The Blue Garou (Detective 'Cadillac' Holland Series Book 1)

by H Hiller

  Avery and Gabb found other things to discuss through their entrees, and both men seemed ready for the meal to be over by the time the waitress offered them dessert.

  TWENTY NINE

  The uneasiness Avery felt as he left his dinner with Agent Gabb only increased during the short drive to Strada Ammazarre. I had been expecting a visit ever since he mentioned he would drop by the bistro after the meeting if there were things we needed to discuss.

  “Apparently dinner did not go well.”

  “You could say that. The FBI is digging into your background. They seem to know more than you have told me about your time overseas. The supervising agent, a guy named Jim Gabb, said their Washington bureau had called his boss to personally shut down the background check. This is exactly what you told me we needed to avoid, remember?”

  Avery’s frown was one I had seen only rarely in the past. I saw a flicker in Tony’s eyes before he looked away from us. The chef would normally have gone to the kitchen while Avery and I talked, but he was now rooted to his seat.

  “I do. But it is not like we don’t have their agent in a worse corner than they can paint either of us into. Gabb has his hands full with his UC. The local office was ordered to drop the investigation as well, right?”

  “Let’s hope they really have. Is there anything else you’d like to share with me about your time in Iraq before somebody else tells me first?”

  “Let’s take this upstairs.”

  “You cannot imagine how little I wanted that to be your answer.”

  Avery stood up and followed Tony and me to the third floor. The three of us took the small private elevator off the kitchen to my apartment in silence. Avery did not question why my chef was part of our discussions, and I think Tony’s presence only compounded the anxiety Avery felt. I opened the wood-paneled metal door to my apartment and the three of us gravitated towards the leather sofa and chairs under the exposed wood beams in the living room. Avery had not set foot in my apartment since it had been under construction. He commented on the finished decorating, which included the well-stocked gun cabinet in my living room and the pair of large chalkboards flanking the desk set by the windows overlooking the Quarter. The post-it notes and writing were my reconstruction of the events leading to my father’s disappearance.

  I poured bourbon for Tony and myself and took a cold beer from the bar fridge for Avery before settling into a chair with my own cocktail. My boss has sworn off hard liquor rather than giving up alcohol entirely. He is a mean drunk but no alcoholic, at least by local standards.

  Avery settled onto the heavy Stickley sofa’s leather cushions and put his feet up on the coffee table. Tony took a seat in a low backed leather chair, identical to the one I sat in, and waited to see what I divulged to Chief Avery. We had already rehearsed my presentation.

  “I think I deserve some answers, if only for myself. I’ve never pressed you about your history before you came home, but I have put my career on the line for an awful lot since you got here. I think you owe me at least some idea of how deep of a hole I may be in.” Avery glanced in my direction, but wouldn’t make eye contact.

  “Even if telling you only deepens the hole?” I offered him a chance to stop.

  Avery gave this a moment’s consideration and then nodded.

  “Yeah.”

  I sighed and took a long sip. “Tell me what you already know.”

  “Your dad was proud of you when you made the Green Berets, but worried as hell when you went to Somalia and things went bad. He said you had jumped to some super-secret outfit when you came back and then all he ever seemed to know came from post cards you sent from overseas that said nothing but that you were okay. He knew you went into Afghanistan right after 9/11, and everyone thought you were probably safer when you took that State Department job you apparently didn’t really have. At least until you were reported missing in action.”

  “Well everything you know up until the Green Berets is about right. I did transfer to a special operations group after we got back from Iraq and did a lot of counter-terrorism work even before 9/11. That was when things got really busy for field agents like myself. I spent a few years working on a contract basis for a lot of three-letter agencies and wound up in Baghdad right after Hussein high-tailed it out of town.”

  “What sort of contract work?” Avery asked.

  “The sort of work everybody but those involved talks about. The kind that my employer needed to have plausible deniability about if something went wrong,” I said without specifics.

  “So, what, you were sending guys to Guantanamo?” Avery said to get the conversation moving again. I think he was beginning to realize how much easier his life would be if he didn’t know what Tulip didn’t know.

  “No. Most of the guys in Guantanamo are planners and management. I was eliminating the threat posed by the guys who were carrying out the missions they dreamed up. This required having a particular mind-set I had honed over the years.”

  “What sort of mind-set are we talking about?”

  “I was prepared to not take any prisoners.” I could see the blood drain from Avery’s face. “I had to change the way I do a lot of things when I came to work for you.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Avery muttered and finished his beer. Tony was pouring fresh rounds for the two of us and Avery abruptly switched to Scotch. I waited while Avery took a long sip from his tumbler and tried to clear the images from his mind before I continued. He very obviously needed as short of a version of things as I could provide.

  “What do you know about the money our government sent to Iraq after the war?”

  “Not much. Didn’t we release some money impounded after Iraq invaded Kuwait?”

  “That and the money from the UN sanctioned Food-For-Oil program came to a little over twelve billion dollars. We delivered it to the Provisional Authority in freshly minted American currency. It arrived on pallets on the same size planes we used to ship tanks.”

  “Twelve billion dollars in cash?” Avery repeated the number to himself a few times.

  “Our government thought it was Iraq’s responsibility to handle and distribute the money because it was technically their money, just in our currency. The country had no economy to speak of and there were no functional banks so everything about the rebuilding process was being paid in cash.”

  “What does any of this have to do with what you were doing?”

  “Like I said, my work in Iraq involved tracking down the groups our intelligence agencies and State Department were convinced were behind the resistance being mounted against our troops. It gradually expanded from there as things became more complicated.”

  “And how do you fit into this?” Avery turned and asked Tony.

  “I helped him with that,” he answered truthfully, but far from completely.

  “So you were some sort of spy like Cooter?”

  “Not really, but I was looking for some of the same men.” Avery frowned again at the thought that his favorite chef had been any part of what I was doing. “My father was an intelligence officer with diplomatic cover at the Iraqi consulate in Italy when he met my mother. He was recalled after they secretly married. Saddam sent men to murder my father when I was ten years old, and my mother and I returned to Sicily. I was a chef in Palermo your army forced Saddam out of Baghdad and I went back to Iraq to hunt down the men who had killed my father. I was arrested at the airport by Iraqi security forces because of my father. They were going to send me back to Italy but Cooter heard about me and got me away from them. He hired me to help him find the men who were financing and directing the Iraqis that were planting IEDs and attacking your soldiers. It turned out that these bad men had relatives who were in the puppet government your President and CIA set up.”

  “The men we were looking for wanted to keep the country stirred up. They began killing people to try to make a civil war. They killed anyone who helped the Americans, such as interpreters. They wanted confusion so they could rob
the country blind, like they had probably been doing while Saddam was in office.”

  “So they killed their own people just to steal the money we sent them?” Avery asked the question, but I think he was just making conversation while trying to get a grasp on his new understanding of Tony and myself.

  “Tony and I made created a team of Iraqis and intelligence agency guys to begin to track the money to find those who were paying people to shoot at us. It was a matter of trying to chop off the head to kill the whole snake.”

  “The man we found was behind a big part of this was also the man who had killed my father. He was a colonel in Saddam’s secret police, and was now running the new secret police with the help of your own CIA.” Tony abruptly took over telling his version of the story. I had never found evidence that the CIA and the colonel were cooperating, only that they were aware that the secret police were back in business. “Cooter found he had bank accounts with over thirty million dollars to draw on. He was also the brother of a minister of finance, and the uncle to an interpreter for a top American diplomat in charge of the transitional government and both of their names were on the accounts as well. Cooter gave the evidence to the State Department.”

  “And things went crazy,” I picked up the thread again. “My report was sent to the State Department in Washington, which probably shared it with the White House, and we were told to freeze the accounts but to leave the colonel himself alone. We did that, but the colonel threw a tantrum and the Iraqi Governing Council protested to our Provisional Government. There was also a big increase in attacks on our troops so I drove out and picked up the colonel for questioning, against orders, and we were ambushed on our way back to Baghdad.”

  “And what happened to the colonel?”

  “He disappeared, along with the money in one of the bank accounts we had not yet been able to freeze.”

  “So I guess you rescued Cooter in the ambush?” Avery turned towards Tony. Tony nodded and then stood up to refill Avery’s empty highball glass.

  “I was part of the ambush.” Tony continued while he poured Scotch. “My job had been to infiltrate the colonel’s campaign. The team knew there would be some sort of attempt to stop us from taking the colonel. I was supposed to be sure any ambush did not succeed. I was ordered to hide in a building overlooking where the ambush was set up and to detonated explosives under the lead car. I set them off while they were still being put in place but members of the colonel’s police force attacked the vehicles anyway and pulled the colonel out of the car he was riding in. Cooter had arranged for your Marines to be patrolling close by and they ended up in a gunfight with the policemen. We wanted to catch the men who were helping the colonel, but things didn’t work out like we wanted.”

  Avery now turned back to me. “You were pretty badly injured.”

  “Every plan has its flaws.”

  “So why did the Iraqis want to question you after the ambush?” He knew, by now, that he was getting far more classified information than he should have, or now wanted to know. “And why did they seal your records?”

  “The new Interim Government was very upset that the colonel had even been investigated, and livid that they were not informed of his imminent arrest. Mostly they were furious that their money was gone. They tried to convince the State Department that we had abducted the colonel and killed him after draining the accounts ourselves. My bosses disavowed any knowledge of the operation or that they had been involved with anyone like Tony, who the Iraqis had already declared persona non grata. The State Department, Department of Defense, and CIA all had no choice but to throw me under the bus to maintain the fragile relationship they had with the Iraqis they were committed to putting in charge of the country when the Provisional Government pulled out. They also couldn’t let it get out that their repatriated exiles were as corrupt as the men they had fought a war to oust.”

  “That sounds like something out of a bad movie.”

  “It was a bad movie. I was dressed as an Iraqi police officer and was admitted to the civilian hospital under that identity. I was initially reported as missing because the Marines found a jacket with my name in the liner after they secured the scene. The fear our people had was that I had been abducted by the same people who rescued the colonel, and that would have been a publicity and security nightmare for them.”

  Tony told Avery the rest of the story. “My family could protect the two of us in Italy so I approached the man Cooter had given our report to and he chartered a plane to fly us both out of Iraq when he was able to be moved. The Iraqis lost interest when they were certain Cooter and I were no longer in a position to embarrass or hurt them.”

  “So where did the story Tulip told me about how you were injured come from?”

  “That was the story the State Department gave Tulip when they notified her about my condition and whereabouts. This was barely a week after my father had gone missing and my whole family thought I was probably dead. I was in a coma and when I came to there was a huge cover story in place that the State Department and Tony had created to explain my injuries. Tony convinced Tulip that he was simply a friend I had made when I went to Italy for a vacation. She believed this because I usually did take my vacations in Europe rather than come home. The last time my family had seen me was when Tulip graduated from law school in 2001.”

  “I assume Tony’s involvement in Iraq is why you try to keep the two of them apart.”

  I simply nodded and Tony acted as though he was not paying any attention.

  “Did I miss the part where you said how you two came up the money to buy this place and open the restaurant?” I could sense his bracing for our saying something about actually being behind the disappearance of the Iraqi and his millions.

  “The attacks against your troops dropped off after the colonel disappeared. Your State Department had a bounty for information about the attacks on Americans. They paid me well for exposing the colonel and gave me permission to come to America,” Tony said.

  “ The State Department recognized my Italian citizenship when they issued my visa and identity card because they would rather explain an Italian getting a visa to open a restaurant than how the son of a former Iraqi spy moved here.”

  “How likely is any of this to blow up in our faces if the FBI keeps pressing?” Avery now returned to the concern that had brought him here this evening.

  “None at all. State and the DOD will never open my files to anyone. They barely want to admit they ever knew me. There’s every reason to believe that the investigation is as far along as it will ever get. The question we now have is whether you can keep our secret.”

  “Who do I know that would want to hear this? What I am going to do is to go home and finish getting drunk so I can wake up thinking of tonight as a bad dream.”

  Avery sighed and stood up. He adjusted his tie and jacket, didn’t say goodbye and look at either of us as he left, and took the elevator to the ground floor by himself

  “I hope your friend can keep his promise.” Tony said and looked me in the eye. I understood the veiled threat that came with my partner’s concern but nodded rather than argued.

  Avery stopped by for brunch the next day, bringing fresh bad news with him. He greeted both of us as though the previous evening had never happened and displayed no signs of anything having changed in his relations with Tony, but the three of us knew everything had changed forever. Chef Tony and Miss J, the cantankerous Black woman who had taught him how to cook for the locals, served us breakfast. This was plates of scrambled eggs set atop smoked pork shoulder piled over baked cheese grits and topped with Tabasco infused hollandaise sauce. Tony brought us a basket of fresh beignets and buttermilk biscuits, most of which came to rest at the bottom of Avery’s pit of a stomach.

  “The FBI isn’t dropping the background check on you. Their SAC personally requested your file from the State Patrol this morning, including your fingerprint records. They are likely looking for something they will use to discr
edit you if you blow their UC operation. It’s not like there aren’t things to find, as I found out last night.”

  “I thought Gabb said he was told to stand down, right?”

  “Yes, but it seems the man isn’t a great listener.”

  Avery was not immediately reassured by my grin. “I can do more than embarrass them. I am pretty sure I can make a provable case that the FBI’s informant has withheld information on felonies and was probably involved in Biggie’s murder.”

  “That should give them something else to worry about than you two. Someday these guys will learn not to play in my backyard without permission.”

  “Do you mind if I have a little chat with Agent Gabb?”

  “Of course I do, but I checked and he will be at Brother Martin tonight since his nephew is playing ball against John Curtis. The family supposedly goes to Brocato’s for ice cream right after the game.” This was Avery’s way of suggesting I not storm the FBI offices.

  “I'll let you know how it goes.”

  “I'll just stare at the horizon and wait for the fireworks.”

  THIRTY

  Avery’s information was accurate, but the only description I had for Agent Jim Gabb was Avery’s saying that he was “a short man with a big swagger and a face you just want to punch.” The posture of a career FBI Agent would have given him away if I had nothing else to work with. He was also paying at least as much attention to what was going on around him as he was to the lackluster performance of his brother’s son at wide receiver. I tactfully decided my opening statement shouldn’t be that someone was going to be paying full price for college, but there were no football scholarships in the boy’s future.

  I had arrived in time for the second half and decided the bleachers were a bad place for a meeting that was almost certain to get heated. I left and took a chance on the veracity of Avery’s information about the family’s rituals. I have always been amazed at the details of people’s lives my friend has stored away, never knowing when they will be of use.