The Big Dig (21 page)

They were waiting in my
living room, a pair of them, like andirons flanking the fireplace, wearing dark suits and ties. Eddie Conklin was with them.

“Geez, Carlotta, you could stay in fuckin' touch.” Eddie didn't look pleased. “These guys about reamed me a new asshole by now.”

Roz, in black leather, emerged from the butterfly chair, yawning and stretching. I wasn't sure if her I-just-took-a-little-nap routine was genuine or a put-on. She's good.

“Hey, Carlotta, sorry. Shouldn't have opened the door.” She glared at the trespassers before dipping into a sarcastic curtsy. “There are some gentlemen to see you, and they pushed their way in.”

“Miss Carlyle.” The elder unknown removed a slim leather folder from his breast pocket, followed it with his name, Dunfey, and the initials FBI.

“Him, too?” I nodded at the younger one.

“McNamara.”

Both sets of credentials looked legit. It was possible that Liz Horgan, unable to cope with the tension, had sprung a leak, run to the feebs. It was possible that Gerry Horgan had felt similar misgivings and opened up. It was possible that I'd been spotted jaywalking in a federal zone or openly dining with Sam Gianelli. Eddie's presence gave me a hint, but I wasn't about to speculate aloud in front of special agents Dunfey and McNamara, both still standing, both trying to peel their eyes off Roz's tight leather butt as she excused herself and rapidly disappeared upstairs.

Dunfey, skinnier as well as older, asked whether I would mind discussing a certain matter that had been brought to their attention.

McNamara, in the brown suit, showed even teeth. “A friend, a colleague of mine, goes way back with Eddie here,” he said. “So far back that every once in a while he'll do Eddie a favor.”

“I'm all for old friendships,” I volunteered when he halted expectantly. It didn't seem like sticking my neck out.

“This bozo will even run a set of prints for Eddie, from time to time.” Dunfey narrowed his eyes into slits. “It's not something he ought to do, really, considering Eddie's just a private op.”

“Right,” I said, “but let's not make a federal case out of it.”

Dunfey's ugly smile stretched. “We can visit headquarters, if you'd rather.”

His threat meant the prints that I'd lifted from the pipe were not only on file, they were of special interest.

McNamara showed me more teeth. “Believe me, we'd prefer your cooperation.” He was playing good cop, Dunfey his evil twin. It wasn't a bad performance but I'd seen it before.

I knew I had to talk or call my lawyer and
dammit,
the thing was I
wanted
to talk. I needed help, specifically the kind of help the feebs can provide. I didn't have the clout, the power, and they had it in spades. They could haul the head of New Hampshire Motor Vehicles out of bed, track down the origin of the stolen Jag. They could trace Dana's cancelled check in the blink of an eye, find the bank, hell, grab the clerk who'd cashed it. But I didn't want to be shut out, and the feebs shut you out so hard you bounce. Plus I was worried they'd save the ex-presidents and the senators, and the hell with the little Horgan girl. I wanted a chance to talk to Veronica James, a chance to earn Dana Endicott's thirty grand.

Dunfey snapped, “Are you familiar with the term ‘obstructing justice'?”

McNamara's voice stayed cool. “Eddie says you didn't tell him where you got the prints, and I believe him.”

“So who's the guy?” I asked.

“
You answer my questions,
that's how it goes. Where is he?” Dunfey was getting hot.

“Is he on the ten-most-wanted? Do I win a prize?”

“Look, we've heard about you. Don't try to get cute with us.”

“I've heard about you, too. About people who died because the Boston Bureau protects informers instead of citizens.” Last year two agents got indicted for helping a local Irish mobster cover crimes ranging from extortion to murder.

“Those weren't citizens!” Dunfey snapped.

“Right. They had vowels on the end of their names so they deserved to get dumped in a gravel pit.”

“Gianelli tell you all about it?”

They'd done some checking on me.

McNamara intervened. “Hey, it's getting late, and we're not making progress. This guy's prints kicked up and we want to know where you got 'em. You used our resources—”

“I used Eddie.”

“Eddie doesn't know shit.”

Conklin roused himself. “Yeah? Well, I know this: You schmucks ain't Boston Bureau.”

They had to be Washington. Justice keeps files in D.C. on guys who've threatened public officials, on foreign-born terrorists as well. The feebs have a counterterrorism squad. Squad 5. I dropped Eddie a nod by way of thanks.

“Listen,” I said. “Whoever matches those prints, I figure he's got to be major, to bring you guys up from D.C. And I also figure you didn't have a clue till the prints came in.”

“We didn't know this particular scumbag was in this particular area, and we're glad to know,” McNamara conceded.

“In other words, I did you a favor.”

“You could put it like that. But we need to know everything you know about the man who made those prints.”

“Favor for favor,” I said.

“The hell with this! Where is he?” Dunfey was hot.

“Does Faneuil Hall mean anything special to you?” I said. “Faneuil Hall on April nineteenth?”

The two agents exchanged uneasy glances.

“Listen, I don't want to stonewall you guys. I just want to tell my story to an agent I know.”

“You can tell it to us,” McNamara said.

“We're in a goddam hurry here,” Dunfey insisted.

“Then the faster you get him here, the faster I talk.”

“Let's take her in,” Dunfey said.

“Take me in, and I clam. Not a word.”

“Shit.”

“You guys could be heroes.” I broke the angry silence with a hint, an implicit offer.

Dunfey brought his fist down on the mantel. “I thought the guys in the Boston office were all corrupt anti-Italian bigots. We're not gonna fly anybody in from goddam North Dakota, for chrissakes.”

“You won't have to. He's local, undercover. I don't think it's his real name, but he calls himself Leland Walsh.”

“Fuckin' A,” Eddie said slowly. “He's Bureau, and nobody fuckin' told me?”

McNamara whipped out his cell.

“When did you know about
me?”

I was ready with an answer. “From the start.”

“Bullshit.”

“You asked too many questions. You took too many chances. You called the morgue Albany Street. Cops do that, not civilians. When you showed me the driver's license in your sock, you made a move toward the other sock first. Your FBI creds were in that one, right?”

We shared the front seat of an old Ford four-by-four parked on the verge of a narrow gravel road. Leland Walsh—I was having trouble calling him by his real name, Leonard Wells—was behind the wheel and I rode shotgun. The deep green of the truck blended into the nearby pine woods. Mist covered the windshield and fogged the side windows, which was okay because that way no one could see inside. We were north of Derry, New Hampshire. It was an hour before dawn, and icy cold. I stifled a yawn and a shiver, drew my jacket closer. More than anything else, I'd found it hard to believe Walsh was Kevin Fournier's friend.

Walsh—Wells—was supposed to confine his activities to discovering whether minority and woman-owned businesses were truly represented on the Dig, or whether blacks and women had been brought in as figureheads to get around federal contract regulations. He wasn't supposed to go sneaking around at night, getting his head beaten in. I'd been right about who he was, and I'd been right about the fact that he hadn't submitted a report detailing his midnight escapade.

And that's why I was sitting in the truck instead of twiddling my thumbs at home or calling my lawyer from jail. I wasn't here because I'd given the feebs Kendall Heywood's fingerprints and they'd sent up every red flag in Washington from the IRS to the Secret Service. Kenny Heywood, devout soldier of the Texas Republican Army, had vowed on tape and in print to blow up the White House, torch the Capitol, machine-gun senators and representatives racing for the exits. I wasn't here because he was currently pretending to be one Jason O'Meara, night watchman, or because I'd been able to steer the FBI to Rogers Walters and his crew, or because I'd unveiled the plot to dig beneath the Dig, using a huge tunnel as a blind for a small one. I was part of this operation because I was blackmailing Walsh. My involvement was the price for my silence.

I rubbed my hands over my eyes. Walsh-Wells gunned the motor to give us a little heat. My FBI all-nighter had been divided into three stages, indignation, disbelief, and finally, planning, with disbelief taking up way too much time. Dunfey couldn't credit the fact that an organized cell had infiltrated security for the Faneuil Hall extravaganza. Ken Heywood was probably a windbag; no one would dare to blow up ex-presidents. The Bureau couldn't take a tour of the secret tunnel, and since I hadn't exactly seen it either, they preferred to imagine it couldn't exist. Walsh and McNamara brought in a Dig engineer and a Department of Utilities supervisor who backed me up. The tunnel might not be there, but it could be there; it was possible. An old sewer line, a hell of a big one, long abandoned, ran parallel to Chatham Street.

Once the feebs wrapped their minds around the necessity for action, once the bureaucracy ground into motion, the wheels spun quickly. The manpower, the money, the persuasive force of the FBI was impressive. The New Hampshire Commissioner of Motor Vehicles, eager to cooperate even in the middle of the night, identified the strip mall parking lot from which the Jaguar had been stolen. It became the first pin in the large map someone tacked to a wall. A vice president at Fleet Bank identified the small Concordia Bank branch in Derry as the place where Alicia Smith or Smithe had endorsed and cashed Dana Endicott's check. Another pin. The red diamond logo Marian had noticed on a dump truck led to Hastings Hauling, a small trucking firm, also in Derry. Pin number three.

By this time, half the special agents in New England were in New Hampshire, waking district attorneys, contacting judges, preparing warrants. Since the operation would be carried out across state lines, it was necessary to fix jurisdiction. The District Attorney's Office for Racketeering and Terrorism, the Secret Service, FEMA, had to be talked on board.

Roz came through with a lead, producing the tattoo artist who'd done designs six months ago on three dudes who gave their address as River Ridge Farm. One was a girl of twenty or so who fitted Veronica's description to a T. The tat man was currently combing through files of known and suspected terrorists.

The tattoo, he explained, was a hybrid, part Montana State Prison—where agents immediately began checking files in the hopes of finding either Rogers Walters or Harold, his incorruptible underling—part homage to various Texas-bred militia groups. The star was straight from the stars and bars, the Confederate flag.

The FBI located the the Hastings truck driver and rooted him out of bed. Urged to do his civic duty and prompted by the name River Ridge Farm, he'd recalled delivering dirt to a small compound off a gravel road in a quiet area that would be bustling with summer camps in three months' time. He'd drawn a map, showing how many gates he'd driven through, exactly where he'd dumped the dirt.

Postal inspectors were awakened and questioned about the number of people receiving mail at the Jasper Pine Road address. The town clerk brought in a platte map. The gas company and phone company gave details about the service.

There were no landline phones, but no one knew how many cells. No one knew how many guns. Three women had been seen and a couple of kids. Two men, a mail carrier thought. A neighbor, the brother-in-law of the mailman, said it was a religious retreat house and the folks were very nice and respectful. Two families, he thought.

“Shit. If it weren't for the kidnapping.” Walsh-Wells didn't go any further because we'd been there before. If it weren't for the kidnapping it would be simple. Disarm the bombs and round up the crooks.

Tandy, borrowed from Dana Endicott, nudged my shoulder, and made soft inquiring noises. I patted her head and she wagged her tail, eager and alert. In the end, I'd gotten the two things I wanted most: participation, and an agreement that the conspirators wouldn't be grabbed until an attempt had been made to rescue both Krissi Horgan and Veronica James.

They'd keep Kristal alive until after her daily call to mom and dad, because if mom and dad talked, the entire operation was at risk. The Horgans had never received a phone call before noon. I thought we could count on Veronica as an ally in Kristal's rescue. I'd gone over my reasoning with the FBI, and by and large, they'd scoffed. She was the sister of a Waco victim, and their faces had gone still at the mention of the Texas town.

I ran through the sequence in my mind. She'd said she'd be gone for a weekend. She hadn't made the phone call explaining her disappearance. I wasn't sure what Walters had told her, how he'd conned her into helping, but I didn't think she'd grasped the enormity of the plan until it was too late. At some point, I thought, romance had turned to reality and the idea of revenge had been personified by a real girl, a bright and sympathetic girl who loved dogs.

When push came to shove, I thought Veejay would help Kristal, but I wasn't a hundred percent on it. I wasn't even a hundred percent on Kristal. Kidnapping does funny things to people. We could have two little Patti Hearsts in there, armed with AK-47s waiting for the glorious revolution to begin. But if I was right, if I could get Kristal out alive … If I could grab Veronica James, give Dana Endicott the chance to hire the best attorney money could buy …

“You awake?” Walsh asked softly.

“Yep.”

“Almost time.”

I ticked off details in my mind. The black Jeep's stolen plate was known to law enforcement. Charles River Dog Care was under careful watch. No one had been arrested; surveillance was deliberately loose. Better to lose someone than to let them know the game was over.

If the game was over, they'd kill the hostage and blow the hall. It might not be as satisfactory to kill teens and tourists and lunching secretaries as former heads of state and a senator who'd helped clear the FBI of wrongdoing at Waco, but demolishing the Cradle of Liberty on the anniversary of Waco would be a coup in itself.

At Faneuil Hall, they could do nothing. They couldn't sandbag; they couldn't shut down. The National Parks Service was in an uproar. A quiet uproar, I hoped.

Walsh-Wells poured a cup of coffee from a thermos and passed it my way. I drank it black, that's how much I needed it.

“We ought to get our vests on,” he said.

“Right.”

“You don't have to go. We got guys can do this.”

“Hey, you don't have to go, either.”

“It's my job,” he said.

“Mine, too. I'm getting paid.”

“Jesus, let's not get into it again.”

“Good idea.”

He chuckled softly. “You went through my stuff, didn't you? That's how you knew what was in the other sock.”

“While you slept like a baby.”

He touched my hand. “Let's do it again, when this is over.”

It was time; if we waited any longer the darkness would dissolve into pale gray mist, into the dawn of April 19. I unwrapped one of Veronica's old shoes, held it at arm's length for Tandy to sniff.

“Take it, girl,” I whispered. “Take it, Tandy.”