The Firefly

by P. T. Deutermann

  “The system?”

  “Oh, c’mon, Mr. Thompson. The criminal justice system. Federal court. Your arraignment. A starring role on the nightly news for all your neighbors out there in Chevy Chase to enjoy as you do the perp walk. And we will give the media some advance notice. And then hordes of ravenously expensive lawyers. Then the IRS will pile on—remember them? Think confiscation of all your assets—your home, your cars, your bank accounts. Then more lawyers—financial guys this time. A little bit of jail time, at first anyway. Then an expensive bail bond—they’ll want ten percent in cash up front, assuming you have any left. Then a long, drawn-out trial, and then real prison time, not jail anymore. Bad food, bad clothes, really bad haircut. Big horny cellmates. A whole new cultural horizon. Exciting, if perhaps initially painful, adventures in your sexual education. You listening to me, Mr. Thompson? Am I coming through here?”

  Thompson had the look now: Bambi out on Interstate 95, frozen in the median, about to make a really bad decision.

  “Sign the damned letter, Mr. Thompson,” Swamp ordered. “Before I conclude you’re being defiant.” He gave Thompson the look again. “Can you imagine how poorly I handle defiance?”

  Thompson swallowed, took a deep breath, picked up a pen, dropped it, retrieved it, and signed the resignation letter. He closed the folder and pushed it back across the desk toward Swamp.

  “Now what?” he said. He actually sounded relieved. That’s the wonder of it, Swamp thought. They almost always sound relieved. Grateful even.

  “We’ll take this upstairs. In the meantime, Mr. Thompson, you go home now. Do not clear your desk. Do not touch your computer. Leave all your personal effects, and that Rolodex. The Labor Department IG’s people are on call to do the housecleaning.” He looked at his watch. “In fact, they should be outside right now. With security.”

  “Can I tell—”

  “Tell your wife? Sure. But don’t contact your sisters just yet—we have some other people who are on their way to talk to them. You can and should talk to your accountant, and your lawyer, if you have one. And you probably should have one. You can even have your lawyer call me if you’d like. Here’s my card.”

  Thompson exhaled noisily. “I’m ruined.”

  “Financially, yes, you are, Mr. Thompson,” Morgan said brightly. “But look at it this way: You won’t end up a convicted felon, and you’re not going to be living in some hot and sweaty federal penitentiary for the rest of your life. You’re getting to walk out of here with a simple resignation letter. Truth is, you’ve just cut a smart deal, Mr. Thompson.”

  Thompson shook his head slowly. “Ruined,” he murmured. “Just like that.”

  “Not ‘just like that,’ Mr. Thompson. You’ve been doing this shit for a long time. And, hell, Treasury’s been assembling this case for five months. I’m just the closer, you understand.”

  Thompson got up, turned around, and stared out the windows. “I might as well shoot myself.”

  Swamp saw White frown. Swamp had actually been about to agree with Thompson; even without a trial, it would save a mountain of paperwork. On the other hand, all the new agents were reportedly getting sensitivity training, so Swamp relented. “You can do that, I suppose,” he said, speaking sincerely, as if he truly cared. “Although, you realize, guns tend to make a real mess. Do it against a wall, you can never get the brain stains out, you know?”

  He saw Gary blink, and Swamp knew he had to do better. “But really,” he said, “I don’t feel this situation is worth suicide. Look at me, Mr. Thompson.”

  Thompson was looking back at him but not seeing him.

  “Compromise, Mr. Thompson,” Swamp continued, gathering his papers. “Compromise is the very essence of good government, don’t you think? You with me on this?”

  With a small start, Thompson brought himself back to the discussion at hand and focused on Swamp’s face. “What?” he said.

  “Are you with me on this, Mr. Thompson?” Swamp said again. “That this isn’t worth suicide or anything drastic like that? That you can think of it as a kind of career change?”

  “Career change?” Thompson croaked.

  “There you go, Mr. Thompson. You’re getting the picture now.” Then he laughed at the perspiring official. “Of course you are.”

  “And another one bites the dust,” said Larry Daniels, director of the SISU at the Treasury Department, inviting Swamp into his less than spacious office. “Nice effing work there, Swamp.”

  “I appreciate your calling me,” he told his ex-boss. “It was fun to do a closing again.”

  “You always were our best closer,” Daniels said. “How’s life at the Circus Maximus?”

  “I’m up to my neck in alphabet soup. ILO in OSI at DHS. That’s intelligence liaison officer to the Washington intel community within the Office of Special Investigations of the Department of Homeland Security.”

  “Aargh.”

  “Yeah. You try bringing all the intelligence lines in this town together in one place at the State Department from the seventy-three federal law-enforcement agencies and offices based in Washington. Talk about herding goddamned cats.”

  “Well, you get bored over in OSI, you’re welcome back here. And I mean that. Gary White do okay?”

  “Nice kid. Well, of course, he’s not a kid. Just looks that way.”

  “I know, but that baby face allows him to sneak up on people sometimes, so it works both ways. Ex–Homicide detective with the Fairfax cops across the river. Look, he’s about done with his probationary year. Reason I brought it up, I’ve been tagged to give back a cross-deck warm body for your outfit, Homeland Security. Want to take him on?”

  “Sure, if he can get the clearances. I could use the help. I’m surprised DHS is still drafting people, though. It’s been what—two years now since DHS stood up?”

  “Press gang is more like it,” Daniels grumbled. “I’ve lost track of who owns what anymore. But what the gestapo wants—”

  “Right, the gestapo gets. If people only knew what a joke that was.”

  “What do I know?—I’m just a lowly Treasury cop. His federal BI’s almost done, so I’ll go ahead and set it up. You get to tell him what Homeland Security actually does.”

  “If I ever find out,” Swamp said. Both men laughed.

  Swamp walked back to the Old Executive Office Building after a quick lunch in an L Street deli. It was a brisk eight blocks from the Secret Service offices on this breezy, cool January day, but Swamp appreciated the fresh air. He’d been with the Office of Homeland Security almost since its inception, having offered his services immediately after the September 11 disaster. It had been a frustrating slog since then, with the new cabinet-level department trying to define its mission, scope of authority, and bureaucratic power in a town that shared such commodities grudgingly. Compared to the almost military efficiency of the Secret Service, the start-up of the DHS had been an exercise in chaos management. And as a recalled annuitant, Swamp enjoyed none of the personal power he had exercised in his last active-duty assignment, as the deputy assistant director of the Secret Service’s prestigious Intelligence Division. Still, he was grateful to be back in the national security game, able to do something to combat the cancer of international Muslim terrorism.

  His office, or, more properly, cubicle, was on the third floor of the OEOB, as it was known throughout Washington. Many of the original Office of Homeland Security staffers had been shoved into cramped quarters in the graceful old mansion a block away from the White House, courtesy of a resentful National Security Council staff, which had had to give up the spaces. His boss, Tad McNamara, was the director of the Special Investigations Unit within the Homeland Security secretariat. Their charter had been drafted on the fly after September 11, 2001, and Swamp wasn’t the only recalled agent working there.

  There was a phone message, two hours old, on Swamp’s desk: “See Mr. McNamara.” He called McNamara’s secretary, Mary, who confirmed that the director was in and av
ailable.

  Tad McNamara was a tall, hawk-faced man who had been the assistant director in charge of Intelligence Operations at the FBI when the Arabs attacked New York City. He and Swamp had worked together when Swamp was a deputy assistant director at Secret Service headquarters, and he had snapped up Swamp’s offer to come back on active duty right after the attacks. Tad McNamara was a man who took most things seriously and looked the part.

  “Mary said you had another project?” Swamp asked after being shown into McNamara’s office.

  The director was sitting behind his desk. He pointed Swamp to a chair and pulled out a case folder. “It’s a firefly, I’m afraid,” he said. “Came over from the Protective Research Unit, your old outfit. Came in routine, late last week. You’re finished with that Labor guy, right?”

  “Right. Closed him this morning. He walked the plank.”

  “Good. Larry Daniels said if anyone could close that guy, you could. Now this,” he said, waving the file folder, “is probably going to be a lot less satisfying, but, unfortunately, we’re probably going to see more of these, at least until we get through this goddamned inauguration.”

  “This is a good time not to be in the Secret Service,” Swamp said. “It’s what—eleven days from now? They start working up the security survey for an inauguration a year in advance, and right about now, everyone’s hair is on fire.”

  McNamara nodded. “This thing is not strictly an intel matter, of course, but with your Secret Service background, you’re the guy who can give me a quick evaluation.”

  “How’d we get it?”

  “PRU is in overload. They’re getting dozens of threats in every day and they simply can’t handle the volume. If it even looks like a threat’s a firefly, they’re farming it out. Any outfit within DHS with the word Investigation in its title is getting tagged to help. Like I said, it’s probably bullshit.”

  Swamp shrugged. “Bullshit ‘R’ Us,” he said. “That’s fine by me.” And it was. A light load was the last thing he wanted these days. Busy, very busy—that’s what he wanted. An endless string of twelve-hour days to make the nights’ sleep come easier. “Need to keep in motion, boss,” he said.

  McNamara nodded sympathetically. Even though it had been almost four years since Swamp’s retirement-day ceremony in the Secretary of the Treasury’s office, everyone who knew him still remembered what had happened immediately afterward. It was one of the few things that could still seize him up, no matter how good a face he put on it.

  “Okay,” McNamara said briskly. “So, this thing. About six weeks ago, late November, I think, there was this bad fire up in northwest D.C. A plastic surgeon’s private clinic. Four vics.”

  Swamp nodded, remembering. “Read about it. Something to do with the oxygen system.”

  “Right. Really hot fire. Got two docs, two nurses. All in the operating theater.”

  “And?”

  “Some forensic problems. First, there apparently was no patient. At least that’s what D.C. Arson thinks. Two docs, two nurses, why were they there in the operating room with no patient?”

  “Getting set up? A training session?”

  “Late at night? Plus, nurses do setup. Docs come in at the last moment, hands in the air, going, ‘Scalpel, clamp, coffee.’…Anyway, that’s one. And maybe there was a patient. Arson guys ended up calling in the Bureau lab people. You have to understand, ID of remains was problematic. Because of the oxygen.”

  “Serious toasts.”

  “Yeah. Carbon mounds on the floor kinda deal.”

  Swamp nodded. His uncle had been a professional gas welder. Oxygen was what turned an acetylene torch into a steel cutter.

  “And that was the second problem: D.C. Arson feels that there would not have been enough fuel in the OR to sustain such a hot fire. You know, big oxygen-fed flare-up when it starts, everything burns pretty quick, people inhale super-heated gas, flop and twitch, and then the whole thing dies down. This one didn’t die down. Place looked like the inside of a blast furnace.”

  “An external fuel source?”

  “Two of the four liquefied-gas bottles melted. Two did not. Something hinky there.”

  Swamp nodded thoughtfully. “So maybe a faked fire. Arson. Okay, homicide. What’s this got to do with the Secret Service and protecting the president?”

  “Well, D.C. Arson listed the case as open. Split decision: One guy says it was probably a deliberate fire, not an accident. Other inspector says no, insufficient evidence. Absence of a patient on the table doesn’t prove shit, especially when the table’s melted. So close it out.”

  “They got closure statistics, too, don’t they?”

  “Bingo. But still…This one guy’s pretty adamant,” he said, opening the file folder. “Let’s see. Deputy Chief Inspector Carl Malone. I know these arson-investigation types. They get a sixth sense, and they’re often right.”

  “And the connection to the president’s protective detail?” Swamp prompted.

  “Right. Last week, this case came up for automatic cold-case review. Malone’s been taking a second look. First week in January, folks still out on leave, nobody else in the office, so time to actually think about a case. And now they have all the evidence boxes back from the Bureau labs. Malone finds something interesting in one of the boxes. Calls Secret Service at the White House. They shop it to PRU. It’s a partially burned medical record.”

  “The missing patient?” Swamp asked, indicating the case folder. He was suddenly impatient, ready to get into something new.

  “This here is PRU’s initial disposition report. The evidence in question is still with D.C. Arson. But apparently, the face-lifters were audiotaping their patients during anesthesia.”

  “You mean taping the OR? To catch errors? Good surgeons do that.”

  “That’s usually videotape. This was strictly audio. Inspector Malone theorizes that these guys were into taping their patients. Apparently, people sometimes say some interesting shit under anesthesia.”

  “For what, blackmail? Their own patients?”

  “Who knows? But go start with this Malone over in D.C. Arson. He says there’s evidence of a threat to the president, but he’s still got it. I’m assuming he laid it out for PRU, but you go see with a fresh set of eyeballs.”

  Swamp got up and took the case folder from McNamara. “Who’s riding this one for the Secret Service?”

  “It’s on the route slip there. Actually, I don’t recognize the name, although you might. And remember, they’re classifying it as a firefly. Your mission is to confirm their judgment. On the other hand, you think it’s real, write a point paper and I’ll get it right back to PRU.”

  “Got it,” Swamp said, definitely anxious to get going. McNamara wished him good luck and then he was out of there. Gary White was waiting for him when he got back to his office.

  “That was quick,” Swamp said.

  “I managed to hand over the final report-writing job on the Thompson case to another probationer,” White said with a sheepish grin. “But only because I had hurry-up, hurry-up orders to report immediately to OSI. Like right now. Today, even. Like I didn’t want to piss you off. Sir.”

  Swamp grinned back. “Nice move. Don’t try that one on me, however.”

  “Never happen,” White said. Swamp told him to go see Mary, Mr. McNamara’s secretary, to get a cube assignment. “It’ll take her at least the rest of the afternoon to pry some more space out of the NSC people. Meantime, you and I have a firefly to pursue.”

  White was clearly baffled, so Swamp explained the slang. “A firefly is a small insect that rises out of the nighttime grass and blinks its biolight right in your face. Everybody looks at it because it’s kind of amazing that an insect can do that. Then somebody inevitably gets tired of the diversion and smacks its bioluminescent ass back down into grass.”

  The young agent was still perplexed. “Uh, and?”

  Patience, Swamp reminded himself silently. You were a new agent once upon a ti
me, too. “And all government agencies have lots and lots of issues on their plates. Nobody needs more work. Sometimes an issue pops up out of the bureaucratic noise level, which is sometimes called ‘the grass.’ It comes up looking really important, demanding immediate attention. Blink. Blink. Blink. People get excited; everybody starts to jump on it. Until some adult with supervisory experience takes a hard look at it and then smacks it back down into the grass because it really wasn’t all that important. Or it wasn’t true. Or it was some lord high pooh-bah’s policy hobbyhorse. In other words, a firefly.”

  White nodded. “And ‘grass’? Where did they come up with that word?”

  “Old military expression. Comes from primitive radar sets, which were basically oscilloscopes. You look into an o-scope, you see what looks like a horizontal line of green grass all along the bottom axis—the signal you’re analyzing sticks up above that ‘grass’ level. So when people say something’s ‘down in the grass,’ they mean it’s not significant.”

  Gary thought that one over. Swamp anticipated the next question.

  “And now you’re gonna ask me what an o-scope is,” he said. White, relieved, brightened.

  Swamp sighed. Hopeless, he thought. “It’s time to go back to work now,” he declared. “Go find out where the District of Columbia Police Department’s Arson Unit lives. If we’re lucky and they’re at police headquarters, we can take the Metro.”

  “Yes, sir. And can I use your phone?”

  Deputy Chief Inspector Carl Malone welcomed them into his office on the second floor of the D.C. Police Department’s headquarters building. He was a middle-aged black man, almost as big as Swamp Morgan. The three sat down at a conference table.

  “I’m Mr. Minority on this case,” Malone said, opening a large three-ring notebook with a case number stenciled on the front cover. “Our cold-case board wants to ree-tire this puppy.”

  “All I’ve seen was the Protective Research Unit’s disposition report,” Swamp said. “Can you review the facts of the case for us?”