Dog Tags

by David Rosenfelt

  They talked for a brief time, since Andy had to get off to answer more police questions. Willie promised to get a flight back the next morning.

  But there was plenty of time until morning, so Willie went back to the bar to have a few more beers and watch the TV coverage. He wasn’t going to be chasing M that night, or ever, so he could drink without worrying about staying alert.

  Jason Greer came into the hotel a few minutes later. He had been repeatedly admonished by M to stay out of public view as much as possible, since his picture had been one of those that Carpenter had shown on Larry King.

  But M hadn’t called in the two days since he left, and Greer had been going nuts in the room. So he went out to a fast-food restaurant, using the drive-thru so that customers wouldn’t see him.

  Then, when he returned to the hotel, he did what he had been doing all along, which was self-park the van rather than use the valet. This was far less to avoid being recognized than to prevent anyone from seeing what was in the locked rear section of the van.

  Greer walked down the lobby toward the elevators, casually looking into the bar and the televisions that were on in there. He stopped in his tracks when the first thing he saw was the picture of M, and a graphic saying that he had been killed.

  Trying to control his rising feeling of panic, Greer went into the bar to watch the television and find out whatever he could. He didn’t notice Willie Miller drinking a beer at the end of the bar, nor would it have meant anything if he had. He didn’t know who Willie was, or what he looked like.

  But Willie noticed him.

  He couldn’t be sure, but he had a good eye for faces, and he thought he recognized Greer from the picture Andy had shown on television. And the way Greer was staring at the screen, trying unsuccessfully to hide the look of confusion and fear on his face, made it far more likely that he was right.

  Willie went out and called Andy again, doing so from a vantage point where he could see the bar. No one answered, so Willie left a message in which he said that he thought he was looking at Greer, but he wasn’t sure.

  As he was getting off the phone, Greer was leaving the bar. Willie followed him and got on the same elevator. Greer pressed 9, and Willie briefly debated whether he should press a different floor so as not to look suspicious. He decided to go to 9 as well, since Greer would have no reason to think that Willie was tailing him. If a potential tail, probably a cop, knew Greer’s whereabouts well enough to be in the hotel, there would be little reason to follow him to his room. They would have other ways of learning the room number, if they didn’t know it already.

  Willie caught a break when Greer got off the elevator and went to room 942, which was almost directly across from the elevator. Willie was thus able to walk past him as if heading for a different room.

  Willie then went to his own room, which was on the third floor, to watch more of the coverage and figure out his next move. He couldn’t be sure it was Greer; his mind and memory could have been playing tricks on him and causing him to be overly suspicious.

  But it would be worth a day or two to find out, even though the idea of more time alone in Everett was not all that appealing. Regardless, he would stay and keep an eye on Greer.

  The question he needed to answer was how.

  ALMOST GETTING KILLED CAN BE EXHAUSTING, AND I WOULD LOVE TO GET SOME SLEEP. Unfortunately, detectives usually have a lot of questions to ask when they find someone with their head blown open on a kitchen floor. The media have set up camp on the street outside, but they’re easier to avoid.

  Even though Pete Stanton is in charge, and therefore we are obviously not under suspicion, the process is very time consuming. This is especially true since two people, Laurie and me, are very much involved. Milo, arguably the key player in the entire incident, escapes unscathed, and he and Tara are in the corner, sleeping together.

  When we’ve finally answered everything there is to be answered, and when forensics and the coroner have concluded their respective business, my need for sleep is put on another hold. That’s because Benson and two other FBI agents show up at around two AM to make a long night much longer.

  Benson talks to Pete for a while, probably getting an update, and when they’re finished Pete comes over and asks me if I want him to hang around as a buffer. I thank him but say it’s not necessary; I’ve had plenty of experience going one-on-one with Benson.

  “You’ve been a busy boy,” Benson says when he comes over to me.

  “As have you. Any chance that with Landon and M out of the way, we’re out of bad guys?”

  “We’re never out of bad guys,” he says. “You called my office before.”

  I nod. “Speaking of bad guys… Jonathan Chaplin is somebody for you to check out. He runs a hedge fund called C and F Investments. Landon was making the investments through that fund, and they were doing it through a bunch of different brokerage houses.”

  “Chaplin know what was going on?” he asks.

  I nod. “Definitely. But I’ve got something else for you that’s more important.”

  “What is it?”

  “First we need to make a deal,” I say.

  “What a surprise” is his dry response, which I ignore.

  “I want your word that an announcement will be made tomorrow stating in no uncertain terms that Billy Zimmerman is innocent. I don’t want people thinking he’s a murderer who was released on a technicality. The truth is he’s been a goddamn hero all his life, and when Erskine got shot he ran at the killer and disarmed him, even though he couldn’t stand Erskine.”

  Benson nods. “Fair enough. Done.”

  “And I want him taken care of financially.”

  “Kiss my ass, Carpenter.”

  “That’s what Erskine’s note said… did you write it for him?”

  He ignores the question. “You want me to give Zimmerman my pension?”

  “I don’t care how it happens. Zimmerman has been sitting in jail for a crime you knew he didn’t commit. Beyond that, the FBI committed jury tampering. I don’t think that was your call; I’ll bet it goes high up to people who will be seriously pissed and embarrassed to have it made public. Well, I’ll go on 60 Minutes to get the story out, if I have to, and you’ll have every reporter in America digging for more.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” he says.

  “You’ll do better than that.” I’m trying to extract a promise from Benson, though he wouldn’t be above breaking it if it suited him. My threat to go public is my insurance.

  “Okay,” he says. “Are you finished now? Or do you want my firstborn?”

  “I’m finished.”

  “Okay, now here are my terms,” he says. “As long as I deliver on my end, you tell no one about FBI involvement in this case. And you tell me everything you know, right now.”

  “Deal. I have reason to believe that the next commodity that Landon was hoping to profit from is natural gas.”

  “Why do you say that?” he asks.

  “The same companies that profited from the oil and rhodium through C and F are poised to make an even bigger profit on gas.”

  “Do you know what they’re planning?”

  I shake my head. “No. But with Landon and M gone, I would hope there’s no one else to plan anything.”

  “You keep hoping,” Benson says, the implication being that he plans on doing a lot more than that.

  Once Benson leaves, Laurie and I get into bed. The implications of what happened here hit me full-bore, and being able to hold her is a substantial comfort. Of course, momentous events are not a requirement for me to enjoy holding Laurie, but tonight it seems even more necessary.

  It’s not until the morning that I think to check my phone messages, and I have one from Willie, telling me that he thinks he has seen Jason Greer. My very strong hunch is that he’s imagining things, especially since it now seems very unlikely that the M sighting in Everett was real.

  I call Willie back, but his cell phone doesn’t answer
. I leave a message expressing my doubts, in gentle terms, and tell him to call me.

  Now it’s time to experience the absolute best part of my job. I head down to the prison to get Billy, who is being processed out. I have to wait less than twenty minutes, a blip in prison time, and there he is.

  We do a real firm handshake, and he grabs my left arm with his left hand, but we avoid the full-on man-hug. Then we head outside to my car, with him stopping briefly to look up at the sky and take a deep breath. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be cooped up in a cell, so I have no insight as to how it feels to be finally let out of that cell.

  But if Billy’s expression is any indication, it must feel great.

  BILLY DOESN’T WANT TO GO OUT FOR A BIG BREAKFAST. He also doesn’t want to have a beer, or go to a park, or see any friends. He wants to go directly to my house, because that’s where Milo is.

  On the way he asks me to tell him what has gone on, and I tell him I will when we get home. For the time being I describe how Milo saved my life last night.

  He smiles and says, “I know what that feels like. He saved mine when I got back from Iraq.”

  We pull up in front of the house, and I tell Billy to hurry up and get inside. I say this because Milo is at the window, clawing at it and going nuts at the sight of Billy, and I’m afraid he’s going to come crashing through.

  I open the door and let Billy in first, and Milo re-creates the flying-dog trick he did on M. Except this time he’s not after anything in Billy’s hand; he’s after Billy. They roll around on the floor for a while, with Billy laughing the whole time. Tara looks at me as if wondering who these two lunatics are on the floor.

  Laurie hears the chaos and comes downstairs, laughing when she sees Billy and Milo. I wait until they’ve calmed down before introducing her, since she and Billy have never met.

  Laurie makes pancakes, her specialty, and Billy inhales them in Marcus-like fashion. “I never thought I was going to have food this good again,” he says.

  Billy pauses chewing long enough to again ask me to fill him in on everything he’s missed relating to his case. I do that in some detail, only leaving out the parts about the FBI’s being on the murder scene that night, and the jury tampering. I promised Benson I would keep that to myself, and I don’t want to jeopardize the financial payoff I’ve arranged for Billy.

  “So it’s over?” Billy asks.

  “Yes. You’ll be fully exonerated today.”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t mean my case. I mean the operation they were running.”

  “I think so, but I certainly can’t be sure. And I don’t think Benson agrees, though he’s not in a position to just assume the best.”

  “I agree with Benson,” he says.

  Laurie nods. “So do I.”

  “Why?”

  “Two reasons,” Billy says. “One, there’s a lot of money that’s been made, and a lot more to come. If Landon and M were alone at the top of this, then that money has no one to collect it, and no one to spend it. In my experience money is always surrounded by people.”

  “And the second reason?” I say, though I am formulating my own.

  Laurie provides it for him. “Erskine. He doesn’t figure. If he was bad and in on it, then he would have no reason to blackmail them; they were his money source and there was plenty to go around. If he wasn’t bad, then who recruited the other soldiers?”

  Billy nods. “Right,” he says, though I already knew that. “There’s got to be someone else, someone who could get to Erskine’s people, who also has the smarts to handle the financial end of this.”

  It hits me like a ton of bricks. I know exactly who that someone is. My mind is racing such that I can barely hear Billy continue.

  “You know who worries me right now?” he says, but doesn’t wait for an answer. “Greer.”

  I grab the phone, in the moment deciding which of two crucial phone calls I should make first. I call Willie, but again his phone goes to voice mail. I leave another message, this time far more urgent.

  As I’m dialing the second call, I say, “Laurie, please Google ‘Everett, Massachusetts’ right away. I want to know what industry they have there.”

  “What am I looking for?” she asks.

  “You’ll know when you find it,” I say, as she rushes over to the computer.

  I call Benson, but he’s not in his office and not answering his cell phone. I leave a message that it’s absolutely urgent that he call me.

  When I get off the phone, Laurie is getting up from the computer. The look on her face says it all. “Everett has one of only five liquefied natural gas terminals in the United States. It’s where the tankers dock.”

  That is exactly what I was afraid of. “Shit,” I say, substantially understating the case.

  “The terminals are considered prime targets for a terrorist attack.”

  “Shit.”

  “It’s only four and a half miles from Boston.”

  This time I don’t say shit.

  I say, “Willie.”

  WILLIE SET A WAKE-UP CALL FOR SIX O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING.

  He figured that would be early enough to keep track of Greer, unless Greer was in Everett to do dairy farming. Not being used to tailing people, he was faced with a dilemma. If he waited inside the hotel to see him, then he might not be able to get to his car in time to follow Greer wherever he might go. If he waited outside, then he was worried that he’d have no idea at all where Greer was.

  Willie solved the problem by giving the valet fifty bucks to let him park his car on the hotel driveway, where he could get to it quickly. He then waited in the lobby near the only elevator bank that stopped at the ninth floor. If Greer came down, Willie would see him and be able to get to his car in time.

  At around eight o’clock Willie realized that he had left his cell phone in the room. He debated whether or not to go get it, and came down on the negative. If he did, he could miss Greer, and then wind up spending the rest of the day waiting for someone who was already gone.

  By noon Willie was bored and starving, not necessarily in that order. He saw a room-service waiter pushing a cart, and asked if he would consider bringing him food there. The waiter seemed generally okay with it, and his enthusiasm increased when Willie gave him another fifty dollars as an incentive.

  Willie ordered just about everything he could think of, and ate quickly, since he knew that sitting in the lobby with all those trays looked weird. He finished and called for the trays to be picked up, and that was accomplished by one o’clock.

  One hour later, Geer came off the elevator and went outside. Willie followed him and watched him walk to the self-service parking lot. Willie then went to his own car, and when Greer came out driving a van, Willie followed after him at a decent distance. Fortunately for Willie, the van was large and therefore distinctive and easy to pick out in the traffic.

  Greer drove north for about a mile and a half, and then east toward the water. He drove slowly and carefully, so Willie had no trouble following him.

  But losing him wasn’t what Willie was worried about; he was trying to figure out where Greer was going and why he was going there. And in the back of his mind was the very real possibility that it wasn’t Greer at all; that he’d been mistaken all along.

  But every instinct Willie had told him he was right.

  Greer reached an area above the water, and then turned onto a winding road that led downward, past a sign that said NO THROUGH STREET. Willie decided not to follow him; since it was a dead end he would be easily noticed at best, and a sitting duck at worst.

  Instead he parked along the road at a spot from which he could see the rest of the road below. He watched as Greer parked his van almost directly below Willie. Both of them overlooked the pier and had a view of the water, though Willie’s was from a higher elevation. Off to the left was a huge industrial plant with enormous tanks, though Willie did not know exactly what its purpose was.

  This seemed to W
illie to be suspicious behavior, and reaffirmed his feeling that it was, in fact, Greer. But it didn’t tell him what to do, and worst of all, he had no way to call anyone for advice or backup.

  So he waited, by himself, without even a room-service guy to provide sustenance.

  I TELL CINDY SPODEK’S ASSISTANT TO INTERRUPT HER MEETING, THAT IT’S URGENT I SPEAK WITH HER. Apparently it isn’t FBI protocol to interrupt important meetings when defense lawyers call, and he resists doing so. So I up it a notch and describe it as a matter of life or death, and he relents.

  Fifteen seconds later Cindy is on the phone. “Life or death?” she asks. She doesn’t sound that worried, since she knows I’ll say anything to get what I want.

  “Many lives and many deaths,” I say, and relate the situation as quickly as I can, without leaving out anything important.

  “Have you spoken to Benson?” she asks.

  “I can’t reach him.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Make sure that nothing is happening at that terminal, and maybe find Willie in the process.”

  “Andy, I can’t order an FBI terrorist operation on your hunch. That’s not how we operate.”

  “Cindy, this is real; I can feel it. If you don’t stop it, we could be looking at a catastrophe. If I’m wrong, we’ll be embarrassed. I’ll take whatever heat I can take. But I know if I spoke to Benson, he’d move on it.”

  “Hold on,” she says, and I wait for about three and a half endless minutes before she gets back on the phone. When she does, the stress in her voice is unmistakable. “Andy, I’m on it; I have to go.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “There’s a tanker due in port in twenty minutes.”

  I hang up the phone, then I stare at it and mentally beg for it to ring. Billy and Laurie do the same; we are silent, knowing that there is nothing more we can do, other than wait.

  It is five minutes later that Benson calls, and I quickly tell him what has happened, and that I have already spoken to Cindy, who said she was on the move. If he’s annoyed by my intervention in bureau affairs, he certainly doesn’t sound it.