by GM Ford
Never happened. Reflexively, the guard jerked his hands back, as if he’d suddenly realized he was holding a molten ingot. He bounced his eyes up and down a couple of times, moving from the hand on his chest to the man at the end of the sleeve.
Jackson Craig smiled. “Perhaps we can find an area of accommodation.”
“Sir,” Craig heard Blackledge’s warning and then the sound of his suitcase hitting the ground. In the next second, he heard the sound of shoes scraping concrete and the unmistakable snick of weapons being cocked and readied.
The guard was close enough for Craig to make out the beads of sweat dotting his upper lip. His eyes were the size of silver dollars. His mouth hung open like a loading ramp. “Whoa, whoa,” the guy chanted.
Marvin was the same way, staring back over Craig’s shoulder as if he’d seen an apparition. Craig snuck a peek. The SUV’s doors had been flung open. Fanned out on the pavement behind him, five Secret Service Security personnel had assumed combat positions. Three pointing standard issue Sig Sauer 9 mil automatics, two more armed with more exotic P556 machine pistols.
“Is there a problem?” Craig asked the guard.
Paul the Pendejo raised his arms above his head. “I’m not armed,” he shouted. “I’m not armed.”
When Jackson Craig reached into his jacket, the terrified guard nearly levitated out of his brogans. Craig flipped open his Secret Service ID, held it close under the man’s nose and then repeated the question.
“No problem. None at all,” the guy assured, shaking his head vigorously to emphasize the point.
Craig turned to Blackledge. “Things are under control,” he said.
“Sir? I have orders to…”
“Call off the dogs,” Jackson Craig said. “I need to have a word with this gentleman.” When Blackledge failed to move, Craig said. “I’ll meet you in the car.”
Special Agent Blackledge reluctantly holstered his weapon and walked off.
Craig threw a paternal arm around the guard’s shoulder. He leaned in close to the man, close enough to smell onions. “I was wondering if I could prevail upon you to do us both a big favor?” Craig asked in a hushed, conspiratorial tone of voice.
“Anything.”
“We would appreciate it if Marvin were allowed to conduct business in the garage here.” Craig pretended to check the area. “I can’t discuss why of course, but let’s just say we have our reasons.”
His shoatish little eyes nearly disappeared. “You mean…”
“We would be much appreciative.”
“Sure. No problem. I can work that out.”
“We won’t forget this,” Craig promised. He reached out and grabbed the man by the arm. Craig’s gaze was steely, his jaw set. “This is strictly off the record, of course.”
“Of course,” the guard assured.
“Alright, carry on then,” Craig said.
The guard took a couple tentative steps and then began to hurry, arms pumping like an Olympic speed walker, head on a swivel as he huffed and puffed back out the front of the loading ramp, grateful to be alive.
Marvin had retrieved his bundle of newspapers. “You got some kind of phat ass clout man,” he said with a gold-toothed smile.
“I don’t think the ‘get out of jail free’ card is going to last very long,” Craig said.
“Doan matter,” Marvin assured him. “I be back in here no matter what.” He swept a hand over his underground realm. “This place is dope man. I make more money in three hours in here than I could make in a week out on some damn street corner.” He reached a hand into his pockets and pulled out a small roll of bills. “Don’t none of these players give me a buck for the paper.” He waved the wad in the air. “Nothin but fives and tens and once in a while a twenty.”
“A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do,” Craig reckoned.
“You on top o that,” Marvin said, pocketing his roll. “I got people counting on me. I got mouths to feed.”
Craig clapped him on the arm and strode back to the waiting Lincoln.
“Let’s roll,” Craig said. “The city of angels awaits.”
Blackledge was still red in the face. “I would appreciate it, sir…”
Craig knew where things were heading. Security lecture. He cut him off at the pass. “You know what W.C. Fields said?” he asked.
“Who?”
“He said a man ought to smile first thing every morning and get it over with.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Let’s go.”
Craig fastened his safety belt, settled back in the leather seat and watched as the spidery legs of LAX’s rooftop restaurant crawled by the Lincoln’s window. He sat silently for several minutes as the driver ramped his way out of the airport and followed the green and white signs toward West Los Angeles.
“Where are they putting us up these days?” Craig asked as they turned west onto La Cienega Boulevard with the chase cars arrayed behind them like a fighter squadron.
“The Hyatt Regency sir.” The young man sounded tentative as if Craig was supposed to guess what the problem might be.
“But what?” Craig prodded.
The driver didn’t hesitate. “I have orders to take you directly to the office, sir.”
The news was hardly surprising. He’d had no illusions about what was going to happen as soon as he arrived in LA. Hopping aboard a company plane and flying three thousand miles without orders made it a good bet the brass was going to wonder what was going on.
Craig just sat in the backseat and stared out the window as a seemingly endless cavalcade of billiard parlors, body shops and bodegas slid by, until, finally, after what seemed like hours, they emerged onto a miracle mile of auto dealerships, tire kickers at two a.m., searchlights sweeping the sky, pennants flapping, all sparkling streamers and twirling signs under a dirty winter moon.
When he next turned his attention forward, he found the driver’s eyes glued to the rear view mirror, paying more attention to the radio in his ear than to the road ahead. Caught by Craig’s gaze, the young man shifted his attention back to the brightly lit street.
“I don’t generally rate this sort of security detail. Any idea why I suddenly require all the attention?” Craig tried.
“No idea, sir.”
“Probably best you watch the road then son,” Craig said with a grin. “My sense of irony would be severely tested were I to die in LA traffic.”
“Yes, sir.”
They rode the last few miles in silence, the Lincoln leading the caravan along South Figueroa, using remote control on the traffic lights until the driver slipped across the deserted sidewalk and used his Secret Service ID to open the underground parking garage. One by one their security entourage peeled off and disappeared into the LA night. The garage was nearly empty. He swept his eyes along the north wall where half a dozen identical Lincoln Towncars were backed in, gleaming under the amber lights like crouching beasts.
For whatever reason, the sight of a pair of small California state flags mounted above the headlights on the nearest Lincoln kick-started Craig’s mind. He took the door from the driver’s hand and slowly pushed it closed, then opened it and repeated the action. Despite upgraded hinges and some first-class engineering, there was no mistaking that the door was far heavier than normal. The sigh he’d been stifling all day escaped his chest. “Bullet-proof?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” the driver said.
“Why don’t you take my bag over to the Regency.”
“My orders are to wait, sir,” Blackledge said.
Craig nodded. “Of course.”
5
Daniel Rosen met Jackson Craig in the carpeted hall outside his office. He stood in the open doorway with his hands in his pockets.
“It’s been quite a while since you graced our shores,” he said.
Craig smiled. “Five years next month,” he said.
Rosen stuck out his hand, Craig took it. His grip was firm and dry. Rosen used his
other hand to cradle Craig’s elbow in a fraternal manner.
“Come in. Come in,” Rosen said, gesturing toward the half-open doorway.
Jackson Craig stepped into the room. Rosen’s office was top of the line civil servant, big teak desk, Berber carpet, several sets of official looking flags, an entire wall covered by congratulatory plaques, another adorned with pictures of Rosen shaking hands with every dignitary in the industrialized world, past and present.
“Won’t you look what the cat drug in,” Bobby Duggan drawled.
Craig laughed and covered his heart with his hand. He looked over at Dan Rosen, “Oscar Wilde was right,” he said. “A friend is one who stabs you in the front.”
Jackson Craig and Bobby Duggan had connected nearly twenty years ago, sweating out twelve weeks of training together and then both having the good fortune to be assigned to the Los Angeles Field Office as Special Agents in Training.
Despite the contrived conviviality, the air in the room was thick with tension.Rosen produced a practiced smile. Duggan, as was his habit, sought to leaven the situation with a homily and a drawl. He held up a hand in mock testament. “As my sainted mother so often said....”
“Don’t believe a word of it,” Craig interrupted. “I knew his mother.”
Truth be told, Bobby Duggan was as urbane as smog and had always used the slow moving country boy façade as an illusion designed to sedate the situation until he had the opportunity to properly calculate the odds.
Daniel Rosen lived up to his reputation for bluntness. “You want to give us a hint here Special Agent Craig? What exactly is going on? What was of sufficient magnitude to cause you to abandon your post and fly back to Los Angeles without orders?”
“I was granted a leave of absence,” Craig said.
“I’m aware of that,” Rosen said disgustedly.
“My father is quite ill.”
“We’re being kept apprised of the situation,” Rosen said.
His tone made it clear that Charlie Craig’s medical condition was being monitored by the company and that he was still waiting for an answer to his query.
“Yesterday’s interagency security briefing mentioned a funeral for former ATF Special Agent Steve Wald,” Craig said.
Rosen and Bobby exchanged ‘elephant in the room’ glances.
“I tried to reach Gilbert through normal security channels,” Craig persisted.
This time they made it a point not to look at one another.
“They were jerking me around,” Craig continued. Bobby started to disagree but Jackson Craig waved him off. “I was born on a weekend Bobby, but it wasn’t last weekend. What’s going on?” he demanded.
Rosen didn’t hesitate. “Wald was murdered three days ago,” he said.
Craig sensed another shoe dangling in mid-air. He waited.
Rosen stepped behind his desk, opened the center drawer and produced a plastic evidence tube and a computer print out. He watched fascinated as Craig used his artificial fingers to unscrew the black metal top. His eyes tracked the hand as it poured the chunk of twisted metal out into his other palm.
“Same batch as the original Harry Joyce murders,” Bobby said. “Fired from the same weapon.”
The name froze Craig’s lungs. Harry Joyce. The room wavered. Craig closed his eyes. He could see the sneering face in the service photographs, hear the gunfire and the sirens, see the smoldering pile of rubble covering the street as the gurney carrying the remains of Harry Joyce clattered across the street.
“How can that be?” Craig wondered aloud.
“No idea,” Bobby admitted.
With Harry Joyce, it was easier to say what he wasn’t. Harry wasn’t a serial murderer. The only strangers he killed were for money. He wasn’t a binge killer because, for the most part, he killed people one at a time, including, and this was to prove his downfall, killing neighborhood people who annoyed him in some way or another. To annoy Harry Joyce was to initial your own death warrant.
Harry wasn’t, by any legal definition, a psychopath either. He didn’t hear voices ordering him to do this or that, didn’t line his baseball caps with tin foil or imagine dogs were talking to him. Nothing so prosaic. Harry simply killed people. That was what he did. How many? They had no idea. As Craig recalled, the original estimate had been thirty or so, but who knew? Sky was the limit.
A month of inter-agency surveillance tracked Harry Joyce to what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse in South Chicago. The set-up seemed straightforward enough. Harry Joyce holed up in some dank little cave. An urban Ted Kaczynski. All they had to do was barge in and root him from his burrow.
Turned out Harry not only owned the whole damn building but the buildings on either side as well. He’d hollowed them out, cut four story deadfalls into the floors, poked sniper holes into the walls, interconnected the buildings on every floor, often in several places. It was like a block-long shooting gallery, and they were the targets.
The place was a maze. Ten or twelve separate spaces. Thirty surveillance cameras, inside and out. Bedrooms. Work-out rooms. A library. A satellite TV setup. Satellite telephone antenna. A collection of uniforms and costumes worthy of central casting, including an extensive collection of women’s clothes and unmentionables … in Harry’s size no less. Word later leaked from forensics that Harry Joyce’s corpse had been totally hairless, in any and all respects, as a result of heroic and oft repeated electrolysis sessions.
Craig recalled his partner Gilbert Fowles pointing at the square packets taped to the rafters, his mouth agape, his eyes wide. The place wired with C4, top to bottom. It was everywhere, more of it than any of them had ever seen before. They evacuated the entire block and called for the bomb squad.
By the time they counted noses and realized they were two officers short, several minutes had passed and the sirens of the approaching bomb squad could be heard moaning in the distance.
Peter Amis and Jackson Craig made a mad dash for the door. No way they were leaving fellow officers in that death trap building with Harry Joyce. Peter managed to get one step inside the doorway. Jackson Craig still had his hand on the door handle, when the building went off like a cherry bomb. Peter was killed instantly, vaporized by a pack of C4 directly above his head. Jackson Craig’s left hand was still attached to the handle when they found the twisted steel door later that afternoon. Only the presence of several on-site medical response teams saved his life.
The brass decided to blame it on a leaking gas main, supposedly ruptured during a drug bust shootout, an occurrence as common as the cold in that part of Chicago. That way the CPD could publicly honor Peter Amis and his dead and wounded comrades and they could take their time sifting through the rubble, without the public or the press peering over their collective shoulders. That was the plan anyway.
Problem was forensics found virtually nothing. No weapons other than those Harry was carrying when he was killed, no money, no documentation, virtually nothing personal, none of the things a man in the murder business could be expected to have, nothing to point investigators one way or another.
The task force members got their pictures in the paper and Presidential Commendations. The media was skeptical of course. The chain of command was prepared to fall back on ‘national security’ but, for once, everyone who knew better kept his mouth shut and the story just petered out as all such stories eventually do. The task force was quietly dissolved. Three officers went into their graves as heroes. Jackson Craig began what was to be a painful eighteen month rehab and the rest of the task force went back to their regular assignments.
Had the subsequent murders begun immediately, the agencies involved surely would have taken notice. As it was, an interval of slightly more than two years proved too great for their collective attention span. By the time Justice Department investigators Mark Stren and Nick Brouseau went missing, the Harry Joyce fiasco was little more than a long suppressed memory.
Stren and Brouseau were on assignment in Idaho, working
with ATF, looking into illegal arms trafficking by a white supremacist group called ‘The Son’s of Freedom.’ One morning they didn’t show up for a breakfast briefing. Two days later they were found in the trunk of a car with their guns still in their holsters and their throats slit.
When, less than a month later, FBI Special Agent Janice Robertson was shot while fueling her car in suburban Roanoke, Virginia, the Son’s of Freedom hypothesis began to waver. Like Stren and Brouseau, Special Agent Robertson was a Harry Joyce task force alum. At that point, collective anxiety kicked into high gear. Bells and whistles began to sound in earnest; administrative wagons began to circle.
Before the situation advanced beyond the worried whisper stage, Jesus Navarro, Robertson’s FBI partner on the Harry Joyce case was murdered while on assignment in Arizona, stabbed in the chest forty one times, leaving, of the original eight Harry Joyce task-force members, only ATF Special Agent Steve Wald and the U.S. Secret Service contingent of Gilbert Fowles and Jackson Craig still alive.
The bureau found the situation dire enough to put Craig and the Fowles family into protective custody while they assessed the threat and pondered their next move. Likewise ATF with Wald. They needn’t have bothered, as, even in the short term, life in a Beltway hotel held scant appeal for any of them.
Gilbert Fowles and Steve Wald opted to resign from the service, to forsake home and hearth and to allow the U.S. Marshal’s Service to put them into deep witness protection. All in all a wise choice for married men. As Craig recalled, Steve Wald had derisively referred to them as the ‘Three Mousecateers’ in the days before they squeaked off their separate ways.
In an unprecedented move, and much to the chagrin of his superiors, Jackson Craig had opted to remain in the service. To Craig it seemed obvious. Somebody wanted to kill him. That being the case, the service seemed as safe as anywhere else, probably safer, working in the covert end of the business, so they shipped him overseas, and put him to work protecting diplomats and their families, an assignment generally reserved for the soon-to-be-retired or otherwise functionally compromised Secret Service agents.