Rising Phoenix

by Kyle Mills

“Nope.” Fallon didn’t get up, but leaned forward and pulled a pen from his pocket. “My name’s Matt Fallon.”

  Richardson wagged his finger up and down, trying to remember something. Finally it came to him. “Hey, aren’t you that guy from Boulder who quit climbing to join the CIA or something?”

  Fallon frowned. “FBI. There’s a difference.”

  “So how do you know me?”

  “I’ve been trying to find you for weeks, actually.”

  Richardson’s climbing partner was looking at him strangely. Fallon figured he was wondering if he’d hooked up with a mass murderer or something.

  “We’re looking for someone who was a customer of the bank you used to work for.” The climbing partner relaxed a bit and began slowly coiling his rope.

  Richardson sat down next to Fallon. “Seems like years ago, man—bank jobs, you know?”

  The agent nodded, remembering the shit jobs he had taken to finance climbing trips. “You might actually remember this guy. It was right before you left. He brought in a suitcase full of cash to buy some cashier’s checks.”

  “Oh, him. Yeah, I do remember him, sort of.”

  Fallon shook his head. This guy must not have looked at a TV or newspaper since he had left Saint Louis. It made him long for the good old days. “So what can you tell me about him?”

  “Nothing really—don’t remember his name or anything,” Richardson began, spreading his legs wide and beginning to stretch. “He came up to the teller window where I was working—but we didn’t do cashier’s checks there, you know. So I sent him to one of the customer service reps. I don’t remember which one.”

  Fallon decided to pass on asking for a description, they had twenty already. “Nothing else?”

  He continued stretching. “Actually, I saw him later that day, now that I think about it.”

  Fallon perked up. “Where was that?” he asked, putting the list of climbs that he wanted do that afternoon out of his head.

  “Up the street at a little shopping mall. I didn’t talk to him or anything. I was just stopped at a light and he was getting into his car.”

  Fallon scribbled in the notebook. His heart was beating faster and faster. “Remember what kind of car, by any chance?”

  “Sure. It’s not every day somebody walks into the bank with a suitcase full of cash—we thought he was a drug dealer, or something. Was he?”

  “Not exactly”

  Richardson looked disappointed. “It was a red Cherokee. Not one of those cool new Limiteds—just one of the old boxy ones. I remember thinking that a guy with that much cash ought to have a nicer ride, you know?”

  “Do you remember anything else about the car? Things hanging from the rearview mirror, dents, bumper stickers—anything, really.”

  “Nothing like that—it was really clean. Looked new. It did have those Save the Chesapeake plates on it, though.”

  Fallon looked at him with a confused expression.

  “You know—from Maryland. I went to school there. The climbing sucks.”

  29

  Baltimore, Maryland,

  March 6

  “What the hell’s going on?” Robert Swenson demanded in a loud voice, bursting through the front door of the apartment.

  Hobart looked up from a thick computer printout, annoyed at his partner’s untimely entrance. He had a headache that no aspirin seemed to be able to cure.

  “What’s the problem, Bob?” he asked calmly, already knowing the answer.

  “I just watched one of our guys get blown away on the steps of some jail in New York and now I’m hearing that the guy that shot him was shot from another building when he was getting away.”

  Hobart leaned back in his chair, turning the printout to face his desk. “I saw the report,” he said cheerfully. “A stroke of good luck—looks like we won’t have to close up shop as soon as we thought.”

  Swenson eyed him suspiciously. “How do you know he didn’t already talk?”

  “I have a well-positioned… friend. He confirmed it.”

  “Is he reliable?”

  Hobart nodded. He had caught his “friend” stuffing his pockets full of cash at a drug bust almost ten years ago. He could have turned him in but decided against it. Better to hold out for a favor if he ever really needed one.

  After confirming Nelsons silence, this particular friend had made it clear that all debts were repaid. He had slammed the phone down before Hobart could threaten him again. There had been no answer since.

  “They haven’t released the name of the shooter, but they’re broadcasting a picture. You wouldn’t be acquainted, would you?” Swenson asked.

  “Karns,” Hobart said, feigning disgust. “I was wrong to have let him back on board. Loose cannon. He must have heard the report that Nelson was talking and figured he’d try to make up for the strychnine thing.”

  “And who do you figure got him?”

  “Oh, hell, probably the Bureau. They fucked up and now they’re covering up. Doesn’t look too good, them blowing away their star witness.” Hobart could tell from his partner’s expression that he wasn’t buying it.

  “And where were you yesterday at ten o’clock?” Swenson asked, an edge of nervousness in his voice. Hobart smiled. He could tell that his partner desperately wanted to believe that he hadn’t been involved. People with that kind of bias were easily convinced.

  “I was in the office working on our budget.”

  He knew that Swenson had been in D.C. the entire day of the shooting and had no way of knowing whether that was true or not. He would undoubtedly check the time and date of the budget file on the computer the minute he got the opportunity. Hobart had temporarily reset the internal time clock on the system when he had saved it. It would read 10:35 A.M., roughly a half hour after the incident. Not proof positive, of course, but it should ease his partner’s mind long enough to finish this thing.

  “They’re gonna trace Nelson and Karns back to you sooner or later,” Swenson said. “We’ve still gotta get out of here.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t know them that well. Even with a couple a hundred agents on it, they won’t get back to me for at least four weeks. So I figure we’ve got two weeks to wrap things up and get a little more work done.”

  Swenson looked doubtful.

  “I’ve got some stuff I’ve really got to finish up, Bob. You mind?”

  Swenson stood. “So what’s your plan for today?”

  “I’m heading out in about an hour or so. Be back tonight.”

  “Maybe we can get together and talk about how we’re gonna wrap this thing up,” Swenson said hopefully. On his way out, he paused and looked down at the chess board sitting next to the television. Two white pawns, representing Nelson and Karns, were lying on their sides. Two blue pawns representing the dead cartel enforcers were in a similar position.

  Alone again, Hobart flipped the printout on his desk over and continued running down the endless columns of numbers with the aid of a ruler.

  The list had been provided by an old acquaintance who worked for C&P Telephone. Phil Nelson’s capture had jolted him like a bolt of lightning. He’d spent hours running through the operation in his mind, trying to find where he might have screwed up.

  In the end, he had decided that Nelson had blown it somewhere. That was a risk you ran in this type of operation—it was impossible to do everything yourself.

  He had gone to bed that night chalking up Nelson’s capture to the fortunes of war—confident that in the next two weeks he could continue to turn public opinion, and then slip silently out of the country.

  It had been almost three in the morning when he had bolted upright in his bed. He had mentioned the DiPrizzio operation to Blake at the hotel. Could the Reverend have called the Bureau? Hobart dismissed the idea at first, but had been unable to get back to sleep. In the end, it had nagged at him enough to spend an entire day on a tour of the pay phones of the greater Baltimore metro area. He had pulled off every freeway exit
ramp between Blake’s office and home, and between the hotel where they had met and Blake’s home, copying down the numbers of the first pay phones that he saw.

  His acquaintance at the phone company had almost choked on the list of numbers, but Hobart had explained that the Reverend was getting death threats and that this was an integral part of the investigation. A devout follower of Blake, his acquaintance had called in some favors and retrieved a list of the long-distance numbers called from those phones on the dates that Hobart had supplied him.

  He rubbed his eyes, painfully aware that the phone company could have had their computer search specifically for the FBI hotline number and saved him hours of tedium and a migraine headache. Everyone in the country knew that number, though. It had been running along the bottom of every TV screen in America for the past two months.

  He was on the second-to-the-last page when he found it. Leaning back in his chair, he tossed the thick stack of paper in the garbage. He had underestimated his former employer. Blake was a consummate actor. He had left the hotel with just the right mix of nervousness, sadness, and growing calm. Not overacted, not underacted.

  So now he knew. The question was, what could he do with the information?

  Mark Beamon paused in the open door to the SIOC. The normally fast pace of the agents inside had been accelerated to a fevered pitch. People talked loudly on phones, typed furiously on laptop computers, televisions blared CNN. The increased activity further tightened the hand that gripped the back of his head every time he walk into the JEH Building.

  Laura was leaning over a man’s shoulder, reading off his computer screen. Beamon threaded his way toward her, nodding to the hustling agents who bid him a good morning.

  “Jesus, Laura—do you live here?” It was seven-thirty A.M. He had hoped to beat her to the office for once, but as usual he felt like he was strolling in at ten.

  “Just like to put in a full day at the office,” she said, walking around the table.

  Beamon grunted and made his way to the coffeemaker. “Want one?” he asked her.

  She shook her head. “Had two already this morning. I’m wired.”

  “Well then, why don’t you step into my parlor,” Beamon said, heading toward an empty conference room. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  Holding a manila folder under her arm, Laura closed the door behind her and began in as excited a voice as he’d ever heard from her. “We’ve got guys waiting at the front door of the MVA—Maryland Motor Vehicles Administration. They’ll start running down Cherokee registrations this morning.”

  “What’s our time frame on getting a list cross-referenced with the driver’s licenses of people who fit our guy’s description.”

  She shrugged. “I have no idea. State motor vehicle departments have different database capabilities. I should be able to give you a pretty good idea later today.”

  She took a seat at the small table across from Beamon. “Our dead shooter’s name is William Karns.” She slid the manila folder across the conference table. Beamon picked it up and began reading.

  “His prints were on file ’cause he was an ex-cop.”

  “Seems to be a pattern emerging.”

  “It gets better. We have three witnesses who place Karns living in an abandoned house only a few blocks from the site of that strychnine poisoning.”

  “So he’s probably not just some crazy—and it looks like you were wrong about the strychnine poisoning being a copycat.”

  “It looks like we were wrong,” Laura corrected in a slightly annoyed tone. “We’ve got agents digging into his background and known acquaintances right now.”

  “I didn’t catch the morning paper. What’s the press got?”

  “Wild speculation, mostly. They don’t have his name, obviously, and they’re running theories from suicide, to the FBI killing him, to one of his own getting him …” Her voice trailed off.

  “Come on, what else?”

  Laura looked down at the table. “You’re taking a lot of criticism for letting Nelson get shot.”

  “Yeah, I seem to be developing kind of a love/hate thing with the press.”

  “I don’t know how you can joke about this, Mark. The thing with Nelson wasn’t even your idea and now you’re going to be left holding the bag while everyone runs for cover.”

  Beamon nodded thoughtfully. “It’s just politics, Laura. I hope you’re taking notes. Always make sure you’ve scoped out a comfortable chair before the music stops.”

  “Well, you’re setting one hell of an example.”

  Beamon laughed. “This is one of those ’do as I say and not as I do’ situations. You’ll find there are a lot of those where I’m concerned.”

  Laura leaned back in her chair and relaxed a little. “Well, I hope you know that I’m behind you, Mark.”

  “No, you’re not. You’ll run for cover too if you have to.”

  An expression of deep hurt crossed Laura’s face. “How can you say …”

  Beamon held up his hands, silencing her. “I know you’re willing to go down with me in this thing, Laura, and that means a lot. But there’s no point to it. Besides, I’m counting on you being Director someday and giving me a big promotion.”

  Laura forced a smile. “And maybe I just will.”

  Beamon pushed his chair back on two legs and balanced precariously with his feet on the edge of the table. “Enough of this political crap. Chasing criminals is supposed to be fun. Are you ready for our field trip?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you mean, what do I mean? I mean, let’s get out there, have a greasy breakfast at Denny’s, and do detective stuff. You and me—the whole day. It’ll be just like Starsky and Hutch.” He dropped the front of the chair back to the floor and stood.

  “Mark, I can’t just leave …”

  He waved his hand dismissively. “The Bureau can survive without you in the office for one day, Laura. Delegate. We’re leaving in a half hour.”

  He slugged down the last of his coffee and headed for the door. Laura scrambled out ahead of him to try to get a day’s worth of work done in thirty minutes.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Laura. Eggs fried at a mom and pop diner have a certain subtlety that just can’t be achieved in a chain restaurant.” Beamon was gesturing wildly with his right hand, paying little attention to his left, which was steering the car. A toothpick hung loosely from his lips. “But to me, Denny’s had the best quality/price/quantity ratio.”

  Laura was feeling sick from the Grand Slam breakfast lodged in her stomach and Beamon’s wild driving. His dissertation on the history of the greasy Southern breakfast wasn’t helping any, either. She decided to change the subject.

  “You still haven’t told me where we’re going.”

  “Baltimore.”

  “Baltimore. Okay. Why?”

  “I told you already—to do detective stuff.” He dug a wad of yellow paper from his shirt pocket and handed it to her.

  She unfolded the pages. They were from the phone book. The word “Theaters” was in the top right-hand corner of the first page.

  “We’re going to see a movie?”

  He gave her an exaggerated look of disgust. “No, we’re not going to see a goddam movie. Flip the page.”

  She turned it over. The heading THEATRICAL MAKEUP was highlighted in green.

  “We’ve theorized that the guy in Poland and the guy at the bank were one and the same and that he was wearing sophisticated makeup. A wig, fake beard, that kind of stuff, right? Now, if he is from Baltimore, it stands to reason that he got the disguises around there. So, all we have to do is find a shopkeeper who remembers a short, thin guy buying those particular items about two months ago. Show him the driver’s license pictures we’re gonna get from the MVA, and budda bing. We’re done.”

  “Why Baltimore?” Laura asked, concentrating on keeping her voice even. Why hadn’t she thought of that?

  “Well, what do we know about this guy? We know he
’s not from D.C. or Saint Louis, ’cause both those cities were implicated with the cashier’s checks—the FedEx place was in D.C., and the bank was in Saint Louis. Now we find out he has Maryland plates. D.C.’s an easy drive from Baltimore, and you can make it to Saint Louis in a day—I looked it up. Also, our anonymous informant called from a pay phone near Baltimore. My gut’s never failed me in almost twenty years—and it’s screaming Baltimore.”

  “Are you sure it’s not the three eggs, bacon, ham, hash browns, and biscuits and gravy?”

  Beamon chuckled. “Stop—you’re making me hungry.”

  “What about somewhere else in Maryland—say Rockville? It fits the facts, too.”

  Beamon shrugged. “Yeah, you could be right. If we don’t get what we want today, we’ll get some guys to expand the search.”

  Laura leaned forward and flipped on the radio. She had grown accustomed to having the news blaring in her ear twenty-four hours a day. “It’s a long shot…”

  “Hey, at least it got us out of the office.”

  Laura juggled her legal pad and the large map of Baltimore that they had picked up at a gas station on the way there. Map reading was just not her forte.

  “Turn right here,” she ordered at the last minute. Beamon turned the wheel hard, squealing the tires.

  “Jesus, Laura. A little advance warning would be nice.”

  “Why don’t you let me drive and you navigate,” she asked hopefully. The words ’suicide seat’ had taken on real meaning in the last couple of hours.

  “Nah. Reading maps in the car makes me sick.”

  They were on their last costume shop in the Baltimore area. No luck so far, though Laura had a list of names to follow up on the next day. People who may have been working on the dates in question, but either weren’t in today or had changed jobs.

  “There it is.” She pointed across Beamon’s hose and out the drivers side window. He wheeled the car around unexpectedly, making a U-turn in the middle of the street, and pulled up in front of the shop. Laura gripped the dash.

  “Everybody out,” Beamon announced unnecessarily. Laura had the door opened and was hopping from the car before it had entirely stopped.