Love and Lies: A Jake Badger Mystery Thriller

by Glenn Rogers

  “That's a lie,” Adam said, angrily.

  “She said she broke up with you because you’re an arrogant ass who thinks you’re better than everyone else.”

  “What a bitch she is,” he said.

  “The things is,” I said, “I believe her.”

  I got to the Thai restaurant a couple of minutes after noon. Alex was not there yet. I ordered a pot of tea for us to share. Alex and the tea arrived at the same time. He looked a little frazzled.

  “Rough morning?” I asked, as he sat down.

  “The world would be a better place,” Alex said, “if there were no criminals in it. I also think it would be better if there were no bureaucrats in it.”

  “You're a Special Agent In Charge for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and you're suggesting that there's too much bureaucracy in the agency?”

  “I'm an anomaly,” he said. “And now that we’ve addressed my issues, what happened to you?”

  “I encountered two female Tasmanian devils, a mother and daughter.”

  He smiled as he sipped some tea, waiting for the rest of the story. I explained about Barbara and her mother.

  “The City of Angels,” he said, “is full of people who do not behave in an angelic manner.”

  The waiter came over and took our order. I ordered the crying tiger beef; Alex ordered the barbecued chicken.

  After the waiter was gone, Alex said, “So how are we going to proceed with what is sure to become an investigative hairball?”

  “Well,” I said, “there were six agents who knew the details of the operation: you, me, Elaine, Griffin, Hoffmeyer, and Warren. Beyond that group, there was the SAC, Kraft, and the director of the OCU, Brandt. We can rule out you, me, and Elaine. That leaves us with five people. I think we should talk with each of them.”

  Alex nodded and said, “Griffin, Hoffmeyer, and Warren are still local. Easy access. But Kraft is now in San Francisco and Brandt is in D.C.”

  “No problem,” I said. “I can travel.”

  “Okay,” Alex said, “how do you want to handle the interviews?”

  “I want to handle the interviews myself,” I said, “That will leave you free to observe and interject at crucial points.”

  He nodded and said, “Tag team. Who do you want to start with?”

  “Who’s going to be the friendliest?” I asked.

  As Alex considered my question, our food came.

  As the waiter set my lunch in front of me, I said, “I'd also like to get two egg rolls to go, please.”

  We dug in and after a couple of bites, Alex said, “I think Christine Warren.”

  “Okay,” I said. Christine's a good agent. Let's start with her. You want to set up a meeting?”

  “Sure. And I’ll get started on the other end of the investigation.”

  We ate some more food.

  “Made any progress on Jason Carrillo?” Alex asked.

  “Not yet. Maybe this afternoon. I know a guy who's DEA. You know him, too, I think. Jessie Garcia.”

  Alex nodded, his mouth full of barbecued chicken. “He's not in L.A. anymore,” he said after he swallowed. “Down in San Diego now.”

  “Trying to discourage the cartels, huh?”

  “Not a job I'd want,” Alex said.

  “Me, neither.”

  “You want to schedule something with him before I set up something with Christine?”

  “No, let's make discovering who the informant was the main concern. I'll work the other thing around it.”

  We finished our food, and the waiter brought us our check and my two extra egg rolls.

  “Those for Wilson?” Alex asked.

  I smiled.

  “Dog eats better than a lot of people,” Alex said.

  “He’s a better person than most people,” I said.

  Chapter 15

  Wilson heard me come into the reception side of the office and came charging from his pillow in the back behind my desk, launching himself at me, as he sometimes did, knowing I would catch him. He'd started doing it occasionally when he was a puppy and even though he is now fifty pounds of energized muscle, it is a ritual we sometimes enjoy. Part of the fun is I never know when he is going to decide to launch himself at me. When he finished lapping my face and neck, I put him down gave him his egg rolls.

  Mildred took one look at my face and wanted to know what happened, and for the second time in an hour I was given the opportunity to relive my adventure with Barbara and her mother.

  It was one-twenty when I called Jessie Garcia's cell phone.

  My name must have come up on his phone because he answered, “Jake Badger. Let me guess. After you stopped fighting, you became a den mother for a girl scout troop.”

  “I did. But it's a very special troop. All the girls are between eighteen and twenty-four and they're all lingerie models.”

  Jessie laughed. “Are they looking for additional den mothers?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But you have to be handsome and charming to qualify, so that would eliminate you.”

  “I see. I guess I'll just have to be satisfied with a superior intellect,” Jessie said.

  “Good luck with that,” I said.

  I could hear Jessie smile over the phone. He said, “How you doing, Jake?”

  “I'm okay,” I said. “Working too much. You?”

  “Not bad,” he said. “Spending all my time trying to learn to speak Spanish. The DEA assumed that since my last name is Garcia I knew how to speak Spanish. They put me down here to contend with the cartels.”

  “That's what I heard. How's that going?”

  “The Spanish? Not so good. The cartels? They're big, rich, organized, well armed, and smart. How do think it's going?”

  “I see. Well, good luck with that, too.”

  “Thank you. What can I do for you, Jake?”

  “I need to talk to you about a DEA operative.”

  “Which one?”

  “Jason Carrillo. Undercover. Using the name James Falcon. Recently deceased.”

  Jessie took a deep breath and let it out. “I hadn't heard.”

  “Couple of days ago,” I said. “Looked to me like a professional hit.”

  “Probably,” he said.

  “Did you know him?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Yeah,” Jessie said softly. “Me, too.”

  We were both silent for a moment. Then I asked, “You got any idea what he was doing?”

  “Yeah. Listen, I gotta meet a guy here in a few minutes. Any way you can come down here this afternoon? We can get some dinner and talk.”

  “Sure.”

  He told me where and when to meet him and disconnected.

  The drive to San Diego would take about two and a half hours. I asked Wilson if he wanted to go for a long ride with me. He woofed that he would. I told Mildred where I was going and that I’d see her tomorrow. She told me to be careful. When I said, yes, mother, she told me not to be a smartass.

  I stopped at the Mobile station on Ventura Boulevard to gas up the Jeep and get a Coke Zero to drink on the drive. I took Laural Canyon up to the 101 heading south, toward the 5.

  It was a clear day in the high eighties along the coast. There were stretches along the 5, after you got south of Dana Point, where you were driving right along the coastline. Its beauty never diminishes. At several points along the way, I could see dolphins playing in the surf, showing the surfers how it's supposed to be done.

  We arrived almost two hours before time to meet with Jessie, so I drove to a secluded beach I knew where Wilson and I could play for a while. I keep a Frisbee in the back of the Wrangler. There happened to be some attractive young ladies whose swimwear was in need of critique. It was a serious responsibility, but I was up for the task.

  I was supposed to meet Jessie at the Boathouse Restaurant on Harbor Island Drive at five-thirty. I got there first, so I got us a table and waited.

  Jessie and I had worke
d together on a joint DEA-FBI investigation. We'd been undercover together and had been in a couple of difficult situations. That sort of thing creates a kind of closeness, a bond. Guys in combat experience the same thing. Brothers in arms.

  I didn't have to wait long. Jessie was a few years older than me. The last time I'd seen him—about a year and a half ago—he hadn't looked it. Now he did. Stress will do that to you.

  Jessie's just under six feet tall and muscular, a former Navy SEAL. His dark hair had begun showing a touch of gray around the edges and his face seemed drawn. His eyes said that they had seen a lot, some things they wished they hadn't seen.

  He sat down, looked at my face, and said, “Looks like you been in a cat fight.”

  “That’s exactly what I was in,” I said, and told him the sad tale of Barbara Sneed.

  “The soft underbelly of humanity,” he said.

  “Not always pretty, is it?”

  We did the usual old friend small talk thing for a few minutes. The waiter took our drink order. Jessie had a Miller Lite; I had a Coke Zero. The small talk continued until we ordered dinner and then we got down to business. I explained about Heidi and her stalker and how the club bouncer, Jason—except he was using the name Jimmy Falcon—had said he'd take care of it. Later that night, someone put a bullet in Jason’s head. At first, it seemed that the guy stalking Heidi had killed him, probably because Jason had confronted him about Heidi. But the next morning, as I studied the crime scene, it appeared to be a professional hit.

  Jessie listened patiently as I told the story. As I began describing the hit, he was nodding. When I finished, Jessie thought for a moment and then said, “Jason was undercover at Security Specialists.

  Our food came. When the waiter left, Jessie went on. “We had some evidence that some of their people were serving as a conduit for getting drugs into the clubs where they worked as security, sometimes with the knowledge of the club owners, sometimes without. Jason went undercover to see what he could find.”

  “You think his cover was blown?” I asked.

  “Probably.”

  “So they hit him,” I said.

  Jessie nodded.

  “So Bailey’s, where Security Specialists sent him, was not Jason’s assignment.”

  “No.”

  “Was there a connection between your assignment and his?” I asked.

  “Not formally,” Jessie said. “But the drugs that were being sold in L.A. clubs were probably being supplied by the cartel.”

  We were quiet for a moment while we ate. Then I asked. “Mind if I poke around a bit at Security Specialists?”

  “I don't mind at all,” Jessie said. “The DEA will, but I don't.”

  I smiled.

  “But why would you want to?” he asked. “Unless it's connected to something else you're working on or you have a client that's somehow involved.”

  I shrugged. “Like I said, Heidi tends bar where Jason was working. I think she feels responsible because she asked him to talk to the guy that was stalking her and then he ends up dead. She was pretty shaken up. I want to make sure she understands that his death wasn't her fault.”

  Jessie nodded.

  “Also, I don't like the idea of drug dealers coming into my neighborhood and killing people.”

  “I wouldn’t either,” Jessie said.

  We ate some more. Then I said, “If I wanted to shake things up a bit at Security Specialists, who would I talk to?”

  “I don't know,” Jessie said, shaking his head. “I'll have to fish around a bit. I'll let you know.”

  He studied me for a moment. “Jason was pretty good,” he said.

  “As good as you and me?”

  “Maybe not that good,” Jessie said, “but good enough. Getting him wasn't easy. But they did. These are bad people, Jake. Don't take them lightly.”

  “Only a fool would,” I said.

  “You need any help,” Jessie said, “let me know.”

  Chapter 16

  Jessie and I called it a night at eight so it wouldn't be too late when I got home. I was on my way back, near San Clemente, when Alex called.

  “Got a breakfast appointment with Christine Warren. Six-thirty.”

  “I'm normally running at six-thirty.”

  “Well, run after breakfast,” Alex said.

  “After breakfast? Didn't I teach you better than that? You can't run four or five miles on a full stomach.”

  “Okay then, get up early and run before,” Alex said. “But either way, the only time Christine's got in the next couple of days is six-thirty tomorrow morning.”

  “Okay. Where?”

  “IHOP Santa Monica and Bundy.”

  “All right. IHOP six-thirty. I’ll pay,” I said.

  “No need. I’ll get it.”

  “Why should you pay?” I asked. “I’m the one who initiated this.”

  “Yeah, but it’s my people we’re investigating.”

  “You weren’t the SAC when it happened.”

  “But I am now,” Alex said. “And if there’s a mole in my office, it’s my responsibility. Besides, I can expense it. You can’t.”

  “Good point,” I said. “You pay.”

  It was a couple minutes after ten when Wilson and I got home. He got a drink of water and then brought me his leash, so I took him for a walk. It was a nice night for a late stroll, even though we had to get up at four forty-five to get in our run before breakfast.

  Traffic was slow and the drive to IHOP took almost thirty minutes. I was a few minutes late. Alex and Christine were waiting and having coffee.

  “Morning Jake,” Christine said, as I sat down. Christine was in her early thirties. She was five eight with an athletic build. Brown hair and eyes. No make up. Pretty, but she didn't care. A graduate of Stanford Law School. When I was an agent, I’d worked with her half a dozen times. She was smart and tough.

  “Hi, Christine,” I said. “Nice to see you again. Sorry I’m late. Traffic.”

  The waitress was there almost immediately and took our order. As soon as she was gone, Christine said, “Okay guys, what's up?” Christine always preferred to get right to it.

  Alex said, “There's a mole in the agency.”

  She looked at Alex for a moment and then shifted her penetrating gaze to me, waiting for an explanation.

  “I have a source,” I said, “that is aware of syndicate operations. He assures me that our sting went bad because an informant inside the agency passed on information to our target. My source also says that an informant is still in place in the agency.”

  Every agent is aware of the possibility of a mole. But in order to function effectively on a day-to-day basis, agents have to trust each other. The thought that you might be working with someone who is not trustworthy is a chilling thought that's hard to process.

  Christine said, “And you think your source is solid?”

  I nodded.

  “But only a few people knew about our operation,” she said. “That means the informant was one of six or seven people.”

  I said, “Narrows it down a bit, doesn’t it?”

  Christine sat back in her chair and took in a deep breath. She was running it through her head, thinking about each person who had knowledge of our operation.

  “So,” she said, “I assume you've ruled out each other and Elaine. That leaves five suspects, including me.”

  There was no anger or resentment in her voice when she included herself as a suspect. It was simply a fact to be acknowledged. She looked from me to Alex for a moment and then back to me. Neither Alex nor I said anything.

  Christine took a sip of coffee and said, “So you need to check my phone records and email, just to be thorough. You know that the mole, whoever he or she is, would not communicate by a means that could be traced. But to be thorough, you need to check anyway.”

  I didn't say anything.

  “But you know you're not going to find anything that way,” she said.

  She was
looking back and forth between Alex and me again.

  “So how are you going to ...”

  The waitress arrived with our food.

  I was hungry so I dug right in. So did Alex. But Christine returned to her question. “How are you going to conduct an investigation of agency personnel when one of them was the SAC and another the director of the OCU?”

  I swallowed a bite of eggs and hash browns and took a sip of tea. Then I said, “We're going to begin by asking if it was you.”

  “Because if it was me,” Christine said, “I would simply tell you.”

  “I've had people confess to me before,” Alex said. “Guilt can be a powerful motivator.”

  Christine began working on her egg white and vegetable omelet. She took a bite and sipped her coffee, and then realized we were both watching her closely. She looked at each of us, leaned in and to me said, “It wasn't me. I'm not selling information to anyone. I wasn't then; I'm not now.”

  I watched her eyes for a couple more seconds. Then I drank some of my tea and ate some more of my eggs. Alex watched her a moment longer and then went back to his waffle.

  “That's it?” Christine said. “That's how you're going to find the informant? You're going to sit down with them and ask if it was them?”

  Alex smiled.

  “No,” I said. “We're going to look very closely at each of the suspects. Do all the normal checks. But besides that, we have an ace in the hole.”

  “Really?” Christine said. “And what would that be?”

  “We've got a mole in their organization.”

  The suspicious look was still there.

  “Our mole will discover who their mole is,” I said, “and we'll have him.”

  Alex was watching Christine and me closely as he finished his waffle.

  “You're no longer an FBI agent,” Christine said. “Why would you refer to an undercover FBI agent as our mole?”

  I shrugged.

  Alex said, “I’m investigating my people. Jake is a consultant. He’s working with me. So, he gets to use inclusive language.”

  Christine looked from him to me again, leaned back in her chair and said, “Well, as I said, it isn't me. And once you rule me out, if you need my help, let me know. I consider you guys friends, even though Alex is now officially management,” she smiled as she gave Alex a sideways glance. “He's still okay. And Elaine was a friend,” she said, looking at me. “I'd like to help find the person responsible for her death.”