by James Carver
There was a deadly hush. It would only be broken by Stevens’s answer to Chambers’s question. Stevens’s reply was halting and hoarse. “I think it was perhaps a mistake. I should have checked.”
“That is not in doubt,” screeched Chambers. “The question you must answer now is, will you resign, Deputy?”
Stevens had been ambushed and had no means of defense. He was like a punch-drunk boxer staggering around the ring in search of a final blow to end his misery. He had run out of words, and exhaustion had now possessed him. Chief Walker came to his side and spoke into the microphone.
“Folks, I think we should wrap this up now if there are no more questions on last night’s shooting. After all, that is what we came here to answer questions about.”
“What about ‘God’s Detective,’ Chief Walker?” challenged Chambers.
“What about him, Miss Chambers? This is a press conference about the Earl Logan killings. When we have a press conference about Father Devlin, you can ask about Father Devlin. Thank you all for coming.”
As Walker and a shell-shocked Stevens exited the room, Walker patted Stevens on the back and said with undisguised pleasure, “Maybe, Greg, the priest wasn’t such a good influence after all.”
Over in downtown Columbus, Trayder Stein had watched the press conference in his office. By the time it had ended and the news station returned to the anchor, he was beaming like the Cheshire cat that had just got all the cream. He reclined in his high-backed, leather executive chair and had himself a celebratory shot of bourbon.
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about! God’s own alcoholic detective!”
His cell buzzed and Stein took the call with pleasure. “Hi… Yeah, you saw it too? Magnificent, wasn’t it? I told you my two boys would come through with the goods… You’re welcome… It ain’t over yet as far as Devlin is concerned. My boys are all over that guy like a fat kid on a cake, and who knows what more they’ll find my friend… Who knows?”
40
George Brennan wore a light brown suit with a dark brown tie. His hair had grayed at the sides, and he looked jowlier and heavier-set than the last time Devlin had laid eyes on him. But he was still as dapper and graceful as Devlin remembered. Devlin had known Brennan from Special Investigations. He had been Devlin’s supervisor on his first case out in Kabul. One of the few black airmen of his generation to be awarded the top honor, the John Levitow Award, at Airman Leadership School, he was a stellar agent. For a kid out of Roseland, Chicago, Brennan had come a long way.
“I heard you’d become a priest, Gabe. Doesn’t the church give you a clean change of clothes these days?” Brennan joked.
“I look like this ’cause I’ve been up all night looking for Ed,” said Devlin, massaging the back of his head.
“Well, you just found him. You gonna tell us how the hell you knew he was here?”
“It was just a pretty compelling hunch which I should’ve worked out before now. If you want to be invisible, take a ride with the people no one else wants to see. And the Gypsies left town round the same time Ed did.”
Ed spoke up. “They saved my life, Gabe.” He was looking very sorry for himself. “They took me in and gave me an old trailer to myself. They gave me kindness where I had no right to find it.”
“I can see that, Ed. As long as you’re safe, that’s all I care about. That’s all I’ve cared about since I spoke to you last Saturday.”
Ed didn’t answer. Nor did George. And the guy in the suit who had given Devlin a sore head didn’t look the conversational kind either. Devlin realized they were going to try and stonewall him, keep Devlin out of their operation. But he wasn’t going to let that happen. Not after all he’d been through. Over his dead body.
“So what’s going on? Why were two private detectives tracking you down, Ed? Tracking me down too? Why did you lie to me and tell me this was all about gambling?”
More silence.
“Anyone gonna tell me what you’re all doing huddled up in a trailer in Cuyahoga Park?”
Again, nobody replied. The three men stared blankly back at Devlin.
“You’re kidding me?” said Devlin. “I came five hundred miles to make sure Ed was okay and no one’s gonna tell me why he’s here?”
“I’m sorry, Gabe,” said Ed dolefully. “I couldn’t tell you what was going on when you called. I was under orders.”
“We can’t tell you anything either, Gabe,” added George.
“I come all the way from Boston by way of DC, have your boy here knock me out stone-cold, and I don’t get to know why?”
“It’s classified government business,” said George stiffly.
Devlin sat back gingerly in his seat, careful of his still-raw head, and gave the men a disdainful look. Then he said, “Okay. You know what? You don’t need to say anything. I know what’s going on here anyway. I know that and plenty more.”
“You can keep bluffing and working it, Gabe. Won’t make any difference.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure, George. See, I’ve been in Halton Springs for less than a week, and I’ve gotten to know a fair bit.” Devlin leaned forward and stuck a finger at Ed. “Ed here was working at the Logan Ranch and chauffeuring for Lazard. I know that much.”
Brennan was a man not given to facial expression. He took professional pride in how hard he was to read, so he kept his poker face. Ed, however, couldn’t hide his surprise that Devlin knew this.
“I know that on Saturday,” Devlin continued, “without warning, Ed upped and left his job and disappeared into thin air. A week later, I find him hiding in a trailer being looked after by two government agents. One of whom”—at this point Devlin turned to George—“if his past form is anything to go by, probably holds a very senior rank by now. So my guess is, you, George, ran Ed as an agent, but for some reason his cover got blown. So that’s why he’s here. And the fact he’s all the way up in Cuyahoga being babysat in a trailer by a suit with a gun tells me his life is in danger. And if you’re running that kind of operation, you must have moved from the Air Force to somewhere like Homeland Security by now because this sure as hell isn’t any Air Force business. So if Homeland’s running Ed as an agent on the Logan Ranch and having him driving for Lazard, then you suspect Logan Enterprises and Lazard of some kind of major criminal activity.”
There was a pause. Brennan was starting to lose his poker face. He was starting to look uncomfortable.
“He knows, George!” Ed exploded. “You should tell him.”
“Shut the fuck up, Ed. Shut the fuck up,” yelled Brennan, his usual composure escaping him for a moment. Then he regained his calm and said to Devlin, “We weren’t running Ed as an agent. We had him there as eyes and ears on the Logan Ranch. Nothing formal. An informant, not an agent.”
“Not far off though. And I take it, then, you are Homeland now?”
“You found Ed, he’s okay, it was nice catching up, but you should go,” said Brennan.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You’ll go if we tell you to go,” said the guy in the suit.
“Nobody was talking to you, junior,” said Devlin.
“I hope you’re enjoying that headache I gave you,” sniped the suit.
“Not now, son, the grown-ups are talking,” said Devlin. The suit muttered a curse under his breath, but Devlin paid no attention and continued to address George. “If you tell me what you’re up to, then I’ll let you know what I got. And I think you’ll find you get the better end of that deal.”
“You always were a smart bastard, Gabe, but somehow I doubt you got anything we haven’t,” Brennan replied.
“Maybe. Maybe not. Let’s just say for starters, just to give you an appetite for what might be to come, I got a link running from a guy called Trayder Stein through the Freedom Medical Company through an offshore back to Logan Enterprises.”
“Shit,” Ed blurted out.
“I was always the better detective, George. You know that,” said Devlin.
“It’s a load of bull, Gabe. You’re reaching,” said Brennan.
“Okay. Then I’ll say goodbye and take what I know. And seeing as you think what I’m trading is worthless, then it’ll be no loss to you.” Devlin stood. “Happens of course that I have the kind of information you’ve been working months to get even a sniff of. That probably cost your operation hundreds of thousands, maybe more, in taxpayer dollars too. But you’re obviously very confident I got nothing, so not knowing what I got evidently won’t keep you awake at night, George. Goodbye.”
Devlin looked toward the suit. The suit looked back at George.
“Well, boss. Should I let him go?” said the suit.
“Push comes to shove, son,” said Devlin. “I don’t think it’ll be down to you what I do.”
“I put you out cold pretty easy, old man.”
“Yeah, but this time you’re coming at me front on, not on twinkle toes. See how far you get before I bust your head open. Son.”
“Leave it, Errol,” snapped Brennan. “Both of you. Errol, you go outside and keep a lookout.”
Errol looked sore as hell but left and slammed the door behind him. Devlin sat back down and looked at George expectantly. George loosened his necktie and said, “Okay. You tell me what you got.”
“That wasn’t the deal, George.”
“I didn’t say anything about a deal. You were always a friend and a good man, Gabe, but you either tell me what you know, or I’ll have you arrested for obstructing a Homeland investigation. You tell me what you got, and then I’ll be the judge of whether you’ve done enough to enter our little secret circle.”
Devlin considered the situation for a moment. He’d found Ed, but he had some big questions he badly wanted answered now. Things that didn’t make sense that he wanted to forge sense out of. For that, much as it pained him, he needed a seat at Brennan’s table. He needed to make himself useful to Brennan.
“Fine,” said Devlin. “I know that Freedom Medical has been plowing huge funds into Logan Enterprises via an offshore company, funds that have turned the ranch around. I know that the Secret Service was investigating the trail of money but that they got nowhere. I know that there was an investigative article on Trayder Stein dropped from the Dayton Sun due to pressure from Stein’s lawyers. I know that Freedom Medical and Logan Enterprises have set up the Halton Medical Center in such a way that its accounts can’t be scrutinized. In short, George, I know that you, me, and the Secret Service suspect something shady is going on, but nobody has been able to nail it down.”
It wasn’t everything he’d got, but it was as much as he wanted to say out loud. He watched for Brennan’s reaction. Brennan casually brushed down his tie, placed his hands on the dinette table, and said in an unimpressed tone, “That it?”
“That’s it.”
“Okay. Most of that I knew. Only some of it I didn’t. The newspaper thing, I didn’t know that, but it ain’t much.”
If Brennan was going to play hard to get, then Devlin wasn’t going to beg for a piece of the action. So he took another tack. A gamble. “You’re not fooling anyone, George. You may act like the big guy who’s running a high-stakes table and has all the cards, but I can see that’s not the way it is. Ed was your only way into the Logans, wasn’t he...?” A beat of silence. Brennan neither confirmed or denied it.
“I knew it,” said Devlin. “You’re cooked, George. You’ve played your one hand, and now you have to leave the table. Your investigation’s stalled.”
“You think insulting me is gonna get you what you want?”
“No. I think helping you get back on track is going to do that.”
“How the fuck can you help me, Gabe?”
Devlin was now thinking on his feet, hearing things coming out of his own mouth that even he found alarming. “Because you can run me as an agent, a real agent, and I can find out just exactly what’s going on. You know my track record as a special agent. Hell, you practically begged me not to leave the OSI.”
“Yeah, I did beg you, but you went and left anyhow, and now you’re a priest. Why the hell would you want to go back into this line of work? After all these years?”
“It’s a good question. One I’m still figuring out myself.” Devlin took a moment to get his thoughts in order and then continued. “I’ve been in Halton Springs a week, and all I’ve done is try to find Ed. That’s all. Yet nearly everyone I talk to has lied to me. The more I asked around, the more I saw something wasn’t right with that town and the more I wanted to find out what that is and cut it out.”
“That’s all very admirable to hear,” said Brennan.
“You, George, more than most, know how good I was. How accomplished a special agent I was.”
“The only word I really heard in that sentence was ‘was.’ You’re an older man now.”
“And I’m a hell of a lot wiser. And I can do things that you or the Secret Service people can’t. I’m not accountable because I’m not linked to you or Homeland, and if I mess up, you don’t even have to care. No hiding me in a trailer paying for some greenhorn to come guard me. No phone calls to superiors explaining the mess. No missed promotions. In the short time I’ve been here, I’ve already got as much intelligence as your outfit got in, what? Months?”
George didn’t answer this time. He was finding it difficult to pull reasons together to push back. Devlin saw an ambitious man with a big headache that threatened to upturn his career progression. He saw a gap and continued charging through it.
“The other reason I have is personal. I came here to find Ed. But I think I’m meant to be here. I was meant to crash into all these people’s lives that I’ve crashed into. I’m meant to follow this to the end. It’s a mission.”
“Fuck’s sake. Don’t start getting all spiritual on my ass. You know I’m a non-fucking-believer. That sort of preacher bullshit doesn’t cut it with me.”
“Okay. Bottom line. Truth is, George, I don’t see where your investigation goes from here. You’re all played out. Not only am I your best bet, right now I’m your only bet.”
Brennan didn’t say anything immediately. He took a deep breath and ran through his options. Then he calmly asked Ed to get him a glass of water. Ed filled up a glass from the faucet and set it down in front of Brennan. Brennan drained it one go and dabbed his mouth dry with the back of his hand. He spread both his hands on the countertop and studied them for a moment. Then he made his decision.
“Okay,” said Brennan. “I’ll tell you what our operation is. Obviously, this is between us. I wouldn’t be telling you, no matter what you claim to know, if we didn’t go way back and if I didn’t know you as well as I do. Then we can discuss what it is you can do for me.”
“You know I wouldn’t betray you to anyone, George.”
“Yeah, I guess I do.” Brennan scratched his chin thoughtfully, looking for the right place to start, then leaned forward and spoke. He was measured and exact, just like Devlin remembered he’d always been.
“As you say, the Secret Service has been investigating Freedom Medical for the last three years for financial irregularities. Massive funds were being routed offshore and not being declared to Freedom’s shareholders. It was thought to be part of a tax avoidance strategy. Thing is, when they managed to follow the money trail, it finally led to Logan Enterprises, specifically to the cattle fertilization plant. The Secret Service suspected the lab was a way of moving capital off Freedom’s books to either avoid paying tax or just using the plant as a last stop before the money disappeared into unknown private bank accounts. But they didn’t have the remit or budget to go after Logan Enterprises. Some more paranoid people say the secretary of state shut it down for conspiracy-type reasons. That Clay was protected up the chain. Whatever. So they turned to us for help. Personally, I didn’t believe for one minute that fifty million had disappeared into Clay Logan’s little cattle lab, no matter how much he crowed publicly about it, about how groundbreaking it was. I thought the Sec
ret Service was onto something, and we saw Ed as a light-touch, off-books way of getting eyes on the lab. He’d just quit the Air Force and lived local. Like you, I knew him from back in the day working investigations. Congressman Logan makes great play of his support for the Air Force and his connections with the Wright Patterson base, so he welcomed Ed with open arms. It was a great fit. Then Ed was asked to drive Lazard around. He was fully embedded, and we couldn’t have been happier.”
“So what went wrong?”
“I don’t know for sure. If I had to jump one way, I’d say it was the Secret Service. They were the only agency outside of my own unit to know we were running Ed. I think they must have referred it to the secretary of state’s department, and that maybe got leaked to Clay Logan. He and the secretary of state are close friends. And that leak nearly got Ed killed by a guy named Packer, who works for the Logans.”
“I know the name, but I’ve never met him,” said Devlin.
“He’s a monster,” Ed butted in. “Scary motherfucker. About seven foot tall and the size of a house.” Devlin suddenly had a strong feeling that he had met Packer after all.
“Got one eye completely clouded over,” Ed continued. “People say he’s got the evil eye. While I was driving for them, he looked over my shoulder every step of the way. Gave me a separate GPS to navigate when I was delivering and told me not to use my cell. Packer said it was ’cause of the cattle lab. We used to pick up medical and chemical supplies. Clay was paranoid too. He didn’t want anyone getting hold of the methods they used on their cattle.” Ed had moved forward now. He really wanted to tell Devlin his side of the story and George wasn’t stopping him. “I had a feeling something wasn’t right. I thought I was getting paranoid—everywhere I went these two guys were following me, a bald fat guy and a tall thin guy, and not doing much to hide the fact they were following me.”
“Believe me, I’m right with you. They sound like the clowns who tailed me down to DC,” said Devlin.
“Well, it got me really wired. I started losing my head, and that’s when I went and got a ticket out to you.”