Lost Light (16 page)

“What is the next search?”

She moved the mouse smoothly and quickly and got back to the key word template.

“Try ‘John Dorsey,’ ” I said. “And to narrow it down, can you also add ‘Nat’s bar’?”

She typed in the information and started the search. It came back with thirteen hits and I asked her to bring up the first one. It was dated April 7, 2000, and reported events from the day before.

 

Two Los Angeles police detectives on a lunch break and a bartender were gunned down in a Hollywood bar yesterday when a man entered the establishment and attempted to rob it at gunpoint.

The 1 p.m. shooting at Nat’s on Cherokee Avenue left Detective John H. Dorsey, 49, dead of multiple gunshot wounds and his partner, Lawton Cross Jr., 38, in critical condition with head and neck wounds. Donald Rice, 29, a bartender working in the lounge, was shot multiple times and also died at the scene.

The suspect, who wore a black ski mask, escaped with an undisclosed amount of cash from the cash register, said Lt. James Macy, of the Officer Involved Shooting unit.

“It appears this was about a few hundred dollars at most,” Macy said at a press conference staged outside of the bar where the shooting took place. “We can find no reason for this guy to have started shooting.”

Macy went on to say that it was unclear whether Dorsey and Cross had attempted to stop the robbery, thereby causing the shooting to start. He said both detectives were shot while sitting in a booth in the dimly lit bar area. Neither had drawn his weapon.

The detectives had been conducting an interview in a business near Nat’s bar when they decided to take a lunch break in the bar, according to Macy. There was no indication that either man had been consuming alcohol in the bar.

“They went there as a matter of convenience,” Macy said. “It was the unluckiest decision they could have made.”

No other patrons or employees were in the bar at the time of the incident. A person who was not in the bar saw the gunman fleeing after the shooting and was able to provide police with a limited description of the suspect. As a safety precaution the witness was not identified by police.

I stopped reading to ask the librarian if I could simply print the story out.

“It’s fifty cents a page,” she said. “Cash only.”

“Okay, do it.”

She hit the
PRINT
command and then leaned backwards in her seat to see if she could see down the aisle to the reference desk. Standing, I could see it better.

“You’re still clear. Can you do one more for me?”

“If we hurry. What is it?”

I raced through my memory banks trying to come up with a name that would work for what I wanted to do next.

“How about the word ‘terrorism’?”

“Are you kidding me? Do you know how many stories that word’s been used in during the last two years?”

“Right, right, what am I thinking? Let’s cut it down. The search words don’t have to be connected, like in a sentence, right?”

“No. Listen, I need to get back to my —”

“Okay, okay, how about the words ‘FBI’ and ‘suspected terrorist’ plus ‘Al Qaeda’ and ‘cell’ spelled with a ‘c.’ Could you try that?”

“That will probably break the bank, too.”

She typed in the information and we waited, and then the computer reported that there were 467 hits, all but six of them since September 11, 2001. Beneath this number the computer printed out the headline of each story. The screen displayed the first of forty-two pages of headline listings.

“You’re going to have to look through this yourself,” Mrs. Molloy said. “I need to go back to my post now.”

I had started the last search almost as a joke. My assumption was that Parenting Today would either interview Mrs. Molloy after I left or send another agent while he continued the tail. I wanted to add a terrorism angle to my search just so they would have something to puzzle over. Now I realized I might be able to find out about what the bureau was doing.

“Okay,” I said. “That’s fine. Thanks for all of your help.”

“Remember, we close the library at nine this evening. That gives you about twenty-five more minutes.”

“Okay, thanks. Where did that printout go, by the way?”

“The printer is at the front desk. Anything you print will come out there. You come to me and pay for it and I give it to you.”

“A well-oiled machine.”

She didn’t answer. She walked off and left me alone with the computer. I took a look around and didn’t see Parenting Today anywhere. I then dropped back down into the cubicle and began scrolling through the story list. I clicked on a few and started to read them but stopped each time I discerned that the story had not even a remote connection to Los Angeles. I realized I should have included Los Angeles in the key word search. I stood up to see if Mrs. Molloy was at the front desk but she was not there. The front desk was abandoned.

I went back to the computer and on the third page of the story list a headline caught my eye.

 

I clicked the
READ
button and pulled up the entire story. The box above the body of the story said it had been published a month earlier on page A13 of the newspaper. It was accompanied by a mugshot of a man with deeply tanned skin and wavy blond hair.

A suspected money courier for supporters of global terrorism was arrested yesterday as he attempted to cross the Mexican border at Calexico with a satchel of cash, the Justice Department reported.

Mousouwa Aziz, 39, who has been on the FBI’s terrorist watch list for four years, was apprehended by Border Patrol agents as he attempted to cross from the United States into Mexico.

Aziz, who the FBI claims has ties to a Philippine cell of Al Qaeda terrorists, was carrying a large quantity of U.S. currency in a satchel found hidden under the seat of the car he was attempting to drive across the border. Aziz, who was alone in the car, was arrested without a struggle. He was being held in an unknown location under federal guidelines as an enemy combatant.

Agents said Aziz had attempted to disguise himself by dyeing his hair blond and shaving the beard he had been known to wear.

“This is a significant arrest,” said Abraham Klein, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Los Angeles anti-terrorism unit. “Our efforts around the world have been geared toward cutting off funding for terrorists. This suspected terrorist is believed to be a person intimately involved in financing terrorist activities here and abroad.”

Klein and other sources said Aziz could be a key figure in efforts to stop the movement of money—the lifeblood of long-term terrorism activity—to those targeting American interests.

“Not only did we take away a good chunk of cash with this arrest but, perhaps more importantly, we took a person who was in the business of delivering money to terrorists out of circulation,” said a Justice source who spoke on the condition he would not be identified.

Aziz is a Jordanian national who attended high school in Cleveland, Ohio, and speaks fluent English, the Justice source said. He had a passport and an Alabama driver’s license in his possession that both identified him as Frank Aiello.

Aziz’s name was placed on an FBI watch list four years ago after information was developed that connected him to money deliveries made to terrorists involved in the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa. Aziz was nicknamed “Mouse” by federal agents because of his small stature, ability to stay hidden from authorities in recent months and the difficulty agents had in pronouncing his first name.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a higher alert status was issued in regard to Aziz, though sources said there was no evidence directly linking Aziz to the 19 terrorists who carried out those suicide attacks.

“This guy is a money man,” the Justice source said. “His job is to move money from point A to point B. The money is then used to buy materials to make bombs and weapons, to support the lifestyles of terrorists while they plan and carry out their operations.”

It was unclear why Aziz was apparently attempting to take U.S. currency out of the country.

“The U.S. dollar is good anywhere,” Klein said. “In fact, it is stronger than the currency in most of the countries where these terrorist cells exist. The U.S. dollar goes a lot further. It could be that this suspect was taking the money to the Philippines to simply help pay for an operation.”

Klein also suggested that money could have been headed for terrorists planning to infiltrate the United States.

Klein refused to say how much money Aziz was transporting or where it came from. In recent months federal investigators have suggested that a large source of financing of terrorists has come from illegal activities within the United States. For example, the FBI linked an Arizona drug operation last year to a terrorist financing network.

Federal sources also told the Times last year that it was believed that desolate areas of Mexico might be the location of terrorist training camps linked to Al Qaeda. Klein refused to comment yesterday on the possibility that Aziz might have been headed to such a camp.

I sat there staring at the screen for a long moment, wondering if I had just stumbled onto something more significant than a way to take a jab at the feds. I wondered if what I had just read could in some way be connected to my own investigation. Could the agents on the ninth floor in Westwood have connected the movie money to this terrorist?

My thoughts were broken by a loudspeaker announcement that the library was closing in fifteen minutes. I clicked on the
PRINT
button for the story and went back to the story list. I scrolled through the headlines, looking for follow-ups to the Aziz arrest. I found only one, which was published two days after the first story. I called it up and found it to be only a short. It said that an arraignment for Aziz was postponed indefinitely while he was continuing to be debriefed by federal agents. The tone of the article indicated that Aziz was cooperating with investigators, though it did not specifically or clearly say that. The story said that changes in federal laws enacted after the September 11 attacks gave federal authorities wide leeway in holding suspected terrorists as enemy combatants. The rest of the story was background information already contained in the first story.

I went back to the list and continued to scroll through the headlines. It took nearly ten minutes but I never found another story about Mousouwa Aziz.

The loudspeaker announced that the library was closing. I looked around and saw Mrs. Molloy back at the front desk. She was putting things away in the drawers, getting ready to go home. I decided that I now didn’t want Parenting Today to know what I had been looking up on the computer. At least not right away. So I stayed in the cubicle until after the next announcement that the library was closed. I stayed until Mrs. Molloy came to the cubicle and told me I had to leave. She had my printouts. I paid her then folded the printouts and put them in my coat pocket with my notebook. I thanked her and left the reference room.

On my way out I pretended that I was studying the mosaics and architecture of the building, turning several times in complete circles in the rotunda as I watched for the tail man. I never saw him and began to wonder if I was being overly paranoid.

It looked like I was the last to leave through the public exit. I thought about finding the employee exit and waiting for Mrs. Molloy to come out so I could ask her if she had been questioned about me and my research requests. But I thought maybe I would only end up scaring her and let it go.

Alone as I walked through the third level of the garage toward my car, I felt the faint chill of fear move down my spine. Whether I was being tailed or not, I had successfully spooked myself. I picked up my pace and was almost trotting by the time I got to the door of the Mercedes.

 

P
aranoia is not always a bad thing. It can help you keep an edge and sometimes an edge is the difference. From the library I headed over to Broadway and then toward the Civic Center. It might seem normal enough, an ex-cop heading toward the police department. Nothing unusual about that. But as I got to the
Los Angeles Times
complex I yanked the wheel hard left without using the brakes or a turn signal and sliced through oncoming traffic into the Third Street tunnel. I pinned the accelerator and the Mercedes responded, the front end rising like a boat as it picked up speed and roared through the three-block tunnel.

As often as I could I checked the rearview mirror for a follower. The tiles on the rounded walls of the tunnel carried headlights like halos. Filmmakers rent it from the city all the time for that reason. Any car trying to keep pace with me would be advertising, unless the lights were turned off, and that would be just as obvious in the mirror.

I was smiling. I’m not sure why. Having a possible FBI tail isn’t necessarily something to be happy about. And the FBI is generally humorless about it as well. But I felt all at once that I had made the right move with the Mercedes. The car was flying. I was up high—higher than in any police car I had ever been in—so I had a good view in the mirror. It was as if I had planned for this and the plan was working. And that brought the smile.