Cold Winter Rain (17 page)

Royal nodded.  “That was it.”

“Nothing about a girl?  Missing girl?”

“
What?”

“
You weren’t supposed to tell me to lay off trying to find a young woman who’s missing?”

Royal shook his head slowly.  “I swear to you I don’t know a damn thing about no missing girl.”

It was my turn to shake my head.  “Okay.  What did this guy look like?”

“
I don’t know.  Just a guy.”

“
Big guy?”

“
Not as tall as me.  Kinda thick though.”

“
Hair?”

“
Yeah, he had hair.”

“
Come on.  Dark hair, white guy, black guy, what?”

Royal sighed.  “I don’t know this guy, see.  And I don’t think he knows me.  So I don’t really care.  He’s a white guy, kinda thick like I said, dark hair, dark complexion.  Brown eyes.  Say,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“
You know that TV show they used to have on HBO?  What was it?  That Mafia show?”

“
The Sopranos
?”

“
Yeah. 
The Sopranos
.  Used to watch that show all the time.  This guy looked just like that guy on the Sopranos, what was his name?  Tony Sopranos.  Yeah.  That’s it.  That’s kinda how he looked.  Italian, you know.”

“
Okay Billy.  I appreciate your speaking with me.”

“
I wish you’d tell the judge.  Go easy on me, you know?  I got an ex-wife and a couple kids in Walker County, you know?”

I nodded.  “Yeah, I know, Billy.”  I held out my hand, and he reached up to shake, wincing a little, the chain between his wrists dragging across the table.

I stood and opened the door, then closed it and turned back.  “I don’t suppose you were the guy sent to trash my boat, were you?” I asked Royal.

“
You got a boat?” he said.  “Bass boat?  Pontoon?”

“
For what it’s worth, it’s a sailboat,” I said.

Royal shook his head.  “I don’t know nothin' about your boat.”

“Okay, Billy,” I said.  “I guess that’s all.”

I opened the door.  The guard was leaning against the wall to the left.  “All done?” he said.

“For now,” I said.

“
Okay,” he said.  Just walk back up the corridor and stand at the door where you came through.  The officers in reception will see you and let you out.”

Unless Billy Royal was lying -- and he wasn’t smart enough for that -- he’d never give me the connection between the oil and gas case and Kris Kramer.  Maybe there was no connection.  Maybe there was no connection between Kramer’s death and the oil and gas case, no connection between Don Kramer’s murder and Kris Kramer’s kidnapping.  Maybe there were two, or even three, separate cases.

And maybe tomorrow the skies would be sunny and the temperature seventy-five.  But that was not the way to bet.

In the waiting room, the families didn’t seem to have moved.  The grannies and mamas and kids seemed so dispirited, so enervated, that no one had the energy to glare at me for getting in and out before they could see their husbands or boyfriends or sons.  Nor did any of them seem ready to volunteer the answers I needed.

Outside, the same gray helmet sat tight over the Birmingham sky, with damp cold air but no rain.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Sitting in the car in the parking lot at the jail, I called Bill Alston.  His voice mail suggested that I leave a message at the beep, so I told him that I had an object in which he had expressed some interest and wondered whether he would be up for an exchange.

Alston called me back before I got to Twentieth Street.  “Hey sport,” he said.  “Where have you been keeping yourself?  Thought I’d hear from you after the big meet with the lawyers.”

“I had a few other things to do,” I said.

“
Travel is broadening, they say.”

“
They do say that.  But why do you think I’ve been traveling?”

You forgot I’m from the government, and I’m here to watch, I mean to help, you,” Alston said.

So much for flying under the radar.  I might as well have sent FBI director Bob Mueller an email with my itinerary for the year.  “Right.  So.  Maybe we can help each other.  I have something you’d like to see.  Why don’t we meet for coffee somewhere?”

“
Just say when and where, sport.  We live to serve.”

“
How about Safari Cup on Third Avenue North in ten minutes?”

“
Make it fifteen.  Okay if Agent Sanders joins us?”

“
Not a problem.  I forgot fibbies always travel in pairs.  See you there.”

I parked in the deck next to the City Federal Building and walked through a muddy alley, dodging puddles lingering from last night’s rain, and around the corner and across the street to the coffee shop.  The two special agents were drinking coffee and eating pastries at a wrought-iron table for four with a marble top near the big floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Twenty-First Street.

Alston saw me and waved as I entered the shop.  I nodded and got into the line for coffee.  When it was my turn, I ordered a medium Kenya dark roast.  The server, a slim man in his late twenties with a blond soul patch and two gold loops in his left ear, asked if I wanted space for milk.  I told him I did.  When the coffee came, I had him add a half-inch of hot skim milk and then slid down the bar to the station where they kept sweeteners.  I grabbed two packets of Equal and a wooden stirring stick and walked slowly over to the FBI agents’ table, careful not to spill the hot coffee.

“Solved any crimes today, Slate?” Alston asked before I sat down.

“
No, but it’s early,” I said.  Taking off my rain parka and draping it over a chair, I sat next to Sanders and across from Alston.  I took a long slow sip of coffee.  “Coffee’s great here,” I said.

“
Doughnuts aren’t bad either,” Alston allowed.

“
You’re all cop,” I said.

“
I like to think so,” he said.

Sanders rolled her eyes.  “If you guys are finished with the male bonding good-old-boy routine, can we transact some of the people’s business here?” she said.

Alston shrugged.  “If we must.  Slate, we hear you may have made a decision about the thumb drive.”

I took another sip of coffee.  “That depends,” I said.

Sanders looked sideways at me.  “You are hardly in a position to bargain with us, are you?” she said.

“
Let’s just listen to what Slate has to say, Agent Sanders,” Alston said.  “What is it you want from us, Slate?”

“
Three things.  First, access to all the information your lab guys pull off the drive.  Second, I want the device back undamaged and unchanged.”

“
Well, as I understand it, the device belongs to the Woolf White firm.  I assume you speak for them?” Alston said.

“
On this matter, I do.”

“
We’ll have someone call Bill Woolf to confirm that.  But, assuming that’s true, then I see no problem with those conditions.”

Alston picked up the last crumb of his doughnut with an index finger, put it to his mouth, and took a sip of coffee.  “So, now, on to door number three.  What else do you need from us, Slate?”

“Information.  Have you heard of a man named Michael Godchaux?”

The two agents looked at each other for the first time since I had sat down.

“Godchaux is a fairly common name in Louisiana, isn’t it?” Sanders asked.

“
Used to be a big sugar mill, sold retail sugar as Godchaux Sugar, I think.” Alston said.

“
Closed down in nineteen eighty-five,” Sanders said.

The agents glanced at each other again.  Alston nodded slightly.  “We know Michael Godchaux,” Sanders said.

“And he has nothing to do with the defunct Godchaux Sugar,” I said.

“
Nope,” Sanders said.

“
Well,” I said.  “That’s a start.  What else do you know?”

“
You visited our Mr. Godchaux.”  It was Alston.

I breathed in and out.  A swinging gate.  “I guessed that you knew that when we spoke on the phone a few minutes ago.  Maybe we can do it this way.  How long have you known Godchaux?”

Agent Sanders stood and said, “I’m getting a refill.  Need anything?”  She looked at Alston but, pointedly I thought, not at me.

Alston watched her walk away and then leaned toward me, elbows on the marble table, coffee cup circled in his big hands.  “Michael Godchaux, as I think you know, is the relator in the
qui tam
case Don Kramer was working on.”

He took a sip of coffee.  “Look, this is all confidential.  I know you understand that, Slate, but you must tell me you will not reveal the information I am going to give to you.  I’m a lawyer too, you know, even if I am just a lowly FBI agent.  Lawyer to lawyer.  Okay?”

I told him I agreed.

“
Good.”  He leaned forward a little more.  “In addition to being a relator, Godchaux is a confidential informant.  He walked into the offices of the United States attorney in New Orleans, four years ago next month.  He demanded that he would speak only with the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana.  It so happened that the U.S. attorney was in his office.  Once the interview began, Godchaux agreed that a couple of FBI agents could sit in.  The U.S. attorney rearranged his schedule, brought in sandwiches for lunch.  My boss at that time, the head of the New Orleans FBI office, and I were the two agents.”

“
So your last post was New Orleans?”

“
That’s right,” Alston said as Sanders sat back down.  He nodded at her.  “Since then, Godchaux has been one of my responsibilities.  Even after I transferred here to Birmingham, I kept that task because Godchaux trusted me and because he had begun to give us information relevant to the Alabama oil leases that you already know about.”

“
So why did you need me and this thumb drive?”

“
Huh.  You met Godchaux.  He’s my informant, but he’s a squirrely dude.  He realized pretty soon after he began to give us information that he could also be a relator in a civil
qui tam
case.  That’s when he contacted Don Kramer.”

“
Godchaux doesn’t tell Bill everything,” Sanders said.

“
Not by a long shot he doesn’t.”  Alston nodded.

“
So Godchaux found Kramer, not the other way around,” I said.

“
Not the usual way with plaintiffs’ lawyers, but I believe that is what happened here,” Alston said.

“
And he played you both?” I asked.

Sanders sighed.  “I don’t mean to be critical of our man.  Michael Godchaux is very bright, very capable.  He has provided us with a mother lode of good, accurate information.  The Alabama  case is important, but it is not the major part of the government’s investigation into the involvement of organized crime in small oil and gas businesses in the South.  We’re close to indictments here and in Louisiana.”

“That could explain a CI’s being a little squirrely, or, charitably, a little nervous,” I said.

“
It could,” Sanders said.  “I would be.”

“
Anyway,” said Alston.  “I don’t know what information is on that thumb drive.  It could be data we already have.  It could be something entirely new.  It could be something Godchaux wanted to share only with Kramer.  I mean, you know, before.”

“
Before the kidnapping, before Kramer’s death.”

“
One or both.”

“
Speaking of which, let me ask both of you your opinion about something else,” I said.

“
Opinions I share freely, sport.  Facts are another matter.”

“
Yeah.  Well.  Here it is.  Do you think Kris Kramer’s kidnapping is related to her father’s work?”

“
What else?” Sanders asked.

“
That’s been our assumption,” Alston said.  “If you have some other angle or thought or information, we’d like to hear it.”

I shook my head.  “No.  No facts.  No theories.  I just want to make sure I’m keeping an open mind.”

Sanders spoke.  “I think we have all finished our coffee now.”  She looked at me.  “Where is the memory stick, Slate?”

“
Before we get to that, I do have one other question.”

When neither agent responded, I asked, “Has Godchaux been compromised?”

Alston shook his head slowly.  “You mean, do his former employers know about his discussions with us?”

I nodded yes.

“We have no reason to think so.  After all, he’s still healthy.  There’s been no contact with the former employer that we know about.  And besides. . . .”

“
Besides?”

“
I mentioned Godchaux is a little squirrely.  Uses disguises.  Very savvy about technology.  Even we have difficulty listening in on that guy.  When he walked into the U.S. attorney's office?  Security video shows a blonde woman entering the building about five minutes before Godchaux was buzzed in to the outer office.  The woman goes into a public restroom on the first floor.  Michael Godchaux walks out of the restroom a few minutes later.  No,” he said, shaking his head emphatically.  “They don’t know.”

I stood, put on my rain parka, unzipped the inside pocket, pulled out the memory stick, and proffered the device to Sanders.  “Here you go,” I said.

Sanders stared up at me.  “You’re a cool dude, aren’t you?”

“
I try,” I said.

Alston’s shoulders were shaking, but he managed not to laugh out loud.

“And you will need something else,” I said.  “May I borrow a pen?”

Alston pulled a ballpoint out of a shirt pocket.  “Here you go, sport,” he said.

I unfolded the cocktail napkin under Sanders’ coffee mug and wrote the password on the reverse side.  “Remember our deal,” I said.

“
You’ll be first with the information outside the government,” Alston promised.

I shot him with a forefinger.  “You’re the man,” I said.  I made my way to the rear exit, into the main lobby of the Title Building, and through its revolving door and out into the cold damp air.