Love and Lies: A Jake Badger Mystery Thriller

by Glenn Rogers

  Alex looked up immediately from a report he was reading, looking first at A.J., then at me.

  A.J. noticed. “What?”

  “Lydia Quantino is an FBI agent assigned to the cyber crime unit.”

  Alex and I looked at each other.

  “Could there be more than one Lydia Quantino?” I asked.

  “We'll have to find out,” Alex said. “Be a pretty big coincidence, though, to have a mob informant and an FBI agent with the same name but not be the same person.”

  A.J. did a quick calculation. “In the past three months,” she said, “Quantino has been paid eighty-seven thousand dollars.”

  “Crime pays,” I said.

  “Assuming that what she did was illegal,” A.J. said. “Remember, we don't know what she was paid for.”

  I said, “You think the syndicate has people on their payroll who do things that are not illegal and still make eighty-seven thousand in three months for doing them?”

  “Good point,” she said.

  “Your Lydia Quantino,” Alex said to A.J., “can you access her social security number?”

  A.J. started typing. “Yeah.” She read off the number.

  Alex began typing and clicking. He was the fastest typist I'd even seen. He was checking agent Lydia Quantino's personnel file.

  He inhaled deeply. “Same social,” he said. “We just found our mole.”

  I stood up.

  “Only problem,” he said to me, “is that she can't be your mole. She's only been an agent for eighteen months. She was in college in Pennsylvania when our sting got stung.”

  I took a breath and sat back down. I studied A.J. a moment and asked, “Can you go back four years?”

  She shook her head. “Four years ago I was working on my MBA and teaching economics as an adjunct at Ventura Community College. I did not become associated with my current employer until fifteen months ago.”

  Alex said, “We’ve been working under the assumption that there was only one informant, then and now.”

  I realized I had stood up again and was pacing. As I reached the end of my short path across Alex's office, I punched the wall in front of me. Not hard enough to make a hole or hurt my hand, but hard enough to make both Alex and A.J. look at me.

  “Sorry,” I said, feeling stupid.

  After a moment, A.J. said, “I don't know that there's anything else I can do for you.”

  Alex looked at me. She was right. I nodded.

  “Thank you for what you've done,” I said. “I hope in your new life you don't make the same mistakes you made in your old one.”

  She didn't say anything.

  I looked at Alex. “You got the rest of this?”

  He nodded, and I left.

  I drove around for a while, trying to think through my frustration. I’d been so sure that A.J. would have what I wanted. I was happy that the current informant was identified. Alex would take care of that issue. But it didn't help me any with what I was looking for. Why had I not anticipated that the present informant might not have been around nearly four years ago?

  Driving around wasn't helping. I went home, got my gym bag, and went to the gym for a couple of hours, lifting weights and working on the heavy bag. Sometimes hitting helps. By the time I was done, I'd worked out most of my frustration and exhausted myself.

  I needed to eat. I went to a little Chinese place on Ventura and ordered pork lo mien. As I ate, I began to regain some sense of balance and focus. Okay, so I'd failed to anticipate that one informant could be replaced by another. Not the end of the world. No permanent damage. At least the current informant had been identified. We'd just have to keep digging. Alex and Monica would continue to help. We'd find who had betrayed us.

  Chapter 49

  It was a little after ten on Thursday morning when Alex and Monica walked into my office, looking a little grim, I thought. Wilson greeted each of them. I offered coffee or tea. They declined. I sat behind my desk; they sat in my guest chairs, Monica clutching a manila folder. With the limited space I had, that was the only real option for three people.

  “Get Loftus handed off to the Marshall's office?” I asked Alex.

  He nodded. “I suspect she's somewhere beginning her new life at this very moment.”

  “Quantino?” I asked.

  “She's been arrested,” Alex said.

  “I hope Theodor makes it,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Alex said. “Me, too.”

  Monica hadn't said anything yet. She sat very still, watching me.

  “You two seem a little uncomfortable,” I said. “What's going on?”

  Very calmly, Monica said, “We know who the informant was.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “Who was it?”

  Monica took a deep breath. “It was Elaine.”

  She might as well have thrown a bucket of ice water in my face and then slapped me. I struggled to comprehend.

  “Elaine? What do you mean, Elaine?”

  “Elaine was the informant,” she said softly.

  “No, she wasn't. Elaine wasn't the mole. Elaine got killed in that operation. Elaine wasn't the one selling information to the mob.”

  I looked at Alex.

  He nodded.

  My mind was racing, but it was getting harder by the millisecond for me to think. This was nuts. I must be missing something. “You're saying that Elaine Bristol, my fiancée, the woman who had taken a bullet for me, a woman that Alex and I worked closely with, was informing to the syndicate regarding FBI plans and operations?”

  “Yes,” Monica said.

  My heart was racing like an engine being redlined. Breaths were coming in big chunks.

  “Bullshit,” I said angrily.

  Alex sucked in a deep breath and blew it out. “It's not bullshit,” he said, calmly. “There's evidence. Quite a bit, actually. It was Elaine.”

  I slapped my desktop hard as I stood up. “What evidence?”

  Monica put the folder she'd been holding on my desk and slid it toward me. “Bank accounts.”

  Shaking my head, I said, “You're wrong. You got it wrong. You made a mistake.”

  “There's no mistake,” Alex said. “We worked together on it. Elaine had multiple accounts. Switzerland. The Caymans.

  “How did you verify the accountholder for a Swiss numbered account?” I spit the words out as if they tasted bad.

  “I have a friend in the CIA,” Alex said, “who has a friend in Swiss banking. He has a friend in the Caymans. You know how it works, Jake. In today’s world there are few genuine secrets.”

  I stood there, flexing my fists, breathing hard.

  Monica said, “Payments were made into those accounts from the same accounts Loftus transferred funds from. The same people who were paying Quantino were paying Elaine.”

  I remember standing there shaking my head. I was pacing back and forth. My hands had balled into fists, fists that wanted to hit, to hurt. My friends were telling me that the women I loved had betrayed me. And not just me, but the other agents on the team. She had betrayed the FBI. She was a criminal. They were telling me she had informed the syndicate about our sting operation. Telling me that she had lied to me. That our relationship was a lie. Telling me that her death had been her own fault. I thought my head was going to explode. This couldn't be true about Elaine. I loved her. She loved me. She wouldn't have done that. This couldn't be happening.

  I remember looking at them. They were just sitting there, watching me. And then I saw Mildred at the door. She was watching me as well. She'd heard what they'd said. She'd heard them accuse Elaine of betrayal and she was watching me. How could this be true? How could Elaine have done this?

  “No, no,” I was saying. “This can't be true.” I remember grabbing my jacket and leaving the office. I remember going out the door and getting into my Jeep.

  That had been about ten-thirty in the morning. The next thing I knew it was ten-thirty at night and I was parked along a lonely stretch of PCH overlooking th
e ocean not far from Oxnard. I must have driven around all day, though I had no idea where I'd been.

  My body ached from head to toe. My muscles had been tensed all day. Anger and stress will do that to you. My head hurt. I took a deep breath and put my head forward, resting it on the steering wheel. I began to cry.

  After a while I stopped crying and sat up straight. I took another deep breath and said, “What if they're wrong?”

  But as the words were coming out of my mouth, I knew they weren't wrong. Alex and Monica were too good at their jobs to be wrong about something like that. They’d have gone over it again and again. And working together, there was no way they'd get it wrong. They had discovered the truth together and they had come together to tell me because they cared about me and knew what hearing it was going to do to me.

  As hard as it was to admit, I knew they were right. I didn't understand how or why Elaine had done it, but she had. And because of what she had done, she'd died. It had not been my fault. It had been her fault. But I let her fool me. I let her lie to me. Why hadn't I seen the truth? Why had I been so blind?

  I didn't know. I didn't know much of anything. There were lots of questions. There didn't seem to be any answers. I put my hand on the back of my neck and rubbed it, trying to rub the pain and stiffness away. It was a futile effort. At some point during the day I had turned off my stereo. I turned it back on. The Moody Blues came on: Lost in a Lost World. The idea had never resonated more.

  I took a few more deep breaths, trying to clear my head. It must have had some positive effect because I began to realize that I was hungry. I sat another minute in the cool, clear evening, watching the moonlight reflecting off the gently churning waters of the Pacific. Under other circumstances, I'd have been satisfied to sit longer. But I'd wasted an entire day. It was time for me to rejoin the human race. I started my Wrangler and pulled onto PCH, heading toward Santa Monica.

  Chapter 50

  I drove into Santa Monica and turned left on Santa Monica Boulevard and drove to a McDonald's that was still open. At one point I thought someone might be following me. I watched. I couldn’t really tell. I went through the drive-thru and ordered a couple of double cheeseburgers, fries and a Diet Coke. As I ate, I kept asking myself, why? It was less painful to think about what Elaine had done from a theoretical point of view than from a personal point of view. What would motivate someone to be a mob informant? Was it purely financial, or was there some underlying ideological reason? An FBI agent who sells information to a criminal organization is a traitor, selling information to an enemy of the State. She’s also betraying her fellow agents. What would motivate someone to do something like that? I didn’t know. Who would be able to answer that question for me? The only person I could think of who might be able to explain it to me was Norman Hanson.

  I drove to the Eros club and Eric buzzed me in. The light was dim, the music was loud, the girl on stage was naked, and the club was full. A very well endowed topless waitress led me through the tables to the door on the opposite side of the club. I went down the hall and up the stairs to Norman's office. Melvin opened the door and gestured me into the office.

  “Jake Badger,” Norman said, putting down his copy of Descartes' Mediations. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  “I need you to help me understand something.”

  “If I can,” Norman said.

  “First, I'd like to ask you a question.”

  Norman nodded.

  “You knew the syndicate had an informant inside the FBI.”

  Norman nodded once.

  “Did you also know who the informant was?”

  Norman's eyes held just a hint of sadness. “Why do you ask?”

  I took a breath.

  “Norman, I know Elaine was the informant. Did you know it was her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn't you tell me?”

  “Because I did not wish to be a source of pain to you.”

  I thought about that for a moment.

  “Why did she do it?” I asked. “Why did she betray the FBI and her friends and me? Was it just for money, or was there some other reason?”

  “I don't know,” Norman said. “The exact nature of the human condition is one that has eluded philosophers and theologians for millennia. Why she did what she did is known only to her.”

  I took another deep breath. “If you had to guess, what do you think her motive was?”

  “Money,” he said.

  “Money.”

  “Many people are not content to merely earn a living. They prefer to enjoy a lifestyle. What they have to do to achieve it, is merely a pragmatic determination.”

  After a moment, I said, “She said she loved me.”

  “She probably did,” Norman said. “Perhaps she struggled with the incoherence of the two desires she felt so strongly. Perhaps that's why she both informed your target of your intentions and also went with you on the bust.”

  I hadn't considered that.

  “This, of course,” he added, “is entirely speculation on my part.”

  I nodded.

  “Can I ask you another question?”

  “Yes,” Norman said.

  “Why do you do what you do?”

  Norman never took his eyes off me.

  “This club?” he asked.

  “Not the club. Your brokerage business. You broker thugs and assassins.”

  “If I didn't, someone else would. And they'd make all the money instead of me.”

  “So you do it for the money. “

  “I do it for a great deal of money.”

  I nodded and thought.

  “The last time I was here,” I said, “you quoted a passage from the Old Testament. At the time, I didn't understand what you meant. Now I do. There's a quote in the New Testament about the love of money.”

  “The love of money is the root of all evil,” Norman said, quoting the passage.

  “Do you believe that's true?”

  “I know it's true,” he said.

  As I pulled away from the club, I thought again that someone was following me, but I wasn't sure. Maybe I was just being jumpy. Picking out a tail at night when all you can really see is headlights is hard to do. Probably nothing. No one had a reason to be following me ... at least none that I was aware of.

  It was after midnight and I was tired. I went home.

  Chapter 51

  I had been in my office about five minutes Friday morning. Mildred had taken Wilson home with her the day before, so she'd bring him in when she arrived at nine. I’d gotten the coffee machine going and put a cup of tea in the microwave. I sat down behind my desk and happened to look at my bank of four security monitors when I saw two gentlemen coming up the walk toward my office. One was small; one was quite large. Both were dressed in suits. They opened the door and came in and in a moment stepped through the open french doors into my side of the office suite.

  “Mr. Badger,” the small one said. It could have been either a question or a statement.

  “And you are?”

  “Mr. Smith. And this is my associate, Mr. Jones.”

  “Alias Smith and Jones,” I said. “TV series. Early 70s. A western. Are you that Smith and Jones?”

  Mr. Smith, a Latino, was the smaller of the two. Maybe five-six, one thirty. He was well-spoken and had no accent. His longish black hair was combed straight back. His gray suite was expensive. The big guy was Asian, Samoan maybe. Probably six-eight, close to three hundred pounds, most of it muscle. His black hair was cut very short. His tan suit fit him perfectly. Obviously made for him.

  Mr. Smith was the spokesman. He smiled. “An amusing factoid, Mr. Badger. But we have pressing business.”

  “Which is?”

  “Which is for you to meet with Mr. Esposito.”

  “And other than your boss, who is Mr. Esposito?”

  “He was Mr. Pipestone's boss.”

  “Really? So Mr. Esposito is a drug dealer.”

&nb
sp; “Mr. Esposito has many business interests.”

  “I'm sure he does,” I said. “Well, tell Mr. Esposito that I'm not really interested in chatting with him.”

  “Mr. Esposito thought that might be the case. However, Mr. Esposito is currently entertaining two guests with whom you are acquainted. He believes you would enjoy visiting with them.”

  I studied his intense yet cold eyes. Who had they taken? Heidi? He said two. Heidi and her little brother, Kyle? Alex and Monica? Not likely, but possible. My stomach had tightened into an angry knot.

  “Oh?” I said, as casually as I could. “And who would that be?”

  “Mildred and Wilson.”

  I felt a wave of rage surge through me that I was sure he could see in my eyes. Control, I said to myself. Control.

  “And I'm just supposed to take your word for that?”

  He held out his hand to Mr. Jones, who stood next to but a little behind him. Mr. Jones handed him something, which he then tossed onto my desk. It was Wilson's collar.

  His eyes were locked onto mine. He could see what I was thinking.

  “They're fine, Mr. Badger. Safe and comfortable… for now. Shall we go?”

  I swallowed. Neither of them had a gun in hand. I could probably get them both before Mr. Jones got over the desk and got his hands on me. But then what? I had no idea where they had Mildred and Wilson. Even if I killed these two, Esposito would just send more. Or he'd kill Mildred and Wilson. But still, capitulating is not in my nature.

  “Mr. Badger,” Smith said, “there are two more men outside. Even if you can kill us, the odds are not in your favor.”

  He was right, but I still hesitated.

  “Mr. Badger,” Smith said, “I know who you are. Decorated Marine. Former FBI agent. Cage fighter. I saw a couple of your fights. You are a warrior in the true sense of the word. But in this case, you would be foolish to resist.”

  They knew they had me.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I stood up.

  Mr. Smith nodded toward the gun under my left arm. “The gun,” he said.