by Dean Ing
When Visconti asked him to tape his memories of that setup in Merced, Gary agreed readily. "But hey, what's all this about a dead Langley man? I'm showing you mine; will you show me yours?"
Visconti had an easy smile for such requests, leaning back, enjoying the moment. "I didn't say he was CIA - not our CIA, anyhow. But they've missed him since 1989. They had a loose surveillance on him for almost a year, waiting for him to step too far out of bounds." He shuffled pages in the open file, made a quick scan. "Subject's name was Genet, French citizen, disappeared from his apartment in Cupertino in Silicon Valley without a trace. French consulate made official inquiries. We weren't much help, so they inquired harder. You know how it goes, pretty soon it's clear that Langley already knew Genet as an old hand in SDECE." Gary nodded at the mention of France's version of the Company.
Visconti continued. "The guy was a heavy spender, made friends around Santa Clara, almost certainly doing his bit for la belle France with - let's put it bluntly - industrial espionage. Frogs have a pretty good national expertise with semiconductors, but Silicon Gulch is where it's at. Genet may have been still on duty with SDECE, maybe not; they'd never have admitted it in any case. But he had twenty years' experience and, according to Langley, he was known as the kind of smooth player the French could trust with beaucoup loot. Very dependable and very tough, survived a few scrapes in his time. Doesn't seem like it would've been that easy to get behind him with a garrote wire."
"Shit!" Gary sat up straight at this.
"Shit indeed! Apparently, a wire breaks the hyoid bone in such a way that they can tell. And after those little mating dances we all get used to, we - Langley, that is - found out something like a quarter-mil in cash disappeared with him." With a thoughtful gaze at Gary's fast-growing crewcut, Visconti went on more slowly: "And when he's found - the second victim down that hole - he's missing his hair."
For a long moment, Gary sat still, rubbing his crew cut reflectively. Then: "Some sort of cult?"
"That crossed my mind, too. The similarities seem to be causing a flap among some Company analysts.
One of their people from the Bay Area wants to sit down with you. Could be tomorrow, so wear a pager and keep yourself handy. Evidently they think you were a mistake in more ways than one."
"You're sure this Frenchman wasn't the first," Gary said, wanting to understand it all, having his difficulties. "Yeah. Times of the disappearances and the conditions down in that hole. We just got a positive match an hour ago from dental records, thanks to that mandible you sent: victim was an eighteen-year-old who's been a missing person since he disappeared from the family ranch in the Briant vicinity in 1986 or 1987. No leads at the time; big strong high-school jock named Steele Lowery, a six-footer who hiked all around. The ranch is only a few miles from your mine shaft, so it's a reasonable supposition the kid just fell in while the water level was low and never regained consciousness.
"Sheriff knows his parents, claims the father's a rancher with clout; sheriff will have told them by now.
And that means the Fresno Bee will know, but I called in a favor and it won't make the papers before the middle of next week when the ID is, quote, positive, unquote, and it won't be front-page stuff. We want to keep this simple for the media, so we're hoping to keep Genet, and you, too, out of the news. It seems likely the Lowery kid simply stumbled into the shaft or fell while exploring. There's no indication he was put down there."
"But there might not be, when all you've got is a skeleton," Gary replied. With heightened interest: "Had he been snatched bald-headed, too?"
A head shake. "They found some hair at the site. Matches the description of the Lowery boy. There's simply no apparent connection with the second victim, any more than you'd connect two animals that wandered into the LaBrea tar pits years apart. The boy was never in trouble, certainly not connected to organized crime or the intelligence community. They're going to treat his death as accidental, which is a plus for us and probably accurate. Damn shame, young man with a good life ahead of him, but it happens all the time. One slip, and accidental death."
"That's how I'd have looked, too, after a couple of years down there." Despite himself, Gary shivered.
"Probably, but listen: you really take top marks for keeping a urine sample." Visconti shuffled papers again, propping a pair of dinky little reading glasses on his nose, then turning back, removing them. "Ever hear of the Thomas Concoction?"
Donating a blank look: "If I ever did, it didn't stick," Gary admitted. "Refresh me."
"New to me, too. Used by veterinarians occasionally; an injection for big animals they want down and out right now, for good. A curare analog puts them down in a matter of seconds, and potassium chloride stops the heart moments later. That - or something very much like it - is what you took in your hip."
"Try my ass," Gary corrected.
Visconti's grimace was comically pained. "I don't suppose you'd like to rephrase that," he said.
"Wups, sorry. But they did try my ass, Paul, and it was fudge. And goddammit, those were not women," he insisted. "They grabbed me like a couple of wrestlers - wait a minute, so how come I'm still alive? Too small a dose?"
"You had enough in you, according to the lab report. I asked about that, and had two pathologists arguing over scenarios for half an hour. They finally agreed that if the victim was in top physical shape, and if he got shaken up hard enough within a short time after cardiac arrest - and I mean walloped on the chest, really rough treatment - it just might jump-start him again. By the way, when they inject a killer grizzly or something, they just let him lie there awhile." Visconti stared into Gary's eyes. "Maybe these two sweethearts of yours just didn't let their sleeping dog lie long enough."
"I wouldn't know," Gary shrugged. "But I knew I was paralyzed, and I think they bundled me down into the footwell of their car before I - Jesus Christ! Before I died." He gulped down his chocolate as if it were an antidote.
Paul Visconti nodded, swinging his glasses from an earpiece, sobered and thoughtful. "Then, I don't know, maybe they ran over a curb, kicked you in the chest - any suggestive bruises?"
Gary placed a hand at his breastbone, rubbing gently. "A little tenderness here, but it's not much to look at. I was more worried about the lump on the back of my head - had me seeing double for a while - but I'm okay now."
"That's what they all say," Visconti rejoined, smiling, pointing at the agent's breast. "All that stuff is going to get a thorough physical before the day is out. And tomorrow, if you're up to it, there's a Langley spook who wants some of your spare time."
"What was that phrase again? Spare time? I know I must've heard it somewhere."
"I'll give you odds you've had more spare time than any of us, the past couple of days," Visconti growled, then softened it with, "It's obvious what you went through, Gary. I want you to know there's no hard feelings. Firm feelings, maybe, but not hard." He stood up, stuck his hand out.
Gary stood and accepted it with real gratitude.
19
MAY 1994
Evidently, your average desk-bound CIA "suit" doesn't do holidays, or so Gary concluded.
The debriefing was set for Tuesday, thanks to the long Memorial Day weekend just ahead. With medical approval for light duty, Gary spent his Saturday morning on personal chores: choosing an apartment in North Fresno, fueling up his Camaro and the Cessna. His buoyant feeling was not solely emotional; compared to his new lightweight polymer cast, the old one had been a freeway abutment on his arm.
His belt beeper, a standard little Metromedia pager, sent him to the phone in his Camaro; Paul Visconti would spring for lunch at the Basque Hotel, an unlikely spot in a graffiti-laden part of downtown Fresno, boasting the best six-course meal in town.
As usual, patrons dining boardinghouse style at the long banquet table made enough noise to cover any conversations by pairs sitting quietly at the small tables. Gary had to grin at Visconti's attire: dress-shirt sleeves rolled back and a loosened t
ie were the man's idea of Saturday casual. Visconti, in turn, kept glancing at Gary's scalp. Finally: "You dyed your hair?"
"Me? No, why - oh. Too much chlorine in the motel pool, like swimming in Clorox. It's okay, this new cast is waterproof."
They automatically got the standard lentil soup in a big tureen, then oxtail stew and salad, already a full meal without the entrée, but a royal Basque feast with it. Visconti ordered chicken, Gary the lamb.
"Thought you'd like to know," Visconti said as they pursued succulent bits of oxtail, "I'm pulling the plug on " your Merced operation."
Gary managed to look disappointed though his feelings on the subject were mixed. "A little La Familia cash is missing; fellow named Pepe is going to be suspicious," he said.
"So what else is new?" Visconti looked at the nearby wall, as if it carried a list of reasons for his decision. "No matter what story you gave him, he'd bounce his toes off your ribs for not checking in before this. And it's still very possible that his people were behind your problem; just not so likely anymore. Do I really want to bring in a team to keep at your back, about as inconspicuous as King Kong trying to hide behind a fence post, while you find out?" He answered his own question with a slow, and very decisive, head shake. "You've already got enough to nail Pepe Luna and a couple of others when it's time to testify."
"By which time I'll have a long white beard," Gary said.
"C'est la guerre," said the RAC, pushing his stew away reluctantly and, as an aside, "you want to leave room for the lamb unless you've been starving for a week. Now, then: we've cleaned out your Merced digs. Forget the BMW - one of Pepe's boys might spot it. I take it you're driving your Camaro?"
Personal use of a "G" car could mean thirty days without pay, as Gary knew. "What else would I be driving?"
"Just checking. That damn velocipede of yours, though: we've got it here in an impound lot. It leaks fluids."
The waitress cleared away the debris of their first courses and Gary salivated at not one, but two lamb T-bones nested in french fries. "What've you got against my Kawasaki?"
"Against anything with two wheels and three hundred decibels," Visconti grumbled, attacking his chicken.
"Besides which, you think I must be an accident waiting to happen on a bike, just like you were," Gary jibed. "You said so yourself."
"I talk too much," Visconti said, chewing and smiling.
Their dessert, comically small portions of chocolate ice cream, was anticlimactic. They discussed office work that Gary would find during the coming week, using handy shorthand terms that made their phrases innocuous. Reading between the lines, Gary guessed that he would be focusing more on the drug channels of Fresno's Hmong Asians for a while. Thanks to his injury, Visconti said, Gary would definitely not be in on
"the fun" - a major bust of an Asian drug house which had been pending for weeks.
A good bust, catching dopers with the product in a swirl of flak-jacketed action and shouted commands, was an emotional payoff, but it was not the place for a man operating at less than 100 percent. If the dopers made a fight of it and you weren't in top form, you could get some of your friends killed, along with yourself. Gary shrugged off his disappointment with, "Doctor says the cast can come off soon. He didn't say I had to stay out of a pool or off my bike."
"Well, then, I do; stay off your bike, dammit, and don't quote me any regs about what I can't tell you to do on your own time. I've covered your butt enough for a while; now you can do me that favor."
Gary agreed with bad grace and let his boss pay the bill. They parted on F Street, among spray-painted legends announcing that this was Crips turf. The graffiti did not bother Gary; he knew whose turf it really was.
He made his final decision on an apartment late in the afternoon, a complex with a pool off Shaw Avenue not too far from the Cessna, and pondered another decision while moving in. According to Visconti, the local paper would not carry any story about that mine shaft until roughly Wednesday. It appeared that no one intended to do any serious checking on the Lowery youth, but after Wednesday, any inquiries would be in context of that news story.
Big, strong kid, narrow slanting hole. I could've grabbed for the sides if I'd been awake, and so could he. Accident, hell - that's an attractive excuse that we Feds can embrace to keep the rest of this business out of the news, he concluded. So I have a window of opportunity here if I want to take it without asking permission. He did not know exactly what years-old information might surface, but he feared that, after a few more days, it would be hopelessly embroidered in the light of the new discovery.
Assuming he was going to follow an officially dead lead, it might be best not to discuss it just yet.
For his personal long-distance call, he used a pay phone on Blackstone. Jan answered on the second ring. "Oh, God, it would be you," she joked. "You must think I sit with sandwiches by the phone on Saturdays."
"Well, weren't you?"
"No sandwich. My Rachmaninoff is playing, though."
He groaned softly. "Boy, you really know how to hurt a guy. I've got a new apartment here in Fresno, and a cast that weighs under a thousand kilos."
She chuckled, setting his mind on edge. "You think that's what they mean by 'a cast of thousands'?"
"That reminds me, I owe you a movie."
"And free lodging for a night - don't forget that."
"Not as long as I live," he chuckled. "You just name the date, lady."
A long pause, then, and in a tentative voice. "How far is it from here to there, Gary?"
"You know as well as I do. Couple of hours," he said, a wild hope rising in him like the biggest trout in all creation.
It broke the surface and sunfished with joy as she said, "Well, I didn't have a workout today, and I'd really like to see your apartment, and, uh . . ." she trailed off.
"Jan. Jan, please quit making those dumb excuses, and jump in your rice rocket and bring a swimsuit.
Who knows, maybe we'll even see a movie tonight."
She agreed and he gave her his new address, tingling all over like a schoolboy, and resolved to stock his place with edibles before Jan's arrival. As he eased into Blackstone traffic, he noticed a cycle shop a block away, a place he had patronized before. He knew the Kawasaki would need a gasket set if it was leaking fluids as Visconti said, but someone was closing the shop as he drove nearer, turning the window sign over to read CLOSED. No hurry; he could take care of it next week.
What he did not notice was the Chevy Luv parked near the rear of the shop, and the familiar figure rolling down a driver's-side window that Gary had paid for, not so long ago.
20
MAY 1994
They were waiting for him on Sunday night, but Ralph Guthrie didn't know it until he was lifting his big duffel bag into the Luv's passenger seat. He hadn't learned much about Chuckie baby, and what little he had found wasn't your basic upper. It had cemented his decision to get the fuck out of Merced and onto 1-5 headed north while the getting was good.
Now suddenly it wasn't good anymore, it was awful. A moment before, in his mind he was already halfway to Seattle. Now, as one of the snake twins materialized from the dark to stand near his elbow, he was nine-tenths of the way toward a shiv in his guts. "Patron wants to talk," said the little guy, and pointed.
Guthrie kept his motions cool, seeing the other twin now, knowing he was flanked, locking the Luv again.
The dark Lincoln town car was a shadowed presence farther down the block, and Guthrie walked to it as if he didn't want to break and run in the opposite direction. In those run-down cowboy boots of his, he wouldn't have gone twenty steps. He'd done all he could to find that frigging Chuck, but time had run out, with only one slender lead to show for it and it hadn't paid off by Saturday.
Once in the Lincoln's cavernous backseat, he realized the twins were getting in front. Bad as things were, it wasn't as bad as it would've been if one of them had got in back with him. Pepe Luna's face was indistinct, his words too
distinct as the Lincoln glided away. "Taking a trip?"
Guthrie thanked God the bag was his first load. "No, no, just my laundry," he laughed. He wished he had that laugh back, it sounded like somebody strangling a parrot. "I was gonna call you in the morning."
"To say what?"
"Got a line on Chuck." Careful, don't promise unless you can deliver. "Least I think so. And listen,"
he said, forcing a little excitement, hoping maybe it would rub off, maybe they weren't heading outside Merced to some farm road where neither cries nor gunfire would be investigated until too late. "Listen, there's a good chance his name isn't Chuck Lane." There, stop and see if you've hooked him.
After too many seconds, Luna responded. "Ralph Guthrie, do not waste my time. Tell me everything you know, without flourishes. You are going to tell me anyway. One way or another."
"Sure, hey, no problem. Smoke?" Guthrie fumbled at his shirt pocket and offered his Winstons.
"Neither of us will. You were saying." Softly, but with that edge.
"I haven't actually seen him; in fact I believe he's holed up somewheres. If we're lookin' for Chuck Lane, nobody's gonna find him. But maybe that's not who we should look for." Right; we, us, you and me together, Lord Wetback. "Lane had a cycle, one of those Jap screamers. That and his Beemer are both gone. Cops took 'em, but they aren't in the PeeDee impound lot. I found out Lane gets his Kawasaki parts from a shop in Fresno. Your guy gave me this snapshot - me and Lane at the downtown bar, how'd you get that without a flash, anyhow?- - well, this snapshot, see, so I had a bunch of Xeroxes blown up of Chuck's face."
It occurred to Guthrie that he was talking too fast. Slow down and live, they say; well, by God, that was no lie. Draw it out a few minutes longer, at least. "Turns out that this Fresno parts man at a cycle shop recognized the picture, says he thought he did, anyhow, except for the mustache, I won't know till he shows - "