The Brea File (11 page)

“And after the big blowup, the call didn’t seem important. It got lost in the shuffle,” Collins suggested.

“That’s right.”

“What’s on the other tape?” Collins sounded as if he had already made a guess. Collins had a good cop’s instincts, Macimer thought. Sometimes that was more important than experience or intelligence… and Collins was also intelligent.

“It’s a recording of a conversation early in 1980 between Special Agent Reese and Walter Schumaker, the informant we know rented the PRC’s hideout. According to a voiceprint comparison in the Lab, the voice of the man who talked to Agent Washington on August 27, 1981, is the same as the voice of the informant on the second tape. The man who made that call to Brea was Walter Schumaker.”

Garvey was beginning to grasp the implications. A look of consternation appeared in his eyes.

“Two hundred agents were looking for the PRC,” Macimer said slowly. “And one of them had an informant planted inside the group, we don’t know for how long. But at the time of the shoot-out, that agent, the one who called himself Brea, either knew or could have known exactly where the terrorists were.”

“And he didn’t report it?” Garvey was incredulous.

“Neither then nor afterwards.”

Garvey broke a somber silence. “What about Schumaker?”

“We don’t know.” Macimer glanced down at one of the reports he had removed from the master PRC file. “Interviews with neighbors of the house on Dover Street indicate that no one was seen leaving there on the twenty-eighth. Schumaker apparently left the house the day before, probably to buy groceries and whatever else the group needed. He could go out safely because he wasn’t on any wanted list—and he used that time to call Brea. That’s speculation,” Macimer added, “but it would seem to be a good guess that he was inside with the others on the twenty-eighth.

“The FBI Disaster Squad went in after the explosion,” the SAC went on quietly. “They were able to find parts of seven or eight bodies. Two of those were identified as the hostages. Their van was found abandoned in the next town, by the way, ten miles away. Fingerprints of at least two of the victims were never found for verification. Schumaker’s prints are in the criminal file. I think it’s a reasonable assumption that one of the unidentified bodies was his.”

“That means Brea knew…”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Collins. Let’s see what the facts say when they’re all in. What I want you two to do is go to San Timoteo and find out what else Vernon Lippert learned. Find out who he talked to and what they told him. Talk to the neighbors, the police. Check with Pacific Telephone and see if you can find out where that phone call to Sacramento came from on the twenty-seventh. My guess is it was long-distance from San Timoteo. Find out where Lippert got hold of that window screen. I want to know everything that Lippert dug up, everything that was in the Brea file.”

He paused, staring at the two agents as they scribbled on their pads, actually two-by-four-inch cards small enough to hold in the palm of your hand as you wrote. He waited until both men had finished writing before he said, “We’re going to finish what Vernon Lippert started. Find out who Brea was.”

Late that Tuesday afternoon the two agents who had been assigned to the case of the stolen FBI vehicle reported to Macimer’s office.

Jack Wagner was in his thirties, one of the famous class known in the Bureau as the “Berrigan 1000.” These were an extra thousand agents authorized by Congress in 1970 at the urging of J. Edgar Hoover, after the Director testified about the “plot” of the Berrigans to kidnap prominent government leaders and blow up government buildings. Wagner had a degree in economics from Columbia on top of three years in Vietnam. He was blond, broad-shouldered and athletic, with a perennial boyishness about his handsome features. Only his eyes were old. Calvin Rayburn, his partner, was thin and stoop-shouldered, five years younger, with black curly hair, heavy black eyebrows and eyes so deep-set that he seemed to wear a perpetual scowl. Where Wagner was outgoing and deceptively casual, Rayburn was silent, as sober in demeanor as his gray flannel suit.

Hell, Macimer thought, what happened to that FBI stereotype you always read about?

The two men worked well as a team in the Criminal Section. The file containing their daily reports of the ten-day Interstate Transport of Stolen Vehicle investigation was, however, disappointingly thin. Macimer thumbed through the reports and sat back in his chair, swiveling gently for a moment. Finally he said, “Stearns doesn’t remember anything about the people in the Fedco parking lot who helped him up after he fell?”

“Only that there was an older couple and a younger man. The man might be interesting, but Stearns doesn’t remember much. Only that he was young, thin, on the tall side. He may just have looked tall because he was helping Stearns up off the ground.” Wagner grinned. “He must’ve done that with one hand while he was pocketing the car keys with the other.”

Macimer didn’t smile. “According to your latest report, you found a gas station in Paris where he stopped for gas. How solid is that?”

“It was him,” Rayburn said.

“Yeah,” Wagner agreed. “It’s one of those self-service stations, and usually those guys don’t notice much. It was a rainy night, and the attendant never left his booth. The only reason he noticed anything at all was that he saw this young guy get out of his car, a blue Ford sedan, and go around and open the trunk. It stuck in his mind because all the guy did was look inside the trunk and then slam the lid shut. By then the attendant in the booth was watching him—they get a feel for anything unusual because of holdups—and he thought the kid was agitated. He stopped pumping gas at an odd number. Most people round off to a dollar or some even number, unless it’s a fill-up, but this was something like two dollars and thirty-seven cents, which is why the attendant remembered. The kid came straight over to the booth and paid cash. No credit card.”

There was a moment’s silence before Rayburn said, “He backtracked.”

Macimer glanced at him. “I noticed that. He came back to Highway 17. Why? Because of what he saw in the trunk of the car?”

Rayburn shrugged. “Could be.”

Macimer glanced at the file once more. The two agents had found footprints in the meadow leading away from the scene where the car had been abandoned after going off the road. Softened by a month of rains, the ground had yielded good castings of the footprints. Their pattern turned out to be that of a popular brand of jogging shoe that sold in the millions.

“The fingerprints and shoeprints are a dead end,” Macimer mused aloud. “But that kid didn’t walk back to Washington. He must have hitched a ride, if he came back at all.”

“We’re working on that,” Wagner said cheerfully, his expression at odds with the tediousness of this phase of the investigation. “I figure we can make a career out of it.”

This time Macimer returned a smile. “You’ll have to make it faster than that. As of now you’re part of a special squad. This assignment comes straight from the Director. One of the files that was in the trunk of that stolen car is missing. Maybe the kid took it, maybe not. He’s the only one who can tell us.” Macimer paused. “There’ll be a general briefing of the squad in the morning. Meanwhile, if you don’t have anything better to do, go back to Fedco. What was that kid doing there? Shopping? Getting off work? He didn’t have his own transportation. Does he live near there?”

“Gotcha,” Wagner said enthusiastically.

Macimer grinned at him. “Have fun.”

* * * *

Macimer glanced at the clock on his desk after the agents left. Nearly five o’clock. He was wondering if he might snatch one normal evening at home and a good night’s sleep—it might be the last for some time—when his secretary buzzed him on the intercom. Willa Cunningham was a good-humored, efficient, self-reliant woman who had returned to office work after her agent husband died of a heart attack at forty-nine. Besides her formidable abilities at taking dictation, typing, answering the phone, organizing paper work and sifting gossip, Willa even made good coffee—without complaining that it wasn’t part of her job.

“There’s a reporter waiting on line three,” Willa said. “Name of Gerella. Do you want to talk to him?”

“Did he say what it was about?”

“He wouldn’t say. But there is a Gerella who works for Oliver Packard. And you know how Packard has been exploiting Senator Sederholm’s Intelligence Committee hearings.”

Macimer frowned. Oliver Packard, syndicated columnist, skeleton rattler, confidant of senators and Presidents, was one of the most powerful men in Washington. In the post-Watergate decade Packard had learned the lessons of no-holds-barred investigative journalism even better than his colleagues. He was for the 1980s what Jack Anderson had been in the 1970s and Drew Pearson before him.

Macimer had a grudging respect for Oliver Packard’s skill at digging into events. The man was a fine investigator with superb instincts for finding where the bones were buried. What Macimer didn’t like was Packard’s apparent willingness, when hard evidence was lacking, to attack by innuendo and suggestion.

Senator Charles Sederholm was in some ways Capitol Hill’s counterpart to Oliver Packard. An imposing man of immense power and influence, he had used the latest round of inquiries into the government’s various intelligence agencies to polish his image in preparation for his run at the presidency.

Macimer realized suddenly that California’s primary election had been held today—the polls would still be open out on the coast. That was Sederholm’s home state, and he would almost certainly lock up its delegates for the coming Republican convention before this day was over.

“I’ll talk to him,” Macimer told Willa Cunningham. “While I’m at it, see what your private grapevine says about Gerella.”

The reporter proved less openly aggressive than Macimer had braced himself for. After a few preliminaries Gerella suggested a meeting with Macimer away from his office.

“What is it you want to see me about, Mr. Gerella?”

“I’d prefer to go’ into that face to face. Let’s just say that… I’ve been looking into some recent FBI history. I hear you might be able to help me.”

The casual comment could be a routine ploy, Macimer thought. It seemed to suggest something without actually saying anything. “I don’t see how I can help you,” he said. “Does this have something to do with Senator Sederholm’s hearings?”

There was a short pause before Gerella said, “What I’m looking into, Sederholm doesn’t know about… yet.”

There it was again. The hint, the oblique but unmistakable intimation of… what? A threat?

“Would you care to be more specific?”

“I can’t do that over the phone—and I don’t think you’d want me to, Mr. Macimer.”

“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.”

“I’d really like to talk to you, sir,” Gerella said, adopting a more respectful tack. “Maybe I’ve been listening to somebody’s fantasies. You know how rumors are in this town.” He paused a moment, as if willing to give Macimer time to evaluate the implied suggestion that what Gerella was looking into was based on substance, not the fanciful spinnings of Washington’s rumor mill. “We could make it some out-of-the-way place where we won’t be seen.”

Macimer laughed. “You don’t want to be seen talking to an FBI agent?”

“I was thinking of you,” Gerella said.

The words confirmed the decision Macimer had already reached. He would meet the reporter. It wasn’t so much that it was important for him to know what story Gerella was digging into or what rumors he had heard. Macimer wanted to know why Gerella had called
him
.

“Whereabouts?” Macimer asked.

“I was thinking of Georgetown.”

“Why Georgetown?”

“I like to eat there. You want to buy me dinner?”

“This isn’t a social get-together,” Macimer said dryly.

“Okay. Then I know a bar where we won’t be noticed.”

They agreed on the time and place and the reporter hung up. Macimer regarded the silent phone thoughtfully for a moment. Then he sighed and dialed his home phone number. Every FBI agent, and especially any Special-Agent-in-Charge of an office, ought to have a prerecorded message, he thought, telling his wife he wouldn’t be home for dinner.

* * * *

Macimer parked on a side street off Wisconsin Avenue. He walked back along the tree-shaded street past rows of Victorian and Federal period row houses, narrow brick buildings with tall narrow windows, extruding short flights of steps. The careful detailing over windows and doors spoke of a bygone craftsmanship that was now too expensive to duplicate.

Although it was still early for the dinner hour, Wisconsin was crowded. Throngs waited to get into the small, fashionable French restaurants, and young people crowded the occasional singles bars. Macimer turned right on M Street. A half block beyond the Café de Paris he found the entrance to the arcade Gerella had described over the phone. On impulse he walked past it and continued along the street to the next corner. He crossed over and started back along the sidewalk the way he had come. No one crossed the street behind him.

Macimer turned the corner onto Wisconsin and stepped quickly into the entry of a small shop whose windows displayed a collection of old prints. The shop was closed.

He stood patiently in the sheltered entry for some minutes, watching the traffic at the intersection of Wisconsin and M Street. Waiting, Macimer felt a familiar and pleasurable tension. He had spent too much time behind a desk in recent years. He missed being in the field.

At the same time he wondered about his caution. He had no reason to fear being seen talking to Oliver Packard’s reporter. But he continued to have the feeling of being watched—he had had it that night of the robbery when he spotted a brown Chevrolet several times.

Yet why would anyone be following him? Because someone believed that he had the Brea file intact? That, like Vernon Lippert, he had sat on it, hiding its contents even from his superiors?

Macimer shook himself impatiently. If what he guessed about the file was true, he understood why it was so important. What he didn’t know was to whom.