You know what happens when you have one hijacking.”

  “Yeah. Imitators.”

  “What else do we have?”

  A long-range scam operation looking into suspicion of bribery in government construction projects involving GSA was not close to breaking. A major arson case had been turned over to the U.S.

  Attorney for prosecution. Jerry Russell left several other files of developing cases with Macimer, along with a stack of 5x8 cards synopsizing less important cases. These were provided by the field supervisors in the office—the sergeants of the organization, each of whom directed a squad of from fifteen to twenty agents.

  At nine-thirty Macimer had a conference with Joseph Taliaferro, the agent spearheading an investigation into the passing of secret documents from the Energy Research and Development Administration to a suspected foreign agent. The investigation had narrowed down to a half-dozen clerks of ERDA known to have access to the documents. All six were under surveillance. One of them, Taliaferro said, had lost the surveillance on two different occasions.

  “The first time was a week ago Friday when he ran a light. Our people couldn’t jump the red light without revealing themselves. We had three cars playing leapfrog with him this past Friday night. Two of them got hung up behind him when he made a left turn at the last second just before another light change. Either he got lucky twice in a row or he knew what he was doing. Our third team stayed with him—they were out ahead of him—until he got onto the George Washington Parkway heading south. He went by our car at an estimated seventy-five miles an hour. There was no way for our agents to go after him without being burned.”

  Macimer got out a map of Washington, D.C., and environs. It covered the entire area within the 495 Beltline. Taliaferro pointed out the intersections where the clerk had lost his tail, each time by timing a light. He had used two different bridges to cross the Potomac, Taliaferro pointed out, but both times he had ended up on the Parkway heading toward Alexandria. And Washington National Airport, Macimer thought. Some of those documents had shown up in New York.