Suspicion

by Joseph Finder

She shook her head slowly.

  She was wearing an extra-extra-large T-shirt that said KEEP CALM AND CARY GRANT on the front. A spoof of an old British wartime poster you now saw parodied everywhere: KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. A silhouette of Cary Grant in North by Northwest, running from a crop duster. Danny had forgotten whether he’d given it to her. She loved old Hitchcock movies. She insisted they didn’t make movie stars like Cary Grant or Spencer Tracy or Gregory Peck anymore.

  “I figured, the less you or Abby was involved, the better. Safer to keep you out of the loop.”

  “So one day Tom Galvin would get arrested and—what, the Mexicans would leave us all alone and say, ‘Rats, I guess we’re just going to have to file an appeal’? And ‘Oh, that guy who’s responsible for us losing billions of dollars, that guy who funneled the information to the DEA, we’ll just leave him alone, because them’s the breaks of the justice system’? Like that?”

  “There’s no need to raise your voice.”

  She swung her feet out from under the covers and onto the floor. “What the hell were you thinking? That they’d go away quietly? Because they always do that, right? Just walk away and throw up their hands. These people who behead their enemies and butcher them, and . . . and you just thought you were going to work against these cold-blooded killers and they’d leave you and your daughter alone?”

  He made a palms-down gesture, patting the air, trying to calm her, get her to keep her voice down. “You don’t really think I’d deliberately do anything that might cause harm to you or Abby, do you?”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “So when you told her she couldn’t go over to the Galvins, and I asked you if there was something about them you didn’t like, and you said no . . . ?”

  “Yes. That was a lie.”

  “And the reason you didn’t want her being driven around by Galvin’s chauffeur—when you said you were just uncomfortable—”

  “That was also a lie.”

  “The old friend who wanted publishing advice, the Jay Gould letters at Wellesley—”

  “I lied to you over and over again. I did. I’m deeply, deeply ashamed of it. But everything I did was about protecting you and Abby. Lucy, come on, keep it down, Abby can hear.”

  “And all because you can’t deal with confrontation.” Her cheeks burned deep red. “Well, that’s something I really can’t fix. This is such a disappointment, really.”

  He no longer recognized her. The mask of anger had lifted away, and what remained was terrifyingly unfamiliar. A woman who looked at him like he was a stranger. Her eyes stared, her expression oddly neutral, impassive.

  “You didn’t want to have this fight, so you decided you knew best.”

  “I didn’t—” He faltered. He didn’t know what to say, because he knew she was right.

  She fell silent, and so did he. There didn’t seem to be anything more to say.

  He got up from the bed. He saw tears in her eyes. She spoke so softly he could barely hear. “You take care of that girl, and tell her I love her so much and I’ll say good-bye to her another time. Right now I can’t.”

  “Lucy,” he said.

  But she’d closed the bedroom door behind her.

  • • •

  He lay awake for what seemed like hours.

  He wept.

  At four in the morning, when the sky was dead black, and daybreak seemed impossibly far off, he had an idea.

  He selected ChatSecure on his iPhone and texted the DEA agents: Need to meet ASAP.

  • • •

  “It really sucks that I have to go to school today,” Abby said the next morning. “Instead of being in Aspen.”

  “I know. Life’s tough.”

  She seemed to relent a bit. “I know. Jenna calls it a first-world problem. Lucy left already?”

  “She had to leave early.”

  A beat. “You guys were fighting last night.”

  “We were talking. Did we wake you up?”

  She shook her head, then shrugged.

  His iPhone, in his pants pocket, vibrated and bleated the distinctive tritone of a secure text message.

  “Is that yours?”

  He nodded, slipped it out of his pocket. Entered his passcode. The message read: Busy on another case. Can’t meet until tonight or tomorrow.

  “That from Lucy?”

  “It’s business. Boring.”

  “You changed the text alert sound? It sounds different.”

  “I don’t know. You want some coffee?”

  She gave him a quick look of surprise. “Yes, please.” She looked at him and smiled.

  “Just this once,” Danny added. He rose and got down a Winnie-the-Pooh mug from the cabinet and filled it three-quarters of the way with coffee. “You can add your own milk and sugar.”

  “Okay.” She poured some Lactaid milk until it was as light as coffee ice cream. She stirred in three teaspoons of sugar. “You sure you guys weren’t fighting?”

  “We’re fine,” Danny said. He’d tell her when it felt less raw. “Get a move on. You don’t want to be late.”

  • • •

  “Let’s go,” Danny called out fifteen minutes later.

  He jangled his car keys. Abby was still in the bathroom, doing whatever teenage girls do in the morning that takes them so long.

  “Boogie, move your butt.”

  The bathroom door opened. Abby’s face was different. It was twisted in what at first looked like intense curiosity, but something about her expression made Danny look twice. Anger?

  “Where’s her toothbrush?” she said.

  “What are you talking—?”

  “Lucy. Lucy’s toothbrush. Her makeup. It’s gone. It’s all gone.”

  Danny couldn’t think of what to say beyond, “It is?”

  “You broke up.” An accusation.

  Danny sighed. “Can we not get into this right now? You’re going to be late for school.”

  “You lied to me!”

  “It’s not your business.”

  “Not my business? All the times you’ve told me to treat her like a member of the family? ‘She loves you, Abby. She’s part of our family, you should treat her like that.’ And now you’re freaking lying to me?”

  “Abby. Boogie. We’ll talk later. Not now.”

  “No!” Abby threw something at him, something small and hard. A hairbrush. It missed him by a couple of feet.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “Abby, what the hell are you doing?”

  “Sure, why not lie to me the same way you lied about Mom.”

  “Huh?”

  “You said she had an infection. An infection.” She was crying now, her face red and distorted.

  “Abby—”

  “You made me go to camp!”

  “You wanted to go to camp. Mommy wanted you to go to camp.”

  “I was kayaking and swimming when Mommy was dying. Oh my God.” Her voice had gotten high and tiny and constricted.

  “Baby,” he said. He went to hug her and she pushed him away. He went numb.

  Tears dripped from Abby’s cheeks. Her nose was running. It tore Danny apart to see her like this. “Like it wasn’t my business Mom had breast cancer. Like I couldn’t hear the truth.”

  Crying now, too, Danny said, “Abby, sweetie, no. That wasn’t it at all. Mommy wanted you to be happy for as long as possible.”

  She said something, but Danny couldn’t make out the words. All he heard was “happy?”

  “Honey,” he said. “I lied to you because Mommy asked me to.”

  And then it was out.

  Pass the buck right back to your dead wife, he thought. Blame her. She’s not around to defend herself.

  Did it make any difference that it was true?

  This time when Danny tried to h
ug her, Abby didn’t fight him. She didn’t hug back, not really, but she allowed herself to be hugged for a long time. His shirt was hot and damp from his daughter’s tears.

  • • •

  Ten minutes later he called Jay Poskanzer, the criminal defense attorney.

  “Jay,” he said, “I need a little help.”

  “On what?”

  “It’s about the DEA guys I’ve been dealing with.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Yeah. I want out.”

  60

  The terror Danny had felt in Aspen at the side of the mountain had scarcely lessened its grip on him.

  Whatever the reason behind that nightmarish mutilation, it might as well have been done for his sake alone. It was a warning, that’s what it was. A glimpse of his future.

  But it was Abby’s tears that had finally decided it for him: He had to get out. The DEA agents would not let up until he met an equally grisly end. To them it made no difference; he’d be a casualty of a long and brutal war.

  He could predict what they’d say. No turning back now. Toothpaste’s out of the tube. Hang in there; keep the faith. We’ll take care of you.

  They’d say whatever it took, make whatever threats they could, to keep him reporting on Tom Galvin, trying to incriminate him. But he couldn’t, wouldn’t, do it anymore. He couldn’t be responsible for putting the guy in prison. Or getting him murdered, more likely.

  A loving father of three kids who’d never done him any harm, who’d tried to bail him out, who was himself trapped like Danny was trapped. Lucy was right. He’d made a terrible mistake.

  And now he had to undo it.

  Force the DEA to back off. However he had to do it.

  So he sat in front of Jay Poskanzer’s desk and tested out the solution he’d finally come up with.

  Poskanzer toyed with a miniature baseball bat, a Red Sox souvenir. He leaned back in his expensive-looking office chair. “What do you mean, you want out?”

  “I want to stop cooperating with them.”

  Poskanzer’s eyes narrowed. His wire-framed glasses were clouded, as if begrimed by fingerprints. His frizzy reddish-gray curls came to a point on either temple like ram’s horns. “You signed an agreement. It’s a binding legal document.”

  “Yeah, well, I want to get out of it. I want it nullified. I want to stop cooperating with the DEA. Simple as that.”

  The sun shone through one of the plate-glass walls of his office, flooding the place with light, glinting off the glass-topped desk. “Dude. Not so simple.”

  “If it were simple, I wouldn’t need to hire you.”

  “Are we on the clock?”

  “I’ll let you know in a couple of minutes.”

  Poskanzer shrugged. “On what grounds do you want to get out of the agreement?”

  “Professional misconduct.”

  He chuckled nervously. “What does that mean?”

  “Threatening to leak to the Sinaloa cartel that I’m cooperating with them.”

  “They wouldn’t—You don’t actually believe they’d do that, do you?”

  He nodded. “Sure. It wouldn’t surprise me. I take them at their word.”

  Of course, all they had to do was take a deposition and put him on the witness stand and the cartel would put out a hit on him. It was a wholly unnecessary threat. But they’d made it.

  “You got proof? An e-mail, maybe?”

  He shook his head.

  “Voice mail? A note? Anything?”

  He shook his head some more.

  “What are their names, again?”

  Danny told him. Poskanzer wrote them down. “So it’s your word against two federal agents’.”

  “Not if we get them on tape.”

  “Wait a second.” Poskanzer held up his hand like a traffic cop. “You’re not talking about recording it yourself, I hope.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s illegal, for one thing? In Massachusetts, both parties have to consent.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think they’re going to consent.”

  “Right. And I can’t counsel you to break the law. That’s against the Massachusetts lawyers’ code.”

  “Well, I didn’t ask your counsel on that, did I?” he said with a smile. “We’re talking about a massive, multibillion-dollar investigation into the Sinaloa cartel. So I broke the law by making an illegal recording. That’ll be a slap on the hand. A goddamned speeding ticket.”

  Poskanzer shrugged. “I . . . I didn’t agree to this.”

  “Got it. So noted. Now, let’s say I get proof. Then where do I go with it?”

  “You take it to the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility. Hold on.” He swiveled his chair and batted out something on his keyboard. “Okay, here’s their website, okay . . . it says . . . here we go: Jurisdiction . . . yada yada ya . . . investigate allegations of misconduct by law enforcement personnel. Yep, these are the folks you want.”

  “And they’d really go after a couple of DEA agents? Not just cover it up?”

  Poskanzer exhaled a long sigh of what sounded like frustration. “Here’s the deal. This is what they do, investigating official misconduct. But they won’t open an investigation unless they think they can win it. Which brings us back to proof. You don’t have any.”

  “Not yet,” Danny said, and he stood up. “But I will.”

  • • •

  He’d gotten three secure texts from the DEA agents demanding to meet. They wanted the photos, the ones he’d failed to get in Aspen. He’d avoided their texts.

  But he was ready to see them now.

  61

  In front of the Hancock Tower, Danny grabbed a cab to Government Center.

  He still hadn’t answered the DEA agents’ text messages. He wanted to surprise them. Catch them off guard. Provoke them into making threats again, if need be. Anything.

  The afternoon sun was melting the snowdrifts. Water seemed to be dripping everywhere. A truck plowed through an immense gray puddle on Cambridge Street in front of One Center Plaza, splashing everything within ten feet, including Danny’s shoes and socks. He cursed aloud.

  Standing outside the ugly façade, he took out his iPhone and selected one of the recording apps. He recorded a sample and played it back. It seemed to work fine.

  Then he started it again and began the recording: “My name is Daniel Goodman,” he said. “I live at 305 Marlborough Street in Boston, Massachusetts.” He gave the date and the time. Keeping the recorder on, he slipped the phone into a front pocket. For evidentiary purposes, Poskanzer had told him, he had to make one continuous uninterrupted recording.

  He took the elevator to the second floor. His cell phone rang. He saw BATTEN SCHECHTER on the caller ID. Jay Poskanzer.

  He debated taking the call. Then decided against it. He’d already begun the recording by stating his name and the date and time. The iPhone was recording. He could talk to Poskanzer when he was finished with the DEA.

  He found room 322 and recognized the stain on the carpet. This was definitely the place.

  He turned the knob and pulled the door open and looked to the left. The receptionist, strangely, wasn’t at her desk. The L-shaped mahogany-laminate desk was still there, but that was the only piece of furniture in the reception area. The row of chairs was gone. There was an empty cardboard box on the floor. The DEA seal, which had occupied a place of prominence on the wall, was gone. So were all the Most Wanted posters.

  No.

  “Hello?” he called.

  He advanced farther into the room, pulled open the door to the inner corridor where he’d met with the DEA men.

  It was empty, too.

  A snowdrift of Styrofoam peanuts across the hallway. Another empty cardboard box. The wrapper from a ream of Staples copy paper.
<
br />   Nothing here. No one.

  The quietly bustling office was no more. It had been disbanded, broken down like a stage set at the end of a run.

  He stood there, dazed, looking around. His cell phone rang. Batten Schechter again. He picked it up.

  He knew what Jay Poskanzer was going to say before he said it.

  “Hey, what’s the deal?” he said. He sounded angry. “I talked to my pal at the US Attorney’s office. There’s no special agents named Slocum or Yeager on the DEA payroll. They used to work for DEA, couple of years ago. But no longer.”

  62

  Danny felt a coldness settle over him, icy tendrils reaching inside, freezing and palpating his guts.

  If they weren’t DEA, then who were they?

  Maybe they were real DEA agents using cover names. That was certainly a possibility. He’d covertly taken a picture of one of them, Slocum, and he mailed it to Jay Poskanzer and asked him to forward it to the DEA. The real DEA.

  Poskanzer called back twenty minutes later. “It gets better,” he said. “These guys used to work for the DEA in Mexico, in Nuevo Laredo, and got caught up in a corruption sting. They each got fired seventeen months ago. They’re bad apples.”

  “Well, they made pretty convincing DEA agents.”

  “Probably because they’ve had practice. Question is, what’s their game? What are they up to? What are they doing it for?”

  Danny didn’t reply. He didn’t know.

  But he would find out.

  His cell phone chimed: a secure text message. “Hold on,” he said. He held it away from his ear, read the message.

  From AnonText007@gmail.com: 6 p.m. Home Depot parking lot, South Bay.

  South Bay was a shopping center between the South End of Boston and Dorchester, just off the Southeast Expressway.

  “Slocum” and “Yeager” were ready to meet.

  63

  Wallace Touhy’s knees hurt like hell.

  When the doorbell rang, he got up from the couch and lumbered to the front door. It took him a good minute or so. He groaned. He’d planned to hold off on the knee replacement until he retired, but now he wasn’t so sure he could make it another four months. The soft knee brace didn’t do a damned thing, and the steroid injections were worthless. He gobbled Motrins like popcorn. His doc told him if he lost thirty or forty pounds, it wouldn’t hurt so bad, but he knew better. It was those four years of serious wear and tear, playing football for the Billerica Memorial High School Indians half a century ago. That was what did it. Everything else was just the cherry on the cake.