La Donna Detroit

by Jon A. Jackson

  “Those pricks,” Mongelo said.

  “Monge, when did you ever know the FBI to get so close? Think about it, Monge. There’s no way those dumb fuckers could nail those guys. Unless they had help.”

  Monge frowned. He caught the drift right away. “Somebody ratted ’em out?”

  “Somebody’s in deep, Monge.”

  “Who?”

  “We don’t know, Monge. But you’re gonna find out.”

  “Me, boss? I don’t know nothin’.”

  “I know you don’t, Monge. You’re the one guy I can trust. You and me go back a long way. If I can’t trust you, I can’t trust nobody.”

  Mongelo nodded, a serious look knotting his face.

  “I had to put out the word that you left town, Monge,” Humphrey told him. “I even told Ellie,” he said, meaning Mongelo’s wife of thirty years. Monge shrugged. “And Carla,” he added after a moment, referring to Mongelo’s frequently battered twenty-eight-year-old girlfriend. He didn’t tell him that Carla had said “Thank God!” “Now sometime soon you’ll be moving, Monge,” Humphrey said. He could see that made Monge anxious. He was feeling secure here in his comfortable prison apartment. A move might not be a good sign. It might be a long car ride, one way. Humphrey let him feel that anxiety for as long as he could before he reassured him.

  “You’ll be moving out with me, Monge,” he said. “I need you by me. Things are getting a little tight and, like I said, I don’t know who’s on the team and who ain’t. I gotta have someone I can trust. The thing is, you can’t breathe a word of this. When I come for you, we gotta be careful. No fooling around. I know it’s hard on you, but you gotta keep up the diet, you gotta stay quiet, and no chatting with nobody. I don’t want no one to know that you’re with me, by my side. If they knew, and I don’t know who they are, they’d grab you for sure. Wouldja even make it to prison? I gotta doubt it. They’re after me, bad. You’re my secret weapon.”

  Mongelo liked this notion. They talked about it in hushed tones somewhat longer. When Humphrey got up to go, he pointed at a plastic sack by the door and said, “That your trash?”

  “Yanh,” Mongelo said. “The wetback lady put it there.”

  “I’ll take it,” Humphrey said, bending to pick up the bag. He locked the door, smiling apologetically. “It won’t be long, Monge. You’ll like the house. I fixed it up for you.”

  Mongelo was grateful.

  As he left Humphrey was surprised to find Strom pacing up and down at the other end of the dark cellar. How much had he overheard, Humphrey wondered? From the man’s expression, evidently nothing. The man was very hot about something. Helen.

  Humphrey listened to his raging as they returned upstairs. But before they got to the office he stopped and said, “So what are you telling me, Strom? You don’t like your job?”

  Strom looked shocked. Then he recovered. “No, no. I just thought you should know. I mean … you know me, boss … if that’s the way you want it … I mean …”

  “Well, what?” Humphrey said.

  “Okay. Nothing.”

  At the car, Humphrey hefted the plastic bag. Alessandro opened the trunk. Humphrey put the bag in the trunk and then got into the back seat with Helen.

  “So, which was it,” he asked, “Hatchet or Hotcha?”

  “Both, actually.”

  8

  Flight Service

  “Dead man doesn’t walk,” Schwind told him, before he’d even finished his pitch. She said it was too complicated, even if they could figure out some way to make him look dead initially. Too many complications.

  Joe was crushed. Later, thinking about it, he realized that it suited Agent Schwind for him to be a fugitive and not a New Age Lazarus. She’d argued that it was all but impossible to fake a death these days, what with DNA testing and so on. And someone, surely Sergeant Mulheisen, would want to be sure that the corpse in the Denver morgue was really Joe Service. No, no, they would go ahead with the plan as sketched. Poor Kirk would have to take the blame, but then he’d be handsomely compensated. He could find an occupation more to his liking. An airline pilot, perhaps, or marine biologist. He’d have to go to school, but it would be fun. He could afford it.

  The way it worked was two days later Kirk was on the night shift. He had to go to the bathroom. When he came back, Joe Service was gone. Kirk looked in the closet and found the money. He counted it. Then he gave the alarm.

  Joe found the car, sitting in the parking lot. He shucked off his doctor’s smock and emergency room scrubs and pulled on the pants and sweatshirt and shoes that Agent Schwind had left for him.

  Joe never noticed any difficulty at all, didn’t even see any police cars rushing to the scene. He got downtown and found the main post office, where he dumped the car that Agent Schwind had provided. One thing he had learned from dealing with federal agents was, don’t use any car that they’ve had contact with. It will almost certainly be bugged, with direction finders, transmitters, who knows what.

  He traded for an innocuous car belonging to a postal worker who would not get off shift, probably, for another five hours. But if Schwind’s provisional transport was bugged, the feds would move in on it within a short time. They would know what he was up to. So he drove to the airport, parked, and rode back into town on the regular bus. He figured that would keep Schwind busy for a while. Even if they figured out he’d stolen a postal worker’s car and they tracked it to the airport, they’d be checking to see which flight he had taken.

  Despite all the screwing around he had a couple of hours to kill before the banks opened. Agent Schwind had provided him with plenty of money—well, a thousand dollars—but he needed much more and he wanted independence. He had a bank account or two in Denver, he was pretty sure. By the time they opened he had drunk far too much coffee, was a little wiggy, but still functioning better than he had expected. In fact, he felt great. It was great to be out and he’d had a good rest, although he was more tired than he wanted to be.

  He’d remembered at least one bank account, from the days when he was flitting about the country unfettered. This one had a deposit box, too. In the box was a brown paper package. He was pretty sure what was in it, but he thought he’d better open it. As he’d thought: a Smith & Wesson .38 automatic, fully loaded with a box of cartridges. Also about $40,000 cash in old bills. He wrapped the package back up and hit the streets, feeling more free.

  A good day’s sleep in a pleasant suburban motel made him feel even better. Now he could consider his future with confidence. In an earlier day he would have headed immediately for Detroit. He was fairly confident that Helen would be there. She must have the money. If she wasn’t there, she was probably dead. At any rate, the Fat Man—Humphrey—would know. But he’d had plenty of time to think about things. No zipping off to Detroit. First, he had to get to the bottom of this business with Agent Schwind.

  He kind of liked the idea of being a rogue agent. That might be a good career choice. Just give up this whole idea of working for the mob. The United States government was every bit as powerful a mob. It might be interesting work. But he had a feeling that Agent Schwind’s purpose might be allied to his own. She might be after Humphrey. First, though, he had to find out more about her. He went to a pay phone with a pile of change and began to call around.

  In his wide-ranging travels, Joe Service had made many invaluable connections. He called five of them now. The usual proceeding went something like, “Oh, hi Joe. What’s up?” As if the person had seen him only last week. Nobody asked why he wanted the information or where he was calling from. They just took the request and said they could tell him more in an hour. An hour later, the answer was the same from all five. Dinah Schwind was not known to be an employee of the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, or the INS (Immigration). Joe had not wanted to give too long a list of agencies, so he’d stuck to the federal ones. There were others, of course, but Agent Schwind had mentioned at least two of those. Maybe she was so deeply covered that none of his contact
s could find a shadow. Or she might be with a state or municipal law-enforcement agency, he supposed. Detroit? Denver? Colorado? Michigan? He had no doubt that she was some kind of cop. He would find out.

  Feeling less secure than an hour earlier, he nonetheless thought that he should contact Schwind now. He called the number she had given him.

  She didn’t seem upset that he had ditched the car and severed their contact. She had expected him to do that, she said. “Are you ready to go to work?” she asked.

  “Sure,” Joe said, cheerfully. “What did you have in mind?”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you,” she said. “You’re still in the Denver area, I take it.”

  “Close enough,” Joe said.

  “We’ll have to meet. I want you to meet my partners.”

  Joe told her to forget that. He had met her, that was enough. It was probably better if he didn’t even know their names.

  She consented to that. “But I need to see you,” she said. “I have to see how you are.”

  Joe assured her he was feeling fine, not quite up to full speed, but a few days on the outside would cure that. He agreed to meet her, alone. She should drive west on Interstate 70, toward Salt Lake. She might have to drive for a while, he told her, but she would see him. Keep her eyes open.

  He passed her in an old pickup truck he’d bought for five hundred dollars, as they were approaching the exit for Route 40. She followed him for several miles, halfway up the mountain road to Berthoud Pass, before he pulled over at a roadside cafe and gas station.

  “Sorry to drag you so far,” he said. He stood by the car, taking deep breaths and stretching. “Smell that. I love that smell of the firs.”

  Agent Schwind didn’t mind, she said. It was sort of on their way. She was glad to see that he was in good enough shape to go to work. The first job, she said, was in Salt Lake City. Did he want to drive there? They could go back to Denver and fly, or they could take the train from Granby.

  “Granby! Hey, that’s where they took me off the train,” Joe said. “I forgot this road goes through there. I just wanted to get up in the mountains. Smell the firs.” Joe was through with trains for a while, he said, with a smile. If she didn’t mind, he kind of liked driving. She offered to drive and he could ride, see some scenery. Why not, he said.

  They drove right past the spot where Helen and Itchy Spinodi had stopped to look for the money, but, of course, they had no way of knowing that. She drove precisely the speed limit. After they got over the second pass, Rabbit Ears, and were driving through the Yampa River valley, they ran into a cattle drive. Schwind was delighted. She said it was like the real West. Driving cattle right down the highway! Joe pointed out that the cowboys were riding all-terrain vehicles and the cattle were some kind of boutique breed of red Angus, along with a few Charolais. He didn’t think that the Goodnight trail was like this.

  “Did you raise cattle,” she asked, “up in Montana?”

  “My neighbor did. They stink too much. Besides, that place is gone.”

  “Thanks to Victor Echeverria,” Schwind said. “You could say he drove you from your home. Well, here’s your chance to get back at him.” It appeared that “Vetch,” as he was known, was well enough to be moved and the Colombian government had issued a request for his repatriation. The United States government had reluctantly consented, although federal officials wanted to question him. But they had no pretext, so they were allowing his transfer.

  “A plane will arrive in Salt Lake City in five days,” Schwind said. “I’ll have everything you’ll need to take it out.”

  “Parked?” Joe said. She nodded. “No one in it?”

  She shrugged. “It would be best if Mr. Echeverria was in it.”

  “But then,” Joe said, “there would be an innocent pilot, a copilot, maybe some medical people …”

  “Maybe, maybe not. I’ll know more when it leaves Colombia. But we were thinking it might be Echeverria’s plane, which is a Gulfstream V. The pilot—we know him—isn’t exactly innocent. Medical personnel … well, I don’t know. You have qualms?”

  “Sure I have qualms,” Joe said. “The question is, do you?”

  “Not many. We want to take out Echeverria, but we’d also like to take out the plane. It would really be better to do this off American soil. We’re not real keen on blowing up a plane in the Salt Lake City airport, but we may not have another choice. If we do …”

  “I like to travel,” Joe said. “Let’s take a trip to Bermuda. What outfit did you say you worked for?”

  “I’m kind of like you, Joe. I don’t work for any one outfit, as you put it. But I have worked for just about all the federal enforcement agencies. Do you want to see my I.D.?”

  She fished out her card from her coat pocket and handed it to him. Joe peered at it closely. It was her face, her name, her general description. It had a thumbprint. He asked to see her hand. She extended it. He looked at the thumb. He wasn’t a fingerprint expert but it looked close enough. He dropped her hand and returned the card. There had been no telltale “void” marks, so it appeared to be a genuine card, issued by the Central Intelligence Agency, signed by the director, George Tenet. Joe didn’t know Tenet’s signature from Bill Clinton’s, but it looked good.

  “Could I see your gun?” he asked.

  She glanced at him, briefly, eyebrows raised. Then, “Sure, why not?” she said. She unholstered the Browning automatic, deftly ejected the magazine, and checked the chamber to be sure it was empty before handing it over.

  Joe handled it lovingly. It had a dull, dark finish. “Model M35,” he noted. “A very nice piece. You like 9mm?”

  “It works every time,” she said. She reinserted the magazine when he returned it. “What are you packing?”

  “S&W .38 auto,” Joe said. “Want to see it?”

  “You show me yours?” she said, one heavy eyebrow arched. “No thanks. You find the .38 more stable, I suppose.”

  “It’s enough gun,” Joe said. “What did you have in mind for taking out the plane?”

  “Well, not a .38,” she said. “Or a 9mm. I was thinking an RPG. I’ve got a six-pack of them in the trunk.”

  “Throwaways,” Joe noted, nodding. “That’d work. What about an M203 launcher, on an AR-15?”

  “I can get it, if you want,” she said.

  “Trouble is, with the M203 or the RPG, you’d have to be fairly close. Not more than two hundred yards, better closer. I wonder if an incendiary in an AR-15, or some similar target rifle, anything in .225, would touch off the tanks.”

  Schwind was skeptical. She thought it was too iffy.

  “They’re very accurate,” Joe said. “I could get my hands on one that’s as silent as an air gun. I could plink away for an hour till I made the right hit. Nobody would notice.”

  “They’d notice ricochets,” she pointed out.

  “Who’s your RAC officer?” he asked.

  She smiled. “For these purposes, I’m the resident.”

  When they stopped for coffee and sandwiches at a little restuarant in Craig, Joe said he had to make a phone call. Schwind rattled off the serial number from her handgun.

  “You’ll find it’s registered to me,” she said. She didn’t smile.

  Joe made the call anyway. Before they left he had the confirmation.

  “Doesn’t prove anything,” he said as they got back into the car.

  “No, just that I own a gun,” she agreed. “Maybe you should have met with my associates.”

  “What would that prove? Who do they work for?”

  She shrugged and they drove on. Later, she said, “Remember, Joe, you’re the fugitive. I could get in trouble just being seen with you.”

  “Good thought,” he said, and went to sleep. When he awoke she told him they were only an hour or so from Salt Lake.

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, when he seemed alert. “You deserve to know what this is all about.” She explained that she had been working in variou
s agencies for some years and the most frustrating thing about the work was that oftentimes valuable, hard-won, and dangerously obtained intelligence was tragically wasted because of bureaucratic wrangling and confusion. “We find out a drug deal is going down, or somebody is leaving the country, or expected to slip in, and by the time we get authorization to act, the opportunity has passed. Or a bureau chief refuses to take responsibility, or he’s mad at some guy up the line, or in a competing agency. It’s a shocking waste. And yet … it seemed to a few of us that if we had simply acted, without bothering with authorization, there would have been little or no fallout. You follow me?”

  Joe followed her, all right. But he expressed his immediate objection, which anyone would have, that you can’t have governmental agencies just charging about, without authorization or accountability. It was too dangerous. Scary, in fact.

  Schwind agreed. “But sometimes …” she said. “Sometimes … take Echeverria, for instance. The man is a known scoundrel, the scum of the earth. He deals drugs on an enormous scale. He practically funds minigovernments. People are killed, others are enslaved, their lives made miserable, because of this, this vermin. Yet he flies in here, no problem. He attempts to kill you—which some would have said would have been no great loss—and we save his life. Now he’ll fly out of here, off to do more mischief. No sane and sensible administrator that I know of would authorize any kind of action against him, certainly not what we are thinking of. Yet if he were to be thwarted, harmed, or even killed, none of those same administrators would object or do anything more than cheer.”

  “Unless you got caught,” Joe said.

  “Unless we got caught,” she agreed. “My friends and I realized that given the intelligence resources we have, we could do a lot. But we have to be very, very careful. And we have to especially be careful that we consider from the outset the value and … well, the moral weight of any proposed action.”

  Good Lord, Joe thought, these people are already out of control. He wasn’t so sure he had made a wise choice, getting involved. Still, he’d had to get out of the hands of the law. He’d had no choice, really. When a man was hanging on to the edge of a cliff, any bush, no matter how many thorns, was worth grasping.