by Joseph Flynn
In the meantime, Jean Morrissey found herself getting one important assignment after another. The vice president conferred with the president on the possible foreign cyberattack on New Orleans, but the second in command was running the show. When the time came for the party to choose a new presidential nominee, both women intended that the vice president have a record of accomplishment no one else could match.
The same strategy would apply to the general election.
With the added twist of accusing the Republicans of not having the nerve or the smarts to nominate a woman. The Democrats’ fondest hope was to have a GOP female as one of the two final Republican primary candidates. When the male candidate inevitably won and showed the Republicans still had their glass ceiling firmly in place, millions of disaffected, moderately conservative women would cast their votes for Jean Morrissey.
That was the plan, anyway.
At the moment, FBI Deputy Director Byron DeWitt stopped by to bring a report to the vice president. She asked him, “News from New Orleans?”
“Yes, ma’am. I just heard from Captain LaBelle. Special Agent Tall Wolf is staking out the building where the young man who made a video recording of the bank robbery lives. He’s waiting for back up from the NOPD and the U. S. Postal Service.”
That last tidbit drew a broad smile from the vice president.
“The Postal Service?”
DeWitt explained the presence of Marcellus Darcy, as relayed by Captain LaBelle.
“So Tall Wolf is resourceful. I like that.”
“So do I.”
“The Bureau isn’t annoyed I brought the BIA in?” Jean Morrissey asked.
“Director Haskins is withholding judgment; others never want to yield an inch of turf. I like it, myself.”
“You’re a maverick, DeWitt. You don’t see yourself ever becoming director or even retiring with an FBI pension, do you?”
“Can’t imagine either of those things.”
“Why did you join the Bureau in the first place?”
“I thought with my background in Chinese culture and language I might be of help to our country.”
The vice president nodded in agreement. “And, of course, you could always continue to do the same job as a private contractor and make a lot more money.”
“When I’m not teaching or surfing,” DeWitt said.
Jean Morrissey smiled again. Then she pushed her personal feelings aside.
“So, Mr. Deputy Director, do you see Chinese involvement in this case?”
“It will be carefully disguised and distanced, but yes.”
“And Tall Wolf will give us a good start on finding a way to deal with it?”
“I can’t think of anyone who’d have a better chance.”
“Let’s talk again later today. Maybe things will start breaking our way.”
DeWitt got to his feet. “Yes, ma’am.”
“One more thing. Will Tall Wolf be able to outmaneuver Marlene Flower Moon as well as catch the bank robbers?”
“I’ve taken steps on that front, ma’am.”
That brought forth Jean Morrissey’s warmest smile yet.
But only after DeWitt had left.
The vice president had learned of Marlene Flower Moon’s presidential ambitions from White House Chief of Staff Galia Mindel.
It was never too soon to start thwarting potential rivals.
If any woman was to come out of this affair with the lion’s share of the credit, it was going to be her. After yielding due deference to the president, of course. Leaving little if anything for the woman who was out in L.A. making a movie with Clay Steadman.
— Chapter 10 —
Toulouse Street, Midcity New Orleans
Marcellus Darcy parked his government sedan behind John Tall Wolf’s rental car. He joined John in his vehicle, taking the shotgun seat. Followed John’s gaze to the building given as Louis Mercer’s home address.
“Glad you could make it,” John said.
The NOPD cops had yet to arrive.
To be fair, Marcellus had gotten there quickly.
“You were on your rounds nearby?” John asked.
“About a mile away.” The postal inspector pointed his chin at the building the two of them were watching. “First two floors look empty. Top floor has all the windows shaded. You know what that makes me think?”
John said, “If the bad guys are in there, maybe they’re hiding in the basement.”
Marcellus looked at John. “You’re one of those guys, huh?”
“What guys?”
“The two or three who’re just as smart as me.”
John smiled. “You have any trouble persuading your boss to join me?”
“Only that he’d never heard of the BIA before. Had to look it up on his computer.”
“And once he did?”
“I told him the bank robbers and whoever turned off all the lights for them had interfered with the orderly delivery of the U.S. mail. It’s my responsibility to see it doesn’t happen again.”
“Perfect rationale,” John said.
“Plus, I told him it’d look good for both of us if we got some of the credit for bringing these dudes in.”
“Enlightened self-interest. How could he refuse?”
“He couldn’t, being my brother-in-law on top of everything else.”
John laughed. A moment later Captain Edmee LaBelle slipped into the car’s back seat.
“NOPD has the block surrounded. Anybody tries to run, they won’t get far.”
John introduced Marcellus and Edmee. Then he asked the captain, “Everybody’s ready if the bad guys come out shooting full auto?”
She said, “We don’t overlook little things like that. I even brought body armor for you two. The biggest sizes I could find. Hope they fit.”
“We’ll let the pros go in first,” John said. Turning to Marcellus, he added. “If that’s all right with you.”
“I was Shore Patrol, not a SEAL. I can wait.”
Edmee LaBelle smiled. “I like a sensible man. Problem is, I can’t keep my people out here for a long spell. The city doesn’t have that kind of money.”
John said, “Let’s see if we can do this on the cheap.”
He took out his cell phone and called Louis Mercer’s phone number.
The NOPD SWAT team entered the building and met no resistance. They cleared the basement, first and second floors within minutes and found Louis Mercer lying face down with his hands clasped behind his head in the open doorway of his third floor apartment, as John had instructed him to do. Louis was home alone.
Once it was determined he was unarmed and no weapon more deadly than a baseball bat and a steak knife could be located in his dwelling, the SWAT commander allowed Louis to sit in an armchair. After Captain LaBelle appeared with John and Marcellus, command of the scene was turned over to her.
She sat on the love seat opposite the armchair and said, “Louis, Louis, Louis. What am I going to do with you?”
John and Marcellus stayed on their feet, flanking Edmee. Staring at Louis.
Louis Mercer wore a thick, well-barbered goatee, but looked like he could still be an undergraduate, not a teaching assistant and a Ph.D candidate. Wearing sneakers, cut-off jeans and a sleeveless Tulane sweatshirt, he dressed like a kid, too.
“I don’t believe I did anything wrong,” he said. “Not in terms of breaking any law.”
The room was filled with bookcases. End tables and a coffee table were piled high with academic magazines and copies of the New York Times, the Washington Post and Le Monde. Neither of the federal cops nor the local police captain took Louis as a mope they’d be able to BS. Not for long anyway.
Which wasn’t to say they couldn’t put him off balance.
Edmee looked at John, silently inviting him to take the lead.
After all, he had the primary responsibility for the case. And the federal government was scarier than the NOPD. Then there was the fact that John was a very big
guy who never took his sunglasses off.
He sat on the love seat next to Edmee and leaned forward.
Marcellus moved behind Louis’ armchair.
Giving him one more thing to think about.
“You know any of those guys who robbed the bank, Louis?” John asked.
The teaching assistant’s eyes got big. “The Indians? No way.”
“You left the bank with them,” John said.
“Unh-uh. I left right after them.”
“How soon after them?” John asked.
Louis sat back in his chair, folded his arms and crossed his legs.
“Pretty soon, I’ll admit.”
“Soon enough that it doesn’t look good for you,” John said.
“I was scared, all right? How could I know some of them wouldn’t come back and kill everyone there? I ran while I had the chance.”
The flush of embarrassment on Louis’ face buttressed his claim of cowardice.
Or good sense, if you wanted to be charitable.
At the moment, John didn’t. He asked, “How could you be so fearful once the robbers had left, but you were brave enough to shoot a video of the robbery in progress?”
For a moment, Louis looked confounded. As if he’d never thought of that contradiction. He started to speak twice, couldn’t find the words he wanted and finally spat out, “That was different.”
“How?” John asked.
Louis gritted his teeth. “I’m a teacher, all right? In the Communications Department. The media and technology section. Having the opportunity to shoot a video of a bank robbery in progress, with robbers dressed up like Indians and carrying automatic weapons: That was a once in a lifetime opportunity. My first thought was, I’ll put this on YouTube. It’ll go way beyond viral. It’ll be a global pandemic. I didn’t have time to think about being scared.”
“But then, being a teacher who knows something about media, you thought of something better than YouTube,” John said.
Louis lowered his eyes and muttered, “I thought I could make a fortune selling limited rights.”
“Television, websites, newspapers, magazines,” John said. “Home and abroad.”
“Yeah.”
John said, “Or that could be your cover story.”
Louis dropped his defensive posture and said, “What?”
Fearing he was in a bad spot now, he looked like he might jump out of the chair, until Marcellus dropped a heavy hand on one of his shoulders. Louis looked up and decided to sit back. Seek a measure of composure.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
John told him, “What I mean is, you could be a part of the gang or at least working for them. You shoot the video at no risk, bug out right after them. Sell the video rights for whatever the market will bear. You get to keep all the glory and maybe a cut of the earnings but kick back most of the money to the robbers.”
Louis’ jaw dropped. Then he smiled.
“Man,” he said to John, “you are one cool thinker. You were in my class, that idea would get an ‘A.’” Louis laughed and said once more, “That is way cool. Only I didn’t do that.”
John looked at Marcellus and glanced at Edmee for their reactions.
They didn’t seem to feel Louis was lying.
Playing along with that, John said, “You know what you would have done if you were really an honest guy, Louis? I mean, once you’d cashed in.”
Saving himself from a lot of trouble, Louis saw right where John was going. He tried to get up once again, unsuccessfully. He looked at Marcellus and said, “Hey, man, I was just —”
“Tell us where you want to go, Louis,” John said.
“My bedroom, second door down the hall. Move the bureau out from the wall. Pull the carpet up. There’s a compartment cut out of the floor. You’ll find what you want there.”
Edmee got up and said, “I’ll go look.”
She came back within minutes, holding a small metal box held shut by an unsecured clasp. She sat next to John and handed it to him, saying, “I used my phone’s camera to document where it was hidden.”
“Open it up,” Louis said. “But, hey, the money’s mine.”
The money was three hundred and twenty-six dollars in old bills.
Hardly the stuff of a bank heist.
“Emergency money,” Louis said. “In case another big storm comes and I have to leave town in a hurry.”
John said, “So if we check this against what the bank lost …”
“Long as I get the same count back, go right ahead.”
Louis was sounding cocky now.
He added, “What you really want is right in there, too.”
The box held three flash drives. One of them was labeled in what looked to be Wite-Out, saying NOPD.
“See. I was planning to share with the cops all along. Once I made my commercial deals.”
John looked at Edmee and Marcellus. They both shrugged.
If John had wanted to be a hardass, he could have referred Louis’ situation to a U.S. attorney. An obstruction of justice charge might be considered. Concealing physical evidence of a crime, even if under no compulsion to produce such evidence, was a no-no. Punishable by up to five years in prison.
But that wasn’t the way John operated.
If he thought of something he wanted to ask Louis down the road, the guy would be more likely to cooperate if he caught a break now. John made plain to Louis that this was in fact his lucky day. He would get off with just a warning.
Then John asked his final question, “You went to the bank to see about getting a loan. What was the purpose of that loan?”
Louis said, “I wanted to see if I could refinance my motorcycle.”
After watching the flash drive copy of the robbery of the Thibodeaux State Bank on Louis Mercer’s laptop — thus assuring themselves that Louis wasn’t trying to chump them — John, Marcellus and Edmee left Louis’ apartment. John also had with him a complete list of the media outlets to which Louis had sold limited licenses to present his work of daring to the public.
Louis said he was also talking to a literary agent about a possible book deal.
He allowed that work on his doctoral dissertation might get pushed back.
Stepping out onto Toulouse Street, Edmee asked John, “You’ll send me a copy of that video?”
“Right away,” John said. “To your personal attention.”
Edmee smiled. “You aren’t careful, Special Agent Tall Wolf, you’ll give the federal government a good name.”
Captain LaBelle told Marcellus Darcy it was a pleasure to meet him.
He said he felt the same way. The two men watched her go.
“Fine looking woman,” Marcellus said.
“Absolutely.”
The postal inspector looked at John and asked, “You got someone special?”
“I do.”
Relieved that there was no threat of competition, Marcellus told John, “You let me know if there’s anything else I can help with. Your job’s a lot more interesting than mine.”
John nodded and watched him go.
Then he walked across the street to handle a task that was his alone.
He got into the back of the town car with the tinted windows that hadn’t been on the street when he’d entered Louis’ building. He was half-expecting to see Marlene Flower Moon, but Nelda Freeland greeted him, if the bleak look she directed at him could be characterized that way. The partition between the driver and the rear seat was up.
“How did you know this was my car?” she asked him.
“It wasn’t here when I went into the building. But there were still cops out here not that long ago. So the vehicle had to belong to someone who wouldn’t get chased away.”
“You might have just poked your nose into an FBI car.”
John shook his head. “A town car for DeWitt? Unh-uh.”
Nelda couldn’t argue that, much as she wanted to.
“I did think it might
be your auntie,” John allowed.
Nelda frowned. John could see the lines she’d have on her face as an old woman.
Barring a Botox counterattack.
Nelda told him, “I’ve had it with your impertinence, Tall Wolf.”
“You’re going to resign?” he asked.
“You bastard.”
“Or you could put my resignation into effect.”
John had give Marlene Flower Moon his signed resignation on the day he started work at the BIA. All it needed was a date and and a shove in the direction of the appropriate paper shufflers and he was gone. That was the way he wanted it.
He wasn’t going to let Coyote, or Coyote Junior, send him into a trap.
By pushing Nelda now, he’d learned that Marlene wouldn’t allow her niece to fire him.
Not for the moment anyway.
“You have anything helpful to say,” John asked, “or are you just snooping?”
“Get out,” Nelda told him.
John made no move to leave the car. “Just snooping then. That’s all right. As long as you’re here, you can do something for me.”
“I don’t work for you,” Nelda said with a note of glottal fry.
Sounded just like a low growl. She was Marlene’s niece, all right.
He said, “All right. I’ll go to the FBI. It’ll take longer that way. And with Vice President Morrissey watching this case closely she might wonder why I needed to go outside the BIA. But, hey, you’re the boss.”
Nelda called John a bastard again. He didn’t bother to criticize her use of repetition.
“What do you want?” Nelda asked.
“I’d thought of using a sketch artist to recreate the patterns of warpaint the bank robbers used. Then they could be checked against historical markings. Give us an idea of whether we’re dealing with a particular tribe. Now that we’ve got actual video that should be a lot easier to do.”
Nelda said, “That’s not something you could do, either from personal knowledge or searching reference material?”
“I don’t have the personal knowledge, and time spent doing research is time away from the investigation.”
“Some Indian you are.”
“Native American,” John told her. “But I can tell you one thing.”